Skully, Perdition Games

by L E Fraser

  Marty sighed. “Well, it might provide some doubt, if you’d gone to the airport.”

  If he’d gone to the fucking airport, he wouldn’t be in this mess. He didn’t need Father pointing out the obvious. “She did this to me, the stupid bitch. She set this up to ruin me.”

  “Derek,” Marty began, “your wife is dead and—”

  “She is not dead. She’s out there laughing her ass off,” Derek shouted.

  “Maybe we should change the subject.” To Derek, the way Marty said it implied he was irrational.

  “You’re the one who brought it up,” Derek retort in aggravation. “I didn’t kill the bitch. No one stole anything and no one cared enough about Gabriella to kill her. This is a set-up. Sonia was probably in on it. That would explain why she lied and said I wasn’t at the condo.” He pounded his fist into the dashboard.

  “That’s enough! Calm down,” Marty said sternly, scrunching his face in disapproval.

  Derek wanted to whack him upside the head. He sipped his coffee and ignored his partner.

  “I’m not a criminal attorney,” Marty continued in a condescending way, “so if that’s the way Stipelli is spinning your defence and he’s confident he can pull it off, I’ll go along.”

  “Go along? You’ll go along?” Derek shouted. “I did not kill my fucking wife. Sonia probably did. She works with scumbags. Easy enough to get one of them to do her a fucking favour. A couple of bucks and a quick blowjob. Badda bing badda boom, Derek pays the price for not being sensitive enough.”

  Marty parked in his reserved space in the parking garage and got out of the car. When he stomped to the elevators, not bothering to wait for Derek, it was obvious he was angry.

  Derek took his time following him. He didn’t give a shit if Marty’s nose was out of joint. He joined him at the elevator and took out his phone, studiously ignoring his business partner.

  Marty jabbed the button for the elevator. “Derek, contain your shit. I’m sick of your attitude.”

  He ignored him and fiddled with his phone. He wasn’t in the mood for a lecture from Father.

  “First you say Sonia and Gabriella planned a frame,” Marty said, “and then you say Sonia arranged to have Gabriella killed. Enough already.”

  “Okay, Dad,” Derek scoffed.

  “I’ve had complaints from the staff, and two of your clients called last week to say they’d pull their business if we didn’t reassign their cases.”

  “Who complained about me?” Derek demanded, shoving his phone into his pocket.

  “It doesn’t matter. The point is that people are losing trust in your abilities. The press is killing us, and people don’t want to be around you.”

  “Who complained about me?” Derek crossed his arms against his chest and glared at Marty.

  Marty threw up his hands in exasperation. “I’m trying to help you, Derek, and your sole focus is on who ratted you out. Use today to wrap up and start your leave of absence this afternoon.”

  The elevator doors opened. “I’m fine.” Derek punched the button for their floor.

  “It’s not a request.” Marty stared straight ahead at the door.

  “What are you saying?”

  “As managing partner, I’m telling you today will be your last day.” Marty’s tone was unyielding. “The partners have agreed to stand by you, until after your trial, but we’re holding a vote to determine whether we buy you out.”

  “You can’t do this,” Derek said.

  “It’s already done, my friend.” Marty got off the elevator and marched through reception to his office.

  Marty had the authority to ban him from the business. If the other three partners supported the decision, Derek’s shares were insufficient to give him leverage. They couldn’t fire him, but there was a clause in their partnership agreement that gave them the right to buy him out on a unanimous vote.

  Gabriella was still ruining his life. “That fucking gash,” Derek mumbled under his breath.

  “Pardon me?” Melissa asked with a wary look.

  “Nothing.” He stomped into his office.

  A few seconds later, she was hovering inside the door. “Can I get you a coffee?”

  He waved the soggy paper cup at her. “I’m drinking a coffee. Look at it, right here in my hand, Melissa.”

  She cleared her throat and pursed her lips. “Mr. McBride wants to speak with you. Your calendar is clear, so I confirmed him for nine o’clock.”

  “Oh.” Derek took off his suit jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. “Did he say what it’s about?”

