by Scott Mackay
The two detectives drove in one of the Luminas to the Best Western Primrose that afternoon. Situated on the corner of Carleton and Jarvis, the hotel wasn’t that far from headquarters. The sun beat down like the worst of thirty-nine lashes, the mercury edged upward, and the pavement was so hot it sent ripples of heated air, mirage-like and filmy, toward the sky. Gilbert nudged the car’s air-conditioning up a notch.
“Is it okay I mentioned Boyd to Tim?” asked Lombardo.
“That I knew him?” said Gilbert.
“Yeah.”
“Sure,” he said. “I don’t care.”
“Because you seem…I don’t know.”
“It was a long time ago, Joe,” he said. “Think about people you knew twenty-three years ago and haven’t seen since. You can barely remember them. I’m just not sure why you mentioned it in the first place.”
“I mentioned it in passing.”
“Yeah…well…Tim’s all jumpy about this one,” said Gilbert. “So I think he got all nervous when you told him I knew Boyd. I guess he thinks my connection to Boyd might blur my judgment on the case. Tim might not show it, but I don’t think he’s the calm man he makes out to be. I think he feels stress just like everybody else. He’s just better at hiding it.”
The Primrose was a nondescript tower of twenty floors built sometime in the late sixties or early seventies, of functionalist poured-concrete design, drab and unadorned. Across the street stood St. Andrew’s Church, an old monstrosity from Toronto’s stuffier Victorian days, now serving a Lutheran congregation of Estonian and Latvian immigrants. Maple Leaf Gardens loomed down the street. Had Judy Pelaez ever played at Maple Leaf Gardens, Gilbert wondered? If so, had she stayed at the Primrose?
He found a parking spot a block south on Jarvis. He and Joe got out and walked north to the hotel. Gilbert thought of Nina. He was anxious to get the test results back, but they wouldn’t be ready till Saturday. His precious Nina. Something like this always put things in perspective. Boyd didn’t matter. Tim’s jumpiness didn’t matter. He thought of Nina five or six times an hour, every hour, every day, hoping she would be all right.
They got Judy’s room number from the desk clerk—1602—and took the elevator to the sixteenth floor. They walked along the plushly carpeted corridor. As they neared her door, Gilbert raised his hand, signaling Lombardo to stop. From inside he heard an acoustic guitar, plucked gently, with consummate skill and grace. The two detectives listened. They waited for her to sing, but she didn’t. Gilbert gave the door a few soft taps. The guitar playing stopped. He heard Judy come to the door.
“Who is it?” she called.
Her voice was husky, rough, not at all the honey-toned soprano he remembered from yesteryear.
“Detective-Sergeant Barry Gilbert and Detective Joe Lombardo of Metro Homicide,” said Gilbert. “Can we come in for a minute, Ms. Pelaez? We need to talk to you.”
He heard the chain-lock rattle, the bolt-lock slide back, and watched, the door open.
She looked up at them through tinted prescription glasses. She wore a coral-colored beret that looked as if it had been around for a while. Her hair, in contrast to the golden thick locks of her youth, was now thin and dead-looking, and escaped from her beret in a tired shade of blond, a color which, sadly, matched the shade of the hair found in Boyd’s bed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I meant to return your call.”
No explanation, no excuse—as if it had never occurred to her that a homicide investigation might be a priority.
“We apologize for disturbing you,” he said. He pulled out his badge and ID and showed them to her. Joe did the same. “Can we come in?”
“Sure…of course.” She hoisted her lips in a weak smile. He saw her trademark teeth, now stained from years of cigarette smoking. “I’m working on some new material. I can interrupt that for a while.”
“I’m sorry about Glen Boyd, Ms. Pelaez.”
She looked away, as if she hadn’t heard him.
“Would you like some peanuts?” she asked, motioning at a bowl on the table. “I can’t live without them.”
“No…no thanks.”
