He was speechless. Just as he had been that first day when they met back in London. She gave him a punch on his arm. “Hey, I don’t want to lose you.”
“Lucky you were in school and not in Kensington Market,” Greene said. “The protest got out of hand.”
Now is the time, she thought. She had to tell him the truth. That she’d taken the photo of Fox’s dead body and posted it online. That she knew it was a terrible thing to do, but she’d been trapped in the house and she’d panicked. That she’d been lying to him for two months, pretending to still be in school. That today she’d put on a disguise to make sure he wouldn’t see her at the protest march. That she was the Kensington Blogger everyone was looking for.
“You’ve probably heard about the photo of Livingston Fox’s body that someone took with a selfie stick and put up online,” he said. “Unbelievable.”
Oh no, she thought. I can’t tell him. No, I can’t. Thank goodness she had the lilac to cover her face. “I saw something about it on Twitter.”
“Can you imagine how the family feels seeing that?”
How could she have been such a complete and utter idiot? And to think that only a month ago she’d been congratulating herself for being resourceful enough to snag an interview with Fox. It had been a real coup. She’d sent him a letter saying she was a journalism student looking for her first big story, and he’d written her back a handwritten letter that said, “I have time to meet at my office, next Tuesday from 4:15 to 4:30 p.m. Email Maxine to confirm. Fox.”
Maxine Daley had turned out to be an older woman from Newfoundland who’d worked for him for years. She seemed to run everything in his life and was friendly and helpful.
“What does Mr. Fox like to talk about besides his work?” Alison asked her when she set up that first meeting.
“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Maxine said. “The Bauhaus Movement. He loves their architecture and design. You should see his book collection.”
She’d met Fox for the first time at his beautifully designed modern office. He was much shorter than she’d imagined. He shook her hand, had her sit in one of two matching chairs by the floor-to-ceiling window, pulled out his phone and made a call. She waited until he hung up and watched him turn his phone off.
He sat down beside her.
“Hello.” He looked into her eyes, as if there were no one else in the world he’d rather speak to. “I talk to Maxine for one minute before each meeting, then go offline for the next fourteen minutes. Do you mind turning off your phone?”
“Of course not.” She fished it out of her bag, turned it off, and looked up. He was staring straight through her. It could have been disarming but it wasn’t.
“What should we talk about?” he asked.
“Maxine told me you love Bauhaus architecture, and I’ve been reading about it.”
He grinned, keeping his eyes on hers. They talked about architecture and design and furniture and colour choices and the texture of marble, granite, and oak. Time flew by. Before she knew it, a quiet alarm went off.
“Time to go,” he said, standing up.
She stood too.
He shook her hand and headed for the door, already back on his phone, talking to Maxine about his next appointment, leaving Alison feeling strangely elated and bereft.
After that, they met weekly on Friday afternoons in the backroom of Huibing Gardens on Spadina, and bit by bit, Fox started to confide in her.
“My parents run this bullshit wellness centre north of the city,” he told her one time. “They say what I do is bad for the environment, but who do you think is paying to keep them in business?”
“I’ve never had a real friend,” he said the next week. “It might sound funny, but my sister, who’s twelve years older than me, and Maxine are my closest friends. Maxine was my nanny when I was growing up. Isn’t that pathetic?”
“I think it’s quite charming,” she said.
“What about you?” he asked, fixing her with that all-encompassing stare of his. “What’s your story, Ms. English Accent?”
He’d never asked her about herself before. She told him everything: her mother’s sudden death; Ari Greene, her surprise father; her move to Toronto; going to journalism school; dropping out; keeping it secret from her father and grandfather.
“And that’s when you became the Kensington Blogger,” he said as nonchalantly as if he were asking a waitress for the dessert menu.
She flushed. “You knew?”
“I suspected. I didn’t know for certain until now. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I like secrets.”
Two weeks ago, he’d given Alison her first scoop.
“Headline news for you. And exclusive,” he said. “I’m engaged.”
“That’s wonderful.”
He showed her a picture of a Japanese woman dressed in a plain blue skirt and white blouse. She looked older than he was.
“You think people will be surprised? She’s not my usual type.”
“She looks nice.”
“Her name is Anita Nakamura. She’s a totally normal person from a totally normal family.”
The minute Alison left the restaurant, she used her phone to post the news on her blog. By the time she got home, she had ten times the usual number of hits.
She twirled the lilac away from her nose and looked at Ari. “I’m going to put this in water. It will make my room smell lovely.”
He grinned.
She felt like a total fraud.
He pointed to the street below them. “I’ve got visitors.”
An expensive-looking vehicle had just parked on the street, and Ari’s lawyer friend Ted DiPaulo, whom she’d met a few times, got out the driver’s side. He walked around to the front passenger door, opened it, and Cassandra Amberlight stepped out of the car.
What was going on? She let the lilac slip out of her hand, then bent down to pick it up so that Ari couldn’t see the shock on her face.
18
“Daddy!” Gloria cried, and ran across the room to hug her father.