  Melissa shook her head.

  “Well, that’s fine.” Derek felt cheered. “Maybe he’s ready to confirm the date he’s resigning his MP seat.”

  “He wants Marty to attend.”

  “Marty is not the one putting everything on the line to run for office. I don’t want him there, so don’t bother him.”

  Melissa’s face was blank. “I asked his assistant to move his nine o’clock so he could attend.”

  “I don’t care. Call her back and tell her you made a mistake.” Derek opened his email. Little activity, which was the norm these days.

  Melissa was still standing in the doorway. “I didn’t make a mistake. Marty asked to be present for any meetings you have today. Mr. McBride is bringing members of the Liberal caucus, and it didn’t strike me as good news.” Her smile was tight, a smirk.

  Surprised by her insubordination, Derek watched her stroll out of his office. She didn’t bother to close the door or to review the rest of his schedule.

  McBride bringing a delegation with him to the meeting wasn’t a good sign. There were rumours he wasn’t stepping down, that the leader of the Liberal party, Justin Trudeau, had asked McBride to remain in the Parliament seat.

  Goddamn Gabriella, he thought with venom. If the caucus pulled support, it was because of her and this defamatory allegation he was a murderer. Why hadn’t he recognized the potential she had to ruin him sooner?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Three Weeks Later: Toronto, Ontario

  Sam

  TELLING REECE HER mother was alive was harder than Sam thought, and procrastinating had complicated the situation. After Liam’s visit, she’d tried a number of times to tell the truth but couldn’t find the words. She had to figure it out before they visited Harvey over Christmas. Short of locking Grace in a closet — tempting, but Harvey would object — Reece would meet her mother.

  Since discovering the truth about her father, Reece was encouraging her to open up about her past. She’d shared with him the crappy relationship she’d had with her sister, how devastated she was over Joyce’s murder, and the horrible things her mother had said to her. They’d even discussed how her mother had broken down at her sister’s visitation, clinging to the minister and begging him to tell her why God had taken Joyce instead of Sam.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to admit that Grace was alive. She didn’t want a relationship with her mother. The woman made her feel like shit.

  The problem was that Reece put value on family and believed ‘talk-therapy’ could salvage any relationship. Sam disagreed. No good came from rehashing the past. When a relationship made you hate yourself, it was best to end it and never look back.

  Grace had raised her with cold-hearted insistence that one always ignored conflict and negative feelings, so it wasn’t fair for Reece to expect her to change a lifetime of conditioning in a few months. Regardless, he would insist an honest discussion between all parties would fix everything. Sam shuddered to think how that would go over.

  “You okay?” He turned from the stove and studied her earnestly. “You’re quiet.”

  “Just imagining what restaurant-quality dinner you’re treating me to,” she said. “I’m hoping for steak or a pork chop.”

  “Hum… prepare for disappointment.” He put the plate in front of her.

  No meat. She wasn’t in the mood for a vegetarian delight. The plating was pre
tty, but the sauce was brown and chunky. “What is it?”

  “Pumpkin ravioli with walnut apple butter, mademoiselle.” With a triumphant smile, Reece bowed at her. “I roasted the pumpkin and made the pasta.”

  “Pumpkin.” The word rolled across her tongue.

  “Don’t you like pumpkin?”

  “Sure, when it’s carved into a jack-o-lantern.” She shoved ravioli through a sea of greasy brown butter sauce. Immature, she knew, but she hated pumpkin and squash. With a flick of her fork, a walnut tumbled off a square of mush-filled dough.

  He burst out laughing. “I didn’t know you hated pumpkin. I detest applesauce so I get it. It’s a texture thing.” He slid her plate over to his side of the table. “I’ll have it for lunch tomorrow. What are you going to eat?”

  She gave him a brilliant smile. “What I lived on before shacking up with a gourmet.”

  Reece chuckled. “Let me guess, pizza.”

  She got up to rummage through the freezer. “You can eat pumpkin, and I’ll have a meat lover’s pizza.”

