Deadly Fall (4 page)

“Can I see those badges again?” she said.

The young one brushed back his jacket to get his
ID
, revealing a gun holstered in his belt.

She scrutinized Detective Michael Vincelli's identification. The Calgary Police Services badge looked authentic. His photo showed a man in his late twenties with a drooping mustache. Bushy black hair covered his forehead and ears. She looked up from the picture to the bald head and jaw stubble.

“I need to get a new mug shot,” Vincelli said. His badge stated his height was six-foot-four.

Walter craned for a look. She handed the
ID
back to Vincelli. Detective Novak's photo looked more or less like him: pencil mustache, chubby cheeks, thinning blond hair back-combed to hide a balding crown. Height five-foot-nine. She should have expected the homicide unit to show up. A first step would be to check telephone records. Callie's message on her answering machine would have turned up as a call sent and received.

Walter tried to follow them through her gate. Vincelli blocked his entry. Even Walter wouldn't mess with a man that size. She continued up the sidewalk with Novak, who walked with a limp. Had he been injured while apprehending a criminal?

“I doubt I can offer any useful information,” she said. “I haven't talked to Callie in months. I'm kicking myself for not returning her message. I had two full days to do it.”

Vincelli caught up with them at the porch. “What about her calls yesterday morning?”

She halted her key in the lock. “What calls?”

“She placed two of them to this number,” Vincelli said. “Around 6:40
AM
.”

“No, she didn't.” Paula pushed open the door. “When I got home from work, I checked my messages. There were no new ones from her.”

Two pairs of eyes, one brown, one blue, stared at her.

Novak spoke. “Was someone else present in the house, to take the calls?”

“No.” She mentally ran through the answering machine messages: Callie's Monday call, Gary's and Hayden's new ones. Between them, some blanks. “I erased a couple I assumed were from telemarketers.”

Or had Callie phoned and hung up after the machine connected? Vincelli had said the calls were placed around 6:40
AM
. Callie's body was found at seven o'clock. The murder site was at least a half hour jog from Riverdale, which meant Callie had left home by six thirty.

“Did she phone me from the trail on her cell?” she said.

“Two calls were sent to this number,” Detective Vincelli said, “We believe she made them minutes before she died.”

Detective Novak limped to the chair facing the kitchen window. Vincelli paused to study the photo magnets on Paula's fridge.

“Those are my daughters,” she said.

“The dark-haired one looks like you.” He claimed the chair next to the side door, leaving her the one across from him.

When they turned down her offer to make coffee, she got out jugs of water and lemonade and washed some grapes. After the grilling at the door, the detectives had shifted the conversation to small talk, commenting on her home's fresh paint smell, her bare living room walls and her deep backyard. Settled at the table, Novak grabbed a sprig of grapes. Both men took out notepads and pens. Novak nodded at Vincelli, who said they would begin with basic information. He asked for Paula's full name, address, cell phone number, occupation, age, and marital status.

Novak recorded her responses. “How do you spell your surname?”

“S-a-v-a-r-d,” she said. “My father was French. I'm from Montreal, like Callie.” She couldn't shake the image in her mind of Callie phoning from the trail in darkness. Callie had heard Paula's voice on the answering machine, hung up, and tried again, hoping the rings would wake a friend who wasn't there.

“How do you spell your boss's name?” Novak asked.

She told them and added that Nils van der Vliet Insurance Adjusters was a small firm; she was sure they had never heard of it. The staff currently consisted of Nils, who was the owner, a secretary, and her. It seemed Vincelli would lead the questioning, while Novak took notes. Given Vincelli's age, he might be a trainee. They trained junior adjusters that way, sending them out with someone senior.

“You moved to this house last month?” Vincelli asked.

“I took possession August 24th and moved in the next weekend.”

“What was your prior address?”

She supplied it. “The house is registered in my daughter's name, for tax reasons; she and her fellow tenants pay me rent. It's perfectly legal.”

