Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (112 page)

The Unravelling

Dan knew he had to move fast. At least one life was at stake. There was no sense going back to the Lockie House. The code had been changed and he thought he knew by whom. It wasn't necessary to break in to confirm anything. Even if his theory proved correct, as he was sure it would, there were limits to what the police would accept. He'd simply have to prove to Inspector Johnston what he knew to be true.

He pulled out his phone as he turned his car around. Johnston was with him now. She agreed he had a point. A big point. And he was closer to Radio City than she was.

“I can get there first,” he said.

“Be careful!”

Charles and Lionel were just crossing the lobby, bags in hand, when Dan arrived.

Fury rose on Charles's face. “I told you to leave us alone!”

“Please, Charles!” Lionel grabbed his husband's arm to quiet him. “Dan? What's this all about?”

Dan gave him a rueful look. “It's about …” He shook his head. “It's about orchids.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it's about orchids.”

“What are you talking about?” Charles demanded.

Lionel quieted him again and said softly, “I don't understand.”

Dan took a breath. “To understand, you have to work backwards. A man is killed in his own home and the door is double locked. Makes you wonder why. Why go to the bother of locking a door when you know someone's going to find the body eventually? The easy answer is, to give the killer plenty of getaway time. Sure, why not? It's the likeliest reason, but in this case it wasn't the real reason because nobody was trying to get away. Then I thought maybe it was a sign of veneration. Of love, even. It fit Ziggy's story. Maybe Santiago's, too. He and Yuri had been together long enough. In any case, either of them could have done it. It might have been an accident and the killer later sealed up the place like some kind of shrine. But that wasn't it, either.”

“How do you know?” Charles asked.

“Because this murder was meticulously planned. The only thing that didn't fit was the timing.”

Dan saw the first cruiser pull up outside the building. Inspector Johnston got out and drew her gun. A second cruiser nosed into place behind it. Two more officers leapt out and followed.

Dan kept talking. “So I asked myself, what if the death didn't occur when it was supposed to? What if it occurred earlier than we were led to believe? Once I asked that question, things started falling into place. Except in that case, why would someone break into the dead man's house to use his cell phone?”

Lionel shook his head, a crease puckering his brow.

“You would only do it if you wanted to make it look like the cell's owner was still alive. Someone used Yuri Malevski's phone to make a call to Mexico and to text an entry code to a house cleaner.”

Lionel shook his head. “You mean it wasn't Yuri who called me?”

Dan shook his head. “No. It was someone else.”

“But who?” Lionel asked. “It was Yuri's voice on the message.”

“Or a recording of Yuri's voice.”

“Oh.”

Dan nodded. “Who else was around to use Yuri's phone? You and Charles were in Mexico. The cleaning lady was just a cleaning lady who'd been set up to further the plot along, so I didn't think it was her. A transsexual named Jan used to frequent the house, but no one had seen Jan for some time, so once again it was unlikely. There was even a weird neighbour with a grudge, plus a supposedly crooked cop thrown into the scenario to confuse things. And, unbeknownst to nearly everybody, a strange boy named Ziggy lived under the eaves in Yuri's house. He confessed to me he'd extracted the entry code texted to the cleaning lady from Yuri's cellphone. A very sweet lady in possession of some extremely valuable orchids, by the way.”

Dan saw Inspector Johnston standing at the back of the lobby listening to him.

“At first I wasn't so sure about Ziggy, but I quickly realized he was more of a neurotic than a psychotic. Killer? Nah, I don't think so. So who else was there?”

Dan let the question hang in the air. He turned his gaze on Charles. “You left late to meet Lionel in Mexico, didn't you?”

Charles suddenly looked bewildered, dropping the lawyer's bravado.

“I had a case to close. I made arrangements to meet with Lionel two days later. It was a Saturday. The airline will have a record. I told you this already.”

“True,” Dan said. “I don't doubt what you say. But somebody made a call and sent a text. Then the phone disappeared. I don't think that was part of the plan. It showed up this morning in a pawn shop with the fingerprints of the suicide victim who jumped from Overlea Bridge, by the way. Though it's beginning to look as though that wasn't really a suicide after all,” Dan said.

“I knew it wasn't,” Lionel said, turning to Charles. “Didn't I tell you?”

Dan continued. “But the question remains: why make a call and send a text? Why? To frame someone for the murder and cover up for the missing money that had been siphoned from the bar. Someone wanted to make it look as though Yuri was still alive, when in fact he'd been dead since the third of February.” He turned his gaze on Charles. “Probably not long after your argument with him.”

