“Are you surprised your mother had so few assets?”
Otto shrugged. He did it a lot. “Looks like she got by OK.”
Impatient, Claudel shifted his feet.
“With so little money, how did your mother live as well as she did? This apartment. The spa trips.”
Otto regarded Ryan as if he’d just dropped from the south end of a pig.
“How the hell would I know? The last time I saw her was 2000.”
“When Adamski died. Were you saddened by his death?”
“What kind of question is that?”
Ryan waited.
Another shrug. Otto was a real charismatic fellow. “Honestly? I hoped the prick would rot in hell.”
“Your mother had income from her old-age pension.” Ryan tried a fast cut.
“I suppose she did.”
“Myron Junior helped her some. Ran errands, that sort of thing.”
“So.” Defensive. Guilt?
“Someone cashed three checks after she died.”
“You suspect Myron?”
“Do you?”
“No. I . . .” Otto spread his feet. “You’re trying to confuse me.”
“Adamski drowned, didn’t he?” Another quick veer.
“Yes.” Wary.
“Where?”
“Someplace in La Mauricie. Near Trois Rivières, I think. Or Chambord.”
Claudel had had enough.
“We’ve been over this, Detective Ryan.”
“Repetition never hurts.” Ryan’s eyes stayed clamped on Otto’s face.
“Mr. Keiser, you’ve noted nothing amiss in your mother’s apartment?” Claudel asked.
“When are you guys going to listen to me? I haven’t set foot in this place in years.”
“You came to Montreal for Adamski’s funeral?” Ryan ignored Claudel’s interruption.
“There was no funeral.”
“Why not?”
“How the hell would I know? Maybe the guy was an atheist.”
“What was your purpose in coming?”
“To talk my mother into relocating to Alberta. I even offered to pack all her crap.”
“No luck?”
Otto spread his arms to take in the apartment. “Does it look like she moved?”
“OK.” Ryan nodded. “Let’s go to Memphrémagog.”
* * *
The cabin was about what I’d pictured, though constructed of logs, not boards. The roof was shingle. There was a metal exhaust pipe in back, I guessed from the woodstove, a crude porch in front.
The word remote doesn’t adequately describe the location. The unpaved road off the blacktop seemed to go on for about ninety miles.
Ryan and I agreed: Keiser’s getaway was not a place one would stumble upon. Either she was targeted and followed, or her killer knew of the cabin’s existence.
The windows were intact. Ditto the door lock. Inside, we saw no signs of a struggle. No overturned chair or lamp. No broken vase. No cockeyed picture or painting.
Had Keiser let her killer in? Did she know him? Or had he overwhelmed her so quickly she’d had no chance to react?
The air was frigid and smelled of ash and kerosene. Other than localized fire damage and fingerprint powder from the crime scene techs, the cabin’s interior looked jarringly normal.
Like the apartment, the place was jammed with paintings, and with what I suspected were local farmers’ market crafts and collectibles. Old milk and soda bottles. Cowbells. Cheese vats. Antique tools.
While Otto and Claudel wandered, I checked the art. Keiser’s initials signed every work.
In the unburned back corner I found her easel and supplies. The techs had been respectful while tossing the place. And foresighted. The upright brushes still formed perfect circles in their holders. The paint tubes still marched in parallel rows. The unused canvases still waited in graduated stacks.
Behind the easel was a small wooden sideboard covered by a handmade afghan. I lifted an edge.
The sideboard had one long drawer above, a pair of doors below that. The brass pulls and lock were tarnished and dented. The wood was overvarnished, gouged and splintered, as though once pried open by force. The piece looked old.
OK. I admit it. Occasionally I get snagged by an episode of Antiques Roadshow.
Vaguely curious, I used a pen to swing one door wide. The cabinet was empty.
I crossed to the bathroom.
And froze.
Psyched, I hurried to the loft and pulled aside a curtain forming a makeshift closet. A dozen garments hung from a rod suspended between twisted coat hangers.
