Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (95 page)

They quaffed their beer and looked around at the disgruntled faces. Impossible to say what bets had been won or lost in this crowd, but clearly the tone was downcast overall.

“Tell me a bit more about Santiago,” Dan said. “Had he and Yuri been going out for long?”

“About four years,” Lionel replied. “Though, as I mentioned, it ended recently.”

“Do you know why?”

“Nothing I could put my finger on. All I know is that they quarrelled and Santiago disappeared.”

“And no one has seen him since the murder?”

“Well, no one I know.” Lionel smiled. “You could ask around.”

An idea struck Dan. “Can you get me access to Yuri's house?”

Lionel looked at him curiously. “You think Santiago is hiding out there?”

Dan shook his head. “Not if he's on the run, but it might help if I had a better idea who Yuri was. To do that I'll need to get a look at what's inside the house.”

Lionel nodded slowly. “Sure, I can arrange that. Until it changes owners, I still have access to the house.” He looked Dan over. “So, are you saying you'll take on the case?”

“I'm saying I'm curious about it. I'll do some preliminary looking around. I'm not promising anything yet.”

“Fair enough. When do you want me to get you into Yuri's place?”

“The sooner the better,” Dan said. “Assuming the police have concluded their investigation and won't show up while I'm there.”

“I can't promise you that,” Lionel told him. “But I'll see what I can do about getting you in for a look around. How would tomorrow morning suit you?”

“Perfectly.”

Due Diligence

Dan rattled the gate with his bare hands then glanced up at the stone mansion towering over its neighbours. It got top marks for atmosphere. This was a scary witch's sort of house, with granite walls, slate tile roof, and a widow's walk. The veined outline of elm trees flailed their branches around it, as though protecting it in an airy embrace.

He fished through the bars until he felt the heavy lock, retrieved the key Lionel had given him, and unfastened the clasp. The gate swung open of its own accord, as though urging him in before he could change his mind. A wide, unpaved drive led up to the front steps. Spring had released tulips and daffodils from their underground hideaways, bright blotches of colour arcing over the damp earth. Someone had cleaned up last season's dead leaves, either recently or back in the fall. It was still early for the gardens to look overgrown and abandoned, but they were clearly luxuriant. A month or two of neglect would turn them into a jungle of weeds and drooping flowers, as sad as an untended grave.

This was one of the city's grandest houses, though it lay far from the protective enclave of wealthy Forest Hill. A plaque beside the front door proclaimed its historic significance as having been built by “noted entrepreneur J.S. Lockie” for his wife, Edna.

Parkdale had always been a contentious community, Dan knew. A mid-nineteenth-century census showed barely enough inhabitants for it to claim status as an independent village. Afterwards, the cry went round that someone had paid a band of gypsies to sign on as local residents to make up the numbers. The Toronto Home for Incurables on Dunn Avenue added to the area's reputation with its gloomy, eponymous title. Dan pictured parents of the time passing the forbidding structure, pointing stern fingers in warning and spreading fear into the hearts of wayward children who refused to heed admonitions about personal hygiene and the eating of one's vegetables.

The neighbourhood's proximity to Lake Ontario and the Canadian National Exhibition made it a desirable place to live, expanding significantly in the 1920s with infill and sidewalk extensions. It prospered further with the opening of movie theatres, the Sunnyside Amusement Park, and Palais Royale, the latter becoming a favourite venue for big bands in subsequent decades.

All that prosperity came to a crashing halt in 1955 with the building of the Gardiner Expressway, itself a controversy as much for its exorbitant cost as for cutting the neighbourhood off from the beachfront. Parkdale's popularity plummeted and it faced a decline from which it never recovered. Of its once-glorious mansions, few remained, but Yuri Malevski's was one of the most notable.

Dan took the yard in at a glance as he made his way up the walk. A pair of curious eyes watched his progress toward the house. A pudgy face, unshaven and lined. Funny turned-up nose. It was the sort of mug you distrusted on sight, he thought. What his Aunt Marge would have called “unsavoury.”

Dan nodded an acknowledgement. The man had been raking leaves. He stopped now.

“You a prospective buyer?” he asked from across the wood fence.

“No, just a bit of maintenance.” Dan paused. “Do you know the owner?”

“Yeah. Dead now. Got what was coming to him, that's for sure.”

Dan expressed surprise. “Not a nice guy, I take it?”

The man snorted. “The worst.” With that, he turned back to his raking.

