by Howard Engel
“I had a few questions to ask Ross Forbes,” I said, “so I visited the wake going on up at his house.”
“Bet nobody sat on the floor there,” Anna said.
“I got a few important answers, though.”
“When do you think you’ll begin to see the light, Benny?” Chris asked. “Before or after the provincials inquiry into toxic dumping and tainted fuels nails your friend Ross Forbes to a permanent address in a minimum security institution?”
“I’m beginning to see light, Chris. A glimmer. Maybe more. Nothing that would do any of us any good in court, but I don’t think this case is going in that direction?”
“What kind of murder case doesn’t go to court, Benny?”
“The unsolved ones,” Anne suggested.
“Political ones?” said Pete, answering his own question.
At that moment, Lije was back with a great silver platter with roast duck on it along with a rosy garnish of red cabbage. Chris began to carve and we passed our plates to his end of the table. Anna helped him by dishing out the vegetables. I added gravy. Pete just sat there with his knife and fork already in hand. When we had all been served and Chris had added him comments to the rest of the ones we larded on Lije about the food, we settled down to serious eating. I discovered that I was hungrier than I’d felt; I even ate the slices of orange that had bedizened the golden roast duck. For a full twenty minutes we made table talk and laughed at Pete’s jokes. These weren’t all that funny, but the wine helped. There’s hardly a joke that wine doesn’t make better. Then Chris looked across at me and asked:
“Are you serious about talking about this thing, Benny?”
“Chris, it’s not talk yet, just thinking out loud.”
“We’ll buy it,” Pete said.
“At least we’ll listen,” said Anna, who hadn’t had as much to drink as Pete.
“I can’t believe that you think you’ve done it again,” said Chris, chomping on a wing.
“If you’ve done it, you took a lot longer than in the other cases we worked on. You used to wrap these things up in under a week. Maybe you’re losing your touch?” Pete was digging more stuffing from the bird’s cavity and carrying it to his twice-emptied plate. He looked from one face to another to find agreement. Figuratively, I kept my mouth shut, while I went on eating. There would be time to talk when coffee came.
Then it came and they were all sitting back looking at me. Three or four herds of angels flew by and they were still looking at me.
“Honestly, I’m stuck. I don’t know where to start.” I took a sip of Lije’s famous coffee to see it I could find inspiration there. When I came up for air, things were still in a tangle in my head. “Let me try to sort through this,” I said. I took a deep breath and started in. “We know that Kinross Disposals has been getting rid of toxic wastes for industry in and around Grantham. It has also been doing the same service on a contract from the city. Last spring, Alex Pásztory nearly blew the lid off part of their operation when he wrote those pieces in the Beacon that were also printed in the Globe. That was the tainted-fuel selling and tax-evasion aspect of the much bigger story that has come to light at Fort Mississauga. Here at the fort, they are dumping terrible things directly into the lake and they are burying drums of other nasty stuff under the earthworks of the old fort.
“Now, Kinross isn’t alone in this, Sangallo is in charge of the restoration work at the fort. They have also buried a few tons of poisonous garbage under a floral clock on the Niagara Parkway. Both of these companies have cooperated in this illegal activity. The responsibility for this rests with Harold Grier and Norman Caine, the CEOs of the two companies. In the background, Sangallo has Anthony Horne Pritchett and his mob lurking and giving professional advice. But remember, for Pritchett, Sangallo is a way to clean up his dirty money. He’s not interested in turning it into another of his rackets.”
“How’s that?” asked Pete.
“As a semi-legal business, Sangallo has its uses for Pritchett. He doesn’t want it to become another of the string of shady clubs, tourist towers, gambling rooms and other vice-related games he controls in the Falls. The cleaner Sangallo stays, the happier Pritchett counts his money. That’s why I couldn’t get past your conviction, Pete, that Pásztory had been taken out by a pro. Pritchett’s the closest professional, and I could never make it dance in time.”
Chris and Pete both turned towards the other. Chris spoke first. “Benny, we just found out this morning that the slug that killed Pásztory was fired from the gun that killed the Commander.”
