explanation. I’ll think about that, because I don’t display photos in my apartment. I have some stashed away but not on display.”
Rhona, who’d been about to open the top bureau drawer, smiled at Ian. “At last we have something in common. I feel the same way. Photos make me sad, and you won’t find any in my apartment either. I do have photo albums. It’s funny, people who visit always comment and their remarks always sound critical.”
Ian grinned back. “What do you know, something in common.” He turned to the desk, where he pushed the sewing machine to one side, opened the computer, and booted it up.
Rhona found a tidy selection of underwear in the top drawer of the bureau. On the left it was black, filmy, and sexy, and on the right utilitarian and unexciting. This woman certainly had compartmentalized her life.
“The computer doesn’t require a password, which is not usually a good thing for us,” Ian said over his shoulder. “The user either has nothing to hide or doesn’t think anyone else will ever look at it.” He folded himself onto the white wooden desk chair, which had a grey Obus cushion attached to its back, and began clicking away. “Speaking of family, I’ll check the address book.”
A minute later he said, “No Trepaniers here. Now I’ll pull up her emails.”
Rhona continued with the drawers. She felt underneath each pile of T shirts, sweaters, workout clothes, but found nothing. She then removed the drawers to check their undersides and the back interior of the bureau. Again she found nothing.
“We need to know if her real name is Sabrina Trepanier and if she has any family contacts. You may have to scan subject headings to figure that out,” Rhona said.
“I’m ahead of you. I’ve done a brief run-through. Most correspondence is with quilters, suppliers of fabric, and other people connected to sewing. Now I’m looking in her folders. None labelled family. One for friends in Toronto, one for passwords, one for Aeroplan.”
“Aeroplan. Check that one. If she ever travelled she had to have a passport, and it will have her birth certificate name.”
“Got it. Claire Sabrina Trepanier.”
“Mystery solved.”
“Now to find her family. I’ll check filed information and the sent emails. Usually that list is shorter than received.”
“Is there a heading for clients? I thought that was how escort services operated,” Rhona said.
“Nothing.”
Rhona, finished with the bureau and moved to the bookcase. Sabrina had not been a reader. A pile of People, US, In Style, and quilting magazines did not count as literature. The baskets held fabric and sewing equipment. Rhona glanced at the bed. She thought the carefully pieced pattern was called double wedding ring. She didn’t know where the information had come from — crafts and sewing had never interested her. In one basket, completed blocks in pinks, creams, and mauves almost filled the space. They were beautiful and she felt a momentary sadness that Sabrina’s quilt would never be finished. She opened another covered basket and found neatly organized files. Thumbing through, she discovered that Sabrina had taken a small business course at George Brown College. She had documented her progress towards the establishment of a quilt- and latch-hooking business. A file on possible properties, another on sourcing, on quilt shows and competitions. On a piece of paper she’d written possible names for the store.
“She was a quilter, not a reader, and she was in the final stage of preparing to open a business,” Rhona said, reaching for the first of the black binders.
In a minute or two Ian looked up. “What’s in the books?” he asked.
“The first one contains dozens of erotic photos, very explicit pictures that Sabrina probably used for escort publicity. The second one has the traditional shots photographers take for models preparing portfolios. The second album may have been made before she got into the escort business. The photos are the kind a model presents to an agency,” Rhona said. She carefully extracted one that showed smiling Sabrina modelling a plaid shirt and jeans that might have come from an L.L. Bean catalogue. She recorded the removal in her notebook. “We’ll make copies of this for the white board and to show to any family we find.”
“Maybe she intended to take the first route and either didn’t get the bookings or learned that the escort business was more lucrative,” Ian said.
“That would be my guess,” Rhona agreed. “She seems to have been an organized woman who had a goal and was prepared to do whatever it took to get there.”
“I agree. I just checked her trash. She used the computer to make dates and dragged the info into the trash so there wouldn’t be a record. Presumably she did that in case her apartment was raided and her computer was seized. Fortunately for us, she hasn’t emptied the trash in quite a while, so we’ll retrieve the information.”
Rhona moved to the cupboard. “Still no family.”
“No, only friends and not many of those. We could contact them and ask about her background,” Ian said and he leaned over. “Wait a minute. I’ve moved to the desk drawers. In the bottom one she has files, and one contains personal documents.”
Rhona left the cupboard and moved to stand beside him.
He flipped open a purple folder with inside pockets and extricated a birth certificate, a will, and other legal documents.
“This copy of her will is two weeks old. Why so recent?” Ian said.
“Because she was afraid and wanted to tidy up her life in case anything happened to her,” Rhona said as she bent to read over Ian’s shoulder. “Aside from two special bequests, she leaves everything to the Toronto Children’s Aid Society. Her collection of antique quilts is to go to her mother, Marie France Trepanier, of Oakville, with a thank-you to her and to her grandmother, Marie Claire Arsenault, if she’s alive, for teaching her to sew. All other clothes and personal possessions go to Virginia Wuttenee, currently living at 68 Delisle Street. Now all we have to do is locate her mother. Trepanier can’t be that common a name in the Oakville area.”
Ian picked up a file of monthly bank statements. “She has money, most of it in GICs. She must have been cautious, ’cause they don’t pay much.” He looked over at Rhona, who had opened the cupboard. “Seems she thought of being an escort as a business and a way to accumulate as much capital as she could.”
“I wonder why we didn’t find her purse in Ms. Wuttenee’s place. Perhaps the killer took it to cover his tracks or make it look as if the crime was a robbery gone bad,” Rhona said before they moved downstairs. She phoned the investigating team and emphasized how important it was to intensity the search for the missing purse.
When Rhona and Ian entered the party room, Ginny, long hair shining, face scrubbed clean, wearing blue jeans and a cavernous maroon sweatshirt with “Toronto” emblazoned on the front, stood staring into the large fish tank, one of the room’s distinguishing features.
“Ms. Wuttenee, we’re here,” Rhona announced and waved the young woman to a soft, upholstered chair while she chose a firmer one for herself. “Have you remembered anything more that could help us?”
“No. I can’t imagine why anyone in the whole world would kill Sabrina. She was nice, really, really
