Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (37 page)

“No, I’m not. I can accept the fact that I was four years old and unaware of what was happening. I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life beating myself up over that.”

Martin’s pen scribbled furiously. He looked up. “It’s hard to say. Guilt has a funny way of disguising itself as other emotions — egotism, a sense of entitlement, anger. Even self-hatred. It’s impossible to predict.”

“What if you murdered someone?”

Martin stared. “I still say it’s not possible to predetermine the answer, but my guess is that in the end, if you can’t reconcile it, it would eventually destroy you.”

Dan pictured Lucille Killingworth’s frozen smile. “But what if you’re incapable of feeling emotion? No remorse?”

“Then maybe nothing would come of it, except the person might retreat further into a lack of genuine emotional responses. There are adults who never mature emotionally. They look and act like other people, but on an affective level they’re very childlike.”

“Immaturity?”

“It’s more like an emotional retardation. These are people who don’t feel the same things the rest of us feel. Lacking empathy, for example. Usually they learn to hide their responses. They become adept at masking how they really feel, giving expression to what they think we want to see.”

Dan thought of Lucille Killingworth’s artificial manners and tempered speech, her convincingly feigned dismay when Dan told her of Daniella’s pregnancy. Her reactions had seemed real, despite being manufactured. Everything cool and restrained. But what, he was thinking, if you pushed her over the edge? What would happen then? Would she do or say anything to give herself away? What would it take to see that side of her?

Out on the street, Dan tossed away Martin’s script for the specialist and put in a call to Trevor. His voice mail answered. Dan left a greeting, saying he was doing well and asking Trevor to reply to his question when he had a moment. If he didn’t answer his cell, Dan said, then he was in transit and the call would forward home. He apologized for the unusual question but said it was important. He felt odd about asking, though he was already sure he knew the answer.

Trevor’s reply was waiting on the machine when he got home. He’d called his mother to make sure. The answer wasn’t what Dan had expected, but it still fit his hypothesis. Maybe even better than he’d hoped. Dan dialled Donny’s number. His friend sounded calm, proudly telling Dan how he’d decided not to panic. There was plenty of time to look for a job, he said, though a vacation still wasn’t in the works, as far as he could see.

Dan listened politely before changing the subject. “Question,” Dan said.

“Shoot.”

“If you were a woman …”

“
If?
”

“Okay. If you were a very
wealthy
woman …”

“Ah!”

“And you wanted to get rid of an abusive bastard of a husband….”

“It’s getting better — keep going.”

“How would you kill him?”

There wasn’t even a pause. “I’d hire a hit man: Tracey Ullman in
I Love You To Death
. Or maybe I’d get my lover to do it, like Barbara Stanwyck in
Double Indemnity
. Or better yet, we’d do it together and then I’d die in a car crash, ironically leaving my lover to be convicted of killing me: Lana Turner in
The Postman Always Rings Twice
.”

“Okay, let’s rethink this. You live in a small town where everyone knows you and there are no hit men, maybe even no lovers. Then how would you do it?”

Donny thought this over. “First of all, I’d never live there, if there is such a place. And if there is, it’s got to be in Saskatchewan. Second, I’d probably poison him and make it look like an accident.”

“Me, too. Okay, where would you hide the body?”

“I wouldn’t. The death already looks accidental, right?”

“What if you killed him somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, so you had to get rid of the evidence?”

“That’s too difficult. I’d need to know the area to find a place that would be fair game for anyone to go, and where he might just end up getting poisoned all by himself.”

“Exactly!”

“What film is this?”

“The Craig Killingworth Story.”

“I was afraid you might say that.”

“Kisses. Gotta go.”

Dan hung up and replayed Trevor’s message. His uncle’s horses had not died from rat poison, as he’d expected. They’d died from something far more interesting. He pictured the stone house in the woods under the pine trees, the red creeper vine along the wraparound porch, and the bright blue flowers in the Killingworth garden the day he and Bill had arrived for the wedding a month ago — he looked at the circled date on his calendar — tomorrow. He did a Google search for images and found what he was looking for.

Dan barely slept, rising in the dark before Ked and Lester were up. He left a note and some money for Ked, telling him to take Lester to the zoo for the day — he’d square it with school later. He stepped into his car, feeling exhilarated. His mind raced all along the 401, heading east in the pre-dawn darkness. Just before seven o’clock, gold spilled over the horizon, the sky cracking open.

It was past eight when he reached Picton and rolled up beside St. Mary Magdalene Church. The grass was overgrown, the stones cracked and leaning. The church had been turned into a museum at some point in the past twenty years. That wouldn’t make any difference. It was the man he was looking for, not the church. He thought back to his first impression of the Poplar Plains house: Klingsor’s castle. The realm of a magician who controlled everything from afar without ever appearing in person. The ultimate trick of the dead.

He walked along the rows of plots. A long rectangular tomb leaked along the edges, water seeping down and turning green at the base:

Nathaniel Macaulay
1914-1990
A God-fearing Christian

Dan looked up at the weeping angel set atop the monument. His voice cut through the air. “What were you thinking, you miserable old bastard? What’s to fear if you’ve done nothing wrong? What do you know?”

A tractor started up somewhere in the distance.

“Speak up — now’s the time to confess. Tell the court what you did.”

The wind stirred in the grass.

“And don’t give me that, ‘Oh, poor me’ stuff. I’m onto you. There’ll be no peace for the dead if there’s none for the living.”

The house looked the same, as much a showcase as ever. An olive green Saab was stopped at one end of the drive’s half-circle. An upstairs window angled the light. Dan placed it somewhere in the hallway outside the room where he and Bill had spent their final night together. He drew up beside the Saab. No need to hide. A few minutes would give him all the time he needed and maybe an answer or two.

In the morning sun, the gardens were popping with the bright blue flower he’d noticed on his previous visit. Monkshood. Blooming this late in the fall meant they were a particularly virulent variety known as
Aconitum Michaelii
. A minimal amount would be fatal if ingested. Even the leaves were poisonous to touch. Symptoms showed up as soon as five minutes after contact. Vomiting, sweating, blurred vision, and paralysis would follow soon after. Cause of death would appear to be heart and respiratory failure. There was no antidote.

He’d brought his gloves. He pulled up a bunch of the deadly flowers with their bright blue spines and their little blue caps. He heard the door open. Lucille Killingworth stared at him in disbelief. He quickly grabbed a stock of purple asters in the other hand, holding them behind his back as he confronted her with the noxious flower held in front of him.

She eyed him warily, as she might a crazy person. “What are you doing? Please leave my property!”
Please
leave. Ever the gracious hostess.

Whatever had happened to Craig Killingworth had happened a long time ago, Dan reasoned. He was risking a lot by being there and doing what he was doing. There was no justification for it, other than one — he needed to be certain.

“Would you hold these for me, Lucille?”

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.”