Shelter then called Gimli RCMP, Gabe Traverse and, finally, his mother to let her know what had happened. He’d have to count on Roberta Shelter to look in on Kelsey when he was at work. She was seventy-two years old but had grown more energetic since his father’s death five years earlier. Between outings to the golf club, bridge games with her cronies and trips to the family cottage, she maintained a hectic social calendar. She didn’t take kindly to interruptions to her carefully planned agenda, but she was crazy about Kelsey, and Shelter knew she’d rally in a crisis. When he got her on the line, she was getting ready to go the hair salon. He glossed over the scarier parts of what had happened the night before and emphasized that Kelsey was at home and safe. Still, his mother reacted with alarm.
“She’s so young. How could this happen?”
Shelter sensed a suggestion that Joan and Sig Arnason were to blame. He decided to let it go. “She’s fifteen, Mom. I was getting up to all sorts of hijinks at that age you and Dad didn’t even know about.”
“If you’re talking about smoking marijuana and climbing out the basement window at night, you’d be surprised what we knew about,” she said, going over old territory they’d shared laughs about over the years.
“I’m going to keep Kelsey here with me,” he said. “Can you come by afternoons and check in on her? Make sure she’s eating and maybe take her out with you?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. Then after a pause, “How long will this be for, do you think?”
“I’m not sure. It might be just until the end of the summer. She’s talked about going to school in Gimli in the fall.”
“Gimli? That’s not a good idea.” Roberta Shelter had never been one to hide her feelings. “She needs to go to a proper school.”
Shelter cut her off. “We’ll see. Anyway, she’ll be sixteen in the fall, and she’s getting more and more independent.”
“Do you need me to come today?”
“I’m going to head down to the office. I expect her to sleep all day, so I think we’ll be fine.”
He didn’t share a lot with his mother about his work. She read the newspaper from front to back every day and always called when he was mentioned. But she lived in a world far away from the violence and crime that was a part of his everyday reality.
“I’m working on a big case, but I’ll try to be at home with Kelsey as much as I can.”
“Alright, dear. We’ll speak soon.”
Coming off the elevator at the office, Shelter bumped into Himmat Sharma. He could tell from the breezy greeting he got that news of his daughter running away hadn’t hit the department. He knew Traverse wouldn’t spill the beans, but he’d been worried it could have gotten back from Gimli — it was a small world. Shelter was relieved he wouldn’t have to deal with sympathy and questions from his colleagues, at least for now. He’d probably tell Jennifer Kane about it in a few days.
Traverse was just ending a phone call when Shelter stopped by his desk. “How’s she doing?” Traverse asked.
“She’s sleeping it off,” Shelter said with a shake of the head and a rueful half smile. He filled Traverse in on what had happened.
“How about you?”
“You know. Who needs sleep, right?” Shelter said.
“Well, you look like shit but no worse than usual.” Traverse tapped his notebook. “Looks like Charlie’s back on the reserve. I just talked to a Mountie up there. He hasn’t seen him but says he might be in the bush.”
Shelter sighed. “Hide and seek, eh? As soon as we know for sure he’s there, I’ll head up.” Shelter crossed his arms and thought about the logistics of getting to Lone Pine. “How about Bill Craig?”
“Nothing in CPIC,” Traverse said. “Pulled up some old articles. It’s all stuff about bringing the Jets back to town and a couple of ribbon-cutting events at buildings with cabinet ministers and the mayor. He’s a big booster of the downtown redevelopment plan.” As he talked, Traverse plugged Craig’s name into Google and was running the cursor over the various search results. He clicked on one, and a photo with a brief caption popped up on the screen. Shelter leaned in for a closer look. The photo showed Craig at the wheel of a vintage wooden powerboat, cruising with a blond woman who waved from the passenger seat. Shelter knew the boat was worth a fortune. The caption under the photo said it was taken on Lake of the Woods, the summer playground for Winnipeg’s old-money set.
“Any court files on him?”
