Текст книги "Murder on the Run"

Автор книги: Medora Sale

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

The three men stopped dead at the front hall, assailed by the unmistakable stench of decay. “Jeez,” said Kevin. “What died in here? It stinks.”

“You better let me go first,” said the constable, looking distinctly unhappy. “Just in case.”

Rob walked up the steps into the kitchen and looked in. The afternoon sun played over the piles of filthy dishes and food that oozed with slime. He gagged at the smell, went purposefully up the steps into the living room, threw open the drapes and pushed the French windows open. There was a merciful blast of cool clean air. They glanced quickly at the chaos of the living room and solemnly followed the constable up the winding stairs to the bedrooms and bathroom. No rotting corpses, no surprises. Just filth and unmade beds. “Well,” said Rob, “since we’re up here, I think I’ll throw my sister’s stuff into a bag.” He pulled out the list, looked at it carefully, and then started with the top dresser drawer.

“Where would Mr. Morrison keep the van?” asked the constable.

“It’s probably in the garage, unless he has taken it out. Ginny’s car sat out all winter in the snow so the damned van could stay safe in the garage—and she was the one who had to take her car to work all the time.” He turned and started to stuff shoes into a big duffle bag he had taken from the closet. “Just let me finish this and I’ll show you where it is. Kevin, grab those things off the hangers and let’s get going. This place gives me the creeps.”

The three men wound their way down the ever-turning stairway as far as it went. Rob opened the door at the very bottom and felt around for a light switch. “There it is,” he said, as the lights clicked on. “I guess he didn’t take it with him when he went out.” The constable looked carefully all around the van. He peered in the side windows, rattled all the door handles, gave it one last look and walked out.

“Is that what you were looking for?” asked Rob.

“I couldn’t say, sir,” said the constable. “I suppose it could be. Anyway, thanks for your assistance.”

“Think nothing of it,” said Rob, cheerfully. “Anything to get that bastard in trouble, I always say. I hope he loses his bloody license. Here, Kevin,” he said, throwing him the duffle bag. “I’d better shut that door up there.” And the three of them closed up the house again.

Down in the garage, a trembling bundle of terrified humanity crawled out from underneath the shiny new van and listened for the cars to drive away.

The bar in the Manufacturer’s Life building was almost deserted. Tuesday’s sparse after-work crowd had given up and gone home. Paul Wilcox stood at the door looking about, until a subdued wave from across the room brought him over.

“Hello, Grant. How are things?”

“Hi, Paul. Thanks for coming.” He ordered two Scotches from the lazy-looking waitress who padded over. “Things don’t look very good right now.”

“Really,” said Wilcox. “What do you mean?”

“Those goddamn cops were back at my door this afternoon, asking me the same stuff about Jane. Wanting to know exactly where I’ve been. Telling me everyone knows I had a fight with her the night before she was killed. Asking me about some guy I never even heard of—some cop. And asking me about some guys I’d just as soon not talk about when there are cops around.”

“Who’s that?”

“Never mind. Just some guys, okay?” He smiled automatically at the waitress and swallowed half his drink in one gulp. “Anyway, I can’t afford this, you know. I have possibilities of big contracts turning up in the U.S. I don’t like these guys breathing down my neck. They could screw me up.”

“Look, Keswick, I don’t know what you’re mixed up in—”

“The fuck you don’t. You were at enough of those parties. Stop trying to look so goddamn pure. Just because you’ve decided to have a shot at the Cabinet, and maybe the leadership—I have friends, I hear things, let me tell you—doesn’t mean that you weren’t there along with the rest of us, your tongue hanging out over all the broads, and trying every kind of shit that was going. You forget that? Because if you do, I’m here to remind you of it.” Grant’s anger was palpable. Wilcox pushed his chair back a bit.

“Okay. Don’t get so sore. Look, as far as I know, poor Jane was killed by that rapist—though, if they’re asking you questions, I suppose they’re not taking it for granted. But I can’t horn in on a murder investigation. Now, come on. That’s asking a bit much.” He laughed uneasily, ready to duck if Keswick exploded. He had been known to do that often enough. “But they’re not looking for drugs, you know—just trying to find out who killed her. So if you didn’t kill her, you haven’t got anything to worry about, do you? They don’t have time to mess around with small stuff like that.”

“What in hell do you mean by that? ‘If I didn’t kill her.’ Of course I didn’t kill her. Christ! It was probably that animal from Cobourg. The one who followed her around all the time. I don’t know why they don’t persecute him, instead of me. Or her husband. Being married to that slut would make anyone want to kill her. But I couldn’t have cared less if she lived or died.”

