"When is it due to come out?"
"By the end of the week, I expect."
"With a Peace River Arch play on top of the Lost Horse discovery, it's bound to be a hot seller."
"Yeah."
"Is there anything you're not telling us about this? Anything we should know?"
"No. Like I say, it's pretty straightforward. Run of the mill. Anyway ..."
"Anyway what?"
"Nothing."
"That's all you're going to tell us?"
"There's nothing to tell."
Chris glared at him, then shot Gwen an exasperated look. There was nothing more he could do at this point in time, and Ingram knew it. It wouldn't only be Pettigrew who had talked to him. McKinley had a criminal law department so it could hold itself out as a full service law firm. Pettigrew would have brought along an experienced criminal lawyer to advise Ingram on how far he was legally required to go in cooperating with the police investigation. Which was precisely nowhere.
"I believe you are withholding something from us." Chris's tone was formal as he and Gwen stood up to leave. "If it turns out that you have been, things will go hard for you."
"I'll take my chances," Ingram replied with a touch of defiance and more confidence than he had shown in their earlier meeting.
"I hate it when that happens," Gwen muttered fiercely when they exited from Bankers Hall onto the Stephen Avenue Mall. "When people clam up on us and refuse to answer questions that could help our investigation."
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
"Your horse is calling you," Gwen said with something close to a giggle as the opening notes of Valencia suddenly rang out. Valencia was the name of the chestnut mare that had been Chris's best show jumper, and he had a snippet of the song installed as the ring tone of his cellphone.
He grinned back at Gwen as he answered. "Crane here."
It was Dummett, wanting to know if there had been any response from TLC to his story.
"Not so far as I know," Chris told him. "I've been out all day interviewing people, so there might be something back at the office. If there is, I'll let you know. Anyways, it's early days yet."
But apart from a number of voice mail messages, all that was waiting for Chris on the tenth floor was Madison Energy's annual report. He had asked Jack Adams to send over a copy. He put it to one side to take home.
chapter five
Nevermore was perched on top of his cage when Chris got home. The cage door dangled from one hinge. He ruffled his feathers and cocked his head to stare at his owner, half-defiantly, half-triumphantly, with a bright yellow eye. His belated "Hello, Chris" made Chris smile indulgently.
"So, you finally succeeded!" he congratulated the bird. Nevermore had been entertaining himself for days working with his beak on the nuts and bolts that held the cage together. "All those toys I bought you weren't enough, were they? You want to expand your empire. Well, I can understand that," he added as he carried Nevermore over to his perch.
Nevermore's dismantling of his cage was amusing, not to say impressive. But he couldn't be left loose in the penthouse while it was empty during the day. He could do too much damage. Especially to himself. The penthouse was full of hazards for an inquisitive parrot. And there was Cassie. The parrot and the cleaning lady did not get along. Psittacine birds were notorious for preferring either men or women. Usually, although not always, it was sex linked, with male birds preferring women and vice versa. It was one way of determining the sex of those species of parrot where male and female were identical in appearance. African Greys were known to be more tolerant in this regard than any other parrot species. Nevermore, for instance, positively doted on Angie, the lady from Petcare who looked after him when Chris was out of town. But Cassie brought out the worst in him. It was probably the noise of the vacuum cleaner.
After dinner he would go down to the storage locker where he kept a toolbox and dig out a screwdriver and needle-nose pliers. He would tighten the nuts as much as he could, but that would only slow Nevermore down, not stop him. Maybe there was some kind of non-toxic glue that would cement the nuts in place.
Mixing the one pre-dinner martini he permitted himself, Chris realized the parrot's antics had given him a much-needed break from the Vinney murder. It never hurt to let the brain lie fallow for a spell. Putting a disc by Sonata on the CD player, he settled back with his drink. Music lovers still raved about the concert she had given at the Epcor Centre more than three years ago. Sonata was one of Nevermore's favourites, and he chit-tered quietly to himself as the music filled the room.
There was a photo of Adrienne along with a brief obituary in the classified pages of the Herald. The black-and-white photo did full justice to her beauty, highlighting the to-die-for cheekbones, expressive eyes, and wide, slashing smile. Her life spanned thirty-seven years; her mother was listed as her only living relative. There was no mention of it in the obituary, but inquiries made by the police revealed that her mother suffered from Alzheimer's and lived in a Halifax nursing home. According to the obituary, Adrienne had died suddenly on Monday, May 26. Now there was a euphemism for you! Funeral arrangements were to be announced. That, Chris knew, would depend on when the medical examiner's office released the body.
Placing the obituary page face up on the coffee table, Chris turned his attention to Madison Energy's annual report. First he read the President's Report, traditionally a summary of the past year's activities with a forecast of things to come. As expected, Madison's CEO was upbeat, hailing the rapid development of the Lost Horse field that had been discovered some eighteen months earlier. Wells in the Alberta Foothills were deep and expensive, but they were also extremely prolific if they encountered oil—some producing more than 2,500 barrels of oil per day. It was an incredible bonanza for a comparatively small company like Madison, and the annual report made the most of it.
Nevermore paused his attack on his favourite toy—a dried coconut shell stuffed with nuts, hanging from the top of his cage—as Chris, briefcase in hand, repeated the words "Goodbye, Chris" four times. The parrot, head cocked to one side, listened intently. It wouldn't be long before he mastered the phrase, which would sound a great deal better than, "Sorry, Nevermore."
Walking north in bright morning sunshine along 4th Street, Chris found his thoughts still occupied by Madison Energy and the Lost Horse discovery. What a thrill it must have been when that wildcat came in! Especially since Madison was still a start-up company just getting underway. He himself participated in the oil patch by owning shares in oil and gas companies, but that was one stage removed from actually getting in there and exploring for the stuff. Maybe someday ...
As the stacked glass cubes of the aggressively modern Municipal Building came into view beyond the leafy screen of the Olympic Plaza poplars these pleasant musings were abruptly displaced by more urgent ones of the serial killings. Putting the Vinney murder aside for the moment, he concentrated on the first three attacks. They were pretty clearly thrill killings, with no apparent motive other than sadistic fantasies. Unlike many multiple killings, the victims were not prostitutes. Maybe the killer was astute enough to realize that the lurid history of streetwalkers being tortured and killed and buried in pig farms or dumped in farmers' fields must have increased police surveillance of their favourite strolls. Or more likely this killer just wanted game that was more challenging, more exciting.
The first victim had been in her mid-twenties, a legal assistant in the law department of an oil company. Seating himself at his desk, Chris first dealt with his phone messages, including two from brokers, then called up her file on the computer. Even making allowances for it being a morgue photo, it was clear that Myra Frazier had been no beauty. But she had been definitely, and amply, female. Her breasts, the right one displaying a dark wound where the nipple should be, were splayed across her chest, and the triangle of pubic hair was dense and dark above fleshy thighs still stained with dried