Cold Comfort (18 page)

Lombardo shrugged. “Yeah, there’s that…but I…we still have to check out this legislative carpool thing. They probably have a record of who took what car out when,” he said.

“So if we see Alvin took a car out the night of the eighteenth, then we take a serious look at him,” said Gilbert.

Lombardo shook his head. “We take a serious look at him anyway, Barry. Don’t forget the gun.”

Gilbert frowned. He tried to be impartial. “There’s something else about that gun, Joe. No forced entry, right? Alvin raised the possibility that maybe when he was having friends over, one of his friends could have taken it.”

Lombardo shrugged. “So we get a list.”

“And then I asked him if somebody had a key. And…I don’t know…he hesitated, got quiet…and I could see him thinking about it…”

“Shit, Barry.”

“I know, I know.”

“He hesitated?” said Lombardo.

Gilbert nodded. “He said he was the only one who had a key. Like he was trying to protect someone.”

Lombardo looked incredulous. “Shit, Barry,” he repeated.

“I wanted to work all these other angles before…”

“You should have told me, Barry. I know he saved your life way back when, but I’m your partner now.”

On the first day of March, Saturday, Gilbert once again stood in Cheryl Latham’s apartment. On his own time. Working the case outside rotation hours. Because there was one thing they still hadn’t figured out. March, and maybe the days were a bit longer, but snow still plummeted from a slate grey sky, batting hard against the panes of Cheryl’s living room window, collecting on the sill. Maybe what he was looking for wasn’t here; maybe in the perp’s gentle and neat toss of her apartment he had found what he had been looking for and had taken it away. But Gilbert didn’t think so. The search was too complete. Nothing had been left unchecked. And that was a sure sign of an unsuccessful search.

He stood next to the couch and stared. Rug, bookcases, TV, CD player, Technics turntable, speakers, Eskimo soap-stone carvings, love seat, chair, pillows, blinds, birdcage, coffee table, lamps, magazine rack…silence seemed to coagulate in thick layers around each object. And in the silence he felt the connections forming. He walked over to the magazine rack and flipped through the magazines and catalogues one more time, looking for something flat, a document that would fit between the pages of a magazine. He grabbed each magazine by the spine and shook. Nothing. The radiator pipes clanked in the walls. He stood up. Listened to the clank fade and the radiators hiss. He stared out at the snow. Did you kill your stepfather, Cheryl? Is that why everything must be so neatly ordered, as if with this precision you hope to obliterate the chaos of that single act? The dead parrot. Gone now, sent to Forensic, but so far devoid of clues; there was no real way they could lift latent fingerprints from feathers. But he was sure that dead parrot meant something.

He stared at the birdcage. And as he stared at it, it seemed to become the only object in the room. Made to look like bamboo, but when he got close he saw that the bamboo was actually made of metal. Cage door open. Newspaper spread out on the cage floor. The connections again began to form. Parrot shit and bird seed all over the newspaper. Yes, Cheryl, I see what you’ve done. He reached through the cage door and lifted the newspaper. Nothing underneath, just the bare metal floor. He pulled the newspaper out, shaking as much of the seed back into the cage as he could. The newspaper caught on the door frame. As he tugged it free, something slipped from between its pages and fell to the floor.

A zip-lock glassine bag with some papers inside. Documents.

He lifted the bag and pulled out the documents.

Bank statements. From the Bank of the Bahamas. Freeport, Grand Bahama Island. The Xanadu Beach Branch. He scanned quickly for the account-holder’s name. Scuba-Tex Ltd., a division of Ontario Corporation 601847. He looked at the balance. $247,662.02. Nearly a quarter million dollars. He could only begin to guess what this meant. But he knew he had a major clue.

Lombardo was working overtime on the case too. Gilbert found him downtown at headquarters and showed him the document.

Lombardo looked up at him. “Ontario Corporation 601847,” he said. “That’s Latham’s corporation. Remember I checked it out when I was looking into Danny’s Crown Victoria.”

Gilbert felt his blood quickening. “So Latham’s still in the running?” he said.

Lombardo shrugged. “I guess so.”

Gord and Diane Danby, Donna Varley’s downstairs neighbors on Crawford Street, returned from their Florida vacation Sunday afternoon. Bob Bannatyne and Gilbert interviewed them that evening.

