Deadly Fall (6 page)

From his office,
Paula drove to the fitness center, even though she was exhausted and didn't need more exercise today after her walk to and from Sam's house. Since she would be busy with Hayden all weekend, this would be her only chance to talk to Anne before the funeral.

During a brief university romance, Anne and Sam had produced a son, Dimitri, now age thirty-one and a prominent federal politician. He won his first seat in the June election. Sam's participation in his son's upbringing had kept Anne and him in contact. Their mutual friends included Kenneth and Callie. When the couple split, Anne had landed on the Kenneth side due to his friendship with her husband. Callie left the fitness center around the same time. Was that a coincidence or not? Paula wondered if Callie's involvement with Sam made her feel awkward with Anne.

The center's sign, Fit for Life, underscored with an infinity symbol, glowed pink and blue neon. Lights shone from the converted church. Anne had bought the building for next to nothing during the 1980s bust. Rather than tear down the one-hundred-year-old structure, she had gutted it, installed beams and floors to support the load of exercise machines and painted the exterior royal blue. The former square steeple became a free weights room with a view of the yuppifying neighborhood. The plumbing and lights could get wonky at times—a burst pipe once closed the center for three days—but during her eight years of membership, Paula had noticed a steady increase in customers. Anne said the business was finally in the black.

Dance music drowned out the whirr of machines, all of which seemed occupied. Paula rarely worked out during the peak evening time, when she tended to be occupied by meetings with insurance claimants. She went through the security gate. Anne rushed toward her. They hugged, which they had never done before. Anne's shoulder muscles felt taut and strong. She spent a good twelve hours at her center every day and pumped machines and weights when she wasn't involved in administrative or supervisory duties. All the way to the changing room, they shared feelings about Callie's murder. “Shock.” “Unbelievable.” The same words they had used on the phone this morning. Anne's workout gear hugged her hips and thighs. Paula changed into her baggy T-shirt and shorts. What did looks matter in an all-female facility, unless you were the owner and had to project an image? They managed to find two spare adjacent treadmills. Paula's feet moved forward and back on the treadmill belt. “I told you about Callie's phone message on Monday. If I'd returned that damn call, she might have told me what was bothering her, if something was. Maybe I couldn't have prevented the murder, but I'd know enough now to steer the cops in the right direction. They came to my house this morning.” She described their visit. Her feet pounded the belt so fast she had no trouble keeping up to Anne's pace. “They can't seriously believe, for one minute, I killed her.”

“We all feel guilty for what we might have done,” Anne said. “The last time I saw her, Callie told me she was thinking of coming back to the center when the weather got colder. Instead, it got warmer. If only I'd pushed her to rejoin us sooner.”

Paula sipped water. “I finally met Sam, today, when I dropped by unexpectedly to pay my respects. Did you know Callie's niece, Isabelle, was living with them?”

“I only found out a few weeks ago. I gather she moved in last May.”

“Is she planning to stay on alone with Sam?”

Anne frowned. “Dimitri mentioned she might. He told Sam to consider the optics.”

“As Callie's husband, Sam's an automatic suspect. Does he inherit her money?”

“Most of that went into their house.”

“Which could be worth a million dollars, after the reno.”

“Dimitri didn't tell me the terms of her will. I didn't think to ask about it.”

“Do you think Sam is sleeping with Isabelle?” Paula asked.

Anne's hazel eyes flashed surprise, as though she hadn't considered the possibility. “I hope not, for his and Dimitri's sake. He's staying with Sam during this crisis.”

Before Dimitri bought his condo in his riding last spring, he had shuttled between Sam's house and Ottawa. Anne had said his relationship with Sam was more like that of two friends than father and son.

“Why did you say, ‘for Dimitri's sake'?”

“Dimitri wasn't specific, but he's concerned about Sam. He said the cops have been giving him a hard time.”

Paula wished Anne was more curious about people. Callie would have pressed her son for details.

“Dimitri doesn't need this with parliament starting up next week.”

