How did what make sense?
“Tom Howard and Tracie aren’t getting along,” Detective Jones said. “Tracie has a big insurance policy, and Tom is now the beneficiary. Tom gets the ball rolling, scares Tracie, freaks her out a little. But then maybe he doesn’t want to do it himself—maybe he doesn’t have the stomach for it, maybe he doesn’t want to take the chance. So he hires de la Rivière to do it. Then, afterwards—” He shrugged.
Riel was still shaking his head.
“I’ve been through the file, John,” Detective Jones said. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone else who had a reason to want Tracie dead. And if it was de la Rivière on his own—if it was just a robbery that maybe went wrong—then how does he end up being killed with the same gun?”
“You found Howard yet?” Riel said.
“We’re still looking for him.” Detective Jones looked down at all the papers and pictures spread out on the table. “You remember anything from the case that might help? Anything that maybe didn’t make it into a report—a gut feeling, a hunch, anything like that?”
“No.”
Just like that, without even thinking it over.
Detective Jones pulled a couple of photographs closer and looked at them.
“We’re going to keep de la Rivière’s identity away from the media as long as we can. We’d like to find Howard first. Talk to him.” He looked across the table at Riel. “We’re going to take care of this, John. The best thing you can do is focus on what you have to do now—do your job, look after the kid, look after yourself. Okay?”
Riel didn’t say anything.
Detective Jones stood up. “You think of anything or remember anything that could help us, give me a call. But you do your job and let us do ours. Okay?”
Riel said okay. He sounded like he meant it. Maybe Detective Jones believed him and maybe he didn’t. He said good-bye and headed for the door. He nodded at me to follow him, so I did, right out onto the porch. He closed the door behind me. “You okay, Mike?”
I nodded.
There were still a few reporters on the sidewalk, but at a glare from Detective Jones they backed up a couple of steps.
“You know how to get in touch with me, right, if anything comes up or if you just want to talk?” Talk about Riel, he meant. About how he was handling things.
I nodded again. When I went back inside, Riel was on his feet, gathering up all the papers, straightening them into a neat pile and putting them back into the thick file folder.
“You better get ready for school,” he said. “I’ll drop you.”
“Where are you going?”
“I have some errands to run.”
I looked at the empty beer bottles.
“Now, Mike,” he said, irritated.
There were six empties on the table. They were just sitting there, not even on coasters, and if ever there was a guy who believed in coasters, it was Riel, because, jeez, the last thing you wanted to do was leave rings on the finish of his brand-new dining room table.
“Yeah? Is one of those errands a trip to the beer store?” I said. “Or maybe straight to a bar?”
That got his attention. He glanced at the empties and maybe, for a second, he looked embarrassed. Maybe.
“I’m legal,” he said. “I don’t need your permission to have a couple of beers.”
I could see he was getting mad. Well, I was already there. I was so mad—and so scared—that I was shaking. “A couple?” I said.
“It’s none of your business, Mike.”
“Right,” I said. “Have a beer or six or ten. Stop going to school. Get fired, why don’t you? Children’s Aid will love that.”
He stared at me for what seemed like a long time. He looked at the beer bottles and frowned.
“There’s somebody I have to see,” he said.
I said, “Who?” and then waited for him to tell me that wasn’t any of my business either.
Instead he said, “This guy de la Rivière—I used to know him. Professionally, I mean. He had a girlfriend. A dancer. Used to work in a bar.” He glanced at me. “I need to talk to her.”
“Shouldn’t Detective Jones do that?” And there it was—just for a second, a little flash in his eyes. “Does he even know she exists?” I said.
“I heard she quit the business, got married and changed her name. I ran into her about a year ago—by chance. I hardly recognized her.”
“So he doesn’t know about her.”
“He’ll probably chase her down.”
“But right now he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know her name either. Her new one, I mean.”
“He’s a good detective, Mike.”
“As good as you?”
He got a surprised look on his face.
“You don’t buy his theory, do you?” I said.
Nothing. He thought he was Mr. Inscrutable. He thought because he kept his face quiet, I had no idea what he was thinking. Maybe he thought I wasn’t too smart. But I wasn’t that dumb either.
“I want to go with you,” I said.
“Forget it.”
“Come on,” I said. “School’s half over. I’ll stay out of the way. I promise.” He was shaking his head at me, so I said, “Unless you’re going some place you don’t want me to know about.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
We got into Riel’s car and drove north until we left the city limits. We passed fields, a lot of them with signs planted in them that said either, For Sale or Coming Soon, usually followed by the name of something that sounded like a cemetery, something like Pleasant Acres or Rolling Hills, but that really was the name of some new subdivision filled with gigantic houses that all look the same and have four-car garages because everyone in the family has to have a car to get around up there in the middle of what used to be farm country.
“When you said she worked in a hospital, I thought you meant someplace downtown,” I said.
“You thought wrong.”
No kidding. “How did you manage to run into her way up here?”
“I didn’t. I ran into her downtown,” Riel said. “She was at a medical seminar. I was there to pick up Susan.”
