One Way Ticket (A Smith and Hughes Mystery Book 1) Read online

  *

  The fat flakes of snow turned to almost gelatinous blobs of rain that froze the minute they hit my windshield. My wipers did their best to scrape the blobs away, but even with the front defroster on gale force setting it was hard to see the road. So I slowed down. A bit. I slowed down all the way to the speed limit when I turned onto Cedar Lane. The newly promoted Inspector at the Ontario Provincial Police detachment in Anishinaabeg Falls had initiated the sneaky practice of having one of his officers set up a radar trap in the parking lot at the station. Up until his tenure going past the big yellow and black sign with the OPP crest on it had been the one place where I was certain I wouldn’t get pulled over. This time I wasn’t driving by, though.

  “I heard you were back,” Hazel, the officer on front desk duty, smiled at me through the bullet proof glass that separated us.

  “Is Will around?”

  “He just came in. I’ll buzz him.”

  I pretended to read the Wanted posters on the bulletin board in the small foyer, but was more interested in the big hand printed notice about the official season opening day at Tom’s Bakery. They made the best butter tarts in the country and in just a few weeks I’d be happily ingesting a major overload of sugar. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened the calendar.

  “Lee Smith’s here to see you,” I heard Hazel say as I typed Sugar Rush! on the appropriate date.

  Instead of hearing Will’s response I heard the buzz of the electronic lock on the door to the squad room. “Thanks, Hazel,” I said as I dropped my phone back into my pocket and pulled the door open to let myself in.

  A few of the officers smiled, nodded, or said hello to me as I made my way to the back of the station. It still felt strange to see Will sitting at the desk in the corner office, even though it had been over a year since it had been my uncle’s office. The bullet riddled sketch of a smiling pig wearing an OPP hat was still on the bulletin board behind the desk though. Uncle Doug had found it when he and his team raided a grow-op and he’d put it up there as a daily reminder to his uniforms of what they could potentially face. The guys they’d arrested had used it for target practise when they got bored watching their pot plants grow. It sent chills down my spine every time I saw it.

  Will stood up, walked around the side of the desk and gave me a great big bear hug. His bushy moustache tickled the top of my head. “Good to see you, Lee.”

  “You, too.”

  He pointed at the chair in front of his desk and walked back to his own chair. “But if you’ve come about that ticket you got last night...,”

  “Don’t sweat it. I’m guilty as charged, as always.”

  “I wish you’d take it easier out there, especially at night.”

  “Your revenues would go way down if I did.”

  “I care more about you than the revenues.”

  “I know. I’ll try.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re not under oath!” he laughed. “So, what does bring you here?”

  “Kayla Wilkes.”

  His eyebrows weren’t quite as bushy as his moustache but they were big enough to match the width of it when he brought them together. “Why?”

  “Her father asked Jack Hughes to look into what happened, and Jack asked me to help him.”

  “And?” He was suddenly in cop mode, not giving anything away while he tried to figure out what I knew.

  “And I’m hoping you’ll talk to me about it, maybe give me some information before I get in too deep.”

  “I can’t talk about an open investigation.”

  “But it’s me; you know you can trust me.”

  “If you really want to help, try telling Jack to let the professionals handle it.”

  “Like that would do any good. He’s still hot on the trail of the liquor store bear shooter. He doesn’t give up on anything, ever. He likes to say that he’s persistent, but he’s just plain stubborn.”

  “No wonder you two get along so well.” Will didn’t bother waiting for me to react to that comment. “Why is he doing this?”

  “Kayla’s father pulled on his heart strings. Apparently, Mr. Wilkes is worried that you’ll classify it as a suicide and he’s adamant that his daughter wouldn’t have done that.”

  “I’ve spoken with Mr. Wilkes and can appreciate why he’s so upset, but I assured him that we’ll do a thorough investigation, a fair investigation.”

