Booking In Page 20

  “I’ve always known Fletcher to be an intelligent man,” Annie said, “but he’s also turning out to be more slippery than I ever dreamed.”

  I poured myself a half cup of coffee. “Never mind Fletcher,” I said. “It’s figuring out who killed Biscuit that’s my main piece of immediate business.”

  “What’s your first step, my dear man?”

  “A nap,” I said. “Then a strategy session with Maury.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Maury and I ordered Johnny Walker Black, mine on the rocks, his straight from the bottle. We were in the Daffodil at late lunchtime.

  Maury pointed at my drink. “If Biscuit were here,” he said, “he would’ve drunk his Black Label the way I’m doing it. Neat. No rocks.”

  I stuck my fingers into the glass in front of me, took out the ice cubes, and dumped them in my water glass.

  “Here’s to Biscuit,” I said, raising my iceless drink.

  “Rest in peace,” Maury said. “And all that shit.”

  We sipped our scotches and were quiet for a few minutes.

  “Whoever killed him,” I said, “didn’t do it because he wanted to bash Biscuit in particular.”

  “It’s more like a case of Biscuit being in the wrong place, wrong time.”

  I nodded. “The killer had gone to the store for another reason.”

  “He wasn’t hunting down Biscuit, that’s for frigging sure. He would probably never have heard of Biscuit or known who he was or what he was doing.”

  “Smacking a guy with a double-sized stapler isn’t a planned event either.”

  “It must have been spur of the moment,” Maury said.

  He waved the waiter over and asked for another drink.

  “No more for me,” I said. “I got a long night behind me.”

  The waiter went away.

  “If I hadn’t have brought Biscuit on to your job at Fletcher’s goddamn store,” Maury said, “he would still be alive.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “It was me having the idea in the first place.”

  “Okay,” Maury said. “I’ll blame you.”

  “Let’s never mind with spreading the guilt around. It’s a time-waster.”

  “We oughta be thinking about who’s the real guilty party.”

  “The person in the store, the same person who wielded the stap­ler, he must have been drawn there by whatever was in the safe.”

  “Which, as far as we know, was nothing.”

  “Until Biscuit walked into the store with the Reading Sonnets in his hands.”

  “His gloved hands,” Maury said.

  I took another tiny taste of Scotch. It made me feel slightly more woozy than my fatigue from the after-affects of Biscuit’s murder had left me. But I knew I had to concentrate on getting the investigation of the killing under way before I went home for another rest.

  “Whoever whacked Biscuit had to have taken the Reading Sonnets with him when he left the store,” I said.

  “You figure the reason this guy had broken into the store was to get the damned Sonnets?”

  “Practically everybody assumed that’s where the Sonnets were stored,” I said. “Only you, me, Biscuit, and whoever else we told, just Annie and Sal probably, knew I had them locked in my bureau drawer at home.”

  “So when the guy in the store last night saw Biscuit with the Sonnets, he knew he’d come into a big piece of luck.”

  “Right, he was so happy that he picked up the stapler and bashed Biscuit.”

  “One good thing about what we’re talking about,” Maury said, “it cuts down the number of people who would have done the murder.”

  I nodded. “It’s a large assumption to suppose that anybody outside the circle of people lusting after the Reading Sonnets or maybe after the Hickey letters did the murder.”

  “So you’re saying one of the guys you’ve already been chasing around interviewing and whatnot, he likely killed Biscuit?”

  “Because those are the guys who think they have something to gain.”

  “We keep saying ‘guys.’” Maury said. “What about the women in this? What about the Hickey daughter you were talking to? Or even that Charlie woman who’s been pals with different guys who are suspects? Maybe she’s tight with whoever killed Biscuit. Or she could’ve done it herself.”

  “I’m inclined to believe Charlie’s shown poor choice in boyfriends, but I don’t think she’s got it in her to be a party to a murder.”

  “Are you sweet on this chick or what? Ever since you saw her in the thong, you’ve kind of let her slide as a suspect.”

  “I had her written out of major player status even before the incident in the swimming pool. But if you think she’s maybe not so clean as I’m saying, okay, let’s leave her on the list.”

  “Cool,” Maury said. “What about the Hickey daughter?”

  “Acey’s big and strong enough to handle a weapon, even if it’s just a giant stapler.”

  “Especially against a runt like Biscuit. Name me one person on this case, male or female, who isn’t bigger than him.”

  “Acey’s got the size and muscle, but what she doesn’t have is the crazy streak she’d need to kill for the letters. Besides, she’s already hired the two MacGillivray brothers to do the heavy lifting for her.”

  “The stupid brother, Artie,” Maury said, “there’s a guy crazy enough to grab the nearest weapon and go after whoever’s getting in his way.”

  “The method of the murder in this case speaks of what anybody would call an impetuous act, and you’re right, that describes Artie.”

  “Impetuous and stupid and a homicidal nutcase.”

  “One drawback in making a case against Artie all by himself I can think of.”

  “How did he get into the store?” Maury said. “That’s what you’re wondering, am I right? A moron like him couldn’t pick a lock.”