“She quit being a dancer and became a doctor?”
“Nurse.”
“And she told you where she works?”
“She didn’t tell me much of anything,” he said. “I don’t think she would have told me her new name, but she was wearing a name tag. I think she was embarrassed, running into someone from her past like that.”
“So how come you know where to find her now?”
Well, what do you know? The flicker of a smile.
“I took a look at the seminar sign-up sheet,” he said.
“Once a cop, huh?”
He gave me a little more smile.
I wasn’t sure why he had finally decided to let me come, what had made the difference. But I was glad to be there, mostly, I think, because of the way Riel looked now. Now that he knew something and now that he was doing something, he had perked up. He didn’t look so much like a guy who was reliving one of the worst times of his life. Instead he looked like someone on a mission, someone who was determined to get the job done. Maybe it was a job he shouldn’t have been doing, and maybe it wasn’t going to turn out the way he wanted or expected, but at least it was something.
We finally pulled into a hospital parking lot.
“How do you even know she’s going to be here?” I said.
Riel gave me a look. “I called ahead,” he said. “Give me a little credit, huh, Mike? When I was working, I wasn’t exactly Officer Stupid.”
Right.
He opened the car door and got out. I stayed where I was until he ducked down, looked into the car, and said, “You coming or what?”
“You want me to?”
“Sure. You can make sure I don’t get into the rubbing alcohol.” It sounded like it was supposed to be a joke, but he didn’t smile.
We went inside. Riel went up to the information desk and asked
for directions. Then we walked up a flight of stairs and through a maze of hallways. I don’t know how he did it, but he seemed to know exactly where he was going. Up ahead, a woman in a pantsuit that looked like some kind of uniform turned around. When she saw Riel, she broke into a great big smile.
“John Riel,” she said. “Is that really you?”
“Is that her?” I whispered to Riel.
He shook his head. “Kate,” he said, and the two of them put their arms around each other and hugged. Then Kate pulled back a little.
“You look great,” she said, giving him a pretty thorough once-over. “What brings you up here again?”
Again?
Riel told her he was looking for someone, then told Kate the woman’s name. It turned out that Kate knew her—she said she’d just gone on her break and Riel could probably find her down in the coffee shop on the ground floor. Then Kate hugged Riel again and said how glad she was to see him and to see he was doing so well. She said, “Come back sometime. If I’m not mistaken, you still owe me a night on the town, from that bet you lost.” He grinned—a real sparkly-eyed grin—and said he’d better do that because he didn’t want her to think he was the kind of guy who welched on bets.
“Old girlfriend?” I said.
“Old nurse,” he said. “I was here for a while. You know, after. They do rehab work here. They’ve got a reputation for it.”
Oh.
We went down to the coffee shop and stood just inside the door for a few moments while Riel scanned all the faces. Then he nudged me and nodded toward the back of the room. He started down between the tables to where a woman was sitting alone, smiling a little as she read and sipped coffee, enjoying her break. She was young and was also wearing a pantsuit that looked like a uniform, except that hers was a sort of peach color whereas Kate’s had been navy blue.
Riel said, “Paula?”
The woman was smiling when she started to look up, but when she saw it was Riel, she got a startled—no, a scared—look in her eyes. Then she straightened up and looked Riel over. Women were always looking him over. Especially pretty ones, and Paula sure was pretty. She had short blond-streaked hair and big blue eyes. I could see she was slim. She had been reading what looked like a textbook.
“Hello, Riel,” she said. “You’re looking good.” She glanced at me and then back at Riel, a question in her eyes this time.
“My kid,” he said. “Mike.”
His kid? I wasn’t the only one who was surprised by that. Paula looked at me again.
“Foster kid,” Riel clarified.
She seemed impressed. I’m not sure why.
“You’re looking good too, Paula. Nursing agrees with you, huh?”
“I love it,” she said. “I’m good at it too.”
Riel nodded. Then he said, “I need to talk to you, Paula. About Gerard.”
Boy, did her face change fast. Away went the smile. In its place, a tight, serious mouth and a tight, serious look in her eyes. She glanced around, like she was afraid someone might have heard what he’d said. Riel pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her. I sat back a little.
“I haven’t seen him in years,” she said. “I’m out of that life now. I’m married. A guy I met while I was in nursing school. He doesn’t know what I used to do for a living.”
“I’m not here to make trouble for you, Paula. I just want to ask you a few things about Gerard.”
“Why?” She sounded angry. Maybe bitter. “What kind of trouble has he got himself into now?”
“The worst kind there is,” Riel said. “He’s dead.”
Her big blue eyes got even bigger.
“Dead?”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Riel said.
And even bigger. “You think I have something to do with him being dead?”
“No. And Paula? You can relax. I’m not a cop anymore.”
She looked skeptical. “Private investigator?”
“Schoolteacher.” She was so surprised that she laughed. It was a pretty sound. “You’re kidding.”
Riel shook his head. “Ask Mike.”
She looked at me and I nodded. “He teaches history at my school,” I said.
