Читать книгу Cut to the Chase - Joan Boswell - Страница 9

Hollis itched to get going, to visit Danson’s apartment and search for signs that he hadn’t intended to be away for an extended period. Despite Candace’s anxiety, Elizabeth’s shoes came first.

“You and Elizabeth are going shopping, aren’t you?” Hollis asked.

Elizabeth, sitting on Candace’s knee, straightened her legs and shook her feet. “New shoes, new shoes,” she chanted as she kicked.

“She has her afternoon nap first. Then we go.” Candace placed a restraining hand on Elizabeth’s legs. “Now that you’ve agreed to help, I hate to waste a minute, but Elizabeth will be a bear if she doesn’t sleep. After that, I don’t have a choice—we must buy shoes.” She lowered Elizabeth to the floor and steered her toward the door. “No matter how often I repeat it, you’ll never realize the extent of my gratitude. You can’t know how relieved I am that we’re doing something.” She stopped halfway to the hall. “I have a set of Danson’s keys, including those for the front door, mail box, apartment door and garage. To speed things up, why don’t I hand them over and let you begin?”

Action at last. “Terrific. The garage. What does Danson drive?”

“He leases a sporty car. I don’t know the make. It’s silver and not expensive. I’m an idiot when it comes to cars, but it’s pretty spiffy.” She corralled Elizabeth. “We’ll shop quickly and join you. Since you’ll have Danson’s keys, buzz us in when we arrive.”

“Before I go, I’ll grab some things—printer paper, notebook, camera, and maybe the thin plastic gloves I use when I construct papier mâché sculptures.”

Candace held the toddler’s shoulder as if she wanted to steady herself, as if Elizabeth’s warm body provided stability and anchored her to reality. She shivered. “They say you do that when someone walks over your grave. It scares me to realize you’re taking gloves so that we won’t contaminate anything in case this becomes serious.”

“Probably silly, but I’ve watched too many episodes of Law and Order and CSI not to think it’s important.” Hollis changed the subject. No point in upsetting Candace any more than necessary. “Write down the instructions for driving to Danson’s. I’m hopeless with verbal directions, and I’m not that familiar with Toronto.”

A few minutes later, after she’d walked MacTee, Hollis parked her truck across from a rambling three-storey brick house on Bernard Street. A relatively new three-car garage filled most of what had been a large garden beside the house. She sorted the keys, clutched what she thought might be the right one for the garage and, not wanting to alert or alarm anyone peering out of the window, walked confidently to the small door and inserted the key. It worked, and she entered the gloomy, musty space, where she flicked the light switch next to the door. A sedate dark-green Nissan sedan occupied one parking spot.

One question answered. Danson’s car was gone.

In the building’s vestibule, she confronted a closed door, three mailboxes and buzzers. Danson did not have his name anywhere. This surprised her. Advice columns warned single women not to advertise their state; to use an initial or simply a surname to indicate where they lived. She wouldn’t have thought the advice applied to men. But given Danson’s tracking obsession, maybe this was a wise precaution. Fortunately, the other tenants’ bells were marked. She’d chat with them if the situation was serious.

She felt silly when she slipped on clear plastic gloves but ignored the feeling. She had a job to do.

No newspaper on the shelf under the mailboxes. That proved nothing. Danson probably picked up the Sun, Metro or Star on his travels.

After she inserted the key, the door flipped open, and mail tumbled out. She scooped it from the floor and bundled it into her large purse before she unlocked the door to the stairs leading up to apartment two. Inside the stairwell, it smelled stale, as if nothing had disturbed the air for days.

Upstairs, she unlocked Danson’s front door, stepped inside a miniscule hall and took in what she saw. It fit the category—student transitting to young adult. Because of Danson’s age and occupation, she’d expected college dorm or family castoffs. Clearly he’d shopped at Zellers or IKEA—she recognized the white assemble-it-yourself furniture. The black leather sofa and club chairs in the living room shrieked newness. Probably bought to replace a worn-out couch or a futon.

She flipped through the bills, flyers and letters she’d carried upstairs. No mail for Gregory—he remained the mystery man without a surname. Nothing useful, nothing she thought might relate to Danson’s disappearance. She dropped the mail on the narrow white hall table. It too was a particleboard DIY creation, no doubt emitting toxic formaldehyde fumes.

Her first priority was to determine if Danson had intended to be away for an extended period. The bathroom would give her a clue. Inside the white room, she opened the vanity’s door. A brown leather shaving kit, stacks of toilet paper and clean white towels occupied the space.