  “He couldn’t have done it on his own,” I said. “But his brother, Arnie, is supposed to be high quality as a break-and-enter specialist.”

  “So it could’ve been the two guys collaborating in the killing. They were already in the bookstore when Biscuit arrived, and what came after that was Artie losing his mind and bashing Biscuit with the stapler.”

  “At a minimum,” I said, “we’ve got to include these two guys as suspects, no question. But there are other people in the same category.”

  “Fletcher being the leader of the pack as far as I’m concerned.”

  “You don’t care for the man personally?”

  “Too shifty, that guy.”

  “Annie would probably agree with you.”

  “And from what you told me, he was out and around in the hours when the murder was happening.”

  “He could have been on a date.”

  “What I think,” Mauray said, “at the time friggin’ Fletcher made his phone call to you, he could’ve been fresh from doing in Biscuit at the store.”

  “Not a bad scenario. Except Fletcher had to have known the Sonnets weren’t in the safe.”

  “There could have been some other reason for him being in the store when Biscuit arrived.”

  “Possibly, yeah.”

  “You got anybody better for the killer?”

  “Can’t leave out the older Grantham son. Brent.”

  “You see him as somebody who could actually kill a person?”

  “He’s a loose cannon,” I said. “That’s his personality, and right now, it’s desperation time for him. Losing ten million bucks can do that to a person.”

  “So he’s on the list.”

  “Close to the top,” I said.

  Maury and I spent the next few minutes in silent contemplation.

  “We need to divide up the work for a couple days,” Maury said. “See what shakes down
.”

  “You mean we each take different suspects?”

  “I’ll handle Fletcher,” Maury said. “Find out what he’s up to. Maybe look into the new girlfriend, if that’s what took him out of the house last night before he got around to whacking Biscuit.”

  “I’ll make Brent Grantham my project,” I said. “That’ll necessarily involve the MacGillivray brothers and Acey Hickey.”

  “We each take care of business with our suspects, keep in touch with one another, and see if something comes loose.”

  “This makes a starting point,” I said.

  Maury raised his glass to toast the arrangement. My glass was empty. I raised it anyway. We clinked glasses.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  It was coming up to nine in the evening. Annie and I and Sal were standing in Margaret Fairley Park with a crowd of other paying customers. We were watching the end of a play. It was called The Postman, and it told the true story of a black man named Albert Jackson who was the first postman of his colour in all of Toronto. He began his job in 1882, and his route took him through the neighbourhoods that became the Annex and Harbord Village. According to the play, Jackson must have been a hell of a guy, because he had to endure the kind of racial abuse most people would have thought Canadians weren’t capable of. The play gave us Jackson’s dispiriting but inspiring story at the sites where it had actually taken place more than a century earlier, and we in the audience trotted around the streets, standing on front porches and in the park while the story unfolded in front of us. Annie had bought tickets weeks earlier, and she thought we should still go, despite Biscuit’s murder, because it would take my thoughts off the poor dead guy. She was right. I put the job of getting to the bottom of the murder out of mind for a couple of hours while I took in Albert Jackson’s saga. Sal tagged along wth us, but Maury had given the play a pass while he headed off somewhere on the trail of Fletcher, his favourite suspect.

  By the time the play ended and Annie and I started our stroll toward home, night was falling fast. It was almost dark when we turned up Brunswick just north of Harbord. Sal trailed us about ten yards back, chatting with a neighbour of hers from over on St. George Street. Just as we passed a laneway, I caught a glimpse of something coming up fast on my right. I started to turn my head, but it was too late for defensive action, because whatever was rushing at me turned out to be a guy’s fist. The fist caught me smack on my right eyeball.

  I came close to blanking out for a couple of seconds, and when I got my consciousness reorganized, I was on all fours on the sidewalk. My eye hurt, and so did my hands and knees where they’d hit the concrete. Annie, who had been on my left, was holding my head and yelling at someone. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but I could hear all too clearly the guy who had whacked me.

  “You son of a bitch!” the guy shouted at me. I recognized the voice of the crazy McGillivray brother. “You lying bastard! You didn’t get me a date with the girl like you fucking promised!”

  My eye was stinging. So were my ears. Artie McGillivray was doing his screaming from about three feet away.

  Annie kept herself between Artie and me and wrapped one hand around my neck while she pushed at Artie with the other. Most of this I intuited rather than saw with both eyes. One of the eyes, the punched one, was out of commission, and the other felt watery.

  “You total idiot!” a woman’s voice hollered at Artie. It was Sal doing the hollering.

  “Oh wow, you’re here!” Artie said. “I didn’t notice you back there.”

  I could see Sal, though not as clearly as I would have liked. She was pulling back her right hand and launching it at Artie’s face. Sal’s punch, powered by the wonders of Zumba, caught the guy on the tip of his nose and drove in deeper. Blood spurted from both Artie’s nostrils, and he dropped like a stone.

  “Just leave my friends alone, you dumb cluck!” Sal yelled at the fallen assassin.

  Artie rolled over on his back, his hands closed across his nose, which was undoubtedly broken. He was trying to say something, but it came out mostly in moans.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Annie said to me.

