“Are you okay?” Kennicott asked her.
“Then Maxine is going to drive me to a place where I will be safe at last. My father doesn’t know anything about it, of course. He would be mad if he knew what I was really up to. I didn’t even pack a bag.”
“Is he the only one who knows you are meeting with me?”
“Nobody else, except Maxine.”
“How are your mother and father doing?”
“Kate is not our mother.” Gloria’s voice took on a new, firm tone.
“Oh. I didn’t realize.”
“Our mother died in childbirth, when Livingston was born.”
“I’m sorry.”
He remembered Karl Fox’s first words when Kennicott told him the news about Livingston: “He’s my only son.” Not “He’s our only son.”
“Kate seemed very unemotional about your brother’s death.”
“Kate is very unemotional about everything. She came to work at Foxhole as a masseuse when I was a little girl. It turned out she and my father were having an affair even before my mother died. She hated Livingston and she resents me.”
Gloria balled her hands up like a frustrated child.
“When Mom died I stopped eating. I was twelve. I got down to eighty-one pounds. They thought I was going to die. Maxine saved me. She doesn’t have kids and she treated Livingston and me as her own.”
“And your father?”
“He’s totally dependent on Kate. She’s ruined the centre. It was my mother’s dream. We used to be full all the time, even in winter. After she died, things were okay for a long time because my father was in charge, but bit by bit Kate took over. He could never stand up to her. Look at the place now. It’s a total failure.”
“Is that why you are leaving?”
“Livingston kept pleading with me to move into one of his buildings. But all the noise and the traffic here in the city, I just, just couldn’t do it.”
“I understand. Is that why you wanted to meet, to tell me this?”
She gave him a quizzical look. “No, no. I need to tell you about my father. You were kind when you came to talk to us at the centre. I thought you were the only one I could trust.”
“Anything that can help us find who killed Livingston is important.”
“That’s what I told Maxine. She didn’t think I should get involved. But when I insisted, she said I should ask if you were close to making an arrest.”
It was the question homicide detectives were asked all the time and never wanted to answer. He’d learned from Greene that the best response was All I can tell you is that we are working full out on this, and as soon as we can we’ll tell you first. It was the answer he’d given Kennicott when he was investigating Michael’s murder. And Kennicott was still waiting.
But Gloria seemed so vulnerable that he decided to tell her a white lie.
“You can tell Maxine we are very close to making an arrest,” he said. If only it were true, he thought.
She smiled for the first time since they’d met. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to hear that. She’s so upset. Livingston was like the baby she never had.”
Kennicott held himself still. Wait for her to talk, he told himself.
She unfolded one of her hands and smacked her fist into it. “You see,” she said, “last night, after the foolish midnight ceremony that Kate organized, my father confessed to me.”
“Confessed? What did he say?”
“He doesn’t want Kate to find out. You won’t tell her, will you?”
“Ms. Fox. This is a murder investigation. I can’t promise you that.”
She looked taken aback. “Detective,” she said, “I told Maxine I needed to talk to you before I leave because you need to know that my father is a weak man but he’s not a murderer. He loved Livingston in his own way and despite everything, I still love him. I know for certain that he didn’t kill my brother.”
“We’ve been told”—Kennicott spoke—“that he argued with Livingston when they had lunch on Friday.”
“They argued every time they had lunch. You don’t understand. When you came to our place he didn’t tell you this because Kate was there.”
“Tell me what?”
“After they had lunch he got on his bike.”
“We know that,” Kennicott said. “We found a video of him leaving the restaurant and heading north toward the building site.”
“But then he turned.”
“Turned?”
“Yes, that’s what I wanted to tell you. He told me to tell you he turned west on Queen Street and went to his favourite bike store, Duke’s.”
Kennicott knew the place. It was one of the oldest bike shops in the city. And not on the way to Kensington Market.
“Daddy had ordered this really expensive new saddle from England, and it had just arrived. And he bought new panniers and a new helmet. He said he was there for at least half an hour and then he rode home.”
“This could very helpful,” he said.
“He said you can talk to Gary, the owner. And look, I have the proof. He made a copy of the receipt for me to show you.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a photocopy of a Duke’s Bike Shop receipt. Kennicott examined it. It was time-stamped 2:35 p.m. This evidence, easy to confirm, would provide Karl Fox with an alibi.
“He hid everything he’d bought inside his old panniers,” she said.
Kennicott thought back to Karl Fox bursting into the room at the centre, carrying two old panniers and a beat-up helmet.
“Who was he hiding it from?” he asked, although now he knew the answer.
She shook her head. “Kate, of course. She despises cycling, and he rides all the time. Livingston and I used to joke that he does it to get away from her. He was always asking Livingston for cash.”
“Cash?”
“It had to be cash. Kate started monitoring his credit cards years ago, right down to the last penny. This was the only way he could stop her from finding out how much he spent on his cycling equipment. That’s what Daddy and Livingston used to fight about all the time. Amazing, isn’t it? My father thought nothing of cheating on my mother, but he is afraid to spend ten cents without that woman’s approval.”
