A Nose for Death (29 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-F
OUR

N
ESTLED IN HIS BED
, H
AROLD
P
YLE
could feel a presence in his room. Staff usually didn't disturb a nap, and if they came into the room for something, they didn't linger. Too busy; all of them, all the time, were too busy. He opened his eyes. The lined drapes made it as dark as night in the room and there was no movement. He shut his eyes again and started to drift, wondering if the presence was imagined - or divine. Maybe the angels were coming for him. Or maybe his departed wife was watching over him. He often wondered what she'd think about him now, dancing and flirting. When the faint sound came again, he opened his eyes and saw a figure. “Daphne?” He shook the wool from his head. It couldn't be his daughter. His eyes adjusted. “Oh, so it's you.”

“Yes, it's me,” she said as she took a step closer.

“I didn't reckon you'd come back.”

“But I have to know one more thing,” she said as she stood over him. “Why did you hate me so much? You didn't even know me.”

“We were foolish.” A knot of guilt twisted his stomach when he remembered how unkind he'd been. It had been a blistering hot day when his daughter had shown up at the door with her little girl. He tried to sit up and got as far as propping on his elbow then stretched his arm toward her. “Forgive a stupid old codger.”

The dark-haired girl pulled away. “Forgive! You didn't forgive us! You didn't forgive my mother. That's what gave her the ulcers, and the cancer. That's what killed her.” Now she was shouting. In a burst of anger, she turned and swept the framed photos from his bureau. Harold cowered back as she paced around the room, jerking her head, hunting for something else to destroy or to use as a weapon to destroy him. “Stupid is no excuse. You're mean and hateful.” Before she could continue, the door abruptly opened and Theresa Milton's tall frame filled the doorway. The girl fled.

He called out, “We loved you. Even if we didn't know you. ” Then the damn burst with a lifetime of restrained tears.

Ms. Milton tried to comfort him. He continued to call out, but the words were caught in his throat and came out as a croak. “So did your father. He loved you. He asked about you.” But it was too late. She was gone.

Although the sun was shining, the spring breeze was cold, chilling the sensitive hairs inside Joan's nostrils. She perched on the picnic table with her scarf looped over her hair and the long end wrapped twice around her neck. Daphne Pyle's journal was tucked securely in her purse. Gabe was late. While she waited, a couple of women came back from a hike, got in their car, and drove off. That left only one other car in the parking lot. A large man in a business suit was behind the wheel, enjoying a late bag lunch, sipping pop from a can as he gazed at the river. Joan often thought about leaving her office at lunch and driving to eat at a spot like this, with a water view. She was going to make some changes when she got back to Vancouver. The gravel crackled beneath Gabe's tires as he pulled up in his truck. He rolled down the window.

“Hop in,” he said with a casual smile.

“Why don't we sit out here?” Joan patted the picnic table.

“It's freezing. C'mon, you're not dressed for this weather.”

Joan glanced at the man in the car eating his lunch. How much trouble could they get into with that guy sitting right there? Gabe opened the door from the inside and she climbed in, pulling off her scarf. The Eagles played softly on the stereo. It was warm inside and permeated with Gabe's clean scent. At the sight of his slightly drooping eyes she softened like milk chocolate under the hot sun. He reached up and wove his hand through her hair to cup her head.

“Gabe,” she warned as she glanced at the other car. He just smiled and bent into her, kissing her long and gently. She pulled back. “We have to discuss the case.” Her willpower was evaporating under the warmth of his hand.

“Of course we do,” he smiled. “That's why we're here.” But he didn't take his eyes off her. He kissed her again and this time started unbuttoning her coat.

“We're not alone.” Her voice quivered. She heard an engine start. Coincidence or telepathy? Gabe grinned and she knew that they were now alone. He slipped his hand under her T-shirt and she put her hand on top of his, at first to stop him, then to encourage him. “We shouldn't,” she murmured.

“Life is too short for shouldn'ts,” he said as he flipped the armrest out of the way.

