The Price of Love and Other Stories (21 page)

Jacqui’s response to the whole safety deposit box issue was just a bit too rushed and casual for my liking. I followed her to the door, trying to decide whether I believed her or not. I wasn’t sure. The problem was that Jacqui Prior wasn’t a
WYSIWYG
sort of woman. Tony Caldwell had called her complicated, but in a way she struck me as shallow, empty without the role to assume, the correct expression to wear or gesture to make.

As I rode the elevator down to my car, I found myself wondering if I was being manipulated. Just how much did Jacqui and Tony’s affair have to do with what happened to Valerie? In my mind’s eye, I saw myself as Charles Laughton riding his stairlift in
Witness for the Prosecution
. Had they planned it between the two of them? I wondered. And was my getting Tony off part of their plan? Was I being used in their game?

If Tony Caldwell or Jacqui Prior hadn’t murdered Valerie, then who else might have done it? Discounting the passing tramp theory, my money was still on one of the dinner guests: Jacqui, Ray Dasgupta, Scott and Ginny Schneider. Valerie would have let any one of those four in the back door. But which one? And why? And what part did the safety deposit box play? Maybe I would find out something from the others who’d been at the dinner that night.

I found both Scott and Ginny Schneider in the office of their modelling agency, just off Spadina, in the garment district. On the surface, Scott seemed very much the outgoing, charming type, while Ginny was more reserved. They were both in their late thirties, and I guessed from her cheekbones that Ginny had probably been a model herself in the not too distant past. Her husband looked more like a trendy stockbroker in casual business attire.

“I thought the police had settled the matter of Valerie’s death,” Scott said.

“They’ve arrested Tony Caldwell, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “But that doesn’t settle anything.”

“How so?”

“I’m just not convinced. I understand Valerie worked for you?”

“She helped out sometimes, yes. She’d been a model herself, and quite a good one, too, so she was able to work with some of the girls and with the clients, help us with our selections. It’s an important part of the business, and it can be very tricky, matching the model to the product.”

“Was anything bothering her around the time of her death?”

“Her husband’s affair with Jacqui Prior, I should imagine.”

“Did she talk to you about that?”

“No. We only found out at the dinner, along with everyone else.”

“You, too?” I asked Ginny.

“Yes.”

“And were you surprised?”

“Naturally,” said Scott, looking over at his wife. “We both were.”

“Do you have any idea how Valerie knew?”

“I’m afraid not. We certainly didn’t tell her.”

“Well, you couldn’t tell her if you didn’t know yourselves, could you? You must have worked closely with Jacqui, though. Did she ever let anything slip?”

“Nothing. Look, Mr. Lang, I’m very sorry about Tony and everything. I’ve known him for a number of years and count him as a good friend as well as a business colleague. But don’t you think the police know what they’re about? He and Valerie did have a terrific row – we all witnessed that – and not long afterwards, she was dead. It makes sense. Any one of us could snap under pressure like that.”

“Indeed we could. Any one of us. Where did you go after you left the restaurant?”

“We dropped Jacqui off at her apartment, then we went home,” Ginny answered.

“Did anything unusual happen on the way?”

“No. Scott had had too much to drink, so I drove.”

“Where’s home?”

Scott answered this time. “Scarborough, down near the Bluffs.”

“So you weren’t too far away from Tony and Valerie’s place?”

Scott’s bonhomie vanished in an instant, and he stuck his chin out. Ginny looked on coolly. “What are you getting at?” Scott said. “You come around here asking damn fool questions, and then you start accusing
me
of murdering Valerie.”

“I haven’t accused you of anything,” I said.

“You know what I mean. You certainly implied it.”

“I merely implied that someone other than Tony could have done it.” I looked at Ginny. “Did either of you go out after you got home?”

Ginny looked down at her hands folded on her lap before answering, “No.”

“Of course we didn’t,” Scott snapped. But something was wrong. Ginny didn’t want to look me in the eye, and Scott was blustering. Was she protecting him?

I took the safety deposit box key from my pocket. “Have either of you seen this before?”

