A Year Less a Day (12 page)

“Clean; nothing on the memory at all. It looks like someone's reformatted the hard drive.”

“Getting rid of the evidence?” suggests BB.

“Maybe.”

“What did she say about her boyfriend?” Wilson wants to know.

“Categorically denied it,” replies Brougham, “and I kinda believe her, despite what Trina Button says.”

“What about motive?” asks Wilson. “Any ideas yet?”

“Usual thing. Trying to escape from a lousy existence,” replies Brougham. “She admits borrowing eighteen grand in the last few weeks; she's dropped sixty pounds in three months; gussied herself up and got some sexy glasses. I bet she looked around the place one day and thought, ‘I can do better than this.'”

“Then what?”

“Get rid of her husband and take off for new life in the tropics like a new person.”

“Christ. Is everyone going to Hawaii but me?” jokes BB, but Wilson is serious as he says, “That works for me, Dave. But where is the money now?”

“Don't know,” admits Brougham, recalling the closing stages of the interview when he'd asked if she would try for bail.

“I haven't got any money,” Ruth had told him.

“But the business made money,” he'd suggested.

“Recently, yes.”

“So—you have some money.”

“You might as well know. I borrowed a lot of money, but I paid for Jordan to go to Los Angeles. It was a special treatment. His doctor said it could cure him.”

“Then we'll talk to the doctor ...”

Ruth had collapsed in grief. “I don't know who he is. I got the names muddled up. But Jordan will know.”

“If you'd tell me where he is I could ask him,” Brougham had shot back brusquely, then he'd brought out the unused box of Zofran that had been found in Ruth's purse, and placed them squarely on the table in front of her, demanding, “What about these?”

“Jordan didn't take them,” she'd replied innocently. “He said they upset him, so he switched ...”

“But the box is full, Mrs. Jackson. How could they have upset him if he hadn't taken any?”

Brougham raised his eyebrows, and the alarm that Ruth had heard when she'd originally found the box now had a source. But she'd had no answer for the officer.

“You don't know anything do you?” he'd said in frustration.

“Not anymore, no.”

“Either you're very stupid or you're very clever,” he'd said. But there was a third alternative. She could see it in his face. “You might just be very dangerous.”

Despite her years, Daphne Lovelace, OBE, of Westchester, an ancient city of buttery limestone nestled in the lush countryside near the coast of southern England, still throws herself into Christmas with the enthusiasm of a store Santa. The great day may be weeks off, but the decorations are already up, apart from the tree, which is still rooted to its pot outside the back door awaiting the annual holiday.

“I've had some of these close to fifty years,” Daphne had told David Bliss as she'd pinned up festive chains and paper bells, and she'd given him a sour look when he'd offered to buy new ones. “These will see me out,” she'd replied a bit testily, and she'd violently snapped open a concertina'd ball to make her point.

“I should be doing that,” Bliss had replied, frantically hanging onto the wobbly stepladder under her, but she had been adamant, saying, “Not in your condition, David. You're here to recuperate.”

But the shine of recuperation is beginning to tarnish a week later as the thought of one more day surfing the TV or the Web while rural life rambles past the window has Bliss fuming, “I wish this damn leg would heal.”

“It probably would if you did what you were told and stayed off it,” admonishes Daphne as she adds a dollop of molasses to her pudding mixture.

“Here. You needn't get up. Give it a stir for luck.”

“Have you got a spoon?”

“Roll up your sleeves—get your hands in there and do it properly,” Daphne orders. “Only sissies use spoons in Christmas puddings.”

“You expecting a lot of people?”

Daphne gives it a moment's thought. “No. Just you and Samantha, really. And her fiancé, of course. He seemed such a nice man at the ceremony.”

“So. Just the four ...”

“And the Joneses and the Elliotts of course, but they come every year, so I hardly notice them. Not one of them is over ninety, but the way they carry on you'd think they're ready to pop their clogs. Then there's Phil and Maggie Morgan from next door—he's been on his deathbed for the past fifteen years. I guess St. Peter's got enough boring old farts without having him as well.”

