Flush Read online

  Larry Stokes’ soprano voice trilled an annoying echo, “You were at the crime scene.”

  Their anger was palpable. Surely I hadn’t been the cause of it. What was going on? With Ralph Creston almost on top of me and Larry Stokes peering around the massive bulk of his body, I slowly stood up, trying to find some airspace. They were so close to me I could actually feel Ralph’s body heat. My mind lingered on that for a second before I registered that I was in deep doo-doo. Their anger had nothing to do with me, I knew that, but still, I was great at feeling guilty and I did. I tried to rise above the crippling feelings because even though my heart was knocking loudly in my rib cage, I knew that in this scenario it would be best if I acted “as if.” As if I had full right to be here. As if I knew what I was doing. As if I hadn’t been to a crime scene unbidden. As if I had hadn’t pretended I was someone else. I needed to be strong and powerful, not weak and ashamed.

  I tucked some hair behind my ear and held out my hand, “Robin MacFarland. I believe we met earlier today. Ralph Creston, wasn’t it?” I smiled playfully and tried to look impish and brazen at the same time.

  “And Larry Stokes,” piped up a thin voice from behind Creston, his head appearing from behind Creston’s back. With fascination I watched the three bristles over his mouth twitch.

  Creston’s manners had the best of him. His smile met his eyes as he engulfed my hand for the second time today. Maybe he liked me. “Nice to meet you. Properly. So tell me, who are you and what were you doing at my crime scene?”

  As he talked, I could see Radcliffe’s apartment unfold behind his eyes. His demeanor changed rapidly and his irises returned to a hard slate. I watched him carefully as his inner film of the memory of our previous interaction played out. “And why were you impersonating a police officer?”

  Impersonating a police officer was a very serious accusation. If charged, I could go to jail. With my smile now frozen on my face I continued on playing my “as if” game. I extricated my hand from his huge one and my heart thumped once and then seemed to stop altogether. I had to stop drinking; it was totally messing with my body.

  “Ralph, Ralph, Ralph,” I said, buying time, and hoping to sound coy, “I never once said I was a police officer, now did I?’ I tried to use the tone I used when admonishing Lucky, slightly cajoling yet firm. “You came to your conclusions all on your own. I can’t help what assumption you and your staff made.” I started enjoying myself. It was sort of fun to be feisty.

  Larry Stokes bobbed his head again. A doughy crumb was embedded in his mustache. My stomach turned. I tried not to look at it.

  On the whole, I felt I was doing well, Creston seemed to be listening, so on I prattled, “You know what they say about the word ‘assuming’—it makes an ass out of you and me.”

  I noticed a slight sag of his football player’s shoulder as he acquiesced to my logic. He took a deep breath and looked at me, deadpan. “What were you doing there?”

  I finally came clean. “I’m a reporter with the Express and was assigned the story on Everwave—you know—the opening of the valves ceremony. That was Monday but the story just came out today. Maybe you saw it? When my editor heard this morning that Radcliffe had died, it was natural that I be assigned to the follow up story.”

  So I’d left out a few details.

  Creston took in my story, listening without moving, his unyielding grey eyes locked onto mine. It was like I was standing in front of a Mac truck. I could almost hear the engine turning the machine of his brain, heading towards me.

  “How did you get in to my crime scene?”

  “It was a snap,” I boasted. But when I saw the skin around his eyes tighten I quickly dropped the smug routine. I had to remember, I was in big trouble. I had been caught in a sort-of lie and I had to talk my way out of it.

  “I held my press pass in my hand so that it was barely visible and didn’t give the cop guarding the scene time to look at it. I stood up straight and said “Toronto, mumble mumble, investigations.”

  “And just like that you were in.”

  “Yup.”

  Creston turned to Stokes and made a writing motion with one hand, the gesture indicating that Stokes should make a note to talk to the rookie who had been so lax in his duties. Stokes fumbled in his pocket, found his phone and started tapping.

  “And how did you know which apartment?”

