No Pain, No Gaine

by Edwina Franklin

  But this time would be different. This time he wanted the weapon to be clearly traceable, from Lou Parmentier’s body to the lifeless hand of a “suicide” with a grafted-on guilty conscience. It was, thought Mr. Vanish with a smile, a ferociously apt solution to an annoying problem.

  The conversation was sporadic as they drove back to Sandy’s building. All the main streets were clogged with traffic on Saturday nights, so Gaine took an alternate route, along narrow side roads where the light of widely spaced street lamps spilled through oak and maple boughs, dappling the pavement. Away from the hustle and neon of Yonge Street, it was more difficult to make small talk. The darkness was so pristine here, and the silence felt too precious to break with superficial chatter.

  Over dinner they had hammered out the details of their partnership. Sandy had never dickered so hard in her life. The printout of the file, it was decided after a harshly whispered battle, would remain with her, as long as she withheld none of its contents from Sergeant Gaine. And he had to be informed immediately of any conclusions she reached independently that were based on the information in the file. They would interview all leads together, examine all evidence together and present their findings to the Chief of Police together, assuming there were findings and they were both alive to present them.

  Once everything had been settled, they had toasted the agreement with ice water and sealed it with a solemn but perfunctory handshake. And then they had run out of things to talk about. Things that mattered, anyway, Sandy amended. Things that she was willing to reveal about herself to a man she didn’t really know—but was wishing she could get to know better.

  At last the dark green sedan pulled to a stop at the curb in front of her duplex.

  “Thanks for the dinner, Sergeant,” she said, as they both got out of the car.

  “My pleasure, Ms. DiGianni,” he replied formally, accompanying her inside and up the stairs to her apartment door. As she groped in her handbag for the key, he added with forced casualness, “It will certainly be interesting working together.”

  Yes, it would be…a brand-new experience, she thought. Just as she was getting used to having him for an adversary, they’d become allies. Sergeant Gaine couldn’t have chosen a better strategy for keeping her off balance.

  At last she felt her fingers close on metal. She pulled the key out of her purse, then inserted it—and the unlatched door swung open on its own.

  Sandy gasped. She had left the living room lamp turned on for security. The first thing revealed by its light was dirt strewn all over her furniture and carpet.

  Instantly she realized where the loamy soil had come from. “Dio, my plants!” she wailed. Sandy dropped her purse beside the telephone and rushed to rescue the uprooted greenery near the windowsill.

  “Don’t touch anything!” barked Sergeant Gaine, stopping her in her tracks. “There’ll be fingerprints all over those planters.”

  “But they’ll die if I don’t repot them,” she protested indignantly.

  He didn’t hear her. He was already on the phone to the Burglary Squad, using a handkerchief to protect any fingerprints that might be on the receiver. Fine, that was how she would save her plants, Sandy decided, and she ran to the kitchen to fetch some tissues and paper toweling.

  One step into the room, she froze. The kitchen had been ransacked. Every drawer had been pulled out and emptied onto the floor. Cupboards were left open, their contents stirred and scattered as though by miniature tornadoes. Even the fridge had been pulled away from the wall.

  “Check all the rooms,” growled Sergeant Gaine behind her. “Don’t touch anything, just look around to see what’s missing.”

  Grimly Sandy marched through her apartment from one devastated room to the next, taking mental inventory. Her radio, her jewelry, the money she kept in an empty relish jar in the kitchen—all had been left alone. But in the bedroom she found her photo albums lying open on the bed, their padded covers slit open. All the snapshots had been removed from their mountings and scattered around the room.

  The intruder had come through the bedroom window; a pie-shaped piece of glass had been neatly removed from one corner of the pane. Sandy shivered and hugged her shoulders, feeling a sudden chill.

  “Well?” Gaine prodded, only a pace or two behind her.

