by L E Fraser
He held the door for her and waited for her to find her keys. “I’ll walk you out,” he said.
In the parking lot, he sat in his car and watched her drive away. Because of his past, he always felt uneasy when someone he loved got behind the wheel of a car for a long drive. With a sigh, he shoved his feeling of disquietude aside and started his car.
JACK BELINSKI KEPT Reece waiting for half an hour. The pretty receptionist peeked at him and picked up the phone. She whispered something and hung up, returning to her computer without looking his way.
The reception space was gaudy, to say the least. Confusing abstract art decorated garish red and blue walls that were better suited in a kindergarten room. The ugly, ultra-modern, uncomfortable furniture probably cost more than his car. To Reece, the decor represented city dwellers scrambling to be unique in a concrete box.
He turned when the hallway door opened and saw a middle-aged woman with ‘lawyer’ stamped all over her march up to the reception desk. “Katrina, where are Julie and Jack?”
“In Jack’s office.” The receptionist tilted her head toward Reece.
The overweight, stern looking woman walked over, and he dropped the magazine he was pretending to read and stood.
“Mr. Hash,” she said, “I’m Gloria Thompson. They’re waiting for us.” She shook hands with him before turning on her heels and trotting away.
Reece followed her down the hall to a closed office door. She knocked once, didn’t wait for a response, and opened the door, beckoning Reece inside.
Gloria handled the introductions. “Jack Belinski, CEO, and Julie Stewart, head of HR.” She sat on the sofa. “This is Reece Hash,” she added, and to Reece, it felt like an afterthought.
Jack was lounging in a purple leather armchair with his legs crossed and a bottle of designer water in his hand. Julie, a thin woman with sharp facial features, perched on the cushion edge of a matching chair. She appeared ready to bolt from the room at a moment’s notice. Neither of them rose or offered their hand.
Off to a great start, Reece thought. He sat beside Gloria on a fluorescent orange sofa. Between the sofa and chairs was a lacquered glass table in a shocking shade of green. The one appealing feature in the room was the wall of windows to Reece’s right, which had a wonderful view of east Toronto. To his annoyance, there were no curtains and he was sitting with the morning sun shining in his eyes.
Madam Lawyer spoke first. “On the phone, you said you have questions about Gabriella Martina’s employment. As I told you, under privacy and labour laws, we don’t need to speak with you.”
This interview already wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He thought they’d be upset about Gabriella’s disappearance and cooperate. His hope was that Gabriella had talked to her boss or co-workers about her sister. She might have kept Isabella’s address on her work computer. He was also hoping to see a sample of her handwriting. Just a technicality really, but he wanted outside confirmation that the handwriting in the diary was Gabriella’s.
“I’m surprised the police haven’t interviewed you,” Reece said.
“Ah, but you’re not with the police, now are you?” Jack said.
The sun was blinding him, and his temper got the better of him. “In which case I’m free to speak with the press about my investigation,” Reece retorted. “Gabriella was murdered two days after you terminated her employment. I haven’t read that in the paper yet.”
“So what?” Jack countered. “Everyone knows her husband killed her.”
Reece gave himself a mental kick. If they weren’t on the defensive before, they sure would be now.
Gloria jumped in. “Mr. Hash, what do you want to know?”
Reece took a breath and started over. “Did Gabriella have a work cell phone?”
Julie shook her head. “No, she refused to take one. Since she didn’t ask the company to pay her personal plan, we didn’t care so long as Jack could reach her twenty-four-seven.”
“How about her work computer? Any chance she kept personal contacts in her address book?”
“No, employees aren’t permitted to keep personal data on our computers,” Julie answered. “I can confirm she didn’t breach the policy because I checked the laptop before turning it over to Jack’s new EA.”
That was disappointing. “Why did you fire her?”
Before Julie could open her mouth, Jack spat out, “She’s a nutcase, not to mention insubordinate. Intolerable and—”
“We terminated her for a number of reasons,” Julie interrupted, “one of which was unprofessional conduct.” Julie was a low-talker, and Reece had to lean forward to hear her.
