MARTELLO and I dropped Marjorie back at my shop around noon, then proceeded up Booth into Lebreton Flats. We pulled up on Primrose, which runs west to east between Booth and Preston, a short block of mostly small townhouse developments from the late seventies.
An RCMP cruiser was pulled up in the visitor’s parking lot next to an Ottawa PD Police Interceptor.
“Humph. Don’t see John’s car; they must have taken it away,” Martello murmured.
As we got out of Tony’s Lincoln, Ottawa PD DS Sally Quinn was walking over to us from the front of a townhouse unit tucked back from the visitor parking spaces.
She nodded at Martello, and stared at me.
“Well, Mr. Anderson – you’re still involved, I see,” she said in a flat voice.
She was in plainclothes today. My memory flashed back to the courtroom nightmare I’d had – how many nights ago? – when she’d been in uniform pointing guns at me.
“He and one of his employees have seen the guy we’re looking for, so we had photos for him to look at,” Martello told her. “What’s happening here?”
“Most of your techies have been and gone, and Phillips’ car has been taken back to the yard. They’ve been through Short’s townhouse and still found nothing really that helps. Guy lived like a monk.”
“How about neighbours?” Tony asked.
“At the time of day we figure John was here,” DS Quinn said. “About mid-morning yesterday, everyone around here was at work, except some older people, couple of retirees, living over there.”
She pointed toward townhomes farther east in the complex.
“They didn’t see anything and clearly don’t have a good line of sight to where John’s car was found.”
“Nobody walking dogs? Mailmen?” Tony asked.
“We’re checking, but nobody’s come forward.”
“Well let’s go look at his house while we’re here,” Tony said.
Short’s townhouse unit was typical of medium density housing slapped up in the seventies. From the front foyer, stairs went down on the left to the basement. Stairs also went up to a small living area, then another flight up to a kitchen, two tiny bedrooms, and one master bedroom. Furnished sparsely, scatter rugs strewn on the parquet floors throughout, the whole space had the atmosphere of a low-rent hotel suite. There were no photos or pictures on the wall or anywhere else. The kitchen was utilitarian with a standard refrigerator containing a carton of curdling milk. There were a few microwaveable dinners in the freezer compartment.
One of the small bedrooms upstairs was used as a study, and an RCMP technician was still there packing up computer equipment to take back for analysis.
The technician, a young bespectacled woman in jeans and a sweatshirt, turned to Martello.
“The guy here sure knew how to protect his files, sir. I’ll try a few tricks with it back at the office.”
Tony, DS Quinn, and I headed down the stairs into the living room. Through the sliding glass doors at the back of this room, I could see that the small yard was entirely decked, surrounded on all sides by high wooden fencing. Off to one side, about midway along the decking, were rigid sheets of blue Styrofoam that covered a rectangular area of about twenty square feet.
“Has anyone been out there?” I asked.
DS Quinn glanced at Tony before answering.
“I haven’t, yet. My constable is still knocking on doors in this area looking for anyone who was around yesterday afternoon. Sergeant Martello’s people have been all through the house. Why? Just a couple of pieces of Styrofoam.”
I bent down to look at a large white plastic container on the floor to the right of the sliding glass door that opened onto the rear deck. The container was tucked almost out of sight under the arm of a moldy-looking upholstered easy chair.
While Tony and Quinn watched, I flicked off the lid. Inside were about three litres of pea-sized nuggets and a scoop. I took a sniff.
“Smells like meal, or food of some type. For goldfish?”
Tony leaned down and smelled the contents of the container himself, then stood and stared through the sliding glass door, looking at the pieces of Styrofoam covering a rough rectangle on the deck.
“Oh no.”
The koi pond hidden under the latched Styrofoam sheets was about four feet deep. The fish themselves were still pretty happy since they’d only been without filtration and daylight since yesterday, presumably. They’d also enjoyed nibbling on John Phillips.
Martello dropped me back at Britfit around 3 p.m. as a fresh set of SOCOs started their work at Short’s townhouse, now a bona fide crime scene with the discovery of Phillips’ corpse.
