If only Summers knew that there was nothing I wanted more than to see Kevin Brace out on bail, Fernandez thought, his head spinning with the sudden turn of events that had left his carefully laid plans in tatters.
“It won’t be necessary for Mr. Fernandez to reconsider his position,” Parish said, standing up. “I’ll let him know if my instructions change. Thank you very much, Your Honor.” She extended her arm to shake Summers’s hand. Slightly bewildered, the judge stood and thrust out his hand. Seconds later, she was out the door.
Finding himself suddenly alone with the judge, Fernandez rose awkwardly. He proffered a quick handshake and hustled out.
Parish was already far down the hallway, well ahead of him. Further ahead than she’ll ever know, Fernandez thought as he quickened his pace to catch up with her.
23
Ari Greene drove slowly up the quiet residential street. Almost every house was bedecked with Christmas lights, either on trees in the yards or in the front windows. They were small, mostly boxy little two-story homes, but every block or two, one had been knocked down to make way for new so-called monster homes, which inevitably featured garish stonework and overly wide driveways filled with basketball nets and equally oversize cars. Totally out of scale with their neighbors, the houses stood out like mismatched pieces on a chessboard.
A crossing guard dressed in a full-length bright orange raincoat was making his way across the street, his lunchtime work with the children going back to school finished.
It felt nice to be in an old-fashioned neighborhood—one of the things Greene liked the most about the city. When he was a kid, he used to sit in the front window of his family’s little bungalow and wait for his dad to come home from the shop. Every day it was the same. His father would walk slowly up the street, his shoulders slumped from a long day. There was a stout birch tree on their small front lawn, and no matter what time he came home, his father would stop in front of the tree, put his hand on it, and stand still for a long moment. His daily ritual. Then he’d come inside.
One morning when he was sick at home with the chicken pox, Greene asked his father, “Daddy, why do you stop at the tree every day before you come inside?”
His father smiled like a man who’d been caught with a little secret.
“Before I come in to my family,” his father said, “I want to leave all my problems outside. So I put them on the tree.”
Now he understood. “Is that why the tree’s so small, Daddy?”
“Maybe,” his father said. “And that’s why you’re going to be so big and strong.”
When Greene hit the six-foot mark in grade ten, it occurred to him that his father’s prediction had worked.
He drove past number 37, did a U-turn, and took a moment to study the house from across the street. It was a two-story bungalow with leaded-glass Tudor windows. A slightly battered Honda was parked in the narrow driveway, and behind it a van with the words LEASIDE PLUMBING written in bold script on its side.
Good, Greene thought as he got out of his car. Looks like she’s home. He walked casually up the front walk and rang the bell. Off to the right was a small wooden door that had been nailed shut. That would have been the milk box, a relic from a gentler time.
Footsteps approached rapidly and the door was flung open. A tall brunette woman with deep brown eyes, just like her father’s, stood in the door. She wore an oversize sweatshirt, with the words ROOTS CANADA prominently displayed, and a pair of stretch yoga pants over her protruding belly. He could hear the sound of a hammer banging on pipes.
“You the electrician?” she said, peering behind Greene, looking for his van.
“Afraid not, Ms. Brace,” Greene said. He had his badge in his hand, and he discreetly showed it to her. “Detective Ari Greene, Toronto Homicide. Could I speak with you for a few moments?”
Her face fell in a deep frown. “I need the electrician in the next hour,” she said. “Do you know how hard it is to get a plumber the week before Christmas?”
“Close to impossible, I imagine,” Greene said.
“Well, I’ve got one working downstairs. But now I need the electrician to hook up the power. They call it nesting, Detective. First child, and I’m renovating the basement. Due in a month, and my husband just had to go with his buddies on their annual ski trip to Mont Tremblant. And oh, there’s the little matter that my father is in jail, just before his first grandchild’s about to be born. So sure, I’ve got loads of time to speak to you.”
