By the Time You Read This (16 page)

26

I
N ALL THE TIME
she had worked with Cardinal, Delorme had never had the slightest reason to doubt his sanity. But when she heard about his hauling in of Roger Felt on suspicion of having murdered Catherine—the story got around the squad room instantly—she began to wonder if grief was pushing him over the edge.

But she couldn’t think about him right now. Somewhere there was a twelve- or thirteen-year-old kid who had been horribly abused and would likely keep on being abused unless Delorme, with the help of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit, could find her. Which was why she was at the home of André Ferrier on Sunday, her day off.

Delorme was no one’s idea of a great housekeeper. There were days—all right, weeks—where the laundry piled up, the dishes didn’t get done and tumbleweeds of dust gathered under the furniture. Living alone, well, no one cared if you didn’t clean up all the time. So she was not overly judgmental when it came to other people’s housekeeping habits.

But the Ferrier household, well, the Ferriers took messiness to a whole new level. Their venetian blinds were down and set so that the overall gloom was sliced by slats of light that hit the ceiling rather than the floor. There were mirrors and photographs and artwork everywhere. But the clutter itself was not artful, it was random and uncomfortable.

As if for contrast, Mrs. Ferrier herself was a neat, trim woman, whose dark hair was secured by an uncompromising snood that allowed no strand to escape. She ushered Delorme into the living room and urged her to sit on a chair that was suffocating under an avalanche of cushions.

“Oh, sorry,” Mrs. Ferrier said, and heaved armloads of them onto the floor, one, two, three. Then she excavated a place for herself in the middle of the couch and sat, her feet disappearing into a floor-level nebula of cushions, toys and sleeping dogs—nothing Delorme recognized from the photographs. There was a St. Bernard snoring near a radiator, apparently stone deaf, a grey poodle that raised one eyebrow at Delorme before falling back to sleep, and a brown and white sheltie that may actually have been defunct. The air carried a distinct aroma of hound.

Delorme, with no known allergies, began to itch.

“Now, what was it you wanted to ask?” Mrs. Ferrier said. In contrast to the chaos of her living room, she looked positively antiseptic in a plain pale sweater and blue jeans. Mid-thirties, but with an air of someone older. To the childless Delorme, anyone with children seemed impossibly mature.

She told Mrs. Ferrier about the marina, the assault.

“Well, I’m shocked. We’ve certainly never had any trouble out there. When did this happen?”

“We’re not certain of the exact date,” Delorme said. She wasn’t about to say possibly two or three years ago.

She asked the questions she had asked the others: about the neighbours, any complaints, ever see anything suspicious. The answers were much the same: neighbours at the marina were friendly but not close, there were occasional disagreements, there was nothing that ever made her think the place was in any way unsafe.

Delorme’s eye fell on the photographs covering one entire wall.

“What does your husband do, Mrs. Ferrier?”

“He’s a car salesman. Down at the Nissan dealership? But that’s his real passion,” she added, waving a trim hand at the wall. “André’s a born shutterbug.”

A blast of TV noise from upstairs, ray guns firing and barked commands involving futuristic weaponry. Fast footsteps on the stairs and then a little girl was in the room with them. She looked seven or eight, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail that made her eyes appear slanted.

“Mum, can I go over to Roberta’s? Tammy and Gayle are going.”

“I thought Roberta was coming over here.”

“Oh, please, Mummy, please!”

Mrs. Ferrier looked at her watch. “All right. But I want you back here for lunch.”

“Yayyyy!”

The girl did a little dance and dashed out the door.

“Cute girl,” Delorme said. “Bet she keeps you busy.”

“Sadie’s still a little kid, thank God. It’s her sister that’s starting to give us headaches. Do you have kids? I’m guessing not, judging by the shape you’re in.”

“Not married,” Delorme said, and moved to the wall for a closer look at the photographs. As she did so, she tried to get a view of the next room, but the door was half closed and it was dim.

