A Victim Must Be Found (22 page)

“I thought home. I mean Daddy’s.”

“The little place on the hill. It’s after midnight. What kind of reception will we get?”

“We’ll be all right. Don’t worry. Daddy’s not the bear you imagine.”

“I wasn’t thinking of him but of his hired hands.”

“Don’t worry. They know the car and there are electronic things that a real burglar wouldn’t know about. You’re safe.”

In the back of my mind was an idea that maybe we should have dropped in at Niagara Regional first to report the adventures of the night, but, when you got down to making a list, there wasn’t much to put on it, unless you could put down each of my snow tires as separate items. Slashed tires and a threatening phone call don’t add up to much more than misdemeanours. My tires were worth more than fifty dollars, so at least it wasn’t a summary conviction offence. It was wilful destruction of property. I had him—whoever “he” might be—on that, whatever else turned up.

Anna drove up the hairpin turns of the escarpment that led to that museum of modern art that Anna called home. We’d covered the distance remarkably fast. I guess it was the lack of traffic at the late hour, but I had to give Anna high marks for her skill behind the wheel. Of course, she probably drove the same route three or four times a day. I was somehow trying to attribute virtues to Anna, whether she wanted them or not. I’d have to take a minute to figure all this out. In the meantime, coming here made sense: it was safe, it got Anna out of trouble and it was a well-defended citadel. I added to that, it wasn’t within a clear view of any other building. The most frightening thing about that phone call was the caller’s up-to-date information. He had seen Anna and me come back to Court Street. He had seen my car in the parking lot outside the Beaumont Hotel. He was keeping an eye on me and I didn’t like that at all.

She slipped a card into an upright stand, the sort of thing you see outside automated parking lots in Toronto, and the big double gates swung open. Instead of driving up to the front door, she took a branch that led around to the rear of the mansion.

“We’re here,” she announced, removing the keys from the ignition and putting them into a leather handbag.

“I’ll cone in and phone for a taxi,” I said.

“No you won’t. You’re spending the night. What’s the use of having a place this size if you can’t cope with unexpected guests.”

“But, officially I’m not a guest. I work for the firm, remember.”

“Don’t be silly. Come on.” She got out and led the way through the dark to an illuminated doorbell. She put a key into the nearby lock and we were in an unfamiliar hallway that was much more the family side of the house, without the monumental and artistic touches of the front rooms. Here the guided tours never penetrated. In five minutes I had a bedroom assigned, pyjamas laid out for me, my own bathroom, and a toothbrush still in its plastic wrapper. Anna brought me another shot of Black Bush and she led the way to a small study with a fireplace and a wall of books. The fire wasn’t lit. That gave me the feeling that I was in a real house and not a movie set. Little things like unlit fires and coffee stains on the kitchen table give me the reassuring notion that even rich people live according to the same natural laws as the rest of us. A coffee stain is the same for everybody, rich and poor alike, and it will stay on the table top until a hand with a rag in it washes it away.

“Are you tired?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, I guess I’m pretty beat.” I sipped on the Irish and so did she. I watched her and remembered the way she’d looked in my office earlier. She’d been so suspicious of me and the investigation. “Do you really think your old man took that list?”

“What happened to your devious and subtle method, Benny?”

“You may call me ‘Mr. Cooperman.’ Did he take it?”

“I don’t know. I worry that he did. But it wouldn’t have been like Daddy to do such a thing. What I want to know is if he didn’t take it, who did, and what does he mean to do with it.”

“If it’s blackmail, the people whose names are on the list won’t have to wait very long to hear from the thief. It’s unlikely that he’ll sit on it. There seems to have been a brisk trade going on in Tallon’s uncatalogued paintings. I know who’s behind that now, but it still is a different answer to the question you raise.”

“I suppose you can’t tell me about that.”

“It’s your old man who’s paying me. He should be the first to know. But I’m not even sure I’ll tell him until I know the whole story. When you start handing out parcels of information you give them a life of their own. The approved practice is to give a full report when you have all the facts and not give briefings from time to time along the way.”

“And you always go by the book?” she asked, throwing back her head in that way women have.

