Skimming Over the Lake, page 6
“Yeah, it would be.”
They walked in silence the rest of the way to the east end of the lake, where there were now a number of portable tables set up where various club members had their boats displayed or awaiting launch. The club members were not concerned by their approach. They were probably used to all kinds of people asking them questions about what they were doing. It was something new and interesting to many people and would attract attention.
“This looks like fun,” Margie offered, raising her voice so that they would all hear her over the noise of the boats that were skimming over the surface of the lake. Despite the fact that they didn’t look a lot like regular manned boats, they were very fast and maneuverable, making hairpin turns and avoiding each other when there were more than one out on the water.
A couple of the men who were waiting for their turn to put their boats in the water turned toward them. Margie suspected that they must only allow a certain number of boats on the water at the same time to avoid collisions.
“It is fun,” a man in a red ball cap answered, giving Margie a tolerant smile. “Nothing like getting your boat out on the water.”
“Are you here often? Is this some kind of club?”
He nodded. “Once or twice a week if I can. We are a loosely formed group. Not a club, exactly. But it’s more fun to enjoy the boats together than separately, so we get together when we can.”
“Do you have a lot of members?”
“There’s a core that is generally the same.” The man gestured to himself and the others who were there, some of them listening to the conversation and others ignoring it as they worked their boats out on the water. “And then there are others who come and go. People who are just starting out, experimenting, or new in the city.”
“And does Simon Hustler play with your group?”
The members looked around at each other. “Well… yes, he’s here sometimes.”
“Pretty often,” offered a woman with long gray hair. A couple of dogs stood near her, watching everything she did. They were obviously well-trained not to go into the water after the boats. Margie wasn’t sure how hard it would have been to train Stella not to go after little boats. It would be doggie heaven for her to have something to chase in the water. “He was an enthusiast.”
“I heard that he was the president of this club.”
There was a snort from a dark-haired, heavyset man. He looked at Margie and rolled his eyes. “He told you he was the president of the club? I’ll just bet he did. No, we don’t have a president. We meet together as friends and enthusiasts when it is convenient. There isn’t anyone in charge. Not Simon. Not anyone.”
“You don’t have anyone who… makes the decisions? Recommendations?”
“No. Everyone does their own thing. And if you can meet when everyone else can meet, then you get together and do it. If you can’t… then you try to rearrange your schedule for the next time. There’s no… special privileges for anyone.”
“Aren’t there rules?” Siever spoke up.
“Well…” the gray-haired woman conceded this point. “There have to be rules. For races or meets. But they were just established over time. There wasn’t any one person who created them and who enforced them for everyone else.”
There was a pause as several of them looked at each other. Of course, they were going to have some thoughts that they didn’t think were appropriate to share. Were they thinking about Simon and how he’d tried to enforce rules? Or was he a rule breaker? Margie couldn’t be sure from all that had been said so far.
“And Simon doesn’t try to enforce the rules?” Siever asked. “Or to make any changes to them? To report people when they aren’t following them?”
“He might,” the heavyset man conceded. “But what I’m saying is… he doesn’t have any special privileges or duties over anyone else. We all just take care of ourselves and our own equipment. If you’re going to fight and argue with people, no one is going to want to run their boats with you.”
“What was Simon like?” Margie asked.
At their sudden looks of surprise and alarm, Margie realized that she’d done it. Siever glared at her. She’d blown any effort that he was making of being quiet and round-about in his questioning. One wrong question, and everyone knew something was up.
Margie opened her mouth to correct herself, then decided there was no point. They weren’t going to believe it and, sooner or later, they would find out the truth, so there was no point in trying to lie now.
“I’m sorry. I mean…”
“What was he like?” asked a man with a controller, watching the boat that he was guiding out on the lake. “Did something happen to him?”
“I’m afraid so,” Margie said. “I’m sorry, I hadn’t planned to put my foot in my mouth like that. I don’t mean to be insensitive.”
“What is it, then? What happened?” the gray-haired woman asked.
“He was killed last Friday.”
“Killed? What does that mean? In an accident?”
“We are investigating his death,” Siever said. “We don’t know yet.”
The members of the group were all turning around to look at the two of them. Those who had boats on the water cut their engines and left them floating out on the lake while they turned their attention to the detectives.
“What are you talking about?” the woman asked.
“I’m sorry, we can’t give you any details at this time. It is under active investigation.”
Margie studied the faces of each of the members of the group. Were they upset or just shocked? Was there anyone who was closer to Hustler than the others? Who had spent the most time with him? Known him for the longest? Were there any reactions that seemed wrong or out of proportion with the rest?
“You’re cops?”
“Maybe we could get everyone’s names,” Siever said. “It will be easier if we know who we are talking to, and then we can contact you when we do know something.”
