Murder At Midnight Read online

  According to the Mintos, the ill-matched couple did not appear to have any close friends. Although Judy was seen occasionally with a woman from the hair styling salon, where she worked.

  “Were they ever visited by this girl?” Scott handed Dorothy a photograph of Lisa Craig.

  “Not that I remember,” she admitted reluctantly. “Did you ever see her, dear?” she asked Tony.

  He scrutinised the snapshot for longer than his wife. “I might have done,” he said slowly. “There’s something familiar about her, that I can’t quite place.”

  “Perhaps you saw her picture in the newspaper? Her name is Lisa Craig and she was murdered in Roanoke Park twenty years ago.”

  “Well that might have been it,” Tony conceded, although he sounded far from convinced. “If anything comes back to me, I’ll be in touch.”

  * * * *

  The Scissors and Comb, flanked on one side by a bridal wear store, and on the other by an insurance office, had changed hands at least twice since Judy’s time. No one currently working in the shop remembered her.

  “Although you might want to try Shelley Roth.” The receptionist had a pierced tongue, and black-enamelled fingernails. “She’s semi-retired now, and only comes in on Saturdays.”

  The high-pitched whine of a hair dryer screeched into life from the back of the salon. “I should have one of her cards here. She runs a sort of hair styling outcall service.”

  Shelley lived in a cluttered one-bedroom apartment above a used clothing store on Commercial Drive. She had tinted red hair and shrewd eyes. Dressed in a voluminous floral caftan, which did nothing to conceal her great bulk, there was an air of hostility about her, which rankled Scott immediately.

  “I think I was Judy’s only friend,” she confided, lighting a cigarette and tossing the spent match into an empty milk carton. “Not too surprising considering how difficult she could be.”

  “Did she ever mention a girl named Lisa Craig?”

  “You mean the doll who got murdered? You know I believe she probably did, her husband was Lisa’s swimming coach, but I honestly don’t recall.”

  Scott shifted uncomfortably on the sagging couch and watched a parade of ants swarm under the kitchen table. “Were you surprised when she suddenly disappeared?”

  Shelley took a long pull at her cigarette, and then left it dangling in her mouth while she refilled her coffee cup.

  “I was flabbergasted,” she replied at length.

  “Was she seeing another man?” he asked bluntly.

  “Not that I know of.” Her angry eyes challenged him to suggest otherwise. “She had her hands full with the stinker she already had.”

  “Did she have any family, or anyone she could have gone to?” He suspected Shelley of not being up front about Judy.

  “No-one, she was an orphan,” she replied testily, stubbing out her cigarette butt in an overflowing ashtray.

  “So your friend, who had no-one at all in this world, suddenly disappears without a trace. You expect me to believe that you simply accepted this and did nothing about it?”

  “You’re way too fast on the draw sonny, and what’s more, you’re wrong, way wrong.” Shelley retorted furiously. “As soon as that bastard husband of hers, told me Judy had suddenly upped and left him, I smelt a rat. I figured that he had finally made good on his promise to kill her.”

  “Did you report your suspicions to the police?” Scott heaved himself up with some difficulty from the bargain basement couch.

  “Well of course I bloody well did. But they didn’t give a rat’s ass about poor Judy, they were too busy trying to find out who killed the glamour puss Lisa Craig.”

  * * * *

  “So we could be looking for a murderer who has killed two women, and made a serious attempt on a third,” Ben suggested, toying with a paper clip on Scott’s desk.

  “Right. Judy going missing at around the same time Lisa was murdered seems like too much of a coincidence to me.”

  “But what on earth is the motive?” Ben asked. “This can’t be the work of some crazed psycho who just happened to be around when all three women were alone. None of them were sexually assaulted either.”

  Scott shrugged. “No, the murderer would seem to be someone known to the women, and killed them for a reason. But what, that is the million dollar question.”

  “Alec Webb might be our man? Perhaps he had just killed Judy that night and Lisa walked in on it?”