  “But it’s Berkshire. Nobody there is going to open up to you. You know how they close ranks to protect their own. Jack’s one of them, so he might be able to learn something that you can’t.”

  “You’re one of them, too.”

  “Correction, I was a student there for two years, but I was never one of them and the only Berksherian I’ve spoken to in over twenty years is Jack.”

  “If you’re an outsider, what does Jack think you can do to help?”

  “Good question.” One I’d asked myself, without being able to answer it. “I guess I’ll find out more in a couple of hours. Jack and I are meeting with the Board of Governors.”

  “Maybe I should come with you? Quite a few of them have yet to return my calls.”

  “Outsider,” I pointed at him. “Outsider with a hall pass,” I pointed at me. “Why don’t we work together? I’ll tell you whatever I learn and you tell me what you know? I picked up a thing or two from Uncle Doug about investigations.”

  “Maybe so, but you didn’t pick up a graduation certificate from the police college in Aylmer and aren’t a sworn officer.”

  “You always were a stickler for details.”

  “They come in mighty handy when a case goes to trial.”

  “Oh-ho! So you think this might go to trial. That means somebody’s going to get charged with something.”

  “Pump the brakes, you’re getting ahead of yourself. I don’t know where the investigation will lead.”

  “Jack says that you found a suicide note.” Will’s expression gave nothing away. “Doesn’t that sort of make this a slam dunk?”

  “No. In fact, most suicides don’t leave a note. The note is one of the things we’re looking into.”

  So, Jack had been right. Will had just confirmed that there was a suicide note. “Are you looking into why that truck slammed into Jack?”

  “Of course, but the ice is too unstable right now to get the truck out to have a good look at it. If we don’t have another cold snap we should be able to get it out in a week or two.”

  “You know Jack thinks someone was trying to kill him, right?”

  “He made that very clear, but let’s see what the truck tells us.”

  “What about footprints in the snow around the truck? Did you look for them? Take pictures or imprints of them?”

  “We know what we’re doing, Lee.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting...,”

  “You were fishing, trying to find out how seriously we’re taking Jack’s accident.”

  “Again, guilty as charged.”

  “We’re taking both incidents very seriously. And I’m seriously advising you to not get involved.”

  “But...,”

  “Lee, please. I know how nosey you are, you drove Doug crazy with your insatiable curiosity, but never forget that curiosity killed the cat. What if Kayla’s death wasn’t a suicide, or if someone deliberately sent that truck down the hill? You and Jack could potentially be putting yourselves in danger.” I opened my mouth to speak, but he held his hands up to stop my words from spilling out. “I’m not saying that’s what happened, but until we finish our investigation it’s a possibility.”

  Will’s serious tone put me on high alert. He was definitely warning me off. Maybe this wasn’t one of Jack’s puzzles after all? Maybe this was the real thing? “I’ll be careful, promise. And I haven’t even decided how involved I’m going to get.” But Will’s warning had set that curious cat’s tail twitching with interest. It was dumb, childish, and possibly foolhardy, but the thought of being able to knock Berkshire down a peg or
two was incredibly appealing.

  Will sighed heavily. “I’m wasting my breath trying to talk you out of it; I can see it in your face. Do me one favour?”

  “Name it.”

  “Keep me in the loop?”

  “You want me to share any information I get?”

  He nodded.

  “But you want it to be a one-way street, right?”

  “I already told you...,”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. You aren’t supposed to discuss open investigations. Can’t you give me anything? How about letting me see her suicide note?”

  The intercom on his telephone buzzed and Hazel’s voice announced “Paul Weber is here to see you”.

  Will pushed a button on his phone. “I’ll meet him down at the evidence locker.” He put his hand on the mouse for his computer and clicked a few times. “Sorry to cut this short, but Crown Attorneys don’t like to be kept waiting, especially this guy.” He stood up and started shuffling through the papers on his desk. “Now where did I put that file?” His movements all seemed exaggerated, especially when he had to contort to accidentally knock his computer screen, turning it so that it faced me.

