By the Time You Read This (13 page)

21

D
ELORME HAD WAITED UNTIL
six o’clock, when she was pretty sure Matt Morton would be home, before driving round to Warren Street, a dead end on the east side of town. She doubted if she had set foot there more than twice in her entire life.

The Morton residence was a low wooden bungalow that looked to be a tight squeeze for a couple, let alone a couple with two children, and it was dwarfed by the vehicles in the driveway. There was a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Chrysler Pacifica, and—the only car of normal size—a Ford Taurus. Beside the garage, two bright red snowmobiles were parked under an overhang.

The crowning piece was the boat, a gigantic Chris-Craft—not that Delorme would have known a Chris-Craft from a submarine, but the manufacturer’s name was in big chrome script on the side. To her untutored eye the thing was quite ungainly, too much snout, not enough top, but probably it was built for speed, not a handsome profile—and who knew how it might look in the water? Delorme had no idea what kind of horsepower it might have, but the propeller looked serious.

Why would you have all these oversize vehicles and then live in a dinky little house? Delorme had often wondered about people—you came across a lot of them in police work—who seemed to spend all their money on pursuits other than their home. She had been in near-hovels that contained televisions the size of blackboards.

Not that the Morton home fell into this category; it looked to be in excellent repair.

The same could not be said of Matt Morton. If he had indeed ever been a football player, as Frank Rowley had said, there was little evidence of it now. Any muscle had long since subsided into several cubic feet of pudge and blubber. His shape was top-heavy, as if he had been squeezed tightly at the ankles and all the fat had moved up into his neck and shoulders. His hair was the same brown as the perpetrator’s in the pictures, though trimmed into a neat, executive cut.

Delorme introduced herself, showing her ID.

“Come on in,” Morton said. “I only have a minute. We’re about to sit down for dinner.”

“That’s okay. I won’t take up much of your time.” The living room, off to the left, contained nothing that she’d seen in the photographs. At the far end of the hall was the kitchen, too far to see much detail beyond a few wooden cupboards. Delorme heard kids yelling and a woman shushing them. It sounded like a boy and a girl.

“I was admiring your machines out front,” Delorme said. “Particularly the boat.”

“My pride and joy, that one. Better be, for what I paid. Still paying.”

“Mr. Morton, I’m investigating a number of crimes that have been committed out at Lakeside Marina, and I need to take a look at your boat. Would that be all right?”

“What kind of crimes?”

“Assault, among others.”

“Assault. Got nothing to do with me, I can tell you that right now.”

“We’re just looking for witnesses at this point.”

“Well, I never saw anything that resembled an assault. Never heard anything either, for that matter. So how would it involve my boat?”

“It may not. If I could just take a quick look, Mr. Morton, that would be very helpful.”

“Go ahead. I don’t care.”

“Thank you.”

Morton put on a Maple Leafs windbreaker and led her out to the boat, walking with the careful, gliding gait of the very heavy. A man could put on a lot of pounds in a few years, however, and Delorme had not yet ruled Matt Morton out as a suspect.

“You actually need to see inside?”

“Yes, I do.”

“There was no assault on this boat. I don’t see what good it’ll do looking inside.”

“It’ll help us rule a few things out, Mr. Morton. Can I just climb up onto the trailer?”

“I’d rather you used a ladder.”

Delorme helped him retrieve an eight-foot aluminum ladder from the garage. The two minutes of exertion had the ex-footballer sweating and wheezing. Nevertheless, he went up first and climbed over the side of the boat. Delorme followed, and stepped down onto the deck.

“Doesn’t look its best right now,” Morton said. “It’s like looking at a racehorse in the barn. You don’t really get an idea.”

“Oh, I think I get the idea,” Delorme said, looking around. “It must be a lot of fun to be out on the water in this.”

“There’s nothing like it, I guarantee you. The air, the sunshine. Not to mention the beer. And everyone’s in a good mood. The kids’re having fun, the wife’s in seventh heaven, and I’m as far away from work as I can be.”

“What line of work are you in, Mr. Morton?”

“IT. Computer networks. Used to be a good way to make a living. Not anymore. Not in this town. We were all set to buy a bigger house, but that’s not gonna happen now.”

“You mind if we lift the plastic sheeting off the seats there?” Delorme was already pretty sure this wasn’t the boat in the photograph. The steering wheel was white, and the one in the picture was wooden. Steering wheels can be replaced, of course, but there was no wooden trim visible on this boat, and she doubted that anyone would have had that changed.

