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

  I could hear Dick’s bellowing buffoon laughter all the way down the hallway as I marched toward the boardroom. “...hell, I wouldn’t mind tapping that! You seriously expect us to believe that you’re not doing her?”

  I wasn’t close enough to make out Jack’s quiet reply.

  “Was she that smokin’ hot when you were teenagers?” Andre asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dick growled. “We used to sneak into the swim team’s practices just to see her tight little bod in a Speedo. And those eyes of hers; never seen a blue like that on any other broad.”

  I stopped and leaned against the wall beside the open boardroom door. Who knew what else I’d learn about myself? My image of my teenage self was very different than the person Dick was describing; more like a timid grey mouse, nervously skirting around the bigger predators.

  “If I didn’t know she was a classmate of yours, Jack, she could almost pass for a current student.”

  “Watch out, Jack! Andre likes ‘em young. He might try to steal your woman.”

  “Lee’s not my woman, she’s her own woman.”

  Nicely done, Jack. (But you’re still not off the hook for not telling me who Kayla’s mother is.)

  “For the record,” Andre wasn’t going to let Dick’s comment lie unquestioned. “High school students are too young for me.”

  “Said the guy who just married a twenty-one year old.”

  “She’s twenty-six,” Andre corrected Dick.

  “Did either of you know Kayla well?” Jack steered the conversation away from the sexuality of young girls.

  “No better than you, probably. We all saw her when she made her bi-monthly boarder captain report to us. Why?” Dick sounded defensive. “Are we on your suspects list?”

  “Not at all. I’m just trying to find out what she was like.”

  “She was at our cottage a few times last summer, with a group of my son’s friends.” I wondered how Andre’s son felt about having a stepmother who was closer to his age than his father’s. “I only spoke to her in passing, though. Dick’s son, Paul, was there, too.”

  “Was she dating anyone?”

  “She was dating Art Chapman’s son back then, but I’m fairly certain that relationship ended shortly after Art was charged with embezzlement.”

  “You can bet Erica had a hand in that break-up,” Dick scoffed. “Now that I think about it, I seem to remember Paul saying something about Kayla hooking up with Ethan Horscroft, Pam’s boy, and that makes sense. Erica’s still close with Pam, so it’s a match she’d approve of.”

  “Did she spend any time at your place, Dick? Maybe to hang out with Paul and his friends?”

  “Not that I remember. The only time I spent with her off of school property was when she asked me to give her a ride over to their cottage, but that was back in the fall. Erica bought her one of those environmentally friendly pieces of crap, a Toyota I think, and it was always breaking down.”

  Since when had Toyota’s been unreliable cars?

  “How would she get back to the school?”

  “Damned if I know.” Dick sure wanted to get the message across that he hadn’t had much to do with Kayla.

  “And speaking of getting back, I have to get back to the city.”

  I pushed myself off the wall and walked into the room before Andre finished his farewells and came out to find me eavesdropping.

  “That was a long smoke,” Dick said when I came into the room. “You know that stuff can stunt your growth, right?”

  “Ha ha.” Now I remembered him. He’d used the same stupid joke back when we’d been students.

  I played it cool as I pushed Jack out to the car, letting him babble on about the private resort that Dick and Andre wanted him to invest in, but I didn’t pay attention to any of the words coming out of his mouth. Once we’d both done up our seatbelts I fired up the engine, turned on my seat heater (but not Jack’s), and locked the doors. With Jack’s only avenue of escape dealt with I began my assault.

  “I’m going to give you one chance, and only one chance, to be honest with me.”

  “If this is about you filling in for a don...,”

  “I’m not finished. This isn’t a merger, acquisition or takeover. This is me, my life. I know how smooth you are at getting people and companies to bend to your way of thinking, but don’t you dare diminish our friendship by treating me as if I’m just a business acquaintance or conquest. You asked me to help you and I agreed to, partially because of our friendship, but also because of Kayla’s father, but your failure to disclose all the pertinent details have now put that agreement in serious jeopardy. Now’s the time to be completely, one hundred percent open about the terms. I want everything on the table, right now, right here.” I stared ahead and locked my focus on one of the still leafless ivy vines that blanketed the exterior walls of Berkshire. “You may speak.”

