A Victim Must Be Found (30 page)

“Not off hand. I see you’ve given the matter some thought. And of course the roof of the house in Port Richmond is too low. Not dependable enough. But you know the house. I was forgetting. I saw you going into it and coming out late this afternoon.”

“Like hell you did! I haven’t been near there. You’re not going to get a rise out of me that way.”

“You know the house though?”

“What house? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sergeant?” Savas tried to calm him down. He took a big swallow from his glass. “Look,” he said once he caught his breath, “you’re telling me that Mary killed herself. I find the whole idea terribly upsetting. She was a good friend going back several years. And I don’t care how she did it. If she’d hit herself over the head with an axe, it’s still suicide, and it’s a good friend dead.”

“You
must
admit to being at her house in Port Richmond just before it got dark tonight?”

“Not even to convenience you, Mr. Cooperman. You can’t place me anywhere near that house. Not today, not ever.”

“I guess your brother will say you were here in the gallery all afternoon.”

“You saw me here yourself.” He looked at Savas, seeming to indicate that this was a demonstration of how to handle my type in the future. “I don’t think he can put me anywhere near Port Richmond late this afternoon.”

Savas nodded to Miles: we have to indulge these cranks and amateurs, you understand, he seemed to be saying.

“Mr. Miles, what if I wasn’t the only witness? What if there is someone else who can put you at the scene of the crime? What then?”

“Cooperman, watch it. Sergeant, are you going to let him go on like this? What do you mean, ‘scene of the crime’? What ‘crime’? And ‘witness’ to what?”

At this point somebody interrupted, asking Paddy to direct him to the “Men’s Room” he called it. Miles gave him directions and told him to lock the door, because it was a unisex facility. When he got back to me and Chris, the dramatic momentum had been lost. He’d had a second to think and rally his defences.

“We’ve got another witness,” I said, to bring him back to the story at hand.

“You’re bluffing. You can’t scare me. Now, if you’ll excuse me …?” He got up, crossed the room and shook hands with a familiar-looking middle-aged man.

“Sergeant,” Paddy Miles called. Savas shot me a fast look and we walked over. “Chet, I want you to meet Sergeant Savas of the Niagara Regional Police and Mr. Cooperman from town, here. Chet Bryant, the crown prosecutor.” Miles looked self-satisfied at the juxtaposition of the justice team. Bryant bowed his head slightly over the hands he was shaking and said something inconsequential. He looked well fed and comfortable. His face reflected a mine of inside lore about the workings of the law. Maybe he knew about murders that were never brought into court, or cases of plea-bargaining that would make three heads curl. There was a look of agreeable genteel corruption about the hang of his jowls and suit. We all mumbled something and Bryant was only removed from us by the appearance of Mrs. Bryant at the edge of the company. She was near enough to smile, but far enough away not to be drawn into the introductions.

“This show seems a great success already, Paddy,” Bryant said, clapping him on the arm, before moving off. “I think my wife is looking at something beyond the reach of a poor public official.” He expected the laugh he got, and then he was gone. Miles looked at me, still showing no emotion, still not sweating.

“I’m calling your bluff, Mr. Cooperman. I think the next move is up to you.”

“We know everything, Paddy. It’s all over.” My voice surprised me. It was less sharp than I thought it would be. It was quiet and relaxed. “You thought Mary’s death would cover your tracks, didn’t you? One good suicide to cover both murders.”

“Both
murders?” Savas and Miles said it like a chorus in Gilbert and Sullivan.

“Yes,
both.
You are all forgetting Arthur Tallon. Tallon was murdered just as Kiriakis was. They’re both connected. But Mary didn’t kill Tallon and she didn’t kill Kiriakis, in spite of that silly cue you planted: the button in Kiriakis’s hand. And one more thing,” I said, catching my breath and watching Paddy Miles’s face trying to deal with this theory of mine. “Mary didn’t kill herself either. She’s a little light-headed at the moment, but in the morning after a good breakfast she’s going to talk her head off. She’s that other witness I mentioned. You’re it, Paddy.”

Before he could say anything, Chris Savas moved in and put the arm of the law on him. “He’s right, Mr. Miles. Let’s go outside. We’ll go over to the station and see if we can get your side of things.”

“You must be having me on. You can’t be serious. I’ve got two hundred guests here!”

