Flush Read online

  “Well, anyway,” I shoved the brochure back into my purse. “That’s when I first met him.”

  “You actually met him there?” Stapleton’s eyebrows had shot up.

  “Well, no, I didn’t meet him, meet him, I just saw him, so I knew what he looked like. I saw him on the stage.”

  “Who else did you know at the convention?” This was from Stokes. I wasn’t sure if I should answer, he was such a junior minion, but the next few sentences of my statement, the ones about what happened next, were ones I wanted to avoid. These were the sentences about going on an internet dating site while pie-eyed drunk and sending off a contact email. Luckily Stapleton gave me a nod, indicating I should answer Stokes. I had a reprieve for a few moments anyway.

  “My best friend Cindy, short for Cynthia, from the paper, was there. She was covering the environmental angle. I was covering the interior space, air conditioning angle.” Hmmm. That sounded good.

  Stapleton was writing. “Last name?” When he looked up for me to continue, I could see he was thinking “airhead.”

  For the life of me I couldn’t remember Cindy’s last name. I’d only known her for a few decades. I probed into the dark and mushy caverns of my brain, desperately looking for this tidbit of information and of course, the more frantic I became, the least likely it would be that I would remember it. I had to get in to see that naturopath. Why hadn’t she called back yet? Note to self: call again.

  I gushed and laughed, I hoped with childlike innocence, “Do you ever know something inside and out and then, suddenly, you can’t remember it at all? Well,” I playfully laughed again here, “that seems to be the problem with me right now. I simply can’t remember it.” My head started humming, bizarrely, that camp song, “Over hill, over dale, we will hit the something trail…” and then I blasted out the word “Dale. Her name is Cynthia Dale.” I felt so smart.

  Stapleton looked up and snarled, “Oh, her.” He made a note, his pen pushing hard into the paper.

  I started to talk faster. “There was also a guy there from a rival paper, the Toronto Times. Jack England. He’s a crime reporter, sometimes sports. Journalism degree from Carlton. Thin.”

  “Interesting. He’s a crime reporter.” Stapleton looked thoughtful.

  “Yes, I wondered about that too. It was a valve opening ceremony, not a court case or anything.”

  Stapleton turned to Creston, “Did you get that? Crime reporter at the Times. England. I think we should talk to him.” Creston nodded and I could see him absorbing the information.

  I rushed in, remembering how he had forced me into a construction zone, “Yeah, well if you do, tell him to not assault women.”

  Creston stopped leaning against the wall and took a step towards me. “He assaulted you? How?”

  Although it would be nice to skim over the drunken stupor bit that was coming up next, and jump right to his question, I knew my messy life bits had to be revealed. I had to tell the story in chronological order. I bantered, “I’m getting to that.”

  Stapleton interjected, bringing the conversation back, “So you knew Cynthia Dale and Jack England at the convention. Both crime reporters. Then what?”

  Then I went home and got drunk and made an internet date with the dead guy, not knowing it was him. Not a pretty story.

  “Well,” I decided to play what usually worked, the grieving widow card. “My husband died several years ago, drunk driver, not him, the guy who hit him, and I had recently been thinking about dating again.” Already I could feel the slow burn of a bright red blush inching up my neck. I couldn’t look at Creston. “So, I was flipping through a dating site on the internet and reading profiles of some guys around my age, checking them out, looking at their pictures.” I sounded like a porn stalker.

  Stokes snickered.

  I pushed on. “Anyways, I posted my profile and some of them contacted me. There was this one profile and the guy sounded interesting, sort of my type. So, he wrote me, I emailed him back, I sent him a time and a place, and we made a plan.”

  “And it was Todd Radcliffe,” said Stapleton. Not a question.

  “I didn’t know it was Todd Radcliffe when I made the plan.” I felt defensive. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have agreed to meet him.”

  “Wait a sec,” puzzled Stapleton, “two things here: first of all, why didn’t you know it was Radcliffe if you’d met him before? Second, why wouldn’t you have agreed to see him?”

