The Unquiet Dead (2 page)

Restless, she kicked at her front tire just as Khattak's BMW pulled up behind her.

“Bit upscale, isn't it, sir?” she said by way of greeting. She meant the house, not the car. Her envious appraisal of his car had been documented on previous excursions.

“Hello, Rachel.”

It was too dark out to read his expression. He sounded withdrawn. Fatigued, maybe, though it hadn't dampened his good looks.

And he wasn't gotten up in one of his closely tailored suits. He was wearing black trousers and a dark, fitted shirt. No tie, no cuff links, grappling a string of beads in his right hand. When they stepped under the house's porch light she saw the beads were green agate. He was fingering them in a nervous gesture unusual for him.

“This isn't Drayton's house, sir.”

“No. This is Winterglass.”

Which sounded like he expected the name to mean something to her.

Biting back the temptation to remind him she could read, she countered, “Never heard of it. Did Drayton use to live here?”

She heard Khattak's quick intake of breath, saw the string tighten around his fingers. He turned to face her and, as always before his direct attention, she squirmed a little.

“This is the home of Nathan Clare. I haven't been here in some time.”

“Nathan Clare?
The
Nathan Clare? The writer?”

She was babbling. Everyone knew the internationally acclaimed author. His last book,
Apologia
, had outsold all his previous works combined. He had made a name for himself intervening in national debates on multiculturalism. Every few years his essays would be collected together and published in a volume, cementing his credentials as a somewhat reclusive public intellectual.

She'd heard him on the radio and had liked his voice and his dry sense of humor. She had meant to purchase the book selection he'd endorsed, but time had gotten away from her. That, and her job. She wasn't on duty tonight, but CPS hours were irregular, and she worked at being someone Khattak could rely on.

She felt a little awed at the thought of meeting Clare. Then she grasped what Khattak had just said.

“You've been here before, sir? You know Mr. Clare?”

He rang the doorbell.

“Yes. Drayton lives nearby. I thought that Nathan might know him.”

Now she remembered that the writer was also the son of Loveland Clare, a diplomat in the Stephen Lewis tradition, a fact she correlated to the spike in her nervousness.

When the door opened, they were greeted by a tall man with a slim, straight nose and a delicate face and jaw. His straw-colored hair was worn long in the front, obscuring his gold-rimmed glasses: he was the perfect example of Rachel's idea of an English gentleman. He was even wearing a tweed jacket. Well-fitted, she observed, and though Khattak was tall, this man had an inch or two over him.

“Esa?” He sounded shocked.

Rachel's eyes widened. Khattak hadn't called to set up the visit?

“May we come in?”

The man in the doorway stepped back, his attention occupied by Khattak, who offered no identification, Rachel trailing behind them. They were led through an entrance hall with a sculptured staircase to a double-height room that defied her every expectation of grandeur. Or was it grand? At least fifty feet across, something about the room managed to suggest warmth. Its floor was a bleached pine, offsetting furnishings in delicate green and the most elaborate Chinese carpet Rachel had ever seen. Velvet sofas anchored the carpet across from a wall of glass that must have given the house its name. Situated on a curve of the Bluffs, the wall overlooked white cliffs and black water extending over a limitless distance.

She didn't know where to look first. The blue and white porcelain that shimmered on the room's tables? The painted white chandeliers suspended between a set of peacock chairs? Or the classical architecture of pilasters and arches that ran the perimeter of the room to support a gallery on the second level? Under a set of casement windows, a grand piano with a raised lid occupied an antechamber that led outside, sheet music scattered across its bench. A silk banner was flung over a nearby chair.

Gawking, she turned back to hear herself being introduced.

“Sergeant Rachel Getty, my partner at Community Policing.”

Nathan Clare took her hand. She was surprised at the strength of his grip: there was something romantic, almost effeminate, about the elegant bones of his hand. She took a green-and-white-striped chair at his invitation, ducking his assessment of her, knowing the picture she presented to the world. Boxy, square-shouldered, round-cheeked, indifferently dressed.

