Page 2 of Not a Word

Her puzzled look seemed to require some explanation.

“I worked for WorldWide.” One of Canada’s major television networks. “Wrote copy for the midday and evening newscasts. WorldWide’s been hemorrhaging money, ad revenue collapsing, people getting their news off their phones instead of TV, and when they did a huge round of layoffs they went after the news division big-time.” What I didn’t bother getting into was that newscasts with two anchors now had one. There was less local coverage, more segments from south of the border. The noon news broadcast was axed entirely, replaced with reruns of Hawaii Five-O. But I figured this detective was more interested in what had happened here than a failing network’s program schedule.

I said, “I got a decent package when they laid me off but I need to find something else.”

“So you’d come to ask your father for money?”

“No,” I said somewhat defensively. “I just wanted his advice. He had a good business sense.”

“So you live nearby? Here in Yorkton Hill?”

“Yeah, other side of town. About ten minutes away. Sunnydale.” It was the name attached to our part of town.

The detective nodded. “We could almost be neighbors,” she said. I didn’t know whether she was trying to be affable, or really did live near us, and didn’t ask. Anyway, she was still interested in why I happened to be here.

“Okay, so, dropping off the books, that was an excuse, but you wanted to pick his brain about your career.”

I nodded. “More or less.”

“And didn’t call ahead.”

Another nod. I thought I’d made that clear.

“So you drive over and get here when? Half past one? Notice anything when you arrived?”

I shook my head. “Car was in the drive.”

Detective McCain or McCabe wrote something down in one of those spiral reporter notebooks. I took a moment to size her up. About forty, I guessed, five eight, black hair with a few gray streaks running through it. Not striking in any way, I thought. A plain, oval face. Businesslike.

“That’s your father’s car? The Lexus?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s your mother’s car?”

“She doesn’t drive.” Still using present tense. “There’s an old Plymouth Barracuda in the garage. A ’72, I think. Dad had a car like that when he was in his twenties. Found one in mint condition, got it fifteen, sixteen years ago.”

The crazy things you think of at the strangest time. I wondered how I’d dispose of the cars when Dad couldn’t sign over the ownership.

“That’s your car behind the Lexus.”

She was looking at the eighteen-year-old blue BMW sedan in the driveway. I nodded.

There were three other cars at the curb, two of them marked police cars, one a black, unmarked vehicle, the one the detective had shown up in. A couple more cars were parked farther down the street including a Toyota Corolla that looked as old as my car.

“So after you got here what happened?”

“I rang the bell. Waited a few seconds, rang it again. Then I tried knocking. And when neither of them came to the door, I thought maybe they were out back. They like to sit out there, look at the pond.”

“Pond?”

“There’s a couple of acres back there, and part of it’s a pond that’s got trees around most of it. There’s a gate, which is locked so kids don’t get onto the property and end up drowning, and I looked over it and they weren’t out there, so I came back around to the front, figured, maybe they went for a walk, although that seemed unlikely. They’re not big walkers. And out here, you want something as simple as a coffee, you have to drive.”

“So why didn’t you leave?”

I sighed. “For one thing, the car was there, so it seemed like at least Dad would be home. I knocked again, no answer, so then I just tried the door and it wasn’t locked. Thought I could leave the books just inside. When I stepped in, I called out.”

The detective was still making notes, glancing up regularly. “Go on.”