Cut Off His Tale: A Hollis Grant Mystery (32 page)

Rhona, who'd been up the entire night, received the news about Knox at five. She completed paperwork and phoned the hospital to hear they'd released Hollis. After washing her face and swilling down a cup of exhausted machine coffee, she headed for the manse.

Elsie, looking out the manse window, saw Rhona arrive.

“She's here. I'll brew a fresh pot of coffee—she appears totally beat.”

Hollis didn't have to ask who “she” was and made no attempt to rise. Once she'd collapsed in the chair, she'd decided she might stay there forever.

Rhona sat down across from Hollis. “How do you feel?”

With a visible effort, Hollis produced a tiny smile. “Grateful to be alive. What happened to Knox?”

“Knox Porter?” Elsie asked.

“Yes.”

“What happened to him? Weren't you going to his house
last night?” she said to Hollis, who nodded.

Rhona debated how much Elsie should hear. “The situation is still fluid. Hollis, could I speak to you privately?”

Elsie picked up her cup. “I understand—it's police business. You don't have to leave. I'll go upstairs and prepare a warm bath for Hollis and turn down her bed.” She didn't give them a chance to argue but marched out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

They listened to her footsteps climbing the stairs then to a door shutting upstairs.

“He escaped. After you screamed and crashed downstairs, he ran into the house. I figured he'd be trapped inside and called an ambulance before I alerted the backup cars that I needed them. I wasn't aware Knox's house is a semi-detached, and there's a door connecting the two basements. He simply walked out the downstairs door of the other house, jumped in his car and drove out past the police cars parked on the street.”

“Where did he go?”

“We didn't have a clue. We put out an
APB
after we obtained a description of the car from the motor vehicles branch. We didn't locate the car, but at four thirty this morning, I received a fax from Knox. In it he confessed to the murder and explained why—he was being blackmailed and couldn't afford to continue paying. He also said he believed it was only a matter of time before Reverend Robertson revealed the details of a lurid event in Knox's past that he had gone to great lengths to hide. In addition, he said he was about to kill himself. The fax was sent from a twenty four hour convenience store.”

“Who would have thought to do it that way?”

“We didn't know whether to believe it or not. Then we had a cell phone call from an early morning jogger who found him dead in his car near the barns in the middle of the
Experimental Farm. He'd run a hose—he must have had it in his trunk—from the exhaust and asphyxiated.”

“My God—that's where he shot at me.”

“In Porter's fax, he asked us to declare the case closed to save his family the grief of the publicity. He regretted having been caught but claimed he hadn't had any choice; in order to live the life he'd made for himself, he'd had to stop Paul.”

“And can you keep it quiet?”

“Not a chance, but maybe we can prevent the more sordid details leaking to the press.”

“I'm not a great fan of Linda's, but what a shock for her and the kids.”

“Sad all around.”

“Paul was a real life Jekyll and Hyde. He had good qualities and supported worthwhile causes, but his obsession with control and power led him to do horrible things.”

“It did. Before I go, I'll tell you a bit more. I've already told you Reverend Robertson was blackmailing Knox and that's why Knox killed him. Because of the activity in Reverend Robertson's Gloucester account, we think Knox was one of many. According to Knox, the victims paid him cash and he deposited the money in the Gloucester Branch, wrote a cheque from ‘anonymous' and sent it to the charities he thought would be most abhorrent to the persons he was blackmailing. He then gave them the receipts, instructing them to use them for their taxes; he must have known they never would. Really quite diabolical. As for the safety deposit box—he hadn't used it for months. Originally it may have been a safe spot to store the master list for the book.”

“When I was waking and sleeping fitfully in the hospital last night, I had an idea about the master list.” Hollis tried to lever herself up with one arm and groaned. “Why don't you check it out?”

Rhona eyed the kitchen clock. “I have to leave, but it
would be good to tidy up one more item.”

“Remember how the chequebooks were in plain sight. I think he did the same thing with the list. In the book, he used fanciful pseudonyms rather than real names. I suspect he taped the list inside one of his reference books, a little book, I think it's yellow, called
The Annotated Onomasticon: The Little Book of Amazing Names
.”

“Onomasticon?”

“It's from Greek and it means ‘dealing with names'.”

Rhona's eyebrows lifted, but she went off to Paul's study.

Yellow book in hand, Rhona reappeared. She handed the volume to Hollis. “Since you were brilliant and thought of this—you deserve the honour of seeing if you're right.”

Hollis tried to open the book, but using one hand she only managed to push it around the table. “I can't. You do it.”

