by Howard Engel
“She put up with a lot from me over the years: all sorts of abuse. Maybe the physical kind was the easiest to take. She saw me through black moods, dry spells, moodiness, drinking bouts, depression. What the hell can I say? She deserved the settlement she got.”
“How did you two meet?”
“Moira was a champion fencer at university. I was a pair of padded shoulders on the line of scrimmage. Now she wears the shoulders.”
“I meant Cath.”
“Up at Secord. I was giving a short course on crime fiction. She was in the class.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No! Nothing like that! 1 wasn’t ever alone with her. She struck me as bright, a good student. That’s all! I didn’t see her again until she began to work at CXAN.”
“When was that? She’s been there for over a year.”
“It was soon after she started. My publisher arranged a promotion appearance on TV; Cath was the assigned interviewer. I guess you could say the interview is still going on. We met out of town for most of the year. Toronto, mostly, but there was Buffalo and Niagara Falls.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s not an episode I’m proud of. But it happened.”
“I’m not your father confessor, McStu. Things like that happen all the time. People in white hats, people in black hats. Doesn’t necessarily make you into a bad guy.”
“I suppose it will all be kosher when we make it legal in the spring. Naturally, it won’t ever be okay with some. But it will at least stop some of the hounding that’s been going on.”
“There’s a lot of that?”
“Sure. Midnight phone calls, anonymous letters on lined paper, words written in spray paint on my car. We’ve both had our fill. Even Orv Wishart over at the TV station has had a few surprises in his mail. But, I’ll say this for him, he’s stuck by Cath. He’s never let on that a minority of her public didn’t approve of her private life.”
“You’re talking about racism? I just want to get this clear.”
“Sure. Nobody gives a damn about two grown-ups sharing pillows when they’re the same colour.”
“How do you know about Wishart?”
“He told me and made me promise not to tell Cath.”
“For a man of his reputation, he hasn’t done badly by Cath. Why doesn’t she like him?”
“Usual reasons. He crowds her, appears to be taking advantage of the employer/employee relationship.”
“Has he tried to force himself on her?”
“That’s the impression I got. She didn’t go into details, but I don’t think she’d lie about a thing like that.” I didn’t quite believe this. I don’t know why, but there was a tin note in it somewhere.
This conversation on the steps was interrupted by Anna who was looking for me. She wanted to show me the snow from the window of the front bedroom. With the pile of coats loading the bed like pelts in a Hudson’s Bay outpost and catching the light from the window, we looked out onto the snow. I now realized how long I’d been talking to McStu. The snow was burying the cars, covering them so that they looked like they’d been dipped in white chocolate. Heavy flakes were still coming down and there was no sign of a let-up.
“We’ll be snowed in in the morning,” I said.
Anna put an arm around me and said: “Who cares? I’ve got a tray of lasagna in your fridge. We can survive for days.”
“We have to get there first.” She gave me a kiss for my clear-sightedness and we began excavating for our coats.
A few minutes later, I remember feeling the cold snow on my face and kissing Anna again and making an angel in the snow, while Anna laughed herself silly before bottling me up in her car for a slippery ride back to town.
Much, much later, I saw the snow blocking the lower portion of my own windows. I’d crept out of bed. The moon was shining on the street. For a moment, I thought it was getting light out, but it was just the moon. Cars outside were buried, trees were shrouded in white. Nothing was stirring. I smiled to myself when I remembered where the words had come from. As I turned back to the bed, I thanked whatever powers there be in the world and beyond it for the bump under the covers on the left side of the bed. Then I got back in and tried to close my eyes, eyes that kept flashing back to the events of the morning, and surrender myself to another couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep.
TWENTY
Somewhere there was an aroma of coffee and a feeling of moving about. Instead of opening my eyes, I settled back into sleep again. The smell of coffee and the comforting feeling of bustle around me gave me a sensation of security and peace. It was an illusion, of course, and was exploded by the sudden awakening of the telephone.
