by L E Fraser
They shook hands and Sam noticed the perfectly painted white tips on Cataleya’s nails. “Completely off-topic, but I’ve always been curious. How do you apply the white polish so straight on the tips of your nails?”
“Most people go to a salon. I do it myself. Ambidexterity.” Cataleya winked.
Ambidexterity. Sam rolled the word over in her mind. She must have murmured it aloud because Cataleya said, “It means I can use both my right and left hands.”
Hopeful, Sam asked, “Can you write with both hands?”
“Only one-percent of the population can. I happen to be one of them.”
Taking a pad from her back pocket, she opened it to a blank page, took a pen from her other pocket, and handed them to Cataleya. “Can you write something with each hand for me?”
“Sure.” When she finished, she handed back the pen and pad.
Sam studied the words: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Cataleya had formed the words well, but the handwriting wasn’t the same. The angle of the letters was different. The weight of the ink was lighter and darker in different places. Sam felt a puzzle piece falling into place.
“Cataleya, thanks for talking to me.” She returned the pad to her back pocket.
“No problem. Give me a minute to corral the dogs.” She called the Pugs, and they trotted after her to the patio doors.
SAM DROVE DOWN the tree-lined street and parked outside the Martinas’ house to call Reece.
“You remember that handwriting expert you talked to?” she asked when he picked up.
“Sure.”
“Can you contact him and ask if science can match ambidextrous samples?”
“Interesting. When will you be at the office?”
“An hour or so. I’m stopping at the University to speak with my PhD adviser.”
“Alright, see you then.”
She hung up and gazed at the attic windows in the Martina house. They looked like eyes. The Dutch colonial reminded her of the home in The Amityville Horror.
A knock made her jump, and she turned to find an old man tapping on the passenger window with the end of a cane. She opened the car door and hopped out.
“I live there.” He gestured to the house beside them. “Why are you loitering around the neighbourhood?”
She dug out a business card and handed it to him. “I’m a PI looking into the disappearance of Mrs. Martina.”
He eyed her with skepticism. “Private dick, eh? Little thing like you, wonders never cease.”
“Did you know Gabriella Martina?”
“Yup, she’s a weirdo.”
“How so?”
“Used to see her in her backyard from my porch. Got a covered one, had it put in…” His eyes fogged over and then he nodded. “About two years ago now.”
“That’s nice. Why do you say Gabriella was strange?”
“Didn’t say strange, said she was a weirdo. Caught her red-handed burying a dog on the property line last summer.” His nose crinkled with disgust. “Thing would rot and attract wild animals. Told her so, too. Lots of other options. We cremated our German Sheppard, and Mary planted a rose bush and put the ashes in the earth. No reason to bury a dog on residential property.”
“Well, I suppose that’s true.” It was sad, but Sam wasn’t about to argue with the old man. She reached for the car door.
“Identical one at her side.”
She turned. “Say what?”
“You heard me. Burying one with a clone in its place. Tell me that isn’t weird.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
He bobbed his head. “Right I did. She said the kids would be upset. The dog — can’t recall its name — was sick so she bought a new one before the vet put down the other.”
Gabriella probably hadn’t wanted her children to witness the dog’s burial. People often bought a new animal when a pet died, especially when young children were involved. Usually, the dogs weren’t identical, but to each her own.
“Speaking of the dog,” she said, “have you seen it?”
“Nope. Good riddance, too. Nasty thing. Always growling at me.” He looked at his watch. “My story’s on the TV.”
She followed him to his front door. “Did you hear anything the night she disappeared?”
He tapped his ear. “Don’t hear so good. Leave the TV loud. Told the police I didn’t hear a peep.”
“Thanks,” Sam said before he disappeared inside the house.
She thought about Gabriella all alone in the backyard digging a grave for her dog. It was beyond sad. She understood replacing your dog. If Brandy died, she’d get another dog right away, and it would be a Golden Retriever.
She didn’t understand pretending a loved one never died. A voice whispered in her head, Isn’t that what your parents did when your brother died?
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Reece
THE OLD WINDOW air conditioner wheezed death rattles, and the office was an oven. Reece stripped off his shirt and gulped water while he waited for Sam.
That morning, he’d made the decision to discuss the office space with her. It represented both of them and was a humiliation.
It was over an Italian bakery in the Palmerston district at College and Bathurst, and he couldn’t deny the smell of fresh bread and cannoli was mouth-watering. His issue was he liked to have his car, and there wasn’t any parking. Worse, the office was a complete contrast to Sam’s sparse, modern home. It was three hundred square feet of disaster.
Sporting a circa-1970s decor, the office boasted hideous wood panelling and a big emphasis on ugly orange. The carpet was a shabby burnt orange that might have been shag back in the day. There were stains on the carpet around the door and scattered beside the desk. Orange plastic blinds hung on the window, which had a piece of plywood wedged in the side to accommodate the air conditioner.
The furniture looked as if she’d rescued it from the side of the road. A crooked wicker table held a scarred white enamel bar fridge and a coffee maker that reminded him of the one his mother used when he was a kid. Rusted metal legs precariously held up two orange plastic chairs perched in front of the splintered partners’ desk. The filing cabinet was so dented it listed to one side.
