As he accelerated down Beechwood Avenue towards the Vanier Parkway, Brandon tried not to think. His sister! It was preposterous. Impossible. Of all the women in all the world, what were the odds? What kind of proof did this Gravelle woman have? Did she have papers? DNA results? Or, as Uncle Cyril had hinted, had she seen the chance to cash in on a little blackmail?
His mother had always warned him to watch out for gold-diggers more interested in his bank balance than in his humanity. Had she been speaking from bitter personal experience?
From his course work and case studies, he was familiar with the power of genes to influence not only a person’s physiology and medical history but also their psychology. Temperament, attitudes, values, habits, interests and even choice of career were affected by one’s genetic inheritance. Identical twins who’d never met often had more in common than siblings raised together.
Rationally he knew all this, but his emotional side refused to follow. Meredith didn’t feel like a sister. He didn’t look into her eyes and see hints of himself. He saw the beautiful, fiery young woman he loved. Unique, compelling and powerfully erotic. Reflecting back on her now, he didn’t feel the slightest twinge of shame or aversion at that arousal. Didn’t that count for something? Surely if there was a blood tie, no matter how hidden, he would have sensed it.
Yet somewhere, his half-sister existed. Cyril and his mother had admitted as much. How could his mother have kept this from him all his life? How could she have written Dad’s flesh and blood out of their lives as if the baby were no more than a pawn? All those years he’d spent growing up in the company of a nanny, alone in the playroom creating imaginary friends from his action figures while he waited for his mother to come home. To think that all along, there had been a sister his own age...
Rage and panic bubbled up in equal measure, squeezing off his breath. He forced his thoughts elsewhere, away from the appalling question that rose unbidden in his mind. What had Cyril and his mother done to Lise? And worse, to Meredith? He didn’t believe for a minute that they’d had no knowledge of Lise’s impending visit. Despite the Valium and the exhaustion, he’d distinctly heard his mother’s words—“That woman...a hundred thousand dollars” — hours before Lise Gravelle’s body had even been found.
He shook his head sharply as he turned onto the Queensway. He couldn’t think about any of that now. He had to find Meredith. Whatever the reason, the woman he loved was running scared and afraid to come home. He glanced at the laptop on the seat beside him. There had been no reply to his second message. If she still had access to the internet, she’d chosen not to answer him. Was she on the run? Or holed up in an isolated hotel somewhere?
The germ of a solution had come to him when he’d awakened earlier that day, re-energized for the search. He had the single email from her. Perhaps a clue to her whereabouts lay deep in the coded circuitry of his email program.
He had a rudimentary knowledge of computer software, but the intricate, arcane codes inside the machine had never interested him as much as animate things, so he always brought his technical problems to an IT specialist. As he drove west in the vague direction of Ottawa’s IT sector in Kanata, he ran through the various firms he’d used. Most had been manned by an ever-changing parade of near-adolescents. Some were just voices on the other end of the phone, who’d taken over the inner workings of his computer by remote control and fixed the problem in less than fifteen minutes. He wasn’t sure he’d even learned their names.
One computer geek stood out in his memory, however. Dylan, a cultural anthropology student and reformed video game junkie, who was now doing his PhD dissertation on gaming cultures. To finance this obscure academic pursuit, he did websites, troubleshooting and software set-ups. He lived in a minuscule apartment on the third floor of a dilapidated old house in the Preston Street area, as close as he could afford to the university. Brandon had been there only once and couldn’t even remember the guy’s last name. Now, as he cut across three lanes of traffic to the Bronson Avenue exit, Brandon prayed he still lived there.
Guided entirely by instinct and sight memory, Brandon drove up and down the jumbled back streets that spread out in the shadow of St. Anthony’s Church. Formerly the working class home of Ottawa’s Italian community, the area was now an eclectic mix of multi-national new immigrants, university students, the working poor and the criminals who preyed on them. However, the occasional Volvo and Subaru in the laneways suggested that gentrification was sneaking in.
