Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (297 page)

Prince Edward Island, July 19

Sue permitted herself a long, silent wail. It welled up from the core of her battered body, a cry of both anger and despair muffled by the months of self-discipline she had imposed. It wasn’t often that she felt sorry for herself, but this morning, as she watched Bob put on his running outfit and jog off along the beach, she cursed her limitations. Every ounce of her cried out to join him, to feel the salt wind against her skin and the wet sand beneath her bare feet. To feel the strength of her muscles and the pounding of her heart.

To know that she was his equal, by his side in all things.

Instead she stood in the cabin doorway, cradling her morning coffee and searching for distraction. This was their last full day on the island. Tomorrow they had to pack up the car for the two-day trek back to Ottawa. Their new home and their old jobs waited for them there.

Inspector Green was never far from her thoughts but now he loomed up to fill her mind. He would not be in the office when they got back. He was still up in the north, searching for his daughter. Guilt distracted her from her frustration. Compared to his ordeal, what was a minor limitation on her part? To make matters worse, she had made almost no headway unravelling her part of the mystery in the past two days.

So far Bob had hit a wall of procedural red tape from the RCMP records department in Yellowknife, but he had managed to obtain faxes of both Scott’s father and grandfather’s wills and had tried to trace the inheritance of the mining claim. The grandfather’s will had left everything to his wife, Lydia, rather than to Scott’s father, William, who would have been only a baby at the time. Lydia had moved south to Vancouver when Guy died in 1945, and as far as Bob could uncover she had never remarried or had further children. It appeared that she had lived with her son in his Richmond house, possibly helping to raise Scott, until her death in 1984. Sue recalled the ex-wife’s description of her: “A bitter old hag stuck in the past.” Poor Scott.

“Not exactly one big happy family,” Bob had observed. “Everyone seems to have existed on their own little islands. Lydia and Guy, William and Scott, and now Scott all by himself. No aunts and uncles, no cousins to help out in a pinch. What a sad, lonely way to live.”

Sue, who had grown up on an Eastern Ontario farm with two dozen cousins living almost within shouting distance, could barely imagine such loneliness. She vowed that no matter how overwhelming and intrusive the family became, she would never again complain about the noise and crowds at holidays.

There was no mention in either will of the brother, Gaetan, and his share in the claim, nor of a Dene wife and child. Nor could Bob find any information about Gaetan’s later life. Lasalle was too common a name to search the Internet without having a starting point. Nonetheless, Bob tried searching databases for the Yukon and Northwest Territories. Nothing. If Gaetan was still alive, he was leaving no digital trace. More likely he had died sometime in the pre-digital era, but a search of dusty census listings and city directories would have to wait for another time.

Yesterday Sue had started the search at the other end of the trail, with Victor Whitehead. She had placed two phone calls to him in an attempt to find out what he knew about Gaetan and Scott, but the man had not returned her calls. Now, tired of feeling sorry for herself and determined to be useful, she marched back into the cabin and put in a third call. Too late she checked her watch. Nine o’clock. That made it six a.m. in Whitehorse. A ridiculous hour to solicit co-operation.

Preparing herself to leave another message, she was surprised when the phone was snatched up before the second ring.

“Yeah?” a man barked.

“Mr. Whitehead?” Sensing he was about to slam the phone down, she rushed on. “I’m Sue Peters, Detective Peters of the Ottawa Police, and I apologize for calling so early.”

Silence greeted her, but at least he was listening. “I miscalculated the time difference.”

“How did you get this number?”

After the two unanswered calls she had coaxed his private cell number out of the clerk at City Hall, but Sue wasn’t fool enough to tell him that. “This won’t take long. I’m working on a case involving a young man missing up in the Nahanni —”

“Goddamn it, not that fucking Lasalle business again. I already told you guys I don’t know anything! So quit hassling me or I’ll lodge a complaint.”

Sue was startled. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about! One of your guys was nosing around here yesterday, making all sorts of insinuations —”

“Who was?”

“Some two-bit Mountie from Fort Simpson. Are you guys so incompetent the one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing?”

