The Corpse With the Golden Nose (6 page)

I asked, “How formal will it be tonight, Pat? Do you know?” Whatever I was going to wear I'd need to unpack it, check it over, possibly iron it. I'd need time to clean up, redo my hair . . . The list went on and on, and I could see that it was already past three in the afternoon.

“Compared with the old country, nothing seems very formal around these parts at all,” replied Pat, smiling. “Unless it's a wedding, they all seem to make do with open-necked shirts, and even trousers for the ladies. But tonight . . . well, maybe you'd better ask Ellen. She'd know better than me.”

As though on cue, Ellen Newman walked quietly through what had been her family's front door as she grew up, into what had, more lately, been her dead sister's home, and was now a place for fee-paying guests. I thought it odd that she looked around as though
she
were the guest, uncertain if it was acceptable for her to enter. I knew from her notes that about five years after her parents' deaths, she had chosen to move out to an apartment closer to the downtown core. Maybe that accounted for her manner: this
hadn't
been her home for a very long time.

Pat melted back into the kitchen bearing our bread-mopped bowls, a smile on his face.

Bud stood up and moved to greet Ellen. Of course we both recognized her from the photograph she'd sent, but I saw a woman who'd aged at least five years since that shot had been snapped. I knew from her notes that it had been taken just about a year earlier, a few days before her sister's death. Her once bouncy dark hair was now lank, with unflattering yellowish-gray strands popping up like little wires; there were dark circles under her once-bright eyes, and her mouth was set in a grim line. Her general size and shape didn't differ too much from the photograph, but she seemed to stoop, and looked frail. A couple of inches taller than me, so about five-five, she might have been five-six or -seven if she'd straightened her back. Bereavement can take its toll physically as well as emotionally.

“Ellen. It's good to meet you . . . at last,” said Bud with feeling, as he strode across the hardwood floor to gather her in his arms in a warm embrace. She hugged him back. After a moment, they pulled back to look at each other smiling a rather awkward smile. Bud turned toward me and announced, “This is Cait, Ellen. The woman I love. I've spoken to you about her, I know.”

I actually felt my jaw drop. “
The woman I love?
” Bud's told me he loves me many times and I have admitted that I love him too. But to hear it proclaimed that way? I was gobsmacked.

“It's just delightful to meet you both. Thanks for coming. I know it's going to be alright now. I trust you, Bud.
You'll
find out what happened to my Annette, won't you?”

And there it was. The
real
reason for us being here. Not the food, not the scenic drive, not the weekend together knowing that Marty was happily visiting doggie friends on acreage so he wouldn't bounce all over us when we were getting close. No, we were here to help Ellen.

Bud looked at me. We locked eyes for a moment, exchanged a slight smile, then he said, “Right, Ellen. We'll do what we can. So where do you want to start?”

And that's when the mood of the weekend
really
changed.

“COME WITH ME,” SAID ELLEN
as she started up the staircase. Bud nodded and we dutifully followed Ellen up the stairs. I took her cue to walk into the room that led off the righthand side of the landing. It was a beautifully decorated double guest room. Tastefully elegant. Paisleys, good landscape prints, and plain walls allowed the real focus to be on the wonderful views.

Once Bud and I were inside, she closed the door. She gestured to us to sit on the sofa nestled in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, overlooking the hairpin road we'd ascended and the glinting expanse of the lake beyond. She pulled a slipper chair from the corner and sat between us and the window. She became not much more than a silhouette. It gave her a conspiratorial air, and rather put us at a disadvantage. It was tough for me to read the finer points of her facial expressions. I tried shifting to get a better angle, but failed.

Ellen hunched toward us. “Tonight you'll get to meet
everyone
,” she said determinedly. “I know how confusing it can be to meet a lot of people all at once and to have to remember them all, so that's why I prepared those notes for you. Did you read them?” She seemed over-eager. “If you're going to work out who wanted to hurt Annette, you'll need to hit the ground running,” she added, as Bud gave me a rather alarmed glance. Clearly, neither of us had expected
this
.

Bud scratched his head, but he didn't say anything. I looked at Ellen, then Bud, and decided I should speak.

