SIREN'S TEARS (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 3) (15 page)

“Well, this won’t help. She was basically home-schooled, like a lot of kids in isolated communities. Plus, her mother was a teacher before she married. Another dead end.”

Having just told her she was a great cop, I didn’t like asking the next question.

“Didn’t the manner of her father’s death bother you?”

“Why? It was an air crash. He flew his own plane frequently in some of the roughest weather and terrain on earth. I guess God wasn’t his co-pilot that day.”

I filled her in on what Cruikshank told me about the “accident.”

“That doesn’t prove ….” She stopped. “Oh, Jesus, God. I screwed up.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, Annie. You were working a case on your own, with no support. Your boss would have buried it anyway. And, once again, there is no proof.”

I don’t think it made her feel any better. She was silent until she dropped me off at the Holiday Inn.

“I’ll let you know when I find out about the sketch, Rhode.”

I promised to keep her in the loop if I found out anything. I always say that, and rarely follow through. But in her case, I thought I might.

CHAPTER 27 – OCEAN FALLS

The next morning, Annie Barrett called me.

“There is no sketch in the file, but that’s not unusual. We put it on the wires and one of the constables took the original around to show people locally. Things get lost. We don’t have our own sketch artist, so we borrowed one from Toronto. I’ll see if they can locate a copy in the main files at headquarters. If not, I’ll try to track the artist down. I don’t think those guys throw anything out. But, like I said, I don’t know how much help it will be. It’s been five years. She probably doesn’t look anything like the sketch now. I wouldn’t, if I were her. I’ve got your card. I’ll send you an email or FAX if I find it.”

“Thanks, Annie. I owe you.”

“Yes, you do.”

A half hour later I was on my way to the Toronto airport.

But I wasn’t going home.

***

I flew to Vancouver on Air Canada and then chartered a puddle jumper seaplane to Ocean Falls, a small town in one of the many inlets along the coast of British Columbia on Hecate Sound. I was burning through my Tiffany retainer at a record clip.

My seaplane pilot asked me if I wanted to see some scenery on the way and, like an idiot, I said yes. His scenic tour consisted of flying very low through valleys and passes, often swooping at the last moment to avoid crashing. During a brief period of level flight, after my stomach caught up with me, I asked him if he knew the Naulls family.

“Old Humpy Naulls? Sure, I knew him.”

“Humpy? We talking about the same man? The guy I mean was a minister.”

The pilot laughed as he banked and dove toward the water in what seemed like a death dive.

“Look down there. It’s a pod of orcas, killer whales.”

We skimmed over the whales and then we thankfully resumed a normal flight.

“Where was I? Oh, yeah. Humpy Naulls. Same guy. The Reverend Humphrey Naulls, pastor of the north, they used to call him. Flew his own plane to visit his flocks, where he flocked a lot of lonely ladies.” He laughed at his own humor. “When their husbands weren’t around, of course. Phoniest bastard I ever met. Would hump a wolverine if it would stay still. Didn’t leave much for anyone else, and the pickings up here aren’t all that great to begin with. Got himself killed a ways back. I helped out in the search. Never found anything, though.”

“Sounds like your heart wasn’t in it.”

“Oh, hell. I gave it my best shot. Felt sorry for his daughter, is all. She may be the only female he didn’t screw.” Then he thought about that. “Course, the way she left right after school and rarely came back, I had my doubts about even that. Hate to think it, though. She was a looker, and a nice kid. I sometimes flew her back and forth when the old man was away. Heard she’s some big scientist, now. Good for her. What’s your interest in the Naulls clan? There’s none left in these parts. Least that I know of.”

“I’m looking for Mary Naulls. She’s disappeared.”

“No kidding. Well she ain’t in Ocean Falls, friend. The population is about 500 nowadays. And I know them all. Unless she is disguised as a seal, you’re wasting your time.”

“I’m just collecting information.”

“You a cop?”

“Private. You have any suggestions about who I might talk to, other than the police?”

He thought about it.

“Hell, the nearest Mounties are 50 miles away. Your best bet is Leticia Bottomley, old Ben’s widow. Together they ran the local paper for years. Letty kept it going for a while after he died, but shut it down a few years ago. But she knew everyone, knows everything. But be careful. Get her started and she’ll talk your ear off. But you’ll get a good meal. She doesn’t get many visitors and dotes on them.”

