The K Handshape (34 page)

Leo had told us as much earlier. I wasn’t sure where this was leading but again I nodded. Better to keep him talking.

“You probably don’t understand what it’s like, Miss Morris. I would guess that your own home life has been a loving and stable one.”

I almost choked on that one but I wasn’t about to take him up on it.

“You have that air about you,” he said. “I can always tell.”

Such utter bullshit. He probably thought it was a line women liked to hear.

“However, as I was saying, it must be hard to understand the situation of someone who hasn’t experienced that.”

I’d had enough. “I don’t think I’d make a very good police officer if I couldn’t empathize with people who come from very different backgrounds.”

My tone must have made him nervous. “Yes, yes, of course, I didn’t mean to imply that you don’t do a very good job. I’m sure you do. It’s just that…”

He was saved from finally twisting himself into a pretzel by the return of Ray carrying a tray with a Styrofoam cup and a saucer of creamers and sugars.

“Here you go. I didn’t know how you take it, so I brought the works.”

“Thank you so much, I really appreciate this.”

“You have a call waiting, Sergeant.” He slipped me a yellow Post-it Note from the reception. “Your mother is on the phone. Says it’s urgent.”

So much for evidence of a loving stable home. I jumped up without even thinking about it. My usual reflex action to Joan’s demands that I thought I’d conquered. Obviously not.

“Did you say she’s waiting on the phone?” I asked Ray quietly.

“That’s what Andrea said.”

Sig was doctoring up his tea, triple-triple by the look of it.

“I have to take a call. I’ll be right back.”

I headed for my office, scooting past the reception desk. We had a part-time girl on at weekends, a student from the community college. She was talking into her mouthpiece and mouthed at me, “Line one.”

Joan had learned some time ago that an easier way to get hold of me was through the office rather than my cellphone where she knew I could see who was calling and respond accordingly. In her opinion, cavalierly.

I grabbed the receiver and closed the door behind me.

“Hello.”

“Christine, this is your mother.”

“What is it? I’m in the middle of something. I was told this call was urgent.”

I made no attempt to soften my tone of voice, too many cries of wolf throughout my life.

“It is. I wouldn’t disturb you if it wasn’t. I just wanted to let you know that we have decided to postpone the wedding until next spring.”

I felt a flood of relief. That let me off the hook. Gill could come here for his two weeks and I wouldn’t have to leave Paula.

“That sounds like a good idea. The weather will be better.”

“Aye.” Joan was reverting more and more to her old dialect the longer she lived in her homeland. “I wanted you to know right away in case you made a booking. You haven’t, have you?”

“No. Not to worry.”

There was a pause and I knew her well enough to know that the real reason for the call was coming up.

“Duncan didn’t want me to be disappointed seeing as how I was looking forward to the cruise so he said, ‘Why don’t we just go over to Canada and see our daughter? We can spend Christmas with Christine and New Year’s with the other kids.’”

Oh no. I didn’t say that out loud but I might as well have. She slipped into the “now you’ve hurt my feelings” reproachful tone that had me jumping out of my skin.

“I thought you’d like that, Chris. We’ve no spent a Christmas together for years.”

Coward that I was, I avoided answering her. “I only get a couple of days off.”

“That’s all right. We can do some sightseeing on our own. Duncan is very excited to see the country. We’ll just fit around your schedule.”

Like hell she would. Joan was constitutionally unable to adapt to anybody else’s life if it didn’t suit her. And what about Gill? Would she insist on him going with them? I’d been looking forward to having him waiting at home for me with a nice home-cooked meal on the stove and my slippers by the fire.

Fortunately I was saved by a knock at the door. Leo stuck his head in. I waved for him to hold on.

“I’ve got to go now, Joan. I’ll call you later when I get home and we can talk more about it.”

“Not too late. You know we’re six hours ahead of you.”

I managed not to explode into a sarcastic rejoinder. “Yes, I am aware of that.”

She was really huffy now. “I’ll tell your father you sent your love.”

“Do that.”

She hung up. I didn’t slam down the receiver but must have communicated the impulse to Leo.

