A Match Made for Murder Iona Whishaw (pride and prejudice read .TXT) 📖

the top of my road. I had to try to straighten up before I got to the house, and that’s when I knew it was gone. It must have fallen out of my pocket when . . .”

“You didn’t keep it in your purse?”

“No. I always put it in my pocket. What’s going on?”

Ames felt his anxiety spiking into fear. “Look, Tina, I don’t know what is going on, but your father has been to see us. I won’t explain now, but he’s on his way home. He’s going to come back, and I want you to come back with him. Do you understand?”

“Of course, I understand. I’m not an imbecile. Why was he there, anyway?”

“I can explain later, just come back with him, okay?”

“All right, all right. I hear a car. Customer. Gotta run.”

“Tina!” But she’d hung up the phone.

A young officer knocked and put his head around the door. “Sarge, that car at the back you wanted the trunk fixed on and keys made, so it could be driven back across the lake? It’s gone.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Martinez sat at his desk, the photographs splayed before him like a bad hand of cards. They’d been delivered by a cab driver shortly after the assistant chief had left to pick up Darling. A couple of nice pictures of Inspector Darling and his wife out at the mission. These he had set aside. The rest. He shook his head, unbelieving. Paul Galloway with his arms around a couple of girls at the club, on the game he was sure. Galloway and James Griffin at the bar in the restaurant. Galloway and Griffin in what Martinez assumed was Galloway’s house. Galloway and Griffin, Galloway and Griffin. A couple of pals. Had Galloway’s wife taken these without her husband knowing? She must have. He’d never have allowed such compromising photographs. He shook his head. What must have been going on in that marriage? The ticking of the clock on the wall seemed loud in the silence. It had been hours since Galloway had gone to fetch Darling at the hotel. What could they be doing? Galloway had distinctly said he was bringing Darling back to the station so they could begin to plan the search. It was a quiet night for a change. Only one drunk had been brought in, and it was already ten at night. God bless Tuesdays. He found Bevan leaning back in his chair, putting in some procrastination, while a partially written report stared back from the desk.

“Hey, Bev, have you heard from Galloway? He was picking up that Canadian inspector because his wife went missing. He told you about that?”

Bevan produced a puzzled expression. “News to me. Boss said nothing about a missing woman. Just hightailed it out with his usual cheerful and charming good night. I lie, of course. He took off without a word, as usual.”

“He said,” Martinez began. “Never mind.” He turned and started back to his desk, and then on an impulse, he looked right and left, opened the door to Galloway’s office, and slid in. He stood for a moment in the dark taking in the enormity of his invasion. It felt like a monstrous violation, after all that he owed Galloway. But nothing added up anymore. He looked behind him at the closed door. Who was he kidding? Nothing had added up for a while. Not Galloway lying to him about having alerted everyone, or saying he was bringing Darling right back, not all those chummy photos of Galloway and Griffin, and he thought, with a thump in his chest, not his missing evidence and notes.

Crossing himself quickly and offering up a prayer to the Virgin, Martinez darted around Galloway’s desk and sat in his chair. There was a small desk lamp and he switched it on, his head beginning to fill with the excuses he’d use if Galloway found him there. But it was unthinkable, what he was thinking. Galloway couldn’t have spirited away his paperwork. The one thing he was always going on about was the importance of putting Griffin behind bars finally and for good.

In the end it had been simple: Galloway had exercised caution and opted not to destroy the evidence—after all, he might decide to terminate his partnership with Griffin, but he had exercised no caution in the storing of it. Martinez had found it tossed at the very back of the lowest drawer of his file cabinet. He hadn’t even bothered to lock the cabinet, so confident was he that no one would dare breach the sanctity of his office.

Martinez looked at it and then put it back. What should he do? Anxious now about the amount of time he’d spent in the office, he pushed the drawer shut quietly and then turned out the desk lamp and felt his way to the door. Taking a deep breath, he opened it a crack. He could see Bevan’s back and no one else on the floor. He breathed a sigh of relief and returned to his desk. It was time to try to understand what it meant and what, if anything, it had to do with the disappearance that afternoon, a lifetime ago, of the beautiful wife of the Canadian inspector.

“Good. Now I feel we’ll get to the bottom of this.” Galloway pulled his car up behind that of a tall man with a cowboy hat and a penchant for loud music. “Turn off that racket!” Galloway commanded.

The tall man leaned into the car slowly and switched off the engine. He bent to brush some dust off the top of his cowboy boots, deliberately not looking at Galloway. “Whatever you say, Chief.” He didn’t appear to like being ordered around by a policeman.

Darling bounded out of the car and rushed up the stairs. A cold grey light heralded the coming dawn, and it made the log cabin seem as abandoned as any he’d ever seen in the Kootenay valley. What had they done with