Cooperman,” I said, trying to sound alert. I looked around and saw that all signs of Anna had fled. I sat up.
“Savas. You awake?”
“Barely. What’s up?”
“I think I’m going to have to bring your buddy Kogan into this Ramsden thing. I know you’d want to know.”
“Kogan! Geez, you must be hard up, Chris! Can’t it wait till Monday?” I flipped my legs out of bed and wiggled for slippers. Savas didn’t say anything. “Kogan had a motive, Chris. I’ll give you that, but I’d check out opportunity before booking him. Would Ramsden have let Kogan into his house, let alone invite him into his den?”
“I know all that. I don’t like much of it either, but he’s the best I’ve got. It would be different if we knew who was the last person to have seen him alive. But we don’t know that, do we?”
I thought of Cath Bracken’s early morning appointment to see Ramsden and swallowed hard. “Are you at your office?”
“No, I’m in a pool in Acapulco drinking rum toddies! Where the hell do you think I am on a working day?” Weekend duty was always a sore point with Chris.
“I’m coming over Give me twenty minutes and tell the desk to let me through.”
I skipped the shower and finished the coffee in the carafe before launching myself into the weather. From the apartment, the snow looked like a prize-winning photograph. From the bottom step, it was nothing but a mess. My galoshes were full of cobwebs. My winter hat could not be found. Still, I threw myself out into it and tried to aim towards Church Street. No one had shovelled his share of the snow from the sidewalk. There was enough of it to make walking hard and even dangerous. I took a spin and a tumble before I’d gone more than a few hundred metres. A gang of hungry starlings had a good laugh at my expense as I picked myself up and moved on through the uncharted landscape. It took more than three times the usual time to cover the distance. I arrived out of breath and ready for a long sit.
The pile of galoshes, rubbers and outer boots somehow humanized the normally sterile entrance to Niagara Regional Police Headquarters. It appeared to be peopled by men and women subject to the same natural laws as the rest of us. It was a beginning. I asked for Detective-Sergeant Savas and an East Indian cadet came out to collect me and usher me through the corridors to Homicide. Savas was sitting in his chair with his head buried in paperwork when I came in. There was a puddle of water on the linoleum under the coatrack. From somewhere I thought I got a nostalgic whiff of wet wool drying over a radiator, but there was nothing visible.
“Well, that didn’t take long!” Savas said, getting up and heading out the door, as though he was going to take off on a lunch break. But he was back in less than a minute with a styrofoam cup of coffee and a few packets of cream and sugar. He cleared a place for me to use as a camp-site and I settled in. While I was prying off the lid, I could hear him sliding noisily into gear.
“I don’t like this Kogan thing any more than you do, Benny.” I took a sip from the cup and said nothing. Savas was too good a cop to get himself caught in a stupid error. All I had to do was to make sure I didn’t get his back up. “Ramsden was at the very least guilty of negligence in the case of Kogan’s girl-friend. Did you know Ramsden swore out an injunction against Kogan coming on the property. Bet your pal didn’t tell you that!” The coffee tasted burnt. T
he cream and sugar didn’t help. Chris kept dieselling on. “I can get witnesses to come forward to testify to the defamatory things Kogan was shouting outside the Bede Bunch’s meeting. Threats, profanity, libels, slanders, the whole bit. Benny, are you listening?”
“First of all there were no libels, because there was no publication, Chris. Let’s stick to the facts. As for the rest of it, I thought they couldn’t get anyone to come forward. Why wasn’t Kogan booked for these things at the time? It seems like a tasty morsel to hand over to the crown, doesn’t it? Before there was a murder involved, your gang just went through the motions. ‘Boys will be boys, eh? No harm done. Move along now.’ And what about Temperley? Whoever killed Temperley had to have a car.”
“One thing at a time. Forget Temperley.”
“I still don’t see Kogan in this.”
“Who else is there?”
