her as if measuring the reason for the question. “Pretty much.”
“You found a good place to live?” Rhona said.
“Twenty questions?” Ian replied.
“When you have a partner, it’s good to know more about him than name and badge number. You certainly aren’t the most forthcoming partner I’ve ever had.”
“I’m forty-two, unmarried, don’t have any pets or plants, and like my job.”
Rhona sighed, “Okay, I get the picture. You want your life to be private. I accept but …”
Ian produced a grin, revealing very white teeth, lighting up his face and making him more attractive than ever. He pushed the shock of black hair off his forehead. “You feel that if one day a decision I make may determine whether you live or die, you’d be happier if you had background information.”
Rhona accepted the cheques from the server and nodded at Ian. “Something like that.”
“I love horses and horse racing but not enough to belong to Gamblers Anonymous. If I had time, I’d buy a horse but I don’t. I like Thai and Indian food, hate KFC, and give the Swiss Chalet chicken an A rating. I like clothes, especially shoes, expensive shoes. I’ve furnished my apartment with antiques and I have a home gym,”
“Antiques?” Rhona repeated. She would have pegged him for a minimalist who loved modern.
Ian continued to grin. “Surprise, surprise. Early Canadian. I own a pine sideboard from the Eastern Townships, probably made around 1830, two corner cupboards, a spool bed in my guest room, and a settle in my living room.”
“A settle. What’s that?”
“A day bed. Farmhouse kitchens had one so the farmer could have a lie down after the big noon meal, or anyone who was sick could recuperate in the warm kitchen.”
“I am surprised,” Rhona said as they stood and moved to the door. She wasn’t going to find out anything else. Time to move on. “To change the subject, whoever killed Ms. Trepanier must have realized it wasn’t Ms. Wuttenee, but maybe he was too out of control to stop or he was afraid if she woke and saw him he’d be caught. How much information about Ms. Wuttenee’s background did you get from your interview?”
They’d reached the door. Ian held it open for Rhona. “Sorry. I know all about equality, but opening doors for women is a hard habit to break. About Ms. Wuttenee, I agree she may have been the intended victim. It’s not too late to talk to her again. Why don’t we tell her to come down to Ms. Grant’s office and speak to us after we check out Ms. Trepanier’s apartment? If we have time after that, we could go through Ms. Trepanier’s appointment book.”
“Good plan. If the killer got the wrong girl, Ginny Wuttenee may be in danger, and the sooner we pin down her life story, the more likely we are to know whether or not she needs protection.”
“Ginny Wuttenee is staying with Ms. Nesrallah. We’ll stop and tell her to meet us downstairs in the party room in an hour when we’ve finished in Sabrina’s apartment,” Rhona said.
“Not Ms. Grant’s office?”
“No. We’ve interfered enough in their lives. The party room will be fine.”
“We should have it to ourselves. No one will be partying right now,” Ian said.
Before entering Sabrina’s apartment, they pulled on gloves and protective covers for their shoes.
“If we turn up anything significant, we won’t have contaminated the site,” Rhona said.
The apartment reeked of paint.
“I thought the new paints didn’t smell,” Ian said.
“Latex is better. They’ve used oil in here,” Rhona said, flicking on the hall light to reveal deep amber walls, the colour intensified by the amber shade on the overhead light. The effect was strange but attractive. From the hall they moved to the living room.
“Charcoal. Isn’t it smashing,” Ian said. “The white woodwork, the ebony furniture — absolutely smashing.”
Rhona wasn’t quite so taken with it, but it was a stunning room.
“I never considered charcoal. My pine furniture would stand out against it. I see a project coming on.”
Rhona reflected that if Ian had made that statement with any of his male colleagues, he would have been mocked, if not to his face then behind his back. Maybe the fact that he revealed so little about himself was a careful cover-up because he realized how he’d be perceived. Interesting. Maybe he wasn’t the metrosexual she’d pegged him for. Maybe … but what did that have to do with anything.
“Nothing personal here. It could be a hotel,” Rhona said.
They continued to the master bedroom, also painted charcoal with a black iron bedframe and white linens. A well-stocked bar cart and the same mirrored ceiling they’d seen in Ginny’s bedroom as well as a white floktari rug on the black-stained floor made a dramatic but impersonal impression.
Ian slid open the drawer of one bedside table.
“Anything?” Rhona asked.
“A selection of condoms,” he said and bent to open the cupboard underneath. “Sex toys to please almost anyone.”
“See what’s in the one on the other side,” Rhona instructed.
Ian walked around the bed and checked. “Same kind of stuff, but there’s more sadomasochistic things — a whip, handcuffs.” He probed further. “Leather masks and other things,” he said and shut the door.
“Tools of the trade, I suppose. Could be relevant — too soon to tell. We need to know more about her, who she is, and where she came from. Let’s try the other bedroom. She must stash personal belongings somewhere. This room reveals nothing about her personality other than her dramatic taste in furnishings and colour and her willingness to do whatever her clients asked.”
She opened the door of the second bedroom and stopped to absorb the total contrast to the rest of the apartment. Soft rose walls, a white wooden single bed with a beautiful quilt. Four more beautiful antique quilts hung on the walls. On the white desk an open, ready-to-go, state-of-the-art sewing machine and a closed Apple laptop took up the space. Two tall white bookcases filled with rectangular white baskets and a series of black binders, a chest of drawers with a wall-mounted flat-screen TV, and an armchair slip-covered in cream cotton with a footstool upholstered in rose-patterned chintz completed the furnishings. A multi-coloured rag rug on the floor added to the room’s welcoming coziness.
“The real Sabrina Trepanier lived here,” Ian said.
“No photos, which may or may not mean she’s totally alienated from her family. Some people don’t like having photos around.”
“Because they think a photographer steals their soul? I remember learning in introductory anthropology that some tribes in the South Pacific believe that and won’t have their pictures taken,” Ian said.
“Maybe that’s their reason, but I think