“The one from Cobourg’s dead. Didn’t you hear? So they can’t persecute him. He blew his brains out. Anyway, you don’t have to tell me. It doesn’t matter whether I think you did it or not.”

Keswick stood up, knocking the heavy chair over. “Christ almighty, I’ve had enough of you. And your fucking insinuations. I should paste you across the table, but I’d hate to damage the furniture. Goodbye.”

Wilcox watched him thoughtfully for a moment as he stormed out of the bar, then dropped some bills down on the table and strolled out after him.

Chapter 14

The offices of Van Loon and McHenry were in a pretty red-brick building with a tree and an attempt at a lawn on the tiny patch of dirt between building and sidewalk. A brass plate on the door proclaimed that a film company also did business there, and a dentist. A sign directed them up the stairs to the second floor. A young, vapid and gum-chewing blonde was typing rather inexpertly as they walked in the door. She abandoned her work in relief at the sight of them, and tried on a smile. “Yes?” she squeaked. “Did you have an appointment?”

Sanders nodded briskly. “Yes, we did.” The news seemed to strike her as singularly amusing. She tittered in response. “With Mr. McHenry, I believe.” That convulsed her in another burst of giggles.

The inner door opened, and a head stuck out. “Are these the gentlemen from the police, Stacey? Or have you bothered to ask?” She sobered up and cast him a reproachful glance. “Come in please. I’m Mark McHenry. Sorry about that girl,” he said, closing the office door. “She’s new, and not long for this firm, I’m afraid. What can I do for you?”

“You might be able to give us some information on one of your clients—a Mrs. Jane Conway. We’re investigating her case, and in the course of looking through her apartment, found some file folders marked with your firm’s name. We were hoping that you could shed some light on the background to the correspondence. Or on anything that might help us.”

He gave them the longish look of a man who is balancing conflicting ethical considerations. “I gather she was murdered,” he said finally.

“That’s right,” said Sanders. “There’s no question about that.”

“But wasn’t she killed by the same man who killed those other women? My impression was that she had been.”

Sanders shook his head. “Probably not. Although someone has gone to a certain amount of trouble to try to convince us of that.”

“Well, in that case, I suppose it’s more clearly my duty to seek redress for the crime, in a sense, than to preserve confidentiality.” He smiled and pushed a buzzer on the phone, then picked it up. “Stacey, bring me the Conway file. Jane Conway. Right now, please.” He looked up. “If I don’t say that, she’ll wait until after, lunch,” he said sourly. The door flung open and Stacey dropped a file on the desk.

“All right?” she asked sullenly.

“Thank you, Stacey. You may go now.” Conversation ceased as they watched her parade out. “Here it is. She wanted, in the first instance, to know how she could block divorce action on her husband’s part in spite of the fact that she had left him.” He grinned. “I told her it would be difficult, but she was very determined. Then she made a will, leaving everything to her Uncle Matt Jameson in Cobourg; then she came in to find out how quickly she could get a divorce and to ask me how she could invest around twenty thousand dollars without getting it too tied up in red tape. By that I got the impression she meant without having the tax people find out about it, so I steered clear of that one. And that was where we were as of March 27th. Oh, except that she called to ask about an action for unlawful dismissal, but since her position was only temporary, I told her she didn’t have a hope. She was, I would say, a very litigious lady.” He produced that little gem with a satisfied smirk. “Oh, and she left something to be kept for her in the safe. Said that she needed it later in the summer. There’s a note here about it. Do you want to look at it?” They both nodded. Sanders’ eyes brightened slightly. McHenry moved over to an old-fashioned safe in the corner and pulled it open. “It’s not all that secure,” he said. “But it makes a handy place to store things. I inherited the office and all its appurtenances—except for Stacey—from my father and his partner, old Van Loon.” As he spoke, he sorted quickly through the contents of one of the shelves. “Here it is. I’m afraid I’ll have to have a receipt for it if you want to take it away.”

It was a small white envelope with “Mrs. Jane Conway, February 24, 1984” written on the outside. It contained something small but bulky. Sanders accepted a proffered paper knife and carefully ripped it open. Inside was a black container, cylindrical in shape, with a gray top. Inside the container was a roll of film. Sanders dumped it out on his palm and looked at it.

“I’d be careful with that,” said McHenry. “It isn’t developed.”

Sanders quickly returned it to its container, and then to its envelope, wrote out a receipt and handed it to the lawyer. “Thank you very much. This looks interesting. You wouldn’t have any idea where the twenty thousand came from, would you? That’s even more interesting.” McHenry shook his head rather sadly.

