Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (177 page)

“I’m here, aren’t I? Not a scratch on me.”

“Would it have killed you to answer your messages?”

“I was at a friend’s, and my cell phone was dead.”

“What friend?”

“Nobody you know.”

“I don’t know any of your friends, that’s the problem!”

“So you want to censor my friends now?”

“No! I just want to know who they are!” He wrestled his voice down a few decibels. “In case something happens.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“You don’t know. That’s the point. We could have been in an accident. Or I’m a cop, I could get shot—”

She rolled her eyes and fished out a tub of strawberry yogurt. “You work behind a desk, Mike.”

This time he didn’t rise to the bait, but waited her out. With a dramatic sigh, she sat down at the table and pried off the lid. “I was with a guy I know. That okay with you?”

“What’s his name?”

“No one important. He’s just a fuck buddy.”

“Just a what?”

“A fuck buddy.” He stared at her in wilful disbelief. “What the hell is a fuck buddy?”

“Come on, Mike, what does it sound like?” Again he waited. “We fuck. That’s all. Whenever we feel like a good fuck, no strings attached, we call each other up.”

For a moment, he couldn’t speak. In his job, he’d encountered nearly every sexual practice invented by men. Why did this simple statement of fact reduce him to incoherence? Her detachment, perhaps? “Is that all sex is to you?”

She gave a careless shrug as she dug her spoon in. “It’s nicer if you’re really into the guy, but this way, when you’re in a dry spell, at least you get it off.”

“Sex isn’t just getting it off—”

“Oh, isn’t it? You should know all about it. That’s what you had with Mom.”

Green stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“You were young and horny, Mom was blonde and beautiful, and you couldn’t get enough of her. But don’t tell me there was anything but the sex for you.”

“Is that what your mother told you?”

She licked her spoon, acting bored. “She said you were ready to hump anything that moved. But I’ve got eyes, Mike. Mom’s pretty, but she’s a complete ditz. She doesn’t have a brain in her head to interest you, but that didn’t matter when you were getting the hottest sex of your life. Too bad I came along to ruin your fun.”

He’d been scrambling for a safer topic, and her comment caught him completely off guard. “What!”

Hannah stood up abruptly, snatched the yogurt tub and flounced past him towards the kitchen door.

He seized her arm angrily. “Wait a minute!”

She struggled. “I don’t want to talk about you and Mom. It’s ancient history.”

“Obviously not. There’s a lot you don’t know—”

“And I don’t want to know.” To his astonishment, her voice clogged with tears. In one last defiant act, she threw the tub of yogurt in his face. Blinded and shocked, he released his grip, and she fled down the hall and out the front door, slamming it so hard the whole house rattled.

She slipped back through the front door two hours later. Green had showered and cleaned up the kitchen, and now he sat in the growing darkness in the living room, too drained to move. The rain had softened to a gentle patter that was barely audible on the roof. He heard her tiptoe down the hallway, heard her stifled breathing as she hesitated in the doorway, felt her eyes upon him.

“Hannah, come in here.” Instead, he heard the stairs creak as she began to climb. “Hannah.”

“I’m going to pack.” He couldn’t detect a trace of defiance in her tone, merely resignation. What the hell does that mean, he wondered, for the tenth time wishing Sharon were here to interpret the adolescent female psyche and tell him how to react. He waited a few minutes, during which he could hear her shuffling around in her bedroom overhead. He hated the thought of the scene to come if he faced her head on, but the alternative— her departure—was worse.

Finally, he went into the kitchen to fix them both a cup of tea, half strength the way they both liked it, with lemon rather than milk. He could still remember Hannah’s reaction when she’d first noticed they shared the same taste in tea despite there being sixteen years and two thousand kilometres of separation. She’d been puzzled, almost cowed. As he headed up the stairs with the tea, he hoped it would voice the yearning too difficult for him to put into words.

There was no response to his call, but when he nudged the door with his toe, he found it unlatched. Symbolic, perhaps? She was sitting cross-legged on the bed, sorting her
CD
s. Her hair hung in sodden strings, and her wet tank top clung to her tiny frame.

