Lindstrom Alone Page 6

  Right. I’m thinking.

  He tucked the cheque under the fruit bowl on his coffee table.

  You saw the house, Harry. She can afford us. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

  That’s what the Trojans said, and look what happened to them.

  But knowing Karen wanted him to take the case, understanding that he wanted her to want him to take the case, made it impossible to turn down.

  Christmas Eve was special for Harry. December 24th was the anniversary of his great aunt Elizabeth Lindstrom’s birth. Known universally as Aunt Beth and feared as much as revered by all who came within her reach, she was the virgin matriarch of the family. Elizabeth was the final beneficiary of Lindstrom Bros., cast-iron stove makers in Preston, Ontario, for four generations until fire burnt the uninsured foundries to cinders and the family fortunes collapsed into managed investments assigned to Aunt Beth, which lasted just long enough to see her comfortably to the grave.

  The aftermath of prosperity was no help to Harry’s father. He devoted his whole life to rekindling the family’s small-town wealth through a series of failed business ventures, which included operating a hardware store in Nanaimo, a heating business in Neepawa, and a water-powered sawmill in Trois Rivières, as well as trying to build canoes in Fredericton, New Brunswick and Temagami, Ontario. Harry’s mother was a violinist and composer with no published work or public performances to her credit. They had small, sad dreams together, large aspirations, and little money to help anyone, even their patrician and imperious Aunt Beth, had she been aware of her approaching poverty or deigned to ask.

  It was Aunt Beth who sent Harry to summer camp each year. If Lindstroms of his generation were not to the manor born, he could at least be a witness to see how the privileged still played. She would have sent him to Upper Canada College as well, but his parents insisted they needed him close to help them unload when their ship came in. When Harry was ready for university, she helped with his tuition, and he got by on bursaries, loans, and summer jobs. When she died, Harry, who was her favourite and her sole heir, attended Cambridge with the deceased Aunt Beth as his sponsor. By the time he earned the scarlet gown for his Doctor of Philosophy, his inheritance had run out and his parents were dead. Although he wasn’t the last of the Lindstroms, he felt very much alone in the world, until he met Karen.

  Once he had a family of his own, he realized his beloved and fearsome Aunt Beth was alive in his children and she faded from his life, except on Christmas Eve. But since the imponderable horrors on the Anishnabe River, she seemed more special than ever. He settled back into his blue linen sofa, sipping a fine brandy, and let himself cry.

  He had a small fresh-cut tree in the window. Its lights glowed brightly, shutting out the darkening sky.

  Tears burnt, as tears do, but he let them flow.

  Okay, Slate, it’s time to get outta here, Karen whispered. Time to go for a walk. Take cash, it’s Christmas.

  “Yes, it is,” he said, shaking himself out of melancholia, donning his sheepskin and the black toque Miranda had given him. “Come on, Sailor. Let’s walk.”

  After he made his way up past Queen through the barren canyon of office towers, he encountered a few people, here and there, usually alone. When he saw street kids, he waited a bit to make sure they weren’t smokers, then slipped a couple of twenties into shivering outstretched hands before moving on.

  Such quirky largesse had become a tradition while studying at Cambridge. For five years in a row, he had celebrated Christmas on his own. The English were wonderfully jolly in the pubs and college common rooms, but notoriously loathe to have company into their homes. Had he not met Karen in his last year, when she gave a series of guest lectures during the summer, a time when Cambridge magnanimously allowed visiting scholars a go at the podium, he might have left filled with the most wonderful warm memories of a breathtakingly beautiful town with breathtakingly beautiful colleges and the most charming quarters for senior dons and the occasional professor, but no lasting friends, unless he counted the novelist E.M. Forster, who was at King’s but died when Harry was five, or Wittgenstein, who like Harry was at Trinity but died before he was born.

