Читать книгу Grave Deeds - Betsy Struthers - Страница 8

The cop smiled and flipped his badge. “I’m Detective Joe Gianelli. And you are?”

“Rosalie Cairns,” I said. “What happened in there?”

“You live around here?” he asked.

“I hate people who answer questions with questions,” I retorted.

“It’s my job,” he shrugged. “Let’s get the preliminaries over with, okay?”

I sighed and gave him the address, not just of my apartment here in the city, but of my house in the town where my husband lives and has his business.

“You’re separated?” He looked me up and down. From the way his eyes shifted from belligerence to attentive friendliness, I realized he must like what he saw. I wasn’t wearing my usual graduate school uniform of jeans and bulky sweater, but had dressed up for tea in my one good outfit: burgundy suede jacket over a white silk blouse and black linen slacks. He and I were about the same age, in our early forties, but he used dye to keep his thinning hair black while I ignore the gray that streaks through the mass of curls I still wear long and loose in spite of the aggravation it causes. I took up swimming this past year, an hour a day in the university pool. Trying to stuff all that hair into a bathing cap almost ruins the pleasure of competing against myself for more and more laps.

“No, not separated.” I answered curtly.

“Divorced, then?”

“No.”

“You work here? You commute?”

“It’s too far to commute. That’s why I have a place here. I’m in graduate school at York.” I searched in my bag for my spectacle case and switched from the oversize dark prescription lenses to my wire frames. The sudden brightness made me blink.

“What does he do? Your husband?”

“He’s a carpenter/contractor, renovates old houses, that kind of thing. He’s just started his company and can’t leave the business. I go home most weekends.”

“Who takes care of the kids? I assume you have kids.”

“I thought cops didn’t make assumptions,” I snapped. “And no, we have no kids.”

“So you’re all on your own here.”

My hand itched to slap the smirk from his face. I counted to ten — slowly. Losing my temper would only worsen matters. I took a deep breath and spoke clearly and slowly, as if to a child: “I’m working. I’m in the library most days, and most nights too, for that matter. I don’t have much time for socializing. It seemed like a good idea when I decided to come back to school, to take an apartment here until my course work is done. As soon as this academic year is over, I’ll be moving home.”

I could hardly wait for the school year to end. Once my oral exams were over, I would be free to research and write my thesis, and I could do that in my own study in my own house. When I had first come to the city, I’d rented a tiny bachelor apartment on the twenty-fourth floor of a highrise, in a development in the suburbs near York University. The windows wouldn’t open and the elevator always stopped at every single floor going up or down, although no one seemed to be waiting for it. The walk to classes along Keele Street past strip plazas and car dealerships was a misery of slush, biting winds, and exhaust fumes. Living downtown meant I had a long transit ride out to campus, but I was close to the Robarts Library for my research. Everything I needed was within walking distance: Kensington Market for food, Chinatown for inexpensive but interesting meals out, bookstores, movie theatres, the University of Toronto campus with its sports complex and myriad cultural activities. Sometimes, I felt like an undergraduate again, twenty years old and carefree; and, far too often, lonely.

I missed my dog, Sadie, and our walks along the river close to our house. I missed Will. Our time together was always too short, a fever of talk and love-making. There was always so much to do: work on the house, work on my courses, seeing friends, shopping and laundry. I looked back almost with nostalgia on those long, slow days of underemployment, when I worked part-time at a bookstore. It was easy to forget how bored I’d been then.

Gianelli looked down at his notebook. “This street’s not exactly in your neighbourhood,” he said. “Are you visiting someone around here?” He managed to make his question sound suggestive.

“I was on my way to my aunt’s. She’d invited me to tea.”

“And she lives?”

“Right behind you.”

He swivelled and stared at the little house as if he’d never seen it before. The animal control officers slammed the van door on the final load of cats. They waved to Gianelli before driving away. He grimaced.

“Who’s this?” It was the man who had ribbed Gianelli about the cat scratch. He was younger than either of us, a black giant in a rumpled blue suit. His shoulders strained at the polyester fabric. From the way he balanced on the balls of his feet, I could tell he was one of those guys who worked on his muscles at a gym. A cop with a “Terminator” complex: what a cliché. His body was taut and sculptured now, but I shuddered inwardly to think how he would appear in thirty years when age took its revenge.

“Detective Wilson,” he shook my hand in a vise grip.

“You’re partners?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” he laughed. “We work out of the same division. Happened to be on our way to lunch when the call came in and he wanted to check it out. I’d leave it up to the constables, but … my friend here is looking for a Big Case, get his name in the papers. Hey, Gianelli, you started frothing yet?”

“Lay off,” Gianelli growled. “This is a relative.”

“Of the old lady?” Wilson’s smile hardened. “How could you let her live like that? Die like that? You been to see her lately? Like in the last decade or so? You should be ashamed.”

“I’ve never even met her. I didn’t even know I had an aunt until she wrote me.”

“You got the letter with you?” Gianelli ignored the younger man and held out his hand to me.

