Raw Bone (16 page)

They clinked their glasses and fell into silence again. MacNeice was aware of Marcello, polishing glasses behind the bar, far enough away to appear to be interested in the hockey game on screen, but close enough that MacNeice was fairly certain he was eavesdropping.

He cleared his throat. “Why aren’t you seeing anyone?” Then he immediately tried to take the question back. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business.”

She grinned at him, enjoying the moment.

“I do have one question—well two. Are you flirting or making fun of me?” MacNeice asked.

“Both.”

She was wearing a dark blue suit and a grey cashmere sweater with a low V-neck showing modest cleavage. It struck him as somewhere between business smart and nightclub sexy—though he realized he wouldn’t really know, since his nightlife was non-existent.

“Mind if I ask you a question? Have you dated at all since your wife died?”

Instantly, his face felt hot and the last bite of branzini stuck in his throat. He coughed slightly and took a sip of wine to wash it down. He was happy that Marcello was busy making a cappuccino at the end of the bar. The loud hissing of the machine’s frother gave him time to compose himself.

“No … I haven’t.” He glanced up at the television and pretended to be interested in the game, though from that angle, he couldn’t make out who was playing.

“I’m not much for dating either.”

Sam told him she hadn’t dated anyone since returning to the city. In part, because of work and the need to generate freelance contracts with American syndicates, but also because she’d bought a condo and was obsessed with furnishing it.

“It’s at James and Bold, an 1880s stone two-and-a-half storey. Mine’s the top one-and-a-half.” She explained that the half-storey was her office, and the roof patio made her think of Paris.

“That’s a stretch for Dundurn.” He looked at her to be sure she was serious. She was. For the first time since she came into the bar, he felt that they had made a connection—a mutual affection for the city.

“It has to start somewhere, probably with people like me who believe the first step is just that—a belief that Dundurn is great.”

He smiled.

“I can jog to the botanical gardens, the mountain or along the waterfront. I can walk here in any kind of weather to enjoy the food and the company.”

He was surprised to see her face flush as she cleaned an area of her bowl that she’d already cleaned. MacNeice offered his empty plate to a passing waitress and shifted on the bar stool to face Samantha. “What else?”

“Okay. I loved Chicago, but I can go everywhere here and feel safe. Even into the north-end. When I was a kid, my mother told me that was strictly off-limits.”

MacNeice accepted an espresso and grappa he hadn’t ordered, noting the look on
Marcello’s face and admitting to himself that a few minutes earlier he’d been exhausted and desperate to leave. He wasn’t anymore.

“Don’t you feel like this is an exciting time for Dundurn?”

He nodded. “Tell me something else.”

“About … ?” She wiped her mouth with the napkin.

“What do you love?”

She looked at him to make sure he wasn’t teasing, or flirting, then pushed the hair from her face. “I love intensity … I mean in people, but also in places. I love art and music and books and wandering around the great cities of the world.”

Her face became softer and she lowered her voice. “I love wine and food, and I love a man who asks me what I love.”

He was twirling his grappa glass on the marble bar, noticing how light from the spotlight above splintered around the glass. He wondered,
why now, why her? What about Kate? What about Fiza?

“And, I have a recurring dream about walking on cobblestones between ancient houses, a black and white dog follows happily along, but I haven’t any idea of where I am—somewhere in Europe.”

MacNeice forced himself back into the moment. He looked down at Samantha’s hands, watching how they rose and fell as she spoke—punctuating, emphasizing. MacNeice knew about dreams and was certain he’d pay for this flirtation the moment he was asleep. “How are you getting home, Sam?”

“It’s not that far. I’ve got my umbrella at the door.”

“I’d be happy to drive you.”

After glancing at the slashing rain on the restaurant window, she accepted.

As he pulled up in front of her building, she laughed. “It was almost like my first date in Dundurn.”

“Mine too, in a long time.” He eased the Chevy up to the curb and stopped, keeping it in drive, his foot firmly on the brake.

“Would you like to come up, Mac?”