“You’d better come along all the same,” Savas said. Miles looked at Savas and then back at me again. His mouth contorted in a sneer.

“I’ll be damned if I’ll listen to any more of this!”

In a flash, Paddy Miles made his move. A table overturned, sending blocks of cheese, crackers and cigarette butts flying. A woman screamed. Paddy Miles was halfway to the door before I was fully aware that he wasn’t standing there glaring at us.

“Hey! Stop that man!” Savas shouted. “Miles, stop! You won’t get far!” But Miles was out the door and on the stairs. Savas worked his way through the crowd with a little more consideration than Miles had. I caught up to him on the top step. “He won’t get far,” he said partly to himself and partly to me.

“You’re right,” I said. “He won’t get far with a flat tire.” Savas looked at me suspiciously. My little red pocket knife felt warm in my pocket.

TWENTY-FIVE

Kyle and Bedrosian picked up Paddy Miles crying over the right front bumper of his Volvo. They said they didn’t have any trouble with him. He went as quiet as a lamb with them to Niagara Regional’s Church Street headquarters, while the party at the gallery continue. Savas whispered something to Peter MacCulloch, who then began looking for his light raincoat in a pile of coats that had collected on a small table under the few hooks by the door. When he’d rescued his own from the rest, he quietly left the party with a solemn expression darkening his face as he made for the stairs. Behind him, Alex Favell watched his back. He looked confused both by the fact that Mary was missing and that her husband was leaving so early. He was unlikely to ask me what was going on, and as I turned back into the crowd, still talking about Paddy’s sudden rush out the door, I wondered whether I’d tell him. It was one of those things you never know until you see what you’ve done. Me, I’d just as soon see Favell squirm on in ignorance, but my character isn’t pure. Maybe I’d have told him the truth, just to see how he’d take it.

Martin Lyster had taken charge of the gallery. He moved through the crowd with skill and charm, occasionally writing something down on the back of an envelope and placing one of those little red dots in a bottom corner of a picture that had just found a new owner. By the time I left, there was a benday explosion of red dots, the walls looked like they’d broken out in measles. The Lambs were snapped up fast. I wondered whether Wally and his Ivy would ever see any of the money. Probably not. Probably not.

On my own way out, Jonah Abraham caught up with me on the stairs. Anna was a few steps behind him. “What was that all about?” he wanted to know. I tried to put him off with a smile, but he wouldn’t buy that.

Okay,” I said, stopping on the landing where the stairs turned. “It looks like this thing is winding down.”

“Then I want to know about it!” he said sharply. Anna had now caught up to him.

“So do I!” she added, as though I had to be told.

“Savas, that’s Staff Sergeant Chris Savas, has a suspect in custody. He has enough on him to hold him for the night anyway. I suggested to him that we try to meet someplace later on. He doesn’t like the idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he would accept an invitation from you if you asked him up to your place for a drink after he got off duty.”

“He’d never come, Mr. Cooperman, especially if we were going to ask him questions about the case.”

“That’s right, but he might just come to listen. I know Chris and he’s one of those cops who knows that listening is the way to learn things.”

“Are we going to be listening to you?” Anna asked with a wicked smile.

“Partly, but not completely. That’s why I want to invite some other people to come up to your place tonight, Mr. Abraham, if you don’t mind.”

“Won’t it be rather late when Sergeant Savas gets finished?”

“It will be close to midnight, I suspect. He’s been on duty at least since four this afternoon. So his shift should end at midnight.”

“Who are these others?”

“I’ll tell you all about it while you give me a lift to my car.”

“Your car?”

“Yes, I left it at the General Hospital.”

Jonah Abraham looked at me like I’d asked him to take me to Winnipeg for a corned beef sandwich. Anna took his arm and after a pause he nodded. We continued down the stairs and out into the night, which had turned chilly.