I handed him the envelope. He compared the address on it with the one I’d given him and eased the letter out with care. He held it at arm’s length, squinting as he read the short message. He should have been wearing the bifocals I glimpsed in his breast pocket.

Wilson grabbed the letter away from him. “Can’t you read any faster? Where’re your glasses? Dear Mrs. Cairns — that’s you, I presume?”

I nodded. Gianelli pulled a silver cigarette case out from an inside pocket. He tapped it open and offered it to me. I shook my head. He chose a filter tip and made a show of lighting it with a gold lighter. The sun winked on the diamond in his pinky ring. He was exceedingly well dressed for duty.

Wilson continued to read: “I understand that you are the only daughter of my nephew, George Cook. It would please an old woman greatly if you were to forgive the neglect of the past, and come to visit me for tea next Wednesday, at three p.m., at the address above. You may find it in your interest to attend. I look forward to meeting you. I am, your dear Aunt, Beatrice Baker. Will you listen to that? Talk about formal.”

“What’s this about past neglect?” Gianelli demanded.

“I told you I never met her. My father left when I was just a baby, and my mother never talked about his family. I just assumed he hadn’t any, but was an only child like me. Only child of an only child — it was something special we shared. That I thought we shared.”

“You think she was going to give you something? Take you back in the bosom of the family?”

“I didn’t want anything from her. I wasn’t going to come at all at first, but I was curious. I might have cousins. She might have pictures of my father and my grandparents.” I blinked away sudden tears. “I just wanted to meet her. To see where I came from. Is that so hard to understand?”

Wilson folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. He hesitated before handing it back to me. I put it in my bag — so much for family.

“You were pretty cosy with that old fellow with the dog,” Gianelli said. “You been around already? Checking out the place maybe?”

“I’d never seen him before today. He just wanted to talk to someone. You know how old people like to talk.”

“Yeah.” He blew a long stream of thin smoke, a dragon tired of chewing up the little folk. “You’re not planning on leaving town, are you?”

“Give her a break, Joe,” Wilson smiled at me. “We may want to talk to you again — after we speak to Mrs. Baker’s lawyer.”

“Could I look inside?” I asked. I didn’t want to have come all this way for nothing. It was not just the time wasted on the long subway and streetcar rides, but the whole journey I’d gone through in the week since receiving the letter. I had struggled with the memories of my mother and the painful hate she had insisted on in every discussion of my father and his family. “They’ll never get their hands on you,” she would say. “They’re rotten, every last one of them.”

“Who?” I’d ask, when I still asked her questions about them. “Do I have an Oma and Opa like Annie does?” Annie was my best friend, daughter of the large and boisterous family who shared our duplex. There were constant streams of relatives coming and going downstairs. I was informally adopted into the tribe, but there were days when I was left behind: when the families gathered for a wedding or a christening at some uncle’s distant house. There wasn’t room in any of their cars then for me. My mother refused to talk about my father or any of the Cooks. “They’re dead to us,” she said, when I pressed her too hard with my queries. “They never wanted either of us when you were born. We don’t need them. We’ve got each other and that’s all we’ll ever want.” And that was all she’d say.

I sighed, and shook off the memories. I’d decided at long last to come here, and I had come too late.

Gianelli and Wilson exchanged glances heavy with some kind of warning I couldn’t interpret.

“Maybe you can go in later,” Gianelli muttered. “Maybe tomorrow if the lawyer agrees.”

“But it’s a long way,” I pleaded. “And I haven’t got a car. Would it hurt for me just to look around a bit? See her things? There might be pictures of her family. My family, I mean. I won’t take anything, and you can come in with me. Please?”

“Sorry.” Wilson scuffed at a crack in the sidewalk. “We can’t let anyone in until the coroner’s finished with the post mortem. Regulations.”

“Coroner?” I was confused. “I thought she died of a fall.”

“Not exactly.” Gianelli dropped his cigarette butt and rubbed it out viciously with the toe of one shoe. I couldn’t help noticing his footwear: blood-red leather oxfords. Nice. He continued. “It looks like she ran into something. Or something ran into her.”

“The cats, you mean?”

“A bit bigger than that.”

“Are you talking about a burglary?”

“No.” He rubbed his hand over his skull, careful not to rearrange his hair. “I’m talking about murder.”

“Murder?” I leaned back heavily against the maple tree, thankful for the solidity of its rough trunk. I was suddenly very tired. I stifled a yawn. My eyes burned. “I thought it was routine, you being here.”

“Let’s sit a minute.” Wilson cupped my left elbow in his big hand. He tugged gently; I let him lead me to the porch. He made a show of pulling out from his pants pocket a handkerchief as big as a scarf which he spread on the top step before gently pressing me to sit.

Gianelli sauntered up. He stood looking up at us, one foot on the bottom of the four wooden steps, both hands deep in his pants pockets. “You okay?”

I nodded. “It’s a shock. I mean, I was just getting used to the idea of having an aunt, and now she’s dead. Maybe murdered.” I shook my head. “Why me?” My voice rose in a wail of complaint.

The officers exchanged glances. Before they could comment, however, a commotion on the street distracted them.

