Curious, I took a plastic lid for my coffee and, juggling the cruller in my other hand, tried to make a dignified exit. Could this be it, after all this time? The legendary beautiful blonde of private-eye fiction come to life at last. In my office?
I took the stairs two at a time and saw her standing there in the hallway, about to knock on my door. She turned, and I could see an expression of distaste on her face. I couldn’t blame her. She was Holt Renfrew from head to toe, and the place doesn’t get cleaned often. Under the dim glow of a bare sixty-watt bulb, the old linoleum was cracked and veined with years of ground-in dirt.
Angelo’s mimed shape hadn’t been far wrong, if a tad over-generous. She was certainly beautiful, but there was something else. I knew her. Damned if I could remember from where, but I knew her.
She smiled and held out her hand. “Mr. Lang. It’s nice to see you again.”
I gestured her into the office, where she brushed crumbs off the chair with her white-gloved hand before sitting down, crossing her legs, and turning her nose up at the view. It’s not great, I know, but it’s cheap. We’re in a strip mall on the Scarborough side of Kingston Road, opposite one of those clapboard hotels where the government houses refugee claimants. I parked my coffee and cruller on the cluttered desk and sat down. Now I knew where I recognized her from, but the name still wouldn’t come.
She peeled her gloves off and gave me another smile. “Susan,” she said, as if sensing my embarrassment. “Susan Caldwell.”
“Of course,” I said. “Nice to see you again, Susan.”
Susan Caldwell. She had been one of my students ten years ago, in another life, when I was a teaching assistant at the University of Toronto. Now I remembered. Susan had been notable mostly for her long blond hair and a rather ill-advised essay on Darwin’s influence on Wordsworth’s thought. The blond hair was still there, along with the dark blue eyes, button nose, long, shapely legs, and a nice curve at the hips. Impure thoughts passed through my mind, but she was only about five years younger than me, and she wasn’t my student anymore.
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
“I need help.”
“Why choose me?” Nobody else ever does, I might have added, but didn’t.
“I remembered that article about you in the paper awhile back.”
Ah, yes, the famous article. When I couldn’t find an academic position after getting my Ph.D. in English, I followed my adolescent fantasy, fueled by years of Hammett and Chandler, and enrolled in a private investigator’s course. I got the qualification, served my apprenticeship with a large firm, and now I was out on my own. LANG INVESTIGATIONS. It had a ring to it. Anyway, the newspaper had done a feature on me, labeled me “The Ph.D. P.I.,” and it sort of stuck. Embarrassing, but it brought in a curious client or two, and now here was the lovely Susan Caldwell sitting opposite me.
“People who need me are usually in trouble,” I said.
“It’s not me. It’s my brother.”
“What’s the problem?”
“He’s been arrested.”
“What for?”
“Murder.” She leaned forward and rested her hands on the desk, so bound up in her plea for her brother that she didn’t even notice the dust. “But he didn’t do it, Mr. Lang. I know my brother. He wouldn’t harm a fly.”
Now that she mentioned it, I did remember hearing something about the case. I don’t usually pay a lot of attention to true-crime stories, especially when they involve celebrities, but sometimes you can’t avoid picking up a few details, especially if it’s close to home. “Tony Caldwell, right?” I said. “The famous fashion photographer. He’s accused of murdering his wife.”
“Yes. But he didn’t do it.”
“Ms. Caldwell, Susan,” I said, “I don’t usually investigate murders. The police don’t like it, for a start, and I try to stay on good terms with them.”
“The police.” She spat out the word as if it were a cockroach. “Don’t talk to me about the police! They’ve just decided Tony’s guilty and that’s that. They’re not even looking for the real killer.”
“They must have a good reason,” I said.
“Well, maybe they think they have a good reason, but they don’t know Tony like I do.”
“What could I do that the police can’t?”
She looked me in the eye. “You could believe me, for a start,” she said. “Then maybe you could talk to him. At least you could keep an open mind.”
She had a point there. There’s nothing the police like more than an open-and-shut case; it’s neat, like balancing the books, and it makes the statistics look good. And most cases are open-and-shut. Why should Tony Caldwell’s be so different? Because his sister said so? If I killed someone, I’d hope that my sister would refuse to believe it, too, and defend me just the way Susan was defending Tony. Still, I was tempted to give it a try.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He’s staying with me. He just came out on bail. Our parents live in Sarnia, and Tony’s not supposed to leave Toronto.”
“Give me the details,” I said.
Susan sat back in her chair and spoke softly. “It was about one o’clock in the morning. Tony and Val — that’s Valerie Pascale, his wife — had been out, and they just got home.”
“Where do they live?”
“The Beaches. Or Beach. I never know which.”
“Either’s fine with me. Go on.”
“The neighbors said they heard them arguing loudly. Then, after it had been quiet for a while, Tony called the police and said his wife was dead.”
“Is that exactly what he said?”
“On the phone, yes, but when they came, before they warned him or whatever they do, they say he said, ‘I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, Val.’ ”
That didn’t sound good. “Did they argue often?”
“They loved each other very much, but it was a pretty volatile relationship. Valerie grew up in Vancouver, but she was half French,” Susan added, as if that explained it all.
“Did Tony explain what he meant by the comment?”
“He said that he was apologising for the argument, that he was sorry the last words they’d had together were angry, and that he’d never have a chance to make up.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He admitted they’d had a quarrel, and said he stormed off upstairs. I know this might sound odd, Mr. Lang, but he had a shower. If you knew Tony, you’d know he’s a compulsive showerer, and he always does it when he gets upset. Ever since he was a kid. When he went downstairs about twenty minutes later, he found Valerie dead in the living room, stabbed. He says he doesn’t remember much after that.”
“You say she was stabbed. What about the knife? Did the police find it? Were Tony’s fingerprints on it?”
“It was just a kitchen knife, I think. He said he’d been using it earlier to cut the string on a parcel.”
“So his prints were on it?”
“Only because he’d been using it to cut the string.”
Again, it wasn’t looking good. “Did he confess?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Was there any other reason the police charged him so quickly, then?” I asked, almost dreading the answer.
“Well,” said Susan, shifting uneasily in her chair. “I suppose so... I mean, you know, when they got there... it might have looked bad.”
“Yes?”
“Well, when the police arrived, Tony was kneeling beside her body holding the knife, and he was covered in blood. Valerie’s blood.”