Innocent Murderer (18 page)

Martha, I thought, with a sinking feeling. Why hadn't she told me that? No wonder I hadn't seen as much of her. Why didn't he just get to the point, whatever it was?

“Speaking of Martha, I wanted to talk to you about her.”

My mind was racing thinking of all the reasons he might want to talk to me about her: I'd asked her to do something she wasn't supposed to do; they were going to fire her; she was being let go because her other two bosses had complained; she was retiring and was afraid to tell me; she was ill and was afraid to tell me; three bosses were too many and she wanted out. I could have gone on but he was looking at me, waiting for me to acknowledge what he had said. I nodded and he continued.

“I'm going to offer Martha a job with me. It'll mean a promotion for her. She is the most efficient tech we have in this department. I wanted to give you the courtesy of hearing it from me first.”

I tried to neutralize my face so that he wouldn't know what I was thinking. “What about your own tech?” I asked.

“She's on sick leave and has told me she is not com
–
ing back. I've already talked to your colleagues and they are okay with it.”

I was speechless. And terribly conflicted. On the one hand I wanted the best for Martha. On the other hand what would I do without her?

“I thought it courteous to let you know. I'm speaking to Martha this afternoon.”

After he'd gone I looked at the soggy mess of my sandwich and suddenly didn't feel hungry anymore. But I didn't have much time to think about losing Martha because the phone rang. Why couldn't they design a bell tone that started softly and grew in volume as your ears adjusted? That would be a good feature on alarm clocks too. I wondered how many people had died of a heart attack after their alarm clocks woke them up. Wake 'em up to make 'em die. God, how macabre.

I picked up the phone. “Cordi, it's Duncan. Please come and get your cat.” There was a lot of meaning pent up in those last six words.

“It's that bad?”

“No, not if you find constant whining, meowing, fidgeting, scratching, and hissing acceptable.”

“She's just disoriented. She'll come around.”

“I don't want her to come around, I want you to come around and get her.”

“I can come up tomorrow, if you can wait that long?”

He grumbled some response I couldn't hear — prob
–
ably wasn't meant to — and then changed the subject.

“I've got the autopsy results back.”

“You have?”

“Yup.”

“But you're not officially on the case. The autopsy was done in Ottawa.”

“Right. And the guy who did it is an old student of mine.” Trust Duncan.

I laughed. “Anything of interest?” I asked, expecting nothing.

“Well, actually, yes there is.”

I waited.

“With apologies to you, Terry didn't die in the swim
–
ming pool.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it, as if it could make everything comprehensible. “She what?”

“The autopsy says that she drowned.”

“We know that.”

“But she drowned in fresh water.”

I wasn't getting this.

“Cordi, the swimming pool. It's salt water.

The possibilities of what this meant swarmed my mind like a hive of angry bees. I was speechless. I remem
–
bered the prickly feeling on my skin after going in the pool and having to take a shower to get the salt off. And I remembered the necklace. I'd been right.

“You there?”

“So where did she drown?” But I knew already. I could see her bathroom clear as day, with the only bath
–
tub on the ship aside from the captain's. I could see the wet carpet.

“The police theory is she was somehow drowned in her own bathtub and then carried outside with the inten
–
tion of throwing her overboard. They must have been interrupted and instead had to throw her in the pool.”

“And Sally?”

“The police think Sally drowned Terry and then com
–
mitted suicide. Sally drowned in salt water.” He paused. “Sally was a big woman, strong enough to carry Terry to the pool.”

That was certainly convenient for the police; no murderer to find and no one to try. Sally writes a sui
–
cide note, stalks Terry, kills her, and then kills herself. I thought back to Sally, who was indeed a big woman, physically capable of such a deed, but emotionally? I doubted it. I doubted it very much. She'd been pretty much a basket case.

“Do you think Sally could have done that?” I asked.