Tomorrow she would be gone. This could be the last time she was with Gabe for a very long time, maybe forever. She wanted to make love right here, right now. She wanted to say to hell with Smartt, the investigation, or men eating lunch. But who was she kidding? They weren't a couple of adolescents, and they had serious matters to discuss that couldn't wait.

“Not now, Gabe.” Her sudden shift in body language sent a clear message.

“Okay.” He shifted to business. “Daphne's daughter rented the car for her mother. There's no question in my mind.”

“I don't think so, Gabe,” she said.

“But it was Patricia Pyle's credit card, her driver's license, used for ID . . . Maybe Daphne doesn't have a credit card.”

Joan interrupted. “No, Patricia didn't rent the car for Daphne. She rented it for herself. Daphne is Patti. Patti is Daphne,” she said.

“What do you mean?” But she could tell the answer was dawning on him.

She rummaged on the floor for her purse and pulled out the pink notebook. “I couldn't figure out why she cringed at the memory of lemon gin but not at the strawberries. The woman who we've been calling ‘Daphne' was chowing down on strawberries like there's no tomorrow. She remembered hardly any details about Roger, but she remembered the mauve sweater I gave her.” Joan opened the notebook on her lap, found the page dated Labour Day weekend, 1978, where there was a detailed account of the bush party written in the telltale blotted scratching of a light-blue cartridge pen. The LG — lemon gin -incident was circled in red. She handed it to Gabe.

He read quickly. “Maybe Daphne wanted to remember those times specifically. Maybe she's been using the notebook to try to recover her memory.”

Joan shook her head. “It's not just that the diary entries are similar to what she remembers. They're identical, word for word, as though she's memorized them, including the lemon gin fiasco.”

“But we all do it to a degree,” reasoned Gabe, “depend on the record of events to reinforce what we remember. I recall exactly what you and I looked like trying to get up on water skies for the first time, what you were wearing, that red-striped bathing suit, how you wore you hair. Then I look at the photo album and it's all there. But I can't remember what you wore earlier that day or an hour later.”

Joan shook her head. “It's more than that. Even if Daphne had brain damage it seems off that she would eat strawberries. When I was working on my Ph.D. I investigated the relationship between memory and scent. We fed rats oranges injected with lithium, so they'd get nauseous. You couldn't get them to eat oranges after that, ever. A single bad olfactory memory will stay all your life. It's coded into one of the most primitive parts of the brain. Daphne had a near-death experience when she ate strawberries as a kid. That's going to make one hell of an imprint. It doesn't make sense that she'd remember lemon gin but not strawberries. It's the same part of the brain.”

“Couldn't it be some sort of anomaly?” asked Gabe.

“Highly unlikely.” She tapped the open book. “Daphne wrote vividly about the lemon gin. There's no mention about her allergic reaction to strawberries. No record. Not much in here about Roger either. Maybe Daph was honouring his demand for secrecy. It's definitely not something she would have wanted her parents to know. Gabe, this book
is
her memory. Earlier today Marlena said something that's stuck in my brain. She said that not everyone is who they seem to be. In Daphne's case, it's literal. She's not Daphne. She's Patti.”

“So where is Daph?” asked Gabe. “The real Daphne?”

Joan looked at him sadly. “I'm pretty sure she's dead.”

“Why?”

“All sorts of reasons, but the main one? Her dad told me she was.”

“Daphne . . . Patricia — she may be a liar but it doesn't mean she's a killer. And, if she is, why Roger? Why Peg?”

“Daphne didn't write much about Roger. Doesn't mean she didn't talk about him to her daughter. And there's this.” She read from the telltale diary. “‘If I drink the gin all at once, maybe my problem will go away'.”

“Her problem?” Gabe shook his head.

“Yeah. Daphne wasn't drinking to cut loose. It was a teenager's attempt to induce a miscarriage. That first time it must have worked. But it didn't when she got pregnant again. Remember the man's shirt she was wearing in the picture?” Joan sighed. “Roger was Patti's father. I'm almost certain.”

“You think she came here to kill him?”

