Free The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe Page A

something’s happened to your husband?”
    Eldwin snorted derisively. “God no. At least I hope not. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him before I got my hands around his neck myself.”
    “What is going on here, Mrs. Eldwin?”
    “He goes to town Friday, saying he’s got meetings and research – who has meetings on the May long weekend, huh?”
    “Well, some people –”
    “– and then calls and says he’s stuck in town until Monday. And then he stops answering his phone. What does that sound like to you?”
    “I don’t know,” said Hazel. “What does it sound like to you?”
    She swallowed something lustily. “It sounds like the same old story to me.”
    “Is he not the kind of person to have meetings?”
    “He’s the kind of person to penetrate other women.”
    “I see,” said Hazel. “So you think he’s having an affair. And you want to hire a PI to catch him in the act?”
    “So how much?” Eldwin asked.
    “How much what?”
    “How much for a PI? And do I have to pay expenses too?”
    Hazel was getting frustrated, but she could tell this Mrs. Eldwin wasn’t going to turn out to be willing, so Hazel was going to have to be careful if she wanted to get anything useful out of the conversation. “I’d say a hundred a day is fair,” she said. “But you could save that money.”
    “Oh yeah? You guys going to offer me a twofer?”
    “We’ve got resources private eyes don’t. We might be able to track him down for you. But we need somewhere to start. Do you know the names of any of his associates in Toronto? What about the number of the person he went down to meet?”
    “Look in the gutters,” she said. “Back alleys, whorehouses, dingy bars, that sort of thing. You’ll find him sooner or later. Let me know when you do.”
    She took another big long drag on a cigarette and hung up. There was a pause and then a dial tone. “Wow,” said Hazel, “did you run
her
through CPIC?”
    “I will.”
    “Okay, so Eldwin’s gone to ground for whatever reason, his wife is drinking before noon, and we still have two amateuranglers at large. Where are we with Bellocque and Paritas? Do we have addresses?”
    “Nothing for this Paritas woman, so I assume she and Bellocque live together.”
    “How can there not be an address attached to her number?”
    “Maybe it’s a cell.”
    “Aren’t cells registered?”
    He looked at her, a little sadly, she thought. “Well, they can be but you can also walk into Loblaws, buy your groceries, a bunch of flowers, and a prepaid cell with nothing but a handful of cash.”
    “Fine. But you have an address for this Bellocque?”
    He put his finger on it. “It’s a Gilmore address. You know where that is?”
    “Yes, James. I live here, remember?” She shook her head. “Jesus, it’s been three days and we still don’t have a single statement. What the hell ever happened to
the police called, call back
as a working notion?”
    “I’m sorry. I should have been more active yesterday, but the truth is, with this thing not changing much” – he gestured at the laptop – “and most of our primaries out on long-weekend DUIs and fender-benders, I guess I just thought some of this could wait until today.”
    “There’s a man
tied
to a chair somewhere, James. A man we were pointed to by a broken, drowned mannequin. What about that seems not urgent?”
    He breathed slowly to get his heart to stop pounding. “I hear you, Skip. But the truth is, we don’t know if that man is ‘tied’ to a chair, or if he’s in any danger, or even if what we’re seeing is real. And the truth is …”
    “What? What is the truth?”
    “The truth is, I’m not sure who’s the lead on this now. Is it me? Because if it is, I think you need to trust me to run it my way.”
    She looked at him flatly, but he saw the fire behind her eyes. “Thirty-six hours have passed in idleness over a question of chain of command? Is that why you’ve been sitting on your ass?”
    He