“I’ve got something,” I called out.
Six feet clomped up the stairs.
31
“SOMEONE STAYED HERE.”
Six puzzled eyes stared at my face.
I spoke to Otto.
“Your mother kept her belongings precisely sorted and arranged. In her apartment closet, all garments hang exactly two inches apart, utilizing the whole length of the rod. On her bureau, on the mantel, on the bookshelves, every object is positioned equidistant from its neighbors, and every bit of surface is utilized.”
Otto nodded slowly, brows pinched into a frown. “That sounds right. She’d get upset if we moved stuff.”
“Your mother’s paintings are studies in symmetry. Everything is balanced, even.”
“Where are you going with this?” Claudel, too, was frowning.
I gestured at the closet.
The men took in the clothing shoved to one side.
Claudel started to speak. I cut him off.
“Follow me.”
In the bathroom, Keiser’s toiletries were bunched together on one half of a shelf flanking the sink. The other half was empty.
Claudel did one of those air poochy things he does with his lips.
“I suspect Mrs. Keiser was OCD. Her compulsion involved keeping objects spatially ordered. If so, she’d have been incapable of breaking that pattern.”
“You’re suggesting someone pushed Mom’s stuff aside to make room for their own?”
“I am.”
“SIJ and arson teams tossed this place.” Claudel. “They probably moved things.”
“I don’t think so.” I told them about the painting supplies. “But it’s easy enough to check the scene photos.”
Claudel’s lips tightened.
“Supposedly, only one person knew about this cabin,” Ryan said.
“Lu Castiglioni,” I said.
“Who?” Otto asked.
“The super at your mother’s building.”
“What about Myron Pinsker?”
Good question, Otto.
My eyes drifted to the easel. The paints. The sideboard.
Sudden head-smack thought.
“Otto, when you were growing up did your mother keep cash at home?”
“A few bucks in her wallet. Maybe a grocery fund. No big deal.”
“Did she ever talk about pulling her money out of the bank? Express concern about the safety of her deposits?”
“Mom was born in the thirties, had that Depression mentality. Banks scared the crap out of her.”
“Did she ever act on those fears?”
“Yeah, actually she did. When she took a jolt in the market in ’eighty-seven, she sold all her stocks and put the cash into a savings account. After nine-eleven she threatened to withdraw every penny. It was one of the few times we’d talked in recent years. I didn’t take her seriously. The markets were in chaos. Everyone was freaked. And, as I said, Mom was a flake.”
“But did she do it?”
Otto shrugged. Who knows?
“Your mother wasn’t one for locks, though, was she?”
Otto looked puzzled.
“At the apartment, she had a wall cabinet and a jewelry box, both with keys. She locked neither.” I turned to Ryan. “Got a penlight?”
Ryan pulled a small flash from his pocket. Crossing to the sideboard, I squatted to inspe
ct the doors. Close up, lit by the small beam, the gouging and splintering appeared fresh.
“This damage is new.” I looked up. “I think Mrs. Keiser kept something locked in this compartment.”
“The doors were jimmied.” Ryan finished my thought.
“By this mysterious houseguest.” Claudel’s cynicism was starting to grate on my nerves.
I stood. “Who may have kept her prisoner until he got what he wanted.”
Otto looked as though he’d been slapped.
“I’m sorry.” I was. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“How far back did you go with Keiser’s financials?” Ryan asked Claudel.
Claudel was staring at the empty compartment. Ryan’s question brought his face around to us. For an instant he looked as if he’d been caught off guard. Then he nodded and yanked his mobile from his belt.
“Tabarnouche. I’m getting no signal on this piece of crap. Charbonneau’s working that angle. Once I’m on the road and back in range, I’ll call and see what he’s dug up. When I know, you’ll know.”
* * *
Ryan’s mobile rang as we were entering Hurley’s Irish Pub for lunch. He clicked on.
“Ryan.”
