Back upstairs, he finished his coffee and watched the traffic on Skinker, considering what his next move should be. Pressuring Father Mohan may have stirred things up, but he figured it was time to see what a little pressure on Ellen Cantrell would do. He dialed her cell phone and asked to see her. She told him to come by her place in an hour, sounding like she’d just gotten up or hadn’t slept.
He dressed for success in black blazer with silk tie and motored across the park to grab breakfast at one of his favorite cafés on its east side. Afterward, when Gabriel tried to pay for his omelet, the owner, who manned the cash register, wouldn’t allow it.
“Next time you pay, Carlo.”
“You said that last time, Max. And the time before.”
“Don’t stay away so long,” Max said with a laugh. “Then I won’t forget what I say.” Gabriel knew it wasn’t his sparkling personality that Max liked, but rather the knowledge that a friend on the force was a good thing to have, like when Max’s soft-minded son-in-law got caught up in a drug bust.
“Can’t stay away from your breakfasts for too long,” Gabriel said and then turned up the collar on his overcoat and pushed out the door onto the street. The Arctic wind still blew, stinging his face. He pulled on his gloves and looked at his watch. He was right on time.
He walked up Laclede Avenue to Kingshighway Boulevard and the ABC condominiums—an appropriate address for an English teacher. Actually the ABCDs, the names chiseled into the pediments above the four entrances: Aberdeen, Bellevue, Colchester, and Devonshire. A hundred years after construction they were still a desirable place to live and well beyond an honest cop’s pay.
He got buzzed into the Devonshire, took the elevator to the sixth floor—the penthouse—found the apartment on the right, and knocked.
Despite it being over an hour since they talked, Ellen Cantrell came to the door in an aquamarine bathrobe. She didn’t look all that great without makeup—circles under her eyes, the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners, and, worse, a general sense of fatigue that clung to her like cheap perfume. She let him in without a word, and he followed her to the kitchen.
The apartment was tastefully decorated. Older, elegant things. Red brocade wallpaper in the vestibule, French-looking chairs and sofa glimpsed as he passed the living room, landscape paintings or reproductions—Impressionist?—on the walls. Money can buy most anything, including taste and interior decorators. He could not see Ellen Cantrell perusing Martha Stewart magazines to get ideas.
He sat at the counter as she stood across from him pouring two cups from what appeared to be an industrial-strength coffeemaker. When she set his cup on the counter, her hand shook. She didn’t ask if he wanted sugar or cream.
“Thanks for seeing me on short notice,” he said.
“You said you didn’t want to talk on the phone.”
“Just wanted to make sure there was no miscommunication.”
She picked up her cup and held it between her hands as if they were cold—or as if she needed to occupy or steady them. “What is it you have to communicate?”
“I was hoping you might have something to communicate to help me find your husband.”
She stared at him. “You mean you have nothing new to tell me?” She set her coffee cup down carefully, impatience creeping into her voice. “I’ve already communicated to you everything I can.”
He sipped his coffee and waited a beat. Then, “There is something new. Something that raises the stakes. Something that suggests some urgency.”
“What?” She straightened.
“Your husband’s life may be at risk.”
“What are you talking about? First you tell me he’s drowned, then he’s alive, and now he’s in danger.”
Gabriel ran his fingers along the rim of his cup trying to get the language right in his mind.
“I know why I was chosen for this assignment, Ms. Cantrell. Angelo Cira and I go back thirty years. He trusts me. He values my discretion. I want you to trust me as well. So I will give you my pledge: Nothing we say to each other in the next ten minutes will leave this room by my doing. And I hope not by yours.” Ellen nodded and brushed the hair off her forehead. Gabriel went on, “What did you do with your husband’s laptop once it was returned to you two days ago?”
“An officer from headquarters came for it.”
She shrugged. “No, and I didn’t ask. I figured it was evidence or something.”
“Did you know what secrets it contained?”
“Secrets? Jonathan isn’t the type of man to have secrets.”
“You know nothing about his Cloud IX accounts?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He nodded as if considering her words. “Okay. I didn’t think so.” He waited. Took another long drink of coffee.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
He set his cup down. “Did you know your husband had stopped working on his dissertation? That he was instead chronicling the events that led to his getting sacked at the university. That he’s spent months gathering incriminating evidence against his boss and others in what he termed ‘educational malpractice.’ That he was writing about his marital problems and about you and … well….”
Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open in an unspoken, Oh. Gabriel held her gaze and continued. “Marital issues aside, the most important thing at this point is what he wrote about ongoing corruption at City Hall, including your involvement in payoffs and kickbacks on the Stadium Towne project.”
“What?” Her body stiffened like she had just been slapped.
“Apparently he felt humiliated and vindictive and so put to use his considerable writing and computer skills to dig into things he had no legal right to—including your email and bank accounts. Now, however, since you gave his laptop to headquarters and, by extension, to Angelo, all that information has been deleted from his online cloud accounts.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand to silence her.
“Now, it could be coincidence. Your husband may have come to his senses and trashed the stuff himself, seeing what damage it could do to you, the mayor, and others. But coincidence just doesn’t smell right in this case since the files—which have existed in some form for months—vanished within forty-eight hours of the downtown boys getting theirs hands on his computer.”
She went into herself. Gabriel sensed the walls going up. He leaned forward and pressed on.
“You’re not naïve, Ms. Cantrell. You know they play hardball downtown when they want to shut somebody up. Usually they’re happy enough simply to sully someone’s reputation, ruin him financially, or send him to prison. Not that difficult when you have the police, the judges, the media, and the mob on your side. But your husband may feel he has little left to lose at his point and thus might be hard to silence by traditional means. I’m keen on finding him and talking some sense into him. Unlike some, I’m keen on keeping him alive.”
Cantrell stared at the marble countertop shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.” When she looked up her bottom lip quivered if just for an instant. “You must be wrong.”
“You know better than I what you revealed to Jonathan and what he might have discovered on his own—and the potential political and legal damage that could result if he made that information public. So I’m also hoping you can give me a clue, anything that might help me find him before something happens. Before the next body we pull out of the river really is your husband’s.” He waited for that to sink in.
“Think about where he might be hiding,” he continued. “Any place you vacationed together? Any friends he might have communicated with? We checked the people he had emailed and talked with recently, but no dice. What about cousins, classmates, prior girlfriends?”
She bit her lip. “We’ve been together since college. There’s no one else … We never traveled much. First there was grad school. Then he was always teaching, and I was working round-the-clock. But Jonathan didn’t seem to mind. He had his books—that’s where he traveled. And his dissertation—Mark Twain, Hannibal, and all that … I just don’t know….”
With that she seemed to pull even further into herself. He got up and let himself out without a word, leaving her leaning against the kitchen counter, staring off into space. It was a wasted conversation in that she gave him nothing new, but he did take away something from the meeting: Laura Berkman and Jonathan Stone were probably right—Ellen Cantrell didn’t seem all that bright. How people like her got into positions of power he’d never know. Okay, he did know, but that didn’t mean he liked it.
Despite his plea for confidentiality, he figured she’d panic and immediately call the mayor. Gabriel couldn’t control what Ellen Cantrell did, so he’d just have to wait and see what happened next on that front. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference—Angelo would just think Gabriel was doing his job, scaring her, blowing smoke up her ass to get her to divulge whatever information she might be guarding. The mayor would see that the lieutenant was on the job, following his directive to do whatever necessary to find Stone. But Cantrell would eventually have to decide who to trust to keep her husband alive.
Unless, of course, that’s not what she wanted.