  “His profile had no photo. He was just ‘Mr. Sail Away.’” I made finger quotes. “But when I realized I didn’t know what the guy I was talking to, I mean emailing, looked like, I asked him for a photo. He sent me one and lo and behold, it was Todd Radcliffe. I nearly died. He had put me off at the convention, sexist, you know, and a bit smarmy, even though he was good looking, but I probably wouldn’t have wanted to meet him if I had known it was him. Plus, I had a story coming out, highly critical of the cooling system, and that would make our meeting awkward, to say the least.”

  “So, let’s unpack all this information and get it straight. Let’s start with the profile. Was there anything in his profile that jumped out at you. Anything that would explain why someone was after him? Any hints that he had ties with other countries?”

  I scrambled through the shipwreck of that night, looking for any flotsam floating around in his profile. “He called himself, ‘Mr. Sail Away,’” I said again, oh so helpfully. “But other than that, it was the usual stuff, like number of kids, where he went to school, well, that was in the United States, so there’s that foreign connection, if that’s what you’re looking for, although it was decades ago. Anyway, the profile said that he was easy going, fun loving, what sort of work he did, you know.”

  “Okay.” Stapleton, put his hand up for me to stop while he finished writing what I’d sputtered. “You didn’t know what the guy looked like but you agreed to meet him.”

  “Yes, that’s the way it happened, at first.”

  Stapleton tilted his head and questioned me. “Really?” He didn’t believe me.

  I wanted to shout “I was pissed outa my gourd,” but held my ground. “Yes, really.” I sounded demure, I thought, and the worst was almost over. For some reason I didn’t want Creston to know I had a drinking problem. “Then I asked him for a photo, he sent it to me, and then I knew that I knew the guy.”

  ‘So where did you meet?”

  “At the Starbucks at Bloor and Avenue Road. Behind that church on the corner.”

  “So, even though you knew you didn’t actually like Radcliffe, you went anyway. Why?”

  “Curiosity,” I lied. Because he turned me on, such a cute ass. I was trying to keep the story simple.

  “What was he wearing?”

  “Khaki-coloured pants. Chino’s I think you call them. Is that how you say it? Americans wear them a lot. He went to school in the States. Oh, I said that. Loafers. Docksiders. And no socks. And a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up. A tie. A blazer. Glasses with no rims.”

  “Sounds like you got a pretty good look.”

  I blushed again. “I pay attention. It’s my job to notice the details. Colours. Shapes. You know…” I drifted off, sounding lame.

  Stapleton didn’t look up from what he was writing. Why on earth was the Staff Sergeant taking my statement anyway? Surely it was below his pay grade. First the important guys from another division, whatever their ranks were. And now the Staff Sergeant. What on earth was going on?

  “And then what happened?”

  “He got the coffees, actually I had tea, mint, I don’t do the caffeine thing after lunch, too much stimulation.”

  “You don’t say,” observed Stapleton wryly. Stokes tittered. Creston frowned. Maybe an ally?

  “We talked, and then—”

  “Talked about what?” Stapleton interjected.

  “About him. He was so self-centre
d. Didn’t ask me a single question. Well, not at first. Then he did. Kids, where we lived, he’d said he didn’t smoke on his profile, but he did.”

  “So, he lied to you?” Stapleton looked affronted, as if Radcliffe had personally lied to him.

  I rushed to Todd’s defense. He was dead, after all. “Everyone lies on those profiles.”

  “They do?” Stapleton probably was a married guy and had never checked out internet dating sites. “What did you lie about?” He bent over his notebook. It looked like his hand was cramping. Maybe he didn’t take too many statements.

  “I said I didn’t drink, but I do, of course, everyone does.”

  “How much do you drink?”

  “I wasn’t drunk at the time, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I’m asking how much do you drink?”

  As much as I can. “A little wine with dinner, maybe a glass or two later in the evening.”

