Cold Comfort

by Scott Mackay

  She stared at him, her bright blue eyes unwavering. Gilbert was perplexed. Her eyes glistened; she lifted her chin, gave it a small involuntary shake, then took a deep breath. Did she know something?

  “I’ve sent a page to the Chamber,” she said. “He knows you’re here.” Her voice was no longer bright. She opened the door to the inner office. “You might as well wait in there.”

  Now she wouldn’t look at him. He couldn’t decide. Did she look guilty? Or was she just anxious?

  “Thanks,” he said.

  He entered the office and she closed the door partway behind him.

  The office was large, as befitted a preeminent member of the Conservative Cabinet, with sixteen-foot ceilings, a desk as big as a king-size bed, sofas, chairs, a table, a private bar, a private washroom, and a stunning view of University Avenue, where the financial spires rose into the brittle February sunshine. A fireplace stood against the north wall, intricately carved with Victorian scrollwork. Several paintings hung on the wall, all of them landscapes—silver birch, pine, rock, and lake—pictures of northern Ontario. Five photographs stood on the mantelpiece. One showed Tom Webb, a silver-haired man, six-feet-five, in a blue pin-striped business suit, wearing a Remembrance Day poppy, taking the oath of office last November. The others were just portraits. Three he didn’t recognize, probably family members, but the fourth was none other than Cheryl Latham. He took a closer look.

  She was younger in this photograph, maybe by a year or two. She wore a wedding gown and her hair was fixed in an arrangement of lace and lilies-of-the-valley. A wedding photograph. But where was the husband? Certainly not on this mantlepiece. He was again struck by the innocence of her face, her delicate pixie-like features, the earnestness of her blue eyes, the genuine honesty of her smile, the golden lustre of her hair. Her freckles gave her a girlish look. Yet now that he looked closer, he sensed a darker quality to those eyes, as if beneath her honesty she was trying to hide something. Who was her husband? Who was Mr. Latham? And if Tom Webb was Cheryl Latham’s stepfather, where and who was her real father?

  “Detective Gilbert?”

  He turned around. Tom Webb stood in the doorway. Here was the man responsible for Homicide’s eighteen-percent cut. Yet Gilbert felt no antipathy toward the man. Webb looked older than he did in the newspapers and on television. His presence was imposing. His silver hair was thick, his face narrow, handsome, and after a week of sailing his catamaran in the Caribbean, deeply tanned. Gilbert showed him his shield. Webb didn’t look at it.

  “Sit down, detective.” An order, not an invitation.

  “Mr. Webb, I’m afraid I have some bad news.” The expression on Webb’s face did not change; he looked mystified; his eyes seemed both dull and unaware. “Maybe you should be the one to sit down.”

  But Webb remained standing. Was the man on drugs? Why such an oblivious look in his eyes? Webb shoved the door closed.

  “Detective, I’m a busy man.”

  Gilbert shrugged. If that’s the way he wanted it.

  “We found your stepdaughter murdered this morning down at Dominion Malting,” he said.

  Webb’s eyes shifted, glanced downward at the Persian carpet, a gift from the emir of Kuwait, and his shoulders sagged; his lips parted, exposing long upper teeth, and he nodded a few times, an infinitesimally small jerking of his head as he absently slid his hands into pockets. He turned his head suddenly to one side and took a sharp breath, as if he had just been punched in the solar plexus. He stepped toward his desk, two steps in all, stopped, stared at the green blotter, then slowly turned back to Gilbert, peering at Gilbert from under his sleek silver brow.

  “We got the call at seven o’clock this morning,” said Gilbert, feeling he had to add something. “The security guard down there found her.”

  “Are you sure it’s her?”

  The obliviousness left Webb’s eyes and he no longer looked like a politician; he looked nearly human. This was what they all asked. Gilbert nodded.

  “It’s her,” he said. “We’ll need you to come to the Coroner’s Office to make an official identification.”

  He looked momentarily annoyed. “I’m in committee all afternoon.”

  Maybe not so human after all.

  “Perhaps your wife can—”

  “My wife’s been dead for three years.”

