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  "Just don't let her catching you talk like that," I said. "Come on. She'd know I was kidding. Wouldn't she?" "She'd stuff and mount you," I said. "Unfortunately for you, in that order." Eddie was right. Jenn Raudsepp exudes a wholesome sexiness that's hard to ignore, whatever her sexual orientation. Men and women alike take note when she dashes across a street or emerges legs first from her car or smiles or tosses back her blonde silk hair. Men stammer when they approach her. They mumble into their drinks. They become stupider than they were before the drinks.

  I'll never know her sexual side. That belongs to her longtime lover, Sierra Lyons, who's a terrific match for Jenn and a good friend to me. Not to mention an ace nurse practitioner who can stitch wounds without commenting on how you look in your underwear. As an investigator, though, Jenn brings it all. She's smart, she's fun, she's good with clients and she works as hard as I do. And as placid as she can seem when she wants, a whole other side emerges when she gets riled.

  One night, we were leaving the office late and came across a guy beating a Native woman in the laneway where Jenn had parked her Golf. He was stocky and built but clearly drunk, and when I told him to get away from the woman, he sneered at me, "You wanna do something about it?"

  "No," Jenn said, stepping forward. "I do."

  And she did. Unfolded those lovely long legs of hers and dropped him with a spin kick, then broke most of his ribs with a roundhouse. From there, she did everything but make him eat his car keys. I could have done it quicker but no better, and it seemed important to her that this particular world repair be done by a woman. The Estonian wonder girl did indeed have a pot of coffee brewing, a continental dark, and once I had a cup in hand I told her how things had gone with Stan Lester, giving her the details I had spared Eddie Solomon.

  "Eddie pay you?"

  "Tomorrow," I said. "A thousand in cash."

  "Today would have been better. Scary Mary called from the bank."

  I shuddered. Scary Mary is the assistant manager at our branch and a devout Christian with a phone manner so artificially nice, so honeyed with false promise that each of us usually tries to pawn her off on the other. I said, "So sorry I wasn't here to take the call."

  "You should be. She likes you better, you know." Then Jenn, a gifted mimic who'd once been a member of a comedy troupe, nailed Scary Mary's breathless menace: "'This is Mary McMurphy from Toronto-Do-min-ion calling. Is that Jonah? What a nice name. Isn't that a Bib-lical name?'"

  "Brrr. You do her better than she does."

  "Why, thank you."

  "If she calls back, tell her to relax," I said. "We'll have Chelsea's thousand and a retainer from Marilyn Cantor."

  "How retentive a retainer?"

  "My brother referred her," I said. "If she knows him, she's bound to have money."

  "She called, by the way."

  "When?"

  "Ten minutes ago."

  "Please say she didn't cancel."

  "Just confirming her appointment."

  "Phew."

  "You have two other messages," she said, a wicked grin starting to form as she slid two scraps of paper across her desk.

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  "Like hell."

  I looked at the two slips she'd filled out. The first was from my mother. The second was from the Homicide Squad of the Toronto Police Service.

  I looked at Jenn, at the sunbeam of a smile lighting her face.

  "What?" I asked.

  "Oh, you know. Homicide. Your mother," she said. "Just wondering who you call first."

  CHAPTER 2

  I met Katherine Hollinger last summer while I was still at Beacon Security. Her investigation into the murder of a Toronto pharmacist overlapped with the case I was working on: another pharmacist whose family had been targeted for extinction. Hollinger was about thirty-six and already a detective sergeant. Five-seven with a lithe build, glossy black hair and eyes whose colour was somewhere between honey and caramel. My feelings for a woman almost always start with the eyes; I liked her from the first look and felt it was mutual. Of course, I'd been stabbed the night before by a badass mobster and was sailing along on Percocet, so my judgment could have been skewed.

  The next day one of my co-workers was shot to death and Hollinger, in addition to her many other charms, was the first to pick up on the heartwarming fact that the hit had been meant for me. She even turned up at my door late one night, supposedly to ask me about the shooting victim but really, I think, to check up on me.

