Cold Comfort by Scott Mackay Read Free Book Online

small laptop computer and called up some graphs to the screen.
    “Did you ever see her with anyone else? Did you ever hear anyone else in her apartment with her?”
    “No. She never had visitors. At least not when I was there.” Sonia twisted her lips to one side, as if she were recalling something. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I saw her once with a Chinese woman. I guess she must have been a friend. She was helping Cheryl up the stairs with a new armchair.”
    “And how long ago was this?”
    Sonia shrugged. “Six months. Maybe seven.”
    “Do you know the woman’s name?”
    “No. I passed them in the stairwell. I was in a hurry. We just said hello.”
    “What did this Chinese woman look like?”
    “She was pretty. Slim. About five-seven. She had her bangs trimmed straight above her eyebrows.”
    “How old?”
    “Early thirties.”
    Gilbert glanced at the man’s laptop screen; the man was moving things around with the trackball and drag key. Laptop for lunch. Gilbert knew the feeling. He sawed into his meat lasagna and chewed. A Chinese woman. A thin lead, but it would have to be checked out.
    “Did she ever talk about her family?” he asked. “Did she ever mention her stepfather?”
    “Tom Webb?” Sonia took a sip of her carrot juice and glanced at her watch. “No, never.”
    “Did she ever mention her real father? Her biological father?”
    “No.”
    “Or any siblings?”
    “I think she has a sister. But she lives up north. Somewhere around Sudbury.”
    “Is that where Cheryl’s from?” Gilbert thought of the photograph on Cheryl’s dresser; the woman and the girl and the ice-fishing shack.
    “I don’t know. She never said where she came from.”
    Easy enough getting answers from Sonia Bailey. But the answers seemed to have little value.
    “Have you noticed anything odd about Cheryl’s behavior in the last little while?” he asked.
    Sonia lifted her hand and waved to somebody she knew, a balding man with a beard wearing a Hudson Bay tricolor parka, just coming in from the cold.
    “Not really,” she said. But then her brow furrowed. “Unless…”
    Gilbert waited. “Unless what?”
    Sonia’s eyes seemed to focus on some undefinable point. But then she looked at Gilbert full in the face. “I found her crying in the laundry room once. In fact, not too long ago. Maybe about two weeks ago. She wouldn’t tell me what it was about, only that she was remembering something sad. That’s out of character for Cheryl. She’s always so happy. She’s always humming. She never gets down about anything. I thought she must have been sick. I told her she should see a doctor but she said no, she would be all right, she just needed a little time to sort things out.” Sonia Bailey dipped her spoon into her chili. “She never told me what she meant by that. I just left her alone. I thought that was best.”
    Back at headquarters, Joe Lombardo had the ballistics results from the recovered slug.
    “The lands and grooves were in good shape, despite the slug’s condition,” he said. Lombardo pointed to the flowering cactus on Gilbert’s window ledge. “Is that new?” he asked.
    Gilbert gazed at the bright vermilion bloom on top of the prickly tuber.
    “Valerie gave me that.”
    Lombardo nodded, but it was a cagey nod, a nod that jockeyed for position. “Valerie,” he said. “The girl from Denmark. The exchange student.”
    “She’s from Germany.”
    “How can I find out about that? I’ve got the extra room at my place. I’d love to have an exchange student stay with me for a while.”
    Gilbert stared at Lombardo skeptically. “I bet you would.”
    “No, I’m serious.”
    “The only reason she’s here is because Jennifer spent six weeks in Germany last summer.”
    “So I have to have my own daughter first?”
    “You’d have to talk to Regina. She arranged it all.”
    Lombardo grinned. “But I don’t think Regina wants any more children. And isn’t she already