  “You’re right and I’m sorry. I should have been upfront with you about the don thing, but...,”

  “Stop there. The only reason to throw a but into an apology is to give you an opening to list all of the reasons why you’re not actually sorry because it somehow wasn’t your fault. This tension is your fault and no one else’s, so own it. What else haven’t you told me?” This was the critical moment. If Jack didn’t tell me the truth about Kayla being Erica Talbot’s daughter I was out.

  “Kayla’s mother is Erica Talbot and, if Dick’s right, Kayla’s was dating Pam Grey’s son.”

  I turned my head slowly and looked at him for the first time. “How could you do that to me, Jack?”

  “Would you have agreed to get involved if I’d told you?”

  “Of course not! You know what Erica did to me!”

  “Bu ... this isn’t about Erica. It’s about a seventeen year old girl.”

  “A seventeen year old girl who came out of the witch who made my life a living hell!” I knew I was screeching, losing control, but I didn’t care.

  “Kayla’s not to blame for what Erica and the others did. I’ll never defend their behaviour towards you, you know that...,”

  “I thought I knew it, but I’m questioning a lot of things right now.”

  “My promise to you better not be one of those things that you’re questioning.”

  Was that a hint of anger I was detecting in his voice? What right did he have to get angry with me?

  “To this day, Erica has never told anyone who your father is. I told you I’d deal with her and I did.”

  “I acknowledge that and you know how much that meant to me, but it’s got nothing to do with this. You should have told me she was Kayla’s mother!”

  It was Jack’s turn to look away. He clenched his jaw and took a deep breath. I didn’t know what was coming, but I was a little bit scared of it. “You wouldn’t be here right now if you’d known, you’ve just admitted that and, quite frankly, that wouldn’t have been fair to Kayla.”

  “You could have explained...,”

  “What?” His head snapped to face me again. “What could I have explained? That you would have been tarnishing Kayla with the sins of her mother? You of all people know how unfair that would have been to Kayla. What Erica did was wrong, spiteful, cruel, name your adjective, but that’s Erica’s issue – not Kayla’s. Kayla wasn’t responsible for her mother’s behaviour many years ago, any more than you’re responsible for what your father did. Maybe she was just as ashamed of her mother as you are of your father? Could I have explained that to you? You wouldn’t have let me get halfway through that explanation before you shut me down and found an excuse to leave the room or even the country.”

  I wanted to scream That’s not fair, but couldn’t. He was right.

  “If this is too much for you to deal with I’ll understand. Do what’s right for you; it won’t change how I feel about you. All I ask is that you don’t forget about Kayla, that you think about her. She was either as miserable as you were, without having the inner strength to pull through whatever she was dealing with
, or someone stopped her life before she ever got a chance to live it.”

  I put the car in gear and backed out of the parking space. Jack didn’t ask me where we were going, or comment on my driving, or push me for a final answer. He let me have the time and space to sort out my thoughts and didn’t speak again until I pulled up in front of his cottage.

  “So what now?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “How was your chat with Mademoiselle?”

  I just shrugged my shoulders noncommittally.

  “She’s a character.” He forced a laugh out and I could tell he was trying to make small talk.

  I turned the engine off and walked around the car to get Jack’s wheelchair out and help him into it.

  “Her mind’s still pretty sharp, for her age, but she’s lost her filter and sometimes the stuff she says...,”

  “She said that one of Kayla’s friends, a girl named Jocelyn, found a USB key that had something on it, maybe a video, possibly pornographic, and that she took it to Dr. Campbell.” I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. “Erica showed up a few hours later, took the USB key, and ordered Dr. Campbell not to tell the police about it.”