“Ah well. Back to headquarters, Dubinsky, and get the lab on to this.”

Not far from the legal office of Van Loon and McHenry, Eleanor was back at her desk at Webb and MacLeod, staring glassily at a pile of papers. Real estate seemed to be suffering from a mid-week slump, and she was having difficulty staying awake. It was warm and sunny out her window, and just as she was sleepily deciding to abandon all efforts at earning a living in favour of a walk, the harsh buzz of her phone sent her crashing back into the real world. It was a business call. A Mr. Jones, who had heard about her, and what a wonderful agent she was, from a friend of his, wanted to look at a house for sale in his neighbourhood.

“Certainly,” said Eleanor. Then, curious, “Who recommended me to you?”

“Al,” said the voice of Mr. Jones laconically.

“Oh,” said Eleanor, trying to remember an Al among her recent clients. Not that it mattered. “When would you like to look at this house? I could probably arrange something quite soon, if you wish.” Strike while the iron is hot, she thought. “And which of our houses is it?”

He gave her an address on the Kingsway, far in the west end of the city. Good fellowship and ethics struggled for a brief moment in her breast against the thought of commissions—prices were generally very high on the Kingsway—and she muttered weakly, “Our west-end office usually handles houses on that side of the Humber. They know the area better. But if you wish to deal with me, I’d be glad to show it to you.” That dealt with her conscience.

“Good,” said Mr. Jones. “Maybe I’ll look at houses downtown later. So you meet us there in an hour, me and my wife, right?”

“I could pick you up if you like. Then you and your wife wouldn’t have to worry about driving there.” Eleanor preferred to keep her clients under her nose between houses.

“No. It’s better if we meet there. In an hour. Okay?”

Well, well, thought Eleanor. You never know when business is just going to fall into your lap, like manna from heaven. She put down the receiver and went for her book to look up the house she was supposed to be showing.

The west-end office had been a trifle sulky about the property. She had apologized for poaching; her client had seen the house and insisted on her showing it to him. “You know how they are,” she’d said guiltily.

“Yeah,” said the girl on the desk. “I know. Anyway, the house is empty now. They moved out last weekend, and it doesn’t show very well now. But they might be a bit soft on the price.” Eleanor’s heart sank. That meant everywhere there had been furniture, there would be great stains or dirt marks. It might even be one of those houses where the paint job didn’t extend to behind the big pieces, and a green room would have big pink patches where there had been chests and sideboards. She hoped they weren’t a fussy couple, after she had driven out all this way to show them the damn place. She was beginning to wish she had insisted that they deal with the west-end office. O greed.

The house was very large and rambling, with half-timbers, diamond-paned windows—the Tudor look. The grounds, she noted happily, seemed to be in good shape—neat grass, nice shrubs, a pretty tree. Good. A large tan Lincoln was parked out in front, and so she pulled into the empty driveway. Mr. Jones’ voice might be a bit rough, but his credit was apparently sound. Two men, expensively dressed in dark suits, got out of the car and walked over to her. “Mr. Jones?” she asked, holding out her hand. One of them responded with his. “Mrs. Jones didn’t come with you after all?” Damn. That meant they had changed their mind.

“She don’t really like looking at a lot of houses,” he said. “So her brother came instead. He knows what she likes.”

“Fine,” she said. Clients came in all shades of peculiarity. And even the strangest often bought houses. She pulled out the key with its big red tag on it—with the white slash across it to show that it came from the west end—and opened the door. Her heart sank even further. Huge curls of dust mingled with indescribable winter grime in the foyer and front hall.

“Nice house,” grunted Mr. Jones. “Nice and roomy.” Eleanor wondered if he had trouble with his eyes. If so, he might like this place. She conjured up the floor plan in her mind and headed confidently for the living room, trying to ignore the newspapers, torn and dirty, scattered on the floor, as she pointed out the working fireplace and the charming bay windows. Mr. Jones didn’t seem to be paying much attention to her. He opened a door at the back of the living room and said, “What’s this here?”

“That’s a study, Mr. Jones, although it could be used as a breakfast room or even a spare bedroom, since it’s close to the ground-floor washroom.” Eleanor had done her homework in that hour. She walked in past the two men toward the rear windows. “And you can see from here what a nice garden there is. Isn’t it a lovely—” Her sentence was cut off abruptly as Mr. Jones’ brother-in-law flipped her arm tightly up behind her back and clapped his other hand over her mouth.

