Cornwall and Redfern Mysteries 2-Book Bundle (38 page)

“Shut up,” Neil told Tony.
He had been listening to the gruff chuckling since he picked his friend up at the Super 8 Motel earlier that morning. After breakfast at the Mason Jar, they had proceeded to the first crime scene. Tony spent a few minutes silently gazing at the locker that had allegedly been a young girl's tomb for a decade and a half. This sobered him for a few minutes, until they were back in the 4 X 4 on their way to St. Paul's. He managed to keep his face straight while giving vent to explosive snorts of amusement.

He knuckled Neil on the shoulder. “I wish I'd thought to take a photo of Bliss racing out of the parking lot last night with Fang Davidson's big silver ball wrapped in a tarp and duct-taped to the top of her car.” Tony gave up the battle and laughed out loud. “Are you going to arrest your little lady friend for theft?”

Neil pulled up in front of the church. “Not happening. Fang won't file a complaint. He knows if he did, Bliss will have a logical explanation, even if she has to lie her head off.”

“What's she going to do with that thing?”

“How should I know? I drove by her place this
morning,
and it's still sitting on the top of her car.” The temperature had spiked a few degrees overnight and a foot of slush covered the streets. Neil gave the steering wheel a vicious twist as the vehicle edged toward the curb.
Where were the freaking ploughs?

Tony slid his hand into the “holy shit” strap. “Ah, so the little spitfire spent the night alone? You mad at her, or the other way around?”

“Without a doubt, she's pissed at me again. I should have asked her to join us last night at the Wing Nut so she could help us with the case. That's what she thinks, I'm guessing.”

“She has eyes on the whole town and could be a big help if you'd quit acting like such a tight-ass. There's something weird going on between you two. Is it about Debbie?”

Neil didn't want to talk about Debbie with Tony. He pulled to the curb in front of the church. “Have a look around, then we'll see if the husband is home and in better shape than yesterday.”

The church was locked, and Neil used the key given to him by one of the church officials. Their boots clattered up the spiral wooden stairs to the choir loft. Tony leaned on the railing and looked down on the pews where Sophie's body had landed. The area remained taped off, but Neil planned to release the crime scene back to the church later today. If the OPP investigator agreed.

Tony lifted his head and sniffed. “Churches smell funny, like rotting wood and judgment. Let's go find Kelly Quantz.”

The manse stood directly behind the church, invisible from the street. A pleasant, round-faced woman in the kitchen told them that they could find “the grieving widower” in his studio. She seemed vague about its whereabouts and they went back outside and trudged half the perimeter of the rambling old house before finding a glassed-in area that looked more like a sunroom than an artist's workspace.

“I don't see any paintings,” Tony observed as Neil rapped on the door. On the other side of the glass walls, Quantz hunched over a drafting table, one hand — the right — wielding a thick pencil, the other holding a tumbler of clear liquid to his lips.

“He's a graphic artist. Cartoons, comics? Looks like he's out of whisky and had to break out the vodka.” Neil nodded to Kelly as the man looked up at them.

“Maybe that's water in the glass.”

“Want to bet. Lunch?”

Tony watched the man lurch toward them. “Nope.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Quantz. Remember me, Neil Redfern, Chief of Police?” Neil had worn his cap today in deference to the milder temperature. He tucked it under his arm and held out his hand.

Kelly looked at the hand and reached for it but couldn't connect. He closed one eye. Neil captured the hand, more to steady the man than anything else. “This is Detective Sergeant Anthony Pinato with the Ontario Provincial Police.”

Neil exchanged looks with Tony. Great, the man was still shit-faced. Fang's interview at the office yesterday afternoon had been a waste of time — he didn't remember any more than Cornwall did about grad night, and he couldn't add anything to his sister's missing person file. They didn't want to push Earl Archman until he recovered from his emergency room visit, and now this. Sober, healthy witnesses were thin on the ground.

“Just a few questions, Mr. Quantz. May we come in?”

“'Course. Sure.” Kelly stepped back. The back of his knees hit the edge of his footstool and he toppled. Tony caught him before he fell over and helped him back into his chair. Then he seated himself on the footstool, leaving Neil to stand over the man. He disliked looming over someone like this, but the enclosure was so small he had no choice. He noticed two of the glass walls were lined waist-high with electronic audio equipment.

“Sorry to trouble you at a time like this, Mr. Quantz. You must have a lot of plans to make.”

“Not busy. Can't make no … uh, any plans. Don't know when Sophie's body will be released. That doctor, what's his name? Reener? He says he'll let me know when they're done and I can arrange the funeral.” His lips quivered and he took another drink from his glass.

