“He lives alone, right? Maybe he was afraid no one would find his body for days. He was a fastidious man by your account. Everything neat and tidy and whatnot. A slowly rotting corpse wouldn’t be to his liking.”
“Really, Martha,” protested Ryan.
“No, I’m serious,” said Martha. “He writes the note at seven-thirty, pins it on his door, turns on the gas, which he must have known was malfunctioning, and then the phone rings or someone comes to the door or he remembers some last thing he needs to do, like make a will, and he has to put his plans for suicide on hold. But he forgets to turn off the gas because he’s in such a hurry to leave.”
“That’s hogwash,” said Duncan.
“Okay,” said Martha, her eyes flashing. “How does this sound? He arranged to meet Cordi, then wrote the note to entice her in, having already turned on the gas before leaving. He gets rid of her and his problem is solved.”
“But that’s attempted murder,” I said.
“It is, isn’t it?” Martha said with a little shudder.
chapter eighteen
“You think it’s this Don guy?” asked Ryan when he and I had finally made it back to my place through a rainstorm. The fresh air of the farm was reviving my spirits, and I was coddling a drink in the hammock on my porch watching the lightning light up the fields in electric white. “He’s not the only one with a good motive for getting rid of Diamond. They all seem to have one.”
I fiddled with my drink. “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. For a popular man he was in dicey water with lots of people. Lianna stood to gain financially, so does Shannon if the handwritten will is found. Leslie got his job and by the sounds of it had fought long and hard and bitterly for it. Is she the type of person to be vindictive? I think so. Is she strong enough to murder? I think so. Is she likely to have murdered him? I don’t know. Then there’s Roberta. If she’s guilty of faking data she stood to lose a lot. In this job climate that would have been suicidal. Even Davies felt that Diamond was the reason he might be passed over for university president. As for all the loggers, Cameron, Ray, the miller Donaldson — with Diamond out of the way they have their jobs. Any one of them could have done it.”
“But that doesn’t explain why someone tried to kill you. Certainly lets Roberta off, doesn’t it? After all, she saved you. Unlikely that she would, if she was trying to kill you.”
“Unless she was trying to make us think that.”
“So what are you going to do now?” My phone began ringing through the open porch door, and I glanced at Ryan. Neither of us made a move to answer it, and the answering machine clicked on. We listened to a low, sandpapery disembodied voice floating out to us, cutting the air with its menace like the lightning that streaked before us.
“Stay the hell out of it, O’Callaghan … or next time we’ll succeed.”
The click of the machine turning off was drowned out by a roar of thunder and the beating of my heart.
“It’s time I went up there to see for myself,” I said early the next day as I pored over the faculty’s directive for course material.
“Go where? See what?” asked Martha absently from her position on her little milk stool as she filed papers. I couldn’t see the milk stool but I knew it was there, strapped to Martha’s rotund figure, because there was no way Martha would be squatting in mid-air.
The milking stool had been Martha’s idea. She’d come out to the farm one Thanksgiving and watched Mac putting the tubes on the “girls,” as he liked to say. He was wearing a milking stool, a round seat on a metal peg that strapped to the waist and looked like a miniature pogo stick stuck to his rear. Martha was so excited about it she made him take it off and show her how to use it. The belt had been way too small, but with Mac’s help they later fashioned a custom-fitted one for Martha. She always wore it on the days she did her filing, moving from one cabinet to another and then squatting on her chair. Now she stood up and moved over to the next filing cabinet, her temporary tail waggling behind her.
“I’ve set up a meeting with the forester, that Raymond guy in the film. We know Diamond was killed in a cedar forest. Maybe I can find out where from him.”
“Mmm?” Martha rested her bulk on the tiny stool and began filing.
“The forester said he could show me maps of the area with tree types and stuff. “
“Oh, Lord love me, Cordi. You weren’t crazy enough to tell him you suspect Diamond was murdered, were you?”
“Of course not. I just told him about my disks and also said I was writing a paper on the logging issue and that I needed maps of the vegetation. He wasn’t too keen until I said the paper was going to deal with pure economics to see which side should win, so I’d be looking at the types of trees and what they would fetch on the market. I’m going up to the logging camp this morning to meet him there.”
Martha slowly swivelled on her chair, a shudder rippling through her face.
“You’re going with someone, right?”
“No,” I said, knowing what was coming and wondering with some amusement how Martha would resolve it.
“My dear Cordi. Surely you’re not going alone? After what happened the other day?” Martha’s eyebrows darted sky-high in disbelief and then plummeted precipitously toward her chin in alarm.
“Not on your life, Cordi. I’m not going to have your death on my conscience. This time I’m coming too.” She glowered at me, daring me to object, and when I didn’t she turned back to her filing, her whole body fairly jiggling with victory.
Half an hour later I manoeuvred my car out of the parking lot and we headed up to Dumoine, stopping off quickly at the farm for a backpack, some food, binoculars, and our Series 111 Land Rover.
“I got another good suspect for this ‘maybe murder’ theory of yours,” said Martha as I turned right onto Highway 148. “Did you know Diamond was worth a bundle? More than $1.5 million?
Startled, I turned to look at Martha. Where did a biology professor earn money like that, I wondered.
“Eyes on the road, please. I can’t stand it when you do that. It was in the paper two days ago.”
“Why didn’t I see it? I read the paper.”
“The Libelled Times?”
“Oh really, Martha. You read that rag?” It was Ottawa’s gossip paper and the first choice of dog trainers.
Martha fluffed out her hair and pouted.
“Really, Cordi, even gossip pieces are founded in truth. And at least they don’t pretend they’ve got all their facts right. Besides, it was in the other papers but not with quite the detail. Anyway, apparently the will was read and Lianna gets it all, including the insurance policy. Shannon comes up empty-handed. That’s why it was in the paper at all. Shannon was vowing to get what was her due, saying she would find the other will if it took forever. They had pictures of the two women looking like murder — you know, the human interest stuff they like. According to sources, Lianna laughed and said forever suited her just fine.”
“Where did Diamond get that kind of money?”
No biology professor I ever knew earned anywhere near that amount even over fifteen years.
“He didn’t. His father was some wealthy U.S. tycoon and left his sons a small fortune. Diamond was quite prudent with his investment and it grew nicely. He was independently wealthy. Nobody but his close family knew it, apparently.”
“So what you’re saying is that Lianna gets $1.5 million from him, and the life insurance policy makes it another million. Rather convenient for her that he up and died.”
“Too