58
“Please excuse me for barging in like this,” Greene said to Anthony Carpenter as he strode into the lawyer’s office. A silver-haired woman, wearing a polyester dress and white gloves, was sitting across the desk from Carpenter.
Carpenter looked stunned. Apoplectic.
“And excuse me, ma’am,” Greene said. “I am a police officer, and I have some urgent business with Mr. Carpenter. It could be a matter of life and death. I need about fifteen minutes of his time.”
“But Mr. Carpenter is my lawyer.”
“Yes, I know. And an excellent one too.”
The woman made no move to leave her seat.
“Detective, you don’t have an appointment,” Carpenter said.
Greene took a deep breath. “I know that. I’ll be happy to pay all the lawyers’ fees today for Ms.—” He turned to the client.
“Mrs. Natalie Xynnis,” she said. “If you are prepared to cover my legal fees for today, I’ll step out, but only for ten minutes.”
“Thank you. And again, I apologize.”
She picked up a worn leather purse from the floor beside her and walked out.
Carpenter closed the file he had on his desk, crossed over to the cabinet in the corner, and put it inside. It seemed to take him forever to pull out another file and return to his desk.
“I’ve done the research as per your request,” he said.
“And?”
Carpenter took out the list of Livingston’s properties that Greene had left with him. Then, one by one, moving a ruler down at a snail’s pace, he silently read the address of each property and made a little pencil mark beside it. Greene looked at his watch. By the time Carpenter got to the last one, five and a half minutes had gone.
At last, Carpenter spoke. “If a purchaser somehow had foreknowledge that Fox planned to build a condominium at a certain location, then if he or she was able to buy the said neighbouring property in advance, that would be an excellent investment.”
“Exactly. And charge the builders extra because the cranes were casting a shadow over their property.”
“It took me three point one hours to do this research. Take a look.”
“What did you find?” Greene asked, scanning the printout.
“In the last five months, all seven houses adjoining Fox construction sites, either presently under construction or planned to be under construction, have been purchased in the exact same manner. Flipped three times in trust, always with different lawyers.”
“Amazing,” Greene said.
“I would say there is a distinct pattern here. I had planned to contact you once I finished my meeting with Ms. Xynnis, by the way.”
“This means it had to be someone with inside knowledge?”
“It certainly appears that way.”
“I can’t thank you enough,” Greene said, grabbing the file.
“Be sure to pay for Ms. Xynnis’s ten minutes.”
“Happily.”
“You might like to know that her husband left her three stores on the Danforth and four houses in the neighbourhood that have doubled in value in the last five years. She’s worth approximately twenty million dollars. And her biggest complaint is that the cost of parking on the street has just gone up.”
59
When he got home, Kennicott found Breaker waiting for him in the kitchen, tearing lettuce and making a salad. She was wearing a pair of his red shorts and a black T-shirt and was drinking from her ever-present water bottle. He’d called her yesterday afternoon after they’d found Bassante’s body and told her what had happened.
“Oh my God,” she’d said. “Daniel.”
“It’s horrible.”
“Claudio was such a lovely man. He has two beautiful daughters.”
“You knew him?”
“Of course. Everyone knows everyone in the construction business. He was one of the best site foremen in the city. Now you see why I’m afraid?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“We don’t know yet. Don’t leave my flat. The squad car will stay outside my place and you’ll be safe there.”
In the background he’d heard another voice. And wind. What was going on? It sounded as if she was outside.
“Did you leave my apartment?”
“I’m in the backyard with your landlord, Mr. Federico. We’ve been planting tomatoes all afternoon.”
“You should know that Detective Darvesh tracked down a video from a store on Queens Quay of you jogging past it on Friday afternoon,” Kennicott said. “You don’t have to worry about your alibi.”
“I never worried about my alibi,” she said, her voice cold. “Did you?”
He paused. “I didn’t worry about it. But I had to do my job.”
“Is that why you’re letting me stay here? So you can keep an eye on me?”
It was hard to tell if she was angry or amused.
“That wasn’t the only reason.”
“Fair enough,” she said. Then she laughed.
“We need to plant now,” he heard Mr. Federico say in the background.
“Hey, Daniel, your landlord wants me to get back to work,” she said.
“Good idea. He’s a slave driver. I’ll see you later.”
Later in the evening he’d called her again.
“How you doing?” he’d asked.
“Going a bit stir-crazy, stuck here like this, not being able to run. The Federicos insisted on having me over for dinner. How are you doing? You must be exhausted.”
“Too busy to be tired. Thanks for asking.”
Early this morning, he’d called for a third time.
“How was your night?” he asked.
“A bit lonely. And yours?”
Kennicott grinned. “I could think of more enjoyable ways to spend my time.”
“You’ll have to let me know some of them one day. What’s going on with the investigation?”
