Not Safe After Dark

SOME LAND IN FLORIDA

The morning they found Santa Claus floating face down in the pool, I had a hangover of gargantuan proportions. By midday I was starting to feel more human. By late afternoon, on my third Michelob at Chloe’s, I was almost glad to be alive again. Almost. I was also coming to believe that Santa’s death hadn’t been quite the accident it appeared.

‘Happy Hour’ at Chloe’s – a dim, horseshoe-shaped bar adjoining a restaurant – lasts from eleven a.m. to seven p.m., and by late afternoon the desperation usually starts to show through the cracks: the men tell the same joke for the third or fourth time; the women laugh just a little too loudly.

The afternoon after Santa’s death I found myself sitting opposite his small coterie. They were an odd group, the three of them who formed the central core. There was a grey-haired man, about sixty, who always looked ill to me, despite his brick-red complexion; a size fourteen woman in her mid forties who wore size ten clothes; and a pretty blonde, no older than about twenty-five. Maybe I’m being sexist or ageist or whatever, but I could only wonder why she was hanging around with such a bunch of losers. Christ, didn’t she know that if she played her cards right she could have me?

OK, so I’m no oil painting. But despite a bit of a beer gut, I’m reasonably well-preserved for a man of my age and drinking habits. I’ve still got a fine head of hair, even if it is grey. And I may be a bit grizzled and rough-edged, but I’ve been told I’m not without a certain cuddly quality.

Anyway, in my humble opinion, Santa – in reality Bud Schiller, a retired real estate agent from Kingston, Ontario – was a total asshole. Most people only needed to spend a couple of minutes in his company before heading for the hills. But not these three. Oh, no. They laughed at all his jokes; they hung on his every word. Of course, Schiller bought most of the drinks, but I thought his company was a hell of a price to pay for the occasional free beer.

‘So, who do you think did it, then, Jack?’

Al French had slipped onto the empty stool beside me. Al was a cross between a loner and a social butterfly: he seemed to know everyone, but like a butterfly he never lit in any one place for long. He said he was a writer from Rochester, but I’ve never seen any of his books in the shops. If you ask him to be more specific, he just gets evasive.

Al tipped back his bottle and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. He was a skinny little guy with a long nose, slicked back hair and a perpetual five o’clock shadow. Today he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts.

‘It was an accident,’ I said.

‘Bullshit. And you know it.’ Al put his bottle down and whispered in my ear. He sounded as if he’d had a few already. ‘When a jerk like Bud Schiller dies, there has to be something more behind it than mere accident. Come on, buddy, you’re supposed to be the private eye.’

‘True. But I’m on vacation.’

‘A real gumshoe never rests until he discovers the truth and sees that justice is done.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Where d’you read that, Al? An old Black Mask magazine?’

Al looked hurt. ‘I didn’t read it anywhere. I wrote it.’

‘You write private eye stories?’

‘We were talking about Bud Schiller’s murder.’

See what I mean? Evasive. And persistent. I ordered another round of Michelob and offered Al a cigar.

‘Cuban?’ he asked.

‘Uh-huh.’

Al shrugged and took the cigar. ‘What they gonna do, huh? Arrest me for smoking?’

I laughed. ‘Seriously, Al, the cop I talked to said it was an accident. She asked me if I’d seen or heard anything unusual, then she left.’

‘Had you?’

‘No.’

I wasn’t going to tell Al, but I’d spent the evening sitting out in the lanai smoking a cigar, reading Robertson Davies and working my way through a bottle of Maker’s Mark. I could hear the singalong in the distance, and I remember thinking there was something absurd about a bunch of adults singing ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘White Christmas’ under the palms, especially with an asshole like Bud Schiller dressed as Santa leading them along. About nine-thirty, when the singalong ended, the print in my book was too blurred to read any more, and by ten o’clock or thereabouts, like most people in the Whispering Palms Condominium Estate, I was sawing logs.

‘He’d been drinking,’ I went on. ‘Mary Pasquale, the girl in the office, she told me he was three sheets to the wind. He must have been carrying his piano away after the party when he tripped near the edge of the pool and pitched in, head first.’

Al just raised his eyebrows.

He had a point. Even as I repeated the official line, something nagged at the back of my mind. As an ex-cop turned PI, I’ve seen enough weird crime scenes in my time, like the guy they found dead on the subway tracks and couldn’t find his head. But in this case, I had to ask myself two questions: first, wouldn’t Schiller have dropped the piano as he flung his arms out to protect himself from the fall?

And second, perhaps more to the point, why on God’s earth was Santa’s electric piano still plugged in?

‘I’ve noticed you talking to Schiller’s cronies,’ I said to Al quietly, so they wouldn’t overhear. ‘Do you know any of them well enough to think one of them killed him?’

Al shook his head. ‘Not really. Just casting the nets, you know. Ed Brennan, the red-faced one, he’s into the ponies. We went to the dog track at Naples once. But he’s a sore loser. Too desperate. And I played golf with Schiller a couple of times a few years back. He cheats. Did you know that?’

