The Evil That Men Do

by Michael Blair

  “She’s going to apply for a restraining order against Marc Lefebvre.”

  “Good,” she said. “But she or Nina could have telephoned me. Now, go away, please.”

  She tried to shut the door on me. I put out my hand, holding the door open.

  “What’s wrong?” I said. “Why are you so angry? Have I done something to upset you?”

  “Oh, fuck off, Riley. You know damned well what you did. You’ve got a bloody nerve coming here.”

  “Look, I don’t—”

  “I can’t believe you would do such a thing,” she said, the bit in her teeth. “Who do you think you are, anyway? God, what a fool you must think I am. I actually thought you’d changed.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What is it I’m supposed to have done? I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” Or maybe I did.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said.

  Lawrence Thomason came into the garage from the house, took a position by her side.

  Shit, I swore to myself. Thomason’s car wasn’t in the driveway, and I hadn’t seen it on the street. And where was Lionel Keynes?

  “Mister Riley,” Thomason said, eyes boring into mine. “Teresa asked you to go. If you don’t, you will leave me with no choice but to call the police.”

  What? I thought, returning Thomason’s cold stare.

  No thrashing?

  “Does this have anything to do with my conversation with Larry the other day?” I said to Terry.

  “Oh, don’t play the innocent with me,” she said. “You know damned well it does. You threatened Lawrence with violence if he didn’t get out of my life. What gave you the right?”

  “Oh, for god’s sake, Terry. You know me better than that. It never happened. I didn’t threaten him.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I’ve never lied to you, Terry. Ever. And I’m not lying now.”

  On the other hand, Lawrence Thomason was lying to her, I knew, as he smirked at me. It wouldn’t do any good to call him on it, though. Terry was not disposed to listen, and Thomason would simply deny it. But I promised myself that the first chance I got I would have a private heart-to-heart with him, if only to wipe the smug expression from his face.

  “Just go,” Terry said. She slammed the door.

  I called Nina from the car and told her what had just happened. “You’re joking,” she said.

  “I wish,” I said, still fuming, trying to wipe the memory of Thomason’s smug look from my mind.

  “Where are you now?” she asked.

  “Parked down the street from her house.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m not going to do anything. What’s the point? It’s his word against mine.”

  “Why would she believe him and not you?”

  “I suppose because she wants to believe him. Or doesn’t want to believe me.”

  “Hang on. Louise wants to talk to you.”

  Louise Desjardins came on the line. After I had gone through my conversation with Terry and Thomason again, she said, “What did she say about calling me? Her exact words.”

  “She said she’d call as soon as she heard anything. Heard anything about what? What’s going on?”

  “All in good time,” Louise said.

  “Goddamned lawyers,” I grumbled, as she hung up.

  Chapter 17

  I spent most of Thursday morning wearing my handyman’s hat and working around the house, trying not to think about Terry or the look of triumph on Thomason’s face when she’d shut the door on me. I re-glazed a broken pane in the front-door window that Rocky had repaired with packing tape, fixed a leaking faucet in the bathroom, patched a crack in the kitchen ceiling, and planed and re-hung a sticking door. At eleven fifteen, as I was re-wiring an electrical outlet in Rocky’s studio, Nina called and asked if I was free for lunch. I said I could be and we arranged to meet in the food court of Place Ville-Marie at twelve thirty. I finished re-wiring the outlet, grabbed a shower, then, because I was running late, drove downtown.

  While we ate, we talked about nothing in particular, although Nina seemed to have something on her mind. At one point she asked if I was going to go back to Scotland once I’d found a place for Grace.

  “I suppose so,” I said. “I liked it there.”

  “Past tense? Because your girlfriend dumped you to marry someone else?”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Well, you know your own mind, at least.” I made a face at her. She replied in kind, then said, “Have you spoken to Terry since yesterday?”

  “No. She made it pretty clear she wants nothing to do with me.”

  “In the meantime, what are you going to do about Larry Thomason?”

  “What do you suggest? Track him down and beat the crap out of him?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “It’s tempting,” I said. “Look, I don’t like the guy, but Terry’s an adult. She gets to make her own mistakes. All we can do is hope she doesn’t get in too deep before she realizes what kind of person he is. But if you want to keep her as a friend, my advice, for what it’s worth, is to keep your nose out of it. You don’t want her to forbid Rebecca to see you, do you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Is she still texting you every five minutes?”

  “No. I haven’t heard from her today at all. But—” Her phone buzzed, skittering on the tabletop as it vibrated. “Maybe I spoke too soon,” she said as she picked it up and looked at the screen. “It’s Louise.” She stroked the screen and held the phone to her ear. “Oui?” She listened for a moment, then said, “Okay. He’s with me now.” She touched the screen again and looked at me. “Louise wants to see us. Can you come to the office?”

  “Sure,” I said. “When?”

  “Now.”

  Louise Desjardins was eating salad out of a Styrofoam box in her office. She motioned for us to enter, dropped the plastic fork into the box, then dropped the box into a bin beside her desk. She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin, which followed the box into the bin.