  She took my right arm, Sal gripped my left, and together the three of us hobbled at a fairly good clip up Brunswick. Artie was still rolling on the sidewalk behind us. No one seemed to have rushed to his aid.

  “We should steer for Shoppers Drug Mart,” Annie said to Sal. “A pharmacist will tell us what to do about Crang’s eye.”

  “I’m going to have a hell of a shiner tomorrow,” I said. “That’s what the pharmacist is going to tell us.”

  Shoppers was surprisingly busy at the latish hour, but the pharmacist examined me right away. She was petite, of probably Vietnamese background, and cheerful as all get out.

  She lifted up my right eyelid with one delicate hand and shone a small flashlight onto my eyeball with the other hand. The beam from the flashlight stung, but the pharmacist insisted on holding up the lid.

  “Not too bad,” she said, smiling enthusiastically as she gave her diagnosis. “It’s been hit square, but I don’t see anything seriously broken in there.”

  She let the lid fall back in place and turned off the flashlight.

  “If anything beyond plain soreness develops” she said, still with the big smile, “you might want to call your ophthalmologist. Otherwise, apply an ice pack to the eye when you get home, and you could pick up some Tylenol Extra Strength before you leave the store, because you’re apt to get a pretty bad headache.”

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “You’re going to have a heck of a shiner tomorrow.”

  “That’s what I call a complete diagnosis.”

  Annie, Sal, and I thanked the smiling pharmacist, took a package of Tylenol Extra Strength off a shelf in the aisle devoted to pain, and lined up at a cashier’s counter to pay the bill.

  “Oh my lord, lady, you didn’t need to do that to the man!” the woman running the counter said in a loud voice. “Honestly, you could at least have shown some restraint, some compassion!”

  The woman was speaking to Annie, who turned to me.

  “What in the world is she talking about?’ Annie whispered.

  “Hitting him was a little extreme!” the woman said. “Don’t you think so, sweetheart?”

  Good grief, it was the clerk who thought I had halitosis.

  “I told your husband,” the woman said, still addressing Annie, “if he kept having trouble after all the mouth aids he bought the other day, he should send his wife over for a chat with me. Instead of which you belt the guy in the eye! How civilized is that?”

  “I didn’t tell you we were married,” I said. “‘Next thing to it’ were my exact words.”

  The woman clerk ignored me. “Do you really think violence is the answer to your husband’s severe illness?” she said, still addressing Annie.

  “What illness?” Annie asked me.

  “You been holding out on us, Crang?” Sal said. She had a big grin.

  “It was when I bought the toothpaste and all the other stuff to help Fletcher’s rotten breath,” I said. “This woman thought I was loading up on potions for myself.”

  “My advice to you, fella,” the clerk said to me, still in a raised voice, “you should dump this wife and find some other gal who’s got your best interests at heart.”

  “Listen,” I said to the clerk, “I don’t have halitosis. I was trying to help someone else.”

  “You’re still in denial,” the clerk said. “I feel sorry for people like you. But my duty to all my customers is to make them see the light.”

  “In that case,” Sal piped up, “guide him to payment for the bottle of Tylenol he’s got in his hand.”

  The clerk gave Sal a long look. “Who are you in all this, another of the man’s next-thing-to-it wives?”

  “Lady,” Sal sai
d, “I have a boyfriend of my own.”

  “Another halitosis sufferer, I’ll just bet.”

  A line of people was collecting behind us, waiting to pay for their purchases. It was late, and they weren’t in a mood for pay lane delays.

  “If we don’t get these Tylenols paid for,” Annie said to me, “there’s going to be a riot in here.”

  “May I ask you to ring up my pills,” I said to the clerk. “If you please.”

  “They’ll do nothing for your halitosis,” the clerk said. “That’s my advice for free.”

  She took the package of Tylenol and put it through the electronic pay machine. I handed her a twenty-dollar bill.

  “See a psychiatrist before it’s too late for your problem with deniability,” the clerk said. “Hire a lawyer too. These two women with you don’t have your best interests at heart.”

  “Thank you for your concern,” I said.

  I collected my change and stepped out on to Bloor with Annie and Sal.

  “I got to hand it to you, Crang,” Sal said. “You got a knack for attracting the nutbars.”

  “What I really need is a different Shoppers clerk.”

  “Honey, what you need is an ice pack, some Tylenol, and a good night’s sleep,” Annie said.

  “What about a martini?” I said.

  “Doesn’t mix well with Tylenol,” Sal said.

  “Goodnight, Sal,” Annie said pointedly.

  “I can tell when I’m not wanted,” Sal said.

  “Nice punch on Artie’s nose, Sal,” I said. “Thanks for that.”

  Annie and I took turns kissing Sal on the cheek, and when we got home, Annie tucked me in bed with an ice pack on my right eye. I fell asleep seconds later.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Next morning, I got to the office at ten, feeling surprisingly chipper, with not a hint of a headache. My knees were sore from my forced landing on the sidewalk the night before, but my eye had no pain. Though the physical agony was nonexistent, the dark-blue ring around the eye made the visuals grim. I had a hell of a shiner.