Cold Comfort (12 page)

Gilbert nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said. He pulled a Mars Bar from his pocket. “I’ve got a bribe.”

She gave him a glum smile.

At room 106, Judith opened the door. The room smelled of LePage’s plastic cement. Wesley Rowe, five-feet-six, 180 pounds, sat at the desk in an old cotton shirt and a pair of Wrangler jeans he wore too low at the hip. He turned around. His hair was brushed back from his forehead. His face was small, with his features seeming to be pushed near the middle, and his chin was so tiny and ill-defined it was all of a piece with his neck. He smiled, revealing brown and crooked teeth. He looked forty years old, but there was nothing savvy or experienced about his eyes. He didn’t suffer from Down’s syndrome, but he was definitely simple.

“Hi, Wesley,” said Judith. “Look who came to see you.”

Wesley waved. “Hi, sir,” he said.

“Hello, Wesley.” Gilbert glanced at the model. “What do you have there?” he asked. “A Spitfire?”

“I don’t know,” said Wesley. “It’s an airplane.”

“My father flew one of those during the war,” said Gilbert.

Wesley looked at the airplane doubtfully. “Wouldn’t he be too big to fit inside?” he said.

Gilbert and Judith looked at each other. Gilbert took a step closer and put his hand on Wesley’s shoulder.

“Remember how I told you I was going to take you to police headquarters some day?” he said. “You said you really wanted to see it.”

Wesley’s eyes widened expectantly. “You mean we’re going?” he said.

Gilbert glanced at Judith; he hated this duplicity.

“If it’s okay with Judith,” he said.

Wesley turned to Judith. “Can I go, ma’am?”

Judith lost her smile. She turned to Gilbert. “Look after him,” she said. “Don’t let anything bad happen to him.”

Gilbert lost his own smile. What she asked was impossible.

Lombardo came to his desk and put a mimeographed copy of a Ministry of Transport record on his desk.

“Look at this,” he said. “Those are the registration papers for a 1994 midnight blue Crown Victoria. Look at the name.”

Gilbert glanced over the document.

Then he looked up at his partner. “Daniel Shirmaly?” he said. “Who the hell is Daniel Shirmaly?”

Lombardo’s eyes narrowed. “That’s Danny,” he said. “Latham’s Danny. His gardener, his chauffeur, whatever you want to call him. He owns a Crown Victoria.”

Gilbert looked at the papers again. “So we ask him where he was the night of the eighteenth, and if he has no alibi, we investigate.”

Lombardo nodded. “I looked into car rental companies, too,” he said. “Budget and Tilden rent the Crown Victoria in Ontario. I had them check their records. Guess what? Larry Varley’s got one out. He’s had it out since the seventh.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“And returned it when?”

“He hasn’t,” said Lombardo.

Gilbert stared up at the dozens of court briefs in red binders on the shelf.

“I might take a drive up to Sudbury,” he said. “To check out the Varleys. Maybe you can check Danny out while I’m gone.”

“Sure.”

“And see if you can dig a little more on Susan Allen.” Gilbert felt the cold winds of his cynicism returning. He looked up at Lombardo, trying to hide the big sadness he felt about the Wesley Rowe case, but he couldn’t manage it. The two detectives stared at each other. They were more than just partners; they were friends. “I feel bad about Wesley,” he said.

Lombardo nodded, commiserating. “I know you do, Barry,” said Lombardo. “I’ll do what I can.” Lombardo glanced out the window where the sky was clear and crisp. He scratched his head, his eyes again narrowing, a faint grin coming to his face. Lombardo, ever at ease, a man of grace and charm, now seemed awkward about something. “I did some checking into Heckler and Koch ownership province-wide,” he said. Lombardo hesitated, reluctant. “You’re not going to believe this, but Alvin Matchett owns a Heckler and Koch.”

Gilbert stared at his partner, all expression leaving his face. “So?” he said.

Lombardo stared back; Gilbert could nearly hear the air crackle with crossed signals. “I know, Barry, but…” He glanced apprehensively toward the front of the office, where Carol Reid walked by with a few packages of Xerox paper. Then he turned around, put his hands on the edge of Gilbert’s desk, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “We have to at least look at it. I know he was your partner, and I know you’re great friends, but—”

“Come on, Joe, you’re not actually suggesting Alvin had anything to do with Cheryl’s murder.”