An electric toothbrush and toothpaste sat beside the sink in a mug commemorating a lacrosse tournament.

The medicine cabinet held two bottles of painkillers, a tiny bottle of wart remover, nonprescription allergy medication and a canister of Noxzema shaving cream. She opened a drawer in the vanity and found an extra tube of toothpaste, a package of unused razors and a hairbrush.

A clean-shaven young man did not leave without his shaving kit and toiletries. He had not intended to be away overnight. Now the question was—where had he gone and why?

She left the bathroom and moved methodically through the apartment. First, on her right, the kitchen. Four items graced the scarred Formica countertop—toaster, coffee maker, bean grinder half-full of beans and a telephone. She lifted the receiver and heard the buzz of a line. No beeps to indicate messages. Since she knew Candace had left messages, this meant Danson owned an answering machine. Because she would have required a PIN combination to access messages recorded by the phone company, she welcomed this knowledge.

Now for a gander in the refrigerator. She found the usual array of condiments, soft drinks and beer along with some small containers of yogurt, two light caesar salad bags and greenish uncooked chicken encased in plastic wrap on a styrofoam tray. Time-dated food long past the best-before date. More confirmation that Danson had not planned to be away for long.

In the master bedroom, two framed posters—lacrosse players in action—provided colour. The utilitarian navy-blue duvet and pillow cases, white chest of drawers, white bedside table, gooseneck lamp and clock radio were minimalist. The bed was made and the closet doors shut. Although she wasn’t familiar with Danson’s wardrobe, she peered in the cupboard and found nothing but clothes and shoes.

On top of the bureau, Danson’s cell phone was plugged into a charger. More evidence to support her growing conviction that he had not planned a trip.

Perhaps that explained why he hadn’t called?

There were many locations without cell phone accessibility but few without telephone service. The high Arctic, the northern tundra—not places Danson was likely to visit.

Would learning that Danson didn’t have his cell phone make Candace feel better, even explain why he hadn’t phoned? No way. It would give her even more reason to worry—few young men travelled far without a cell phone.

She plucked her notebook from her shoulder bag, copied his cell phone address book and wrote down the names of those whom he’d contacted and those who had called him. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a photo phone. She knew how useful they could be. Recently she’d read that many companies had outlawed cell phones, since they provided such an easy way for staff or visitors to steal confidential information.

The second bedroom, impersonal as a motel room, epitomized austerity. If Gregory intended to establish a homey base in Toronto, he hadn’t accomplished his goal.

She’d deal with establishing Gregory’s identity later. Danson was her priority.

Back to the combination living room/dining room. A wall of Venetian blinds, no curtains, off-white walls. A collection of tall, healthy palms and ficus in large black self-watering pots clustered near the windows. The pristine leather furniture grouped around a small TV set on a worn chest of drawers flanked by three bookcases.

Books revealed facets of a reader’s character. Danson had kept his college texts, along with books on kinesiology, brain patterning, psychological treatises on abnormal behaviour, books on treason, on the organization of the courts, on criminal law and more prosaic volumes on lacrosse. An interesting collection.

A sound system, CDs, jazz and more jazz, along with black cardboard file boxes, and large photo albums filled the remaining shelves. A peek inside the boxes confirmed that Danson seldom threw anything away, as he’d saved memorabilia from his life along with outdated files and receipts. The photo albums, arranged chronologically, revealed his devotion to his family and to Angie, his murdered fiancée.

Opposite the recreational side of the room, yet another lacrosse poster presided over the mechanics of twenty-first century living. An unpainted door resting on two beige metal file cabinets served as a desk. A laptop, printer, phone and answering machine lined up like soldiers awaiting their marching orders. The answering machine’s message light flashed.

Hollis pressed play.

“Your mortgage has been approved blah blah blah...” Pointless to save, but to erase would be tampering with evidence in the event there had been a crime. She pressed save and moved to the second one. “This is Boris,” a heavy Eastern European accent, one she thought that she recognized. Boris must have done a blitz on every phone number in the book. “Do not move unless you talk to Boris...”

She stopped listening. Boris might vary his spiel, but many times before she’d received his annoying calls selling his moving company’s services.

Number three. “It’s Monday. Where the hell are you? You’ve got a job, in case you’ve forgotten. Actually, you fucking well haven’t—you’re fired.”

Not good news. If he’d intended to be away for an extended period, Danson would have talked to his boss.