“Problems?”

“Minor.”

And they were in comparison to his.

“What’s happening, Chris? I haven’t been in yet. How’s Sigmund?”

I knew what he needed to know but it was very awkward.

“There are inconsistencies in his statement, Leo. When I pushed him on it, he got very upset and said he wanted to talk to you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Hear what he has to say, I guess. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer and hasn’t been charged with anything but…”

“He’s lying.”

I bit my lip. “It seems that way.”

“What’s he said so far?”

I told him and he frowned.

“So there are two holes. First off he obviously had made contact with Deidre before he showed up at the casino…”

“That’s what it looks like to me. He keeps saying they were in touch by email.”

“Bullshit. They’d already met before Tuesday.”

“The big problem is that he never said anything about coming back in the Nova.”

“Did you ask him about the security guard saying the Chevy wasn’t in the garage at three o’clock?’

“Not yet.”

“Did he say what he was up to yesterday?”

“His story is very thin. He says he went out for a drive but we’ve got at least eleven hours unaccounted for.”

Leo pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, a gesture I’d seen him make many times but I thought this time he was trying to force back tears.

“He’s a good kid, Chris. He gets on people’s nerves but I don’t think he’s capable of…”

He didn’t finish his sentence. He didn’t have to. I reached over and squeezed his arm.

“Come on, let’s go and talk to him.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Sigmund looked up when we entered. “Hello, Dad. We’re in a mess, aren’t we?”

He was so wan and looked so vulnerable, I half-expected him to climb into Leo’s lap. His father, however, was hardly warm and welcoming. He took the chair at the far end of the table and sat down.

“You said you couldn’t talk until I was here. Well here I am. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Ray reached for the record button on the tape. “Ready?”

Sig nodded miserably. He couldn’t really go back on what he’d said about talking when his father was here. Even though the questioning was still being considered unofficial, we could record the interviews with permission.

“I haven’t been quite up front with you all. I did go back home after seeing Deidre. That’s absolutely true, but I came back.” He ducked his head. “Well you know all that, don’t you?”

“Did you see her this second time?” Ray asked.

“Yes, I did. She was actually standing by her car. She had a flat tire. She said she needed to get into town in a hurry. She was meeting some guy at Memorial Park … so I gave her a ride. I dropped her off just at the top of the park. And that’s the truth, I swear.”

I took over. “Sig, do you know who she was to meet with?”

He turned to me gratefully. “No. It was hard to communicate with her so we were both pretty silent on the way down. I asked
her. I was wondering who was so important but she just wouldn’t answer. She got me to let her off and that was that.”

“What time was this?”

“By the time we got there it was almost a quarter past eleven.”

“Did she meet anybody?”

“Not that I saw. She headed down to the monument and I drove off.”

“Did you notice if there was a car parked by the pier?”

“I couldn’t see that far.”

“It was late, didn’t you worry about her?” Leo spoke before I could stop him and his voice would have taken off wallpaper.

“Not really. I mean I know she was deaf and all that but she seemed pretty independent. I just thought she’d meet her fellow and that was it. Besides, if she’d missed him, she wasn’t that far from home. She could get a taxi if she had to.”

“And that was the last you saw of her?”

He lowered his head. “Yes. I’m sorry, Dad.”

I sat back in my chair. If we could believe him, we’d got a tiny piece in the puzzle. We could concentrate the search for witnesses more closely.

Ray’s turn now. “After you left Deidre, what did you do?”

Sig fiddled with the crumpled sugar paper. “Nothing really. That is, I went home. It was a work day the next day. I wanted to get to sleep.”

“What time did you get to your apartment?” Ray again.

“Gosh, I’m not sure. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Ballpark. Midnight? One? Two?”

“Well, let me see, it’s a forty- to forty-five-minute drive, so if I left Deidre at eleven-fifteen, I’d be home by midnight.”

“Can your mother confirm this?”

“No, I don’t think so, she was already in bed. She likes to get to bed early. She always says she needs her beauty sleep.”

He gave a quick sideways glance to his father, trying to rope him into an alliance against Trudy. Leo didn’t bite. He was staring at a spot on the wall beyond his son.