Joe was staring at her. Gilbert knew what he was feeling. It was so often the case with famous people. You stared at them for a minute. You remembered all the photographs and television images you’d ever seen of them and compared them to the actual article. He gave her a look over himself. And yes, it was definitely her, Judy Pelaez, the megastar folksinger of two decades ago—only age had touched her in the myriad ways it touched everybody. Her petite ballerina-like figure was gone. She was heavyset on top. She held herself in a slightly stooped position, as if osteoporosis had made gains in her spine, the way it did with so many women her age. While she might have been heavyset on top, her legs were exceedingly thin. Her face no longer had its pliancy, was lined in places. She had middle-aged pouches under her eyes. Only her lips were full, sensual, and young looking. Anybody seeing her for the first time would realize, just from her lips, that she’d been an extremely pretty woman in her younger days.
She sat down—slumped would be more accurate. Gilbert took the chair opposite. Joe remained standing, glanced around, began the plain-view search, allowable under the Canadian Criminal Code. Anything within plain view was fair game as far as evidence was concerned. This kind of search didn’t need a warrant.
Judy’s room faced south, and through the humidity outside Gilbert saw Lake Ontario resting like a big blue plate, tranquil and calm, the antithesis of downtown’s hot jumble of skyscrapers. A layer of brown smog circled the horizon. The Royal Bank Tower glowed like a gold monument to Canada’s capitalist ways. Judy wouldn’t look him in the eye. She sat on the edge of the couch with her hands on her thighs, uneasy, as if she were getting ready to spring any moment.
“I understand Glen Boyd was your common-law husband,” Gilbert began, “and that you lived with him for ten years in San Francisco during the nineteen-eighties and nineties.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And that you had two children by him.”
“Yes. Morningstar and Delta.”
“And that you had dinner with him on Friday night, the night he was murdered.”
Her chin dipped, as if the effort to hold her head up was too much for her. She took off her prescription glasses. There. The eyes. There was no mistaking those eyes. The cat-green eyes he had seen in so many photographs. The eyes of Judy Pelaez. They grew misty. She snatched a Kleenex from the box and dabbed them.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Joe unobtrusively walked around to the back of the couch and went to the table by the window. He pretended to look at the view of the lake, then glanced at all the papers on the table.
“It’s okay,” said Gilbert. “I understand. I know how it is.”
Many times, sympathy freely given, though meant to comfort, exacerbated tears. She cried more earnestly. She dabbed first one eye, then the other as she stared at the scanty flower arrangement on the coffee table.
“Stacy called me with the news,” she said. “I’m numb. I just sit here. I can’t believe he’s gone.” She looked up at Gilbert with hopeful eyes. “Can I see him?” she asked. She sounded curiously childlike now. “Can you take me to him?”
He hated to play the hard-ass, especially because her grief seemed genuine, but what choice did he have?
“I’m afraid that’s impossible right now, Ms. Pelaez,” he said. “You’ll have to wait until the coroner’s office gives us the okay to release the body to the funeral home.” He thought of Dr. Blackstein’s inconclusive autopsy report. “And there might be a bit of a delay. You’ll just have to hang in there.”
Her lips came together in a frustrated line. “Do you have any idea how long it will be?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
Her shoulders sank. She turned, stared at the peanut bowl, then lifted a guitar pick and tapped it a few times against her skinny knee.
“I have no
idea who would do this to him,” she said. “I guess that’s what you want to know. I fly up here every year. I try to get him to come back to his children, and convince him that I’m the one he should be with. But he never listens. He’s never sensible about anything. And now look what’s happened to him.” She paused, thought about something, then put the pick on the table. “He told me he was seeing someone.” For the first time she looked him in the eyes. Her tears dried. “You wouldn’t have any idea who that might be, would you? You’ve been investigating. Maybe you’ve turned up her name. Maybe she was the one who did it.”
Preposterous as he knew it had to be, he couldn’t help thinking of Regina. Was Regina the mystery woman Boyd was fooling around with?
“We haven’t ascertained the woman’s identity yet,” he said. “But rest assured, when we do, we’ll be speaking to her, too.”
“Because I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the one you’re looking for,” said Judy. “If you find her, you should put her away for good.”
