Rory slid under the bed, flicking open the stained black book to the last entry. “Jee-sus.”
The pilot had recorded flying two heli-skiing clients, Darren Baker and Minerva St. James, and a 220lb “food-drop” package up to Joffre, dropping them off to “cache the supplies” with orders to return in two hours for a client pick-up at a lower elevation.
Rory wormed his head and shoulders deeper under the bed frame, to wrestle forth the pile of potatoes, and see what other dark treasures were stashed under the house-cleaner’s temporary nest.
The angry strains of Beethoven’s 9 th suddenly reverberated through the house, followed by an aggressive rapping at the door. Rory recoiled, smashing his head on the underside of the bedframe.
Janna jumped to her feet and shimmied into her clothes like a girl practiced to changing in co-ed locker rooms. She raced for the front door, leaving Rory mumbling something unintelligible behind her.
Ellie Veraceli unholstered her RCMP-issued sidearm. “One more time,” she nodded to her companion.
Carly Hughes rapped hard for the third time on Minty St. James’ front door, just as Janna swung it open, her prepared peaches-and-sweetness smile sliding from her face as she caught the glint of Ellie’s gun. “What the …??”
Behind her, Rory was holding the Pilot Log out like an offering, “Janna, it was your grandmother.”
Carly and Ellie moved into the foyer, closing the door firmly behind them.
“I’ll take that,” said Ellie, eyeing the black book. “And whatever else you found under the bed.”
Rory stepped back, putting the book behind his back. “Aren’t you supposed to be over video-taping the tree-cutting party at Lot 1/9 so you can log all the local insurgents and hippies into your Olympic watchlist files?”
Ellie’s eyes once-overed Rory’s state of undress. Scowled, “And aren’t you supposed to be doing anything apart from having sex with minors?”
“I’m 19,” pouted Janna, pushing her not insubstantial chest forward.
“Yeah, well, you always had a thing for age-inappropriate female athletes,” Ellie spat at her old flame.
Carly, sensing an enhanced level of stress in the air exacerbated by Ellie’s still unholstered gun and the funk of Rory’s three-day stale sweat, stepped between the two women. “Folks, let’s stay focused. Janna, we’re sorry to uhh, invade your privacy, but when we heard movement in the house, we thought maybe the suspects had beaten us to the evidence.”
Rory jumped two steps down into the sunken living room, brandishing a decorative fireplace poker before him. “Enough of this shit. I’ve already been arrested and released. It’s a set-up, Ellie. Come on.”
“They’ll have already left for the ribbon-cutting,” said Carly, looking at the clock on her cellphone. “We’ve got to get over there, and fast.”
Ellie flicked the safety back on her gun. “Rory, put the poker down. And get some pants on. We’ll explain in the car.”
“Are you going to put the siren on?” asked Janna, leaning her head between the front seats of the police cruiser.
“We don’t want to lose the element of surpise,” muttered Ellie, gripping the steering wheel with bloodless knuckles.
Carly was bagging the Pilot Log and the potatoes into separate ziplock bags.
“How did Barb get hold of this stuff, anyway?” Rory squirmed in the backseat of a police cruiser for the second time in as many days.
“She has the cleaning contract at RCMP staff housing. She called me when she discovered evidence pertaining to the Messup/St. James investigation in a garbage bag at the back of Constable Baker’s wardrobe.” Ellie slammed the flat of her hand against the wheel. “Right under my nose. My own guy.”
Carly angled around from the front passenger seat. “I’ve been debriefing Hiroshi since he found Chuck’s body. Then when Minty went missing…” She put her hand gently on Janna’s. “And the only people arrested were an alcoholic backhoe-driving has-been…”
“Hey!”
“…and a 110-pound trophy wife. Hiroshi and I figured it was high time the rats that were stinking up this place were forced out for air.”
Rory’s head was starting to ache — his crash course in sobriety, blue-balls, and efforts at moving the puzzle pieces into place, not to mention the way Ellie was navigating the gravel entrance to Lot 1/9, were taking its toll.
