Dos Equis (11 page)

that file one way or another. And as soon as she did, she was painting a target on her back. What happened was going to

happen, no matter what you did.”

“Do you really think so?” For the first time, he sounded a bit like a little boy.

I nodded. Some lies are also kindnesses.

“Okay, so we don’t have the file,” I said. “I assume Lynette destroyed it as soon as she retrieved it from Jane’s office.

Otherwise the cops would have it and they’d be all over this too.”

JP nodded his agreement.

I dipped a corner of French toast into the pool of Saskatoon berry syrup on my plate. “So, JP, you have to tell me everything you remember from when you looked in the file. You have to dig deep, and be as specific as you can.”

“Oh man, that’s gonna be tough. Like I said, I only went through it enough to get a sense of what was in there. I remember

some newspaper clippings. There were a lot of references to a certain website. And there was a spreadsheet. That’s what I

remember the best, because it was so obvious what was going on.”

“What sort of spreadsheet? What was on it?”

“It was kind of like a wishful thinking income statement. It looked like Lynette was detailing all the money she expected to collect as soon as her mother was dead. Insurance, proceeds from selling land and buildings and farm machinery, that kind of stuff. But the best part was that, after the total income, she deducted something called FH Ending Fee.” JP spelled it out for me.

“Do you have any idea what that was?”

He shook his head. “But over the phone one day, Jane told me she had figured it out. She said she didn’t want to talk to me

about it until we met again in person, and only when she was absolutely certain. But she did say she’d found out some shocking things. And that it didn’t look good for Lynette Kraus.”

“Was there anything else?”

Another head shake.

“Okay. Let’s go back to the other stuff. What about the web-site? I don’t suppose you remember the URL?”

“No. The only thing I remember about the website is that it had this crazy ass name, and had something to do with people

contemplating suicide.”

“Suicide? Where did that come from? Who was suicidal? Lynette? Her mother?”

“I don’t know. I guess Lynette did kill herself in the end. Maybe that’s why she had the gun in the first place?”

“Doesn’t fit with someone who was wishing her mother dead so she could start living big.”

“No, you’re right, it doesn’t.”

“What do you remember about the newspaper clippings?”

“Not a lot. I didn’t take the time to read them through. There were quite a few. There was usually a picture. Always an older woman.”

“Are you talking about obituaries?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I guess I should have mentioned that up front.”

“Were they all local deaths?”

“Local? You mean to Saskatoon?”

“Yeah,” I said, getting up to refill our coffee cups.

“Oh no. These were clippings from all over Canada, and the United States too.”

Oh great. That was going to make them even harder to track down.

“Do you remember any of the names, or maybe the dates of death?”

JP thought about this for a while. “I’m better with faces. I think if I saw the faces again I’d know them. The names, nah, I don’t think I remember any. Damn, I wish I’d paid closer attention. But I didn’t think I had to, seeing as I was taking the file with me.”

I raised an eyebrow at his use of “taking with” as opposed to “stealing.”

“The dates of the obits were over a long period; I’d say from the last five to seven years.”

Terrific. How many old ladies could there be in North America, who died in the last seven years, anyway? Yech.

I sat down with a thud, searching for some way to excavate JP’s head for the information we needed. Why couldn’t he be

one of those photographic memory types of PIs? But wait… “How do you know the women were from Canada and the U.S.?”

JPs eyes grew wide. “Friggin’ right!” he suddenly shouted, hopping from the table.

Barbra and Brutus and I watched him disappear, and listened as his bare feet ran down the hallway toward the den.

I gave the dogs a look and said, “You’re the ones who let him in here.”

Brutus gave me one of his rare woofs.

“Do
you
know how he did it?”

No answer.

I cleaned up a bit in the kitchen, then picked up our coffee cups and headed into the den to see what boy wonder was up to.

He was at my desk, busily tapping away at a laptop that wasn’t mine. He’d put his clothes on, but the hair was still a piece of modern art.

“Thanks,” he said absentmindedly, as I set his coffee next to him.

