Cold Comfort

by Scott Mackay

  But then the message ended; no indication of violence, just a sudden cut-off. Gilbert remembered the phone in the wastepaper basket. But there was something that didn’t jibe with this tape, something that left him unconvinced.

  “Is that her bird in the background? The parrot?”

  “That’s him,” said Latham. “He’s a squawker.”

  Gilbert stared at Latham. The bird was dead. True, there remained the possibility that this message came before the bird was killed. But there was also the possibility that this tape was perhaps months or weeks or even a year old, that Latham had saved it on purpose to use as a decoy when it came time to murder his wife.

  “Do you mind if I take that tape?” he asked

  Latham opened the cover, snapped out the tape, and gave it to Gilbert. “It’s yours.”

  Gilbert squirreled it away in his accordion-style briefcase.

  “So you called Missing Persons because you got this message from her the previous night.” Gilbert cocked his head. “Gee, Charles, I don’t get it. She sounds like she’s in legal trouble. Nothing to file a missing persons report about. Did you actually go over once you got home on Tuesday night?”

  Latham nodded. “As fast as I could.” He sat down in his chair, lifted his cup of coffee halfway to his lips, but then put it back on the table. “You see, Detective Gilbert, this separation wasn’t my idea. I love Cheryl. I’ll do anything for her. Do you know that old Cole Porter song, Night and Day? That’s what it was like for me when Cheryl came along.” He lifted his coffee again and this time managed to take a sip. He nodded at Gilbert’s briefcase. “That message, she asked me to come over, I was hoping for a reconciliation, so of course I went over.”

  “So you arrived at the Glenarden at approximately what time?”

  Latham’s brow furrowed. “A little after midnight.”

  “Do you have a key?”

  “Not to her apartment. But she gave me one to her building.”

  Gilbert remembered the security tape. “What were you wearing?”

  “My parka.”

  Four men, all in parkas, all unidentified because of deep hoods.

  “I can’t help noticing you have a big bandage on your hand,” said Gilbert.

  Latham looked at the thick gauze bandage. “I’m an absolute idiot in the kitchen,” he said. “Thank God I have Sally.”

  “So you got in the building and you went upstairs. You went upstairs and you knocked on Cheryl’s door. Did anyone see you?”

  “No. The halls were empty.”

  “And earlier in the evening you were at work.”

  “Correct.”

  “And did anybody see you there?”

  Latham frowned. “I’m not a suspect, am I, detective?”

  “Nobody said you were. But we have routine questions we like to ask. So we can narrow the field. What time did you get to work on Monday night?”

  “Around nine-thirty. I had a few things to pick up.”

  “So if I were to ask the security guards—”

  “I went in through the underground parking lot. You have to have a special access card. No one saw me.”

  “And what about when you got up to the office? It’s a big firm, isn’t it? Someone must have been working late.”

  Latham’s face grew stony. “No,” he said, “no one was there.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Gilbert. “Don’t look so worried. You just tell me what happened. You got home at eleven, you listened to Cheryl’s message, and you rushed over to the Glenarden. You used your key to gain access, you went upstairs and knocked on her door.” Gilbert raised his eyebrows. “Then what happened?”

  “She didn’t answer. I couldn’t hear a thing inside. Not even that damn parrot of hers.”

  Gilbert contemplated Latham; maybe he was telling the truth, maybe not.

  “So then what did you do?”

  Latham shrugged. “I went home.”

  “And in the morning you called Missing Persons. That’s the part I don’t get.”

  Latham took a deep breath, pushed his chair away from the table and crossed his legs. “Maybe I should explain a little bit about what happened between Cheryl and I over the last year. So you can better understand my emotional state on Tuesday morning. I know it’s not a logical thing. Phoning Missing Persons. I can see it bugs you. But I’ve been keyed up for a year.”

  “Then tell me about your year.”

  Latham glanced toward the kitchen door, collecting his thoughts. “I don’t know how things could have so badly deteriorated between Cheryl and I,” he said. “It wasn’t any one thing in particular, just a lot of small things. For two years we were fine. But then we began to fight. Are you married, detective?”