  After everything crashed to a head those last hot days of June, with more than half a dozen killings in two countries to account for, Hollinger and her mouth-breathing partner, Gregg McDonough, had more than a few questions for me. The sessions were long and tense. We sat in a small interview room with four bare walls, a small table, three hard chairs and a video camera that stood above us all on a tripod, recording every question they threw at me and every poor excuse for an answer I gave back. I bobbed and weaved my way through it, telling no outright lies but providing nothing near the truth. None of the killings could be attributed to me, though I had seen and done enough that I still wake up shuddering, chasing away images of faces under water, of bullet-riddled bodies in hot closed rooms.

  Hollinger and I hadn't spoken since. I had thought about calling her half a dozen times, asking her out for coffee. Then I'd stop and wonder what exactly we could talk about.

  How about those corpses in the Don River, Katherine? All that sorted out?

  Well, not quite, Jonah. Don't suppose you could clear that up for me. And pass the skim milk.

  Like Hamlet and Gertrude sitting across a table from each other, plates piled high with funeral baked meats.

  Now she had called first, so I called back from the reception area-away from Jenn's rolling eyes.

  When she answered, I said, "Hey, Sarge."

  "Hey, yourself, Geller. How are you?"

  I liked her voice almost as much as her eyes. An alto with just a slight husk. "I'm good," I said. "How about you?"

  "No complaints. Except people keep murdering each other."

  "The mayor just put out a press release saying what a safe city we have."

  "The mayor doesn't work my crime scenes. So," she said, "how's the new agency?"

  "We're doing all right. Finished one case this morning. About to start another."

  "Good," she said. "Okay. So… listen, Jonah. I have some news I thought would interest you."

  "What's that?"

  "I had a meeting with Gruber this morning." That would be Les Gruber, the new head of the Homicide Squad. "We're closing the Di Pietra cases. All of them."

  "With what smoke and which mirror?"

  "I wouldn't question it if I were you. As far as we're concerned, Ricky Messina and Stefano di Pietra were responsible for all six murders."

  "They did keep busy."

  "We also believe Ricky and Stefano both died as a result of injuries sustained during their fight in the river."

  "Who came up with that? You or Gruber?"

  "It does wonders for our clearance rate."

  "Gruber, then."

  "He's got his black marker out as we speak. And I'm not going to second-guess him on it. We have too many red cases as it is."

  "So no more questions for me?"

  "Just one. How late do you work?"

  "I set my own hours."

  "Yeah? 'Cause I was wondering if you maybe wanted to have dinner."

  "Dinner?"

  "Tonight, if you're free."

  I said, "Tonight?" Smooth, Geller. Smooth as shrapnel.

  "It opened up just now. I took it as a sign. If you don't want to…"

  "No," I said. "I mean yes. I do."

  "You sure?"

  "Very sure."

  "You like Italian?"

  "Of course I do," I said. "Scratch a Jew, find an Italian. Except on Sunday evenings, when we all convert to Chinese."

  "A friend of mine recommended a place that ha
s real southern Italian cooking and decent prices."

  "Won't leave us much to complain about." "It's Toronto," she said. "There's always weather and real estate." Call number two.

  "So you're seeing Marilyn Cantor today?"

  "Any minute, Ma."

  "Such a tragedy," she said. "I went to the shiva and she was a broken woman."

  "I didn't know you knew her that well."

  "I don't really," my mother said. "She was on the board of volunteer services at Baycrest when I chaired it a few years ago." My mother makes her living-and a good one-as a real estate broker, but she's also one of those dynamos who manage to sit on half a dozen boards of arts, culture and community service organizations. How anyone in Toronto gets along without her is beyond me. "But a situation like this," she said, "you pay your respects. If you were more connected to the Jewish community, you'd understand."

  And there it is, ladies and gentlemen. The first shot across my bow.

  "I don't know that much about her situation, Ma."

  "Daniel didn't tell you?"

  "I didn't speak to him."

  "But he referred her to you."