After setting his seaplane down in the blessedly calm waters of the small bay fronting Ocean Falls, the pilot taxied to a small town dock. There was a medium-sized fishing boat tied up to pier just down from us. A man came out of a small shack to help the pilot secure the plane.

“How are you, Buzz? Good flight?”

“Yeah, Amos, thanks.”

“Sticking around?”

“Don’t know.”

Buzz the pilot turned to me.

“How long you staying, Mr. Rhode.”

“Just the night, I hope. Can you come back for me tomorrow?”

“Won’t have to. I don’t have another charter until the weekend, so I’m sticking around.”

“A girl in every port?”

“Lot easier with Naulls out of the picture, I’ll say that. You have my cell. Just call me when you want to go. If something comes up, I’ll call you. I won’t leave you stranded. Fair enough?”

I said it was.

“Where are you staying, mister,” Amos said.

“Hadn’t given it any thought. You have a suggestion?”

“Well, there’s no hotel. But I know Captain Paul has a couple of rooms over the tavern that he lets out.”

“Where is the tavern?”

Amos pointed to a cluster of buildings just down the street.

“Can’t miss it. It’s called ‘Captain Paul’s Tavern’.”

“Original.”

“It’s his last name. His first is Randy and his wife didn’t want the place named Captain Randy’s. She was afraid it might attract the wrong type of crowd.”

I looked at the deserted streets. All two of them.

“Yes, I could see that might be a problem,” I said.

“She is a bit strange,” Amos admitted. “But good with the buybacks.”

“He’s going to see Letty Bottomley,” Buzz said.

“You’d better watch yourself,” Amos said. “I hear old Letty was pretty frisky back in the 60’s.”

Both men laughed.

***

The tavern was what one would expect in a small fishing village on an unforgiving coast. Wooden and weather-beaten, both inside and out. I could have been in Gloucester. For all that, the interior was warm and spotless, and the small bar had a sort of rustic charm that invites serious drinking. I nodded at two men wearing heavy rain slickers and holding pints. Two red poker chips were on the bar in front of each man. A simple way to keep track of buybacks and drinks owed. A middle-aged woman wearing an black apron with a picture of a salmon on it was tending bar. I asked for a pint.

“What of?”

“Whatever these gents are drinking,” I said, “and why don’t you give them both another.”

“Just leavin’, mate,” one of the men said as they pocketed the two chips in front of them. “Got to ship on the tide. Save your money. But thanks just the same.”

“That your fishing boat at the dock?”

“T’is.”

“Halibut?”

“Salmon, too.”

“How long are the poker chips good for?”

“To the next ice age,” he said. “We’re kind of rooting for global warming.”

I signaled the barkeep.

“Give them two chips, on me.” I looked at the men. “For good luck.”

The men raised their mugs to me in unison and she put another two poker chips in front of them.

“If you’re here when we get back,” the other man said, “we’ll stand you one.” He blew a kiss to the barkeep. “See you, Katie.”

“Stay safe, boys,” she replied.

Katie turned out to be Captain Paul’s wife. She was happy to rent me a room for the night and give me directions to Leticia Bottomley’s cabin, which was about two miles out of town. She suggested I call ahead and I did. As Buzz suggested, I was invited for dinner. At “6 PM sharp.”

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Mrs. Paul said. “Our dinner special tonight is fish sticks. Make them myself.”

“A pity,” I managed to say.

“My God, an honest-to-goodness straight man,” she said, laughing. “I’m just kidding. Jesus. You think with a name like mine I’d serve fish sticks?”

I was beginning to like Ocean Falls. I had just over an hour to kill so I went up to my room to drop off my overnight bag and clean up. When I went back down, I asked Katie Paul where I could buy some wine to bring for dinner and she went into the back and brought out two bottles of “Blasted Church” Syrah. I raised my eyebrows but she said, “It’s a local winery. Reasonable. I’ll put them on your bill. If you don’t like them, you don’t have to pay. Letty is partial to it.”

There was no taxi service in town, so she offered to drive me herself.

“Who’s going to watch the tavern?”

“I leave it open. Anyone comes in they know to fix themselves a drink. People are honest around here. If I’m not back in time, they leave the money on the bar.”

“Or poker chips?”

