Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (30 page)

“What about Jonathan’s wallet and the sketch Carrie MacDonald drew of him? My men found them in the back of your bedroom closet. How did they get there?’

She said nothing.

“They’re a poor substitute for the real thing, by the way. They won’t love you back.”

Her knuckles whitened, but she feigned disdain. “My father says he’ll get that whole search thrown out of court, you’ll see. You had no probable cause when you broke into my apartment.”

He smiled. “Well, he can try, but judges up here are not that easily bullied. There was a life in danger and that Elavil prescription was in plain view, so the law’s on my side. As for Jonathan’s death, your alibi stinks. I had a female officer check out that university pool where you were supposedly doing laps. She was able to sneak in and out the back door of the change room with no trouble.”

“Just because she could doesn’t mean I did, Inspector. I believe I’m still innocent until proven guilty, even in this provincial backwater.”

He sat forward in his chair, a cup of cold coffee forgotten at his elbow. He had been up all night, but he felt more alive than he had in days. His eyes held hers quietly as he played his ace.

“I saw Dave Miller this morning. He was still pretty groggy, but he wanted to tell me about his discovery. He’d found a new Danish book which showed yet another method of analyzing brain wave data that gives even different results. So maybe all three of you were picking up different parts of brain activity and Difalco’s theory doesn’t contradict Miller’s after all. Both theories could be right. Or wrong. Quite amazing, isn’t it, how little we really know?”

She had resolutely held his gaze, but now red flooded her cheeks. Her arms tightened across her chest as if she were trying to hold herself together.

“That’s a lie!” she spat. “I looked at that book and I—”
Belatedly, she caught herself and clamped her jaw tight.

“You didn’t read to the end. It was the last paper in the book.”

She began to shake all over. “I’m not talking any more. Get out! Get the fuck out!”

Without warning she leaped up and flung herself against the door, bringing two police officers racing into the room. It took both of them to subdue her, and her curses echoed in the hall long after they had dragged her away.

“Boy, what a waste!” Sullivan exclaimed, shaking his head in disbelief. “A kid like that, with so much going for her, so much to contribute, and she’s going to spend her best years behind bars.”

After a few hours sleep and a fresh shave, Sullivan was in top form again but the long emotional night had finally taken its toll on Green. Slumped at his desk, he rubbed his eyes wearily.

“Yeah, she has a great mind, but people never saw beyond that, to the young woman who needed love and affirmation just like the rest of us. Perhaps even more than the rest of us. She’d been raised in a hothouse, made to grow up before her time, always expected to excel, to win, to be number one. The pressure was incredible. You know, rumour has it she broke her own wrist when she saw she had no chance of winning gold in tennis at the Olympics. That’s how abhorrent losing was to her. I should have realized she wouldn’t relinquish Jonathan Blair as easily as she seemed to.”

“But she killed him because of the research, Mike, not because he’d dumped her.”

“I think both things went together. I don’t think she
planned to kill him at first. She just wanted Raquel out of his life, so she planted the love note for the Haddads to find. The sad thing is, I don’t think Jonathan was as involved with Raquel as Vanessa thought. He just felt sorry for her because no one ever saw beyond the great body.”

Sullivan guffawed. “You saw Raquel’s picture. You honestly think Blair wasn’t attracted?”

“Sure, he was attracted. In the heat of the moment he might even have slept with her. But what I mean is—it wasn’t…” Green coloured. “It didn’t mean anything. I think he really broke up with Vanessa because he suspected she might be involved in the research fraud. Then, somehow Vanessa found out he was investigating the fraud. My guess is on Sunday when she was in his office preparing the love note on his computer, she stumbled upon the data in his computer and she realized she was about to be exposed. I suspect she followed him around after that, trying to keep tabs on him and learn more about what he knew. Maybe she overheard him ask for a meeting with Halton, and knew she had to move. Her lucky break was to witness the fight between Jonathan and the Haddad brothers, and that gave her the idea for the frame. If she hadn’t seen it, she would have figured out another way to kill him. Whatever it took, Jonathan Blair had to be eliminated before he met with Halton the next day.”

“Yeah, but what about the knife? How’d she get it so fast? Last I heard, Gibbs checked all the gift shops and came up empty.”

Green pawed through the papers on his desk, sending several skidding onto the floor. He pounced on one with a grin. “Gibbs, bless his obsessive-compulsive soul, didn’t give up, and I have taught him well. Lateral thinking, that’s what he used. He decided to check Middle Eastern restaurants, and
what do you know! The Moroccan Nights on Bank Street found it was missing one of the decorative daggers that hang on the wall.”

Sullivan shook his head. “Boy, what a cold cookie. To love the guy and wipe him out like that over some research—that’s pretty warped.”

“Yeah, and I think that’s why she finally snapped. Ambition and success meant more to her than people. She’d defied her father in choosing Halton instead of Harvard, so she had a lot to prove. In the academic world you prove yourself by the significance of your research. You don’t win a Nobel Prize by being wrong. Vanessa’s work was based on Miller’s theory. She thought Difalco’s results contradicted Miller’s and so put hers in question too.”

“So it was her all along, not Miller, who tampered with Difalco’s data.”

Green nodded. “Difalco had almost finished his data collection, and naturally, he was beginning to crow. I think she got worried and ran some simulations of his work. When she found out his results were good, she broke into his raw data and altered his numbers. Then she suggested to Miller he run simulations, and of course the results weren’t at all what Difalco claimed. And the rest is history. Miller checked Difalco’s raw data, yelled fraud, Vanessa erased the data and Difalco yelled sabotage. If only she’d realized, as Miller did, that both theories could be right. Or both wrong. And that truth is the only important player in the drama.”