“I haven’t had a chance to look.” Traverse swivelled in his seat and looked at Shelter. “If we start pulling files, it could get back to Craig. MacIsaac said no action.”
“One way or another, this guy is involved,” Shelter said. “Let me make a call.”
Shelter went to a closed office, shut the door and phoned Steve Roth. He’d been friends with Roth since they were in primary school. They knew each other’s secrets from their sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll days and would trust each other with their lives. Roth had pursued the career that Shelter’s parents wanted for him. He was a top-notch litigator with a downtown law firm and worked incredibly long hours. He knew everyone and had a razor-sharp memory and a taste for gossip. But he’d never betray Shelter’s confidence.
Lawyers didn’t have secretaries to screen their calls anymore. They did it themselves using call display, and Roth picked up on the first ring. “Yo.”
“How’s it hanging?” Shelter asked.
“I’d rather be at the lake,” Roth said. “How about you?”
“Ah, you know. Trouble with Kelsey. But it’s okay.”
Roth made a sympathetic sound. “Something for me to look forward to.” He and his wife had gotten started later on having kids, and their two were still in elementary school.
“Hey, listen. What do you know about Bill Craig?”
Roth was uncharacteristically silent. “You know who he is, right?” he said finally. “What do you want to know?”
“His name came up in a case.”
“Hold on.” He heard Roth putting the phone down, his chair squeak and then the sound of his office door shutting. He picked up the phone and said, “That’s a serious dude.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
When Roth spoke again, all the usual humour was gone from his voice. “Filthy rich, obviously. Real estate, construction and I think he even owns a quarry east of town. Two kids — Sam’s a year older than us and went to Ravenscourt. Stacey was a year behind us at Kelvin. They’re both in the family business. The old man is very well connected with the mayor and pro-development city councillors. They’re always at his box at Jets games. Apart from that what can I tell you — a big cottage at Kenora — on Treaty Island. Yacht club. Golf at Niakwa when he’s in town.”
“Who’s his lawyer?”
“Oh, that’s something,” Roth said. “He’s got a bunch of them. We do a bit of work for his company. But his main man is Derrick Alistair. He runs his own firm under his last name. We get files he’s involved in, and that’s how he signs everything — just Alistair. He’s got a kind of a dicey reputation.”
“Dicey how?”
“I heard he’s an offshore specialist.”
“Like offshore accounts?”
“That’s what I heard. A stockbroker was talking about him at the squash club. It’s just a rumour, obviously. He keeps a low profile, but he’s got a big house in the old part of Tuxedo. So he’s doing alright.”
Shelter made a note. “Anything else?
Roth thought about it. “Well, you know about the break-up with his wife, right?”
“No. What about it?
“Oh, a nasty one,” Roth said with relish. “She catches him fooling around with someone at the office and goes absolutely bat-shit.” He chuckled. “Massive fucking scandal. Last I heard, it’s headed to court. She wants to take him for half of everything, and that’s a very big number, my friend.”
Shelter made another note. “What’s her name?”
Roth paused and t
hen tried out a couple of names before coming up with it. “Shawna. Shawna Craig. Very old money. In fact, it’s her family’s company Bill is running. Daddy was a senator, a bagman for the Liberals, and she grew up on the Crescent. The place at the lake is on her side, too. Bill was a salesman when he met her, for Christ’s sake.”
“Okay. I hadn’t heard anything about that,” Shelter said.
“Oh, yeah. Very messy. She’s trying to get him out of the company.”
Shelter made a note. “Thanks, man.”
“You got it. You and Kelsey need to come over for dinner soon. I’ll call you, okay?”
“Sounds good.”
Shelter called Traverse into the office and filled him in on the conversation.
“It’s interesting, but it doesn’t get us any closer to why Craig is hanging around with Charlie Osborne or who the other guy in that hotel room was,” Traverse said. “I don’t believe these guys would kill somebody — let alone two women — to keep coke and hookers quiet. No way.”
“There’s got to be more,” Shelter said. “Let’s check out the court records on Bill and see what we can find.”