I didn’t rate cheating at golf as high on my list of motives for murder, but you never knew. ‘What about the girl?’

Al raised his eyebrows. ‘Ah-hah! Cherchez la femme, is it? Her name’s Karen Lee. Kindergarten teacher, I think.’

‘I wish my kindergarten teacher had looked like that.’

‘You’d’ve been too young to appreciate it. Besides, if you’ve got any thoughts in that direction, Jack, forget them. I warn you, she’s strictly an ice queen.’

I looked at Karen Lee. She was running her finger around the rim of a tall, frosted glass – abstractedly, rather than in any deliberately erotic way, but it still looked sexy as hell. She sure didn’t look like an ice queen to me.

‘How long has Schiller been coming here?’ I asked.

‘Longer than me, and I’ve been a regular for, what, nine, ten years now.’

‘How did they all hook up with each other?’

‘I don’t know, except they’re all from Canada. Every year Schiller would manage to gather a few luckless characters around him, but, like me, they didn’t usually come back for more. Ed was the first one who did, about four years ago. The blonde was next, year after, I think, then Mama Cass showed up just last year.’

‘What’s her real name?’

‘Ginny Fraser. Three time loser from Smith’s Falls, far as I can gather. Single mother. Welfare.’

‘How can she afford to come here?’

‘Don’t ask me.’

‘What does Ed do?’

‘Retired. Used to be a school caretaker in Waterloo.’

Kindergarten teacher; welfare case; retired caretaker. Not exactly high-paying jobs. And all Canadian. Still, that didn’t mean much. Half of Canada rents condos in Florida in the winter – and Canada’s a big country. I looked at them again, trying to read their faces for signs of guilt. Nothing. Karen was still running her finger around her glass rim. Ed was attempting to tell a joke, the kind, he said loudly, that he ‘just knew old Bud would have appreciated’. Only Ginny was laughing, chins wobbling, tears in her eyes.

I finished my beer, said goodbye to Al and left. When I got back to the condo that evening with a bottle of Chilean wine and a pound of jumbo shrimp for the barbecue, I tried to put Al’s suggestion of murder out of my mind.

But it wouldn’t go away.

The problem was what, if anything, was I going to do about it? Back home, I’m a licensed private investigator, but down here I’m not even a citizen.

Still, that evening out on the lanai, after the wine and the shrimps, I decided to keep my bourbon intake down. A good night’s sleep and no hangover would be the best bet for whatever tomorrow might bring.

The grass pricked my feet as I walked towards the pool the next morning for my pre-breakfast swim. Already the temperature was in the low seventies and the sky was robin’s egg blue.

I stood for a moment on the bridge and looked down into the murky water for the huge turtles and catfish. Evenings, just before dark, I’d got in the habit of feeding them chunks of bread. But there was nobody around this morning.

A couple of hundred yards away, over the swathe of dry grass, the squat, brown condo units were strung out in a circle around the central island, connected to the mainland by a wooden bridge over the narrow moat. The pool, the office and the tennis courts were all on the island. And that was Whispering Palms. Someone had bought some land in Florida and got very rich.

An old man, fuzz of white body hair against leathery skin, was lying out on a lounge chair catching the early rays. The scent of coconut sun screen mingled with the whiff of chlorine. The pool was still marked off by yellow police tape.

I noticed that the office door was ajar, and when I popped my head inside, I saw Mary sitting at her desk, staring into space. I like Mary. She’s about twenty-five, an athletic sort of girl with a swimmer’s upper body and a runner’s thighs. She has a shiny black pony tail and one of those open, friendly faces, the kind you trust on sight.

‘Oh, Mr Erwin. You startled me. You weren’t wanting to use the pool, were you?’

‘I was. But I see it’s still off-limits.’

A frown wrinkled Mary’s smooth, tanned brow. ‘Well, I mean, it’s not on account of the cops or anything,’ she said. ‘It’s just… well, I didn’t think the residents would like it, you know, swimming in a dead man’s water.’ She turned her nose up. ‘So I’ve called maintenance and they’re gonna clean it out and refill it all fresh. Should be ready by this afternoon. Sorry.’

‘No, you’re right. It’s a good idea,’ I said.

Most people probably would be put off by swimming in the same water where an electrocuted Santa Claus had floated around all night alone in the dark, but it didn’t bother me much. I had seen death close up more times than I cared to remember. Besides, people swam in the ocean all the time and thousands have died there over the centuries.

‘Mary,’ I asked, ‘do you happen to know who the last people to see Mr Schiller alive were?’

‘His friends. Mr Brennan, Miss Lee and Miss Fraser. They said he was fine when they left.’

Of course. The ubiquitous trio.

Mary shook her head. ‘Never could understand what Miss Lee saw in that group, pretty girl like her.’

