The Tanglewood Murders. David Weedmark
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returned as well. Without a word, Juan started up the conveyor belts and graders and began dumping tomatoes onto the conveyor belt. The girls were silent, grim; Juan had told them the news.
Taylor drove up to Juan and looked at him pointedly. “I thought you had the day off.”
Juan shook his head. “I asked. He said I could go home as soon as I finish here.”
Taylor leaned towards him and whispered, “I told you not to talk to anyone but the police.”
“Mr. Voracci told me he’d call the police,” the youth replied, crossing his arms. “He’s the boss. Not you.”
“Did you have to tell Caines?”
“He wanted to know why I came back. He’d find out anyway.
Why are you mad at me? I had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t my fault, you know.”
Taylor drummed his fingertips on the top of the steering wheel.
“I’m not pissed off with you. I’m just pissed off.”
“It sucks,” said Juan. “We’re all pissed off.” He cocked his head, adding quietly, “And the girls are really scared.”
“They should be.”
After that, Taylor resolved to keep to himself for the rest of the day.
He worked through his lunch hour, lifting pallets and bringing them to the processing area. He was at the far end of the greenhouses when his forklift slowed and sputtered to a stop. Methodically, he unclasped the propane cylinder from the rear of the machine and, carrying it with one hand, he kicked open the steel door to take a short cut across the gravel driveway. He stopped in his tracks as the door slammed shut behind him and stared up in surprise at the bruised and darkening sky of dusk. He pulled his watch from his pocket and hesitated before putting it back on his wrist. Instead he shoved it back in his pocket. It was just after seven o’clock. The compound was silent. All the pickers and packers and truckers had gone home.
“What the hell am I doing here?” he whispered.
Just a few days ago, he’d been preparing to leave, to go home, go back to his job in Ottawa and pick up the pieces of his life. Yet now, everything he had hoped to escape from for a few months had followed him. This was not the peaceful, carefree place he had sought. It stank with the same senseless violence he had turned his back on last autumn, and with the same despair. It had a voice now—the soft young voice of Anna Wagner.
You are responsible, she said.
Taylor walked silently towards the shipping bay and rested the empty cylinder on its rim, twisting it into the gravel a bit to ensure it did not topple over. He climbed up onto the loading bay, where the backs of trucks would couple with the warehouse, and waited.
His fingers picked at the black rubber padding that protected the frame from the more reckless drivers and stared out across the gravel parking lot as he listened to the sound of music in the far distance and then the sounds of quiet tires on gravel approaching the loading dock.
Taylor quietly stepped back a few feet into the dark shadows of the loading dock and positioned himself behind a stack of wooden pallets. From between the slats he watched a beige electric golf cart, with Randy Caines at the wheel, round the corner of the greenhouse and continue past.
Caines was a large man, about three hundred pounds, but less than five and a half feet tall. He seemed to own only three shirts and two pairs of pants, and these were all black—golf shirts and track pants; his hair was slick, shiny and black as well. He was the one person Taylor had met since he started working at Tanglewood that he felt himself capable of hating without reservation. Every pound of Caines seemed to be riddled with malice and hatred. Anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path, let alone be placed under his authority, was liable to pay the price for his wrath. As the Warehouse Manager, there was no employee at Tanglewood who did not fall under his shadow.
Taylor eased himself around the pallets and watched Caines stop his cart in front of a white plastic greenhouse then carefully unlock the two padlocks that kept its contents safe and secret. This was the only greenhouse Taylor had never entered, because Caines kept it strictly off limits to everyone. Caines had explained during Taylor’s first week at Tanglewood that Michael Voracci grew rare flowers inside as gifts to his wife. Anyone entering the greenhouse, he had gruffly explained, would be fired immediately. Opening the door would disturb the pollination process.
It did not take long for that lie to be exposed. Taylor had overheard someone’s remark during dinner break the following night, “Just like Voracci’s flowers!” echoed by a chorus of laughter.
“So those aren’t flowers growing in there?” he asked.
No one answered him, but the continued laughter made it clear this was a standing joke amongst the workers. As his first days passed, it became obvious that the workers all believed Caines was growing marijuana in there. No one had ever seen Voracci bringing flowers to his wife. For that matter, no one had ever seen him kiss her.
Taylor decided not to concern himself with that greenhouse, at least until it was time for him to leave. For one thing, the greenhouse was quite small, no larger than what a hobbyist would keep in his backyard. For another thing, Ben Taylor was not exactly a narc.
But today, he wondered what other secrets besides marijuana might be hidden inside.
Everyone has secrets, of course. Taylor knew from personal experience that most secrets are only interesting to the person harbouring them. Strangers usually don’t care if you have a drug or alcohol problem, if you have financial problems, if you are cheating on your spouse, or have a sexual fetish, or were caught shoplifting when you were fourteen. However, that rule flipped like a coin when someone nearby died violently. Strangers, namely the police detectives who would inevitably arrive, would soon search for and isolate any secret they found relevant to their case. Lives were turned over, secrets exposed, and reputations often destroyed, in the search for a killer. Caines’ greenhouse would not be sacred territory to anyone once the provincial police began probing around.
There was some comfort in that, at least, knowing that the OPP would now be involved instead of the town police, who had written off Anna’s disappearance as a runaway. Taylor would not longer have to sit on the sidelines while the local chief muddled through this case.
Taylor felt just a hint of satisfaction in that when he saw Randy Caines emerge from the greenhouse. He was emptyhanded, and Taylor wondered what the purpose of this visit had been. He smiled.
He was going to take a personal interest in watching each of Randy Caines’ secrets brought to the light of day.
Now standing in fading twilight, Caines looked left and right before locking the greenhouse door and pocketing the keys. Like a black paunchy thundercloud, Randy Caines cut a conspicuous figure against the white plastic of the greenhouse as he boarded his personal golf cart and hummed away.
Once the golf cart was out of sight, Taylor walked across the loading dock and picked up the telephone, asking the operator for the local OPP dispatch office.
“Just in case you haven’t been notified yet,” he said, before briefly giving the details of the crime.
With that done, he went outside. The air already felt much cooler now that the sun had set behind the hedgerow at the edge of the vineyard. He listened to the gravel shift beneath his feet as he walked, looking up at the large, expansive clouds, draped in hues of orange and purple, gently wafting across above him. The clouds, it seemed to Taylor as his thoughts rose skywards, were nearly within reach of his hand if he were to merely stretch towards them. It was then that he began to hear the music softly flowing through the air.
Beyond the blue garbage hopper at the edge of the parking lot, perhaps a hundred yards from the loading dock, stood an eight-foot cedar privacy fence that separated the vineyard and farm from the private residence of Michael and Jennifer Voracci. From beyond the fence, from an open window on the side of the two-storey gabled home came the gentle sound of a piano, magically