Tony just drove, not saying a word, and I had the sense not to try to ask anything. I was pretty shaken myself. The image of Phillips floating face-up in the koi pond, the one eye not eaten staring at the sky, wouldn’t leave me.
We pulled up to the Britfit forecourt on Cambridge Street. Martello put his Town Car in park, and turned to me.
“What are you goin’ to do now?” he asked.
“I guess I’ll stay here a couple of hours, catch up on some paperwork. I’ll get JP to drop me at home.”
The office loaner Mini Cooper was still parked at my flat.
Martello sighed.
“Okay. Conn, I’m going to have to pull Cooke away from your place. We need all hands on deck right now. I’ll call him in a minute, tell him to wait until you get there.”
“I’m sorry about John, Tony.”
“I know. We are really going to nail this bastard if it’s the last thing I do.”
I opened the passenger door and started to get out.
“Hold on a sec,” he said. “I’m thinking you must be right, that this guy has fried his own brains, is wrapping up loose ends, and you’re one of them. I’ll talk to some senior people and try to convince them that he’ll definitely show up at your place in the country, and that we need to cover it, full technology, armed officers planted, the works. We can call in some favours with Ottawa PD.
“With Phillips … gone like that … I might have more success convincing them, but you know how it is, everything is a battle with resources. But I’ll work on it and let you know. In the meantime, watch your back and keep your cell on.”
After what I’d seen at Short’s townhouse, it was something of a relief to enter Britfit, a familiar and comforting place. Marjorie was on the phone in her own office as I entered the shop with a wave in her direction. Dougald had been working flat out finishing up the lawyer’s 150S Drophead engine repairs, while Reg, assisted by JP, had been taking care of the ongoing business of tuning a variety of cars.
Over the course of the next hour, Marjorie and Reg brought me up to speed. Jaguar club members had been bringing their vehicles, mostly E-Types, in for tune-ups, and we’d had half a dozen MGBs and Midgets in for minor work. The Sprite was back after its clutch replacement as the owner now wanted a full lubrication and fresh coolant service. A tasty TR4 in French blue paint needed new exhaust pipes and mufflers fitted, and a red MGA was due in at the end of the day with, according to the owner, backfiring and stuttering carbs.
This was all quite satisfactory. Today was the sixth of May, and owners of these cars were looking forward to the Victoria Day weekend in less than two weeks. This long holiday weekend, the first one on the calendar since Easter, marked the true beginning of the car show season with, hopefully, pleasant top-down weather for picnicking and touring round and about the burgeoning spring countryside. And the owners wanted their little cars running smoothly and looking good for the first car shows.
I told the others nothing about Phillips’ death, the third now that could likely be tied to Robert Short, the PR card scam, the murders of Morrison and Archambault, and the arson at our shop. I said that I would be occupied with things for a few more days but would stay in touch and try to get in to help out when I could.
Dougald nodded.
“We’re keeping up okay, Conn.”
Reg, of course, took a different approach.
“We’re doing all right, Guv’nor. Don’t worry about us poor, victimized, non-unionized workers slaving away night and day, grinding our knuckles to the bone, while you owner types eat caviar and …”
“That’s fine, Reg; obviously all’s right with the world here.”
Marjorie had updated me briefly on the accounts picture, all good at this point. But she did have one small problem.
“Jerry seems really out of sorts, Conn. Mewling a lot and doesn’t want to eat much. I called the vet’s office that did the surgery and took him in over my lunch hour. They’re happy with his leg. His eye socket and tail stump are all healed, too. They can’t really find anything wrong.”
“I’ll take him back to my place for a few days, Marjorie. Isabelle grew to like him; perhaps he just needs some full-time attention away from here.”
I’d always thought of cats as aloof animals, compared to dogs, at any rate. But Jerry was a funny little beast, seeming to crave a fair bit of affection and attention, and he was perhaps still a bit traumatized by being kicked and mutilated. He had bounced back pretty well after his surgeries, but who really knows how cats think or what sets them off?
JP had been hovering on the edges of my vision. I crooked a finger toward him now. It was almost 4 p.m. and nearly close of business anyway.
“I need a ride home in the Land Rover, JP, and we can talk about the you-know-what in the basement.”