The Dead Letter (32 page)

80.

After two large glasses of cold water, one fresh-brewed coffee, and an
extra-strength Tylenol, Anne still felt like a sodden mat of leaves in a storm drain. Her sleep had been weird and dream-restless. Her bones ached, her muscles knotted, and, as she dressed, she felt a twinge in the ankle she'd twisted two nights before. All in all, not propitious omens for the work ahead. Anne muttered something sarcastic to herself, grabbed her purse, and rushed out the door to the car.

There would be no morning jog along the boardwalk today. It was alibi day, and, if it turned out as she hoped, it would be a day of reckoning for someone. She only wished she knew who it was. She was also confused that the likely suspects were disappearing like moths near a bat roost.

Anne pulled into a metered parking space at the entrance to the university campus. She weighed whether or not she could get her business done before some campus cop planted a ticket on her windshield, but she dug into a pocket, pulled out a coin, and dropped it into the slot. She had an hour.

The Registrar's Office was still closed. It was not yet nine o'clock. So she walked past that building and headed for the main door of the Vet College. A security guard at the desk gave directions for Edna Hibley's office and pointed her down a corridor to a linked building that housed offices for staff.

Edna's office was on the second floor. Anne strode along the rows of cubicles, each identical to the other and offering little privacy. Professors at work were in plain view to anyone who passed by. Every office had a glass front and a glass-panelled door. It reminded Anne of a zoo she once visited where animals had been exhibited behind a similar glass enclosure.

As she walked down the corridor, Anne mused whether Edna would have been labelled carnivore or herbivore, but, when she reached her office, she felt a wave of disappointment. Edna's cage was empty. Perhaps she was teaching class or supervising a lab or prepping for some lecture or other. Or perhaps she was still at home. Anne had had reservations about going straight to the Registrar's Office for information on Dawson. Likely they would balk at releasing info on student schedules without an official police request or a nod from someone like Edna who could grease the information slipway for her. Anne's disappointment changed to indecision, and she gazed blankly into the empty office.

Something about Edna's habitat held Anne's attention. Naturally, it revealed her public and professional face, but it also disclosed skills and accomplishments and even a few personal qualities, one of which was pristine orderliness. Anne prided herself on personal neatness and simplicity, clearing away distractions and clutter and all, but Edna had achieved a level of meticulousness that was quite superior. She preserved not only remarkable order, but applied an almost military precision to it. A notebook and a journal of some sort lay on her desk, one on top of the other, both squared and centred. A packet of new pencils stood erect as soldiers in a sparkling glass cylinder, their carbon cores sharpened to fine points. Stainless steel in/out trays fitted crisply at the outside corner of the desk, and it was quite evident that she had processed or disbursed the previous day's incoming mail and memos before she had left for the day. Even Edna's chair had been dutifully pushed in; cabinet drawers and cupboards were properly closed; and the lock on the filing cabinet had been engaged. Her books were regimented as well. The spine of each volume, binder, portfolio, and text had been marshalled exactly to the leading edge of every shelf.

Edna's precision impressed Anne but did not entirely surprise her. She had seen similar meticulousness in some teachers, scientists, and even a few cops she had known. A few uncommon criminals fit that profile as well.

Eventually, Anne's eyes drifted to the personal items in the office. One was a framed photograph of a young smiling Edna, an older woman, and her twin sister Carolyn. The girls looked to be about twenty. A second photograph with faded colour showed her mother and father together. Several large university degrees adorned the walls above the bookshelves. Simple black plastic borders framed them, but they stood in stark contrast to two other framed pieces, both showcased in warm wood frames. They were needlepoint pictures, handmade colourful representations of bluebells and peonies and roses and words of inspiration: “All power comes from Him” and “Reflect Repent Repair.” They were expertly crafted, and Anne admitted an admiration for the dexterity that had crafted them. Several other small framed pieces acknowledged her work with UPEI Student Services, the Companion Animal Recovery Project, the John Howard Society, and Alzheimer's Society, and they filled the remaining wall space between cabinets.

Anne glanced at her watch anxiously. She was wasting time now and hurried off. The morning had brightened considerably since she had arrived. She headed toward the Registrar's Office but, on a whim, turned instead toward the library.

