01 - Old City Hall

by Robert Rotenberg

  “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.

  30

  Daniel 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.

  “Where were you when this happened?”

  Peel flicked the gum into his mouth. “Well—”

  “Where?”

  “In their condo.”

  “That’s impossible,” Kennicott shot back. “I’ve watched all the videos from the lobby.”

  “I’d go in through the basement. There was a door she’d leave open. Stick a brick in it.”

  Peel and Torn together? Hard to imagine a more unlikely pair. “How often would you see her?” Kennicott asked. It was amazing the things people did with their lives.

  “Every Tuesday morning,” Peel said. His voice flat now, resigned. “Eight o’clock.”

  “Eight o’clock,” Kennicott echoed. He remembered the chart he’d done of Torn’s week. The perfect way to have an affair. “Just when the whole country knows Brace is in the studio,” he said.

  Peel shot Kennicott a glance. He seemed to snap out of his sadness. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was angry.

  “Kennicott, get your mind out of the gutter.”

  Kennicott laughed. “Peel, you should talk. You’re the one who likes to brag about his conquests.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Katherine,” Peel said. He was acting genuinely upset.

  Kennicott had had enough of his charade. “Peel, give me a break. You sneaked in once a week to see her when Brace was on air . . .”

  “Brace knew all about it. He encouraged it.”

  “Encouraged it? Peel, you’re too much.”

  Peel clawed another piece of gum out of his blister pack and jammed it into his mouth. “It’s not what you think. Katherine had a problem. Not many people knew about it. I was helping her.”

  It was Kennicott’s turn to get angry. “Peel. You were having an affair with her and Brace found out, and now you’re trying to cover your—”

  “Shut up, Kennicott,” Peel said. “We met at AA. I was her sponsor. For the first year, I only knew her first name. I didn’t have a clue who she was. Eventually she started to talk. That’s how I met Brace.”

  Peel chewed his gum hard.

  “Katherine just kept relapsing,” he said. “It was very bad. We thought a job might help her self-esteem. First step.” He spit his barely chewed gum into a snowbank.

  Kennicott thought about how the little man had jiggled his ice-filled glass. How he’d drunk it all in one big gulp. Like a real drinker.

  “How long have you been on the wagon?” he asked.

  Peel glanced at him. “Five years. It was bad. I almost lost everything.”

  Kennicott nodded.

  “I don’t know anything about how she ended up dead. But you want to put me on the stand to bury Katherine a second time, go right ahead.” He zipped up his jacket, making a cool, swishing sound. “It will be on your conscience, not mine.” Peel yanked open the heavy door and disappeared into the warm chalet.

  A moment later the door closed with a loud clank. Kennicott looked across the darkened millionaires’ parking lot and knew it was going to be a long, cold walk back to his car.

  31

  The worst thing about the drive out of Toronto was the endless traffic. Here it was just past 11:30 and you’d think rush hour would be over. Especially since he was headed out of town. Instead, Ari Greene was sitting in a traffic jam on the Don Valley Parkway, heading northeast out of the city. No wonder the suburbanites who had to drive this every day referred to it as the Don Valley Parking Lot.

  Forty minutes later, when he finally got to the end of the highway and turned onto a two-lane country road, everything changed. The cars thinned out, and unlike in the city, where there was only a hint of winter, the woods were filled with snow. For the next two hours, as he drove north, then east, then north again, the landscape grew even whiter. But the roads were in pristine condition. In Toronto a few inches of snow could linger on side streets for days, but up north they took good care of their roads.

  The only delay was a bad patch of construction on the highway just before he got to his destination. So it was almost three o’clock when he pulled into the parking lot of the Hardscrabble Café. Huge mounds of snow were piled up on all sides, somehow making the lot feel like an enclosed bunker.

  Inside, Greene smelled the now-familiar scent of fresh-baked bread. He’d read that smell is the only fully formed sense we have when we’re born, and one of the last senses to go before we die. Often he asked witnesses, trying to recall an event, if they could remember the smell of a place. He found that, like a song on a car radio when something unusual happens, a scent could fix a point in time in a witness’s mind. It was surprisingly effective.

  Throughout his long drive north Greene had been preoccupied with the phone call he’d gotten from Kennicott about McGill’s fingerprints on Brace’s million-dollar contract offer from Howard Peel.

  Greene replayed in his mind his first meeting with McGill at her café back in December. He remembered how he’d watched her wipe down the tables. How surprised she was to see he was still there. How she reacted when he called her Mrs. Brace and identified himself.

  “Shit,” she’d said. The word seemed so out of place from this proper, highly disciplined woman. She’d stopped and looked him straight in the eye. “I guess I knew someone would show up sooner or later.”

  “I didn’t want to talk to you in front of your customers, but w
e couldn’t find a phone number for you,” he’d said, and she’d put her hand on his shoulder: “I don’t have a phone, Detective Greene.”

  “What if someone needs to reach you?” Greene had asked.

  With an easy confidence McGill replied, “You can always send me a letter, Detective. It takes just two days from Toronto.”

  She’d smiled a warm smile and laughed a bit more. “You get stuck in that construction on the highway?” she’d asked.

  “For half an hour,” he’d told her, and she’d shaken her head and said, “It’s been two years. They promised us it would take nine months. Doesn’t help business, I can tell you that.”

  “I just have some questions for you,” Greene had said, and with a nod McGill pulled out a chair and sat down. She reached into her apron and extracted a pack of cigarettes, crinkling the box.

  Sarah McGill swears and she smokes, he’d thought. There was something surprisingly charming about it.

  McGill pulled the plastic off the cigarette pack, opened the lid, and hit the bottom corner, trying to get a cigarette out. It wouldn’t come. She put the pack down.

  “Everyone up here smokes, Detective. I began a few months ago. Pretty strange, don’t you think, for a sixty-year-old woman to start smoking for the first time in her life.”

  “Doesn’t look like you’re very good at it,” he said, pointing to the pack.

  McGill grinned. She held up her left hand. “Lost the finger when I was a kid. My dad took me on a tour of the mine and I poked around where I wasn’t supposed to. I was too embarrassed as a teenager to hold a cigarette, so I was probably the only kid in town who didn’t smoke.” She shrugged and picked up the pack again. “I’ll quit soon. What do you need to know?”

  They spoke for about an hour. The story seemed pretty straightforward. When Brace and McGill’s oldest child, Kevin junior, was two-and-a-half years old, he was diagnosed with severe autism. For years they struggled as their son descended into his own silent world. When puberty hit, he became big and violent. By this time their daughters Amanda and Beatrice were eight and six years old, and it was no longer safe to have him at home. Children’s Aid took him into care. The stress of it all soon ended their marriage. Brace moved in with Katherine Torn, and McGill decided to come to Haliburton.