Bone Dance (25 page)

“How do I know you are not lying?”

“Have you ever talked to that guy? He asks more questions than he answers. I need a Tylenol after ten minutes with him.”

Frenchie threw back his head and laughed. “It is true. It is true. That man should learn to just say it. Like the commercial, huh, Aldo? Just say it.”

He pulled to the curb. Aldo let go of the belt and shoved me out onto the sidewalk.

The front passenger window rolled down. “You stay out of this,
ma belle
. It is done. If you go looking for answers, you will only find trouble.”

They pulled into traffic. Just another shiny blue Lincoln with a muddy license plate.

I found my purse lying half on the sidewalk, half on the road. I gathered the contents that had spewed out. Everything was accounted for except my cell phone. I looked around. Something that looked suspiciously like a phone antenna stuck out from under the back wheel of a red Toyota.

As I walked back to my car, I started to shake. Inside, I clutched my arms across my chest and rocked until the trembling stopped.

No case was worth that, I concluded. Then I thought about the rent and the fact that I'd only been on the job for a couple of hours. I might have earned enough for a Big Mac, but that was about it.

I decided to put in a few more hours, earn the three hundred I'd been paid, and call it a day.

I swung into the Bank Street Dairy Queen. Once I'd stopped shaking, the heat had seeped back in, leaving me rubbery-limbed and parched.

A Peanut Buster Parfait hit the spot. I sat in the almost empty parking lot and leaned back against the headrest. My neurons, no longer overheated, started firing a bit faster, and I realized there was an avenue of information that I hadn't yet tapped. Tossing the empty container in the garbage, I trotted across the parking lot to a pay phone and dialled Sophie Burch's number.

“Good afternoon, Crown Attorney Thaddeus Skipp's office.”

“Hi, Sophie.”

“Ronnie, what a surprise! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Sophie was the mother of an old boyfriend. Though the romance had soured, she and I had remained friends. “Actually, I'm hoping you can tell me a few things. About Gary Chicago's death.”

There was a long pause, “You know I'm not supposed to talk about anything I hear around here. I could get fired. Or even charged. It's a really big deal. Anyway, I don't know anything.”

“Come on, Soph, don't give me that. You screen everything that goes into or out of Skipp's office. Don't tell me you don't know anything.”

I could hear her breathing on the line.

“You owe me, and you know it,” I said.

“That's not fair! I'm going to pay you back!”

“I've heard that before.”

Sophie's voice shook, “I haven't been to the casino in six months. I swear to God that part of my life is over.”

“Look, I just had a run-in with some of Bolino's friends, and it's left me more than a little cranky.”

There was silence on the line.

“I gave you every cent I had to keep people like those from rearranging your body parts.”

“I know, Ronnie!”

“The least you could do is help me out.”

“I can't.”

“Damn it! I cashed in my
RRSP
s for you!”

“All right! All right! Just a minute.” I heard her door click shut.

“What is it you want?”

“Why don't we just start with some yes/no questions?”

Sophie sighed.

“I take it Ms. Rapture is the main suspect,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Are they pursuing other avenues?”

“No.”

“Do they have decent evidence against her?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“These are supposed to be yes/no questions,” she whispered.

“Come on, Soph, I need a hint.”

She sighed. “Not here. Not now.”

I smiled. We made a dinner date, and I headed for home. Time to clean up. I was having company, after all.

My apartment was one of many identical shoeboxes in a shabby high rise in the west end of Ottawa. Apartment 904, home sweet home. The Tweetster greeted me as I stepped through the door. Tossing seeds was his way of saying hello.

I took a quick, cool shower and slicked back my hair. It wasn't blow-drying weather. Anyway, my hairspray had already given up its last squirt, and digging the mini-bottle out of my purse just wasn't worth the effort.

Sophie arrived, a cold bottle of Chardonnay in hand. She was a cheap date; a couple of glasses and she was ready to talk.

“So you want to know what they've got on that Rapture woman, huh?” she asked around a mouthful of pizza.

“It would help me know what I'm up against.” I reached for another gooey slice.

“Well, everything seems to point to her.”

“Everything would be what exactly?”

“They found him in the bathroom of the hotel room. He was fully dressed except that . . . well . . . let's just say he was exposed.”

“Umm . . .” I said.

“Apparently he looked perfectly normal except for the big hole in his chest. And the blood, of course. Whoever shot him nailed him right in the heart.”

“None of that necessarily implicates my client.”

“No,” Sophie said, “but they found cigarettes in the ashtray with lipstick stains on them. A colour called Rubicund Red—apparently a favourite of Ms. Rapture's.”

They couldn't possibly be harassing my client with only that scanty bit of evidence.

“As I understand it,” Sophie continued, “they found traces of lipstick on certain other things as well.” She gave me a look.

“Ah.”

“Our investigator says word on the street is that Chicago
was going to drop her. He was eyeing up someone else.”

I contemplated another slice of pizza but had begun to feel queasy.

“There's more.” Sophie patted her throat and the back of her neck with a tissue. “They found your client's fingerprints on the doorknob and the phone. When the
DNA
comes back, they'll be picking her up.” She raised her glass in a mock salute. “It looks like you played the wrong hand this time, Ronnie.”

I lay awake half the night wondering why a murderer would hire someone to find out who killed the victim. Did she think I was so stupid that I'd just meddle around causing problems?

In the morning I called Ms. Rapture and didn't waste any time on preliminaries. “They found your fingerprints in the hotel room,” I paused. “What have you got to say about that?”

Just as I began to wonder if she planned to reply at all, her shaky voice came over the line. “Gary left me a message to meet him at the hotel at nine. When I walked in, he was already dead.”

I rubbed my temple, “You didn't think I needed to know about that?”

“Oh, God! It was so horrible!” Her voice caught in her throat. “I loved him.”

“Why didn't you call 911?”

“I was going to. I picked up the phone to call,” she said, “but I realized it might look bad for me. So I left him there. God forgive me, I just left him there!”

She cried while I sifted through the new information. “Why should I believe you?” I asked.

“You have to! Someone is setting me up. You're my only chance.”

I sighed. “All right,” I said. “I'll see if I can get the family to talk to me. But don't get your hopes up.”

I called ahead, and Mrs. Chicago reluctantly agreed to meet me. She opened the door of her million-dollar-tons-of-curb-appeal home and fixed me with a stare that would have made a lesser mortal cringe. I handed her my card and held my ground. “Mrs. Chicago, thanks for meeting with me. I know this must be difficult for you.”

She ignored my out-thrust hand but took the card and stepped back, waving me in. Amber liquid sloshed from her glass onto the marble floor. “I don't know why you're here,” she said as I pushed the
RECORD
button on the tape recorder and followed her into the depths of the house.

In the kitchen, she picked up a knife and began slicing a lemon. She finished her drink in one quick toss-back.