  “Have you told him?” she said to Nina, gesturing for us to sit.

  “About the call? No, of course not. You told me not to.”

  “What call?” I said.

  “On Monday evening,” Louise said, “Terry received a telephone call from someone claiming to be Marie-Claire Cloutier.”

  “Should I know who that is?”

  “She was Charles Pearson Brandt’s assistant, accomplice and lover. She disappeared with him and the money he stole.”

  “I don’t suppose she called to tell Terry where he was.”

  “No. But she is prepared to reveal his whereabouts and testify against him in return for immunity from

  prosecution.”

  “Why call Terry? Why not the police? Or you?”

  “Ms. Cloutier is not exactly a candidate for Mensa,” Louise said. “According to everything we know about her, she’s moderately intelligent, but not particularly imaginative. She earned a living for a time as a photographer’s model, but retired from that business when she was gang-raped by three of her clients. She brought charges against them, but their lawyers gutted her on the stand, and all they got was a slap on the wrist. I wish I’d been representing her.”

  “Terry sort of liked her,” Nina said.

  “Everyone we’ve spoken to said she is a very likeable person,” Louise said. “Although somewhat lazy and lacking in motivation. In any event, she was supposed to call Terry back on Tuesday evening for my answer. Which, by the way, was yes, I would represent her and try to get the prosecutor’s office to agree to a deal. I instructed Terry to tell her that while she might not get full immunity, she’d very likely get a reduced sent
ence, possibly even probation. Especially if her information led to Brandt’s apprehension and recovery of the money he stole.”

  “I take it there’s a problem,” I said.

  “Terry was to call me as soon as she heard back from Madame Cloutier,” Louise said. “But Terry has not called, and I have not been able to reach her. I left numerous voicemail messages on both her landline and her cellphone, but she hasn’t responded. Or to email and text messages.”

  “Did Cloutier tell Terry where she was calling from?”

  “No. And the number she was calling from was blocked.” Not a complete dummy, I thought.

  “Does she have any family she may have been in touch with?” I asked.

  Louise shook her head. “Her parents died in a house fire when she was six, and she and her older brother were raised in foster care. He joined the armed forces when he turned eighteen and was killed in Afghanistan in 2009.”

  I had a cold feeling about Terry’s failure to return Louise’s calls, certain it had to do with Lawrence Thomason and how he’d turned Terry against me. Maybe not just me.

  “Have you spoken to Lionel Keynes?” I said. “Maybe he can tell us what’s going on.”

  “I have not been able to contact him. He hasn’t responded to emails or to the messages I left on Terry’s business line. I don’t have a personal number for him.” She looked at Nina. “Do you? Cellphone, landline, home address?”

  “I can get them,” Nina said. “Have you tried Rebecca’s mobile number?”

  “I was going to ask you to do that,” Louise said. “You have a rapport with her.”

  Nina took out her phone. “She’ll be in school,” she said, as she tapped and stroked the screen. She turned on the speakerphone as the call went to voicemail.

  “Hi, this is Becca’s voicemail. You know what to do.”

  “Rebecca, it’s Nina. Please call me as soon as possible. It’s urgent. Thanks.” She disconnected. “I’ll text her the same message,” she said, as she thumbed the phone, typing faster with her thumbs than I could with all ten fingers. When she’d done, she looked at Louise and said, “Now what?”

  “Riley, tell me more about the threats Lawrence Thomason made against you,” Louise said.

  “I didn’t take them, or him, very seriously,” I said. “Unfortunately. I never imagined he’d tell Terry that it was the other way round.”

  “We need to know more about this person,” Louise said. “But first, we need to know if Marie-Claire Cloutier has called Terry back. Riley, would you please go to Terry’s house and determine if she is there, and whether Monsieur Thomason is there with her? If she is home, and prepared to listen, tell her that it’s imperative I speak with her. From your description of your conversation with her yesterday, it is possible that Thomason has manipulated her into believing that we no longer represent her best interests. If that is in fact the case, we will need to find some way to remove him from the picture.” She sighed. “Perhaps I should have taken Nina’s and your doubts about him more seriously.”

  No perhaps about it, I thought.

  I’d brought the Volvo downtown, so didn’t waste any time getting to Terry’s house. When I got there, there were no cars in the driveway, neither Terry’s Ford Focus, Lionel Keynes’s Mazda nor Thomason’s BMW. Nor did any of them seem to be parked nearby. Likewise, there was no sign of Marc Lefebvre’s Pathfinder. No one came either to the front door or the garage door when I rang the bell. I considered breaking in, but there were ADT alarm stickers on both doors. I returned to the car and called Nina. She was on another line. I asked the receptionist to transfer me to Louise Desjardins.

  “Any word from Terry or Rebecca?” I asked.

  “No,” Louise said. “Nina is worried. She told you about the text messages Rebecca has been sending, did she not? She hasn’t received one since yesterday, and Rebecca is not responding to Nina’s texts. Calls to her phone go straight to voicemail.”

  “What about Terry’s parents? Do they know where she is? Or anything about Cloutier’s call?”

