Safe Harbor, page 9
Father Jack’s eulogy provided scant solace. “As Christians, we take comfort from knowing our loved one has gone to the fellowship of the risen Lord.”
He paused. “But when the departed was a young woman like Jude with her life full of promise, it can be difficult for us to understand why a loving God would allow this to happen. Sure, there are sayings to make us feel better. Remember Billy Joel’s song ‘Only the Good Die Young’?”
There were titters among the congregation, then an awkward silence. Devon smiled at me. I took Tommy’s hand.
“The death of Jude Seaton,” Father Jack continued, “a beautiful, talented woman with a young son to raise and everything in life to look forward to, can really test our faith…”
I glanced behind me and spotted Hardy seated behind the mourners.
A movement at the back of the church caught my eye. A tall figure dressed in black stood in a side aisle beside a marble pillar. I craned my neck for a better look. Male, dark skin, early twenties. He was dressed in black jeans and a worn black jacket. Not someone I would have expected to see among this predominantly white, well-dressed congregation.
The man turned and glided back up the aisle. A heartbeat later, he vanished into the shadows at the back of the church.
“What is it?” Devon whispered.
“There was someone back there…”
He glanced at the back of the church, then looked at me.
I shook my head. “Probably not important.”
We turned our attention back to the pulpit. Father Jack was telling anecdotes about Jude at Safe Harbor. “Several years ago, some of the volunteers built the back porch and they were painting it. I’d told them that this was blessed work because Jesus Himself was a carpenter.”
I turned and looked at the back of the church again. Nothing.
“The job was nearly done,” Father Jack said, “when one of the volunteers on a ladder dumped a bucket of paint over Jude. She let fly some pretty colorful language. ‘Jude!’ I said to her. ‘Excuse me, Father Jack,’ she replied, ‘but Jesus Himself would be swearing too right now.’”
The faces of the people around us broke into weak smiles. Where had Tommy been while Jude was helping refugees at Safe Harbor?
“Ms. Tierney, a word.”
Hardy hurried over to us as we made our way to the church parking lot.
“Can’t it wait, Detective?” Devon said.
Hardy ignored him. “Who was that at the back of the church?”
Devon took Tommy’s hand and pointed to a squirrel that was running along a hydro wire.
“I don’t know what—”
“Come on. I was watching you. You turned around to look at the back of the church. Saw someone who’s not part of the white-bread crowd. Tall guy, looks like he could try out for small forward with the Raptors. Slipped out as soon as you spotted him. What gives?”
“Nothing gives, Detective. I didn’t get a good look at him. But anyone can walk into a church. Anything else?”
He studied me for a moment, then shook his head. “Not right now.” He lowered his voice. “Call us if you see that guy again or any strangers hanging around. There’s a killer out there. The boy may be his next target.”
Chapter Eleven
Yuri
Yuri lit a cigarette and sat at the battered kitchen table while he stirred sugar into his mug of instant coffee.
A dark-skinned woman with an infant in her arms appeared beside him. “Sister not allow smoking at Safe Harbor.”
Yuri gave her a smile, displaying a mouth full of broken and stained teeth. “I think you not tell Sister. Not if you know what is good for you.” He tweaked the child’s cheek. “And your kid.”
The woman gasped, tightened her hold on the baby and scurried out of the room, leaving Yuri alone with his thoughts. Sister Celia and Oskar were at the funeral of the Seaton woman. Yuri frowned. He had told Oskar not to go, told him the police would be there.
But Oskar had laughed him off. “Jude and me, we work together when she volunteer at Safe Harbor,” he’d said. “Is right I go to funeral.”
Damn that Oskar. The Seaton woman’s picture had been in all the newspapers. Yuri flung his cigarette onto the floor and ground it into the linoleum with the heel of his boot. But that was Oskar, always rushing in without considering the consequences.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Yuri had been eighteen and training with the Spetsnaz, the Kremlin’s elite fighting force. The British SAS? America’s Delta Force? Hah, weaklings! Spetsnaz wasn’t afraid of dirty work—sabotage, assassinations—for Mother Russia.