“She was shot on the fifth,” said Bannatyne. “I know I’ve already gone over this with you, but we want to go over it again. You left for your vacation on the sixth. The body was discovered by your friend, Natalie Carels, when she came over on the evening of the seventh to water your plants and collect your mail. I took your statement over the phone on the seventh.” Bannatyne glanced down at his notes. “I just want to make sure we have this all straight.”

Gord and Diane nodded. “We called up the stairs on the morning of the sixth to say good-bye,” said Diane. “Not that we knew her that well. She stayed to herself most of the time. We got no answer so we just thought she was out.”

Gord spoke up. “To tell you the truth, we were a little nervous about leaving her here,” said Gord. “There’s no private entrance. Not that we have a lot of valuables, but, you know, she didn’t look…she really wasn’t our kind of person. We have a lock on our living room door, and we put a lot of stuff in there.”

Bannatyne nodded. “I hope I didn’t ruin your vacation,” he said.

Diane glanced out the window at the snow, which was coming down steadily. “I don’t know if I want to live here now,” she said forlornly.

Bannatyne sighed sympathetically. “I know what you mean,” he said. “Murder can really wreck a place.”

Gord put his hand on Diane’s arm. “It’s all right,” he said.

“Who gave the statement?” asked Gilbert. He turned to Bannatyne. “Or did they both give a statement?”

“I gave the statement,” said Diane. “Gord was on a fishing charter.”

“So let’s just go over it for Detective Gilbert’s sake,” said Bannatyne. He looked at Diane. “On the evening of the fifth you stayed late at the office because you wanted to finish all your outstanding work before you went on vacation.” Diane nodded. Bannatyne turned to Gilbert. “We verified that. She was there. The security guard saw her and so did one of the dictaphone typists. Gord, you were here all night except for that hour you had to go to your travel agent to make some last-minute changes in your plans. That was from about eight-thirty to nine-thirty. Correct?”

Gord nodded. “Correct.”

“And when you left, Donna’s TV was on, and when you came back, Donna’s TV was off.”

“That’s right.”

He turned to Gilbert. “We had officers in Florida check for residue on Gord’s hands. He was clean. And we checked with his travel agent. He was there. We figure the murder took place in the hour he was away.”

Gilbert nodded. “Okay.”

Bannatyne looked at Diane. “Diane, you told me Larry Varley stayed with Donna in November, was away for December, and came back in January.”

“Yes.”

“But you never heard them fighting.”

“No.”

“And Donna never said anything that would lead you to believe that there was any friction between them.”

“Other than telling us he was her brother, she didn’t say anything about him. They seemed to get along. They were quiet. They watched a lot of TV.”

Gilbert interrupted. He looked at Gord. “You said you had to go to your travel agent on the evening of the fifth. What kind of change did you have to make?”

Gord Danby looked at him, his eyes narrowing. “Not really a change, actually. We won some concert tickets. At least that’s what they said. When I got there, no one knew what I was talking about.”

Gilbert and Bannatyne looked at each other. Then Bannatyne turned to Diane. “That wasn’t in your statement,” he said.

A knit came to her brow. “I guess I forgot about it,” she said. “Is it important?”

Gilbert looked at Gord. “Was it just a mix-up?”

“That’s what they said,” replied Gord. “They have two new guys working there.”

“But did you verify it?” asked Gilbert.

“I was in Florida the next day,” said Gord. “It was the farthest thing from my mind.”

“So it wasn’t your regular travel agent who phoned you then?” asked Gilbert.

“No.”

“Who was it?”

“I guess one of the new guys.”

Gilbert glanced at Bannatyne. Get the Danbys out of the house. Use the concert tickets as a pretext. Kill Donna Varley, no witnesses. He turned back to Gord.

“If I played you a tape, would you be able to recognize the man’s voice?” said Gilbert.

Gord nodded tentatively. “I think so,” he said.

When Gilbert and Bannatyne were out in the car together, Gilbert took a manila folder out of his accordion-style briefcase.

“That was good, Barry,” said Bannatyne. Bannatyne started the car and turned the heat on full. “It’s colder than a pig’s tit,” he said. “I’m glad I’m in the Bahamas this Friday.”

“Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that,” said Gilbert. He reached up and flicked on the overhead light. “You’re going to be in Freeport?”

“I already told you,” said Bannatyne. “The place is called Pimento Beach. A little resort about eight miles up the coast from Freeport.”

