Once Upon a Time (17 page)

Green gestured him into his office. “Did you manage to check out Toronto?”

Watts nodded. “The hotel and the convention people. You're going to really love this. Or hate it, depending on whose side you're on.”

“What have you got?”

“Statements from colleagues, a copy of his hotel bill.” Watts handed Green the fax. “He was registered there all right, but his alibi is full of holes.”

Green had been scanning the hotel invoice and gave a cry of surprise. “That's not all that's wrong. Look at the goddamn phone calls!”

*    *    *

Green sat in his little blue Corolla just down the street from the Reid house, where he hoped Howard was still staying. The November chill was gradually seeping through his worn-out boots, but still he didn't hurry. He needed to sort out his plan of attack carefully. Howard had a lot of explaining to do, but he was no fool. If Green were to breach the wall of family silence, his approach had to be very subtle. Almost soundless.

Green was still probing possibilities when the front door flung back, and a young woman appeared on the doorstep, wrapping a long, trailing scarf around her neck. She glanced quickly up and down the street, passing over his car without a flicker of interest, and then set off briskly down the street in the other direction. She was well dressed in a bohemian way, with a loose, brown wool skirt swinging above her ankles.

Ah-ha, he thought. A plan of attack. On impulse, he jumped from the car and ran to catch up with her, startling her as his footsteps pounded up behind her. Hastily, he produced his badge.

“Sorry,” he said breathlessly. “Rachel Walker, isn't it? I'm Inspector Green, Ottawa Police. I was about to call for your husband at the house when I saw you.”

Her eyes narrowed warily. They were fine eyes, rich amber, widely set and thickly lashed.

“Howard's not here. He took his mother up to the country.”

“Oh. Can I have a word with you then?”

“I'm not sure if I…”

“I don't bite, I promise. How about I buy you a hot cup of cappuccino somewhere?”

She said little as she climbed into his car, merely arched her eyebrows at the clutter of McDonald's wrappers and Tim Hortons cups that he tossed into the back seat. Her hands were folded demurely in her lap, whether out of natural poise or aversion to his grimy car, he could not tell.

Hoping to relax her, he grinned. “Don't you dare say a word. I happen to be very fond of Queensway dining.”

“Howard warned me you had a way about you.”

He cast her a surprised glance. “Warned?”

“He said people could say more to you than they had intended.”

He smiled. “I'll take that as a compliment. What did he not want you to tell me?”

It was her turn to smile, turning to him with her flashing amber eyes. For an instant he felt his thoughts scatter.

“Now, I'm not that dumb, Inspector,” she was saying when he could focus again. “Howard has nothing to hide. He's not afraid of anything incriminating. He just meant he opened up more to you than he intended. Howard doesn't open up easily—one more legacy from Daddy Dearest.”

“I've heard a lot of secrets from people over the years. I don't shock easily, and I guess that's reassuring to some people.”

She waited until they were seated across from each other in the Trattoria, a little Italian café on Preston Street. There was only one other customer at the other end of the room, an elderly labourer reading his Italian newspaper over a cup of coffee. The tables were brightly set with red and white checkered cloths in preparation for the dinner crowd. Once the waiter/owner had taken their orders, he disappeared into the kitchen to prepare them.

She fixed her amber eyes on him. “And what secrets do you want from me, Inspector?”

In an interview, control was essential. His years as a police detective had taught him that. But his years as a detective could not prepare him for the look in her deep, laughing eyes. Women had been his weakness since his youth. An impish smile, dancing eyes, soft, sweet-scented limbs—the slightest hint sent his hormones flooding. Marriage had not changed his chemistry, merely his attempt to control it, and if he continued to look into those eyes, he would not be able to think at all. Studying his notebook, he gathered his forces.

