Murder At Midnight Read online

  “They’re yours,” he exclaimed triumphantly. He made the call from the pay phone in the foyer, as his cell phone’s batteries were low. Just then a sleek maroon Jaguar purred to a stop in the parking lot. Scott watched with interest as a tall distinguished looking man with silver hair and aquiline features stepped out. He wore an immaculate pin striped suit and walked with the aid of a silver-topped ebony cane.

  Philip Mitford, I presume? he thought to himself and asked his aunt if Mitford drove a Jag.

  “He most certainly does.” She had an unmistakable note of pride in her voice and a certain coquettishness. So the rumours about Mitford and Violet were true, he mused. Well she certainly could do a lot worse for herself than the wealthy realtor. He had built himself a business empire that extended into almost every sphere of commerce.

  Bidding was highly competitive for the item that interested Mitford, but he ended up acquiring it anyway, the price for the letter, however, was an astronomical sixty thousand dollars.

  So this was the man who had fired Garrick Boyd when he became the prime suspect in the murder of Lisa Boyd. No wonder, thought Scott. Philip Mitford looked like the type of person who would be horrified by any unfavourable sort of publicity. Having one employee murdered, and another one suspected of committing the crime, was about as bad as it gets.

  “You’re Violet’s nephew, aren’t you?” Mitford spotted him as they were leaving. “She told me you’d be here.”

  They shook hands and chatted for a while about antiques. “Violet has been a source of never ending knowledge,” he told Scott. “She makes antique collecting a great pleasure.”

  It was the first time that Scott had actually spoken to the wealthy realtor, up close and personal. Although, he had been known to him for years, as a popular local figure, who gave generously to charities.

  “Look, I’ve been trying to get Violet to tie the knot,” he suddenly confided. “But she won’t give me an answer.”

  Scott felt completely taken aback by this unexpected revelation. While he suspected that Mitford and Violet were an item, he hadn’t realised it was this serious.

  “Maybe she just needs a little more time to get used to the idea,” he suggested, feeling like a reluctant go-between. Yet he was happy for his aunt, she would be set for life with a catch like Mitford. He seemed like an amiable enough sort too, if a trifle fussy.

  When Scott returned to the office, an agitated Meg greeted him. He still felt decidedly awkward around her, after the fiasco in Roanoke Park and their subsequent violent coupling. Never get your women where your bread and butter comes from, had been one of his father’s favourite sayings. And by golly, he had been right.

  Still, there was no sense in crying over spilt milk, or any other beverage for that matter. He just had to make the best of it. He had to admit though, that Meg was being very decent about the whole sorry affair. Her bearing and attitude towards him remained carefully the same. So at least the rest of the staff remained unaware of their carnal connection.

  “There’s someone waiting for you,” she told him with a definite air of urgency. “It’s Adelaide Craig, Lisa’s Mother; and while she’s not exactly smashed, she isn’t feeling any pain either.”

  “Really?” Scott had meant to return to the rooming house on Keefer Street to see Adelaide, but what with one thing and another never got around to it. Now the mountain had come to Mohammed so to speak.

  “I put her in Greg’s office.” Meg winked with conspiratorial glee. “He won’t be in this afternoon.”

  Adelaide Craig looked much as Lisa would have done in later life had she lived. Apart from, one would hope, the bleary bloodshot eyes that were the badge of the habitual drunk. The excessive use of alcohol had also coarsened the fine features and added a dry, lifeless look to the once abundant auburn hair, now swathed with grey.

  “Thank you,” she said to Scott, slurring her words only slightly as she rose to shake his hand. “Thank you for trying to find the killer of my little girl.”

  The sun zigzagged its way through the blinds and came to rest on the large desk with its usual stack of papers and proofs.

  Scott could not bring himself to sit down on Greg’s imposing chair. It would almost be like an act of lese-majesty, he decided wryly. Instead, he pulled up one of the less comfortable ones intended for visitors.

