“This time I’ll eat yours,” Greene said.
Kennicott didn’t smile. “It’s five in the morning. You know I have to be back at work in an hour. What do you want to talk about?”
Greene took another bite of croissant and grimaced. “These seem to get harder every year,” he whispered.
“Here’s your café, Detective Kennicott,” Caldas said, moving in with a tray before Kennicott could reply. “And a fresh croissant. Enjoy.”
Kennicott could smell the coffee and felt his stomach churn. Once Caldas left, he passed the croissant to Greene and turned away. At the counter, a group of men in workboots were trading jokes. On the far wall a TV was playing a European soccer game, and the fans in the stands were cheering wildly.
“This afternoon, when I told you I was planning to get in touch with you soon, you didn’t believe me, did you?” Greene asked.
“Was it the truth?”
“It was.”
Kennicott downed his espresso in one gulp.
“Thanks for the coffee, Ari,” he said, with no enthusiasm. He stood up.
Greene grabbed his wrist. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Kennicott thought about breaking out of Greene’s grip. Basic training. Grab his bound hand with his free one and pull it toward Greene’s fingers, which would not be strong enough to hold a moving arm.
“What?” he said, still standing.
Greene let go of his wrist. “I sometimes work as a consultant for Ted DiPaulo, my former defence lawyer.”
“I thought you were happy being a construction worker.”
“It’s part time. Please sit down, Daniel.”
Kennicott took a deep breath and sat. “Why?”
“Cassandra Amberlight.”
Kennicott met Greene’s eyes. “We’ve been looking for her. She’s not answering her door at her apartment. Her office is closed. No one in the market has seen her. We don’t even know if she’s alive or dead.”
“She’s alive.”
“Where is she?”
Greene shook his head.
“Ari, come on. If she has an alibi, I need to hear it sooner rather than later.”
“I know.”
“We want to talk to her.”
“I hope to bring her in to headquarters.”
“Today?”
“Tomorrow. Ted needs more time with her. Say three o’clock. You don’t have grounds to arrest her.”
“Not yet, but I may have very soon. Is she going to give us a statement?”
“You know the drill. Her lawyer doesn’t want her to talk to you.”
“And you?”
“I think she should.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think she did it. Daniel, I’m asking you not to arrest her.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Don’t arrest her . . . yet.”
Kennicott stared out the window. At the traffic light a group of cyclists on road bikes dressed in matching gear adjusted their helmets and drank from their water bottles.
“You don’t exactly have a lot of credibility on this kind of thing anymore,” he said.
“Mea culpa. Amberlight’s not to blame for my transgressions. Just hear her out.”
He turned back to Greene. “You know we found her prints in the shed?”
“Yes.”
“You know she’s got a criminal record?”
“I heard she assaulted an employee last year.”
One thing Kennicott had learned in his previous life as a lawyer was that your clients never tell you everything, and he doubted that Amberlight had told DiPaulo and Greene her full record. “Did you know that fifteen years ago she stabbed her husband with a kitchen knife? Or that she slashed her wife with a screwdriver two years later?”
Greene took a final bite of his croissant. He was stalling.
“She got the records expunged, but Darvesh was able to retrieve them. Amberlight didn’t mention those convictions, did she?”
“That’s covered by solicitor–client privilege.”
“Ari, you are starting to sound like a lawyer.”
“Ha! You know I dropped out of law school after the first year.”
Despite himself, Kennicott laughed. “Okay, tell me again exactly what you did after you saw Fox’s body in the shed.”
“As I told you before, I called 911 right away.”
“And after that?”
“What do you think I did, Daniel?”
Answering a question with a question. It was a classic delay tactic. “I think you couldn’t resist looking in the alley out back. It was a few steps away. You could have got back in less than a minute. You were careful in your statement to Darvesh. You didn’t lie. You just left things out.” He didn’t say “again,” but he was thinking it.
“Don’t worry. I didn’t touch the gate. It was open wide enough for me to get through easily.”
He’d been right about Greene. He had checked the alley. The guy always had a secret.
“What did you see?”
“I didn’t see a suspect running away, if that’s what you are asking.”
It was a subtle dig. But he hadn’t answered the question. Kennicott shook his head.
“Daniel,” Greene said, “I saw the same thing you saw, a typical Toronto back alley.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
Greene could be incredibly frustrating.
“More café for the young detective?” Caldas said, appearing out of nowhere.
“No thanks,” Kennicott said. “I’ve got to get to work. Bring Ari another croissant.”
“My pleasure.” Caldas pivoted on his heels and was gone.
Through the window, Kennicott could see the street brightening with the rising sun. “I assume that if you uncover material evidence, you’ll hand it over to me right away.”
“You know I will.”
“Amberlight,” Kennicott said. “You really think she’s innocent?”
“Her past plays both ways. It makes her a prime suspect, but it also makes her a perfect target for a set-up. I don’t think she’s guilty, and you don’t want to make the same mistake twice.”
