The Night Bell by Inger Ash Wolfe Page A

– nothing. And there’s something else.” Wingate twitched involuntarily. “Are you sure you’re OK?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “When did you start wearing the uniform again?”
    “What do you mean by
something else
?”
    Greene held him in his gaze a beat longer. “Come look at this.”
    He led Wingate into his office and turned his computer screen toward him. It was an email message from Sandra Fremont, sent at 12:45 in the morning. Wingate read it. “Has Hazel seen this?”
    “I only just saw it myself.”
    Wingate dialled Hazel’s home number. “Sorry to bother you again. It’s important.”
    “Renald?”
    “Maybe. We don’t know. Sandy Fremont sent Skip an email in the middle of the night. After Renald was taken.”
    “And?”
    “
The sergeant is next
,” he read.
    “Next what? Sandy Fremont sent that?”
    “It came from her address. But I don’t think it was Sandy Fremont who sent it.”
    “Is that all?” she asked.
    “It’s signed
Please Stand By
.”
    She coughed her disbelief. “Is anyone down –”
    “Ray sent Fraser. And Macdonald is down there canvassing for Renald.”
    There was a bit of a silence at her end. “Good,” said Hazel. “And where are you, James?”
    “With Ray.”
    “You get around.”
    “I guess so.”
    “Pass me to him.” He did, and Ray covered the mouthpiece until Wingate left the office. “How’s he look to you?” she asked Ray.
    “James? Like an irradiated boy scout.”
    “He came to my house at seven. With a pair of lesbian paramedics. My house was very strange this morning, Ray. Can you handle James? I’ve got my hands full.”
    “No problem. Difference between you and James is James obeys direct orders.”
    “Send him home.”
    “I will. Check in with me?”
    “Thanks.”
    Greene disconnected. He called Wingate back into his office. “Shift’s over. Go get your uniform dry-cleaned and get some sleep. Am I supposed to call your brother or something?”
    “I’m not in detention, Skip. I’ll go. You’ll let me know if anything else turns up about … about Sergeant Renald?”
    Ray promised his detective sergeant that he would.

] 8 [
1957
    They’d eaten turkey three Sundays in a row. It was a tradition ever since she was a kid that her mother would cook a huge turkey at Thanksgiving and then freeze the leftovers in order to have roast dinner for as many Sundays as it would last. Thanks to her mayoralty, Emily usually received her turkey as a gift from someone, and no one gave the mayor of Port Dundas a small turkey. The one she’d cooked two Sundays ago had been a sixteen-pounder. They’d be eating it until Christmas.
    They’d invited her father’s parents and Emily’s father over. Grandma Blythe lived at the Poplars and no longer recognized anyone. She had been sick since before Hazel was born, but the woman’s stern gaze still presided over the living room from a photograph above the mantel. “Yourmother’s face should not be in a room where people are drinking Scotch,” her father said to Emily, toasting the framed photograph sardonically.
    His father-in-law frowned at the comment. “Blythe was not against the occasional tipple,” he said.
    “A shandy is not a tipple, Craig.”
    They all came to the table. Alan had refused to dress properly for dinner and sat in his overalls. He had been hard to “civilize.” Ten years in a county orphanage could do that to a person. They tolerated his strange habits, like holding his fork in his fist as if he were going to stab someone with it.
    The defrosted and reheated turkey was making its appearance this week as Turkey à la King. They said grace and then the bowls and platters were passed around and everyone filled their plate. Alan would not eat anything with a sauce on it, so a separate dish had been prepared for him with plain white meat, mashed potatoes, and Brussel sprouts sautéed with bacon, which he wouldn’t touch. It didn’t really matter what you put in front of Alan.