  “What about Cheryl’s husband?”

  “Charles and Cheryl have been separated for over a year.”

  “Are there any siblings?”

  “No. Cheryl’s the only…” Webb looked at his watch. “I can come at three. Can we do it at three?”

  “I’ll make sure somebody’s there,” said Gilbert.

  They stood there in silence. Webb no longer looked annoyed. Outside, Gilbert heard the health-care workers chanting: “Hey-hey, ho-ho, Thomas Webb has got to go.” Webb looked at the large arched windows and a faint grin came to his face.

  “Listen to them,” he said.

  Gilbert thought Webb might elaborate; but he continued to stare at the cold February sunshine streaming through the windows, finally took a few steps, sat on the edge of his desk, clasped his hand together, and glanced at Gilbert.

  “Look, I think I better be alone for a minute or…Cheryl and I weren’t exactly close but I…”

  “I understand,” said Gilbert. But he made no move toward the door. “We might need your help with this, Mr. Webb.”

  “Let’s not make a media circus of it, okay?”

  “If the media get wind of it, it won’t be from our side.”

  “What do you need to know?”

  “Where she lives, for one thing. Where she works. Where her ex-husband lives.”

  “I have no idea where Charles lives.”

  “Okay. But anything else you think might be of use to us.”

  He shrugged, and now a distant look came to his eyes, as if he were running old memories through his head. “You can leave your card with Jane,” said Webb. He looked at Gilbert. “Would that be all right? I’ll have her phone over the information once we dig it up.”

  “That would be fine,” said Gilbert. He took out his wallet and extracted his card. Then he peered at Webb; he nearly got the sense that Webb was relieved in some way. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill Cheryl?” he asked.

  Webb again stared out the window; the decibel level of the protesters outside was rising. No one, it seemed, in the whole Province of Ontario, wanted to take an eighteen-percent cut.

  “None,” said Webb. “None whatsoever.”

  “Do you have time for a few questions?”

  Webb’s eyes settled on Gilbert like two balls of ice. “I’m afraid we’re right in the middle of session back in the Chamber,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything further I can add right now.” He stood up and gestured toward the door. “Jane will phone when she gets a moment.”

  Three

  Gilbert picked up Lombardo at the Murray Street entrance of the Mount Joseph General Hospital an hour later. Lombardo carried a large manila envelope. As he slid into the passenger seat, Lombardo held up the envelope in a gesture of triumph.

  “You should see them,” he said. “Typos all over the place.”

  “I told you so.” Gilbert swung out onto Murray Street and made a quick left on Orde. “What about format?”

  “All social work reports are run through a Lasotec laser printer up in Medical Records.” Lombardo tapped the envelope. “These were done on a typewriter.”

  Gilbert grinned. “I told you,” he said. “And I bet her story’s different now. I bet it says she now requested home care. I bet she deemed Wesley unfit to look after his mother. Did you get the Medical Records transcription logs?”

  “They’re in the envelope,” said Lombardo. “There’s no record that these new notes were ever dictated. We’ve got her, Barry. We’ve got her.”

  They pulled in front of Cheryl Latham’s apartment building a short while later; though it was just pas
t four, the sky was already dark, and a blurry swath of snow-bearing clouds spilled from the northwest like a can of grey paint. The temperature remained cold, but at least the wind had died down. They found a parking space a few doors away, got out, and walked the remaining distance.

  Gilbert glanced around.

  Her building was nestled among older four-bedroom two-storey homes, an anomaly in this neighborhood of single-family dwellings. They climbed the steps and entered the foyer. He looked up, saw a security monitor, its red light flashing.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  Lombardo nodded. “I’ll get the tapes,” he said.

  They rang Percy Waxman’s buzzer.

  A minute later they watched the superintendent walk down the hall, a short man with long arms, stooped shoulders, and a shuffling but nonetheless long stride; the effect was ape-like. He gave them a wave through the netted glass door. Three paint scrapers poked from his shirt pocket, there was a pencil stuck behind his ear, and he was dressed in grey—grey workman’s trousers and a grey shirt with his name embroidered in gold on a small cloth badge above the right breast.