A long black limousine nosed its way through the thinning crowd of neighbours. It pulled into the driveway, stopped, the engine purring no louder than one of the recently departed cats. The driver didn’t bother looking our way when he got out, but bent to open the back door. He wasn’t exactly wearing a uniform, but the trim cut of his gray overcoat and his formal stance as he gave an arm to the elderly gentleman who was struggling to stand, clearly showed him to be a chauffeur. I’d never met a real chauffeur before. I’d never met anyone who had the means or the need to have one.

The old man steadied himself, his weight borne by a black knobbed stick with a rubber tip and elaborately carved silver handle. He looked rich and cold, the black fur collar of his long cashmere coat pulled high around his face which was small and white under the brim of a lamb’s wool cossack hat. He shook off his servant’s helping hand and hobbled toward us. The driver got back into the car, ignoring the younger man who clambered out of the back seat and quickly overtook his senior. The old man also ignored him, concentrating instead on the cracked sidewalk. We could hear the faint whistling of his breath as he made his way towards us.

The younger man reached the stairs first. “What’s going on here?” he demanded. His voice was high and thin, the intonation suggestive of a British accent. Or of a Canadian accent which was trying to sound British.

Before any of us could answer, the old man spoke directly to me. “You must be George Cook’s daughter?”

I nodded yes.

“And these gentlemen?”

Gianelli introduced himself and Wilson.

“Detectives!” the younger man exclaimed. He looked up at the house as he asked, “Mrs. Baker?”

“I’m sorry,” Gianelli replied. “She was found this morning.”

“Any sudden unexplained death has to be checked out,” Wilson added.

“Surely it wasn’t unexpected,” the old man said. He swayed on his cane. A small clear droplet hung from the end of his nose, stretched, fell on the high collar. His companion reached out to take his arm, but the old fellow shrugged him off. “Beatrice was ninety-three years old. Her time had come. But murder! I doubt that. She had no enemies.”

“She was found at the bottom of the stairs. With a broken neck,” Gianelli said.

“Accident then.”

“I tend to agree…” Wilson began.

Gianelli interrupted him. “You’re the lawyer? Dufferin Ross?”

“That’s right.” The old man held out a trembling hand which Gianelli gently shook. “How do you know my name?”

“She had your card taped to the wall beside her phone. We called your office …”

“We were on our way anyway.”

“Is that what that call on the car phone was about?” The younger man’s voice rose even higher. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were too engrossed in the stock market reports,” the old man retorted. I caught the glint in his eye and realized he must have enjoyed not just keeping this small secret from his companion, but also the other’s obvious dismay at finding the police at their client’s home.

Gianelli interrupted their tiff. “And your name, sir?”

“Roger Markham. Of Ross, Armour and Markham. Mrs. Baker is one of my uncle’s oldest clients.”

“Friend, boy,” the old man grunted. “Some of us are friends with our clients. We can see beyond the bills.”

Markham flushed, but continued. “We had an appointment with Mrs. Baker today. To see her great-niece. Putative great-niece,” he added. “I told him I didn’t like this idea from the beginning; that there’d be trouble. And I was right.”

The old man wasn’t listening. His eyes never left my face, eyes of a very pale blue, almost colourless beneath the thick white wings of his brows. His skin was stretched tight over the bones, the only wrinkles in nests at the corners of his eyes and in deep grooves that ran from his sharp nose down to the edge of his lips. Small red patches glowed on his cheeks; his lips were pale and, as I watched him, the small pink tip of his tongue ran out and around them. I looked away.

“So, you know this woman?” Gianelli asked.

“Knew her father. Feckless boy. Knew them all. Not her, though. Mother took her away. Let’s take a look at you, then. Come down here, where I can see you properly.”

I stood up reluctantly and came down the stairs. Markham had to step into the grass to make room for me on the pavement beside his uncle. He grimaced as he stepped in something soft, and began to wipe the sole of his shoe over and over on the edge of the concrete path. The rasp irritated the old man. He spoke over one shoulder.

“Why don’t you wait in the car, my boy? You didn’t have to come with me. I can still do business on my own.”

“It’s all right, Uncle. I don’t mind waiting.”

The old man shrugged. Before I could back away, he grabbed my chin with one hand, cold and bony as a claw, and turned my head from one side to the other.

“You have your grandmother’s eyes,” he said. He dropped his hand to join the other on the top of the cane.

I shivered. I could feel the faint crescent dents of his fingernails in the skin of my cheeks.

“My mother didn’t take me away,” I said to him. “My father left us.”

“That’s what she told you, is it?”

“That’s what happened.”

He shook his head and was about to speak again when Gianelli repeated his question: “Is this Mrs. Baker’s niece?”

“Great-niece,” Mr. Ross corrected. “Beatrice’s brother’s granddaughter. “

“You knew she was coming to visit her here?”

“I suggested we meet in my office, but Beatrice refused to come downtown. She didn’t like the traffic and she didn’t want to leave her cats. Filthy things,” the old man sniffed. He looked narrowly at the house. “They still in there?”

“The Humane Society took them away,” Wilson said.

“Good. Then what are we standing out here in the cold for? Let’s go in.”