“I understand.” Neil looked over at Kelly's drawing table and noticed a caricature of something half-woman, half … was it a squirrel? He blinked a few times, but the figure still had ears and a bushy tail and a pair of improbably large breasts. Man, it was disturbing. He didn't want to take the chance of offending Quantz, so didn't mention it.

Tony, however, had no such reservation. He pointed at the drawing. “What the hell is that?”

The widower said proudly. “It's my new design. I've created a line of elemental avatars I'm hoping to sell to a gaming company. This is Amandaline.”

Tony squinted at the drawing. “She's a squirrel?”

“No, she isn't! She belongs to the element of air. She can fly, catching the updrafts. And … and downdrafts.”

Tony didn't let up. “I don't think she'll get through the liftoff part of flying, not with those, uh, boobs. And she has squirrel ears and a squirrel tail.”

Quantz turned the drawing over. “Amandaline is not a squirrel.” He finished off the contents of his glass and reached around the back of his chair for a bottle. Neil was right, it was vodka.

It was time to stop cosseting Quantz and question him before the man passed out. He leaned over and removed the bottle and glass from Quantz's hands.

“Hey! Give that back. You got no right …”

Tony glanced from the artist to the drawing. He picked it up and held it against the light of the glass wall.

Neil deposited bottle and glass well out of Quantz's reach. “You need to stop drinking long enough to answer some questions about your wife's death, Mr. Quantz. Sergeant Pinato will go to the kitchen and ask the nice lady who's washing your dishes to make some coffee.”

He spent Tony's absence wandering around the studio, mentally estimating the value of the electronics and artist's paraphernalia. A laptop and colour printer sat on a small table, sharing shelf space with reams of copy paper, drawing pads, and jars of coloured pencils.

“Do you still work as a DJ, Mr. Quantz?”

“Not so much anymore.” Quantz had adopted a sullen expression and stared out the window at the melting snow. “The kids want a young DJ with tight pants and a shaved head. I do some anniversary parties, stuff like that, in the summer. My equipment is outdated, too. Cost too much to replace.”

“Do you remember the party in the gym of the old high school the year your wife graduated?”

Quantz's eyes filled with tears. “I DJed all the school dances back then. That's where I first fell in love with Sophie. I was twelve years older and didn't think I stood a chance.”

“Yet you and she married, when? After she graduated from Divinity College?”

“That's right. The boys, they all took advantage of Sophie, but after she started trusting me in final year, she wouldn't have anything to do with them anymore. Even before she went off to university. I used to visit her on weekends, everything above board, mind you.”

Tony returned with a cup steaming with black coffee. He handed it to Quantz, but took it back quickly after Quantz's shaking hands spilled a few drops onto the tiled floor.

Neil stepped back a pace. “About the graduation dance in 2000, Mr. Quantz. What do you remember about that night?”

“I don't remember anything unusual if that's what you mean.” He accepted the coffee cup from Tony again, holding it in both hands.

“Did you see Faith Davidson leave the gym?”

“Faith?” Quantz hooked his shaking fingers through the cup handle and brought the cup carefully to his lips. “That's the skeleton, right? Poor girl. Can't help you, though. I'm not sure I even remember what she looked like.”

“What about Sophie? Did she leave with a group of friends?”

Quantz examined the ceiling, as though deep in thought. “I don't recall. It was a long time ago. All the kids were gone by the time I packed up my equipment, though.” He used both hands to set his cup on a nearby table.

Neil glanced again at the electronics stacked neatly against the wall. “It's a shame you'll have to move.”

“Eh?” Quantz bolted upright. “Move? From here?”

“Of course. I believe the house is owned by the Episcopal Church. Since your wife is no longer the incumbent priest, you'll have to move to make room for the new one. And Sophie's salary will stop. Where will you go, sir?”

Quantz sobered before their eyes. He looked around the room.

Neil and Tony waited while reality sank in.

Quantz looked up at them. “You're right. Now I'm homeless. And broke. What's going to happen to me?”

He slid from his chair to his knees. “Oh God. Why did this have to happen to Sophie? Now, I have nothing.” Sobs ripped through his thin frame, and he bent forward until his forehead rested on the floor.

He moaned. “You don't know what it's like. To lose your wife like this. I didn't get the chance to say goodbye or tell her I love her.”

Neil's breath caught in his chest. He pushed his black memories away and gestured Tony over. “If this is an act, he should win an Academy Award, but if it isn't, we can't leave him like this. Apparently, he won't talk to Victim Services.”

The cold from the tile floor seeped through his boots. Tony threw a knit blanket over the prostrate man on the floor. “Do you have a psych ward at the hospital?”

“Are you kidding me? We have six beds, and they're usually full. But I was thinking more of a tag-team from the church. The ladies seem to be looking after his meals and cleaning. Maybe a few at a time can babysit him until he dries out.”