“Ms. Pelaez, let’s talk about the dinner you had with Mr. Boyd,” he said. “Were you to meet him at the restaurant, or was he picking you up? What was the arrangement?”
Judy cast around for an answer, as if in her distress she couldn’t immediately recall the arrangement. “I was to meet him at Scaramouche,” she said.
“Scaramouche,” said Gilbert. “That’s familiar.”
“It’s north of here. I forget exactly where.”
“Joe, where’s Scaramouche?” asked Gilbert. As Lombardo was a regular sampler of Toronto’s nightlife, Gilbert thought his young partner might know. “Have you been there?”
“It’s off Avenue Road,” said Lombardo. “On Benevenuto Place. It’s upscale and trendy. A lot of Forest Hill-types go there.” Joe turned to Judy. “Do you mind if I use your washroom?”
As was his custom, Joe was making the most of the plain-view search, widening it where he could.
She gestured distractedly toward the washroom. “Go ahead,” she said.
Lombardo walked to the washroom, went inside, and shut the door.
“So you were to meet Mr. Boyd at Scaramouche,” said Gilbert.
“Yes.”
“And did you go there?”
“I went there…and I waited…and he never showed up.” She frowned, looked to one side. “What else is new?”
“And did he make reservations? Or did you?”
“He did.”
“So they were under his name.”
She shrugged, an impatient jerking of her shoulders, and lifted a Toronto Life magazine from the table, as if she were getting bored—the way a child might get bored.
“I guess so,” she said.
“And when he finally didn’t show up, what did you do?”
Her frown deepened. “I called his apartment,” she said. She fidgeted. “No one answered.” She put the magazine down. “His voice mail was on.”
“So did you leave a message?” asked Gilbert.
“I couldn’t. His mailbox was full.”
“So what did you do then?” he asked.
She lifted a peanut from the bowl. “I went back to our table,” she said. “I waited.”
“Until what time?” he asked.
“Until nine o’clock.”
“Because we believe he was murdered around nine-thirty.”
She grew still, as if the time of her husband’s death was symbolically significant to her. “Nine-thirty,” she said. “You always wonder what time you’re going to die. At least I do. Everybody says they would like to die in their sleep. Not me. I’d like to die in the morning. While I’m having tea. With the radio on. And a big bouquet of roses hanging upside down by the spice rack.”
Here was the lyricist Judy Pelaez, he decided, romanticizing her own death. Death seemed an apt subject for Judy Pelaez. She was the undisputed mistress of melancholy.
“So you left Scaramouche at nine,” he said. “And where did you go from there?”
But it was as if she were in her own world now. She wasn’t listening. She was thinking of something else. Maybe about roses hanging upside down by the spice rack. But then she snapped out of it.
“I came back here,” she said with a big sigh.
“You came back to the hotel.”
“Yes,” she said. “I thought he might have left a message here.”
Joe came out of the washroom.
“And had he?” asked Gilbert.
“No,” said Judy.
“So did you try calling him again once you got back here?” he asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
She frowned. “Why should I?” she said.
“To find out what happened,” he said.
“I didn’t care. He stood me up. It’s not the first time. He’s stood up every woman he’s ever loved. I’m not the only one.”
Gilbert took a deep breath and stared at Judy’s guitar, a Larrivée acoustic, leaning against the sofa. She had a capo strapped around the third fret.
“When do you go back to San Francisco?” he asked.
In a quiet but steady voice, she said, “After I bury my husband.”
He decided there wasn’t much else he could ask her right now, not until he confirmed her alibi. “We’ll need to speak to you again,” he said.
“If you must,” she said.
She didn’t get up to see them off. She simply went back to working on her new material.
Outside, on the way back to the car, Gilbert asked Lombardo if the plain-view search had yielded anything useful.
“Nothing incriminating,” said the young detective. “I found a rental agreement from Tilden. She’s rented a midnight blue Buick Skylark, Ontario license plate AEDF 079. I’ll put it in the file. It might come in useful later.”
“Did you happen to see any perfume lying around?” asked Gilbert.
