Amuse Bouche (32 page)

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Amuse Bouche

I wished a jury would accept those words with as much conviction as I did. Over the years I'd come to rely on Sereena's sense of a person's character. In particular, she could smell bad intentions half a world away. I imagined it was a skill garnered in a once perilous lifestyle. I was glad to know she had come to the same conclusion about my client as I had. My mind fell again to thinking about Randy Wurz. Had he found something? How could I reach him? Was he in danger? I had almost decided to take a run over to the QW offices when the eureka hit me.

It was a clue I'd come across days ago but at the time it made no sense.

I pulled the phone book close again and flipped pages until I reached the map section.

"What are you looking for?" Sereena asked.

In my head I recited the acronyms I'd seen on Tom's computer in his office at QW

Technologies. QWHD, QWS, MSHD, TWHD

and NavyHD. I'd concluded at the time the obvious: QWHD stood for QW Technologies'

hard drive which was the hard drive in the computer on Tom's desk. QWS stood for the QW

Technologies' server. Although most people save computer information to hard drives and floppies, many companies also have a main server for safer and larger storage capacity. It was the QWHD and QWS locations Randy 368

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Wurz had gone off to search today, hoping to find something that would tell us what was in the TechWorld lab. TW had to stand for TechWorld and TWHD had to refer to a TechWorld hard drive on a computer Tom kept in the TechWorld lab—a computer that was now missing. That left MSHD and NavyHD. I had no idea what these monikers referred to when I first saw them, but now that I was sure I'd figured it out I was angry with myself for not seeing it earlier. The acronyms created by Tom always somehow indicated the locations of the computers where he stored information. At work, QW, in: the lab where he tested his video games, TW, and...at home...MS had to refer to Main Street, the address of his apartment. But I'd seen no computer when I was in the apartment.

Where had it gone? Would Tom have been planning to take it with him to Europe? Was it at the bottom of Pike Lake along with the rest of his luggage? That left NavyHD. It had to refer to another location where he kept a computer. I had to find it. It was possibly the only computer left that would tell us what was going on in that TechWorld lab.

I glanced up but for a quick second at Sereena. "Navy," was all I told her. All of the acronyms Tom Osborn used related to physical locations or addresses. So it made sense that Amuse Bouche

Navy could be an address or name of a business. "Is there such a thing as a Navy Street or Navy Avenue in Saskatoon? Or a business with Navy in its name?"

My finger moved down the listing of

Saskatoon street names: Nahanni Drive, Nash Place, Neatby Crescent. No Navy. I turned to the White pages and found only one listing that started with Navy: Navy League Cadets & Sea Cadets. It didn't sound right.

"There used to be an Army & Navy store downtown," Sereena suggested.

"Yes, but that's gone now; I wonder if I'm wrong. Maybe 'Navy7 refers to something nau-tical, rather than an address or a place."

"Maybe you're looking at the wrong map."

I looked up at her sharply. "What?"

"Maybe Navy
is
an address, but not in Saskatoon."

It was bad news. The physical location of NavyHD could be anywhere in the world. It made sense. Tom likely travelled widely during the course of his work. If he had some reason to want a secret, secure location to store computer information, he could have a computer in any one of countless locations. I groaned out loud and gave Sereena a hapless look. "It could be anywhere," I said.

"Nonsense. Use your head."

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I'm sure my eyes doubled in size as the answer suddenly came to me. I had seen the sign only yesterday. When I'd followed Clark Shiwaga into the Pike Lake resort we had turned onto the street where Chavell and Tom kept house. Navy Avenue!

I reached over the counter for Sereena's hand and kissed it with a flourish. "You were right! I was looking at the wrong map. There isn't a Navy in Saskatoon, but there is in Pike Lake!"

I grabbed
at
the phone and called Detective Darren Kirsch at his home number. Treena told me he was still at work and I reached him in his office, noisily chewing on an apple.

"Darren," I said with a hopefully contagious sense of urgency and import, "would you answer one query, no questions asked?"