It was mid-afternoon before they left Quantz in the capable hands of a committee of women who promised to keep an eye on him.

“You know, they'll smother him with kindness, and he'll keep hitting the bottle,” Tony said, as they waited in the drive-through line at Timmy's.

Neil paid for their lunch. “He'll sober up pretty fast when he's sitting on the curb with his squirrel-girl drawings and his outdated audio equipment.”

“Where are we going now?” Tony sunk his teeth into his honey-mustard chicken sandwich.

Neil drove with one hand on the wheel, while bolting down his BLT. “We're going to the Belcourt greenhouse.Cornwall will be there. You can ask her what those cone-shaped objects in the photo are. Because, fucked if I know.”

Neil grunted in satisfaction
when they turned off Concession 10 into the greenhouse parking lot. “We're in luck. That's Fang Davidson's truck beside Cornwall's Matrix.”

Tony set his feet carefully onto the slush-covered pavement. “There's nothing taped to her roof. Who's your money on if they're in there slugging it out for custody of that tacky mirror ball?”

“Cornwall, hands down. She won't be thwarted by an old classmate who's in legal possession of a sparkly object she covets.”

The main greenhouse door opened into an anteroom, which, in turn, led into a foyer. The top of a marble table held one small blooming plant in a black pot. This was Rae Zaborski's desk when she worked as receptionist. Two dirt-filled, four-foot-high containers took pride of place in opposite corners.

Tony looked down at the label on one of the pots. “
Titan arum
. What the hell's that? There's nothing in here. Big tub of dirt is all.”

“They're dormant, or the seeds are growing, something like that. It's also known as a Corpse Flower, and we're lucky it isn't blooming. It flowered last summer and take my word for it, a five-day-old corpse smells better. One of these jungle plants stunk up the whole east end of town.”

“Sorry I missed that,” Tony said and a smile tugged at his lips. “Where is everybody?”

They moved forward into a corridor. One side looked out on a vista of rooms separated by transparent walls. In the distance, a worker operated a spraying machine while in another room two people wearing lab coats, hats, and masks bent over a bench. Sharp instruments hung from their gloved hands.

Neil noticed the red tendrils of hair spilling from the cap of the taller figure: Glory Yates. When Tony raised his hand to rap on the glass, Neil stopped him. “We need to find Fang and Cornwall. Let's try the offices along here.”

“This place reminds me of a fuckin' funeral parlour, it's so quiet.” Tony rolled his shoulders. “I can hear those friggin' plants growing. And are those crickets, or frogs?”

Neil listened. “Sounds like frogs, but I wouldn't bet on it around here. Come on.”

A group of small office cubicles with opaque walls lined the far end of the corridor. In the middle office, Dougal Seabrook tapped frenetically on a laptop. A grey parrot perched on his shoulder, ribbiting like a pond full of bullfrogs. The bird turned its beady black eyes toward the two men in the doorway and croaked, “Boys, it's the fuzz. Hide the reefers!”

Seabrook had taught the bird to react at the sight of a uniform, any uniform, including the hydro meter reader and the UPS driver.

Tony's loud guffaw caused Seabrook to glance up, but his fingers remained on the keyboard. “Afternoon, Neil. If you're looking for Bliss, she's around somewhere.”

According to Cornwall, her cousin was working on his second novel, another steamy mystery about murder with a nineteenth-century setting. Seabrook's gaze moved over Tony without curiosity and then dropped to his keyboard again. “Try the atrium. Unless she left. She works fewer hours than a banker.”

“How can you tell an atrium from the rest of this place?” Tony asked, looking up at the vast, clear ceiling above their heads.

Neil shrugged, picking up the thick, heavy scent of wet earth. His nose itched.

“How come there are so many rooms?” Tony indicated the vista of plants. Every hue of the rainbow was represented in the blossoms, and every shade of green in the leaves and stems.

“Maybe some plants need more light and humidity than others,” Neil guessed. He knew little about exotic plants, and cared even less. He sneezed. Fungi spores were airborne, weren't they? He picked up his pace but halted when he heard voices ahead.

Rain drummed on the panes and slid down the walls. The atrium dwarfed the rest of the structure. The enclosure had glass walls and a door like the plant rooms, but lowered screens hid the interior from their view. The space stretched the length of the greenhouse.

“Just a little more, Fang. That's it, to the right, just a little. Now you're getting it,” Cornwall's voice encouraged.

Male groaning accompanied Cornwall's urging. “Come on, Bliss. I can't stay in this position much longer. This thing is forty inches across.”

Tony looked at Neil. “Man, are you sure you want to go in there?”

Neil pushed past his friend and opened the door.

Cornwall had her arms wrapped around the bottom supports of a twenty-foot stepladder while she strained her neck to look up.

