by Marc Strange
“You wish to minimize your liability, is that it?”
“I’m concerned that one of my employees may be charged with something he didn’t do.”
“Unofficially looking into?”
“Yes, sir, though I do know the investigator in charge. Detective Sergeant Weed. And I’m keeping him informed of my efforts.”
“I’ve already spoken to Detective Weed. I’m sure he can fill you in.”
“He has, sir. I know you were nowhere near the Lord Douglas on the night in question.”
“Nor any time in the past five years that I can recall.”
“Yes, sir. I’m just trying to get a clearer picture of how Mr. Buznardo’s death will affect your foundation.”
“It won’t impact our foundation in the least, Mr. Gundy.”
“I’m sure that’s a relief.”
He looks at me with less than complete favour.
“If Prescott Holdings’ funds had been diverted, it could have caused a disruption,” I say as if I know what I’m talking about.
Gowins wafts an airy wave over his immaculate desk. He’s shooing away a gnat. “The corporate and legal set-up is much too carefully structured to be dismantled by some spaced-out tree hugger with a Messiah complex.”
“He did have radical plans for the future of Prescott Holdings.”
“That would have had no influence on Horizon, Mr. Gundy. The two entities have an arm’s-length relationship. Our funding is based on a strict formula relative to their corporate earnings. They earn the money, we spend the money. They aren’t allowed to spend, we aren’t allowed to earn. It’s quite simple.”
“I understand that, sir, but if Prescott Holdings stopped earning money, there wouldn’t be anything for Horizon to spend.”
He gives me a thin smile and caps his thousand-dollar fountain pen. “I find that highly unlikely.” He closes his desk binder of Spanish leather as he stands. I think my time is up.
“So you weren’t particularly concerned about the change at the top of Prescott Holdings?”
“Immaterial as far as Horizon is concerned.”
“And the CEO of Prescott Holdings, Wade Hubble? His departure wouldn’t have altered your relationship with Prescott Holdings?”
“I seriously doubt that Wade Hubble would be removed from his position, Mr. Gundy. His stewardship has been exemplary, if a trifle parsimonious of late.”
“Did you discuss the situation with him?”
“Mr. Hubble and I avoid contact, personal or professional. It’s part of our agreement.”
“Who do you deal with at Prescott Holdings, sir?”
“Mr. Gundy, I think you may be entering an area far removed from the interests of the Lord Douglas Hotel. The Prescott Holdings/Horizon relationship is no concern of yours. Both entities are represented by established law firms. You’re welcome to seek an appointment.”
“I’ve already talked to one of your lawyers.”
“Really? Which one would that be?”
“Alvin Neagle.”
“Neagle?”
“Alvin Neagle, Jake Buznardo’s lawyer. I understand he’s joining the Horizon legal team. I suppose his familiarity with Buzz’s legal status will be of value.”
“Good day, Mr. Gundy. Next time please make an appointment.”
“I will, sir. Thank you for your time. And it’s Grundy, sir, Joe Grundy.” “Of course it is.”
He sits back down and opens his binder of Spanish leather, dismissing me without so much as a nod. I resist the impulse to back out of the room.
Edwin Gowins’s next appointment is waiting in the outer office. She’s wearing taupe today, cashmere it looks like. Her ash-blond hair is curbed at the temples by heirloom tortoiseshell clips. Her shoes and handbag match. She’s still out of my league.
Nonetheless, I say, “Hello again.”
“Again?” she says without a glimmer of recognition.
“We met briefly outside the Lord Douglas Hotel two nights ago. And before that I saw you get out of an elevator. I believe you were visiting Jake Buznardo.” Amazing how the ace hotel dick can put two and two together if he’s given a few days.
“I’m sorry,” she says, not sorry at all, “I don’t recall.”
“That’s my fault, ma’am. I should have introduced myself. My name’s Joe Grundy. I’m in charge of hotel security.”
“Really?” She doesn’t look too impressed.
“I was just talking to Mr. Gowins about the possible repercussions of Mr. Buznardo’s murder.”
