Old City Hall (20 page)

Kennicott opened it and looked at the name inside. He felt his body jerk: “Mrs. Sarah Brace, maiden name Sarah McGill.”

Ho grinned and pointed to some background documents. “Back in the late 1980s she was involved in some kind of protest. Pushed a cop through a glass window. Got charged and printed.”

Kennicott’s mouth felt dry.

“Hey, I told you Brace had the insanity defense. His common-law wife and his ex-wife both on the same page. That’s nuts.”

Kennicott slammed the file shut. “Where’s a phone I can use?” he said, his mind whirling. “I’ve got to call Greene.”

A
ri Greene put down the phone and looked around his empty kitchen. All he was wearing was a towel, which he’d wrapped loosely around his waist when he got up to answer the phone. He filled the kettle with cold water, turned it on, and then, retying the towel tight, hobbled over to the front door. Outside, he bent down to snap up the morning paper. As he walked back toward the kitchen, he opened it to read the headline. Then he paused.

There was a rustling sound coming from the bedroom. He teetered for a moment, like a waiter caught between tables. On one side was the noise in the bedroom, on the other the sound of the kettle in the kitchen as it began to boil. He tapped the bedroom door with his foot, swinging it open. “Here’s
The Globe
,” he said, entering the near darkness and gently tossing the newspaper on the edge of the bed.

“What time is it?” a woman’s voice said from under the covers.

“Too early. I have to get going,” he said.

“I heard the phone ring.”

“Go back to sleep,” he said, backing out of the darkened room. “I’ll take a shower in the basement and you can let yourself out.” There was an old bathroom downstairs, left over from the previous owner, who used to rent the basement out. It was pretty basic.

The covers began to stir, then were flung back like a wave emerging from a flat sea. Jennifer Raglan clicked on the bedside lamp and
sat up, shaking her head. She wasn’t wearing a top, and her breasts swayed just above the crest of the sheets. Lifting an arm, she ran her hand through her hair. She made no effort to cover herself. A younger woman might have a more sculpted body, Greene thought, but not the confidence. Raglan acted this way at work, as the head Crown in the downtown Toronto office. Confident but not cocky.

He rocked on his heels. She held his eyes. When they started their secret affair, Greene and Raglan had reached a firm yet unspoken agreement: keep their jobs out of the bedroom. He let the silence accumulate—something he was good at.

“Thanks for the paper,” Raglan said finally. She reached across the bed with one hand and lifted the sheets to cover herself with the other, smiling, not pouting. That was another advantage of someone who was older, Greene thought. Maturity.

“It was Daniel Kennicott, an officer on the Brace case,” Greene said. “He had a hunch about that million-dollar contract Brace didn’t sign. FIS found Sarah McGill’s fingerprints on the last page.”

Raglan put the paper down. “Hmmm. The first wife,” she said.

He nodded. “I’ve got to go up and see her. It’s going to be a busy few days.”

“I’ve got the kids for the rest of the week,” Raglan said, picking up the paper again. Raglan had two teenage boys and a daughter who was still in the tomboy stage. She was reading the sports section. “Leafs are in trouble now. They lost their goalie, all they got left is that old guy.”

“Yeah. I’m going to try to get my dad to a game,” he said. “Wish me luck.”

“Take a shower up here,” she said, tilting her head toward the en suite bathroom. “It’s much nicer than the one downstairs, and I’m not getting back to sleep.”

“I’ll make some tea first,” Greene said.

In the kitchen the portable electric kettle had already clicked off. He poured the hot water into his porcelain teapot and refilled the kettle with cold water.

When he first made Homicide, Greene was put on the case of a
professor who’d been stabbed to death by a crazy student. The man and his wife were both academics, here on a year’s sabbatical from the London School of Economics. They had no children, and the wife, whose name was Margaret, stayed throughout the trial. The university extended her contract, and she ended up living in Toronto.

One afternoon, about a year after the trial was over, she happened to be walking down the street when Greene was on his way to his parking spot. Margaret tried to make it seem like a chance encounter, and Greene decided not to let on how obvious her little gambit had been.

They lived together for the next twelve months, and during that time she taught him the proper way to make a pot of tea. Eventually she got a job offer back in England, and periodically she sent him photos of her new husband and their growing daughter, and a package of assorted tea.