“Perfume?” said Lombardo, surprised by this.
“A bottle of Dilys by Laura Ashley?”
“No,” he said. “Why?”
It had taken him a while, but now he remembered the scent on the scarf, one his wife wore on occasion, one of his standby gifts for birthdays and anniversaries.
“Just a gut feeling,” he said.
“You and your gut feelings,” said Lombardo.
“My gut feelings have helped me solve more murders than I can count, Joe,” he said, now trying to quickly steer away from the perfume. It made him nervous. “We go as far as modern criminalistics can take us, and then we rely on our gut feelings. Killing’s in the gut. Ask any murderer. He’ll tell you he knows what I’m talking about.”
Six
That evening, on the pretext of picking up groceries, Gilbert drove to Mike Topalovich’s apartment. Gilbert used the grocery pretext because he didn’t want anybody in his family to know what he was doing.
Mike’s building, a low-rise on Dawes Road, was in a hardworking neighborhood of new Canadians from Sri Lanka, Trinidad, and, in the Topaloviches’ case, Poland. A red sun bloated to five times its normal size sank through the usual products of combustion, painting the windows of Mike’s building orange.
Gilbert left his car at the curb and immediately began to sweat. High temperatures continued. He entered the foyer and discovered, much to his chagrin, that the air-conditioning was broken. No relief here. He pressed the intercom button beside number 103 and waited.
A few moments later, a gruff voice said, “Yes?”
“It’s Barry Gilbert,” he said. “Nina’s dad. I called earlier.”
“Oh, yeah. C’mon in.”
The door buzzed and Gilbert went inside.
The corridor smelled of old cooking and lemon cleanser. He found apartment 103 immediately to his right. A man of about forty stood at the apartment door waiting. Tattoos covered his bare arms and sweat soaked the chest of his gray undershirt. He wore black shorts, sandals, and a gold chain around his neck. His hair was long. He had a thick mustache, smelled heavily
of men’s cologne, and a cigarette dangled from his lips.
“You Nina’s dad?” he asked, his Polish accent thick but not impenetrable.
“Yes. Casmir?”
“Yes. Lena’s out. I had her go out. She doesn’t know yet. It would kill her to find out. She’s at her sister’s. I told her to stay there for a while. Her sister tapes the soap operas, so I think we’re good for at least two hours.”
A little white dog—an American Eskimo dog—pranced past Casmir’s feet, jumped to its hind legs, and delicately bounced its paws against Gilbert’s shins, jubilant with excitement.
“Snowflake, get down,” said Casmir.
“It’s okay,” said Gilbert. He knelt, his arthritic knees giving him a pinch, and patted the little dog. “I like dogs. I had a German shepherd when I was teenager. Queenie was her name.”
Casmir grinned. “She’s a good dog,” he said. “She’s my angel. C’mon inside. Mike’s waiting for you at the dining room table.”
He followed the stocky, muscular man inside.
The smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air. The kitchen, directly ahead of him, was a mess, with dishes stacked on all available counter space, and a green garbage bag filled to overflowing against the broom closet. Snowflake sniffed more curiously at his pant leg.
Glancing into the living room, Gilbert saw a special shelf stretching the whole length, every square inch filled with collector-item dolls, all still in their original packaging. One was dressed like a Victorian woman in a crinoline dress and a bonnet; another was in a kilt and a tam-o’-shanter; another wore a little Dutch girl’s costume, complete with Middelburg cap and wooden clogs. He assumed these dolls belonged to Lena—he couldn’t picture Casmir as a doll collector.
Through the kitchen, he saw the dining room, where Mike Topalovich sat morosely at the table, the wind from the ceiling fan twitching the strands of his James Deanish hair.
“You ask him whatever you like,” said Casmir. His eyes grew sullen, as if he resented his son for the whole thing. “He knows he has to answer. And have a beer. It’s hot in here. A beer will do you good. There’s plenty in the fridge. Molson Canadian.” He grinned, then parroted the famous slogan. “‘I am Canadian.’” His eyes narrowed inquiringly. “You smoke?”