“How nice for you,” she says, turning away in response to a discreet cough from a well-favoured young man with spiked blond hair and a jacket almost as fine as the number Gowins had on.
“Mrs. Ingraham? Please go in. Mr. Gowins is expecting you.”
“Thank you, Jeremy,” she says, and leaves me standing on the purple carpet.
She turns at Gowins’s burled walnut office door and looks back at me. “For the record, Mr. Grundy, I wasn’t visiting Mr. Buznardo that night.”
Oops. First slip. “Sure you were, ma’am. He gave you a hundred-dollar bill and you threw it away in the elevator. I guess you found it insulting.”
“As I do you, Mr. Grundy. Most insulting.” She enters the inner sanctum with most of her shell intact, but I think I spot a hairline crack. A tendril of ash-blond hair has come loose. She won’t like that.
I turn to the handsome young man behind the desk. “Jeremy?” I say. “That was Mrs. Ingraham? Did I get that right?”
But my time in the Crystal Cathedral has elapsed. He doesn’t even trouble himself to sneer.
chapter eighteen
”I have to tell you, Mr. Grundy, that I am shocked by your ineptitude. And that of your staff. What can I say? A drunk, a gambler, a murderer, and a thief. You should rethink your hiring policy.”
That’s Wade Hubble talking. He’s making me follow him down corridors and in and out of elevators, busy moving among his subjects, dispensing blessings, barking orders. A man of substance. A Borgia on a tour of his provinces.
I’ve tracked him down at the Prescott Holdings offices through a leap of sleuthing inspiration that told me the CEO of Prescott Holdings might be found at Prescott Holdings, and I was fortunate to arrive at the executive level as he was parading along the outlying carpeting accepting the accolades of his loyal subjects, who appreciate that Wade Hubble has repelled the Visigoth and secured the borders of the kingdom. Whether any of them infer that Wade Hubble personally bumped off the invader isn’t for me to say, but I get the distinct impression they’d be proud to think so.
Wade Hubble’s Roman beak cleaves the air like the prow of a ship. He’d be at home in a toga. I’m not exactly rubbing elbows with the man. He has a scrum of suits and haircuts following closely, and I have to work at maintaining a position in his wake. Now and then one of my questions gets through to him and he pauses in his more important duties to grant me a barb.
“And to top it off, the entire organization is being run by an over-the-hill prizefighter who never won a prize. It appears that your sole claim to fame is that you stopped a bullet meant for Leo Alexander seven years ago.”
“Mr. Hubble,” I say, “I don’t want to take up your time. I’m sure you have important things to attend to. I was hoping you could direct me to Mr. Axelrode’s office.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Oh. He introduced himself at the hotel as being associated with your company in a security position.”
“Mr. Grundy, you’re on the wrong floor. You’ll find the security offices on the ground floor. I’m surprised they let you up here.”
“They may have been distracted by all the reporters trying to get up to see you.”
“Yet somehow you managed it.”
“I’m big, but I’m shifty,” I say modestly.
He looks me over as if I’m a piece of fish he’s considering for lunch. “Please shift yourself back down to the lobby.”
“I w
ill, right away, sir. I really do need to see Mr. Axelrode.”
“What for?”
“I need to straighten out a few hotel matters. An unpaid bill —”
“I don’t deal with bill collectors.”
“And a pending assault charge.”
“None of this has anything to do with me.”
“It does if he was working for you at the time.”
He’s given me far too much of his time already. He starts walking again, handing off memos, scheduling important meetings.
“I suppose Molly MacKay will inherit Mr. Buznardo’s estate,” I say.
He stops, turns, gives me a thin smile. “I’m still not willing to concede that Mr. Buznardo ever had an estate, but whatever the situation, Parker Prescott’s interests are safely back with the board of directors.”
Half an hour later I’m on a log staring blankly at the business section of the Emblem, columns of numbers and acronyms as incomprehensible to me as cuneiform, and not nearly as pretty. The sun is behind me, warming the back of my neck. The North Shore glows. The freighters at anchor in English Bay gleam like cruise ships. Gulls wheel, mergansers dabble close to shore, a rangy retriever chases a Frisbee along the wet sand, quick clouds pile up against the Coast Mountains.