Morton lifted the plastic off the two seats closest to the stern. They were the swivel kind, smooth white upholstery, with small fixed tables nearby. The photograph had shown back-to-back seats with red upholstery of the tuck-and-roll variety. The entire back of the boat was different.

“You need to see the galley too? The cabin?”

“No, thanks, Mr. Morton. You’ve been very helpful.”

“It’s no trouble. Now that we’re here, I mean.”

“All right, then. A quick look won’t hurt.”

She let him show her around, Morton proudly pointing out various features for her to appreciate. A couple of times he said, “The wife would kill me if she knew how much I paid for that.”

“I guess it’s kind of like having a second home,” Delorme said. “At least in summer.”

“That’s exactly what it’s like.” Morton emphasized the point with a finger the size of a sausage. “You said a true thing there.”

Delorme had never been particularly attracted to boats, but the interior had a neatness about it that appealed to her. Lots of tiny cupboards and containers, everything miniaturized and the edges rounded off.

“Your kids must love it,” she said.

“Oh, my son would stay on the boat full-time if he could. Brittney couldn’t care less, though. She’s thirteen.”

Delorme very much wanted to see the girl but couldn’t think of a way right at that moment to manage it.

“Mr. Morton, how do you get along with the other people out at the marina? Do you see much of them?”

“Not really. It’s mostly families, you know. Everybody’s so busy with their own kids, they don’t have much time to get to know each other. We talk about the weather, that kind of thing.”

“It’s pretty close quarters out there. And this is an expensive piece of equipment. You ever have any complaints?”

“What, about the marina?”

“Or about the people who park next to you.”

Morton thought a moment. He ran a hand over his head.

“Well, there’s some Italian asshole always plays his music too loud. He’s at the other end of the dock, but noise travels when you’re on the water. I’d be happy if you’d arrest him or deport him or something.”

“Not likely. What about the people near you?”

“The Ferriers? They’re good people. We’re not close, but we get along fine. André and I have the occasional beer, talk about the game. That’s about it.”

“They have kids?”

“Two girls: Alex and Sadie. Sadie’s eight or so. Alex is Brit’s age, thirteen going on thirty, way they are these days.”

Thirteen years old. Delorme wanted to ask more about the girls, but didn’t want to draw too much attention to that angle just yet. What if Morton was the one diddling the neighbours’ kids? To draw him away from that area, she mentioned Frank Rowley.

“Frank I know from high school. I got no complaints about Frank.” Morton suddenly snapped his fingers. “I just remembered something. You’re investigating assaults?”

“That’s right.”

“Guy named Fred Bell. I saved his ass one time some crazy bastard threw a punch at him.”

“Frederick Bell?” Delorme had never met Dr. Bell in person, but she knew he was a psychiatrist.

“That’s it. English fella. But it wasn’t at the marina, exactly. It was outside the seafood joint next door.”

“What was the fight about?”

“I don’t know. Guy was yelling about the treatment Bell gave his son. Kid killed himself, I guess. Anyway, he was clearly out of it and swinging like a madman, so I just kinda stepped between ‘em and suggested he move on. Wasn’t much of an assault, when you get down to it. This was about a year, year and a half ago.”

“Do you know his name?”

“I forget—Whiteside or something like that.”

“Last question, Mr. Morton. You ever see or hear anything else around the marina that upset you, maybe made you think it wasn’t a good place for your kids to be?”

“How do you mean? Like safety-wise?”

“Like any-wise.”

Morton shook his head. “The marina’s like a neighbourhood. People generally look out for each other. Help out with a cup of sugar, that kind of thing, you know? Even though we don’t know each other well, there’s a kind of camaraderie, a kind of trust, that you don’t find in a lot of places. Perfect little sanctuary—for anybody, especially kids.”

22

C
ARDINAL WAS DEALING WITH
bills at the dining-room table. Kelly was watching an
ER
rerun in the living room. She watched television just like Catherine, with a bowl of popcorn in her lap and making comments at the TV every now and again. “Oh, come on,” she would say. “No doctor in their right mind would do that.”

Cardinal had written cheques for Catherine’s credit cards, and had scrawled on each payment stub “Deceased, please cancel.”