“You had cause?” Reece asked.
“Gabriella said—” Julie began, at the same time Jack declared, “She insulted me. What would you do if your secretary insulted you to your face?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Reece replied. “How did she insult you?”
“Called me an aging Spanish porn star.”
Reece smothered a chuckle. Jack was an arrogant-looking man whose appearance suggested he was trying hard to pretend he wasn’t over sixty. He was wearing skinny jeans and pointy-toed Italian shoes. He’d used gel to puff up his thinning hair, and his forehead was shiny and tight. Reece suspected Botox injections.
“Well,” Reece forced his face to remain neutral, “that could be taken as an insult, yes.”
“Could be?” Jack scoffed. “She’s deranged.”
“Why did she say it, do you know?”
Jack laughed. “How the hell should I know? I took her out for lunch to discuss ongoing problems. When we were driving back to the office, she drove like a maniac and hurled insults at me.”
“Ongoing problems,” Reece repeated. “You experienced performance management issues?”
“Yes,” Julie said, a little too fast in Reece’s opinion.
“What type of issues?”
“She was two cans short of a six-pack,” Jack said.
The guy had a wealth of nasty ways to describe his assistant’s mental health without giving concrete examples. Reece turned his attention to Julie, shading his eyes against the sun’s glare. “What type of issues?”
“She had a difficult time managing Jack’s calendar. Gabriella often double-booked him, removed meetings from his calendar, and forgot to send cancellations for the ones she rescheduled.”
Finally, something of substance. Reece stood and moved to the wall of windows, leaning his back against the window so the sun wasn’t in his eyes. He opened his iPad to make notes. “Anything else?”
Jack had to crane his neck to see him. “She talked to herself. Muttered under her breath.” Jack spun his finger around his temple. “And not just to herself, but about herself. Gabriella is feeling this and Gabriella thinks that,” he mimicked in a screechy, soprano voice.
“She did seem,” Julie paused and appeared to be searching for the right word, “distracted at times.”
Jack snorted. “Because she was chatting up male employees all the time.”
That didn’t sound like the woman he’d met. “She was a flirt?” Reece had difficulty keeping the disbelief from his voice.
“Well,” Julie said softly, “sometimes, she was too social in the workplace.”
“With the men.” Jack snorted and looked disgusted. “I felt bad for her husband. Word on the street is he was a sure winner for McBride’s Parliament seat. That poor son of a bitch. Can’t say I blame him for losing his temper.”
Gloria frowned. “What Jack means is—”
“I meant what I said.” He glared at Gloria. “Derek Martina has great potential. Being shackled to a fruitcake would have destroyed his chance to make it to Ottawa.”
Gloria stood. “I believe we’re done here. Mr. Hash, we terminated Gabriella Martina without cause within six months of employment. We provided her with a generous severance package, which we didn’t need to do under the Employment Standards Act. We had sufficient grounds to terminate her with ca
use. It was a bad fit, and Jack has made it clear they didn’t share a trusting relationship.”
Reece remained standing by the windows. “Did anyone witness her insulting Mr. Belinski?”
“What difference does that make?” Jack demanded. “I’m the CEO.”
Reece couldn’t shake the feeling that Jack was fabricating the allegations. Although he hadn’t known Gabriella well, he had spent an evening in her company. If anything, the woman was reserved, too quiet. The idea of her hurling insults at her boss was tough to believe. He wasn’t learning anything helpful and it was frustrating.
“I understand she showed up for work the morning after you fired her. Any idea why?” Reece asked for no other reason than curiosity.
“It was odd,” Julie said in a voice shy of a whisper. “Jack told me what happened, and we drew up the termination papers. At five o’clock, we called her into HR and told her we were ending her employment effective immediately. The next morning, she was sitting at her desk as if nothing happened.”
Definitely strange behaviour. “Was she upset when you told her you were firing her?”
