“Tough life,” I said.
“Not much of a retirement plan, though,” Hastings said. He paused for a few seconds, then added, “Although she always seemed to have money. Sometimes quite a lot.”
“How much would she make helping Frank Poole pick up and deliver boats?”
“Not that much. Nor do I think he was a particularly reliable employer. She called me once from Mexico to ask me to wire her some money. I think it was couple of months later that she started working at the tennis club. I thought she was finally settling down, but more likely she was just making a slight career adjustment.”
“Staking out new territory,” Reeny said.
“It does seem a little more in character,” I said. “Did you know that she had a brother in jail for killing a man in a bar fight?”
“Stepbrother,” Hastings said. “Pierre Deguire. Petey. And he didn’t kill the man in a bar fight.”
“That’s what she told a friend,” I said.
Hastings shook his head. “It may have happened in a bar,” he said, “but Deguire was a small-time coke dealer in the Laurentians, the resort country north of Montreal. The victim was a competitor.”
“Did Carla tell you this?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I ran a background check on her. A few phone calls to some friends in law enforcement.”
“Why would you do that?”
He didn’t answer right away, watched me from behind those steely eyes. Reeny Lindsey finally nudged him gently with her elbow.
Hastings shrugged and said, “I inherited this lifestyle, Mr. McCall. Perhaps if I’d earned it I wouldn’t have to write some of the stuff I write. My grandfather had the good fortune to own a modest ball-bearing factory at the outbreak of World War II. My father never did an honest day’s work in his life. Fortunately for me, his lifestyle caught up with him before he was able to spend everything. Unfortunately for me, I was even easier prey for people like Carla. However, by the time Carla came along, I’d learned – the hard way – to recognize the sharks. A little late, though; there isn’t much of my grandfather’s money left.”
“So you’ve learned to be suspicious.”
“That’s right.”
“What else did your law enforcement friends tell you?”
“I don’t suppose it’ll come as any surprise to you that she has a record.”
It didn’t, but I was disappointed nonetheless.
“Nothing very serious,” he went on. “When she was nineteen she was arrested a couple of times for soliciting, pled guilty, and paid the fine. After that, nothing. It was the eighties,” he added. “Fear of AIDS drove quite a few of them out of the business, I imagine.”
“No arrests for theft?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Why?”
“She’s stolen from just about everyone I’ve talked to,” I said. “I’m guessing she stole from her boyfriend, which is why he’s so eager to find her.”
Hastings shrugged. “Adaptability is a good survival trait.”
“Vince Ryan isn’t the kind of person I’d want to cross,” I said. “I think he’s used to getting his way and willing to do just about anything to get it.”
“What was that name again?”
“Vincent Ryan,” I said.
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing, really. He introduced himself as a developer of some kind. He and Carla became lovers after his wife died in a hit-and-run accident while he and Carla were in Europe.”
Hastings was silent for a few seconds, eyes half closed, then stood up.
“What?” I said as he disappeared below. Reeny shrugged and looked as puzzled as I felt. Hastings returned a few minutes later with a slim file of newspaper and magazine clippings. He handed me a clipping.
It was a grainy black and white newspaper photograph of Vince Ryan glaring into the camera lens, mouth open, as if snarling “No Comment.” Or “Fuck off.” He made no effort to conceal his face, unlike the pale, dark-haired woman on his arm whose face was partly obscured by a paperback-sized handbag. The caption read, “‘No comment’ says Toronto businessman Vincent Ryan after being questioned by police in connection with the brutal rape and murder of his wife Elizabeth Giordini Ryan in their Forest Hills home.”
A cold fist of fear tightened around my chest.
“Is that the man you spoke to?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And I’m almost certain the woman in the photograph is Carla.”
“Ryan’s wife died,” Hastings said, as he thumbed through the clippings. “But it wasn’t hit and run. It was murder. She was raped and murdered in her home. And it was evidently pretty brutal. Her throat was slashed so deeply her head was almost severed. Although Ryan was in Europe at the time,” Hastings went on, half reading, “he was questioned by the police. He and his wife had been separated for almost a year and, according to her sister, she was going to file for divorce. And there was a sizeable life insurance policy. The sister screamed murder most foul, but the police were never able to connect Ryan to the murder.”
“Connect him how? You mean, he might have hired someone to kill his wife.”
“It happens all the time,” Hastings said.
“How do you come to have this?” I asked.
“Research,” he said. “For a script I wrote. One of those true crime shows about people who hire professional assassins to kill their spouses.”
He handed me the rest of the clippings. I quickly read through them. They added little to what Hastings had already told me.
Although Margaret Giordini was certain Ryan had had her sister killed, she wasn’t a very credible source. She had a history of emotional instability and her sister’s death pushed her very close to the edge, perhaps beyond it. On top of that, she and Ryan had been lovers before he’d married her younger sister and she was very bitter about it. But she and her sister had been close and she told the police that her sister had told her on more than one occasion that she was afraid of Ryan, that he’d threatened to kill her if she tried to divorce him.