“First you heat the pot. Then use cold water. The hot has been sitting in the tank too long. Be careful when it boils,” Margaret had said. “Stop it just when it hits the boil. You don’t want to boil the oxygen out of it.”

He swirled the hot water around the pot, then dumped the water into the sink and plopped two bags of white tea into the pot. He let the kettle steam up and waited until it just hit a rolling boil. Then he lifted it, tilted the teapot on an angle, and poured the water down onto its side wall.

“Never pour the water directly on the tea,” she had instructed. “You need to let the bag come to the water.”

Finally he put the top of the pot across the opening, not covering it completely. “And when you let the tea steep,” Margaret had said, demonstrating, “give it air, room to breathe.”

Leaving the tea to steep, Greene slipped into the shower. He filled his hair with shampoo and let the warm water wash over him. It felt good. He was trying to figure this out. Sarah McGill’s fingerprints on the unsigned million-dollar contract.

Greene reached for the bar of soap and turned his face up to the nozzle. He bent forward and let the warm water run down his back.
He was glad to be in the upstairs bathroom. The shower stall in the basement had a narrow head, and the floor outside was cold concrete. His mind was a jumble. There was something else about Brace’s condominium that had just occurred to him. What was it?

A hand slid into his fingers and took the soap from him. Raglan’s skin was soft, warm. She soaped his shoulders, then his neck, then his stomach. Just go with it, Ari, he told himself. All thoughts of Brace’s apartment slipped away as he arched his back gently toward her, her skin dry against his wetness, becoming wet herself.

D
aniel Kennicott hustled out of the FIS office and battled the traffic back downtown to Old City Hall, where he swore out a subpoena for Howard Peel. Just in case the little man decided he didn’t want to talk to him, Kennicott would drag him into court. Then he rushed over to Peel’s office. It was always better not to call someone in advance when you wanted to serve him. It turned out that the Mini Media Mogul—as Peel liked to refer to himself—was hosting a party at his private ski club, north of the city. It was almost two o’clock by the time Kennicott hit the road. He had to hurry.

The sun was slipping over the ridge, which passed for a ski mountain in southern Ontario, when he pulled into the Osgoode Ski Club. The parking lot was massive, filled to capacity with a staggering array of expensive cars: Lexus, BMW, Acura, Mercedes, and every top-end model of SUV. There must be more money in this parking lot, Kennicott thought as he drove around hoping to find a spot, than in half the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. After five minutes he finally found a place in the farthest reaches of the lot.

Just as well. Anyone who saw him get out of the bland Chevy would know right away that he couldn’t possibly be a member. After he’d picked up the subpoena, he had rushed home to change. He’d chosen his clothes carefully. A pair of corduroy pants, a cable sweater, a cashmere car coat, and a pair of handmade Australian boots. The
shoes make the man, his father had taught him. He wanted to take Peel by surprise. To do that, he needed to be able to walk into the exclusive ski club and fit right in.

It was the club’s annual men’s day. The ski lifts had closed, and groups of men stood in clutches, holding large plastic glasses of beer and eating fresh sushi served by a bevy of tuxedoed waiters. There was an air of excited release. In the corner, the little man was holding court near a big stone fireplace. He wore a bulky ski suit that, even though he’d unzipped it, made him look even more squat, more rounded. Kennicott walked behind him, careful to keep out of Peel’s sight line.

“Yep, I gotta tell ya,” he was saying as he swirled ice in a highball glass filled with a clear drink, probably vodka and soda, Kennicott thought. “You guys might have big, fancy offices downtown, but you spend all your time with other guys in suits. Me, ha, come to Parallel sometime. It’s just wall-to-wall gorgeous female flesh.”

One of the fellows next to Peel, a tall, barrel-chested redhead, downed his beer. “And how about those female rock stars? You must get to meet some of them.”

Peel put his small head back and let out a loud laugh. “Oh, man, you haven’t lived until you’ve done some rock and roll in the back of a limo.”

The redheaded man stared down at Peel, amazed. “Really?” he asked, confounded at the thought of little Howard Peel actually being in a limo with a rock-and-roll beauty.

“It’s true,” Kennicott said, cutting in, a big smile on his face. “Howie’s told me many tales.” He walked into the circle and clapped Peel heartily on the back. “But sadly for you gents, my lips are sealed.”