“Nice pictures,” she said. There were images of boats, pictures of people, pictures of trees, houses, trains, buildings. The photographs were much better quality than the pornographic ones Toronto had sent her. Not that that meant much. Even a pro might let his standards slip in the grip of lust.

Mrs. Ferrier got up and joined her, a sudden whiff of lemony soap.

“That’s Sadie,” she said, pointing to a photo of a four-year-old sitting on the back of the St. Bernard. “That was taken a few years ago, when we first got Ludwig. Oh, she tormented that dog. The poor thing had to ride her around as if he was a pony. No wonder he sleeps all the time these days, don’t you, Ludwig?”

“And you have another girl, you said?”

“Alex. Alex hates having her picture taken. She even took down the old ones we had of her. Thirteen-year-olds are so … passionate about everything.”

“Is Alex home right now?”

“No, she’s spending the weekend at her cousin’s in Toronto.”

There was the sound of the front door opening.

“Here’s André now,” Mrs. Ferrier said. “He’ll be able to tell you more about the marina.”

There was a loud sigh from the front hall and the noise of shoes being removed.

“God, am I beat.” This from the front hall.

“We’re in here,” Mrs. Ferrier called.

“We?” Mr. Ferrier came in and held out his hand to Delorme. “André Ferrier,” he said before his wife could introduce them.

“Lise Delorme.”

“Ms. Delorme is a detective,” Mrs. Ferrier said. “She’s investigating something that happened at the marina. An assault of some kind.”

“At the marina? God, who got assaulted? I suppose you can’t tell me that.”

“No, I can’t. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Mr. Ferrier?”

“Not at all. As long as I can put my feet up. I just played nine rounds out at Pinegrove and my dogs are barking.”

“Isn’t it a little cold for golf these days?”

“Tell my boss that. He’s a fanatic. Honey, do we have an extra diet Coke or something for the detective?”

“That’s okay,” Delorme said. “I’m fine.”

André Ferrier settled himself into the chaos of the couch. He was average sized, broad in the shoulder, but in better shape than one might expect of a salesman. Medium brown hair just covered his ears and collar.

It’s possible, Delorme thought. He could be the guy in the pictures, though with shorter hair. She wanted to see his boat, wanted to see it right away, but didn’t want to put him on his guard. She trotted out her questions once more. By now she was practised at making them sound as if she were circling around an assault that might have happened at a wild party, maybe teenagers out of control.

Mr. Ferrier sipped lazily at his drink as he answered the questions. He didn’t seem worried in the least.

“You have to be on your feet a lot?” he said at one point. “With what you do, are you standing a lot of the time?”

“Not anymore,” Delorme said. “That’s the best thing about getting out of uniform.”

“I’m standing in the showroom most of the day, talking to customers. You’d be amazed how exhausting it is. That’s probably why my boss has us playing golf all the time. Born sadist.”

“But I see you have your own hobby,” Delorme said.

“What? Oh, my photographs. Yeah, I love photography. That’s my idea of the perfect afternoon—go out somewhere I’ve never been before, couple of cameras on my shoulder, and just shoot pictures all day.”

“You hardly ever do it anymore,” Mrs. Ferrier said. “You should get out more often.”

“It’s hard with kids,” Ferrier said. “They don’t want to hang around while you frame your shot, decide on a lens, all that. Let alone watch you take multiple shots of the same thing. But that’s what you have to do. When you see something you want to shoot, just fire away as many times as necessary. No point saving film.”

“A couple of cameras, you said? Digital or film?”

“I’m just getting into digital. Tell you the truth, the technology isn’t quite there yet. For the kind of results I want, I’d have to spend thousands of dollars on a camera—and then it would be obsolete in a couple of years anyway. I have a little point-and-shoot digital, but that’s not why I take two cameras with me. You take two so that you don’t have to change lenses all the time. I keep a wide angle on one, a telephoto on the other. Little trick I learned from a great teacher I had.”

“Can’t you just use a zoom?”

Ferrier winced. “Heavy. Clumsy. Too much glass.”