“Yeah. But sometimes you get too close to things. Get too committed, lose sight of the big picture. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, right?” Sullivan hauled himself to his feet and stretched luxuriously. “Well, I’m taking the day off, going to rebore the engine on the old Chev. Maybe it’ll
last another winter. By the way, Mary says that little house you two were looking at in Barrhaven has dropped its price. It’s a steal now, she says.”

Green avoided Sullivan’s eyes. At this moment, even Barrhaven would be preferable to the future he faced. He’d just called home for the seventh time, and there was still no answer. “Yeah, well…”

“Uh-oh. Trouble in paradise? Sharon didn’t like the press coverage?”

“Something like that. Plus I’ve been a self-centred ass.”

“So what’s new? She knew that when she married you.” Green cast him a reproachful look. “Yeah, but I’ve sunk to new lows since the baby was born.” He traced slow circles on the desk with his pen. “Almost as if…when it was just Sharon and me, I knew I could always walk away. She’d be hurt, but we’d both find someone else. But with Tony—”

“You’re his father for life.”

“That’s the thing. I should be.” Green paused, thinking of Hannah. “And I’ve been wondering…it’s almost like I want to hold him away from me. To tell him ‘Don’t expect too much of me so I won’t fail you’. To insulate him.” And maybe to insulate myself a bit too, he added but only to himself, for that was a frailty Sullivan would not understand.

“Lots of fathers try that route, as you know, and we pick up the pieces.” Sullivan clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re in the soup now, man. You’ve just got to learn how to swim.”

Green’s door swung slowly open. They both looked up to see Sharon standing in his doorway, Tony balanced on one hip. The baby’s face split in a wide grin at the sight of him.

“Soup?” Sharon repeated, calm and unreadable.

Sullivan moved to the door. “That’s my cue, folks. I’m off.” He tickled Tony’s toes, mouthed the word “swim” at Green
and slipped past them out the door.

Sharon remained planted where she was. “I listened to your seven messages on the tape and I decided I’d better come talk to you personally. God knows when you’d come home.”

He winced but said nothing. His seven messages had said it all. He was a screw-up, he was obsessed with his work, sometimes he couldn’t think straight, but he loved her, he loved Tony, he’d go to the moon for her if she’d give him another chance. Now it was her turn. She shifted Tony on her hip, and her composure wavered. She studied the floor.

“I guess I haven’t been exactly blameless in all this, Mike. I’ve been bitchy and always tired and preoccupied with Tony. The old body’s all out of shape, and my breasts are still leaking milk. Not quite the girl you married.”

“Stop it.” He jumped to his feet and moved toward her. “Darling, nothing happened.”

She backed against the door, whipping her head back and forth. “Don’t give me that. Denials or confessions…I really don’t want to know.” Her voice quavered. “I know I can’t compete—”

“No!” He gripped her by the arms. “You need to know. Nothing happened. Yes, I was attracted to her and yes, she came on to me. But I stopped it. She got my tie off and my pants undone, but I stopped it. Because I didn’t want to lose us.”

For a long moment she simply stared at the floor, but finally her mouth twitched slightly at the corners. “She got your pants undone? How much?”

He risked tracing his finger lightly across her hand. “If we weren’t in my office and you didn’t have Tony, I’d show you how much.”

She sighed. “I’m just not sure it’s going to work, Mike.”

“I know I’m not much good at keeping my promises, but—”

“But you promise to change?”

He bit his lip; she wasn’t smiling. She had heard all this before. “No, but—” he eased Tony out of her arms into his, “—I do want to try.”

“That seventh message, when you promised me a new house…”

With his free hand, he reached for the phone. “I’ll call Mary Sullivan right now.”

She finally smiled her slow, wise-cracking smile. “You ought to be tempted more often, Green. I might get a swimming pool out of it next time.”

One

September 2nd, 1939

I hear her footsteps on the mossy riverbank
See the sun-flamed red of her hair
As it swoops in rhythm to her run.
She tilts her head, shields her eyes.
But still I hide, drunk with hope and disbelief.
She has come to me, my rebel princess.
Slipped the sentinel gaze of the village,
huddled in its uneasy rest.
Run across the cornfields behind the mill
And out to meet her poet.
Nothing to offer her but words spun into shimmering webs,
to catch her lofty dreams.
She spots me then and smiles,
And I open up my arms.

After fifteen minutes
of waiting, the old man pulled the sweaty tuque off his head and scowled at the snow through the window. His long plaid scarf pricked his neck, adding to his annoyance. He could see little through the pale wintery light in the room, but he could hear his wife thumping around in his bedroom upstairs. Drawers opened and closed.

What the hell was the woman doing up there! He felt a surge of alarm as he remembered the letter. How stupid of him to leave it in his desk drawer. He should have burned it as soon as he got it. When they got back home tonight, he would. Once today’s ordeal was over.

He looked around the room at the refuge he had sought to create. A modest parlour with a crumbling brick fireplace, a scratched piano and shelves haphazardly stacked with books. All he had ever wanted was this little cottage in the country, his pipe, his whiskey and an armchair by the fire. A retirement cottage, he had told his wife. Far from cruel strangers and prying eyes, from a past that still lurked in his head.

Yet in the end he had not escaped. He leaned back in the armchair and willed away the sudden tears that filled his eyes. She would see them—nothing escaped her—and she would fuss. Not overtly, for she knew better, but quietly, fluttering around the kitchen to make him tea, watching him with silent, questioning eyes. And now, because of that monstrous letter, how long before she knew?

A final thud roused him, and he looked up to see her descend the stairs, pulling a pair of thick woollen gloves over her gnarled hands. She frowned at him as she came across the room, picked up his tuque from the window ledge and pulled it firmly back down on his head.