Death On a No 8 Hook (A Willows and Parker Mystery) (17 page)

Chapter 31

The City of Vancouver employs ten meter maids to patrol the downtown core. During a typical shift each woman will issue between fifty and eighty tickets; in the course of an average week approximately four thousand individual tickets are written. Computer records are kept and notices of non-payment of fines together with the empty threat of a summons are mailed automatically to the registered owners of offending vehicles. The paper carbons of the original tickets are filed in heavy cardboard cartons in a city-leased warehouse. At the end of four years, unpaid tickets are written off as a bad debt. The paper is recirculated — reduced to pulp.

It took Willows and Parker and the three junior clerks they’d recruited to assist them less than an hour to unearth the second of the tickets Judith Lundstrom had slapped on the windscreen of the black Trans Am.

The two detectives took the ticket back to 312 Main. A priority telex to the Motor Vehicle Branch in Victoria was answered in just under three minutes.

The car was registered in the name of an American woman named Misha Yokóte. Residences were listed as Laguna Beach, California, and 616 Greenbriar Lane, in the nearby municipality of West Vancouver.

“Let’s check out Laguna Beach first,” joked Parker.

Willows smiled politely, and kept reading. According to the MVB telex, Misha Yokóte was twenty-eight years old, a spinster. She had black hair and brown eyes. Her height was five foot one and she weighed one hundred and four pounds. Miss Yokóte had no visible scars. She was restricted to driving with the aid of corrective lenses. Her British Columbia driver’s licence had been issued in June of 1982. It was clean: no wants, no warrants.

“I wonder who’s been driving Misha’s car,” said Parker.

“Let’s go see Bradley,” said Willows. “If we’re going to stake out a West Van address, he’s going to have to know all about it.”

“And so will the West Van cops.”

Willows nodded glumly. West Vancouver had its own police force, and they were responsible for maintaining the peace in an area where the inhabitants were noted for their advanced age and high incomes. Willows had worked with the West Van cops before, and knew that they’d be a lot more concerned with serving their own interests than cooperating with a couple of hotshot dicks from the big city. He folded the telex in half and put it in his wallet.

*

Bradley moved the area map around on his desk like a shirt on an ironing-board, flattening out the wrinkles with the palm of his hand. He found Greenbriar Lane in the index, then used the coordinates to locate it on the map.

“Nice neighbourhood.”

“We’ll try not to create a disturbance,” said Willows.

“You talk to the West Van cops?”

“We thought we’d let you handle it.”

“Thanks a lot, Jack. How many teams are you going to need?”

“We can do it with three.”

“If you say so.” Bradley studied the map. Ash fell from his cigar, polluting several scale miles of the West Vancouver foreshore. “You can have Farley Spears. I’ll try for Ralph Kearns and Eddy Orwell. Orwell’s been pushing for a transfer, let’s see how he does.” He gave Parker a bland, depthless smile. “You’re a man short, somebody’ll have to double up.”

Out in the squad room, the telephone on Willows’ desk rang harshly.

“Keep in touch,” said Bradley, waving them out of his office.

Willows picked up the phone. It was Pat Rossiter, the Mountie from Squamish.

“Bill Lister, Naomi’s father, killed himself first thing this morning,” Rossiter said without preamble.

Willows was stunned.

“His gas station opens at seven. The mechanic found him in one of the service bays, sitting in his car. He’d run a hose from the exhaust pipe in through the back window, and gassed himself.” Rossiter paused. “You still there, Jack?”

“What else have you got?”

“He wrote a suicide note. A confession. He murdered his daughter.”

Willows thought about the carving in Lister’s living-room. Christ on the cross, the face twisted in anger.

“The note was hand-written,” said Rossiter. “There’s no question it’s authentic. Lister drove up the mountain in a four-wheel drive Jeep that was in the shop for a lube and oil, and a new section of exhaust pipe.”

Willows nodded into the phone. He was thinking about the smear of fresh grease he’d found in the grass by the creek, the traces of carbon-monoxide poison in Naomi Lister’s blood.

“Bill Lister wrote down the Jeep owner’s name. We checked the work records. The vehicle was left at the station on August thirteenth, and picked up three days later. The owner was down in Seattle for a dirty weekend with his girlfriend.”

“You talked to him?”

“Both of them. The guy was planning to write off his expenses. He’d kept all his receipts. The girl corroborated his statement. They’re both clean, no doubt about it at all.”

“Why did Lister kill his daughter? Was there any explanation in the note?”

“The girl was a fornicator and a sinner, a dreadful abomination in the eyes of the Lord.” Rossiter sighed theatrically. “Why didn’t we think of that in the first place, Jack? We could’ve solved the damn case the same day you found the body.”

“Tell me something,” said Willows. “Did Lister mention any other names?”

“You think he might’ve sliced up the kid in the van?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Solve your case for you, wouldn’t it?” said Rossiter cynically.

“Say hello to Katie for me,” said Willows, and hung up.

“What was that all about?” said Parker.