They both looked genuinely puzzled. “No,” said Scott.

“Never,” said Ginny.

“OK. Thanks for your time.” I pocketed the key and headed back to my car.

Tony Caldwell’s photographic studio was located in that urban wasteland of movie studios and sound stages between Eastern Avenue and the Gardiner, where Toronto pretends to be New York, London, and even a distant galaxy. At least parking in one of the vast, empty lots was easier than around Spadina, which had cost me a small fortune. The studio had an empty feel to it, but Ray Dasgupta was in the office, working at the computer. He stopped and looked up when I knocked and entered. I told him who I was and what I was doing.

“You probably think it’s odd, me working here while all this is going on?” he said.

“I suppose it takes your mind off other things. And no doubt, there’s work to be done.”

“Mostly bookkeeping.”

“What’s going to happen to the studio now?”

“I don’t know. Tony was the real creative energy behind us. I’m not much more than a glorified administrator. Oh, I know a shutter speed from an f-stop, but that’s about as far as it goes. Tony has a flair for striking up relationships with his models … ” He paused. “That wasn’t meant to come out the way it did. I mean, behind the camera.”

“I know what you mean. But seeing as you mention it, how much do you know about these other relationships?”

Ray sucked on his lower lip, frowning.

“It’s not that tough a question, Ray,” I said. “Jacqui wasn’t the first, was she?”

“How do you know?”

“Never mind. But if anyone ought to know, it’s you, his partner. How many? How long?”

Ray squirmed in his chair. “Always. As long as I’ve known him, Tony’s been chasing women. He couldn’t seem to help himself.”

“And Valerie didn’t know?”

“I don’t know whether she suspected or not, but she never acted as if she did. Not in public.”

“And you think she would have done something if she’d known?”

“Yes. Valerie is a proud woman, and jealous, too, not someone to take an affair lightly. She might not have divorced Tony. After all, she’d given up her own career, and she liked the lifestyle, but … ”

“Maybe she’d have killed him?”

“But he’s not the one who’s dead, is he?”

Still, it was another possible scenario. Maybe Jacqui was the last straw. Perhaps there’d been a struggle, Valerie with the knife, trying to kill Tony, and things had turned around. That didn’t help me much, though, as he hadn’t even tried to claim self-defence.

“What do you think of Jacqui?” I asked.

Ray’s lip curled. “Jumped-up little slut. It’s not as if she can’t have any man she wants. Why Tony? Why steal her best friend’s husband?”

“And Valerie?”

Ray looked away, clearly disturbed by the question.

“Ray? Something you want to tell me?”

“Look, I … I would never have … I mean … ”

“Were you in love with her, Ray?”

His silence told me all I needed to know.

“Was it you who told Valerie about Tony and Jacqui?”

Ray jerked his head in an abrupt nod, then turned damp brown eyes on me. “How could he? How could he treat her like that? Oh, she never looked at me twice. It’s not that I thought … or even hoped … but I couldn’t bear to see it anymore, them carrying on the way they did, and Valerie not knowing.”

“So you told her.”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Just before dinner.”

“Did you kill her, Ray?”

“Why would I kill her? I loved her.”

“Maybe you went round to the house later and found her alone, Tony in the shower. You thought you were in with a chance now, but she turned you down, laughed at you, and you lost it. Is that how it happened, Ray?”

For a moment, I thought he was going to confess, then he said, “No. I didn’t do it. But I’d have a closer look at Jacqui Prior if I were you.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because of something Valerie said when I told her about the affair.”

“What did she say?”

“She said, ‘I’ll ruin her. The little bitch. You see if I don’t. And don’t think I can’t do it, either.’”

“You’d better not have come around with more of those ridiculous accusations,” Jacqui Prior said, flopping on the sofa and crossing her long legs.

I took out the safety deposit box key and held it in front of her. “I’ve been talking to Tony, and we’ve been through some of Valerie’s papers. According to her Visa bills, there’s an annual fee of forty dollars at a B.C. credit union. The people there were not forthcoming, but they did admit that Valerie rented a safety deposit box. I asked myself why she kept a box in Vancouver when she lived in Toronto.”

