“Something’s not right,” I told Clell.
We sat in the lobby of one of the buildings he guarded at night. He was a conscientious security guard and made his rounds regularly, but that still left plenty of down time. I brought him coffee and company a couple of nights a week.
He scratched his chin and drank from the thermos cup. The coffee was Maxwell House, nothing fancy. I think Clell would spit out anything Patrick Bourdon brewed.
“They paid you four hundred dollars?”
I nodded.
“To do what?”
“I told you already.”
“I know. Tell me again.”
I sighed. “To find the woman and feel her out about a settlement. To offer my professional opinion on her honesty.”
“And how hard was that?”
“Not too hard.” I told him about the number on Bourdon’s cell phone and Adam’s help.
“Those reverse directory thingies,” Clell said. “Are those restricted to law enforcement only?”
I shook my head. “No. They’re public documents. But they’re expensive.”
“A lot less than four hundred dollars, though. Access to ‘em, anyways.”
I saw his point. “Any top-flight private detective firm would probably have the reverses. Bourdon could have used that phone number on his caller ID to find out where she was staying for less than fifty bucks.”
“That’s if he wanted to see her in person,” Clell said. “It sounds like she was making herself pretty available on the phone.”
“Yet she didn’t want Richard to know where she was.”
Clell grunted. “Afraid of him, but wants his money.”
“Maybe.”
“Fear and greed, two pretty powerful competing emotions.”
“She didn’t look too scared when I talked to her. She looked pretty confident.”
“Putting on a strong front, maybe.”
I shrugged. “Could be. She didn’t want any part of a deal, that was for sure.”
“That was one part of what they were paying you for, right? Just to see what her reaction was?”
“Yeah. Richard said he wanted my opinion about whether she was lying or not about the kid being his.”
“That makes you a consultant,” Clell joked.
I smiled. “I should get little business cards printed up.”
He waved his hand around the lobby. “You could get an office here, huh?”
We chuckled together and drank some more coffee.
After the laughs faded, we sat and thought for a bit. Finally, I said, “Here’s the thing. Bourdon didn’t ask me for my opinion. He just paid me and that was it.”
“Easy money,” Clell said, a hint of disapproval in his tone.
“Easy money is never easy,” I said. “Something’s not right.”
“You know who you should call?” Clell asked me.
I nodded. “Mr. Stoll.”
I didn’t have long distance service on my telephone in my apartment, so I had to get a roll of quarters from the MI-T-Mart and use a payphone. The first few quarters got me through to a woman with a lovely voice, but she spoke only French. When I asked for an English speaking operator, she put me on hold. That cost another seventy-five cents. Then a gruff-voiced male came on the line and took my request. Only twenty-five cents later, he came back with the number. He offered to connect me for a dollar more, but I was afraid I’d run out of change while talking to Mr. Stoll, so I direct-dialed.
There were six rings, then a man’s voice came on the line, rimmed with sleep.”Yes?”
“I’m sorry for calling so late, sir, but I need to speak with Mr. Stoll. My name is-”
“Is this some kind of a cruel joke?” he snapped.
“No,” I said. “I realize it’s late, but-”
“Mr. Stoll was a good man,” he said. “Why can’t you jackals let him rest in peace?”
Surprised, I said nothing. A moment later, he spat a curse, and broke the connection.
When I returned to Clell’s building, he was making his sweep, so I headed home instead. My mind was whirring. Mr. Stoll, Anne Marie’s husband, was dead. Maybe that was what was wrong with this situation and was why my gut was reacting.
Why hadn’t Richard told me? Or Anne Marie? Or Bourdon, for that matter?
I wasn’t sure, but I knew one thing for certain. I wasn’t going to ask them now.
The next morning, I drove north for about four hours. I was grateful that my single criminal conviction was only a misdemeanor, so leaving the country was not a problem. I made good time to the Canadian border and passed through with only a slight delay.
Trail was a small town. I knew small towns, having grown up in one. From my vantage point, the positive thing was that everyone probably knew everyone else’s business. The negative thing was that they weren’t likely to share the information with a stranger, particularly an American.
I tried a local bar first, but most of the faces were unfriendly that time of day. I wandered into a couple of feed shops, but no one wanted to talk about much beyond chickens and hogs. I paid to have a lube, oil and filter done at a local garage and found out a little bit more there.
Stoll was dead, I learned, and it had been a suicide. He’d taken a handful of sleeping pills. A farmer named Martin, who was waiting on a brake job, refused to talk about it any further. “Wouldn’t be right to speak of the dead,” he told me, “so soon after he’s been put to rest.”
Eventually, I wandered into the small newspaper office. The secretary’s desk had an ‘out to lunch’ sign, but a single reporter sat at a computer two desks away. I caught a glimpse of his solitaire game before he minimized the window.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you a reporter here?”
He smiled. “I am the reporter here. It’s a small town.”
“Did you cover the Stoll death?”
His smile faded and suspicion crept into his features. “I did.”
“I was wondering if you could tell me a few things about that situation.”
“Why would you want to discuss a tragedy like that?” he asked me. “Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m American,” I said. “And I’m investigating a possibly related matter.”
“How could a suicide be possibly related to anything?”
“It’s complicated,” I said, holding out my hand. “But maybe you can help me. My name’s Stefan Kopriva.”
He eyed me for a few moments longer, then took my hand and shook it. “Fred Warren.” He motioned to the chair next to him. I smiled disarmingly and took it.
“What is it you want to know?”
“Well,” I said, “being a newspaper reporter, how did you see the story?”
“What do you mean?”
“Every reporter has an angle. How did you look at it?”
He frowned. “It was a tragedy, plain and simple. All the more so due to all the ugly rumors.”
“Rumors?”
He nodded. “Yes. Before…and after.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Mr. Stoll was a wealthy man,” Fred said. “Or so it appeared to all of us. Everything seemed to be fine on the surface, except of course for what Mrs. Stoll was doing.”
“You mean with the hockey player?”
“You know about that?”
“I heard it at the garage.”
He nodded sagely. “Yes, well, pretty much everyone suspected it. Some probably knew it for certain. The two of them weren’t very subtle about it, particularly when Mr. Stoll was traveling.”
“Did he travel a lot?”
Fred shrugged. “A fair amount. More lately, it seemed. I suppose, looking back, it makes sense.”
“What do you mean?”
Fred shook his head. “I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? We were discussing the wife and her indiscretions.”
I made a mental note to return to this point and asked, “How did he find out?”
Fred shrugged again. “I think he suspected for some time. I’m sure that once he had the nerve to ask one of his friends, he got an honest enough answer.”
“Not knowing might have been better for him,” I said.
“Because he killed himself?” Fred asked. “I thought so, too. Most people did. But then after the funeral, it all came out.”