  Jack’s phone rang just as I was pushing him up the ramp to his front door. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the screen. “Speak of the devil, literally. It’s Erica.”

  “The Berkshire tribal drums still beat fast. Who do you think called her, Dick or Andre?”

  “It could have been either of them. Or maybe Dr. Campbell. Mind if I take it?”

  “Whatever.” But what I hadn’t expected was for Jack to answer on speaker once I’d wheeled him into the great room.

  “I understand that you want to meet with me to discuss Kayla. I’ve also been informed that you’re working with Lee Smith, that she’s added being an investigator to her long list of bullshit stories about herself.”

  I wanted to snatch the phone out of Jack’s hands and hurl it through one of the panes of glass along the lake side of the room. Instead, I walked away from him and went to stare out at the lake. Those channels were definitely wide enough for my kayak.

  “I asked Lee to help me, Erica.”

  “I bet she jumped on that! She’s probably been carrying a grudge all these years and would like nothing better than to hit me when I’m down.”

  “Lee’s a better person than that.” Jack’s wasn’t using his calming negotiator voice now. Erica’s denigration of me had riled him. “No matter how justified she’d be to want to strike back after what you put her through.”

  “Look, I don’t know what you two are playing at but you’re going to have to put a stop to it. Our Chatham subsidiary is going public and the IPO is in two weeks. Any hint of scandal could cost me millions. Be at my house tonight at seven.”

  That was the Erica I’d known. Everything was secondary to increasing her net worth, even the pesky little detail of having her daughter die at an inopportune time.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What do you mean, you’ll see what you can do?” Erica still didn’t react well when someone didn’t immediately say yes to her demands.

  “I’ll have to arrange a ride. As you may have heard, I had an accident and I can’t drive. Why don’t you come up here?”

  “No, we meet down here or nowhere. And don’t give me any bull about needing a ride. Dick said he saw your new plane at the Muskoka airport and I know you’ve got a pilot on staff.”

  “Like I said, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you later to let you know what I’ve worked out.”

  “Don’t bother. I don’t care how you do it, just be here. Will she be with you?”

  I knew I was the she Erica was asking about. I mouthed She hasn’t decided to Jack.

  “Maybe.”

  “Not likely, though. She doesn’t have the guts to face me.”

  That did it!

  Oh Erica, I thought, you just made a very stupid error. You had me cowering back then, but I’m a lot stronger now, more sure of myself. I don’t run from challenges anymore – I run right at them!

  “What do you think?” Jack asked me as he dropped his phone back into his pocket.

  “She’s still a cold hearted bitch.”

  “Agreed. Do you want to come with me to meet her tonight? The choice is entirely yours.”

  “No more secrets or surprises?”

  “Promise.”

  “I’m in.” If Jack had questioned my reasons for agreeing to meet with Erica I would have told him it was because I felt sorry for Kayla’s father, but that would have been less than half the truth. What I wanted, what I’d often fantasized about, was to stand tall (metaphorically) in front of Erica – to let her see that she hadn’t broken me.

  “Then we should leave in about an hour. Otherwise, we’ll get caught in rush hour on the 401 and I know how much you hate that.”

  “Why can’t we take your plane?”

  Jack pointed at his cast. “I can’t work the rudder pedals, or the brakes, and I’m on painkillers. I can’t fly.”

  And I knew he wouldn’t trust anyone else to fly him. But I couldn’t leave in an hour. Auntie Em and I had a meeting with a land appraiser in an hour, a meeting I didn’t want to tell Jack about. If he knew that we were considering selling a chunk of our land to help cover the rapidly increasing property taxes he would have immediately offered to pay our tax bills. “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “Suck it up!” That startled him. “I’m facing a whole lot of fears for you, and for Kayla’s father – a man I haven’t even met ...,”

  “And for the satisfaction of proving Erica wrong about you not having the guts to face her.”