“So tell me,” I said, pulling up a chair. “What’s going on?”

“You’re a genius, Russell. You see, I knew the women weren’t local because the newspaper clippings were arranged

alphabetically by the name of the city they’d lived in. Lynette Kraus must have been anal with a capital ‘A.’ Each clipping had a yellow sticky with the city’s name written on it.”

“Are you telling me you remember the names of the cities?”

“Well, a few of them anyway. A couple of others I can make a pretty good guess.”

“So what are you doing now?”

“I have access to an obituary search engine through this genealogy website I’m a member of.”

“Oh? You’re into searching your genealogy?” Nerd.

He stopped tapping only long enough to give me a look, as if trying to determine whether I was being sincere or a jerk. I’m

not sure what conclusion he reached, but he went back to typing while he answered my question. “No. I just thought this would be a good thing to have if I was serious about being a professional detective.”

I had to give him that. “So what’s your plan?”

“I’m going to see how many of these cities I can remember. Pull their obits for the past several years for any women over the age of seventy. See if there’s anyone I recognize.”

My eyes were sore just thinking about it. It’s not that it was a bad idea, just a time-consuming one which had a high

probability of netting no results. Better him than me. “Good luck.”

“What are you going to do?”

“First, I’m going to take a shower. You might consider the same thing.”

Without skipping a beat or bothering to look up, he shot back: “Sure. Just yell when the water gets hot and I’ll be right in.”

I turned my back and walked away. I didn’t want him to see the big smile spreading across my face.

Chapter 8

Millie Zacharias answered the phone after three rings. As I was showering—alone—I got to thinking about the identity of

Hilda Kraus’s murderer. If it wasn’t her daughter Lynette, as Millie had suspected, then whose car was it she saw sitting near and then in Hilda’s yard in the days leading up to the death? Millie thought the car belonged to Lynette. Was she wrong?

“Mr. Quant, I’m surprised to hear from you,” Millie said when I re-introduced myself.

“I hope this is a good time to talk.”

“Sure, but I don’t know what’s left to say. I hear Lynette killed herself when they found out what she did. Sounds like case closed to me.”

“The police were investigating her for Jane’s murder, not Hilda’s.”

“Same difference, I suppose. Like Barb said, dead is dead: let’s just leave it alone.”

“Did you know that Jane believed someone else was responsible for actually killing Hilda?”

“What’s that? Why’d she think that? It’s obvious Lynette was guilty, isn’t it?”

“Maybe. But Jane thought Lynette hired someone else to kill Hilda for her.”

There was a break in the conversation. Millie had obviously placed a hand over the receiver, but I could still make out a

muffled conversation with another woman, likely Barb.

“Is that right? Barb thinks…” A bit more muttering in the background. “I think that’s a bit far-fetched. Don’t you?”

“Actually, I don’t. No matter what Lynette thought of her mother, to physically end a parent’s life would be a very difficult thing to do. She knew she’d be coming into a lot of money after her mother was dead. So even if it was expensive, it would

have been a lot easier to hire someone else to do the dirty work.”

“I suppose. But in Saskatoon? Could she find someone like that in Saskatoon?”

“Ever hear of Colin Thatcher?” The Thatcher case had been big news in Saskatchewan. Thatcher, the son of a former

premier, was a provincial cabinet minister until he resigned in 1983. Four days later, on a bitterly cold day in January, his ex-wife JoAnn was found bludgeoned and shot to death in the garage of her Regina home. The couple’s divorce had been

acrimonious. Rumours abounded that Thatcher was in some way involved and that he’d hired local men to help him commit the

murder. He was found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison.

“So you believe the same thing, then? That Lynette didn’t do the killing?”

“I’m having doubts,” I allowed. “Millie, you told me that you saw Lynette’s car near and in Hilda’s yard around the time of

the murder. How did you know it was Lynette’s car?”

Without hesitation, she responded. “I didn’t.”

“Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!” The discordant chimes in my head peeled. This is one of the reasons it is never a

good idea to take over someone else’s investigation. Things like this get missed.