“You're the cop.” Joan shrugged. It was starting to drizzle again, “Maybe it was simply too much baggage for one young woman.” She stared at the rain on the window, one rivulet blending into another, then another, and another until they flowed as one steady trickle down the windshield.

He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “What's the matter? Something else is bothering you.”

“Can you find out how Daphne died?” she asked.

“I'll put somebody on it.” He looked at his watch. “Although I don't know if we'll get the answer today. You're wondering if the answer will be cancer?” She nodded. “A lot of people die of cancer, Joan.”

“Then check to see if she suffered from ulcers. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, but it will take longer,” answered Gabe.

“While you're at it, can you find out the side effects of all the medications that were found in Peg's system?” She went on to explain. “When I'm designing a flavour I sometimes include a fragrance, not for its dominant characteristic, but for its lesser characteristic.”

“I don't get it.”

“Marmalade. It's made from the bitter peel, but the real target is the more delicate underlying orange flavour. It's more subtle. It's possible that the drugs weren't intended to kill Peg, that they were given to her for another reason.”

“To put her out of commission?” asked Gabe.

Joan nodded, then asked, “Did Peg give Daphne an alibi for the night that Roger died?”

“She confirmed that Daphne was staying with her and told Des that she had come in quite early on Friday night.”

As Gabe spoke Joan remembered seeing her in the lobby chatting with Ed Fowler. “But, once she got to Peggy's, did she leave again?”

“Peg was on Des's list to do a second interview,” he paused then finished slowly, “on Sunday morning.”

“If Patti had seen her mother doped up on a cocktail of medications,” said Joan, “incapable of moving, too drugged to reveal secrets . . . ”

The pieces were falling into place like blocks in a game of Tetris.

“But why would she be carrying her mother's pills around?” Gabe asked doubtfully.

Joan thought of the eclectic assortment of junk that had been in Patti's bags and was now lying on Joan's bed at the motel. Besides the diary there were faded concert tickets, letters, and makeup products that hadn't been manufactured in years.

“It's her way of holding onto her mother. She's not operating in the same reality as the rest of us. There's no telling what she's thinking.” She paused. “Or what she'll do.”

Before Joan had a chance to say another word, a vehicle squealed into the parking lot, sending stone chips flying. The contorted grimace on Staff Sergeant Smartt's mug bordered on glee as he approached the truck. He'd finally caught them. Gabe climbed out and faced him.

“You're off the case Theissen. Report to the detachment, now! You can be damned sure that disciplinary action will start immediately.”

“On what grounds?” Gabe's voice was quiet and controlled. So controlled, in fact, that it made Joan shudder. She slid out of the truck and stood by his side. There was no time to lose and this pissing contest between Gabe and Smartt wasn't solving anything.

“Listen to me,” she stated sharply. “There's a murderer out there and we have to stop her before anyone else dies.”

“We? Her?” asked Smartt sardonically.

Joan ignored his tone. “Every suspicion that you've hurled at me applies to someone else as well.” She had his attention. “Daphne Pyle. Both our names were added to the invitation list after the fact. Both of us returned to Madden after a long absence. Neither of us graduated from Madden High.

Smartt interrupted. “But he was seen outside of your cabin. And, by your own admission, he attacked you thirty years ago.”

“But there's another way our circumstances differ. My father's death forced my family to leave town. Daphne left because she was pregnant.” She glanced at both men. “And the baby's father was Roger Rimmer.”

Joan had felt like an imposter when she'd arrived in Madden. She hadn't noticed that someone in their midst was wearing a much more elaborate disguise. Patti had found a life in her mother's stories, and then used the information to create an illusion. “And that child is here posing as Daphne Pyle.”

“Oh, that's ripe,” guffawed Smartt. “You're not serious?” he asked, looking from Joan to Gabe. “You think I can't tell the difference between a woman in her late forties and a thirty year old?”

Joan was surprised to see Gabe looking uncomfortable. She protested. “Our brains are driven to fill in the blanks. In my lab we trick people into thinking one thing is something completely different. Label kitchen compost as ripe blue cheese and testers will insist that they're smelling Roquefort. ”