Continued from 2 previous posts...
If there was
such a thing as a down-to-earth blueblood,
then Rebecca Blackmore was it. Think Noxzema
girl meets
Dolce and Gabbana. Contrary to the outdoorsy,
all-natural
glow, she was the cosmetics manager at
Chadwick’s, an
über-snooty fashionista store where I
couldn’t even afford
to window-shop. I felt completely inadequate
in my
Birkenstocks and jean jacket, but the early spring
warmth
had inspired me to ditch my full-length mink.
“Rebecca?”
The glass doll looked up from the counter.
“Yes,
what may I do for you?” Although she was
speaking at a
normal volume, her voice unrolled in a
melodic whisper.
“I’m Sasha Jackson. Can I chat with you for a
moment?”
“Certainly. Are you interested in a makeover?
I can
book you an appointment.”
Didn’t my cheeks already have a healthy glow?
“Actually, this might be best in private.
It’s about your
cousin, Gordon. Do you have a break soon?
Maybe we
can have a coffee?”
“It’s quiet right now. Amanda can keep an eye
on
things. Let me get my purse and I’ll meet you
at the coffee
shop in the food court.”
I had grabbed a seat at the quietest table I
could find.
When Rebecca joined me, she gracefully
crossed her legs
and sat so perfectly postured she looked like
an entrant
in a dressage competition.
She spoke very slowly. “Yes, Gordon and I
were very
close. We’re three months apart. What do you
want to know
about him?” She sniffed and brushed the tip
of her nose. I
offered to get her some tissue, but she said
no thanks.
“My allergies seem to be acting up,” she
said.
I launched into an impromptu spiel. “I’m a
psychology grad student at the University of
Toronto.
I’m looking at the long-term effects of
violent deaths on
the mourners.”
I had honed my ad-libbing skills during my
rocker
chick band days. Nothing was more
embarrassing than
forgetting the lyrics to someone else’s
top-ten song.
There was also nothing less satisfying than
playing other
people’s hits to rooms full of drunk guys who
wanted to
hit on you because they thought you made eye
contact
with them during that romantic/sexy song at last call.
When it came to bullshit, I had the market
cornered.
Rebecca took a dainty sip of her latte, and I
tried to
picture her hurling a drink in Christine’s
face the night
before. It didn’t compute. This was a classy
chick, and if
not exactly congenial, she was certainly
cordial. Drink
tossing seemed beneath her.
“Well, it’s really hard when death is sudden
like
that.”
Her soft voiced cracked a bit, but there was
no
way this model of privileged decorum would
have an
emotional meltdown in public. She took
another tiny sip
and carried on.
“You never expect a murder to happen to
someone
in your own family.” She paused for a moment
as if
lost in a fuzzy old memory. “It’s supposed to
be some
nameless face in the newspaper. But then
suddenly your
world explodes and you have this never-ending
hole. You
feel suspended. You never get to say
goodbye.”
“I suddenly lost someone, too, and I
understand
how hard it can be. Maybe that’s why this
field of study
appeals to me. It’s a kind of closure in a
way.”
God strike me down for telling that whopper.
I felt
uneasy about telling such a creepy lie, and
the superstitious
side of me felt paranoid now for having
tempted fate. I
made a mental note to call Dad later today.
Rebecca continued. “I think my mom had given
up
hope on having a second child. Mind you, she
was only
thirty-three, but my brother, Darren, was
already eight
years old, and they wanted to give him a
little brother or
sister to grow up with.” She paused for
another sip, and
I waited for her to continue.
“By that time, no one expected my Aunt
Maureen —
she’s my mother’s older sister — well, no one
expected
Aunt Maureen to have a child, either.”
Rebecca sniffed
and brushed her nose again. “But then,
surprise, both
sisters were pregnant at the same time. Aunt
Maureen was
thirty-nine when she had Gordon, and my mom
had me
three months later. Gordon and I were
inseparable from
day one. We were in the same classes from
kindergarten
right through high school. Darren is so much
older than
I that I’ve always felt Gordon was more like
my brother
than Darren.”
Rebecca’s cell phone twittered to life. She
glanced
at the call display. “It’s the store. Just
give me a moment
please.” She went off to one side of the food
court and
then stepped out of view.
Okey-dokey. I had twenty seconds, max. I dug
right
into her purse. Even though the topic of our
discussion
was sad, Rebecca had shown no signs of tears.
That
sniffling and twitchy nose had me and my
suspicious
nature wondering about drugs. Cocaine was and
always
had been the preferred recreational escape
among people
with the money to indulge in it.
