“I thought you had a business degree,” Henry said.
“Marketing,” Tess said by way of explanation.
Henry flipped through the papers. The top of the first page read “BC Corporation Summary - 121702 BC Ltd.”
“The company was incorporated way back on December 1, 1971,” he read, skimming and flipping sheets. “The only director of the company is R. Benham.”
“Mr. Benham owns our building?” Tess asked, surprised.
“Not necessarily.” Henry’s eyes scanned the remaining document as he spoke. “Shareholders own a company. Directors just sort of make decisions. They don’t have to be the owners, too. It’s possible, though, but it makes no sense.” He tapped the table with his index finger. “The registered office’s address is Unit 2, 1584 Richardson Street, which is no surprise. Although, I’ve never seen anyone picking up mail from there. Have you?”
“I’ve never seen anyone going in or out, ever,” Tess said. “What’s that other address?”
Henry frowned at the page.
Why is this familiar?
“1501 West Broadway.” He looked out the window, mentally walking through a map of the city.
“Why are there two addresses?” Tess asked.
“The records office is different from the mailing address of the company. Lots of companies keep their corporate records at their lawyer’s offices.” He typed away on his phone. “Lawyers. There’s only one law firm in that building. Whoever the shareholders of the company are, they are using Tolmie Douglas & Associates, upstairs.”
“Let’s go up there and pretend we work for the company,” suggested Frieda.
“Nice try, kiddo,” Henry said. “I’m sure that’s illegal for some reason. Plus, I know those lawyers. You remember my friend, Alex? That’s his firm.”
“Just ask him, then.”
Henry winced. He couldn’t stop now. He also couldn’t just ask Alex to violate a client’s privacy. Tess and Frieda sat in silence as Henry weighed the consequences of putting a friend in a compromising position versus the cost of not knowing the answer.
“Alex does trusts and estates, not corporate work. But I think I know what I can ask, without actually asking. First, I need to figure out whose client the company is. There are three possible corporate lawyers there and maybe we can find out who we should talk to. Two of them I know only by name, from work we did with them at the bank. The third, Tolmie, is a tyrant. We’ll get nowhere if it’s his client.”
“Let’s hope it’s not his, then. Who’s Alex?” Tess asked.
Henry punched in Alex’s number without thinking. “A friend from university. He’s also handling my divorce.” He heard the phone ringing and held a finger to his lips.
“Alexander Irving speaking.”
“Hey, Alex.”
“Hey yourself. I thought you were going to be busy all week having fun. What’s up?”
“I’m just trying to get a hold of someone at the management company for my apartment. I lost the contact info, but I remember them saying that they use you guys for their corporate work.”
“Oh? Do you recall whose client it is?”
“I don’t. I think it was either Nolan or Mya. The company is 121702 BC Ltd.”
Henry waited. He shrugged at Frieda and Tess and continued. “The thing is, Bernadette’s my usual person, and she’s away right now. I think she might have gone on vacation or to see her family or something.”
The response was slow in coming.
“Really?”
“I know. You’d think she would have left a contact number. She might have mentioned it, in fact, and I guess I just missed it.”
Henry waited. He thought for a moment they had been disconnected. But Alex spoke again.
“Why are you asking?”
Henry tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. “I’m just trying to track down another contact at the company. I figured you guys could put me in touch with one of the owners.”
“Huh. I can’t help you.”
Henry rolled the dice. “Is it possible that Nolan or Mya might know? Or Tolmie?”
“What the heck is this, Henry? What are you really asking about 121702 for?”
Henry’s mind raced. Corporate structures ran through his mind: holding companies, trusts, shareholders, trustees.
That firm must have hundreds of corporate clients. Why would Alex be aware of this company off the top of his head? Why this reaction?
Henry pulled the ripcord. “Hey, I must have misheard that it was one of your clients. Sorry for wasting your time. I’ll just leave a message for my usual person to call me when she gets back.”
“Yeah, don’t worry about it.” There was disbelief in Alex’s tone. Still, he seemed willing to play along.
“Hey, by the way, have you heard about Ron Benham?”
“You can’t ask me this shit, Henry.” Alex growled. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but you’re going too far this time, even for you. This conversation never happened.” A loud, clattering sound followed as Alex hung up.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Henry lowered the phone from his ear. The pieces fell into place.
“Well?” Tess asked.
“The company is owned by a trust,” Henry said with confidence. “If Alex is the lawyer, then either he is the trustee or, at least, he’s legal counsel to the trustee. Whatever the purpose of the trust is, by his reaction, I’d guess it’s hush-hush.”
Henry leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. “Using a trust would be a simple way to obscure ownership of the company. You continue to operate the company just as you’d like, based on decisions you make when you set it up. Then lots of the directions are set in stone and anyone else can run it as the trustee. The big question is: where did the trust come from?”
“And you can find that out, right?” Frieda asked.
