Cold Comfort (15 page)

Marsh was grinning now, and his grin wasn’t at all skeptical. He raised his index finger and shook it absently at Lombardo. “I like that,” he said. “That’s good, Joe.”

Lombardo didn’t exactly beam, but he was certainly happy about Marsh’s reaction.

“This Crown Victoria,” continued Marsh. “What color was the one Larry Varley rented?”

“Midnight blue as well,” said Lombardo. “Kind of a standard color for that car.”

Marsh nodded, as if he were just confirming things for himself. “This looks good. You’ve got to find that car. You find that car, and we solve this murder.”

Lombardo pulled a three-and-a-half-inch computer disk from his shirt pocket. “The Ministry of Transportation E-mailed me every owner of every Crown Victoria in Ontario.”

Marsh’s grin faded. “Don’t go waving those things at me.”

“I’ve got a sorting program,” said Lombardo. “I’ll start with male owners who live in Toronto, and move outward.”

Highway 400, extending straight north from Toronto, is more to most Torontonians than just a super highway; it’s a spiritual escape route, a gateway to the north, the fabled yellow brick road to the even more fabled Cottage Country. Sweet in summer, bleak in winter. Rolling farmland south, rock and bush north. 400 forks into 69 and 11 south of Orillia, each again spiritual thoroughfares in the consciousness of Southern Ontarians, highways that lead deep into the Canadian Shield, and, in fact, enter the land of the silver birch, home of the beaver, the blue lake, the rocky shore, such as the legendary camp song canonizes. Weekend escapees strip off the urban armor of the densely populated Golden Horseshoe, that megalopolis cusping the west end of Lake Ontario; they return to the ghosts of the Iroquois and Algonquin. The fish are always biting, the wild blueberries are always ripe, and the loon call echoes across the lake at night.

As Gilbert forked left onto highway 69 and saw the first massive slabs of granite thrusting from the stunted birch and cedar bush, his shoulders eased and his grip on the wheel loosened. The demarcation between north and south came abruptly, from farmland to rock within a few miles, a change that made Gilbert always feel as if he had left Toronto far behind. Always the same whenever he came up here; the tension melted away. The sky was overcast with thin grey clouds. The landscape was white, snow-covered, with the road blasted through rock, the iron-rich cutaways bleeding rust, blemishing the snow. Here and there, local teenagers used the sheer cuts for spray-paint graffiti, an insult to Precambrian igneous rock nearly four billion years old.

He chewed up the kilometers, thinking about the case, trying to make sense of the evidence thus far. Driving knocked the pieces of the puzzle closer. Some people got their best ideas just as they were falling asleep at night; Gilbert got his when he was driving. Latham, Danny, Sally, Larry, Dean, Alvin. Maybe Jane Ireland. If nothing else, Jane Ireland had motive. He shook his head as he neared Parry Sound. He crossed the French River, that capricious waterway Champlain had used to penetrate to the heart of Huronia. Could he draw the line there, at Jane Ireland, or did he have to go further? Tom Webb? Sonia Bailey? Even Shirley Chan? Sometimes he had to agree with Alvin. Given enough time, he would make everybody a suspect.

He let the case drift, lulled by the rhythm of the road, passing trucks when the road periodically widened into three lanes.

Soon, far in the distance, he saw a giant smokestack, the Inco superstack, the single most identifiable landmark in Sudbury, over five hundred feet high, pouring tons and tons of acid-rich steam into the sky, blighting the countryside for miles around. The Precambrian rock in and around Sudbury looked scorched, blackened by over a half century of ore processing, as bleak a landscape as could be found anywhere, with most of the trees dead or dying, the snow looking more grey than white, and the faint smell of rotten eggs hanging in the air.

Highway 69 widened to a four-lane divided highway. He passed a McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Burger King, Home Depot, and a Wal-Mart. The true north strong and free. Highway 69 hooked onto Regent Street, and finally onto Paris Street, one of the city’s main drags. He turned right and headed east toward the city center.

The Sudbury Regional Police Department gave him Officer Guy Faucher as support. Faucher had a heavy French Canadian accent.

“You see there the home and work addresses of Dr. Dean Varley,” said Faucher, tapping the contact sheet Gilbert held in his hands. “Also his telephone numbers. As for Mr. Larry Varley, well, detective, you can take your guess along with the rest us. He was residing at the President Hotel, in a room on the third floor—this must be the last week of January. But now he goes away. And we don’t know where he goes. Maybe his brother does. Maybe his brother is a man who will help you.”

