Murder in Focus (17 page)

Sanders reached into the cookie tin and picked up the notebook. The first page was headed “Dawn in Vienna” and was filled with apparently random jottings. “That's the name of his novel,” said Miranda Cruikshank, pointing at the heading. “Neat, eh?” She sat back with a look of satisfaction. “And those are his notes for the first chapter. He showed me. I couldn't figure them out at all, but of course they made perfect sense to him.” Her eyes filled with tears for a moment. “Such a damn stupid thing to happen to such a nice guy.”

Sanders scanned the first three or four pages as casually as he could. He had to resist the temptation to whip out his pen and start copying, but Miranda, although she seemed more than willing to accept anyone at his own valuation, might get suspicious if he started taking notes on his old pal's writing notebook. “I'll bet this would've been a great novel,” he said, injecting as much folksy sentimentality into his voice as he could dredge up. “I guess this must be his cast of characters, eh?—all these initials. Probably trying to think up names. It's hard to come up with good names, you know.” Miranda Cruikshank nodded wisely. She had obviously had this sort of conversation before. “I wonder what he meant by that? Did he ever tell you?” He yawned and pointed at the bottom of the fifth page of the notebook, where Bartholomew had written “1700 Joe + 1” and drawn a box around it.

“It must've been important,” said Miranda. She looked over at Sanders and picked up her braid again. She had done that while wondering whether to let him in the house and it made him nervous. “For him to do that to it.”

“Naw,” said Sanders lazily, hoping to head her off. “Just doodling, I'll bet.” He began to flip idly through the pages. “I guess my stuff isn't—” A piece of letter-size paper, folded in four, dropped out of the notebook onto the table. “Maybe this is it,” he said, unfolding it and trying to hold it away from Miranda's prying eyes.

It was headed up “R.T./Hardy, F.F.T.M.C.” and consisted of a meaningless series of numbers, some circled, arranged in what looked like paragraph form, filling the better part of the page. At the foot of the page Bartholomew had written, in what by now was familiar handwriting, “Party, May 18th, 720 Echo Drive.”

“Is that yours?” asked Miranda, reaching out her hand for it.

Sanders shook his head and folded the piece of paper up again. He opened the notebook once more as if to replace it, palmed the sheet, and slipped it into his pocket. He went on staring at the fifth page, which, in spite of a jumble of initials, seemed to make some sense, and willed it into his memory. For a fleeting instant he had considered palming the entire book, but decided that even a trusting creature like Miranda would think its disappearance peculiar. Finally he looked up and answered her. “What's that?” he said, as if being dragged back from a reverie that had taken him thousands of miles away. “Mine?” He shook his head slowly. “No, this is all Don's stuff. Tragic, isn't it?” he added. “A great talent like that.” Miranda Cruikshank nodded in solemn agreement. “I guess he must have mailed my outline back to me. And well, you know what that means. It could be weeks before it turns up.”

“Probably,” said the landlady. “After all, someone like Don wouldn't have lost anything you gave him. I mean, he was so, well, fussy about everything. Used to drive me crazy sometimes. Not like these other slobs I have living here.”

“Unless he'd been drinking a bit,” said Sanders, curious to see what her reaction would be.

“Drinking? Don? You gotta be kidding,” she said. “You had to practically tie him down to get him to have a beer. Did he used to drink when you knew him?”

Sanders nodded. “A bit,” he said cautiously.

“Must have gotten himself into trouble over it,” she said. There was satisfaction in her voice. “I thought so. I mean, otherwise why be so careful about the stuff? And he never came in drunk like the rest of the guys. Never.”

“Do those other guys who live here, your other boarders,” he said, “do they work at that same construction job he was on?”

“Nope,” she said. “The other guys he works with, they're staying at the hotel. He told me he had enough of them during the day, without having to live with them, too.”

“That sounds like Don,” said Sanders, standing up. He was beginning to tire of the deception, easy though it was. “Look, thanks a lot for the beer and the chips. And thanks for looking for my stuff. Don must have appreciated living in a place like this.” At that he began to worry that he had gone too far, but Miranda Cruikshank smiled and held out her hand.