  Adelaide spoke at length about her slain daughter, and how she loved to bake. “Little heart shaped cookies for Valentine’s Day,” the unhappy woman reminisced. “And Santa Clauses at Christmastime.”

  From where Scott sat, he could see the North Shore Mountains rising up like prehistoric monuments in the distance. Their massive stone faces hard with indifference to the pathetic human dramas being enacted below.

  “She loved swimming too, Mr. Preston. Spent every spare moment she could in the water. I think she could have made the Olympics if she’d really put her mind to it. I honestly do.”

  “Tell me Ms. Craig,” Scott asked, seizing the opportunity when Adelaide stopped talking for a moment to blow her nose. “Did you notice if Lisa appeared worried, or acted differently in any way just prior to her tragic death?”

  “…I don’t think so. I mean I was very busy at the time running the insurance agency with Bernie…you know my sister, so I might not have noticed.” The last time she had seen her daughter alive, was when she hurried out of the house on that last evening of her life, and got into Garrick Boyd’s flashy car.

  “We’re going to the movies, see you about midnight,” she called over her shoulder, her long auburn hair trailing down the back of the stylish green cloak.

  “What do you think of Boyd?” Scott asked cautiously, not wishing to upset this emotionally wrecked woman by asking her point blank if she thought Boyd had killed Lisa.

  “Well you know I rather liked him.” Adelaide caught Scott by surprise. This was the very last response he had expected, considering her sister’s quite adamant stand on the subject.

  As if sensing his thoughts she flashed him a pathetic smile and explained that she knew about Bernice’s dislike of Boyd, and her utter certainty that he had killed Lisa.

  “Garrick Boyd was not an easy person to get to know,” she admitted. “I believe a poverty stricken childhood, made him determined to make lots of money. Bernie used to call him a grubber. Yet, I sensed a basic decency about him.”

  Adelaide’s restless hands with their bitten down fingernails strayed up her arms as she hunched on the edge of her chair.

  “I need a drink, Mr. Preston,” she stated the obvious without digression. “And I could kill for a cigarette.”

  They continued their conversation in the lounge bar of the Rembrandt Hotel, in the twilight world of clinking glasses and tinkling piano. Adelaide gulped down two massive brandies in short order, and sucked greedily on one cigarette after another.

  “Tell me Ms. Craig,” Scott began cautiously. “Was Garrick Boyd the only boyfriend that Lisa had?’

  Her expression became immediately guarded. “As far as I know,” she replied defensively. So there had been other men in Lisa’s past, Scott concluded. Perhaps even when she was very young?

  “Did she have any special friends when she was growing up?” He was determined not to let the subject close so easily.

  “It depends what you mean by special,” Adelaide countered, stubbing out yet another lipstick stained cigarette. “She had friends, of course. She was a normal, happy girl.”

  “Any boys amongst them, Ms. Craig?”

  “There could have been. I don’t remember, I’m afraid. Why? Is it important? How can something like that help bring her killer to justice?”

  “Just trying to get a picture of what Lisa was like.”

  He offered to drive her home, as the bar filled up for Happy Hour. He noticed how slurred her speech had become, and that she had difficulty concentrating on what she tried to say.

  “Thanks,” she murmured giddily, and smiled up at him through watery unfocused eyes. Scott
felt a strange excitement being this close to Lisa’s mother. She was after all, as close to the dead girl as he could get here on earth. Just a mature version really––when one overlooked the ravages that booze had rent––of the tantalising redhead who had so enslaved his soul.

  * * * *

  A WOMAN KILLED LISA. The glaring words, all in block capitals, jumped out at Scott and were followed by a name: JUDY WEBB.

  Probably just the work of a crank, he decided, or someone with an axe to grind against this Judy Webb, whoever she was. He placed the anonymous letter in the file along with all the others of the same ilk. They had fairly poured in since the article about the unsolved Craig case had been published.

  He thought no more about it, until Meg phoned him around midnight, about a week later.

  “It’s incredible.” She sounded breathless. “I’ve been having those fleeting impressions flash across my mind more and more often lately. But I’m not sure how many of them are real, or just imagination.”