  “Whatever. It won’t kill you to face one or two of your own. You trust George enough to pay him a small fortune to be on-call as your co-pilot, so trust him to fly us down and back. It’s not like it’s a long flight. What’ll it take? An hour?”

  “More like fifteen minutes. Just wait until you see the new Global 8000 I bought. It was delivered while you were away.”

  “So, show it to me. Show me your new toy and trust the professional you hired to do his job. You can still sit up in the cockpit with him and keep an eye on everything he does, right?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Great. Then that’s the plan. And we can fly into the island airport instead of Pearson. That way we’ll avoid the 401 completely.”

  “No can do. The Global can land at the island, but we can’t take off from there unless you want to go for a swim. Even if we emptied the fuel tanks to vapour level I’m pretty sure we’d still weigh too much to get off that short of a runway and I’m not prepared to face that big a fear, not even for you. You don’t like the 401 in rush hour? Suck it up.”

  “That’s fair.” I headed for the stairs.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Upstairs to get my backpack and then home. I still haven’t unpacked.”

  *

  Two-point-eight million dollars. It was a staggering amount. And to think my great-great-great-great grandfather had been given hundreds of acres for nothing when he signed up for a land grant and immigrated to the new province of Ontario in 1880. Back then, all of the land around Maple Lake and then some had been his. Unlike so many of the unsuccessful settlers of his time he’d quickly figured out that the British government lied, big time, about the farming suitability of the rocky uneven land and had recognised the value of the trees on his property. Maybe he’d even sold some of them to the Berkshires? Maybe the Jacobean banners and beams in the dining hall ceiling had come from land owned by my family? Great (to the nth degree) grandfather’s ancestors had learned something else – selling off chunks of land was a faster and less labour intensive way to make money. That knowledge had come in handy when Auntie Em and Uncle Doug were faced with Berkshire’s tuition bill. They’d sold a small strip of land with an endangered fish habitat at the shore to the Ontario Ministry of Natural Reso
urces and Forestry for one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. The money was supposed to cover the tuition cost of my two years at Berkshire, with twenty thousand dollars left over for the trip of a lifetime that they’d been planning for most of their lifetimes, but Berkshire’s incidental fees had eaten up almost all of that twenty thousand.

  The appraiser suggested that we sever four two-acre lots, each one with two hundred feet of water frontage. Seven hundred thousand dollars, times four. Two-point-eight million dollars. No wonder Muskoka was now known as the Malibu of the north. Only the ridiculously rich (and usually famous) could afford to buy places on Lake Muskoka or Lake Rosseau’s Millionaire’s Rows, or Lake Joseph’s Billionaire’s Row (where Jack’s cottage was). Would that side of our lake be given a catchy nickname if we sold the lots? Very Well Off Lane? Maple Lake didn’t have the celebrity appeal of the big three lakes, but according to the appraiser it was “pristine” and less publicity hungry stars were starting to search out places just like it. Oh, goody.

  I shook out the little black dress that Jack had given me. Would all of the sand ever come off of it? I should have wrapped it in a plastic bag before shoving it into my backpack.

  “So? Thoughts?” Auntie Em sat on the edge of my bed; her shoulders slumped.

  “I don’t want to do it.”

  “Neither do I, but we’d still be the only ones in our bay. We wouldn’t actually see the places they’d build. Maybe we could find another endangered habitat and contact the Ministry...?”

  “The entire bloody area’s an endangered habitat! And given the province’s deficit they’re not going to sink money into saving another piece of our habitat.” The Ministry deal Auntie Em and Uncle Doug made in the 1990s had been a fluke. A very, very lucky fluke. Times had changed.

  “We could sell just one lot; we don’t need that much money.”

  “We’d hear their boats and you can bet they’d come in here all the time to circle around on their jet skis.” I found an empty hanger and slipped the dress onto it, sand and all. “And they’d need to extend our road to get to their properties, and then there’d be a constant convoy of construction equipment to deal with while they built their place.”