Death in a Family Way (20 page)

The waitress nodded. “Yeah. A very nice lady.”

“Can you remember what questions she asked?”

The woman thought for a moment. “She was mostly interested in these two guys I was telling her about. The guys that the girls came here with.”

“What made you remember them?”

“The girls were so young.” She checked to see if the boss was watching her. “Not that it means anything these days.”

“Can you remember what the men looked like?”

“I'm not very good with describing people. Just what they eat, and like I told your girlfriend, funny habits.”

“Habits? What kind of habits?”

“Well, like I told her, the older one of them uses a lot of these things.” She pointed to the dish of coffee creamers on the table. “In his coffee, see. Then he builds them up, you know, like this.” She leaned over him, picked up several of the containers and piled them on top of each other. “Sort of like building castles. Makes a hell of a mess.”

Remembering the cream Cubby had spilt on the table that morning, Nat nodded in commiseration. “How old was this guy?”

“Oh, around about your age, I guess,” she answered. “But he's a real snappy dresser, now I come to think of it,” she added, eyeing Nat's crumpled suit.

“Any idea when you last saw either of them?”

“Not for a long time.”

“How long?”

“Must've been over a month or more.”

Nat stood. “I'll probably be back,” he said.

The waitress started to walk away, then turned back. “You're
not the police, are you?” she asked nervously. “I don't want no trouble.”

“No.” Nat got one of his grubby cards out of his wallet and thrust it at her, along with a five-dollar bill. “Look, if either of them comes in again, will you call me immediately?”

As he drove back over the Lions Gate Bridge, heading for his office, Nat went over his conversation with the waitress again and again. “What the hell did you find out from that waitress, Maggie, that I didn't find out?” As he neared the office block, he suddenly changed his mind and headed for Sawasky's precinct to see if there was anything new. But when he got there, he suddenly remembered that his friend was still in Toronto, and Nat was forced to talk to Farthing instead. He told him that Maggie was missing, but Farthing seemed uninterested. He checked in at the morgue again, then just to make sure, he canvassed all the hospitals once more. Nothing. He phoned Harry just in case she'd returned, and got his snotty daughter on the line instead. “No, Mr. Southby, she hasn't returned.” Click. He phoned Violet Larkfield. Still no answer.

•  •  •

IT WAS AFTERNOON
when Maggie finally woke. She lay trying to orient herself, then the horror of Cuthbertson coming back to kill her came flooding back. She wriggled out of the sleeping bag and ran to the window.
Damn! I can't see the dock from here.
Thank God her head was clearer, but she was almost faint from hunger. And there, just inside the door, was a tray with a bowl of canned stew and a cup of coffee. Both were cold, but she ate, relishing each mouthful as she surveyed her prison. One bed. One chair. Slatted blinds covering both the bedroom and bathroom windows. A single towel in the bathroom. And that seemed to be that. The only nice thing about the whole room was a huge confetti braided rug that covered most of the floor.
I think you're
in a helluva fix, Maggie old girl. Not even a bedsheet to tear up.
She peered down at the rocks again and shuddered. “There's got to be another way out of here!”

Impossible schemes ran through her mind. Like screaming for help until Violet came up, then hitting her over the head with something—except there was no “something” to hit her with. Or getting Violet up to the room and pretending she was sick— except that would mean appealing to Violet's better nature, and she didn't think she had one . . . except with cats. She could try flashing the light off and on in the hopes that someone on one of the islands would come and investigate—except there was only a small bedside lamp with a very short cord. In the end, she had to face the fact that there was only one avenue of escape— the window.

The sky had clouded over and, shivering, she closed the window, walked to the door and pressed her ear against it. She couldn't hear a thing.
He can't be back yet. He would've come up. But why hasn't he come back?
She paced back toward the bed, tripped over the edge of the braided rug and landed with a thump.
Damn!
She turned to sit against the bed to survey the damage to her knees. “Just bruised,” she muttered, and started to get up, then stopped. She stared at the offending rug and, for the first time in days, a little smile lit her face.