Greene smiled. Said nothing. Always watch what witnesses do, not what they say. Or even better, what they don’t do. Despite the chaos in her life, Amanda Brace had not slammed the door in his face. He thought of the call to her from the Don made on Brace’s behalf. How her father had refused to talk to her. Greene was pretty sure she was as eager to ask him questions as he was to interview her.
“Come on in for a minute,” she said finally, as if her own good breeding won out over all competing emotions. “I made some coffee for all the trades. Do you want some?”
“No thanks,” Greene said.
“I better check that badge again,” she said. “A cop who refuses free coffee.”
Greene smiled and motioned to the small living room to the left of the hall. “Can we sit and talk in here?”
“Sure,” she said, closing the door behind him. The small house was remarkably neat. He noticed a framed picture over the mantel—a cover from a professional-looking corporate magazine. Amanda Brace was in front of a group of stylish-looking young people, all wearing shirts with various ROOTS logos on them. In the background there were rows of perfectly stacked boxes and binders. A headline read ALL IN ORDER and the subtitle said AMANDA BRACE AND HER TEAM KEEP ROOTS ON TRACK.
Brace took a seat against the far wall, well positioned to be able to look out the little bay window for the renegade electrician. Greene took the seat facing her.
“I should tell you, Detective,” she said, tying her hair back, “I already spoke to my father’s lawyer. She sent me to her partner, Ted DiPaulo, who gave me what he called independent legal advice. Wouldn’t charge me for his time. Let’s be blunt. I don’t have to talk to you at all, do I?”
Greene nodded. “That’s true.”
“I can just tell you to get lost, and that’s the end of it.”
“You can tell me to get lost,” he said.
She seemed to hesitate for a minute. “Look, it’s an open secret that I hated my stepmother. I was nine when she—” Brace took her eyes off Greene and looked hopefully over his shoulder at the street. Greene heard a car pass slowly.
“I did a word jumble in grade four and called her my ‘pest’ mother. They made me see the school psychologist and all that. It was nineteen years ago. All I can tell you is that my dad doesn’t have a violent bone in his body. Never. You want to make him out to be this horrible, nasty man. Well, that’s not him.”
Greene nodded.
“That’s all I wanted to say. Okay?”
Greene said nothing. She didn’t make any move to escort him out. He heard another car approach and slow down in front of the house.
“And you want to know my whereabouts on Sunday night and Monday morning, I imagine.”
Greene nodded again. Sometimes the best question was just silence.
“You know, it’s funny. I had ‘Kill Katherine’ on my to-do list, but I just didn’t get to it. Instead I was home patching the basement walls.”
“When’s the last time you saw your dad?” Greene asked.
“Our weekly dinner, like always,” she said, lifting herself a bit out of her seat. “It’s the electrician. Thank my raging hormones.”
“Where?”
“He’s right outside,” she said, pointing to the street.
“I mean the dinner,” Greene said.
“The dinner?” Brace said. “Oh.” She seemed to have almost forgotten he was still there. “Our usual place. Look, I do have to ask you to leave. Sorry.” She pulled herself
up sideways from the chair. “If I miss this guy, we’re sunk.”
Greene stood up. “Thanks for your time. I know you’re busy.”
“Busy? I don’t have a clue how we’re going to fit a baby into our lifestyle.”
In the hallway, just as he pulled the door open, Brace touched his arm. “Look, you can hate someone with all your might but still put up with them. That’s how I handled Katherine. It was the best I could do. No one’s happy she’s dead. I hear her family’s doing a private cremation. Nobody in the world knows my father as well as I do. There’s no way he did this. No way.”
“Thanks for letting me in,” Greene said. “Many people wouldn’t have.”
“Blame my mother,” she said. “Good manners.”
Out of the corner of his eye he could see a man in overalls lumbering up the driveway carrying a large plastic toolbox.
“Good luck with your plumbing,” he said.
She suddenly threw her head back and started to laugh. It was a loud, enchanting laugh.
“I need it. I’m peeing once an hour.”
In the narrow vestibule door he turned sideways to let the electrician in.