So I was vindicated for thinking exactly the same thing yesterday. And if a young woman like Mary could think it too, it couldn’t be either ageist or sexist, could it?

‘Mind if I ask you something?’ Mary said with a frown.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Mr Schiller was a Canadian citizen, right?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘Well, I was worried, you know, like his relatives might come down and make some sort of lawsuit. What do you think?’

Aha, the great American paranoia raises its ugly head: lawsuits. ‘I’m no legal expert,’ I said.

‘You hear about things like that all the time, don’t you? I mean, they could sue for millions. I could be liable. It would ruin me.’ She laughed. ‘Even if they sued for hundreds it would bankrupt me. I could lose my job. I need this job, Mr Erwin. I need the money to go back to school.’

I smiled as reassuringly as I could and told her I didn’t think that would happen. We didn’t even know if Schiller had any next of kin, for a start. And she couldn’t be responsible for his behaviour when he was drunk.

‘But the cops said he must have tripped over that crack in the tiles.’

‘What crack?’

‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

We went outside. The old guy in the lounge chair was still working on his skin cancer. Near the side of the pool, Mary pointed out the crack. It didn’t look like much to me. I put my foot in front of it and slid forward slowly. My big toe slipped right over the crack and the rest of my foot followed. I could hardly even feel the rough edge of the tile. ‘It’s hardly enough to trip over,’ I said to Mary.

‘He was wearing flip-flops.’

‘Santa Claus was wearing flip-flops?’

She nodded.

‘I suppose that might make a difference. Even so… It’s still a long way from the water. Maybe six feet. Schiller was a little guy, only around five-four, wasn’t he?’

‘Yeah. I thought about that, too. But he must have been walking fast, or running, then he tripped and skidded in. Those tiles can get pretty slippery, especially if they’re wet.’

‘But wouldn’t the piano just rip out of the socket?’

Mary shrugged. ‘It was one of those ultra-light things,’ she said. ‘And it had a long cord.’

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why the hell Santa Claus should be running towards the swimming pool in the dark with a live electric piano in his arms, no matter how tight he was or how light the piano.

A heron landed by the side of the moat. Just for a moment, I felt a slight shiver run up my spine to the hairs at the back of my neck. It was a sign I recognized. I was being watched. And not by the heron or the sunbather.

Mary turned and walked back to the office, sandals clip-clopping against the tiles. I followed her, admiring the way her thigh muscles rippled with each step. I felt strangely detached, though; I could admire the sculpted, athletic beauty of her body, but I didn’t feel attracted to her sexually. But, then, it had been a long time since I had been attracted to anyone sexually, except maybe Karen Lee.

Mary sat down at her desk again.

‘Look,’ I said, leaning forward and resting my hands on the warm wood, ‘I know this might sound strange to you, but I’d like you to do me a favour without telling anyone or asking too many questions. Do you think you could do that?’

Mary nodded slowly, tentatively. ‘Depends,’ she said, ‘on what it is.’

When I got back to the condo, it was time for breakfast, but without the swim, my appetite wasn’t up to much. I put on a pot of coffee, drank a glass of orange juice and ate a bowl of high-fibre bran. The healthy life.

Usually I took my second cup out to the lanai and worked on one of the cryptics from the Sunday Times book of crosswords. That was one thing always annoyed me about American newspapers: you couldn’t find a cryptic in any of them I’d seen. This morning, though, I took the two sheets of paper that Mary had printed out for me.

OK, so Schiller was alone at the pool after the sing-along, or so Ed, Karen and Ginny said. Anyone could have gone there in the dark, killed him and tried to make it look like an accident. And at least three people knew he was there: Ed, Karen and Ginny. Were they telling the truth?

There was some risk – there always is with murder – but it was minimal. Most of the residents are elderly and they’re usually in bed by ten. This isn’t like some of the places where you get kids drinking all night and skinny-dipping; there are no kids at Whispering Palms.

First, I looked over the list of condo owners I had persuaded Mary to print for me.

Schiller’s unit was owned on paper by Gardiner Holdings, registered in Grand Cayman Island. If that didn’t set alarm bells ringing in an old gumshoe’s mind, what would? But I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it meant.

Ginny Fraser’s unit was a timeshare, though Ginny herself wasn’t listed as owning any time.

Ed Brennan’s unit was registered to a Dr Joseph Brady in Waterloo, Canada, and Karen Lee’s to a travel agency called EscapeItAll, based in Sarasota.

One way or another, these four had all ended up at Whispering Palms, Fort Myers, Florida, and I was damned if I could see any reason other than pure chance.

So which one of them did it? And why? Or was it someone else?

I pushed my glasses back up the bridge of my nose and reached for the telephone. Being a private investigator from Toronto has some advantages in Florida.

When I’d finished on the phone I felt the need to go out for a drive. Not far. Maybe over the skyway to Sanibel and Captiva. Lunch at the Mucky Duck. Seafood and Harp lager. After all, I was on vacation, whatever Al said about gumshoes and the search for truth and justice.