Gilbert opened the file folder. “I’m just wondering…” Some photographs fell on the floor and he picked them up. “These are shots from Cheryl’s funeral. All our major suspects. Latham, Matchett, Danny, Sally. Here’s Tom Webb and his secretary, Jane Ireland, too, just in case. You can pull Larry’s photo from Donna’s file. Do you plan on going into Freeport at all?”

Bannatyne was looking at him suspiciously now. “What the hell are you getting at?”

Gilbert showed Bannatyne photocopies of the bank statements he found in the birdcage and outlined how they might be related to the Latham case.

“I’m just wondering if you can check this out when you’re down there.”

“You mean like do actual police work while I’m on vacation?”

He was being facetious.

“Yeah,” said Gilbert.

Bannatyne looked through the photographs then studied the bank statements. “That’s a pile of loot,” he said.

“Maybe you might buy one of the bank employees a drink. Ling’s okayed some expediency money for the Latham case. Maybe one of the employees might be able to see around the confidentiality rules.”

Bannatyne nodded. “Show the employee the photographs, see if he or she recognizes any of them.” Bannatyne looked skeptical. “It’s a bit of a long shot, Barry.”

“Maybe not. Webb goes down to the Bahamas regularly. He has a huge catamaran down there. And Latham has this place, Scuba-Tex. They have an outlet down there.”

Bannatyne again looked at the photographs. “I don’t know,” he said. “They probably have an agent banking for them.”

“Maybe,” said Gilbert. “But even that might yield some information.”

Monday morning. Like Antarctica outside, with wind and snow and killing temperatures, the coldest March 3 on record. But inside the new building they had the heat way up. The detectives, officers, and secretaries fanned themselves with whatever paper, folder, or envelope came to hand. Some rolled up shirtsleeves and loosened neckties. Lombardo’s turn for coffee. Gilbert was reading a small story on page five by Ronald Roffey, how the Cheryl Latham case had stalled. He felt his mood diving. Lombardo came in with a couple of extra-large cappuccinos.

“Roffey always makes Monday morning so enjoyable,” said Gilbert.

“Christ, do you believe this?” said Lombardo, looking out the window as he took his scarf off. “March third, for Christ’s sake.”

“You and Valerie had a nice time last night?”

“She hates this weather.”

“Is Frankfurt so much warmer?”

“March third in Frankfurt you at least have crocuses. Look at that snow.” Lombardo shrugged hopefully. “Maybe they’ll have to cancel her flight tomorrow.”

“They can fly planes through snow, Lombardo.”

“What about ice on the wings?”

“It’s supposed to thaw tomorrow.”

Lombardo shook his head. “God, I’m going to miss her. This is ridiculous, isn’t it? She’s a nineteen-year-old kid.”

Gilbert grinned as he took his cappuccino from the tray. “So that makes you about two years younger.”

“No, I’m serious Barry. I’m going to take a week this July and go to Piedmont. I’m going to drive up and visit her. Her folks own a pig farm.”

“So you’ll be right at home.”

Lombardo laughed. “A little Roffey goes a long way with you.”

“I’ll be bitter for the rest of the week,” he said.

Lombardo shook his head, his eyes growing meditative. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have a feeling we’re going to solve it this week.”

“Here comes your Gypsy blood,” said Gilbert. “We’ll have Building Services put up a special shelf for your crystal ball.”

“I don’t use a crystal ball,” said Lombardo. “I use tarot cards. More murders are solved using tarot cards.” He looked at Gilbert quizzically. “I thought you knew.”

Carol Reid came down the aisle to his desk, weaving her way around the modular office furniture. She cast an anxious glance toward Marsh’s private office. She had a piece of paper in her hand.

“I thought you’d better see this,” she said, addressing Lombardo. “Don’t let Marsh know. He’d have my gizzard.”

She handed the piece of paper to Joe.

“What is it?” asked Gilbert.

“It’s Bill’s proposed discharge list,” said Carol. “He’s got to send it to Ling to get the okay for his layoffs.”

Gilbert looked at Lombardo. Lombardo’s brow settled and his lips squeezed together in a thin line. His dark eyes seemed to glitter like the edge of a sharp knife as he went over the list a second time.

“Shit!” he said. He tossed the list on Gilbert’s desk. “What an asshole.” He pounded the top of the filing cabinet with his fist. “I could name ten detectives who don’t do half the work I do.”