BOOK EXCERPT: Peggy Blair’s DOUBLE VISION sees past murder

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Ottawa-area author Peggy Blair was a lawyer for more than 30 years and now works in real estate. She is also a renovator, artist and high-level boxer, who has penned five fiction books and one non-fiction book. In DOUBLE VISION, Ottawa homicide detective Jamie Wallace joins forces with a Russian hitman to track down a killer.

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Norma Wesson was an older woman with flawlessly styled thick grey hair. Her clothes looked perfectly tailored. She came from a generation that still called themselves “the missus” and their husbands “hubbies” and used the honorific “Mrs.” with pride.

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Damien Echo and Mrs. Wesson were sitting at a round wooden table inside Skinked, a tattoo parlour that Damien’s boyfriend, Peter Dylan, owned and operated in Lowertown. It was located on the main level of an old building just off King Edward Avenue. The structure was old enough that it was probably haunted, although Damien had never seen any ghosts and didn’t expect to. The séances and teacup and Tarot card readings were all pure performance. She made up sh– for a living.

Damien used the back room for what she called her “psychic intuitive consultations.” It had original wide plank softwood flooring and a beat up Chinese sideboard and an old moth-eaten Persian rug she found at the curb on garbage day. There were two comfortably over-stuffed upholstered burgundy chairs she’d hauled from the roadside as well. Mrs. Wesson perched on the edge of hers like an anxious child.

The elderly woman was bereft, black mascara smeared beneath her eyes. Her arthritic fingers unconsciously twisted a piece of damp tissue. “My late husband, David, took care of everything for me. He bought the groceries, did the cooking, drove me everywhere. I never had to lift a finger.”

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She wore a wedding ring that had to have at least a two-carat diamond embedded in it. Her diamond stud earrings were almost as impressive. Damien tried not to stare at them. Even pawned, they’d be good for at least a thousand.

Damien had checked out Mrs. Wesson before their appointment. The woman had no social media accounts, no Facebook, no Twitter, nothing. She appeared to be socially isolated, an older woman with money left adrift in a world that had become increasingly more comfortable with technology than she was. In other words, the perfect mark.

“I’m afraid of the supernatural, to be honest. But we need to do it to find Tulip, right? David and I never had any children. She was our baby. Now that he’s gone, she’s all I have left.”

“The spirit world will help us find Tulip, I’m sure of it.” Damien pointed to the Ouija board. The triangular wooden planchette rested in the middle. “We start off by touching the planchette — that’s the pointer — very lightly, with our fingers. We can’t push it, though; we have to let the spirits do all the work. Go ahead.” She smiled reassuringly. The only person moving that pointer was going to be her.

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Mrs. Wesson proffered a trembling index finger and touched the planchette tentatively. “I’m a little frightened by all of this. You’re going to try to contact David, and he’ll tell us where Tulip is?”

“If all goes well, yes.”

Tulip, Mrs. Wesson’s beloved poodle, had gone missing two days earlier. She broke free while Mrs. Wesson was walking the dog down Bronson Avenue and tore off through heavy traffic. Mrs. Wesson was desperate to get Tulip back, afraid the dog would be hit by a car.

“I called her and called her,” Mrs. Wesson said. A plump tear rolled down her cheek. “And she just wouldn’t come. I lost sight of her because of all the LRT construction on Queen Street.” She wiped the tear off her face with the back of her hand. “If anything happens to her …”

Damien nodded sympathetically. “I promise we’ll find her.”

When Damien lived on the street, a lot of her homeless friends had dogs and loved them desperately. She remembered one who’d wrapped a blanket around his pup as a wicked storm approached. Thunder rumbled in the distance; hail stung like pellets shot out of a BB gun. He’d placed the trembling creature in a shopping cart as gently as if it were a baby, kissed it on the forehead, and made a tent out of plastic garbage bags to protect it from the heavy rain.

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Before she met Peter, Damien couldn’t remember anyone treating her as tenderly as that homeless man cared for his terrier. Her mantra until then had been if you let someone get too close, you might as well hand them a knife so they could cut your heart into pieces.

She shivered, thinking of the home she’d run away from, the constant abuse. But this was business, she reminded herself. Mrs. Wesson would pay to get Tulip back. And Damien needed the money; she couldn’t let herself ever become wholly dependent on Peter. On anyone.

Mrs. Wesson had relied on her late husband David and look at her now. Helpless. Turning to strangers because she wasn’t competent to do anything by herself. Damien shuddered. That would never happen to her.

“Will I see David when we do this?” Mrs. Wesson asked. “The cancer ate away at him. He was almost skeletal when he finally passed, all drugged up. It was terrible. I certainly wouldn’t want to see him that way again. I like to think of him when he was healthy. Vibrant.” She smiled, wiped her moist eyes. “He had so much energy. Like one of those Energizer Bunny commercials, the ones with the pink rabbit pounding the drum. And he was oh, so handsome when he was young.”

