Hiding in Plain Sight

HIDING IN
PLAIN SIGHT

A Shelby Belgarden Mystery

Valerie Sherrard

Copyright © Valerie Sherrard, 2005

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other-wise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Editor: Barry Jowett

Copy-editor: Jennifer Gallant

Design: Jennifer Scott

Printer: Webcom

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Sherrard, Valerie

   Hiding in plain sight / Valerie Sherrard.

ISBN-10: 1-55002-546-5

ISBN-13: 978-1-55002-546-0

  I. Title.

PS8587.H3867H52 2005        jC813′.6       C2005-900170-4

1      2      3      4      5             09      08      07      06      05

We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Book Publishing Industry Development Program
and
The Association for the Export of Canadian Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit
program, and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative
.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard
,
President

Printed and bound in Canada.

Printed on recycled paper.

www.dundurn.com

This book is affectionately dedicated with love and
thanks to my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Alf Lower,
who planted the seed that grew.

I
t was a warm, sunny morning early in August — a perfect day to hang out with friends by the river or just goof off around town. In my case, though, I didn't have anywhere in particular to go. The house was empty when I got up, so I was kind of rattling around, antsy and in the mood to go somewhere.

A note in the kitchen told me that Dad was at work and Mom had gone off on some picture-taking excursion. She'd started off as a total amateur a few years back but she got some books and learned a lot about photography and developing pictures and all that stuff. Now, she sells some of her work to the local paper — mostly wildlife pictures or candid shots of townsfolk.

My boyfriend, Greg, was away with his dad, visiting relatives in Russell, Ontario. I'd never even heard of the place before Greg had told me they were going there, but
I'd discovered it was a little town near Ottawa. According to Greg, it was so small that it didn't even have a theatre.

My best friend, Betts, was away too. That was really aggravating, because the last time I'd talked to her she'd been pretty upset — so upset, in fact, that she couldn't even talk about it. I hadn't found out what was wrong before she left with her folks for summer vacation. They go away for a whole month, and there are still two weeks left, so I won't be able to find out what was bothering her until she gets back. If it was even something important enough that she remembers it, that is. Betts is kind of, well, inclined to overreact at times. It's perfectly possible that she'll have forgotten the whole thing by the time I see her again — after me worrying about it for the past few weeks.

Anyway, as I was saying, I really had nowhere to go, which was a thought that kept popping into my head as I laced up my runners. Still, I wasn't going to sit around the house all day. I'd been doing that for the last two weeks, on account of being grounded.

I'd rather not talk about that, though, since it seemed a bit harsh to me, considering that the trouble I'd been in had been for a good cause. My folks had actually agreed with me about that, but they had still insisted on giving me stiff consequences for it.

So, there it was, the first day I was allowed out, and I had nothing in particular to do. I thought maybe I'd
just take a walk around, in case I happened to meet up with someone from school or whatever.

I headed across town, taking the route I normally use when I'm going to Greg's place. Instead of turning where I usually do, though, I kept on to the town square, where a cluster of stores form the perimeter of a park. The park has a few benches and a bunch of flowerbeds, with a big statue of some guy named Lord Beaverbrook in the middle. I don't know who he is, but there are a few buildings around here named for him, so he must have done something important at some point in history.

It briefly crossed my mind that I could go to the library and look up this Beaverbrook dude, but I dismissed it pretty fast. I guess it wouldn't hurt to know what was up with him and all, but this wasn't the day for it. It was too nice out, and I'd been trapped indoors for too long.

I avoided walking through the park itself, though that would have been the quickest route to the next street I was going to take. I'm sure the whole spot was designed to be a nice, peaceful place to sit when you're out shopping, but it sure isn't like that. There are always a few people hanging around the benches, but they're generally not the sort you'd want to park your grand-mother beside if she needed to rest her feet for a bit.

Usually, it's mainly guys hanging around there. Most of them are in their twenties, but there are exceptions,
and they range anywhere from a few years older than me to pretty old, like in their forties or even fifties.

It's not that they're actually doing anything wrong, at least not that you could see right off, but they've definitely taken over the park and now no one else uses it. The best I can explain it is that their presence creates a kind of atmosphere that doesn't exactly invite anyone else in.

As I skirted around it I got thinking about that and wondering what it was about these guys that so completely discourages anyone else from using the park. Was it accidental or something they did deliberately?

I know one thing — their appearance probably has a lot to do with it. Most of them look as though they've taken a pretty relaxed approach to personal hygiene, to the point that you'd have to wonder if they even had access to running water. Their clothes back up the apparent philosophy that cleanliness is highly overrated.

I was trying to decide if this was enough to ensure that others stayed away, or if there was more to it, when my attention was caught by the sound of a siren. In fact, it nearly made me jump out of my skin, the sudden blast screaming into the air on the next street over.

Naturally, I was curious. Who isn't, when they hear a siren?

The most annoying part for me is that I can't tell one emergency vehicle from another. I guess they must
make different sounds, but I never know if I'm hearing a police car or an ambulance or a fire truck.

It seemed like a good idea to check it out, just to see if there was anything astir. My conscience tugged at me just the slightest bit because I'd more or less promised Greg that I'd steer clear of trouble while he was away. I dismissed that by telling myself
I
wasn't really interested, but that I should check it out for Betts. She loves to hear everything that's going on and she'd be so proud of me if I had a tidbit for her when she got back home.

I hurried along the street to the corner, where I quickly discovered that the source of this particular siren had been an ambulance.

I told myself
again
that I wasn't being nosy, though it was getting a bit hard to convince even myself. Then I sauntered casually in the direction the ambulance had taken. It came to a stop near a building that was familiar to me, which helped me persuade myself that I really
should
check out what was going on. Just in case it involved someone I knew or something.

It's kind of hard to look nonchalant when you join a crowd of people who are standing around waiting to see who happens to be sick — or, for that matter, dead. I mean, we all knew why we were there, yet we were all acting like our interest was somehow legitimate, instead of macabre, which is closer to the truth.

I swear, I never used to be the least bit interested in stuff like that. A year ago I'd have walked right past and never given it a thought. Lately, though, I seem to run into trouble on a regular basis, and I guess my outlook is changing because of that.

It seemed to take the ambulance attendants a long time to come back out. When they finally appeared, a stretcher rolled between them. With a start, I recognized its occupant as Howard Stanley, an octogenarian I'd met there recently when I was sort of doing an investigation. He was a sweet, helpful old guy, so it was alarming to see him grimacing in obvious pain as he was rolled toward the back of the ambulance.

I briefly considered going in to ask the landlady if she knew what was wrong with him, but she's not the sort you can get a sensible answer out of very easily. I abandoned that idea and decided I was going to have to mind my own business after all.

It's weird how bad I felt the rest of the day, thinking about poor Mr. Stanley. Having met him only once, it wasn't as though I knew him well or anything. Still, he'd been so nice. On top of that, I'd gotten the impression that he didn't have a lot of visitors. If I remember correctly, he has a daughter somewhere in town, but it seemed to me that he only saw her on Sundays. I suppose the rest of the week would be pretty long, all alone in an apartment.