•  •  •

BY SEVEN NAT WAS HOME,
making himself a stale cheese sandwich. He popped a beer and sank down in his leather armchair, but his mind kept coming back to Maggie's obsession with Violet and Collins. For the next hour, he sat stolidly in front of his television, staring at
Ozzie and Harriet
and then at some God-awful quiz show, without absorbing a thing. At last he turned it off and stood up, brushed the crumbs from his jacket and put on his shoes. “Violet, I'm coming to see you!”

The sky was heavily overcast and the house in complete darkness. Like Maggie before him, Nat parked a few houses away before walking back. At the front door, he leaned on the buzzer for several minutes before deciding the woman definitely was not home. He felt in his pocket for his penlight, and following its thin light, walked around to the rear of the house. By the time he located the stone steps up to the back door, he wished that he had returned to his car for his emergency lantern. He was just congratulating himself on reaching the door without a misstep, when out of the blackness a small body ran between his legs. He gave a yell, overbalanced, and his flashlight went flying. As he sat on the bottom step, the cat settled into his lap and began to knead his leg. “Well, if Violet's in, she sure as hell heard that,” he muttered, pushing the cat away. He grabbed the flashlight, which was sending its thin beam skyward, held his breath and waited. But all was quiet. He staggered back up the steps and peered through the glass. He couldn't see a thing.

The cat sat hopefully by the door while he searched in vain under the sisal mat for a key. He flicked the light over a huge terracotta pot serving as an umbrella stand, then carefully tipped it up and felt underneath it. Still no key! “Maybe it's inside the pot,” he said to the cat, who was watching him with keen interest. Removing a couple of tattered umbrellas, he thrust his hand down inside the pot. “Presto!” He pushed the key he'd found into the keyhole and gave a gentle turn. As the door opened, the cat slipped through the gap to disappear into the blackness. The overpowering feline odour made his stomach curl as he too slipped into the kitchen. He felt along the wall for the switch, and in the sudden light saw a door leading into a fair-sized dining room and another opening into a square hall with a staircase and the entrance to the living room. The house had a quiet, unoccupied feel about it, but taking no chances, he switched the kitchen light
off before moving toward the living room. As Maggie had told him, there was the cat perch, and on each small platform sat a cat, its eyes reflected in the beam of the flashlight. But when one huge Siamese stood up, growled, hissed and then arched its back as if to spring, Nat ducked quickly out, closing the door behind him. Upstairs he opened the doors of three bedrooms before he came to what seemed to be Violet's. Risking the light again, he saw clothes strewn over the double bed, dresser drawers lying open and a suitcase discarded by the closet door. “Now I wonder where she went in such a hurry?”

A car's lights turning into the driveway and sweeping over the room caused him a moment's panic, but he resisted the urge to dive for the light switch. As the new arrival entered the house, Nat slipped out of the room to listen from the head of the stairs.

“Come on, you little buggers.” It was Collins' voice. “Come and get it.”

Nat risked looking over the banister to see Collins, like a modern pied piper, leading the pack of cats from the living room to the kitchen to be fed. He could hear him talking to them while he fed them and cleaned out litter boxes. Then, just as Nat turned to slip back into the bedroom, he felt something brush against his leg. Looking down, he saw a black cat twisting and purring in ecstasy.

“Get lost,” Nat whispered, giving the cat a kick. But the animal was not about to leave its new-found friend, and standing on its hind legs, the cat stretched up and dug its claws lovingly into Nat's leg.
Holy shit!
He bent down, unhooked the cat's claws and gave it another shove, but it just purred louder and entwined itself through his legs. Stepping backward to get away from its caresses, he bumped into a small hall table. “Hell!” he breathed. Quickly, he moved back into Violet's room and made for the clothes closet, hotly pursued by the cat. They reached it in a dead heat just as Collins bounded up the stairs to investigate.

“Is one of you little buggers up here?” Collins said as he came into the room. “What the hell? She's left the damned light on!”

The cat gave a plaintive meow, and Nat pushed himself further into the closet until he was smothering in Violet's fur coat. Collins opened the closet door and the cat walked out. “How the hell did you get in there?” he said. He scooped up the cat, turned out the light, closed the door and went back down the stairs.

