Sea to Sky (18 page)

“You can’t compare them!” She seemed to be startled at the vehemence of her response. “I mean, my dad’s death was an accident. Oh my God. I still truly, truly miss my dad.” She grabbed a napkin and dabbed at the corner of her eye.

“Did Mike ever talk to you about his work?” Hunter was anxious to get the conversation on a less emotional plane. He always felt uncomfortable watching a woman cry. Either he felt helpless, like now, or if he felt manipulated, it made him angry.

Kelly seemed to be trying to pull herself together. She took another sip of wine and he could almost see her start to relax as she considered the question. “Yes. He would have a scotch or two and start to talk about his ‘scores’, as he called them. And about the ‘losers’ — also his word — that he had outsmarted at work.”

“Do you remember him referring to anyone specific? Any specific names or situations you can recall?” Hunter realized that his own glass was still full, while she had less than half of her wine left. He took two large swallows; he didn’t want her to start feeling self-conscious.

She rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry. Names pretty much went in one ear and out the other for me. I didn’t enjoy listening to him, but I didn’t want to make him mad so I pretended to be interested.” She told Hunter that she only half-believed Mike’s stories of his ‘scores’, taking most of them for drunken boasting. “He obviously was doing well, though, because he kept on buying things. Expensive things and I mean really expensive. He bought a boat. No, a yacht. He called it a yacht.” She related how he had made such a big deal of buying the boat, how much it had cost, and where he wanted to keep it. That weekend, he had her bundle up the kids and he had driven them through L.A. on a Saturday — almost an hour and a half each way — and taken them for a tour. The new boat was parked at the seller’s marina in Huntington Beach.  “Correna was running a fever that day and wouldn’t stop crying. Jordan wasn’t suitably excited — I think he was feeling intimidated — so Mike started giving him a hard time. I was preoccupied with Correna and he accused me of not appreciating all the things he did for me. The drive home was hell.” She drained the last of her wine. “I never saw the ‘yacht’ again.”

“Did you ever get the impression that Mike was doing anything…” Hunter paused, not sure how to express it without offending her. “Let’s say, not quite above board?”

She tilted her head. “Funny you should say that.” The wine was working its magic and she was now visibly more relaxed. “I almost got the impression that the guy who was showing us the boat was some kind of Mexican mobster. I tried to figure out how it would work, selling a boat as part of a money laundering scheme or something, but I’m just not sophisticated that way.” She laughed. “A degree in journalism didn’t prepare me for investigating criminals.”

“You’re a journalist? Good for you.”

“No. I wanted to be a journalist. I studied journalism. That doesn’t make me a journalist.”

“Sure it does. You’re just a journalist who doesn’t have a job. Yet.”

That made her smile.

He found her more than willing to answer questions for the time it took for both of them to polish off another glass of wine. From her descriptions of sudden financial windfalls and Mike’s contemptuous attitude toward his bosses, Hunter was convinced that someone Mike had dealings with through his work, possibly someone who felt Mike represented a threat, or someone he had double-crossed, had a motive for murder. Fear or revenge. If the stakes were high enough, both could be powerful motivators, as powerful as jealousy and greed.

He finally broached the subject of her whereabouts the morning of Mike’s death, and her answers were vague. She left the hotel, she walked in the falling snow, she returned to the hotel. She wasn’t certain about times and places, saying she didn’t know street names but could maybe retrace her steps, and then she looked at her watch and said, “I’ve got to get back to the kids. Beth and John are going to need a break.”

The interview was over.

Elspeth Watson had been clock-watching since ten o’clock, which was highly unusual for her. Normally, time went by quickly because hers was a busy job. Phone calls from shippers, phone calls from receivers, phone and radio calls from drivers; it wasn’t uncommon for her to have three or four lines going at the same time. Then there was Wally, her main warehouse guy, popping in and out of the warehouse for instructions, drivers leaning on the front counter wanting to chew the fat while their trucks were being loaded or unloaded, and Peterbilt skittering around looking for an errant piece of kibble or needing to go outside for a pee.

Today, however, she watched the clock because she was anxious to help Hunter out with his investigation, and couldn’t wait for the pace to slow down so she could make a few phone calls. The most important one was to her friend, Marilyn Jenkins, aka MJ, at Hastings & Toop Customs Brokers.

“MJ! You had lunch yet? Wanna meet me at Edna’s?”

“What the … you never take a lunch break on Mondays, girl. You sick or something?”

Ten minutes later, they were seated across from each other at a small table against the wall in Edna’s Kitchen. ‘Edna’ was actually a Chinese couple who called themselves Susan and Walter. Walter did most of the cooking and Susan yelled out the orders from tableside in Chinese, which usually didn’t sound anything like ‘soup and sandwich special’ or ‘deluxe burger with fries’.  It was the only place to eat in the immediate area, so it was usually busy, but you never had to wait long for a table. Their coffee was weak and the chairs were small and hard, so diners didn’t linger. The chairs were especially uncomfortable for diners as large and heavy as El and MJ, so El got right to the point.

“I need a favor. I need you to get in touch with some of your pals across the border and see if you can dig up anything on a company called Blue Hills Industries in Sylmar, California.”

MJ looked at her as if she’d just suggested going to the gym.

“I’m serious. You cleared a shipment from them two years ago for Northstar in Abbotsford. You must know
something
about them.”

“Get real, El. I can’t even remember the name, let alone anything about them.”

“What about you look in your files.”

“No. Our files from year before last are all in boxes at the back of our warehouse. Besides, there won’t be anything but an invoice in our files. What’s that supposed to tell you? What do you need to know about them for anyway?”

Susan showed up with the coffee pot, ready to pour. El waved it away and asked for a Coke. “What’s the soup du jour?”