He halted his masticating long enough to let out an unnecessarily long and heartless-sounding laugh. I relented and told him bits and pieces of what I'd found out about the computer storage locations and the TechWorld lab which Randy and I had found empty that morning.

"I don't see what all of this means, Quant,"

he said after I'd finished.

"It means there might be more to Tom Osborn's disappearance and murder than anyone, including the police, knows. If there wasn't,"

I added, looking at my wrist-watch, "why would 371

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you still be at your desk at ten o'clock at night?"

"I do have other cases, Quant."

"Okay, okay I'm not asking you to do anything, I'm just asking for an answer to one question."

He sighed. He'd either put his apple down or was done with it. "What is it?"

"When your guys searched Harold Chavell's cottage at Pike Lake, did they find a computer?"

He sighed again and then I heard him make a stretching sound as if he was reaching for something. "I've got the inventory of stuff we confiscated from the cabin," he said. "There ain't no computer on here. And if there'd been one we'd certainly have taken it. Is that it? I got work t'do."

Damn. Where the hell was NavyHD? It had to be at Pike Lake! I was about to hang up when I heard Darren mutter. "What did you say?"

"Hold on a sec." More reaching sounds.

Some pages being flipped. "Yeah... I thought so, here it is."

"What?" I urged.

"I thought there was mention of a computer somewhere. We did get one."

"From his apartment?" I wondered.

"Nope, nothing there. But the divers found a computer in his luggage."

"Divers?"

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Bidulka

"Tom's body got free of the cinder blocks it was tied to, but his luggage didn't. We sent divers into the lake to see what they could find and they came up with two suitcases. One of them contained a laptop. It was ruined though.

We couldn't even boot it up and we tried removing the hard drive but it was wet toast."

Was that the fate of NavyHD or was the computer in the luggage actually MSHD as I had earlier guessed? There was only one way to be sure. I hurriedly thanked Darren and hung up.

I jumped off my stool and announced, "I'm going to Pike Lake!"

"I'm coming with you!" Sereena declared.

I looked at her. Then I laughed. She joined in.

"Sorry" she said with a dry rasp, "it just seemed the appropriate thing to say in the heat of the moment." She emptied her wineglass, blew Barbra a kiss and sashayed her
way
out the back door.

I ran to a closet and selected a maroon-coloured, down-filled bomber jacket. I dashed about grabbing keys, wallet and shoes. Barbra followed at a discreet distance as I scrambled about. She wasn't particularly pissed off when I left. She was used to my leaving at a second's notice and easily resigned herself to an evening on her own. As I made my way to the garage I wondered if I should get her a puppy.

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On my way to Pike Lake I used my cellphone to try reaching Randy Wurz and Errall again, but neither were answering the phone. I was a little miffed at Errall for leaving me an urgent message to call her back and then not staying by her phone. But then again, this wasn't her investigation and no matter how I looked at things, there was no way I could reasonably expect her to sit by her phone all night waiting for me to call.

It was a starless night but the moon was nearly full and cast a bluish glow on the shadowed streets of Pike Lake. From my earlier visit with Shiwaga I easily found my way to Navy Avenue and Chavell's place. I parked on the same berm as before, retrieved my flashlight and gun and made my way through the caragana moving the flashlight from side to side like a pendulum of fireflies. Before long I was standing on the wooden deck at the cabin's back door. I directed the light into the sloping backyard. Nothing new to see since yesterday as far as I could tell.

I chose the back door for my dastardly chore—break and enter—because it was near the lake end and away from trie road. As I expected, the lock was unsophisticated and easy to pick. For some reason, all sense of security and safety goes out of people's heads when it comes to their leisure properties. It's as if 374

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nothing terrible could happen to them when they're at the lake. Tom Osborn, for one, had found that to be tragically untrue.

The back door swung open and I stepped again into the comfortable porch area.

Although the moon was doing its best to illuminate the room it was still insufficient for my needs. If I was going to try to find something the police had missed, I knew I'd need the full benefit of electricity. Even if someone were to drop by and wonder what I was doing, I was pretty sure I'd be able to come up with a reasonable story. I reached for the nearest light switch and began my search for NavyHD.