“That’s better. Half the town hated Ramsden for one thing or another. He was that kind of guy. The liberals hated him because he wanted capital punishment to come back. The minorities hated him because his vision of this country had no place in it for them. The Tories hated him because he gave them a bad name. If there are Reds around, they hated him because he was always blaming them for everything wrong with the country from the weather to the post office.”
“Rein in, Benny! Shut up a minute. You’re opening up the whole city! I don’t need to weigh suspects by the ton. All I need is one that looks as good as Kogan does right now. That’s all I want.”
“What about the whole blackmail thing?”
“What whole blackmail thing? You talking in tongues, Benny?”
“Ramsden, to my knowledge, kept things—papers, photographs, letters—that would prove embarrassing to several people in this town. He made money off these things and collected it regularly. Didn’t you find any of that stuff over at his place? This shouldn’t come as a surprise to you at this stage of your investigation, Chris.” That was a bad move. I shouldn’t have come that close to crediting him with professional sloppiness. That made him mad, and mad wasn’t going to help Kogan.
“Now stop right there! What the hell are you talking about?”
“I have a client who says Ramsden was blackmailing him—has been for more than ten years,” I lied. Anything to save Kogan. “Hell, my client has a better motive for killing Ramsden than Kogan, Chris!”
“Of course, you’re not prepared to tell me who that is, are you?”
“We’ve been here before on that one, Chris. I can’t stay in business if I turn snitch. We both know that. But my point is that if I happen to have stumbled across one extortion victim, there must have been others. You know as well as I do that blackmailers don’t outlive rally drivers.”
“You think he has a lot of incriminating stuff over on York Street?” This was Chris’s way of telling me that his gang hadn’t found anything. And why should they? Ramsden wasn’t the killer, he was the victim. Why should they toss his place?
“He’s got it hidden somewhere. That’s as good a place to start looking as any. You still have keys to the house?”
“Now hold on!” Sometimes Chris can see right through me. “I’m not taking you with me! This is police work and last time I looked, you were still freelance.”
“Best of luck, Chris. How will you recognize the good stuff when you find it? It doesn’t all come boxed and labelled. If you haven’t got it already, it means that Ramsden’s done a good job of hiding it. Might take you all year. If you can afford to throw away an offer to assist your investigation, I’ve misjudged how close you are to wrapping this thing up.”
Chris pulled at his ear, the way he always did. Sometimes he sucked on his teeth. Pete Staziak lets his mouth gape like a pistachio in its shell. Everybody thinks differently. I’m not sure what I do when an idea is playing around in my head. I hope I still don’t pick my nose the way I used to when I was in kindergarten and got told off by Miss Alton about it. It wouldn’t be an asset to my practice.
“Okay, Benny. Put on your hat. We’re going on a searching party that better not turn out to be a wild-goose chase.”
I didn’t think I’d ever see the inside of Thurleigh Ramsden’s house again. Even with the body removed from the rug, it did not send out waves of welcome to Chris and me as we came across the threshold and into the narrow hall.
I forget what I said about the place the first time around; there were more serious things to talk about. This time I got a feel for the place and through it for the man who’d lived here. It was a small house: the usual rooms downstairs and three bedrooms on the second floor. Two of these had been closed, the beds dismantled and the drawers in the bureaux emptied. The drawers were lined with the same kind of wallpaper my landlady had recently applied to the walls of the stairwell leading to my apartment. I’d have to have a word with her about that.
The downstairs was off balance, because, as I’ve already said, Ramsden had been using the front room as an office. He had opened up the double doors leading to the dining-room and had relocated most of the soft sofas and chairs there to be close to the television set and an old stereo phonograph. I would have been surprised if Ramsden had converted to CD. The kitchen was small, yellow and untidy. More than the other rooms, the kitchen proclaimed Ramsden’s widowhood. He dined alone, at a simple wooden table.
From the pictures, flags, plaques on the wall, I got the impression that Ramsden thought this was a much bigger and grander house. The addition of imitation wood panelling in the study, the large desk all testified to the fact that Ramsden was something of a self-deceiver. The belongings looked like they had been chosen for a bigger house. Perhaps they came from one.