  “So he had no choice but to silence her too,” Scott nodded. “He then dumped her body in Roanoke Park. But why attack Meg?”

  “Perhaps he was drawn back to the scene of the crime, and Meg caught him there. She looked so much like Lisa that in a fit of panic he attacked her.”

  Scott walked over to the window. It was a moody day. The sky like curdled milk. “He would feel guilt initially at being discovered there on the anniversary of Lisa’s murder, and then terror when he thought it was her ghost returned to seek retribution.”

  “I believe it fits,” declared Ben.“That would mean, of course, that Meg is mistaken in thinking her attacker might be a woman.”

  “But then she wasn’t sure about that in any case. It never really did sound right to me.” Scott paced restlessly around the office.“I think it’s time to have another word with Alec Webb.”

  * * * *

  “You’ve been talking to that ugly bag of bile Shelley Roth,” Webb accused. He looked furious. “That fat bitch has always had it in for me. She’s a man-hater.”

  A broad sweep of sunlight knifed across the drab living room and rested on the hearthrug where the Nell lay.

  “She actually accused me of murdering my wife, and sent the police around to my door,” he continued angrily. “But of course, there wasn’t a wisp of evidence to back up her outrageous claim.”

  Alec paused for a much-needed breath. “I had a good mind to sue the fat cow for libel.”

  “Mr.Webb,” Scott proceeded cautiously. “You told me last time that Judy had affairs with several different men and finally left with one of them. But Shelley has denied this. She insists that Judy was a faithful wife.”

  “Bosh, ” Webb shot back defensively, “sheer vindictive bullshit and nothing else.

  You know that fat broad hated me so much, that I often think she may have murdered poor old Judy just to try and incriminate me!”

  This startling outburst was followed by several moments of uneasy silence, broken only by the incessant ticking of the mantle clock.

  “Mr.Webb, do you happen to remember where you were on the night that Lisa Craig was murdered?” Scott fired the loaded question as casually as possible.

  “Look I don’t have to answer any more of your damned impertinent questions,” Webb growled. “So just get the hell out of my house and don’t come back.”

  * * * *

  “We’ve had a complaint about you,” Slater stated bluntly, his dark eyes intense. A sudden rain shower hurled itself against the windows of the police building.

  “Let me guess?” Scott smiled. “Alec Webb?”

  “Look here Scott, a claim of harassment against you is no laughing matter.”

  “Harassment?” Scott repeated incredulously. “I hardly think asking the man a few questions could ever be classified as that.”

  “According to Webb, you visited his home twice in a matter of a couple of days, asking questions that implied he may have murdered not only his wife, but Lisa Craig as well.”

  Scott shook his head. “It’s simply not true,” he stated firmly. “Webb agreed to see me and there was no coercion of any sort on my part.”

  “Nevertheless, I am cautioning you not to have any more contact with him?”

  “Why wasn’t Webb investigated properly twenty years ago,” Scott demanded, switching the focus away from himself. “If it turns out that he is, indeed, the murderer, it’s going to cause a major scandal for your department!”

  “Why didn’t you keep me informed about your investiga
tions?” Slater demanded. “I wouldn’t even know about this Alec Webb, and his possible connection to the Craig case, if he hadn’t called to complain about you.”

  “I am not working for the police department. Or at least, as far as I know, my name is not on your payroll.”

  “When you uncover any new evidence in a capital case, it is your duty, whoever you work for, to report it.”

  “The Craig case was bungled badly by your department, Neil. If it ever does get solved it won’t be thanks to you.”

  “You’re getting to sound like that bloody editor of yours,” Slater accused. “His dislike of the police department is legend.”

  “This is getting us nowhere fast,” Scott retorted. “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be getting back to work.” He added as a sassy afterthought. “And I won’t leave town.”

  Slater punched in a telephone number and rubbed his aching neck muscles. The added stress of handling the unsolved Craig murder was beginning to take its toll. Now this latest bombshell about the victim’s swimming instructor and his missing wife was causing him no end of grief.