“According to the police,” Hastings said as I returned the folder, “there was motive aplenty. A divorce might not have ruined him financially, but it would have hurt. On the other hand, the insurance would have helped him over a fairly serious cash flow problem. But Ryan’s alibi was airtight and there was no evidence of any kind to implicate him in a conspiracy. These kinds of murders are almost impossible to solve unless the police get lucky – someone with a score to settle comes forward, or the hitman himself gets caught for something else and talks, either to make a deal or just to boast.”
I got up and went to the rail, looked out over the harbour. Dusk had fallen quickly and the lights of the city were reflected in the glassy water.
“Did he do it?” I asked without turning.
“At a guess,” Hastings said, “I’d say yes. Her death was too convenient to be coincidental. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t. However, the possibility puts Carla’s situation in a whole new light, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t understand why she lied to me about how his wife died, though, “ I said. “If she wanted my help she’d have had a better case if she’d told me the truth. You don’t think…” I left the thought unspoken.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Hastings said. “Carla may be a thief and a grifter, but I don’t think she’s a killer.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said.
The three of us stood surrounded by the deepening night and the subdued grumble of the city. Hastings, rangy and rumpled; Irene Lindsey, quiet and lovely; and yours truly, certain now that I’d got myself in way over my head. On one of the nearby boats a woman laughed. In the distance, a SeaBus whined across the harbour on the regular run between Vancouver and Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver. The lights of the ski-runs on top of Grouse Mountain gleamed like a ragged string of pearls floating in the sky to the north over the dark mass of Stanley Park.
“Thanks for th
e tea,” I said.
“Nice to have met you,” Irene Lindsey said.
“If I hear from her,” Hastings asked as I stepped onto the dock, “I’ll tell her to call you.”
“Thanks.”
“But to be honest,” he said, “I hope I don’t hear from her.”
* * * * *
When I got back to Sea Village a little after nine, Hilly was in Daniel’s living room, watching a video on his giant television. Daniel called me into the kitchen, where he told me he’d had to go looking for her when she hadn’t returned by eight-thirty.
“I didn’t tell you to get her into trouble,” he added. “I just think you ought to know there have been reports about a man hanging around and treating the kids to free games.”
“Oh, wonderful,” I said.
“Don’t overreact,” he said. “Not every older man who likes kids is a pedophile. Hilly’s a smart girl. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
I returned to the living room, watched a little more of the movie with Hilly, then kissed her goodnight and went back to my place. Pouring myself a couple of fingers of Bowmore malt with a drop or two of water, I took it up to the roof and settled into a deck chair without turning on any lights. My life seemed to have become exceedingly complicated in the short time since Hilly had arrived. I like things simple. When they get complicated, I get edgy. I was also rattled by what I’d learned from Chris Hastings about Vince Ryan. Rattled and more than a little scared. Of course, there was a good chance Ryan may not have had anything to do with his wife’s death. Nevertheless, I was worried. And why had Carla told me that Ryan’s wife had been killed by a hit and run? Maybe it was time to send Hilly to stay with her grandparents in Victoria. She wouldn’t want to go, nor did I want to send her, but I had to get her out of potential harm’s way. Perhaps, I thought, I should go with her.
I could hear the telephone ringing, but I let the machine take it, too lethargic to answer it. A few minutes later, though, I levered myself out of the chair and went downstairs (or below, if you prefer). I pressed the PLAY button.
“Thomas, this is your mother speaking. Are you there? Oh, I hate these things. If you’re there, please answer.” She paused, waiting for me to pick up. “All right,” she said at last. “Call me as soon as possible, please. It’s urgent.”
I reset the machine, picked up the handset, and pressed the memory button that dialled my parent’s number in Victoria.
“It’s me,” I said when she answered.
“So you were there after all.”
“I was up on the roof. What’s so urgent?”
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Your father and I have decided to get a divorce.”
“What? A divorce? What do you mean, a divorce? When did you decide this? Why?”
“I know it must come as a shock to you, Thomas, but these things happen, you know.”
“Not to my parents,” I said. My voice felt strange in my throat, as if it belonged to someone else. Nor did it sound like my own voice. Nevertheless, it was oddly familiar.
“We’re human beings too,” my mother said. “You, of all people, should understand.”
“What should I understand?” The voice I heard was my own, but it was as if I were ten years old again.
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. I did, of course. I knew what she meant. And I understood. “Look,” I said, “I know things have been difficult lately, but a divorce is a little drastic, isn’t it?” She didn’t really believe he was seeing another woman, did she? I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“It’s the only way,” she said. “I’m through making sacrifices. I have myself to think about. My needs. I’ve been thinking about going back to work.”
“Work? What kind of work?”
“Why, acting, of course. What kind of work did you think I meant?”
“Acting?”
“Yes, acting.”
“You don’t have to get a divorce to do that,” I said.
“What else can I do? Your father made it quite clear he didn’t want me going back to work.”