  "Not directly. His assistant set it up."

  "And you didn't call to thank him?"

  Shot number two.

  "I was going to, Ma. Right after I meet Marilyn."

  "Jonah," she said. "Honey."

  Oh, God. Not the "honey."

  "You have one brother."

  "So does he."

  "Which means?"

  "Which means he could have called me himself, instead of having Sandra do it."

  "So take the high road. Call and thank him. It's not as if your business is booming."

  "Ma-"

  "Is it?"

  "I wouldn't say booming but we're doing all right."

  "Are you, dear? Really?"

  "Yes, Ma." Stretching the definition of all right, perhaps, but this was my mother. Telling her how close to the bone we were would only send her to that place we've been too many times before: unwanted career advice, which ranked right up there with matchmaking.

  "I wish I knew what it was with you two."

  What it was-what it had always been-was that Daniel was more successful. A lawyer, and a highly esteemed one at that, senior partner in the firm of Geller, Winston, Lacroix. Married with two adorable boys. A shul-goer, on the board of Young Israel congregation, and a contributor to charity. All the things a mother hopes for or, in the case of a Jewish mother, demands. All the things I wasn't and felt I'd never be.

  "I'll call him the minute Marilyn leaves," I said. "Before the door swings shut."

  "Just be good to her," she said. "Do right by her. Her youngest child killing herself… she's had such a terrible time."

  "Her husband hasn't?"

  "Her ex-husband," my mother said. "And him, you never know what he's feeling. Half the time I was there, he was taking phone calls. During shiva!"

  "Listen, Ma, I think that's her at the door," I said. And no lightning bolt struck me down.

  "At least it's just a family matter," she said. "This business you're in, I worry so much about what could happen to you."

  "I know, Ma."

  "No, dear. If you knew-if you really knew-you'd get into something safer."

  "That's definitely her at the door," I said.

  "You'll call Daniel?"

  "Yes."

  "And you'll be careful?"

  "Like you said, Ma, it's a family matter. How dangerous could it get?"

  CHAPTER 3

  Marilyn Cantor's knock, when it came, was barely audible. Two soft taps, a pause, then a third tap. I wouldn't have heard it had I not been in the front reception area.

  I opened the door and saw a woman of about fifty, dressed casually, comfortably and expensively in jeans and a maroon suede jacket. Five-four, slim, with auburn hair and blue eyes. Deep indigo smudges under her eyes, as dark as if she had recently broken her nose. But I knew from what my mother had told me that she'd endured far worse.

  I introduced myself and Jenn and got Marilyn seated in one of our guest chairs. She declined coffee but when Jenn offered to make tea, she gratefully accepted. "Something decaffeinated or herbal, if you've got it," she said. "I'm having trouble sleeping."

  As if the dark pouches under her eyes hadn't told us that.

  "I almost didn't make it," she said. "Here, I mean." She was having trouble making eye contact. Looking around the office, out the window, at the mismatched file cabinets and desks we'd bought at a school board auction. "I spent all morning wondering why I made the appointment. What I hope to accomplish by it. Whether there's anything to be gained."

  "Is that why you called to confirm?" I asked. "Most people don't bother."

  "Yes," she said. "I think you're right. I needed to push myself out the door. I needed someone to be expecting me."

  The kettle came to a boil and Jenn placed a mug in front of her, a bag of decaf English breakfast bobbing on the surface.

  "Tell us about your daughter," I said. "And what you think we can do to help."

  It didn't take any more than that to make her eyes well up. I pushed a box of tissues toward her from my side of the desk. The tears she could wipe away; the dark pouches seemed there to stay.

  "Her name was Maya," she began. "She was the youngest of two. Our baby. She would have been twenty-two next month. She was studying theatre arts at York-she'd wanted to be an actress since she was a little girl. And she was beautiful and sweet… our gift from God." Her arms went around her body, hugging herself, trying to provide comfort where none was to be had.

  "Do either of you have children?" she asked.

  I said no. Jenn shook her head.