But he had missed his shot at glory. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, morale plummeted in Spetsnaz and the rest of the military. Corrupt bastards were in charge and no one in uniform was making a decent wage. Yuri resigned and sought his fortune elsewhere.
The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was attracting fighters from all over Eastern Europe, including Russian mercenaries and volunteers fighting for a Slav Orthodox brotherhood. But he had no principles left to uphold. He attached himself to the Bosnia Serb Army as a kontraktniki or contract soldier. He would get paid for the risks he took and move on. He no longer needed to be a hero. He gave himself a nom de guerre and became Yuri.
For the first few months in Bosnia’s killing fields, he’d been part of a unit that smuggled gasoline to the Serbian forces. He quickly picked up the Serbian language, which was similar to Russian. Then, in the summer of 1993, he was assigned to a cell in northeastern Bosnia to back up its young leader, Oskar Jacovic. Against his advice, Oskar ordered a surprise early-morning attack on a Muslim village called Tica. The villagers put up more resistance than Oskar had expected and several of Oskar’s men were killed.
Yuri shook his head and lit another cigarette. With a little reconnaissance, that could have been avoided.
In the end, they’d smashed through the village’s defences. They rounded up the able-bodied men and shot them. They dumped their bodies in a mass grave. They burned the houses. And they raped twenty-four women.
The Serbian soldiers had been under orders to rape Muslim women. Spread around as much Serbian seed as possible so the victims would produce little Chetniks. That day in Tica, most of the soldiers followed their orders with gusto, but a few had to fortify their resolve with alcohol. “I have two sisters,” said a young man Yuri had found retching into the bushes. “I am ashamed to be a Serb.”
But Oskar had no such reluctance. “We need to wipe out the Turks as if they were never here,” he told Yuri over a bottle of slivovitz that evening. “No more Muslims, no more war. Simple. But what would we do then?” He laughed. “Taking our turns with their women,” he added with a leer, “we do our duty and have a bit of fun at the same time, yes?”
Yuri knew there was more to the war than expelling the Muslims from Bosnia, but he avoided discussing politics. The country’s problems had nothing to do with him. He was there for work. And as a kontraktniki, he was not expected to take part in the rapes, which was fine with him. He had no desire to force himself on crying, struggling women. There were plenty of girls in the Serbian towns who welcomed the soldiers. These were spirited wenches who were eager to satisfy a man and enjoy themselves between the sheets.
And he knew that Oskar hadn’t given a damn about any Slav brotherhood. Oskar had only been out for himself then, just as he was now. They had that in common.
After Bosnia, Yuri had honed his skills as a soldier of fortune in Kosovo, then in Africa and Colombia. But he was getting older now. It was time to switch to another line of work. He’d slipped into Canada the year before and planned to lie low for a while. The country was too stable to practice his arts of war, but he knew there would be other opportunities.
Three weeks after he arrived in Toronto, he had run into his old comrade-in-arms, Oskar, in an Eastern European deli. It really was a small world. Oskar said he had work for him. It wasn’t difficult and the money was good.
Yuri got up from the table. He had better scram before that nun got back. She didn’t like him hanging out here unless he was doing a job for her.
Chapter Twelve
Pat
Father Jack blessed Jude’s casket in the Seaton family vault at Perpetual Life Cemetery and gave it a splash of holy water. Norah stood beside him with her head bowed, her hands on Tommy’s shoulders. There were tears on her face, but the boy’s eyes were dry. The funeral director handed him a pale pink rose and whispered something to him. Tommy placed the flower on his mother’s casket.
On our way back to the Volvo, a small woman with short dark curly hair approached us. “Tommy,” she cried. The boy ran into her arms.
After a few moments, she released him and turned to me. “I’m Sister Celia De Franco, a friend of Jude’s. And I know you’re Pat Tierney. Arlene told me that Tommy is staying with you.”
“For a few days.”
