For a moment I thought I’d misheard or he’d got it wrong. “I thought you said he hadn’t seen Deidre in years?”
“That’s right. And when I spoke to him last night he didn’t breathe a word about being with her on Tuesday.”
“How did he take the news?”
“I don’t know. Stunned? Disbelieving? The sort of emotions you’d expect. He asked if we knew what had happened, who’d killed her.” He scowled at me. “They were perfectly normal questions, Chris,” he snapped. “I never gave it another thought.”
“Why would you?” I snapped back, more to jolt him off that track than because I was irritated. He looked ghastly. He turned back to the screen and stared at it with such intensity, I thought he’d push himself bodily into the scene.
Sigmund didn’t look much like him. He was taller, a few pounds into chubby, with narrow-framed designer glasses that were too small for his face. He had long sideburns and a quiff, à la Elvis. He’d shoved up the sleeves of his khaki cargo blazer and a beige scarf was tossed with careful insouciance around his neck. Everything screamed “trying too hard.”
“Ready to continue?” asked Ben, who hadn’t expressed any curiosity about our exchange. Perhaps he’d learned to tune out emotional pain.
“Just a minute.” Leo jotted down the time from the screen. 8:19. Ben pressed “play.”
The figures on the screen jumped into life. Sigmund put his hand on Deidre’s shoulder. She turned and looked up at him. A frown and a shrug to remove his hand. Some words were exchanged. She was talking and signing at the same time but her voice must have been loud because the man seated beside her glanced at her curiously. The dealer scooped up the cards and collected the chips, which disappeared down a small plastic drain beside her. She took more cards from the sleeve, asking the players if they were in for the next round. Deidre tapped the table to indicate she would play on. Sigmund stood awkwardly, arms hanging by his sides, not speaking. The next round went quickly; Deidre showed a queen high but lost to the house. Sigmund said something else to her. It was obvious this was not a friendly conversation. She shook her head. He asked her something which looked from his gesture as if he wanted her to go with him. Hand lifted to mouth. Ah yes, to the bar. Another shake of her head. Whatever she said then clearly upset Sigmund. He spun around and left.
“Stop the tape for a minute,” said Leo. “Can we track his movements?”
Ben nodded. “For sure.”
“Let’s do that first then but come back to Deidre. We’ve got to get one of those girls to watch this and tell us what they’re saying,” said Leo.
He could of course ask his son what they’d been talking about, but almost without realizing it, Leo had switched into official mode. Sigmund was now on the witness list.
Ben inserted more tapes and started the first one at the time checkpoint.
“There he is,” Leo cried out.
We picked him up on the next frame and then the next. He pushed his way through the crowd and went into the bar. Here, he checked his watch turned around and headed for the exit. He went through the doors at 8:27.
“There aren’t any cameras in the parking lot,” said Ben. “But we do have them at the entrance. We keep track of the cars coming in and exiting.”
Their surveillance was, shall we say, comprehensive, but I hadn’t heard a peep out of civil liberties folks protesting about Big Brother tactics.
“Go back to Deidre, please,” said Leo.
Ben did so and we watched the tape for the next two hours. Ben commented periodically on some of the other players that he recognized but nowhere in the tape did we see Deidre talk to anybody or show any reactions to anybody around her. She seemed to have a good night until the end when she lost all her chips. The man two seats down had a flush and cleaned up. Finally, at 10:40, she too checked her watch, looked alarmed, and stood up quickly, indicating to the dealer that she was finished playing.
“She’s supposed to be at Memorial Park by eleven. She’s cutting it close,” said Leo.
She grabbed her coat and purse.
Ben tracked her through the casino, hurrying now, and through the exit at 10:43.
That was that. We knew she’d gone to her car and found she had a flat and then vanished into thin air.
We all sat back. I rotated my shoulders to get the feeling back and Leo massaged his neck.
“I didn’t see anybody paying her attention. No covert glances, nothing. What do you think, Chris?”
“From what I’ve seen, I agree with you. I don’t think she met anybody inside the casino.”
