Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc. (7 page)

“What's going to happen to it?”

“I'll probably chuck it out for the dustmen,” suggests Daphne, and Bliss looks up with a thought.

“Bingo,” he yells a few minutes later as he squats on the floor of Minnie's kitchen next to a garbage bag he's dragged out of a bin in the backyard.

With one hand over his nose, Bliss is holding up a crumpled piece of paper to Daphne with the other.

“What is it?” she asks, keeping her hands in her overcoat pockets.

“This,” he says, unfolding it and flattening it on the floor, “is a Western Union receipt for four thousand, nine hundred pounds. And I bet there's another in here if I dig deep enough. Thank God the garbage hadn't been collected.”

“But, I don't understand…”

“It's the missing money, Daphne. Stapleton didn't steal it. She sent it to…” Bliss pauses while he deciphers the writing on the receipt. “She sent it to Canada.”

“She didn't know anyone in Canada,” spits Daphne indignantly. “Why on earth would she do that?”

“I think it's a company name,” says Bliss, reading aloud. “‘CNL Distribution, White Rock, British Columbia.'”

“Call Mike, your Mountie friend in Vancouver,” says Daphne, indicating Bliss's cell phone. “He'll know.”

Mike Phillips is a recently promoted inspector with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver, and he is growing accustomed to becoming embroiled in murder cases involving his English counterpart, David Bliss.

“I could get shot for this,” says Bliss as he opens his cell phone and flicks through the digital address book looking for his Canadian colleague's number. “It's my job to make sure that people don't short-circuit the system,” he continues irritably as he taps in the number of the officer with whom he had once teamed up to trace a serial killer. “That's what Interpol's for,” he carries on as he waits for the connection. “If everyone made their own enquiries with foreign forces there would be anarchy.”

“Oh, you can be such a stuffed shirt sometimes,” says Daphne snatching the phone. “The closest I've ever been to being on the force was cleaning the constables' toilet down at the police station. So unless you think that
applies…” She pauses, with the phone close to her ear, mouthing “Voice mail,” then adds, “He's on leave — Hawaii for two weeks,” as she waits to leave a message, but then she changes her mind and slowly closes the phone. “Minnie and I were planning on going to Hawaii,” she tells Bliss, with a sniffle of unfulfilled nostalgia, and then she brightens with an idea. “What about Trina?” she says, pulling out her diary and searching for a number.

“I don't know…” begins Bliss hesitantly, having mixed feelings about the zany Canadian woman who had become enmeshed in Phillips's mass murder case and had found a kindred spirit in Daphne.

“It can't do any harm,” continues Daphne as she punches in the international code. “We only need the phone number of the company, and then we can ask them about Minnie's money ourselves.”

“I still think I should do it officially through Ottawa,” Bliss is saying as Daphne listens for the ringing tone.

“Don't you worry, David. I'll talk to her,” says Daphne sarcastically. “I wouldn't want her getting into trouble with Interpol as well.”

“Vancouver Zoo. Monkey House,” answers the voice on the phone, and Daphne puts on a puzzled face.

“Is that you, Trina?”

“Oh. Hi, Daph. Yeah, it's me. Hang on. There's a guinea pig on the loose…” Then she yells, “
Kids!
” with such force that Daphne ducks.

“Sorry, Daphne,” says Trina, coming back on the phone. “It's a madhouse here. I was just making some curried banana cake.”

Daphne grabs a pen from Bliss's breast pocket, enthusing, “It's one of Trina's recipes.”

“Hold on a minute,” complains Bliss, grabbing it back as Daphne begins writing in her diary. “And that's my personal cell phone you're using.”

“Oh. Sorry, Trina, I'll get it later. David's worried about his bank account now he's a lowly chief inspector. Oh. Did you know Samantha, his daughter —”

“Daphne…
please,
” implores Bliss.

“Oh. Hang on, Trina. He wants to talk to you himself.”

“Trina, do you know a place called White Rock?” asks Bliss without wasting expensive seconds on pleasantries.

“Sure. Just south of here on the American border. Hey, have you got another murder for me?”