He could not tell what she was thinking nor what she was feeling. He sensed anxiety, amusement, mockery—even fondness. But in this panoply of impressions, hostility was absent. He wasn't sure why. Perhaps Howard had told her he was Jewish, and she felt a natural kinship. Or perhaps she felt no reason to fear him. Whatever the cause, he sensed that he could make her an ally and give himself entry into the closed family secrets. But he had to play his cards right, and for that he had to be able to think.

He raised his eyes to meet hers again and willed his thoughts to remain in focus.

“Right now I'm just trying to get all the facts straight,” he began humbly. “I always like the pieces to fit, no matter how irrelevant they might turn out to be. Today I've been working on the activities of the family in the past few days, since the death on Wednesday. I know your husband was at a medical conference at Mount Sinai in Toronto, and he told me you were staying overnight at a girlfriend's. Was that Wednesday or Thursday?”

She smiled, not fooled. “Wednesday. We had tickets to the National Ballet at the Place des Arts. Her name is Maxine Melanov, and her number is 689-2634, if you really want to know.”

“And you stayed there how long?”

“Just the night. I went there from work on Wednesday, and went straight back to work from her place Thursday morning.”

“And no one knew of this?”

“Howard did. I don't usually submit my schedule to my mother-in-law.”

He grinned boyishly. “Of course not. So when did you get the call about your father-in-law?”

“Thursday morning. I checked our answering machine when I got to work and found a message from Ruth about a family emergency, so I tried to call her.”

“What time was that?”

“A little after nine. But I had trouble locating her because she was at Margaret's. One of the problems with having in-laws who don't talk to you is that you don't have phone numbers. I did get through later in the morning.”

“Why didn't you just call Howard in Toronto?”

Here for the first time, she wavered. “I did call, and I left a message at his hotel, but he was busy at the convention. I finally drove home and rummaged through his papers until I found his sister's address.”

“And when did you reach Howard?”

“About six in the evening. He finally returned my call.”

“Six in the evening!” Green feigned incredulity. “Why didn't you have him paged at the convention?”

She hesitated. “I did, but he didn't return my calls.”

“Was he even there?”

She was a good actress, he had to grant her that. She had clasped her hands before her and was resting her chin on them in apparent nonchalance. He thought her knuckles whitened slightly, but it was the only sign she gave of the tension within.

“Inspector,” she rebuked, “there were over a thousand physicians there. He could have been anywhere—the washroom, the coffee shop, outside for a breath of fresh air—and not heard the page.”

“Did you try again or leave a message on the board?” he pressed relentlessly.

“Yes, I did, and he finally got it.”

“None of his friends and colleagues saw him at all on Thursday,” he said quietly. “One of his friends looked for him all day to tell him about the pages, and he couldn't find him anywhere at the convention.”

She shrugged. “For all I know, he could have skipped the afternoon and gone out for a three-hour lunch on the town with some colleagues. Isn't that what people do at conventions?”

“My man asked the friend that, and he said it wasn't likely because they were having a luncheon address by a highly respected neurosurgeon whom everyone wanted to hear. This friend looked all over for Howard to sit with him, but he was nowhere to be found.”

She finally relinquished the excuses and flounced back in her chair. Now he could sense hostility. “This isn't routine. Just what are you implying, Inspector?”

“Only that it seems he didn't attend the convention on Thursday. In fact, no one remembers seeing him most of Wednesday either. I don't know what that means, but I find it curious.”

Her eyes snapped. “I suggest it just means no one could find him. It doesn't mean Howard killed his father. Howard was very mixed up about his father, but he would never have killed him. He was just trying to stay out of his life.”

Their cappuccinos arrived, and she gratefully took advantage of the diversion to regroup her forces as she fussed with her coffee. Green did the same. He knew he'd get nowhere by pushing her to the wall, other than losing whatever kinship she might feel for him. He needed that more than he needed her speculations on Howard's activities, and he was beginning to suspect that Howard had kept her as much in the dark as everyone else. Howard was the one he needed to confront.

