Murder Is Uncooperative (8 page)

“Gwen did say that. I guess there had been some incidents in the past. I didn't know about them. As I said, I'm new to the building.”

“I've been told that Mr. Walter was instrumental in helping you move into the building. Yet you say you didn't know him.” D'Onofrio was frowning.

“Well, he was the person who took my application and showed me around the apartment. He seemed like a good manager who really cared about the co-op. And he was always willing to be helpful.”

“I've also been told he gave you preferential treatment for this apartment and a parking space.”

I frowned. “No. I've been on the waiting list for a year. And then my father needed a wheelchair-accessible apartment. We were lucky to get this place. But the only other family I've heard about was smaller and didn't need wheelchair access. I guess there must have been others. But I'm sure the process was fair.”

"And the parking space?” D'Onofrio asked.

“I don't know. A parking spot in the underground garage comes with the apartment. Les mentioned something about wanting it to be convenient for my father's wheelchair. I don't know if anyone else wanted that spot. I certainly didn't ask for any particular parking spot.”

“So you're saying there wasn't any particular relationship between you and Mr. Walter?” he continued.

“Yes, that's what I'm saying. I just met the man. I know he listed the office assistant as a contact in his personnel file but I don't know what their relationship is.”

He glanced at his notebook. “Did you notice if Ms. Arsenault had blood on her clothing when you went to get her?”

“When I went to get her? No, of course not. Surely you don't suspect she had anything to do with this.”

I remembered Gwen wiping her bloody hands on the sleeves of her sweater. But that had been later, after we'd been trying to help Les.

D'onofrio's golden eyes looked at me the way I imagined an eagle might look at his prey. “And Ms. Cole? Did she appear to have blood on her clothing?”

“I don't think so.” I remembered Mariana hugging me in the hall. “Well, maybe from me. I got some blood on my clothes when I tried to give Les first aid.”

“Yes, I gather, Ms. Butler, that you were completely covered in blood.”

I gulped. “There . . . there was a lot of blood. Head wounds seem to bleed a lot. Anyway, I was trying to stop the bleeding before the ambulance got there. Gwen had a tea towel. I think she was doing dishes when I went to get her. I used it to try to stop the bleeding. I don't know what happened to it.”

"We'll find it if it's still in the office. What happened to the clothes you were wearing that night?” he asked.

“I . . . I threw them out. They were covered in blood.” I could feel tears gathering in my eyes. “I never wanted to see them again. Even if I'd washed them, I'd always think about Les.”

I thought I saw a glimpse of sympathy in his eyes. But he went on. “And these clothes, you put them where?

“In the dumpster out back.” He wrote something in his notebook. “They might still be in there. I don't know when the garbage gets collected.”

He made another note in his book and looked at me again.

“Can you tell me why you were in the office so late at night?”

I could feel myself blushing. “Um, I wanted to ask Les something. And it wasn't really late. The co-op meeting had just finished.”

“Is it true that you had gone down to talk to Mr. Walter because you had just heard that the co-op members believed that you had used sexual favors to get your apartment?”

Sexual favors? That sounded oddly quaint. I might have laughed if I hadn't been so embarrassed. I could feel my face getting even redder. “I don't know what
all
the co-op members believe. But, yes, Naomi, my neighbor, told me she had heard that. It was nonsense, of course.”

“And I believe she told you she had heard this from Mr. Walter. And you wanted to confront him about it.”

The word “confront” caught me. “No.” I could hear my voice shaking. “I just wanted to ask him what he'd heard and to talk to him about it. I'm starting to get the impression there are problems in this co-op. I don't know how that rumor started. But I don't think it was Les. He was a nice man.”

There were tears in my eyes now. Ever since my mother died, I found I was much more emotional than usual. A symptom of grief, I suppose. And sometimes, if I started to cry, I found it hard to stop. I didn't want to lose it in front of this police officer.

The golden eyes regarded me with what looked like suspicion. “You seem very upset about someone you didn't know very well.”

“I found him. I don't know about you, but I don't see dead bodies every day.”

I wasn't sure what to think about the look he gave me. “We'll want you to come in to make a formal statement,” he said, “and we'll need to take your fingerprints so we can compare them to the others we found.”

We made arrangements for me to go to the station in the morning. I was sure the fingerprint ink would be black, not blood red, but I couldn't help feeling that, for some time to come, my hands and my memories would be stained with the effect of Les's death.

Ben had pre-school again the next day, and it was mid-morning by the time I'd dropped him off, done some shopping, and made it back to the co-op.

I saw Gwen at the door of her apartment and stopped to ask how she was doing. The loss of the co-op's manager was going to put quite a burden on the president.

Her eyes were a little red, and she looked pale. But I was relieved to see that she smiled at me in friendly greeting.

“I'm all right, Rebecca,” she answered. “I was just so upset about Les. Now I'm the president of a co-op without a manager. I just don't know what to do.”

I saw that she had a couple of large cardboard boxes on her dining table, with papers and file folders scattered across the table surface.

She glanced at them too.

“I'm trying to get some co-op work done. There are probably more important things I should be doing. The co-op has bills to pay, and we'll have to keep track of who has paid their housing charges. I hope Ruth can handle some of that. But I'm trying to get this done. It's some work on the co-op's history. I started this before Les died. He kept talking about putting together a history of the co-op. He wanted to do it, but he never had time. So I offered to take it on. And now I'm thinking I could make it a sort of a memorial for him. But I just don't know where to start.”

I could see tears in her eyes again.

"Listen, Gwen. Would you like me to help? This is the kind of thing I do. I mean I'm a writer, and I used to be a reporter. I'm pretty good at pulling together a jumble of information and writing something that's easy to understand. I'd be happy to go through that stuff and see what I can do with it.”

