Crazy Lady (24 page)

“Indeed,” said the king, taking the young man aside. “But first you must promise that you will keep it a great secret until you are ready to spring the trap. For, assuming that the woman of your dreams has the cunning of her gender, if she were to scent an intrigue then she would immediately wish to take it over and make it her own. Believe me, there is nothing more dangerous to the plans of a man than permitting a woman to peek into the architect's drawing house.”

“The water gardens and the Grotto of Thetis were designed by the Sun King himself,” the cicerone continues as she points out of a window to the landscaped grounds, and Bliss is happy to escape from the group as he goes in search of material to bolster his manuscript.

“The Grotto of Thetis, an ornamental cavern filled with mythological allusions, signifies the place where Apollo takes his rest at the end of a busy day flying across the heavens,” Bliss's guidebook tells him as he stands alone in the marble chamber, imagining it as it was when water cascaded from gilded fountains and chandeliers of solid gold lyres set with pearls cast a romantic glow.
I wonder how many of his concubines Louis managed to mount in here
, ponders Bliss, thinking that this has to be the ultimate love nest on a warm July night. But now, on a wintry December day, there is no warmth, and mental images of
heated sexual encounters merely drag him down.

“I might have killed myself for all she cares and knows,” he says aloud, hearing his words echo hollowly around the deserted stone room. “‘I love you more than I've ever loved anyone else in my life,' you told me,” he carries on nostalgically. “‘And I know that you love me in every possible way.'”

“I do,” he replied, not needing to ask what Yolanda meant, knowing that at times he was a lover, while at others he was a father, a brother, and a son.

“I was everything to you, Yolanda, and you know it,” he says to the walls. “And you were everything to me… you
are
everything to me.”

“
I
t could be a long day,” warns Trina as she crams lunch into a wicker hamper for herself and her English counterpart. “I did creamed banana sandwiches,” she adds, but Daphne has experienced enough of Trina's experimental cuisine not to inquire what other ingredients might be included in the mix.

“I was thinking of wearing this,” the visitor says, modelling a deerstalker she bought as a joke when the idea of being a private detective first came up. Trina turns up her nose. “It's a bit obvious,” she says and quickly switches it for a neon green baseball cap.

“So, let's go through this again,” says Daphne a little nervously as they head off in Trina's car.

“It's called overt surveillance. I read it in the manual,” explains the animated woman. “First we hire another car. Something really honky that he can't possibly miss — a snazzy big red number. You can drive that one.”

“Umm,” murmurs Daphne, indicating a problem. “I don't think I brought my licence with me.”

“No sweat,” says Trina. “I'll hire it in my name. You just follow me to Craddock's place, but I'll park round the corner and we'll drive up in the rental. Then I'll slip back to mine.”

“Then?” asks Daphne, still somewhat uncomfortable.

“Then I'll phone him and pretend I'm a friend of friend who's tipping him off about a police raid.”

“And he runs.”

“Yeah — and you take off after him.”

“But I lose him after the first couple of blocks.”

“And he goes, ‘Great, I've shaken them off.' But I'll be right there on his ass. It's textbook.”

Trina's plan may be according to the text, but Craddock hasn't read the book. With Creston on his tail he's already flown, together with his charge, and booked himself into one of the cookie-cutter tourist hotels clustered around the airport.

“You'll be all right here,” he told Janet as he carried her into the threadbare room under cover of darkness, but she was too weak to reply.

“Oh drat. His flipping car's gone,” says Daphne with a sigh of relief as she and Trina roll around the corner in their souped up Mustang, but Trina isn't fazed.

“Great,” she says, already half out of the car. “Let's break in and see what we can find.”

“Trina, we might get caught,” complains Daphne, sitting tight, but Trina is unsympathetic as she forges up Craddock's driveway with his garage in sight

“Hey. You got me arrested at the doctor's place.”

A few minutes later, once they have pried open the garage door and found the mattress in the back of the van, Trina exclaims, “Oh my God, she was here! Look,” she carries on, holding up the roughly cut lengths of duct tape as evidence, “he tied her up.”