“Yes, we get a lot of those,” she laughed.

A few minutes later I climbed out of her jeep in front of a white clapboard house set among some trees on the side of a small hill.

“Call me when you’re finished,” Katie Paul said, “and I’ll come and get you.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“We like to make our customers happy,” she said. “Where would we be without repeat business? You might come back in 10 years.”

CHAPTER 28 – A SWEET CHILD

Leticia Bottomley was bigger than I expected. Tall but not fat, with a face that, while not pretty, could certainly be described as handsome. Her hair was silver, full and well-kept. She was dressed in jeans and a heavy Irish sweater, and looked good for a woman who had to be pushing 70. She took the wine from me with a smile and led me into her parlor, where there was some cheese and crackers set up on a table next to a roaring fire. There were photos of children on the mantle above the hearth. The smells coming from the kitchen were promising but I withheld judgment. For all I knew, I was getting muskrat pot pie.

“Please sit, Mr. Rhode. I’ll open one of these.”

“I can do that if you like.”

“I’m perfectly capable of opening a bottle of wine, Mr. Rhode. Besides I want to check on the roast.”

She went into the kitchen for a few minutes and then returned with the wine and two stem-less wine snifters. She allowed me to pour. The Syrah was excellent and I said so.

“People make a big fuss over the wines from Oregon and Washington,” she said, “but we have much the same soil and climate.”

We ate cheese, drank wine and chatted for a while. We were soon Alton and Letty. She was a well-educated and well-read woman, which I should have expected from someone who ran a newspaper for decades. Modest on the outside, the house was surprisingly plush inside, with expensive-looking furniture and carpeting. It turned out that she came from money “back east.” The newspapering started out as a sideline and something to keep her busy. Her husband was a well-paid manager for Crown Zellerbach when that company ran a huge paper and pulp mill in Ocean Falls.

“We had almost 4,000 residents here in the 1960’s,” she said, “but the population withered after the mill closed in 1980. They offered my Ben a job elsewhere but we loved it here and enough of our old friends stuck around to make it enjoyable. So we stayed, and Ben helped me put out the paper. And to be honest, without the paper mill, which didn’t always smell the best, the area went back to how it must have been a hundred years ago. Now it’s a fishing village and quite beautiful, don’t you think? Of course, it does rain a lot and you have to like the cold.”

The Bottomleys had two grown children, both boys, who rarely visited.

“A son is a son until he takes a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life,” she said. “Doesn’t really bother me. Not much to do around here for my grandchildren.” She waved an arm at the photos above the fireplace. “And both my boys live where it’s warmer. One is in California and one in Georgia. Both married with kids and doing very well. I visit them each at least once a year. I’m one of those women who gets along with her daughters-in-law. And I take them all to Disney once a year. The one in Florida. Now why don’t you bring our wine to the table and I’ll get us dinner.”

The roast turned out to be elk, which she served with a port wine reduction, potatoes and green beans. There was a basket of biscuits. The meat was rare and tasted like good venison. I said so.

“We ran a food column featuring local recipes,” she said. “I became a good cook in spite of myself. Now what do you want to know?”

“Anything you can tell me about Mary Naulls.”

“My eldest, Tom, dated Mary. He liked her well enough, but I got the sense he thought there was something off about her. He wouldn’t say much, but I think she had a problem with sex. I don’t mean she was a lesbian or anything. That doesn’t bother anyone around here. It’s too damn cold to begrudge anyone keeping warm, with anyone. Mary liked men, but seemed afraid of them.”

“Did that have something to do with her father?”

Letty Bottomley looked at me.

“What do you know?”

“I flew in with Buzz and got an earful.”

“Buzz is an old lady. He was our internet before there was an internet. I suppose he told you that Humphrey Naulls was a lecher.”

“Not true?”

“Hell, yes it was true. He even propositioned me. Unsuccessfully, mind you. A real Elmer Gantry. His poor wife was a laughingstock.”

“There were no scandals? The man was a minister, for God’s sake.”

“Humphrey did most of his catting around far from home. I was an exception to his proposition rule.” She smiled. “I may not look like much now, but in my day I could turn a few heads.”

“I’m sure you could,” I said. “You are still a good-looking woman.”

She nodded at the compliment.

