The Last Hand (10 page)

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Authors: Eric Wight

BOOK: The Last Hand
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Still looking out the window, she said, “I won't come to the service.”
“The funeral? Why not?”
“I couldn't bear it.”
“Nobody likes funerals. Would they … expect you?”
“I have no idea. I imagine so.”
“It's your own choice entirely, I would think.” Salter stood up. He wanted to get away from her and return when she got her balance back. “I'll leave my card in case you want to get in touch.”
True to the little scene she was acting out, she remained staring out the window.
 
 
Back in the office, Salter found a message from Calvin Gregson, asking him to call.
The lawyer answered immediately. “I'm told you've been put in charge of the Lucas investigation, Staff Inspector. I'm very glad. Jerry was a friend of mine and I hope you catch the bastard who killed him soon. I just called to say that, and if there is anything I can do, any question I can help you with, don't hesitate to call.”
“Thanks for the offer. You mean his habits, do you? Whether he wore a hat, stuff like that?”
“Anything.”
“That's very public-spirited of you, Mr. Gregson. I'll make a note of it.” He hung up.
“A
re we off, then, sir?” Salter's new assistant asked him.
“Smitty, why would one of Toronto's leading criminal lawyers make himself available to provide information about Lucas, information he knows perfectly well we can get from a number of people?”
“They were pals, mebbe?”
“Yes, but he knows I've got Lucas's partner, and his sister, and others. I don't need him.”
“Maybe he needs you.”
“Sure he does. He's trying to insert himself into the information loop about the case.”
“That's solved, then. Shall we be off?”
“By the way, a little job for you. Check up on Flora Lucas. She says she was in Costa Rica until last Friday, staying at her brother's house, but most of the time in the hospital. Confirm that, would you?”
“You mean get on the blower to Costa Rica? I don't even know where it is.”
“Start with the consul. He'll be in the Yellow Pages. Find out when she entered the country and when she left. The address of her brother's house will be there somewhere. Ask the local police to confirm she was there, if you can find someone who speaks English. Check with the hospital how long she stayed there.”
“Sir, why? What's going on? Why are we doing this?”
“Proper procedure, Smitty. I told you, this is what we're supposed to do, how we are supposed to proceed, so I'm showing you the proper way. Covering my ass. Make a note of it. We must check up on the whereabouts of all possible suspects.”
“You suspect her?”
“Smitty, close the door. Now. An unreliable witness has given me to understand that Lucas and his sister may have been involved in a taboo relationship.”
“At their age? I've heard of it among poor kids in Glasgow, but not when they grew up. You think that's right? True, I mean. I know it's not
right
.”
“I don't believe it for a second, so I'm personally going to take no notice of hints like that. But there's you to consider. If I fall flat on my ass, I'd like to know we've followed routine. That's you.”
“Sir, can I ask if something is bothering you? I mean you're talking a bit strange. A bit silly if you don't mind me saying it.”
Salter laughed. “I'm following my hunch, Smitty, that's all. But let's clean up Costa Rica before we tick it off. Now, tell me about Lucas's apartment.”
Smith said, “It's no' a big block of flats, not by Glasgow standards. I've spoken to all the tenants on his floor except two who the janitor says are on vacation. Two of them saw the woman. One of them lives next door and rode up in the elevator about seven in the evening, and saw her knocking on Lucas's door.
“Wearing all the gear?”
“Aye, but here is the thing they didn't tell us before, she was wearing a raincoat over the rest, a slicker, the chap called it, but I think he meant raincoat. He said she was wearing a white slicker and holding the front closed, as if she had nothing on underneath. Now this chap thinks she didn't see him in the corridor, because when she turned away to go into Lucas's apartment she let the slicker fall open and he got a glimpse of a lot of leather straps. Her costume.”
“So it looks as if Lucas had an arrangement with a tart who knew his apartment number. She was dressed for work with a white slicker on top. Maybe Lucas told her to wear both, the slicker for the neighbors, the costume for him.”
“That fits.”
“So we just have to find her. By now she'll be in Winnipeg or Vancouver and she won't be wearing the outfit, or the slicker, I guess. Could he describe anything else about her?”
Smith looked at his notes. “He said he caught a glimpse of Alice Faye under the makeup, but when she spoke it was more like Gloria Grahame. Who would they be?”
“Film stars. How old was this guy?”
“He looked about eighty.”
“That figures. Alice Faye goes a long way back.”
“What do they look like?”
“I've no idea. I just know the names,” Salter said. “Did you try to put her description on the computer?”
“Barlow and Jensen already did that, with her costume, anyway. There's been no response yet.”
“What did the autopsy say?”
“The knife entered the front of his chest between the second and third rib, severing the …
“Yeah, yeah. What about sexual activity?”
“Yes, within the previous eighteen hours. That's as far back as he could go.”
“So she serviced him, then, and killed him?”
“Or both, at the same time. The old praying mantis trick. That where we're going?”
“Right now, let's go back over to the apartment. Have you had a chance to talk to the neighbors about anything else they saw that night, any other strangers, maybe?”
“The only thing I picked up was from a tenant in an apartment on the Bedford Road side. He's more or less confined to his home with arthritis, and he looks out the window a lot. He said that several times lately he's noticed a woman in a toffee-colored car-that's his description, sir-parked near the block, within sight of the main doors. She got out once and walked a few yards down the street but she had a headscarf on and all he could say was that she wasn't old and she wasn't young, and she wore a raincoat with a belt. He said she would stay there for two or three hours, then just drive off. Unfortunately, the one thing this old boy is sure of is that she wasn't outside on the night Lucas was killed, because when he heard the news he
thought of her. But he's quite clear, not that night. What do you think, sir? Not much use?”
“It helps. If he's reliable–you think he is?–we know now that there weren't any strangers lurking about that night.”
“Then what's this woman all about?”
“Surveillance, Smitty. She probably calls herself a private investigator, and what she is doing is keeping tabs on someone, either for an insurance company or a spouse. A red herring. Nothing to do with us, but useful in a negative sort of way. Let's go. You got the keys?”
“Oh, there was a call for you from another lawyer, a man named Holt. He calls himself the family lawyer.”
“What did he want?”
“Just to know if he could be of any assistance.”
“What's
he
really want, I wonder? To know how soon he can wrap the estate up, I shouldn't wonder. I'll call him back.”
 