The short man looked up. Kennicott could see that it took Peel a moment to place him.

Before Peel could react, Kennicott touched him on the shoulder, leaned over, and whispered in his ear. “Consider yourself served with a subpoena. Tomorrow morning, courtroom 121, Old City Hall. Do you want me to drop it on the floor and walk away, or can we have a little chat?”

Peel flinched only for a moment. He recovered fast. “Daniel, I didn’t see you out there all day,” he said, slapping Kennicott on the back as if they were old friends. “We got to talk about that deal.” He took Kennicott’s arm and led him out of the crowd. “This has nothing to do with rock stars in limos, believe me, guys,” he called back to his audience.

Peel steered Kennicott to a staircase on the far side of the fireplace. For a small man in heavy ski boots he handled the steep stairs with surprising agility. A moment later they were standing just inside a deserted back exit door. Kennicott took out the subpoena and touched him on the shoulder with it.

“What the fuck is this all about?” Peel hissed, grabbing the paper out of Kennicott’s hand. “I’ll have my lawyers in court tomorrow, and we’ll quash this thing in no time.”

“No dice. You’ve got material evidence.”

“Like what?”

“Like Brace and Torn went to see you the week before she was killed.”

“So what?”

“You offered Brace a million bucks at the meeting.”

“I already told you that.”

“You didn’t tell me that you saw Torn the next afternoon.” It was a guess, but Kennicott was pretty sure he was right.

Peel frowned. “You didn’t ask.” He still had the glass in his hand. He rattled the ice around in it and put it to his lips.

“I’m asking now. Do you want to talk, or do you want to go on the stand?” Kennicott took a step closer, close enough to smell what was in the glass. He sniffed but didn’t smell anything.

Peel stomped his ski boots on the metal grating in front of the door. “Why are you doing this to me now? It cost me ten thousand bucks to get all these account execs up here for the day. Every ad agency in Toronto sends someone.”

Kennicott held Peel’s gaze.

“Okay, okay,” Peel said, his little blue eyes darting around to make sure they were still alone. “Katherine wanted me to pull the contract offer. She didn’t want Brace to take the job.”

“Why? You’d offered him a ton of money, a limousine every morning, sixteen weeks’ vacation, Mondays off.”

“I know.”

“I’ve been looking through Torn and Brace’s bank accounts and Visa statements. They could have used the money.”

“I know.”

“Torn was buying things on sale, going to thrift shops. Everyone says Brace never cared about money. She should have been thrilled about this deal.”

Peel took a big sip from his glass, then slowly met Kennicott’s gaze.

“Well?” Kennicott said.

Peel gave an exaggerated sigh. “I already told you, Officer Kennicott, she wanted out of the deal.”

“And I told you it doesn’t make sense.”

Peel put his head back and finished his drink in one big gulp. He’s drinking water, Kennicott thought. Dry pipes. He must be getting over a hangover from the night before.

“Let’s go outside,” Peel said. With a hard clang he opened the fire door, and seconds later they were standing in the winter dusk. With the sun down, the temperature had dropped fast. Kennicott hunched his shoulders against the cold. It was beginning to snow. The big parking lot was now dark, the herd of rich vehicles like so many sleeping cows.

“What happened?” Kennicott asked.

“Katherine was part of the deal,” Peel said. He pulled a blister pack from his pocket and pushed out a piece of gum. The plastic made a hollow, crinkling sound. “We’d found a job for her as an associate producer on a weekend show. Early morning. No one is listening. Perfect way for her to get started. She was even training for it once a week. A friend of Brace’s with a studio in his home.”

Kennicott nodded. He knew the best thing he could do was to keep quiet. Let Peel tell his story. The comforting smell of the burning fireplace wafted through the air. He gazed across the lot and, despite himself, started to calculate in his head the value of the cars parked there.

“It was too much for Katherine,” Peel said.

Kennicott thought about what he’d learned about Torn’s life. The rigid regularity of it. Her abstemious spending habits.

Peel’s voice turned sad. “One day she freaked out.” Then, to Kennicott’s astonishment, he tore open his ski jacket and pulled down the collar on his sweater. “This is what she did to me.” Peel’s neck had deep scratch marks. They looked quite old. “Her nails,” he said, stating the obvious.