As it turned out, Dr. Dean Varley wasn’t a dentist, such as Matchett had suggested. He was a veterinarian.

Gilbert phoned beforehand and let Varley know he was coming.

He found the Lansing Animal Clinic at the far end of town, right near the Taxation Building in a new strip mall sandwiched between a 7-Eleven and a Wendy’s. He parked, grabbed his accordion-style briefcase from the passenger seat, and got out of the car. Out on the street a flatbed truck loaded with fresh-cut timber rumbled by. Small snowflakes, really just pellets, fell from the slategrey sky. This was Tom Webb’s riding, Sudbury West, solidly working class, most of the men miners, loggers, or pulp and paper workers. He approached the clinic, passing a group of French-speaking high-school students. So many French-Canadians in Sudbury. A lot of native Ojibwa as well. He opened the door and went into the animal clinic.

The waiting area was clean, new. On the walls hung several reproductions of Robert Bateman’s super-realist paintings of Canadian wildlife. Animal owners sat in chairs with either cats in cages or dogs on leashes. The receptionist, a young woman with startlingly blonde hair, wearing some kind of nurse’s uniform, looked up at him with curious eyes—he was the only one in the waiting area who didn’t have an animal.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

He pulled out his wallet and showed her his shield.

“I’m Detective Barry Gilbert from Toronto,” he said. “I called about a half hour ago.”

She nodded quickly. A solemn look came to her eyes. From somewhere in the back, Gilbert heard a dog yelp.

“Wait right here,” she said.

She got up and went to the back.

Less than a minute later the door opened and out came Dr. Dean Varley. He wore a light blue doctor’s tunic and smelled of strong disinfectant soap. He was short, no more than five-feet-four, but well-built, muscular, with tightly coiled brown hair, thick brown eyebrows, and intelligent eyes. He had to be forty-two, with a wide friendly face, and a chin that looked too closely shaved.

“Detective Giller?” he said.

“The name’s Gilbert,” said Gilbert. “Barry Gilbert.”

They shook hands. “Come into the back,” he said. “I’ve got coffee if you like.”

“Thanks, I’m fine.”

“Linda, hold calls for the next little while. Charlene’s going to handle the routines.”

“Yes, Dr. Varley.”

“And if Mr. Claveau phones about his horse again, tell him the earliest I can make it is next Tuesday. Give him Dr. Hasselback’s number. Dick might be able to go.”

“Yes, Dr. Varley.”

Gilbert followed Varley into the back. Kennels of every shape and size lined the walls. Seven or eight cats wandered freely. Gilbert glimpsed briefly a small boa constrictor coiled in a large aquarium. Two West African cockatoos squawked at each other near the back. Dr. Varley led him into an examining room and shut the door. A stainless steel examining table stood in the middle of the room. The room was brightly lit with huge fluorescent tubes overhead. On the wall hung the famous Norman Rockwell print of the doctor about to give a young boy a big needle in his bum.

“Please, have a seat,” said Dr. Varley.

“I’ll stand,” said Gilbert. “I’ve been driving all day.”

“Snow in Parry Sound?”

“Not this time.”

“You’re lucky.”

“Just cold. I hear they have a sauna at the Days Inn.”

“Do they?” said Varley, congenially. “I’ve never been.”

“I’m sorry about Cheryl,” said Gilbert.

Varley shrugged, raising his eyebrows. “She was too young.”

“And about Donna as well.”

Varley nodded with grave resignation, as if death were death and there was nothing you could do about it.

Gilbert continued. “You saw her in November?”

Varley looked at him, puzzled. “No,” he said. “Who told you that?”

“I thought there was a family meeting.”

“What family meeting?”

“Did you not go down to Toronto with Larry in November?”

“No,” he said. “No, I was right here, working. I didn’t go anywhere in November.”

Maybe Matchett had his information wrong. “But Larry went down, didn’t he?”

Varley shrugged. “Wasn’t it October? I know he went down sometime around then.” A slight frown came to the doctor’s face. “Is it really that pertinent?”

“I can’t seem to find your brother,” said Gilbert.

“My brother’s at sea right now.”

“At sea?”

“He hires on occasionally. I saw him just before he left. He’s been at sea since February seventh.”