“I didn't kill Yuri!”

Dan watched him. “I believe you now, but for a while I thought you had. Still, there was that call and the text from Yuri's phone. They had to have been made by someone else, since Yuri was no longer alive.”

Everyone stared at Dan.

“But how do you know?” Charles ventured.

“The orchids.”

“What orchids? What are you talking about?”

“You know, I couldn't figure it out. Here's a man who is supposedly crazy about orchids with a greenhouse full of dead plants. He'd paid a lot of money for those plants. They should have had flowers on them. They should have been alive. But most of them were already dead when a cleaner arrived and vacuumed the petals off the floor. That was a Thursday. Yuri's body was discovered two days later, on Saturday. The coroner's report said he'd been dead for two or three days at most, but in fact he was dead well before that. The house was nearly freezing for a week. The thermostat had been turned down to keep the body from decomposing. That's why the doors were double-locked, to keep anyone with the code from entering and turning it back up until a few days before your return from Mexico by a cleaning woman who always cleaned house on Thursday.”

“Then who made the call and sent the text?” Lionel asked.

“Your lover.”

Lionel looked to his husband. “But Charles was with me by the time I got the call. Besides, he changed his plans for business reasons at the last minute. His boss insisted. It wasn't anything he planned.”

“Yes,” Charles broke in. “I changed them for business.”

“Nevertheless, Charles came later. He met you two days into your vacation in Mexico, as you both pointed out. It would have given him ample time to do the deed before turning down the thermostat and heading off to Mexico. As I say, he
might
have done it, but Charles didn't have the code to Yuri's house. In fact, he told me himself he never had the code.”

“Then how could he have made the call or sent a text?” Lionel asked. “You just said —!”

“I didn't say your husband made them. I said your lover did. The same person I saw standing on the stoop when I arrived at Malevski's house this morning. I thought I saw a delivery man trying to get into the house with an old code, but in fact he had just changed it after removing some very expensive orchids from the greenhouse. It was Santiago.”

Lionel shook his head. “But Santiago's dead!”

“No, he's not.”

“Then who —?”

“A boy who had already threatened suicide. Ziggy was pale as a ghost, even under all that make-up. Didn't you notice the discrepancies on the body you identified as Santiago's?”

Lionel looked bewildered. “His face was damaged badly. I … I told you, he didn't look right. He was all swollen up!”

“Yes, and Ziggy told me Charles said he looked like Santiago's younger brother. True, they looked a bit alike, but they were essentially different in obvious ways. Santiago has olive skin where Ziggy's is pale. Santiago was hairy, while Ziggy was smooth.” Dan held Lionel's gaze. “Ziggy told me he got the new code from Yuri's phone. He would have had to pick it up to read it. Then later he sold it to a pawn shop, along with a few other items. That was a problem. They weren't Santiago's fingerprints on the phone, they were Ziggy's. As his lover, you would have known you were identifying the wrong corpse. I saw Santiago's picture about an hour ago, in fact, so I have a pretty good idea where the police will find him. He seems to have found an adopted mother. She keeps his picture beside the orchids he gave her for safekeeping.”

Charles set his suitcase on the floor and looked at Lionel. The anger had been replaced by fear and uncertainty.

“Why?”

“Why?” Lionel looked away. “Why were you running around with that stupid little boy in girl's clothes? And all those other scum you picked up, thinking I would never find out? You made me sign that prenuptial agreement, virtually locking me into marriage. Is that your idea of fair — tying me down and making me risk all my savings if I left you?”

“That wasn't the purpose …” Charles started to say. “I was protecting us. I was just doing what lawyers do.”

“Protecting us?” Lionel spat at him. “And I was just doing what accountants do, balancing the accounts and tidying up your dirty little affairs all over the city. Santiago is twice the man you are.”

From the corner of his eye, Dan saw Inspector Lydia Johnston move quietly toward Lionel.

Home

Dan was just edging up to the curb when his phone rang.

“Hey, Dad!”

Ked's voice nearly leapt out of the phone at him.

“Hey! What's up?”

“I won!” He waited a beat. “The science contest! I won with my sling psychrometer!”

Dan laughed. “That's amazing!”

“Old world technology,” Ked said. “It's still the best.”

“So are you going to give up your cellphone and revert to tin cans tied together with strings?”

“That's
too
old world for me. It probably even predates you.” There was a pause. “This will really help with scholarships.”