A 300-person crowd, some in “Save The Trees” tees, was gathered behind bright yellow cordon, with RCMP video cameras trained on them. In counterpoint, 20 long lenses were zoned on the VIP deck, where most of Patti Peterson’s party had re-constituted to flash unnaturally whitened smiles, and watch benignly as the mayor did the honorary ribbon-cutting for the future Olympic Medals Plaza with a chainsaw.
Ellie slammed the cruiser door shut, and strode officiously to the front of the dais where the microphone was primed.
“Ladies and Gentleman! Please!” The media swung their lenses, as one, to Ellie, thereby capturing her discrete nod into the crowd that signaled 25 navy-coated municipal by-law officers to move into formation, with five officers each positioned around the dignitaries Patti Peterson, Donald Rumswitz, Ralph Peterson, the mayor, (from whom one officer was firmly retrieving the chainsaw), and at the back of the crowd, Constable Darren Baker.
“We’d like to take this opportunity to make an announcement. I have here warrants for the arrests of five suspects in the murder of or conspiracy to commit murder of Charles Jessup and Minerva St. James. The RCMP has worked hard, in conjunction with our colleagues at the Vancouver Homicide Investigation Division, to resolve this crime and ensure the safety of this community.”
Hiroshi Steinberger and Barb McCann stepped up to the microphone, as Carly turned to read the VIPs their rights.
Barb spoke: “Last week, in an in-camera meeting, the mayor had Constable Darren Baker moved to the top of the employee housing list, ahead of 742 other people.”
There was a collective moan from the crowd.
“He did this at the request of several of the leading figures in this community, namely the late Minerva St. James, Patti and Ralph Peterson, and Donald Rumswitz, all of whom have recently made sizable contributions to the mayor’s 2008 electoral campaign.”
Twenty long-lensed cameras stuttered a rapid-fire cross-examination of the mayor’s blanching face, capturing the precise expression of discomfort as a by-law officer cinched a zap-strap tight around the mayor’s wrists.
“They lobbied for this deal as payment for Constable Baker’s services to them.” Barb, who had cleaned the dirty laundry and picked up the crumbs from Whistler’s elite for two decades, was hitting her stride. “A service that enabled them to shut down the Pemberton Employee Warehouse project, and ensure the next major employee housing would develop land co-owned by Rumswitz and the Petersons, next to the Peterson Putridity Purveyors Waste-Water Treatment Plant.”
Barb had made their beds after they’d slept with their children’s friends, and their friends’ wives, and even been summonsed out by the jilted exes, like Chuck Jessup, to be plied for what inside information she might have, and there was a sweetness to this moment that she was savouring.
“This deal would give Minerva St. James the exclusive rights to sell the units in the development, netting her in excess of $1.3 million in commissions. This development would also net Peterson Putridity Purveyors an indefinite contract to sell off-the-grid methane heat to the 350 units in the development, generating them an annual return of $105,000 a year.”
Barb’s voice was starting to crack, like the knuckles on her chapped hands, dried out from so much exposure to industrial strength cleaning products.
Hiroshi stepped up, resolved, “The only person standing in their way was a man who had staked his entire fortune on employee housing moving up to Pemberton. A man who had been Minty’s business partner on the Pemberton Employee Warehouse, had been her lover, and her conspirator, burying a secret for her for more than 10 years. Chuck Jessup.”
Janna sobbed, “How can they say these things about my Gammy?”
Carly whispered, “Her powers of seduction were legendary. She used them on Chuck. And Constable Baker, when she needed Chuck dead. Even Ralph Peterson, years ago. She’s had Ralph over a barrel for 10 years, with incriminating photographs of them together that she’d had Chuck bury. And that’s how she kept Ralph loyal to using her services in all his real estate deals, making her the most successful realtor in the province.”
“So Ralph killed her?” Janna snuffled.
“No. Constable Baker did. Jilted lover thing. She broke up with him after they dumped Chuck. He was bitter, and figured he could pin it on his old snowboarding nemesis, Rory MacDougall.”
“And you’re telling me my grandmother did all this for some real estate commissions?” Janna asked.
“There’s only two things that make this place turn, Janna. Money. And powder. You’ve just got to know what side you’re on.”
Carly watched quietly as the Cheakamus Four Conspirators and killer Constable Baker were escorted away.
She put her arm around Janna’s shoulders. “Come on, I’ll buy you a latte.”
