“Would you like some tea? Some coffee?”
“No, thank you. Please sit down, Mrs. Tilley.”
Mrs. Tilley wobbled a little, and the colour drained from her face as if someone had pulled a plug in her feet. She lowered herself to the torn sofa and folded her hands neatly on her lap.
“I’m afraid Morris is dead, Mrs. Tilley.” Cardinal’s heart was pounding. He would never get used to this. “Someone killed him.”
“Killed him?” A hand rose slowly to Mrs. Tilley’s mouth.
“I’m very sorry.”
Mrs. Tilley turned to Delorme, as if a woman might talk more sense.
“Why would anyone kill Morris? Morris is—Morris gets along with—Morris wouldn’t hurt a fly. He smokes too much marijuana, that’s true. And he doesn’t seem able to hold a job, but the economy hasn’t been good, you know. And Morris is very picky; he won’t take just anything. But he doesn’t get into fights. It can’t be Morris. There’s a mix-up somewhere, you’ll see. You’ve got the wrong person.”
“His identity was confirmed through dental records,” Delorme said. “His teeth. Your son had an extra incisor, I believe?”
The pause that followed was brief, the silence deep. Somewhere a clock was ticking: one second, two seconds, three. And then Mrs. Tilley’s howl split the air. It was loud, long, and from a distance might have been canine. She gulped for air, almost choked, and let out another howl that hurt Cardinal’s ears not so much because of the volume, which was intense, but because the long, unearthly wail seemed to carry with it all the suffering of all human hearts.
Delorme came back from the kitchen with a glass of water; Cardinal hadn’t even noticed her get up. It took a while, but Delorme eventually managed to get the woman calmed down. The howls subsided into sobs, the sobs into soundless tears, and finally she was able to speak.
“I’ll need to see him,” she said. “I won’t fully believe it, otherwise.”
“Yes, of course,” Delorme said. “We can arrange it with the forensic centre in Toronto, if you like. Or they can make arrangements with whichever funeral home you prefer and you can see him here.”
This brought on a fresh round of tears. It was Cardinal’s experience that allowing grief to take too full a hold could make getting information impossible. At the risk of seeming callous, he broke in with his first question.
“Mrs. Tilley, when did you last see your son?”
“Quite recently. Two or three months ago.”
“Two or three months?”
“Well, two months. Morris gets very involved in things. In his projects and so on, and then I don’t see him for a few months. Then one day I’ll come home from Loblaws and there he’ll be at the kitchen table, wolfing down a sandwich, happy as a clam. He’s a good son. He’ll bring me flowers sometimes. Tulips it was, last time. He knows I love tulips. His brothers never bring flowers.”
“The last address we have for him is Marsden Road,” Delorme said. “Up in Greenwood?”
“Yes, that’s right. He shares a place with some friends.”
“How did he seem when you last saw him?”
“Oh, the usual. Morris doesn’t change. He’s been the same since he was twelve. Happy go lucky. A little thoughtless. A bit … lost, sometimes. I blame the marijuana for that. He told me he was making some good money.”
“Good money doing what?”
“Working for a trucking firm. Loading and unloading. Nothing fancy, but it was a paycheque.”
“Did he mention who he was working with?”
“No. No, he just said it was a good outfit. That’s the way he put it. He said, ‘Ma, I’m finally with a good outfit. I’m in on the ground floor.’ Not that I believed it would get him anywhere. He never sticks with anything. But I was glad he had some money in his pocket. He even brought me some. Didn’t say anything, but after he left I found a hundred-dollar bill under the cookie tin.”
“Did you ever see any of the people he worked with, or any of his friends?”
“No. Well, only one. A boy named Sam he would bring round every once in a while. The two of them would sit in the kitchen and polish off a dozen cookies at a go. Hermits were his favourite—you know, cinnamon and raisin and not too sweet? Oh, there was no keeping those in the house when Morris was around.”
“What is Sam’s last name, Mrs. Tilley, do you know?”
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t. Not a bad-looking boy.”
“Can you give us a description?”
“He’s pale. Very dark hair and very pale skin. He’s shorter than me, and I’m only five-three in stocking feet.”
“That wouldn’t be Sami Deans, would it?” Delorme said. “Stocky and sort of bewildered-looking?”
“Well, you could say that. I never knew his last name, but Morris certainly called him Sami all the time, as if he was a little kid. Of course, it was Morris who never grew up. I suppose he never will, now.”
Mrs. Tilley covered her eyes and cried into her hands for a few moments. Delorme found a box of Kleenex somewhere.
“Mrs. Tilley, are you absolutely sure you don’t remember meeting any of Morris’s other friends or co-workers?” Cardinal said. “It’s terribly important.”
“Morris didn’t tend to bring people round, I’m afraid. Never did. He’s a sociable boy, but at the end of the day he always tended to come home alone—even when he was quite little.”
It didn’t take long to establish that Mrs. Tilley knew essentially nothing about her son’s activities. A few more questions and then she saw them to the door, bobbing along behind them, dabbing at her eyes, apologizing for not being more helpful and thanking them for being so kind.
“The thing I’ll never get used to about murder,” Delorme said, back in the car, “is how many more victims it has than just the one that ends up dead.”
“We’re going to find the guy that did it, Lise. That’s why we’re in this business. Tell me about this Sami Deans you mentioned. Kind of threw me for a loop in there.”
“That’s because you think all I know is white-collar stuff. But us junior detectives have to deal with low-lifes all the time. Unlike elite investigators like yourself.”
“Unlike old has-beens is what you mean.”
“Exactly. Sami Deans. Lives in a frat house, so to speak. In Greenwood, like Mrs. Tilley said.”
Greenwood was one of the first subdivisions built in Algonquin Bay. At one time it had been an address with some cachet, but Greenwood, like much of Algonquin Bay, had come down a peg or two. Now, Greenwood was mostly a haven for retired people on modest pensions, subcompact cars parked beside brick bungalows with bright green lawns. Unfortunately, some of the streets had taken a less picturesque turn.
One such street was Marsden Road, just beyond the Beckers convenience store. It had only three houses. The first was occupied by a half-mad old coot who wore a Second World War trenchcoat even in the blazing sun. The second had been gutted by a fire two years previously, and for complicated tax reasons had been neither repaired nor torn down.
The last house on the block had once been a two-storey, white-brick affair, but now the brick was grey and black. The lawn, those parts of it that were not utterly bald, was a field of litter. Warped plywood covered missing windows. Weeds sprouted through the asphalt drive, where a seventies-era Malibu appeared to have been dropped from a great height.
“Listen to that,” Cardinal said as they rolled up.
“Listen to what?” Delorme said.
“I can hear that car rusting. It’s actually audible.”
“I didn’t know you were a car buff.”
“I’m not. I just hate to see machines mistreated.”
They went up to the front door and knocked loudly.