  He looked satisfied. My hands were certainly sweating now. I worried if I moved them they’d squeak on the Formica table top. Just what I needed to preserve my dignity.

  “And then?”

  “We parted.”

  “Kiss?”

  “Handshake.” I tried to sound prim. But then I remembered the electrical current that had passed between us when our hands had touched. How he had turned around to look at me at the exact same time I had turned around. Anyway, what did it matter now, dead was dead.

  “So, you parted ways. Did you have a plan to get together in the future?”

  Why did he need to know that? Oh, to discount the suicide theory. “Yes, a dinner for next week.”

  “What night?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “Where?”

  “He was going to email me with the plan.”

  “No input from you?”

  “He wasn’t that kind of guy.” When I said this I saw Creston shift in the corner of my eye. What did that mean? Was he more egalitarian?

  “Okay, so you parted with a handshake and then what happened?”

  “I was nabbed from behind by Jack England and he forced me into that construction zone beside the hotel. On Bloor.”

  “Jack England? He was there? Interesting.” He looked up at me, “That was probably frightening.” Stapleton sounded so factual as he wrote my answer down with his head bent over his notebook, but when he looked up at me again I saw his brown eyes were empathetic.

  I remembered how scared I was with the scaffolding and scrap heaps of lumber all around me. “Yes. It was. He pinned me against a brick wall and wanted some information from me.”

  “Did he have a weapon?”

  “No, just his strength.”

  “He’s a big guy?”

  Creston butt in. “No, not really, tall, yes, but thin, a bike rider type.” I saw him snort with derision and flex his bicep. Guys.

  “You know him?” Stapleton asked Creston.

  “England? He mostly writes on crime, some international coverage, terrorism. But he’s a skinny guy. Wiry. Probably stronger than he looks.”

  Stapleton looked back at me after acknowledging Creston’s summary of England’s physical body type. “So, you were scared but not worried he was going to harm you.”

  “No, nothing like that. I could push him away. And I did.” I remembered the feel of his tight chest muscles under my fingers.

  “What was the information he wanted to know from you?”

  “He said, ‘I need to find out what you’re up to.’ He said those exact words. It’s part of my job to memorize what people say. I’m good at it.”

  “Okay, so he said that. Anything else?” Stapleton was writing rapidly.

  “Um.” After my saying I had virtually a sound bite memory, I couldn’t remember what else England had said. Of course that would happen now. I looked down at the flecks of grey in the Formica tabletop and replayed the scene in my mind. It came back to me. “He also said, ‘Don’t fuck with me, Robin. Why are you meeting with Radcliffe?’”

  “What did you reply?”

  “I asked him why he was following me. Then he said he wasn’t, that he was following Radcliffe. Then he asked me why I was seeing him, I told him it was only a date. Then he warned me off him, saying he was dangerous and I remember ridiculing the suggestion. I said Todd was a Harvard-type goody two shoes.”

  “How did it end?”

  “I asked him why he was following Radcliffe. Todd.”

  Both Creston and Stapleton leaned forward, “What did he say?” They asked in unison.

  I didn’t know who to face, but the answer was simple. “He said nothing. Turned on his heel and left. He warned me off Radcliffe. Kicked a garbage can and said ‘Rob-BIN.’”

  Stokes chuckled as if making a note of the pun for future reference. Creston rolled his eyes.

  “And you said…”

  “I think I said something like ‘You too, Jack-OFF. ’”

  Stapleton frowned as he wrote it down. “And then you went where?”

  “Home. Of course.”

  Anybody see you when you got home?”

  “My dog.” Not much of an alibi.

  Stapleton shut his notebook and said, “Okay, I’m going to get this typed up and an officer will bring it to you at work to sign as your statement. If you think of anything else, yada yada yada.” He slid his card across the table.

  “Who should I call, sir? You or Creston?”

  Stokes bristled because he’d been left out.

  “Me. Creston. Doesn’t matter.”

  Hmm, I thought, Creston. I’d think of something. “Thanks.”