After Collins had left the house, Nat quickly disentangled himself from Violet's furry embrace, picked up his discarded flashlight and ran down the stairs. She
must have asked Collins to look after the cats,
he thought as he let himself out of the house.
And if I'm quick, I can follow him and see if he's the one that's holding Maggie.
As he ran down the street for his car, he saw a flash of silver as Collins drove past.

Nat started the engine and pushed the old Chevy into gear just in time to see Collins make a right onto Fourth Avenue. “He's heading downtown,” he muttered. He soon realized that it was going to be very difficult to keep Collins in view and not be seen. He had to content himself with staying well back as he drove through the light Monday night traffic, hoping the occasional silver glint he saw reflected from the overhead street lamps would lead the way. Nat knew that Collins had a factory on Johnston Street on Granville Island, but when Collins turned onto the Granville Street Bridge, it became apparent that it was not his destination. His route took them instead onto Georgia and then through Stanley Park and over the Lions Gate Bridge before heading for Marine Drive in West Vancouver. Nat overshot Collins' next sharp left turn toward the water onto Bellevue Avenue, and by the time he had made a quick
U
-turn to follow, he was just in time to see that the Jaguar had been parked in a
RESIDENTS ONLY
car park adjacent to the luxury, eight-storyed apartment building that Collins was entering. Nat parked his car further up the street
and walked back to the apartment building. There was a securely locked, strong glass door leading into a sumptuous lobby, and according to the residence list outside the door, Collins and his wife lived on the second floor. Although there was a faint possibility that Maggie was being held prisoner in their apartment, he somehow doubted it, because the man would hardly have left her there to go and see to his aunt's cats. He spent a few more minutes looking for Violet's or Maggie's cars outside the building, then climbed wearily into his own again.
That was one helluva wild goose chase,
he thought, as he headed back to Violet's place.
There has to be a reason why she left in such a hurry. And I still think the reason has to be Maggie.

It was close to midnight when he arrived once again at the house at Seventh and Larch, and he spent the next hour scouring it for clues, even searching the desk in the living room amid the menacing cats, but finding nothing incriminating, he let himself out the back door, locked it behind him, and walked dejectedly to his parked car. “So,” he said, reaching for his notebook, “she's not with Collins. She's not at Violet's. So where the hell is she?” He pushed the key into the ignition and then paused.
I wonder if Violet took her car?

•  •  •

EXCEPT FOR A LITTLE FRAYING
on the edge closest to the door, the rug was in good condition. The nail scissors she kept in her handbag would have cut the stitches that held the braids together in a matter of fifteen minutes, but she had left her bag in her car when she decided to become a super sleuth.
Think, Maggie, think. There must be something sharp somewhere in this prison.
Heart pounding, she crept to the door to listen once again for Cuthbertson's voice. Then, lying flat on her stomach, she peered under the bed. Nothing! The medicine cabinet in the bathroom was completely bare. Not even a safety pin. Apart from the one towel
on the rack, a bar of soap and a toilet paper roll, that seemed to be it.

She knelt on the floor and looked under the old-fashioned, claw-footed bathtub. Thick grunge covered the floor under it, but in the far corner she could see a small silver handle sticking out of the filth.
A man's safety razor!
She stretched her right arm as far as it would go—it was so close, but not close enough. She stood up to survey the room for something to extend her reach. Then, hot and frustrated, she leaned over the tub to pull up the plastic slatted blind and open the very small window. The blind came clattering down again. “Damn!” Climbing into the tub, she snapped it up again, holding it up while she opened the window. And then it came to her. “Of course,” she said almost happily, “one of these lovely slats will do it.”

She yanked the blind down, pulled one of the slats out, then, down on her stomach once again, she began scraping the razor toward her. The slat seemed to have a mind of its own, and as she pushed, it bent double and suddenly sprang back to edge the razor further into the grunge. Maggie lay flat for a moment. “Patience, patience,” she said, gritting her teeth, but it was all she could do to remain calmly on her stomach when she knew that even now they could be on their way up to kill her.