She smiled in relief. “Would you? Even if you could just sort it out, that'd be a big help. I just have these two boxes. There are probably lots of others that need to be gone through. But if you could just start with these, that'd help. And if you're willing to sort out the others and actually write the history, it'd be marvellous.”

She started shuffling the papers on the table and dumping them in the boxes, as if she couldn't get rid of them fast enough.

When she had filled the first box, she handed it to me.

“One is probably enough for you to carry,” she said. “When you get through that, you can come back for the other one. I can't tell you how glad I am to get rid of this, Rebecca. Whatever you can do will be appreciated. I know there are more files,” she added. “I did ask Ruth to look for them. But they're just a bunch of old pictures and files from the co-op's past. The co-op's financial statements are more pressing. Anyway, thanks for taking this on. Let me know if you find anything you don't understand.”

I was starting to realize there were many things about the co-op I didn't understand. I hoped these boxes would help me understand the tensions in the building better. If someone was pointing the finger at me for Les's death, I wanted to be prepared. Finding out what was going on in the co-op seemed a good first

As soon as I got home, I wanted to upend the box that Gwen had given me and just root through everything. But I knew it was best to sort things first. From what I had seen in Gwen's
apartment, there were old photos and written documents. I could put the photos in one file, maybe sorted by date or subject, and sort through the written documents. I didn't know what I'd find, but I thought it best to get it in some order.

Of course that was easier said than done. I glanced at the backs of pictures to see if anyone had noted dates or the people in the photos. Few had any kind of identification. I found myself looking at them curiously, wondering if I would recognize anyone.

Some of the pictures were cute, showing kids in the playground or dressed up for a Halloween party. I glanced at each of them, trying to put them in order of date, based on the clothes and hairstyles of the people in the picture. It was easy to recognize the shoulder pads and big hair from the 1980s. Later pictures showed bangs flipped up and lots of leggings. Even if the files didn't help me understand what had happened to Les or what was going on in the co-op, I'd enjoy finding out about its history. This was going to be fun.

The piles of old meeting minutes were easy to put in order. Most of them had the date on them, although not all, I noticed. The minute taking at meetings was sometimes pretty casual, particularly for committee meetings.

There were other documents—lists of members from different years, newsletters, and other notes. I couldn't really see any pattern to them.

Near the bottom of the box I found something different.

It was a file folder with a single newspaper clipping, faded, yellowed and tattered. It was dated twenty years earlier. It showed pictures of two young girls. Another picture showed the co-op, the trees in front of it much smaller than they were today.

And a headline.

"H
OPE
F
ADES FOR
F
INDING
M
ISSING
G
IRLS
A
LIVE
."

I read the story quickly. Two fifteen-year-old girls, Jessica Anderson and Amy Cole, had been missing for a month when the story was written. Amy had lived in the co-op, and Jessica, a school friend, had visited her that afternoon. The last place they had been

The pictures the newspaper had used were probably school photos. The two looked heartbreakingly happy. Jessica's face was covered in freckles. Her smile glinted with the silver of braces, and her long blond hair framed a face still chubby with baby fat. Amy looked like a sprite, with short dark curls and a heart-shaped face.

I shuffled through the remaining papers in the box but there were no other newspaper clippings. Some of the other papers seemed to be from the same time. I glanced through them quickly to see if there was more information about the missing girls but there was nothing.

I grabbed the phone on my desk to ask Gwen if I could pick up the other box she had. But I got her voicemail. It was too late for Ruth to be in the office, so I couldn't check there for more boxes.

I switched on my computer to see if I could learn anything else on the web. The search was as frustrating as the one through the papers in the box.

The newspaper's site yielded nothing.

I found a site that claimed to be a list of missing people and unsolved murders in Canada. But it seemed to be completely
unofficial and run by a volunteer. The names of the two girls were not listed on the site.

Which could mean that they'd been found alive and safely returned home. They could have run away for some reason. Or they could have been murdered, with the case wrapped up and neatly solved. Or the guy who ran the site (I assumed it was a guy) might have simply missed this case.

I found a site that offered to sell me access to the archives of newspapers all over the world. A good idea, but not on my budget.

Oh, for the days when I had all the resources of a large daily newspaper at my fingertips.

Well, maybe I still did.

Glancing at my watch, I hoped I might be able to catch Dave in the newsroom.

“Hey, Bec, what's up,” he said when I reached him. “I've only got a minute. I have to head out to the game soon.”

“What's on tonight?” I asked.

“Geez, Rebecca,” he laughed. “Hockey. You know, our national obsession? Canucks against Calgary? Don't you pay any attention to the sports pages?”

“Oh, sure,” I answered. “Well, sometimes. I read your stuff, Dave. And I talk to Ben about what you're writing. All the time.”

“Like my big feature in today's edition about the game tonight? I can tell that really grabbed your attention.”

I laughed. “Okay, you got me. I didn't read it today. But seriously, Dave, you know I like your writing. You make hockey interesting even for someone who isn't a hockey nut. That's a pretty good skill.”

And I did like hockey. Dave was a big fan, and I had sometimes gone with him to games. And I knew he hoped Ben
could play when he was a little older. Dad quite often watched games on television. But I found I couldn't really get into watching games on our tiny television. And there was no way I could afford tickets to a game, not anymore.

"So, what's up, Bec,” Dave was asking. “Are you buttering me up because you want something?”

Oops, busted. I quickly explained about the newspaper clipping I found and what I was looking for.

“So what's the story on this?” he asked. “You said the clipping was from twenty years ago, but there must be some reason you're asking about it now.”

I told him why I was asking.

“Wait a minute. Is that building you live in the one where the guy died?” Les's death had received some media coverage, describing it only as “suspicious.” I was surprised Dave hadn't realized it was our building. I thought Cara would have mentioned it.