But when I walked out to the car, I saw Karen Lee bent over the front tyre of her red Honda rental just a few parking spots down, white cotton shorts stretched taut over her ass.

I stood and admired the view for a while then walked towards her and asked if she could use any help. Why not? She could only tell me to get lost, that she was perfectly capable of fixing the tyre herself. Or she could accept my offer graciously.

She did the latter.

Turning on her haunches and shielding her eyes from the sun, she smiled and said, ‘Why, thanks, yes. I’d appreciate that.’ She had dimples at each corner of her mouth. Cute.

Then she stood up and brushed the dust off her hands. She was wearing a pink tank top, and a little sweat had darkened the cotton between her breasts.

‘Flat,’ she said.

A facetious reply formed in my mind, but before I could voice it she went on, ‘The tyre. I should have done something about it last night. I thought something was wrong, maybe a slow leak. But I couldn’t be bothered. Then, when I came out just now I saw it was flat.’

‘No problem,’ I said, and in no time we took off the flat and put on the spare.

‘Thanks a lot,’ said Karen, smiling. ‘It’s not that I’m helpless or anything. I mean, I know how to change a tyre. But-’

‘Forget it,’ I told her. ‘My pleasure.’

‘What I was going to say was it was nice to have a bit of company.’ And she smiled again, giving me the full benefit of her dimples and baby blues. The front of her tank top was even damper now and I could see beads of moisture on the tops of her breasts, between the tiny hairs. She had her hair tied back and fixed with barrettes, but a few strands had come loose and stuck to her flushed face. Some ice queen.

‘Hot, isn’t it,’ she said, waving her hand in front of her face. ‘Look, why don’t you come in and clean up? It’s the least I can do.’

I could have gone to my own place, just a few buildings down, but I’m no fool. I followed her up the steps to her second-storey unit. Inside, it was pretty much the same layout as mine: open-plan kitchen and living room, two bedrooms – one with its own bathroom – guest bathroom, and the lanai out front.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ Karen said, picking up a few magazines scattered on the sofa. ‘I wasn’t expecting company. Please go ahead. Use the bathroom.’

The bathroom was full of the mysterious paraphernalia of feminine beauty – potions, eyebrow pencils, little sponges, cotton wool, Q-tips. I washed the sweat and grime off my hands and face and flushed the toilet, using the noise to cover up the sound as I went through the drawers and cupboards. There was nothing out of the ordinary: soap, deodorant, shampoo, talcum, tampons, Advil, Maalox. The only interesting item was a bottle of Prozac. These days it seems half the world’s on Prozac.

When I got back to the living room, Karen had just finished tidying things into neat piles. She smiled. ‘Cold drink?’

‘A Coke would be great.’

‘I’ll just go freshen up.’ She looked down at her body and spread her arms, then seemed embarrassed by the gesture. In fact, now we were inside, her manner had grown much more nervous and I didn’t know how to put her at ease. Too many movies about the nice guy next door turning out to be a psycho, I suppose.

‘I’ll help myself,’ I said. ‘You go wash up.’

‘OK… I’ll… er… It’s in the fridge. I won’t be long. Are you sure you’ll be OK?’

‘I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’

When she went into her bathroom, the lock clicked behind her. As soon as I heard the shower start up, I began a quick search, not knowing what the hell I was looking for. If Schiller had been murdered, Karen had to be a suspect. Much as I hoped she hadn’t done it, she had been one of the three to know where he was after the sing-along. And how drunk he was.

All I found out was that Karen was halfway through The Concrete Blonde; that she more than likely slept alone; that she favoured casual clothes but had a couple of expensive dresses; that she didn’t seem to watch videos very much; and that her musical tastes extended from Mozart to Alanis Morissette.

When she came out, she was wearing red shorts and a white shirt. Her hair was still damp from the shower and it hung in long hanks, framing her pale oval face.

‘There,’ she said, hoisting herself onto a stool at the kitchen counter. ‘That’s better. What a start to the day.’

I poured her a Coke. ‘I guess you must still be pretty upset about your friend dying?’ I said.

‘Bud. Yes. How did you…? Of course. I’ve seen you in Chloe’s, haven’t I? Always alone. No wife? Girlfriend?’

A definite hint of flirtation there, I thought. ‘My wife died three years ago. Auto accident.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry. That must be terrible.’

I shrugged. ‘There’s good days and bad. Were you very close to Mr Schiller?’

She looked away. ‘Not really.’

‘I don’t mean to pry or anything,’ I said, ‘but were you… I mean, what drew you to him?’

‘I don’t know. We weren’t an item, if that’s what you’re getting at.’ She blushed. ‘I’d just been through a painful divorce. I was depressed. I suppose I came down here to escape… I don’t know… I guess maybe I succeeded. Bud and the others, they were my escape. It was all fun. No demands. Bud was a laugh. He never took anything seriously.’

‘You were one of the last people to see him alive, weren’t you?’