“And?”

“It’s my guess she got it while she was still living there, and she doesn’t need frequent access.”

“So it’s probably empty.”

“But why keep paying? She can’t have forgotten about it. The annual bill would remind her.”

“So what’s your explanation, great detective?”

“That there’s something in it she wants to keep.”

“And how does that relate to me?”

“The two of you grew up together in Vancouver.”

“So?”

“What’s in the box, Jacqui?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“You’re lying.”

“How dare you?”

“What’s in it? Was it worth killing her over?”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“So you say. But the way it looks to me is that you had the best motive. You were having an affair with her husband. She threatened you. And she was keeping something in a safety deposit box in Vancouver that may be related to you.”

“That’s just conjecture.”

“But it’s a pretty reasonable conjecture, you must admit.”

“I’m admitting nothing.”

“Well,” I said, standing to leave, “the police will probably be less polite than me, and there’ll no doubt be media interest. Your choice, Jacqui. If you’re innocent, you’d be far better off telling me the truth. I don’t have to tell anyone.”

I could see her thinking over her options: Whether to tell me anything. How much to tell. How many lies she might get away with. What she might use to bribe me to keep silent. In the end, she came to a decision. “I need a drink first,” she said, and went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured herself a Pernod. It turned cloudy when she added a few drops of water. As an afterthought, she asked me if I wanted anything. I said no.

“Strictly between you and me?”

“Of course.”

“When Valerie dropped her little bombshell and all hell broke loose, I took her to the washroom.”

“I’ve always wondered what went on in there.”

“She told me she’d ruin me.”

“How?”

“When Val and I were students,” Jacqui said, “we were … well, to put it mildly, we were a bit wild. We got into coke and stuff in a fairly big way, and it can skewer your judgment. There was a man. We were so high we thought it would be fun to make a video. He didn’t know. No copies. Only the original. Need I say more?”

“The three of you?”

“Yes.”

“And Valerie kept this?”

“I told you, she liked control.”

“Why would she want to have control over you?”

“Not me, you fool. Him. He was a politician. Still is, and climbing the ranks.”

“So Valerie used it to blackmail him?”

“She never used it for anything, as far as I know.”

“But that gave him a motive for killing her. Who is he?”

“He didn’t even know about it. I’m sure of that.”

“But Valerie threatened to use it against you?”

“Yes. This Cherub contract is a really big deal, and I need to be squeaky clean. It’s a family line, so if it got around that their cherub wasn’t quite as cherubic as they thought, I think you can see where that might lead.”

“The unemployment line?”

“Exactly.”

“You do realize, don’t you, that you’ve just given me another motive for your killing Valerie? If she made the video public, you’d have been ruined.”

“No. You don’t understand. There was no video.”

Now it was my turn to look puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t think I wanted that thing lying around, do you? I can make myself look enough like Valerie to fool people, especially strangers behind the counter in a bank, and her signature is easy
enough to forge. One day, while she was at the dentist’s, I borrowed her key and her ID.”

“So you’re saying –”

“Valerie didn’t know, because she never checked from one year to the next, but the video was gone. I destroyed it. That safety deposit box was empty.”

“Then who –?”

Jacqui put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no,” she said, turning pale. “Oh, God, no!”

“You again,” said Scott when I called at their Scarborough home early that evening.

I had spent the rest of the afternoon doing the sort of digging I usually do when I’m not investigating murders. Ginny walked through from the kitchen and nodded a curt greeting.

“What can I help you with this time?” Scott asked.

“When you were driving Jacqui home from the restaurant the night Valerie was murdered, you asked her about what went on in the washroom, didn’t you?”

“So what? I was curious.”

“And she told you that Valerie had threatened her with something that could ruin the whole Cherub deal.”

“She did? I don’t remember.”

“Oh, come off it, Scott! You mean to tell me you were so curious you can’t even remember what she told you?”

“What does it matter?”

I leaned forward. “It matters because it gave you a motive to kill Valerie.”