Negative Image

by Vicki Delany

  “Do you like working there?”

  She smiled. Amy was not pretty, her complexion was poor and her hair lifeless and badly cut, but when she smiled her eyes filled with a joy that lit up her face. “Oh, yes, it’s wonderful. The dogs are so nice. Debby says I have a way with dogs. That’s good, right, Moon?”

  “Very good.” Winters would no doubt soon be paying a call on Debby. Smith had seen her around, talked to her a couple of times when walking the beat. She was in her forties, and full of enthusiasm about her new business. Strange that she’d risk it all by breaking into clients’ homes when they were away. Unless that had been the plan all along.

  “That’s about all I wanted to know. Thanks for your time, Amy. Say bye to Mike for me.” Smith started to turn toward the door. Then she stopped. She looked at the kitchen table again. It was laid with three place settings: knife and fork and spoon and a folded square of paper towel tucked under the knife. Robbie wouldn’t sit to the table: his plastic bowl, decorated with a picture of brightly colored balloons, was on the tray of his highchair.

  “Amy, when you know someone’s going to be away for a while, on vacation, do you, well, tell anyone?”

  “That’s confidential information.” She mispronounced the words slightly as if repeating what she’d been told.

  “Thanks. See you around.”

  “Diane said it’s okay to tell her, though. She’ll keep it confidential, too.”

  “Who’s Diane?”

  The door off the kitchen opened.

  “Diane is our cousin,” Mike said. “She’s staying here for a while. What are you getting at, Molly?” Robbie had the right ear of a stuffed pink rabbit in his mouth. He toddled over to his mother and tugged at her leg.

  “I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell anyone about this discussion, Mike. Amy, can you keep it a secret?”

  “Sure,” she said, picking up Robbie.

  Smith doubted that, but she only needed enough time to get to Sergeant Winters.

  “Catch you later,” she said. She ran down the stairs so fast her running shoe slipped on the step and she managed to keep her footing only by grabbing at the peeling wooden banister. A splinter broke off and imbedded itself into her right thumb. She ignored it and was almost at her car when a woman came around the corner. She was dressed in loose clothes, and had a camera bag tossed over her shoulder. Smith averted her face and scurried across the street. The woman passed without giving her a glance.

  Smith had been in uniform when they’d met. The uniform her brother said made her look tough, not like any young woman going about her business in a residential street.

  She nipped behind a walnut tree and watched the woman turn at Mike and Amy’s apartment and head for the back stars.

  Diane, the cousin.

  Diane Barton. Rudy Steiner’s assistant.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Ray Lopez went back to the Hudson House Hotel, one more time. He had a gut feeling about Dennis Jones. Then again, perhaps he shouldn’t have had the extra spicy golden curry for lunch. He stifled a burp.

  Dennis Jones was waiting in the conference room, looking out the window. The hotel was beginning to treat the police like staff: no more coffee, sandwiches, cookies, just an empty table.

  When Lopez came in, Jones threw himself into a chair. He had a purple-gray circle around his right eye, and his knuckles were scratched. Lopez openly studied the man’s face. “What happened to you?” he said at last.

  “Walked into a door,” Jones said. He glared at the detective with an expression as dark as the bruises on his face, then lowered his head to study his hands. He began picking at dirt lodged under his fingernail. Lopez made a mental note to check the shift reports for the last couple of nights.

  He sat down and threaded his fingers together. “What did your brother say when you asked him for money?”

  Jones’ head jerked up. Lopez watched him, saying nothing further. He was only guessing, had no reason, other than his gut instinct and his reading of the handyman, to believe Jones had confronted his brother.

  Finally Jones shrugged. “He lied. Said he’d help me out if he could, but he was dead broke.”

  “You didn’t believe him?”

  “’Course I didn’t.” Jones jumped to his feet. He crossed the room to stand at the window. It had a view only of the back alley and the rear of the building opposite. “Look at the way he lived. Look at the wife. Think a woman like that would stay with him if he didn’t have money coming out of his ass?”