Neither cop disagreed. She drank some lemonade. Just because they were cops, she shouldn't be defensive.

Novak glanced at the door. “Do you mind if I open that? It's a bit stuffy in here.”

It would be less stuffy if he took off his jacket. Her sweaty blouse and capris made her feel vulnerable against their formal attire. Novak returned to his seat with a groan.

Vincelli loosened his tie. “You should see a doctor about that leg.”

“What happened?” Paula refilled her lemonade glass.

“Fell off my horse,” Novak said.

She laughed, releasing some tension.

“It's no joke,” he said. “That filly's too frisky for an old fart like me.”

Vincelli brought them back to business. “When was the last time you saw Callie?”

“In March, at her daughter's play,” she said. “We spoke once, about a month afterwards. I left her a few messages over the summer. She didn't get back to me until this week. I found that odd.”

“Why?”

“Usually, she returns my calls within a few days. I expect she was busy with Sam and her house renovations. You've met her husband, Sam?” Obviously, they had. She took a sip. Hopefully, the liquid would regenerate her parched brain.

Vincelli continued. “When you talked to Callie in April, did she sound troubled about anything?”

“On the contrary, she was buoyed about her university studies and sounded happy with Sam. Her life couldn't have been better. She'd had a health scare in the winter, though.”

Vincelli's raised eyebrow suggested he hadn't heard of this.

“A shadow on a mammogram; it turned out to be nothing.”

“She must have been relieved,” Novak said.

“Do you suspect some trouble led to her death?” Should she mention her suspicions about Sam? They were based on nothing more than her impressions from a brief meeting. The detectives would have interrogated him and Isabelle and, if anything, seen more than she had.

“Have you known Callie long?” Vincelli asked.

“Forty-two years.” With his prompting, she explained that Callie had moved onto her street the summer they were both ten. They became instant friends. Callie attended a Catholic elementary school, but switched to Paula's Protestant high school mainly because it was co-educational. Both attended Concordia University. Paula majored in anthropology, Callie in fine arts.

Novak scribbled notes. In addition to prompting, Vincelli's role was to glare and, presumably, look for nuance in her words and expressions. With his encouragement, she went into details. It felt good to spill everything to an eager listener, even this stranger from the police.

“Callie dropped out of university before her final year,” she said. “That is, she moved to Calgary before school started that fall, so she didn't finish.”

Vincelli unbuttoned his collar. The pink shirt suited his olive complexion. He hadn't touched his water or the grapes. Despite his writing task, Novak had devoured two sprigs.

Vincelli leafed back through the notebook in which he hadn't written a word. “Callie moved to Calgary in 1973 with her boyfriend.”

“Not exactly,” Paula said. For her twenty-first birthday Callie's parents gave her a car: a rusted old Chevy that inspired the girls to drive to Vancouver with their then boyfriends. The road trip west was fun. Arriving was not so hot. In Vancouver, they splurged on hotel rooms, rather than stay in a hostel. One night, while Callie nursed cramps, their boyfriends went out to a bar. They picked up some girls and didn't get back until morning.

Novak chuckled, while continuing to write.

“Callie and I were furious,” she said. “The guys kept asking us, ‘What's your hang-up?' This was the sixties, well, early seventies, free love and all.”

Novak looked up. “Being a cop, I missed all that fun.”

Her contemporaries at that time would have called him a pig. She had probably used the term herself. During the past thirty years, her world-view had merged with Novak's.

Having finished the pitcher of lemonade, she filled her glass with water. “While the guys were sleeping it off, Callie and I packed our bags and left them with no transportation and an unpaid hotel bill. We even took the cash from their wallets. It was a rotten thing to do.”

“It sounds to me like they deserved it,” Vincelli said. Did he ever smile?

Later, they learned the boys spent the rest of the summer cleaning hotel rooms and hitchhiking home. In Wawa they waited five hours in driving rain for a ride. Callie's boyfriend caught pneumonia.

Vincelli's lip twitched.

“You're right,” she said. “They deserved it.”