The space was gross, plain and simple, and Reece wanted to move to new digs. But change didn’t sit well with Sam. She was already upset, and it had something to do with her trip to London. He’d definitely heard her crying last night and couldn’t understand why she’d lied.
He’d suffered too much loss to deal with lies. His parents and twin brother, a PI, had died in a car crash, and his fiancée, Sarah, had lost her fight with cancer a month before their wedding. A friend had talked him into seeing a therapist, and although the progress was slow, Reece was able to learn self-help tools to recover. Self-help required one-hundred-percent honesty from himself and the people around him. His cop instinct was screaming at him that Sam was lying to him about something big, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
He loved Sam and wanted a transparent relationship, but he understood she needed to feel safe before she’d let down her walls and share. Something devastating must have happened to make her so cynical and self-protective.
One explanation for her silence was that she didn’t trust him. That hurt and it was driving him nuts imagining what was causing her so much shame that she felt she had to hide the truth, regardless of the damage it would do to their relationship. She knew how he felt about lies, and withholding the truth was the same as lying. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, and it was making him suspicious and resentful.
Sitting in the gross office boiling to death wasn’t improving his mood. Reece wiped sweat from his eye and reached for his cell to call and suggest meeting at the air-conditioned loft when she threw open the door.
“Oh boy,” she gasped. “It’s oppressive out there with the humidity.” She laughed at him lounging in the chair bare-chested. “I’m surprised you’re still
wearing pants.”
“I’d offer to take them off, but it’s too hot,” he grumbled.
She collapsed onto a chair. “We have to fix the air conditioner.”
Or we could move to a professional space where we could meet clients, he thought.
Sam’s short strawberry-blond hair was stuck to her cheeks and forehead in limp curls, and, when she stripped off her T-shirt, her abdomen muscles rippled under her tank top before settling into an impressive six-pack. She was taking their fitness bet seriously and working out regularly. He wasn’t confident he’d win. Having trained with an ex–US SEAL, his girlfriend was proficient in hand-to-hand combat, and Reece understood her sister’s murder was Sam’s motivation to rely on herself to stay safe.
At five-foot-three and one hundred and five pounds, Sam sometimes looked deceptively fragile. She did not resemble a delicate flower now. The veneer of sweat made the muscles in her arms look like they belonged on a MMA fighter. Reece was proud of her.
“Geez, you expect me to focus now?” He grinned. “How did your interview go?”
Chuckling, she took the pad from her back pocket and opened it. “What do you think of this?”
He glanced at the words. “I’m guessing whoever wrote it is ambidextrous.”
“You can tell?”
“No, you called and asked about ambidexterity.”
She laughed, but it sounded disingenuous. “Sorry, the heat is killing my brain cells. Hey, let’s have some cold wine to help the massacre along.”
Sam never drank before dinner. Still, he pulled out a bottle of lukewarm wine and a beer from their decrepit bar fridge.
He handed her a glass of wine and cracked open his beer. “I bribed the handwriting expert with lunch, and he claims there are many variables to consider when matching samples to an ambidextrous person.”
Slumped in the chair, she rolled her eyes with an exaggerated sigh. “Why are experts so reluctant to offer an opinion?”
“Samples frequently lack sufficient matches to reach a definitive conclusion,” he said. “I had to suffer a boring dissertation about the JonBenét Ramsey case and the ransom note that numerous handwriting experts reviewed when Patsy Ramsey was a suspect.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Bet that was enlightening.”
He swallowed a mouthful of warm beer and shrugged. “At least his air conditioning worked.”
She laughed and filled him in on her interview with Cataleya Sousa.
“I suppose I can buy that Gabriella would pretend to receive a call as an excuse to get away from socializing,” he said.
Sam laughed. “A date once did that to ditch me. While he was talking on his cell about a work emergency, his phone rang. He was too stupid to turn it off before faking his getaway call.”
“I’m not sure why you’d pretend the call was from your dead sister,” he replied. “That’s odd. Do you think Gabriella wrote out the cards with her less dominant hand and pretended they were from Isabella? That’s beyond strange.”
“Maybe it was a peculiar way to keep her sister’s memory alive.” She sounded unconvinced.
“I did some digging on the Internet while I was waiting for you. People can learn to use their less dominant hand — athletes do it all the time — but to write well is rare,” he said. “The writing in the card wasn’t neat, but you could read it. I don’t think Gabriella wrote it.”
“Maybe she asked someone to write the card,” she suggested.
“Who? She didn’t have any friends.” He tossed his empty beer can, bouncing it off the wall and into the recycling bin. “Why did you want to talk with your PhD adviser?”
“Mrs. Shannon told me that Gabriella was close to her sister. Isabella’s death would have been catastrophic, especially if they were together at the time of the accident and she couldn’t save her,” she explained.
“Are you suggesting she thought her sister was still alive?”
“No.” Sam twirled the stem of her wine glass between her fingers. “She didn’t talk about Isabella to enough people. I think it was survivor guilt and post-traumatic stress. Dr. Raczynski specializes in PTSD, which is why I wanted his advice. People use defence mechanisms to deal with horrible events they can’t process, like the sudden death of a loved one. It starts in the denial stage of grief.”
