Whipped: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel(31)
“Door won’t budge, knob doesn’t turn. There’s a huge pile of newspapers sitting there, four days’ worth, Globe, Gazette, Post, Journal de Montréal. Nothing from Monday, so that must be when he vanished.”
“Could you see inside?”
“Just a glimpse through a gap in the shutters. All I could see was a clump of clothes, it looked like, maybe for the wash.”
Had he run off suddenly with chores undone? Another dark thought: had he been disappeared? Likely not, if that was indeed the Mafia doing a drive-by, still hoping to target him.
“Whoops, hang on. Car coming.”
Pierette went silent for several seconds, then, in a hushed voice: “Miata, its top down, just stopped and double-parked. It’s Svetlana. I’m scooching down. I’ll call back.”
Margaret waited tensely. Minutes passed before Pierette rang. “Okay, she’s outta here, all clear. I’m shooting you some video. Hang on while I check flights out of Dorval.”
Svetlana was on the lam? Two videos soon arrived. The first showed Svetlana Glinka removing her dark glasses as she climbed from the driver’s seat. Legs almost freakishly long, like a high-jumper. Blonde, if that was her real hair, blue eyes, cherry lips, a face like a Kewpie doll. Dressed for travel in skinny jeans and a multi-pocketed blazer. Knee-high boots, alligator or something.
Now she was hurrying to her building, carrying a flight bag, now opening the door to her flat, stepping inside. The second video showed her reappearing, pulling a wheeled suitcase that must have been waiting for her inside the door. She locked up, loaded the suitcase into the trunk, and took off.
Pierette sounded breathless. “I don’t think she saw me. My guess is that she’s on her way to the airport. I’m making a run for Dorval right now. Over and out.”
Again, Margaret found herself dredging up dismal scenarios: Lou had vanished Monday, the day after the open-mike blooper. Had Christie Montieth, who had sprinted from the salon with her iPhone, held on to her exclusive to track down sources? She could easily have zeroed in on Glinka, prompting Glinka’s sudden departure.
Maybe Christie had got a lead on Sabatino, tried to contact him. Had the nervous fellow, knowing the story was about to break, fled from the coming storm?
§
Fretful, impatient, yielding to an itch to be more than a passive bystander, Margaret sped off that afternoon in her Honda Civic hybrid over the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge to the Quebec side, for a rendezvous in the Gatineau Hills with her intrepid aide.
Pierette had confirmed that Glinka had flown out from Dorval — she’d spotted her in short-term parking at the open trunk of her Miata. A heavy-set man and a tall, fit-looking woman, in their thirties, seemed to be helping with her luggage — or searching it, because Pierette watched them close her suitcase from some distance away. No photos, her phone had died.
The mystery woman then drove off in the Miata. Her partner took Glinka’s suitcase and led her to the terminal. By the time Pierette caught up to them, she was already being waved into security. Presumably first class, given the brief elapsed time. Her escort then returned to the short-term lot, drove off in a white van.
Margaret supposed that the two confederates had been hired by Emil Farquist to facilitate her quick getaway. Her presence in Canada posed a grave danger to him if a nosy reporter — Christie Montieth, for instance — were to ask her questions. Emil had to be anxious — masked well, not on display at the scrum on Thursday.
The highway wove among forested hills and scattered farms and cozy villages, scenes that took Margaret back home to a gentler life that beckoned more urgently with the passing days. A wise woman was whispering: give up, get healthy, enjoy life, it’s not too late. Jennie would be anointed acting leader; someone with more energy could run in Cowichan and the Islands.
North of Gatineau Park, farms gave way to forests of beech and birch and sugar maple in their fresh green dresses. It was a gorgeous day, but Margaret was too depressed to enjoy it. The spiriting away of Glinka seriously dimmed any chance of proving Farquist had bought her silence. With the world crowding in on her — the election, Farquist, Sabatino and Glinka’s disappearences — Margaret was becoming like her husband, or at least one of his personas: pessimistic, morose.
Pierette was waiting, as promised, in her rented compact outside a café in the village of Kazabazua. Margaret parked and got in beside her.
“Not too pleased about this,” Pierette said. “The leader of a national party can’t be seen poking around anywhere near Lac Vert.”
“Hey, it’s just a couple of pals taking a scenic drive on a sunny afternoon. Don’t be such a grouse.” This was met with silent disapproval. “You’ve been a total wizard, Pierette. My hero. I love you.”
That earned just a weary look and raised unforgiving eyes as she stuck a sun hat on Margaret’s head, dark glasses on her nose.
Pierette turned onto a secondary road that wound east into hills thickly forested with spruce and aspen, birch and tamarack. Sun-bathed lakes. Occasional cottages, but most of them hidden.
After about fifteen kilometres, they pulled in to a roadside lookout with a panorama of undulating forest on mountains scarred with ski runs. The large lake in the foreground was rimmed by forest and hill and was still as glass, ruffled only by a whisper of wind near the far shore.
“Lac Vert,” said Pierette. A narrow driveway a hundred metres up the road was marked by a sign at a wonky angle. “Privé. Private.” It led, Pierette had learned, to three waterfront chalets, none visible from here, the owners a retired judge, a computer engineer, and Farquist.