  He opened the door and let them in. “You’re late,” he said. He spoke with a faint Polish accent. “I was just about to leave.” They stepped inside; the hall looked freshly painted, was brightly lit with small chandeliers. The air smelled of lemon household cleanser. Waxman turned abruptly, as if he had wasted too much time already, and led them down the hall, not once looking back.

  Gilbert and Lombardo glanced at each other.

  “Mr. Waxman,” said Gilbert, “we have a consent-to-search form we’d like you to sign.” Gilbert snapped open his accordion-style briefcase, an heirloom from his father, and pulled out the form. “Just put your signature here, and we’ll go up.”

  Lombardo pulled a pen from his pocket and offered it to Waxman.

  Waxman stopped, turned around, and looked at them with irritable eyes.

  “Sign where?” he said, feverish with impatience.

  Gilbert showed him the spot.

  He scribbled his signature quickly, as if he just wanted to get the whole thing over with, gave the form back, then continued down the hall.

  He led them through a set of double glass doors to a stairwell.

  “Can we ask a few questions?” said Gilbert, as they began to climb the stairs.

  “Ask away,” said Waxman. He wouldn’t look back at them; it was as if he believed both detectives carried the plague.

  “Did she have many visitors?” asked Lombardo.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “How would I know? She’s on the fourth floor. I’m on the first. You think I have X-ray vision?”

  They hairpinned around the first landing and proceeded up the next flight.

  “How long has she been living here?” asked Gilbert.

  “A year.”

  “Can you check that?” suggested Lombardo.

  “I don’t need to,” said Waxman. “I know it’s a year.”

  “Does she have any friends in the building?” asked Gilbert.

  Waxman pulled a paint scraper from his pocket, scraped a suspicious piece of dirt from the tile steps, and put it into his pocket.

  “She sometimes talked to Sonia,” he said. “They did their laundry together.”

  “Who’s Sonia?” asked Lombardo.

  “In 4F,” said Waxman. He stopped, listened: the pipes behind the walls clanked as the boiler surged. “I wish I could fix that,” he said. He shrugged and continued up the stairs.

  They reached the fourth floor a moment later. At the end of the corridor, Gilbert saw a fire door.

  “Is that fire door rigged to an alarm?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Waxman.

  “Is it regularly inspected?” asked Lombardo.

  “Just last month,” said Waxman.

  “So if I open it, the bell starts ringing,” said Lombardo.

  “What did I just say?” said Waxman.

  “Are the fire escape and the front door the only way in and out?” asked Lombardo, unfazed by Waxman.

  “You could jump.” Waxman looked back at Joe, as if he hoped Joe might take his suggestion literally.

  Gilbert and Lombardo again looked at each other. Waxman was one of those guys.

  At the end of the hall, Waxman unhooked his keys from his belt and opened the door. He took a brief glance in, didn’t seem too interested, then looked back at the detectives. “Get me when you’re finished,” he said. “I’ll be in the office. You’re not going to tape it or anything, are you? I just put fresh paint on last month.”

  Gilbert sighed. “It depends, Mr. Waxman.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether it’s a crime scene or not. We won’t know that until we take a look.”

  Waxman gave them a sullen nod, not at all pleased. “Try to be careful,” he said. “I try to keep things nice around here.”

  Waxman turned and padded away. Gilbert and Lombardo stared at him. Gilbert finally shrugged. “I think we just about ruined his day,” he said.

  They pulled on cloth gardening gloves, opened the door, checked the entranceway first, no sign of forced entry, then went inside.

  Kitchen to the right, living room to the left, a dining nook at right angles to the living room just beyond the kitchen.

  What Gilbert noticed first and foremost was the dead parrot lying on the living room floor. Who wouldn’t? A lot of books had been pulled from bookshelves, many lying open face down in haphazard piles. He took a few steps into the room and crouched beside the dead parrot. Lombardo came up behind. Gilbert stared at the parrot. Bright French green. A South American parrot. With some red and yellow head feathers, and white skin around the eyes. A black beak. Some matted blood in the wing feathers. A tropical apparition on this cold February afternoon.