He stopped in front of a narrow white clapboard house that listed slightly to the right. He’d not called ahead since he had no telephone number nor even a full name, but he hoped Dylan was home. The young man hadn’t seemed to have much of a life beyond his computers and his books. On the doorframe, there was a column of four rusty buzzers without identifying names or apartment numbers. Brandon took a guess and pressed the top one. There was no sound from within, no distant buzz or footsteps. He tried again, clutching his laptop and peering up at the top window for signs of life. Still nothing. A slight push opened the front door, however, and he found himself in the same cramped hall he remembered. A door off to the right, a radiator shelf piled high with junk mail on the left, and steep stairs straight ahead.
He climbed up two flights and hammered on the plain white door at the top. Rustling within. He hammered again.
“Who is it?” came a squeaky voice.
“Dylan, it’s Dr. Longstreet. Brandon. You did some work for me last year. I need your help.”
The door cracked open and a young man peered out. Dressed only in boxer shorts, he was even thinner than Brandon remembered. His hair hung about his shoulders in lank strands and his chin bristled with patchy stubble. He blinked at Brandon with uncomprehending eyes.
“Sorry, I pulled an all-nighter. Can you come back?”
Brandon pressed his palm against the door. “Please. I have one simple task. You can either do it, or you can’t.”
“But I don’t—”
“This is important!” Brandon stepped forward then saw the alarm on the young man’s face. “Sorry, I know it’s an intrusion. If you could just look at this.”
The young man managed a crooked smile and moved aside to let him in. “All right, but you enter at your peril.”
Once he was inside, Brandon saw what he meant. A cloak of hot, rancid air closed around him. The apartment was even worse than he remembered. Food-crusted dishes, bits of computers, tangled cables and splayed books littered every surface, including the floor. Dylan kicked a path through to what had presumably once been a kitchen, although dismantled computers sat on the counters and stove top and the table was covered with papers. Dylan pushed these aside to clear a space for Brandon’s laptop.
“I’ve been pretty much holed up here for the past month,” he chattered, as if to hide his nerves. “My advisor wants the first draft before Christmas! This is my third extension, and I’m not coming this far just to get thrown out on a technicality.”
“It shouldn’t take long, and I’ll make it worth your while.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. This way, maybe I’ll get to eat tonight.” He took Brandon’s laptop and with expert fingers booted it up. “So what’s the problem?”
“Can you trace the origin of an email?”
“You mean the source computer?”
“No, I mean the physical location of the person.”
Dylan looked surprised. “Depends. Sometimes it’s tricky, but I can give it a try this evening.”
“Could you please do it now?”
Dylan grabbed his hank of hair and pulled it back into an elastic. “No, I’ve got a couple of things in the pipe already. Just leave it with me and I’ll call you. I’ll have the source ISP number, owner information, whatever you need.”
Brandon glanced at his watch. Three o’clock. He cursed his forced inaction. “How long?”
“Nine o’clock, latest.”
He could have taken the laptop elsewhere, but it might take hours to find someone else to do the job faster. In the end, he booted up his email program and opened Meredith’s single email reply. Sitting alone on the screen, surrounded by the clutter and decay of the kitchen, it looked both poignant and sinister. Dylan, however, barely gave the email a second glance as he took down Brandon’s passwords and contact information.
As Brandon descended the steep, narrow staircase to the street, he turned his restless thoughts to his next move. He was due at work to cover the evening shift, but he couldn’t even think about that now. Not when he was so close. He mentally reviewed the list of Meredith’s friends and contacts he’d compiled the night before when he was trying to figure out where she was hiding. Last night his mind had gone around and around in futile circles, but now, without the fog of fatigue, alcohol and emotion, one name jumped out. Tanya Neuss, one of her childhood friends, who was away on a six-month overseas posting.
Perhaps that was why he hadn’t given her a second thought last week when he was trying to find out where Meredith was.
* * *
Tanya Neuss lived in a spacious apartment on the top floor of a chunky brick low-rise in Westboro. Brandon parked on the side street in front of it and studied the façade, trying to pick out the window. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, his hopes soared. How had he been so stupid as to discount Tanya simply because she was overseas? How could he have forgotten that she had left Meredith her keys so that Meredith could keep an eye on her apartment? What better place to hide out than in an obscure apartment building on a dead-end side street, where it was possible to come and go through a back door that opened onto the parking lot?