Though it was almost eleven, he said yes. Soon he was climbing the stairs behind her. He smiled, noticing her slim ankles. God is alive in the details, he thought. Sam paused at her glossy blue door. “You’ll see blue’s a bit of a theme,” she said sheepishly as she opened the door and turned on the lights, easing herself out of her shoes. MacNeice removed his too and put them neatly beside hers. Samantha took his coat and hung it next to hers on a wall rack. She asked him if he’d like a glass of Chablis. “I opened it when I thought about making dinner at home. I don’t want it to go to waste, but I don’t want to drink it alone.”

He agreed that would be a bad idea. As she went into the kitchen, he took in the room. What wasn’t white—the door frames with their panelled doors—was pale blue. Except for the sofa, which was a cobalt blue that reminded him of Matisse, but he wasn’t confident enough to say why. The wide-planked flooring appeared to be the original cherry, bearing the scars—nail and screw holes—of the building’s past.

The galley kitchen was separated from the living room by a counter. Scattered across it was
The New York Times
and nestled between its sections was a near-empty glass of white wine. On one of the stools was a notepad and pencil. MacNeice resisted the urge to scan what was written.

On the walls were French industrial drawings, schematics of machinery, most of which dated from the 1930s, but MacNeice found two from the mid-1800s. These were fine line reconstructions of circular staircases burnt to ash in the châteaux during the French Revolution. These were complex drawings, so sophisticated that one could be forgiven thinking that they were art and not a how-to guide for restoring what had been lost.

“My father was a structural engineer and I’ve always loved that kind of drawing. They remind me of him,” Samantha said, handing him a glass as she came to join him. “Cheers.”

“Indeed, cheers.”

He would recall later that the evening ended the next morning, but he was less certain about the actual moment it began. He was sure of the music—Art Tatum, his choice, from her collection of LPs, played on a high-tech turntable. He remembered the moment she put her hand on his as she poured the first glass from the second bottle of Chablis, and her laugh. Apparently he’d said something funny, though whatever that was, he couldn’t recall.

He remembered the kiss. He was at the door and he’d meant it as “thank you” and “I hope to see you again,” but it led immediately to another kiss followed by an embrace—initiated by her. He remembered not wanting her to let go, but not knowing exactly what to do.

Was it too much wine or the years spent living without physical contact? He didn’t know, but he woke up with an untroubled mind, an utterly relaxed body and a foreign tingling in his groin. His eyes took in everything, the room and the duvet pushed down to their ankles, her body and on the bedroom wall another drawing of another ancient staircase. He could see that he had
made an attempt to put his clothes neatly on the chair, but his socks looked like they’d been tossed. He had no idea where he’d put his underwear.

She stirred beside him and rolled onto her back. “Good morning, Detective Superintendent.” She looked at him and smiled before closing her eyes again. Moments later, her phone buzzed urgently from the nightstand. She propped herself on an elbow to scan the display, then said, “Sorry, but I have to take this.”

She slipped out of bed and walked to the window, the phone to her ear. She listened, said “okay” and “understood” and hung up.

Turning back to him, she said, “I have to pack. I’d proposed an in-depth article on the Greek banking system’s risk management practices before and after the economic collapse. At first my editor said no, but then I found a disgraced former bank president who was in a prison near Athens. He agreed to give me an interview in return for his wife and grown son receiving the equivalent of five thousand US dollars. My editor just told me that the paper will cover it, so I have to catch the next flight to Athens.”

“When are you back?”

“It depends on how co-operative people are. I can’t just take what the imprisoned banker says as the truth: I have to corroborate it. Maybe a week, maybe longer.” She came over and sat on the edge of the bed, and he reached out to run a hand along her thigh. “Please don’t do that,” she said. “It makes me not want to go.”

The call to Anniken’s parents took all of six minutes—including the time it took for Markus Christophe to translate English to Norwegian and back again. The two daughters were both away, one doing her residency at a hospital in Oslo, the other in Frankfurt on business. Anni’s mother was in hospital following a hip replacement. Her father had just arrived home from the market when the phone rang. MacNeice told him what had happened to his daughter, and then Christophe repeated his words in Norwegian, his voice charged with emotion but steady. When he stopped, there was a pause that lasted at least thirty seconds.