“Great! I guess that'll make it easier for you to move away from Toronto when you go to school.”

“I guess.” There was a longer pause. “You really want me to move away?”

“I want you to see what the rest of the world looks like. You have to leave home to do that. But it doesn't mean you can't come home again whenever you want.” He paused to consider. “How does Elizabeth feel about this?”

“She thinks I should go, too.”

“Then there's your answer.” Dan put the car in park and turned off the ignition. “I'm truly thrilled for your win, but I just arrived somewhere and I need to do something. Can we talk about this later? Maybe over a little celebration?”

“Sure.” Hesitance crept into Ked's voice. “I'm busy tonight, though. Elizabeth and I are going out. Sorry.”

“No worries. We'll arrange something.”

Dan got out of his car and stood looking up at the house that had relinquished nearly all of its secrets to him. For a moment, he wondered about the future owners, then decided he'd let them discover the secret panel on their own.

He punched in the four numbers of the entry code, gratified to see red turn to green once again. Still welcome, after all. He was beginning to feel like part of the family. Maybe that was Yuri Malevski's influence, creating a place where everyone could be at home.

Most of the plants had been removed from the greenhouse. The few that remained were dead or too large to be moved easily. He hoped whoever took them knew their worth. Or maybe not. Why not just let them be plants, with no special price tag attached to them?
Let them be appreciated for their beauty
, he thought.

Dan bounded up the stairs to the third floor and pushed on the panel. It swung open. He looked around the tiny space. The diary was gone — police evidence. The fingerprints on it had confirmed what he'd already known, that it was Ziggy who was pushed from Overlea Bridge.

He nudged the curtains aside and looked out on Yuri Malevski's lush garden. Who knew, but the fruit trees and flowers might have dated to the time of its construction, back when it was just becoming known as the Lockie House. It was a pleasant thought, all that stretching back into antiquity.

It was a cozy hiding spot. Dan could have benefited from something like this as a boy escaping his father's drunken aggression. He lay on the futon and stared at the beams overhead. Three words were scribbled in chalk on the wood:
Ziggy was here!
He felt a lump in his throat.

Just then, his cell buzzed. It was Donny.

“Are you still angry with me?” Donny asked.

“Angry with you? Why?”

“For introducing you to them and getting you mixed up in that sordid tale.”

“Not your fault. You couldn't have known. And no, I'm not angry with you.”

“Thank god. Prabin told me I was imagining it, but I've had nothing but sleepless nights ever since.”

“In fact,” Dan said, “if I'd listened to you in the first place, I might have been further ahead. You made the whole thing sound like a bad TV drama, and in fact that was what it was. I need to learn to think in clichés if I'm going to be more successful. It really was all about the protection money, but not because of the police. It was Lionel and his Cuban boyfriend scheming to steal from Yuri and have a life of luxury.”

“So who did the killing?”

“I thought you were above asking such sordid questions.”

“Humour me this one time.”

“Ziggy felt protective of Yuri, so he told Yuri about Santiago's affair with Lionel after he saw them together. It wasn't long before Yuri threw Santiago out. I think that was when Yuri discovered the missing money. His private file showed they'd been siphoning it out of the bar for months. When Yuri confronted Santiago, he killed him in his kitchen. With Lionel's help, they made it look like Yuri died while Lionel was in Mexico and Santiago was off with the girlfriend at Jane and Finch. Lionel had an old recording of Yuri's monthly meeting reminder. Santiago played it back to him over the phone while he was away.”

“When did you catch on?”

“It took a while. There were so many things telling me I was wrong, particularly the coroner's report on the timing of the death. But once I reconsidered that in light of their affair, everything made sense. Lionel even made threatening calls to Santiago's girlfriend to warn her off. He would probably have married Santiago himself if he hadn't already been married to Charles. A divorce would have cost him dearly. I first began to suspect Lionel because he tried too hard to convince me it was Charles, when he should have been protecting him. It would have been all too convenient for them if Charles had been convicted of Yuri's murder.”

“Hmmm …” Donny said meditatively.

“I blame myself for Ziggy's death,” Dan said, running his fingers across the lettering overhead. “I don't think anyone knew he was in the house till I mentioned it. The decision to make it look as though Santiago committed suicide figured neatly into their plans. Santiago lured Ziggy to the bridge, saying Charles wanted to meet him, only Charles wasn't there when he arrived. Lionel planted his card on Ziggy to make sure he would be asked to identify the body. Being an illegal, there was no record of fingerprints or family to come looking for Santiago when he disappeared. Ziggy was perfect.”

