Authors: Anne Emery
“Problem solved.”
“I didn’t do it. I’ll take a lie detector test!”
“You weren’t the only one whose interests were threatened by Jordyn.”
“What do you mean? Hey! You don’t mean Befanee had something to do with this! That’s fuckin’ sick, man. Befanee couldn’t hurt anybody. She never did nothing violent in her life. And she was with me that night. Ask anybody.”
“But who would know, if it was just the two of you here by yourselves?”
“Maybe somebody seen us, somebody from one of the other trailers.” He brooded on the problem for a while, then said, “Hey, I just remembered. The guy three places down was having a party and it got out of hand, and I went over and told him off, and told him to turn the music down and keep his buddies inside and quiet. It was late that night. You can go ask him!”
“I will. But that doesn’t prove Befanee was here.”
“Well, she was.”
“All right, Gary. Do you think that other guy is at home right now?”
“Yeah, he’s always there. He sleeps all day, parties all night. He’s in there.” Gary pointed three trailers down.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. You come outside and stand where I can see you. So I know you’re not on the phone to your alibi witness, telling him what to say.”
“I wouldn’t do nothing like that.”
“And I’ll ask him about that night. Let’s go.”
They went outside, and Gary stood in front of the trailer by the door.
“One more thing, Gary. If you ever turn up at St. Bernadette’s and ask for money again, the priests there will have you arrested. Now stay here where I can see you.”
“All right, all right.”
Monty walked down to the party trailer, which looked the part, with piles of bottles and cases of empties all around the battered exterior. He knocked at the door and waited. Nearly a full minute passed before someone answered. A bleary-eyed man wrapped in a bedsheet stood at the door blinking. “Whaddaya want?”
Monty explained that he was trying to find out what certain individuals were doing the night of September twenty-third and twenty-fourth, when Jordyn Snider was killed. He asked whether anyone had come to his trailer, perhaps to complain about noise. The man stared at him through bloodshot eyes and made an obvious, and strained, effort to think back to that night. Then he had it. “Yeah, I remember that night! Or the next morning, because somebody stole my fuckin’ copy of the
Daily News
. I heard there was a murder, and wanted to read about it in the paper, and some asshole stole it. But then I got it back from the guy, and the story wasn’t in anyway because it happened too late for the paper to have it. That was when that Jordyn girl was stabbed.”
“Right. Do you remember anything about the night before? Were you here?”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I didn’t even know her. Yeah, I was here. I had some people over. And I can prove it. Go ask the asshole who lives in that place.” The man pointed to Gary Hebb’s trailer, where Gary still stood by the entrance. “Yeah, look at him standing there, the nosy bastard. Some people got nothing better to do than whine at their neighbours. He came over in the middle of the night and started ragging on me and my friends about a bit of music we had on. It wasn’t even loud. He was the only one to complain, not even the old geezer who lives next door. Maybe he’s too deaf to hear it, I don’t know.”
“So that man, Gary, came here that same night to complain.”
“Yeah. He’s always doing stuff like that. I think she puts him up to it.”
“Who?”
“The Virgin Befanee. Maybe messages from God’s mother are what keeps her awake, not my parties. She had her face in the window that night, watching every step he made, making sure he came over and butted in.”
“All right. I won’t keep you any longer. Thanks for your help.”
“Yeah, any time. Just feel free to wake me up.”
Monty walked back to Gary Hebb. “Looks as if you’re in the clear. The guy gave you your alibi, and he doesn’t like you much. Befanee’s off the hook too.”
And Monty had heard something new about the murder victim. There was a nasty streak running through the personality of Jordyn Snider.
Chapter 13
Monty
Just after lunch on Tuesday, the receptionist at Stratton Sommers put through a call. “Somebody on the line for you, Monty. If she gave a name, I couldn’t make it out.”
“Thanks, Darlene. I’ll take it. Hello?”
“Hello? Mr. Collins?”
It was a timid voice; Monty could barely hear her. There was noise in the background, and he missed whatever else she said.
“Could you say that again?”
“I’m, uh . . .” The woman cleared her throat and spoke with a bit more volume. “I’m here to see Perry.”
“Perry?”
“You know, Pike.”
Could this be April? The alibi woman really existed?
