The Taken

even the police lived in a state of alert suspicion, it was possible to run the kind of plot they were caught in now: someone using a lake, a newspaper, the internet, and colourfully wrapped packages to tie a leash around an entire police force and tug it in the direction they wanted it to go in. It made him wonder if someone had specifically chosen Westmuir to bring all this stuff to life. It was worth a thought.

He’d called Eldwin’s house again on the way up and found the wife at home. She didn’t seem particularly surprised that he wanted to see her in person, just gave him proper directions and rang off. That only confirmed his theory. In Toronto, the police don’t call ahead, and what’s more, if they did, both sides of the conversation would hang up and immediately begin forming dire anticipations. Claire Eldwin, he found when he arrived, had put on the kettle.

She came to the door in a shiny gold housecoat with pale blue jeans underneath, and she was smoking a handrolled. Out of habit, he sniffed the smoke and checked off the tobacco box mentally. She blinked at him in her doorway, looking him over with interest and gripping the doorframe like she was going to twist it out of the wall.

It was a big house for two people, he thought, but it looked small because it was stuffed with furniture and knick-knacks. Either Eldwin or his wife collected obsessively. Cloth flowers, paperweights, small busts of famous composers, colourful replicas of birds in tiny gold cages. It all crowded in, making the rooms seem darker. She led him to an oval dining room table in wood that looked out onto a big garden full of larger, but equally extraneous, baubles. Cement arches, birdbaths, four little doghouses scattered along the serpentine flagstone paths that wound toward a stone fountain in the middle of the yard from its edges, looking as stranded as a ship run aground. There wasn’t a dog to be seen anywhere. He stood at the window as Mrs. Eldwin made tea. “It’s a quiet week,” she said. He looked at her quizzically. “You’re wondering why I have so many empty doghouses, aren’t you?”

“It occurred to me.” There was something strange about that yard, he thought. It wasn’t just its busy emptiness, it was something else…

“I sit dogs,” she said. “It was crazy busy over the long weekend, but there’s no one now. I had a St. Bernard, a Brittany spaniel, and a chihuahua for three days.”

“Sounds like a Disney film.”

“It wasn’t.”

He turned away from the window. She was pouring hot water into a teapot. “How long have you lived in Mulhouse Springs, Mrs. Eldwin?”

“You don’t look like your phone voice,” she said. “You sound like a small man on the phone, but you’re not.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I think.”

“It’s a compliment.”

He sat, accepting tea from her. “Well, thank you. You didn’t answer my question.”

“We moved a year after the wedding.”

She was at the very least extremely drunk. He could tell she’d been drinking when he spoke to her on the phone. A drunk interview could be good, but if you needed any of it later in court, someone might argue that the statements were unreliable. Still, he needed to know the basics. “And the wedding was when?”

“What?”

“When did you get married, Mrs. Eldwin?”

“September… two thousand and one. It’ll be four years this fall.”

“And before Mulhouse Springs, where did you live?”

“ Toronto,” she said.

“And why did you folks move up here? Mulhouse Springs isn’t exactly Yonge and Bloor.”

“It was Colin’s decision,” she said, coming to the table. “He wanted more space.”

“For what?”

“To ‘think,’ he said.” She gave a nasty little laugh. “Writers, huh?”

“What does he need to think about that he couldn’t think about in Toronto?”

Her face suddenly became serious. “I’ve stopped asking.”

Wingate put a cube of sugar into his tea and stirred it. “Tell me more about Colin.”

“Like what?”

“Who do you think he went to see in Toronto?”

“Someone probably wanted to hire him to ghostwrite a computer manual. Or a biography of their cat.”

“Is that how he makes a living?”

She laughed that knowing, exasperated laugh again. “Make a living? Colin’s been working on the Great Canadian Novel for fifteen years. From long before I met him. He’s never published anything that actually had his name on it. You know, before the Westmuir Record.”

Wingate nodded. An unpublished writer and a dog-sitter had bought this house? “How did the two of you meet?”

Claire Eldwin reached behind her and took a pouch of Drum off the countertop and began to roll herself a cigarette. “In a class. Nine years ago. He sometimes fooled one of the colleges into hiring him to teach a continuing studies class.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“You know, adult education. Most institutions of higher learning have a cash cow on the side called ‘continuing studies.’ It’s evening classes taught by alcoholics and sexual deviants to anyone with a pulse and a chequebook. His class was called Get Published Now. You know the saying those who can’t, teach, right?”

“I’ve heard it said.”

“There’s a corollary: those who can’t teach, fuck their students on the side. That’s how we met. Romantic, huh?”

“Well, you married him.”

She lit the cigarette. “Guilty.”

“And now you think he’s having an affair.”

“Colin is always having an affair.”

“He sounds like a super guy. What’s his novel about?”

“Damned if I know. It’s the Great Canadian Novel. It’s probably about the snows of yesteryear. I can hardly wait. Do you want a drink?”

“No, thank you. Do you know where your husband’s staying in Toronto?”

“All I know is that it’s warm and wet.” “Mrs. Eldwin.”

She stood and went into the kitchen and took a bottle of Grand Marnier out of the fridge. “This stuff gives you a wicked hangover and then you have to drink more of it to get rid of the hangover. It’s the perfect consumer product. Imagine making yourself necessary.”

“I just want to get this straight,” he said. “The people who called your husband on Friday offered him a job, is that right?”

“That’s what I understood.” She leaned on the counter. “Why are you so interested in my husband, Officer? Just lay it on me: what’s he done?”

“He hasn’t done anything as far as we know. It’s just that… we think he might be in some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“We’re not sure.” She looked at him, seemingly lost in thought. “Did you ever hire that PI?” he asked.

“Your boss offered to be of use, so I didn’t. Should I have?”

“No,” he said.

“You don’t think my husband is fucking some bimbo, do you?”

He hesitated a moment. “No, Ma’am. I don’t.”

“Well, you don’t know him, trust me.”

“It doesn’t sound like I’d want to.”

“No…” she said, rubbing an invisible mark off the counter-top. “You’d like him. Everyone