“So. Just me and Samantha ...”

“And I expect Minnie Dennon will accidentally stop by, saying, ‘Oh, I didn't realize you had guests, Daphne.' Hah! If all accidents were as predictable as Minnie's, we'd never have any.”

“So. Just us four,” laughs Bliss, and Daphne smiles.

“Well. Everybody wants to meet my celebrated guest.”

“I'm not celebrated ...”

The phone interrupts and Daphne glances at the stove's clock. “Who would call at this time?”

“Mike. How are you?” gushes Bliss a few seconds later as Daphne holds the phone to his ear.

“Helloo ... Sergeant Phillips,” yells Daphne at the phone, making Bliss wince.

“Hold on,” says Bliss, “I'll wipe my hands.”

It is nearly twenty-four hours since Ruth's arrest—lunchtime in Vancouver—and Phillips is calling from his office. “Police baffled” had caught his eye in the
Province
that morning, though he'd not taken any notice until Inspector Wilson had slipped in and carefully shut the door behind him.

“You're not bugged are you?” Wilson had asked, poking under Phillip's desk and upending his phone.

“No. Why?”

“This could be a bit awkward, Mike. What do you know about a Ruth Jackson?”

The name Jackson had left Phillips looking blank and he'd reached for his computer keyboard. “What does she do? Dope, porn ...”

“Ruth Jackson,” Wilson had pointedly repeated. “Runs a coffee shop out your way.”

“Oh, that Ruth. Yes, I took her to the hospital yesterday ... Why?”

“Dave, a friend of mine has gotten herself into a bit of trouble,” Phillips tells Bliss once the English detective has wrestled the phone from Daphne.

“I was just about to give him my brandy sauce recipe,” Daphne huffs, as Bliss tunes into Phillips and volunteers to assist if he can.

“It's a bit of a long shot, but it might help her if we can trace her father. He's English.”

“No problem, Mike. Let me grab a pen, and I'll get the details.”

“It's a bit vague,” he'd started, though “vague” would not adequately describe the meagre information he had gleaned from the distraught woman. Ruth had burst into sobs of relief the moment he'd walked into her cell, and hadn't stopped crying throughout his visit. Wilson had kept a cold eye on the RCMP sergeant, watching for signs to back Trina's claim, and the way that Ruth had rushed to fling her arms around Phillips hadn't eased his mind entirely.

“Mike. Thank God you've come,” she'd sobbed, until Phillips had finally peeled her off and asked her if he could help.

“I haven't done anything, Mike,” she'd wailed. “Why are they keeping me here? Why aren't they looking for Jordan?”

“I can't talk about your case, Ruth,” Phillips had said, as instructed. “But you need a lawyer. You told the detective that your father was in England. Do you know where?”

“This is ridiculous,” Ruth had mumbled through the tears. “They can't find my dying husband in Vancouver but they want to find my father.”

“Look. Your dad might ...”

“He's not a dad. Dads don't do what he did,” she'd bawled, and through a barrage of tears she had poured out her mother's version of her conception.

“It's not strictly police business, Dave,” Phillips continues as Bliss returns to the phone with a notebook. “But she's got no one else to turn to. And I thought you might be fidgety with so much time on your hands.”

“You're right. What's she done?”

“Murdered her husband. I don't buy it myself, although I have to admit it doesn't look good.”

“What's she saying?”

“She can't believe he's gone. Keeps insisting he was dying of cancer.”

“And he wasn't?”

The answer is as puzzling to Phillips as it is to his comrades in the Vancouver force. The Zofran was certainly for cancer sufferers, but beyond that, there wasn't the slightest evidence that Jordan had ever been tested or treated for the illness.

“She might have got bail, but we found traces of blood on a knife,” continues Phillips after explaining the cancer dilemma.

“Have you looked under the floorboards?” inquires Bliss.

“There's a forensic team pulling the place to pieces right now.”

