Sea to Sky (33 page)

Hunter stirred some sugar into his coffee. “Did you follow him down?”

She shook her head again. “Then he’d know for sure, wouldn’t he? I figured I’d pick him up again as soon as I could.”

He nodded.

“So who do you think killed him?” she asked.

“I’m still trying to make all the puzzle pieces fit. I’m just not feeling comfortable with the business angle. That kind of thing goes on to some degree in every industry, and seldom leads to murder. In spite of what looks like an execution-style killing, I’m beginning to suspect the motive was more personal than professional. One of the major pieces is missing, because I’m not totally sold on the real motive yet. On some level, I’m hoping that my hunch is wrong.” He took a sip of coffee, still keeping his eyes on her face. “So you don’t think the other skier was a woman?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Your lawyer friend?”

“Is that who you suspect?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t really care who did it so I’m not going to waste any time thinking about it. No.” She stirred the whipped cream topping into her coffee, then licked off the spoon and set it on a napkin. “I do care on some minor level. Maybe I’m being catty, but I’d like to see her get nailed for it. Some lawyers think they’re smart enough to maneuver around the law.” She paused to sip at her coffee. “Besides, if it was personal, she’s got one of the biggest motives.”

“One of them?”

“Duh.”

Hunter smiled. Duh, indeed. When it came to motive, Mike Irwin’s unhappy wife might have had the biggest motive of all. “Did you see Kelly Irwin that morning? She said the grandparents took the kids to McDonald’s, so she went for a long walk. Alone.”

Meredith sniffed. “Along with ‘I went for a long drive’, that’s got to be one of the weakest alibis in the book. No, I didn’t see her. Not that I’m aware of, anyway, but I wasn’t looking for her that morning, was I? ”

Hunter took out his wallet and tucked a ten dollar bill under his empty cup. “You’re right. No one with any sense would use an alibi like that,” he winked at her, “unless it happened to be the truth.”

“Right,” she said with a laugh. “You realize, of course, that could be exactly what she wants you to think.”

After he left Meredith Travis, Hunter had the rest of Saturday and all day Sunday before the shipment in San Bernardino would be ready for pickup. Usually when he had a layover, he would take short sightseeing trips if he could afford the fuel, or else find a good book and hang out at the truck stop, spending time in the restaurant or the drivers’ lounge when he wasn’t resting in the truck’s sleeper bunk.  This time, he was on a mission to find out as much as he could about, or from, anyone connected with Mike Irwin.

He gave some serious thought to how he should approach Alora Magee. Things had ended awkwardly in Whistler, to put it mildly, and although he had no intention of pursuing a relationship with her, he was going to have to talk to her. Her behavior troubled him, or more accurately, the motivation behind her behavior. He thought it reasonable that he had offered to reschedule his meeting with John Irwin in order to take her to dinner, but she had taken what he thought was unwarranted offense at the fact he hadn’t planned to spend the entire evening of her last day in Whistler with her.

Why had she seemed so eager to find an excuse to end it with him? He replayed their conversation, as near as he could remember it. Was what he did really so unforgiveable, had she simply over-reacted, or could it be that he had outlived his usefulness? Had he really been set up, as the private eye suggested? He hated to think he had misjudged Alora so completely, but a homicide investigator had to be thorough. She would not be happy to hear from him and he expected to get flak from her, but he would have to set aside his pride and ask if he could see her again.

The woman had been the victim of a stalker, so staking out her apartment would no doubt backfire. The solution would be to visit her office. Lawyers were a dedicated bunch when it came to billable hours, so he wouldn’t be surprised if her firm’s office was open and active on a Saturday afternoon, and that she was at work, catching up after her vacation. He decided that was his best bet.

It was after two thirty by the time he parked his tractor at a small mall in Sherman Oaks and walked across Ventura Boulevard to the building housing her law firm. The law office was on the fourth floor of a concrete and glass tower, and he checked his reflection before opening the glass door to the building. He had on clean jeans and an only slightly wrinkled cotton shirt, blue with narrow white stripes. He thought he looked respectable enough, although he knew he was no ‘sharp-dressed man’.