Again Gilbert stared at the doctor. Here was another discrepancy, information that didn’t jibe with what Gilbert already knew: Larry Varley, the rented Crown Victoria. Yet there was nothing of a lie in the way Dean Varley spoke; as far as Dean Varley was concerned, this was just a simple statement of fact.

“Are you sure?” asked Gilbert.

Dr. Varley rubbed his hands together and leaned against the examining table. “Look, detective, I know you have to do this. I know you have to check everything out. So I’ll make it easy for you. Larry and I had nothing to do with either of those murders. He was in Halifax on the fifth, and at sea on the eighteenth. I was up here, in Sudbury. I know you have to do this, but I think you might be wasting your time.”

“And what were you doing on the night of the eighteenth?”

“I went to the Sudbury Wolves hockey game with two friends, Bill Fournier and Kevin Horvath. Linda will give you their numbers. And if that’s not enough, a lot of people saw me at the arena. As for Donna’s murder, one of your other detectives has already called about it…is it Ballantine?”

“Bannatyne.”

Varley nodded, still congenial, still cooperative. “I was judging a dog show that day.”

“And what about Larry?”

“Like I said, he was in Halifax by that time.”

“Getting ready to ship out,” said Gilbert, playing along.

“That’s right,” said Dr. Varley.

“And did he stay in a hotel down there?”

“How would I know?”

“What was the name of his ship?”

“The
Gerald
something,” said Varley. “The
Gerald Peyton
. No, wait a minute, the
Gerald Hayden
,” he said.

“Did he drive down?”

“He took the bus.”

Gilbert raised his eyebrows. “You’re sure about that?”

“Larry doesn’t have a car.”

“Maybe he rented one.”

Varley shook his head. “I had to lend him the money for bus fare.” Varley stood up, arched his back, and glanced out to the back parking lot. “You know, I wish you’d stay away from Larry. He’s had a hard life. He’s made some bad choices. And he carries a lot of emotional garbage around with him. He doesn’t want to hear about Cheryl. He has a real big problem with her. There’s stuff about… my dad and Cheryl…and Larry really doesn’t…” Varley’s eyes narrowed. “Have you…I mean how far have you gone with this?”

“We checked it out,” admitted Gilbert. “It was a snowmobile accident, wasn’t it?”

“Actually, hypothermia. My father froze to death.”

Gilbert felt something loosen inside; a connection made, a mystery illuminated, a piece of the puzzle suddenly fitting. The manner of death. Hypothermia.

“He was injured in the snowmobile accident,” explained Dr. Varley. “Cheryl and Donna were with him. The snowmobile was totaled. The girls had to walk five miles. My father couldn’t move. By the time help finally arrived he was already dead. Have you ever spent a winter up here, detective?”

“No.”

“The day my father died it was minus forty. And this is what Larry doesn’t understand. Those girls had to walk five miles to get help. When the temperature’s that cold it doesn’t take long. My father didn’t stand a chance. Larry thinks he did. Especially because the authorities thought the whole thing was confusing enough to have a close look. There’s no way Cheryl could have saved my father. Larry thinks otherwise. He was close to Dad. He’s never forgiven Cheryl since the inquest.”

“Inquest?” said Gilbert.

“There was an inquest into my father’s death.”

Gilbert took out his notebook. Varley made a face. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“There’ll be a record,” said Gilbert.

“I wish you’d stay away from Larry,” repeated Varley. “You’re just going to open old wounds. He took my father’s death badly. He never really got over it. They were like this,” said Varley, crossing his fingers. “A lot of people, when someone they love dies, they look around for someone to blame. Cheryl just happened to be the one he decided on. The snowmobile crashes, my father’s too injured to move, the girls make a five-mile trek to get help. Cheryl’s thirteen, Donna’s nine. Both were badly frostbitten by the time they got to the nearest town. The snow was two feet deep in some places. Do you know what it’s like trudging through snow like that? Slow going, especially for a couple of scared girls. Cheryl had to keep waiting for Donna. She might have gone ahead, but then what would have happened to Donna? Donna would have frozen to death as well. So that’s what I tell Larry. Don’t blame Cheryl for Dad’s death. Thank her for saving Donna’s life. I don’t know what the authorities found so confusing. And I don’t know why Larry won’t give it up. But you’re not going to help matters if you—”

“I’ve got to look into the inquest,” said Gilbert. A woman poked her head in the door, must have been Charlene, holding a cocker spaniel under her arm, and just as quickly ducked out again when she saw Gilbert and Varley. “Did you ever talk to the authorities about the inquest?”