  Reluctantly she shook her head and said in a choked voice, “I can’t see anything missing. Maybe a photograph…”

  Gaine swore under his breath. “I was afraid this would happen. Whoever broke in here wasn’t a thief, Alessandra. He was looking for something. Maybe he was looking for you. Just imagine what would have happened if you’d been home.”

  The chill seeped into her bones, making her teeth chatter. Gaine reached out for her, but Sandy evaded him and returned to the living room, still hugging her shoulders, not wanting the touch of any hand but her own. She felt violated, and blinked back tears as she surveyed her ruined plants once again.

  Gaine had followed her and now stood quietly to one side, watching her. “I’ve been telling you since Thursday that you were in danger, Alessandra.”

  “Are you saying Mr. Vanish did this?” she asked dully.

  He was silent for a moment. “No, I don’t think Mr. Vanish would operate this way.”

  Sandy’s temples began to throb, making her wish she had put some headache tablets into her handbag earlier. She couldn’t go looking for them now; her bathroom was part of the scene of a crime and mustn’t be disturbed.

  Suddenly there was a strong arm around her shoulders, gently urging her toward the door while a honey-smooth voice murmured into her ear, “You look ready to collapse. Let’s go wait for the Burglary Squad outside.”

  Nodding, she relaxed gratefully into the curve of his arm, resting her cheek against the front of his shirt, feeling strong muscles flex and play beneath the fabric as he adjusted his stance to support her. It felt so reassuring to be able to lean against him like this, to share his strength when her own failed her. She hadn’t been held this way in so long, she thought with a sigh.

  As Alessandra snuggled against his chest, Ted automatically tightened his embrace, smiling as he heard her sigh with pleasure. What a bundle of contradictions she was, he thought wonderingly—fiercely independent one minute, soft and yielding the next. A man could easily fall in love with a woman like Alessandra. Ted looked down at her and found her lush, full lips invitingly close.

  For a breath-stopping moment they stood on the landing outside her apartment, locked together, neither one moving a muscle as his awareness of her, of what he had been about to do, grew more acute. Then, slowly, regretfully, Ted shook his head and released her, forcing himself not to react to the troubled expression in her eyes.

  He couldn’t. Not now. Not yet…

  Seconds later the front door swung open as two stocky men in business suits entered the building.

  “Burglary Squad, ma’am, Sergeant,” said the older one, nodding to each of them in turn.

  Ted almost sighed with relief.

  Chapter Four

  Sunday, June 10

  As her sleep-fogged mind struggled to identify the persistent noise that had dragged her back to consciousness, Sandy opened one eye in the direction of the digital clock on the nightstand. She squinted hard to bring the numbers into focus, and in that instant realized that the shrill, insistent sound was coming from the telephone right beside the clock. It was 6:20 a.m. Somebody was phoning her at 6:20 a.m. Sandy moaned.

  Muttering a choice Italian phrase under her breath, she groped for the receiver and actually managed to bring it to her ear without giving herself a black eye. “H’lo,” she sighed.

  There was a short click, then a dial tone.

  Sandy frowned uneasily as she hung up. Normally she would write the call off as a wrong number, with the caller too embarrassed or thoughtless to say anything. But this, following so soon af
ter the break-in last night, was disquieting.

  Suddenly Sandy felt restless. She sat up in bed and hugged her knees, feeling knots of tension gather across her shoulders as her gaze swung to the temporary cardboard patch Ted Gaine had put over the hole in her window last night.

  What if he was right about the intruder? What if the guy had broken in expecting to find and silence a writer who knew too much, and had had to settle for ransacking her apartment instead? What if he was planning to try again? A piece of cardboard wouldn’t stop him. Dio, a new pane of glass and changing the locks wouldn’t stop him either, if he was determined to get in.

  No, she told herself firmly, she would make herself crazy if she dwelt on this. Sandy threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She hadn’t spoken to Uncle Hugo yesterday about Tommy as she’d intended. At the earliest decent hour, she would have to have a talk with him. But first, she had to reclaim her apartment.