  Scott had been in bed reading when she called, Flynn lying across his feet. The drapes were open and he could see the blinking light of the Seabus, as it skimmed across the harbour.

  He knew that Meg’s memory had been stirring lately, although the ill-advised visit to Roanoke Park had not produced the desired results. But it had been releasing brief snippets of what had happened on that terrible night, when she had been left for dead.

  She recalled the swirling snowflakes, tossed like confetti from the heavens, and the tall trees looming above her. But then nothing, until now…

  “All of a sudden…I…I’m grabbed from behind, and a hand is clamped over my mouth. I can remember struggling and trying in vain to scream.”

  “You’re doing very well Meg,” Scott encouraged. “But don’t force it, it will all come back to you eventually, I’m sure.”

  “But I wonder how much of this is mere imagination?” Meg sounded dubious.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “…Well, it’s just that I seem to recall my attacker cursing at me in a furious voice.” She hesitated for a moment then added. “It sounded something like…‘You rotten little bitch.’”

  “Well that’s very possible.” Scott felt puzzled by her confusion and doubt. “So why are you having difficulty believing this?”

  “…I ...well I know you’ll think I’m way off the mark when I tell you this. But you see…it was a woman’s voice…”

  * * * *

  Scott flicked through the telephone directory with impatient fingers. “Judy Webb,” he muttered. “Judy Webb.” But there were no Judys or Judiths listed, and not even a J.

  In the morning he began calling them, but no one who answered had ever heard of a Judy. Eventually they dwindled down to just one, an Alec Webb who lived at 609 Braemar Crescent.

  “Braemar Crescent.” Scott repeated the address to himself several times before the possible connection sent him flipping frantically through a street map.

  By God, he had been right! He circled the spot in red ink.

  Braemar Crescent was in the vicinity of Roanoke Park. Number 609 only about two short blocks from the bus stop that played such a prominent part in Lisa Craig’s tragic end. It also happened to be in the same direction that the doomed girl walked towards, on the night of her death.

  * * * *

  It was an overcast morning with a slatey banner of a sky flying moodily overhead. In the distance, a boat siren wailed out a lonely warning from far out on the open sea.

  Scott parked his car close to the bus stop where Lisa Craig had last been seen alive. Then he walked the less than two blocks to number 609 Braemar, a neat two-storey house surrounded by honeysuckle.

  A muscular red-haired man with a broad freckled face opened the door. “There’s no Judy here,” he replied. “Just myself and Nell.” He indicated the ageing spaniel that came shuffling towards them.

  Scott bent down and patted the dog, which drooled and gazed up at him with soulful eyes. A carpet cleaning van pulled into a neighbour’s driveway, and from somewhere in the back of the house, a kettle whistled with shrill urgency.

  “I’m just making tea, come in and join me,” he invited brusquely. “I’m Alec Webb, by the way, and Judy used to be my wife.”

  “Do you happen to know her present whereabouts?” Scott glanced around the sparsely furnished living room with its faded blue rug and dull upholstery.

  “Afraid I can’t help you there,” he answered immediately. “The fact is, Judy walked out of here about twenty years ago, and I’ve neither seen, nor heard from her since.”

  The tea was bitterly strong and served without milk. Scott added three sugar cubes. He explained about the articles he was writing about the unsolved Craig murder, and how an unsigned letter suggested that perhaps Judy Webb could assist in the newly launched enquiry.

  “You know I’m surprised that no one has ever contacted me about Lisa’s murder before,” Webb admitted.

  “So your wife did know Lisa?” Scott felt immediately hopeful.

  “Well…vaguely, I suppose,” he answered cautiously. “But I had the most to do with the girl.”

  Scott became instantly alert and aware of how quiet it had suddenly become. The ticking of the mantle clock sounded unnaturally loud.

  “You see I was her swimming coach.”

  Of course! Lisa’s mother told him that her daughter was a champion swimmer.

  “So you must have known her fairly well then?”