“No. If I went by the book I wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d be back in town looking for the guy who slashed my tires and made that threatening call. I’d probably have reported it to Niagara Regional.”

“Will you?”

“In the morning.” Ever since the incident of the phone call and our flight from my place, Anna Abraham had become quiet and rather withdrawn. In the bar she had been friendly and curious. Now she only seemed to be going through the motions of being the polite hostess. I’d had to bank the coals of some very unprofessional feelings. They probably didn’t go with sharing the boss’s roof anyway. As we got up and she walked me back to my room, we started talking about her job again. She told me about her classes and the number of essays she wasn’t looking forward to marking.

“Starting next Wednesday, I’ve got to unscramble thirty papers on the American Civil War. It’s hard charting a course through those long-dead battles, trying to find trends in leadership and trust, the politics of generalship and so on.” She was leaning against the door-frame. “You know the one about Lincoln offering to send all his generals a case of whatever it was that Grant was drinking.”

“No, I missed that. What I always wanted to know was did the people investigating the Lincoln murder ever discover whether there was a second gun.”

Anna laughed. “See you in the morning,” she said. It had been an awkward moment for both of us, but I’d managed to get through it without betraying my boss or embarrassing either Anna or me. I was dead tired anyway. I didn’t even get a chance to enjoy the luxury of my surroundings. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the fancy pillow.

NINETEEN

Breakfast came on a tray. I think it was the first time that had happened since I had measles or whooping cough. Not only were there things like croissants and jam along with excellent coffee, there was even a carnation standing up in a tall vase. I wondered whether the flower was supposed to go with my jacket. I knew it wouldn’t pass on St. Andrew Street, so I left it in the vase. But it was a nice thought, one that suggested the isolation between this house and the city I lived in. In Grantham only a mortician would wear a flower in his lapel for everyday wear. A politician would sport one only during an election campaign.

After eating my way through the little curls of furrowed butter and rolls, all the way to the Royal Danish pattern on the china in fact, I dealt with my teeth and headed for the shower in a bathroom that overwhelmed me with white terrycloth. The shower stall was huge, with jets of water coming at me from at least three directions. The shampoo came in a plastic bottle. When I squirted a blob of shiny blue shampoo into my palm, it squirted right back into the bottle the moment I released pressure on the container, rejecting me and all I stood for. It knew a fake when one came along. On the same rack as I found the shampoo, I discovered a conditioner and a special rinse all in the same matching plastic bottles. I don’t think I ever did so much reading in the shower before in my whole life.

When I came out of the bathroom, my clothes had been brushed and my shoes polished. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, I muttered as I wondered where the elves were hiding.

The first familiar face I saw belonged to Vince, whom I hadn’t seen since my first visit to see Abraham. He knocked softly at my door and gave me the Toronto paper and a note from our boss. I put that away in my unadorned jacket and asked if I could call a taxi. Vince winced slightly. He told me that a car was ready to take me to town whenever I was ready to go.

Back in the real world, where coffee comes with cream in plastic containers and where the counter of the United Cigar Store is real because I’m leaning on it, I made a few calls from the pay telephone. First, I dealt with the car. The Motor League would tow it and take it to the garage where new tires would be added if, as I thought, the others were past repair. I telephoned the garage and warned them what was coming and asked if I could collect the car before eleven o’clock. I got an argument and after a few hot exchanges, I told them I’d pick it up around noon. Then I had words with Staff Sergeant Chris Savas about the recent harassment I had undergone. He gave me his sympathy and suggested I go back to school and become a teacher and thus get out of his hair for ever. I told him I had no taste for the work. The hours were too rigid for the likes of me.

“Benny, we’ve had a few calls about you in the last couple of days.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Citizens making inquiries about your status.”

“Uh-huh. Any complaints?”

“Nothing specific. But the tone is usually critical even if there are no charges. I took one of the calls myself. Staziak got the second one. They just want us to know that you are making a nuisance of yourself and that certain bigger-than-average tax payers are just making friendly inquiries.”

“Why are you telling me all this, Chris? I know you aren’t going to tell me who called. But I can guess.”

“I’m just tellin’ you. There are more ways than one to slash your tires. I hope they weren’t new.”

