None So Deadly Page 6

  I knew it could well be the only time that day when I would hear that phrase and the speaker would actually mean it. “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be just fine now,” I told her.

  She’d been out the door for maybe three minutes when Jill topped up our coffee, took my hand, guided me to a kitchen chair, and sat down across the table from me.

  “I know,” I said. “I was a jerk. I’m sorry.”

  “Not a jerk.” Jill shook her head. “Troubled.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “So, what’s the trouble?”

  I thought about how to answer her.

  “It’s not us, is it? Because if it is, I must have missed something? And if you say it’s not you, it’s me, I will punch you in the face.”

  I laughed. “There are some things bothering me. But you and Kyla aren’t on the list. In fact, when I do feel down, and I admit I’m a bit that way right now, you two really are my port in the storm. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true. It’s just one of the things I love about you. Both of you.”

  “Good, that’s out of the way. Your face is safe. Do you want to talk about the things that are bothering you?”

  I picked up my coffee cup but set it back down without drinking any. “You know, I wonder sometimes how cops do it. How are they able, day after day, to look into the face of the evil around us and still maintain an outlook that isn’t as dark as the part of the world they inhabit? I know I did something similar when I was at the Herald, but writing about crime isn’t the same as what I’m doing now with Cobb. That was more distant somehow. Now I feel like I’m up to my neck in it, and I don’t like it.”

  “I’ve talked to Lindsay Cobb about that,” Jill said. “And she says there are days when Mike really struggles with it. Even after all this time and all he’s seen, there are times …” She didn’t need to finish the sentence.

  “That surprises me,” I said. “He always seems so … together, so in charge of what’s happening around him. I guess I should have known that he had to have those down moments, too.”

  “And you’ve seen the face of evil … again. And you’re troubled.”

  I looked at her. “Yes,” I said.

  “Is it the boy you told me about? Danny?”

  “Yeah, him. This is a tough one. I believe … no, I guess I want to believe the kid didn’t shoot Claiborne.”

  “Then that’s what you should believe.”

  “Although I hasten to add that someone needed to shoot the guy.”

  “Not a solid citizen?”

  “Outwardly a model guy — successful, rich, gave to charities. Everybody loved Wendell. But there was another side, the dark side. Pretty creepy. And he’s not alone. There’s enough sleaze in that family to service an entire neighbourhood. The trouble with a case like this is that I want so badly to help the kid, but I’m not sure I can.”

  “You’ll help him.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “And in those rare moments when I’m not thinking about the plight of Danny Luft, there’s Kennedy. And Faith Unruh. Some days there’s just too damn much.” I didn’t tell her there was something else. Something that was killing me and that I wanted more than anything to tell her … and couldn’t.

  A few months before, Jill had told me that the combination food bank/homeless shelter she volunteered at, Let the Sunshine Inn, was in financial trouble. The government grant the Inn relied on had gone away and the place was going to have to close if alternate funding wasn’t found.

  And, of course, given the financial turndown in Alberta after the oil price collapse of 2015, that funding wasn’t coming from a struggling private sector.

  That’s when I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I approached the MFs, a criminal motorcycle gang Cobb and I had encountered before. I had this idea that maybe they’d provide the money — twenty-five thousand dollars — to keep the doors of the Inn open. Stupid. Naive. Ridiculous. Check, check, and check.

  Except that they did agree to come up with the money. But not without a few conditions that I should have foreseen. That anyone would have foreseen. Anyone, that is, who didn’t desperately want to help someone they loved. Desperately being the operative word.

  The MFs made it clear that I was theirs, that there would be payback and there wouldn’t be negotiations when the time came for me to do something or a series of somethings to repay them — simply returning the twenty-five thousand dollars wasn’t an option, even if I had a way to come up with the money.