Willows told her about Lister’s suicide and the note he’d left behind.

“Somebody who works in a service station,” said Parker thoughtfully, “would know how to hot-wire a car. Or an Econoline van.” She frowned. “Maybe Lister thought the kid was pimping for his daughter, got her involved in the business.”

“Could be,” said Willows. “But I’d say Bill Lister was about fifty years old, and that he looked every minute of it. The man we’re after is only about thirty.”

“According to that old Chinese woman we talked to. But she must be in her eighties. Who knows what kind of shape her eyes are in.”

Willows nodded. He’d been thinking along similar lines. The old lady had impressed him, but what if she’d been wrong?

“Are you going to tell Bradley about this?” said Parker.

“What do you think?”

“I think we should give Spears and Orwell the first shift. We can take over after dinner, watch the Trans Am until whoever’s living at Greenbriar Lane packs it in for the night.”

*

There was a Block Brothers “For Sale” sign in front of a large mock Tudor house diagonally across the street from Misha Yokóte’s sprawling L-shaped rancher. Eddy Orwell parked the unmarked police car in the driveway, which was hidden from the street by a dense hedge of dwarf cedars. Farley Spears unbuckled his seat belt. He climbed out of the car and went over to the house, pressed his nose against a window and came away smiling.

“It’s empty. No furniture, nothing.”

“Perfect,” said Orwell, reaching for the Zeiss 7x50s on the seat beside him.

The rancher was white, with dark green trim. There was about a hundred and fifty feet of frontage, all gently sloping lawn. The driveway curved up the left side of the property and disappeared into an attached double garage. The garage door wasn’t completely down, and with the aid of the binoculars, Spears was able to see the licence plate of the car parked inside. The plate number was identical to the number on the parking ticket issued by Judith Lundstrom.

Spears lit a cigarette. Orwell glared at him, but didn’t say anything. Orwell was a vice cop working on a homicide investigation, and he knew he had to watch his step. Spears was a jerk, but what Spears said to Bradley could have a serious impact on Orwell’s career. He moved upwind of Spears, and Spears smiled at him, smoke dribbling out of his mouth and nostrils.

Orwell found another gap in the trees and scanned the front of the house. Heavy curtains had been pulled across the windows, either for privacy or to keep out the heat of the afternoon sun. Orwell fine-tuned the binoculars until he could make out the warp and woof of the fabric. It didn’t help much.

Farley Spears finished his cigarette and lit another one.

The house shimmered in the heat.

Spears looked down at the city, ten or more miles away and lost in a poisonous grey haze. “I wonder how much it costs to live up here,” he said.

“Lots,” said Orwell.

“That much, huh.” Spears dropped the butt of his cigarette on the asphalt and ground it under his heel. Orwell had a real talent for small talk. It was going to be a long afternoon.

There was a garden tap sticking out of the house to the left of the front door, just above ground level. Spears knelt and turned the handle. The tap made a gurgling sound and a single drop of lukewarm water fell into his cupped hand. He turned the tap off. Smoking dried him out, but he was wired, he couldn’t quit. He glanced at Orwell. They only had one pair of binoculars and it was clear that Orwell wasn’t about to give them up. He went over to the car and sat down and lit his third cigarette in twenty minutes.

At half-past four, Farley Spears decided to relieve his boredom by taking a short walk. He’d noticed that there was an almost perpendicular wall of rock behind the rancher, about a hundred feet away from the house. The rock wall was at least fifty feet high, topped with a mix of dense shrubbery and stunted evergreens. If he could manage to get up there, he’d have a great view of the fenced back yard, maybe even be able to see inside the house.

“Maybe even fall and break your neck,” said Orwell when Spears told him where he was going.

Spears walked up Greenbriar Lane until he was out of sight of the rancher, then cut through somebody’s yard and followed a split rail fence up the flank of the cliff. Within a few minutes he was breathing heavily, winded. He paused, and loosened his tie. The air smelled of resin. Insects buzzed wearily past. Spears looked around. He was all alone. He unzipped his trousers and urinated against a cedar fence post, aiming at an ant but missing. When he was finished, he started up the hill again, climbing slowly but steadily, pacing himself.

Ten minutes after he’d left Orwell, Spears was feeling anything but bored. Squatting in the bushes at the top of the cliff, he looked down on a heart-shaped pool, a barbecue full of dead ashes, and a man and a woman making love in the middle of a tiled patio, their dark bodies reflected in a windbreak of glass blocks.

The woman was lying on her back. Spears could see her face. She was Japanese.

“Pleasure to meet you, Miss Yokóte,” he said softly.

Inside the house, a telephone warbled.

The man continued his steady rhythm. The woman’s hands slid down his back. She gripped his buttocks and squeezed hard. Spears watched the index finger of her right hand disappear between her partner’s cheeks. The man began to move a little faster. The telephone warbled musically. Sweat glistened on the man’s back. Misha Yokóte slowly lifted her arm, withdrawing three feet of gaily coloured silk scarf from the man’s anus. Spears’s mouth gaped open. The man bucked and lurched. His knees thumped on the tiles. He cried out, and Misha laughed.