“I don’t know that we can.” Henry shook his head and rubbed his temples as he spoke. “I hope I haven’t burned a bridge there with Alex, too. That’s going to take some explaining. If he’s the trustee, he’s accountable to the people who benefit from the trust. The beneficiaries. We have no idea who they are, and there is no way in hell that he’s going to tell us.”
Henry polished off his coffee, now cold, in one long swig. “I mean, it’s possible that the trust is some long-dead person’s estate. But it’s just as likely that someone living set it up for themselves.”
“To hide something?” Tess asked.
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “It fits, right?”
“Mr. Benham,” Frieda said, under her breath.
“Could be,” Henry said. “Anyhow, I think the trust successfully prevents our figuring out who owns 121702. This is a dead end.”
Henry leaned one elbow on the table and flipped through the corporate information again.
“That was enough law and accounting for me for one day,” Tess said.
“We can’t be stuck,” Frieda said and pouted at the window.
Tess placed the card from Bernadette’s purse on the table. “This is all we’ve got.” She pulled out her phone and looked to the service counter for the posted password to the WiFi.
The three of them fumed in their own ways. Eventually, Frieda dipped into her satchel, offered them all gum, and joined Tess with her own phone.
“You took a pic of the chat?”
“I’ll send it to you.”
Henry’s phone beeped a receipt, and he listened as the conversation turned more intently to the subject of DB Cooper. His own eyes passed again and again over the small card Tess had lifted from Bernadette’s purse.
“Hang on,” he said. “Where are you guys?”
“We’re looking at the Net-Tectives site again,” Tess replied.
“Did you know that DB Cooper left his tie on the plane?” Frieda asked. “It wasn’t even a real tie. It clipped on. How cool, eh?”
Henry read through the conversation again between treasurehunter1971 and
juliancaesar.
“So, we’re confident that Mr. Creepy is Keller, or treasurehunter1971, right?”
“Because Frieda pointed out that he had out-of-town plates,” Tess said.
“Right. But who’s the other guy? Who did our stalker come here to meet? And for what?”
“Holy sh—” Tess caught her language and looked at Frieda. “Smokes. We went down the rabbit hole with the Cooper-Benham thing, but we’ve still not looked at the other side.”
Henry turned back to his laptop and brought up the Net-Tectives site. He brought up the juliancaesar profile. Member for thirty days, no posts to his name, most recent history was the same DB Cooper hijacking forum. And a name.
“Julian Corbeau,” he said. “At least it’s not Ron Benham.”
“Corbeau means ‘crow’ in French,” Frieda said, leaning most of her body across the table to see Henry’s screen. “And he’s from here, right?”
Henry googled the name, followed by ‘Vancouver’.
“And we have a hit.” He looked up at Tess. “Julian Corbeau, it seems, is the owner of Corbeau Silver & Gold, right downtown. Not much of a website, but we’ve got a phone number.”
Henry dialed the number. No answer. He looked at his watch. “It’s past five-thirty.”
“Where is it?” Tess asked. “We could go in tomorrow and talk to this Julian guy.”
“This is crazy.” Henry’s shaking hands made and corrected mistakes as he typed into the laptop. “East Hastings. Right downtown. Why not? We’ll go in the morning. He doesn’t know who we are. We’re just customers. It’ll be an adventure and, if we learn anything, we’ll pass it on to the police.”
Frieda leaned in very close to the screen. “Could you switch to street view?”
Henry switched map views, so the screen showed the street right in front of the pawnshop. There to the left of the barred windows was a small store with a green sign that read Welcome Pharmacy.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In the hallway of 1584 Richardson, they agreed to order pizza and immerse themselves in Cooper lore. Henry watched Tess climb the stairs in lithe hops. She would fetch her laptop, and probably lose her socks and shoes.
Inside Henry’s suite, Frieda scooped Shima into her arms before the cat had fully emerged from the bedroom.
Henry leaned with his back on the door and surveyed the situation. Despite the drama and sirens of the night before, despite the lingering scent of new furniture, despite everything, he felt a long-unfamiliar calm. There would be no permanent damage to his friendship with Alex. The decision to walk away from his professional designation felt more right the more he thought about it. And Frieda? He could look after her, and he couldn’t ask for a better house guest.
He dared wonder whether the worst was behind him.
Before Henry could find the number to call for delivery, the apartment door burst open, knocking him forward.
Tess rushed in, barefoot and crying.
“He was here.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Lock the door behind us. Don’t let anyone in. If you hear me shout, call 911.”
Frieda, with Shima still in her arms, nodded in the bedroom doorway as Tess and Henry went out into the hall.
Henry stopped cold as his foot hit the first stair to the second floor. “He’s gone now, right?”
“I think so,” Tess said.
They crept up together, wincing at each creak of the old stairwell.
From the hallway, through the open door, Henry could see books and papers littering the floor. Further on, in Tess’s bedroom, sheets and clothes were piled on the floor. Every drawer had been opened and emptied. Whoever had been through the apartment had invaded every imaginable space.