“I run Safe Harbor, the home for refugees that Father Jack spoke about in his eulogy. I have to get back there now, but I’d like to talk to you. Could we…”
Tommy had mentioned Sister Celia at the police station. I looked at Devon. He placed a hand on my arm. “Tommy and I can hang out this afternoon,” he said.
“I could drop by later today,” I told Sister Celia.
Tommy tugged at my sleeve. “Can I come? I want to see Benny.”
“Our cat,” Sister Celia said. “You can visit us another time, Tommy. I have something to discuss with Mrs. Tierney.” She smiled at me. “I’ll be there all day.”
Norah lived in a handsome, red brick house in Rosedale, the enclave for Toronto’s wealthy residents just north of the downtown core. A tall spruce tree on the front lawn was festooned with Christmas lights, unlit during the day. And probably the past few evenings since Jude died.
Inside the house, there was no Christmas tree, no holly or mistletoe. Living rooms on either side of the front hall were tastefully furnished in mahogany and cherry wood. Large oil paintings, stained-glass side windows and handsome Persian carpets provided color.
“Tommy, my love.” Norah enveloped her grandson in a hug. She lifted her head to greet Devon and me, and told us to help ourselves to drinks and the buffet in the dining room. “I want to spend a few minutes with my boy.”
A gray-haired man in a navy blazer mixed drinks behind a bar in the east living room. In the dining room behind it, a long table was laden with dainty sandwiches, platters of poached salmon and roast beef, salads and baskets of rolls and bagels. At the sideboard, a middle-aged woman in a maid’s uniform poured coffee and tea into china cups.
The sight of all that food twisted my stomach into knots. I took a cup of tea, and Devon and I moved into the room across the hall.
Arlene stepped up beside us, a frosted glass in her a hand. A stocky man with a ruddy complexion, one of the pallbearers, was at her side. “My husband, Lloyd Dobson. Pat Tierney and—”
“Devon Shaughnessy,” Devon said. The men shook hands.
“Our kids are over there.” Arlene waved at the sofa across the room, where a boy and a girl, who looked about ten years old, were seated with Norah and Tommy. “Evan and Bettina. Twins are such a handful.” She heaved a dramatic sigh. “It’s been horrific. And the worst was finding her. The most horrible thing that ever happened to me.”
Lloyd patted her arm.
I stared at her. The most horrible thing that’s happened to you, I wanted to say. What about Jude?
“I’ll see if I can get anything for Norah,” Lloyd said and moved away.
“Pat, Arlene.” A woman joined us, her platinum hair spiking out from her head like a dandelion gone to seed.
“Gemma,” I said.
She hugged Arlene, then turned to me. “I’d just got back from St. Lucia yesterday when the police called about Jude.” Her face crumpled. “Horrible.”
“Do you know Gemma?” I asked Arlene.
“We all went to Queen of Angels. Of course, I was years behind Gemma and Jude.”
Gemma gave her a weak smile. “Two years.”
I introduced Devon to Gemma. Then I turned back to Arlene. “Jude taught at the same school she went to?”
She wrinkled her pug nose. “Hard to believe anyone would want to go back there. After university, Jude drifted around the world for a few years. Taught English with Friends Beyond Borders in China and Tanzania. She had Mom and Dad worried sick. When she finally came back to Toronto, she got a job at our old school.”
“Teaching at a private girls’ school seemed pretty sedate for Jude,” Gemma said. “I thought she’d go back to one of those underdeveloped countries. She had a real social conscience. At university, she was involved with the Animal Rights Front.”
Arlene snorted. “And she was allergic to dogs and cats.”
“She settled down because of Tommy,” Gemma said.
“She never should have had that child.”
Devon looked uncomfortable. I tried to change the subject. “You saw your sister at Christmas?”
Arlene shook her head. “Mom likes to have us all here for Christmas dinner. But Jude had the flu and stayed at home. On Boxing Day, Lloyd and I took our kids skiing in Vermont for a few days. When we got back, I called Jude because we hadn’t exchanged Christmas presents. She said she still wasn’t feeling well.”
