No Pain, No Gaine

by Edwina Franklin

  “They…asked about the phone repairman. When I told them that he’d only touched the phones, they asked if they could have a look at them also. Their ID looked genuine, so I let them in. Showed them my phones, too.”

  Sandy bit back a sarcastic comment about cereal box prizes. “And?”

  “They took our phones apart again and put them back together again. Then they thanked me and left.”

  Sandy’s head was beginning to throb. “And that’s all they did?”

  “That’s all,” replied the other woman in a tiny, contrite voice. “Do you want your spare key back?”

  “No, it’s all right,” she sighed, rubbing her temples with aching fingers.

  “Well, I’ve left dishes soaking downstairs,” said the woman, her voice almost hysterically bright, “so if you’ll excuse me…?”

  Sandy waved her away and got up to close the door. Then she dug into her handbag for a couple of headache tablets, her mind foaming and churning with unpleasant possibilities.

  The phone man could have been for real, of course, in which case Sandy was upsetting herself unnecessarily.

  But if the phone man was an impostor, or if the two police officers were impostors, they could have been casing the apartment for a future break-in. Or else they could have been looking for something.

  The printout.

  Fear and anger knotted together into a cold lump and nested at the back of her throat. Sandy raced into the bedroom and flung open the closet door. None of the clothes looked disturbed, but that didn’t mean anything. She swept them aside with one arm and shoved her chair into the closet with the other. Standing on the seat of the chair, she pushed open the little trapdoor to the attic.

  Dio, please, let it still be there!

  Sandy reached blindly through the opening, sighing with relief when her fingers touched the molded plastic handle of her briefcase. Then it occurred to her that that didn’t mean anything either, and she pulled the case down and opened it on her bed to make sure the printout was still safely inside. Dio grazie, it was, all five pounds of it.

  Nonetheless, Sergeant Gaine ought to know about these three visitors, she decided. Sandy locked the briefcase again and returned it to its hiding place. Then she hurried into the living room, snatched up the telephone receiver and punched in the home phone number from Gaine’s card. No answer.

  Muttering to herself, she tried his office number. After seven rings, the phone was picked up by a Detective Sergeant Andover. No, Sergeant Gaine wasn’t in the office right now. He was out investigating a case. If she cared to leave a message, Sergeant Andover would be happy to pass it along. Or, if it was an emergency, Sergeant Gaine could be reached on his pager. Was this an emergency?

  Sandy glanced around her apartment. Everything was in its place. Nothing looked touched. If her neighbor hadn’t made a point of running upstairs to tell her about it, she wouldn’t even have known that anyone had been here during her absence. That was the truly frightening part, she thought with a shiver. That was the way Mr. Vanish would operate. However, as long as there weren’t any bodies littering her living room floor, and Gaine had promised—threatened, actually—to call her later this evening anyway…

  No, this probably wasn’t an emergency, she told the sergeant reluctantly before hanging up.

  Hugging herself, Sandy walked through the apartment, trembling to think how easy it was for an intruder to get into a place like this. And she was all alone here, and plenty of people knew it—including, no doubt, Mr. Vanish. She looked around and could practically see the footprints of the three men who had tricked her neighbor into letting them in that afternoon.

  She would have to scrub her apartment down again. And the thought crossed her mind as well that maybe she ought to see about getting herself a gun.

  Chapter Eight

  Thursday, June 14

  “Sergeant Gaine is out on a case right now,” apologized the receptionist. “Perhaps one of the other detectives could help you?”

  Sandy uttered a small, frustrated moan. “No, thank you. I really only want to talk to Sergeant Gaine.”

  That was an understatement. Sandy had awakened at five o’clock that morning, coiled tight as a spring with tense anticipation. She had logged on the magazine computer at 7:00 a.m. and worked nonstop until 1:30 p.m., when Frank Leslie had come to reclaim his terminal. And as she worked, pieces had begun falling into place in her mind, and she’d realized with a start that she must have been put under police surveillance. That was how Gaine could promise so confidently to watch over her twenty-four hours a day.