When Nathan smiled at her, she said awkwardly, “You must like music. You don't have any photographs on your piano.”

She'd seen plenty of soap operas where a Steinway served mainly as a repository for antique picture frames.

“Nate believes pianos are for playing.”

The “Nate” caught Rachel by surprise. Both the nickname and the comment implied familiarity, making her wonder how well her boss knew Nathan Clare and whether that had been a sneer in his cultured voice.

Nathan sat back on the green sofa, watching Khattak string the beads together around his wrist.

“I haven't seen that in a while. Does it help while you're working?”

There was a hint of challenge in his manner.

Sitting next to Khattak, Rachel was able to see the string of beads more clearly. Every now and again, the agate stones were sectioned off by a little marker, dividing the string into segments. It was a rosary or—what was the word Khattak had taught her?

A tasbih, the Muslim equivalent.

She realized that Nathan was watching her. He had swept the hair from his forehead, and now she could see the hazel eyes behind his glasses, intent but also kind.

“We've come about your neighbor, Christopher Drayton. I was hoping you might have known him.”

“Everyone in the neighborhood did. He was well regarded here, generous with his time. People were shocked to hear of his fall, myself included, but I suppose no one was quite as distraught as Melanie. Melanie Blessant, his girlfriend.”

“You knew him well, then.”

“As well as I know all my neighbors, I'd say. He was an educated man, he enjoyed books, art. He'd been here for dinner several times to discuss various projects he was interested in with mutual friends. On some of the same nights you were invited. He was funding a small museum—something that would interest you. I can give you a list of the guests, if you'd like.” He rummaged in a small drawer and handed the paper to Rachel.

Khattak brushed it aside.

“Did he often walk by the Bluffs?”

“I believe so, but the people who live here are well versed in the dangers of erosion. It's easy to lose your footing out there.”

“Had you ever seen him from these windows?”

“You know these windows don't face the path, Esa.”

There was a note of chiding in Nathan's voice that took Rachel aback. The tenor of the whole conversation seemed strange to her, the room imbued with an inexplicable anxiety. The tasbih was taut around Khattak's hand; Nathan Clare's posture was stiff. That both men knew the source of it was clear: it was Rachel who was in the dark.

Nathan turned to her.

“Do you like the house?”

She couldn't help being caught by the cloudy expanse of lake beyond the windows. Waterfront views were not to be had off the dim streets of Etobicoke, where she lived.

“It's stunning. From the outside, I thought it might be a little pompous, but it isn't.”

She bit her lip. Sometimes she was too honest and in this case probably naïve as well. There were thousands of dollars worth of antiques within the room, pieces she could neither name nor identify, yet all possessed of a consonance that pleased the eye. Things to live with rather than admire. The careless sprawl of music suggested as much.

“You can play the piano if you'd like,” he said, following her gaze.

Rachel couldn't play. Though Don Getty had done well for himself in life, the arts weren't a luxury he'd encouraged his children to indulge in. It was her mother's old recordings she had listened to when her father was out of the house, the needle scratching over Chopin's nocturnes, her mother's favorite composer. Part of her mother's life before she'd married Don Getty, as inaccessible to Rachel as her mother's thoughts.

Rachel made her way to the piano, called there by a secret longing. The banner casually placed on the chair beside it looked like a miniature flag, a blue Superman shield imposed upon its green background, the initials
CK
appliquéd at one corner.

The two men followed in her wake like an entourage, Drayton forgotten.

Khattak reached around her and took the banner.

“You still have it,” he said.

He deposited the tasbih in his pocket, his hands relaxing.

“It was a pledge, Esa. You know that.”

Khattak's gaze switched to the fireplace, taking in the blank space above the lip of white marble.

“The portrait's gone.”

“It was more than time.”