“Have you at least talked to him about it?”
“What good would it do? He’s never taken me seriously. He thinks it’s all a big joke.”
“Maybe you should see a counsellor.”
“I won’t have strangers prying into my private life. I’ve made up my mind, Thomas, and there’s nothing you can do to change it.”
“Have you told Mary-Alice?”
“Not yet.”
“Before you tell her, are you absolutely certain this is what you want?”
“Want?” she said. “I don’t want a divorce,” she said. “I don’t think anyone wants a divorce.”
Now it was my turn to say, “You know what I mean. Don’t tell her unless you are sure there’s no hope.”
“I’m sure,” she said.
Ten minutes after my mother hung up Mary-Alice called. It went much as I expected it would.
“There must be something we can do,” she said.
“If there is,” I said, “I don’t know what it is. If I did, I might’ve saved my own marriage.”
“Is it because of Daddy’s affair?”
“She didn’t mention it and I didn’t ask. She says she wants to go back to work.”
“Work? What kind of work? Surely you don’t mean acting. My god, that’s ridiculous. She’s sixty years old.” I agreed that it was a little ridiculous, but not because of her age. “Maybe it will just blow over,” Mary-Alice said hopefully.
“And maybe it won’t,” I said. “They haven’t been very happy lately.”
“Happy? Who’s happy?”
“I was,” I said. “For a while. Aren’t you?”
She didn’t answer. “Think of something,” she said.
Chapter 21
I slept fitfully and woke up in a foul mood, made fouler by having to go next door to Daniel’s to shower and shave. I grumbled and growled my way through the day, moody and irritable, impatient with Bernard Simpson and how long the repairs were taking, with Bobbi’s continuing absent-mindedness, with Ron’s constant surliness. I even snapped at Mrs. Szymkowiak when she reminded me that I hadn’t signed the paycheques she’d left on my desk. When I went into my office to sign them, Bodger hissed at me as I tried to remove him from my chair.
“Don’t push your luck, stir-fry,” I told him and tipped him onto the floor.
A little after two o’clock Bobbi hung her baseball cap on a yardstick and waved it in front of my office door.
“What is it?” I said, taking my heels off my desk. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who is it?”
“He says his name is Vince Ryan.”
“Tell him to go away,” I said.
“I told him you were busy,” she said, “but he said it was important.” Lowering her voice, she added, “And he’s got a guy with him who looks like he could pick up a small car.”
“All right,” I said without enthusiasm. “Show them in.”
“Hey, McCall,” Vince Ryan said cheerily, a broad smile on his homely face. He settled onto the old worn leather sofa opposite my desk. Sam stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, arms folded across his broad chest.
“What do you want?” I asked sourly. As if I didn’t know.
“Having a good day, are we?”
“It’s getting worse by the minute.”
“I was in the neighbourhood,” Ryan said. “So I thought I’d just drop by to see how things were going.”
“What, exactly?”
“Pardon me?”
“How what’s going?”
“I didn’t come here to talk philosophy, McCall. Did you find out where Carla is?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You talk to anybody at all?”
“Correct
me if I’m wrong,” I said, “but didn’t I tell you I wasn’t going to help you find her?”
“I guess I didn’t believe you.”
“Believe me,” I said.
“Why don’t we go get ourselves a drink and talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I said. “Besides, I’ve got work to do.”
“Work later. You need to relax.”
“You’re probably right,” I said. “But if you don’t mind, I’ll choose who I relax with.”
Ryan looked up at Sam. “Sam, go get yourself an herbal tea or something. I want a private word with our friend here.”
Sam heaved himself away from the door jamb and went into the outer office. Ryan reached out and closed the door. It banged shut with a rattle of glass and cheap plastic blind.
If you believe a tenth of the stuff on television or in the newspapers it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the majority of North American males are beer guzzling wife beaters, rapists, child molesters, serial killers, or ambulance chasing lawyers; that women, when not obsessing about cleanliness or worrying about leakage from their sanitary products, regularly poison their husbands and children, seduce teenage boys or elderly men, and turn their sons into homophobic sociopaths and their daughters into pathological victims; that every black kid in the inner cities carries a handgun and wants to be a crack dealer when he grows up, if he grows up; and that every politician is a self-serving egomaniac who can’t keep his fingers out of the till or his dick in his pants. (Okay, so some things are true.) If beings from Alpha Centauri are monitoring our television, who could blame them for deciding to blow us into the fifth dimension before we can mess up any more of this spiral arm of the Galaxy. Assuming, of course, that they don’t have problems of their own.
While I did not swallow much of anything I saw on television or read in the papers, it had nevertheless skewed my perspective and I was having a difficult time making up my mind about Vince Ryan. Had he or had he not hired someone to kill his wife? Nothing in my life had prepared me to make that kind of judgement. On the one hand, I did not want to believe people were capable of cold-blooded murder; on the other hand, the evidence that some indeed were was irrefutable.
If Looks Could Kill Page 14