“What insinuations?”

“Well, I’ll save you the trouble. I told him he was flat wrong. I never heard of this Scott Lasalle, I don’t know where he is, and he sure as hell isn’t my cousin!”

Sue scrambled to keep ahead of him. This was getting interesting! She tweaked the truth for effect. “Our information is that he is your cousin.”

“Says him! I don’t know what his game is, but I never saw him before that night in the bar.”

Sue’s mind raced. Clearly there were developments she and Bob knew nothing about. She sensed he was only one question away from hanging up on her, so she’d better make it a good one.

“What do you know about your grandfather Gaetan?”

The phone slammed in her ear. Okay, wrong question. But at least she had opened up several leads. First of all, Scott and Victor had connected before, and Scott knew he was a cousin. Secondly, for some reason the Fort Simpson RCMP had questioned him about it. Was it possible the RCMP was quietly investigating behind the scenes? For a force obsessed with protocol and red tape, that would be a surprise.

But the third lead was the most telling of all. The name Gaetan Lasalle had touched a nerve.

It was nearly two hours before she could reach the commander of the Fort Simpson detachment. The sergeant was clipped and professional but initially unwilling to discuss the details of an ongoing investigation. She had to drop not only Inspector Green’s name but also the Ottawa Police Chief’s, and was well on her way up the RCMP ladder before he capitulated.

“Constable Tymko is conducting some inquiries in Whitehorse, yes. But only regarding the missing man’s recent activities.”

When she asked for Tymko’s contact information she met with further resistance, until she informed him she might have information that would assist him in his inquiries up there. Nihls requested that she give it to him to pass on, and it took several more exchanges to convince him that direct communication between herself and Tymko would speed up the process.

Just as she hung up with Constable Tymko’s cellphone number in hand, she spotted Bob’s lanky figure jogging toward her along the sand. He was red-faced and dripping with sweat, but his eyes sparkled.

“Man, I’m going to miss this!” he exclaimed after he’d downed half a litre of orange juice.

“Maybe Prince Edward Island could use a pair of crackerjack major crimes detectives.”

He laughed. “Major crimes? Here? I bet the worst thing that happens on this island is someone robbing the collection plate on Sunday. Besides, we’d have to transfer to the RCMP.”

She made a face. “How to ruin a good idea. Speaking of the RCMP …” She filled him in on her phone calls. “You’d be proud of me. I was very well behaved.”

He leaned over to plant a sweaty kiss on her forehead. “I’m going to jump in the shower. See if you can work your magic on this Tymko guy.”

Unfortunately Constable Tymko didn’t answer his phone. As she listened through eight rings, she glanced at her watch. Almost eight o’clock Yukon time. Surely not too early for a cop on the job. When his voicemail kicked in, she left a detailed, professionally-worded message dropping not only Inspector Green’s name but also Sergeant Nihls’s. If he were acting true to RCMP form, he would no doubt check with his superior before returning her call.

Sure enough, he called back fifteen minutes later, just as Bob was emerging, naked, from the shower. She took the phone and herself out onto the deck. She needed all her wits for this call. As it turned out, Constable Tymko was a sweetheart. As informal and co-operative as Nihls was uptight. He waved aside the constable label in favour of Chris, and he sounded very excited to have someone other than himself investigating the mysterious connection between Scott Lasalle and Victor Whitehead.

“Wow!” he exclaimed when he’d heard her out. “So you think Victor Whitehead might be Gaetan Lasalle’s grandson?”

“That seems most likely. Both brothers spent time in the bush in the Nahanni area where Victor’s grandmother grew up. She got pregnant about the same time.”

A rumbling roar drowned out his reply. “Hang on!” he shouted. “I’m on the street playing chicken with semis. I have to find some place to hide so I can write all this down.”

She waited, listening to the sound of traffic and heavy breathing as he found a place to settle. “Safe,” he said finally, “I’m all ears. Take me through this step by step.”

She consulted her own draft of the family tree before starting at the beginning, with the two brothers heading west during the Depression and ending up in the Nahanni region. She explained about the Dene baby named Isabelle Lasalle.