Kennicott watched Karl Fox hold her. Nobody else in the room moved. Father and daughter walked to the couch, and he sat down between his wife and his daughter. He took his wife’s hand.
“I’m very sorry,” Kennicott said. “Your son’s body was found at the Kensington Gate building site late this afternoon.”
“But why? How? Who?”
Kennicott watched Karl’s reactions carefully. “We don’t know yet.”
Tears flooded the man’s eyes. “He’s my only son.”
This was why the first few hours of a homicide investigation were so difficult. You had to deliver the worst possible news to people who were most likely victims but could possibly be killers. You’d never met them before and there was no foolproof way to gauge their reactions, which could be anything. A stoic mother; an emotional father. Kennicott had developed a detective’s double vision, which meant eyeing people with both compassion and suspicion at the same time.
Fox didn’t seem to have any clue that he was a possible suspect, and Kennicott didn’t want him to think that he was.
“What can you tell us, Detective?” he asked.
“As I explained to your wife and daughter, at this early stage I’m afraid we can’t tell you very much. We know how frustrating that is. Hopefully it won’t be for long. Right now it’s crucial that we trace your son’s whereabouts throughout the day. You said you had lunch with Livingston.”
It was important to use Livingston’s name to make his father feel that his son was a real person to Kennicott. Not just a victim.
“Yes, at Fresh. We eat there every Friday. The food is all organic.”
“What time did you meet?”
“Our regular time. Twelve-thirty. He always has a million meetings booked in a day. It drives him nuts that I’m such a slow eater.”
Fox was still talking about his son in the present tense, as if he were still alive.
“Do you know where
he went after your lunch?”
“I have no idea. He never tells me a thing. As usual, he had his Rolls-Royce convertible parked up the street, with that woman chauffeur of his waiting to take him to his next appointment. And he was drinking from one of his silly colour-coded water bottles. Said he needed to hydrate because of the heat.”
“What did you two talk about?”
Fox clenched his jaw. “With Livingston, there’s one topic: his business. How much money he’s making. That didn’t stop him from spending half the lunch flirting with the waitress.”
Most of the articles about Fox had mentioned his womanizing. Perhaps that hadn’t stopped, even though he was engaged.
“And now this crazy wedding plan of his. Marrying some older woman he hardly knows.”
Fox glanced at his wife. Kennicott caught the scorn on both their faces.
“Did he mention that someone had threatened him, anything of that sort?” Kennicott asked.
“The last few weeks he’s been acting real paranoid. He kept saying that someone was following him. Trying to steal an idea he was working on. He didn’t know who it was.”
“Anything else you talked about? It’s important.”
“He said he has a new concept for a building. He wanted us to move Foxhole down to the city. As if we’d do that.”
“Move from here?” Kate Fox said, not shy to interject. “Never.”
“Apparently this idea of his was top secret,” Karl said. “He kept telling me how crucial it was to keep it hush-hush.”
“Did he say where it would be built?”
“No. He said he drew up the plans himself. I said, ‘Great. Show them to me.’ But typical Livingston, he had all sorts of excuses. I know he’s ruthless in business, and I’m sure he’s made a lot of enemies.”
Kennicott heard the sound of a door being flung open.
“Gloria! Gloria!” A stout middle-aged woman dressed in an old-fashioned business suit burst into the room, leaving the door open behind her.
Gloria lifted her head. “Maxine!”
“I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” Maxine said. She rushed to the sofa and pulled Gloria into her arms. The two of them broke down in tears.
Kate Fox addressed Kennicott. “Maxine was our nanny when the children were growing up. We called her the third parent. She’s been Livingston’s executive assistant for years.”
“I see,” Kennicott said. There was something cold about Kate. She still hadn’t cried. She was less upset about her son’s murder than his nanny-turned-assistant.
Kennicott turned to Darvesh and nodded at the door. It was time to leave. Let the family grieve. He told Maxine that he’d need to speak to her as soon as possible.
“Is tomorrow morning too late?” she asked, fighting to compose herself.
“No. That would be perfect.”
“I’m always in early. Can you come to the office at nine?”
“Yes,” he said. “I appreciate it. And I understand Livingston had a chauffeur.”
“Sherani.”
“We want to talk to her right away.”
“Certainly.” She opened her purse and pulled out a well-worn pencil and a pad of Post-its, wrote out a phone number, and passed the note to Kennicott. “Here’s her number. She’s extremely upset. I’m sure she’ll be most helpful. I’ll have her there tomorrow morning if you like. She can show you where she spent the day with Livingston.”
“That would be excellent,” Kennicott said.
He and Darvesh shook hands all around and walked out. When they were back in the police car, Kennicott asked, “Are you okay?”
Darvesh put the keys in the ignition but didn’t turn the car on. “It’s very difficult to tell a family their child has been murdered.”
“It’s probably the toughest part of the job,” Kennicott said. “And it never gets easier.”
Kennicott could still remember the ashen look on the face of the police officer who had informed him his brother Michael had been murdered. The cop had been Detective Ari Greene.
“Tell me your impressions of the Fox family,” Kennicott said.
“What’s with the mother?” Darvesh said, putting the car in gear. “Madame Ice Queen or what?”