  The leader of the MFs was a ruthless and evil bastard named Rock Scubberd. But surprisingly and disturbingly, it was his beautiful and clearly influential wife who had been instrumental first in brokering the deal, then in explaining what it meant for me. The Power Woman Behind the Power Man. I doubted that Lorne Cooney had included the Scubberds in his feature.

  But somehow, hearing it from a woman, this woman, in her measured, calm, almost mesmerizing voice, made the promised (though unstated) outcome, if I didn’t deliver when the time came, all the more threatening.

  I had known almost immediately the seriousness of my mistake. I also knew there was no turning back. I had literally made a deal with the devil, and the price I would one day pay was going to be very, very high.

  And when the day came when they made their demand, I knew it wouldn’t be the beautiful, enigmatic Mrs. Scubberd who would invite me for coffee at Starbucks and gently, almost apologetically, lay out the details of my … assignment. No, it wouldn’t be like that. Nor would it be Scubberd himself; he’d see the whole thing as beneath him. No, it would be one or more of his lieutenants, thoroughly dangerous and not giving a damn whether I lived another day or not. And one of those lieutenants would be Minnis — I knew only the one name — the most vicious, the most frightening, and the one most without feeling. He would kill me, if given the order, like the rest of us stomp out the lives of insects on the sidewalk.

  Yes, it would be Minnis.

  I hadn’t intended to tell Cobb, but eventually I did. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him and was stunned at my stupidity. He essentially reiterated what the lovely Mrs. Scubberd had said — that the payback, when the time came, would be something I almost assuredly would not want to have any part of, and he added that there would be other, just as unpleasant demands to follow and the consequences, if I decided not to comply, were unthinkable.

  One of the worst things about what I’d done, and something else I hadn’t considered as I planned my approach to the MFs, was that I had put Jill and Kyla in harm’s way. When the MFs made their initial, and subsequent, demands of me — were I to refuse, no matter how impossibly awful those demands — these were people to whom family was simply human currency to be used in whatever way was needed to make others do what they wanted. And Cobb had made it horribly clear that there were no limits to what Scubberd and his people would do. I could not, of course, tell Jill. I had long ago promised her and myself that I would never lie to her about anything and while I technically hadn’t, at least not yet, I was a long way from being forthcoming about the money that she believed had come from a good and unnamed Samaritan.

  This Samaritan was anything but good.

  “More coffee?”

  I shook my head. “I should probably get moving. I’ve got some calls to make and a couple of people I need to see.” I stood up. “I’ll call you later.”

  “Don’t go just yet,” she said. “There’s something I want to talk about, too. Or at least something I want to ask you.”

  For a second, panic grabbed me as I thought she had somehow heard about the MFs and my arrangement with them … or rather their arrangement with me.

  “You might want a little more coffee for this one.”

  She was smiling and I didn’t think she’d be doing that if this was about the MFs. I sat and watched her pour the coffee.

  Jill returned the pot to the counter, sat back down, and looked at me. “Adam, wh
at do you think about us?”

  “Listen, if this is about this morning, I’m sorry I was a pain in the ass, I really am. But I love you guys to death, you know that, and —”

  She leaned across the table and put her fingers on my lips. “Shut up and listen a minute.” Her voice the soft, throaty sound I loved.

  “Okay,” I said through her fingers.

  “Kyla and I have been talking … about us. About the three of us.”

  I started to say something, but thought better of it and settled for a nod.

  “We think of us as a family and wondered if you feel that way, too.”

  I couldn’t tell her that moments before, I had been thinking about the possible looming danger to her and Kyla.

  “I do, yes,” I said. “Consciously. Unconsciously. All the time. You are my family.”

  “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. How happy that makes both of us.”

  “What are we talking about here? Are you proposing to me?”

  Her face lit up. “Let’s just say I’m proposing a proposal.”

  “I love you, Jill. I love you guys more than I can even express — and I’m a wordsmith, for God’s sake.”