“We don't know that,” cautions Daphne, but five minutes later, when Trina spots a familiar sweater on the floor of Craddock's bedroom, there is no doubt.

“Now what?” asks Daphne, and Trina's study of the private investigator's manual comes in handy again.

“Redial,” she says, hitting the button on the bedroom phone, and is not totally surprised when an English voice answers, “Creston Enterprises. How may I direct your call?”

“Sorry, wrong number,” says Trina as she puts down the phone, then she turns to Daphne and quotes from the manual. “Golden rule,” she explains. “Never just cut off a pretext phone call. That's too suspicious.”

“Very interesting,” says Daphne, “but what do we do now?”

“Put ourselves in the mind of the villain of course,” replies Trina without the faintest idea of what she's talking about.

Bliss on the other hand has no difficulty imagining the world of his villain — King Louis XIV, Duke of Normandy and King of France from 1643 to 1715 — as he wanders the regimented gardens of the great palace at Versailles and spins his mind back nearly three hundred and fifty years to the time when Louis
le Grand
delighted in showing off his designs to visitors. “The fountains, waterfalls, and canals were the king's personal favourites,” the guidebook tells Bliss, but the waters have turned to ice and even the statues that surround the ornamental ponds seem particularly lifeless in the frosty northern air.

“The King's insatiable appetite for all things ostentatious is symbolized in the grand design of his great palace and the statuary in the surrounding grounds,” the guidebook continues as Bliss eyes a marble nude who leaves nothing to his imagination.

“I bet the old lecher loved this one,” says Bliss as he runs his hand over a silky smooth thigh, but he recoils at the snakelike coldness of the damp stone and can't help lumping the
women currently in his mind, if not actually in his life, into a slippery heap. “Yolanda had no right to do this to me,” he fumes under his breath. “I was happier thinking she was dead.” And what of Prince Ferdinand's reluctant paramour? How callous or careless was she of her suitor's heart?

“I give up,” admits Trina after she and Daphne have watched Craddock's house for a couple of hours without success. “I guess we'd better tell Mike Phillips what we've got. Maybe they can track him with dogs. Although I suppose I could try Raven and ask her to use her psychic powers.”

“I think Mike Phillips would be the answer,” suggests Daphne, having been somewhat leery of the scheme to beset Craddock in the first place.

“OK,” says Trina leaping out of the sports car and heading for her own. “Race you back to the rental place.”

“No!” yells Daphne.

“Spoilsport.”

RCMP Inspector Mike Phillips listens attentively to their story, though he pretends to clamp his hands over his ears when Trina admits breaking into the private investigator's house. “You're gonna end up in jail one of these days.” He laughs as he shakes his head in disbelief, and then he spends a few seconds mulling over the name. “Craddock, Craddock…” he muses. “I'm sure I've heard that name before. Hold on,” he adds and he phones Dave Brougham of Vancouver's City Police.

“Craddock, PI,” repeats Brougham vaguely, apparently deep in deliberation, then he questions guardedly, “Who wants to know, Mike?”

Phillips hesitates for a thoughtful second before answering. “Friend of mine. He just wants to know if he's on the level… thinking of hiring him for a job.”

“Oh yeah,” says Brougham, seemingly at ease. “Good guy, used to be on the force — reliable.”

“Ex-cop,” explains Phillips putting down the phone. “Are you sure he's the man?”

“How else did Kylie's sweater get in his bedroom?” snaps Trina, stuffing her daughter's garment into his nose. “She gave Janet this to wear.”

“I get the point,” he says, brushing it off. “But these are serious allegations. He could do time, big time, for this if you're right.”

“I'm right…” she starts, then turns to include her partner. “We are right.”

Craddock's cellphone makes him jump as he sits worriedly by the side of Janet's bed gently massaging her hand.

“It's me,” whispers Brougham. “What the fuck have you done?”

“What?”

“The RCMP are asking questions. Phillips didn't let on but I reckon that stupid Button woman has figured out who you are.”

“Shit.”