Karen nodded. ‘Yes. With Ed and Ginny.’

‘What happened?’

‘We’d all had a bit too much to drink. When everyone else left after the carols, we started joking around by the pool. I fell in. I wanted to go home and change out of my wet clothes, so the three of us came to my place. Bud said he had a couple of things to do, then he was going to turn in.’

‘Did he say what he had to do?’

‘No. Just a couple of things.’

‘Do you think he could have been meeting someone?’

‘I suppose so… I…’ She looked me in the eye. ‘Why?’

‘Just curious. How did he seem?’

‘He was very drunk.’ She frowned, then went on. ‘You know, I’ve thought time and time again that we should have done something, that I should have said something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, made him come with us, something like that. Somehow I feel responsible.’

‘Don’t be silly. There’s no way you could have known.’

‘Even so… I can’t help feeling guilty.’ She held her hands up. ‘Look, I don’t know how we got into this, but it’s a beautiful day out there and I don’t want to get even more depressed.’

Interview over. ‘You’re right,’ I said, getting up. ‘I’d better be going myself.’

She walked me to the door. ‘Thanks for the help. It was nice talking to you.’

‘You too.’ Before she could close the door on me, I turned. ‘Don’t think this too presumptuous of me,’ I began, ‘but how would you like to come out for dinner or a drink tonight?’

‘Tonight?’ Her face dropped. ‘Oh, I can’t. I’m busy.’

I started to turn away. ‘It’s OK. I understand. Believe me. My mistake, especially after what you said about the divorce and all. I’m sorry.’

But she rested her warm hand on my arm. ‘It’s nothing like that,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to think I’m making an excuse. I’m not. I really do have something on tonight. The three of us are having a sort of wake. I couldn’t miss it.’

Maybe this wasn’t the brush off, then. Heart thumping, fear of rejection bringing me out in a sweat, I persevered. ‘How about tomorrow night then?’

She smiled. ‘I’d love to. Really, I would.’

‘Great. Do you like seafood?’

‘Sure.’

‘How about the Big Fin?’

‘Fine. Look, I’ll meet you at the bar there at seven. I’ve got some running around to do first, and I’m not sure if I’ll have time to get back here. OK?’

‘Fine. Big Fin. Bar. Seven.’ I walked off, grinning like an idiot.

The phone started ringing, the way they do, the minute I stuck my key in the door that afternoon. I put the groceries I’d bought at Publix on the kitchen counter and picked up the extension.

‘Jack, it’s Mike.’

My partner. ‘You were quick.’

‘Well, partly it’s a slow week.’

‘And…?’

‘And partly there’s not a hell of a lot to report.’

‘Go ahead anyway.’

‘Nothing on any of the people on the list. Squeaky clean, every one of them.’

‘What about Schiller?’

‘That’s the only interesting part. As far as I can make out, nobody knows him. I checked out the Kingston address you gave me. It’s owned by a couple called Renard. They confirmed that a man called Bud Schiller rents it from them and the cheques come in regularly.’

‘Where from?’

‘That they wouldn’t tell me. Anyway, I got the name of the guy next door to the Schiller place, and he said the house is empty most of the time.’

Now what the hell did that mean? ‘Anything else?’

‘That doctor in Waterloo, Joseph Brady, he checks out. He’s Edward Brennan’s family doctor, has been for years, and he rented the condo to Ed for the first time a few years back. Apparently the poor guy needed to recuperate from some illness – nothing specific, you know doctors – but I got the impression this Ed character had suffered various health problems on and off over-’

‘Mental or physical?’

‘Can’t say. But Brady’s a family doctor, Jack, not a shrink.’

‘OK. Go on.’

‘So it was a kind of convalescent holiday. He liked it and kept coming back.’

‘How about EscapeItAll?’

‘Perfectly legit. They own a few condos down the Gulf Coast and rent them through local agencies. Quite a lot of the Toronto travel agents do business with them, and the ones I talked to said they never had any problems.’

‘And the timeshare?’

‘Also legit. There is one thing, though. Virginia Fraser, one of the names you gave me?’

‘Right.’ Ginny Fraser.

‘I talked to the woman she rented from, and it turns out that the dates Fraser got weren’t available originally.’

‘So?’

‘So she paid over the odds.’

‘Ah-ha. On welfare, too. Is that all?’

‘Just about. Gardiner Holdings, that company in the Caymans? Looks like it’s the front of a front of a front. I couldn’t get even get a whiff of the real movers and shakers behind it.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Thanks a lot Mike. You did good work.’ Then I hung up and mulled over what I’d learned.

‘Gee, I dunno, Mr Erwin. I really shouldn’t be doing this,’ Mary said when she found the right key.

‘It’ll have to be cleaned out, anyway,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I know. It’s just… Still, you are a licensed private investigator, right?’