“No… Well, yes, in a way. One of Daphne's friends has been killed, and for some strange reason she sent all her money there last week — more than twenty thousand dollars, judging by the receipts,” explains Bliss, before giving Trina the details of the money transfers, each for a little under five thousand pounds.

“Ten-four,” says Trina once she has the information.

“What does that mean?” queries Bliss.

“No idea, but the cops always say it on television… or is it ten-ten?”

Trina Button puts down the phone as her husband, Rick, wanders in from the garage with grease-stained hands.

“Rick, you'd better put a padlock on the guinea pig cage. I've got another murder case.”

“What… What are you talking about, Trina?”

“Surely you remember? The last time I was on a case the mob tried to murder him.”

“Trina,” Rick reminds her gently, “you were never on a case. You are a homecare nurse who just got caught up in some nasty business, that's all. Anyway, you don't have time for this now. I've almost finished the machine and Norman is on his way over for the inaugural run.”

“Great!” shrieks Trina. I'll be out in two minutes. Just gotta make a call.”

CNL Distribution is a multimillion-dollar corporation with shareholders who prefer to remain unlisted — everywhere, and the phone book offers Trina no help. Neither does the directory enquiry operator. With Rick calling, “Hurry up, Trina,” she quickly tries the Western Union office in White Rock, but draws a blank there as well.

“I've no idea,” says the clerk tersely. “We don't ask our customers their business.”

“Do you have a phone number, then?”

“Sorry, ma'am. Can't help.”

“Come on, Trina! Norman's almost here,” calls Rick, and a moment later Trina is joined by her two teenagers, Rob and Kylie, as she stands in the garage with tears of joy streaming down her face.

“It's beautiful, Rick… It's absolutely beautiful,” she blubbers, then she turns to an elderly-looking man who has just wheeled himself into the garage in an electric wheelchair.

“Look, Norman,” she says, pushing her children aside for the newcomer, “isn't it wonderful? Rick is so clever, isn't he?”

Norman Spinnaker is, like all of Trina's patients, facing a bleak outlook. Diabetes has blocked his blood vessels and robbed his legs of the strength to carry him, while nephropathy has destroyed his kidneys. Without constant dialysis, or a transplant, Norman is well aware that he is never more than few days away from meeting his maker. But thanks to Trina's unbounded optimism, he looks to his uncertain future with more confidence than a teen pop idol.

“I think it's… um… fabulous,” says Norman, critically eyeing the machine that Trina insists will save his life. “But are you sure about the power-to-weight ratio?”

“Absolutely,” says Rick. “C'mon Trina, climb aboard and we'll give it a trial run.”

“Yes!” exclaims Trina, and she punches the air triumphantly.

The machine is a two-person quadricycle which has been fashioned from a kidney-shaped fibreglass bathtub complete with faucets, shower and soap rack. Wheels, and a nautical steering wheel from a marine junkyard in West Vancouver, have been added by Rick, along with a brass bulb horn that he had liberated from a vintage Model T Ford in his college days. A limp Canadian maple leaf flag hanging from the top of the ten-foot shower pole caps off the bizarre-looking machine, and Rick gives the pole a shake as he explains in a madinventor's voice, “Shipmates and shipbrats… Note that this apparently standard shower unit is, in actual fact, the mainmast, from which a shower-curtain sail can be suspended. And this,” he carries on as he triumphantly pulls a large yellow plastic duck from a bag, “this is the figurehead which I shall now fasten to the plughole puller while naming this vessel… “ He turns to Trina with a questioning look.

“The
Kidney Queen,
” suggests Trina regally.

“Absolutely,” agrees Rick. “The
Kidney Queen.
God bless her and all who pedal in her.”

“She's terrific,” says Trina, running her hand over the canvas lawn-chair seats. “What d'ye think, kids?”

“You're crazy,” spits Kylie. “Like, you really think you can pedal that all the way to New York?”

“No problem,” says Trina as she hops in and tests the pedals. “It's all downhill from here. Check out a map.”

“Mum,” questions Rob, “why are you doing this?”

“To raise money for kidney transplants —” she begins, but her fourteen-year-old son cuts her off.

“No, I meant, why are you making me look such a dweeb?”

“A dweeb?” questions Trina, and she looks to Rick for support, but he's busy watching a spider on the ceiling.