  Reece popped ravioli in his mouth. “What happened in court today? Was it any better than my experience yesterday?”

  For the past two weeks, she and Reece had taken turns attending Derek’s trial, hoping to hear something worth investigating.

  “No.” She puckered her lips and rolled her eyes. “If we don’t find something to help Jim win, he probably won’t hire us again. There isn’t a shortage of PIs in Toronto.” She sighed. “I was counting on the bonus. I was hoping to take some time off to focus on my PhD thesis. This sucks.”

  “There’s still time. Don’t give up yet. Has the Crown wrapped up?”

  She put the pizza in the oven and nodded. “Gabriella looks like a poor waif out of a Charles de Lint novel. When they talked about the missing dog, a woman on the jury wept.” She dropped the pizza box into the recycling bin. “Derek looks like a monster. God, if this was the US and there were cameras in the courtroom, the whole country would be out with pitchforks. The artist’s drawings in the paper are bad enough.”

  Reece scraped pasta sauce onto his fork. “McBride and the Liberal party pulling their support a week before the trial didn’t help. Garnered a lot of press for Derek, all bad.”

  She crinkled her nose in disgust. “And for us — did you read the statement the Crown Attorney made, thanking us for the great work we’ve done in providing him with additional evidence?”

  She squatted and peered through the glass in the oven door.

  “A watched pizza never cooks,” warned Reece.

  “Derek’s attitude in court is also hurting him,” she said. “He’s… cavalier, I guess is the word.”

  “We have to find Gabriella,” Reece said. “We have to work on the assumption she’s not dead.”

  If they were going to salvage their firm’s reputation, he was right. “Without identification, she must be in Canada,” Sam said. “But without friends or money, where? What’s she doing, living in a box under a railway bridge?”

  “If this was planned, she has false documents. She could be anywhere in the world.”

  He was right. The question was how Gabriella did it. “We’ve gone back twenty years in the Martinas’ finances. There aren’t any discrepancies, and buying forged documents is expensive. I still say the key is finding Quentin LeBlanc.”

  Reece drank his wine in silence for a few minutes. “Well, if she framed her husband, it took careful planning. It’s not as if she’s experienced in murder. There was nothing on her computer search history except for Amazon downloads of books and movies and online decorating tips.” He paused in thought and then added, “You know, I’m surprised about all the books she bought. When we were at dinner in June, she told me she wasn’t a fiction reader.”

  She’d also tried to engage Gabriella by discussing books and movies. Gabriella had offered monosyllabic answers before shutting down the topic by stating she didn’t like fiction entertainment. What an odd thing to lie about. Sam opened the oven door to peek at the pizza.

  “If you keep opening the oven, it won’t cook. You’re letting out all the heat.”

  “I’ll turn it up a bit.” She adjusted the dial, and he ran over to check.

  “You can’t cook frozen pizza at five hundred degrees.” He adjusted the heat to four-twenty-five. “Gabriella could have researched how to stage a crime scene on a different computer, but it didn’t belong to the family.” He leaned his back against the sink. “The police checked the kids’ and Derek’s.”

  “Maybe she used an Internet cafe or the library.” Sam grinned. “Or watched Dexter.”

  Reece laughed.

  She crossed her arms with another sigh. “We need a money trail or a witness who saw her. Anything to prove she was alive after the alleged murder.” She took a plate from the cupboard. “It’s ready.”

  He knelt to check. “It’s not ready. Give it five more minutes.” Reece took his plate from the table and put it in the dishwasher.

  “Still like being a PI?” she asked sarcastically.

  “It’s hard,” he admitted, and it surprised her that he’d taken the question seriously. “You have the same questions but none of the authority to get the answers.” He picked up his wine glass and swirled the contents.

  “Well,” she said, “it’s nice having you around to brainstorm, not to mention all your provincial and federal police contacts. Gold mine.”

  Reece lowered his eyes and circled the edge of his wine glass with the tip of his index finger. “Right, I’ve spent five months begging for favours.”

  “Ah, the catfish feeling.”

  He looked quizzical.

