A Victim Must Be Found (16 page)

“Oh, Mattie’s not here. She’s out.”

“Do you know when she’s coming back? It’s important.”

“I see, well, you could give me your name and I’ll have her telephone you when she gets back.” Gertrude Bouts had a trace of an accent that was probably Dutch. “Will you come in? I have to see to the baby.” I followed her down the hall and into a large front room full of comfortable contemporary furniture with a large TV set supplying the focus of all the arrangements. Only the baby’s playpen was set on a different axis. Mrs. Bouts picked up the child, who looked to be under a year old, and began to address him as Willum. I sat down into the deep comfort of a piece of sectional armchair-sofa, and waited. At last she put Willum back into the playpen and smiled again in my direction.

“Sorry about that,” she said. She had the idiom exactly, but there was an accent under it which escaped her ear. “My husband’s in Hamilton this morning. He works as a dot-etcher for a photo-engraver. You said it was important that you see Mattie?”

“Yes,” I said. “A friend of hers has been killed.”

“Oh, no!” she said, holding tightly to the arm of her chair. “How awful!” I told her what had happened, the whole schmeer. She didn’t seem to recognize Pambos’s name when I got that far.

“When do you expect her back, Mrs. Bouts?” Here she looked awkward and failed to meet my eyes.

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Cooperman, Mattie’s not here. I mean, she’s gone away. She left nearly a week ago.”

“Do you know where she went or where she’s staying?”

Gertrude Bouts shook her head. She didn’t know anything. I began to feel a tightening at the bottom of my stomach. I took a breath before asking any more questions.

“Are you from the police, Mr. Cooperman?” She tilted her head like she was asking if I liked the temperature of the room. I explained that too.

“As a friend of the dead man, they will try to get in touch with her before too long. They’ll want to know where she went.”

“I see,” she said. “I see.” She stared at the carpet.

“What can you tell me about Mattie, Mrs. Bouts? I never met her.”

“Well, she was a very pretty, fun-loving thing, you know.” She put her hand to her mouth suddenly. “Why did I say was? Oh my God, you don’t think …?” There wasn’t a particle of evidence to suggest that any harm had come to Mattie Lent, but I found myself sharing the same fear that Gertie Bouts had voiced. We were both fearing the worst for that pretty fun-loving thing.

THIRTEEN

“Oh, no, Mattie is Austrian, not German. She comes from Schruns, the skiing centre up in the Montafon Valley in the Vorarlberg. Her father had an inn on the Kirchplatz, or as you would say ‘Church Street.’” Gertie handed me a black-and-white photograph of a pert blonde, smiling through snow-glare at the camera. In the snapshot, Mattie was standing in an up-to-date ski outfit in front of an inn. Snow-laden firs flanked the end of the inn, and latemodel cars that owed nothing to Detroit were jammed together along the street.

“So this is Mattie.” I waved the photograph, turning my statement into a question. Gertie nodded. “When was she back there last?”

“That was taken in the early winter of 1986. She went back to see her parents. Her mother’s been sick. They’re both over seventy.”

“Looks like a nice place.”

“Oh, yes, beautiful. It has green and white plastered houses and the church has a green dome like an onion.”

“What’s she like?”

“Oh, like in the picture. She likes to go skiing and dancing. She likes a good time.”

“Does she have a job?”

“That I wouldn’t know. She pays the rent on time. She wears nice clothes.”

“Did you ever hear her talking about Mr. Kiriakis from the Stephenson House?”

“No, she didn’t go for little coffee-klatch confessions. She didn’t pull her hair down with me, although she lived with us for nearly five years.”

“I see. And you’ve no idea where she went?”

“Oh, no. She just left. She didn’t take more than an overnight bag.”

“May I see her room?” Gertie didn’t answer right away. She was trying to remember when she’d changed the bed last, maybe. Her lips were very pale when at last she nodded.

“If you like,” she said.