“Yeah, Mum,” carries on Kylie. “It's kind'a embarrassing. My friends all say you're weird.”

“Hold on a minute, you two,” says Norman, coming to Trina's side. “I think your friends must be weird. You're lucky to have a mother — what's that smell?”

“Oh — oh,” cries Trina, leaping out of the machine and racing for the kitchen. “Flaming banana curry cake.”

“You were saying, Mr. Spinnaker?” questions Kylie.

Trina's intended Kidney Run to New York is seven months away, but her goal to raise a million dollars for kidney transplants is already looking shaky. Her primary problem is that she lacks the wholehearted backing of the local Kidney Society. Indeed, the president and members of the steering committee have been frantically distancing themselves from the scheme from the moment Trina announced her plans.

Until Trina's arrival, the Society's fundraising committee had been both inoffensive and ineffective due to the advanced years of most of its members. And how Trina, in her late thirties, was elected to the chair of the committee at her very first meeting is still a matter of some debate, although some of the blame has been laid at the feet of Maureen Stuckenberg, the Society's perennial president.

“We need someone with bright new ideas,” Ms. Stuckenberg insisted, and the group unanimously voted
for Trina, knowing that any event requiring most forms of physical activity, financial input or personal solicitations by members could easily be discussed to oblivion within a year or so.

“Just propose a few of your best ideas,” the president had told Trina a few weeks before the annual committee meeting, not knowing of Trina's passionate nature and unswerving doggedness in her desire to do good, and Trina arrived at the meeting weighed down with graphs, sketches and a slew of fundraising manuals, and quickly set the stage.

“You have to personalize the plea to open purses,” she explained poetically to the group. “I mean, look at the opposition —”

“We don't think it's helpful to characterize other charities in that manner, Trina,” Maureen Stuckenberg admonished. “We are all in the same boat when it comes to raising money.”

“Okay. But we haven't got a bunch of goggle-eyed pot-bellied orphans on our side,” Trina continued, undeterred. “To really squeeze the pips you need something zappy, like a kid with no legs or a hole in his face you can get your fist into.”

“Trina…” the President warned.

“Well, let's face it. Most of our people are just ugly, fat old fogies with nothing to show for their complaint but a dodgy urine sample. I mean, all they do is sleep.”

“Trina. We are not in the business of exploiting the suffering of our patients.”

Trina's mumbled retort — “Everyone else does” — didn't sat well with the executive, and she found herself with an increasingly hostile audience as she worked her way through her presentation.

Dances, duck races and fashion shows were all shrugged off without debate; lawn mower marathons,
telemarketing and pet shows were given the cold shoulder; and Trina was getting down to the wire when she suggested inviting Martha Stewart to design a commemorative kidney-shaped teapot.

“Okay,” she told the committee in desperation. “Idea number twenty-seven. We could do the same as the Women's Institute in northern England. They made a mint selling their own Christmas calendars.”

“At last,” Maureen Stuckenberg muttered under her breath, and immediately garnered nods of support from around the table.

“Shall we take a vote on that, ladies?” she proposed loudly, and had a full show of hands, until a spoilsport — Trina's geriatric predecessor — demanded details. “What kind of calendar was it? Recipes? Knitwear? Cute little cuddly animals?”

“No. Just portraits of the president and all the members,” Trina responded imperturbably.

“Well, that sounds very sensible, Trina,” Maureen Stuckenberg carried on, primping herself up and slicking back her eyebrows. But the spoiler had a cautious eye on Trina and insisted on specifics.

“Well, actually,” Trina mumbled, with her head in her papers, “they all posed in the nude.”

Ms. Stuckenberg came close to meltdown, but Trina was running out of options and persisted. “You needn't worry, Maureen. I mean, most of
them
weren't particularly good-looking, either.”

“Trina. Our Christmas fundraising event has been very successful for the past twenty-seven years without smutty ideas like that,” the president fumed indignantly, and bristled still further when Trina pointed out the obvious irony in the Kidney Society's seasonally appropriate sales of cholesterol-loaded Christmas cakes, giant chocolate bars and sugar-coated butter shortcake
to a diabetes-prone, overweight populace with a forty-percent chance of developing kidney failure.