  Gilbert nodded.

  “Then you know how married couples argue. They argue for the sake of arguing. They argue because they haven’t had enough sleep, or because they’re feeling cranky, or because they’re hungry. Sometimes it’s about money. Sometimes it’s about other things. Cheryl was always independent about money. She kept her job even after we got married. We argued over just about damn near everything.

  “We bought a painting, a Louis d’Niberville, a mother toweling a child dry at the seaside, perfect, I thought, for the hallway leading to the indoor swimming pool. She insisted we hang it in the old sewing room. I don’t know why. There’s hardly any wall space in that room. And it’s a big painting, something you have to stand back from to truly appreciate. Isn’t that silly? That was our first big argument. I let her have her way. Why not? I saw that it was upsetting her. I knew she had to have things just so. She got panicky otherwise. Like if she couldn’t control the world the world would somehow control her.”

  Gilbert remained quiet. Somewhere off in the house he heard a clock softly chiming. The coffeemaker made a sudden bubbly sound, hissed once or twice, then lapsed into silence.

  “Then we began having arguments about Danny and Sally,” continued Latham. “It’s not that she didn’t trust them. Danny and Sally are the most trustworthy people in the world. Cheryl was just a private person. I’ve always had live-in help. My parents had live-in help. It’s never bothered me. But Cheryl felt as if she were being scrutinized all the time. Sally’s the best housekeeper I’ve ever had. Everything’s always spotless. And her cooking’s great. But Cheryl began to hover over Sally. Cheryl could never relax when Sally was around. I don’t know why. Sally’s easygoing. Sally will forgive a lot. But finally Sally asked me to talk to Cheryl. Cheryl and I argued.” Latham smiled in self-deprecation. “I’m probably giving you the impression that we argued all the time. But we didn’t. Most of the time, things were great. We were like two high school kids. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We really loved each other. But then we would have these fights. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted to accommodate her as far as I could. She really wanted to be mistress of her own household, I guess that’s what it was. So I finally let Sally and Danny go. I gave them glowing references. They both got jobs immediately. I had to beg them to come back when Cheryl finally left me. I also had to give them a whopping increase in pay, but I don’t care, they’re worth it.”

  A black squirrel climbed the bird feeder, scaring the sparrow away.

  “So you resented this?” suggested Gilbert. “You felt like you betrayed Sally and Danny?”

  “I felt…not exactly as if I’d betrayed them, but…I just felt sad that we would find ourselves in a situation where I would have to ask them to leave. And whether I resented it…well, yes, I suppose I did. I appreciate order, detective. I like a clean house. I can work better when I know everything’s in order. A lot of people are like that. But Cheryl carried it to extremes.”

  Gilbert wondered what this had to do with phoning Missing Persons, but let Latham continue. It was as if Latham had never been able to talk to anybody about this; as a veteran of thousands of interviews and interrogations, Gilbert recognized the syndrome well; Latham was ventilating. Sometimes a detective le
arned more this way than from a direct question.

  “Not so much resentment, but more a mounting frustration,” said Latham. He tapped the kitchen table a few times. “Then…I don’t know…I guess it was a month or two before our separation, she started asking me for money. This was new. She’d never asked me for cash outright. And I gave it to her. It wasn’t the money that bothered me.” He gestured at the house. “I’ve got more than I can use…I just wanted to know what she needed it for. What’s so strange about that? She didn’t want to tell me. It became an issue of trust for her. She was my wife, if she needed money, I should give it to her, what’s mine was hers, etcetera, and I should be able to trust her. After all, I trusted her with everything else.”

  “How much money?” asked Gilbert.

  Latham gave him a vague shrug. “I didn’t keep track.” He squinted, pushed his glasses up his nose. “It must have been five or six thousand.”

  “And this happened about a year ago last Christmas?”

  “About that.”