“I’ll leave you all the ones you gave me,” she muttered, not looking up.

As he took the tea to her, he found he was trembling so hard, he could barely keep the mugs steady. She accepted the mug with a fleeting smile of thanks. “There’s an eleven p.m. flight to Vancouver, if you’re free to drive me.”

Part of him wanted to smile, part to weep, for she sounded exactly like his long-dead mother whom she had never known. Despite Hannah’s almost total lack of exposure to her Jewish roots, Jewish martyrdom, like the tea, must be in the genes.

He could have parried her comment and continued to skirt along the edges of the emotions that seethed between them. They’d managed a whole year avoiding them and had built the beginnings of a tentative relationship that left them both at a safe distance. But the truce had been shattered, and he knew he had to get to the bottom of it.

“Do you think you were unwanted?”

She shot him a look of rebuke from under her long black lashes. He had violated the rules between them. Finally, she shrugged. “Of course I was unwanted. You only married Mom because she was pregnant. Three months after I was born— pouf, gone.”

“Your mother left me.”

“But you were glad of it.”

“About her leaving, yes. But not about losing you.”

“You don’t have to say that, you know. I have Fred.”

The barb deflected harmlessly. Green knew Ashley’s second husband had tried his best to be a good stepfather to this wild, prickly girl, but she had fought him every inch of the way. “Fred is not your father. I am.”

She rolled her eyes and edged away from him on the bed. “Look, thanks for the tea, but I have to get packing if I want to make that flight.”

He stared into his mug, willing himself to tread further. “When I first saw you in the hospital, all six pounds, ten ounces of you, I admit I was terrified. I’d never known any brothers or sisters or cousins—
Zaydeh
’s first family all died in the Holocaust—so I didn’t know if I had it in me to care for someone so small and needy. It was a lifetime commitment that scared the hell out of me.”

She didn’t say anything, but he noticed she had not taken a sip of her tea, which she clutched as if two hands were needed to keep it steady. He breathed a little more easily.

“I wasn’t very good at it,” he said. “Your mother was right to leave me. I spent long hours at work, I left her alone with you all the time, but in those first three months I did begin to know you. I remember your first smile, I remember you holding my baby finger in your fist and staring up at me like you were wondering ‘who is this guy?’ And when your mother took you away, I was devastated.”

This time she gave a small grunt. It may have been disbelief, or perhaps contempt.

“I know you’re angry at me for dropping out of your life for sixteen years, and you have every right to be.”

“Gee, thanks.” He ploughed doggedly ahead. “But I’m really glad you came back into my life. That took a lot of courage, Hannah. More courage than I had, and I thank you for it.”

“Yeah. Well, all good things come to an end.” She set down the tea and moved to slide off the bed.

He grabbed her arm. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry? Would that be enough?”

She yanked herself free. “I don’t want you to say anything. We’re done! Go back to your perfect little world, with your perfect wife and perfect son—”

“You’re not in the way! You’re part of it!”

“I’m trouble, I know it. I’m trouble wherever I go. But at least Mom’s had a year’s break from me.”

“Have you spoken to her?”

“Not yet. She’d just drive me crazy asking what went wrong.”

He heard the defeat in her voice, and his throat ached. “What did go wrong, honey?”

She jerked open her dresser and began tossing clothes on the bed. “It’s no big deal. I just get bored.”

“I don’t buy that. You were enjoying school, and I thought...I thought you really liked Tony and Sharon.”

“And Modo. Yeah, it’s been fun.”

He sensed her slipping from his grasp, and he had no idea what might stop her. “What did I do wrong?”

She shrugged, still folding clothes on the bed. “I just don’t like parents, and like you said, Mike, we’re strangers.”

“We’re not strangers. You’re that little girl who grabbed my finger, you’re my mother all over again, you’re my stubbornness and restlessness... And I don’t want to lose all that.”

She headed for her closet and dragged her backpack out of the corner. For a moment she contemplated the tiny bag and the massive pile of clothes on the bed. In that moment’s hesitation, he made the only move he dared. He rose, placed his hands on her shoulders, and turned her to face him. She stared at his chest as he kissed her head. His heart pounded, and he waited until he could trust his voice.