The receptionist, a young woman wearing a grey suit and who wouldn’t look out of place in a fashion magazine, was clearly a professional and gave no indication that his appearance was inferior to that of the firm’s usual clients. He asked her if Alora Magee was in her office.

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No, she’s not expecting me. Please tell her it’s Hunter Rayne.”

A moment later Alora emerged from an office down the hall. She wore tailored black slacks and a blouse of a satiny yellow fabric that somehow accentuated the amber of her eyes. She looked good. Hunter felt an unexpected twinge of regret that things hadn’t worked out between them. “Thank you, Rebecca,” she said to the receptionist, then motioned with her head for Hunter to follow her. She didn’t smile or offer her hand.

Hunter echoed her ‘thank you’ to the receptionist with a smile and followed Alora.

Once inside the office, Alora closed the door behind him and remained standing, her hand on the knob.

“What do you want?” she asked.

Hunter glanced around the office before he replied. There was a low black filing cabinet and credenza, plus a couple of framed abstract prints on the wall. A large desk with several files open on its surface was between him and a tinted glass window; one chair was pulled out behind the desk and two chairs faced it. Beyond the window he could see nothing but a high overcast sky.

“I realize you want to put Mike Irwin behind you, but it may not be that easy,” he said. “The detective in charge of the case still considers you a prime suspect — you and me both, in fact. I’d like nothing better than to forget the whole thing myself, but I’m trying to be proactive here. If I can find evidence pointing at the real killer, you and I can get on with our lives without worrying about a knock on the door and an escort to jail early one morning.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. Why are you here?” She dropped her hand from the door knob and leaned against the wall behind her, arms crossed over her chest.

“If you’ll answer a few questions for me, I’ll be on my way.”

She nodded, but said nothing.

“Last time I spoke with Kelly Irwin, she indicated that you and she did not — do not — have an attorney-client relationship. Is that correct?”

Alora nodded again.

“So whatever she said to you during your time together at Whistler is not privileged information. Is that correct?”

She took a deep breath and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Ask your questions. Depending on what they are, I may or may not answer you. If I feel that I am betraying her confidence, well, I’m not under oath and I’m not obligated to tell you anything. You’re not even a cop.”

He had to smile. “That’s right. I’m just a truck driver.” He gestured toward the two chairs in front of her desk. “I won’t be here long, but that doesn’t mean we can’t sit down.”

She moved away from the door, hesitating at the chair next to him, then walked around the desk and took the chair on the other side. She slid it forward, closed the file that was open in front of her, and placed her elbows on the desk.

Hunter cleared his throat as he sat down. “As you probably know, sometimes an insignificant detail can create a tiny wedge that breaks open a criminal case. I do intend to speak with Kelly Irwin again, but I’m hoping your powers of observation and intuition will shed some light on her behavior. Did Kelly say anything to you about the last time she saw her husband?”

Alora frowned. “Give me a minute,” she said, leaning back and closing her eyes. “I need to think about that.”

Hunter sat silently. Was she trying to recall her conversation with Kelly, or was she considering her strategy? He had to take what he could get.

“She told me that she didn’t say goodbye to him that morning. She heard him getting ready to leave, but she pretended to be asleep.”

“Did she say why?”

“She didn’t have to. As much as she now says she loved him, she hated the bastard. She was also afraid of him. Don’t forget, I’ve been there.”

“Then what did she do?”

Alora’s pursed her lips. “Funny. I didn’t ask her — why would I? — but she made a point of telling me that she got the kids up and dressed and took them over to their grandmother’s, then went out by herself for a long walk in the snow.”

“Why do you think she made a point of telling you that?” He thought of Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s long walk in the snow the day he made the decision to resign as Prime Minister of Canada. A major life-changing decision.

Alora shrugged. “Maybe she felt it had some kind of cosmic significance. You like to think that when someone close to you dies, you’ll feel something, somehow, before you hear the news.” She looked right at Hunter as she spoke.

Hunter looked away. He knew what she was talking about. On his way to their home after Helen had discovered Ken’s body, he’d had a hard time believing Ken could have died without Hunter receiving some kind of psychic message. From who or what, he didn’t know.