  Now she understood whom he had nodded to on the street, and why Constable Browne had shadowed her so closely at the scene of Vito’s murder. How long had they been watching her? she wondered. Since the discovery of Blass’s body? Since she’d turned over the ledger page Tuesday morning? Or had the surveillance begun even earlier than that, for a different reason? Had the eyes she’d felt boring into her at the subway station last Saturday belonged to a plainclothes police officer with orders to make her feel vulnerable and in danger?

  The more she’d thought about it, the angrier Sandy had become. That Gaine had put her under surveillance was reassuring; that he’d done it without letting her know was—well, it was peeping. It made her skin crawl.

  So, no, Sandy didn’t want to talk to another detective. She’d come here at two o’clock on an empty stomach specifically to straighten out Ted Gaine.

  “Then can I give him a message for you, or at least tell him that you stopped by?” suggested the receptionist, flashing a sympathetic smile.

  Sandy considered for a moment. “Yes, you can,” she said, handing over the sealed manila envelope containing the photocopies of Charlie’s notes. “Please tell him that Alessandra was here, and give him this, and say, ‘I told you so.’”

  The receptionist looked momentarily puzzled. “That’s it? ‘I told you so’?”

  “That’s all of it.”

  She shrugged and copied down the message on a pad of printed yellow forms. “He’ll get this as soon as he returns,” she promised, tearing off the slip of paper and taping it onto the envelope.

  Finally feeling pangs of hunger, Sandy stopped at a fast-food place for a chicken sandwich and some salad before going home. While on the subway platform, however, she changed her mind and took a southbound instead of a northbound train. She hadn’t spoken to Uncle Hugo since yesterday noon.

  She had lectured him about family obligations; she was a fine one to be doing that, Sandy scolded herself now. She’d watched him being driven off, sick and weak, in a police car, and then hadn’t even thought about him for over twenty-four hours. Dio, what was the matter with her?

  The video arcade had been temporarily shut down because of the murder investigation. All the doorways but one had been sealed, and the interior of the building was filled with a dark, eerie silence. Sandy took a cautious step inside, waiting a moment for her eyesight to adjust. As the dim outlines of the game machines became discernible, they reminded her of a troop of camouflaged soldiers waiting in ambush.

  “Can I help you?” came a stern voice from behind her. Sandy spun around and found herself face-to-face with the arcade’s assistant manager, Barney Bruce, arms folded and wearing a carved expression.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he said, and relaxed. “Looking for Hugo, I guess.”

  “Yes, I am.” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in the unnatural silence of the arcade.

  “He isn’t here. He phoned me early this morning and said he was feeling sick.”

  After yesterday’s ordeal, Sandy wasn’t surprised to hear that. She marched double time to Queen Street and rode the streetcar directly to Uncle Hugo’s place.

  But Hugo wasn’t there. The building superintendent let her into an apartment that was as neat as a pin—and empty.

  Not sure yet just
how worried to be, Sandy thanked the woman and went directly home. She would phone her mother right away; maybe she’d heard something and hadn’t been able to reach Sandy earlier. And against her better judgment she would contact Charlie, as well.

  Things had really begun to come together in her mind as she’d worked on the computer early that morning. She had developed a theory that tied in Blass and the ledger page with Mr. Vanish; now all she needed to do was test it. To accomplish that, she would need information from a variety of police files, and since the confidentiality of the Mr. Vanish investigation would be blown if Gaine officially delved into Department records, it appeared she had no choice but to hire Charlie.

  Sandy sighed. Hire Charlie and conspire to commit a theft from police records. Obviously it would be wiser to do this without Ted Gaine’s knowledge. There was no way the magazine would back her up, either, if she got caught knowingly purchasing stolen information. But she wasn’t buying it for a Police Digest article, she reminded herself. It would be used to assist the police in nailing Mr. Vanish. It might even solve the Parmentier case.