Norman Quincy Weed, wearing his red-and-blue tie, walks towards me across the grass, carrying a bag of popcorn. “How’s the head?”
“I slept, I ate, looks like I’m gonna live.”
“What’d he say he hit you with?”
“The money.”
“At least it wasn’t a cheap knockout.”
He strolls down to the water and broadcasts the entire bag of popcorn. Gulls and crows and ducks converge. He leaves them to sort out who gets what.
“Haven’t found him yet?” I ask.
“It’s the manhunt of the year. You figure he caught a ferry?”
“I heard a ferry. He was near a ferry. He could have been getting on, getting off, hanging around reading brochures.”
“Horseshoe Bay,” Weed says.
“The one last night was from a payphone at the terminal. You figure he’ll call again?”
“I’m carrying a cell. He’s got the number.”
“The log wet?”
“I’m sitting on a newspaper. You can have the sports section.”
He sits on the hockey scores and stretches his legs. The popcorn has been divvied up, but not equitably. “The Mounties are all over the big island. If he’s over there, they’ll find him.” He stands to adjust his section of the newspaper and sits again. “I had a knot under there.”
“Want the business section?” I have it in my hand. “It’s thicker.”
“Even Dan Howard’s not stupid enough to play the Vancouver stock market.”
“I wanted to find out how Prescott Holdings’ stock was doing.”
“Not publicly traded,” Weed says. “You’d have to know all the companies they own pieces of, and how all of them are doing. Prescott Holdings has its fingers in more pies than it has fingers.”
“I don’t think I’m smart enough to figure out what’s going on, anyway,” I say.
“Join the club. It’d take a team of forensic auditors a year to sort out their set-up. That’s assuming someone found evidence of a crime that would justify opening up their books. Lucky for me that’s not my department. I’m working the who-shot-the-billionaire angle.”
“Still think Arnie did it?”
“Give my guys an hour in a room with him and I’ll know for sure. It’s a strange one. Big mess in the bedroom, no struggle in the other room, nothing knocked over. Shooter got real close. Like the victim maybe knew who he was.”
“Buzz was a laid-back kind of guy.”
“So I hear,” Weed says. “Also he was a wee bit stoned. Marijuana and wine. THC and alcohol in his blood.”
“You did an autopsy?”
“Ongoing. Got the blood work back. There’s going to be other stuff.”
“Some other drugs?”
“Nope.” Weed has yet to find a comfortable perch for his rump. He takes the business section from me and adds it to his cushion. “Medical examiner doesn’t think the young man was very well.”
A brief image of Buzz wincing when he stood up flashes in my head.
The rangy retriever is tireless and hasn’t stopped running since I got here. His Frisbee-throwing trainer sends him on yet another deep route. The dog gallops in our direction wearing a demented grin, defies gravity, and snatches the disc in midair. He grants us a moment to admire his prowess before loping back down the beach with his prize. The retriever is a picture of vitality, but all I can see is Jake “Buzz” Buznardo coming out of the hotel bathroom wearing a towel, his Jesus beard still dripping, his pale-skinned torso, ribs showing, chest hairless, something bad going on inside.
We stand and I collect the newspaper sections and walk them to a trash basket. “We’re getting crowded off the front page,” I say.
“Well, you got lucky. The Middle East blew up, some sports celebrity got caught with his pants down, and there’s a serial rapist working his way through Richmond.” He tosses his popcorn bag on top of the newspaper. “That’s a nice trench coat.”
“I had a breakfast date.”
“Jesus! With a woman?”
“Connie Gagliardi.”
We start walking back from the beach, heading for Denman.
“She’s too short for you,” Weed says.
“Too young, too.”
Weed climbs into his car. “Probably going to release the body tomorrow. His sister’s having him cremated. There’ll be some kind of wake, play music, scatter the ashes, like that.”
“Scatter them where? Roberts Creek?”