Julie frowned. “No. She seemed… well…”
“She laughed.” Jack stood and stretched. “Gloria and I have a meeting.” He shook Reece’s hand briskly. “Julie will see you out.”
After they left, Reece turned to Julie. “Did you tell her why she was being fired?”
“No,” she said. “I offered to provide feedback at a later date. Jack prefers it that way for terminations.”
Firing an employee without telling her why was too similar to a dictatorship for Reece’s taste. Not for the first time, he felt grateful he didn’t work in this kind of corporate culture.
“Is it true she laughed when you fired her?” he asked.
Julie nodded and appeared puzzled. “Yes, it was strange,” she said. “That was part of the problem, you see. Gabriella had an odd personality. It’s difficult to manage a person when they lack consistency.”
They were walking through reception to the exit when Reece asked, “Did she ever talk to you about her family or was there a co-worker she talked with?”
Julie frowned. “No. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t care for her, and I suppose she sensed that. I can’t think of anyone in the office who liked her.”
Reece resisted her attempt to herd him out the door. “Do you have anything with Gabriella’s handwriting on it, maybe her application form?”
She shook her head. “All our HR forms are PDF interactive. Our employees fill them out online. I’ll take that visitor badge for you.”
Reece couldn’t believe there wasn’t a sample of Gabriella’s handwriting at the office. She was a secretary for God sake. “I need to see something with casual handwriting on it. Julie, it could be important to the case. Gabriella has children. They don’t know what happened to their mother. You could help us find her.”
As intended, his comments flustered the timid woman and she blushed. “If it’s important, I’ll see what I can find.” She scurried down the hall. A few minutes later, she was back with a file folder.
The receptionist looked up. “Julie, if you need Gabriella’s handwriting, Gabby wrote notes on Jack’s expense report.” She handed Julie the form.
“Katrina, expense reports are confidential.” Julie glanced at the document. “That’s not Gabriella’s handwriting.” She gave the receptionist back the paper.
Reece stepped forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of the writing.
“Yes, it is,” insisted Katrina. “I recognize it from the other expense reports she submitted.”
Julie turned over the document before Reece could see it. “Someone in Finance must have made those notes. This,” she pulled a document from the file folder she was holding, “is Gabriella’s handwriting.”
Katrina looked at the paper in Julie’s hand. She was clearly confused and about to say something, but Julie interrupted her and spoke to Reece. “Gabriella edited this document the week she started.” She handed him the file.
The writing was neat cursive with letters that leaned to the right. It matched the handwriting in the diary. He thanked Julie and left.
Gabriella had written the diary — an angry tale of psychological abuse and emotional neglect perpetrated by her cheating husband. A man now accused of her murder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sam
LONDON’S NORTON ESTATE was a nice circa-1960s suburb, and Mrs. Shannon’s house was a side-split, brick ranch with stunning flower gardens. The neighbourhood gave Sam an odd feeling of déjà vu.
Parking at the side of road near the Shannon home, she got out and walked toward a woman crouched in the grass beside a peony bush. “Mrs. Shannon?”
The woman stood and shaded her eyes. “That’s right.”
She looked to be in her early sixties. Her hair was short and the dark brown dye job was a home effort. She was wearing a short-sleeved blouse and a loose pair of blue cotton pants with bright pink rubber protectors strapped around her knees.
Sam handed her a business card and identification. “I’m a private investigator from Toronto, and I’d like to ask you some questions about the LeBlanc family, if you don’t mind.”
Mrs. Shannon pulled off one of her gardening gloves and took a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of her blouse. Her eyes darted from the card to Sam, her expression a mix of bewilderment and distress.
Puzzled, Sam asked, “Is everything okay?”
“I, ah, it’s just I haven’t heard that name in a while.” Her demeanour went from polite to closed-off in a matter of seconds. “What’s this all about?” She brushed dirt from the seat of her pants.
“Do you recall the family?”
“Of course.” She wasn’t meeting Sam’s eyes.