  Just below Dundas Street, he walked past a recessed doorway and nearly missed the girl sitting on folded cardboard with a neat sign propped in the light. He stopped, intrigued. The sign was decorated with Christmas stickers and read:

  My name is Penelope

  Spare pennies? Spare Penny

  Please send me to Hawaii

  Harry looked down at the young woman huddled for warmth into herself but gazing up at him with a kind of wounded pride. She was maybe in her late teens, early twenties; it was hard to tell. When he smiled, she smiled.

  He turned for a moment to take in the Yonge Street corridor as the air filled with snow. Wiping moisture from his face, he wondered if this waif, whatever her age, had any idea how incomparably beautiful this was, with the muted neon lights glowing and the large flakes drifting. Regent Street in London, New York’s Fifth Avenue were no better. Only the memory of being with Karen on a rocky promontory in the bush overlooking a frozen lake, watching the sky shake out its blanket of snow over the forest in the diffuse light of a full moon, exceeded the scene he shared with Penelope.

  You’re such a romantic, Karen whispered. He looked back at the girl in the doorway.

  “Hawaii. You are ambitious.”

  “My reach exceeds my grasp,” she said. “‘Or what’s a heaven for.’”

  Given the audacity of her sign, the word play, the strategic use of punctuation he wasn’t surprised to hear her quote Tennyson.

  “Are you a student?” he asked.

  “I dropped out.”

  “Me too,” he said. “Why you?”

  “I’m older than you think. I was in graduate school, writing my dissertation, and one day I just sat back and realized I had nothing original to say so I quit.”

  “Very wise,” he said. “They should have given you a PhD for that.”

  “They didn’t have the confidence,” she said. “You studied Wittgenstein?”

  The quip about a doctorate for the truly deserving was Ludwig’s, although Socrates probably said it first.

  “He’s hard to avoid. But no, I studied Locke. I didn’t like him very much.”

  “So you quit. You don’t do philosophy and more?”

  “We’re doing it now,” he said.

  She shivered and nodded her head.

  “Did you teach Wittgenstein?”

  “No, he’s unteachable.”

  “Unless you were his contemporary.”

  “Especially then. You could teach the man nothing!”

  For a brief passing moment he was nostalgic for the academic world. Then all the rest he’d left behind crowded in. He reached into the sheaf of twenties in his pocket to extricate a few, then paused, and handed her his fleece-lined gloves.

  “Those mitts of yours are about done for,” he said. “Take these.”

  Her fingers were poking through the synthetic material.

  “I like to have my fingers free in case I need to make change. Thanks.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “All things considered, I’m doing.”

  “With the Hawaii project.”

  “Good.”

  “You’ll need to have a visa or something if you plan to stay.” He was not sure how literally to take her ambition.

  “I’m American,” she said.

  “Far from home.”

  “Not really. Canada’s been good, but the winter is, like, a bit challenging.”

  “It hasn’t really started yet,” said Harry, sadly.

  “No worries, I’ll get where I’m going, one way or another.”

  “How far, so far?”

  “She reached into the folds of her worn parka and pulled out an envelope. She made eye contact, then handed it to him. He opened it. There was a bus ticket from Toronto to Seattle. He handed it back.

&nbs
p; “So far, so good,” she said.

  Harry extended an arm and glanced at his watch: ten minutes to midnight.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  “Thanks for the gloves,” she called after him. “No worries.”

  As he receded into the slowly swirling snowlight, he heard her final words, “Have a good Christmas. Merry Christmas.”

  Harry found a Royal Bank with an ATM out front. He reached awkwardly through layers of coat and sweater and retrieved the cheque from Birgitta Ghiberti in his shirt pocket, which he deposited in his account. He withdrew his maximum daily limit of $1000. Then he waited until church bells rang out, tolling in Christmas. He withdrew another $1000. He turned and walked back into the snow. She was gone. The doorway was empty. Her folded cardboard was gone.

  Harry squinted into the snow, looking south. He could see an indistinct figure trudging into the whiteness. He walked rapidly through the accumulating snow and caught up to her.

  “I told you I’d return.”

  “You and General MacArthur,” she said, turning slowly and looking up at his face, saturated with melting snowflakes like her own.