She got up a moment after I did and led the way up a staircase that was a little grand for a rooming house. She paused outside a door on the second floor and knocked, for form’s sake, then we went in. It was an ordinary bedroom without anything that struck me as odd or unusual. It was clean, tidy, with clothes in the closet and more in the bureau. In a drawer of the bedside table I found a few letters with Austrian stamps. The writing looked German to me and authentic enough to convince a non-Germanspeaking person. I examined some black-and-white photographs and postcards from Schruns. It looked like a nice place to visit. After slipping the letters back into their envelopes and tucking the collection back into the drawer. I turned back to Gertrude, who was trying to stay out of my way. “Are you at all worried about her disappearance, Mrs. Bouts?”

“‘Disappearance’? Why, Mr.—I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name …”

“Cooperman.”

“Mr. Cooperman, yes. Mr. Cooperman, until you came I didn’t think it was anything like that. She’s a young girl, but I thought, you know, that she’s a modern woman. ‘Disappearance’ is strong language for staying out all night. I mean, without knowing what you just told me about her friend, Mr. Kiriakis. She still may come home all together, you know, in one piece This isn’t the first time she’s been away without leaving word. Oh, no. At Christmas we didn’t hear from her for nearly two weeks. But that was Christmas, and we were busy and the time passed more quickly. Now, this time, I don’t know.”

“Well, maybe ‘disappearance’ is a big word for what’s happened. But coming just at the time of Pambos Kiriakis’s death … It does pose a question. I think you would be wise to inform the police of what’s happened.”

“Yes. I will speak with Dirk about it.”

“Has she had any visitors, any family coming to look for her?”

“I told you that they are in Austria, ah, but I was forgetting. Her sister Greta came last October. She stayed for three or four days and then went back to New York. She’s a translator at the United Nations.”

“Do you think that Mattie went to see her sister?”

“I don’t think so,” she said with the beginnings of a testy look coming to her face. “I don’t think they get along. Greta is very old fashioned, very serious, very religious.”

“I see. What about other friends?”

“I‘m sorry. I already told you. And now, I must get back to Willum. I’m sorry that I can’t be of more help. Dirk and I want to do the right thing, Mr. Cooperman. Do you think that the police will come to see us?” We moved out of Mattie’s room and down the staircase with the wine-coloured walls that told of grander times, when the living was easy and supported by an army of servants. In the front room again, before moving to the door, I tried another tack.

“Did Mattie have any interest in art? You know, paintings, oils, watercolours?”

“Oh yes, she talked about it. She went to Buffalo and Toronto to see the galleries there. Dirk said he’d show her the Hamilton gallery one day. But she wasn’t a painter herself. She liked to see the pictures.”

“I see. Thank you for your help, Mrs. Bouts. I’m sorry to have troubled you.” I made my way back through the hall to the tall front door. We shook hands formally and a moment later I was looking back over my shoulder at the house, trying to think whether I was imagining the feeling that Gertie Bouts wasn’t telling me everything she might about this business. The house, tidy in its nineteenth-century reserve, wasn’t helping either.

Further up Queen Street, I passed the familiar office of the
Beacon
. Through the window on the ground floor I could see customers placing ads or picking out words for obituaries and wedding announcements. News of last night’s dirty deed at the Stephenson House had not yet reached the street. The
Beacon
was an evening paper; it rarely hit the pavement before three-thirty in the afternoon. Next to the
Beacon
, an old house, formerly used as a real-estate company’s head office, had sprouted a “For Sale” sign. I knew it wouldn’t be long before demolition crews would start pulling down the last of the surviving houses on this part of Queen Street. I could almost imagine the original owner of the property stepping out of a carriage and complaining to the contractor that there must be some mistake.

I walked past the window of the Upper Canadian Bank. As I expected, there were no customers standing in line behind the velvet ropes. Four tellers stood idly at their posts waiting for their eleven o’clock break. I felt a warm surge when I recalled that Jonah Abraham’s cheque was, even as I walked along the main street of Grantham, turning me into a man of wealth and property, comparatively speaking. At least it wouldn’t sink into my overdraft without leaving a trace. That thought led directly to a rut in my recent thinking. I was obsessed with the idea that I had given Abraham a good deal when I’d agreed to continue the investigation I started for Pambos. I wondered when was the last time Jonah Abraham had got a bargain.

A tune came to my lips, a spring to my stride and I almost felt my girth increasing through its association with affluence. A couple of people said hello to me as I came east along the south side of St. Andrew Street. I almost felt like an established merchant on the street, a bit like my father nodding at his competitors as he passed them standing between the large display windows of their stores.