  "I'm not sure you can understand how this hurts," she said. "Not just that she's gone. But how she died. Why she did what she did. Why I-oh, God-why I didn't know. If she was hurting so badly, if she was so depressed, why didn't I sense it? Why didn't she tell me? Reach out to me? We were close. We'd always been close. More so than Andrew-that's our oldest. He keeps everything inside. If it had been Andrew, God forbid, I think I might have understood. But Maya… I keep asking myself, was I so wrapped up in my own life? Was I not approachable in some way? Divorce affects the entire family, we all know that, and it certainly laid me pretty low the first year. Especially when Rob took up with his girlfriend. But Maya is-was outgoing. Upbeat. She seemed to enjoy her life, her friends, her courses. She was cast in two productions last year and even directed a one-act that was-I'm sorry, I'm rambling here."

  "You're doing fine," Jenn said.

  "The hardest part was shiva," she said.

  Jenn glanced at me. "A week of mourning," I explained.

  "It's supposed to be a time of consolation," Marilyn said softly. "A time when friends and family hold you up until you can get back on your feet. To me, it felt more like an inquisition. I felt everybody's eyes on me, as if they were asking themselves what I had done wrong. As if I had failed my daughter and everyone in the room knew it. Every day, until it was over, I thanked God that we cover mirrors during shiva because I couldn't stand to look at myself," she said. "I live alone now, and except for the one in my bathroom, they're all still draped in black cloth."

  She used another tissue to wipe her eyes. The office was silent, except for the hum of computers and the buzzing of an overhead light.

  "Actually," she said. "I was wrong. Shiva wasn't the hardest part." She pinched the bridge of her nose as if she could cut off the supply of tears to her eyes.

  "Take your time," I said.

  She swallowed hard a few times then willed herself to go on. "It was the day after she died," she whispered. "When the arrangements had to be made."

  I knew where she was going with this, but Jenn wouldn't, so I said nothing.

  "We're not really Orthodox Jews," she said. "But Young Israel is an Orthodox shul. A synagogue," she said to Jenn.

  "That much I know," Jenn smiled.

  "Did you know
that Orthodox Jews who commit suicide can't be buried inside the walls of their cemetery?" Marilyn said bitterly.

  Jenn's smile vanished. "No."

  "I had to plead with the rabbi. Go around and around with him, asking for special dispensation. All this with my daughter in the morgue, and time running out. We're supposed to bury our dead quickly, right? He agreed in the end, but you know why?"

  Jenn couldn't answer that one; I could, but didn't want to.

  "He said if she had taken her own life, then it could be said that she hadn't been in her right mind, and therefore couldn't be held responsible for what she did. Do you understand how that felt? Him saying my daughter was out of her mind? If she was, goddammit, then someone was responsible. For knowing it. Seeing it. And that person was me."

  "What is it you need from us?" I asked.

  "I need to know why," she said. "I need someone to tell me why Maya would take her own life. Maybe there are friends she talked to. Or classmates or teachers. People she trusted more than-more than me. I can't bring myself to ask them. Maybe there are things she wrote down in a journal or underlined in a play, but I can't go through her things. I need someone else to do it for me. I need you, if you'll do it. Money is no problem," she added. "My hus-my ex-husband paid me dearly for the right to sleep with a woman half his age."

  "Was Maya seeing anyone?" Jenn asked.

  "I don't think so," Marilyn said. "Not that she told me. But now of course I wonder if she would have."

  "Can you provide a list of her friends?" Jenn asked.

  "I already did." Marilyn produced a folded sheet from her purse. Half a dozen names were typed on it, along with phone numbers, cell numbers and email addresses. "These are the girls she's known the longest," she said. "The ones who grew up on our street, went to the same high school, the same summer camp. I'm not sure about her friends from theatre school but I've brought some programs from plays she was in, which will have most of the names. And her teacher is Theo Harris. Maybe he knows what was going on with her. She spoke well of him. She spoke well of everybody… that's the kind of person she was. Not an enemy in the world."