He turned to his computer. The civil records showed a lengthy list of lawsuits and other proceedings stretching back twenty years. Shelter wasn’t surprised to see the litigation. It wasn’t unusual for construction companies and real estate developers to get into beefs with suppliers, subcontractors and disgruntled clients. He ran his eyes down the first page of the search results. It was Traverse who spotted it. “Hey, I’ve seen that number before.”
“What number?” Shelter asked.
“This one.” Traverse reached over Shelter’s shoulder and touched the screen. It was a long string of letters and numbers that ended with 01-06933. Traverse pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked a filing cabinet. He returned to the desk with a manila file folder. Inside was a copy of the paper they’d found in the laundry room at Crystal Rempel’s apartment block. He pointed at the sheet. “Here. It’s the same number,” he said, his voice betraying his excitement.
Shelter grabbed the mouse and clicked on the entry. Details of the court record appeared on the computer screen. “It’s the divorce proceedings,” Traverse said.
Shelter nodded, leaning back in his chair. “Let’s see what’s in the file.”
Court records in Manitoba were stored at the Law Courts building, a short drive through the downtown core. Shelter submitted a slip of paper with the file number to a clerk. She returned with a tan-coloured folder containing records from divorce proceedings between William and Shawna Craig.
Shelter carried it to a desk and scanned the documents, stopping at an affidavit filed by Shawna Craig.
“She’s accusing him of hiding assets,” he said after skimming the document. He flipped back to the beginning, and he and Traverse read it together paragraph by paragraph. Her lawyer’s dry rendering of his client’s allegations had the odd effect of making them all the juicier. It was clear the document was calculated to inflict maximum embarrassment and legal damage to Bill Craig.
“Oh, wow,” Traverse said, tapping a paragraph with his finger.
In 2002, Mr. Craig purchased a safe and had it delivered to his office at the company’s headquarters. It is Mr. Craig’s practice to keep large sums of cash in this safe. The amounts exceeded $25,000 at times. To Mrs. Craig’s knowledge, these sums were never accounted for in the company’s financial statements, or in any tax return.
Shelter ran his finger down to another paragraph.
It was Mr. Craig’s practice to use workers employed by the company to effect renovations on the couple’s residence on Wellington Crescent and their cottage at Lake of the Woods. These renovations included, but were not limited to, an addition to the residence, the construction of a swimming pool and the installation of a new kitchen and the renovation of two bathrooms. At the Lake of the Woods cottage, a large boathouse was constructed. None of this work was reported in the company’s records, and the workers were paid in cash. No taxes of any kind were paid, nor were the usual payroll deductions made.
On the next page, Shelter’s eyes were drawn to a subject heading: Agassiz Holdings. “That name was in Crystal’s notes,” he said. He pulled out the sheet of paper from the file folder and pointed to it. They read the passage in the court proceeding.
During the course of her duties, Mrs. Craig had occasion to view references to an entity by the name of Agassiz Holdings registered in the Bahamas. Mrs. Craig believes that her husband and certain of his business associates are the beneficial owners of Agassiz Holdings and have used this corporation to illegally hide the proceeds from their dealings from Mrs. Craig and Canadian tax authorities — an amount of at least CDN$1.5 million.
Shelter whistled. “I wonder what else she knows about?”
“There’s no sign from the database that a tax investigation is going on.”
“It’s a pretty recent document,” Shelter said. “I guess no one knows about it.”
“Crystal knew,” Traverse said.
Shelter nodded. “What I don’t get is how Crystal knew it’s Bill Craig in the photo?” Traverse asked. “Rory and Charlie wouldn’t have told her, and Pam only knew him as Bill.”
“Maybe someone else was feeding her information,” Traverse said. “Someone who knows what they were doing in that hotel room.”
TWENTY-ONE
Shelter tapped on Inspector Neil MacIsaac’s door. “What?” MacIsaac barked.
Shelter looked at Traverse and raised his eyebrows. He peeked his head into the office and found MacIsaac glaring.
“We’ve got something in the Crystal Rempel case.”