“Yes, Bud let me have a look at your notes—I hope you don't mind?”

“Oh no, not at all. Anything either of you can do—really, anything—would be helpful. Thank you.” She was very intense.

“Well, I do have a couple of questions for you, but if now's not a good time . . .”

“Oh no, now's fine. Just fine,” she was almost panting with excitement.

“Okay then. Ellen, on the third page of your notes you've referred to Sammy Soul of SoulVine Wines as a ‘drug-addled, ageing hippie with no moral compass.' Do you know for a fact that he still does drugs, or are we talking about all the acid he famously dropped in the '60s and '70s, when he was making his lead guitar bleed and scream as the front-man for the Soul Rockers?”

Ellen gathered herself quickly and replied, angrily, “No one ever sees him taking drugs, but he can't possibly be the way he is without them. Besides, he keeps going on about how it should be legal to grow cannabis for your own use and then to be able make wine with it, like they do in some places in California. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's doing it already.” That seemed to settle it for her, and it helped me to build another layer of her psychological profile. I know Bud reckons I'm sometimes alarmingly judgmental—but I thought Ellen Newman might actually be more so.

“Have you lived here all your life?” I enquired, tactfully trying to change the subject to one that might infuriate her less.

“Why would I leave?” was her reply. Her tone spoke volumes. She didn't say it happily, but with a venom that suggested she'd be just as unhappy anywhere.

As I dwelt momentarily on Ellen's reply, Bud
finally
stepped up and asked, “You went to university in Vancouver, right?”

“Oh yes,” replied Ellen coolly. “But I didn't like it there. The people were cold and hard. Always trying to get on. And the city was dirty and noisy.” The straight line that was her mouth became thinner and more firmly fixed.

I suspected that Ellen had left her home to go to a city she'd been determined to dislike, and she'd done just that. People always seem to forget that they pack their own emotional baggage and lug it about with them everywhere they go.

Changing tack, Bud asked, “Ellen, who have you told these folks I am? How will you introduce me?” It was a good question.

“Well, I've thought about that and I'm going to say you are: Bud Anderson, my ‘grief buddy.' They'll understand that. They all know about my online stuff.”

I didn't know who was more surprised, me or Bud.

“That's all supposed to be
private
, Ellen. We've blogged a great deal about how it's the privacy that allows us all to write as we do. The anonymity that allows us to open up. You've written that yourself.
More
than once.” Bud sounded frustrated.

“Yes, but it's different now. We
know
each other. We can be open about it all. Besides, I've already told Pat and Lauren Corrigan and
they
were okay with it.”

“And what have you said about
me
?” I wondered. Aloud, as it turned out.

“Oh, I've just told them you're his girlfriend. No one knows what you do. Actually, Bud hasn't even told
me
. It never came up. What
do
you do? Is it interesting?”

I gave it a split-second's thought and blurted out, “Marketing professor. At the University of Vancouver. Business school.” Bud looked at me as though I'd had a stroke. “It's fascinating. I love it. Been there ten years.”

“Nice,” Ellen replied, smiling. “I studied at the UVan business faculty about twenty years ago. Is Professor Colling still there?”

Oh damn and blast!
I had no idea who Professor Colling was, or whether he, or she, might still be at the university.

Luckily for me, Ellen answered her own question by adding, “Oh, but that's a silly question, of
course
she won't be. She was ancient when
I
was there. She's probably dead by now. And good riddance.”

“Well, back to the matter at hand,” I said, trying to escape from any more close calls. “I know that you're due to collect us here in a cab at six o'clock this evening and that dress is formal tonight, so I'm assuming a long dress will be okay for that?” I raised my eyebrow in query, and Ellen nodded. “Right, well, that means I'm going to have quite a bit of getting ready to do. I'd like to clean up a bit, and so forth, before I dress. Would it be alright if we meet you downstairs here at five thirty, in case we have any more questions before we leave? Could the cab wait?” I thought that my rapid exit strategy might be a bit abrupt, but Bud was raking his hair with frustration, looking worried, and seemed keen to get away. I knew I was.

