by Giles Blunt
“Have you been drinking already? It’s just a little black dress.”
“No, it’s not. You’ve got shiny things on, too.”
“Shiny things. Great. Anyway, since when do you notice what I wear?”
Cardinal thought about that as they drove out to Ronnie Babstock’s house. Delorme was right that it was out of character. Of course, it was also out of character for her to look like a total knockout. But it was more than that. It had been two years now since his wife’s death, and he was aware of certain changes in himself.
Back before Christmas, he had been watching a movie with Delorme at her place. It was not a comedy but it had some funny bits, and Cardinal had laughed too loud. He heard it himself-he’d been doing it a lot lately-but he was defensive when Delorme remarked on it. She asked if he planned to become one of those laughers who annoy other people in movie theatres.
“It was just funny,” he insisted. But he had been laughing too loud, and it had felt good, as if something inside him, not his heart but some lesser-known organ of feeling, long frozen, had somehow melted. The world began to seem a richer place; amusing things were more amusing.
And sad things were sadder. When Delorme had told him about her neighbours’ dog having to be put down-their young daughter hysterical with grief-he had been quite upset. These were not even people he knew. Where did it come from, this burgeoning susceptibility? He was sure it was healthy-well, fairly sure-like recovering the feeling in fingers numbed with cold. It felt good on the whole, if slightly illicit. It only made sense that he was finally beginning to fully engage with the world once more.
Delorme had a lot to do with it. Their friendship was so free and easy, like no friendship he’d ever had. He never worried about Delorme. With Catherine, after her first breakdown early in their marriage, there was never a time when he was not worried about her. His love for his wife, though deep and loyal, had always contained a large element of protectiveness. Delorme was just a friend, he wasn’t responsible for her, and she did not require anyone’s protection, thank you very much.
When they arrived at the party, Cardinal enjoyed introducing her to Ronnie and his other poker friends, observing their reactions. Several of the women were wearing shiny things as well. Amid the candles, the ice buckets, the flutes of champagne, they took on the cheerful glitter of Christmas presents. But he felt no urge to leave Lise’s side.
He was not generally much of a drinking man, but a bevy of highly groomed young women drifted among the guests, refilling glasses without asking. By the time dinner was served, he was discovering in himself hidden wells of amiability.
People asked about the Marjorie Flint case. A senator’s wife had been murdered in their city, why wouldn’t they? It was one of the things Cardinal usually hated about parties, people inquiring about high-profile cases when he couldn’t say a thing about them. Tonight he refused to let it bother him. And in any case, Ronnie Babstock was running a kind of protective interference for him.
“Is it true she was chained up like a dog?” one woman asked.
“He can’t talk about it,” Ronnie said. “Case in progress.”
Over dessert, another woman said, “Totally nude in sub-zero weather-it’s unbelievable what that man did.”
Actually, the fact that Marjorie Flint was warmly dressed was far more remarkable, but Cardinal said nothing.
“Rachel, didn’t you hear? The poor guy can’t talk about it.”
“It’s okay,” Cardinal said. “People are bound to be curious.”
“I mean, really,” Ronnie said. “There’s a limit.”
The conversation turned to Ronnie’s own work. Delorme mentioned the photographs that had been coming back from Mars, how Marti, the peripatetic robot, had lasted longer and travelled farther than anyone had expected. Cardinal realized she must have read up in preparation for the party, a courtesy that would never have occurred to him.
“You must worry all the time,” she said. “All those billions at stake.”
“Our test protocols are stringent,” Ronnie said. “We put ’em through hell before NASA even gets a peek at ’em. And I mean hell.”
“Does NASA get a warranty?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well, there’d be rolling guarantees, I imagine.”
“You know about contracts?”
“Lise is our white-collar-crime specialist,” Cardinal said. “Don’t let her near your tax return.”
“There are various time frames with various liabilities,” Ronnie said. “We’re way above water on this one.”
“Yes, I’d imagine so.” Delorme raised her glass. “To Marti.”
They toasted the robot, and then someone said, “A wife gets murdered, it’s always the husband. And David Flint’s known as a total bastard around the Senate.”
“For Christ sake,” Ronnie said. “They can’t talk about it.”
“Yes, but we can.”
It was late when they said their good nights and stepped outside into the cold. Cardinal handed his car keys to Delorme, and she accepted them without comment. She took the slow route, along Lakeshore, probably because the lighting was better.
“I really enjoyed that, John. Thanks for taking me.”
“I’m glad you came. I wouldn’t have gone on my own.” That didn’t sound quite right to Cardinal’s ear, he wasn’t sure why. He reached over and turned down the heater a notch.
“Ronnie Babstock’s so down-to-earth. Kinda cute the way he wouldn’t let people make us talk about work. Like we were celebrities or something.”
“Uh-huh.” Cardinal was still trying to figure out what it was he had meant to say.
They drove the rest of the way to his apartment building in silence. Delorme parked in his spot and handed over the keys.
“I’ll walk you home,” Cardinal said.
“Don’t be silly. It’s two minutes.”
Cardinal went with her. They walked uphill side by side, both with their hands in their pockets. A thin dusting of snow glittered in the street lights. Distant sound of a freight train heading south.