MacIsaac frowned and waved at the two chairs on the other side of his desk. When the two detectives were seated, their boss couldn’t contain his anger. “I spent the last hour and a half being interviewed by the goddamn search committee for the new chief,” he said. “There’s not a police officer among them. Did you know that? They don’t have a bloody clue.”
Shelter nodded but remained silent. Of course, he knew the search to replace Chief Gordy Taylor was being conducted by a civilian oversight body appointed by city council and the province. The composition of the search committee was irrelevant to MacIsaac’s chances of landing the job. He was all wrong for chief of a modern police department. He was too old-school, too unpolished, too grumpy. Shelter was taking a guilty pleasure in watching his boss’s career dreams go up in smoke before his eyes.
MacIsaac looked down at his desk, gave a shake of his head and brusquely gathered some papers into a pile. “Taylor’s lucky to be getting out. Now what do you two want?”
“It’s Bill Craig. We’ve found evidence of some pretty serious tax evasion,” Shelter said. “We’ve also established that Crystal Rempel knew about it.” He ran through Shawna Craig’s allegations against her husband. “The tax evasion gives us leverage to get search warrants and bring Craig in.”
MacIsaac had been shaking his head as Shelter spoke, and his shoulders were rounded, as if he were carrying a great load. “We talked about Craig this morning, and Chief Taylor was adamant that we are not to take any premature action,” MacIsaac said. “We still haven’t established a firm link between Craig and the homicides.”
“We have him in a hotel room with Monica Spence,” Shelter said. “And Crystal Rempel was investigating him and his business dealings.”
“You say he was in the hotel room, but we don’t have any hard evidence of that fact.”
“Come on, Neil.”
“Come on yourself. I’m not saying we’re never going to talk to Craig. Let me take this new evidence up the chain. But for the moment, it’s hands-off.”
“Jerk,” Shelter said to Traverse under his breath as they walked back to his desk. “This is all politics. He’s so scared of the chief. But Taylor is going to be gone in a couple of weeks.”
“I guess old habits die hard,” Traverse said.
Shelter considered their o
ptions. One was to simply bring in Craig against orders and let the chips fall where they may. He was running the investigation, and it was highly unusual for this kind of roadblock to be put in his way. But it would be a big move, one that could land him back in a uniform or end his career altogether. Shelter stared at Traverse as his mind turned.
“What?” Traverse said finally.
“Let’s go see the wife.”
“MacIsaac said to leave Craig alone.”
“He didn’t say anything about his wife,” Shelter said. “She seems to be in the mood to talk about her husband.”
Traverse smiled. “I like it.”
“I know where she lives, assuming she’s keeping the house in the divorce. And I think that’s a pretty safe bet, given the tone of those proceedings.”
It was mid-afternoon by the time they had set up an appointment to see Shawna Craig at her house on Wellington Crescent. Traverse parked in the circular driveway in front of the three-storey mansion, and the two detectives climbed the broad limestone staircase. Shelter rang the bell and then turned to survey the lawn shaded by enormous oak trees. In the distance, a jogger passed on the boulevard that separated the two traffic directions on the Crescent. He heard the door swing open and turned to find a deeply tanned woman in a mauve T-shirt, knee-length khaki shorts and white canvas sneakers. Shawna Craig’s shoulder-length blond hair had been simply but expensively cut and dyed with highlights. Deep wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were evidence of a lot of time in the sun, but with an upturned nose and broad lips, she was still a handsome woman in late middle age.
“You were lucky to catch me,” she said after Shelter had made the introductions and she’d ushered them into the house. They stood under a chandelier in the entrance hall, facing a wide staircase leading to a landing, where an antique grandfather clock ticked. To the right through an archway was a dining room with a long mahogany table and a hutch where expensive china was displayed. To the left was a large living room made gloomy by drawn curtains. “I’m just on my way to the lake for a few days. But I’m pleased the police are taking an interest in this. Thank you for coming. We can sit in here.”
Omand's Creek: A gripping crime thriller packed with mystery and suspense Page 15