This was Greene twisting the knife.
Caldas arrived with the second croissant. “Enjoy, Detective,” he said placing it in front of Greene.
“He loves them,” Kennicott said.
“Thanks a lot, Daniel,” Greene said, once Caldas was gone.
Kennicott shrugged. He took a deep breath. “Ari, get Amberlight to talk to me,” he said, standing to leave. This time, Greene didn’t try to stop him.
23
Alison had hardly slept all night, and this morning she was having trouble concentrating. And keeping her hands steady. She was tucked away on the back patio of Jimmy’s Café, one of her favourite places in Kensington Market, drinking an iced tea, but the tighter she gripped the tall glass, the more it shook.
Tea. It was another thing that reminded Alison of her mother, who was passionate about tea and how to make it properly. One particularly cold February morning this past winter, Alison had woken up early and found Ari in the kitchen, boiling water, a teapot set on the counter. She stopped in the doorway. He didn’t know she was there.
She watched him monitor the kettle and take it off the stove just before it boiled—the same way her mother had taught Alison to do—so as not to boil the oxygen out of the water. He poured some into the teapot, swirled it around to heat the pot, tossed the water in the sink, and put in two bags of white tea. He poured the hot water down the inside of the pot. “Never pour the water directly on the tea,” her mother had always said. “Let the bag come to the water.”
She watched him place the lid across the opening, not covering it completely. “Always let it steep for five minutes,” Mummy had instructed her, “but let it breathe a little.”
Ari turned to get a mug and noticed Alison for the first time.
In the two
months since she’d come to Canada, they’d slowly gotten to know each other. The one topic that they’d never broached was his relationship with her mother. She knew he was waiting for her to talk about it. He was respectful that way. Suddenly, it felt as if Mum was in the room with the two of them. It was time.
“It was like watching Mum, the way you made the tea,” she said.
“She was a good teacher.”
“How long were you together?”
“A year.”
A thought occurred to her that she’d never thought of before. “Where did you two live?”
He hesitated. Shrugged. “I was lucky. I got into the real estate market early. I bought this house twenty-five years ago.”
She took her head and laughed. “Well then, maybe this really is my home. Did mum like living here?”
He nodded. “She did. In the end she needed to go back to England. I respected her decision, but I couldn’t leave.”
“Your parents?”
He shrugged. “Your mother and I, we never fought.”
“Did you love her?”
“I don’t know if either of us was capable of love back then. We were good to each other.”
“You didn’t really answer my question.”
He opened a cupboard, got out a second mug, slid the lid in place on the teapot, poured two cups, and passed one to her.
“Of course I loved her,” he said at last. “And I was a fool not to realize it in time.”
That cup of tea had been comforting on such a cold winter morning. Now the iced tea in her hand felt cool. The humidity hadn’t let up, and even in the shade she was hot.
She had copies of the city’s four newspapers on the table in front of her. They all had stories about Livingston Fox’s murder, and the Toronto Sun featured the photo she’d taken of the body in the shed, with the rebar in his chest blurred out, on its front page. The image had gone viral online, and her blog was now trending on Twitter.
No one knew who’d taken the picture and who the Kensington Blogger was. Just her luck. She’d gotten an amazing scoop, a story that could make her journalism career, but she couldn’t put her name to it. What was she supposed to do now? Go to the police? With what? She didn’t have any evidence that would help them find the murderer. And she would probably be charged with breaking into the house on Augusta, maybe even for posting the picture online.
From her seat at the rear of the courtyard, she could see everyone who entered the cafe through the open back door. There was the usual morning mix of hipsters and aging hippies and other local regulars. A handsome man in a well-tailored suit came in, went straight to the counter, and talked to the barista. She recognized him. He was the police officer who’d come out of the gate by the shed when she was looking out the second-floor window. She looked down at the Toronto Star, at a photo of him giving a news conference yesterday: Detective Daniel Kennicott, the officer in charge of the case.
He must be looking for her. But how did he know she was here? Maybe the reporter, Persad, had given the police a description of her? Maybe someone tipped them off that she was a regular here? She could feel her heart pounding. There was nothing she could do to get away. She was stuck.
She opened the newspaper at a random page and held it up to hide her face. She was staring at what Canadians called the Sports Section. Sports, not sport, the way it was called in England. Just one of many little differences in language she was trying to get accustomed to. Most of the stories were about ice hockey, which Canadians simply called hockey. There weren’t many at all about soccer, their name for football, but there were lots about baseball. Ari had taken her and Grandpa Y to a game at the domed stadium, and she’d found it entirely bewildering.
Why hadn’t Kennicott come over to her yet? She lowered the newspaper enough to peer over the top. To her great relief, she saw he was walking out of the cafe carrying a paper coffee cup in his hand and two more in a cardboard carrier. Maybe he wasn’t looking for her. The crime scene was two blocks away. He must be headed over there.