“Okay,” was all Monty said.
“Yeah, I’m, uh, his wife.”
His wife?
“Well, we’re divorced, but . . .”
That’s right, Monty remembered. Podgis told him he was divorced. “I see. You’re Mr. Podgis’s wife, or ex-wife, and you’re here . . . where are you?”
“I’m at his place. Well, his building. He’s not home, so I can’t get into the apartment. One of his neighbours is letting me use her phone.”
“Did Pike say what time he’d be home?”
“No, not exactly. He doesn’t . . . well, he gave me his address and phone number, but he doesn’t exactly know about me coming.”
Oh.
“I took the train all the way here from Toronto.”
“How long did that take you? Day and a half?”
“Yeah. It was a long ride. I’m pooped.”
“I can imagine.”
“So, he’s not here, and you’re the only other number I have. I mean, the only other person whose name I know, because of all the publicity. Well, I guess I could have called the TV station, but . . . Anyway, if you hear from him, will you tell him I’m here?”
“Problem is, I have no idea when I’ll hear from him, and you’re stuck there with your bags and no place to settle in. Tell you what. You go to the lobby of the building, and I’ll swing by and get you. If Pike comes home in the meantime, great. If not, we’ll figure something out.”
“Oh, no, don’t do that, Mr. Collins. I’ll just wait.”
“See you in twenty minutes. Oh, what’s your name?”
“Phyllis.”
“All right, Phyllis. Call me Monty. See you in a bit.”
But before leaving for Dartmouth, Monty made a call. He saw an advantage in getting to Podgis’s ex-wife before Podgis did. With any client, especially one of this sort, Monty was always leery about what might come out of the woodwork and rear its ugly head at trial; best to hear it sooner rather than later. The former Mrs. Podgis could be a gold mine of information about his client, information Podgis himself would never divulge. But the talk might flow more freely if there was another woman in the group. He would shanghai Maura into taking a trip across the water.
His hopes were dashed, however, when he and Maura pulled up outside the five-storey yellow-brick building Podgis was renting while awaiting trial. The place was rundown and shabby, and the glass doors were so dingy and abraded that Maura had to hop out of the car and enter the building to see whether anyone waited in the lobby. Nobody there.
“Shit,” Monty muttered when she returned to the car. “If she’s not waiting there, it probably means he’s home, and they’re both in the apartment.”
“Easy enough to find out. What’s the apartment number?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Let’s go up.”
“The Podgises at home. Can’t quite picture it.”
“You will soon enough.”
So Monty drove to the far end of the parking lot, where the visitors’ spots were, and locked up and walked back to the building with Maura. They went inside and up to the second floor, knocked on the door, and waited. Knocked again. They heard someone shuffling to the door. Podgis in bedroom slippers?
“Who is it?” Podgis barked.
Monty considered several options — Jehovah’s Witnesses, Avon lady, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Girls to Go — but just said, “Monty.”
This was met by silence, then a belligerent, “Whaddya want?”
“Double date.”
“Fuck off.” His words sounded slurred.
“Open up, Podgis. We didn’t come all the way over here for nothing.”
“Who’s
we
?”
Then Monty heard Phyllis’s voice. “Perry, that’s your lawyer! Let him in!”
The door opened, and Monty was looking into the blotched red face, and breathing in the boozy fumes, of an obviously drunken Pike Podgis, still in his winter jacket. “I don’t need you here, Collins. If I want to pay for your time, I’ll choose the time. Got that?”
“Perry! Don’t be so rude to Monty.”
Phyllis Podgis, if she still went by that name, was a short, very thin woman with badly dyed brown hair in long, wavy layers and thick curly bangs cascading over her forehead — the hairstyle of a country singer on a downward slide. Tiny pale eyes were set in a small, weak-looking face. A set of glaringly white teeth, although perfectly straight, looked incongruously large in the little mouth and were obviously false. She gave the newcomers a bright smile.
Monty felt an overwhelming urge to put his arms around her and shield her from the cruelties the world would surely visit upon a woman who looked like this.
“Please come in.”
Podgis turned to her. “This isn’t your house to invite people in.”
“He just got home now,” she said to Monty and Maura. “From a bar! He doesn’t hold his liquor well. He never did.”