  When Len Barthrop answered, he cut right to the chase.

  “What exactly was done on the Judy Webb disappearance? I’ve just had Scott Preston from the Morning Herald in my office, and I shudder to think what the headlines will be tomorrow.”

  There was a stunned silence at the other end of the line while Len, clearly taken aback by the suddenness of the question tried to gather his wits. “ I can’t recall the case, off the top of my head like this,” he stalled. “But, it’ll all be right there in my report, Neil.”

  “Don’t give me that line of bull,” Slater exclaimed angrily. “I have the file open in front of me now, and you did bugger all besides interview Webb once, and declare him of no further interest.” Slater tossed a pencil across his desk in disgust. “Why for God’s sake? Webb had known Lisa well, and his wife’s disappearance coincided with her murder!”

  He listened to Len’s defensive explanation. It was the same stand he had taken earlier when questioned about his handling of the Craig investigation.

  The only difference being that this time he admitted, albeit reluctantly, that he had been going through a particularly messy marriage break-up at the time; trying desperately to quit drinking; and had a full roster of other cases to deal with as well. “The department was even more under staffed than usual which made matters worse,” he ended on a defiant note.

  “If things were really that bad for you, you should have taken a leave of absence.” Slater was not sympathetic. “Now you’ve made the whole department look bad.”

  * * * *

  COPS BADLY BUNGLED THE CRAIG INVESTIGATION––The inch-high headline graced the third page of the Morning Herald, and Scott hadn’t pulled any punches.

  Why, he asked, had neighbours, friends and others who the murdered girl had been in close contact with for many years been ignored? He was referring here to her swimming coach Alec Webb, who for legal reasons, could not yet be named.

  “As soon as the cops start investigating him, we’ll do a full page spread and nail him to the wall,” Greg Mowatt promised, with an unseemly degree of relish. “But for the moment, we’ll have to hold our fire.”

  He had been in consultation with the newspaper’s legal department, who warned of a possible lawsuit if they jumped the gun.

  “Don’t take any more flak from that bastard, Slater,” he told Scott. “Just refer him to me, and I’ll skin him alive.”

  * * * *

  The article about the unsolved Craig case produced the usual gamut of comment from readers. They ranged from the cranks, who insisted that Lisa had been sacrificed by a cult, or spirited to the park by a UFO; to the bored, who led dreary lives and desperately wanted to be involved with something as exciting as a murder, no matter how minutely. Then there were those who just might conceivably, have some valuable information to offer. The hard work was in sifting through the sand of the latter variety and hopefully finding a pearl.

  Scott had been doing just that, on a perfect June morning. The newsroom was quiet, and a lemony patch of sunlight dappled its walls like the beadwork of an angel.

  When the telephone buzzed, he answered it absentmindedly, engrossed in the perplexities of the Craig case.

  “I have to see you as soon as possible.” Garrick Boyd sounded extremely agitated.

  “Do you have something else you want to tell me about Lisa Craig’s murder?” Scott recalled how uncommunicative Boyd had been at their last interview, and how someone had almost run him off the road afterwards.

  “I sure do,” Boyd retorted. “And it’s going to knock your socks off!”

  * * * *

  The Coach and Four stood at the crossroads between the old railway bridge and Skytrain station. Scott arrived early and ordered soda water. He wanted to keep his wits about him for this meeting with Boyd. It had been a wet afternoon, but shortly before dusk the sun made a brief appearance, casting a ghostly green light over a watery world.

  As he waited he went over the notes he had made during his last interview with this prime suspect in the Craig slaying, the feeling that Boyd was hiding something permeated throughout. He couldn’t decide what, or why?

  Guilty knowledge about Lisa’s murder, which might mean that he didn’t kill her,

  but knew who did? Or, he was the killer, and getting antsy with all the recent publicity,

  wanted to divert attention away from himself.

  However, either way, Scott expected to find out shortly. For this surely must be the knock your socks off revelation that Boyd intended to confess.