  “I Googled the white pages. From my phone. In my car while I was figuring out how to get in.”

  Creston harrumphed and scrunched up his lower lip while he thought. His eyebrows flattened, defeated, and his head tilted to the right. All made sense, his facial expression said. I took a deep breath and let the butterflies in my stomach settle down.

  Cops had been coming and going around us while I was being grilled by Creston. The rhythm of the room had been barely interrupted by the three of us standing by the metal bench near the front door. The two cops had gotten so close to me, that I had backed up and could now feel the cold steel of the bench digging into the backs of my knees. Coffee was being poured and computers were being worked. Suddenly the door that Creston and Stokes had barreled from was opened and a round man with a balding head and sloping shoulders came out, his sleeves rolled up and a piece of paper in his hand. He had an iguana tattoed on his forearm. This was probably Stapleton, the head honcho of this shop.

  “Robin MacFarland?”

  “Yes, that’s me,” I said tentatively.

  “You given your statement yet?”

  “What statement?” asked Creston. His voice escalated. “Reporters don’t give statements.”

  “Statement?” bobbled Stokes.

  “No, sir,” I answered.

  “Come into my office,” said Stapelton.

  “Reporters don’t give statements to the Staff Sergeant, either,” exclaimed Stokes.

  But I was already hightailing it into Stapleton’s office and after a millisecond of hesitation, Creston and Stokes followed, close on my heels. Stapleton acknowledged them with a warning. “No more pissing matches. One a day is my limit. It might be your crime scene but this is my witness.” He grudgingly let them into his sanctuary.

  As Stapleton edged sideways behind his scratched metal desk, the remaining three of us juggled for real estate in the tiny office. The police budget looked a little tight if this was how they treated the boss. Creston settled his firm butt on a bar stool, smack in the centre of the miniature urban sprawl. Sidekick Stokes stuffed his lumpy ass onto the comparative broad field of a leather chair, obviously bequeathed by a demolished hotel lobby. I stood leaning against a bookcase.

  I was proud of my location. No one knew better than I did the value of positioning. Location location location. I should have been a real estate agent. I could be putting together mega deals for condo developments along St. Clair or the Distillery District. I would drive a fancy silver car with a built in GPS system and an indoor temperature gauge, like Cindy’s. Surround-sound speakers. Bluetooth this and that, whatever Bluetooth was. A Mercedes. But no, the reality was I was such a lonely, old, fat alcoholic who was such a failure that I had even screwed up internet dating. How does one even achieve that? How had pushing “send” end up here? I had to stop drinking. Had the naturopath emailed me back? It would be rude to check my phone, here, of all places.

  Stapleton pulled out a well-thumbed notebook from his inside breast pocket and poised a pen above it. He was going to write? His single bushy eyebrow did a rap dance maneuver as he looked questioningly at me. I shifted back and forth on my feet. “Well?” he said. When I didn’t manage to speak, he repeated, “Well?” and tapped his pen on his notebook. “Well?”

  I could only think of that old joke about the three holes in the ground; well, well, well. I tried not to laugh and smoothed my hands down my sides. My palms stuck to my pants. What was that material anyway? Polyester? Was I really wearing polye
ster stretch pants? Geez, I was getting so decrepit. No, I consoled myself, everyone wore polyester these days. Wool pants were out. Unless you were rich and thin and shopped at Holt Renfrew on Bloor Street. Then you wore camel-coloured wool and satin-lined pants with oxblood-coloured boots and a matching bag.

  Stapleton cleared his throat. He was becoming impatient.

  My brain felt pillaged. “I really don’t know where to begin. It’s a fairly long story.”

  “Okay.” He exhaled and stood up, his bald head acquiring a row of horizontal lines reflected from the fluorescent tubes above. “Let’s go to an interview room, where there’s a table and chairs for everyone.”