“I thought so too. Drive real slow until you get to the entrance.”
Kennicott looked out the window at the grounds. The grass hadn’t been cut recently, and the garden beds were filled with weeds. The parking lot was empty, and there was no sign of any clients. Meanwhile, their son was chauffeured about town in a Rolls-Royce. Making millions. Maybe that was why they thought his wedding plans were crazy. Livingston might have been about to sign away his fortune and leave them and their crumbling business in the lurch. Now he was dead, where would all his money go?
“After the funeral is over, we’re going to have to get a look at Livingston Fox’s will. Follow the money trail, see if it leads back here.”
“Good idea.” Darvesh stopped the car at the end of the driveway. “Should I still follow the speed limit back?”
“Hell no,” Kennicott said. “Floor it.”
19
“Ari, thanks for seeing us right away,” Ted DiPaulo said when he got up to the porch. As usual, he was impeccably dressed. Despite the heat, the suit he was wearing looked crisp. “Meet Cassandra Amberlight.”
Amberlight was the opposite. She wore an old, shapeless dress. A big woman with wide shoulders and long arms, she was breathing hard from the exertion of climbing the staircase.
Greene shook her hand. It was sweaty. “Can I get you anything? A glass of water?”
“A seat is all I need,” Amberlight said, as she plunked herself down on a chair. “You do that climb every day?”
“A few times a day,” Greene said. “You get used to it.”
“Maybe you, not me.”
DiPaulo chuckled. “Cassandra and I went to law school together. She always sat in the front row and I always sat in the back.”
“This is my daughter, Alison,” Greene said.
“Young lady,” Amberlight said to Alison, “I hope you don’t want to be a lawyer or a cop.”
“I don’t know what I want to do,” Alison said. She’d picked up the lilac that she’d dropped and was smelling it again. “Presently I’m in journalism school.”
“Probably a good idea,” DiPaulo said. “For once in her life, Cassandra doesn’t want to talk to the press.”
Everyone laughed. Thank goodness for Ted, Greene thought. He was good at cracking jokes, getting people to relax.
“Especially after someone posted that dreadful photo of Livingston Fox’s body online,” Amberlight said. “This social media stuff is totally out of control. Who would do such a thing? They should charge the person. There has to be some kind of legislation.” She turned to Alison. “Young lady, this is your generation. All these cellphones and selfie shots. What do you think?”
DiPaulo grinned. “At law school, not a day went by when Cassandra didn’t have a new cause to champion.”
“I guess sometimes people just get carried away,” Alison said.
“To say the least,” Amberlight said.
“Well, have a good meeting. I’m not accustomed to this humidity and I’ve got homework to do.” Alison waved her lilac and walked inside.
When the door closed, Amberlight gave Greene a quizzical look. “Can I ask where she picked up that charming English accent?”
“It’s a long story.” Greene crossed his arms. “I think I know, but what brings you two here?”
“Livingston Fox,” DiPaulo said. “I fear Cassandra’s going to be a suspect. The police will want to speak to her soon, and I need you to help me prepare her.”
“I had nothing to do with his murder,” Amberlight said, sitting upright.
“I assume you’re a suspect because you’re leading the opposition to Fox’s new condo project,” Greene said.
“That’s not all,” she said.
“What am I m
issing here?” Greene asked DiPaulo.
“Tell him, Cassandra.”
“Maybe I will take that glass of water,” Amberlight said.
Greene could see she was stalling and that she wanted to talk to DiPaulo alone. He took his time going inside to get her the water.
“The first thing the detectives will ask you,” he said, once he was back outside and sitting across from her, “will be to account for your whereabouts earlier today.”
She took a long swig. “I met with Fox at two-thirty this afternoon,” she said.
No wonder she was nervous. He’d found the body at about four o’clock.
“Where?” Greene asked.
“At the back of the Kensington Gate work site, in the work shed where he was killed.”
DiPaulo was still standing, his face expressionless, as hard to read as an expert poker player’s.
“How did you get into the yard?”
“Fox had unlocked the gate and left it open for me.”
“How long was your meeting?”
“I’m not sure. About half an hour.”
“Then what happened?”
“I left.”
“And Fox?”
“He stayed there.”
And when you left, did you leave the gate open or did you lock it? Greene wondered. That was the key question, but now was not the time to ask.
“What was the meeting about?”
“We’d been meeting for a few weeks in secret. Fox wanted to make a deal. He was prepared to turn the Kensington Gate 2 into a rental building with affordable apartments for artists and the disabled. The main floor would include a medical clinic, a common kitchen, a gym, and a public swimming pool. He planned to set up a non-profit organization called the Fox Cityscape Foundation and make me the director and I was going to get a penthouse apartment in the building.”
“What did he want from you in return?”
“We planned to do a joint press conference tomorrow morning. He was going to say he’d been persuaded by the protest today and had done a one-eighty. He wanted me to invite the protesters to work with me in the foundation. He had the building all planned out. He’d done his own architectural drawings, and he showed them to me today.”
Heart of the City Page 7