* * *

An hour and a half later, we were sitting in a room at the Abraham mansion. We were holding drinks and making polite conversation in what was a strange setting for most of us. Bill Palmer had had a few of Abraham’s prize Bloody Marys, while Linda Kiriakis was still sipping her first. MacCulloch had arrived a few minutes after Alex Favell had left his rubbers in the hall. It had started raining on the drive up the escarpment, one of those fine, misty spring rains, heavy with the smells of local industry. I’d once complained about that smell to an advertising man who worked in Alex Favell’s agency. He said it was the perfume of money. I wondered while I was waiting for Savas to come and make our group complete whether the smell ever gets too strong for the money to be worth it. I’d thought of asking Mattie Lent to join us, but there wasn’t a good reason, and I’d promised to keep her out of it as well as I could. I did invite Wallace Lamb to join us. I wasn’t sure what he could tell us, or whether Ivy would let him, but they both came when Abraham sent a car to fetch them. Anna was amazed that Lamb was still alive and so was Alex Favell. Martin Lyster came as soon as he was able to close up the gallery and check on what he could do for Paddy.

“Well,” Jonah Abraham said, as soon as Chris Savas had taken off his wet raincoat and had been handed a Bloody Mary, “if everybody’s comfortable, Mr. Cooperman, why don’t you get started?”

“Good idea,” I said and immediately wondered where I should start. I told them that there had been an attempt on the life of Mary MacCulloch and that she was still in the General, but that Dr. Leung had told me that he was sure that she would be all right. Favell breathed a raspy sigh at the news. He glanced over at MacCulloch, who was looking at one of the many pictures by Milne and Lamb that decorated the walls of the room.

“You see,” I said, trying to get closer to the meat of the subject, “Paddy Miles not only tried to kill Mary MacCulloch, but he tried to blame other crimes on her as well. If he had succeeded in killing her, he would have silenced a witness who could connect him to other wrongdoing.”

“You mean that bum cheque he gave Wally,” Ivy said, collecting glances from everybody in the room.

“Hush, precious,” Wally Lamb said to Ivy, patting her ample arm on the couch next to him. “Listen to the man.”

“You’re not being very specific, Mr. Cooperman. What wrongdoing?” asked my employer and host, ignoring Ivy.

“Paddy Miles had been selling paintings from Arthur Tallon’s collection at scandalously low prices to Mary. She would take them to Hump Slaughter’s auction house where they would fetch a healthy profit, which she in turn would share with Miles.”

“How do you know this?” asked Peter MacCulloch in an overbearing tone on the edge of rudeness but lacking that last inch of malice that hinted he was half-afraid I had an answer. “Where’s your proof?”

“I overheard Mary talking, arguing, really, with Slaughter yesterday afternoon. They were worried that the other partner was going to give the game away. There wasn’t much trust between them. I doubt if Hump ever knew that Miles was knowingly lending a hand. He may have thought he was just trying to clear out Tallon’s stuff without realizing the market value of the paintings.”

“That seems hardly likely,” said Alex Favell. “If Hump auctioned the paintings, then he would collect the money. If he split the profit with Mrs. MacCulloch, it would leave out the third partner Are you suggesting that Paddy Miles took half of Mary’s share? That seems illogical to me.”

“I think you imagine that Mary was involved in this simply for the money. I think it’s a safer bet to say she was in it for the adventure and the thrill of putting one over. She was a wealthy woman. There’s no sign that she needed the extra cash. To her, crime was a prank, a way of kicking up her heels at society. There were other things we needn’t to go into here that suggest that she was trying to be as unconventional as she could be and get away with it. She’s not a hard case in any way.”

Favell was looking at the pattern on the rug. Savas gave me a good look at his scowl. His views on middleclass crime were on record. Anna was getting bored by these preliminaries, she was restlessly moving from one perch to another. “So,” she said, “you’re going to forget all about her?”

“Look, Anna, I’m not an avenging angel; I’m a poor working stiff. All this stuff is up to the cops and then the Crown.” She pouted and allowed herself to slip deeper into her chair. “Let me try to deal with everything that happened in an orderly way. If I get it twisted up, it’s because it’s a complex business.”

“Start with that dud cheque,” Ivy offered, leaning forward on the couch. “Paddy Miles gave Wally here a cheque and it bounced. I took it to the bank as soon as it arrived and it was no good!”

“Shut up, precious,” Wally Lamb said. “Keep still and listen.” He put a hand on Ivy’s knee and she moved closer to the painter.

“A moment ago, Benny, you said there were other crimes that Miles was trying to pin on Mary MacCulloch. Is that a good starting place?”

“Yeah, Bill, I’ll try it that way.” I should have known that it would be a veteran journalist who’d help me find a hard line through this. He had taken out a pipe and was busy packing tobacco into it. I watched him as I talked, it was relaxing entertainment.