“No, I don't think so,” said Duncan. “I would like to think Sally came along, saw Terry in the pool, and reacted instinctively. She jumped in fully clothed to try and save her, and her heavy clothes took her under. But the suicide note clearly kyboshes that.”

“Could be fake.”

“Not according to the police. It's definitely her hand
–
writing scrawled on a little, ripped piece of paper.”

I thought about that for awhile and was caught off guard when Duncan said, “I have a name for you, Cordi.” His voice came softly down the line, interrupting my chain of thought. “Dr. Geraldine McKinnon.”

What the hell was he talking about, I wondered, and then froze. Duncan was nothing, if not persistent.

“Just because you were right about the necklace, and about one of them being murdered, doesn't mean you don't need help.” He proceeded to rattle off the wom
–
an's phone number, admonishing, “Just call her, Cordi.

It can't hurt you.”

Then the line went dead and I stared at the mouth
–
piece for a long time. A very long time indeed. I hung the phone up and stared at it some more, willing the conver
–
sation I had just had to crawl back into the receiver and die. I didn't want anything more to do with Sally and Terry. It wasn't my problem. And I didn't want anything to do with Dr. Geraldine McKinnon.

Chapter Fourteen

I
spent the next bunch of days catching up on work, planning the courses I'd have to teach in the fall, and marking some lab assignments from my comparative anatomy course. I called Duncan to beg off the five hour round trip drive to get Paulie. He wasn't too happy about it, but both of us were swamped and couldn't take the time. I hadn't seen Martha for a while and I wondered if the Dean had already snatched her, but then I realized that all her things were still here, and besides, Martha would never leave without saying goodbye. I was actually grateful when there was a heavy footfall outside my door.

It was a policeman, wanting to take my statement about Terry's death. I answered all of his questions, basi
–
cally outlining everything I remembered, but when I began to ask him questions about the fresh water in her lungs he politely begged off. It was, after all, an official investigation. Frustrated, I saw him to the door. Then the phone rang and I ran back to get it.

“Cordi?” The voice was strong, almost angry, or was it something else?

“Yes,” I said, warily.

“It's Sandy. From the ship.”

Shit. I'd forgotten to ring her back, or at least there was no answer when I did. How many days now? Four?

It couldn't have been much of an emergency. There was a lot of commotion in the background — children's voices.

Must be a birthday party.

“Sandy. How are you?”

Instead of answering my question she said, “I'm sorry I wasn't around if you tried to call.” She hesitated, letting the implication sink in and then quickly added, “I had a sick kid,” by way of her explanation.

“That's too bad. Everything okay now?” I asked.

She bulldozed over my questions and got to the point. “I need to talk to you very badly.” When I didn't respond she said, “It's about Sally.”

“What about her?”

“Please, I need to talk to you in person. Can we meet today?”

I sighed and rummaged around on my desk for my laptop and calendar, buried under a stack of research papers. “Why don't you come here around 5:00?” I said, cursing myself for not just saying no. I'd just finished tell
–
ing myself I wanted nothing more to do with Terry and Sally and the lot. Tell that to the niggling little thought in the back of my head.

There was a long pause at the end of the phone. I waited, listening to children's voices laughing and gig
–
gling. I was wondering what it would be like to have chil
–
dren when Sally broke up my dog's breakfast of thoughts. “I know this is asking a lot, but could you come here? I have the kids and no car….”

I blew air into my cheeks so they popped out like a puffer fish and then let the air slowly stream out of my mouth. “Where's here?” I heard myself asking the ques
–
tion that had just committed me.

“Manotick” she said slowly, as if I might react badly.

I did, but not to her. I hauled the receiver away from my ear and made nasty faces at it before bringing it back and politely saying, “Where in Manotick?”

Manotick is in the countryside, fifteen kilometres south of Ottawa, but is officially part of the City of Ottawa — the rural part. It was going to take me about twenty-five minutes to get there if there wasn't much traffic. When I'd realized I was going to have to go to her I changed the time to 6:30, dinner time, so I could get my work in. She hadn't protested.

