Dean Monaghan’s business had been sold to me, fair and square. Ilona had said there was no doubt that I owned it. But had it been tainted by the murder of its former owner?
I took a gulp of wine and shook my head. It was my business now. I had a new office suite, and I’d come up with a new name for the business. My clients were people Dean had once worked with, but I was the advisor who would shape their financial futures.
The downside was that people would always remember that I had purchased Dean Monaghan’s business, and what had happened to him. I couldn’t shake the idea that he had been killed because of something connected to Monaghan Financial. I had to know who killed him and why. Then, if I needed to, I could take steps to clear my business’s name.
I rolled my head and shoulders, trying to relieve the tension I was feeling. Back in the kitchen, I splashed more wine into my glass. Lukas had seemed far more interested in acquiring his father’s business than in mourning his death. I pondered this as I sipped my wine. Murdering a parent is a horrendous act, but it’s not unheard of. Some parents harass and ridicule and abuse their children, and some kids strike out in retaliation. And other kids strike out for no apparent reason at all.
The doorbell pulled me out of my reverie. I stashed my wine glass in the fridge, and went to the front door.
Hardy was standing on the porch. “Did you know Samantha Reiss returned to the office on Wednesday afternoon and found Monaghan’s body?” he asked as soon as I opened the door. “She came down to the station this afternoon and gave a statement.”
I held the door open for him. “She should have called the police as soon as she found him.”
“Goes without saying,” he said, stepping inside. “So you knew she came back to the office.”
“I just heard about it this afternoon from Lukas Monaghan. Giorgio, the man who runs the diner across the street, told him he saw Sam return to the building.”
“Lukas Monaghan.” A look of distaste crossed Hardy’s face. “He was at the station, too.”
“I told Sam she had to tell you that she found Dean. I sent her to the police station.”
Not reporting a murder had to be a serious offence. “Are you going to charge her?” I asked.
“Failure to report a crime is not a criminal offence in Canada,” he said, “unless it aids or abets the crime or the commission of another crime.”
“Such as in child or elder abuse,” I said, “where not reporting it puts the victim in danger of more abuse.”
“Right.” He paused for a beat or two. “But we could charge Samantha Reiss with the murder of Dean Monaghan.”
“What?”
“We found her fingerprint on Monaghan’s Rolex watch.”
Sam had mentioned Dean’s watch. “She told me she pulled down his watch to check his pulse.”
Then I saw the twinkle in Hardy’s eye. He was trying to get a rise out of me.
Emboldened by his good humor, I voiced what was on my mind. “Does Lukas Monaghan have an alibi for Wednesday afternoon?”
“That’s the second time you’ve asked that question. You must think I don’t know how to do my job.”
He was smiling, clearly in a very good mood. But he didn’t answer my question.
Chapter Thirteen
“It is good you find new office,” Tony Garcia said when I let him and his friend Joe Olase into our office suite the next morning. “Terrible thing happen at Mr. Monaghan’s office. My wife, Gabriela, run out when we find him.”
I gave Tony and Joe a tour of the suite, and explained what I wanted them to do. Then I left Tony with a key and the security code, and I hit the supercenters.
By noon, I had ordered Macs, monitors, printers, a photocopier, filing cabinets, two desks with chairs, chairs for the reception area, and a flat-screen television. I was told that all my purchases would be delivered before 10 the next morning, and a techie would arrive soon after to set up the computers and the television.
Back in my car, I called Tommy at his grandmother’s house. Norah, his grandmother, told me he had just left for his cousins’ birthday party. I’d forgotten all about the party, and I hadn’t bought presents for the twins. But Norah, bless her heart, said she had gifts for Tommy to take to the party.
I checked e-mail and found a message Ilona had sent 30 minutes earlier. She was wondering how I was settling into my new premises. When I reached her by phone, she told me she was making a run up to the Hockley Valley that afternoon, and asked if I would like to join her.
“Would I ever!” I said. Getting out of the city for a few hours was exactly what I needed. I texted Laura, reminded her to walk Maxie, and told her that Tommy would be home by 5 p.m. and I should be back by seven.
Ilona spent weeknights in her downtown condo, but her home was an old stone farmhouse northwest of Toronto. She’d had something on the go in the city the previous day, but now she wanted to check on her house and her two horses.
She gave me a hug when I met her in the lobby of her condo building. She was wearing supersized jodhpurs and riding boots, and her hair was tucked under a ball cap, but she still sported her jangling bracelets. “It would be criminal to spend this glorious day in the city,” she said as we took the elevator down to her underground parking garage.
I kept my thoughts to myself as she maneuvered her sporty black Audi through the city streets and up the Don Valley Parkway. But I gave her an earful when we were flying along the westbound 401.
“So can I let Sam go?” I asked when we were drinking tea in Ilona’s living room with its spectacular view of the Niagara Escarpment. “I can’t work with someone I don’t trust.”
She went over to the window, and appeared to be contemplating the landscape in front of her. The trees had more color than those in the city, but they hadn’t yet hit their fall peak.