“All the best with the baby,” Greene said.
“I can handle it,” Brace said.
Greene had no doubt that Amanda Brace could handle just about anything.
There was an old saying: When a husband is having an affair, the wife’s always the last to know, Greene thought as he walked toward his car. But what about a father and his daughter. When Daddy’s a bad guy, isn’t she the last one to know? Or did Amanda Brace really know her father better than anyone else?
24
The woman at the steel reception desk had the look of a fashion model. Daniel Kennicott knew the look. Models had a studied distance about them. They never quite made eye contact. Always seeming slightly distracted, as if their conversation with you was only a small part of what was going on in their mind. This woman had long black hair, beautiful Eurasian features, and even though she was sitting down, he could tell she had fabulous long legs. The desk she sat behind was massive. Highly buffed steel. The only thing on it was a laptop computer, with the logo PARALLEL BROADCASTING on the back of the screen. A tiny headset was attached to her left ear.
“Can I help you?” she said, glancing at Kennicott with her gray eyes.
“Daniel Kennicott. I’m here to see Mr. Peel for a five o’clock appointment,” he said. “I’m a few minutes early.”
She touched something on her computer, her eyes now fixed at a point just over his shoulder. “Shirani, please come to reception.” Even though the woman barely whispered into her mouthpiece, her voice echoed loudly over an unseen sound system. “Officer Kennicott for Mr. Peel’s five o’clock.”
Kennicott smiled. He was out of uniform, and he hadn’t told her he was a cop.
A glass door opened, and a tall woman holding a clear plastic clipboard walked in. Her skin was deep black. She had an elegant, thin nose, high cheekbones, thin lips, and a diamond stud in her left nostril.
“Good afternoon, Officer Kennicott,” she said, extending her hand. Her fingernails were painted in an intricate pattern. “Shirani Theoraja, Mr. Peel’s executive assistant. Please come this way.”
The offices of Parallel Broadcasting occupied the top floor of an old converted warehouse that had been stripped down to its foundation, like a carcass with every scrap of meat torn from its bones. The ceilings were high, with exposed ductwork running overhead, the walls sandblasted brick, and the floor hard concrete painted black. Kennicott followed Theoraja down the central hallway. Offices on either side had large windows and glass doors, letting in a flood of light. The desks were made of the same steel construction as the one at reception, and each had the same laptop with the Parallel logo. There didn’t seem to be a piece of wood anywhere.
Theoraja walked fast, her high heels clicking on the concrete floor. The sound reverberated, but the people in the glass-door offices didn’t even look up.
At the end of the long hall, there was a dark mahogany door, heavy and ornate. The name HOWARD PEEL was written in cheap-looking brass letters. Theoraja gave a confident rap.
“Yep,” a gravelly voice called from inside.
“Mr. Peel, Officer Kennicott is here. He’s ten minutes early for his five o’clock.”
There was no sound for a few moments, and then the door swung open. A short man stood inside. His frizzy hair was a strange, almost orange color, and there were plugs in the front of his scalp, evidence of a recent transplant. He wore a button-down white shirt with the top three buttons undone—exposing a plague of graying chest hair—and a pair of cowboy boots, which seemed to make him look even smaller. His little eyes were the only attractive point on his face, an unexpected deep blue.
“Well, Officer Kennicott, how ya doing?” he said, extending a pudgy hand. “Howie Peel. I’m supposed to run this joint. Come on in.”
He escorted Kennicott in as the door closed. Peel’s big corner office was unlike the others on the floor. He had a large wood desk and beat-up-looking furniture. There was an old Underwood typewriter on a battered credenza. The windows were covered by dusty brown drapes.
“Can you believe that Shirani?” Peel said as he sat in one of the two chairs facing his desk and motioned Kennicott to the one beside it. “There weren’t women like that in the town I grew up in on the Prairies. We had one Chinese restaurant and some native kids in rags out on the reserve. Everyone else was whiter than a farmer’s field in February.”
