Lake on the Mountain: A Dan Sharp Mystery (30 page)

Her face in confusion, she opened her hands to accept the Monkshood. Dan whisked them away at the last moment, substituting the asters. “Sorry, not these ones,” he said. “I forgot — the blue ones aren’t safe. Are they?”

“What is going on here? What are you doing to my garden?” she demanded.

“Is this what you poisoned your husband with? Or did you have Magnus do it for you?”

Fury overtook her. Her body trembled. In that moment, Dan was sure she was capable of violence. And now he knew what it took for her to abandon her social graces.

“I’ve had enough. Leave now before I call the police!” She headed back to the house.

“Yes, I’m sure you’ve got Commissioner Burgess on speed dial for emergencies like this.”

She turned back to him. Her eyes flashed venom. Dan held her gaze. “Where did you bury him? Somewhere in the garden? What if I came back with a warrant and dug up your entire estate?”

“Is that what you think you’re doing? Looking for my husband’s body? My god, you’re a madman!” Dan saw the defiance. “Go ahead.”

“Or how about if I have them drag the bottom of the drop-off on Lake on the Mountain?”

The defiance wavered, but only slightly. Twenty years later it would probably be impossible to determine cause of death from something like aconite.

“You want me to open up a twenty-year-old cold case on the grounds that a woman has a poisonous flower growing in her garden — even after you’ve told me she didn’t know what it was when you tried to hand it to her?”

Saylor turned to face him in his smart-look casuals. A definite Mark’s Work Warehouse man. Dan had caught him before he went on duty, surprised to learn he lived on this side of the reach.

“All it tells you is that the woman doesn’t know shit from Monkshood. She could have got someone to do it for her. I told you that’s how she killed his horses.”

“Unless they thought they were radishes and ate them accidentally in the field.” Saylor eyed him. “Horses are pretty stupid. It’s happened before, you know.” They were sitting in Saylor’s car, parked a few hundred yards offshore from where a ferry tugged its load into place, lining up with the dock to release its conscripts. Dan watched the doors open and the cars surge forward. “And even if I dredge Lake on the Mountain, what am I going to find?”

Dan considered this. He hadn’t worked out the details. Something still wasn’t sitting right. “I don’t think you’re going to find his body up there — I think he’s buried somewhere on the Killingworths’ grounds.”

“Really!” It was more a statement of disbelief than surprise. “You actually think this woman is stupid or daring enough to murder her husband in her home and plant his body in her garden somewhere?”

“He got off the ferry on this side of the harbour on the afternoon of November first and was never seen again.”

Saylor looked off in the distance. “See that road? It goes on to Kingston. And a hell of a lot more places after that. What makes you think he even stopped at home before leaving? He was under strict court order to avoid his family. It could only have made things worse for him. And why would she kill him and bury him in the garden even if he did disobey the order?”

“I don’t know.” Dan shook his head. “I guess it doesn’t seem all that likely, does it?”

Saylor shook his head. “Not if you know small towns, it doesn’t. There’s hardly a secret that escapes somebody’s notice. Though whether they’re respected or revealed is anybody’s guess, but no — she wouldn’t bury her husband on the grounds. I can almost guarantee it.”

“You said ‘almost.’”

Saylor shot Dan a look. “Give me a break, buddy. She would never do it.”

“Okay, what about the lake?”

Saylor still looked doubtful. “Let me get this straight. You think she poisoned her husband, then dumped him in the trunk of her car and drove his body across on the ferry up to Lake on the Mountain? And she then dragged him across the road and dropped him into a lake frequented by tourists…?” Saylor stared at him. “Do you see how flimsy this is?”

Dan sighed. He was right. It sounded crazy coming from Saylor’s mouth.

“You can’t file a murder charge against someone without a body or at least some major evidence pointing to murder. You don’t have either, and you may never have.” Saylor paused to listen to a radio report. When it was over, he looked at Dan again. “In the meantime, don’t be surprised if I have to serve you with a restraining order. Burgess is going to be all over me the second he hears about this. You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t charge you with attempted murder if she figures out what those flowers were.”

