Chapter Eighteen – The Rumour Pipeline

 The revolving doors hissed closed behind her, sealing out the punishing cold. Janet stomped her boots on the lobby mat, shaking ice crystals from her scarf. Lorne was waiting near the security desk, bundled in his parka, coffee already in hand.

 

“You made it,” he said, giving her a quick once-over. “Look alive.”

 

Janet peeled back her scarf, cheeks still burning from the wind. “How do people survive this? It’s minus thirty with a windchill that feels like minus forty. My face is frozen solid.”

 

Lorne grinned. “Edmonton toughens you up. Come on, she’s waiting upstairs.”

 

They rode the elevator in silence, the car humming as the digital numbers ticked up. At the seventeenth floor, the doors slid open to reveal a clean, carpeted corridor lined with glass offices.

 

Sheila Pezat greeted them at the reception desk. She was in her early fifties, brisk and efficient in a dark blazer, her expression polite but cautious.

 

“Lorne,” she said, shaking his hand. Then, to Janet: “And you must be Ms. Brown.”

 

They settled into a small meeting room, a tray of coffee set between them. The city skyline spread pale and frozen through the window.

 

“Sheila’s been good enough to give us some time,” Lorne said.

 

Sheila folded her hands. “He’s already brought me up to date on what you’re looking for. Let me be candid with you—this isn’t going to be easy. We deal with high turnover in bank staff. And privacy legislation limits how much I can say, even off the record.”

 

Janet sipped her coffee, letting the warmth ease her hands. “I understand. But sometimes people remember things more than the files do.”

 

Sheila nodded slowly. “That’s true. When an employee steals, we don’t forget it. It rattles people. Word spreads through the rumour pipeline. And cases like that—well, they don’t just vanish. They get retold, they get folded into the training we give new hires. Cautionary tales.”

 

Janet leaned forward. “So there would be a chance someone remembers if something like this happened… say, fifteen years ago?”

 

Sheila tapped her finger against the mug, thoughtful. “There might be. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll tell you this—I’m attending an Inter-bank HR seminar later this week. HR managers from all the big networks. If there was a theft, a sudden resignation, a name that set off alarms… someone in that room will remember. It’s the kind of thing we swap stories about. Quietly, but consistently.”

 

Lorne shot Janet a quick glance. “That’s better than we hoped.”

 

Sheila offered a small smile. “Give me a few days. I’ll float it discreetly, see if anything surfaces. If there’s a trail to follow, I’ll let you know.”

 

Janet set her empty cup down, a pulse of anticipation rising in her chest. For the first time, it felt like the hunt was moving from shadows into daylight.

From there, Lorne led Janet across downtown to the central police station, a gray concrete block softened only by the swirl of breath-clouds from officers hurrying inside.

 

Inside, they were ushered into a cramped office stacked with files. Staff Sergeant Paul Dineen, head of the Anti-Fraud squad, rose to shake hands. He was a broad man in his fifties with tired eyes but a firm grip.

 

“Lorne tells me you’re chasing something unusual,” he said, gesturing them to sit.

 

For an hour, he talked through the work of his squad. “Fraud doesn’t make headlines like drugs or guns,” he said, “but it empties more pockets. We see everything—romance scams, business-email compromises, grandparents handing over life savings.”

 

He leaned back, recounting successes with a hint of pride. “Last year, we nailed a pair running fake Canada Revenue Agency calls. They had burner phones stacked in shoeboxes and a script taped to the wall. We pulled in fifty handsets and froze four hundred grand before it vanished offshore. Another time, we broke up a crew selling phony gold bars to seniors. Real shine, real weight, all worthless. We got convictions on that one.”

 

Janet shared what she and Lorne had pieced together—the slip about winter, the likely Edmonton connection, the suspicion of a bank employee who left under a cloud fifteen years ago.

 

Dineen nodded slowly. “That tracks. If she had inside access, that explains how she understood her victims. Makes sense she started with what she knew.”

 

He tapped a pen on his notebook. “I’ll have my staff check whether any banks reported a theft around that time. But don’t get your hopes up. If the money stolen wasn’t worth filing an insurance claim, banks didn’t always bother reporting to us. They prefer to handle it quietly.”

 

Still, he smiled faintly. “Your methods are sound. The trail’s thin, but it’s a trail. Don’t give up on it.”

By the time they left the station, twilight was already draining the light from the city. Lorne dropped Janet at her hotel, promising to call once Sheila got back from her seminar.

 

“You look beat,” he said as she climbed out.

 

“Just a long day,” she lied. The truth was her body still carried the weight of the previous night’s binge.

 

Upstairs, she ordered supper from room service, ate in silence, and let the tray sit untouched on the dresser. She checked her computer once before bed. No green dot. No new message.

 

Ramona hadn’t reached out.

 

For once, silence was its own kind of relief.