Mr. Jones walked around in front of her and smiled. “Don’t worry, Miss Scott. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Not now, anyways.” He looked at her appraisingly. “Nice hair.” She glared back. “I bet your boyfriend likes your hair, don’t he? No, don’t answer, I can tell he does.” He slowly pulled a smallish knife out of his pocket, held up a huge chunk of hair from the side of Eleanor’s head, and then, in one smooth gesture, hacked it off. Tears of pain started up in her eyes. “And because we’re nice guys, we’re gonna send your boyfriend some hair—like a memento, you know.” He smiled and shoved his face close to hers. “I got a piece of advice for you. You shouldn’t ought to go out with cops. Not with cops that tread on people’s toes. You tell your boyfriend. ’Bye now. Vito here will make you nice and comfortable for the time being.” He started to walk out of the room. “Stick her in the corner over there, Vito.”

Sanders looked up as Dubinsky came in from lunch. In front of him was a file folder stuffed with sheets of paper. “This just came up,” he said. “It’s the first crop of sightings from the sketch. It would have helped if bloody MacVey hadn’t been off for the weekend, though. By now this guy and his van are probably in Vancouver.” He picked up half the pile and dropped it on Dubinsky’s desk. “Might as well go through them and see if there’s anything worthwhile. Then grab Collins and get him to start sifting.”

“Anything come in this morning on the license number?”

“Are you kidding? There are hundreds of light brown vans out there, most of them have a number in them that looks like a nine, and none of them so far is owned by someone who says he likes to go out to attack women in one.” He picked up another set of reports. “When you finish those, you can look at these. Every van not more than five years old owned by a male, or a family in which there is a male between the ages of sixteen and forty-five. Have fun.” He yawned. “Did you drop the film off at the lab?”

“Yeah,” said Dubinsky. “They said it was exposed all right, and they’d develop it and get some prints over in an hour or two if it was that urgent.”

“I didn’t need them to tell me it was exposed. She’d hardly be keeping extra rolls of film in her lawyer’s safe, would she? But why didn’t she take it off and get it developed like anyone else?” He looked up again. “Yeah. They might have been that kind of picture. Funny thing for a girl to have around.”

“Depends on who’s in the picture,” said Dubinsky.

“Mm,” muttered Sanders. “Before you get started on that, I want to see if we can make any sense of this stuff.” He picked up a small slip of paper. “‘M.—3—Tues.’ and ‘G.—5—Tu.’ We found that on Friday; it was sitting by her phone and she was a very neat person, wouldn’t you say?” Dubinsky nodded. She was even neater than Sally. “So that must have been the Tuesday of the party at Marny’s or she would have thrown that out. If these numbers aren’t times, then what are they? What do you write down when you’re on the phone to someone?”

“Amounts,” said Dubinsky. “So you won’t forget them.”

“Three what? Five what?”

“Kilos?”

“That’s a hell of a lot, if we’re talking about coke. How about three grams? That’s hardly enough to worry about. Three hundred bucks worth?”

“In that case, the three could just as well stand for thirty or three hundred grams. Who’s M.? Mike?”

“Marny Huber, obviously. And G., of Course, is Grant Keswick. It makes sense. Why else would Jimmy Fielding be hanging around? So that would have made her a distributor. Which explains the large amounts of cash in her bank account and the extra twenty thousand she wanted to squirrel away somewhere.” He sighed. “Seems funny that she would be so upset at losing her job.”

“I don’t know about that. It was a good cover. Maybe she figured she’d just stay in the business until she made her pile, and wanted to have something respectable to fall back on. She should have stayed away from places like the After Hours, in that case.”

“I wonder where Mike fitted in with all this,” said Sanders, picking up the sad little note sent down by the Cobourg police. Dubinsky’s reply was interrupted by someone sticking his head in the door and throwing a letter On Sanders’ desk. It clunked as it landed.

“Mail for you,” he said. “Just arrived by special messenger. Since it was marked ‘urgent’ I thought I’d be a sweet guy and bring it up here.” He waved and disappeared.

Sanders picked it up. His name was neatly typed on the envelope along with the word “urgent,” underlined in red. It was very thickly stuffed with something that felt like cloth. Inside it was something hard and lumpy as well. “Jesus,” said Dubinsky, “it’s probably a bomb.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Sanders. “It’s too small an envelope.” He turned it over. “But I’m going to be goddamn mad if it blows up in my face.” He slowly eased up the flap and peered gingerly inside. His face suddenly went gray. “God almighty,” he breathed, and pulled out a long thick bundle of curly red hair and dropped it on his desk. Dubinsky leaned over to look at the envelope. Next he pulled out a door key, with a red Webb and MacLeod label on it, and an address on the label. Then he unfolded a piece of paper. His hands were trembling as he smoothed it down on his desk to look at it.