They left the treadmills for the elliptical machines. Paula was glad to see some sweat matting Anne's ash-blond bangs. Anne returned to the “shock” and “unbelievable” words that were starting to sound like platitudes. “I shudder at the thought of Callie jogging alone in the dark,” Anne said. “I don't much like that creepy area behind the Stampede grounds in daytime, never mind at night.”

“Callie didn't tend to worry about such things.” Another non-Anne trait.

Anne pressed her machine settings. Paula punched her elliptical panel up two levels. The machines were good for channeling stress. Much of her talk during their tri-weekly workouts involved venting, mainly hers about work, her daughters, parking tickets, incompetent repairmen . . . Anne was a good listener. In the old days, when she and Callie worked out, Callie had listened, too, but was more likely to tell her off. “Get over it,” she would say, “Don't be judgmental, see it from his or her point of view.” Clearly, at the end of her life, Callie was looking to her for help with a problem that may or may not have been related to the murder. If Paula was in crisis, who would she turn to? Hayden, unless the problem was him. She didn't have many girlfriends. The ones she had acquired after her divorce had remarried and drifted away or stalled in the bitterness. In terms of hours spent together, Anne was probably her current best friend, although they never met outside the fitness center. Of the two, Paula would rather pour her crisis to Callie, despite their distance in recent years. She wiped an eye.

“What's the matter?” Anne said.

“She's gone. There's no one in my life to replace her.”

Two minute cool down
scrolled across the elliptical panel. Anne maintained her pedaling pace. She always worked vigorously to the end.

“My best memories of Callie are of us being silly,” Paula said. “Like that night we went out drinking to celebrate my divorce. I told you about that. We wound up running along Stephen Avenue downtown shouting, ‘Death to all husbands.' I can't believe I did that, even when drunk.”

“You stumbled into a cop and collapsed in hysterics.”

“He threatened to drag us off to jail. Instead, he put us in a cab and sent us home. I told him drunkenly he'd restored my faith in men.”

Paula stepped off the elliptical machine. “Now that she's dead, all my petty jealousies seem like a waste of time. I was even jealous of Leah's preference for her, that year after we moved to Calgary. I'm glad I forgot about that when the detectives were grilling me.”

Anne led them to ab-cruncher. “I'm sure Leah didn't prefer her—

“She rubbed it in about how much more fun Callie was, more like a friend than—”

“Normal teenage rebellion,” Anne said.

They lay down on the benches and moved up and down in sync.

“Leah blamed me for dragging her here, away from all her friends in Montreal,” Paula said. “She let Gary off the hook, although it was as much his fault.”

“Kids are never fair,” Anne said.

Even at the time, Paula understood Leah's need to heap all the blame on her, so she wouldn't feel betrayed by both parents. It didn't stop Paula from being hurt, and holding back anger wasn't her strong suit. She pulled her body higher to attack her abdominal muscles. So many words she would take back, so much she would change. “I wish I'd said ‘screw work' and gone with Leah, Callie, and Skye for that girls' week in Palm Springs. It would have been fun to have had that time together. I might have got grunge.”

Anne turned sideways, her heart-shaped face sweaty and perplexed. Paula faced her to work the obliques.

“In Palm Springs, they saw a grunge band in a club,” Paula explained.

“What, exactly, is grunge?” Anne said.

“Beats me.”

“Could be Dimitri's ear-splitting teenage music,” Anne said. “That reminds me, a reporter interviewed him today while he was leaving Sam's house. The clip should be on the eleven o'clock news.”

Dressed for bed,
Paula flicked on the tv and collapsed into the sofa cushion. Outdoors, a vehicle made a U-turn on her street. Its headlights scanned her dark living room. The light stung her eyes. She was desperate for sleep, but couldn't miss the nightly news for Dimitri's interview and any updates on the murder.