When they reached her house, Delorme stopped at the front path and started to thank him again, but Cardinal found himself speaking over her words. “I just have to say this,” he said. “I’m really happy when I’m with you. That’s all. Simple, true, and it’s not champagne talking. I’m really happy when I’m with you.”
Delorme squinted at him. Gave him the full Clint Eastwood he’d seen her use on thugs and lawyers, not to mention those colleagues whose commitment to honesty was imperfect. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing. I’ll see you Monday. You’re in Monday, right?”
“John, wait.” Her voice softened. Her hand-gloved, small-alighted on his forearm, a touch barely perceptible through his parka. “I’m just not sure I heard what you said.”
“I just said I’m happy when I’m with you, that’s all.”
“Oh, that’s all.”
“It just seems to be a fact. I guess it’s obvious. It just suddenly struck me, that’s all.”
“Oh, that’s all,” she said again. Those skeptical eyes looking up at him, those lips slightly parted.
Cardinal takes hold of her shoulders and kisses her. In the cold of the night, the sudden heat of her mouth responding to him. Her hand reaching up and coming to rest on the back of his neck. And the whole time they’re kissing, he has the feeling he’s just stepped out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet.
In the course of her police career, Delorme had come across any number of paranoids. Her egregious colleague Ian McLeod was a prime example. But before meeting Senior Detective Vernon Loach, she had never encountered a reverse paranoid. Loach seemed to cherish the delusion that people were out to do him good behind his back.
“No, I was talking to a producer at CBC,” he was yelling to someone on the phone, possibly even his wife, poor woman. “And I think they’re going to do a whole profile on me… like an act
ual biography thing.”
Only if they’re developing a satire, Delorme thought, and scanned an entry in Marjorie Flint’s e-mail address list for the third time. Earlier, Loach had suggested to some unfortunate that Judge Roselyn Tate, the newest-and certainly the prettiest-member of the Superior Court, had a crush on him.
Loach was not bad-looking. Delorme could allow him that much. But he was one of those people who have regular features, a good build, a reasonable wardrobe, and no sex appeal whatsoever. Put him beside Cardinal and it was like he wasn’t even in the room-except for his ego.
She thought again about that kiss. No telling where that was going to lead; they had ventured into uncharted territory. But she was feeling an excitement she hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. It worried her a little-more than a little-and she told herself to focus on work.
She put her hands over her ears to block out Loach and tried to concentrate on the lists of contacts-names, numbers and e-mail addresses-that had once been the private property of Laura Lacroix and Marjorie Flint.
The senator’s wife had lived in Ottawa, Laura Lacroix in Algonquin Bay’ the chances of their having many people in common were slim. She did a search for 613 in Lacroix’s address book and came up with three Ottawa phone numbers: a couple named Sal and Jackie Gottlieb, Club Risque and Leonard Priest. None of these showed among Marjorie Flint’s contacts.
Delorme worked her way through the entries one by one, marking off each one with an asterisk. Every now and then she’d get a flutter when there was a match between the two address books, but so far these had turned out to be national concerns such as Air Canada, the Bank of Montreal or Fairmont Hotels.
She tried to cheer herself up by remembering that even if she ruled out common connections, it was valuable information. Valuable, but not exciting. She kept wishing Cardinal would show up. They hadn’t spoken since the party, and over the rest of the weekend she’d found a ridiculous anticipation building up. Sunday evening she’d called an old friend, Claire Nadeau, and told her what had happened.
Claire’s enthusiasm was complete and unhesitating-surprising, since Delorme herself was far from certain this was a positive development.
“We work together,” Delorme reminded her. “What if it doesn’t work out? It’ll be horrible.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist. Ever since the day you moved back to Algonquin Bay, you’ve been talking about this guy.”
“As a colleague, not as a-”
“Bullshit, honey. You’ve always had this tone about him, how if only he wasn’t married.”
“I have not.”
“Oh yes you have.”
“I have not.”
“Lise. Listen to your voice-you’re totally thrilled. It’s wonderful. Are you going to screw it up now by getting all negative?”
Delorme had tried to make Claire see that she was just being reasonable. Cautious. It’s not like she was twenty-one, for Pete’s sake. And yet here she was checking the clock every ten minutes.
At twelve-thirty, she put on her parka and went outside. Sunlight bouncing off the snowbanks made her eyes water. She was halfway across the parking lot when Cardinal called her name. He was at the side entrance, in shirt sleeves.
“Lise, where you headed?”
“I was just going to pick up a sandwich and bring it back. You want me to bring you something?”
“Hop in the car. We’ll pick up something on the way.”
“Way where?”
“Astor Bay. Arsenault came up with something good.”
He told her about it on the way out to Astor Bay. Arsenault had finally managed to pin down the piece of snowmobile cowling. It matched an Arctic Cat 660 Turbo model produced between 2007 and 2009.
“Turbo. That’s where the rb lettering came from?”
“Right.”
“And how’d he get the date range?”
“In his words? ‘Easy. They changed the font.’ ”
“Love that database.”