  It wasn’t Lopez’s place to tell Jones that his brother had, in fact, been telling the truth. “What time did this happen?”

  Jones turned, and stared into the detective’s face. “I don’t remember,” he said.

  “By your own account, you were on the second floor around five-ish.” So far no one had come forward to report seeing Jones later in the day. To hotel guests, he probably blended into the woodwork. They would take as much notice of the scowling, overalls-clad man as they would a chambermaid’s cart. “Did you drop in on your brother, say hi? Ask for a handout?”

  “Didn’t want any fuckin’ handout. I want nothing more than what I’m owed. I’m the one stayed in Sydney all those years to look after our mother. I was the one took care of her when she took sick. Dad couldn’t do it, too drunk, usually. Anyway, it was him made her sick, most of the time. I went to Alberta once, got a job in the oil patch. Good job, real good money. Then Mom fell down the stairs, broke both her legs. She couldn’t work, couldn’t take care of Dad or the house. Someone had to go home, someone had to look after her. It sure wasn’t going to be Mr. Steiner.” Jones’ voice dripped with contempt. “He sent her a magazine when she was in hospital, a flash fashion magazine full of the sort of women I couldn’t have in my wildest dreams. Mom didn’t even know why he’d sent it to her. But I knew. His name, his fake name, was in it. He’d taken some of the pictures. Greece. Blue water, white buildings, expensive women with bored faces and no tits, wearing blue and white bathing suits and come-fuck-me shoes.

  “He hadn’t sent the mag because he thought Mom would be pleased. He’d sent it because he knew she’d show it to me and he could rub my face into it. He sent her presents some times, for her birthday and Christmas. An ugly scarf from Paris, a purse from Italy, jams and jellies from London. Never any money, never anything that would actually help us out.

  “I told him it was time to pay up. Time to pay me for all the money I’d lost over the years, taking care of our parents, his parents.”

  Jones shook his head. “And he sat there and told me he was dying and didn’t have a penny to his fake name.”

  Silence stretched though the room. Finally, Lopez asked, in a very low voice. “What did you do then?”

  “I left. I walked out. He was a pathetic creep. He was lying when he told me he didn’t have any money, but I figure he was telling the truth about dying. He looked like he was dead already.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Five-thirty.”

  “Next time you saw him?”

  “There was no next time. And now there won’t be. I’m not expecting to get an invitation to the funeral reception.” Jones looked at Lopez. His eyes were dry and his face was angry, but he spoke in a low voice. “Before I left, for the last time, I told him what I thought of him. I told him that our mother died, wondering why he hadn’t come to see her. Her last words were something like, Albert was always so selfish. He was never as strong as my Dennis. You might think I killed him in revenge, but I didn’t need to. That was all the revenge I needed.”

  Jones walked out. The door shut quietly behind him. Lopez let out a long breath and sat back in his chair. Did he believe the man? Yeah, he did.

  Deep in his pocket his cell phone began to vibrate. It was John Winters, telling to get back to the station ASAP.

  ***

  Smith was so excited, Winters could barely understand what she was trying to say. “Hold on, Molly. Take a breath.�
��

  She didn’t take his advice. “We have to move fast. Mike knew what was going on, and I don’t know if he’ll protect his cousin. At any rate, Amy’ll let the cat out of the bag soon.”

  “I’m glad Mike knows what’s going on, because I don’t. Where are you?”

  “Turning into Monroe Street.”

  “We’ll talk about this when you get here. I’m in the office.” He hung up and waited for her.

  She was out of breath when she ran into the GIS office. Her face was flushed and her eyes wide with excitement. She’d temporarily forgotten her grief over her dad, but it would be all the harder to handle when it came crashing back.

  “Take a seat,” he said.

  Full of nervous energy, she remained standing. “Diane Barton, one of the women we arrested in that street brawl, is Amy and Mike’s cousin. She’s staying there. Amy tells her when clients at the dog day care book off for a period of time. Which they do when they’re going on vacation.”

