By the Time You Read This

22

CARDINAL WAS DEALING WITH bills at the dining-room table. Kelly was watching an ER rerun in the living room. She watched television just like Catherine, with a bowl of popcorn in her lap and making comments at the TV every now and again. “Oh, come on,” she would say. “No doctor in their right mind would do that.”

Cardinal had written cheques for Catherine’s credit cards, and had scrawled on each payment stub “Deceased, please cancel.”

His thoughts drifted to the two people he had tracked down so far: one of them dead before Catherine was killed, the other still a possibility. He had yet to confirm Codwallader’s alibi, but his gut was telling him that it would probably hold. Cardinal sensed that he was missing something obvious, that he was on some entirely wrong track. So far he had been focused on motivation and opportunity: Who had reason to hurt him through his wife? Who had recently been released from prison?

But there were more basic things to consider: Who knew his address? Who knew Catherine was his wife? Who was in a position to pounce on this information with such alacrity? Not a drunk like Connor Plaskett (even if he had been alive), and maybe not a self-absorbed loser like Codwallader either.

Cardinal’s address and phone number were not listed in the phone book, and the police station certainly didn’t give them out. Ever since his days on the drug squad back in Toronto, he had made it a rule to keep an eye out for people watching him, people following. If you weren’t vigilant, someone could follow you home, threaten your family. He would have known if anyone was following him.

He sifted through the rest of the bills. There were requests from the Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and Amnesty International (Catherine’s), and others from the Hospital for Sick Children, UNICEF and March of Dimes (Cardinal’s). There were bills from Algonquin Bay Hydro, the water department, the phone company and Desmond’s Funeral Home.

Most of these were already opened if not already paid. Cardinal examined them one by one, holding them under the gooseneck lamp beside the phone. He put on a pair of reading glasses to make sure. None of them showed the same printer flaw as the vicious sympathy cards.

All right, maybe that was too simple. Almost all of these, with the exception of the smaller charities, would be addressed by computer. No human being would even see the bills until they came back with cheques attached. He opened the bill from the funeral home.

It was signed by David Desmond. None of the capital letters showed any trace of the printer flaw.

“She is such a crack baby,” Kelly said to the TV. “How could she ever get to be a nurse?”

At the commercial break she stopped by Cardinal on her way to the kitchen. “Why don’t you come and watch, Dad?”

“I will in a second.”

“It’s such a pleasure to see people screw up their lives worse than you screw up your own. Although I guess you see that pretty much every day at work.”

“I do, indeed.”

“I’m getting myself a diet Coke. You want one?”

“Sure.”

Cardinal was looking at the invoice that had come enclosed with the letter from Desmond’s. One item in particular had caught his attention, and it wasn’t the price, which came as no surprise.

Casket—Superior Walnut, Natural—$2,500.

There was a distinct line through the capital letters.

And lower down: Payment Received—$3,400.

The same line through the P and the R.

“The show’s back on,” Kelly called from the living room. “Your Coke’s in here.”

Cardinal pulled the three cards from his briefcase. She preferred death… A line through the capital S. How she must have hated you. Same line through the capital H. He dug out a magnifying glass and squinted at the relevant letters. A match.

Could a funeral director get tired of sympathizing with all that pain he or she saw every day of the year? Could you get sick of all the tears, the prayers, the dithering over details of services, the relentless implication that this loved one was really something special, unlike, say, the other people you buried day in and day out? He supposed that, yes, you could get sick of it, and yes, you might one day snap and start sending unsympathy cards through the mail.

But the cover letter itself was free of flaws.

He called David Desmond at home.

A professional to the bone, Desmond didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, John,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I was just looking at my invoice from you.”

“Oh, there’s no rush to pay that. You’ve already paid half of it on deposit, and I’m sure you have lots of other things on your mind.”

“I was wondering if you prepare them yourself.”

“Well, we write up the initial figures, of course. But later on, after the services, we hand everything over to our bookkeeping service.”

“They seem to do a good job for you. I’ve got some rather complicated tax stuff coming up this year and I was wondering if I could get their name and address from you.”

“Oh, certainly. It’s Beckwith and Beaulne. Hold on a second, I’ve got the card here somewhere.”

“Which guy do you use—Beckwith or Beaulne?”

“Neither. It’s a fellow named Roger Felt.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Why? You know Roger?”