“Actually, it’s called Dents ‘n’ Dings. Place out on 63 sells scrap snowmobiles. He just went out there with that piece of plastic and browsed till he found a match. I’ve spent the morning going through reported snowmobile thefts.”
“Are we sure it’s stolen?”
“No, but it’s a good bet.”
“Where were you doing this?”
Cardinal looked at her. “Where?”
“You haven’t been at your desk. I didn’t even know you were in.”
There was an odd tone in Delorme’s voice. It made Cardinal a little nervous.
“I stayed in Ident,” he said. “Collingwood’s out, so I just sat at his desk and started running through what we had. Why?”
“Nothing. There must’ve been a ton of snowmobile thefts.”
“Not of that model, not in black and silver. And I focused on a week either side of the day Marjorie Flint was abducted. That gives us three possibles. Printout’s in my briefcase, top folder. I love it when footwork pays off, don’t you?”
“You’ve got True North dealership as our first stop? If you want to steal a snowmobile, why would you go to a place that’s well lit and has alarm systems and video cameras?”
“It’s closest. We’ll rule it out and move on.”
The showroom of True North, with its gleaming Yamahas and Ski-Doos, was deserted except for the manager himself. Apparently the snow-poor season was raising his stress levels. When Cardinal and Delorme identified themselves, he put on an elaborate show of being surprised to see them.
“Two weeks ago I called. Two weeks, and now you show up? Guy could’ve driven the thing out to B.C. in that time.”
Cardinal didn’t want to get into it. “Your statement of complaint says the suspect took it out for a test drive. How’d he manage that? We haven’t had any snow.”
“Actually we had about four inches two weeks ago,” Delorme said.
“Not that it stayed,” the manager added with bitterness.
“Did you get some ID before you gave him the keys?”
“Two pieces. I can show you, but one’s fake and the credit card’s stolen. Believe me, afterwards I checked.”
Cardinal pointed to the security camera above the counter. “You have the security tape?”
“We gave you the security tape. Two days after it happened. What’s wrong with you people?”
The initial complaint had been taken by Ian McLeod. McLeod was a good investigator, except when a case bored him, which this one clearly had.
Cardinal apologized. “There was no note of it in the file, unfortunately.”
“Typical. I love paying taxes, don’t you? Luckily, I kept the original. You can watch it in my office.”
He took them to his office and opened the safe. He pulled out the photo ID and handed it to them. Cardinal could see right away that a new picture had been rephotographed over the original. The manager put a disc into a player.
They watched a squarish, chunky man talking with a salesman, pointing to the window, the lot outside.
“He took the Arctic Cat, right?” Cardinal said. “Silver and black?”
“Silver and black. A 2008 model with barely a scratch on it.”
Cardinal turned to Delorme. “Did you have any questions?”
“I think we have what we need.”
It wasn’t like Delorme to be so quiet during an investigation. Cardinal found it a little unsettling. He thanked the manager and promised to be in touch if they found anything.
When they were back in the car, Delorme said, “I can’t see anyone who plans a murder of this kind putting his face on a security camera. I hope we don’t have to go visit his phony address now.”
“Let’s get Sergeant Flower on it.” Cardinal pulled out his cellphone and dialed.
Delorme shook her head.
“What? Flower loves stuff like this.”
“Loves doing it for you, maybe. If I tried that, she’d snap my head off.”
Ca
rdinal was already speaking into the phone. He gave the address and a couple of parameters to follow, made a joke, and rang off.
He could feel Delorme getting annoyed. Whether it was at him or not, he wasn’t sure. He thought again about their kiss of the other night. Exciting, yes, but he knew they had to talk about it. Probably she did too and it was making her edgy.
He wasn’t used to being nervous with Delorme, and he was aware of his own peculiar reaction. It made him chatty, not at all his usual style, rattling on about what a great job Ident was doing, about the “snowmobile database,” about the Ottawa people running down everything they could find on that tree house. “They’ve even got some cryptography guys at the RCMP looking at the number 25, seeing if they can relate it to anything to do with Marjorie Flint. You know, it occurs to me her table number at that fundraiser was 25.”
“I’m sure that’s the key, John. Take a week off. Your work is done here.”
Cardinal glanced at her, but she kept her eyes on the oncoming traffic.
“Hey. It’s called brainstorming, Lise.”
“If you say so.”
“You’re usually the one with the hare-brained ideas-”
“Thanks.”
“You didn’t let me finish. The hare-brained ideas that turn out to be really smart. Are you annoyed about something? About the other night?”
“You seem hyper, that’s all.”
“You’re right. I’ll shut up. What’s the number on Beachfront?”
Delorme glanced at the printout. “Twenty-five.”
“No, it’s not.”
“One thirty-nine.”
The woman who answered the door was holding a calico cat in her arms. “She runs out if I don’t hang on to her,” she said. “She’d kill every bird in this province if she had the chance.”
To Delorme, the cat looked as if she had just swallowed three Valium, the way she was drooped all over her owner’s chubby arm.
Cardinal asked about the stolen snowmobile.
“It’s back,” she said. “Returned of its own accord, believe it or not.”
“I’ll need a little more information than that,” Cardinal said.
