Cathy Hobson, who had slept with the murdered man, Hans Larsen.
Cathy Hobson, daughter of Rod Churchill.
True, Larsen had been involved with many women. True, Churchill had been in his sixties.
Still…
After Sandra had finished her work for the day, she drove to the Churchill house, at Bayview just south of Steeles. It was only five kilometers from 32 Division headquarters — not much of a waste if this turned out to be a wild-goose chase. She parked and went up to the front door. The Churchill family had a FILE scanner — Fingerprint Index Lock Electronics. Common these days. Above the scanning plate was a doorbell button. Sandra pushed it. A minute later, a woman with gray hair appeared at the door. “Yes?”
“Hello,” said Sandra. “Are you Bunny Churchill?”
“Yes.”
Sandra held up her ID. “I’m Alexandria Philo, Metro Police. Can I ask you a few questions.”
“What about?”
“The, ah, death of your husband.”
“Goodness,” said Bunny. Then: “Yes, of course. Come in.”
“Thank you — but, before I forget, can I ask whose fingerprints the FILE scanner accepts?” Sandra pointed at the blue glass plate.
“Mine and my husband’s,” said Bunny.
“Anybody else?”
“My daughters. My son-in-law.”
“Cathy Hobson, and — ” Sandra had to think for a moment — “Peter Hobson, is that right?”
“Yes, and my other daughter, Marissa.”
They went inside.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Sandra, smiling sympathetically. “I know this must be a very difficult time for you. But there are a few little questions I’d like to clear up, so we can close the file on your husband.”
“I thought the file was closed,” said Bunny.
“Almost,” said Sandra. “The medical examiner wasn’t a hundred-percent sure of the cause of death, I’m afraid. He’d marked it down as probably an aneurysm.”
“So I’d been told.” Bunny shook her head. “It doesn’t seem fair.”
“Can you tell me if he had any health problems?”
“Rod? Oh, nothing serious. A little arthritis in one hand. Sometimes a little pain in his left leg. Oh, and he’d had a small heart attack three years ago — he took medication for that.”
Probably insignificant. And yet … “Do you still have his heart pills?”
“I suppose they’d still be in the medicine cabinet upstairs.”
“Would you mind showing them to me?” asked Sandra.
Bunny nodded. They went up to the bathroom together and Bunny opened the medicine cabinet. Inside, there was Tylenol, a container of dental floss, Listerine, some of those little shampoos they have at hotels, and two prescription bottles from Shoppers Drug Mart.
“Which one is his heart pills?” asked Sandra, pointing.
“Both,” Bunny said. “He’d been on one kind since his heart attack, and had been taking the other kind for several weeks now.”
Sandra picked up the bottles. Both had small computer-printed labels stuck to them. One said it contained Cardizone-D, which certainly sounded like a heart drug. The other was labeled Nardil. Both had been prescribed by a Dr. H. Miller. The Nardil bottle had a fluorescent orange label on it: “Warning — severe dietary restrictions.”
“What’s this about dietary restrictions?” asked Sandra.
“Oh, there was a long list of things he wasn’t supposed to eat. We were always very careful about that.”
“But he’d been eating take-out food the night he died, according to the medical examiner.”
“That’s right,” said Bunny. “He did that every Wednesday while I was out at a course. But he always had the same thing, and it had never given him trouble before.”
“Do you have any idea what he’d ordered?”
“Roast beef, I think.”
“Do you still have the packaging?”
“I threw it out,” said Bunny. “It’s probably still in our Blue Box. We haven’t had our trash pickup yet.”
“Do you mind if I have a look — and can I keep these pill bottles, please?”
“Uh, yes. Of course.”
Sandra slipped the pill bottles into her jacket pocket, then followed her down. The recycling hopper was inside a wicker hamper. Sandra rummaged through it. She soon turned up a small slip of newsprint with Rod’s order from Food Food printed on it.
“May I keep this, as well?” said Sandra.
Bunny Churchill nodded.
Sandra straightened up and put the slip of paper in her pocket. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” she said.
“I wish you’d tell me what’s going through your mind, Detective,” said Bunny.
“Nothing at all, Mrs. Churchill. Like I said, just loose ends.”
CHAPTER 34
Peter had flown to Ottawa for a meeting at Health and Welfare Canada, but it had only lasted a short time. It could have been done by conference call, but the minister liked to wield her powers every now and then, summoning people to the capital.
The soulwave work, of course, wasn’t the only project Hobson Monitoring was involved with. This meeting had been about the still-secret Project Indigo: a plan to produce a sensor that could categorically distinguish between an active smoker and one who had only been exposed to secondhand smoke. That way, the former could be disallowed benefits under provincial health-insurance plans for any illness caused by or exacerbated by smoking.
Anyway, with the meeting breaking up early, Peter found himself with an unexpected day to spend in Ottawa.
Ottawa was a government town, full of faceless bureaucrats. It produced nothing except documents and law, legislation and red tape. Still, it had to be a showcase for visiting world leaders — not everything could be in Toronto. Ottawa had many fine museums and galleries, a small amount of interesting shopping, the Rideau Canal (which in winter froze over, letting civil servants skate to work), and the pageantry of the changing of the guard on Parliament Hill. But Peter had seen all those things more than enough times in the past.
He asked the receptionist if there was a phone he could use, and she directed him to an unoccupied office. With government hiring freezes in their third decade, there were lots of those. The phone was an old audio-only model. Well, thought Peter, if they were going to spend tax dollars putting phones in unused offices, it was good that some restraint was being practiced. Like most Canadian executives, he knew Air Canada’s 800-number by heart. He was about to dial it to see if he could change his flight, but suddenly he found himself dialing 4-1-1 instead.
A voice said in English, “Directory assistance for what city, please?” Then the same phrase was quickly repeated in French.
“Ottawa,” said Peter. Videophones could access directory listings at the touch of a few keys, and for those who didn’t have such things, it was cheaper, and more environmentally friendly, to have free directory assistance. About half the time, one got an electronic operator, but Peter could tell by the bored slurring of the words that he’d landed a real live human today.
“Go ahead,” said the voice, realizing Peter’s language preference from the way he’d said the single word “Ottawa.”