Dan punched in the numeric code Lionel had provided. A light turned from red to green. He grasped the handle and entered into a vigilant silence, gazing down a long hallway with a green and ivory harlequin pattern. While re-arming the system, his nose picked up the scent of cleaning substances covering something disquieting that might have been the smell of embalming fluid. A perfectly preserved tin ceiling spread overhead while a staircase cascaded behind Dan's right shoulder. The walls were polished rosewood. High double doors led off from both sides of the hall. The first set opened into a sitting room offering a tableau of stuffed chairs, antique lamps, and a wide brick fireplace. It was like stepping back a hundred years.

At the far end, a white grand piano sat perfectly framed between bevelled lead windows. Dan ran his finger along the polished top, leaving a faint trail in the dust beside a glittering candelabra above a keyboard that seemed to be awaiting the tinkering fingers of a Liberace-come-lately. A portrait of Jesus with what looked like an exploding purple heart stood propped against it for that added touch of kitsch. Had the notorious bar owner and sex-trade proponent been a secret religious acolyte on the side? Dan recalled seeing a documentary on notorious drug dealers, surprised to learn that one of them, a ruthless killer who had her enemies assassinated, was also a doting grandmother captured by the FBI while reading her Bible in a Florida hotel.

The second set of doors led to a dining room with a mahogany table that sat twenty. On the walls, a series of tempestuous seascapes in oil were mounted in hand-carved frames, while a vintage bookstand cradled a scrapbook stuffed with newspaper clippings and old registries. A page from
The Society Blue Book
, subtitled “Toronto's Social Directory for the Ages,” listed J.S. Lockie at the present address as though he lived there still. Time never failed to make mock of human pretension.

On the reverse,
Boyd's Business Directory for 1875–6
credited Lockie as manager of the Canadian Bank of Commerce beside an advertisement for “
DOCTOR J BELL'S TONIC PILLS FOR NERVOUS DISORDERS — WE NEVER FAIL TO CURE
.” A few of those might put him to rights when he was having a bad day, Dan mused, wondering just how much cocaine was in those pick-me-ups back then. Those were the days.

The Canadian Mining Manual of 1890
followed one page over, with ads for the Hamilton Powder Company (“Manufacturers of Gunpowder, Dynamite, Dualine, and the New Eclipse Mining Powder”) and I. Matheson and Co. of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia (“The Best Place in Canada for Gold Mining Machinery”). Lockie was listed again, this time as director of the Haliburton Mining Company, incorporated with “a capital stock of $100,000 in shares of $1,000” to work mineral lands in the nearby counties of Haliburton, Victoria, and Peterborough.

A short article on architecture noted an addition to the house in 1892. Then, in 1905, another write-up stated that it “had passed hands to Mr. Frederick S. MacGregor, bachelor, age 35.”
Suspiciously old for a bachelor back then
, Dan thought. “Mr. MacGregor receives 1st, 2d, 3d Thursday of every month,” the piece noted, while mentioning the various sports groups he belonged to, including the Toronto Racquet Club and Toronto Canoe Club, where he was noted as a “vigorous and lively member.”

A portrait of MacGregor showed an intense, handsome young man with high cheekbones, well-formed ears, and deep-set eyes. His sporty build and muscular chest were well-defined by a collegiate sweater.
Well, Fred, you're a real catch in my books
, Dan thought.
I'd visit you on just about any Thursday, even if you're over a hundred now.

In the kitchen, two-fours of beer had been stacked against the far wall, revealing Malevski's taste for micro-breweries and Belgian lager brewed by Trapist monks. The fridge contained water bottles, yoghurt containers, and a half-empty carton of eggs. A damp mop and plastic bucket sat behind an outside door, the inevitable attendant to late-night party-giving, as though Malevski had intended to be prepared for all eventualities. The bottom of the sink held a residue of dust and sand where someone had emptied a pail of dirty water, probably the last time any cleaning was done.

Dan followed the hallway to the far end. A final door led unexpectedly to a greenhouse. It was like entering a small jungle. Plants sat on the floor, hung from beams, reached to the sky. Cacti proliferated. Those were the lucky ones, Dan noted. Most of the others had been left to die, shrivelling like the skin of a nonagenarian. He recognized a peyote plant, its small, button-like formations sprouting telltale pink flowers. The waxy leaves of orchids, equally neglected, dangled above with their jointed, mostly-flowerless stems spiking the air. As a gardener, Yuri Malevski seemed to have lacked a green thumb.

For the most part, the house was in good order, not in any state of neglect or abandonment. It was clear that someone with taste and money had lived here, at least until recently. Dan wondered which had been the party rooms where Malevski's guests took their drugs and played out their little dramas of the high life.