  I immediately read what was on the screen. It was the least I could do, seeing as how he’d been so obvious about turning it around. But what I was reading didn’t make sense. It was some kind of quote, possibly from Shakespeare, typed in italics.

  Tired with all these, for restful death I cry.

  And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

  Death, death: O, amiable lovely death!

  What the ... oh! “Is that what I think it is?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen and kept re-reading the words, trying to memorize them.

  “Stop staring. Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” Will turned his back to me and slowly picked up some pages, one-by-one, from the tray on his printer. He didn’t turn around until after he heard the artificial shutter sound that my cellphone made whenever it took a picture. “You didn’t get that from me, agreed?” He turned the computer screen around again.

  “Get what?” I smiled and innocently batted my eyelashes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Good.”

  “Was it signed?”

  He just shook his head.

  “So anyone could have written it?”

  He nodded. “Stay in touch and, please, be careful.”

  I did as he asked and obeyed the speed limit all the way across town to the hospital.

  *

  “Did you even notice that stop sign when you rolled past it?” Jack asked as I pushed down on the accelerator to get up to speed on the two-lane highway that would take us up around the top of the Muskoka lakes to his place at the north end of Lake Joseph.

  “Take your glasses off.” He was leaning over in his seat to see the speedometer. “I’m actually trying to be good, you know.” I begrudgingly lifted my right foot up, a bit.

  “Can we stop at the diner on the way? I’m starving! The hospital food left a lot to my digestive tract’s imagination.”

  “The egg-white omelette was yummy. You should have tried some.”

  “You ate it before I had a chance to. And some of us like to eat real food, not bird food.”

  “I eat healthy food. And some of us don’t have the metabolism of a hummingbird so we have to watch what we eat.”

  “Good thing you didn’t blink while you were inhaling it, then. You would have missed being able to watch it go from the plate to your mouth.”

  “Remind me - why do I like you?”

  “Because you have good taste. Not in food, though. So? The diner?”

  I could feel my arteries hardening just watching him devour three eggs, fried over-easy, four pieces of buttered toast and a heap of greasy bacon. At least he washed it all down with freshly squeezed orange juice, instead of the frozen canned stuff. The only reason his diner offered freshly squeezed juice was that he’d seen a fancy high-end juicer in one of his gourmet magazines and couldn’t resist buying it.

  Jack was usually a slow eater, but his breakfast took even longer than normal. Word of his accident had spread through the community and everyone who worked at the diner and all of the regulars who came in wanted to make sure he was okay.

  Even though he hadn’t been born and raised in the area like I had he was more of a welcomed local than I was. Everyone acknowledged my presence at the table, but no one went overboard with friendliness. The invisible barrier between me and them was just as strong as it had been the day it went up. The day my father was arrested. I’d changed my last name to Smith, but I’d always be Lee Saddler to the locals. I felt it in their accusatory stares and chilly hellos. No matter how strong Jack’s glasses were he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see it.

  And he wouldn’t stop asking me questions about my trip. I wanted to talk about Kayla’s suicide note, but not in a diner crowded with nosey people. So I talked as fast as I wanted Jack to eat, but my travelogue and his meal were repeatedly interrupted by people stopping at our table.

  “...I ditched the Platinum Cruise group after the polo match and went exploring on my own...,”

  “Did your friend join you?”

  “No.” I wished he’d stop bringing Hunter up so much. “I, me, myself and I, stopped to watch some kids playing cricket in Bathsheba; it’s on the Atlantic side of Barbados. And this one boy, Malvin, explained the bails, beamers, wickets and stumps to me much better than you ever have.”