In Hope,
BC
, she and Callie treated themselves to a night out at a bar, where a folk rock band performed to their audience of two. After the set, the members joined them at their table.

“I swear,” she said, “there were literally sparks between Callie and Owen, the group's front man. The guys invited us to follow them to their gigs in northern
BC
and Alberta. We said, ‘Why not?' School didn't start for two weeks. They taught us harmonies; we played tambourines. What's the matter?” she asked Novak.

He cocked his head at her. “I'm trying to visualize you dancing on stage.”

She smoothed her frizzy hair. “Weren't you ever young and foolish?”

“Still am.” He patted his leg.

In Calgary, the day they were set to leave, Callie dropped a bombshell. She was staying with Owen and the band. She loved him, couldn't live without him. “They put me on a Greyhound bus,” Paula said. “I was—”

Vincelli's eyes narrowed.

Not continuing would seem evasive. She returned his stare. “I was angry at her. Until then, the trip had been a ‘we're-in-this-together adventure.' I felt betrayed, like she had broken a pact. I also thought she was stupid to sacrifice her education for a guy she'd only known two weeks. Owen was a selfish jerk, in my opinion. And yet . . .”

Vincelli jotted his first note. So, this was how they operated. She should have seen it. She handled suspicious insurance claimants the same way. Act friendly, gain their trust, share food, and let them ramble until they contradict themselves or blurt something out. Well, she had nothing to hide and her feelings, while petty, had been normal.

She steadied her gaze. “In one of the band's numbers, Owen played the saxophone. It was damn sexy and the one and only time I understood what Callie saw in him. I still thought she was wrong to give up school, but part of me was jealous of her passion. It was a complicated jumble of feelings that all seem irrelevant now.”

“What was Owen's surname?” Novak asked.

“Rafferty.” She also supplied the name of the lead guitarist, with whom she had shacked up, less ardently than Callie had with Owen. “Both grew up in Vancouver, if that helps.”

“I doubt they can add anything,” Vincelli said. “But we'll check them out.”

Callie and Owen moved in with a group of students they'd met at a music event. Their grand passion fizzled in a few months. At Christmas, Callie sent Paula a card, saying she'd broken up with Owen and was dating one of the students, Kenneth Unsworth, who was majoring in business and geology. They married a few years later. Paula didn't attend the wedding because flying was expensive, she didn't want to use up her vacation time, and she wasn't sure Callie wanted her there. Vincelli waited for her explanation. Spilling to cops was becoming less fun. A cigarette would be handy for stalling and considering replies.

Rather than phone to invite her to the wedding, Callie had sent a note that struck Paula as formal. Callie said it would be a small event, with only immediate family and a few friends present, and Paula needn't feel obligated to come. Kenneth's sister would be maid of honor. “That was understandable,” Paula said. “Callie and I hadn't seen each other in three years. Still, I'd known her a lot longer; we'd been best friends since childhood, gone through a lot together.” Her voice gave out. She refreshed it with water. “I'm not holding a grudge for that minor slight, if it even was one.” That was totally true. Why did it sound like she was covering up?

After the wedding, she and Callie kept in touch through sporadic letters and phone calls. Callie did the books for her husband's struggling business and couldn't take the time to fly out for Paula's wedding. “Tit for tat,” Paula said, instantly regretting the remark that made the small hurt seem profoundly meaningful.

As young wives and mothers, both got busy with family responsibilities and jobs. Kenneth's oil company took off. Callie gave up the bookkeeping for volunteer work and, later, interest courses in theater, painting, film studies and music. Paula didn't realize her friend was rich until she visited her in Calgary. Even then, she didn't see it right away, since Callie's house was modest and Paula didn't know Mount Royal was the city's most elite neighborhood. During a second visit, when their children were older and required less attention, she and Callie enjoyed the theater and restaurant scene and the parks, which were far less crowded than the ones back east. It was sunny and warm the whole time; the dry air was comfortable and unpolluted; every hill showcased magnificent mountain views.