  “If there’s a but coming …”

  “I know, you’ll punch me in the face.” I held up my hands. “It won’t be necessary. But I am a bit of a traditionalist. I’d like to ask you, and then I’d like us to be engaged for a while … I don’t know if that’s weird for people who have been married before, but I’d really like that.”

  I didn’t tell her that being engaged would allow some time for me to figure out a way to extricate myself from the clutches of the MFs. Of course, I knew that extrication was not possible, but I needed to at least have some idea as to what I was facing and whether, in fact, Jill and Kyla were in danger. Because if they were, there could be no wedding; there could be no family.

  “How traditional are we talking here?”

  “Down-on-one-knee-ring-in-hand traditional. I know that’s chauvinist and hopelessly old-fashioned but I’d really like to do that, you know?”

  She nodded, smiling widely. “Okay, but there’s something I want, too — that you might think is just as strange.”

  “And that is …?”

  “The first time around, I was married by a justice of the peace. Lovely man, and he made everything as nice as he could. There were six people at the ceremony, including the JP, Keith, and me. I’d like you and me to be married in a church. It can be a little church, and I don’t care if there are more than six people there. But I always felt bad that I’d missed out on that and I was hoping you’d be okay with it.”

  “Of course, I’m okay with it. I’d marry you in a bathroom if it came to that, but a church might be better.”

  “I can almost guarantee it.”

  “When do we tell Kyla?”

  “I think, for now, I’ll tell her that you and I have talked about it — which isn’t a lie — I just won’t tell her what we’ve decided until some of that tradition kicks in.”

  I leaned in toward her. “It seems to me that two people who have just decided to get married should maybe kiss and hug and stuff.”

  She put a hand to my cheek and said, “I couldn’t agree more, but I thought you had calls to make and people to see.”

  “Calls? People? I don’t remember saying that.”

  She laughed, then punched me playfully in the chest.

  Cobb was working on a Reuben while I was in full attack mode on a little something called the Portobello Perkalator Burger. We were in the Purple Perk and conversation had ground to a halt while we ate. Both of us liked the place. Good food, interesting clientele, great coffee, all just a few blocks from Cobb’s office.

  Once the food was gone, we both sat back and sighed. “They have to start supplying cots in this place,” Cobb said.

  “No argument over here.” But the truth was I wasn’t in the mood to kibitz. “You ready for the rundown?”

  “Ready,” he said, and sat up a little straighter, presumably the better to take in what I had on Claiborne and family. Between what I had gathered and what Lorne Cooney had passed along, there was a fair amount of information. I hoped there was more fact than fiction, but you could never be sure when taking data from a source other than the subject. Nevertheless, based on volume alone, it made for an impressive report.

  “There’s a lot there,” he acknowledged. “Plenty of skeletons in plenty of closets. All we need now is a client who shaves more than once a month and has money.”

  “In the meantime?”

  “In the meantime, we keep working it. I don’t like what’s happening with the kid any more than you do.”

  “So, what’s next?”

  “We shut off the computers and put away the press clippings and do some real detecting. Face to face.”

  “Gumshoe.”

  “The very word I was looking for.”

  FIVE

  It was pretty much a coin flip as to where the gumshoeing would begin, but we agreed we were both intrigued with the sister thing. Susannah Hainsey hadn’t married after she and Claiborne parted company. She lived alone in what looked from the outside like a very nice condo in Lower Mount Royal. I was wondering whether her parting settlement had left her enough to purchase the place or whether she had settled into a lucrative career. Cobb’s ability to get us an appointment with her at two in the afternoon on a workday was telling. He’d called her and explained that while he knew she had spoken with the police, we were representing Danny Luft, who had been detained and was likely to be charged in the case. She’d heard about Danny and was appropriately sympathetic.