Taking his first delicious sip of coffee, he held up his hand in truce. “I agree with you. I don't think Howard killed his father.” Green had known several sons who'd killed their fathers, but he wasn't going to tell her that. “However, I do think he went out to his father's house the next day—maybe to get something or look for something—and he is trying to hide that fact. I think perhaps he discovered something about his father that he's keeping to himself. And if so, he could be in danger.”

Her amber eyes reflected her surprise. The hostility faded. “What are you talking about?”

“I think there's a dangerous secret here dating back to the Second World War. Possibly a secret someone would kill to protect.”

To his surprise, she did not react with shock or disbelief, but with fear. Knowing fear. Her eyes narrowed, and her voice grew soft. “What have you found out?”

“I think Eugene Walker was a Polish labour camp survivor.”

She dropped her eyes quickly, as if to hide their reaction. “Howard's mother rarely talked about it,” she said. “But from what little I pieced together, I couldn't help wondering what he did during the war. That's certainly one explanation.”

“What do you mean—one explanation?”

She coloured. “I mean it's one explanation for the way he was when Ruth found him. I know a lot of young Poles were interned by the Nazis.”

She had fixed her gaze on her coffee, swirling the foam with a spoon which trembled in her hand.

Carefully, he probed deeper. “One thing puzzles me, though. If he had been a camp survivor, you'd think he would be more sympathetic to the Jews. But I understand he threw a fit when Howard married you.”

Briefly her eyes lifted to his, and he caught a flash of what she had been trying to hide. Fear. “Polish anti-Semitism can run pretty deep,” she countered. “Both sides hated and feared the other, justifiably or not. I imagine a Pole might react with the same panic as a Jew to intermarriage.”

“Is that what Eugene did? He panicked?”

She nodded. “Howard said he was absolutely distraught. Occasionally you hear of Jewish parents being afraid and upset, but for a Gentile it seemed odd. It made me wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“What was he afraid of from a Jew? What he was hiding—” She caught herself and tightened her grip on her spoon.

In a flash of insight, he understood. Throughout occupied Europe, the Nazis had been aided in their round-up of the Jews by hundreds of local citizens. Some collaborated out of fear and self-preservation, but many had welcomed the chance to vent their own hatred and gain recognition in the eyes of their new masters.

Green's eyes narrowed. “You thought he was on the other side of the fence, didn't you? A Nazi collaborator.”

She put her spoon down with a clatter. “I didn't think anything. I just wondered. Or rather, my father wondered.”

Green recalled Jeff Tillsbury saying her father was influential in the Jewish community. “Does your father know something about war crimes?”

“He's a lawyer, and he used to be an advisor to the B'nai B'rith Anti-defamation League.”

“What's his name?”

“Ben Lowenstein.”

As he sipped his coffee, Green digested that news in silence. The Anti-defamation league was a watchdog group that monitored and combatted racism across the country, mainly anti-Semitism. Green had heard of Ben Lowenstein, whose zeal in fulfilling his mandate had made him controversial in the Jewish community, which was anxious to build bridges rather than burn them. That Eugene Walker's son had chosen to link himself to such a family was the ultimate irony.

“That must make for some interesting dinner conversations,” he remarked with a smile.

She had some of her father's fervour, however, and she was not easily deflected from her train of thought. Her coffee had remained virtually untouched at her elbow. “But my Dad's right,” she said, as if she was used to having to defend him. “What do we really know about Eugene? He was found wandering around in the forests of Germany wearing a stolen army uniform and claiming he didn't know who he was or what language he spoke. Pretty damn convenient.”

“So your father thinks the whole amnesia business was faked?”

“Brilliantly.”

“But the shape Eugene was in—the typhus, the starvation. You can't fake that. He took months to recover.”

“Even villains can fall ill. Look at his life!” She was animated now, her dark eyes sparking. “He picks a quiet farming community with a mixed ethnic make-up including Germans and Poles. He lives a reclusive existence and does almost nothing to call attention to himself. Cooperative, law-abiding, unobtrusive—that's exactly how war criminals have acted when they've come to North America.”