  “Do you think it had anything to do with Christmas?” asked Gilbert. “Maybe she had to buy Christmas presents or something.”

  Latham shook his head lackadaisically. “I have no idea,” he said. “By that time I didn’t care. I just wanted to keep her happy.” Out in the yard, Danny appeared from behind the indoor swimming pool, pushing the snow-blower before him, sending a cloud of snow into the air. “Then, in January, things really took a turn for the worse. She started looking for fights. Like she wanted to find an excuse to leave me.” He tapped the table. “She wanted to move this table. I had this nook specifically built so I could put a table here. This is my favorite spot in the whole house. I wanted to eat my breakfast here and look at my garden. She was cooking bacon with a spatula over by the island there. I felt like I’d been tackled when she told me we had to move the table. I’d given into her every other wish. I lost my temper. I hardly ever lose my temper. The fight really wasn’t about the table. It was about everything else, about all the small changes I’d been forced to make, about Sally and Danny, everything. My garden’s special to me, Detective Gilbert. There’s nothing I enjoy more than sitting at this window and looking at my garden. I had a furniture-maker make this table specifically for this nook.”

  “So you said no,” said Gilbert.

  Latham gave him a rough defiant nod. “That’s right. I said no. And we fought. We argued. And she had that spatula covered with molten grease in her hand. And she always moves her hands a lot when she argues. But I honestly think, even to this day, that she flung that grease at me on purpose.” He pointed to two whitish spots on his cheek. “You can still see the scars. And…I don’t know…I lashed out. It was more reflex. When something physically hurts you like that—and let me tell you, detective, that grease hurt like hell—you instinctively…” Latham fumbled for words.

  “You hit her?” asked Gilbert.

  Latham’s defiance disappeared like air out of a balloon. He looked suddenly overcome with guilt. “I didn’t mean to,” he said. “I never hit anyone in my life. And to hit my wife…I don’t know how it happened. Like the pressure built up, and the grease just set it free, and I didn’t really hit her that hard, just gave her a kind of a light cuff across the top of the head, it didn’t do much more than mess up her hair. But as far as Cheryl was concerned, that was it. I’d crossed a line. I begged her. I pleaded with her. I dragged the table away from the nook right there and then, but she kept on screaming at me. She flipped. I’d never seen her like that. From then on, I was completely despicable to Cheryl.” Latham leaned forward and stared at the detective intently. “I’m only human, detective. I lost my temper. It’s the first and only time I’ve ever lashed out at anyone. I told her it would never happen again. But as far as she was concerned, I didn’t exist anymore. At least not as her husband. One lapse, Detective Gilbert, that’s all it took. One isolated incident. You think she would be able to forgive me. I’m not perfect. But you think she would have given me a second chance. It was just a light tap. It didn’t even hurt. And it was completely out of character for me. She knew I would never do it again.”

  Gilbert stared at Latham; and he recalled Blackstein’s autopsy report. All the distant fractures, the missing teeth, the scarred spleen. Beaten badly as a child. Under those circumstances, was Cheryl’s reaction so bizarre? He wondered if Latham knew. Probably not. Child-abuse victims usually buried things. And this didn’t sound too good for Latham from a suspect standpoint. He’d already placed himself at the Glenarden on the night of the murder. Now he was explaining to Gilbert how unfairly, how cruelly he had been treated by his wife. He had a cut on his hand and they had unidentified blood in the kitchen sink. He had no provable alibi. Plus no forced entry at the Glenarden, which meant Cheryl knew her killer.

  “And that’s when she left you?” said Gilbert.

  Latham nodded morosely. “The very next day. She stayed with a friend from work at first. I grew obsessed with knowing where she was. I still am. That’s what you have to understand about Tuesday. I always have to know where she is. When she left me, Dorothy was dead and Cheryl didn’t want to impose on Tom. The following month she moved into the Glenarden. Of course I tried desperately to win her back.”

  “But she refused to see you.”