“There’s no father listed, but with that name, it’s a strong possibility it was one of the brothers. Guy was by that time married to Scott’s grandmother, Lydia, and from the wording of the will, he seems to have loved her very much.”

“That doesn’t mean much after months in the bush, I can tell you,” Chris replied. “For a lot of those bush men, Native women were just …” He hesitated.

Sue appreciated his discomfort. “Play things?”

He mumbled agreement.

“My money’s still on Gaetan,” she said. “Guy does seem like an honourable man. A loyal one too. He used to send money home to his mother in New Brunswick whenever he could. If he’d made some woman pregnant, I think he’d have done something for the child, at least in his will. Remember, when he wrote that will, he thought he’d struck it rich.”

“But he disappeared himself about the same time. Maybe he never knew about the Dene baby. It’s not like news travelled fast in those days, especially during the winter.”

“What do you know about his disappearance?” Sue asked.

Chris filled her in on the story the bartender had told him, concluding with the mystery surrounding Guy’s death. Sue bent over her chart. “All right, let’s see what we have so far. We have two brothers who discover a possible ruby mine and stake a claim. They register the claim with the Mining Recorder’s Office in 1943 and raise funds for exploration in the summer of 1944. But the samples prove to be worthless and the investors pull out. Lots of people lose their shirts, so they would have been angry with the brothers.”

There was silence on the end of the line. Then Chris grunted. “Funny. The brothers don’t give up on the claim. Guy spends that whole winter in his cabin, trapping to make money but mainly to guard the claim, so the legend goes. And Gaetan goes to work on the oil pipeline. They’re still trying to raise money.”

“And less than a year later they’ve both dropped out of sight. Guy is presumed dead, but Gaetan?” Sue stared at her family tree. At the links as yet unexplored. All women. Scott’s grandmother, who must have known something about her husband’s intentions and his continued belief in the mine. The Dene woman in Nahanni Butte, who had borne a child from one of the brothers. And that child herself.

Isabelle. Victor’s mother, the only one still alive who might have heard stories about Guy and Gaetan. Who might know what had happened that summer in Nahanni Butte and up in the mountains where the rubies were. Sue had wanted to talk to the woman herself, woman to woman, victim to victim. A woman like herself who had fought adversity and, despite the crippling scars of residential school, had risen above it. But she knew this interview had to be conducted face to face, so as to read the silences, the nuances, the shared moments.

Chris seemed like a nice man. Maybe he could handle it. Much as she hated to, she had to hand it over.

“Can you find Isabelle?” she asked. “She lives in Whitehorse. We need to know what she knows.”

Chapter Fourteen

Whitehorse, July 19

 A
fter he hung up, Chris remained sitting on a low retaining wall outside the Whitehorse RCMP detachment. He was oblivious to the morning traffic and to the sun already heating up the crisp northern air. Instead, through the faint throb of his lingering hangover, he contemplated the information that the Ottawa detective had presented. How could he break down Victor Whitehead’s wall of denial? How could he find out his true connection to Scott Lasalle?

And more importantly, his reason for lying about it.

Chris could see no good reason why Victor would deny a connection unless he was up to something. Surely if he had simply been ignorant of Scott’s possible relationship to him, he would have expressed curiosity, maybe even excitement given that he was an only child with very little family. Not flat-out rejection.

In Chris’s opinion, Victor knew exactly who Scott was, but wanted at all cost to cover up the connection. Chris was dying to confront Victor with the bartender’s statement and demand the truth from him, but now he hesitated. Victor could still weasel out of all the bartender’s accusations. He could still say it was a chance encounter in a crowded bar and they had shared a table out of necessity. He could still say their hour-long conversation was nothing more than harmless drunken banter, their fight the result of the other man’s inability to hold his liquor. He could even concede with astonishment that maybe Scott was his cousin after all but that it was complete news to him.

Chris had learned two basic tenets of police interrogation strategy: leverage and corroboration. Sometimes the second provided the first. He needed confirmation of the blood ties. That meant talking to Isabelle first.