“And you develop your own pictures?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s the only way you get any control.”

“Mr. Ferrier, it would greatly assist in our investigation if you were to allow me to look at your boat.”

“Hey, wait a minute. You think somebody got beat up on our boat? Sorry, but that’s nuts, Detective. Nobody ever goes on it except us.”

“Even when you’re away?”

“Nope. We keep an eye on things for each other out there. If I tell Matt Morton or Frank Rowley I’m gonna be away, they’ll make sure nobody messes with the boat.”

“But it’s not like a house—they’re not there all the time.”

“True. But there’s all sorts of security out there. Has to be. They had a run of break-ins a few years back and now they have cameras.”

“You’re certainly within your rights to expect a search warrant,” Delorme said, and stood up. “Mrs. Ferrier, thanks for your help.”

“I don’t think André meant to say you couldn’t look at the boat, did you, dear?”

“Well, no. Not really. I just think it’s a waste of time, that’s all.”

“Even if we just rule it out as a crime scene, that’s useful,” Delorme said. “Our problem right now is that most of the boats are already out of the water. Where do you keep yours in winter?”

“Four Mile Marine. Other side of the lake. They have a lot more room and they’re a lot less pricey.”

“Is that off Island Road?”

“Take Island. Make a right at Royal. Go about half a kilometre, you’ll see a sign. Can’t miss it. I’ll tell ‘em you’re coming.”

Island Road was four miles out of town, north on Highway 63. Delorme had to drive past Madonna Road on the way. Following Trout Lake’s western edge, Madonna Road curved back along the highway after a few hundred yards. Cardinal’s house was a dark rectangle below brilliant clouds of coloured leaves. She wondered if his daughter was still there, or if she had gone back to New York.

Work wasn’t the same without Cardinal around. Delorme liked to do all the footwork, cover all the bases and keep her supplementary reports up to the minute. Cardinal was all for narrowing the focus as soon as possible, and he was right almost every time. Then he would go back and cover all the bases, just like Delorme. “Working together,” Chouinard had said to them one time, “you two might add up to a decent investigator.”

The two ident guys lived in their own world. Szelagy was such a chatterbox, it was practically like having a radio going all the time. McLeod was always making the world a present of his opinions—and his opinions were insufferable. At least once a day Delorme prayed he was only kidding with some sexist or racist or anti-civilian remark. She hadn’t realized how much Cardinal kept a lid on such things at the office until he was gone.

She made the turn onto Island Road, wondering how Cardinal was coping. Never having had a husband, Delorme had never lost one, but she remembered how she had grieved when her mother died. A dozen years ago now. Delorme had been a student at Carleton University in Ottawa. But she still remembered how it hurt, day in and day out, for weeks and months. She hoped that Cardinal would soon begin to feel some respite.

A daydream visited her. She saw herself having dinner with Cardinal at an expensive restaurant. In Montreal, for some reason. And then they were walking on Mount Royal, the city spread out below them. She was giving him a hug, just to comfort him, and then he was hugging her back, and her heart stirred with something more than friendship.

“Jesus, Delorme,” she said aloud, and slammed on the brakes. She had missed the turn onto Royal Road. She backed up, provoking honks of protest from an oncoming Jeep, and wheeled onto the dirt road.

Four Mile Marina: Sales, Service, Storage
. The sign came up sooner than she expected, at the foot of a driveway wide enough to accommodate boats and trailers.

A young man in cargo pants and elaborate running shoes showed her to the boathouse. The structure resembled an enormous shoe rack with rolling metal shutters for doors. It was two levels high, and Delorme was glad to learn that the Ferriers’ boat was stored on the lower level.

“I better get back to the office,” the kid said. “Gimme a holler if you need anything.”

“I will. Thank you.”

The place was deserted. A light rain began to fall, rattling on corrugated tin, and intensifying the surrounding smells of pine and wet leaves. Delorme opened the padlock and pushed up the shutter. She found a light switch and flipped it on.