“Samantha will give you headaches,” she said, turning to me and sliding the bracelets off her arms. “But she did not lie about going back to the office.” She placed the bracelets on the coffee table.
“She withheld important information from the police.”
“And she told the police about it yesterday.” She fixed stern eyes on me. “Samantha may not be the ideal assistant, but keep in mind what I told you. Unless there is a really good reason to let her go—such as her doing something that harms your business—she could sue you for wrongful dismissal.”
With the business loan I had taken out against my home, the last thing I needed was a lawsuit. “I’ll need to monitor Sam carefully. She doesn’t have good judgment. But I can’t check everything she does.”
“Work with her.” Ilona gave me a wink. “Really. You can do it.”
I handed her the printouts from the file I’d made on Gabe Quincy. “Take a look at these.”
She sat beside me and sifted through the papers. “We must find out who this Gabe Quincy is,” she said.
“Where’s your computer?” I asked. “We can start with Google.”
“Come.” She let the way to a study off the kitchen.
She powered up the machine, and typed Gabe’s name into the browser’s search box.
The first page of hits included an article that had run in the Toronto World a few years before under the headline, “Hospital Clerk Fined $50,000 for Selling Records.” The financial advisor Sam had sold the mothers’ names to was Gabriel Quincy.
I sucked in my breath. “Holy shit!”
“This is good?” Ilona asked in the chair beside me.
“Gabriel Quincy is Sam’s brother-in-law.”
“That is how Sam and Dean met?” she asked.
“No. Sam told me she was tutoring kids as part of her community-service sentence. And that Dean was her supervisor.”
Ilona turned to me. “I have to visit my horses. See what else you can find about Gabe while I’m outside.”
“I can do that at home. I’ll come with you.”
I followed her into the kitchen. “What do you make of the e-mai
ls?” I asked.
“It sounds as if Dean and Gabe had a business arrangement of some kind, and they were being careful about their correspondence. Perhaps in case Samantha saw it.”
Which was what I had gathered, too. “Something criminal?”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but as a lawyer, I look for hard evidence to make a case.”
At the kitchen door, Ilona pulled on her riding boots. “I could make up all kinds of scenarios about what Dean and Gabe were doing,” she said as she opened the door. “But I am not a fiction writer.”
I spent the next hour watching her put her horses through their paces in the riding ring. She was completely focused on the task at hand.
***
On the drive back to Toronto, I voiced my biggest concern. “I have no idea whether the killer got hold of client information while he was in Dean’s office.”
“You are assuming the killer is a man,” Ilona said.
“I stand corrected. While he or she was in Dean’s office. Sam says there was sensitive information in the filing cabinets, as well as on the computers.”
“Sam might be able to tell whether papers in the filing cabinets are missing or out of order, but she is not permitted in that office,” Ilona said. “And the cleanup squad will remove all paper and have it destroyed.”
“Dean’s computer was still on when Sam found him.”
“Pat, the murder of Dean Monaghan was a violent act. There was a great deal of emotion behind it. His killer wasn’t there to look at client files. If that was the intention, he—or she—would have broken into the office at night.”
It seemed all I could do was cross my fingers—and hope for the best.
***
I gave Ilona a tour of my new office suite when we returned to the city. Tony and Joe had worked wonders. The walls were freshly painted, the hardwood floors gleamed, and the windows sparkled. All the suite needed was office furniture and computers.
“I love it, dahlink!” Ilona stood in the middle of my office, her arms extended. “This is where you will build a great business. But you need art on these walls.”
“I can’t afford art right now.”
“Don’t worry about money. My older brother’s son, András, is an artist who often hangs his work in restaurants and bistros. He gets exposure, and the restaurants and bistros get his magnificent paintings on their walls. I am sure he would be honored to hang his work in here. And you will love his paintings.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
I had left my car across the street from her condo building, and she drove me back to it. “You have shown those e-mail messages to the police?” she asked, turning off the ignition.
“Not yet.”
“You must go over them with the police. You recognized that they differed from Dean’s other correspondence, but the police might miss that.”
She was right about that. “What about client information?” I asked.
“Run your concerns by Detective Hardy. But as I said, Dean Monaghan’s murder was a crime of passion. His killer wasn’t looking for client information.”
I blew her a kiss and closed the car door.
***
At home, Maxie greeted me with a joyful dance, Tommy launched into an account of his cousins’ birthday party, and Laura announced that dinner was almost ready. “Give me five minutes,” I said, and headed upstairs.
I changed my shirt in my bedroom, and called Sam.
“I did it. I went to the police station,” she said when she recognized my voice. “It wasn’t fun, especially running into Lukas again, but I did it. And I haven’t been charged with anything…yet.”
“I went through Dean’s e-mails last night,” I said. “There were several messages from Gabe Quincy. Your brother-in-law. The man you sold the mothers’ names to.”
“Gabe? He knew Dean?” She sounded surprised.
“That’s how you got the job with Dean, wasn’t it? Through Gabe.”
“No way. Gabe would be, like, the last person to put himself out for me.”