“We’re going back to square one. Sometimes you overlook obvious things when you’re charging around. I have a favour to ask you. You knew Livingston very well. Can you make a list of the ten words you would use to describe him? We can go over it when I get home. Who knows where that might lead.”
“Sure. Anything I can do to help.”
A few minutes ago he’d called her a fourth time to tell her he was on his way. His heart was thumping when he walked in the door.
She gave him a hug. They held each other for a long time.
“It’s awful,” she whispered at last, holding him tight. “I keep thinking of Claudio’s girls.”
“So do I.”
She kissed him on the side of his neck and let go of him.
“Can you tell me anything about what happened?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
She had a pad of paper on the counter. “I made my list,” she said. Her handwriting was extremely neat.
“Here are my top ten Livingston Fox characteristics,” she said. “Smart, ruthless, inventive, obsessive about time, obsessive about order, funny, engaging, secretive, warm when he wanted to be, and tireless.”
He stared at the list. Something he’d heard about Fox in the last three days didn’t fit with what she’d written. He thought back to Fox’s office. The work shed. How everything was in order. What Amberlight had said about the stray pencil they’d found on the floor of the shed. How he’d said not to worry about it.
“Obsessive about order,” he asked Breaker. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Everything always in place. It used to drive Adam Lewis nuts at the Omni. Adam can’t get through a morning without spilling something on himself. Fox was always perfectly groomed. And at the table he’d be cleaning up, stacking the dishes, wiping the table with his napkin. His office was like that too.”
“If there was a pencil on the floor of the shed, and he’d told someone not to bother picking it up—”
“No way.”
“A lot of people have told us about his obsession with time. If on Friday he had a meeting and didn’t set the timer on his phone to end it—”
“Fox? Impossible.”
Kennicott kept looking down the list. What else? What else? “Tireless,” he whispered.
“I could have put that as number one,” Breaker said. “Fox had more energy than anyone I’ve ever known.”
“He told his fiancée when he spoke to her in Japan that he was tired. That was on Friday afternoon a few minutes before he met with Amberlight. She said that too. Think, on Friday morning at Omni did he seem off?”
“It really didn’t occur to me until now but he was much quieter than usual. He told me he was worn out. He’d got up early to talk to his fiancée in Japan. I remember he was yawning when Adam was taking the group photo. Then he had his eyes closed. Adam had to take five or six shots to get a good one.”
Kennicott thought back to Lewis flipping through the photos on his phone, looking for the best shot because Fox’s eyes were closed in almost all of them.
“Did he eat anything unusual?”
“No. Just the mushroom soup, like we all do. Lewis insists. And he was drinking from one of his water bottles the way he always did.”
She picked up her own bottle and shook it. Kennicott could hear it was almost empty. “Hydrating, like I’ve been doing all day especially with this heat wave.”
Kennicott stared at her water bottle. He thought about the water bottles Fox kept in the back of the Rolls-Royce. How could he have missed it?
“What, Daniel?” Breaker asked. “What?”
He felt her hand on his.
“What time is it?”
“It’s eleven-forty, why?”
He pulled his phone
out and jabbed Greene’s number.
He kissed Breaker on the top of her head. “Thanks,” he said, then ran out the door.
60
Alison was upset and she was scared.
Yesterday afternoon, Grandpa Y had told her the terrible news that Ari’s friend Claudio Bassante had been murdered in the same place and in the same way as Livingston Fox. Ari called and said he’d be working all night. He’d asked Grandpa Y to sleep over at the house, and he’d arranged for a police car to be stationed outside.
This was unbelievable.
She’d checked her blog. It had gone crazy. People were posting all kinds of theories about who the killer was, speculating that it was one of the developers who was competing with Fox, or one of the condo board owners who was suing him, or one of the protesters from the march on Friday, or some criminal gang who were using his condos for dealing drugs or money laundering.
She’d stayed up all night making notes, reading the new blog posts as they arrived, eating bowl after bowl of granola, more as a distraction than from hunger.
Now it was morning. She couldn’t think of anything else to do, so she reloaded the two hours of raw TV footage of the demonstration on Friday. Maybe there was some clue she’d missed. She changed her settings to play the video at maximum speed and started to watch it again. The protest flew by. The marchers, the drummer, the people with babies, the people with dogs, the police marching down the sidewalk, making sure the protesters stayed on the street. All except her, sneaking across the sidewalk to the house on Augusta.
Wait a second.
On her phone she pulled up the three pictures of the shed she’d taken from the second-floor window. Detective Kennicott had looked at them and hadn’t seen anything significant. That was because no one had thought of this.
She looked at the photo that showed the hoarding and the alley below it. She zoomed in on the spot she wanted to see.
Wait, wait.
She went back to the picture she’d posted, the one with the clear view through the shed window. Instead of focusing on Fox’s dead body, she zoomed in on the water bottles on the desk. There were two, one blue and one orange. There should have been three. Where was the yellow one? Fox always had his three-pack of bottles with him when he met her at the restaurant.
Heart of the City Page 21