Dan started to protest. Pete wagged a stubby white finger under Dan’s nose. “I don’t want to hear you’ve gone back there again. I know you mean well, but I’ve got a job to do. Please — don’t get in my way again.”

Twenty-Four

Terminal

“Mr. Dan Sharp?”

The voice tugged at him like a rusty razor blade.

“Yes?”

“This is Magnus Ferguson.”

Dan felt a bottomless space open under him. He listened, ears glued to every inflection, as Magnus described how the note Dan tucked into his mailbox had been forwarded to his current address.

“Anyway,” he said, finally getting around to the heart of the matter. “I understand you have some questions for me.”

“Yes, I do. I’m looking into a disappearance that took place some years ago. Did you once work for a man named Craig Killingworth?”

Ten, fifteen seconds evaporated. Dan thought Magnus wasn’t going to answer or was scouring the storeroom of memory to retrieve a lost file. Then he said, “That’s a name I haven’t heard in a very long time.”

“Then you did work for him?”

“What is this about?” came Magnus’s savaged rasp.

“I’m a missing persons investigator.”

“So your card said.”

“I’ve been hired to find Craig Killingworth.”

“Who are you working for? Is it Lucille?” the man asked suspiciously.

“If I told you I don’t know who I’m working for, you might find that difficult to believe or understand, but I can tell you I’m definitely not working for Lucille Killingworth. I had a rather unpleasant call from Lucille’s lawyer last week warning me not to pursue the matter.”

Dan heard Magnus chuckling on the other end. “Oh, she can be persuasive, all right!”

“Do you know where Mr. Killingworth is now, by any chance?”

Magnus snorted. “He’s dead.”

“Do you know that for a fact?”

“Oh, I know it all right.”

“May I ask how you…?”

“No, sir — I will not discuss this over the phone. I don’t trust the phone.” Dan waited. “You come here and I’ll give you proof.”

Magnus agreed to meet with Dan on the island. “I haven’t been back out to my trailer for a long time,” he said. “I think it’s time I paid a visit.”

Anywhere else, and at the very least they would have been hookers. In some parts of the world their dress would have got them killed. Here, they were schoolgirls having a lark — fishnet stockings, high-heels, pert fresh-cut hair, trim buffed nails, and pretty, chirpy smiles.

Dan and Donny navigated the narrow aisle leading to the back of the Walnut Café. With its Korean décor and mostly Korean clientele, the place was known mainly for one thing: a menu consisting of walnut-shaped nuggets of nougat-filled delight, with side orders of sugar-coated berry or seaweed pancakes, and lacy, tongue-shrinkingly sweet cookies. Make that two things: it also had the worst coffee Dan had ever tasted. It was Donny’s favourite café.

In the back room, they found a chipped table among the coat racks and stacked take-out boxes. Inflected Korean syllables filled the air. On TV and in newspapers, reporters bemoaned once-liberal Canada’s growing racism, as evidenced in the polls and statistics revealing a negative attitude toward the country’s burgeoning immigrant population.
Are we no longer the tolerant, accepting land we once were? I doubt it,
Dan thought, looking around him. The question was wrongly put. Canadians were what they’d always been, but they’d grown wary on realizing a noticeable number of the new arrivals crowding their shores and cities in search of a better life had come intolerant themselves, or had at least come ignorant of the ideals of liberal humanism that allowed them to be here.

He looked over at the table of teenage girls trembling with laughter as they ate their treats and gossiped in Korean. Chances were some of their fellow immigrants would have sent them packing rather than allow them access to these same shores, given half a chance. Dan also knew that men like him and Donny would quickly have been refused entry or denied their rights by many of these same new citizens. That is, if they weren’t imprisoned or killed outright. You didn’t overturn positive human values and replace them with weaker, intolerant ones. That was not the Canadian way.

Donny was nearly over his gloom-and-doom act about the lost job, no longer convinced his life was at an end if he never sniffed another vial of overpriced skunk gland reduction. He was even considering taking time off before embarking on a search for the next phase of his existence. Still, he’d come in reflective, on the down-turned side.

Dan turned his attention to what Donny’d been saying.

“… and you start to wonder, you know, are the good things still ahead of you or have they already passed you by? And did you even notice?”