“I only suspected, that’s all,” Millie told me. “I told Jane what I thought. After I saw the car there two days in a row, and still couldn’t get Hilda on the phone, I took down the licence number. Just in case, you know. I gave the number to Jane. She was pretty happy about that. Said she could use it to confirm it was Lynette’s car.”

“And did she?”

“Dunno. She never told me.”

“Millie, you wouldn’t happen to still have that licence number would you?”

“You bet. Hold on, I’ll find the paper I wrote it on.”

Hallelujah. Things were looking up.

By the time I’d called Darren and begged him to get info on the plate number I’d gotten from Millie Zacharias, JP was coming out of the shower. His hair was silkily wet, and somehow he’d gotten his face scruff back to the just perfect, slightly-unshaven length. He was wearing his own jeans, but had found an old Saskatchewan Roughriders sweatshirt that was one of my

favourites for lazy Saturdays. I was about to protest. Until the jolt. It was just a little jolt. Somewhere in the region of my heart.

It told me that I kind of liked him wearing my sweatshirt.

Instead of objecting to his wardrobe choice, I turned back to my computer screen, and said, “I’m trying my luck at finding

websites on suicide. You said you’d recognize the name again if you saw it?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. He plunked himself down on the den’s couch, in front of the coffee table where he’d moved his

own laptop.

“I’ll write down the names I’m coming up with for you to look at. I’ve only just started, but this is a whole new world I

didn’t even know existed. Did you know there are websites that basically give lessons on the best ways to commit suicide?

Some of them list all the different ways, then rank them in terms of overall popularity, ease of completion, associated pain, chance of success. There’s even shopping lists for everything you’ll need, depending on the choice you made. I found an advice column on selecting the perfect tubing for a successful carbon monoxide poisoning. There are articles comparing and

contrasting different suicide methods by age, sex, geographical location. It’s craziness. I had no idea this kind of information was out there.”

“I’m glad to hear it. That you had no idea, that is.”

For the next few hours, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about suicide. Meanwhile, JP continued—so far in vain—

to locate at least one of the newspaper clippings he’d seen in the MOM file.

It was nearing noon when next we popped our heads up from our computer screen worlds, like two bleary-eyed gophers.

“What do you say we take a break for lunch?” I suggested. “I’ll take you to my favourite spot downtown.”

“Are you asking me out on our first date, Mr. Quant?”

I crooked my head to one side, thought about it, and answered. “I’d say yes, but doesn’t a guy usually wait until
after
the first date before wearing the other guy’s sweatshirt?”

JP stood, and with a deliberately slow movement, pulled the sweatshirt over his head and tossed it to the floor. “Okay. Now

we can start all over again.”

I looked at him, standing there, the lightly tanned skin of his muscled torso quivering with…anticipation? Cold? Doubt about how I’d react?

I rose and approached. I liked the fact that all evidence of cockiness and confidence had fallen away with the sweatshirt. His eyes followed my progress with a mixture of hope and nervousness. I hadn’t expected to see it so soon. But I knew. This was

it. This was what I wanted. In a strange way—and uncharacteristically for me—I felt as if I already knew everything I’d ever need to know about this man. He was right for me, and I was right for him. My certainty was palpable. I felt pings of electricity zinging throughout my body. My head and my heart, with a fair bit of urging from my groin, were in favour. Everything I was

feeling, everything going on inside my body, came to the surface in the form of the biggest, widest, possibly most idiotic

looking stupid-ass grin since Jim Carrey in
The Mask
.

JP looked a little uncertain. “What’s so funny?”

“With your permission, JP Taine, I am going to kiss you for a very long while.”

Suddenly, we were both grinning.

Mary joined us at our table. It was well after two p.m., and the lunch crowd had pretty much thinned out.

“I love this place!” JP enthused, his eyes dancing around the Indian palace on the prairies.

“You haven’t been here before?” Mary asked, her inquisitive, dark eyes carefully assessing JP.

I didn’t quite know how to introduce him when we came in— mumbling something about us working together on a case—so