The man rolled off her, on to the hot tiles of the patio. He still had an erection. Spears saw to his surprise that he wasn’t Japanese at all, but that he had a very deep tan, that he was tanned all over, every last inch of him.

The telephone hadn’t quit. Misha jumped lithely to her feet and padded into the house.

No visible scars, thought Spears. Terrific legs. The phone had stopped ringing. His thigh muscles ached. He shifted his stance and a handful of pebbles rattled down the slope and fell to the narrow strip of lawn between the face of the cliff and the pool.

Misha came out of the house and said, “It’s Felix. He wants to talk to you.”

Junior nodded. He scratched his groin and strolled into the house.

Spears watched Misha walk along the edge of the pool towards him, climb up on the diving-board and test the spring of it. She stood in profile, perfectly still, as if listening. Spears stared at her breasts. She flexed her knees and began to work the board, got some altitude and arced cleanly beneath the flat pink surface of the water.

Spears’ foot dislodged a few more stones, larger ones this time. He was too busy watching Misha to notice.

Chapter 32

Junior was watching Misha too, as he picked up the telephone. “Hi, Felix. What’s happening?”

“You tell me,” Felix snarled right back.

Junior wondered if Misha’d answered the phone with that soft and lazy post-coital voice she liked so much to use. He turned his back on the pool, giving Felix all of his attention. “Well,” he said, “I got up about ten, swam a few laps and had some breakfast. Spent maybe an hour washing and waxing the car. Took a shower and watched part of an old John Wayne movie on the TV.”

Felix was breathing hard. “Is that it, Junior, or are you saving the best part for last?”

“Thought I might get around to mowing the lawn this afternoon, if it cools down a little.”

“Leading a pretty quiet life, are you?”

“You could hear a bullet drop.”

“How’s Misha?”

“She’s okay.”

“Voice sounded a little throaty, like she might be coming down with a cold.”

“No, she’s fine.”

“I don’t like it,” said Felix. “Mannie should’ve called by now.”

“I drove by his place a couple of times last night,” said Junior. “His car was parked outside, but he wasn’t showing any lights.”

“Something’s gone wrong, I know it.”

“Why the hell you ever hire the guy, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“I owed his father a favour.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It happened long ago, Junior. Before your time.”

Junior found that sometime during the conversation he’d turned so he was facing the pool again. Misha was jumping up and down on the diving-board. She saw him watching, and waved.

“You want me to go back, take a look around, kick his door in?”

“I don’t know what I want.” He sighed heavily into Junior’s ear. “You get Misha on the next plane out of there, okay? Tell her I miss her, tell her anything you want. Just get her packed and on her way.”

“Whatever you say, Felix.”

“As for Mannie, maybe you ought to hang in there a little longer. Give him some room.”

“He ain’t gonna phone,” said Junior flatly. “Not if he fucked up. And he must’ve fucked up or he would have phoned by now.”

“You think so, eh?”

“I’d bet my life on it.”

“Don’t talk like that,” said Felix quickly. “It’s bad luck.”

“I know the guy,” said Junior. “He’s gonna spend the next six months sitting in his crummy little house, hoping we forgot about him. But we can’t afford to do that, can we Felix?”

“I guess not,” said Felix slowly. “I hate to admit it, but you’re right. He’s a liability.”

Junior felt a tingle of anticipation. He started making plans, his brain awhirl.

“Be careful,” said Felix. “And when you’re finished with him, take a minute to look around. Make sure he didn’t leave a love note to his lawyer tucked away in the sugar bowl, you know what I mean?”

“Sure,” said Junior.

“I hope so,” said Felix. He hung up without saying goodbye, but Junior wasn’t offended. It was a style thing, was all. Nothing personal. He put the phone down and went back outside, into the sunlight and the heat. He jogged across the patio, dived into the pool and kicked hard, touched bottom and came up on the far side.

Misha was sitting sideways on the board, painted toenails dabbling at the water. She smiled down at him and said, “What did Felix want?”

“He wanted me to make up his mind for him.”

“About what?”

“Mannie Katz.”

“Really? What’d you decide?”

“Time to say goodbye.”

“No wonder you look so sad,” Misha joked.

Junior reached up and pulled her shrieking and giggling into the water. He held her close, so their faces were only inches apart. “The reason I’m sad is because you didn’t come,” he said.

“I never do,” she said. “And I never will.”

“But why not?”

“Because I couldn’t handle the guilt, that’s why.”

Junior wanted her to try to explain it to him, even though he doubted he’d ever understand. Misha saw the questions coming, deflected them by putting her smooth brown arms around him and kissing him on the mouth.

Junior pulled away, but not too far. “Felix wants you on the next flight out of town,” he said.

Misha kissed him again. Her lips tasted faintly of chlorine.

One
for
the
road
, thought Junior.