“No,” said Joe, the single syllable dropping from his mouth like a brick. “Not at all. I know Alvin. I know he’s a good cop. But we got to put it in the paperwork. He’s a registered Heckler and Koch owner. And he has a connection to Cheryl. We ask to take a look at his gun, we have ballistics fire it a few times, and we’ll file the report under J.” Lombardo stood up. “When Marsh looks at the file, he’ll know we’ve tried everything. If Alvin’s the way you say he is, he’ll give you his gun without a blink.”

At eleven o’clock that same morning, Gilbert, accompanied by a blood technician, and with an escort of two uniforms, pulled up in front of Charles Latham’s opulent home in Rosedale. Against the brilliant blue but bitterly cold sky, surrounded by snow-covered spruces and pines, Latham’s house, despite its architectural dissonances, looked picturesque. Gilbert got out of his Lumina and walked back to the patrol car. The uniformed driver rolled down his window. Sometimes he longed for patrol. Arrests and collars were always so straight-forward on patrol. There was never any labyrinth, maze, or dead-end.

“Keeping warm?” asked Gilbert.

The officer nodded. “You want us out for this one?” he asked.

Gilbert shook his head. “I don’t think so. Maybe just park in the driveway so he knows you’re here.” Gilbert looked at the box of Country Style donuts sitting between the two officers. “And save one of those for me.”

The driver smiled. “Will do.”

The officer rolled up his window and drove into the driveway.

Gilbert walked back to his own car. The evidence technician, Monica Chavez, got out of the car with the blood-taking kit.

“You ready?” he asked.

She nodded. “Sure.”

They walked up the front walk. Gilbert rang the doorbell. A moment later, Sally answered.

She looked first at Gilbert, then at Monica. Her shoulders tensed, not much, but enough for someone like Gilbert to look twice.

“Detective Gilbert,” she said, now forcing a smile. “Is Mr. Latham expecting you?”

From inside the house he heard the sound of the dishwasher humming. “No,” said Gilbert, pinning an apologetic grin to his face. “No, but if you wouldn’t mind getting him.”

She peered past his shoulder where she saw the patrol car and the two uniforms sitting in the driveway. The smile disappeared from her face.

“He’s very busy,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s a good idea to bother him about Cheryl right now.”

“This shouldn’t take long,” he said. “If you’ll just have him come downstairs we’ll get it over with as quickly as possible.”

Sally looked at Monica then back to Gilbert. She opened the door further, her face both anxious and puzzled. Yet the small knit in her brow indicated she was annoyed as well. “Come in,” she said. “If you could just wait in the hall.” No coffee or Chelsea bun this time. She was glum. Her sunny Filipino features had hardened. “I’ll see if he’s available.”

Gilbert took a deep breath. “Sally, things will go quicker if you tell him he hasn’t got a choice.”

This stopped her. She gave him one last look, not a particularly hostile one, but as if she finally understood he meant business. She nodded then disappeared up the stairs.

He and Monica sat on the upholstered bench.

“Nice place,” said Monica.

“He’s an architect.”

“I didn’t know architects made so much money.”

Gilbert thought of his own salary. “I guess some do.”

Latham made no fuss when he came downstairs. He glanced briefly over the warrant, then simply unbuttoned his sleeve and rolled it up.

“I’m sorry about this, Charles,” said Gilbert, as Monica tied the rubber tourniquet around Latham’s bicep and had him make a fist.

Latham looked even paler than usual. “Was there much blood?” he asked.

Gilbert stared at Latham. Was this an act? Come on, Charles. Show me something. Let me see you. What exactly were you searching for when you tossed your wife’s apartment on the night of the eighteenth? Did you borrow Danny’s car?

“Enough to give us a scientifically reliable sample,” said Gilbert.

Monica slid the needle into Latham’s arm.

Later that afternoon, Gilbert drove to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Nestled among the heavily wooded parklands and ravines surrounding the old McLean Estate, just north of the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the CNIB was a sprawling network of ivy-covered buildings, dormitories, and wings. It was here that books were turned into Braille, Seeing Eye dogs taught to guide, and the blind habituated to a life among the sighted.

Gilbert parked his car and hurried through the gate to the main building. Much of the CNIB was staffed by the blind, and it was odd for Gilbert to see so many of them in one place, stepping briskly along the halls, keeping to the right, their white canes gingerly held out before them, navigating their way through the corridors, up and down stairs, in and out of offices and meeting rooms as if they were completely sighted. He felt strange, like he was invisible; no one could see him; if one of them got too close he simply stepped out of the way. He finally found his way to the cafeteria.