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“He sounds like he was a wonderful person. But he’s not totally gone. His energy is all around us. We can reach out to him. And no, you won’t see him. This isn’t a séance. No voices, no visions. If the spirit world responds, the planchette will spell out the words on the Ouija board. That’s how it communicates with us. Shall we get started? Are you ready to try?”

Mrs. Wesson nodded and took a deep breath. She closed her eyes tightly for a few seconds and then opened them with a determined look and set her jaw. She put the tips of her fingers on the pointer; Damien placed hers there as well.

“Oh, Ouija board,” Damien called out and tipped her face towards the ceiling for dramatic effect. “Where is Norma’s beloved Tulip? Let David, Norma’s husband, come to guide us.”

But Damien already knew exactly where Tulip was. If all went well, she’d be heading over there to pick up the dog after the bogus Ouija board session ended.

All she had to do was negotiate the price.

When Mrs. Wesson called to book the appointment that morning, she sounded frantic. “Tulip hasn’t shown up at the Ottawa Humane Society. I put up posters on the telephone poles all around Centretown, but no one’s responded. I feel like you’re my only option, as crazy as that seems. Can you help me to find her?”

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“Of course. I have an opening at eleven.” Two hours away. No need to let the woman see how anxious Damien was for new clients or how much she needed the money.

Okay, Tulip, Damien thought when she hung up the phone. You ran away from home. I used to do that all the time too. Where did you go?

The first place she checked was Twitter, then Instagram, and finally Facebook, where she discovered a Good Samaritan named Miriam on the “Ottawa, Lost Dogs, Cats and Pets” group. Miriam had posted a photo of a cute brown poodle she’d found wandering loose on Booth Street.

The poodle had a metal tag on its collar that said “Tulip” but no phone number. Miriam was going to take it to the Ottawa Humane Society that afternoon if no one claimed it.

Damien immediately reached out to the woman via direct messaging. She told her it was her mother’s dog, and that she’d be by to retrieve it on her lunch break. Miriam promised to look after Tulip until then.

Damien pushed lightly on the planchette, but the pointer resisted. She glanced at Mrs. Wesson and narrowed her eyes. “Now, you can’t move the pointer, Mrs. Wesson, or this won’t work.”

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“But I wasn’t doing anything. I barely touched it!”

“Okay, then. Let’s try this again.” Damien pushed the planchette forward to spell out the first two letters of the dog’s name:

T U

But before she reached the letter “L,” the planchette took over. It danced across the board, racing from letter to letter, and Damien wasn’t doing anything at all, and it didn’t look like Mrs. Wesson was doing anything either. It spelled out:

N N E Y S

Damien blinked as the planchette paused as if catching its breath. Tunney’s Pasture was a complex of government buildings to the west of downtown, near the Ottawa River, at least three kilometres from where Tulip was being looked after. What the f—?

“Tulip’s in Tunney’s Pasture?” Mrs. Wesson’s eyes widened.  “Oh Damien, that’s amazing!”

“Wait a sec.” Damien frowned. “It’s moving again.”

The planchette scurried to the numbers listed at the bottom of the Ouija Board and tapped out three numbers:

2 9 5

Damien looked at Mrs. Wesson, but she could see no sign that Mrs. Wesson was assisting the pointer. She had the feeling she and Mrs. Wesson could take their hands off it altogether and it would keep right on moving.

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“It’s spelling out an address!” Mrs. Wesson shrieked. “Oh my God, this is incredible!”

P A R K D A L E

H E L P

M E

Jesus, Damien thought. The tips of her fingers touched Mrs. Wesson’s. She felt a sudden jolt as if she’d touched a live wire. She pulled her hands from the planchette. Her fingers burned. She shook them, blew on her fingertips. She tried to rid herself of a deep sense of foreboding. What the hell had just happened?

ABOUT PEGGY BLAIR

Peggy Blair’s first mystery novel, THE BEGGAR’S OPERA, was turned down 156 times before it was shortlisted for the U.K. Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award. She didn’t win the prestigious award, but after a brief encounter with writer Ian Rankin (now Sir Ian Rankin) in a hotel bar in Harrogate the night before she headed home, he told her 156 rejections “wasn’t too bad” and that she should contact his Canadian publisher and use his name.

As a result, she ended up represented by Rankin’s U.K. agent, hit the Frankfurt Book Fair hotlist, and was published internationally, to critical acclaim. The story of how Ian Rankin helped her was retold as far afield as the Sydney Herald in Australia, where the newspaper suggested that next time she should buy Rankin a beer.

THE BEGGAR’S OPERA (since renamed MIDNIGHT IN HAVANA after its U.K. title) won the Giller Prize Reader’s Choice Award and was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award, among others. Peggy has since created her own imprint, Rebound Press, and her books can be purchased through reboundpress.com.

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