Forever Dead (26 page)

The words on the page in front of me began to blur and jump, and I thought for a moment that it had been smudged when it was printed, until I shifted my gaze and realized everything was looking blurred. My head was pounding and I felt weak and dizzy. I felt an overwhelming urge to lie down and sleep.

I stumbled through to the front door, knocking over the vase on the hall table on my way, my head growing more fuzzy and woolly and my heart pounding so that I thought someone was knocking on the front door even as I tried to fill my lungs. Too late I remembered the humming sound coming from near the stove. I needed air. The door was just inches from me, and I watched in quiet desperation as my hand reached out for it just as my mind swirled into darkness.

“My dear Cordi. You're just lucky to be leaving this place vertically instead of horizontally.”

Martha was perched on the windowsill of my hospital room, right by a huge bouquet of daisies — there being no chair big enough for her. Ryan was trying to stuff my oversized dressing gown into a tiny overnight bag.

“You were damn lucky, Cordi,” agreed Ryan. “The place was thick with carbon monoxide fumes. If Roberta hadn't needed to pick up some papers from Don and dropped by when she did …” his voice trailed off.

“You'd be fodder for my med students, dear girl.” I looked toward the door, where Duncan stood framed. “The lethal effects of CO poisoning on the human body. Great topic. Aren't you going to ask the old codger in and introduce us all?” Duncan slid his eyes over Martha and Ryan and winked at me as their faces went through the usual contortions on being faced with a nose the likes of Duncan's.

Ryan gripped his hand, muttered some inanity, and looked at Duncan's left shoulder, but Martha, whose face had raced through surprise and astonishment to sheer delight, chortled with glee, “Goodness gracious, man, what a nose you have.”

Duncan's smile turned into a huge grin, as he strode over and gripped her pudgy hand in his own two massive ones. “Music to my ears, my dear woman. Most people tend to look at my left shoulder and pretend my nose isn't there, while their minds are thinking about nothing else.”

He turned his twinkling eyes on Ryan and raised his eyebrows.

“This nose was a gift from my dear dead parents.”

He released Martha's hand, having held it for slightly longer than necessary, and strode over to the chair by my bed.

“How did you know I was here?”

“I have admitting privileges at this hospital and saw your chart lying at the nursing station this morning. Figured there couldn't be more than one Cordi O'Callaghan, so I called the cop who brought you in, before coming to visit. They told her, as you know, that the gas stove in the kitchen was left on and malfunctioned.” He looked at me and grimaced.

“I think you've stirred up some muck and it's beginning to swirl around you like a bloody tornado. No proof, of course, but it's not exactly easy to leave the gas on. The police version is that Don turned on a back burner to cook some stew, received a phone call that made him rush out of the house, writing you that note, which was scribbled and almost illegible, and then forgot the gas on. Not only, that but he accidentally turned on the wrong burner and then the burner malfunctioned and you wouldn't have noticed because carbon monoxide is odourless.” With my hay fever I wouldn't have noticed a frightened skunk at five feet. But I did remember now the hissing sound that must have been coming from the kitchen, and not the basement, and the pot on the front burner. “And that's how I almost died?” Duncan nodded. “His neighbours told the police that Don had had a problem with it last week and had tried to get a repairman in. But they were fully booked and he'd vented his frustrations at them.

“His neighbours? Why didn't the police talk to Don?”

“Because he hasn't shown up, and I don't think he's going to,” said Martha.

Everyone swivelled to look at Martha, who was twirling one of my daisies in her right hand. I wondered
if she'd sneaked a peak at Patrick's card when she fished out the daisy. Roberta must have told him right away for the flowers to arrive so quickly.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because he's pulled a bunk, as they say in the movies, hightailed it out of here, disappeared, because he couldn't face going to jail for what he's done.”

“And what do you think he's done?” asked Duncan his lips twitching in amusement.

“He faked data and then when Diamond found out he somehow manoeuvred Diamond in front of that damn bear and while he didn't throw the killing blow he still murdered the man so that he wouldn't lose his job.”