Tanya lived modestly. Working for NGOs overseas was never guaranteed to make you rich, but in addition, Brandon knew she funnelled all her savings back into the organization. He was grateful for her frugality as he opened the Sixties-style glass door and entered the tiny vestibule. No lavish lobby here, no fancy security system or coded entry buzzers. Just an old-fashioned intercom and a panel of buzzers labelled with the apartment numbers, which he contemplated with dismay. He and Meredith had visited only once and he could picture Tanya’s apartment in his mind. Top floor, but that was all. In any case, if Meredith was in hiding, she would never answer the buzzer.
He began to buzz other apartments and was astonished when one of the tenants came on the intercom. “Apartment 402,” he mumbled in falsetto. “Forgot my key.”
The door buzzed open and he was in. Too impatient for the balky old elevator, he bounded up the stairs two at a time, huffing by the time he exited the fire door onto the top floor. He padded along the deserted hall and came to a stop partway down, outside #408. There was a peephole but no extra deadbolt on the flimsy wood-panelled door. Meredith had often bugged her about that. This had to be the one.
The hallway was utterly silent. Not even the murmur of TV or tenants emanated from the nearby flats. Holding his breath, he laid his ear to the door. Silence, except for the beat of his racing pulse. Leaning against the wall, he drew deep breaths to slow himself down. Tried again. Still no sound from beyond the door. On a wild chance, he reached above the door for a spare key. The walls were high and the door tall, discouraging all but the biggest of burglars from reaching it. But there it was, a single brass door key covered with dust. He blew it off, inserted it and heard a satisfying click as the door drifted silently open.
He searched the one-bedroom apartment in less than five seconds. Nothing. He returned to the kitchen for a closer look. The whole place looked tidy and uninhabited. There were no dishes in the sink or on the rack. The garbage pail under the sink was empty and scrubbed clean, the fridge, coffee maker and toaster all unplugged. The cupboards contained only some pasta, spices and a few cans.
No one had used this kitchen in a long time. Disappointed, he moved on to the bathroom. Also clean and dry. The bed had been stripped and a dust cover spread over it. Not a single rumple disturbed its surface. It took him ten minutes to go through the apartment inch by inch, methodically looking for any signs of covert habitation that Meredith might have missed. There was nothing. The phone was disconnected and unplugged. Tanya was nothing if not thorough.
He wanted to scream. He had come so close, yet he was nowhere. She was not here. She had to be somewhere else, but where? This had seemed like such a perfect idea—a friend out of town for months and her apartment lying empty for the taking. As he travelled back down in the elevator, he thought about the last time they’d seen Tanya. It had been her going away bash, held not in her apartment but at her parents’ cottage on Loon Lake. It was a ramshackle cottage built with spit and salvaged lumber by her grandfather and his brothers decades ago. The other cousins squabbled over it during the premium weeks of summer, but Tanya loved to party there in the autumn, when the colours were glorious but the bugs and other cottagers were gone. It was on a dead-end dirt road, all alone on its section of the lake, and they could make as much noise as they wanted. Bonfires, guitars, off-key singing, and way too many coolers of beer.
Halfway out the front door, Brandon froze. Tanya had been drunk and maudlin by the end of the party when she’d given Meredith the keys to her apartment. “I’m so sorry I’ll miss the wedding. If I could, I’d fly home. But you guys have a great time and if you want to use my apartment or my car for—you know, a getaway—just do it. It’s my present to you.”
The car! Brandon sprinted around the edge of the apartment building into the parking lot at the back. Meredith had planned to move the car every few weeks to make sure it didn’t seize up. It was an ancient, rust-riddled red Honda, and Meredith had joked that she wouldn’t let it die on her watch.
The parking lot held about a dozen cars, each parked in their designated numbered spot. Nowhere among them, however, was there an ancient red Honda.