Podgis glared daggers at her, but she did her best to ignore him. “Now, have a seat. I cleared some of his junk off the sofa.”
“Okay, thank you. Phyllis, this is my wife, Maura. Maura, I don’t believe you and Pike Podgis have been introduced.”
“I heard you didn’t have a wife anymore,” Podgis said in greeting.
Maura gave him a look that would have shrivelled several of his vital organs if he had caught it, then turned from him to Phyllis and greeted her warmly.
“Can I get you something?” Phyllis asked.
“There’s nothing to get them,” Podgis snarled, “and they’re not staying.”
“Nothing, thanks,” Maura replied, as if Podgis had not spoken.
“I brought a few things for him that he’ll like. You know, make it more homey for him being stuck here in this place by himself.”
“I’m always by myself,” he declared. “What do you think? All of a sudden I need a nanny looking after me?”
“Here.” She reached into her bag. “I brought you a couple of pictures to put on your desk.”
“What?”
“Your family, Perry. And me. To remind you people are rooting for you. You’ll beat this charge. We all know it.” She placed a frame containing two photographs on a table Podgis was using as a desk.
“Get that off there.”
She put her hand over the double frame. “No man is an island, Perry.”
“For Christ’s sake.” He looked over at Monty and Maura. And Monty saw something that looked like desperation in his eyes.
“This is our wedding picture.” Phyllis was all but dwarfed by a big white lacy dress and veil, but her homely little face was beaming in the direction of her groom. Podgis, looking much the same as now but a bit less blocky, was decked out in a beige tuxedo with brown piping along the lapels, and a shirt with frills all down the front. Monty had long been of the opinion that photographic evidence of 1970s weddings should be put to flame and burned until only fine ash remained. The groom in this picture was half turned away from the bride, his eyes looking elsewhere.
“And here’s Perry with his family.” Phyllis pointed to a group of four. “That’s him as a teenager. He looks exactly the same, doesn’t he?”
He did. His mouth was closed awkwardly, presumably to hide the bristly teeth, but otherwise it was the same old Podgis in miniature. His sister looked remarkably like him. An older brother, tall, blond, and fairly handsome, towered over the other two even though he was leaning on a goalie stick. He faced the photographer with a rakish grin. Beside him was a frail-looking woman who appeared to be wearing a blond wig. She smiled stiffly at the camera.
“That’s his mother on the end. And his sister and brother.”
“He’s not my fucking brother!” Podgis bellowed from the kitchen. Monty heard the clinking of ice cubes and the sloshing of liquid into a glass.
“Yes, he is, Perry. He’s your half-brother. That makes him your brother. And my brother-in-law. Arnie played junior hockey in Ontario!”
“He played like shit. And kept selling his equipment for money to party with. And
she
kept replacing it.”
“Now, Perry, you know that only happened the one time.”
“Twice.”
“Okay, twice. But he made it up to your mother later. Paid her back, with interest.”
“Yeah, fifteen years later.”
“Well, he had other expenses. Once his little girl came along.”
“His little girl didn’t just come along, Phyllis. He was banging every little hockey ho on the Ontario junior circuit. I wonder how many other bundles of joy came along that we never heard about.”
“That’s not very kind, Perry. If he had other kids, he would be supporting them too. But he doesn’t. He just has Cherry Dawn. She’s a cutie. And really popular!”
“She was Arnie the goalkeeper’s daughter, but many a shot got past her crease.”
“Shut up, Perry! That’s enough of that kind of talk.”
Phyllis turned to her guests. “Brothers! Isn’t it always the way? And there’s no excuse.”
“Fuck off about it, for Christ’s sake!”
“Arnie was so good to Perry. When Arnie got a job at the Chrysler Dodge dealership, and Perry finally got his first job in radio, which didn’t pay very well, Arnie offered the money to fix Perry’s — ”
“I told you to shut the fuck up!” Podgis came barrelling out of the kitchen with a nearly empty glass in one hand and a bottle of tequila in the other. As he entered the living room, he tripped and fell to his knees, smashing the glass and bottle, and letting out a roar of anger and frustration. He stumbled to his feet, batting the shards of glass from his clothing.
Phyllis left the photos and went into the kitchen. “Where do you keep your broom and dustpan, Perry?”