“Cordi's old baiting theory, huh?”

I looked at Duncan and said, “Did you know Don has a severely handicapped daughter who lives at a very expensive nursing home and he was having trouble paying the bills?”

“There. See? What did I tell you?” said Martha. “The poor man couldn't afford to lose his job or he'd have to move his poor kid to some horrible place. A parent's love of a child is a very powerful thing, you know — strong enough to kill for.”

“And now he's just abandoned her forever?” asked Duncan dryly.

Martha fluffed up her hair and said straight and cool, “He's abandoned her and himself. I say he intended to kill himself but some fool phone call or something interrupted him and whatever it was, it was important enough for him to race out of the house with the gas left on. Cordi just got unlucky and was in the wrong place at the right time. He hasn't returned, and I'm telling you he won't, because he's dead. Killed himself out of remorse for his daughter, guilt over Diamond,
and shame over the faked data. At least he didn't have to know that he almost killed you by accident, too.” She nodded at me.

“But, Martha, if he was going to kill himself why would he then write a note and tack it on the door for me to find?” I asked.

“He wrote the note before the phone call. He'd already decided to kill himself before you came. He meant you to find his body.”

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling, and she valiantly continued on.

“He lives alone, right? Maybe he was afraid no one would find his body for days. He was a fastidious man by your account. Everything neat and tidy and whatnot. A slowly rotting corpse wouldn't be to his liking.”

“Really, Martha,” protested Ryan.

“No, I'm serious,” said Martha. “He writes the note at seven-thirty, pins it on his door, turns on the gas, which he must have known was malfunctioning, and then the phone rings or someone comes to the door or he remembers some last thing he needs to do, like make a will, and he has to put his plans for suicide on hold. But he forgets to turn off the gas because he's in such a hurry to leave.”

“That's hogwash,” said Duncan.

“Okay,” said Martha, her eyes flashing. “How does this sound? He arranged to meet Cordi, then wrote the note to entice her in, having already turned on the gas before leaving. He gets rid of her and his problem is solved.”

“But that's attempted murder,” I said.

“It is, isn't it?” Martha said with a little shudder.

“You think it's this Don guy?” asked Ryan when he and I had finally made it back to my place through a rainstorm. The fresh air of the farm was reviving my spirits, and I was coddling a drink in the hammock on my porch watching the lightning light up the fields in electric white. “He's not the only one with a good motive for getting rid of Diamond. They all seem to have one.”

I fiddled with my drink. “Yeah, that's what I was thinking. For a popular man he was in dicey water with lots of people. Lianna stood to gain financially, so does Shannon if the handwritten will is found. Leslie got his job and by the sounds of it had fought long and hard and bitterly for it. Is she the type of person to be vindictive? I think so. Is she strong enough to murder? I think so. Is she likely to have murdered him? I don't know. Then there's Roberta. If she's guilty of faking data she stood to lose a lot. In this job climate that
would have been suicidal. Even Davies felt that Diamond was the reason he might be passed over for university president. As for all the loggers, Cameron, Ray, the miller Donaldson — with Diamond out of the way they have their jobs. Any one of them could have done it.”

“But that doesn't explain why someone tried to kill you. Certainly lets Roberta off, doesn't it? After all, she saved you. Unlikely that she would, if she was trying to kill you.”

“Unless she was trying to make us think that.”

“So what are you going to do now?” My phone began ringing through the open porch door, and I glanced at Ryan. Neither of us made a move to answer it, and the answering machine clicked on. We listened to a low, sandpapery disembodied voice floating out to us, cutting the air with its menace like the lightning that streaked before us.

“Stay the hell out of it, O'Callaghan … or next time we'll succeed.”

The click of the machine turning off was drowned out by a roar of thunder and the beating of my heart.

“It's time I went up there to see for myself,” I said early the next day as I pored over the faculty's directive for course material.