A rectangular space between the white and blue chinoiserie was less faded than the rest of the wall. Something had been there, and again she was the outsider, in the dark as to why they were here at all when they should have been at Drayton's house, searching for indications of homicide.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Clare. How do you and the inspector know each other?”

Nathan smiled at her and she blinked. The smile transformed her notion of the introverted writer into something much more visceral. A more than ordinarily attractive male, with glints of light turning his straw-colored hair gold.

“Didn't Esa tell you? We were at school together. We're old Seatonians.” And when she still looked blank, he clarified, “Upper Canada College.”

Openmouthed, the piano forgotten, she turned to Khattak.

“You went
to school
with Nathan Clare, the writer?”

“He wasn't ‘Nathan Clare, the writer' then. And we've come about Christopher Drayton, not my unsavory past.”

Nathan grinned at him, the first unforced gesture she'd seen from either man.

“It was unsavory, wasn't it? At least, all the good parts.”

Her eyes lit up at the teasing. Here was someone who might deflate the always unruffled, ever-so-proper Inspector Khattak. She wanted to delve deeper into the mystery of this hidden friend, megawatt writer or not, who must be awash in particularly useful inside information. Despite their rocky start when she'd first joined CPS, she'd come to admire Esa Khattak and to value his opinion. She just wasn't sure that she understood him as well as she'd like to. And if Nathan Clare could help her with that, she wouldn't object.

But the mood died in an instant as Khattak answered, “Most of the bad parts as well, I'm afraid. I'm sorry to have bothered you. We should go.”

“Sir—”

There were at least a dozen questions she could think of that they hadn't asked Nathan Clare—at least he could clarify the list he'd given them, why he'd had it to hand, and why it even mattered.

“Now, Rachel.”

She scurried along behind him, swallowing a grimace. Whatever brief connection she had felt to the author, Khattak was her boss. Her boss who ignored the question Nathan called after him.

“Did you ever read
Apologia
, Esa?”

And that wasn't a question he seemed ready to answer.

 

3.

He was a modest and reasonable man.

They left their cars where they were. It was a silent ten-minute walk from the far end of the circle to Drayton's address. There was no cordon of police tape around the house, a large home typical of those built on small lots when fifty-year-old bungalows were scraped down to make way for new luxury models. The exterior was stuccoed in white, a color Drayton must have repainted yearly, because the outside bore no traces of wear.

She wasn't sure what they were looking for, wasn't sure why a name like Christopher Drayton would pop up on the CPS radar. On the face of it, it didn't seem like a minority-sensitive situation. All she knew was that her boss was doing a favor for a friend on his own time, and he had asked her along to the party.

“Figure the girlfriend did it, sir?”

“What?”

“Melanie Blessant. The one Clare mentioned. Maybe followed him out after dark, pushed him over the edge.”

They were meandering their way through the well-proportioned living spaces, a family room and salon that mirrored each other in dimension, furnished with expensive if generic taste. Everything was in order, well tended, as if death had not visited this house.

Her question was meant as a gentle reminder that nothing about this assignment appeared to fall within their purview.

They had reached the kitchen at the back of the house: dark cabinets, earth-colored stone, stainless-steel appliances, a desk where the mail was tidily sorted. She thumbed through it. Credit card statements, utility bills, a landscaping service, the usual. Adjacent to the kitchen was the study, a glimpse through its French doors disclosing bookcases and a wide desk. She tried the handle. The doors were locked.

Khattak produced the keys.

“Local police were asked to leave this room locked so we could take a look for ourselves. Take some photographs, will you?”

Rachel pondered this. Drayton's body had been found two days ago. Why had Justice moved so swiftly to secure this particular scene when the body had been found at the base of Cathedral Bluffs?

She had her answer when the doors spread wide to reveal a room twice the size of any other on the main floor. She unearthed her camera and set to work.

The chair from the desk was situated in the center of the room, facing windows that looked out upon the garden. It was an old-fashioned oxblood leather chair without casters, but that wasn't what had captured Rachel's attention. Nor was it the reason Khattak stood still beside her.