Dan listened as a sailor might eye heavy, low-lying clouds in a rising wind — concerned, but not overly. And then it was his turn. He described his confrontation with Lucille Killingworth outside her estate.

Donny paused, walnut cake halfway to his mouth. “As if I don’t have enough to worry about! First the incident on the boat with the Brazilian boy, and now attempted murder. Is there nothing you won’t stop at? I think you’re becoming unhinged. And nice shiner, by the way. I assume you’ll let me in on that one eventually?”

“Nothing to tell — I got mugged in Sudbury.”

Donny looked at Dan for a long while before speaking. “Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“This!” He waved his hands about, oblivious to the Korean family sitting next to them warily evading his reach. “All of this crazy man stuff.”

“It’s my job.”

“Your job is not to run amok at weddings and attack rich heiresses whose families comprise the bedrock of the Canadian establishment.”

“True.”

Donny slowly shook his head and looked away, a monk contemplating life’s greater mysteries. Finally, he turned back. “Who were your heroes, man? And don’t give me some crap about Superman, ’cause he’s not a real hero and you’re not an American.”

Dan shoved a bite of walnut cake into his mouth, savouring the sweet warmth. “What if he
was
my hero?”

“I detect insincerity.”

“Okay, then maybe I don’t have any larger-than-life heroes.” Dan shrugged. “My heroes are the people who manage to get through the day without doing damage to themselves and others around them. The ones who do the best they can, without throwing the towel in and crying foul because they wanted more than life’s meagre offerings allowed them. People like my Aunt Marge.”

“Good one.” Donny nodded, downed his coffee with a flourish. “Me? Angela Davis. She was my hero as a kid — and still is now. Black rights, human rights, women’s rights, the struggle for truth and justice. She fought for what she believed in and she paid the price. All those years in jail and all those words written for the cause. That woman had more conscientiousness and compassion in her little finger than … I don’t know what. But is it not the very
definition
of tragedy,” here his eyes glinted mischief, “that this woman who did so much to further the cause of race and class struggles and fight for human dignity, should be reduced in our collective consciousness to a hairstyle?”

Dan grinned. “But a hairdo with attitude — or latitude. It was a pretty big ’fro, remember.”

From self-pity and childhood heroes through to the shear absurdity of life. A trip across the universe over a cup of coffee. That’s what he loved about Donny. You could never tell what would come out of him next: gloom or joy, kindness or anger. He was a jazz riff tossed from horn to bass to sax, used up and carried around and turned inside out till it was almost gone, only to return triumphant in another key. That was his genius.

“Compassion, huh?” Dan said.

“That’s the word.”

“So just how compassionate are you feeling these days?”

“I smell a leading question,” Donny said, eyeing him with suspicion.

“Are you willing to do your part for the cause? To help further the struggle, given the opportunity — and I gather that you have time to do so, given the inclination.”

“Now I’m really suspicious. Tell.”

Dan took a sip of coffee, tried not to gag on the taste, and added another spoonful of sugar. “I only do this for you, you know,” he said. And proceeded to fill Donny in on his adventures with Lester and his upcoming trip.

“Another chapter in the Craig Killingworth Saga?”

“Uh-huh. And what I need,” he said, “is for you to take Lester for a few days while I’m in B.C. Because I still haven’t found a place for him.”

Donny’s face was impassive. Dan felt the need for a sermon coming on, one of those “Here Are Ten Good Reasons Why You Should Do This” manifestoes. The kind he’d invariably failed at with other kids at school. “Ked’s going to stay with Kendra, of course. But I can’t ask her to take in a stray.”

“Okay,” Donny said. “I’ll do it.”

“Okay? Just like that — okay?”

“Do you want me to say I’ll think it over?”

“No, I want you to say okay.”

“And then you say…?”

“Thank you.”

Donny nodded. “You have a need. I have time and opportunity, as you put it. I’m out of work, feeling suicidal, and in need of distraction. Plus I am deeply concerned about you, so I will do this for you. A few days, you said? As in three or fewer?”

“Guaranteed.”

“And then the Craig Killingworth Story will be over for good?”

“Absolutely.”

“Done.”