The second floor consisted of several bedrooms and a sitting room replete with a small library. A quick glance at the spines showed the man had been a fancier of biographies: writers, artists, actors. People of accomplishment. They seemed to accuse him, Dan felt, as if asking whether his life had been of any special significance compared to theirs.

It struck him the house was too big for one person. J.S. Lockie had had a wife and, presumably, a family. MacGregor, a confirmed bachelor, would have lived alone. Or had he? Perhaps he'd taken in a friend to relieve him of boredom and loneliness. Someone to help chase away the gloom. Maybe a squash-playing pal with benefits. It was no wonder Malevski had entertained. The problem was that the sort of company available for late-night get-togethers tended to want more than companionship. Sex, drugs, money. Clearly, Malevski's pool of friends hadn't been culled from the pages of
The
Society Blue Book
. His friends came from bars and were probably as transient and temporary as they got. Had he been trying to buy their affection? Put a roomful of drug users and sex addicts in the hands of a rich man and the inevitable problems would arise, expectations rising with them.

Dan snapped pictures with his cellphone as he went. There was nothing unusual, just a house that felt empty and, because it was empty, lifeless, as though its owner were away on a long vacation. As yet, he had nothing to report to Lionel and Charles. Fair enough. He still wasn't sure he wanted to take on the job. Business of late had kept him flush enough that he could afford to be choosy.

Emptiness and silence weighed on him like a dull pressure at some underwater depth. As he opened a final door, ghostly laughter emanated from the walls. Dan started as he caught a dim movement at the far end of the darkened room. His hand flew to the light switch. Quicksilver galvanized the walls as he confronted his mirror image. He waved and saw his relieved-looking twin wave back, glad not to have to explain his presence to anyone more demanding.

“Sorry for disturbing you,” he said, the reflection's mouth moving in silent accord.

An echo of the laughter filtered in from the street, some passersby sharing one of life's amusing little moments. He leaned against the wall and felt the urge for a serious drink. A good Islay Scotch with plenty of peat. Something that would burn as it went down. The yearning had come over him more often lately. He resisted, of course. Alcohol was a companion he'd learned to control only after it spent years controlling him. A promise to his son still hung over his head. Social drinking — one or two at most — was permissible. No more. But the urge to sit and drink in an empty room surrounded by silence had a pull that was hard to resist.

A soft padding pricked his ears, like raindrops on pewter. Only it wasn't raining. He stopped to listen. Nothing came to him. What was it about empty houses that set the imagination stirring? He'd just convinced himself it was an illusion when he heard a soft
click
upstairs.

He crept down the hallway to a set of stairs, climbing carefully, lifting each foot and setting it down as quietly as he could. Halfway up, he stopped to listen once more. Again, there was nothing. He began to think his nerves were getting the better of him.

The only door led to the master bedroom. The furniture here was unexceptional, functional in the extreme. An outside wall angled down on a slant, its window well jutting outward. This, he presumed, was where the notorious bar owner had died.

Over the bed, a portrait of a rugged, attractive face in late-middle age arrested Dan's gaze. The perspective was shoddy. The eyes stared straight ahead, bright blue forget-me-nots, with a wooden gaze and flat features common to amateur portraits. It looked recent, so this wasn't J.S. Lockie or his successor, Frederick S. MacGregor. Dan guessed it was Yuri Malevski. Unlike the dining-room seascapes, this work had little artistic merit. Not art then, just someone dabbling with a brush in an attempt to create a likeness of a man who had in all probability paid him. It didn't suit the mental picture Dan had of a fastidious collector with well-defined tastes.

The scrawl at the bottom right caught his eye. A flamboyant pair of
S
's, with their tails twisting away beneath.
Santiago Suárez
, Dan was willing to bet. You wouldn't put up with mediocrity from Sotheby's, but you might from a sexy, young boyfriend, even if it meant hiding the painting upstairs out of view.

He wandered to the window and looked out over the back garden. A cherry tree was in bloom, smoky tendrils of whitish-pink spreading over the ground. Spring had taken a firm hold. He was about to turn away when a figure slipped into view. Dan felt a jolt run down his spine. He hadn't been alone after all.

Someone in a dark overcoat and cap had just left the house by the rear door. From that distance, it could have been anyone, male or female, young or old. A quick backward glance over the shoulder revealed the face of a young male wearing pale makeup. Dan stepped back from the window. That was all he saw before the boy disappeared through the gate.