‘Right. And maybe we can check on next of kin, make sure no one’s gonna come down and file a lawsuit against you.’ I hated pressuring her that way, but I had to get inside Schiller’s condo if I was to get any further. I was now more or less convinced that someone – either one of his three pals or someone he had arranged to meet – had gone to the pool and murdered him. It would help if I could find out whether he had anything to hide.

Still biting her lip, Mary turned the key in the lock.

Schiller certainly travelled light. A quick search of the master bedroom revealed only warm-climate clothes and a tattered Tom Clancy paperback on the bedside table. No papers in the drawers, no photographs, nothing. The cops must have taken his passport. The bathroom held only what a single man’s bathroom would, and the guest bedroom was empty except for the bed, stripped down to its mattress. Kitchen and fridge contained the usual – milk, bread, condiments, a couple of TV dinners, cutlery, booze. By the looks of it, Schiller ate out a lot.

In the living room, the stereo, TV and VCR took up one corner. A cabinet under the VCR held a stock of tapes. One of the movies was from a local rental store, and it was overdue by two days. The tape was still in the machine.

‘I’ll take this back tomorrow,’ I said to Mary, casually slipping the tape back in the box.

Mary just nodded and glanced nervously at the door. ‘I think that’s about all,’ I said, ‘if you want to go now.’ Mary was out the front door like a shot. ‘You didn’t find anything about next of kin?’

‘Nothing. No news is good news. Don’t worry.’ She flashed an anxious smile. ‘I’ll try not to.’ And I hurried back to call the courier company. It was late, but with luck, they could get a package to Mike overnight.

‘Jack?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Mike.’

‘Hang on… Just a minute…’ I sat up quickly. It felt like I had to drag myself a long way back from God knew where. I rubbed my eyes and checked my watch. Three-thirty in the afternoon. I must have dozed off after lunch. I opened the fridge and popped the tab on a can of Michelob, then picked up the phone again. ‘Yeah, go ahead, Mike. Sorry about that.’

‘No problem. I took the video down to Ident first thing this morning. It was a bit of a mess – must have been a popular movie down there – but Harry found a match you might be interested in.’

‘Schiller’s got a record?’

‘Not Schiller. The only prints we could find on file belong to a Sherman Smith.’

‘That rings a bell.’

‘It should do,’ he went on. ‘Remember that land scam twenty years ago? Smith defrauded hundreds of people out of their life savings.’

‘What was it, some land in Florida turned out to be swamp?’

‘Something like that. Smith disappeared with the money and was never seen or heard of again. In all there must’ve been over two or three million bucks.’

I whistled. ‘What happened?’

‘The Mounties followed the paper trail for a while, then they lost it. Smith never surfaced again.’

Except as Schiller, I thought. He probably split his time between Florida and the Cayman Islands, travelling on a phony Canadian passport but not staying in Canada for long. Too risky. ‘Do we recognize any of the victims’ names?’ I asked Mike.

I could almost hear him grinning over the phone. ‘I thought you’d never ask. As a matter of fact we do: a Mr Edward Brennan.’

Karen was sitting at a stool at the bar sipping something colourful and cluttered through a candy-striped straw. She was wearing a green silk off-the-shoulder number, one I had seen in her closet, with her legs crossed. I caught an eyeful of slim, tanned thigh as I walked towards her. She smiled and said hello. Her shiny blonde hair fell over her shoulder on one side, and she had tucked the other side behind her ear, fixing it there with a pink flower that matched her lipstick. Nice touch.

I must admit I’d been relieved to find out it was Ed who had the connection with Smith, not Karen. It didn’t mean he was the killer, of course, but it sure gave him one hell of a motive. I still had a lot of questions for Karen, though, and I wasn’t sure how, or if, I could mix business and pleasure.

I ordered a bourbon on the rocks and we walked through to the table. It was a tacky-looking kind of restaurant, with nets hanging from the ceilings and old barrels converted into chairs, but the food was always superb.

Karen examined the menu, then she said, ‘I’d like to start with some oysters. How about you?’

‘Fine by me.’ Oysters! For an ice queen? Maybe Al French had an agenda of his own? So we ordered a dozen oysters and a bottle of Californian champagne, followed by swordfish steak for me and coquilles Saint-Jacques for Karen. She avoided my eyes as the waiter lit candles on the table.

We chatted about this and that. Karen seemed nervous, on edge, attention all over the place, so much so that she seemed skittish. But just when I thought I’d lost her, she’d look me in the eye and come back with the kind of remark that showed she was there all the time, maybe even a step or two ahead.

‘Did you know Bud, Ed or Ginny back home?’ I asked when the subject came around to last night’s wake.

She shook her head. ‘One rule about a world you escape to is that neither it nor any of its inhabitants can exist in the world you regularly live in.’ She fingered the napkin ring on the table as she spoke, shadows flitting in the depths of her eyes.

‘I can understand that,’ I said, thinking it sounded like something out of a computer-game manual. The oysters arrived and we helped ourselves. ‘I suppose it’s an escape for me too.’

‘Is it? In what way?’