“Peace, brother,” she said, solemnly.

“Uh, peace,” gurgled Sanders, and fled.

Sanders climbed into Harriet's car as fast as he could get the key in the lock and headed through town for the nearest open garage to fill up her fast-depleting gas tank. As he pulled up in front of a lighted regular-unleaded pump and killed the engine, he thought that he caught a glimpse of a medium-blue Ford Escort through the corner of his eye. Ridiculous, he murmured to himself. He was being swallowed up in some locally induced paranoia. He stretched, tried to look unconcerned, and then pulled out his notebook and began to jot down absolutely everything he could remember from those five or six pages. The more he wrote down, the uneasier he felt. On one of those pages hadn't Bartholomew mentioned a light blue Ford, license number 1 something something B something F—or E? Or had he made that up, remembering from that hot kitchen some fact that didn't exist, that had jumped backward into the book from his unconscious memory of the car that had just whipped by him. Then other words from those pages floated into his memory and began to tease and worry at him.

Who in bloody hell am I dealing with? he wondered. Who precisely, that is. He could always try the last refuge of confusion and ask. He looked at his watch. 8:30. He accepted his change and pulled back onto the highway again. Higgs had been complaining today about having to be at another concert tonight, he remembered, some chamber group playing with that violinist, sponsored again by the Austrian embassy. He headed north toward Ottawa.

The crowd was still milling around for the intermission when he arrived at the concert hall, but the ringing bell had started to herd them back to their seats. Higgs was standing near the main entrance door, facing inward, looking reluctant to commit himself to the second half of the program.

Sanders pulled open the door behind Higgs and spoke right into his ear. “Evening, Inspector,” he said. Higgs jumped and whirled around.

“For God's sake, man,” he said, seeing Sanders and stepping back in relief. “Don't do that. Not right now. I might have killed you.”

“Probably not,” said Sanders. “You're much too well trained to do something that stupid, I would say. But I apologize for startling you. How's the concert?”

“Who can tell?” asked Higgs, gloomily. “I'm just here to look around, that's all. No time to listen to the music. I suppose it's all right, and so far nobody's massacred anybody else, so it's a success from that point of view as well.”

“You're really expecting something to happen, aren't you?” asked Sanders curiously. “I'm surprised. It just doesn't seem all that likely to me. Not here.”

“Well . . .” said Higgs. “You hear a few rumors here and there and so you do something. You should know how it is. Most of them have no basis in fact at all and you look like a bloody fool tracking them down. One or two of them are the real stuff, and if you ignore those you end up administering local justice in some Arctic outport.” He shrugged. Right now, in the bright lights of the lobby, he looked tired and pretty human. Through the closed doors behind them came muted clapping, and then the muffled sounds of music. “What are you doing here? You come to this concert? You're missing the second half if you did.”

Sanders shook his head. “I was just walking by on my way back from dinner,” he said, “and I saw you through the glass. Thought I'd say hello is all.”

Higgs made an indefinable snorting noise.

“Oh, there was one thing,” said Sanders. “What in hell is ‘Joe plus one'?” The RCMP inspector gave him a startled look. “I was over in headquarters talking to some people and this guy is staring straight at me and says it. Someone laughs and the guy next to him says, ‘Sure, no problem.' I felt pretty stupid. What in hell was he talking about?”

Higgs laughed, and the taut lines disappeared from his face. “I haven't heard that for a while,” he said. “Not for a couple of years.” He shook his head. “One of the men in our detachment used to call the days of the week that.”

“What?”

“The days of the week. I didn't know that anyone still remembered it. And the guy who did it is . . . never mind. Anyway, Joe was a bartender at someplace we used to go to, it doesn't matter where. He worked the bar in the evenings from Thursday through Sunday, so Joe plus one was—”

“Friday,” said Sanders thoughtfully. “A neat system. He must have been a funny guy.”

“He was,” said Higgs, clipping off his words again. The mask of rigidity slipped over his face once more. “I must get back into the hall and keep an eye on things. Good night, Inspector.”

