“Often with cases that have been unsolved for this long, when someone wants the investigation restarted, it’s because something has suddenly turned up — a long-lost note, a letter from the missing person, a mysterious phone call, something like that. Is there anything along those lines that might be the reason, or at least part of the reason, you’ve come to see me?”
Monica Brill hesitated. It was her turn to think. “I guess … I guess there is something that’s kind of, well, puzzling.”
Cobb looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“Five weeks ago, I received a CD.”
“A CD.”
Monica nodded. “I wasn’t going to say anything, because I was afraid you’d think I was a crackpot and not take the case.”
“How did it come to you?”
“It was left in my car.”
“In your car,” Cobb repeated.
“My car had been locked. I’m sure of that because I remember locking it with my remote, and an older couple who were nearby glared at me when it beeped.”
“So, someone broke into your locked car and left a CD.”
“Yes.”
“And where was this?”
“At the grocery store. A Safeway just a few blocks from where I live. I didn’t notice it right away. I loaded my groceries in the trunk, and when I went to get in the driver’s seat, the CD was lying there. I almost didn’t see it.”
“Was it in a case?”
“Yes.”
“And what was the CD of?”
“It’s a song.”
“One song,” Cobb repeated.
A slow nod. “Yes, one song … and …” Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at her hands.
“And what, Ms. Brill?”
“I’m sure it’s my grandmother singing.”
“Did you recognize the song?”
She shook her head. “I’ve heard my grandmother’s voice before. On some old reel-to-reel tapes. She’d signed a record deal but hadn’t recorded anything before she disappeared, at least nothing commercial — just those tapes. But I’ve listened to them, and I’m quite certain it’s her voice on this CD, even though the recording is poor quality.”
“Poor quality as in old?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. It’s quite scratchy, and there are a couple of places in the song where her voice fades out almost completely.”
“And the song she’s singing on the CD wasn’t on any of the tapes you’d heard previously.”
“No. I went back and listened to them all again, and this song isn’t on the tapes.”
“Anything identifying the CD?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know — an image, a graphic, like an album cover?”
She shook her head again.
“Any writing on the case or on the CD itself?”
“No, nothing. The case was dirty, but there wasn’t anything about what was inside.”
“Is this the only thing you’ve ever received that might connect to your grandmother?”
“I … I think so.”
“And no phone calls, letters, nothing else that you or anyone else in your family might have found out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing. And I’m sure if anything like that had come to someone else in the family, I’d have been told about it.”
Cobb looked down at the folder again. “Is the CD in here?”
“I made a copy. The copy is in there.”
“The copy.” Cobb repeated.
“As I told you, I was afraid you’d think I was a nutcase and refuse to take this on, so I didn’t bring the original … if the one I received was the original.”
I was having trouble with her thinking that the first CD would make her seem like a nutcase but a copy wouldn’t. I wondered if Cobb would let that go. He did.
“I’ll need you to bring the original CD with its case and the tapes of your grandmother performing earlier,” he told her. “I’ll see if a voice analyst can match up the voices.”
He looked over at me, eyebrows raised, offering me the chance to ask some questions.
“What about your mother, Ms. Brill?” I asked. “Is she with you on this investigation into finding her mother? Is she aware of it?”
“My mother passed away four years ago. Breast cancer. She was only forty-seven years old.”
“I’m sorry.”
Monica Brill’s expression didn’t change. “Her name was Alice; she changed it to Alicia as a young woman. She moved to Calgary when she was twenty, married my dad, and they divorced after ten years. We talked about my grandmother several times before my mother died. She never knew the woman who was her birth mother and never heard a word from her or about her after that night.” She pointed in the direction of what was once The Depression. “My mother was raised by an aunt — one of my grandmother’s sisters. Who, by the way, also knew nothing about what happened to her sister.”
When I didn’t have any more questions, Cobb looked back at Monica. “What was your grandmother’s stage name?”
“She didn’t have one. She went by her real name.”
“And that was?”
I answered the question. “Ellie Foster.”
Monica Brill turned to me. “Wow, good memory!”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t around during The Depression days, but like I said, I’ve read about the place and what happened in that alley that night.”
“If your grandmother had made any commercial recordings, Mr. Cullen would probably have them in his collection,” Cobb said, with a nod in my direction. “He has an accumulation of Canadian music that is likely unmatched.”
“Accumulation?” I said.
“It means you have a lot.” Cobb smiled.
“Thanks for clearing that up for me.”
Monica continued to look at me. “Sounds like you could be the perfect guy to have on the case.”
I shook my head. “Uh-uh.” I pointed at Cobb. “He’s the investigator. I help out once in a while with research. Maybe I can contribute in that area.”
She looked at Cobb.
“One week,” he said after a long pause. “Then we meet again to determine if there’s any point in continuing.”
“And that week will cost me …?” Cobb quoted the figure, and she nodded her agreement. “Do you require a deposit?”
While they sorted out payment, I picked up the file folder from Cobb’s desk and glanced through it. It was thick and heavy — further testament to the work Monica Brill had done on her own.
I picked up one piece of paper, the eyewitness account of someone named Guy Kramer, who had stepped into the alley just as the car had come racing down it. He had dived behind some garbage cans as the first shots were fired, so he didn’t see much, although he indicated in his statement that he had peeked over the