Other than Sigmund Forgach, but it wasn’t necessary to add that. We all knew.
“I think the next step is to speak with my son,” said Leo. “He might be able to help us.”
And after that? I knew Leo’s mind was racing too, sifting, discarding, flinching away from suspicions too horrible to be acknowledged. Why had Sigmund hidden the fact he’d met Deidre on Tuesday night? But what earthly reason might he have for killing her?
Leo looked at me. “I suppose I shouldn’t be the one to question him, should I?”
“Uh-uh. We’ve got to pass all this on to Ed. He’ll have to bring Sigmund in for a talk.” Leo turned to the manager. “We’ll need to keep these tapes.”
“I’ve already got them marked.”
“And you do know that as this is a police investigation, you are bound by the rules of confidentiality.”
Leo’s voice was unnecessarily authoritative but Ben didn’t seem to take offence.
“I wish you all the best, Doctor.” his voice was soft and sympathetic but I could see Leo bristle. He wasn’t used to being the object of pity and he didn’t like it.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get back to the office right away. Thank you so much for your help, Mr. Snake.”
“I’ll take you downstairs.”
We went out into the other room. Mr. Torvill was nowhere to be seen. The monitors flickered on, people lost their money and their hopes.
We walked back to the parking lot, not speaking. Deidre’s car had been removed by the forensic guys, but we knew where it had been parked. I saw Leo looking around as if some clue would hit him and set his mind to rest. All that happened was the wind gusted and blew a discarded chocolate wrapper onto his foot. He shook it off angrily. I let him into the car, just as my cellphone rang. It was Katherine. I moved away so I could talk.
“How’d it go?”
“Let’s say there were some surprising developments but I’d rather tell you when we come in.”
“I’ve just had a call from Ed. Good news. We have a sighting on that camper van.”
“Fantastic. Where?”
“Over on Colborne Street. It seems to have been an attempted break-in. The resident is an elderly woman, apparently, but she gave an excellent description of the man who was trying to get in her apartment. It could be Zachary Taylor, from what I’ve seen on the DVD. She says a blue and white camper van was parked in the parking lot and she saw it drive away.”
“Colborne Street is only a couple of blocks from where Deidre lived, isn’t it?”
“One west and two south. Ed is over there now but he thought you might want to talk to the woman yourself.”
We disconnected and I went back to the car. I told Leo about the phone call.
“I want to talk to him.”
“Not now, Leo. I think it would be best if I got you back to the office and you can follow up on Sigmund.”
“What if this Zachary fellow is the one who murdered Dee?”
“If he is, we’ll charge him. It won’t change matters for you to see him at this point.”
He didn’t like it but his better judgement prevailed and he nodded agreement.
There was a steady stream of cars leaving the casino and I moved into the lineup to get out. I glanced up as I drove through the gates but the cameras were nothing if not discreet and I wouldn’t have noticed them if Ben hadn’t told me they were there.
As we headed across the narrows toward Orillia I had another déjà-vu experience. Except that it was midday, it was an exact repeat of our experience of yesterday morning, which felt like years ago. Leo was completely silent, almost asleep. I realized I was getting really hungry. When I was front line, I’d learned to live with very unpredictable meal times but after two years of regular office routine, my stomach was accustomed to eat in the middle of the day. I was contemplating stopping to grab a quick slice of pizza to take with me, bad idea, when Leo said “You don’t have to drive all the way back to the Centre. Just go to Colborne Street and I’ll take a cab from there.”
I was afraid he might be getting sneaky on me and was actually hoping to confront Taylor. What I felt must have showed on my face because he said with a touch of irritation, “Don’t worry. I won’t do anything. I’m not a complete idiot. Put me down a block before if you want to.”
I actually thought that was a good idea and, making the excuse that I was going to turn right on Memorial Drive at Barrie Road, instead of left for the Centre, I let him off. He looked small and vulnerable, his collar turned up against the chilly air as he stood at the side of the road waiting to hail a cab.