Then, over the crackling line, the father said, in English, “My Anni is gone?”

MacNeice asked Christophe to ask if there was someone nearby so that he wouldn’t be alone. But before he could interpret, Mr. Kallevik said, “We will be well. Okay … okay. Well … goodbye. We talk soon, Markus. Goodbye.” The long-distance line burped twice. He was gone.

“Markus, are you still on the line?” MacNeice asked.

“I am.”

“Do you know how to reach the sisters?”

“I call my fiancée—she knows them. And I will phone him later too.” He cleared his throat. “The Kalleviks are strong people, ya—farmers in Norway must be strong.” He excused himself and blew his nose. “I come to you, ya? I come for Anni’s body. We should be going now … back to Norway.”

It was just after noon when his cellphone rang. MacNeice realized he’d been daydreaming about soft flesh and warm sunlight.

It was Dylan’s caseworker, and before she let him speak, she outlined the rules: MacNeice would have five minutes, no more, since Dylan had to eat lunch with his foster family. Second, MacNeice was not to upset him.

She passed the phone to Dylan.

“Hullo.” The boy’s voice was filled with fear and uncertainty.

“Have they put you up close to your school?”

“Yeah, pretty close.”

“So how is the foster home?”

“It’s okay, I guess.”

“I just have one question for you, Dylan. It will help our investigation. In the night table next to your father’s bed, we found three keys in a metal box. One of them is a post office box key. Do you know anything about them?”

“Keys?”

“Yes, in a tin box: a post office box key and two others, fairly old. Neither of them fit the doors of your house.”

“I saw them once, but I was just bored and snoopin’, so I never asked Dad about them.”

The caseworker came back on the line to inform MacNeice that the conversation was over. When he protested, she said softly, “Dylan doesn’t want to talk anymore. He needs time to adjust … to a different life. I’ll keep you informed, if you like, though I’m limited in what I can
share.”

MacNeice thanked her, put the phone down and slipped Nicholson’s keys in his pocket. He told Ryan he’d be back in an hour, and headed for the stairs.

At the main post office, he asked to see the manager. When a middle-aged man with thinning hair emerged from a back office, MacNeice introduced himself, then put the key in front of him.

Without picking it up, the man said, “It’s a P.O. box key.”

“Right. I want the name that it’s registered under and the location of the box.”

“No can do. Without a warrant I can’t give you a name. And to get information out of me, you’ll need a federal warrant, requested by the RCMP.”

MacNeice looked at the name tag on the man’s shirt. “Tell me, Mr. Tekatch, do you have kids?”

“Yeah—two, a boy and a girl—but you’re still gonna need the Mounties.”

MacNeice pointed over the manager’s shoulder to a box wrapped up, down and sideways in two-inch packing tape. “That box behind you …”

Tekatch turned. “So?”

“This key,” MacNeice said, “belonged to a man who was a teacher and father. He was stripped and duct-taped tighter and more completely than that box, to a child’s wagon. He was left in Gage Park. As a first responder was cutting him out of the tape, a grenade taped to his chin exploded. Several men were injured, some very seriously, and the teacher—”

“I read about it.”

“Well, his son is now an orphan. And, when I left him yesterday, he made me promise to find out who killed his dad.”

“Jesus …”

MacNeice picked up the key. “All I’m trying to do is keep a promise.” Offering the manager the key, he added, “Don’t give me anything other than the name that goes with this, but if that makes you uncomfortable, just give me the names of everyone who rents a P.O. box.”

Tekatch looked around to see if his staff were watching, and when he was sure they weren’t, he swung around to his computer and began clicking away on the keyboard. After a few minutes, six pages of single-spaced names, organized five columns across, spilled out of his desk printer. He collected them and brought them back to the counter. “So we’re clear, detective, this could easily cost me my job.” He passed them to MacNeice, along with an envelope. “These are last names only, nothing else. You find the name, I’ll give you the location of the box. Fair?”

MacNeice took the pages and started flipping through them, looking for Nicholson. His name wasn’t there. “Tell me, could someone rent a box under a pseudonym?”