  Like meek sheep the three of us followed him out of his office with me sandwiched between Stapleton and Creston. The air between me and Creston felt like thick cotton wool filled with miniscule sparks of electricity. I let myself think “Zowie” for a minute. We paraded down a long hall, past some administration offices, and stopped in front of a room that had a grey metal door and a window filled with high impact glass interwoven with wire. Stapleton pulled out a silver key and thrust it into the lock on the brushed stainless handle. It opened smoothly. He stepped aside and nodded for us to enter ahead of him.

  As I walked by the window in the door I flashed back to my long ago—very long ago—days, at Harbord Collegiate. There was a window exactly like this one on the door leading into the cafeteria in the basement. I remembered how one day the quarterback from the football team—what was his name anyway?—lost his temper and smashed his fist into the glass. The shattered window hung together with wires, the star-burst fracture remaining for at least a month before it was replaced. I remembered how the sunlight from the cafeteria refracted through the broken glass, making pretty pastel prisms on the stairs leading into the lunch room.

  The screech of a metal chair scraping the tiled floor snapped me back into the present. I skirted around the table to the chair that Stapleton had pulled out for me and was standing behind, waiting patiently for me to sit down. He then sat on the other side of the table and stared at me. I could feel him looking at me looking at the handcuff hook on the table in front of me. It had caught my eye. I had never in my life seen a handcuff hook. Sure, I’d read about them in mysteries, when lawyers go into prisons and their clients are handcuffed to the table, but no, I had never actually seen one. It seemed so flimsy, just a piece of curved metal bolted down. Was it secure? I was dying to give it a shake, to see if it jiggled. It looked like the screws were loose. I tore my mind back into the present. This was serious business.

  Stokes was sitting across the table as well, his chair slightly angled towards me. Creston leaned against a wall and when I glanced at him I thought he gave me a look. It had been years, decades, since I had dated anyone, and had no idea what the look meant. If there had been one at all. Was it a come-hither look? Was it a “I want to you-know-what to you” look? Or, was it simply a “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble” look? Perhaps it was an “I’m hungry and want some donuts” look. I tried not to scrunch up my eyes as I figured out what the look meant. He smiled at me and I tried not to pay attention to the slow burn creeping up inside me.

  This was the most sex I’d had in years!

  My attention was drawn back to Stapleton by the soft sound of his pen scraping across a page in his notebook. What on earth was he writing? I hadn’t even started my story yet. I leaned forward to see the page. He had carefully written “Robin McFarland: Statement” and the date. One of my few talents was the ability to read upside down and I decided not to correct the spelling of my name because then he would know that I could read what he was writing. I might be able to get more info if he was unguarded. The benefit of this ability to read upside down was offset by the mild dyslexia that came with it, but hey, I had survived the fiasco in the elevator.

  I glanced at my surroundings. In one corner, the corner opposite to where the ever so handsome Creston was leaning, was a video camera on a tripod. A light underneath the lens was blinking off and on. I hadn’t seen Stapleton turn it on and wondered if it were activated when the door was unlocked. Was this station high tech enough for that? Or, had I been daydreaming and simply missed him switching it on? And how did I look? I tossed my head and tried to muss the top of my hair with my fingers. No skunk stripe down my part recorded permanently on film for me.

  The table was scarred by cigarette burns and stains. The handcuff hook was worn with the edges gouged. The screws did look a little loose. I briefly calculated the age of the table back to a time long ago time when people were allowed to smoke in public places. Twenty years? Ten? At one end of the table was a black, scruffy tape recorder, again, already turned on. I hadn’t noticed that happening either.

  Forget the handcuff hook, it was me who had a few screws loose.

  This was all very somber. Here I was: a reporter whose most exciting story in the last year was about an unusual shade of turquoise in gerbera’s created by a florist in a Dutch greenhouse. How could it be that I was sitting in front of a Staff Sergeant and not one but two recording devices? I resolved to not let my mind wander again anywhere, especially not over Ralph Creston’s trim body. When I did that nothing else seemed to compute. Recording machines were turned on and I didn’t even know how or when. I looked up into Stapleton’s brown eyes. Were they cruel? No, hard to read, but certainly not nasty.