I continued. “We have a statement from the security guard at your condo, a Mr. Meadows. He is willing to swear that the Chevy wasn’t in its parking spot before three o’clock.”

“Ah. Well you know what? That’s quite right. I was tired and decided to park in the outside lot until morning.”

The lie was as transparent as tissue paper.

“We’ll follow up on that.”

I sat back in my chair. “Why didn’t you say at the beginning that you had picked up Deidre?”

Sig twisted the sugar packet into a tight spool. “I didn’t think it mattered. I had nothing to do with what happened and I figured you’d find out soon enough who did it then…” he stopped.

“Then what?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I was sure you’d find the guilty party. It’s what you do, isn’t it? Solve crimes?”

Whoa. That poisonous dart flew across the room.

“Good Lord, I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Leo exploded. He was so angry he jumped to his feet and his chair went crashing backward in an unintended dramatic gesture. Sig flinched. “Do you realize what you’ve done? You could be charged with obstruction of justice. Are you a complete idiot? You must have known this was crucial information for the investigation.” Leo was red in the face. “Why? What’s the real reason? You were about to say, ‘You’d find out soon enough and then…’ Then WHAT?”

Sig looked as if he were about to sink under the table. “Then Mom wouldn’t need to know.”

I flashed a warning glance at Leo which I don’t know if he even saw.

“Are you afraid of your mother, Sig?” I asked.

“Not afraid exactly, afraid of upsetting her. Her nerves are terrible and well…”

His voice tailed off but I got the picture. She made his life miserable. Leo was staring at his son in disbelief but he was the one who’d described Trudy as a marshmallow with sharp teeth.

Leo righted his chair and sat down again. I turned to Sig and smiled reassuringly at him.

“Can you say more about that, Sig? You didn’t want your mother to know that you’d had any contact at all with your sister, is that what you mean?”

He nodded gratefully. “That’s right. She would have freaked if she’d known. She saw it as betrayal of the worst kind.”

“But in fact you met with Deidre before you saw her at the casino, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Sorry. You’re right. She sent me an email about a month ago. Out of the blue. I mean I was stunned. She said she had a daughter now and she’d like her to know her own blood. She invited me to come to the house and I could meet her. So I did. I was curious myself as to what the fuss was all about.”

“That was on Monday?”

“That’s right. I mean she is a cute kid but given the state of the nation with my mother I didn’t know what I could do. The kid’s deaf too so I don’t know what we’d accomplish. Deidre was disappointed, naturally. That’s why I said I’d think about it and she said she was always at the casino on Tuesday nights if I changed my mind.”

He took up another sugar packet and started to twist it tight.

I thought of Joy and how easy it was to communicate with her. He would be missing out on a lot.

“Why didn’t you say you’d seen Dee only the night before when I called to tell you she was dead?”

Leo’s voice had gone ice cold. Again I intervened. “Was it the same reason as you just gave? You were afraid your mother would know?”

“Yes.” He gave a smile that was tinged with shame. “I’m totally embarrassed to admit how much of my life is governed by my fear of my mother’s reaction but I’m afraid it is.”

I liked him a lot better for the honesty but he’d gone back to staring at the clock on the wall.

“Do you want to revise your description of your day yesterday?”

He sighed and his eyes flickered over to Leo. It wasn’t only his mother he was afraid of, poor guy.

“Will my mother have to know what I say?”

“Not necessarily.”

“She’s a mite possessive of me, as I’ve said. Understandable in the circumstances. Single mother and all that.” He wasn’t so afraid he couldn’t send another dart in Leo’s direction. And I saw it landed and hurt. Sig drew in his breath, and like a diver on the edge of a very cold pool, he held his nose and jumped in. Or should I say a very hot pool?

“Because of our circumstances, my mother has tended to be overprotective and I, er, haven’t really had, shall we say, much to do with the opposite sex. The ladies,” he added for my benefit in case I was offended by the term
opposite sex
. “However, I am in every respect a man with, begging your pardon, Miss Morris, with normal appetites and needs…”