Authors: Carolyn Davidson
Knapton looked at the windowsill, littered with glass and covered with the grey dust of fingerprint powder, and frowned. It was obvious that the kitchen window had been broken from the outside; a good size brick lay on the kitchen counter surrounded by shards of the broken window pane. But there was nothing to show that the kitchen window had been the burglar’s point of entry, no shoe or finger prints to lift with the print tape.
“Are you sure the doors were locked?” he asked the Everett’s. There was a strange feel to the household, and Ronald wasn’t sure if it could be put down to reaction to the robbery or something else.
“Like I told you, we lock all the doors at night,” the man replied. John Everett looked like the kind of man who would rather take things into his own hands than call the police on any given day, and he, for one, wouldn’t want to bear the brunt of that confrontation. The man’s wife peered out from behind her husband in a way that would have been comical were it intended to be so, bobbing her head in agreement with everything the man uttered.
“These cases often go unsolved,” he told the family truthfully, “but we’ll do our best to get to the bottom of it. I’ll be checking with the neighbours as to whether they saw anyone driving by last night, and we’ll see what we get from the prints.”
He looked again at the couple, and their daughter, standing by the stairs to the right of her parents. The girl looked familiar, but he couldn’t place from where. She appeared uncomfortable to be in the room, hunching her shoulders forward as if to diminish her bulky frame and breathing heavily through her nose.
“It was just the three of you here last night?” he clarified, making a note on his pad when the man grunted affirmatively.
“We’ll be in touch,” he told them, feeling like a cliché as he said it. Chances are the money wouldn’t be found, but the station would be alerted for any other robberies in the district.
He took a deep breath as he left the Everett’s house and felt himself give an involuntary shake of his shoulders. Something about that household made him very happy to leave it.
*
The trees bent under the strength of the wind, and Clare watched the branches thrash and twist from the kitchen window. The moon was bright, shedding a spotlight on the fields behind the house.
Clare didn’t turn from the window when the door behind her banged shut and Tom stepped inside the house, stamping the damp earth from his shoes on the back door mat. He gave a start when he saw Clare, her profile outlined in sharp duplicate by the darkened window’s reflection.
“It’s late,” he said, approaching his wife. “What are you doing up, was the baby fussing?”
Clare turned to look at her husband with wide eyes. His cheeks were flushed from the night air, his hair ruffled by the wind.
“Where were you?” she asked him, voice high and thin. “I’ve been waiting for you so long.”
“Oh Clare,” he moved towards her, putting a hand on her arm, his fingers surprisingly warm in spite of the chill outdoor temperature. “You shouldn’t have waited up, you know I often stay late on Fridays.”
“The construction ends when the sun goes down,” she said in an accusatory voice. “Where were you?”
Tom sighed and turned away, pulling his sweatshirt over his head. “It’s late,” he said, “I’m tired. You know I always take the crew out for drinks at the end of the week.”
Clare laughed, a jagged laugh that grated on his ears.
“Oh I know, Tom,” she said, turning to face him. “You wouldn’t believe what I know.”
She looked into his eyes with a thinly veiled hysteria he turned quickly away from.
“Let’s go to bed,” he said, beginning to mount the stairs.
“Go to bed,” Clare’s laughter followed him up the stairs, “Let’s go to bed. When you have been bedding half the town Tom, now you want to go to bed with your wife?”
“Clare!” Tom bellowed, “That’s enough! Enough of your accusations, enough of your walking the cliffs like a crazy woman, enough of your turning up on strangers’ doorsteps. I can’t live like this, you need to get help!”
Clare stared at her husband in disbelief at the words that had never been spoken aloud before.
Turning away from him she stepped into her boots and flung the back door open, letting a cold lick of air enter the heated kitchen.
“Clare, wait!” Tom called after his wife, watching in frustration as she dashed across the lawn, her nightgown flapping wildly at her legs. He looked up the stairs where he knew his son was sleeping and cursed.
“Clare!” he called again, grabbing his coat from the rack as he bent to lace his work boots. Rushing down the driveway he looked both ways, not finding a trace of his wife in the night. Cursing again, he reached into his pocket to find his keys and opened the door of the truck, still warm after its recent arrival.
Driving the length of the driveway he stopped and looked both ways. When there was no sign of his wife he turned right, where the road led towards the cliffs, and kept the truck at a crawling pace as he looked for her figure in the darkened road sides and tall grassed ditches.
Tom opened his window and leaned into the cool air, calling his wife’s name into the wind. “This is crazy, Clare,” he shouted pointlessly, “Let’s go home.”
He had almost reached the road’s end, where it diverged on the right to the trail up the cliff, and to the left towards town, when he thought he saw her, a snatch of a white gown and a pale face flash in the moonlight before disappearing.
Tom stopped the truck and leapt out, looking each way in the improbable hope that there was someone there to help. Feeling foolish, he chased the image of his wife into the dark forest, ducking his head against stray branches as his feet caught on the uneven rocks of the trail.
The steady rush of the wind combing through the moonlit forest was interrupted only by the thud of his footsteps on damp rock. The sounds added to the feeling that he was in a dream, and Tom lengthened his strides in the attempt to catch up with his wife.
“That’s enough, Clare!” he called, feeling his heart pound in his chest with the effort of the uphill chase. The path in front of him levelled out suddenly and the night sky seemed to grow brighter as he crested the top of the escarpment.
Ahead of him he saw his wife, outlined against the luminescence of the moonlit sky and the bay that stretched out beneath the cliffs.