  But as the hands on the clock above the bar moved relentlessly on, he began to suspect that he had been stood up. He ordered another soda water and crunched restlessly on a saucer of peanuts, his eyes drawn in boredom to the television in the far corner.

  At 10:00 p.m. he finally gave up and left. Boyd was obviously playing games and it rankled that he had been the pawn.

  * * * *

  The following morning Scott arrived at work to find Slater in Greg Mowatt’s office. Both men looked grim faced and angry.

  “If this is what you call assisting the police department, then your definition of the term must be light years away from mine,” Slater fumed. “Ever since these lurid articles have been published, all hell has broken loose.”

  “Now just a Goddamn minute there,” Greg challenged. “You seem to forget that it was you who requested our help in the first place, because you failed to solve the Craig case. Although you had twenty long years to do it in.”

  “Look, I’m just asking that you stop all the hype about the case, at least for now.”

  “How dare you try to muzzle the freedom of the press,” Greg roared. “Any more attempts at this type of coercion, and I’ll go right over your head to the Police Board.”

  “I am not attempting to coerce anyone,” Slater snarled. “I am simply asking that you curtail the scope of your current activities, as they are interfering with and impeding a police investigation.”

  “Gosh, I didn’t know there was one,” Greg retorted sarcastically. “It seems to me that we are the ones doing all the work.”

  “That’s my point exactly,” Slater stormed back. “This is police work, so kindly butt out and leave it to us.”

  “Well it seems to me that that’s exactly what we did do for twenty long years!” Greg snapped. “Just remember, if it wasn’t for us you wouldn’t have any new leads in the case.”

  “Perhaps not,” Slater conceded. “But then we wouldn’t have a barrage of public abuse either, most of it anonymous and threatening. It’s disrupting the whole department.”

  “Well if you’re finding this amount of heat uncomfortable, Slater,” Greg growled. “Just wait until our next piece hits the news-stands. It’s going to expose the alcoholic cop in charge of the investigation, and raise serious questions as to where his interests really lay.”

  “Now look here
,” Slater cut in, his dark eyes furious. “You don’t have a shred of evidence to support such a serious allegation.”

  “Oh don’t we now,” Greg bluffed, with an evil grin. “Well, you’ll just have to wait for the morning edition to find out.”

  But the article about Len Barthrop was shelved at the last minute. Not because of any interference by the police or other interested parties, nor due to any advice from the Morning Herald’s legal department, but because a much more dramatic development had taken place.

  Garrick Boyd, or Darryl Boyd as he’d been calling himself for a number of years, was found dead in his car, at the bottom of a sheer and very ragged cliff.

  * * * *

  “There was something he wanted to tell me about Lisa Craig’s murder,” Scott explained. He and Slater were standing beside a towering cliff on the Sea-to-Sky Highway. The police roadblock kept it safely free of traffic. “He must have been on his way to meet me when it happened.”

  Boyd’s car had ended up crushed between two massive boulders, with the incoming tide battering over it mercilessly. It shocked Scott to see that it had happened at the very same spot where he, himself, had been almost forced off the road.

  The day was chilly. Thunderous rain clouds hovered on a washed out dishrag of a sky.

  “You should have reported this to me at once,” Slater replied testily. “Boyd was the prime suspect in a capital case for crying out loud. Now look what’s happened?”

  “Hindsight is always 20/20,” Scott shrugged. “But I really don’t see how it would have made any difference.”

  “Oh you don’t eh? Well I have news for you. If I had known about Boyd’s telephone call to you, I would have had him picked up, and he would still be alive today.”

  “But refusing to talk, as he did for twenty years.”

  “Perhaps so,” Slater conceded. “But where there’s life there’s hope, and there isn’t any now.” He speculated about the reason for Boyd’s call. Perhaps the current publicity had made him unusually nervous, and he was trying to throw the investigation off track. Or, he may have had an accomplice in the murder of Lisa Craig, and their unholy alliance had been somehow shattered.