  “And he did,” said Harry.

  “I’m off my shift,” she said. “Shop’s closed. I’m going home.”

  “Which is where?”

  “A very classy stairwell in a very classy building with a very classy heated garage.”

  “Take this with you, then.”

  He handed her $2000. She took the bundle of bills and examined it, then offered it back.

  “I’m not for sale.”

  “All I want is a postcard from Hawaii. From the big island. Honolulu’s too commercial.”

  She thrust the stack of bills at him again.

  “I can’t, you know.”

  “You can’t write? Just send me a note.”

  Refusing to take back the money back, Harry passed her his card.

  “Private investigator? I like your email address. Harry, alone. Maybe I could hire you some time, pay you back.”

  “I hope not. I only do murders.” He leaned over and brushed his lips against her forehead. She didn’t flinch, but he could tell it was a struggle. My God, what has she been through?

  Good man, tough guy. Aunt Beth’s birthday is over. Let’s go home. She’ll be okay.

  “Bye, now,” he said. “Just a postcard.”

  As he turned to walk away, he pulled the black toque down over his ears. He’d been tempted to give it to the girl, but she’d be basking in Hawaiian sunshine before the New Year.

  He’d have to send a note to Miranda, thanking her for the Christmas present.

  When he received a phone call from a midrange hotel later that night, asking about a young woman who paid cash for her room and was carrying a big wad of bills, he vouched for her, asked to have his best wishes passed on, and went back to bed with familiar voices swarming in his head, which slowly faded as he drifted off into a deep sleep.

  His Aunt used to say, “The kindness of strangers is the only kindness that counts.” Whether giving or receiving, it’s the lack of connection that makes it authentic.

  5 THE VISITOR

  THE INSISTENT RATTLING OF KNUCKLES ON HIS simulated wood door awakened Harry with a start. Daylight was streaming between the partially opened pewter-grey drapes in the living room. His bedroom was still filled with the gloom of a lingering night as he scrabbled around for his dressing gown, then trudged through to the foyer that, in the north side of his apartment, was as dark as the inside of a cupboard.

  Leaning to peer through the peephole, he knocked his forehead against the door and realized he wasn’t fully awake. He didn’t recognize his caller; the optics of the security lens suggested a man with squint eyes, no nose, and a cadaverous mouth. Although Harry wanted to retreat to his bed and try to wake up again in a more civilized manner, curiosity compelled him to identify the interloper before turning him away. He swung the door open aggressively and stood, this time on his own threshold, face to face with Bernd Ghiberti.

  “Don’t you people believe in the normal courtesies,” Harry muttered. He could feel Karen’s pleasure at being vindicated for repeatedly urging him to lock his door, which he seldom did.

  Harry’s visitor recovered from a brief moment of confusion. “It’s Christmas, it was hard to avoid being swept in with the Yuletide hordes. I’m sorry to bother you, Professor. I see I’ve got you up. I need help.”

  “Don’t we all,” said Harry, stepping back to let the man in while assessing his own dishabille in the semi-darkness and running his tongue across his teeth in mild disgust. He didn’t bother to switch on the light. “Come in, give me a few minutes. My God, it’s eleven. Make yourself some coffee, there’s a Nespresso machine on the counter.”

  Bernd Ghiberti was an odd intruder into what had promised to be a contemplative day. Arriving unannounced on Christmas was creepy but not threatening. He was much too polite, but that was likely an implicit apology for his previously hostile behaviour. It did strike Harry as strange that he felt comfortable with someone who could be complicit in the deaths of his sisters and might be a serial killer.

  His visitor was dressed to Harry’s taste. Chinos, button-down shirt over a cotton tee (Bernd’s was purple while Harry tended to wear black). Buffed shoes, probably Cole Haan. Irish wool sweater. Harry’s own sweater collection had been legendary at Huron. For the most part, he dressed Canadian; he liked dressing well, as opposed to being well-dressed. He wasn’t very good at keeping his wardrobe replenished. Karen usually purchased his sweaters and he hadn’t bought any more since being on his own.