My sunny, daydream died. Jonah Abraham’s daughter was leaning against the street door leading to my office. She looked like she was trying to hold up a falling building.

“Hello, Mr. Cooperman.”

“Goodbye, Miss Abraham.” She blocked my way to the door handle. “Excuse me,” I said, and I tried to say it politely. I pushed past her.

“Why are you so mean to me?” she asked. “I’ve never met anyone as rude as you are.”

“That comes of a sheltered life. You don’t know how lucky you are.” I got the door open and headed up my twenty-eight steps. She was right behind me. I could hear sharp heels on the linoleum. I didn’t even try to close my door. She wandered in and shut it with a flat white palm.

“You didn’t answer my question. Why are you so mean?” She moved away from the door and walked behind the client’s chair. “I could tell Daddy,” she said with a smile.

“Right now I’m on better terms with your old man than you are, so don’t threaten me with an empty gun.” I flipped through the mail that I’d scooped up as I came in. There was nothing of interest, except for a bill from an oil company with an enclosure offering me a device for inflating my punctured tires, with nothing to pay on it for six months.

“Don’t call him that. ‘My old man,’ I mean. You don’t know anything about him.”

“I know he’s worried as hell about you.” I picked up the telephone and moved it across the desk. “You want me to dial the number?” She crossed her arms and held onto her elbows for a second, then slumped into the client’s chair. She looked at me like I was the third school principal in a row to tell her she was a candidate for expulsion.

“I can’t talk to him now. Not with you here. I’ll call him later, I promise.” She gave me a blast of those salamandrine eyes again. I wondered if a private investigator is
in loco parentis
to his client’s offspring. I hoped not.

“Okay, I believe you will. Now, what can I do for you?”

“I just wanted to talk. I know you’re working for Daddy. He told me.”

“So, you’re checking up. Is that it?”

“He’s always getting short-changed. He can’t buy a stamp for the going price. Everybody nicks him. You don’t know what having money’s like.” I thought about that, but said nothing.

“Do you know why he hired me?”

“Naturally. He wants you to find some kind of list of paintings or other. He said that he is suspected of taking the list from a man who has just been killed. Now I can tell you right now that he didn’t do that. He was home with me all night last night.”

“That’s a big help.” She slowly lost the pout on her face and began to look quite proud of herself. “I hope you keep this information to yourself. I wouldn’t share it with the cops if I were you.”

“Why should I do anything you say, Mr. Cooperman?”

“If you want to keep your old man out of jail, you won’t complicate things by inventing phoney alibis that are about as watertight as a broken coffee filter. You were out last night and didn’t get back until after I got to your place. Besides that, the cops know he was at the scene of the crime. He called them. So, please go take a creative writing course somewhere and use your inspiration on paper.”

She didn’t like me again. She’d almost become friendly, but I put things back about a hundred years. She slouched and fidgeted in her chair. I decided to try another tack, just to see what would happen. “What do you know about Mary MacCulloch?”

“Mary Mac …? She owns a picture Daddy wants. A Lamb, I think. She’s very beautiful, and Daddy says she’s very spoiled. He sometimes calls her ‘Bo Peep’ because of all the Lambs she owns.”

“You share your father’s interest in painting, I gather?”

“I love pictures. Yes. But neither one of us …!”

“Hey! I’m on your side, remember? You don’t have to protest your innocence with me. I just thought you might be able to help me out, that’s all. What is this Lamb that Mary MacCulloch has that your father covets?” switched from “old man” to “father” to illustrate the fact that I too could be reasonable when others were prepared to be so.

“It’s a major painting, but on a small scale. It’s only about that big.” She indicated a rectangular shape about three feet by two. “He said he would trade shares in Windermere Distilleries to own it. And you have to understand that Windermere Distilleries is bread and butter to the family.”

“He has a soft spot for Lamb too, hasn’t he. He’s another Bo Peep. Do you think he’s any good?” I expected the look she gave me; the question was a vague probe. I don’t know what I was after.

“Wallace Lamb’s pictures will still be hanging in galleries long after a lot of abstract expressionist garbage has been cleared from the walls of our major galleries,” she said with a face like Joan of Arc or maybe an English suffragette.