“How long will you beat yourself up for that one?”

“How long have you got? I feel culpable. That won't change.”

“But in reality, Ziggy started the ball rolling by telling Yuri about Santiago and Lionel. With or without you, it would have come back to him once they knew. And you have to remember you saved Charles's life, at least.”

“I suspect the trip up north would have resulted in another fatality, made to seem accidental. Lionel hated that Charles was able to lord it over him once he'd signed the prenuptial and then went all over town having affairs. I was wrong about Charles, though. He may have ordinary human flaws, but he wasn't the cesspool of immorality I thought he was.”

“Glad to hear. So does this mean I can stop worrying about you for the time being?”

“Why would you worry about me?”

“Oh, I don't know — getting beaten up in Quebec didn't exactly quell my fears.”

“A couple of thugs hired by some renegade cops, nothing more. Lydia thinks she knows who to pressure for an answer. I doubt I'll be looking over my shoulder for that one the rest of my life.”

“I just wish you'd stop taking chances. By the way, where are you?”

“Yuri Malevski's mansion.”

Donny sucked in his breath. “Okay — I don't even want to know.”

“It's all right. I wouldn't tell if you tortured me.”

“That sets my alarm bells ringing.”

“Don't worry your pretty little head about it. Besides, you know what they say: wild horses couldn't drag it out of me.”

A match flared on the other end.

“Question,” Dan said.

“Shoot.”

“If you were single and knew a very sexy cop who was also single, would you date him?”

“If I were me, sure. If I were you? Definitely not.”

“Why?”

“Because he's a cop and you're a private eye. Isn't that a little like dating the enemy?”

“Kind of. It's okay, I just wondered. I'll talk to you later.”

“Wait!”

“What?”

“If you do date him, will there be coercion?”

Dan smiled. “If there is, it'll be willing.”

“Then it won't be coercion. But in any case, take pictures.”

Dan was seated at his kitchen table. He glanced up at the cupboards that once held his alcohol. What would they hold when Ked went away to school in the fall?

He pulled out Nick Trposki's card, pushing Hank's orchid aside as he reached for his cell. The cop answered right away. There was a pause when Dan identified himself.

“I'm not in a bar, if that's what you're thinking,” Dan said. “I'm not calling you to rescue me.”

“Glad to hear. How can I help?”

“Do you ever think about the future?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“Not really. I'd like to know.”

“All right. Then, yes. Sometimes.”

“That's it?”

There was a laugh. “Okay, here's what it is. Mostly it depresses me to think about the future. I can barely stand to think about tomorrow let alone the distant future, but every once in a while I think about what I'll be doing a year from now and whether I'll be with anyone in another five. How's that for a true confession?”

“Pretty good,” Dan said. “I've got one, too. I don't want to grow old alone. Especially since I've come to the realization that I can't live with alcohol in the house. Imagine that — a grown man who can't trust himself.”

Nick gave a begrudging laugh. “I hear you.”

“Some days I think the solution is to live
with
somebody. But then I think about it and I don't like what it says about my independence.”

“Giving it up, you mean?”

“Yeah, that. At times I want to be with someone, but at other time I don't want to be crowded out.”

Nick waited. “So why are you telling me all this? Are you asking me out or something?”

“Yes, I am officially asking you to go out on a date with me. No commitments, apart from dinner. What do you think?”

“I'd be willing to consider it.”

Dan laughed. “That's it? Just willing to consider it?”

“It would have to be a decent place. I may be a cop, but I still like good restaurants with nice atmosphere and top-quality food.”

“How about Italian to start?”

Nick laughed again. “When?”

“I think we should begin tonight. No use waiting. I don't know about you, but I'm already forty. I'm pretty sure neither of us is getting any younger.”

“I agree,” Nick said. “I'm not far behind you in years.”

“Tell you what. I just got home. I'm going to take a shower. Then I am going to make a reservation for two somewhere in the city. I'll call and tell you where.”

“Sounds good.”

Dan waited a beat. “By the way, you know how you told me your last lover was the best guy you ever met?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that's not me. I'm more thorn than rose.”

Nick laughed. “I never said I was perfect either. But he wasn't really all that perfect, to tell the truth. You know the thing that pissed me off most about him?”

“What?”

“When he wanted out of the relationship, he was so angry he just moved away. He never even called to say goodbye.”

Dan thought about this for a moment. “Don't worry, I wouldn't do that. I always say goodbye.”