Due to Callie's involvement with Sam, Paula had followed Dimitri's political career through the right wing Reform-turned-Alliance-turned-Conservative party. During his election campaign, the newspaper ran a profile piece in which the interviewer questioned him about his illegitimate birth. Dimitri spun his answer into support of family values by remarking he was glad his parents didn't abort him. The next day a left-leaning columnist implied Dimitri's parents had made an unfortunate choice. The columnist's remark inspired a couple of letters-to-the-editor.

On the screen, the news anchor reported on a hostage's reunion with her family, after days of captivity in Iraq. He segued to a report about United States veterans who opposed a monument honoring draft dodgers in Nelson,
BC
. Shots of the picturesque mountain town. A sketch of the proposed statue. It could be a half hour before they got to the local stories.

The anchor returned to the screen. “Federal Conservative member of parliament Dimitri Moss was shocked yesterday by the murder of his stepmother.”

Paula jerked forward.

“Zoë Jensen talked to Mr. Moss at his father's Calgary residence.”

Bathed in sunlight, Dimitri spoke into a microphone. He looked down, not at the reporter or the camera. “I was in my office, answering constituents' mail. My father came in and suggested we go for a coffee. He hadn't done that before, but I didn't think anything of it. I'd heard about the murder on the radio. Names weren't mentioned. I had no idea.” His voice trailed.

He wore a leather jacket and held a motorcycle helmet. His hair was thinning on top. Otherwise, he seemed a younger version of Sam; same muscular build and strong cheekbones. Dimitri stood in front of a bow window with closed blinds. The reporter asked for his reaction to the news.

“Disbelief,” he said. “I last saw Callie on Labor Day weekend, less than three weeks before it happened, at a barbecue with family and friends. She was full of life.”

“How would you describe your stepmother, as a person?”

He looked up. “She wasn't my stepmother. She was my father's wife. There was no reason for anyone to kill her.”

“Your party advocates stiffer penalties for criminals. How will this experience influence your views on that issue?”

Dimitri's eyes narrowed. He looked ready to bark out an angry reply.

“I have always been tough on crime,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”

The reporter signed off. Calgary police had reported no new developments on the case.

So, Dimitri didn't accept Callie as his stepmother. Why would he? He was thirty when his father/friend married her. Still, his response had been sharp, his answer to the crime question sharper. The newspaper profile had referred to his temper as a trait he struggled to control. Callie had confirmed that, adding she thought Sam spoiled him, giving him everything he wanted. Anne worried about his motorcycle riding. He wasn't reckless, she said, but bikes were intrinsically dangerous. The telephone rang. Paula jumped up. It was after eleven. Who would phone at this hour? She hurried to the kitchen. “Hello?”

No one spoke. Someone had called and hung up early this morning, too.

“Hello? Who's there?”

The line went dead.

Paula finished her morning coffee, her mind numb from two sleepless nights. She got Detective Vincelli's business card from the telephone cabinet. Two hang-up phone calls the day after Callie died might be a coincidence, but Vincelli had told her to phone about anything possibly connected to the murder. Thank God, none had blasted her awake this morning, and Hayden would be staying over tonight. The doorbell made her jump. She glanced at the wall clock. Five past ten. Hayden wouldn't have finished his work already. She hurried through the living room. On tiptoes, she peered through the front door window. The opaque glass obscured the tall, bald man in a business suit—Detective Vincelli.

“I was passing by on my way to the station,” he said.

“Is there some news about the murder?”

“Nothing significant. I can only stay a minute.” His face looked as tired as hers had this morning in the bathroom mirror. His beard stubble was moving from fashionable to unkempt.

She cinched her bathrobe belt and patted her bed hair. “I was going to call you about some phone calls I received.”

“Yesterday morning and last night shortly after eleven o'clock?”

“How did you know about them?”

“They were sent from Callie's cell phone.”

She gripped the belt, trying to take this in. Callie had her cell with her when she died. If someone was using the phone now . . . “Did the killer take the phone and gun?”

“The cell might have been dropped and picked up by someone else.”

Or the murderer had phoned her last night. Hello. Hello? she had said into the line.

“Did the caller say anything?” Vincelli asked.

“Nothing. The line sounded dead, both times.”