Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (60 page)

“‘Summer in Mind.'”

“Yes, that was it. Good for you!” she exclaimed, as though they were teammates playing Trivial Pursuit. “He used to sing it for me. He could be quite charming company when he tried, you know.”

“I got the impression your son liked him too.”

She stared blankly at him, the eyes of a raccoon caught up a tree with no way back down. “Did my son tell you that?”

“More or less.”

“Then perhaps you should ask him about Jags Rohmer,” she said, gazing at him over a cloud of smoke. “I should hardly think he would remember Jags. He was very young at the time.”

“He told me Jags was a religious man. He said you went to church together.”

Her face showed disquiet, though she didn't contradict him. She took another drag, pulling her face into a grotesque mockery, a death's mask, as her skin tautened and her cheekbones showed the hollows beneath the flesh, spewing smoke like some charnel house beauty queen.

“That's a strange sort of memory. I don't know what to make of it.”

“Would you say Jags was religious?”

“I really don't know what to say to that.” She looked discomfited again. “I suppose everyone has something odd about them. I can't really see Jags as a religious person. He was very iconoclastic back then. He couldn't abide traditional values. But then again
I didn't know everything about him.”

Dan considered his next question carefully. “Were you aware of any extremes in his sexual nature?”

“Such as?”

“Do you know what the term ‘gasper' refers to?”

Marilyn looked away for a moment. Dan thought she wasn't going to answer. Finally, she turned back to him. Her mouth had hardened into a thin line.

“You're referring to one of his later albums. Yes,
I'm aware of the term and what it means. I never saw anything of that side of him. He was always very respectful to me.” Her eyes narrowed. “Despite the times,
we managed to be discreet about some things.”

“Of course.”

“Is there anything else?” she asked sharply.

Dan tried for an offhand smile before the next assault. “Would you say that Jags had a negative impact on your life? Is there anything you blame him for?”

Now she focused her gaze directly on him. “In what way ‘negative'?” She blew a cloud of smoke at him. “Drugs, for instance? Is that what you came here to ask? Whether I'm a drug addict? And if so did Jags Rohmer get me started? Is that what you want to know?”

“I'm sorry if I …”

She frowned and stubbed out her cigarette. “I don't think those are appropriate questions to be asking me about your employer.”

Dan nodded. “I'm talking about a time long ago, in the past, when he might have been a different person than he is today.”

“We were all different people in the past,” she said emphatically. “You're still young. You have no idea what I'm talking about.” She looked up at him. “For the record, I don't blame Jags Rohmer for anything. If you don't have any relevant questions for me, I think you should leave.”

Dan stood. She followed him to the door. He held out his hand, expecting her to shake it and close the door behind him. Instead, she paused.

“Do you know, Mr. Sharp, what my son thinks of me?”

She watched him closely, a gambler waiting for the turn of a card that will make or break her. A flash of red or a streak of black. Breath held back, barely daring to hope. The longing was almost tangible.

“He seems to think very highly of you.”

“Is that so?”

“I'm sure it is.”

She shook her head. Not the right card after all. “I don't think it's true, for what it's worth.”

“Why would he not think highly of you?”

She smiled ruefully, perhaps the first genuine expression he'd seen on her face since he arrived.

“I was a bad mother, Mr. Sharp. A very bad mother. I'm sure he blames me for a lot of things.”

It was her refrain, Dan realized. She'd said as much already. Even her self-professed failures made her special, a cut above other mothers, famous or not:
No one has failed as spectacularly as I. No one could be so sad and miserable as I
.

Dan smiled. “It's what children do.”

She contemplated this. “Perhaps.”

“If it's any consolation, he's never said anything negative about you to me.”

“Thank you,” she said simply. “I appreciate that.”

“Thank you for your time,” Dan said.

“I'm sorry I couldn't be of help.”

She looked relieved as he made his way out the door.

Ladybug, Ladybug

Ordinarily, the fire on Symes Road would have been classified as a three-alarm blaze. The call that came in to emergency at 1:13 am on Friday, September 12, should have resulted in a simple designation that would ensure a basic response unit of some twelve vehicles. Instead, it was classified as a “one-alarm probable.” Meaning there might or might not be a fire.