His thoughts drifted to the two people he had tracked down so far: one of them dead before Catherine was killed, the other still a possibility. He had yet to confirm Codwallader’s alibi, but his gut was telling him that it would probably hold. Cardinal sensed that he was missing something obvious, that he was on some entirely wrong track. So far he had been focused on motivation and opportunity: Who had reason to hurt him through his wife? Who had recently been released from prison?

But there were more basic things to consider: Who knew his address? Who knew Catherine was his wife? Who was in a position to pounce on this information with such alacrity? Not a drunk like Connor Plaskett (even if he had been alive), and maybe not a self-absorbed loser like Codwallader either.

Cardinal’s address and phone number were not listed in the phone book, and the police station certainly didn’t give them out. Ever since his days on the drug squad back in Toronto, he had made it a rule to keep an eye out for people watching him, people following. If you weren’t vigilant, someone could follow you home, threaten your family. He would have known if anyone was following him.

He sifted through the rest of the bills. There were requests from the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and Amnesty International (Catherine’s), and others from the Hospital for Sick Children,
UNICEF
and March of Dimes (Cardinal’s). There were bills from Algonquin Bay Hydro, the water department, the phone company and Desmond’s Funeral Home.

Most of these were already opened if not already paid. Cardinal examined them one by one, holding them under the gooseneck lamp beside the phone. He put on a pair of reading glasses to make sure. None of them showed the same printer flaw as the vicious sympathy cards.

All right, maybe that was too simple. Almost all of these, with the exception of the smaller charities, would be addressed by computer. No human being would even see the bills until they came back with cheques attached. He opened the bill from the funeral home.

Dear Mr. Cardinal
,

We at Desmond’s Funeral Home wish you to know that we sympathize with you in your time of loss
.

We also want to thank you for choosing us. We hope that our services have brought you some measure of comfort and security during one of life’s most difficult transitions
.

Our invoice is enclosed. Please remit your payment as soon as it may be convenient. And please know that if there is anything else we can do to serve your needs at this difficult time, we are always ready to help
.

With thanks, and deepest sympathy
.

It was signed by David Desmond. None of the capital letters showed any trace of the printer flaw.

“She is such a crack baby,” Kelly said to the TV. “How could she ever get to be a nurse?”

At the commercial break she stopped by Cardinal on her way to the kitchen. “Why don’t you come and watch, Dad?”

“I will in a second.”

“It’s such a pleasure to see people screw up their lives worse than you screw up your own. Although I guess you see that pretty much every day at work.”

“I do, indeed.”

“I’m getting myself a diet Coke. You want one?”

“Sure.”

Cardinal was looking at the invoice that had come enclosed with the letter from Desmond’s. One item in particular had caught his attention, and it wasn’t the price, which came as no surprise.

Casket—Superior Walnut, Natural—$2,500
.

There was a distinct line through the capital letters.

And lower down:
Payment Received—$3,400
.

The same line through the
P
and the
R
.

“The show’s back on,” Kelly called from the living room. “Your Coke’s in here.”

Cardinal pulled the three cards from his briefcase.
She preferred death
… A line through the capital
S. How she must have hated you
. Same line through the capital
H
. He dug out a magnifying glass and squinted at the relevant letters. A match.

Could a funeral director get tired of sympathizing with all that pain he or she saw every day of the year? Could you get sick of all the tears, the prayers, the dithering over details of services, the relentless implication that
this
loved one was really something special, unlike, say, the other people you buried day in and day out? He supposed that, yes, you could get sick of it, and yes, you might one day snap and start sending unsympathy cards through the mail.

But the cover letter itself was free of flaws.

He called David Desmond at home.

A professional to the bone, Desmond didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, John,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I was just looking at my invoice from you.”

“Oh, there’s no rush to pay that. You’ve already paid half of it on deposit, and I’m sure you have lots of other things on your mind.”

“I was wondering if you prepare them yourself.”

“Well, we write up the initial figures, of course. But later on, after the services, we hand everything over to our bookkeeping service.”

“They seem to do a good job for you. I’ve got some rather complicated tax stuff coming up this year and I was wondering if I could get their name and address from you.”

“Oh, certainly. It’s Beckwith and Beaulne. Hold on a second, I’ve got the card here somewhere.”

“Which guy do you use—Beckwith or Beaulne?”

“Neither. It’s a fellow named Roger Felt.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why? You know Roger?”