Keys, Percocet, condoms, breath mints,
sunglasses,
OxyContin, tissues, Paxil, Percocet, nail
file, lipstick,
lip balm, Vicodin, and wallet. I flipped open
the wallet.
Forty dollars. Some business cards,
miscellaneous
memberships, and the usual plastic. Well, the
mood-altering
prescription narcotics certainly explained
the
stoned Mona Lisa serenity.
Not willing to press my luck any further, I
closed the
bag, but not before lifting her wallet and
sticking it in my
pocket. I was the picture of innocence when
she returned
to our table a moment later.
“Sorry about that. I’ll have to go in a
minute. One of
our distributors is on her way, and she has
samples of the
new summer colours. Anyway, where were we?”
“Gordon’s murder must have been hard to deal
with.” I had all the finesse of a jackhammer.
“It was twice as hard because Christine got
away
with it.” Nose twitch and sniffle number
five.
“Why do you think she was the killer? I understand
the police questioned her and checked her
alibi. They
never charged her.”
Rebecca sprinkled a bit of cinnamon on her
java, then
absently swirled the stir stick in the foamy
beverage and
watched the powdery grains disappear. “She’s
slippery.
Christine would never pull the trigger, but I
believe she
pulled the strings. It would be darn hard to
convince me
of anything else.”
“What would her motive be?”
“Revenge, because Gordon broke off their
engagement.” Another pause. “Thank goodness
he
did. He was too good for her. I never liked
her, and she
knows it.”
“So
you convinced him to end it?”
“Yes. Gordon and I had a heck of a fight
about it. I’d
also fought with Christine about their
relationship. She
treated him like dirt. I told her I’d stop
the wedding one
way or another.”
“Then Christine knows he called it off
because of
you?”
“Absolutely. She mailed me a sample of the
invitation
a couple of days earlier. I know this was
catty, and I
shouldn’t have done it, but after they broke
up, I wrote ‘I
told you so, now go to hell’ on the
invitation and mailed
it back to her.”
“Not to be crass, but that seems more like a
motive
for her to kill you, not Gordon. What does
your brother
think?”
“Darren and I haven’t really talked about it
much.
My family’s very much the
British-stiff-upper-lip kind.
We don’t discuss emotions or unseemly topics.
It just
isn’t done.”
“I see.” Right, a murdered relative was so
unseemly.
Whatever would people think? “Well, were
Gordon and
Darren close?”
“Darren and Gordon were good friends once
they
became adults. They skied together and went
to the club
sometimes. They weren’t as close as Gordon
and I were,
but they were solid. With eight years between
them, it
took a long time for them to be on the same
footing, if
you understand what I mean. They had little
in common
as a ten-year-old and an eighteen-year-old.
The difference
was less significant once they were in their
twenties and
thirties, all grown up as they say. And, of
course, they
worked together, too.”
“What kind of work did they do?”
“They played the stock market, financial
planning
and investments, that kind of thing. Darren
still handles
all the portfolios for their clients.”
“Would you mind if I talked with Darren?”
“Of course not.”
“What’s the best way to reach him?”
“If you give it half an hour, you can find
him at
Pockets. It’s a billiard club at Spadina and
Wellington.
He plays there every afternoon from about two
till four
or five. He calls the place his second
office.”
The broker with the pool cue in the billiard hall?
What next? Colonel Mustard in the
conservatory with
the candlestick? If Darren went there every
day, his
business had to either be doing exceptionally
well or
exceptionally poorly.
“I guess I’m headed there next. Thank you.
And
I know it doesn’t mean much, but I’m sorry
for your
loss.”
“Thank you. Would you like to come to
Chadwick’s
and see the new summer line? The distributor
always
brings several testers and demo products.”
“Nah. I’ll finish my coffee and then head
down to
Pockets.” But not till I’d emptied and filled
my own
pockets.
On my mark, get set, go.
I ran a block down the street to an
office supplies store and copied the contents
of Rebecca’s
wallet. I placed all the business cards,
receipts, dry-cleaning
slips — everything — face down on the
photocopier. Then
I did the same with the credit cards and ID.
I might burn in hell some day, but I’d have
an
interesting time on my journey there.
A few minutes later warm black-and-white
copies
were stuffed in my pocket, and the wallet
looked just as
it had when I’d pilfered it. I detoured by
the shop and
told Rebecca she must have dropped it.
“Why, thank you. I never even noticed.”
That was the point.