The exact classification of a blaze is never a precise thing. Fire fighters will tell you it depends partly on location, with the number of alarms indicating the required level of response. Larger alarms mean a greater response. Once a fire is confirmed, additional units such as ladder trucks, ambulances, and even civilian cars for various officials may be dispatched. Each alarm “upgrade” could mean as many as four or more additional vehicles being sent.

Precise or not, contemporary classifications are a far cry from early fire fighting efforts, which relied on church bells and watchtowers to ring out the alarm. Once alerted, fire fighters would scan the horizon for smoke in an effort to locate the blaze. As the system progressed, it gained in sophistication. Bell ringing grew to utilize a system of codes indicating direction or even the precise district where a fire was occurring. In 1852, Boston became the first city to employ a telegraph alarm system, greatly speeding response time and increasing efficiency.

The accuracy of an alert is also tied to eyewitness description, though not always wisely. The first call to fire hall number 423 on Keele Street came from a handful of drunken teenagers stumbling from one party to another. Initially unable to agree on what they were seeing, they took cellphone photographs of the flames tickling the second floor windows and spurting through the roofline for nearly a quarter of an hour before deciding that it might in fact be an actual fire and not “some fucking awesome rave” replete with lights and strobes. Finally, after another minute spent arguing over whose cellphone to use, the call was made.

“Uh, yeah, we think there might be a fire?”

There was no wind that evening and it had rained earlier, so the event was at first sight less dramatic than it might have been had the wind spread it faster and more conspicuously. What was also not clear was that the entire inside of the building was already being consumed. Which was why the fire began jumping from roof to roof less than thirty minutes after it began.

The first engine arrived on the scene at 1:19 a.m., along with a quickly swelling crowd of young people, thanks to a series of cellular and text messages sent by the teenagers to their friends in anticipation of a little excitement prior to making the emergency call. The fire department arrived to discover a blaze spreading much faster than normal. It was the first indication an arsonist was at work.

There was no question of gaining entry into the building. The north wall began to collapse within minutes of the fire department's arrival. Additional fire fighting units were quickly dispatched and neighbouring stations roused to help in the battle. The delay in designating the fire as being serious was one of the complications that contributed to the extent of the damage. It was nearly 6:00 a.m. before the blaze was sufficiently under control and a suggestion to evacuate the vicinity no longer considered necessary. By then the warehouse and three neighbouring buildings had been destroyed.

By afternoon the following day, forensics investigators were able to conclude that at least one life had been lost. The body was so thoroughly incinerated that they were unable to make even a cursory guess as to the age or sex of the victim. A number of beer bottles and cans were subsequently found in the area where the fire was believed to have started, so the initial suspicion of a rave that got out of hand was still being considered. According to the property owners, the building had been unoccupied pending renovation. In the rush to get the premises ready, a low-cost decorating company was hired to strip and paint all the interior walls. Large quantities of paint strippers, thinners, and turpentine had been imported for the job, which was to have begun Monday, leaving the place filled with a considerable amount of incendiary material.

The question of insurance fraud was considered unlikely since the owners had been doing well with long-term rentals. The investigators leaned toward a decision of accidental combustion, partly as a result of numerous reports of teenage intruders partying on the grounds. Unknown to the public, and unreported in the press till many weeks later, a disagreement erupted between the members of the investigating committee on whether to classify the blaze as arson or accident. The death made it tricky, as this put the onus on the building's owners to prove that every precaution had been taken to prevent trespassers from entering the premises.

The possibility of an arsonist-at-large quickly spread fear in the surrounding neighbourhood, where several of the city's notorious garage fires had occurred earlier in the summer. The worry was that the arsonist had been using the garages for practice till he got his technique down, and was now en route to bigger and brighter things.

None of this would particularly have interested Dan, except for a midnight phone call from Germ suggesting the fire might be of importance to the Bélanger case. Once again Dan high-tailed it over to Germ's bunker.