  “At first she did. But after a month or two, we started seeing each other for coffee occasionally. She helped me with some business now and again. There’s a Starbucks up there. I didn’t press her immediately. I felt I had to give it the velvet glove. If I could show her that I was really a nice man, that I was truly sorry, even remorseful for clipping her on the head like that, I thought she might take me back. In May she helped me plant the annuals. I thought things were going well. But then she started asking me for money again.” Latham paused. “Five hundred dollars. Sometimes a thousand. I was only too happy to give it to her. I didn’t even ask her what she wanted it for. I really didn’t care. I thought I was making headway. I was always phoning her, always dropping in at her work. I just wanted to know where she was.” He shook his head, and he looked ripped apart again, and guilty as could be. “That’s what happened Tuesday morning. I guess I panicked. I phoned and phoned. I was worried about the message she’d left. She wasn’t at home and she wasn’t at work. I thought something might have happened to her. I started thinking about the money. I had to know where she was. My old habit. I simply had to know that. I didn’t intentionally phone Missing Persons but that’s who they put me through to.” He shrugged. “I wanted to find her. I wanted to make sure she was safe. And I was willing to try anything.” He looked at Gilbert quizzically. “Is there anything so strange about that?”

  Six

  Gilbert arrived at Mount Joseph General Hospital a little after one that same afternoon. A hundred hospital workers—nurses, technicians, housekeeping staff—marched with pickets in front of the admitting drive-through, not a strike, just a one-day protest, with many of the placards featuring Tom Webb’s name; the hospitals faced the same eighteen-percent cut. He parked the car, grabbed his briefcase, and entered the hospital, his mind still half on the things Charles Latham had told him this morning.

  The hospital, built in the 1950s, was a study in institutional gloom; dour portraits of past presidents hung one after the other in the lobby, the wood panelling had faded to the color of potato skins, and the small lights hanging from the ceiling did little but cast anemic pools of light into the general dimness. He turned left past the volunteer office and continued down the hall. Glass cabinets displayed the handicrafts of rehab-therapy patients; there was nothing handy or crafty about these small paintings and clay sculptures; they were malformed, accidental, and spoke of the tragedy of mangled bodies trying to rebuild themselves.

  He passed the Urology Department and finally came to the Social Work Department. He entered a small reception area. The receptionist, a fragile-looking woman with wispy black hair pulled into a severe bun, peered up from her computer.
<
br />   “Yes?” she said.

  Gilbert pulled out his shield. “I’m Detective Barry Gilbert,” he said. “I have an appointment to see Susan Allen.”

  The receptionist looked at Gilbert with a perplexed frown, then buzzed Susan Allen’s office, lifting the receiver to her ear. “You have a Detective Barry Gilbert to see you,” she said.

  The receptionist listened to Susan Allen’s reply, put the receiver down, then looked up at Gilbert.

  “She’ll be out in a minute,” she said. “You can have a seat over there.”

  “Thanks.”

  Gilbert sat down. He stared at the receptionist, trying to figure her out. Before he could ponder further, Susan Allen’s door opened and a man, his face red, his eyes set in barely suppressed fury, well-dressed in a suit and tie, marched from the office, and, without looking once to the left or right, or even so much as acknowledging the beleaguered receptionist, left the Social Work office and disappeared down the hall.

  Susan Allen appeared at her door. She stared after the man, her face strained, obviously upset about the encounter, and turned to the receptionist.

  “Liz,” she said. “Liz, he’s usually not like this…he usually…”

  Liz stared at Susan forlornly. “Did you get it settled?” she asked.

  Susan turned around, seeming to see Detective Gilbert for the first time. She looked at Gilbert as if she didn’t know who he was. Then her memory jogged. “Detective…” She struggled to remember his name.

  Gilbert rose, extended his hand. “Gilbert,” he said. “Barry Gilbert. I came to talk to you about Wesley Rowe.”

  “Oh!” she said, as if she’d been jabbed by a pin.

  Gilbert glanced toward the door. “But I see I came at a bad time.” He let his hand fall to his side. “If you want me to come back some other—”