  Ms. Hainsey greeted us wearing a top and long skirt that I guessed came from Africa. Both garments were predominantly black but were far from widow’s weeds. The top sported a frenzied pattern of bright colours, flamboyant colours, cheerful colours, while the skirt featured stripes, mostly white, but some yellow and light blue. It wasn’t an outfit I’d expect to see at an office party or oil company board meeting — maybe a CD launch for the Barenaked Ladies. Thing is, it looked good on her, as I suspected most clothes did.

  Susannah Hainsey was a beautiful woman; in fact, she possessed a mesmerizing beauty, combined with an elegant, almost perfect way of carrying herself that made it difficult not to stare. Seconds after she had ushered us into her living room, I glanced over at Cobb. He appeared to be as intrigued as I was.

  “Mike Cobb,” he said, recovering and extending a hand, “and this is Adam Cullen.”

  I followed suit on the handshake and was surprised, I’m not sure why, at the firmness of her grip. She gestured in the direction of a coffee-brown leather couch and Cobb and I sat. She settled on a loveseat opposite us, her legs tucked up beneath her. I remembered Lorne Cooney saying she was older than Claiborne by eight years, putting her in her midfifties, but she had the fluid movement and the litheness of a much younger person.

  I was a little surprised that she didn’t offer anything in the way of refreshments. She hadn’t appeared upset or annoyed at our being there, yet there was no mention of coffee, cookies … not even water. Maybe she was worried we would stay longer than she was comfortable with.

  But while I was still pondering the point, from another room, a man wearing dress slacks and a light-blue sport jacket appeared. “Gentlemen, this is Trenton. What can he get you? We have alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks of almost every kind, so please don’t hesitate to ask for whatever it is you’d like.”

  “Just a Diet Coke for me,” Cobb said, and though I was thinking how pleasant it might be to have a Caesar or maybe a Manhattan, I told Trenton water would be fine.

  Ms. Hainsey looked disappointed in us, and I hoped my facial expression told her it was Cobb’s fault.

  “How can I help you gentlemen?”

  “As I mentioned on the phone, Ms. Hains—”

  She held up a hand. “Susannah, please.”

  “As I mentioned to you, Susan
nah, we’re investigating the murder of your former … friend —”

  Her hand went up again. “Please, Mr. Cobb, Wendell and I were lovers; then we lived together; then we split up and eventually ended up hating each other. But we were definitely never friends.”

  Cobb nodded. “I stand corrected. And before I go further, I should say that we are sorry for your —” Here he hesitated, certain that loss was not the correct word for how Susannah Hainsey viewed Claiborne’s demise.

  She was smiling, apparently enjoying his discomfort, and waved off the comment just as Trenton returned with the refreshments. I restrained myself from glaring at Cobb as Trenton deposited the Coke and bottled water in front of us and what looked very much like a well-constructed dry martini on an end table to Susannah’s left. Trenton exited the room and Susannah sipped once, then settled back and looked at Cobb, clearly ready. I pulled my notebook and pen out of my pocket. She glanced at it but didn’t comment.

  Cobb said, “How did you and Claiborne meet?”

  “I was a volunteer with the United Way and I met with Wendell to discuss a possible donation. He’d been a donor previously, but the amount wasn’t particularly significant. We met at his office, then again a couple of days later over lunch, and he signed a cheque for fifty thousand dollars, more than five times the amount of his previous donations.”

  “And from there?”

  “From there we saw more of each other — it was platonic at first, but not, I confess, for long.”

  “And he was married at the time?”

  “Yes, but that didn’t last a great deal longer.”

  “You and he never married.”

  “No. I’d been married and lost my husband in an accident. I just didn’t feel that I wanted to marry again. And if I had wanted to marry someone, it wouldn’t have been Wendell Claiborne, I can assure you.”

  “Why is that, Ms. … Susannah?”

  “Why didn’t I want to marry Wendell?” She considered before answering. “It’s just … there wasn’t real depth in what we felt for each other. I liked dating him, I liked sleeping with him, but I didn’t want to marry him and I certainly didn’t want to have children with him.”