She moved on to the next message. “It’s Cally. Let me know if your gorgeous mother still sews her wonderful costumes. I’d like her to design one for me with no other like it in the whole wide world. Oh, and tell her we’re not in the same competitions. Call me.” Cally sounded like she drew hearts as punctuation in anything she wrote and cultivated wide-eyed innocence. Probably her stock in trade in the competitive dance world.

Next call was a hang-up.

Several long messages related to lacrosse and recruiting for the team. The callers, and there were three different voices, became increasingly irate when they repeated their messages and demanded that Danson return their calls. Whoever they were, they’d phoned before Candace talked to them, or they’d be aware of Danson’s absence.

And then it was Boris again.

No messages offered any immediately recognizable clues as to Danson’s whereabouts.

The filing cabinet came next. The top drawer confirmed her impression that Danson was a tidy man. Financial records—paid bills, taxes, insurance, Visa and bank statements—filled the first drawer. Lacrosse schedules, contacts, equipment etc, memberships in lacrosse and alumni associations, newspaper clippings relating to lacrosse, to criminals, to the justice system, to trials—these files crowded the second drawer. Danson seemed to have recorded and saved every detail of his life.

If a crime had been committed, the apartment would be sealed, and she wouldn’t get a second chance to burrow through his records. Hollis hoped she wouldn’t need any of this information but pulled the paper from her bag and used Danson’s printer to copy every potentially helpful file, including a chart detailing the organization of Toronto’s Russian Mafia.

The Toronto police would do a thorough job. She’d had firsthand experience and knew how effective they were. Sometimes an unprofessional mind thought differently, approached problems in a different way. That would be her role.

Copy, copy, copy—it took forever; almost all her paper, and the printer alerted her that the ink cartridge must be replaced. Once done she carefully replaced the files and opened the laptop. If she needed a password, she would be out of luck. No one in her circle of friends used passwords for their personal computers, but given his campaign to round up criminals, Danson might. She flicked it on.

The intercom sounded. Candace and Elizabeth had arrived.

Hollis buzzed them through the downstairs door and stepped out in the hall to wait for them to climb the stairs.

“Touchdown. Mission accomplished. We have shoes,” Candace called.

“Hi, Howis,” Elizabeth said.

Inside the apartment’s living room, Candace donned the gloves Hollis offered. Elizabeth watched and held up her hands.

“No gloves for you. They’re too big. They’re for Hollis and me,” Candace said.

Elizabeth’s lower lip quivered.

“You can watch TV,” Candace said to the little girl, who immediately plunked herself down in front of the television.

Elizabeth held up her foot for Hollis’s inspection. “See,” she said displaying a pink running shoe with Velcro fasteners. “New.”

“They’re gorgeous. What a lucky girl you are,” Hollis said.

Elizabeth ripped the Velcro tab to undo the shoe. She gripped the heel, yanked the shoe off and held it up to Hollis, who accepted the gift, admired it, and handed it back.

Elizabeth struggled to push it on, so Hollis bent down to help her. “Was it hard to track them down?” she said to Candace peering over the little girl’s shoulder.

Candace smiled ruefully and ran both her hands through her neat bob. Hollis admired the way the hair dropped into place, the mark of great hair and a terrific cut.

“Hard enough. Three stores, two temper tantrums—then success. Coping with toddlers is not for the faint-hearted.” She picked up the remote and flicked on the TV.

Elizabeth ignored it. Instead she peered up at Candace. “Danson?” she said. Her nose wrinkled, and her tiny, almost invisible eyebrows drew together in a frown.

“Not here, sweetie,” Candace said.

Elizabeth glowered. “Lizabet want Danson,” she said.

“I know you do. But not now. Elizabeth, this is one of your favourite shows—it’s Curious George.”

Diverted, the little girl settled to watch the monkey’s cartoon antics.

Candace moved closer to Hollis. “Well, what did you find?”

“Danson’s car, wallet and keys are gone, but he left his cell phone, toothbrush, and shaving stuff. He must have expected to return quickly from wherever he went.” Hollis didn’t want to look at Candace, to witness the devastation as the ramifications of this information hit home.

“He doesn’t go anywhere without his cell.” A long silence grew heavier by the minute. “This is bad news, isn’t it?” Candace said.

No use denying it. “I think you should contact Missing Persons,” Hollis said gently. “If you like, I can phone Rhona Simpson, a homicide detective I know, and ask her advice.”

Candace shuddered. “Please. Do it immediately. I have to know that Danson isn’t the unidentified man in the morgue.”