 
“Music, Japanese prints, canoeing,” Salter said. “A friend of Trudeau's, maybe? No, there's no sign of politics, except his sister.”
They were in Lucas's apartment, looking down on the Annex. Salter said, “Nice location. Half the restaurants in Toronto are at your doorstep, there's a liquor store across the street and a bookshop around the corner, movies, the lot. There's even a Japanese print shop a couple of blocks away. Where do they buy their groceries, I wonder?”
“The Manulife Center. My wife shops there on her way home.”
“Yeah? Okay, I'll look around here, you take the bedrooms.”
The living room and kitchen were worth only a glance. As expected, the walls were covered in Japanese prints; some stereo equipment, along with several hundred CDs, LPs and tapes, nearly filled one end wall. There was no television set in the living room, and Salter glanced into the main bedroom expecting to find one mounted on the wall above the end of the bed, but there was none there either.
The furniture in the living room consisted of two large couches covered in grey tweed and a matching armchair and two leather club chairs. Five tables of different sizes supported vases, cups and glasses and at least a dozen magazines. One of the vases held long-dead,
white daffodil-type flowers, the kind that Salter disliked for their stink, but balancing those was a fragrant vase of still-living freesia. One huge Middle Eastern carpet covered most of the floor, a thin, pale expensive-looking thing. There were no Western paintings on the walls to compete with the Japanese prints except one, of a beautiful girl in her twenties with frizzy orange hair–a slimmer, younger Flora Lucas.
On a side table, a group of framed photographs testified to the history of Lucas's relationships. Salter noted several parental-looking couples and two pictures of heavy, balding men and pioneer-type women who were probably ancestors. The rest featured various combinations of Lucas, his sister, and assorted strangers, covering the span of the siblings' lives from infancy up to each one's marriage. There the record stopped.
Smith came out of a bedroom. “Nothing of any interest at all,” he said. “It's all as Barlow and Jensen said. There's nothing unusual about the contents of the bureau or the closet except that he had two sets of long silk underwear. Folks in Glasgow would find that strange.”
“Canoeing,” Salter said authoritatively, the old Canadian explaining to the young immigrant. “You wear silk underwear canoeing if you've got plenty of money.”
“Aye? I haven't come across it before. 'Course, there's not a lot of canoeing in Glasgow.”
“Give me a hand with this lot. Marinelli's people would have taken the appointment books and such. I've seen a letter addressed to his sister he never sent.”
“His last words?”
“His last wishes, I imagine, plus a list of his assets and where to find them. And any little donations or bequests he wanted her to look after, but weren't worth putting in the will.”
“How do you know? Have you read it?”
“I just went through the same thing with my lawyer.”
“Why wouldn't you put stuff in your will?”
“It's easier to keep a running list of intentions. If you put them in a will and change your mind you have to keep adding clauses and getting them witnessed. But if you change your mind about, say, who
you want to leave your collection of
Hustler
to, you can just cross them off your list and write in another name. This way you leave everything to one or two people in your will, asking them to do all the little things on the list.”
“How the rich live, eh? I don't think anyone in our family left a will. What if the heir doesn't want to do it? Maybe your wife doesn't like the man you've left your fishing rod to.”
“Then she doesn't have to give it to him. You have to trust them a little, though. If not, put everything in your will.”
“Have we found the will?”
“Probably deposited with his lawyer, who is also probably the man he was in partnership with. We'll find out this afternoon. Lucas's office is on Prince Arthur. I'll go over and talk to the partner now. Stay here, keep poking around, and I'll pick you up when I'm done.”
 