  “Okay,” said Stapleton, when he saw he had my attention, “tell me about your romantic involvement with Todd Radcliffe.” He looked at me with a not unkindly expression on his face, pen poised.

  Creston leaned forward.

  14.

  “WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW? Where should I begin?” I sat back in my chair and tried to look innocent, waiting for Stapleton to ask me a litany of questions. He also sat back in his chair and looked like he was waiting for me to speak. Was this a standoff? Stokes, too, sat back in his chair, a smirk twisting the corners of his mouth. Everyone was sitting back in their chairs and waiting for someone’s mouth to open. Except for Creston, who was leaning with his back against the window frame, looking hot.

  If this was a psychological game of chicken, I knew I shouldn’t be playing. Ultimately I would look stupid because there was no doubt that they would win. Did I truly think I could put one over the Staff Sergeant? In an instant he could get me in a head lock and make my eyes bulge out if he wanted to. They did that on TV. Maybe not in Canada? I could only hope. Were those recorders on? What did flashing lights mean, anyway? On or off? Did I need a lawyer?

  “I am not sure where to begin.” My fingers were fidgeting. Playing with the damn handcuff hook for heaven’s sake. I put my hands in my lap and held them there. But then I remembered a training session on journalistic interviewing techniques. The instructor was vehement: keep your hands visible at all times, otherwise you’ll look like you’re hiding something. So, I put my hands back on the table, palms flat, hoping they wouldn’t leave sweat marks when I moved them.

  “Begin at the beginning,” chirped Stokes. His breath wafted over the table and smelled like stale coffee and cigarettes.

  I addressed the air above Stapleton’s head. “I’m a reporter for the Home and Garden section of the Express and about two weeks ago, or maybe it was ten days, or perhaps a week…” I faltered here; already this wasn’t going well. I am not good with time.

  Creston interjected, “We can check, whatever it is you are about to say, so don’t worry about being 100 percent accurate.”

  “Thanks,” I gave him a look of relief, “I am not that good with time. And the tape recorder is making me jumpy. Is it on?” No one answered me. I guessed that meant yes. “Anyway, a while ago there were no good flower shows or interior design shows or new condo’s or specialty flowers to report on so my editor, or maybe it was me, chose this convention, well, anyway, I ended up going to this conference, well, actually a convention, about deep lake water cooling syst
ems. There’s a pump in the middle of the lake, figuratively speaking, not really the middle, closer to shore, that pumps cold water into pipes that cool downtown buildings. There are a few steps in between the lake and the buildings, but that is the general gist of it.” I was babbling.

  “We know about Everwave’s activities and the various stages of the cooling process and building locations.” In contrast to my blabber, Stapleton was the voice of reason. He spoke calmly and wasn’t sounding impatient, or at least not yet.

  Creston shifted on his feet, over by the window. Was he irritated by me? No, he was trying to see what was going on in the street below. I could see chest hair at the neck of his open shirt. I snapped a mental picture to review later. That’s enough Robin, put your focus on the here and now.

  “They have a pretty good brochure explaining it all. I have one here.” I dug deep into my purse, pawing through all my junk for the glossy brochure I had picked up from the convention, hoping I hadn’t thrown it out. I knew this wasn’t likely, as clearly I hadn’t cleaned out my purse in a decade. Finally, after much embarrassing rustling that sounded like a nest of snakes had taken up residence in my bag, I felt the silky surface of the brochure with my fingers. As I put it on the table in front of Stapleton, a small insert of Todd’s face looked back at me from the pipe covered first page. He was such a hunk.

  I had to get over all my man crazy thoughts. After all, this guy was dead.

  Stapleton didn’t even look at it and tossed me a sympathetic look. “We know you were there. You don’t have to prove it. We have the records of everyone in attendance.” He flicked the brochure back to me with a neatly trimmed nail. Now he was getting impatient.