Her eyes went back to Riel, and she looked at him like she was trying to picture him in a classroom, maybe chalk dust on his hands. Then her face got serious again. “Gerard’s really dead?”
Riel nodded.
“What happened?”
So he told her. He said that Gerard de la Rivière was the person they’d found up in the woods in Caledon, maybe she’d read about it in the newspaper. She said she hadn’t. She said she didn’t like reading the newspaper, it was always depressing. She said she didn’t watch TV news for the same reason. Riel talked softly when he told her that Gerard had been shot to death, and that it looked like it had happened a few years back. He didn’t say anything about Tracie Howard, though, and he didn’t tell her that Gerard had been killed with the same gun that had been used to kill Tracie Howard. I wondered why, but I didn’t say anything.
“You remember when you saw him last?” Riel said.
She had been looking him straight in the eyes when he told her what had happened, and I could see that she seemed sorry that de la Rivière was dead. Now she looked down at the textbook she had been reading.
“Paula?”
“Sure, I remember,” she said. “I can’t believe he’s dead.” She shook her head. “I was eighteen years old when I met him. Right off the farm. No kidding. I’d never been in a place as big as Toronto. I was totally lost when I got off the bus. And then I met Gerard. We were together for four years.” She shook her head again. “I think about those days, it’s like I’m thinking about someone else’s life, not mine, you know?”
Riel nodded.
“I never asked him what he was doing,” she said. “I mean, I knew he was into some things that …” She shrugged. “I just never asked. I figured what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. He’d be there at the apartment with me and we’d have fun, and then he’d take off, be gone a few days, a few weeks, one time two months. He never said where he was going, and I never asked.” Her eyes met Riel’s again, and she looked sorry. “Did he do something really bad?”
“Maybe,” Riel said. “Now, about when you saw him last…”
She told him the exact day. “The reason I remember so well,” she said, “it’s my birthday. I thought that was going to be the day.”
We both waited.
She smiled again, but looked sad when she was doing it. “I thought he was going to propose to me,” she said. “You believe that?” Then, “Look at this place.” We looked around at the cafeteria. It was big and bright and filled with people, a lot of them in white lab coats or pastel pantsuits like her own. “I love it here. I feel like I belong here. I’m helping people, and I like that. But back then? Back then I thought I’d have died and gone to heaven if Gerard had asked me to marry him. And when he showed me that ring, I thought, He must really love me. It was so big. So gorgeous. I have no idea how much a ring like that must have cost. I knew Gerard didn’t have that kind of money—well, that he couldn’t have got that kind of money legally. But I didn’t care. I wanted that ring. He showed it to me, and I waited for him to say the words. But he never did. He never proposed to me. He said I wouldn’t believe how much that ring was worth to him, and then he said he had to go out. He put it in his pocket and left, and I never saw him again. He didn’t even wish me happy birthday.”
Riel thought about what she had said. “You never saw him again? Not even once?”
She shook her head.
“Did you ask around, find out where he might have gone?”
“I asked some guys he used to hang around with. They didn’t know. To tell you the truth, I don’t think they even cared. Not everybody felt about Gerard the way I did, and when I think about it now, I don’t know why I felt that way.”
“You didn’t report him missing?”
&nb
sp; She laughed. “To the cops? You kidding?”
“Paula, did you ever see him with anyone he might have been doing some work for?”
“If he was … working … for anyone, I didn’t want to know about it. Anyway, he didn’t bring people like that around to the apartment.”
“He never mentioned any names?”
“I told you, I didn’t want to know what he was doing. I really didn’t.” She looked at Riel. “He could be very sweet. At least, he was to me.”
“What about the ring?” Riel said. He asked her what she remembered about it—could she describe it? When he asked, I thought, A ring is a ring. Well, maybe it was to me, but not to Paula. It must have made a big impression on her, though, because she remembered it perfectly. She described the stone—a diamond that she said was blue, although I’ve never seen a diamond that didn’t look clear, like ice. She even drew a little picture of the setting for Riel. He slipped it into his pocket and thanked her for her time.
“Are the cops going to show up and ask me the same questions?” she said. She looked nervous again.
“Probably,” Riel said.
“And is it going to be in the papers and on TV?”
“Probably,” Riel said. “Not right away, though. The police want to keep it quiet as long as possible. It gives them an edge while they try to figure out what happened.”
“Because my husband …”
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Riel said. He stood up and looked at her again. She’d been smiling when we first spotted her. She wasn’t smiling now. “I’ll see what I can do.”
We were on our way out of the hospital when Riel said, “You go on ahead to the car. I have to make a phone call.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. I glanced around and saw a row of pay phones.
“Me, too,” I said. “I’ll meet you outside.”
He went out while I fished for some coins in my pocket. I decided to return Emily’s call before she left me another message and maybe told Riel even more about the mysterious wallet. I thought she would be in class so I’d just be able to leave a message, tell her when I’d be at the community center so she could talk to me there instead of calling me at home. But she picked up on the second ring.
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