Just as I was grabbing my keys and stuffing a note
–
book into my pocket, Martha walked into the outer office. At the same time the phone rang. I picked it up and got some guy at the grant office telling me I hadn't sent in all the required information. As I sorted it out with him I watched Martha in the mirror in my office. She was just wandering around aimlessly, picking up specimens, holding up her milking stool and then put
–
ting it down, and even touching the pictures she'd taken of one of my indigo buntings as if she'd never seen them before.

I caught my breath. She'd talked to the Dean. It was written all over her face — indecision, nervousness, excitement, nostalgia, and regret. I felt my heart sink.

Had she said yes? If she had I'd have to let her tell me. I didn't want her thinking I had talked about her behind her back, even if the Dean had initiated it.

“Hi,” I said as I stepped out of my office. Martha was holding the little rubber ducky I'd given her as a joke at least four years ago. I hadn't even known she still had it.

Guiltily she dumped it in her drawer and shut it.

“Hi, Cordi.”

We were two solitudes, each with our own knowl
–
edge, but no bridge to communicate it. Why do friends do that to each other? I felt powerless to even begin to build a bridge. Of course, I could have swum across, but I didn't.

I gave her lots of time to say something, but she didn't. Maybe that meant she hadn't yet made up her mind. I couldn't believe she'd stay with me and the other two guys she didn't care about one way or the other. Put that way, I knew what her answer would be. It was a promotion after all — to work for a full professor with his added research funding, equipment, and experiments.

“Gotta go,” I said and she smiled.

“See ya.”

I should not have turned around in the doorway. She was blowing her nose and looking out the window, the indecision usurping every line in her face.

I practically ran to my car, shoving thoughts of Mar
–
tha out of my head as fast as they came in — and they were breaking the speed limit.

The ride out to Manotick was actually nice, once the four lane highway of Riverside gave way to the two lane River Road, and the houses gave way to fields with plac
–
idly grazing cows. Developers were having a field day out here, giving their developments such names as “Honey Gables” and, across the river, “Heart's Desire.” I never understood developers' need to be so precious.

As I drove over the bridge spanning one branch of the Rideau River I could see Watson's Mill, now in shadow. It's a huge stone monolith that rises out of the water, and has been part of the river for almost one hun
–
dred fifty years. Every time I look at a mill I marvel at the strength of the stone — that the river could not carry it away — and I secretly wonder if they ever leak.

I drove down the town's main street and followed the river out the other end, until I came to a dirt road where I stopped to peer at my scribbled page of direc
–
tions. When I finally found her house it was not what I had expected. The first indication was two monstrous brick gateposts with ornate wrought iron gates fastened to them. I had stopped the car and started getting out to open them, when they slowly opened on their own accord. A camera? I drove down a windy road and broke out onto lawns that would have held ten tennis courts. The house was huge and immensely ugly. It looked as though it had been built of Styrofoam blocks by a couple of children having fun. There wasn't a single straight wall. They angled or turned corners and slanted themselves in all directions. The door, however, was normal. I walked up to it and raised the leaden knocker that had been fash
–
ioned into a bolt of lightning.

It was a long time before the heavy oak door slowly opened.

“Hi,” said a little voice some three and a half feet off the floor. A little boy, about six years old, stood dressed in a Robin Hood outfit complete with plastic bow and arrows.

“Are you Dr. O'Callaghan?” He stumbled over my name but smiled up at me as if he hadn't noticed, which he probably hadn't.

“Yes, I am,” I said and smiled back.

“Mummy says to bring you to the living room. She's busy. Becky did a boo boo.”

I followed the little boy into the house. The hallway was very dark, lined in grey slate, and the floor was dark grey slate too. I could see the light at the end of the short hall and when we broke out into the open I stood on the wide slate-grey stairs that led down into the house and gaped in astonishment.