It was well after midnight when I gave up.

Dejected at my failure to turn up the computer I'd hoped would reveal the secret of the Tech World lab, I helped myself to a bottle a beer from the kitchen refrigerator. As I sipped the frothy elixir I retraced my steps and made sure all the lights in the cottage were extinguished. I let myself out the door I'd come in, careful to re-lock it, and eventually found myself once more, none the wiser, standing on the small wooden landing that looked out into the narrow back lot and lake beyond. I stood there for many seconds, staring blindly into the abyss of darkness, Amuse Bouche

wondering what to do next. Although getting out of the cold night and jumping into a warm bed were quickly making their way to the top of my list, the fate of NavyHD continued to bother me. If NavyHD was the computer the police had found at the bottom of the lake, then where was MSHD? Was it possible that NavyHD and MSHD were the same computer? Was it possible there'd been nothing important going on in the Tech World lab after all?

I finished my beer and deposited the bottle on the deck where I hoped a recycler would find it. I was about to switch on my flashlight for the trip back to my car when I heard it.

An unfamiliar noise.

I felt my skin shift.

This was one of the many reasons I don't like camping and wouldn't like living in a cabin in the middle of wilderness. There's a myriad of unfamiliar noises. I used my flashlight to pan over the yard. Fire pit. Check. Sloping lawn.

Check. What else was out there? A squirrel?

Possibly. Raccoon. I suppose, although I'd never seen one in person. A bear? No, Quant, no bears in the Saskatoon region. How about a cougar?

Hadn't I heard something about cougar sight-ings near the city this past spring? Or was there a person out mere? I straightened my back and asked myself what kind of detective I would be 376

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without doing some detecting. It was my job, but even so, there was no need to be unprotect-ed. I moved the flashlight from my right hand to the left and pulled the revolver from my pocket. I stepped off the landing into a squishy mix of grass and soil-I slowly made my foray into the backyard keeping the light one step ahead of me. My ears were hurting with the effort of trying to discern a sound of impending danger. As I got further away from the cabin the ground became steeper and steeper and I knew I would soon be at the lake's edge. I kept my steps as small as those of a blind man without a cane, wanting to make sure I stopped before I found myself in water. But instead of water I found myself on another wooden platform. It was the small dock I'd noticed the day before.

Again the noise!

I twirled around wielding the flashlight like a
Star Wars
lightsaber.

Still nothing. Damn squirrels.

I moved the light over the surface of the floating dock, half-submerged in the water, and followed a rope from its one end tied to a moor-ing post to the other now hanging limply in the dark water of the lake. A short time ago the rope was probably used to secure a boat of some sort to the dock. I panned the flashlight onto the shore and indeed, overturned and now land-377

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locked for winter storage a couple of yards away was a small, wooden skiff. With a sudden acrid sensation in the pit of my stomach 1 realized that this was where it happened. This was where Tom Osborn had met his end. Someone had marched him out of the cottage and forced him, probably at gunpoint, close to the water's edge (less distance to drag the body) but not so close that anyone on the lake might have caught sight of what was happening. And then they'd asked him to turn away The last thing Tom Osborn would have seen was the glass-still surface of his beloved Pike Lake. Perhaps there'd been a few late season ducks floating by. Maybe he'd tried to focus on the dusk canoe ride with Harold, the scene from the picture I'd seen in their bedroom. I hoped that in his last moments, when he most certainly would have known he was about to die, he'd buried himself in memories and found some small comfort.

And then he was shot in the head. From behind. The body would have toppled to the ground.

I directed the flashlight to the spot where I guessed his body might have lain. There was no blood left, no sign of a life seeping into the soil.

I supposed what the police didn't take with them for evidence had long ago been cleaned up by wildlife and weather.

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Darren Kirsch had told me Tom had been tied to cinder blocks. Obviously the killer didn't do a good job of it. And then Tom and his luggage were moved into the skiff, taken for one last ride on the lake, probably not too far out to avoid being seen, and tossed overboard, discarded like garbage.