Dan watched the big boat manoeuvre the cliffs and head into the harbour, water dividing white and dark behind it.
The Queen of Nanaimo
. The wake rebounded off the island. He’d watched with a feeling of regret as they passed between Mayne and Pender Island, but there was nothing to be done about that. He’d sensed the unvoiced questions in Trevor’s emails, heard the hopeful tone when he asked if Dan might be coming back that way for a visit. It wouldn’t do to contact him if he had no intention of staying.

Once off the ferry terminal, he noted the wary faces that marked his progress up the coast. They seemed to sense his outsider status, the eternal other-ness about him that followed no matter where he went. He passed farms and homesteads. Here the roadside stops were less inviting, less intriguing to his eyes. He recalled the angry dogs running alongside his car on his last visit. Having retreated to an island in their minds, these people were relegated to one in time as well, cut off, isolated, and dwindling slowly to nothing. On Mayne Island he’d felt a sense of community. Here they were lost in the landscape and wanted nothing so much as to stay lost.

He was at the dirt road leading to Magnus Ferguson’s trailer in less than half an hour. From a distance he saw the tall white-haired scarecrow tugging at the earth with a hoe. For a second, it seemed as though he were looking at a badly aged version of Craig Killingworth. He thought he’d found the missing man. A whole scenario flashed through his mind, how Killingworth had simply disappeared to escape his past and ended up in the woods of B.C., aged but alive, and mostly nuts.

Magnus leaned the hoe up against the trailer and came over to meet him with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, the way the Natives must have regarded the first white men to land on their shores right before it all went wrong for them.

They walked slowly around the trailer as Dan described his search for Craig Killingworth and the events that had led him to contact Magnus. As they walked, Magnus appeared to be taking inventory of what he’d left behind on this plot of land as much as the measure of Dan’s intentions.

Dan tried to look interested when Magnus pointed out the stubby basil and flat-leafed parsley. “They don’t thrive here — not enough light except in the morning. Then the deer eat the leaves down to the stems.”

Crows hung and dipped their heads in the rust-flecked fronds of Western Redcedar waving overhead. “You must enjoy the solitude out here,” Dan said.

Magnus scratched his chin. “Tell you the truth, most days I hate it. It’s a lonely life. Blacker than black. People always romanticize places like this. You’re still stuck with your own company, whether you like it or not.”

He turned away and looked into the forest as though searching for a sign, some encouragement that what he’d endured hadn’t been in vain, or maybe just wanting a reason to go on. When he turned back, his face was set. “All right — I guess I trust your motives. Ask me what you want to know.”

Dan nodded. “When we spoke on the phone, you said you had proof that Craig Killingworth was dead.”

“I do.”

“I was hoping you could show it to me.”

Magnus waved him around to the front of the yard. He walked up to the steps of the trailer and pulled the door open.

Inside was a world in decline. Everywhere were signs of hopelessness: cramped quarters that bulged with household goods, piles of discarded clothing, boxes making an obstacle run of the trailer’s length. The interior had been turned into a museum, a monument to lost time. There was more than a hint of mould in the air. Papers languished on shelves, letters whose corners had been nibbled by mice thieving for their nests, with droppings left on the counters and on the unwashed vinyl floor curling at the edges. It was a catalogue of despair, a last refuge of broken dreams.

Dan watched Magnus insert his hand into a pile of papers and turn something over. A bundle of letters teetered and splashed to the floor. Magnus looked down at them with contempt, scratching through the refuse flattened into piles on the shelves. For a moment, Dan was afraid he’d come all this way to interview a crazy person who just wanted a little company.

“Here — look at this.” Magnus handed him a photograph. Dan was expecting a picture of Craig Killingworth, but the attractive young man standing in a rose garden was a complete stranger. Dan stared at it, hoping to glean its significance.

“Hard to believe that’s me, isn’t it?” Magnus said. “You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I used to be very good looking. Turned a few heads in my day. Forty years of smoking will do it to you. I quit the day I got my death sentence.” Dan looked up from the photograph to the emaciated skull regarding him. Magnus nodded. “Terminal lung cancer. Well, here I am five years later with everyone telling me how lucky I am to be alive. ‘What’s so lucky about it?’ I ask them. ‘I haven’t had a cigarette in five years.’”