“It was an alternate site,” Germ explained. “We almost didn't set this one up. It was a last-minute thing. Velvet Blue decided it was worthwhile, so there you are. No one showed up on camera before, but two days ago Little Boy Blue entered the premises.”

“Wait a minute! Are you telling me that Little Boy Blue was at that warehouse?”

“Dude, that's what I'm saying.”

Dan thought back. Two days ago was when he had discovered Gaetan Bélanger at the abandoned retirement home. If Bélanger had wanted to find an alternate site to hide, he would have chosen his alter-ego to make an appearance. That way, if anyone saw him, it would be easy to back out with no one the wiser as to his true identity.

Germ showed Dan the tape. He watched as the boy in a cap and blazer approached with a knapsack on his back. It was Gaetan Bélanger. He was talking on a cellphone and looking over his shoulder. Then he simply turned the corner and went inside, disappearing from the screen.

“Do me a favour,” Dan told him. “I want you to check all your cameras in the vicinity and see if you can find him on the same site the day of the fire. Then I want you to look for a police officer or anyone who even looks like a cop checking out the warehouse any time before that.”

Germ gave him a look. “As long as you're not in a rush. That could be hours of recordings.”

“Take your time. This needs to be done right.”

Dan was in his car, traffic whizzing by. He got on the phone to Ed Burch.

“Another late-night call,” Ed said. “Should I be worried?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, I've been meaning to call you anyway.”

“I beat you to it. Not with the best news, I'm afraid.”

“Hit me.”

Dan drew a breath. “Do you know about the fire at the empty warehouse south of St. Clair?”

“Possible arson, yeah, I've been hearing about it. Someone died, I heard.”

“Yeah. Someone did.”

Dan let the pause sink in.

Ed caught his tone. “Do you think you know who it was?”

“Maybe,” Dan said. “I don't think we're going to like what we find out about the victim.”

Ed's voice was cautious. “Are you thinking it might have something to do with Gaetan Bélanger?”

“It's my guess it does.”

“Why?”

“Ask a leading question …”

He proceeded to tell Ed about his confrontation at the retirement home and the break-in at Germ's studio.

Ed took a deep breath. “You should have told me sooner, Daniel.”

Dan heard the worry in his voice.

“Ed, it wasn't my break-in to report.”

“I'm not talking about the break-in.” There was an edge to his voice. “I don't like this. Argue what you will, this is a murder investigation. You had a duty to disclose what you know.”

“I still don't know anything for sure.”

“I'll let that go for now, but if you're right then this is another murder. You're getting in way too deep here. How can you even be sure that Pfeiffer was behind the break-in at your source's studio?”

“Again, there's no proof, Ed, but he was following me around and getting antsy about not having contact with my sources.”

“But that still doesn't mean it was him.”

“Not in itself. But consider that what Pfeiffer wanted was access to tapes showing the possible hideout of Gaetan Bélanger. Then consider that he destroyed the tapes. Two days later, a fatal fire breaks out in one of the locations targeted by the cameras set up courtesy of my source. To my mind, there's only one way that adds up. Pfeiffer has to be behind it.”

Ed was thinking this one over. “You're right. There are too many coincidences there for me to swallow,” he said at last.

“That's what I thought. Question is, what do we do about it now?”

Ed's voice was gloomy. “I'll have to call the chief about this. Sit tight. Chances are you're going to receive a call in the next couple of hours, if I can wake anybody up. I'll try to keep you out of this as much as I can, but I know they're not going to like it.”

“Do what you can, Ed. I trust you.”

“I hope you don't regret saying that, Danny.”

When Dan arrived home he reluctantly woke Trevor. His boyfriend sat up and blinked at the light, elf-like, a boy awakened on Christmas morning.

Trevor's face fell as Dan explained what had been happening. “What can we expect?”

“At the very least I'm going to get a rap on the knuckles for withholding information.”

“And at worst?”

Dan sighed. “Things could get difficult.”

Trevor nodded. “Is this the point where you tell me to start worrying?”

“I doubt it will help,” Dan said. “But this is the point where I would normally decide to have a very strong drink.”

“I could probably use one, too. Do you think Ked would mind?”

“Not this time. Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen.”