As we took seats in the main room, in Mitzi’s booth, I noticed that one small wrong had been righted. The name plate dedicating the corner to Bill Hurley’s mother had been stolen one busy night. The little plaque was now back in place.
Really. How low can you go?
As Ryan listened, I mouthed the name Claudel. He nodded.
The waitress brought menus. I ordered lamb stew. Ryan gestured that he wanted the same.
The waitress collected the menus and left.
Ryan contributed a lot of “oui’ s” and “tabarnac’s” to the phone conversation. Queried a location. A date. An amount. He was smiling when he disconnected.
“We got us a motive.”
“Really?”
“Between the fall of 2001 and the spring of 2003 Marilyn Keiser withdrew approximately two hundred thousand dollars from her savings account at Scotiabank. There is no record of a deposit elsewhere.”
“I knew it. She kept it in shoe boxes at the cabin.”
“Not sure about the boxes, but, yes, your cabin theory skews right. And, by the way, Claudel is impressed.”
“He is?”
Ryan was looking for the waitress, who had vanished.
“What did he say?”
“ ‘I’m impressed.’ ”
“Seriously.”
“I’ve got to use the men’s.” Ryan slid from the booth. “Order me a beer.”
“What kind?”
“The usual.” He was gone.
The usual? I’d seen the man drink about every brand ever brewed.
Across the room, beer tap handles ran the length of the bar. Round ones, oval ones, wooden ones, green ones. I read the logos.
First the OCD. Then the locked sideboard.
Was it Wednesday and Thursday’s purging? Had clearing my system enabled me to think better? Heightened awareness born of my battle with microbes? A third dot connected with an almost audible click.
Oh, baby, I was on a roll.
I was poking at the idea a second time when Ryan returned.
“This is nutso, Ryan. Wild barking mad.”
“Where’s my beer?”
I could barely sit still.
“Listen to me.” I pointed two palms at Ryan. “Just hear me out before you scoff.”
“I never scoff at you, buttercup.”
“The floral endearment is scoffing.”
Ryan made a give-it-to-me gesture with his hand.
The waitress arrived with our food. Ryan ordered a Sam Adams.
“That’s it!” My palm smacked the table.
The waitress backed off.
“What are Red O’Keefe/Bud Keith’s other aliases?”
“All of them?”
I nodded.
Ryan pulled his spiral from a jacket pocket, flipped pages. “Red O’Keefe. Bud Keith. Sam Caffrey. Alex Carling.”
“He’s using beer brands!”
Two kids at the next table slid glances our way.
I lowered my voice.
“He mixes and matches. Red—Red Stripe. Bud—Budweiser. O’Keefe—O’Keefe’s. Keith and Alex—Alexander Keith’s. Carling—Carling’s Black Label.”
“Sonovabitch.”
“But listen.” Again the stop sign hands. “Listen.”
“I’m listening.”
“Sam Adams.”
Ryan raised his mug.
“Sam Adamski.”
“Keiser’s third husband?”
I nodded.
“He’s dead.”
“What if he’s not?”
The mug halted en route to Ryan’s mouth.
“According to Otto, Adamski’s body was never recovered. What if he’s alive?”
“What if he is?”
“Keiser and Adamski married in ’ninety-eight. What if she talked to him about sewing her money into the bedroom drapes? What if he looked her up this fall to check things out?”
“The drowning was staged?”
“Or the accident was real, but he survived. Maybe he saw his death as an opportunity to be exploited.”
“Where’s he been since 2000?”
“Maybe he changed his identity and hid out, left the country, got busted and did time under another name. Who knows? Adamski reemerges, needs bread, decides to look up his former wife.”
“Why now?”
I ignored Ryan’s question. I was spitting ideas as they came into my head.
“Or maybe the two kept in contact all along. Maybe they met at the cabin. Adamski knew about it. He built it, for God’s sake.”
“Why keep it secret that he’s alive?”
“The kids hated him.”
“They hated him throughout the marriage.”