“There was a woman in Uthisca who fell asleep at the wheel, killing her children. A month later, she was still setting places for the kids at the dinner table,” Reece said. “If that’s what you’re talking about, it is delusional.”
While he was talking, her cell pinged. A text message. She picked the phone up from the desk but didn’t look at it.
“I don’t think Gabriella believed Isabella was alive.” She looked thoughtful. “Have you ever talked to yourself?”
“Not with an imaginary friend.” The cell pinged again. He frowned. “Are you going to check that?”
She waved her hand. “It’s not important.”
“How do you know? You haven’t even looked at it.”
“Forget about it. I’m not talking about imaginary friends. People visit cemeteries and chat with the dead person. What do they do if the cemetery isn’t local?”
Reece understood what she was driving at. “Okay, let’s say Gabriella understood Isabella was dead, but she kept her…” he paused to search for a word, “essence alive. You’re suggesting Derek misunderstood. There weren’t any calls. What Derek heard was Gabriella speaking aloud to work out a problem.”
“Yup, pretty much. Derek never saw her on the phone. He heard her in the kitchen. He assumed she was on the polycom.”
Standing, he paced the small office. “But Derek claims there were two different voices. Did she make up a voice when she talked to herself? Sam, that’s crazy.”
Her cell rang and she glanced at the ID, swiped the call to voicemail, and turned off the phone. Sam never turned off her cell.
“No, Derek lied about hearing two voices,” she said.
“What about the gifts and cards? Her kids confirmed they received stuff from their aunt.”
Sam sighed. “Well, that’s why I think Gabriella wrote the card. She must have bought the gifts. I haven’t had any luck tracing package deliveries to the Martinas’ house.”
Reece opened a second warm beer. “If Derek knew Isabella was dead and wanted to push his wife over the edge, maybe he bought the gifts.”
“If he could make everyone believe Gabriella was delusional, it would lend credibility to his allegation that she asked him to pick up Isabella at the airport,” she said. “We’re back to believing Derek is a monster who psychologically tortured and murdered his wife.” She sighed. “Did you see Jim today? What was in discovery?”
“They have a witness who saw a silver four-door sedan pull into the Martinas’ driveway shortly after five on the night of the murder. Just before the cops arrived, he saw the car leave.”
“Derek drives a silver four-door sedan. Was it a BMW?”
“The witness can’t confirm. He assumed it belonged to Derek.” Reece handed her a file. “Take a look at this. A man abducted Gabriella during a family vacation in Batchawana Bay when she was five. Six months later, a fisherman and his son found her on the US side of Lake Superior. She was walking on the ice, dressed in an animal skin.”
Her eyes had widened while he spoke. “My God, why didn’t Derek tell us?” She bent to the file and read the sheets.
“He claims he never knew.”
She scanned the papers, and her expression was grim. “Jesus,” she said, “Cataleya told me Gabriella loathed men and hated sex. No wonder.”
“Read the medical intake.”
“There were scars on her body. It says flesh was removed.” She sounded shocked.
“Did you see where they found her?”
“Copper Harbor,” Sam said. “Three months ago, Gabriella returned to where she was rescued. What has this got to do with the murder trial?”
“It goes to motive,”
Reece replied.
“How?”
“A frigid wife with mental health issues, a cheating husband with lofty political dreams and a large insurance policy. Sex, money, and ambition are convincing motives. The Crown is claiming that leaving the marriage would be a cataclysmic nightmare that would cost Derek a fortune and ruin his political aspirations. The easiest route was to murder his wife and be the grieving husband campaigning for harsher criminal punishments.”
Reece reached for his shirt. “Cataleya Sousa’s statement does more to hurt Derek’s defence than help it.” The shirt stuck to the sweat on his back and chest. “Regardless of our guesses at Gabriella’s motivations for faking calls with her dead sister, it lends credibility to the suggestion of mental illness.”
“We’re missing a big piece of the puzzle.” She flipped through the file, stopping at a sheet. “If Derek claims that he didn’t know Gabriella was a victim, why did he think his wife’s body was mutilated?”
“She told him she had skin cancer when she was a child.”
“And he believed that?” Sam went back to reading. “Reece, did you see the part about the dog?”
He nodded. “Yeah, she was with a white Samoyed when they found her.”
Sam’s frown deepened. “The dog’s name was Ganawenim. I know that name.” She paused and her eyes widened. “That’s also the name of the Martinas’ dog, but Gabriella called him ‘Gana’. She told me the name is Ojibway for ‘protector’ and she’d had him since childhood.”
Reece snorted. “The animal would be over thirty.”
She told him about her impromptu meeting with the old man after she left Cataleya.
He thought of Brandy. “My God, Sam, replacing your dead dog with the same breed is one thing, but giving it the same name?”
“Where is the dog, did Jim know?” she asked.
“No. The first officers said there wasn’t a dog on the scene. Forensics confirmed there wasn’t any canine blood. No white Samoyed turned into the Humane Society or Animal Care and Control. The dog’s disappeared.”