“And let’s just say I enjoyed the 60’s,” she added, with a glint in her eyes, “and leave it at that.”

I didn’t mention that the boys at the town dock also had the same opinion of her younger version.

“In any event,” Letty went on, “Humphrey really didn’t need to look locally. Fishing, trapping and logging are dangerous professions. There were plenty of lonely widows in the boondocks that he went out of his way to console and comfort. It’s not easy being a widow in these parts. I know. I’m one. But I was past the shenanigan stage when Ben died, and I’ve made my peace with it. It could be worse. The Kaulong tribe in New Britain, the island off Papua New Guinea, used to strangle widows after their husbands died. Personally, I’d rather be strangled than sleep with someone like Humphrey Naulls. Mary told me about the Kaulongs. She knew a lot about indigenous people, from her studies and travels. I always loved talking with her when she was in town. Not that she came back very often.”

“Because of her father?”

“Yes.”

“You may have been an exception to his rule, Letty, but not the only one. Buzz hinted that Naulls did some of his lechery very close to home. Maybe in his home.”

Letty Bottomley didn’t look shocked. Only sad. She passed me the second bottle of wine and motioned for me to open it. I did and filled our glasses.

“Buzz isn’t a total idiot,” she said. “I suspected that as well. It’s not that incest is unknown in these parts. Winters are long and people get isolated. It’s rare, but usually of the brother-and-sister kind. Not my cup of tea, certainly, but not as monstrous as father and child. But no complaint was brought against Humphrey Naulls. The people in this town might have had their doubts about him, but he was a bit of a legend in B.C. The “Flying Pastor” bunk. He was always after Ben and me to do feature stories about him.”

Letty looked at me shrewdly.

“This is more than just Mary going missing, isn’t it, young man?”

Letty must have been a heck of a newspaperwoman. While we finished eating, I told her why I was tracking Mary Naulls.

***

“It’s hard to imagine that poor, sweet girl turning into a serial killer,” Letty said. “But you make a persuasive case.” Dinner over, we were back sitting by the fireplace, drinking coffee. “I’d say my son, Tom, dodged a bullet.”

“I don’t think she would have harmed him. She seems to target married men in their 60’s, her father’s age. If I had to guess, I’d say they reminded her of dear old dad, right down to his philandering. That would suggest that she knows they were adulterers, probably from first-hand experience. And if her father did sexually abuse her, she could easily transfer her hate for him to any man she thought treated women dishonorably.”

“Daughter of a hypocritical, perverted minister,” Letty mused aloud, “who sought solace in another religion, only to find out that there are hypocrites in every faith. My God, what a story! What are you going to do?”

“I have to find her before she kills anyone else on Staten Island, or moves on. My problem is, I can’t even prove she is there. And even if I could, I don’t know her name, or what she looks like. I don’t suppose you ever took a photo of her for your newspaper.”

Letty snapped her fingers.

“You know, I seem to remember we did a story about her when she worked in South America. Local girl makes good kind of thing. I think she sent us some photos to use, and she was in some of them.”

I felt a sudden thrill of anticipation.

“Did you save the photos?”

“I don’t know. If we did, they might be in the morgue at the paper.”

“I thought you shut down the paper.”

“I did. Sold the operation to a young couple. They turn out those all-advertising shoppers. I think you call them penny savers in the States. Not just for Ocean Falls, of course. Not big enough. They also print for Aristazbal Island, Bella Coola, Rivers Inlet and several other communities. Nice folks. I asked them to keep a couple of copies of all of our editions in the basement, for their historical worth. So, even if there are no photos, there should be a story with the photos in them.”

I called Katie Paul at the tavern and she picked me up. I had a brandy with her at the bar, just to be sociable, and then went to my room. I was looking forward to possibly finding a photo of the elusive Mary Naulls. My elation at the prospect was quickly short-circuited by a cell call I got from Dr. Gallo at Richmond Memorial.

“The toxicology report on Father Zapotoski came back negative, Mr. Rhode. The official cause of death is stroke. If anything precipitated that, it was no longer in his system. There are more sophisticated tests available, of course, perhaps at Government organizations, but I don’t have the standing to order them. I’m sorry.”

I thanked Gallo for his efforts, feeling deflated. It looked as if I was going to wind up with a suspect and no proof. And that suspect was in the wind. Everything now depended on finding that photo.