  “Yes and no,” came the enigmatic reply. “I mean, I don’t think we ever really know another person, do we?”

  Scott shrugged and took another sip at the tarry tea. “I suppose not,” he agreed, and rephrased the question. “What were your impressions of the girl?” From where he sat he could see a bee hovering around the irises that still glistened with raindrops from an early morning shower.

  “Intelligent, enthusiastic,” he answered finally. ”The way she was cut down like that before even reaching her prime...” He shook his head sadly. “But to think that they still don’t have the slimeball who did it is even worse.”

  “When did you last see Lisa?”

  “ Two or three days before she died, at the Fairview recreation centre…our usual weekly swimming lesson.”

  “How did she seem?”

  “ Well,” he began hesitantly, “I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but afterwards, I mean after she was murdered, I got the idea that she had been worried about something.”

  “Did Lisa ever visit you here?” Scott shot the thorny question without warning. But Webb didn’t flinch.

  “Never,” he replied unequivocally.

  * * * *

  “So do you think he’s lying?” Ben asked. They were sitting by the same pool that Lisa Craig had swum in just days before her murder. Shortly before closing time, it was almost deserted.

  “Probably.” Scott picked at a piece of hard skin on his elbow. “I’ve found that for one reason or another, most people do. Especially, when they’re talking to a reporter.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” Ben laughed.

  They had visited the recreation centre to take pictures of the pool and to speak to any staff member who might remember Lisa Craig and her relationship with Alec Webb.

  But they had drawn a blank. The receptionist, barely twenty-years-old herself, looked quite amazed at the question. Something that had happened before she was even born was totally ancient. She shook her head and assured Scott no one had worked there that long.

  An isolated hollow feeling now settled on the pool as it neared closing time and everyone had left.

  “Lisa must have been heading for Webb’s place the night of her murder,” suggested Ben.

  Scott nodded. “It explains why she was walking away from her home, instead of towards it, when she got off the bus.”

  “Do you think they were having an affair?”

  “It’s too early to tell. If they were, and either his wife Judy
, or Boyd, Lisa’s boyfriend found out about it…”

  “That certainly would be a motive for either one of them,” Ben agreed. “Talking of Judy, it seems to me there’s something mighty fishy there too.”

  “You mean her disappearance?”

  “Did he give you any idea why she just suddenly up and left?”

  “He said she had been unfaithful to him with several different men, and finally left with one of them.”

  Ben raised an eyebrow. “This gets more interesting by the minute. It’s time to have a word with their neighbours.”

  Chapter Four

  The Mintos had lived on Braemar Crescent for most of their fifty-two year marriage. There wasn’t much that had happened there that they did not know about.

  “Oh yes, we remember Judy Webb, don’t we, Father.” Dorothy was a large untidy woman with a cheerful expression.

  Her husband, Tony, a wizened little monkey of a man wore two hearing aids. He cupped his hand to his ear, the signal that he hadn’t heard.

  “Judy Webb,” Dorothy repeated, louder this time and with more emphasis on the phonetics. “You know, Alec’s wife.”

  Scott looked around the cluttered living room, with its wall full of family photographs. A well-used and lived-in place, the exact opposite of Alec Webb’s home, which had an air of emptiness and chill.

  Over a pot of tea, served with scones and homemade jam, the Mintos regaled Scott with the lurid details of the Webb’s’ life. Dorothy did most of the talking, with Tony jumping in occasionally to stress a point or correct some minor detail.

  “Get it right now, Mother,” he would caution his wife.

  The picture that emerged of the Webbs was not a flattering one. Judy came across as a sharp-tongued harpy, whom everyone avoided like a dose of flu, while Alec emerged as an unhappy, hen-pecked husband who spent as much time away from home as possible.

  “Judy was a heavy-set gal, with a face like a bull dog,” Tony chuckled wickedly.

  “Oh come on now dear,” Dorothy contradicted. “She wasn’t that bad. It was just her nasty disposition that made her seem ugly.”