“Yeah, it kinda smothered my theory, eh?”
“Well, it makes me feel better about what I was going to say,” I said, feeling like the last pieces were fitting together.
“Benny, you took us over a lot of this ground before. We know about Kinross, but have never been able to make a charge stick. They’ve got a bunch of lawyers working right around the clock. They make it hard.”
“Working around the floral clock. Can’t you see it?” Pete said looking rather rosy and sinking down in his chair.
“We’ve got three deaths to deal with: Jack Dowden’s, well over a year ago—remember we talked about him at the Di?—Alex Pásztory’s a week ago last Thursday and the Commander’s last Friday night. Let’s look at them in reverse order. Chris, you think that Ross Forbes killed his old man. And you’ve got some solid reasons: He was at the club, saw and talked to his father, admits they talked in the sauna. He and the senior Forbes had long been at one another’s throats. No love lost, right? This feud was particularly bitter right now because the old man threatened to oust Ross from his CEO position at Phidias at the scheduled board meeting on Monday—that’s right, it would have been today. With Caine married to Sherry Forbes, the Commander could argue that Caine was the new blood the firm needed. So, Ross is your favourite suspect. He looks like a guilty man.”
“Benny, on TV and in the movies the suspect that looks guilty is always innocent. But in real life, the guy holding the smoking gun is usually the guy who fired it. Please, save us from some elaborate scheme designed to incriminate Ross Forbes.”
“Yeah, Forbes looks guilty because he is,” Staziak added, just in case I’d missed the thread of Chris’s argument. Soon he had returned to working on his back teeth with a toothpick. He was a little hard to hear.
“Chris, I’m not saying there wasn’t premeditation, but I don’t think it was of the elaborate variety. And speaking of smoking guns, I forgot to say that the gun that killed Murdo Forbes came from the family collection and Ross Forbes had access to it. Does that cover your arguments, Chris?” Savas nodded slowly over the rim of his coffee.
“Well, Chris, I was in the club that afternoon. So was Harold Grier, his brother-in-law, so was my father and a couple of dozen others. When the wedding rehearsal started, just about everybody in town who was related to or knew the Commander was within striking distance of the sauna. Okay? So, let’s eliminate opportunity. With the time of death so vague, we’ve got an army of people who could have done the old boy in.”
“You can cross the females off your list of suspects, Benny. The Commander was killed in the men’s side. The murderer had to pass the man handing out the towels, robes and whatnot. That cuts out half your suspects. They wouldn’t be able to pass the physical.” Chris smiled and Pete laughed out loud. Anna gave me her consciousness-raised eyebrow as I waited, feeling a little schoolteacherish, for quiet.
“Let’s look more closely at Ross’s motive. He wanted a second chance to make good as CEO at Phidias. (Everybody says that his first try lacked energy and bite.) He wanted to see Caine penned in at Kinross and to keep out of his way at the City Centre. I saw a bit of this when Caine tried to have me thrown out of Phidias and Forbes protected me. He needed to win all the battles he could with Caine. He knew that he couldn’t stop Caine marrying Sherry. How could killing the old man stop the wedding? It couldn’t. It could only slow things up at best. Not worth a human life, would
n’t you say?
“What do we know about the confrontation in the sauna? No physical signs of a struggle. According to Ross they just talked. He told his father that he’d just joined Alcoholics Anonymous.”
“Ross Forbes in AA?” Anna said. “I don’t believe it! It’s like saying your father’s given up gin rummy and your mother’s sold her precious television set.”
“Nevertheless, that’s what he told Murdo Forbes. Ross also told me that besides his father, I was the only other person—apart from fellow AA members—who knew about it.” Eyebrows across the table were raised at the news. The two cops knew it wasn’t proof of anything, but it was a good story.
“Now, suppose someone did have that information. Suppose there was somebody who knew Ross had given up the bottle. That would mean, at the very least, that that person spoke to the Commander after Ross left his father in the sauna. Such a person would replace Ross as our leading suspect. Right?”