Sanders stood at the door to the motel room and hesitated. There was a dim light glowing from behind the heavy curtains but no sound issuing from the room. He transferred the key to his left hand and let his right hand slip automatically inside his jacket. With a slightly awkward motion, he inserted the key and opened the door, keeping his body back from the opening. The area in front of him had been cleared of mess, but the portion of the bed that was visible from where he stood was still piled high with their jumbled possessions. He pushed the door open a little more. More chaos, but no sign of Harriet. And no sign of anyone else, either. He slammed the door back as far as it would go. It hit the wall with a satisfying thump of metal on drywall and he walked in.

Propped up against the lamp on the low chest was a terse note. “Couldn't stand this. In coffee shop. H.”

She was sitting over the remains of a piece of apple pie and cheese. “Have some,” she said calmly. “It's not bad.”

He picked up the menu, ran his eye down it, and put it back down. “I wish you'd stop doing that to me,” he said.

“Doing what?” She put down her fork and looked up.

“Scaring the life out of me. When I opened that door and you weren't there . . . All I could think was that it might have been nice to have more than one night. . . .” His voice trailed away and he picked up the menu again. The waitress took a couple of steps toward them and he called out, “A corned beef. And a beer, a Blue, I guess.” Harriet raised two fingers. “Make that two corned beef and two Blues.” He turned back to her. “Now, what happened?”

“Nothing happened to me, obviously,” said Harriet. She could feel her cheeks burning under the steadiness of his gaze. “We lost him,” she went on hastily. “It was pretty stupid of us, I guess. I was sure he hadn't seen me, and there was no reason why he would have recognized Scott, but we followed him out to the parking lot, got Scott's car, and followed his car right back into Ottawa and then up to the river and over into Vanier. Anyway, the car pulled into a motel parking lot, the driver got out, and—”

“It wasn't the same man?”

“How in hell did you know?”

“It happens,” he said, grinning. “He probably spotted you, led you to the parking lot, and drifted off to his dormitory as soon as he found someone else for you to follow. Long before the person you were following got into his car.”

“Well, I felt pretty idiotic. Harriet Jeffries, girl detective, screws up again.”

He waited while the beer arrived, poured some, and raised his glass. “To Harriet Jeffries, girl detective. It's just as well you didn't find him, you know. At the risk of sounding repetitive, I have to say that these are probably not nice people. And I hate to think what stupid thing you might have done if you'd actually tracked him down to a motel room. Like charging up to him and asking for your pictures back.”

She shrugged. “I wouldn't do something like that. I think. Not unless I was really furious.” She raised her glass in return. “And where in hell have you been?” She was having trouble keeping her voice steady. “I was—”

“All over,” he said, suddenly cheerful. The anxiety in her eyes and the catch in her throat as she spoke had ignited the fire in his belly once again, and he picked her hand up and held it in both of his. “I may have found out a lot. Then again, it might be absolutely nothing and totally irrelevant. I'll tell you as soon as I get something to eat. I'm suffering from having consumed nothing but organic junk food all evening.”

“Organic junk food?” He surrendered her hand and shook his head as the sandwiches arrived.

“And that's what I've got so far,” said Sanders, pushing his plate aside as he finished both his sandwich and his account of the evening. “This Bartholomew was keeping rather cryptic notes on some sort of activity when he was killed, but for whom I do not know. One thing is very clear, though. He sure as hell wasn't an ordinary construction worker, not even an ordinary snitch. I would have sworn he was roaring drunk when I saw him, and an hour later, when he died, there was no appreciable amount of alcohol in his system. So he was pretty good at blending in.”

“This is all very interesting, but it doesn't tell us who stole my pictures, does it?” said Harriet, frowning.

“There is that party,” said Sanders. “The one in his notes. It's tonight, isn't it?”

“Well, I'll be damned,” said Harriet, “so it is.” Her eyes began to glow. “What a coincidence. And here I am, dressed fit to kill, just itching to get to crash some glamorous affair. Come on, finish your beer, John Sanders. Let's go. In case everyone gets bored and goes home early. What time is it?”