Peter Robinson - Not Safe After Dark

‘Don’t ask me.’

‘What does Ed do?’

‘Retired. Used to be a school caretaker in Waterloo.’

Kindergarten teacher; welfare case; retired caretaker. Not exactly high-paying jobs. And all Canadian. Still, that didn’t mean much. Half of Canada rents condos in Florida in the winter – and Canada’s a big country. I looked at them again, trying to read their faces for signs of guilt. Nothing. Karen was still running her finger around her glass rim. Ed was attempting to tell a joke, the kind, he said loudly, that he ‘just knew old Bud would have appreciated’. Only Ginny was laughing, chins wobbling, tears in her eyes.

I finished my beer, said goodbye to Al and left. When I got back to the condo that evening with a bottle of Chilean wine and a pound of jumbo shrimp for the barbecue, I tried to put Al’s suggestion of murder out of my mind.

But it wouldn’t go away.

The problem was what, if anything, was I going to do about it? Back home, I’m a licensed private investigator, but down here I’m not even a citizen.

Still, that evening out on the lanai, after the wine and the shrimps, I decided to keep my bourbon intake down. A good night’s sleep and no hangover would be the best bet for whatever tomorrow might bring.

The grass pricked my feet as I walked towards the pool the next morning for my pre-breakfast swim. Already the temperature was in the low seventies and the sky was robin’s egg blue.

I stood for a moment on the bridge and looked down into the murky water for the huge turtles and catfish. Evenings, just before dark, I’d got in the habit of feeding them chunks of bread. But there was nobody around this morning.

A couple of hundred yards away, over the swathe of dry grass, the squat, brown condo units were strung out in a circle around the central island, connected to the mainland by a wooden bridge over the narrow moat. The pool, the office and the tennis courts were all on the island. And that was Whispering Palms. Someone had bought some land in Florida and got very rich.

An old man, fuzz of white body hair against leathery skin, was lying out on a lounge chair catching the early rays. The scent of coconut sun screen mingled with the whiff of chlorine. The pool was still marked off by yellow police tape.

I noticed that the office door was ajar, and when I popped my head inside, I saw Mary sitting at her desk, staring into space. I like Mary. She’s about twenty-five, an athletic sort of girl with a swimmer’s upper body and a runner’s thighs. She has a shiny black pony tail and one of those open, friendly faces, the kind you trust on sight.

‘Oh, Mr Erwin. You startled me. You weren’t wanting to use the pool, were you?’

‘I was. But I see it’s still off-limits.’

A frown wrinkled Mary’s smooth, tanned brow. ‘Well, I mean, it’s not on account of the cops or anything,’ she said. ‘It’s just… well, I didn’t think the residents would like it, you know, swimming in a dead man’s water.’ She turned her nose up. ‘So I’ve called maintenance and they’re gonna clean it out and refill it all fresh. Should be ready by this afternoon. Sorry.’

‘No, you’re right. It’s a good idea,’ I said.

Most people probably would be put off by swimming in the same water where an electrocuted Santa Claus had floated around all night alone in the dark, but it didn’t bother me much. I had seen death close up more times than I cared to remember. Besides, people swam in the ocean all the time and thousands have died there over the centuries.

‘Mary,’ I asked, ‘do you happen to know who the last people to see Mr Schiller alive were?’

‘His friends. Mr Brennan, Miss Lee and Miss Fraser. They said he was fine when they left.’

Of course. The ubiquitous trio.

Mary shook her head. ‘Never could understand what Miss Lee saw in that group, pretty girl like her.’

So I was vindicated for thinking exactly the same thing yesterday. And if a young woman like Mary could think it too, it couldn’t be either ageist or sexist, could it?

‘Mind if I ask you something?’ Mary said with a frown.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Mr Schiller was a Canadian citizen, right?’

‘As far as I know.’

‘Well, I was worried, you know, like his relatives might come down and make some sort of lawsuit. What do you think?’

Aha, the great American paranoia raises its ugly head: lawsuits. ‘I’m no legal expert,’ I said.

‘You hear about things like that all the time, don’t you? I mean, they could sue for millions. I could be liable. It would ruin me.’ She laughed. ‘Even if they sued for hundreds it would bankrupt me. I could lose my job. I need this job, Mr Erwin. I need the money to go back to school.’

I smiled as reassuringly as I could and told her I didn’t think that would happen. We didn’t even know if Schiller had any next of kin, for a start. And she couldn’t be responsible for his behaviour when he was drunk.

‘But the cops said he must have tripped over that crack in the tiles.’

‘What crack?’

‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

We went outside. The old guy in the lounge chair was still working on his skin cancer. Near the side of the pool, Mary pointed out the crack. It didn’t look like much to me. I put my foot in front of it and slid forward slowly. My big toe slipped right over the crack and the rest of my foot followed. I could hardly even feel the rough edge of the tile. ‘It’s hardly enough to trip over,’ I said to Mary.

‘He was wearing flip-flops.’

‘Santa Claus was wearing flip-flops?’

She nodded.

‘I suppose that might make a difference. Even so… It’s still a long way from the water. Maybe six feet. Schiller was a little guy, only around five-four, wasn’t he?’

‘Yeah. I thought about that, too. But he must have been walking fast, or running, then he tripped and skidded in. Those tiles can get pretty slippery, especially if they’re wet.’

‘But wouldn’t the piano just rip out of the socket?’

Mary shrugged. ‘It was one of those ultra-light things,’ she said. ‘And it had a long cord.’

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why the hell Santa Claus should be running towards the swimming pool in the dark with a live electric piano in his arms, no matter how tight he was or how light the piano.

A heron landed by the side of the moat. Just for a moment, I felt a slight shiver run up my spine to the hairs at the back of my neck. It was a sign I recognized. I was being watched. And not by the heron or the sunbather.

Mary turned and walked back to the office, sandals clip-clopping against the tiles. I followed her, admiring the way her thigh muscles rippled with each step. I felt strangely detached, though; I could admire the sculpted, athletic beauty of her body, but I didn’t feel attracted to her sexually. But, then, it had been a long time since I had been attracted to anyone sexually, except maybe Karen Lee.

Mary sat down at her desk again.

‘Look,’ I said, leaning forward and resting my hands on the warm wood, ‘I know this might sound strange to you, but I’d like you to do me a favour without telling anyone or asking too many questions. Do you think you could do that?’

Mary nodded slowly, tentatively. ‘Depends,’ she said, ‘on what it is.’

When I got back to the condo, it was time for breakfast, but without the swim, my appetite wasn’t up to much. I put on a pot of coffee, drank a glass of orange juice and ate a bowl of high-fibre bran. The healthy life.

Usually I took my second cup out to the lanai and worked on one of the cryptics from the Sunday Times book of crosswords. That was one thing always annoyed me about American newspapers: you couldn’t find a cryptic in any of them I’d seen. This morning, though, I took the two sheets of paper that Mary had printed out for me.