Rhona fanned through the book. The document was folded and neatly paper-clipped to the back cover.

“I'd like the names to remain confidential,” Hollis said.

“We'll keep it in case it's needed for evidence, but no one needs to be privy to the names.”

“That's okay. When you're finished, I'd like to turn the list over to my lawyer and, if the victims want the money, to have him use Paul's estate to repay the blackmail.”

“You'd be a one-person victims' rights society.”

“And I'm not gong to allow the publication of
When Push Comes to Shove
. It may have the potential to increase tolerance, but I think it's more likely to be sensational and threaten the individuals whose privacy Paul invaded.”

“It's certainly
your
decision.”

“Before you go, I want your opinion.”

Rhona, who'd risen, sat down.

“As I learned more and more about who Paul was and what he'd
done, I wondered if he was a sociopath. What do you think?”

“According to psychologists, a sociopath has no conscience, no awareness of others' pain and is intent on achieving his own ends. Mostly people think sociopaths are criminals, but in reality they exist in every walk of life, and as long as they're smart enough to adopt camouflage, they succeed as top business executives, religious leaders—their ruthless disregard for those around them allows them to reach positions of power.”

“But why would he pick the church?”

“What better place to exercise power, to play with people's lives, to hide his true nature.”

“Thanks—it's the one explanation I came up with. It makes me feel a little better to realize he may have been a professional manipulator—I was way out of my league.”

Rhona, with a thousand ends to tie up, excused herself. As she drove away, she resolved to tender her resignation, to end her career with the Ottawa police with this case. She fished her cell phone out of her bag and called Zack to share the good news.

Elsie must have been watching, because when Detective Simpson drove away, she clumped downstairs.

“I probably shouldn't ask, but can you tell me what happened to Knox.”

“He'd dead. I'm sure it'll be on
TV
and in the paper by tomorrow. He killed Paul.”

Elsie absorbed Hollis's bald statement. For once, she had nothing to add, no bright encouraging words to offer.

“I can't tell you any more. I would if I could.”

“I know you would. What a time you've had. I've run a nice hot bath for you. Why don't you let me help you upstairs.”

Soaking in the tub, Hollis allowed the hot water and
fragrant lavender bath salts to perform their soothing magic but knew nothing would ever be the same.

Paul's murder had changed lives.

Tessa and Kas had gone through hell. She wondered if Kas would ever forgive Tessa and if Tessa would reconcile herself to her lack of faith in Kas. Marcus had already forgiven her, but the opening of old wounds couldn't have been pleasant. With Sally gone, JJ and Daniel would be grief stricken. Marguerite would bear forever the weight of the suicide of the woman Paul had seduced. Denise's life had changed because of Paul's diabolical will. The Porters—she even felt sorry for Knox, pushed by Paul to act as he had.

Paul had a lot to answer for. Although it was never right to take the law into your own hands, she understood how Paul had trapped Knox and pushed him into a corner where he felt he had no other option but to cut off Paul's tale with a carving knife.

Her own epiphany had begun in the first few paces of the marathon, but it hadn't ended there. She'd learned about herself, about her ability to delude herself, to pretend things were okay when they weren't. Somehow, although she'd backslide, she resolved to be more honest with herself in the future.

She drained the water and climbed out of the tub determined to make amends for some of the wrongs Paul had done. She carefully eased herself into jeans and a white shirt, replaced the sling, snuggled her feet in her comforting moccasins and walked slowly downstairs.

In the kitchen, Elsie poured her yet another cup of coffee.

“Try these butterscotch squares,” she urged, passing a cookie tin.

MacTee, sensing this might be the time he'd receive a treat, did what retrievers do and sat down. He'd long since discovered good things happened to dogs who sat. And it did. Hollis shared a morsel and prepared to learn to live after the fall.

Joan Boswell was born in Toronto and grew up in Ottawa, Edmonton, Oakville and Halifax. She has had work published in magazines and anthologies in Canada and the United States. As a member of the Ladies' Killing Circle, she has had stories in each of their six books:
The Ladies' Killing Circle, Cottage Country Killers, Menopause Is Murder, Fit to Die, Bone Dance
and
When Boomers Go Bad
. (coming in Fall 2005 from RendezVous Crime). She has also co-edited the last three books. In 2000, she won the $10,000 Toronto Sunday Star short story contest.
Cut Off His Tale
is her first novel.

Joan lives in Toronto with two flatcoated retrievers and enjoys life with her grown sons, their partners and her grandchildren.