  “Hi, Jack! Heard what happened to you...,”

  I read a couple of emails on my phone and fought hard to resist the urge to look at the picture of Kayla’s suicide note while I waited for Jack’s attention to refocus back on me. “... the reefs around Carriacou are still in pretty good shape and I enjoyed the dive there...,”

  “Thanks for sorting out the mess with the Canada Revenue Agency for Mum, Jack. Dad used to handle all the tax stuff, but he obviously didn’t do a very good job of it, and those CRA boys can get nasty. I’ll be heading over to your place this afternoon. There’s a half-cord of wood in the back of my truck with your name on it. Nice to see you, Lee.” The barrier lowered for a nanosecond, but only because Auntie Em was good friends with the man’s mother.

  “I got the cutest green shamrock stamp in my passport when we cleared Montserrat customs...,”

  “Thank you so much for the job Mr. Hughes,” our waitress gushed as Jack waved her off when she tried to refill his coffee mug for the third time. She didn’t even look at me or my mug.

  “...and I met a team from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust who were on the island to do research for the Mountain Chicken Recovery Programme.”

  “Most of the island gets wiped out by a volcano and they’re worried about chickens?” Jack asked as I pushed his wheelchair down the ramp to the parking lot.

  He’d had the ramp put in shortly after he bought the diner when the son of one of the line cooks was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident, and seeing it made me wonder how we were going to get him up the steps to his cottage.

  “They’re not chicken chickens,” I said once we were on the road again. “They’re leptodactylus fallax, commonly known as the Giant Ditch Frog.”

  “Not that commonly known – I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Nobody will ever hear of them if the recovery program doesn’t work; they’re critically endangered. The volcano wiped out a lot of them and now there’s a gross fatal fungal disease called chytridiomycosis decimating the remaining population.”

  “How do you remember all the scientific terms?”

  “I make notes and sometimes do voice recordings when I’m talking to people.”

  “And those notes and recordings are ... where? You’re driving.”

  “They’re in my backpack.” I waited longer than I would have if Jack hadn’t been in the car for a transport truck to barrel north past us before turning left across the highway onto the gravel lane to Jack’s cottage. “
I usually remember how to say the words, but need my notes to spell them.”

  “This coming from the girl who almost failed biology because she refused to dissect a frog.”

  “I don’t want to look inside dead things. I’m much more interested in the living world.” We both went silent and I had to wonder if Jack was thinking the same thing I was – without meaning to, I’d just succinctly summarized how I felt about looking into Kayla’s death. I started talking again before Jack could. “We had the day at sea after Montserrat.”

  “Did you actually go to the formal dinner that night?”

  “I went, but I didn’t enjoy it. Thanks, again, for the dress. You didn’t have to do that...”

  “It was nothing. Karl adored my mother, so I knew he wouldn’t mind sending something over for a friend of mine.”

  “Who’s Karl?”

  “I can’t believe you just asked that! You must be the only female on the planet who doesn’t know who Karl Lagerfeld is. Frog funguses? Those you know. But designers?”

  “The plural of fungus is fungi. Gee, you’d think someone who claims to be well read would know that. And I’m pretty sure the women of the Xatanawa tribe don’t know who Karl is either.”

  “And they would be?”

  “An indigenous Amazonian tribe in Brazil that recently made first contact. FYI, for the record, I do know the name of a designer. Phil. I buy his stuff all the time.”

  “I’m scared to ask this. Who’s Phil?”

  “Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike.”

  I’d trumped him on the sarcastic score sheet, so Jack moved on. “Where’d you stop after the day at sea?”

  “The Turks and Caicos. I rented a scooter and went over to the conch farm to see if Sally and Jerry were still there.”

  “Who?”

  “Two conchs who come out of their shells for the tourists. After the Turks we went to the Bahamas. Most people went on shopping excursions or to the casino, and the cruise also offered a drift dive off of Eleuthera, but I’ve been there-drifted that before so I walked around the marina and found a dive shop that was about to take some people over to San Salvador by helicopter for a wall dive. I talked them into taking me with them and the walls were amazing! They start off small, but some of them drop to seven thousand feet. I even saw a Hawksbill Turtle...,”