“The front ones had less than five thousand miles on them.”

“That’s rough. I don’t think I’ve got a thousand miles left in my front tires. You should have taken my car.”

“Thanks, I’ll remember next time,” I said. “Chris, what’s happening with Pambos? Did the post-mortem tell you anything?”

“It might have, but it sure as hell isn’t going to tell you anything. Back off, Cooperman. I mean that.”

“Has Mattie Lent turned up? The girlfriend?”

“Where did you …? Damn it, Benny!”

“Okay. Forget it. I was just asking
en passant
, as they say. But I’m willing to put down good money that says she hasn’t come forward.”

“Think we’ll find her in a ditch, eh? Well, we’ll get her in time. What do you know about it anyway?”

“Me? Nothing. I’m looking for a list that got lost, remember? I leave murder to the homicide fellows. Where do I get off telling the cops what to do?”

“Benny, put down the goddamned fiddle and talk straight. What do you know about Mathilde Lent?”

“Chris, I don’t
know
a damned thing and what I suspect isn’t of much interest. But I promise, if I run into anything like a hard fact, I’ll send it your way. Pambos was a good friend and I want to see his killer caught as much as you do.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe Phin Lawder and that crazy sister of his did him in. They still own part of the Stephenson House. It’s been in their family for generations.”

“Yeah, well, the blood isn’t what it once was, Benny. She’s in a home and Phin isn’t capable of much more than pulling a cork these days. We checked him out for the night of the murder. He was drinking with two leading citizens and your pal Kogan, the panhandler, back of Gilmore’s Hardware. Dead end.”

“Have you got a line on his ex?”

“Oh, she’s not anywhere near this. Linda’s not even living in town as far as I know. They made a clean break a few years ago.”

“But you’re checking every avenue that might unmask the killer, right?”

“Cooperman. You go right to hell and get off my back!”

After hanging up on Niagara Regional’s finest, and he is, I rejoined my cold coffee on the green marble counter. I was about to complain that they were out of croissants and that there were no flowers on the counter, when Bill Palmer and Barney Reynolds came in and took a booth. They gave me a friendly greeting, so I took my cold coffee in their direction. After the usual complaints from Barney about the paper, the town and society in general, I got to ask Bill a few more questions that I was wondering about. “Any breaks in the Kiriakis murder?”

“Nothing. The cops aren’t saying a thing. I got to talk to Ted Lansky in the Coroner’s office. He said there wasn’t anything special about what killed him. He was stabbed and the knife that did the job was still in the wound. Nice and tidy, he says.”

“Tidy for him,” said Barney. “He doesn’t have to try to get a new lead on it for tomorrow morning.”

“Barney,” Bill said, “neither do you.”

“Yeah, well, I could be, if I wasn’t trying to rewrite the stuff for
City and Vicinity
. They tell me to edit this stuff that comes in from the boondocks.
Edit
it, for God’s sake, I bloody well have to
translate
it!” We commiserated with Barney for a few minutes while he told us about how he’d been undermined by yet another journalism school graduate. “Still wet behind the ears and he’s telling me where to put my hyphens!” When this familiar line began to grow tedious, I changed the subject back to where I wanted it.

“Bill, Pambos didn’t have any family other than his former wife, is that right?”

“Yup. He lost one brother in Cyprus the way I told you, and the other one was killed off by the mob up around Malham. The famous Malham torso case, remember? Geez! Now they’re all dead, all three of them, dead under fifty. That’s bad luck!”

“Is it?” I wondered out loud. “The first died in a political scrum. According to you, the Brits set up the Greeks and the Turks were waiting for them. That sounds like dirty pool to me. I can understand the second brother going anti-social after that. What had authority ever done for him?”

“You’re digging too deep, Benny, and too long ago. Cyprus is over and done with.”

“The hell it is!” said Barney. “You send me out there, and I’ll send back some stories that would send these kids back to school. They never saw a shot fired in anger except at a hockey game.” Bill ignored Barney for the moment and shook his head in the affirmative. He’d weighed what I’d said while Barney went on about what he’d done in Stanleyville back in the 1960s.