Cold Comfort by Scott Mackay Read Free Book Online Page A

married?”
    Gilbert made a face. “Some day I’m going to have to reform you.”
    “I thought you already had.”
    “You won’t recognize yourself once I get through with you.”
    “If I end up anything like you, I won’t want to recognize myself.”
    Gilbert now grinned back. “You’d like being me,” he said. “You’d be able to have exchange students stay with you.”
    Lombardo laughed.
    “Now what do you got on this bullet?” asked Gilbert.
    Lombardo looked down at the ballistics report. “A Heckler and Koch .45 semiautomatic with a copper sheath.”
    “That narrows it.”
    “And I’ve got Laird’s list. He’s got thirteen cars. He also cautions that the Michelin XGT is a popular replacement tire.”
    “Shit.”
    “I know.”
    Gilbert tapped his desk a few times. “Did you dig around in marriage records at all?” he asked.
    Lombardo nodded. “Cheryl’s been married only the once. To Charles Latham.”
    “No, I’m talking about her mother. Doris.”
    “It’s actually Dorothy,” said Lombardo. “I had to make a few calls.” Lombardo slid his hands into the pockets of his stylish pleated pants. “She died three years ago from breast cancer. Tom Webb was actually her third husband, Cheryl’s second stepdad. Before Tom Webb, she was married to a man named Paul Varley, no details, only that he died some time in the early 1970s. Before that, Dorothy was married to a mid-level mining executive, Craig Shaw, who worked for Lac Minerals in Sudbury. He was killed while on a tour of one of their newly sunk shafts in Povungnituk, Quebec. Cheryl must have been seven at the time.”
    “So Cheryl’s from Sudbury?”
    “They actually lived in Laurentian Hills. That’s a well-to-do suburb just outside Sudbury. Tom Webb’s riding is up there, Sudbury West. I guess Dorothy met Webb up there.”
    Gilbert stared at the paperweight of bullet slugs McEndoo had fashioned for him down in the machine shop.
    “Any siblings?”
    “Not from that first marriage,” said Lombardo. “Cheryl was an only child. But Paul Varley had three kids, two boys and a girl. Nothing much on her step siblings yet, just their birth records. Larry and Dean are the boys. Donna’s the girl.”
    “Webb should have told me this.”
    “Maybe he doesn’t know. Maybe Dorothy never told him.”
    Gilbert raised his eyebrows. That might be a possibility.
    “I guess we’ll have to get in touch with them,” Gilbert said. He lifted the bullet paperweight and turned it on its side. “Does the name sound familiar to you?”
    “What name?”
    “Varley.”
    Lombardo cocked his head. “No,” he said. “Should it?”
    Gilbert shook his head to himself. “I don’t know.” He put the paperweight down. “Maybe…no, I guess not. But I can’t help…”
    Lombardo shrugged. “Do you want me to get some sandwiches or something?”
    But Gilbert hardly listened. Varley. He filed it away, then looked up at Lombardo.
    “Any make on the blood yet?”
    Lombardo nodded. “The stuff we found on the bathroom floor was Cheryl’s. The stuff under the kitchen sink…” Lombardo took his hands out of his pockets and put them on his hips. “Well…it’s somebody else’s.”
    “Mystery blood.”
    “You guessed it.”
    “What about the hair?”
    “It’s not Cheryl’s. That’s about as far as we’ve got.”
    “Anything new from Dominion Malting?”
    A sudden wind blew a snow squall against the pane.
    “Fifty-two Division’s gone over and over it. Either the ejected cartridge has been lost, or the perp took it with him when he left.”

Five
    Early the next day, with the shift barely an hour old, and the sky still dark on yet another frigidly cold February morning, Staff Inspector Bill Marsh called Detective-Sergeant Barry Gilbert into his office. The Staff Inspector’s office overlooked the police courtyard, with a view of the old YMCA below. A large man to begin with, Marsh looked even larger in this small office. The desktop