“You never doubted that she actually did go for that walk?”

Alora leaned back, looking more relaxed than she had since his arrival. “You think she could have killed him?”

Hunter wondered if her relaxation was a sign of relief that his questions pointed to another suspect besides herself. “You don’t?” he asked.

“I think, if I were in her position, I would want him dead,” she said, “but do I really think she has the jam to kill somebody?” She shook her head. “If she were tough enough to kill him, I’d assume she would have been tough enough to leave him before it came to murder.”

“As tough as you are, you mean?”

She didn’t reply, but she looked him in the eye and, for the first time that day, he saw her smile.

C
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A
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    NINETEEN

Sunday morning at the Rialto truck stop dragged. Hunter was restless, wishing he could do something — anything — to get information that could solve Mike Irwin’s murder, but the people he wanted to speak with now were in Seattle. He considered looking up Dave Cordero but he decided he didn’t have enough information or the credentials to interview or even approach the man successfully. He didn’t have access to police databases or research sources, but maybe he could find at least some information at a library. He asked one of the truck stop employees and she told him that the best and closest library open on a Sunday would be at the University of California Riverside. It took just twenty minutes to get there on the freeway but it took him another half hour to find the right place to park and make his way on foot through the maze of buildings to the Rivera library.

His first search was for anything that might enlighten him about Don Julian Transport. A business directory told him that it was located on Don Julian Road. Hunter rubbed his chin and remembered that he hadn’t shaved. So, he wondered, did the name Don Julian have a Mexican connection? Don Julian Road ran northwest to southeast through the primarily Hispanic city of La Puente, east of L.A. Next he looked for Cordero’s company, which he remembered Meredith saying was somewhere south of L.A. He couldn’t find anything at all on Dave Cordero, and no obvious connection between Cordero and Don Julian Transport. Nothing came up on Todd Milton, either, but that was no surprise.

“Does the name Don Julian mean anything to you?” he asked one of the librarians, an older woman who reminded him slightly of Jessica Fletcher from the TV series ‘Murder She Wrote’.

“Only Don Julian Alvarado,” she said. “A character in the Hornblower series.”

Hunter hit the side of his head with the heel of his hand. “Of course. El Supremo. That crazy Spaniard.” He had borrowed the book from Gord, his landlord, who had the whole series of C.S. Forester novels. So Don Julian looked like a dead end. He thanked her and was about to walk away, but it was still Sunday and he still had hours to kill.

“While I’m here,” he said, turning back to the librarian, “how about Belle Sorenson, or Belle Gunness? Have you got anything on her?” Sorry’s mention of her had piqued his curiosity.

“I happen to be a big fan of true crime myself,” said the Jessica Fletcher look-alike with a smile.

Hunter laughed. “I wouldn’t exactly call myself a fan,” he said.

The librarian frowned, then punched something into the computer. “I should be able to refer you to a couple of books. I know there was also a movie inspired by Belle’s story. Did you ever see
The Bad Seed
? The mother of one of the main characters was a female serial killer based on Belle, except in the movie she went to the electric chair and no one knows for sure what happened to Belle. In fact,” she looked at him over her reading glasses, “rumor has it that Belle ended up in California.”

“A recent movie?”

“Mid-fifties, I think. Black and white. The little girl almost won an Oscar.”

“Little girl?”

“The bad seed. Her poor mother got the idea that she’d somehow passed on her grandmother’s murderous tendencies to her daughter, so she tried to kill the child and herself. Kind of a weird ending. They both survived. You’ll have to keep an eye out for it on late night television.”

“I will,” said Hunter, just to make her happy.

She eventually directed him to a book in the stacks. It was called
Belle Gunness: The Lady Bluebeard
. Hunter settled into a chair near a window with his reading glasses perched halfway down his nose and began to read. Belle had carried out most of her murders in Indiana, not Illinois but he’d remembered partly right: she’d killed would-be suitors as well as her husbands. She’d also killed her own children. He shuddered.