Kennicott nodded. He’d done some reading about Howard Peel, president and CEO of Parallel Broadcasting. Every article painted the same picture of the man: a master salesman, loose-lipped, said the most outrageous things, but everyone seemed to like him.
“Shirani’s gorgeous but touchy,” Peel said. “Ouch. She’s Tamil. What did I know? I hired her, her friends. One day I hire another Sri Lankan woman named Indira. I figured she’d fit right in. The next morning Shirani and her gang are in my office. They’re all going to quit. ‘What’s the problem?’ I ask. Turns out Indira’s Sinhalese; Shirani and her troupe are all Tamil. I get my history lesson. The former Tamil prime minister killed by Sinhalese rebels. The Tamils’ houses and tea farms burned. Shirani—those black eyes would melt chocolate. ‘All right, all right,’ I say. ‘No more Indira.’”
Kennicott nodded. He’d also read that Peel could talk your ear off. He decided to wait until the short man ran out of gas.
Peel seemed to finally notice Kennicott’s silence and slapped him on the knee. “Enough about me and the beautiful young women who work for Parallel. What can I do for you?”
“I’m involved in the murder investigation of Ms. Katherine Torn,” Kennicott said.
“You see the contract I offered that guy? A million bucks, thirty-six weeks, no Mondays. Everything he wanted. I even threw in a limo. Good thing he didn’t sign, or I’d be paying him to broadcast from the Don Jail.” Peel chuckled. It was a thin, reedy laugh. “Come to think of it, it might have been a good angle. Great way to take on all those damn shock jocks.”
“Why didn’t Brace sign the contract?” Kennicott asked.
“Why? How should I know why?”
“What about Katherine Torn? You ever meet her?”
“Yep. She was in my office with Brace just last week.”
Kennicott nodded. He thought of Peel’s crushed business card in Torn’s wallet. “Last Wednesday afternoon?”
“Sounds right. I’ll ask Shirani.”
“She want him to sign it?”
“Who knows?” Peel rubbed his hands together. “What’d you think of the contract? You used to be a lawyer. Worked for Lloyd Granwell.”
Suddenly the little man’s friendly banter had an edge to it. He hadn’t really answered the question. Clearly he wanted Kennicott to know that he’d done his homework.
Ever since he’d become a cop, Kennicott had heard quips like this. When he took the job, Chief Charlton
had held a press conference. Made a big deal about Kennicott’s being the first lawyer to join the force. He had tried to duck the publicity, but it followed him. The next day, his face was on the cover of all four major papers.
“I didn’t want any of this,” Kennicott had said to Detective Greene.
“Charlton is a master with the press,” Greene had said. “You’ve just been encoded into the collective DNA of the city.”
Of course Peel, like anyone of any influence in Toronto, knew Granwell, Kennicott’s old mentor. “The contract seemed pretty straightforward,” Kennicott said, meeting Peel’s eyes. “Why was Torn at the meeting?”
“My idea. I’m an old sales guy. The best way to close a deal is to bring in the spouse. I figured a million bucks would convince her it was a great deal.”
“But it didn’t?”
He shrugged. “He didn’t sign. And look at Brace now. Waived his bail. I hear he doesn’t say a word in prison.”
“Who told you that?” Kennicott asked.
“Don’t be fooled by this fancy fucking office,” Peel said. “I started as a beat reporter for a small-town radio station. I have my sources.”
Kennicott kept his face blank. What Peel was doing was very smart. Like a good journalist. Tossing out some information from a source and hoping Kennicott would confirm it. Kennicott didn’t move.
“Doesn’t jail sound wonderful?” Peel said, once it became clear that Kennicott wasn’t going to say another word. The short man got up from his chair and began to pace. “Meals made for you. Sit around and play bridge all day. Read the sports section to your heart’s content. Now Brace doesn’t have to interview some housewife from St. John who’s collected a thousand bottle caps to donate to the local hospital charity. Or listen to a high school band from New Liskeard play ‘O Canada’ with Popsicle sticks. He must be happy as a clam.”
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