“OK. Maybe they weren’t in contact. Maybe he shows up, holds her captive, smacks her around until she tells him about the money. Then he kills her.”
“Take a breath.”
I did.
“Otto said something this morning that got my wheels turning.”
“What?” I asked.
“He remembered that Adamski drowned somewhere in La Mauricie.”
“It was a boating accident. Do you suppose Adamski went down in the Saint-Maurice River?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find out. That’s not important. You know what else is right there, not far from Trois Rivières?”
I shook my head.
“A little place called La Tuque.”
It took me a nanosecond to make the connection.
“Bud Keith’s alibi. He wasn’t at L’Auberge des Neiges when Rose Jurmain was killed. He was off bear hunting at La Tuque.”
Things were falling into place.
M. Keith, the Villejoins’ tree removal man.
Bud Keith–Red O’Keefe, Grellier’s bar braggart with knowledge of Christelle’s hidden grave.
Bud Keith, the kitchen worker at Rose Jurmain’s auberge.
Sam Adamski, Marilyn Keiser’s third husband.
For the longest time Ryan and I just stared at each other.
Could Caffrey/Keith/O’Keefe/Carling/Adamski have killed all four women?
Why?
Means and motive didn’t matter for now. We had the common link. The explanation of how the victims’ lives touched.
Ryan reached for his mobile.
32
BY THE TIME RYAN DROPPED ME AT MY CONDO WE knew that Caffrey/Keith/O’Keefe/Carling/maybe Adamski was neither at home nor at work.
Ryan issued a BOL. Be On Lookout. I’d barely cleared the Jeep when he roared off, hands tight on the wheel.
He phoned that night around eight.
“He’s slipped the grid.”
“You’ll get him.”
“I had him.” Ryan’s voice was taut with frustration. “I had the sonovabitch.”
“What did the neighbors tell you?”
“They’re not the type to notice. Or to share insights with cops.”
“What about the gas station?”
“No one’s laid eyes on the guy since Wednesday.”
The day Ryan interrogated him. I didn’t say it.
“I faxed Keith/O’Keefe’s mug shot over to Trois Rivières. They ran it out to the camp near La Tuque where Adamski was staying when he had his fatal boating accident in 2000. It’s the same guy. And the same camp.”
“No shit.”
“They’re the outfit that arranged Bud Keith’s bear hunt during his sabbatical from kitchen duty at the auberge.”
“Good work, Detective.”
Ryan snorted in self-derision. “Except for the part where I let the bastard walk away without so much as a backward glance.”
“He won’t get far.”
“He disappeared in 2000 and didn’t resurface until two years ago. We have no friggin’ idea where the prick was all that time.”
Good point. I didn’t say that, either.
“You confirmed that Adamski’s body was never found?”
“Yeah.” Ryan sounded exhausted. “Apparently he went out on the lake early one morning, alone. They found the boat belly-up, Adamski wasn’t in it. They dragged the lake on and off for a week, found his wallet, hat, his fishing gear. No body.”
“The locals didn’t find that odd?”
“Apparently it’s happened before. This lake’s ninety feet deep in places.”
Sudden flash of the Lac Saint-Jean vics abandoned in my lab. I felt my own stab of guilt. Quentin Jacquème had been waiting forty years for an answer concerning his brother-in-law Achille and the rest of the Gouvrard family.
Monday. First thing. No distractions.
“—gotta tell you. I’m beat.”
I pictured Ryan doing that hair-rake thing with his hand. I imagined the clumps shooting in all directions.
I opened my lips.
Hesitated.
What the hell?
“Would you like to come over?”
“Thanks, Tempe. Really. But I promised Lily I’d pick her up early tomorrow. I can’t screw up. I’d better call it a day.”
“I understand.” I didn’t.
“You know where I’d rather be. It’s just . . . Please. Ask me again?”
“Sure.” My chest burned. I needed to get off the phone.
Birdie and I watched Pretty Woman on the old-movie channel, then crashed.