  Creston handed me his card as well and we all filed out of the stuffy interview room, one after another. In the busy main room of the station Stapleton turned to me and held out his hand. “Thanks for coming in and not yelping for a lawyer. We got the job done quickly and I doubt you had a hand in Radcliffe’s death, whatever caused it. Could be a suicide or maybe a murder by an international crime ring for our fresh water. Maybe it was natural causes. We have to investigate all the possibilities. We’ve been watching him. He had an important job and he knew a main source for our water supply. So it easily could have been an attack on him with some sort of biological agent. Creston’s requested full tox.”

  Stapleton’s mind seemed made up, but I doubted his theories. Radcliffe was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy and too…. I didn’t know the right adjective. Too clean? Simple? Ralph Lauren? Too something to be involved in terrorism. And theft of water? Nah. Sure, it was a hot issue, Canada having so much of it, but nope, not that guy. Something else was going on.

  But thank heavens I was in the free and clear. Such a relief. “Nice to meet you too, Staff Sergeant Stapleton.” I laughed to show that there was no harm done and then went out on a limb. “May the force be with you.”

  He looked at me strangely and then let out a huge bellow. He liked my joke. Then he peeled off from our small group to his office full of purpose, his leather heels snapping on the linoleum, his shiny head reflecting all the lights along his way. Creston guided me through the desks to the exit, his hand igniting the small of my back. We parted on Dundas Street, with Creston and Stokes heading to their five-year-old cop car, a scratched up Ford, and me standing on the corner, cellphone in hand, not wanting them to see my old banger. I would pretend I was checking my mail and wait until they were gone.

  In the meantime, who should I call? Cindy? The office? No, the naturopath. This brain wandering thing had to go.

  15.

  WHAT AN AWFUL INTERVIEW. How embarrassing. How mortifying to admit to those people that I, an investigative crime reporter, well, sort of, went out with someone I hadn’t fully researched. No wonder they asked me about the drinking. They probably guessed what was what. The drinking simply had to go. If I couldn’t get in touch with the nat
uropath today, I would find an AA meeting somewhere. Tonight. Even if I didn’t agree with their methods and had heard their success rate was pretty low, I would go to a musty church basement and take the first of my twelve steps.

  What did Stapleton think was the cause of death? Natural, accident, suicide or homicide? Torture even. He had no idea. It seemed they were banking on the water theft angle as a motivation. And so, it appeared, was Jack England. I gave my head a shake to clear it. If this was a murder to facilitate the theft of our fresh water, whether by an international crime ring or by someone locally, and Radcliffe was involved, I would eat my hat. That Todd Radcliffe was too, too…. I could never find the right adjective. He was too North Toronto.

  But still, I had to be careful. I was a murder suspect, for heaven’s sake. Let them think what they wanted to. I knew I was innocent. I couldn’t fight what they thought and had to have faith that the law would prevail. Ha ha ha. In the meantime, I could deal with my personal issues.

  I darted along Dundas towards my car while burrowing in my bag for my keys. Thank heavens I had found a parking space fairly close to the station. I dodged around some dog poo. Wasn’t there a fine for that? Then I remembered that I was now keeping my keys accessible, in the side pocket. Where I could find them easily. Too bad my brain wasn’t conveniently in a side pocket somewhere. What was wrong with my memory?

  Finally, with keys in hand, I held the phone up to my eyes and searched through my contacts for Sally Josper, the naturopath, and tapped her number with my thumb as I walked to my car that was parked across the road from the art gallery. What an idiotic architectural design, Noah’s ark envy. She answered first ring.

  “Josper.” Her melodic voice announced her name with a distinctive underlying force. She even sounded healthy.

  “Hi, it’s Robin MacFarland, I was wondering if I could come in and see you, sometime soon.” I fumbled about in my huge bag looking for heaven’s knows what. My keys! Oh look! They were in my hand. This was bad. Maybe I had Alzheimer’s. Why not add that to the list of things wrong with me?