  After the detectives had left, Sandy had stayed up past midnight repotting all her plants; and then she had collapsed into bed, exhausted, leaving the rest of the work for morning. Well, she thought, sighing as she surveyed the shambles the intruder had left behind, morning was here and the place was still a mess. Everything looked dirty. Everything she touched felt grimy. She would have to clean every room from top to bottom, so she might as well get started now.

  She would have to dust and mop and vacuum and polish and scrub. She would have to launder all her clothes and towels and linens. She would have to wash every dish and every pot and pan and knife and fork she owned. She would have to eradicate every trace of the person who had violated her home and her possessions last night, and every trace of the team of detectives who had followed in his filthy footsteps and added their own to the mess. Her apartment would be hers again, even if she had to clean it to within an inch of its life.

  By 10:15 a.m., Sandy had accomplished her objective. She had also answered the phone five times and the caller had hung up on her five times; and each time it happened she threw herself even more energetically into her cleaning, as though the ringing of the phone had materialized on the floors and furniture as additional dust and grime to be scrubbed away.

  In the end, her kitchen could have doubled as an operating room. Even her plants sparkled. Wearily she wiped a forearm across her damp brow and headed toward the bathroom, stripping off her T-shirt and shorts as she went. The buses ran every half hour on Sundays. She had time to shower and change and drink a fast cup of tea. Soon she would be knocking at Uncle Hugo’s door.

  At 10:45, as Sandy was double-checking the contents of her purse, the telephone rang again. For a moment, she froze. Then, forcing down a panicky flutter at the back of her throat, she hurried into the living room and picked up the receiver on the third ring. Before she had even finished saying hello, the caller hung up.

  Sandy stared uneasily at the receiver for a moment before replacing it on its cradle. She still had to talk to Uncle Hugo this morning, and she would. Tommy’s future was important to her. But the disquieting feeling of danger was back, clinging to her thoughts like a cobweb.

  Glancing down, she saw Ted Gaine’s business card lying beside the phone. He’d added his home number in ink and made her promise to call him, night or day, if anything untoward or frightening happened. He had refused to leave her alone in the apartment last night until she’d accepted his card and promised to use it. Thoughtfully Sandy picked it up and fingered it. Had he insisted because he expected further trouble? Like these phone calls? Or because it threatened his control of the situation if she actually handled something herself?

  After a moment’s hesitation she replaced the card beside the phone, picked up her briefcase and left, closing the door firmly behind her.

  One hundred and fifty. One hundred and fifty-one. One hundred and fifty-two.

  Ted let go of the handles of the rowing machine, removed his sweat-saturated terry headband and dragged his forearm wearily across his stinging eyes. This wasn’t going to work. He’d been punishing himself for more than an hour already. If feelings could be measured in drops of water, then he’d already shed a gallon of guilt over his near lapse the previous evening. But the needlelike stabs of his conscience still weren’t letting up.

  He’d come that close to kissing Alessandra DiGianni last night, not because his razor-sharp police instincts told him that it was the best way to break down her resistance to his questioning—interrogating her hadn’t even been on his mind at that point—but simply because she was warm and beautiful and already wrapped in his arms.

  Ted had always prided himself on being the consummate investigator. His career with the Department had been marked not by reckless heroics but by thoroughness and attention to detail. Those qualities had put him at the top of his class coming out of Aylmer Police College and had ensured his rapid promotion out of uniform and up to the rank of detective sergeant before he’d been assigned to Homicide two years ago.

  True, his years on the street had made him wily. Working undercover, he’d learned to think like the criminals he hunted. Sometimes it took a “scam”, as Joe referred to it, to secure a confession or flush out a suspect; but more than anything, police work was cerebral. It was painstaking examination of circumstances and details. It was logic and extrapolation. It was observation and deduction. And it demanded objectivity.