The librarian smiled. Anne had a feeling that the woman actually meant to be friendly, not an unusual expectation on PEI, but Anne, in the achy, sleep-deprived, frazzled state of her morning, found it too unlikely a prospect. Nevertheless Anne forced back the best pleasant expression she could muster.

“I'm looking for some information,” said Anne.

“They say a library's the best place for that,” she quipped.

“It's personal information.”

“Try me.”

“I need to locate two students, but I don't know their schedules.”

“Names?”

“Jacob Dawson and Sami Smith.”

The librarian's pleasant, staid expression sank beneath a choked smirk, only to return moments later. Then she said: “Room 206. A group study conference room. Up the stairs and turn right.”

Anne suddenly felt like a rabbit caught with a mouth full of lettuce in her mother's garden. When she found words, she said, “So it's true what they say. Librarians are the gatekeepers to everything.”

The librarian said nothing, but tossed back a cavalier look that exuded contentedness, omniscience, and a ripple of merriment.

On her way upstairs, Anne's cell phone beeped. She glanced at it. A text message from Ben read: “Meet me at Timothy's in an hour.”

The conference room on the second floor had a fishbowl element as well. Behind the glass Anne saw Jacob, Sami, and three other students sitting around a table, notebooks out, papers shuffling, and students prepping for something. Anne knocked lightly. Jacob came to the door; a confused twist furrowed his brow. He shut the door behind him so no one could hear their conversation. He looked edgy.

“Jacob, you look almost as bad as I do this morning. Busy night?”

Dawson folded his arms in front of himself and glanced back uneasily toward the members of the study group who were watching, especially Sami, who gave Anne a look of either annoyance at the interruption or jealousy at the intrusion.

“Studying,” said Dawson. A group project is due. A presentation.”

“Where did you study?”

“I was at Sami's. Why are you asking?” Jacob's foot moved a guarded half-step back and his eyes darted elsewhere.

“Just curious. MacFarlane's dead.”

“I know. I heard on the radio this morning. An accident or fire or something. Right? But what's that got to do with me?”

“So where were you Saturday night?” Anne's phrasing was blunt.

“I don't have to answer questions like that,” he said. Jacob turned and his hand grasped the door to go back in.“Listen to me. MacFarlane's death is suspicious. You can answer my questions now, or the police will be tapping on your door later. Which will be less embarrassing?”

“All right, all right. I was at the library until closing. Then I had the study group,” he said, pointing back to the others in the room. “We met at Sami's. I was there most of the night.”

“Most of the night?”

“Okay. All night.”

“Will anyone back you up on that?”

“They all will.” Dawson's arm swung back toward the students behind the glass.

“Good. Thanks. Now you can go. Send her out,” Anne said.

Sami put on a fresh scowl and resumed her insolent demeanour, all of which confirmed Anne's speculation that Sami was wrestling with jealousy. Anne also quickly deduced that Sami knew about Jacob's history and, like many girls her age, some compulsion drew her to pursue men on the fringe, men like Jacob, but, in spite of her capricious feelings and motivations, Sami produced a solid alibi for Jacob. She claimed that Saturday's study session began in her dorm room after the library closed at ten. Jacob grabbed a snack and arrived at her place shortly after eleven. Five of them were there until about two-thirty, and Jacob spent the rest of the night with her.

Sami wrote down the names and phone numbers of the others in her study group. She jabbed the list at Anne, shot her a final, scornful, menacing look, and returned to the study group.

81.

Timothy's was a coffee shop in the heart of Charlottetown, two blocks from Anne's office if she cut through the flower beds and lawns of Province House. The shop had an old-time feel to it. It was long and narrow, like a dining car on the CNR. The floor was tile, the ceiling high and panelled in sheets of embossed tin, like ones still found in the kitchens of older rural homes.

Cabinets filled with pastries and sandwiches, cookies and breads, stretched along one wall of the shop. The service counter and food-prep station also shared that space. A string of eight or ten small tables lined the other wall and further along was a waist-high polished wood counter for a stand-up crowd on busy days.