  As she stepped through the door of her apartment, Sandy glanced at her watch. It was nearly 3:45 p.m. She had time to make her phone calls and then put in a couple of hours researching her next article before dinner.

  Her mother’s line was busy. And when Sandy dialed the number scrawled inside the matchbook cover, she got an answering machine. Reluctantly, she left a message and hung up.

  Ted uttered a low whistle of surprise. “Will you look at this?” he murmured.

  “Look at what?” said Joe, crossing their office space to scan the photocopied pages spread across his partner’s desk. “Armed robbery, kidnapping…” he read. “Why did you pull all these files?”

  “I didn’t. Alessandra has very kindly provided us a copy of the information she got from her first source back in May.”

  Joe glanced up, his blue eyes widening. “I think we’ve found a leak, partner. Only I don’t understand how he could have broken into that many files without being detected. Look, he even makes reference to a photograph in the evidence vault—”

  “A photograph? Let me see that.”

  As Ted read the summary of the five-year-old Haltford kidnapping, his thoughts and his pulse began to race together. Alessandra told him she’d had to contact some of the people named as witnesses to corroborate the facts in each case. He had only questioned her about the two murders, but what if she’d corroborated the kidnapping as well? What if she’d discussed the existence of that photograph with someone who’d rather it was destroyed?

  His mind flashed the image of her ransacked bedroom, the window left ajar, the photo albums sliced open, their contents scattered all over the room. And all at once Ted knew, without a shred of doubt, that the intruder had been looking for the Haltford photograph in Alessandra’s apartment Saturday night.

  He cast a worried eye over the other eleven cases on his desk. How many more nervous perpetrators had her in their sights? he wondered.

  Just then the phone rang. Preoccupied with Alessandra’s twelve cases, Ted was vaguely aware of Joe picking up the receiver, having a brief conversation, and hanging up again.

  “That was Ballistics, partner,” said Joe, then repeated it loudly a second time to get Ted’s attention. “They confirm that Roger Blass was killed by a bullet from the same gun used on Parmentier back in August. I don’t know where you got that hunch from, but it was right. Let’s pull the files and get to work.”

  But Ted’s thoughts were heading in a slightly different direction. So Blass and Parmentier had been killed by the same gun? And if Alessandra’s mystery witness was right and Mr. Vanish was responsible for both murders, then he had to be closing in on her, as well. Ted felt a chill ripple across his shoulders. He’d kept the surveillance on Alessandra informal until now to avoid frightening her; but informal surveillance would no longer be enough. Tonight he would have to frighten her to get her to go along with the next stage of his plan to protect her. And judging by what little he knew about Alessandra, that wouldn’t be easy.

  Sandy made a herculean effort to immerse herself in the research for her next article; but a darkening cloud of guilt and fear and anger kept fragmenting her concentration and sending her thoughts off on frightening tangents.

  When the telephone rang, rescuing her from what had become a hopeless task, Sandy virtually pounced on the receiver.

  “Hello!”

  It was Dooley. “Vito’s dead,” he rasped, wasting no time on preamble.

  “I know. I was there with the police just after he was found.”

  “Have the cops got anything? I mean, do they think they know…?”

  “It’s a murder investigation, Dooley. The police aren’t about to share sensitive information with a crime journalist.”

  “So you talk to them, but they don’t talk to you? That means you can’t tell me if they’re out lookin’ for Mr. Vanish, neither, huh?”

  “No, I can’t. I’m sorry.” Sandy sighed with genuine regret. She would have liked to reassure him that there was an investigation going on, but she and Gaine had agreed to keep it secret.

  Silence gaped like a chasm between them for a moment. Then, hesitantly, Dooley said, “Mr. Vanish got Vito, y’know. He thought it was me but he got Vito instead. Shot him in the chest and left him in that alley.”