‘I used to come down here with my wife.’

Karen frowned. ‘Then it’s not an escape you’re after,’ she said. ‘It’s catharsis.’

‘Maybe you’re right. If so, it hasn’t happened yet.’

She put her hand lightly on mine. ‘Give it time, Jack. Give it time.’

We finished the oysters, and the main courses arrived. I tried to find a way to steer the conversation back to Bud Schiller. As usual, I couldn’t find a subtle way, so halfway through my swordfish, during a temporary lull, I said, ‘Remember when you told me the three of you went to your room and Bud stayed out by the pool?’

She nodded. ‘And you thought he might be meeting someone?’

‘That’s right. Did any of the others leave your room at any time?’

‘Not until later.’ She blushed. ‘Ed must have passed out there. I found him on the couch in the morning.’

‘Did Ed ever mention knowing Bud from before?’

Karen looked down at her plate and speared a scallop. ‘No.’ Then she looked back at me and her eyes widened. ‘What are you suggesting? That Ed murdered Bud? You can’t be serious?’

‘I don’t know, Karen. I’m just curious, that’s all.’

‘But why? Why are you interested? Are you a cop?’

‘I’m a private investigator,’ I told her, ‘but I’m not licensed to operate down here.’ I shrugged. ‘It just seemed suspicious to me, that’s all.’

I paused for a moment, then I jumped right in and told her about Schiller’s true identity and the land scam, in which one Edward Brennan lost his life’s savings. When I finished, Karen was pale. She excused herself to visit the washroom.

When she came back, she looked a lot better. She didn’t wear much make-up, but she had given herself a fresh coat of the basics and looked good as new.

‘I’m sorry for overreacting,’ she said. ‘Honestly, I’d never really considered that Bud’s death could have been deliberate. I suppose I was too busy blaming myself. But Ed…?’

‘I can’t be sure,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t look good. Are you certain he never left your condo?’

‘He went over to his own unit to pick up some Scotch. I’d run out. But he wasn’t gone for more than ten minutes.’

‘Ten minutes was enough.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Tell the authorities, I suppose.’

She nodded slowly. ‘That would be the right thing to do, of course. But poor Ed. I don’t like the thought of him spending the rest of his life in jail. Can’t you just… you know… let it go?’

‘However much of an asshole Bud Schiller was, he didn’t deserve to die like that.’

‘You’re right,’ she whispered. ‘I’d like to go home.’

As I followed Karen’s Honda back to Whispering Palms, I was beginning to think that I’d blown my chances of a pleasant end to the evening. But she invited me up for a nightcap.

Once we were inside, she busied herself preparing the drinks, flitting nervously between fridge and cocktail cabinet, chattering brightly away. Ever since we got back, I’d sensed a certain tension between us and I thought it was sexual. When she walked past me to open the sliding glass door to the lanai, I put my hand out and touched her shoulder. She turned, gave me a swift peck on the cheek and said she had to go to the bathroom.

I gazed out at the dark island beyond the lanai, the Christmas lights on the bridge, drink in hand, waiting for her. What did the peck on the cheek mean? Was it promise or consolation? You’re an old fool, Jack Erwin, I told myself. You should stick to your bourbon and blues.

Then I heard a door open behind me. Thinking it was Karen coming back, I turned around.

Ed Brennan stood there, a baseball bat in his hands.

Before I had time to react, the front door opened and Ginny Fraser walked in carrying a long kitchen knife.

Karen came out of the bathroom. She wasn’t carrying any weapon and she looked as if she had been crying. ‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘What are you going to do?’ I asked, trying to sound more confident than I felt. ‘Hit me on the head with the baseball bat then stab me and pretend it was an accident? Just to protect Ed here? Come on, Karen, he’s not worth it.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Karen said. ‘You think you know everything but you don’t. You don’t know anything.’

My breath caught in my throat. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

Then a strange thing happened. I saw Karen flash a quick, sad glance at Ed, and he just seemed to deflate right before my eyes. His baseball bat dropped to the floor. ‘He’s right, Karen,’ he said. ‘We can’t do this. We’re not killers.’

I looked at Ginny Fraser. She dropped the kitchen knife and flopped onto the sofa.

After I got my breath back, I turned to Karen and said, ‘Right, now we’ve got that charade out of the way, will someone tell me what’s going on here?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ed said for the third time. ‘I don’t know what came over us. We were desperate. I still can’t imagine what made us think we could kill an innocent man. When Karen phoned from the restaurant and told us you knew… we just panicked.’

‘I’m sorry I deceived you,’ Karen said. ‘I admit I was trying to find out if you knew anything. After I saw you and the woman from the office looking at the pool yesterday, I thought you might be trouble. So I arranged the puncture.’

Well that makes two of us acting from impure motives, I thought. ‘So you’re all sorry,’ I said. ‘Whoop-a-de-doo-dah. Now would someone tell me why I shouldn’t call the police right now?’