“So what have you done?”

“Nothing, Dave.”

“Don't try snowing me. I was the one who put you onto the woman. I'm in this as well. So what did you do with her?”

Craddock hesitates long enough to annoy his ex-partner.

“I said —”

“OK, Dave. Look, I'm in a bit of a bind. She needs a doctor.”

“What?”

“It was that crazy broad Button and her sidekick. They staked my place out. Look, I never meant to hurt her.”

“All right. Where are you?”

Mike Phillips has also been on the phone, assembling a small team, and fifteen minutes later he briefs half a dozen men in his office and assigns tasks.

“His name is Craddock,” he says pointing to one of the sergeants. “Ex–City detective — friend of Dave Brougham. Get everything you can on him. He's supposedly a PI, but he sounds like a shit one.”

Phillips turns to the next officer. “Brougham, sergeant, Vancouver City — get me the works. You two,” he says, moving around the room. “Get a search warrant on Craddock's joint and take a forensic team. If my info is right he's had a hostage there for at least a couple of days.”

“Name?” asks one of the team.

“Thurgood — Janet Thurgood. The woman linked to Constable Montgomery's death a few weeks ago.”

“Evidence for the warrant?” queries one of the men as he furiously takes notes.

“This sweatshirt,” says Phillips passing around the bagged item while covering for his informant. “It was found on the driveway of the house by one Mrs. Trina Button, a friend of the missing woman.”

“And she can positively ID it?”

“She can,” continues Phillips, “and I'll have a statement to that effect for you in about ten minutes.”

“Sounds good enough.”

“Right,” continues Phillips, pointing to the two unassigned officers. “You two start asking questions on the street. I want him found fast.”

“OK, boss.”

“And put out an APB on a vehicle as soon as we know what he's driving.”

Finding Craddock's car will be little help to the officers. Now that the ex-cop has finally woken up to the enormity of his actions he's tucked the vehicle away in a dusty
corner of the airport's parking garage and rented a replacement from Avis.

Dave Brougham pulls alongside the hired car in the hotel parking lot half an hour later with a friendly doctor in tow. Then he pulls his ex-colleague into the bathroom, slams him against the shower cubicle, and shuts the door.

“What the fuck have you done to her?”

“Nothing, Dave. She just passed out on me.”

“You weren't screwing her.”

“No way. I'm a pro, Dave. Everything was cool till that freaking Button woman set up camp on the street. She's the one who needs screwing.”

“Leave her to me. I owe her anyway.”

A gentle rapping on the door signals that the doctor has finished.

“That was quick…” starts Brougham, putting on a smile as he opens the door, but the doctor isn't smiling.

“We gotta get her to a hospital stat.”

“I'm not sure…”

“She's in a bad way. Dehydration, malnutrition — for some time I'd say. Could be anorexia, but look at her. I bet she doesn't weigh a hundred pounds. Her blood pressure is on the floor and her reflexes are slower than a city bus. She has to go to a hospital.”

“OK,” says Brougham backing Craddock into the bathroom again. “Give us a minute, will you?” Then he turns on his ex-colleague. “You're out of this all right. You'd gone before I arrived.”

“But…”

“No buts. You're out. Just get your ass out of here damn quick. Pack yourself a big bag and take off. Get some distance until it blows over.”

“What if she croaks?”

“You'd better hope no one ever finds you 'cuz your name is all over this — understand? And nothing I say can change that.”

“But, Dave…” Craddock is still protesting as Brougham opens the door and heads for the bedside phone for an ambulance while telling the doctor to grab a cab. “I'll take it from here, Doc,” he says. “You might as well get going.”

Craddock's mind whirls in indecision as he drives back to the airport garage. His own car will mark him wherever he goes, but if he sticks with the rental for any length of time his Visa bill will arrive by truck. In any case, he has no idea where to lay low.

“Maybe I should get some sun,” he says checking out the leaden Vancouver sky and trying to cheer himself as he reaches the terminal buildings and hears the roar of a jet taking off. Then he brightens. “Why not?”