Christmas?”
“I’ve had better,” I said. “And yours?”
“I’ve had better too.” He stirred his coffee. “You said this was about business, Jo. What’s up?”
My plan was to be brisk, objective, and matter-of-fact. But seated across from this man with whom I had shared every possible intimacy for three years, the words tumbled out. “I’m scared,” I said. “Scared and exhausted and confused. I’ve got a ton of information. I don’t know what any of it means. I keep banging into walls and stumbling into dead ends.”
Alex gave me the smallest of smiles. “Sounds like we’re working the same case,” he said.
“Then let’s help each other. My concern is Jill. Yours is the truth. There’s no conflict of interest here, Alex.”
His gaze was assessing. “You’re suggesting we share information.”
“Not everything,” I said quickly. “I know this is irregular, but I thought we could just ask each other a few questions. No obligation to answer unless we wanted to.”
I could see him deciding. “So who gets to go first?” he asked.
“You can,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “The Toronto police went to Evan MacLeish’s office to see who he’d been in contact with before his death. The place had been picked clean. Do you know anything about that?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to fill me in?”
“No.”
Alex shook his head. “Off to a great start. Do I get to go again?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay. Here’s something current. We have two witnesses who were at the airport today when the EMT people picked up Tracy Lowell. Both our witnesses heard Tracy tell her niece, ‘I did it for you.’ Do you know what she was talking about?”
“I have a pretty good idea. For starters, Bryn is Tracy’s daughter, not her niece. I’m surprised that didn’t come out when you interviewed her at the hospital.”
Alex blew on his coffee. “She wouldn’t talk to us. Clammed up absolutely, but that is interesting – and significant. So you think Tracy was telling her daughter she killed for her.”
“Obviously I can’t be certain,” I said. “But my instincts tell me Tracy didn’t kill anybody. I think she was just making sure Bryn knew that she was the cause of her suicide attempt.”
“Nice parting gift for your kid,” Alex said. “Your turn now.”
I took a breath. “How tight are people’s alibis for the night of the rehearsal dinner.”
“Not tight at all,” Alex said. “And I have no problem giving you this information because if you can add anything to the equation, we might finally get a break on the Leventhal case.”
“There’s no doubt in your mind that Gabe was murdered,” I said.
“None,” Alex said. “Pathology is still waiting for some tests results, but they have enough to state that Mr. Leventhal did not die of natural causes.”
“The night I identified the body, you said there was blood under Gabe’s fingernails. Was it Evan MacLeish’s?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Alex said. He leaned across the table and looked into my eyes. “Maybe this would go more smoothly if I suggested a line of questioning that would help us both. Jo, everyone is covering up for everyone else in this case. Claudia says she was with Tracy, except of course when she went out for a few minutes with Bryn, but luckily Felix happened along at just that moment, so he and Tracy were together. Then Felix went back to his room and Claudia spent an hour with him there. We have some corroborative evidence for that particular encounter. Felix and Claudia were making so much noise that the guest in the next room had to knock on their door and ask them to keep it down.”
“They were quarrelling.”
“Actually, the guest thought they were indulging in a little overly athletic lovemaking. When Felix answered the door, the guest was surprised to see that he was fully dressed.” Alex rubbed his eyes. “Bryn, of course, was never alone – not for a second. After Claudia left, Tracy and Bryn spent some quality time together. It’s seamless. The weird thing is, I don’t think these people even understand why they’ve dropped into this mutual protection mode. But they’ve obviously had a lot of practice cooperating with one another, because we can’t break their stories.”
“So if I could supply an inconsistency, you’d have a wedge.”
Alex wiped a small ring of coffee from the table. “Yes, and a wedge is exactly what we need if we’re ever going to crack this open. There’s another area where we could use a break. After he left the wedding, Jill’s partner, Felix Schiff, apparently disappeared off the face of the earth for a period of at least sixteen hours.”
“I saw Felix the morning after the wedding,” I said. “He looked like hell. He told me he’d been doing the club scene.”
“That’s what he told us too,” Alex said. “The problem is nobody remembers seeing him. Of course, nobody remembers not seeing him, but we’re dealing with a population whose powers of observation grow dim when a cop walks into the room. Even Mr. Schiff claims to have zero recollection of what happened.”
“Do you believe him?” I said.
“Not much you can do when a man says he had a blackout.”
“It’s so out of character,” I said. “I worked with Felix on ‘Canada Tonight’ for four years. He was the executive producer in Toronto and I was just a political panellist out here, but we talked every week about stories. We weren’t close, but I thought I knew him. He always called himself ein prakiter Mensch – a practical man.”
“Not the kind of man to go out and get blind drunk after his business partner’s wedding.”
“No,” I said. “Especially when that business partner is a friend.”
Alex’s cellphone rang. He half-turned from me, mumbled a few words, then looked at me apologetically. “I have to get back to work,” he said.
I stood up. “I invited you. I’ll pay.”
“I’ll get it next time,” he said. He touched my arm. “Jo, I would like there to be a next time. For what it’s worth, I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” I said. “That didn’t make the hurt any less.”
When I went to pay, Marv himself was at the cash register. He scratched his belly and gave me his best smile. “Come again,” he said. “And sit in a window booth like you did tonight. I’m working on strategies to bring in a more genteel clientele.” He scratched his belly again, then rasped confidentially, “You know, people like yourself and me.”
Angus’s car was parked halfway down the block from our house. The windows were fogged. I slowed, waited, and finally hit the horn. After a few too many beats, Angus rolled down the window. On the seat beside him, Leah was adjusting her clothing and smoothing her newly blonde choppy bob. When she recognized me, she waved. “Sorry, Mrs. Kilbourn. It’s been a while since we were together. We’re hungry puppies.”
I smiled at her. “Enjoy the moment,” I said.
“I am,” she said.
Angus leaned out of the window. “So you’re okay with this?”
“I’m great with this,” I said. “But keep the action away from the house for a while. Bryn is going through some tough times.”
“Do you think I’m a lowlife for bailing on her?” Angus asked.
“You’re not bailing on her. Be her friend, and save the rest for Leah.”
When she heard the door, Jill came downstairs. She moved slowly, as if even the act of putting one foot in front of the other demanded an act of will. Being bludgeoned by crises was taking its toll on us all.
We gravitated towards the kitchen and sat at the table. Outside, a squirrel cleaned out the bird feeder. “How did Bryn handle the news about Tracy?” I asked.
Jill hugged herself as if she were cold. “Pragmatically,” she said. “She wanted to know if Tracy could stop us from moving to New York. I called Kevin. He says it’s a dicey situation, but the best thing to do would be to sit down and talk it out, just the three of us – no lawyers, no outsiders to put steel in Tracy’s spine. He also told me that since Tracy’s lost her job on that kids’ show, she’d probably be open to discussion of financial compensation.