“Oh, absolutely,” agreed Ellen with enthusiasm, and she bounced up out of her chair, put it back in its place and started toward the door. “This'll be your room, Bud, and Cait's across the hall. Unless you'd rather be the other way around. It's just you two this weekend, so you'll have the place to yourselves—well, except for Lauren and Pat, of course. They live in. Well, out back, in the double-wide. But that was in my notes, right? Yes. They won't be a bother, though—they'll be pretty busy getting things ready for tomorrow's breakfast. Let's get tonight behind us first. See you, ready to go, at five thirty, and we can clear up anything you need to know before we leave. Byeee . . . lovely to see you both and thanks so much for coming.” And she was gone.

I sat down again, hard, having risen to accept her parting words. We sat there until, from my vantage point, I could see her walking out of the front door. Then I turned to Bud and said, “Having promised in the truck to hold off with my opinions until I'd met the woman—I have now met her, and she's a
nut job
, Bud!”

“And that's your calm, analytical, professional psychologist's opinion?” he replied, shaking his head.

“Sometimes, Bud, I revert to the vernacular so that non-psychologists like you can understand what I'm talking about. The full two barrels of vernacular assessment are that anal, she's judgmental, she's closed-minded, she's
small
-minded. She's poorly read, hasn't been exposed to anything but a traditional, locally based way of life. She's unused to male attention, might have had a boyfriend or two when young, but nothing serious—not for them, anyway, but maybe for her. She's controlling, she's passive-aggressive, she's repressed—in every way. Do you want me to go on?”

“How about the fact that she's grieving her dead sister and can't see the wood for the trees?” asked Bud pointedly.

I sighed. “You're right,” I admitted. “I'm being too harsh.
Too judgmental
.” I smiled guiltily at him. “She's operating under duress, and her sense of perspective is likely to be way off. This might be unusual behavior for her and then again it may not be. That's part of the problem. Everything's coming at us from
her
point of view, and we don't know how true, or off center, that is.”

Bud nodded. “Talking about
off
—what was all that about being a
marketing
professor? You could have given me the heads-up on
that
one.”

I shrugged. “I made a split-second decision, Bud. It might be too late for you to be anonymous here, and, given what you've done for a living, it was always likely that it wouldn't have worked anyway.” Bud nodded his agreement. “But there's no reason for folks to know that I'm a criminal psychologist. That's
not
the sort of person a murderer usually opens up to, so I thought it was better to be something that no one would bat an eyelid at.”

“Nearly got caught there though, eh?” Bud grinned.

Again, I shrugged. “Yep, I never thought of that. I'll be better prepared when I meet the other suspects. I'll draw on my time back in London when I worked for that advertising agency, and waffle on a bit about return on investment and brand building . . . if I have to talk about anything to do with marketing at all. After all, it's unlikely, right? I mean, we're both going to be trying to direct our conversations towards possible motives, opportunities, and all that.
Right?
”

Bud shifted uncomfortably.

“Come on, Bud. That's why we're here. That's why we've come. Well, Annette's death,
and
the food, of course.”

“Diet on the back-burner this weekend?” he asked.

I patted my tummy. “I'll start again on Tuesday.”

“Good luck with that.” He smiled indulgently.

I dragged my thoughts away from the long days filled with little more than Greek yogurt and lettuce that I'd have to endure for weeks to make up for my forthcoming indulgences, and refocused on the matter at hand.

“Listen, Bud, about Ellen's notes: the physical descriptions and the factual backgrounds—you know, who does what and lives where—might be useful, but I don't think we should rely on any of the character assessments she's written. Maybe I should just call them what they are—character
assassinations
. People might not have had a bad word to say about her dead sister, but she sure as hell has a lot of bad things to say about everyone we're about to meet. Something I didn't have a chance to comment upon before we got here was that she says nothing at all about Annette in the notes, other than, as I just mentioned, that no one ever had a bad word to say about her. Now, if, as you say, she also told you that everyone loved Annette, I don't quite know what she expects us—sorry,
you
—to do. Why would
anyone
want Annette dead? Well, other than this Raj Pinder, the guy who inherited half of Ellen's family business . . .”