The forensic team had started at nine, after a briefing in the café. “Blood, body fluids, unusual stains, weapons, and ideally a stiff or two,” Inspector Wilson had told them. “Concentrate on the apartment and the kitchen first—I expect the customers would have noticed a cadaver on the floor out here. And have a special look for poisons, though it sounds like she made sure she'd got rid of them.”

“What about fingerprints?” asked a dactylographer, readying her brushes.

“If you find a bottle or weapon—otherwise it won't give us anything. We already know it's an inside job. Her dabs will be everywhere.”

“They'll probably be there for a week or more,” Phillips continues to Bliss. “Unless they turn something up.”

“And you don't think they will?”

“I was gonna say that she doesn't seem the type, but they all say that don't they?”

“They do over here, Mike.”

“Anyway. It's a real long shot, Dave, but I'd like to help her if I can. She's got no relatives she knows of in Canada and wants to trace her father.”

Daphne is dividing the pudding mix into three greased bowls as Bliss takes the sketchy details of Ruth's father, and she has them in the steamers by the time he puts down the phone.

“Here you are,” says Daphne draining the remains of the rum into two glasses and handing one to Bliss. “It seems a shame to waste it.”

“Thanks, Daphne,” he laughs, then shakes his head. “God knows how Mike thinks I'm going to trace this bloke.”

“What have you got?” she asks, sliding alongside him.

“Male; white; with a Liverpudlian accent. Apparently the woman's mother told her that he'd said his name was George, and he had a guitar case.”

“Where was this?”

“Vancouver. August 22, 1964, at a Beatles concert.”

“Oh,
that
George. Well it should be easy enough to find him, unless he was cremated.”

“I don't expect it was him,” says Bliss. “Probably some fan with a matching haircut.”

“Wasn't that about the time of the FLQ crisis in Quebec?” asks Daphne, deep in thought.

Bliss shakes his head, laughing. “I've no idea Daphne. They didn't teach international political science in my kindergarten.”

“I keep forgetting you're just a boy, really,” laughs Daphne as she heads to a bookcase in search of some long forgotten facts.

“I'll try to get more information from her when she's calmed down,” Phillips had concluded on the phone to Bliss, adding, “The problem is that most of what she says doesn't pan out, so I'm not sure if this is just another of her fantasies.”

Ruth's mind is in a tailspin as she spirals deeper into an abyss of misery, and she is still bawling when Inspector Wilson appeals to Phillips to have another talk with her. “See if you can do anything with her, Mike,” he says. “I‘m worried she'll blow a boiler the way she's carrying on.”

A friendly face warms Ruth a fraction, but her bloodshot eyes plead for help as she blubbers, “Mike, please make them let me out so I can help find him.”

“Just tell me where he is, and I'll make sure he's looked after.”

“I don't know. I keep telling you. Please let me out.”

“You'll have to apply to a judge for bail.”

“Why would I need bail? I haven't done anything.”

“Are you sure you can't afford a lawyer?”

“I haven't got any money.”

“She's not telling the truth,” says Wilson, shaking his head at Phillips a few minutes later. “She admits borrowing eighteen thousand over the past few weeks and there is several thousand unaccounted for in the business, according to her mother-in-law.”

“What about hard evidence, sir? What have we got?”

“I'm not sure I should be discussing this with you, Mike. You're aware of the allegation that you have a personal interest?”

“That's garbage.”

“OK. Well, bottom line ... As you know, forensics have found human blood on a kitchen knife; the cab company that supposedly took him for his treatment didn't; her apartment is full of pot, and we've got a video from the drug squad showing her buying on the street; her mother was a mainliner, judging by her record; and, to top it off, her husband's been missing for three months while she pretended to everyone that he was upstairs with a touch of the flu. Not looking good for your friend, Mike.”

Phillips takes a breath and weighs in, “I thought something wasn't right, just the way she trimmed herself up and started taking care of herself, wearing lipstick and eyeshadow, getting her hair done.”

“As if she was on the lookout for a replacement,” suggests Wilson. “Although that doesn't make really sense. From what I've heard, he was the one who might have been on the prowl.”

“Do we know what her husband looks like? I never saw him.”