Robideau nodded. “This at least explains why the plants weren’t dried out.” He took the mail and leafed through it. It didn’t amount to much, but then the girl hadn’t been here long enough to establish a presence. There were a few fliers, a cable television bill, and a manila envelope from a national seed company...
His interest quickened.
The manila envelope had been redirected, a previous address scribbled out with a pen.
A previous address.
An address in the city.
“I won’t be arrested over this, will I?” fretted Mrs. Pashniak.
“Not today,” Robideau assured her.
The girl who received him was thin and plain, though with remarkable eyes and a faultless complexion. Her name was Sidney Brixton, and certainly she knew Angela. They had been friends since enrolling in Fine Arts, where Sidney had majored in photography, and Angela in modem dance. Angela had done well. Won some awards for choreography. But she’d had trouble landing employment after graduation.
Sidney Brixton was consternated to hear that her friend had gone missing. The chief said, “You haven’t heard from her, then, since she left?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re not just saying that because she asked you to?”
“Oh, no!”
“You were close, then? Friends and roommates?”
“Yes. Then she went off to that little town. I told her it was silly, that the city was a better place for her, but she was determined. She had a benefactor, she said. A patron. Someone who would help her get established.” Sidney ruefully blinked her large, sad eyes. “She hoped to open a dance school. It was her fallback plan, you see — to teach. But it would take money to set it up, and she didn’t have any.”
“Who was this benefactor?”
“A man. I never actually met him. If he came to get her, they’d meet down at the door. We spoke on the phone a few times, and I didn’t like him because he seemed arrogant. Smug and superior. I never said as much to Angela, though.”
“Why not?”
“She would have had ten fits. She’d have asked me how I could say such a thing about someone I knew nothing about.”
Sidney shrugged. “We parted on good terms, though, and I expected to hear from her.” Her face clouded. “And now I think you’re telling me that I may not hear from her ever again.” Her large eyes glistened.
“I need to find this man,” Robideau said. “Can you tell me his name?”
“Only a pet name. Angela called him Obie.”
Obie, thought Robideau. Overberg?
“He approached her after a school performance. I didn’t go that night. The subject matter didn’t appeal to me.” She frowned disparagingly. “All about forced prostitution during wartime — the brothel camps armies set up. It was a short musical sketch that Angela had choreographed. But I don’t like that stuff. Angela told me later about this older fellow who approached her afterward.”
“This Obie.”
“Yes.”
“So he liked her work... You had your doubts, though, about that?”
“Darn right I did. I thought he was using her.”
I think so, too, the chief thought.
“Do you have a picture of your friend?”
“Of course. I’m a photographer.”
Thank God, Robideau thought.
It was a posed photo in black and white. Sidney explained that there was a whole new movement afoot in black and white photography; she seemed excited by it. What a difference, Robideau thought, between her and the so-called artists who aimed spray cans at fences and walls.
The girl in the picture was dark and pretty. Strong features, hair curling in at her chin. She sat elbows up, fingers interlaced, her face against the back of one hand.
“That’s a curious bracelet she’s wearing,” Robideau said.
“Yes, isn’t it. It’s only pewter, but rather interesting. All those little figures, like charms, sort of, engaged in different forms of dance. She found it in a pawnshop and had to have it. She wore it always.”
Overberg, thought Chief Robideau darkly, heading north out of the city with the wheel clenched in his two big fists. It was Overberg who had befriended Angela. Older, smug, condescending Obie. The smiling man with no answers. Well, he was going to have to come clean before this day was out!
With a sense of forboding he thought about Angela Lemay. He was ready to accept — like Sidney, like the girl’s neighbors, like Mrs. Robideau — that something terrible might well have happened to her. Mr. Overberg had a lot to answer for.
But unfortunately Mr. Overberg was not at home. More accurately, he did not acknowledge his doorbell, nor did he answer his phone. Robideau swallowed his irritation and drove to the Highcliff.
If he couldn’t deal with Overberg directly, he would take Mrs. Pashniak’s advice and go back to the beginning, that voice in the garbage chute. He could probably rule out the furnace room, Leonard Boski’s domain, and go directly back to the storage room at the top of the stairs.
He buzzed Leonard from the door, but it was Chuck Lang who let him in. “Leonard’s a tad busy at the moment, chief. He thought up a surefire concoction to get the paint off them bricks.” Chuck winked. “The man’s a rocket scientist, you know.” The chief wasn’t interested. He relieved Chuck of Boski’s key ring, then took a ride to the top floor.
Again he was struck by the room’s clinical tidiness. He entered reluctantly, concerned lest he disturb some crucial if microscopic evidence.
The room’s contents were in three rough groupings: furniture on the left, unused building materials and fixtures in a small corner on the right, and appliances at the back standing three deep along the wall. There were some large washers and dryers, no doubt originally from the building’s laundry facility; also some old electric ranges, fridges, and freezers.
And the chute access door.
It was quiet up here. Except...
Yes. Very odd. The machines should be disconnected and dead, but one of them was humming, quietly functioning. Why? Moving to investigate, he found that the sound was coming from one of the freezers.
An unpleasant queasiness stirred inside him. Steeling himself, he heaved up on the lid.
It was locked.
Well, if Boski could jimmy apartment doors, Robideau could certainly open a recalcitrant freezer. He found the pick on Boski’s large key ring and applied it to the key slot. The pick wouldn’t fit. But the chief was bound and determined to open this freezer and picked up a length of flat iron from the plumbing corner. He wedged it under the lid, heaved again. With a screech, the catch tore out of the sheet metal.
He threw back the lid.
He had been prepared to discover a human body. What he saw was a long, bent, bundled object, lying hunched in the bottom of the box. It was wrapped in an old window curtain taken from a stack by the door, drapery cords binding it tight. He leaned into the frosty cavity, fumbled with the bindings, pulled them open...
A human hand slipped out, each tiny hair on the back of it sparkling with tiny ice crystals.
“Found what you’re looking for, chief?”
Horrified and startled, Chief Robideau straightened. He turned and found Overberg standing behind him, eyes fixed in an intense, icy hatred.
“It appears,” the older man continued, glancing at the freezer, “that you’ve been prying into things — pardon the pun. I trust you have the appropriate permissions. A warrant would be nice.” He had lost his youthful radiance, the haughty humor missing from his eyes.
“I think we’re past those niceties now,” the chief told him, regaining his composure. “I’m going to guess that it’s Ted Tozer lying in this freezer, and that you can tell me how he got here.”