  “You feel like a bottom-feeder.” That never bothered her, but she could understand why it upset Reece.

  He went back to rubbing the lip of the glass with his finger. “The frustrating thing is I don’t think Derek is guilty,” he said. “There was no blood spatter on Derek’s clothes when he was arrested, and he was wearing the same thing he’d been wearing at the office.”

  “But the police believe he changed before the fight,” she said. “He killed her and grabbed his original clothing before he dumped the body and the blood-spattered clothes he wore during the murder.”

  “Yes but Derek’s a lawyer. It doesn’t make sense. Even though he doesn’t practice criminal law, I can’t believe he’d be stupid enough to leave so much incriminating evidence.”

  Putting on her psychologist hat, she said, “Under severe stress, people don’t act logically. Anger is a base emotion that erases common sense, turning people stupid.”

  “Another thing, what if the kids had come home?” Reece said. “The youngest son, Kevin, was at a friend’s house and the girl, Anna, was out with her boyfriend. Teenagers are unpredictable. There was blood all over the walls and floors. Why would Derek leave the house in that condition?”

  She turned off the oven and left the door open to cool the pizza. “Good point. Why not wrap her in the tarp, pop her in the trunk and go back and clean the scene before disposing of the body?”

  Reece poured a second glass of wine, which was out of character for him.

  “If we’re right and she’s alive, why did she bother doing this?” Sam asked. “It’s risky, she’ll never be able to see her children again, and it’s difficult to plan a frame of this magnitude and disappear.”

  “She was smart. Her GPA for the three semesters she studied biochemistry was over ninety percent. We’re talking off the charts analytical deductive reasoning.”

  “I’m not denying that she could do this, I’m confused over why she would do it. Gabriella had grounds to divorce Derek, keep the house, and have custody of the kids. Even Derek admits—”

  Reece held up his hand to interrupt. “Yeah, but divorcing him wouldn’t ruin him. If the court convicts him, the Law Society will revoke his licence. Then there are Derek’s political aspirations. Canadian politics may be lacking decent candidates, but we don’t elect criminals convicted
of murder. It’s doubtful his children will forgive him for murdering their mother, and the cost of his defence is bankrupting him.”

  She nodded. “I suppose she had good reason. Watching your husband cheat right under your nose would be tough to swallow.” She thought about how distant and angry her own mother was when she was growing up. “Lots of fathers abandon their kids when they want out of a relationship. Maybe Gabriella didn’t care about ditching her kids.”

  She took the pizza out of the oven, cut it into quarters, and grabbed a paper towel. Sitting at the kitchen table it occurred to her there was a flaw in her theory. “The thing that doesn’t add up is Cataleya Sousa told me Gabriella wasn’t unhappy in the marriage. It sounded like she was okay with Derek satisfying his carnal needs elsewhere, because she didn’t want to have sex with him.”

  “I don’t know. The diary didn’t sound like she was okay with things,” Reece argued. “In fact, the entries completely contradict the woman we met. They’re full of rage and hate.”

  “If Gabriella planned the frame, she planned her disappearance equally as well,” Sam said. “If she obtained another identity, we can’t find her without a lead. Money is the logical place to start. Even if she has credit cards under the assumed identity, she needs cash. Any suggestions?”

  “No, I’ll keep thinking about it.” Reece looked troubled. “I need to talk to you about something.” His face was serious, and she hoped he wasn’t about to talk marriage.

  In the past two months, Reece had asked her to marry him twice. He’d even bought a gorgeous ring. It was sitting on his bedside table beside the pile of ratty paperbacks, cooking magazines, and treasures he loved to hoard. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him, but she didn’t believe in the institution of marriage. If you wanted to be with someone, you didn’t need a piece of paper proclaiming your commitment.

  He surprised her by saying, “I’ve been talking with Toronto Police Services. I’m considering returning to law enforcement.”

  It didn’t come as a shock to her that he was reviewing his options. Reece wasn’t enjoying the private sector, she knew. The Toronto police would be lucky to have him. If that were his decision, she’d support him.