 
Lucas's partner, Derek Fury, a small, polished man in his early sixties whose every hair, nail and tooth had been clipped, filed and buffed as if Fury had a loving owner, beamed his goodwill alternately at Salter and at the room behind Salter as if to an audience watching the two men put on a performance. He was not dressed in the height of fashion, nor was his hair the right length for the year; his glasses, which fashion said should be narrow and steel-edged, were huge, like oversize windows tacked onto an old house. Together with his bow-tie, his waistcoat and the large dots on his shirt they showed him to be an original, a man who dressed in the things he liked. His outfit, like the decor in most people's homes, could be accounted for as the steady accumulation over thirty years of the fabrics and accoutrements that continued to appeal to him, even as fashion moved on.
Salter introduced himself and Fury extended a little shell-like hand, momentarily caressing Salter's fingers, then put his hands together on top of the desk and waited, smiling.
“I'm investigating the death of Jeremy Lucas,” Salter said. He had to begin somewhere.
Fury smiled his understanding of what Salter had said, then hitched his body forward in a gesture of encouragement, but said nothing.
“How long had you two been partners?”
Fury referred to a note in front of him. “Nineteen years. In the beginning we were both junior partners in a firm with two other lawyers, but when the seniors died we re-formed ourselves and gave the partnership our own names. Just the two of us.”
“You knew him well, then?”
“Absolutely.”
“Did you socialize with him?”
“Oh, no. No. Oh, my, no. Not at all. I bought him lunch on his birthday, and he did the same on mine. Somewhere rather grand, usually. We used to compete a bit. Last time he took me to Canoe. Do you know it? I thought by the name it would be somewhere he patronized with his trekking chums, where they would serve pemmican and canned fruit–you know, a sort of bush meal.” He smiled, a huge delighted grin at the idea of eating a bush meal in Toronto, retaining the smile until Salter smiled back. Then the light died as he remembered himself. He continued, “But actually it's very elegant. I was on the point of arranging something for his birthday at a new place I'd heard about, The Samphire, on King Street. Do you know it?”

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