“Keep talking. Sounds reasonable. Since the Commander never left the sauna alive, then we know the murderer had to get the information right there in the men’s sauna. Who was he?”
“Well, Chris, first of all I have to attack your assumption that the murderer has to be male.”
“What is this, quibble time? Of course he has to be male!”
“Chris, you were right when you said that a woman couldn’t get into the men’s locker room because she couldn’t get past the guard who checked on everybody going in and out. If she did manage to get by him, she’d cause a major sensation when she went through the changing-room and showers.” Here, as I might have guessed, Pete smiled again and Anna refused to encourage him. She bit down hard on a green onion for his benefit and glanced back at me. I went back to my narrative to see how it would come out.
“No, a woman couldn’t get into the sauna in the usual way, but she could if she came from the pool.”
“What?” They had all stopped playing with their coffee spoons and wine glasses.
“The sauna’s just inside the door from the pool.”
“Now hold on! You’re saying—”
“Wearing a robe and a bathing-cap, and maybe goggles, a woman might just slip through the door without raising a fuss. The lifeguard isn’t particularly watching the comings and goings from the pool area. I understand that the women’s changing-area is a mirror-image of the men’s side. So, if she knew where the women’s sauna was located, she could have hatched a plan to kill Murdo Forbes in the men’s.”
“Benny, a woman can’t just walk into the men’s sauna,” Pete said with finality. This was a crack that was going to break up his idea of the universe.
“Pete, the afternoon Ross took me to lunch, we looked into the pool. He pointed out his parents and it took me a few moments to recognize Murdo from the other swimmers. I never did pick out Biddy. Remember that these are serious long-distance swimmers. They wear identical goggles and bathing caps. In that rig and wearing one of those blue terry-cloth robes, there’s no particular visible difference between the sexes.”
“Two things,” Chris said holding up an appropriate number of fingers. “One, you are still talking premeditation, right?”
“Sure. You don’t carry a gun into the pool without some plan to use it.”
“Two, I think I know where you are heading, Benny, and I won’t buy it for a minute!”
“She had access to the Commander’s gun collection.”
“You’re saying that the old lady killed her own husband! That’s crazy! She’s not even in the picture, Benny. Why are you pulling our legs?”
“Damn it, Chris! I don’t like this any more than you do! Just hear me out, okay? Of course she loved Murdo; of course she didn’t want to kill him; of course she isn’t our usual idea of a murderer; but, she was a woman at the end of her tether. Murdo was about to cut Ross out of the family business. She knew that on Monday morning, when the board met, Caine would oust Ross with the Commander’s blessing. I’m sure she tried to move the old man to a less dramatic course of action and failed. You say she was a good wife, I say she was also a good mother, according to her lights. That’s why she took that last desperate step to ensure that Ross would get his second chance to make good in the business. There’s something else and I’ll come to that in a minute.”
“You think that Mrs. Forbes could have managed all that, Benny?” Pete asked. “A nice old lady like that?”
“Remember, Pete, that Biddy’s a tall and rather stringy woman. I’m not saying that Anna, here, could get away with it.”
“Is that a compliment or a slam?” Anna said. “That’s all I want to know?”
“How did she know that Murdo would be alone in the sauna?” Chris asked.
“Murdo’s cigars. He smoked everywhere, even in the sauna. The men in the locker room gave him a wide berth. He ignored all of the NO SMOKING signs, with a certain evil glee, I suspect.”
“So, she knew what she was doing all along. A very cool villain.”
“Until you begin to suspect Ross, Chris. She hadn’t figured on that. That spoiled everything. You arrested the very person she’d set out to protect. And now, he wasn’t just out of a job, he was facing a trial and prison. No wonder she had a stroke. She planned a tidy swift kill and executed it perfectly. Then you spoiled things by locking up her son. I’ll bet, if she hadn’t been felled by the stroke, that she would have come forward and told you everything. When I saw a friend of hers earlier, he said that in the hospital she was desperately trying to tell him something. She’s frustrated and unhappy because of the way she’s left things. And she can’t do anything about it.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Chris.