  “As to the latter, apparently not. They have not spoken to Terry since Sunday evening and she told them nothing about taking time off work.”

  “I’m going to check out Lionel Keynes,” I said. Nina had given me his home address and phone numbers before I left the office. “And it’s time we looked more deeply into Lawrence Thomason.”

  “I agree,” Louise said. She got Nina on the line and we discussed what Nina had dug up on Thomason, which wasn’t much. Nor did she have a means of contacting him, phone numbers or home address. Louise told her to make an official request to the police to run Thomason’s license plate number to identify the dealer from whom he’d leased his car, on the pretext that they were looking for a potential witness in a case. That could take a few hours, though.

  Louise hung up. I said to Nina, “After your launch, when Thomason slammed Fredrick Strom into the car and broke the window, I asked him for a business card to put under the wiper blade.”

  “I remember,” Nina said. “He took it back.”

  “He told me he hadn’t worked there in a while, but the company name on the card was Excel Wood Products.

  I don’t recall the address.”

  “Hang on,” Nina said. I heard the clack of her keyboard. A few seconds later she said, “According to their website, Excel Wood Products makes high-end commercial cabinetry for retail stores, hotels and such. The address is 128 Hull in Lasalle. I’ll text you the directions.”

  A few seconds later the iPhone chimed, and a text message alert was displayed on the screen.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Talk to you later.”

  Lionel Keynes lived in Dorval, a few kilometres east of Pointe-Claire, not far enough from the end of one of the main runways of Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport. As I got out of the car in front of a small postwar bungalow, a passenger jet thundered overhead as it took off. The windows of the Volvo rattled, and I clamped my jaws shut to keep my fillings from falling out. It was a wonder the houses under the flight path still had glass in their windows.

  Lionel Keynes’s Mazda wasn’t on the street—the small lot didn’t have space for a driveway—nor was there a response when I knocked on the door. I called his cellphone and landline, letting both ring until they went to voicemail. I left my cellphone number on both, along with an urgent request for him to call me, Nina, or Louise Desjardins as soon as possible.

  Following the directions Nina had texted me, I headed east on Autoroute 20 and took the exit for the borough of Lasalle. Rue de Hull was a short cul-de-sac across Dollard Avenue from a sprawling warehouse and cinema sound stage complex. Excel Wood Products occupied most of the north side of the street. The reception area contained samples of the company’s work and was redolent of fresh-sawn wood, varnish, and furniture polish. From somewhere in the back of the plant came the high-pitched whine of a woodworking machine, a saw or a planer. A grandmotherly woman with fluffy white hair and pale blue eyes sat behind a highly polished, dark wood reception desk that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the lobby of a small luxury hotel. She smiled at me as I ran my hand along the smooth, warm surface of the desk.

  “Nice.”

  “Thank you,” she said, smile widening. “Can I help you? I’m afraid we’re not hiring at the moment,” she added. She had a faint European accent, German, I thought, or Austrian.

  “Thanks,” I said, returning her smile. “I have a job.” I handed her one of the generic business cards Louise Desjardins had given me. “My name is Riley. I work for this law firm. I’d like to speak to someone in your personnel department about one of your former employees.”

  “Oh,” the woman said. “We’re a small company. We don’t really have a personnel department. Ms. Stadler handles hiring and payroll. I’ll see if she’s available, shall I?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind
.”

  “Not at all,” the woman said, standing. “I’ll be right back.”

  She went down a hall lined with closed doors. She knocked on the second door on the left, then went in, shutting the door behind her. When she emerged a moment later, she was accompanied by a lanky brunette about my age, wearing a snug mid-thigh skirt that showed off truly spectacular legs, made more so by three-inch stiletto heels. The heels elevated her eyes close to the level of mine.

  “I’m Irene Stadler,” she said, glancing at my card. “Elke says you’re a lawyer.” The tone of her voice implied skepticism.

  “I’m an investigator,” I said, returning her steely grey gaze, which exuded an almost physical chill. “I’d like to talk to you about a man named Lawrence Thomason. I have reason to believe he may have worked … ” My voice trailed off at the look of near panic on the faces of both women.

  “Christ,” Irene Stadler said, her take-no-prisoners façade crumbling. “We’re not being sued, are we?”

  Elke wrung her hands.

  “If you are,” I said, “it’s not through our firm.”

  “Let’s take this into the conference room,” Irene Stadler said. She turned to Elke. “I think Gerry should be part of this.”

  “He’s out back,” the older woman said. She picked up a hand-held two-way radio from the reception desk.

  “Come this way,” Ms. Stadler said.

  Chapter 18

  I followed Irene Stadler down the hall to the first door on the left, which opened into a windowless conference room. The plain, dun-coloured walls were hung with framed photographs of hotel rooms and lobbies, retail-store counters and display cases, and what I guessed were private libraries and bookstores. I recognized the interior of the former Nicholas Hoare bookstore on Greene Avenue in Westmount.

  “Please, sit down. Would you like some coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, lowering myself into a comfortable leather swivel chair at the conference table, a beautiful piece of furniture that I presumed was another example of the company’s work. She sat down across from me.