‘We can’t stop you,’ Ed said. ‘We won’t stop you. In a way, it would be a relief.’

I poured three fingers of Karen’s bourbon into my glass and settled down on the sofa beside Ginny. Karen and Ed sat opposite in matching easy chairs. ‘Just tell me what it’s all about,’ I said. ‘Who really did kill Schiller?’

‘We all did,’ Ed answered.

I looked at Karen and Ginny, who both nodded.

Jesus Christ, I thought, it’s Murder on the Orient Express all over again.

‘Ginny and I pushed him into the pool,’ Ed went on. ‘He thought we were playing games. Karen plugged in the piano, and we all lowered it in after him. After that all we had to do was lie to the police and tell them he was still alive when we left him.’

‘What I really don’t understand,’ I went on, ‘is why. I know Smith cheated Ed out of his life’s savings, but what did he ever do to you, Karen?’

‘My father,’ she said flatly. ‘Vernon Connant. You’ll find his name on your list. Lee’s my married name. Smith swindled him out of every penny we had. When the news broke he killed my mother, then himself. With a shotgun. I was five at the time. Just before he put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, he looked at me. He was going to kill me, too, but at the last moment, he couldn’t do it. I’ll never forget that look. I’ve spent my whole life trying, one shrink to another, pills, the lot. You can’t tell me that Sherman Smith didn’t deserve to die.’

I took a long sip of bourbon and let the fire fill my mouth before swallowing. ‘What about you, Ginny? You weren’t on the list, either.’

‘My husband. Harvey Pellier. I went back to my maiden name.’

‘What happened?’

Ginny gave a harsh laugh. ‘Nothing quite so dramatic as Karen’s story. Harvey lost everything, and it broke his spirit. He left us. Just walked out and never came back. We hadn’t been really well off, but we’d been happy. When Harvey left, the family just fell apart. I couldn’t hold it together. The kids did badly at school, started hanging with a bad crowd. You know the sort of thing. They drifted into drugs, street life. Will died of an overdose. Jane’s still somewhere out on the streets. I haven’t heard from her in years.’

After a few moments of silence, Ed ran his hands through his hair and said he wouldn’t mind a drink. Karen got him a Scotch on the rocks. Then he began. ‘I bumped into Smith about four years ago. Pure chance. Coincidence. I just couldn’t believe it. I suppose, when you think about it, you never know who’s going to be renting from who. Anyway, I saw him, after over fifteen years, and do you know what?’

I shook my head.

‘He didn’t recognize me. I mean, you ought to recognize people whose lives you ruined, don’t you think? Because of him I had a nervous breakdown, I got hooked on the booze, lost job after job. You name it.’ He thumped his chest with his fist. ‘Then, when I began to relive what he’d done to me, I realized the anger was still there. Only now I had the advantage. But I couldn’t kill him. Not alone.’ He glanced at Karen and Ginny. ‘When it first happened – I mean twenty years ago – lots of us had meetings with lawyers, and I became close to Karen’s father and Ginny’s husband. But Smith had never seen Karen or Ginny. So I got in touch with them, told them the situation and we planned what to do. We befriended him, one by one, pretended we didn’t know each other, then we killed him.’

Ed fell silent and the others looked at me. It was hard to imagine the havoc Sherman Smith had wreaked on these lives, hard not to sympathize with the three of them, but who was I to judge?

‘It’s up to you now, Jack,’ Karen said, seeming to sense my dilemma. ‘You know the whole story now. We’re guilty of premeditated murder.’ She glanced at Ed. ‘If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think it’s helped any of us. I don’t think it’s going to make our lives any easier to bear – probably the opposite – but it’s done and you’re the only one who knows about it. We can’t kill you, but we’re not going to give ourselves up willingly, either. It’s your decision.’

So whether I liked it or not, it was up to me. I finished my bourbon, then I nodded and went back to my condo.

Almost exactly one year to the day later, I found myself in Chloe’s for ‘Happy Hour’. There were one or two faces I recognized around the bar, but most of the people were strangers. I still didn’t know why I kept coming back year after year. Especially this year. Maybe Karen had been right and I was looking for catharsis.

Or for Karen.

I looked across the bar at where I had first really noticed her last year, running her finger around the rim of a glass. Now a chain-smoking brunette with a hard face sat there instead.

‘Hi, Shamus.’

Al French slipped onto the empty stool beside me.

‘Beer?’ I offered.

‘My turn.’ Al ordered two beers. ‘Did you ever get to the bottom of that mysterious death?’ he asked.

‘Which one was that?’

‘You know. Last year. That asshole Bud Schiller.’

‘Oh, him.’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think there was anything mysterious about it at all. I think he was drunk, he tripped and he fell into the pool.’

‘Yeah, and he pulled the piano in after him just for good measure. Come on, Jack.’

I shrugged. ‘You know, Al, sometimes the strangest of accidents do happen. Did I ever tell you about the guy they found dead on the subway tracks and couldn’t find his head?’