She put the newspaper down and picked up her drink. Her hands were shaking more than ever, but she managed to take a sip. She couldn’t let herself get paranoid. That would freeze her. She wished she could talk to her mother about what to do. Here she was stranded in this strange city with a new but strange family. Ari. Grandpa Y. And who was she really? Was she the same Alison she’d been before her mother died? Or was she now the Kensington Blogger, the kind of person who could take a photo of a murdered man and post it for the world to see?
She had to get hold of Persad. She pulled out the reporter’s business card, then hesitated. How could she contact Persad without giving away her identity or her phone number or her email address?
She looked around and noticed for the first time the vines and petunias in containers lining the patio and the cut flowers on every table. The winter had been long and cold, but her mother was right about the humidity. Good for the flowers though.
Flowers.
That would work. Go low-tech.
Alison laughed out loud at the thought, and a young man who was reading a textbook at the table next to hers looked up. She grinned at him.
Ha! she thought. I guess I am Ari’s daughter after all. He’d be proud of me for this idea.
24
Greene knew the Tim Hortons coffee shop on Elm Street all too well. A few years earlier, a stray bullet had killed a four-year-old boy who was walking with his father through the parking lot of the coffee shop. He and Kennicott had been the detectives on the case, which had galvanized the city.
Greene had gotten to know the owners of the franchise, Mr. and Ms. Yuen, immigrants from Hong Kong who had put their life savings and years of work into the business. Fortunately for them, after the shooting the lure of coffee and doughnuts had proved stronger than people’s aversion to visiting the site of the tragedy, and the Yuens’ business had survived.
Whenever Greene visited, they offered him free tea or coffee, as Ms. Yuen did now.
“We’re happy always to see you, Detective,” she said.
“Happy to see you too.”
“You drink coffee now, or still tea?”
“Tea.”
“Free today,” she said.
“Thanks.” As always, he insisted on paying her two dollars and stuffed a five-dollar bill in the jar for a summer-camp fund. “My friend will be here soon. A police officer in uniform.”
“No problem,” Ms. Yuen said, putting the toonie into the cash register.
Greene took his cup and walked around to the tiny lunchroom in back. The Yuens had reserved it for him when he’d called half an hour earlier to let them know he needed to use it. He’d arranged to meet PC Lindsmore, whom he’d known since their days together in police college. The years of trust between them had broken apart after Greene was charged with murder. It was time to repair it.
Lindsmore came in, carrying two doughnuts in one of his meaty hands and a large coffee in the other. Greene pulled a chair back for him.
“Ari, good to see you. You surprised the heck out of me yesterday when you turned up at the building site.”
“I think I shocked Kennicott even more.”
Lindsmore plunked himself down. “How many more years can I do this crazy job?”
“How many more years of support payments do you have to make?”
“Don’t ask.” He pried the plastic top off his coffee and drank half of it in one gulp.
“How old is Carl now? Ten?”
“Good memory, Ari. Eleven. I see him Wednesday nights for two hours and every other Saturday for six, if his mother hasn’t made other plans for him or he doesn’t have a sore throat or any other excuse she can dream up to keep him away from me.”
Few cops made it through their careers without getting divorced, and Lindsmore’s had been particularly nasty.
“Hang in there.”
“You helped me a lot back then. I won’t forget it. I’m glad you’re
back in the city.”
“Kennicott’s mad that I didn’t get in touch with him earlier.”
“He’s young.”
Greene reached over and took one of the doughnuts.
“Since when did you start eating doughnuts?”
“There’s an exception to every rule.” Greene tore the doughnut in two and took a bite from the smaller piece. Then he sipped his tea, letting the silence between them settle in.
Lindsmore still hadn’t touched his food, which had to be some kind of record, Greene thought.
“Shit, Ari. Look.” Lindsmore sighed. “I didn’t mean to fuck you over before, when you were on bail. I knew in my heart you would never have killed Jennifer. I feel terrible about it. I know Kennicott does too.”
Greene chose his words carefully. “It was a bad time for all of us.”
He hadn’t entirely accepted Lindsmore’s apology. They both knew there was still a debt to be repaid.
Lindsmore picked up his doughnut and demolished it in three bites.
“I’m not just working construction,” Greene said.
Lindsmore eyed the half doughnut Greene hadn’t eaten yet. “You’re undercover, aren’t you, Ari?”
“No. I have no ties to the force. My old lawyer, Ted DiPaulo, has asked me to help out a suspect in the Fox murder.”
“Ari Greene, a PI?”
Greene grinned. “Nothing official.”
Lindsmore laughed. “Ari Greene doing community service.”
“Because he doesn’t want to see the wrong person charged or convicted.”
Lindsmore rubbed his large hands together. “Understood. You of all people know what it’s like.”
“Problem is I don’t have any access to police information.”
Lindsmore lowered his voice. “You know I’d do anything for you. But if I get fired, I got no salary, no pension, no support payments. That’s it, I’ll never see Carl again.”
“I know.”
“I want to help. But . . .”
Heart of the City Page 9