After skimming through the book, he still wasn’t sure why Sorry’s father would have felt a need to mention her to his son. The only connection he could see was the name Sorenson, which was the last name of one of her husbands. He decided not to bring it up again with Sorry. His relationship with his father was precarious enough. One detail of Belle Gunness’ story struck him in relation to Mike Irwin’s murder. Revenge. Some psychologists suggested that Belle was exacting revenge on men as a result of being badly beaten by a rich boyfriend when she was only seventeen.

He looked at his watch. When he got back to the Rialto truck stop, he’d give himself that overdue shave, maybe catch a hockey game in the driver’s lounge — only possible now because football season was over — or maybe a movie, then have an early dinner and read himself to sleep.

As much as Hunter liked highway driving for a living, those layover days on the road sometimes made him wish that he were home.

Elspeth was looking for a piece of paper one of the drivers had given her with what he called ‘an awesome lead on backhaul from the Yukon’. (“I get a commission, don’t I?” he’d said.) She was rifling through a messy stack of papers on her desk Monday afternoon when she came across the two Rolodex cards that she’d pulled out after hearing from Sorry about Don Julian Transport.

“What are the chances?” she muttered. Not good, in a city the size of Greater Los Angeles, that the two Southern California freight brokers she knew well enough to ask would know anything significant about a small trucking outfit in the City of Industry. She was on the verge of slipping the cards back into the Rolodex file, then decided it was about time one of her attempts to help Hunter paid off. All she had to lose was a few minutes of her time, and a few dollars worth of long distances charges.

The first call was a bust. “What? Who? Never heard of ‘em. Gotta go.” The guy hung up before she could squeeze in another question. She knew what her drivers would’ve said.
Taste of your own medicine
, or something like that. Oh, well. She dialled the second broker and found herself on hold.

She was just about to hang up when Matt Yost at MY-way Freight Services came on the line. “Yo, Mattie,” she said. “Greetings from the Great White North.”

“Wassup, bitch? You buyin’ or sellin’ this time?”

“Neither, bro. I’m looking for information on an operation in your ‘hood.”

“Hit me.”

She gave him what she knew about Don Julian Transport. When he didn’t respond right away, she thought she’d struck out again.

“I crossed paths with them a couple a times lately. Aggressive sons of bitches. The drivers are Latino thugs, not sure if they’re Puerto Rican or Mexican, but best guess is Mexican. Don’t quote me, but I think they’ve got some kind of extortion thing going. You know, could be anything from ‘give us the contract and we’ll give you a cut’ to ‘give us the fuckin’ contract or we’ll break your fuckin’ legs’ kind of thing.”

“Anybody you know get hurt?”

“None of my regulars. I tell my guys to stay clear of them. They tried to bully one of my customers, but he took my advice and told them to take a hike. When push came to shove, they backed off. Still, my advice is, stay away, mama. Don’t let ‘em rope you into anything.”

“Don’t worry. I’m particular about who I do business with. Listen, Matt, while I got you…” she began.

“I knew it,” he said. “I just knew it. You got a driver in SoCal and you need a load north, am I right?”

“Moi?” she said, in her Miss Piggy voice. She would need a load soon, but didn’t want to ask for one now. “Just wanted to say, I got a couple of loads shaping up here for next week if you need backhaul.”

“That’s a first! I got no drivers up that way right now, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

El hung up the phone with a shiver of excitement. She had something for Hunter, at last! “Now we’re cookin’with gas, Pete!” Peterbilt looked up at her from his doggie pillow, which was big enough for a dog four times his size, then tucked his nose under his tail and went back to sleep. El went to the lunch room and pulled a can of Coke out of the fridge, popped the top, and took a couple of big swallows. Then she settled her butt back in her big swivel chair and dialled Hunter’s cell number.

Around sunset on Monday, Hunter was at the Flying J truck stop near Lodi. He hadn’t managed to get away from the plastics warehouse in San Bernardino until almost eleven o’clock so he’d grabbed a Subway sandwich on his way out of town and was now ready for a break. After dinner, he could get back on the road and drive another four hours or so north, wait out his ten hours of off duty time at the Pilot truck stop in Weed, then be back on the road by about nine o’clock Tuesday morning. That was, of course, barring delays with traffic or any kind of mechanical breakdown. He’d been lucky lately, with his truck, and did his best to make sure the old Freightliner stayed healthy.