Shirley Chan waited for him at a table by the window eating Chinese noodles out of a Tupperware container, not with chopsticks but with a fork, and sipping a Diet Coke. He worked his way around the tables, careful not to step on the tails of the many guide-dogs. They had never met, but he knew who she was from the funeral surveillance, and from Sonia Bailey’s description. He stopped in front of her table and leaned forward.

“Ms. Chan?” he said.

She was thirty-five, with black bangs cut straight across her eyebrows, an attractive woman, wearing red lipstick, a jade necklace, and a silk blouse with small yellow dragons.

“Detective Gilbert,” she said.

He pulled out his shield and nodded. “Thanks for getting back to me so quickly,” he said.

“Anything I can do to help,” she said. She wasn’t native Chinese, had to be at least second-or-third generation, spoke with a plain Canadian accent. “We’re all still stunned around here,” she said. “Cheryl was liked by everybody.”

Gilbert opened his briefcase and took out his notebook. “I’m sorry about Cheryl, Ms. Chan.”

“Call me Shirley.”

“I understand you were good friends with her.”

Shirley glanced out the window where the bare branches of a maple tree scraped against the pane. “I was her friend,” she said. “But she had a certain reserve. I don’t know if I ever got through that reserve.”

Gilbert flipped to a fresh page of his notebook. “And she was at work on the seventeenth? You saw her here on that Monday?”

Shirley nodded. “She was here.”

“And did she seem different to you at all?”

Shirley took a deep breath. “I’m not sure how to answer that. Not different from the way she’d been behaving lately.”

Gilbert’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward. “How do you mean?”

Shirley absently stirred her noodles with her fork.

“I don’t know, maybe she was just overworked. She worked so hard. She lived for work. At one point last year she was holding two jobs.”

“She was?”

“Her stepfather hired her as a fund-raising consultant. A six-month contract.”

“Because of the election,” said Gilbert.

“She’s a bit of an expert. She knows how to raise money.” Shirley ate a mouthful of noodles, chewed meditatively, stared out the window. “She must have been working sixteen-hour days. Maybe it was just because she was so tired…since Christmas…I don’t know. She hasn’t been as chipper. She had an affair. With someone from her stepfather’s staff. It didn’t turn out well. And she had family problems. Not that she would ever tell anyone about them. She was a private…” Shirley Chan put her fork down and stared at Gilbert. “You know what I mean? You could spend a whole day with Cheryl and not be any wiser. She had this guard, this suit of armor she put on. To tell you the truth, I found it exasperating at times.”

“You say she had an affair,” said Gilbert. “With who?”

A few of the sighted employees walked by with trays of food, glancing curiously at their table. When it came to murder, everyone was curious.

“A man named Alvin Matchett,” she said.

Gilbert felt his face turning red. “Alvin Matchett,” he repeated.

“Yes.” She took a sip of her Diet Coke through her white plastic straw. “A very nice guy. She should have worked harder. I don’t know what happened. First Charles, then Alvin, she can’t seem to stick it through.”

“You met Alvin Matchett?” he said.

“Twice,” she said. “She couldn’t have chosen a sweeter guy. A real gentleman. I think she regretted the way things turned out.”

“She was upset about it?”

“I think so. But she didn’t talk about it. She lost some weight. And she looked awful. I told her, go see a doctor. But she doesn’t like doctors. She doesn’t like people poking and prodding her.”

He looked out the window, where three grackles settled on the branch of the maple tree. Why didn’t Matchett mention this? Then again, why should he? It was over and done with. Still, he would have to ask Alvin about it.

“And do you know Charles?” asked Gilbert.

She raised her eyebrows. “A bit,” she said.

“And what do you think?”

Her face settled. “I find him moody,” she said. “He loses his temper easily. I once saw him smash a four-hundred-dollar vase because he didn’t like where Cheryl put it.”

Gilbert contemplated Shirley Chan. Something not right about Latham, that’s for sure, and Shirley was confirming it.

“Is that it?” he asked.

She took a deep breath, now reluctant. “He was always snooping,” she said. “At least that’s the impression I got. Whenever he came to the office here, he would pull open filing cabinets and look through them, really inappropriate, right in front of everybody, stuff that was none of his business. We didn’t know what to say. I mean, what do you say to a man like that, a man who has absolutely zero social grace?”