People were not eager to hand out their names and contact details, but they came forward gradually. The more people who introduced themselves, the more the remaining members of the group were under pressure to comply as well. No one walked away or refused to give their names.
The gray-haired woman was Monica Ellis, the dark-haired stocky man was Michael Richards, and the one in the red ball cap was Larry Brown. One of the men with his boat on the water was Terry Hall, and the other was Vernon Nash. Siever diligently wrote down everyone’s names, phone numbers, and email addresses. He didn’t get addresses, but he would be able to pull up their driver’s licenses to figure those out, and they could do background checks on each of them.
“So you can’t tell us what happened?” Monica demanded. “It seems like you should be able to tell us something. Obviously, if you are investigating it, Simon didn’t just die in his sleep.”
“Unless someone poisoned him,” Larry pointed out.
“I’m sure no one poisoned him,” Monica snapped.
“The police are investigating it; he could have been.”
Monica turned to Margie, maybe picking her as the softer target. “Simon wasn’t poisoned, was he?”
“The medical examiner’s findings have not been released yet,” Margie fudged. If she told them that he’d died of drowning, then they would know why she and Siever were there at the lake. It wouldn’t be too hard to figure that out. “He said that more investigation was necessary.”
Margie and Siever both watched everyone’s faces for any tells. Terry Hall and Michael Richards were both wearing masks, though Michael pulled his down occasionally to have a drink of water and grab a few breaths of fresh air. The others, maskless, were easier to read. But none of them were giving anything away.
CHAPTER TEN
“When was the last time each of you saw Simon?” Siever asked.
They looked at each other.
“He wasn’t here Sunday,” Larry answered. The others were giving him dirty looks for being the first to speak up, but he ignored them. “Was he here last Tuesday? He’s usually here every time I am… he likes to get his boats out whenever he gets the opportunity.”
“He was here Tuesday, a week ago,” Vernon agreed. “Same as he is every week.”
“Were you surprised not to see him on Sunday, then?” Siever pressed.
“Well, yes. A couple of us said something about it. Wonder what happened to Simon. Maybe he’s sick. Just the usual stuff in passing.”
“Anyone call him to find out if everything was okay?”
Heads shook. They weren’t close enough to be comfortable calling him up, even if they thought that he might be sick. But of course they hadn’t had any reason to believe that anything bad had happened to him. Just because a guy didn’t make it to one regular boating day, that didn’t mean that there was anything wrong. He could have been working, visiting his mother, getting a vaccination. A hundred other things.
“So the last time any of you saw him was last Tuesday?” Margie asked.
They all nodded, some more emphatically than others.
“How did he seem then?”
Looks were exchanged. People thought back, tried to remember clearly.
“No different than usual,” Larry said. “Simon was Simon.”
“Yeah. Just the same,” Monica agreed.
“He wasn’t upset about anything?”
“Well… Simon was usually upset about something. He liked to complain and make a big drama over little things,” Larry contributed, picking his words carefully.
“Larry!” Monica reprimanded.
“Well, it’s true. Are you going to deny that it’s the truth?”
“No… I just don’t think… you need to make it sound like he’s a bad person. He complained, but a lot of people do. Something bothers you, you go rant to your friends about it for a while, and then you feel better. That’s the way society is these days. Did he argue any more than the average person…?” Monica opened her mouth to answer her own question “No,” then stopped, looking stricken.
“Yes,” several of the others answered together.
They all looked at each other. Monica was still trying to bring herself to say no, he was just like anyone else, but she couldn’t seem to manage it, knowing that it was a lie.
“Well… maybe,” she admitted. “A little.”
“A lot,” Larry corrected. “He always had something stuck in his craw. You know it’s true.”
“But that doesn’t mean that he was dramatizing. Some people just have… a more negative outlook at life. Maybe he had a difficult childhood.”
“I’m sure his mother thought he had a difficult childhood,” Terry said dryly.
“You guys! I don’t know how you can joke about this, or not think about the fact that Simon is dead! He’s dead, and you’re joking about him or saying things about him that are… exaggerations.”
“Was there something in particular that he was upset about on Tuesday?” Margie interposed.
“That’s a long time ago now,” Larry said, shaking his head. “I’m lucky if I can remember what I did before breakfast. Last Tuesday…?” He looked at the others, hoping one of them would remember.
“This and that,” Monica said, shaking her head. “I can’t think of anything in particular. He was looking for a part that the hobby craft store didn’t have and wouldn’t order in. He said something about his mother. I forget what, that he had to go see her to help her with the garden, or something. I think. Anything else?”
“Work?”
“Maybe.”
Simon had been an accountant, according to the background they had gathered on him. Margie was sure that an accountant would always have something to complain about at work. Clients who didn’t know what they were talking about. The other accountants in the firm. A messed up financial statement. A missed delivery. A CRA audit. There was plenty that could go wrong in accounting.
“Was he here most of the days that your club meets?” Margie asked.
