Sonia wasn’t answering her phone. I thought of leaving a message but figured she wouldn’t want that. But then I wasn’t sure I cared what she wanted. Images came to mind: Miles’s mangled hand and the nauseating way he’d apologized to Chambers. If Sonia had known—and if she hadn’t known—
I stayed with the Sorenson case. It was more manageable, if no less perplexing. A picture was emerging of Tabitha Sorenson. Clever and foolish, furious and ironically detached. She’d see the injustices of the world as justification for fraud. When the opportunity to borrow the money was practically dropped in her lap, it was too good to pass up.
That was the key—opportunity.
Tabitha was smart, maybe brilliant. She’d executed her scheme well. But she’d planned it on the fly. Emotion had guided her—exhilaration, fear, and something else that I couldn’t think of.
In the small office on Pender I cracked the window, allowing the chill and the sound of rain to lull me to sleep. When I woke someone was coming through the door. Kay, carrying coffee and a paper sleeve holding a bagel.
“Your phone’s dead,” she said. “You weren’t at your place or Hastings.”
“Something up?”
“Don’t be.”
I dumped the remnants of last night’s tea in the trash and plugged in the kettle.
Stringing a tea bag around the handle of the mug, I said to Kay, “Sake of argument, let’s say Tabitha made off with half a million dollars. What would a young, somewhat educated woman in her twenties do with that kind of money?”
“She doesn’t seem like she’d be into ponies.”
“Is that what you’d do?”
“Well, I’d never work again,” Kay said. She thought about it. “I do like horses. Travel, maybe. You?”
I took the seat by the window. “Get a house. Maybe buy this building, fix it up.”
“My half brother, the landlord-slash-private eye. Or would you quit?”
“I’d probably pick my clients more carefully.”
“You’d never quit,” Kay said. “Without this job you’d be like that old guy from Shawshank, end up hanging from a ceiling beam somewhere.”
“Thing is,” I said, “it’s not that much money. Whatever Tabitha did, she’d have to be careful. She could get out of the country, but where would she go? Did she use a false passport? Or sneak into the States?” I thought of something. “You know if Tabitha took a language course?”
“Which question did you want me to answer?” Kay said.
“Last one. How much French did she learn?”
“As much as you need to pass high school in Vancouver,” Kay said. “Which is—”
“Next to none. And college?”
“Spanish Zero Nine Nine, ‘Intro to Latin American Culture Through Film.’ That’s all.”
“Tabitha’s not a career criminal,” I said. “She’s getting by on brains and audacity. Remember, she didn’t high-tail after the scandal, she was around for the first part of the audit.”
“And then split after because why? Waiting for the right time?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Or maybe something scared her,” Kay ventured. “Like what if Tabitha was in on it with one of the others. Dhillon, maybe, they were close. They could’ve had a falling out. Or they could all be in on it together.”
“If she did have an accomplice, I’d bet on Mastellotto. More of a political angle than a financial one. That’s who she looked up to, her last couple semesters.”
“What about Dana Essex?” Kay said. “Don’t laugh, she would’ve seen a lot of Tabitha, same as Mastellotto. Plus she was on that events committee.”
“Possible,” I said, “unless you’ve met her and seen she’s the type who looks both ways before crossing her own driveway. She doesn’t know Tabitha well. And I don’t think she has the first clue about money.”
“She’s paying us,” Kay said.
“Which tells you plenty.”
Down the other end of the street, a tour bus rolled by at full speed. Detour, maybe. Or maybe they were including this area in a “Seamy Side of Vancouver” tour. Not too much seaminess in the middle of the day.
“This point it’s all conjecture,” I said. “She might’ve had help, but she kept her family and schoolmates out of the loop. We’ll learn more from her credit report than we did from them.”
“All those people we talked to,” Kay said, “and we still don’t know who she is. How can someone hide so much of themselves? It’s like maybe even she didn’t know who she was.”