  Sandy nearly dropped the phone. “Wait a minute—you witnessed the killing? You’re going to have to tell the police—”

  “Tell them what?” cut in Dooley. “That Mr. Vanish thought Vito was me? Not even the cops are that dumb, lady. They’ll put two and two together. They’ll figure out that I was the one told you about seeing the Parmentier hit go down. He’s really gettin’ close now. I’m gonna disappear until they get him. So long.”

  “But where will you—?” She was talking to a dial tone. Slowly Sandy hung up the receiver, torn between relief and anxiety. She had an awful feeling about this, a premonition that wherever Dooley went to ground, Tommy would be with him. And if Mr. Vanish realized he’d made a mistake and went after Dooley…!

  There was a knock at her door. Now what? she thought as she wrenched it open.

  Ted Gaine was standing in the hall, wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket, and holding a fistful of wilting chrysanthemums.

  “I got your message,” he said, wearing an ingratiating expression, “and I’ve come to pick you up for dinner.”

  The day had been too much for her. “Dinner?” she echoed, staring at the tired bouquet.

  Belatedly he remembered them and held them out to her like a schoolboy handing his teacher an apple with a bite taken out of it. “These are for you. They’re a little thirsty…”

  “Dinner,” she repeated impatiently, brushing away the flowers. “Okay, Sergeant Gaine, how long have I been under police surveillance?”

  “Since you left Investigative Services Tuesday morning. And we’ve had this building staked out since Tuesday noon. Can we discuss this after dinner, please?”

  He tried to give her the flowers again, and once again she brushed them away.

  “Have a heart, Alessandra,” he pleaded. “These poor mums need water.”

  With an exasperated sigh, she snatched the bouquet out of his hand and carried it over to the sink. “You’re a chauvinist,” she said from the kitchen. “There’s a problem between us and you’re going to try to solve it by giving me flowers, feeding me and patting me on the head.”

  “Not at all,” he replied from the doorway. “The flowers and the food and the pat on the head are to calm you down so we can discuss our problem and work things out like reasonable people. I’m sure I’d rather do this on a full stomach than an empty one, so how about dinner?”

  Sandy stared at him for a long moment. He was right, she realized with a sigh. And he was regarding her with a warmly amused expressi
on that seemed to call forth an answering smile, making it very difficult for her to remain annoyed with him.

  “Dinner sounds fine,” she said at last, putting the vase down on the telephone table. “I’ll go change my clothes.”

  “Don’t bother. Casual is perfect for the place we’re going to.”

  The place turned out to be Ted Gaine’s house in the suburbs, a small town house on a crescent, three doors away from a neighborhood playground swarming with children. And dinner, she discovered, would be a backyard barbecue for two, a sampling of suburbia for the deprived city dweller.

  Sandy surveyed the smallish backyard and saw a sapling supported by stakes and loops of rope, anchors that had once held a swing set, and a tiny garden sprouting little green shoots in impossibly straight rows.

  “Is this really your house?” she asked.

  He flashed an unexpected grin. “Did I borrow it to impress you, you mean? I didn’t. One-third of it is all mine.”

  “Oh, you share it with two other people?”

  “Nope. I share it with the Police Credit Union.”

  Sandy shook her head wonderingly. “I’m sorry. It’s just so hard to believe—”

  “What? That I have a home and a life away from Investigative Services?” he reproved her gently. “Well, I do. I just don’t get to enjoy them very much—especially right now.”

  This reminder of the investigation that had brought them together effectively killed the conversation until at last the charcoal caught fire. While they waited for the heat to steady, Gaine went into the kitchen to assemble the rest of their meal, and Sandy followed curiously.

  “This isn’t your house,” she insisted with a shake of her head. “It’s too clean. Everyone knows that men living alone are supposed to have a sink full of pots and pans, dust bunnies in every corner, and—” Gaine took some salad vegetables out of the refrigerator and she glanced inside, “—green fur growing in the fridge,” she concluded.