“Today special chicken noo-doh wif egg samitch.”

“What comes first?” asked MJ. “The chicken or the egg?”

“Come together. You want?” Susan was short and skinny and always seemed to be in a rush. She wore a blue dress and white apron like an old fashioned waitress, and big white Reeboks.

They both agreed to the special, after which Susan yelled something unintelligible at Walter, then hurried to the next table.

“I need to know if there’s anything — you know — peculiar about the company.” El was starting to feel a little irritated.

“Peculiar? Peculiar in what way?”

Elspeth huffed. She realized that she didn’t have a good fix on what she was supposed to be looking for. She tapped a spoon on the empty coffee cup in front of her to help herself think, and before she knew it, Susan had breezed past the table and whisked the cup away.

“Well?”

“Okay. Look.” El lowered her voice. “You hear about that guy who got killed on the chairlift at Whistler?”

MJ leaned closer, nodding.

“He worked for Blue Hills Industries. I can’t divulge too much, but I’m helping with the investigation.” She looked around the restaurant, as if there might be industrial spies listening in instead of hungry warehouse workers and data-entry clerks grabbing a quick lunch. “We need to know if something going on there could have been a motive for the guy’s murder.”

MJ scrunched up one side of her face. “Who was the guy? A shipper?”

“Purchasing manager, more or less.”

Susan rushed up to the table with two white plates, each containing a sandwich on white bread and a small bowl of steaming soup. The service at Edna’s Kitchen was fast, no doubt about it.

“Jeez, El.” MJ examined her soup spoon, then gave it a good wipe with her napkin before starting on her soup. “What could I possibly find out? What could
you
possibly find out?”

El took a couple of spoonfuls of soup. She suspected Walter’s only role had been to open a big tin and heat it up, but it tasted fine. “New accounts, lost accounts, something that happened recently. How hard would it be to find out who does their documents?”

MJ took a bite of her sandwich, chewed and swallowed before she spoke. “Don’t forget, El. Canada is small potatoes to most American companies, and you can’t get information on the company’s domestic shipments from a customs broker.”

El knew she was right. Even with her U.S. broker contacts, MJ wasn’t going to be much help.

“Can’t you just call and ask them?”

El almost spat out a mouthful of soup. “Are you kidding? Who the hell would talk to a total stranger about their business, especially where something like aerospace contracts is concerned? Even a shipper would know better than that.”

“Just a thought.” MJ sounded a little hurt.

“Unless …” El said. She put down her spoon and tapped her lips with a forefinger.

“What?” MJ asked, but didn’t look up from her soup. There was nothing left of her sandwich but a few small crumbs.

“Drivers. Drivers talk to drivers.” El took a bite of her egg sandwich but couldn’t wait to chew and swallow before adding, “And they generally don’t work for the shipper. They work for the trucking company. No company loyalty to the shipper. See where I’m goin’?”

MJ nodded.

“I get a driver to hang out and watch a truck leave the plant, follow the driver to a coffee shop or rest stop, start up a friendly conversation …”

“Do drivers like to gossip . . . e-e-eh?” MJ’s eyes lit up.

“Do drivers like to gossip! You ever knew any drivers who seemed to like sharing, uh, juicy bits of information with you?”

They both started to laugh — both big women had big laughs — until several others in Edna’s Kitchen turned to look at them. Susan bustled over.

“You need somefing? You want pay now?”

“What’s for dessert?” asked MJ.

“Dessert? We never have dessert here,” said El. She put the last of her sandwich in her mouth.

“You want apple pie?” said Susan, looking from one to the other as she picked up their dirty dishes, but not waiting for an answer. “I bring two apple pie.”

El happily picked up the tab.

Hunter answered his cell phone on the first ring. He was in the lobby of the Coast Peaks Hotel again, waiting for a break in the conference proceedings so he could buttonhole someone to talk to about Mike Irwin, and he was starting to feel impatient. It was frustrating not to have the investigative tools that he used to have when he was a legitimate detective with the RCMP.

“Any news?” It was Helen Marsh.

Hunter felt a twinge of guilt that he hadn’t spared a moment of his day to think about her runaway son, he’d become so focused on the murder investigation.
Just like the old days.
“Not yet,” he said. “I’ve got several feelers out, and there are posters with his picture being distributed downtown.” Hunter hoped that was true.

“You still can’t leave Whistler?”

“I’ll have to stay here another day or two,” he lied. He was starting to feel pretty confident that the RCMP had crossed him off their list of suspects, but he now felt like part of the investigative team and he knew he couldn’t walk away from it. He’d always been that way. Once he started working a murder, there was a strong magnetic pull that didn’t let up until the case was solved, or went cold. He hated to let a case drop before it was solved, and he still carried details of cold cases more than a decade old around in his brain, pending a new lead.

He heard her suck in a breath, and knew she couldn’t rest until she had news of her son. His feelings of guilt multiplied.

“I’m going crazy, just sitting at home.”

“You’ll feel worse on the streets of Vancouver, wondering if he’s calling — or even coming home to — your empty house.”

He heard a soft groan on the other end of the line, and remembered what Kelly had said about stopping the world and taking a break from life. Helen needed that break right now.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ll make a few phone calls right now and call you back. Go make yourself a cup of coffee — or tea, maybe, something that might make you feel better — and just relax for an hour or so, knowing that there are people in Vancouver working on finding Adam for you.”

“But they aren’t his mother, Hunter. It’s not as important to them.”

“Adam
is
important to them, Helen. To them, and to me.”

“Oh, God, Hunter. How could he do this to me? Why doesn’t he call? I’m so afraid that something terrible has happened to him.”