“Did you know their eldest daughter?”
She nodded curtly. “I did.”
Hoping to shock the woman into being more helpful, Sam said, “The Toronto police believe she was murdered.”
The woman’s eyebrows rose. “Murdered? That’s awful.” She didn’t ask follow-up questions, but Sam sensed some of her resistance give way.
“I’m working for her husband’s lawyer,” she said, leaving out the tiny detail about Derek’s arrest.
“Well,” Mrs. Shannon bent to collect her gardening tools, “we can’t be having a conversation about murder on the front lawn.” Plopping the tools into a wicker basket, she headed for the house.
Taking that as her cue, Sam followed.
Inside the house, Mrs. Shannon scurried to a side table, snatched a photo, and stuffed it in a desk drawer. Her eyes roamed around the room and she moved two more photos.
Curiosity piqued, Sam took her shoes off in the doorway and noted where Mrs. Shannon put the pictures, in case she should have a moment alone to see what all the fuss was about.
Mrs. Shannon beckoned her into the kitchen. “I can offer you iced tea.”
Sam hated iced tea, but accepted to be polite. “How well did you know the LeBlanc family?”
Mrs. Shannon took a pitcher from the fridge, poured two glasses, and handed one to Sam. “Not well,” she said. “My boys are younger.”
“How old are your boys?” Sam swallowed a mouthful of cold tea and tried to hide her grimace.
“Jeremy and Ralph are Irish twins, as they say, so there’s a year between them. They’re twenty-nine and twenty-eight.” She sat at the table across from Sam. “Ryan’s twenty-five.”
“How old is Isabella?”
Mrs. Shannon looked at her as if she was crazy. “How old is Isabella?”
“Yes, Isabella LeBlanc. Is she younger or older than Gabriella?”
“Well… She was younger.”
Derek wasn’t lying. Isabella did exist. “Wait, sorry,” she said. “She was younger?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Shannon said slowly. “Isabella LeBlanc is dead.”
Sam slammed down her glass. “Dead? When? How?”
“The winte
r of 1992. It was New Year’s Day. She was eleven or twelve. She fell out of their tree house,” Mrs. Shannon said. “Hit a branch on the way down and broke her neck. I always thought it was too high. Quentin built a railing around it, but…” her voice trailed off.
Sam’s mind was reeling with all the new questions this discovery brought up. “Can you tell me what happened?”
Mrs. Shannon got up and opened a cupboard, extracting a bottle of whisky and pouring a lot into her tea. She offered the bottle and Sam declined.
After half an hour and a lot of whisky, Mrs. Shannon finished her story about the afternoon Isabella LeBlanc died.
Sam’s head was spinning. She thought about her own sister’s death. From what Mrs. Shannon had told her, Gabriella and Isabella had been very close. “Poor Gabriella,” she said.
Mrs. Shannon played with the teaspoon on the table. “Have you seen the Village of the Damned?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“After Isabella died, well that’s what Gabriella was like,” she said. “The strange way those alien children walked and the lack of expression in their faces.”
Mrs. Shannon stood and cleared the glasses from the table. She stumbled and fell against the counter. “I’m due at the church in twenty minutes.”
Sam followed her to the front door, wondering if she should offer to drive her since the woman had consumed so much booze. It wasn’t any of her business, so she kept her mouth shut and leaned down to pull on her sneakers.
“You don’t remember me, do you? I… I remember you so well from the neighbourhood, you know? Scarcely out of nappies and full of spit and vinegar but always such a sweet little thing.”
Sam stood and smiled. “You’ve confused me with someone else. I’m a born and raised Torontonian.”
“No,” she insisted. “Grace went home to her mother to deliver. Colin was heartbroken he missed his daughters’ births.” She took a small step toward Sam. “You were his favourite. Colin always said Joyce favoured your mother, but you were his, just like your brother would have been if he hadn’t—” she hesitated, “if Malcolm hadn’t died as a baby.”
