I told Duncan and Martha to meet me at the scene of the crime — I’d always wanted to say that — and I took the quickest route back to the station, where I picked up a bunch of supplies, and then headed over to Stacey’s. I was peering through Stacey’s door when I heard Martha and Duncan arriving. I had each of them look inside at the chair and the desk.
“The layout is similar to ours, except Stacey just had one bed,” I said to Martha.
“What are you getting at, Cordi?” asked Duncan.
“I want to recreate something for you, but we obviously can’t do it here.”
I led them back along the path to my cabin and had them both sit on one of the beds. I pulled out the chair and sat down in it. I tied one of my ankles to each leg the way Stacey had been tied. Then I tied four pillows around my chest and stomach to simulate Stacey. I took the cloth, dunked it in pretend chloroform, pressed it quickly to my face, and then threw it away. I picked up the duct tape, took a section and ripped it from the roll, then lay it on my lap. I took another section of duct tape and put it over my mouth. Using a slip knot, I tied one hand to the chair. On the other I prefashioned a slip knot, tying the loose end to the chair and leaving a large noose at the other, and left it on my right leg. Duncan caught his breath but I continued. I placed the duct tape over my nose and then slipped my free hand through the noose and jerked up on both my arms while trying to reach my face. The pillows got in the way, as I knew they would.
Duncan was off the bed in a nanosecond, ripping off the duct tape in one painful tear.
“You could have killed yourself,” he said accusingly.
“Precisely.”
“Stacey killed herself,” said Martha, somewhat redundantly.
Duncan was looking disturbed.
“I didn’t tamp the duct tape all the way down, Duncan. I could still breathe.”
“Crazy little stunt,” he said.
“With both of you guys there?”
“We might have fainted or something.”
“She committed suicide.” Martha was like a broken record.
“It’s certainly another scenario,” said Duncan as he balled up the duct tape and threw it in the trashcan.
“A woman diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, with two years to live watching her body deteriorate around her,” I said, and my mind went on a tangent thinking about Stacey and the demons she had faced.
“She had a motive for her own murder, no question,” said Duncan. “But what’s with the chloroform? Was she trying to say something? … Cordi? Are you listening?”
I blankly looked at Duncan. The only thing I could say was, “All I’ve done is add another suspect to the list.”
After that Martha and Duncan left and I spent some time looking through Martha’s pictures. She was really very good, although there were no pictures of people, just animals. Some of the shots were out on the beach, some were in the forest, and, by the looks of it, some were just outside the door. My mind was whirling around so fast that I lost interest in the photos and went up to the mess to see who was around. Darcy and Trevor had taken the plywood off the windows. It was a beautiful day, so it wasn’t surprising that no one was around. I went down to the labs to do some snooping and passed by an open door. It was a small office that might better be described as a closet. There were no windows and the lighting was dim. Every square inch was plastered with botanical plants of one sort or another.
“Cordi. What can I do for you?” I turned and saw Darcy bearing down on me.
“I was just wandering around.”
“I see you’ve found my office,” he said, a little too brightly.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to pry.”
He came up to me and nodded his head peremptorily.
On a whim I said, “Do you remember how Stacey was tied?”
He went pale then.
“So you do know?”
I took a guess at what he meant. “That it was suicide?”
He nodded, but I think it was because he was speechless.
“Was she depressed before she died?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t you be?”
I took the deserved rebuff in stride and said, “I mean, did she behave any differently than she had over the previous five weeks?”
“She seemed resigned, if that’s what you mean. She was never a happy person, but she did seem more depressed than usual. But then she became elated. That’s the only word I can think of. As if she had made up her mind — I guess suicide was her only way out.”
“But she was Catholic. That would have gone against her faith.”
“It would have been against every moral fibre of her body to do it.” His voice was shaking. “Her agony must have been intense. For her sake, I tried to stop you.”
“Stop me?”
He looked disconcerted, as if he had said too much.
“Stop me from what?” I said and still he didn’t answer. “Stacey’s dead. What harm could it do for me to know?” I asked.
“A lot. That’s my point. She would never want it known that she committed suicide. I had to keep you from finding out.”
I looked at him with my jaw open. “You’re the one who has been trying to kill me.”
He cradled his forehead in his hand. “I was never trying to kill you, just scare you off the case. And it was just the lighthouse fire, nothing else.”
“But what’s the point? The police would have figured it out.”
“Not without the primary clue.”
“Which is?”
“That she was tied with slip knots. Only you and I knew that.”
But I was momentarily distracted from Darcy as I remembered a conversation I had had and realized with a wallop that somebody else did know. I clued back in when he said, “With you out of the picture I just had to keep my mouth shut.”
“But the ropes are physical evidence.”
“Were physical evidence.”
I looked at him with my mouth open. I could picture Stacey’s raw wrists as we moved her up to the cooler, but there had been no ropes. He must have gone back to the crime scene before he asked me to address everybody.
I could hear someone on the phone down the hall and wondered if their conversation was going better than mine.
“You realize you have destroyed evidence that the police might need to charge someone with murder,” I said.
“But I thought you agreed it was suicide,” he said, his voice sharp and insistent.
“It could be, but it also could not be. The police will have to sort that one out. But for the record, you nearly succeeded in killing me. What were you thinking? Why did it matter so much to you?”
“She took a chance on me. I stole her laptop when I was her student at Dal. She caught me in the act and scared the shit out of me. Held me at gunpoint while she questioned every inch of my life. I must have answered the right way. In exchange for her silence she actually hired me as her assistant free of charge.”
I must have looked surprised because Darcy chortled and said, “She pays me now.”
I left Darcy and headed back to my cabin, thinking that Darcy could have killed Stacey to finally be free of her and the secret she carried.
Martha was snoring on her bed and had put all her photos and the printer on my bed. I really wanted to lie down but she was so peaceful looking that I picked up a handful of pictures and found a place to sit down at the end of my bed. I leafed through, looking at the pelicans skimming the sea, the male Indigo Bunting belting out its song of love, the feral pigs and the wild horses. I stopped at the picture of a screech owl. It was obviously taken at night but the little owl with the large ear tufts stood out. Its golden eyes stared at the camera, as if daring it to do something, which of course it had by taking the picture.
I was about to set the photo aside when something jumped out at me. I bent to look more closely. Behind the owl I could make out a cabin. But it wasn’t the cabin that interested me. It was the person standing in the doorway and the time stamp on the image. My eyes weren’t good enough to read it so I woke Martha up and she found the photo online. I was looking over her shoulder as she zeroed in on the face.
“What is Rosemary doing there?” said Martha. “I had no idea she was there when I took this picture.”
“Do you remember where it was taken?”
“Yeah, that’s right outside Stacey’s cabin.”
We digested what she had just said and then Martha zoomed in on the time stamp. July 22, 2:45 a.m.
“Isn’t that around when Stacey died?” she asked.
“Zoom in on her left hand,” and the left hand came into focus holding what looked like a roll of duct tape and some latex gloves. I had Martha zoom in on every section of the picture. We could see beyond Rosemary into the cabin and the back of Stacey’s head slumped against the chair.
“Jesus. Did I capture the moment right after her death?” Martha quietly asked. “What are the odds?”
“Somehow I wouldn’t have pegged Rosemary for a murderer,” I said morosely. “I mean, she doesn’t really have a motive.”
“Cheer up, Cordi. Motive shmotive. We should be celebrating. You’ve solved the case.”
But for some reason I didn’t feel much like celebrating.
“Did you ever think that instead of murdering Stacey maybe she was helping her?” I said.