“I can’t take this anymore,” he said to her shape, and reached out to grab her by the arms, and then she was gone
*
Susan glanced around the reception room of the Port Elgin Spa, taking in the gauzy curtains covering windows that reached to the ceiling, and the rock waterfall which provided a muted gurgle as backdrop. She had asked one of her Constables to pull Tom Logan’s credit card history over the past couple years, and when overnight bookings at a hotel came up a handful of times she decided to pay a visit to the establishment. Something told her that excursions didn’t include Mrs. Logan.
The girl standing behind the reception desk stopped her diligent tapping on the keyboard to look up with a beaming smile as Susan approached.
Susan smiled in return as she placed her police identification on the desk. “I’m hoping you can help, Sonja,” she said, reading the girl’s nametag. “I need to verify some dates a customer booked here with you.”
The girl’s eyes widened and she leaned forward conspiratorially. “Did something criminal happen here?” she asked in a hushed voice, looking around the empty reception room.
“Nothing like that,” Susan told her. “I just need to confirm that this individual was here on these dates.” She slid a printout of Mr. Logan’s credit card bills across the counter, the relevant dates highlighted and other charges blacked out.
“Oh,” Sonja responded, sounding vaguely disappointed. “That should be easy enough.”
She took a moment to resume typing on the keyboard before giving a triumphant smile. “Here we go,” she told the Inspector, “he booked here three times all in all. I had to go back over a year to get all the dates.”
“That’s great,” Susan told the girl. Hoping her luck would continue she asked, “Did you sign Mr. Logan in on any of these visits?”
“Nope,” the girl shook her head apologetically, “I only started this September.”
Thanking Sonja for her help Susan asked her to check if her manager was available to speak with her.
“No problem.” Sonja appeared to be taking her role in assisting the police force seriously, and bounced off purposefully in search of her manager. Susan took the time to have a nose around the main floor of the spa. A thickly carpeted hallway led to a brass elevator on the left and French doors looked out onto a garden to the right. The hall ended at a set of stairs, and posted signs informed her of a choice of ascending to a restaurant and beauty spa or a going down a floor to the pool and hot tub.
Turning back to the lobby Susan saw a woman dressed in a suit heading towards her, the blue of her blazer matching the spa curtains. Janice McCowan, as she introduced herself, gave a firm handshake, although her expression conveyed slightly less enthusiasm about greeting a police officer. Her plucked eyebrows raised in concern when Susan showed her badge and explained she was gathering information about a prior guest’s visits to the spa.
“I can certainly check who was working the front desk on these dates,” Janice told the Inspector. After hesitating she added, “I hope nothing criminal happened here at the spa.” Susan could imagine the misgivings growing in the manager’s mind; groups of women gathering for bridal showers or couples planning for a romantic weekend weren’t likely to add criminal activity to the description of their desired getaways.
“Not at all,” Susan assured the woman. “We’re just looking into an individual who happened to stay here. I’d appreciate your help if you could locate any staff who might remember him.”
The manager headed back down the hall to check the shift schedules while Susan waited in the office the woman had directed her to. “Can I get you a coffee or tea?” Janice poked her head back into the office door way, her alarm now assuaged enough to keep up the hospitality standards of the spa. Susan passed on the offer of refreshments, keeping occupied reading texted updates from her staff on her phone while she waited.
Ten minutes passed before there was a tap on the door, and Janice appeared in the door way again. “The staff member who was working front desk on two of the three bookings is here today, and I can give you the phone number of the waitress from the restaurant, who also would have delivered any room service. The staff take on a few different roles on quiet days,” she explained to Susan. “I’ve got Evan here when you’re ready.”
“That’s perfect,” Susan told the spa manager, thanking her for her help.
Janice ushered in a teenager dressed in the spa’s blue uniform, and Susan stood up to shake his hand and direct him to the seat across from her.
Evan looked like a shy boy made more nervous by the situation, his thin legs crossing and uncrossing as he sat uncomfortably in his chair.
“Hi Evan,” Susan began. “I appreciate you talking with me, I won’t take much of your time. Do you remember checking this gentleman in on any of these occasions?” Susan slid a photograph of Mr. Logan she’d brought with her across the glass surfaced end table alongside the highlighted reservation history.
Evan leaned forward to study the picture closely, keeping his hands folded on his lap as though worried picking it up would contaminate evidence. He nodded and swallowed nervously, his Adam’s apple bobbing prominently in his thin neck.
Ah, to be a teenager, Susan thought sympathetically. She wouldn’t do it again by choice. Trying to put the boy at ease she continued. “I know the last visit was five months ago, so we’re really testing your memory here, but is there anything you can remember about Mr. Logan, or anyone he was with?”
Evan’s acne-marred cheeks flushed a prominent red and he nodded again. “I remember the girl he was with,” he said quietly, and Susan pretended not to notice when his voice cracked on the last word. He cleared his throat and corrected himself, “I mean the lady.”
Susan took a picture of Sarah out of the folder she had brought with her. It was her senior year high school yearbook photo, a head and shoulder shot of the girl smiling directly at the camera.
“Was this the woman who was with Mr. Logan?”
Evan’s eyes darted at the photo and back to his lap, and he nodded. “Yes, she was with him both times I saw him.”
“What do you remember about her?” Susan enquired.
Evan cleared his throat again. “She was pretty,” he said apologetically, looking down at his hands on his lap.
“Did she seem happy to be here?” Susan asked the boy. “Was she enjoying herself?”
Evan looked to the ceiling as he tried to remember.
“Yeah,” he answered after a moment. “The first time I saw her, she was laughing a lot and holding onto the man’s arm.” He paused. “Maybe not so happy the second time I saw her, the last time.”
“No?” Susan asked the boy expectantly, waiting for him to flesh out his recollection. “What do you think was wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” Evan shook his head. “She just wasn’t smiling and laughing like the first time I saw her. The man looked kind of upset, too. Maybe they were fighting,” he finished awkwardly.