the satchel she had set at her feet and pulled out a file folder. It was fairly thick.
“This is what I’ve been able to do on my own,” she said, setting the folder on Cobb’s desk. “In this folder are press clippings, a photocopy of the police report from the original investigation, photographs of my grandmother performing, and a map of the street as it was back then. I put that together myself. I might have one or two of the businesses wrong, but I think for the most part it’s quite accurate. The two detectives who first worked the case were Lex Carrington and Norris Wardlow. Mr. Wardlow died in 2003, but Mr. Carrington is still alive and is a resident of Cottonwood Village Retirement Centre in Claresholm, which is about an hour south of Calgary. I tried to get in to see him, but the people in charge wouldn’t allow it, so I don’t know if he remembers the case or is even mentally competent. That’s as far as I went with my own investigation. I decided it was time for a professional to take over.”
I could see Cobb was impressed. He opened the folder, flipped through some of the material in it, read a couple of the clippings, and finally looked up at the young woman sitting opposite him, who showed no sign of impatience.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” Cobb told her. “We’ll work this for a week — make some calls, see if there’s any chance that there might actually be some leads out there, something we can take hold of and follow up on. If after that time I feel there’s any point to continuing the investigation, we’ll talk again. If, however, I think I’d be wasting my time and your money continuing, then I’m out.”
Monica Brill nodded. “That’s fair.”
“Now, is there anything you’re not telling me?”
“What do you mean?”
Cobb leaned forward on the desk.
“Often with cases that have been unsolved for this long, when someone wants the investigation restarted, it’s because something has suddenly turned up — a long-lost note, a letter from the missing person, a mysterious phone call, something like that. Is there anything along those lines that might be the reason, or at least part of the reason, you’ve come to see me?”
Monica Brill hesitated. It was her turn to think. “I guess … I guess there is something that’s kind of, well, puzzling.”
Cobb looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“Five weeks ago, I received a CD.”
“A CD.”
Monica nodded. “I wasn’t going to say anything, because I was afraid you’d think I was a crackpot and not take the case.”
“How did it come to you?”
“It was left in my car.”
“In your car,” Cobb repeated.
“My car had been locked. I’m sure of that because I remember locking it with my remote, and an older couple who were nearby glared at me when it beeped.”
“So, someone broke into your locked car and left a CD.”
“Yes.”
“And where was this?”
“At the grocery store. A Safeway just a few blocks from where I live. I didn’t notice it right away. I loaded my groceries in the trunk, and when I went to get in the driver’s seat, the CD was lying there. I almost didn’t see it.”
“Was it in a case?”
“Yes.”
“And what was the CD of?”
“It’s a song.”
“One song,” Cobb repeated.
A slow nod. “Yes, one song … and …” Her voice trailed off, and she looked down at her hands.
“And what, Ms. Brill?”
“I’m sure it’s my grandmother singing.”
“Did you recognize the song?”
She shook her head. “I’ve heard my grandmother’s voice before. On some old reel-to-reel tapes. She’d signed a record deal but hadn’t recorded anything before she disappeared, at least nothing commercial — just those tapes. But I’ve listened to them, and I’m quite certain it’s her voice on this CD, even though the recording is poor quality.”
“Poor quality as in old?”
She shrugged. “Maybe. It’s quite scratchy, and there are a couple of places in the song where her voice fades out almost completely.”
“And the song she’s singing on the CD wasn’t on any of the tapes you’d heard previously.”
“No. I went back and listened to them all again, and this song isn’t on the tapes.”
“Anything identifying the CD?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know — an image, a graphic, like an album cover?”
She shook her head again.
“Any writing on the case or on the CD itself?”
“No, nothing. The case was dirty, but there wasn’t anything about what was inside.”
“Is this the only thing you’ve ever received that might connect to your grandmother?”
“I … I think so.”
“And no phone calls, letters, nothing else that you or anyone else in your family might have found out of the ordinary?”
“Nothing. And I’m sure if anything like that had come to someone else in the family, I’d have been told about it.”
Cobb looked down at the folder again. “Is the CD in here?”
“I made a copy. The copy is in there.”
“The copy.” Cobb repeated.
“As I told you, I was afraid you’d think I was a nutcase and refuse to take this on, so I didn’t bring the original … if the one I received was the original.”
I was having trouble with her thinking that the first CD would make her seem like a nutcase but a copy wouldn’t. I wondered if Cobb would let that go. He did.
“I’ll need you to bring the original CD with its case and the tapes of your grandmother performing earlier,” he told her. “I’ll see if a voice analyst can match up the voices.”
He looked over at me, eyebrows raised, offering me the chance to ask some questions.
“What about your mother, Ms. Brill?” I asked. “Is she with you on this investigation into finding her mother? Is she aware of it?”
“My mother passed away four years ago. Breast cancer. She was only forty-seven years old.”