“This is the worst bit,” Tess said.
In her studio, a bottle of ink was upturned onto the hardwood floor in one dark pool with spatter in all directions, looking like a murder scene from a black-and-white film. A single brush lay staining her yellow chair, discarded after having been used to write on the wall.
The letters were a dark, dull black, the ink having soaked into the paint and plaster.
THIEF
Henry stared at the word.
“Why me?” Tess asked.
Henry opened his mouth but had no words. They studied the message together for a long moment.
Henry whispered. “Do you notice how nothing looks broken?” He turned on the spot. “Other than the ink, there’s a mess but nothing’s wrecked. Why?”
“Maybe he was trying to be quiet?” Tess said.
“Maybe,” Henry agreed. “Or maybe he was angry when he attacked Benham. And here? Here he was just looking for something?”
They looked back at the writing on the wall. The characters were tall, evenly spaced, of equal size.
“It’s not scribbled, is it?” Tess said as she leaned in to look at the letters. “He even went back to the well a couple of times for more ink.”
“So, what does he think you stole?”
“His papers?”
Henry shrugged. “That’s the only thing I can think of.”
Tess’s pale look told Henry that she was thinking the same thing. Her ‘daughter’ Frieda was the thief.
“What’s so goddamn important about those papers?”
“Whatever it is, he wants them back.”
“And he can’t have found them, because there was nothing here.”
“You’re sure?”
“We had all of it last night. It’s all downstairs. Which means . . .” She looked out the large window at Richardson Street. There were neither cars outside nor pedestrians. Even the café appeared empty.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Henry said. “There’s a good chance he’s coming back.”
“Augh!” Henry turned quickly from the window and made fists in his hair. “We’ll have to call the police. Again.”
“What do we tell them?”
“What do you mean, what do we tell them?” Henry’s eyes were wide. “This could mean Frieda.” He pointed at the writing on the wall. “We tell them everything.”
“We can’t, though, can we? Are you going to tell them we held back a bunch of pages? Or that we used your bank password to get information about the numbered company?”
Henry rubbed his eyes. He paced in a circle, stepping on paper, avoiding books.
“And what about Mr. Benham?”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get our stories straight.”
They spoke for several minutes before they heard sirens. Henry looked out the window and saw a police cruiser pull up in front of the house. One of its front tires rested on the curb. Its front end nearly touched the lamppost and faced against the direction of traffic. A familiar figure in uniform got out of the passenger side of the vehicle and stood looking at the building.
“Did you call the police?” he asked.
“No. I’ve been with you the whole time.”
“Well, Stubbing and Tipton are here.”
“Fred must have heard you shout.”
Henry tipped his head back to the ceiling, groaning.
“You go see Fred,” Tess said. “I’ll meet our friends.”
A second car pulled up behind the first.
“And their friends, too,” she added.
Chapter Thirty
Sergeant Khatri was a towering, full-bearded figure, several inches taller than Henry. He fairly filled the doorframe leading to the hallway. The Sikh officer wore his turban low on his forehead, dark blue and cheerless to match his uniform jacket. Only when Khatri smiled could Henry surmise that he wasn’t scowling.
“My colleagues are just finishing with your friend upstairs. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions in the meantime, Mr . . .?”
“Lysyk. Henry Lysyk.” Henry waved Sergeant Khatri into his apartment.
The Sergeant gave Henry a sidelong glance as he entered. “Have you lived here long?”
“Only about half a ye
ar.”
“And you are dating Ms. Honma?”
“No, we only just met.”
“But you’ve lived here for months?”
“Yes. I keep myself busy.”
Henry held out a mug and kettle. Khatri shook his head and continued walking around the room.
“Do you have keys to the other suites in the house? Maybe Ms. Honma’s?”
“No.”
“But you do find her attractive. I mean, you’re a single man, and she’s a young, single woman.”
“I beg your pardon. What kind of question is that?”
Khatri looked at his note pad. “And your niece? She is staying with you?”
“That’s right. Her folks are away for a few more days.”
“Where is she now?”
“In the bedroom with my cat. He’s a little spooked by all the activity.”
“She saw the man on the lawn?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t mind keeping her in the house where your neighbor was attacked downstairs?”
Henry looked at the closed bedroom door. Frieda would be pressing her ear to the other side.
“Well, I don’t like it, of course. But what happened to Benham has nothing to do with me.”
“What about what happened upstairs?”
“What?”
“You saw what was painted on the wall?”
“Yes. Thief.”
“If you had to guess what the person who wrote this was referring to, what would you say?”
Henry blinked and tried to read into the scowling Sikh’s eyes.
“What would you say that you do for a living, Henry?”
“I’m between things.”
Khatri broke off and paced into the kitchen. He stopped in front of the large window and blocked out a great portion of the view.
“Where did you tell my colleagues you were yesterday, when Mr. Benham was attacked?”
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