It was not so busy when Anne arrived. The breakfast crowd had got their coffee and Danish and gone to work, and the mid-morning coffee break crowd had yet to descend. Ben sat at a table halfway down the aisle. One bright ray of sunlight illuminated the dust on his shoe. Three other customers sat at a window table. One bald-headed and two white-haired retirees chuckled amongst themselves, drank in the warm morning light, chewed the details out of city politics, and devoured old stories each had already heard but had forgotten since their first telling.

She sat down next to Ben with a creamy coffee and a large sugar cookie fresh from the counter. Her chair clanked and scraped on the tile floor; sweet granules on her cookie glittered in the reflected sunlight; and a wisp of steam rose from her cup, twisted, and curled in the air so beautifully that one would expect a genie to magically leap from the vapours. Anne's mood and temperament had risen since the library visit. She was feeling almost lively again.

“What's the news?” asked Anne. Ben hid behind his paper, absorbed with page two of the morning
Guardian
. Anne stared at him through the classifieds: “Dalmation, two years old, needs open spaces. Will sell or trade for house dog.”

“Peale's dead,” said Ben, without looking up from his newspaper.

Ben's two words squeezed the life out of any sparkle Anne had managed to resurrect that morning. The magic fled.

“How?”

“Went overboard on the ferry to Nova Scotia last night.”

“That's tragic.”

“So it is.”

“And odd. Do we know what happened?”

“Nova Scotia police are guessing it was an accident. Sea was rough, weather nasty. They found his car abandoned on deck after the ferry docked. He was nowhere about. They drew conclusions, but they haven't recovered a body.”

“Do you buy it?”

“It's hard to swallow. He had a pile of cash and bonds in his overnight bag. Investigators found it in his car. They also turned up his passport. He wouldn't need that for his supposed business trip to Cape Breton. Something else was afoot.”

“So you think he killed MacFarlane and was making a run for it?”

Ben shook his head doubtfully.

“Veronica, his wife, swore that he was home before midnight on Saturday…and he didn't leave the house again until he got the call from Sergeant Schaeffer…and that couldn't have been until after two. The coroner puts time of MacFarlane's death between midnight and two o'clock and, putting that together with the Fire Marshal's guesstimate of the progress of that type of fire, MacFarlane didn't succumb until about one, one-thirty.”

“So why was Peale running? It doesn't make sense.”

“He was afraid.”

Anne looked at him quizzically, and he explained: “Dit just phoned before you got here. He retrieved some text messages from Simone's
old cell phone. It looks like, at the time, Peale and Simone were
secretly carrying on…behind MacFarlane's back as well as Veronica's. MacFarlane finds out, kills Simone, frames Dawson, and blackmails Peale. The text messages didn't implicate Peale in Simone's death, but it would have been scandalous enough to hurt his business dealings, marriage, and political aspirations. And that's not all…,” said Ben. He leaned back in his chair, folded his hands over his paunch, and wrapped a self-satisfied grin across his face.

“What?” said Anne curtly and gave his foot a sharp kick.

“There were several flirtatious interchanges between Simone and Wendell Carmody, too.”

“That toad?”

Ben nodded. “Yep, I think she was bent on trading up and cast her net a bit wider than anyone had guessed.”

“But we're still back to square one,” said Anne. “MacFarlane killed Simone. We know that now. But the suspects in MacFarlane's death? Peale. He has an alibi from Veronica…and Dawson…he has an alibi for the time of death as well…his girlfriend and several other students. In the end, we've got nothin'. We're not even sure whether MacFarlane's death was an accident. Same with Peale's. Everyone's calling them accidents. Come to think of it…we haven't even reached square one. All we really have is a handful of suspicions and a funny feeling in our gut. Did the coroner's report come back?”

“The attending physician listed immediate cause of death as asphyxiation. Antecedent cause: smoke inhalation. He classified it as an accidental death.”

“Another dead-end,” said Anne glumly.

“I expected that. So I've asked the coroner to do a complete autopsy. See what, if anything, that brings to light.”

Ben took a long final slurp of his cooling coffee and looked closely at Anne. His brows furrowed and he leaned back in his chair like a physician dictating a diagnosis to a nursing assistant.

“You look like hell,” he said.

“I was feeling much better before I got your cheery news.”

“Why don't you take a break, get some rest.”

“Maybe…got to meet someone first.”