“Sure. He was almost always here. If he missed, it usually meant that he was sick. He didn’t skip out because he had something else going on.”
Margie nodded. “And what about days that you guys aren’t here? Did he come on his own too?”
Monica and the others looked at each other. “I guess so,” Larry said. “Most of us only get here on either Tuesday or Sunday, not both, but I know Simon sometimes mentioned being here other days too, in case anyone wanted to join him.”
“And did anyone ever take him up on it?”
There was a definite hesitation, the group not wanting to answer the question.
“Not anyone who knew him well,” Michael said finally. “A newbie might, someone who wants to get some more time in or thinks it would be a good time to pick a pro’s brain about some of the ins and outs of the craft…”
“But those of you who knew him well, you wouldn’t come here to boat with him?”
They shrugged or shook their heads. “Simon was quirky,” Monica tried.
“Simon was a pain,” Michael countered. “I know he probably couldn’t help it, but the guy drove me up the wall. His voice, his negativity, his… social skills, I guess? Always wanted to talk about himself, made inappropriate comments, would change the subject and try to take over the conversation if he wasn’t interested in what someone else was talking about. He was just awkward, I guess. Not someone I enjoyed being around. I put up with him in order to meet with the others and have a chance to try out my boats or have a race, but come here with him on another day? No, not me.”
Margie looked around and the others in the group. “Was that the general consensus?”
They looked up or down or out at the lake at the boats bobbing on the surface.
“He was awkward,” Larry agreed.
Margie made some notes in her notebook, but she didn’t see how any of it could relate back to Hustler’s death.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Margie was frustrated by the lack of progress on the case. Some cases took months or years to close, of course, but the Hustler case had seemed so open and shut that she was irritated that they hadn’t yet been able to establish the manner of death and to move it forward.
She and the others spread out a representative sample of the photos of the body on the conference room table and printed off the medical examiner’s preliminary report and emails regarding what they knew about the bruises so far. They ordered sandwiches for lunch and all walked around the table looking at the pictures and rereading the description of the object or objects that had caused the bruises.
Margie worried that it was a wild goose chase. What if Hustler had sustained the bruises earlier in the day from something that was totally unrelated to his death? None of them could identify anything that had been out in the water that might have cause the bruises. Would they have to drain the lake or send in divers to see if there was something under the surface that was dangerous? People sometimes disposed of old cars or other junk in lakes like that. Margie couldn’t understand why they would since there were plenty of auto junkyards and the dump right beside the park.
But there could be something under the surface that he had run into while trying to save his dropped phone. It was really the only logical assumption.
“They’re all on his upper body,” Cruz observed, “nothing below the shoulder blades or chest.”
“Do you think that he could have dived down and gotten caught in something?” Margie suggested. “He had to fight his way out…?”
No one seemed to think this was a possibility.
“Blunt object, sharp edges,” Jones mused. She examined a couple of pictures, holding them close to her eyes and turning them around to see them from all angles. Margie wasn’t sure how that was going to help. The bruises were not giving much away.
On TV, there were always distinctive chain patterns, an emblem, or some other shape that could be matched directly with one unique item. But in real life, bruises were usually indistinct, and a person had to be able to connect the dots and be creative in trying to think of what object or activity had caused the injuries.
“And a lot of force,” Siever pointed out. “This wasn’t something that he just bumped into. He was hit with a fair amount of force.”
“But we don’t know exactly how long it was before his death,” Margie said. “I don’t think there’s an exact science to how well the bruises would be developed by the time he died.”
“They were new bruises. Not purple or yellow. Still fresh,” Cruz said. He looked at the array of pictures. Shades of red. Blood collecting under the skin. Nothing, as he said, that could be days old.
“But minutes or hours?” Margie asked. “What if he’d had a fight with someone earlier in the day?”
“Earlier than six o’clock?” Jones asked. “Who would he have fought with before six o’clock in the morning? He didn’t live with anyone, right?”
“No. No family or roommates.”
“Then it wasn’t likely a fight with anyone. And those aren’t from a car accident. Whatever happened to him must have happened in the park.” Jones asserted.
“Well, the only things in the water were the raft and his RC boat.”
“You got pictures of the RC boat?”
Margie went to the laptop on the boardroom table and browsed through the pictures in the workspace for the Hustler file, eventually bringing a couple of pictures of Hustler’s RC boat up on the screen.
“Here it is.”
Everyone grouped around the laptop to look at the pictures.
“Well,” Cruz ventured, “It could be from the boat, don’t you think? That would explain why everything is shoulders and above. He’s in the water, the boat is floating on top of the water; it would hit his head and shoulders.”
Margie looked at the picture and shook her head. “It makes sense, but it doesn’t. Why did he go out on the lake? Because something was wrong with his boat, and he had to retrieve it. So it was disabled, it wasn’t going anywhere.”