“Well, Benny, this is your show. Where do you want to start?” Chris was in a good mood. He knew that if I found some new evidence, he would profit by it. If I failed to turn up anything new, he was still the winner because he would be able to make a few jokes at my expense. Either way he was looking good. And, I was forgetting, he still had Kogan.
I knelt down and began pulling back the rug near the desk. Chris squatted noisily, with a knee sending out a crack like a rifle shot. He began rolling the rug back too. First we did the part behind the desk and then the larger part in front. I was looking for loose pieces of hardwood that might he hiding a cache of papers. Unfortunately, all of the floorboards were sound. I didn’t bother with the stretch of wood directly under the desk, because he would have had to push the desk out of the way whenever he needed access to the hidden material. I thought Ramsden, judging by his kitchen, was a lazy but pragmatic sort. The stuff would be hidden, but where he could find it when he needed it. I don’t think he was a reader of Poe, so I wasn’t going to find anything in plain view. Or so I thought then.
“Let’s try that panelling next,” I said, straightening up with more difficulty than I’d have imagined. Smiling at the absurdity of it all, Chris began to rap the panelling with his knuckles. I picked up a gavel with a brass plaque on it and started at the bottom end. I don’t know what we were listening for, to tell you the truth. All I heard from the wall was the occasional dropping of plaster from the old lath behind it. When our rapping got to the same square, we gave up. The whole area sounded the same, but whether that meant there was or was not anything concealed behind it, neither of us could guess.
“We could rip it off,” Chris suggested. After a moment, I shook my head.
“No sense in it, Chris. He’d have had to rip it off every time he needed it. I couldn’t find a spring or button or release of any kind. There’s no part of it mounted on hinges as far as I can see.”
“Too many Saturday matinees when you were a kid, Benny.” Chris patted his pocket to see if he had cigarettes, then thought better of it. “You think there’s a hidyhole behind those books up there?” I looked over at the rather pinched bookshelf, which leaned heavily to the history of the kings and queens of England. I didn’t think that Ramsden would gut the text of these icons of his philosophy for his blackmailin
g needs, but a row of old legal tomes at the top looked like greener fields.
“Try those,” I said, pointing. He moved a captain’s chair to the bookcase and stepped up on it. That put him a little higher than top shelf. Above the books, he found something. It looked like an old-fashioned filing box, with a slightly rounded side to make it resemble a book about fifteen inches long. He handed it down so that he could continue his inspection of the law books.
On the spine end of the file was the name “Phoenix” and in capital letters, “Invoices.” I could just make out the faded copperplate script: A to Z Orders 1918–1919.” I tried to open it, like a book, but there was a catch to be released. When I did that, I could smell mildew and nearly eighty years of use as I lifted the lid. Inside was a set of files divided by tabs marked with the letters of the alphabet. I lifted one, G, at random and found a few letters to Ramsden from various people whose names started with that letter. There were business as well as personal letters bearing dates in the recent past, quite contrary to the information on the spine. Among the G’s I could see no sign of blackmail. I looked further. Thinking of Orv and his problem, I dipped into the W’s. Here I found a letter from Orv, dated three years ago. It was a request for a meeting on an unnamed subject. In pencil on the top of the letter I read: “put off to October. See Montgomery.” I looked among the M’s. There was nothing with a Montgomery on it. “Montgomery” must be something outside the file, an aide-mémoire.
“These books are all solid,” Chris complained from on high.
“I may be on to something,” I said. “Give me a minute.” I sat down in Ramsden’s chair behind his desk and went through more of the files. Quite a few of the letters had pencilled notes on them. A few of these referred the searcher on elsewhere: “See French,” “See Crerar,” “See Horrocks,” “See Bradley.” In each case the file contained no letters from any of these named references.
Chris had come down off the chair and was glancing at the pictures on the wall. He turned a couple of these around to see if there was anything stuck on the backing. “He collected letters from a lot of famous people,” he said, looking at some letters mounted between plates of glass.