Fang stood on the uppermost rung, reaching up with pliers in one hand and a roll of duct tape in the other.

They approached quietly, not wanting to startle Fang. “He's a dead man if he falls from that height,” Tony mentioned casually.

Fang spotted them and called down, “Can you arrest her? I came to deliver some parcels, and Bliss acts like I'm her slave. She made me help her unload all the Christmas junk from her car, then I had to give her the motor and electrical cord she forgot to steal last night along with my ball and tarp. Now, I'm risking my life setting this up for her. She's bossier than my wife.”

“He has four children,” Cornwall called over her shoulder. “Isn't that careless of him?”

Neil pulled Tony aside. “Get Fang off that ladder. See if you can get him talking about his sister's life before she disappeared. I'll take one for the team and ask Cornwall our burning question of the day.”

Cornwall wanted assurances from Fang that the motor was rigged up before giving him permission to descend. She flicked the switch beside the door, to ensure the glitter ball revolved.

“It works!” Then her smile receded. “Wait a minute. What happened to the spotlight, Fang?”

“It didn't work, so I threw it out. Get Chico to donate a new light or, here's a thought, buy one.”

“But you're still going to come back and take the ball down after the benefit, right? And hang it in my garage?”

Neil took Cornwall's hand and pulled her to one side, leaving Fang to Tony. “Never mind that right now. Tell me what those two cone-shaped objects are.”

“First, tell me where you found them.” Cornwall never played games, except sometimes in the bedroom. But blackmailing came as naturally to her as breathing, even if she considered it negotiating.

“I'm the one who asks the questions. You answer them. That's the way it works.”

“Well, pardon me. How about this, then? I'll guess and you tell me if I'm right.” She didn't wait for his agreement. “You found them in the locker room close to the body.”

It took effort to keep his face neutral. She guessed again.

“Or else they were actually in the locker with Faith. Both of them.”

He gritted his teeth before recalling his dentist's advice about grinding and enamel loss. Relaxing his jaw, he looked down at Cornwall's head. “All right! They were in the locker with the bones. Now, what are they?”

She offered up a dazzling smile. “Six-inch cones. Imagine them wrapped with green tape. And filled with a lovely floral arrangement of red roses and babies' breath.”

“Of course.” Neil felt like slapping his own head. “All the girls had one. What about the boys? Were their boutonnieres inserted into a cone?”

Cornwall's look was disdainful. “That would be one heck of a boutonniere, wouldn't it? They had one rose wrapped with some leaves, then stuck through their lapels and pinned.”

She lowered her voice. “So you found two cones in the locker. Somebody threw two graduation bouquets on top of Faith's body, closed the locker, and just walked away.”

“But, why two?” Neil mused.

“If the murderer was one of the girls, she could have thrown her bouquet in as well as Faith's.”

“Maybe.”

The door behind them swung open, slamming him in the back.

Glory Yates entered, releasing her thick mane from her white cap. She still wore the lab coat and the face mask hung around her neck. Her houseboy, Pan, similarly attired, hovered behind his boss.

“Oh, hello, Neil. Excuse me. I need to speak with Bliss.” She gave him a quick uplift of her lips. Glory was a member of the Police Services Board. He had never had any personal run-ins with her, but according to Cornwall she was the devil's mistress, prowling the graveyards at night, sipping blood from a crystal goblet while she waited for her Dark Lord.

She addressed Cornwall. “There you are, Bliss. Did you contact the list of delinquent clients I gave you this morning?”

At Cornwall's nod, she continued. “Good. I have another three names, and you might as well get to them before you leave today.”

Bliss accepted the paper from the outstretched hand and stuffed it in her back pocket.

Glory's eyes scanned the mountain of Canadian Tire bags in one corner. “Oh, I see you're moving forward with your decorating tasks for our open house. Carry on then.”

As she turned to leave, she hesitated and looked up at the glitter ball. It spun slowly, catching a few beams of light from the overcast sky. “Very nice. But it needs a spotlight. See to it. Fang, I hope Bliss isn't taking advantage of you again …”

Her words ended abruptly and her body became still. She found the one stranger among them. Her mouth formed a perfect
O
.

Tendrils of curls tumbled around her face, and her pale complexion turned pink. She floated forward, stopping a few feet from Tony. One hand twitched as though she wanted to reach out and touch him.

Tony blinked and cleared his throat. His olive skin never reddened. But something changed in his face. Black eyelashes swept his cheeks. His dark eyes opened wide and his gaze locked with hers. Neil had seen this reaction before.

Tony's right hand reached for Glory's and, instead of a traditional handshake, their fingers intertwined.

Was it Neil's imagination, or did forked lightning flash in the darkened sky above the atrium?

He closed his eyes against the sight. “Ah, shit.”