“Then it’s quite a coincidence that your partner in crime knew your employer.”
“I totally swear I had no idea.”
I wasn’t sure whether I believed her.
“Dinner’s ready, Mom,” Laura called as I put down the receiver.
“Keep my plate warm,” I shouted back to her. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
The police needed to know about the e-mails between Dean and Gabe. And that Gabe was Sam’s brother-in-law.
I punched in Hardy’s cell number.
Chapter Fourteen
I arrived at work on Monday laden with a coffeemaker, mugs, a telephone directory, a folding table, and a begonia for the window ledge in my office. I was pouring my first mug of coffee when I heard footsteps on the stairs.
“I’m here, Pat,” Sam called out.
“Good morning, Sam,” I called back to her.
“About Gabe,” she said, bursting into the room, “I haven’t—”
I held up a hand. “We’ll talk about Gabe later.”
I got Sam settled at the table with a coffee and her cell phone, and told her to arrange for phone, Internet, and television hookups. And have the security company—the same firm Dean had used—change our entrance code.
The night before, I’d found no messages from Gabe when I went through Sam’s e-mails on the flash drive. But I had my suspicions. It was too much of a coincidence that Gabe knew Sam’s employer. I didn’t find much more about Gabe on the Internet; I read that he’d been given a large fine and spent 90 days in jail for orchestrating the hospital scam, but I already knew that.
The computers and furniture arrived just before 10, as I’d been promised, and the techie turned up 20 minutes later. At 11:30, he was still at work in my office.
Tired of pacing the suite, I went out on the fire escape, taking care to prop open the self-locking metal door with the plastic crate. I saw that the door could only be opened from the inside by pushing a crash bar. That meant Dean’s killer couldn’t have come into the suite through that entrance.
I sat on the stairs leading down to the alley and checked my e-mail. A message from Zach Rosen caught my eye. “Heard you’ve opened your own business. Mazel tov!” he said. “Let’s get together soon.”
Zach and I had been on the organizing committee for Personal Finance Month a few years back. I’d heard that he’d changed firms since then, and his e-mail signature at the end of his message told me he was currently managing the Optimum Capital branch on Avenue Road. The branch where Lukas Monaghan worked.
I punched Zach’s phone number into my cell.
“Zachary Rosen,” he answered.
He let out a whoop when I told him who was calling. “How the hell are you, Pat? We haven’t talked in ages.”
I told him it was the first day of my new life as a business owner.
He asked if I was free for lunch. “We need to celebrate,” he said.
We made plans to meet an hour later.
I had just disconnected when Sam joined me on the fire escape. “The fire escapes are another thing I like about the offices on this street,” she said brightly. “Dean’s came in handy before I quit smoking. Dean didn’t smoke, but he liked to keep the door open on warm days.”
I nodded as I checked for messages that might have come in while I was talking to Zach.
“Pat, about Gabe.”
She sounded so anxious that I had to hear her out. “What about him?” I closed my phone.
“Detective Hardy came over again last night. He asked if I was involved in whatever Dean and Gabe were up to. No way, I told him. I said I hadn’t even realized they knew each other.”
I must have looked skeptical, because she insisted that she hadn’t seen or heard from Gabe or her sister since Gabe went to jail. “I have no idea where they are,” she said, “and they haven’t been in touch with my parents, either. Mom and Dad blame me for keeping Be
cca away.”
“Blame you? Whose idea was it to access those patient records?”
“Gabe’s, but my parents seem to think it was my fault,” she said. “Maybe because they had to take out a loan to pay my fine, and they don’t have a lot of money. Dad was downsized from his job five years ago, never found another. Mom works in the office at Winners.”
“Did Hardy seem satisfied with what you told him about Gabe?”
“I hope so. He said there wasn’t any correspondence with Gabe on my office computer. And he took a look at my cell last night. Nothing there, either.”
“What could the connection between Dean and Gabe be?”
“They were both financial planners,” she offered.
“They may have met at industry events. Did Gabe and Becca know you were working for Dean?”
“I told you. I haven’t been in touch with them.”
“You were with Dean for three years.”
“I haven’t talked to my sister since her husband went to jail.”
“Would your parents have told them?”
“Like I said, Mom and Dad haven’t seen Becca and Gabe.” She paused for a moment. “Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Becca calls Mom once in a while.”
I had my answer.
On my way back inside the building, I took another look at the door to the fire escape. I planned to have a regular lock installed, so we could open that door with a key from outside.
***
A few years had gone by since I’d last seen Zach Rosen. There was more silver in his hair, I noted when he slid into the seat across from me at Yitz’s, but he still had that devil-may-care nonchalance some women find irresistible. A lot of women, judging by Zach’s many marriages and his current trophy wife. Their photograph had recently run in one of the industry trade publications.
We ordered Yitz’s smoked-meat sandwiches, and Zach peppered me with questions about my new business.
“Dean Monaghan who—” he began when I told him who I’d bought it from.
I cut him off. “Yes, that Dean Monaghan. The police are still on the case. I’ve taken an office down the street.”
Uncharted Waters Page 7
