Dan Sharp Mysteries 6-Book Bundle. Jeffrey Round

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      Saylor called again the following week. Given his increasing involvement in the case, Dan wasn’t surprised to hear from the Picton cop a second time. He listened patiently while Saylor updated him. He was exhibiting all the symptoms of over-zealous determination, including tracking the girl’s whereabouts before her death. The long arm of the law reaching out beyond the grave.

      “By the way, are you still talking to those people?” Saylor asked.

      “The Killingworths?”

      “Those would be the ones.”

      “No — I’ve left off with that.”

      “Very interesting, what I’ve come up with.” This apparently was Dan’s cue to ask him to elaborate. When Dan said nothing, Saylor continued. “The girl had actually been in the country almost a month before the wedding, which is curious when you consider that she was here with her husband and not her brother. It gets more interesting though. That pregnancy?” Dan’s ears picked up. “She was booked into an abortion clinic in Montreal.”

      “What?” Suddenly Dan was very interested.

      “She went in for a consultation two weeks ago. She was supposed to have gone in for the full procedure last week, but she never showed up.”

      Dan whistled. “I wonder who was behind it?”

      “I thought you’d never ask,” Saylor said. “The operation was arranged and paid for by Lucille Killingworth.”

      A surprise piece of the puzzle slipping into a very unexpected space. “Oh, man!” Dan said.

      “I’d give a million bucks to know what was going on there,” Saylor said. “How did they react when you told them about the pregnancy?”

      Dan flashed on the scene in the drawing room at the Killingworth home. He recalled the tense looks on both faces, but it had only been Thom who’d disavowed any knowledge of it.

      “And she never said anything to the contrary?” Saylor asked.

      “No, but she looked pretty shocked too.”

      “I guess she would be if she thought she’d taken care of it.” There was a silence on the line then Saylor said, “Do you think the son was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know about it?”

      “I’m inclined to believe it,” Dan said, sketching in Thom’s revelation about provisions for a first grandchild in his grandfather’s will.

      “So legally speaking, because of the marriage any inheritance money would have belonged to the baby, whether it was Thom Killingworth’s DNA or not?”

      “I guess. I can’t say for sure. I’m sure a lawyer would happily argue that.”

      “Well, well — that’s interesting news,” Saylor said.

      “When you put it that way, yes.”

      “I’m all over it, buddy. You keep in touch now.”

      The date was circled on his calendar. He’d scheduled a meeting with the family of the missing fifteen-year-old. He was too rushed to eat so he ordered coffee in and tried to concentrate on the file. Telling parents their teenage son was involved in prostitution was always a delicate matter. Dan thought about his own boyhood. If he’d disappeared without telling anyone, would his father have found himself sitting through an interview like this, explaining how Dan had run away because he felt unloved and unwanted? If asked about identifying markings, would he have mentioned the scar running down the right side of Dan’s face from the time he’d thrown him against a doorframe? Probably not. Dan had let his father off easy by announcing his departure.

      Just before one o’clock, Sally knocked and opened the door, giving Dan an odd look. The Philips entered, introduced themselves as Gloria and Paul, and sat before Dan could offer. Everything about them was loud. The only thing standing between the father and a caveman, in Dan’s estimation, was about three grunts. He could have been a mail-order hitman — muscles constricted in his shirtsleeves, his neck a bulbous pillar wider than his face, hair a shock of white greased to his skull. The mother had the air of a woman whose glory days ran along the lines of head cheerleader at Wawa Senior High. Dressed in a Hallelujah Pink sweater with matching lipstick and nails, plunging neckline, and thigh-high skirt, she’d toned down the look with a black nylon windbreaker, placing her one solitary rung above her husband on the evolutionary ladder.

      Dan thought he detected an odour — it might have been two — of something faintly melony covering the scent of fried fish. A moment passed before he could distinguish that the fruity smell was coming from her and the fried smell from her husband. He wished he’d eaten. The combination was going to be difficult on an empty stomach.

      He asked for their version of events the night Richard disappeared. He listened with considered solemnity as Gloria Philips retold the story, tapping her pink nails on his desk for emphasis. It all sounded familiar except for one detail: Richard had been getting money from somewhere. Dan nodded as Gloria told of a series of unexpected electronic gadgets — cell phones, iPods — and overnight trips to Toronto that her son had explained as being a friend’s invitation to concerts.

      Gloria’s account ended. She eyed her husband. “His version’s the same as mine.” The human grunt nodded as Gloria looked Dan in the eye. “But I didn’t come here to hear myself talk,” she said, tapping the file. “I want you to tell me what’s being done to find my son.”

      Dan closed the file and sat back. “The reason I asked you to repeat the story is because there’s often a detail that gets overlooked, and sometimes it comes out when people talk it through. The detail that stands out here is that Richard seems to have been getting money from somewhere. Do you have any idea where it came from?”

      Gloria looked at Paul then back at Dan. “No. Maybe he was stealing it from somewhere, but not from me. I always know what’s in my purse.”

      “What do you know about the place where the police picked up your son twice in the weeks before he ran away?”

      She shook her head. “It was some place queers went to prey on young boys.”

      And yet somehow those boys always managed to find themselves in those places by accident or were inexplicably drawn to them against their will time and again, Dan finished silently, thinking of the shadows beneath the trestle that had shaped his own adolescent sex life. “Do you think that’s where your son got the money?”

      The look of disgust on Gloria’s face could have wiped the rust off a nail. “Are you telling me someone was paying my son for sex? Is that what I’m hearing you say?”

      “I’m trying to determine where he got his money.”

      Gloria’s voice was hard as flint. “He was fourteen years old! He’s too young for sex.”

      “That’s the legal age for sex. Prostitution is another matter.”

      “Who the hell made it legal for some pervert to fuck my kid up the ass at the age of fourteen?”

      Her husband squirmed in his СКАЧАТЬ