  Somehow, in spite of all his training and experience, Ted was finding it impossible to be objective about Alessandra. He kept imagining how it would be to taste the honeyed warmth of her mouth, feel the silk of her hair against his cheek…

  It was a wonderful fantasy, but it was still only a fantasy. Ted closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and put the daydream on fast forward: Standing on the landing outside Alessandra’s apartment door, kissing her hungrily—until she pulls back. For a moment she gazes into his face, her eyes troubled… “I don’t need this,” she tells him in a voice that could cut glass. “And I certainly don’t want it from you. As you can see, I’m perfectly capable of getting myself where I want to be, by myself.”

  No, he amended, shaking his head impatiently, that wasn’t Alessandra; it was Carol the day she demanded her divorce. Since meeting Alessandra, he’d found himself thinking with disturbing frequency about his ex-wife. Carol, the social climber. Like Alessandra, she was a strong, independent woman, with enough ambition for two. Funny how he still seemed to lean toward that type. After the number Carol had done on him when they divorced, anyone would think he’d be keeping his distance from Ms. Alessandra DiGianni, instead of wanting to grab every opportunity to get closer to her.

  Chemistry, that was all it was, he reminded himself savagely. The curse of the male species. A fresh, lovely face came along, and he was gone. How else could he have ended up married to Carol, who called him “a badge on legs”? And why else would he feel so drawn to Alessandra, who, except for one vulnerable moment last night, barely tolerated him?

  A good detective ought to be able to control those kinds of feelings—or at least not let them show. Resolutely, Ted gripped the handles of the rowing machine and resumed counting strokes.

  One hundred and ninety-five. One hundred and ninety-six… After three hundred, he’d go upstairs and take a shower. Or maybe after four hundred. Or five.

  The file on Mr. Vanish was easily three hundred pages long and had taken three hours to print out. Watching the fanfold sheets pile higher and higher in the out basket hanging from the printer in the Police Digest composing room had gradually distracted Sandy from her other nagging worry of the moment—the apparently failing health of Uncle Hugo.

  She had surprised him at home that morning; and he, in turn, had surprised her. Stunned, Sandy had looked into Hugo’s unnaturally flushed face with its dull, weary eyes, and had seriously wondered whether this tired old man was capable of helping anyone. Just the thought of what she had come to say to him had sent a pang of conscien
ce lancing through her; but she had said it anyway, after making Hugo promise to visit his doctor the very next day for a checkup.

  All the way to the magazine office, his face had haunted her. And then the printer had begun spewing page after page of margin-to-margin words. Sandy had scanned the printout, lifting a dozen or so sheets at a time to peek between the fanfolds; and she had realized with dismay that studying all this information, in only their spare time, would take the sergeant and her a long while, possibly longer than Mr. Vanish was willing to grant them.

  Carefully she tore off the final page, lifted the printout out of its basket and placed the stack of paper in the briefcase she’d brought from home. So far, so good. Now she just had to get it back to her apartment without alerting anyone.

  She had telephoned Ted Gaine from Editorial, asking him to meet her at her apartment to look over the file. He’d offered to drive down and pick her up, but she’d refused, pointing out that a police escort was the surest way to tip off a watcher that there was something valuable inside the briefcase. Reluctantly, he’d had to agree.

  So, tense behind a mask of carefully composed features, Sandy marched rapidly up the back stairs to Editorial, past her desk to the double glass doors, and back down again to the street. She had been seen entering the front door of the building, carrying a briefcase; she would have to leave the same way. And she would have to treat the briefcase as casually as if it held only the uneaten portion of her takeout lunch.

  To her relief, the journey home went without a hitch. Sandy was smiling as she carried the briefcase through the front door of her building and up the steps to her apartment. After locking the door behind her, she filled the kettle for tea and opened the briefcase on her kitchen table. Then she gathered writing instruments and paper and arranged them precisely on the table around the printout. This was her all-night study ritual, begun back in college. After Ted Gaine had gone home, she would keep at it until her eyes refused to focus anymore.