  “Careful, Molly, don’t get too excited. We have a link, but it’s thin, and I don’t think the time frame’s right.” Diane Barton had arrived with Rudy Steiner, to take photographs of the Kootenays for a travel magazine. They’d come to Trafalgar less than a week before Steiner’s death, but the B&Es had been going on for at least six weeks.

  “Oh.” Smith’s face collapsed in disappointment and she dropped into Ray Lopez’s chair.

  “Hold on,” he said. She perked up again, and he almost smiled. She was as enthusiastic as an untrained puppy. What had Barton said when he interviewed her—when he was still allowed in the murder investigation. That she’d arrived in Trafalgar ahead of her boss, to scout out locations.

  “Phone the Hudson House,” Winters told Smith. “Ask them for the date Diane Barton first checked in.” Smith dove for the phone. When Steiner was alive he paid for his assistant to stay at the hotel. Once he died, she was on her own tab and moved in with Mike and Amy. No reason to assume she didn’t have contact with her cousins no matter where she was staying.

  Winters pulled up his file on the B&E to refresh his memory.

  “Thanks,” Smith said into the phone. She hung up. “March fifth.”

  Winters skimmed his notes. The first B&E was March twelfth. “You might be onto something, Molly, good work.” He read the most recent entry. “Frank Spencer saw a photographer on the street a day or two before the break-in across the road.”

  “That doesn’t help us, that was a man.”

  “Did Spencer say it was a man?”

  “Let me think. He said he saw a guy taking pictures.”

  “A guy, as in a male, or a guy, as in a generic person of not much interest?”

  Her blue eyes opened wide.

  “I would have thought you’d be aware of the dangers inherent in sexist language, Molly.”

  “He said the guy.” She made quotes in the air with her fingers. “Was about average height and slender, with short hair. Average height for a man is around tall for a woman. Barton always dresses in sloppy, generic clothes. She could pass for a guy—I mean for a man—at a distance.”

  Winters stood up and took his jacket down from the hook. “I’m going to pay Ms. Barton a visit.” Smith jumped out of her chair. “Unfortunately, you can’t come with me. You’re not in uniform and you’re unarmed.”

  “I can borrow a gun.”

  “You most certainly can not. You’re a uniformed officer, not a detective.

  “Go home, Molly. You’ve done a good job and if this pans out, you’ll get the credit. But right now I think your mother needs you more than we do.”

  She deflated as quickly as a popped balloon. “My mother. I actually forgot for a while there.”

  “I’ll give you a call, at your mother’s house, when I have something to report.”

  It was almost six o’clock and the Chief and Barb had left for the day. Winters took the back stairs to the parking lot two at a time and called Keller. “I have a lead, a promising lead, in the B&E business.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “There’s a complication.”

  “Isn’t there always.”

  “I’m bringing Rudolph Steiner’s assistant, one Diane Barton, in for questioning. Obviously, there’s likely to be some overlap with the IHIT investigation.”

  “You can bring this woman in. Sit her in the interview room, but don’t start questioning her until you either get the go ahead from Madison or he joins you.”

  “I’m not going to let him take over. He doesn’t know a thing about the B&E case.”

  “Agreed. It’s your show. Good luck with it.”

  Winters didn’t take a uniform or a patrol car to pick up Diane Barton. This was just going to be a friendly little chat. Smith had given him nothing but conjecture. Conveniently Barton had the charges of assault and creating a pubic disturbance stemming from that fight with Josie Steiner hanging over her, which would give him a welcome amount of freedom in handling her.

  He followed Smith’s directions to Mike and Amy’s place. When he knocked on the door, Amy answered. She was holding her young son, squirming like a bucketful of eels, and gave Winters a shy smile. “I remember you,” she said. “You’re with the police.”

  “That’s right, Amy, and I remember you too. May I come in?”

  “Sure.” She stepped back. “This is Robbie.”

  “Hello, Robbie.”

  She put the child down. “Mike’s not here. He’s at work.”

  “I’d like to talk to your cousin, Diane Barton, is she here?”