“Here. Out there.” He points at the Kitsilano side of the bay. “Point Grey somewhere, near the university. Wreck Beach maybe to entertain the nudists. The sister never left town.”
“Where’s she been?”
“Hanging out with that rock-and-roll band, Redphone,” he says, smiling before I can correct him.
“I’ll get in touch if I hear from Arnie again.”
“Next time you hear from him he’ll probably be in a lock-up somewhere,” Weed says. He starts the car, then organizes the seat belt to his satisfaction.
“Norm, on the off chance Arnie didn’t do the murder, my money would be on Axelrode. He was lurking, he was carrying a piece, he was poking his nose into everybody’s business, he had a hard-on for Buzz. I think you should be looking for Jeff Axelrode.”
“We’re looking for him. What can I tell you? We’ve got his name on the list. We’d like to talk to him. We expect to talk to him once we find him. When we find Arnie, we’ll talk to him, too. One of those guys has the money. Maybe they were in it together. Who knows? We’ll locate them and we’ll talk to them.”
“Is it okay if I look for him?”
“Who? Axelrode? No, it’s not okay if you look for him. You work inside the hotel. That’s what you do. You stay inside the hotel and everything will be fine. When you step outside the hotel, you’re in my house.”
“I’m a private citizen. I should be allowed to move about the city like everyone else.”
“You’re allowed. Merely constrained.”
chapter nineteen
Channel 20’s studio is in Burnaby. It takes two phone calls from the guard at the gate before I’m allowed to get lost in the Channel 20 parking lot. I was told that visitors are allowed to park in Section 7, but I can’t find Section 7 to save my life, so I park in Section 6 where the spaces aren’t allocated and the vehicles aren’t Porsches or Mini Coopers. After that I find a fire door propped open by a square wastebasket functioning as a community ashtray and promptly get lost in endless back halls, wandering without a clue for at least a mile.
I arrive at a reception area from an odd direction, according to the surprised look on the receptionist’s face. She tracks down Connie Gagliardi for me by phone. I’m given specific and deta
iled directions for this final leg of my journey and arrive without incident on the third floor, where Connie is waiting for me. She’s wearing her on-camera look: flawless eye shadow and two-tone lips. I think I like her face better without makeup, but this is good, too.
“The scuttlebutt precedes you,” she says. “Some giant is thundering up and down the halls searching for Connie. My secretary thought I should hide.”
“I try not to thunder,” I say, “but I think I got desperate when I hit my fourth dead end.”
“You came in the back way.”
“And I parked in the wrong section.”
“I’m glad you made it. Want to sit down?”
“Do I look done in?”
“You look thirsty.”
“I admit to that.”
“Stay close,” she says. “It’s just as confusing up here.”
Connie’s secretary seems relieved to see that I’m not a deranged water buffalo bent on destruction, and she supplies me with a frosty Evian and a shy smile.
“I’ve got it set up in my office,” Connie says. “It’s the raw footage. It got trimmed and edited before it went to air. I had Redhorn playing one of their songs at one point, but the mix was so bad we left it out. They were hoping for a plug for the new CD. I’ll make it up to them. You can fast-forward through those sections. The meat of the interview begins about halfway through.”
She gives me a remote and points out the play and fast-forward and rewind buttons. I appreciate the instruction.
“I’ll leave you with it for a while,” she says. “I have an interview to do in Studio 3. If you get brave, you can track me down there. It’s the studio after 1 and 2. Otherwise I’ll be back in about forty-five minutes.”
Connie’s secretary, whose name is June, is kind enough to show me a second time how to operate the remote, and then waits with me for a moment to make sure I’ve grasped the basic principles.
The tape starts with some bumpy images. I recognize a few of the faces — the record executive, Carno I think his name is, and Barnett somebody, “the best record producer on the West Coast,” Washburn, the young guy with the old face, and J.J., the guitar player sitting beside the long-haired soprano. The broad shoulders of Bubba, the road manager, block the frame for a moment until the camera pans and locates Buzz and Molly sitting together.