  He owned a single necktie. Trinity colours of course. He had never owned a suit and possessed only one jacket. He and Karen had indulged in impeccably tailored Armani blazers to wear with jeans for their registry office wedding. He usually kept the jacket in his office for whatever occasion the college might throw at him, but he had worn it home the night before they went on their doomed trip to Algonquin Park. Later, it had been consumed in the flames when their house burnt down.

  Harry disappeared into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. He didn’t know what his visitor wanted but he decided to seize the initiative by taking his time. He had a steaming hot shower, then shaved, grimacing at the ghostly distortion of his face in the fogged up mirror. By the time he emerged into the living room, he was on edge, which gave Ghiberti the advantage, especially since there were two cups of fresh espresso on the coffee table, filling the room with their congenial aroma.

  Without saying anything, Harry picked up a cup and sniffed. Roma. His favourite.

  The man sat on the sofa, leaving Harry his preferred teak and leather armchair. Harry put his feet up on the table, a George Jensen second-hand midcentury modern solid teak derelict he’d picked up in a Jarvis Street pawn shop. He sipped his coffee and waited. He lowered his feet to the floor and reached over to wipe imaginary marks from the teak. Finally, his guest, having finished his own coffee, asked if Harry would like another. Harry declined.

  “You must wonder why I’m here?” Bernd said at last.

  “Social visit?”

  Harry drained his cup, got up, and made them seconds. He listened distractedly as the machine whirred and thick, rich coffee surged into each cup in turn.

  “I’m worried about my mother,” said his visitor.

  “I’m sure you are,” said Harry.

  “I’m sorry about all that other business.”

  It seemed prudent to say as little as possible. Let the man proceed at his own pace.

  “She’s been rather disturbed, where I am concerned, since my sisters died.”

  In three separate events, Harry. It was a cumulative process.

  Having worked for the last week to suppress being enthralled with the Ghiberti family, Harry bridled at finding his interest rekindled simply because this man had shown up.

  Bernd Ghiberti had a curiously affable smile, shy in spite of his aura of innate condescension. He
held himself stiffly and had an arch way of speaking, but he did not seem overtly sinister.

  “Detective Lindstrom, this is quite awkward. My mother seems to be missing.”

  I would have thought he’d prefer to have her as far away as possible!

  “I assume you had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

  “No, Detective, I did not murder my mother—although I confess it is an interesting notion. If I had I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Cops are called ‘detective.’ And I’m not a professor. Call me Harry.”

  “Harry.”

  Last time I talked to your mother, you were the one who was missing.”

  “Well, as you can see, I’m not.”

  “What about the young woman, the blonde? Is she missing as well?”

  “I assume she’s with Birgitta.”

  He calls his mother by her first name. Novels have been written on less.

  “How does she fit in?” Harry asked.

  “She doesn’t. She’s just a friend. A visiting relative.”

  “Really. Which is it? A friend or a relative?”

  “They’re not mutually exclusive, are they?”

  “Depends on the family.”

  “Birgitta enjoys having people around.”

  “My sense was your mother is a solitary person.”

  “Those are not contradictions.”

  “No, I don’t suppose they are.”

  Solitude in a crowd, Harry was familiar with that. He sipped his coffee. “Would you describe yourselves as close?”

  You can’t be serious!

  Just looking for a reaction, Sailor.

  “Family is family, it’s not a matter of choice. I was close to my sisters. But Birgitta has this obsession. Why would I have done them in, for God’s sake?”

  Innate evil. The bad seed.

  “Look,” said Bernd. “There’s no villain here. After Sigrid died, she was the youngest and the last to go, my mother took it into her head I was responsible for all of them, Giovanna and Isabella, too. I think she held me to blame for her broken marriage as well. I don’t really remember Giovanna. She drowned the same year my father moved out. I was seven, and I was ten when Isabella died in a gas explosion.”