  “She’s here.” Barton got up from the kitchen table. Short-haired, tall and lean, dressed in an oversized sweat shirt and loose pants she could be mistaken for a man by someone not paying much attention. “I don’t have any business with you. My court hearing is on Thursday.”

  “I want to talk to you about another matter. I don’t want to disturb Amy and Robbie so I’d like you to accompany me to the station.”

  Behind her glasses, the corner of her right eye twitched, and she shot a glance toward the open door behind him. “And if I don’t want to?”

  “It will be mentioned at the hearing.”

  Amy’s face was pinched in concern, sensing the tone, if not understanding the meaning. Robbie picked up a pink rabbit and waved it over his head.

  “You’ve got the power,” Barton said, spreading her arms. Her hands were shaking and the twitch in her eye was getting worse. “I’m all yours.”

  Winters put Diane Barton in an interview room with a cup of coffee, checked the audio and video recording equipment, and went to his office to wait, without much patience, for Madison. He started the ITO for a warrant to search the place at which Barton was staying. Unlikely, if she were the thief, she’d store the computer equipment and DVD players at Mike’s small house. He’d have to find a storage facility somewhere. If he were lucky, she might have kept some of the jewelry or smaller electronics such as iPods with her own possessions.

  Lopez came in, followed by Kevin Farzaneh. “Got a call from the Chief,” the detective said. “What’s up?”

  “Where’s Madison?”

  “Talking to Mrs. Steiner,” Farzaneh answered. “In the presence of her lawyer. He said I can sit in on this interview.”

  Winters explained what he’d learned about Diane Barton’s possible involvement in the recent spate of B&Es.

  The three men walked into the interview room. Barton had made an ashtray out of her coffee cup, and a couple of butts floated on remains of the dark liquid. “No smoking in the building,” Lopez said.

  “Arrest me,” she replied. Her dark eyes, magnified by thick glasses, skittered about the room, between the three men, to the door, her hands, the coffee cup. They sat down, and Lopez switched on the recording equipment. Winters stated the date and time and the names of those present. He told Barton she was not under arrest; they just had some questions for her.

  “Do I need a lawyer?” she said.

  “Up to you.
”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Go ahead.” Her left leg was twitching, the foot beating out a tattoo on the wooden floor. Seeing Winters’ eyes on her, she pressed her hand onto her thigh and the movement stopped.

  “Why are you still in town?” Winters asked. “Your job here is obviously finished.”

  She attempted to shrug, but the movement didn’t cover her nervousness. She wiped her hands down the front of her pants. “Maybe I like it here. Actually, that’s a lie. I don’t like it here. My job, as you put it, is over because someone bumped off the boss. Definitely terminated, not only the job but my expense account as well. I would very much like to go home, except the bitch of a wife has my photographs. Besides, in case you’ve forgotten, I have to appear in court on Thursday.”

  “You can come back for the court appearance.”

  “Travel costs money. Some of us can’t afford to criss-cross the country whenever we want.”

  “Short of money are you, Miss Barton?”

  “If it’s any of your business, yes. I’m unlikely to get paid for not only the last week of work, but all my expenses as well, and I’m out the proceeds from my photographs unless her ladyship decides to give them back. Which will happen about the time hell freezes over.”

  “You’ve been staying with your cousin Mike Stanford?”

  “Can we hurry this up? You know perfectly well where I’m staying considering you found me there.”

  “When did you first arrive in Trafalgar?”

  She leaned back in her chair, and chewed at the nail on her index finger. “March fifth.” The leg began moving again.

  “Have any contact with Mike or his sister, Amy, between then and when you came to stay with them?”

  “Sure. They’re my cousins. I called to say hi.”

  “Is that all?”

  She looked at him through narrow eyes. “Why are you asking me about them? Mike didn’t know Rudy and far as I know they never met.”

  Winters thought. So far no one had mentioned the dog day care or the B&Es. Should he let her think he thought Mike was implicated in the death of Steiner? She was obviously anxious and trying to hide it, but that meant nothing. Lots of people, with absolutely nothing to hide, got jumpy at police attention.