Jude had looked well enough when she came to my office.
“Mom talked about looking in on her, but I didn’t want her to catch Jude’s bug,” Arlene continued. “So I dropped by on New Year’s Eve morning with our gifts. I could see the Christmas tree lights through the front window, but she didn’t answer when I rapped on the door. I tried the door knob and it turned. Inside…” She started to cry.
A tall man with dark hair came over and put an arm around Arlene. “I’m Patrick Seaton,” he said to Devon and me. He smiled at Gemma.
I introduced myself and Devon to the president and chief executive of Seaton Ferguson, and noted how much he looked like Jude. Same dark hair, blue eyes, good bone structure.
He threw me a smile. “You’re Jude’s friend, the one who’s been looking after Tommy.”
“That’s right.”
“Thank you. It’s been a great help to us.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe that Jude is dead. She was two years younger than me, and hell on wheels when we were kids. Always coming up with schemes to outfox the folks. And now poor Tommy?” He shook his head.
“Tommy. All anyone can think about these days is poor Tommy,” Arlene cried and moved away.
Gemma and I exchanged startled looks and stared at Arlene as she crossed the room.
“She’s upset,” Patrick said.
“And Tommy?” I asked. “What will happen to him?”
His face tightened. “Arlene has her hands full with her two. And Charlotte, my wife, is Crown counsel in the Queenston insider trading case. She’s working eighteen hours a day. Mom’s keen to have Tommy live with her, but I don’t think her health is up to it. A young boy would be a handful.”
“He can’t go back to his school on Monday,” I said.
“We’ll come up with something by then. If you’d be good enough to have him for the next few days, he’ll be off your hands by Sunday evening. I’ve made some calls to boarding schools.”
“But…”
“We really appreciate it.” He flashed me another smile. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
“Smooth operator, that Patrick,” Gemma said as he crossed the room. “He knew you wouldn’t say no. Who could say no to a kid as cute as Tommy?”
“He’s got a lot of nerve.”
“I’ll help myself to some food,” Devon said. “Can I get either of you anything?”
Gemma and I both declined. As Devon headed for the buffet, Gemma looked wistfully at Patrick who had joined a group across the room. “I had a major crush on him when I was fifteen.”
“He looks a lot like Jude and Norah. Arlene must take after their father.”
“Arlene was adopted.”
“Oh?”
“She was told when she was about ten and ever since then she’s tried to be the perfect Seaton daughter.”
“I take it Arlene and Jude weren’t close.”
Gemma smiled. “Two very different women. And Arlene was always jealous of Jude. Her great looks, her confidence, the fact that she was a real Seaton.”
“Had Jude been dating anyone recently?”
“She may have been seeing someone last summer. I say this only because she never had time to spend at my cottage in Muskoka.” She shrugged. “I’ve known Jude for twenty-five years. She was my dearest friend, but there are huge parts of her life I know nothing about. She never told me who Tommy’s father was. She was a very private person.”
I felt my face grow warm at the mention of Tommy’s father. “I gave the police your name. Jude said you’d mentioned me.”
Gemma looked puzzled. “I guess I must have. So that’s how you know her. She never told me that she needed a financial advisor. But, as I said, she was a private person.” She suddenly stopped. “Is that what the police are saying? That a lover killed her?”
“I don’t know what they’re saying. But Tommy mentioned that a friend of his mother’s was at their house a fair bit last summer, although he hadn’t been around for a while. A Clive Pettigrew. Did you meet him?”
“No. But I hope the police are following that up.”
“They know about it.”
She looked over my shoulder. “Speaking of the police…”
I turned to see Hardy making a beeline toward us.
“My cue to mingle.” She drifted across the room.
Hardy pulled up beside me, a bottle of water in his hand. “I hear the boy is staying with you.”
“I was asked—told, you might say—to keep him.”
“By him.” He motioned with his head toward Patrick.