“Will you at least wait until the school year is over, honey? Get your course credits, and then if you still want to go...”
I
won’t stop you,
he was going to add, but he found the words would not come.

Eight

 G
reen arrived at his office Friday morning to find a copy of the
Ottawa Sun
planted in the middle of his cluttered desk. The front page was devoted to a huge picture of Marija straining against the restraints of three police officers by the edge of the Rideau River crime scene. Visible in the background was a cluster of Ident officers bent over an object in the water. The headline said “
DISTRAUGHT MOTHER DEFIES
‘
NAZI
’
POLICE
”.

Green seized the paper to see who had written it. The photo was credited to someone he’d never heard of, but the story on the inside page bore a familiar name. Frank Corelli, long-time crime reporter for the
Sun
, who had somehow managed to capture Marija’s shriek about Nazis and reported it with glee.

“Corelli, you
putz!”
Green shouted at no one in particular. He was just about to phone the
Sun
to ream the reporter out when another thought struck him. Who had planted this paper on his desk, and why? His question was answered within seconds by the Major Crimes clerk, who knocked warily on his door to inform him that Superintendent Devine wanted to see him as soon as he came in.

Barbara Devine had her own copy of the
Sun
, which she brandished when he walked into her office. “Mike, is this your idea of managing the media?”

He put on a suitably doleful face. “Barbara, it’s news, and like it or not, it’s a hot story. We did everything we could to support the victim’s mother, including giving her a moment with her daughter to say goodbye. It’s unfortunate that the reporter chose to capture her worst moment.”

Devine’s crimson lips grew tight. “Unfortunate is not the word, Green. We look like a bunch of Keystone Kops, and I’m not authorizing thousands in overtime to support a circus act. What are your men doing downstairs?”

She was still a dangerous shade of purple, and Green wasn’t sure whether that was an accusation or a genuine request for an update, but he launched into one anyway, in the hopes of diverting her attention from the
PR
disasters of her division. At this very moment, he said, Brian Sullivan was briefing the day staff, collating reports and setting out the assignments for the morning. All night, the graveyard shift had been out on the streets, pursuing inquiries. The local known sex offenders had been questioned, and their whereabouts on the night of Lea’s disappearance were being systematically verified. Officers had also spent the night showing Lea’s photo around at Hog’s Back Park again in the hope of finding someone who’d seen her and her companion that night.

Her colour gradually returned to normal as she listened, and at the mention of a secret companion, she stabbed the air triumphantly with a manicured nail. “That’s the place to focus your efforts, Mike. The boyfriend. Short and sweet and wrapped up before anyone else gets hurt.”

“Gee, I would never have thought of that,” Green muttered under his breath afterwards as he hurried back downstairs to the incident room, where Sullivan’s morning briefing was in full swing. Ident photographs, reports, and jot notes of key facts lined the walls, and every chair was occupied around the conference table. Expressions were grave and eyes were fixed on Bob Gibbs, the department’s technical wizard, who already had the case up on the screen. He was filling in bubbles with questions and assignments while Sullivan stood by the screen with a laser pointer in his hand. At this point there were three big bubbles unassigned—Boyfriend, Ice cream and Ident.

Green slid unobtrusively into a seat at the back and watched as Sullivan targeted the first bubble. “We now know she wasn’t alone, so we need to nail down her companion. So let’s reinterview all her friends and classmates at Pleasant Park High School. Put some pressure on them. Someone has to know who she was seeing. I have a teenage daughter. Keeping track of who’s dating who is a top priority for them. Gibbs, why don’t you and Luc take that? You can take a couple of guys from General Assignment to help you.”

Gibbs nodded without enthusiasm. His eyes were redrimmed, and his suit wrinkled, as if he could barely summon the interest for work. His regular partner, Sue Peters, had been severely injured during a murder inquiry a couple of months earlier, and Sullivan had tried unsuccessfully to find a replacement who suited Gibbs’ meticulous style. Before Sue’s injury, he had just begun to gain confidence and take on a more senior role, but without her brash, charging-rhino style—and the testosterone she seemed to stir up in him— much of the fight had been taken out of him.