There was space at the pumps, so he pulled in to fuel up before parking his rig and heading to the restaurant for something to eat. He sat at a booth by the window. Whoever had been there before him had left a copy of USA Today on the seat, so Hunter picked it up and glanced at the headlines, then left it folded on the table. He ordered a steak with fries and gravy, aware that his daughters would be horrified at his choice if they were there, but he was too hungry to care. He knew they would scold him for not eating more vegetables, so when the waitress returned to set down his coffee, he asked for a side of onion rings.

After putting cream and sugar in his coffee and taking a sip, he pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket, about to turn it on and check for voicemail, then thought better of it. Roaming charges came straight off his bottom line. There was a payphone at every table for the convenience of truckers, so he called El on her 800 number.

“Make it quick. I’m standing in the lineup at the Colonel’s,” she told him. “Did you get my message?”

“No. What’s up?”

“I’ll give you the details when you get back. What time do you expect to pull in?”

“When do you need me?”

“Get your beauty rest Wednesday morning, sweetcheeks. See me in the office around noon, and you can make the delivery in Port Kells yourself anytime after one o’clock. I’ll have a load to Winnipeg for you Thursday morning, if you want it. That work for you?”

Hunter said it did, and El said, “Five pieces of chicken and a large fries with gravy, please,” as she hung up on him.

Next he retrieved his voicemail. He listened to the message from El, and a message from his daughter, Lesley, suggesting they ‘do lunch’ on Saturday if he was around. He’d have to call her back for a rain check when he got home, and tell her he’d be in Winnipeg on the weekend. He preferred the north-south run to travelling east in the winter, but he couldn’t turn down a load. The Coquihalla highway across the Coast Mountains could be treacherous during a snowfall, and the passes over the Rocky Mountains were unpredictable. Temperatures of minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit weren’t uncommon on the prairies
,
and he usually had to keep his engine idling to keep both himself and The Blue Knight from freezing during the night.

No further calls from Helen. His mind conjured up an image of her silently weeping at her son’s bedside, and he realized it was an image from the past, when she had sat holding her husband’s lifeless hand. Hunter took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on what was outside the window of the truck stop restaurant, under the lights.

He saw a mini-van pull up, and a woman dressed much too lightly for the temperature here at nightfall — she must have come from the desert — emerge from the passenger door, slide open the van door, and extract a young child out of its car seat. The child was blonde and wore shorts and little yellow sandals, so he thought it must be a girl. A young boy aged four or five jumped down from the van and the woman grabbed him by the shirt before he could walk away, and she made him take her hand. A man, also in shorts and with a backpack slung over one shoulder, appeared from around the other side of the van. He took the youngest child from the woman’s arms, the little girl leaning into his shoulder as he settled her on his arm and kissed the top of her head, and the four of them walked together toward the restaurant. Again, Hunter found himself thinking about days past, a different life that seemed so long ago, when he was part of a young family.

His own girls were now young adults, and he was so far away from them most of the time that if anything were threatening them, he wouldn’t even know, let alone be able to do anything to protect them. That ate at him when he let himself think about it. He wondered if he would feel differently about a son. Young men are usually their own worst enemies. A father would have to hope that he’d done his job well enough to ensure his son would make the right choices in life, but Hunter didn’t think he would worry as much about protecting a son as he worried about his daughters. Is the mother more responsible for the behavior of a daughter? If so, his ex-wife Christine had done a good job.

Can a father, then, be held responsible for the behavior of his son? Or hold himself responsible? He couldn’t help but think about Sorry and how his father had been disappointed in him. Had the older Sorenson actually been more disappointed by his own failure as a father? And what about Adam Marsh? Had his tormented father not only caused his wife and son the devastating pain of dealing with his suicide, but also doomed young Adam to travel the wrong roads for the rest of his life?