“Go where? See what?” asked Martha absently from her position on her little milk stool as she filed papers. I couldn't see the milk stool but I knew it was there, strapped to Martha's rotund figure, because there was no way Martha would be squatting in mid-air.

The milking stool had been Martha's idea. She'd come out to the farm one Thanksgiving and watched Mac putting the tubes on the “girls,” as he liked to say.
He was wearing a milking stool, a round seat on a metal peg that strapped to the waist and looked like a miniature pogo stick stuck to his rear. Martha was so excited about it she made him take it off and show her how to use it. The belt had been way too small, but with Mac's help they later fashioned a custom-fitted one for Martha. She always wore it on the days she did her filing, moving from one cabinet to another and then squatting on her chair. Now she stood up and moved over to the next filing cabinet, her temporary tail waggling behind her.

“I've set up a meeting with the forester, that Raymond guy in the film. We know Diamond was killed in a cedar forest. Maybe I can find out where from him.”

“Mmm?” Martha rested her bulk on the tiny stool and began filing.

“The forester said he could show me maps of the area with tree types and stuff. “

“Oh, Lord love me, Cordi. You weren't crazy enough to tell him you suspect Diamond was murdered, were you?”

“Of course not. I just told him about my disks and also said I was writing a paper on the logging issue and that I needed maps of the vegetation. He wasn't too keen until I said the paper was going to deal with pure economics to see which side should win, so I'd be looking at the types of trees and what they would fetch on the market. I'm going up to the logging camp this morning to meet him there.”

Martha slowly swivelled on her chair, a shudder rippling through her face.

“You're going with someone, right?”

“No,” I said, knowing what was coming and wondering with some amusement how Martha would resolve it.

“My dear Cordi. Surely you're not going alone? After what happened the other day?” Martha's eyebrows darted sky-high in disbelief and then plummeted precipitously toward her chin in alarm.

“Not on your life, Cordi. I'm not going to have your death on my conscience. This time I'm coming too.” She glowered at me, daring me to object, and when I didn't she turned back to her filing, her whole body fairly jiggling with victory.

Half an hour later I manoeuvred my car out of the parking lot and we headed up to Dumoine, stopping off quickly at the farm for a backpack, some food, binoculars, and our Series 111 Land Rover.

“I got another good suspect for this ‘maybe murder' theory of yours,” said Martha as I turned right onto Highway 148. “Did you know Diamond was worth a bundle? More than $1.5 million?

Startled, I turned to look at Martha. Where did a biology professor earn money like that, I wondered.

“Eyes on the road, please. I can't stand it when you do that. It was in the paper two days ago.”

“Why didn't I see it? I read the paper.”

“The
Libelled Times
?”

“Oh really, Martha. You read that rag?” It was Ottawa's gossip paper and the first choice of dog trainers.

Martha fluffed out her hair and pouted.

“Really, Cordi, even gossip pieces are founded in truth. And at least they don't pretend they've got all their facts right. Besides, it was in the other papers but not with quite the detail. Anyway, apparently the will was read and Lianna gets it all, including the insurance policy. Shannon comes up empty-handed. That's why it was in the paper at all. Shannon was vowing to get what was her due, saying she would find the other will if it took forever. They had pictures of the two women looking
like murder — you know, the human interest stuff they like. According to sources, Lianna laughed and said forever suited her just fine.”

“Where did Diamond get that kind of money?”

No biology professor I ever knew earned anywhere near that amount even over fifteen years.

“He didn't. His father was some wealthy U.S. tycoon and left his sons a small fortune. Diamond was quite prudent with his investment and it grew nicely. He was independently wealthy. Nobody but his close family knew it, apparently.”

“So what you're saying is that Lianna gets $1.5 million from him, and the life insurance policy makes it another million. Rather convenient for her that he up and died.”

“Too convenient by half. My bet is she was somehow involved in his death. A real Jezebel, she is. Mark my words. A painted lady like that has no good up her sleeve.” Martha's face glowered darkly.