“Me too,” added Anna and Pete in unison. After a minute Anna turned to glare at me. “Benny, why does it have to be Biddy? I’m still sceptical. I mean, it sounds like a good story, but what makes it more than a story? What makes you so sure?
“It has to be Biddy, Anna, because she knew that Ross was on the wagon. She knew he was in AA. She could only have learned that from Murdo just before she shot him.”
“You mean to say that they had a little family talk before she pulled the gun?”
“No, I’m suggesting that as soon as he saw her, the Commander announced his son’s latest idiocy triumphantly. He always took pleasure in Ross’s failings and here was another, from his point of view, that topped most of them. The old man had resented Ross trying to clean up the mess he’d made of the business these last few years. He was angry at Ross’s shouldering the blame for a lot of illegal things he’d been doing. To him that was the way business should be carried on. It was the way everybody did it not so long ago. Ross’s attempt to take the blame lined him up with the enemy in the old man’s eyes. The last thing he wanted from his son was to be interfered with. To the Commander, it looked like he was being undermined by everybody, Ross included. This stuff will come out when the provincial inquiry is published.”
“I’ll still be damned, but it does sound like the Commander,” Anna said. Both Chris and Pete nodded slowly in agreement. I called out to see if Lije could find us more coffee.
THIRTY-ONE
We were now sipping liqueurs and cappuccinos in an empty dining-room. I hadn’t notice when the other customers had left. We’d been sitting in a cloud of our own smoke for so long that the rest of the room vanished into a blur. Maybe it was the wine and the food. Anyway, Lije Swift didn’t look like he was anxious to start putting the chairs on the tables, so we relaxed and kept on talking. At least some of us kept on talking.
“Benny, you said that Biddy had another reason for killing her husband besides Ross. What was it and was it less—what shall I say?—noble than her other motive?”
“You tell me, Anna, when I’ve finished.”
“It’ll be light soon, Benny. Maybe you can skip the side-issues, just hew straight to the meat.”
“I’ll try, I’ll try. Let’s see. Pásztory was shot with the same piece that killed the Commande
r. In fact the gun came from his own collection. Our premier suspect, then, has to be Biddy Forbes, since we have her on the other killing. But when I look at it, it just doesn’t make sense. Biddy was interested in Ross’s future with Phidias, but not really concerned about the daily workings of any of the companies. Maybe she was in the past; I’m talking about right now. I don’t think she cared much one way or the other, just as long as there was a place for Ross at the top.
“Pete, you thought that Pásztory was killed by professionals, by out-of-towners brought in for the job, a typical contract hit. Well, I told you I don’t buy any serious involvement by Pritchett. He wanted Sangallo, where he was a silent partner, to stay as honest as an illegal toxic dumper can. He left the tough stuff to Harold Grier and Norman Caine. They could play as rough as the game required. If the mob did a job on Pásztory, you wouldn’t have found him at the fort. He would have been dumped on the railway tracks somewhere, or pushed over Niagara Falls. Leaving him at the fort was a rash, dumb idea. It meant if we found the toxic dump, we found Pásztory; if we found Pásztory, we found the dump as a bonus.
“I told you before about Jack Dowden’s death and how I think it happened at the fort and not at the Kinross yard. Since we talked, I’ve got more backing for this. Both Caine and Carswell were part of a cover-up. They moved the site of Jack’s death to the yard and manufactured the required witnesses. Brian O’Mara will tell the truth about what he saw now. And I suspect that if you compare the dirt on the back of Dowden’s work clothes you’ll find that it matches the parging or pargeting on the wall of the fort.”
“Parging? Pargeting? Cooperman, where do you get pargeting?” Savas was always questioning my words. If he’d never heard a word, he doubted that I had. It was grossly unfair. I looked at him leaning back lubriciously in his chair while I explained what pargeting was. I repeated what McAuliffe told me, making the gestures he’d made with his pipe with my unlit cigarette. Then I told them what Dr. Roppa had told me in Toronto about how his archaeological dig was quite separate from what Sangallo was doing at the fort.