  “Did you see the sign out front?” said Gilbert.

  “What sign?” asked Lombardo.

  Gilbert stood up. “No pets,” he said.

  They split up: Lombardo went to the kitchen while Gilbert stayed in the living room.

  Books on the floor, but also old LPs taken from the shelf under the Technics turntable, each vinyl disk pulled from its sleeve and left in a rough pile on the floor. Mostly classical music. Bach, Telemann, Handel. Somebody had tossed the place. The slipcovers on the couch pillows had been unzipped and the foam rubber partially pulled out. He turned on the brass floor lamp. The parrot’s bamboo cage stood in the corner, its door open, bird seed scattered on the floor below. Who would kill a parrot? Why kill a parrot? And having a parrot for a pet, what did that say about Cheryl Latham? Some of the desk drawers were open, and the contents looked gone through. Whoever searched this apartment took care not to disturb it more than necessary. Could he reasonably conclude that whoever had searched this apartment had also killed Cheryl Latham? He shook his head. He couldn’t conclude anything yet. Maybe Cheryl herself had been searching for something.

  Prints and paintings had been pulled from the wall, the paper backings cut off the frame with a sharp implement, the paintings then neatly stacked against the balcony door. Outside, fresh snowflakes batted at the window. Books opened, LPs removed from jacket sleeves, the paper backing removed from prints and paintings, the slipcovers unzipped. Searching for something flat, something that could be hid in those places. Cash? Was this just a straight-ahead murder-robbery? No. He looked at the dead parrot again. Not a robbery. Not with her body down at Dominion Malting. But if not cash, then what?

  “Anything in the kitchen?” he called.

  “You should see how well she’s got this organized,” called Lombardo.

  Gilbert walked to the kitchen. In the glass cupboard the glasses were lined up in even rows, like a battalion of soldiers, each one exactly the same distance from the next, each one identical so that the impression of uniformity was overwhelming. Copper-bottomed pots, seven in all, hung on hooks next to the refrigerator, each one dazzlingly clean, the largest on the far left, the sm
allest on the far right, the middle ones arranged in a diminishing sequence of size.

  “And look at this,” said Lombardo, opening one of the cupboards under the counter.

  Canned goods. Arranged in a series of diminishing concentric circles on a lazy Susan, the small cans on the outside, the large ones in the middle. On the shelf below, bottles of wine in a small wine rack. Small handwritten labels had been affixed to the corked spout of each bottle, telling what each one was.

  “That’s excessive,” said Lombardo.

  “Just because you drink your father’s rotgut all the time doesn’t mean you have to criticize,” said Gilbert.

  “My father doesn’t make rotgut.”

  “I know. He makes vinegar.”

  “I thought you said you liked his last batch,” said Lombardo.

  “I did,” said Gilbert. “I had a clogged drain and it worked beautifully.”

  Gilbert opened the cupboard under the sink, where a wire frame with a flip-top lid held a small garbage bag in place. He looked under the sink; various cleaning products stood in a neat row. From the corner of his eye he noticed a single reddish-brown drip mark on the rubber-coated wire frame of the garbage bag holder, hidden behind the garbage bag. Except for this single drip mark, which anybody, even Cheryl could have missed, the cupboard gleamed. Gilbert pointed.

  “Look at this,” he said.

  “That’s blood,” said Lombardo.

  They both stared at the small saber-shaped drip. Then Gilbert stood up, put his hands on his hips, and took a deep breath. Outside, the wind was building, whistling through the blue spruces in the next yard.

  “We’ll call Forensic,” said Gilbert. “We’ll have them scrape it off. It looks like a good sample. Go have a look at the living room, tell me what you think. I’ll check the bedroom and bathroom.”

  “What do you think they were looking for?” asked Lombardo.

  “I don’t know,” said Gilbert. “Something flat. Paper? Cash? Something that would fit in a book or a cushion.”

  “Do you think they found it?”

  “We’ll have to see if the bedroom’s been searched.”