“Sanders,” it said briefly, “You can rescue the lady at the address on the label. And if you don’t want her to lose more than her hair, I suggest you stop meddling with Jimmy and his friends. You might hurry out there. She’s anxious to see you.” The message was typed and unsigned.

“Dubinsky,” he whispered, his voice shaking, “get the dispatcher. Send out an emergency unit to that address.” He pointed at the key. “Get someone working on where this came from. And get the car. We’re going out there now.” He took a deep breath, and then held up the key tag so Dubinsky could read the address. He dropped it in his pocket, looked back and picked up the hair, put it carefully into a clean envelope in his desk drawer, then headed for the door.

Eleanor felt as if she had been lying on the cold, dirty wood floor for at least a day. Her arms ached from being tied behind her back in an abnormal position. Her ankles were tied tightly together and then lashed to her wrists, preventing her from straightening out her legs and from attracting attention by kicking a wall. Her mouth was taped shut. The neighbourhood seemed to be absolutely deserted. Surely someone must think it odd that her car had been sitting in the driveway all this time? But then, she thought, why should they? Strangers had probably been going in and out of here for days, doing all sorts of things. In the distance she heard the rising and falling hoot of a passing ambulance. Much good that does me, she thought. It was joined, however, by the shrill scream of a police siren, which suddenly got so loud it sounded like two police sirens inside the house. The ambulance stopped hooting. The police sirens stopped screaming. She heard the pounding of fists on the door, then more pounding closer to her. There was a confused babbling of voices, then a crash of broken glass. “We’re in,” called a voice loudly, then footsteps began to move very slowly and faintly in a room behind her. She tried to make a noise, but Vito had done his job very well.

“There she is.” Above her loomed a uniformed figure, then two. “Miss Scott?” Hands quickly yanked off the tape before she could think about what they were doing, then untied the ropes on her hands and feet.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s me.” Running footsteps rang through the empty house. Sanders, following the sound of voices, came into the study and was instantly on his knees beside her.

“Are you all right?” he asked, rubbing her wrists, scarlet with rope burns, then pulling her up to her feet.

“Ouch,” she said. “Yes, I’m fine.”

Sanders drove back in grim silence with Eleanor beside him. Dubinsky was driving her car. Still thinking of bombs, Sanders had inspected the Rabbit carefully for signs of tampering. The lady next door, however, assured him the two gentlemen in the Lincoln had left the house at a brisk pace and had promptly driven away in their lovely car. “How in hell did you get yourself in that situation,” he said finally. “You went out all alone to meet someone you’d never even heard of to look at a house that isn’t even in your district. Christ! You’re lucky that’s all that happened to you.”

“I’m a real estate agent,” she snapped back. “If I only showed houses to people I knew, I’d starve. That’s the way we operate. On faith. I must say, you’re not very sympathetic.” Tears filled her eyes. “I didn’t have a very pleasant time in there.”

“I was too sick with worry to be sympathetic. I didn’t know what they had chopped off besides your hair.”

“Is that why all those cars and ambulances came? There seemed to be an awful lot of them.”

“Well—they sent out the works.”

“Where are you taking me, by the way?” she asked in a small voice as he turned off University Avenue onto Dundas.

“Where I can keep an eye on you, that’s where.”

“And my car?”

“That’s going where no one is likely to tamper with it for the time being. I don’t want to have to worry about you all the time.” He turned and glared at her for a second, then pulled the car into the garage.

Eleanor sat in his office, moving slowly from fury to starvation. “Is it too much to ask for something to eat?” she said finally. “I haven’t had any lunch, and it’s past two.”

Sanders looked up, then smiled. “Sure. I’ll send out for sandwiches.”

“Oh gee, thanks,” she replied, with heavy sarcasm. “And I have a friendly message for you from Mr. Jones and Vito.”

“Oh,” he said warily. “What’s that?”

“He told me to tell you that I shouldn’t go out with people who tread on other people’s toes. Who were those guys, anyway?”

“The whole thing had the nice clean touch of the professional. Somewhere we’re getting very close to the mob, and they’re reacting predictably.” He ruffled her hair. “But I’d rather they hadn’t got on to you.”

“Oh well,” said Eleanor. “I always wanted to know what I looked like with really short hair.”