Booking In Read online

  I turned my head to look into Annie’s eyes. “Good advice,” I said.

  “You better take it, old sport.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  It was just before the evening hour when the streetlights went on. Maury and I were sitting in Sal’s Miata parked in front of Brent Grantham’s house.

  “You won’t even need to get out of the car,” I said to Maury.

  “That part’s good,” he said. “I also have to be back at Sal’s apartment before eleven.”

  “You’re on a short leash?”

  “If this idiot Brent’s the killer, she doesn’t want him doing to me what he did to Biscuit.”

  “Listen, Maury, you won’t be anywhere close to Brent.”

  Maury shifted in his seat. “What you want me to do,” he said, “it’s like the job I did the first time we came to this house, when the crazy MacGillivray brothers were hanging around.”

  “Same locale, different duties.”

  Maury let out a sigh of impatience. “You want me to sit in the car watching the front windows up there, first floor and second, and if I see you in one of the windows giving a signal, then right away I send the two messages you put on my iPhone.”

  “In fact, they’re the same message, same wording, one to Meg Grantham and the other to Beth the assistant. It’s succinct, just tells the story of how and why Brent killed Biscuit.”

  “Not enough to convict him of first-degree murder is what you say, but manslaughter for sure.”

  “Whatever charge,” I said, “Brent was responsible for Biscuit’s death. He smacked the little guy with the stapler. All in a fit of temper over Brent wanting the Reading Sonnets.”

  “But I probably won’t even need to send the emails right? I’m like the decoy.”

  “Not quite a decoy, but a first line of defence once I start making accusations. I tell Brent that if he gets obstreperous, you’ll fire off the messages.”

  Maury scrunched down in his seat, checking the visuals between the Miata and Brent’s house. “View’s good from here,” he said.

  “Just keep a lookout.”

  I got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk to Brent’s front door. The porch lights were on, and so were the lights in the living room. I pressed the doorbell and heard chimes from inside the house.

  A young woman answered the chimes on my second try. The immediate impression I got of this young woman was that she didn’t represent someone who would typically open Brent Grantham’s front door. She wasn’t large-breasted, wasn’t dressed in a bikini, and didn’t have legs that went on forever. She wasn’t homely either, but she looked too responsible and proper for a Brent girlfriend. The woman was medium height, medium weight, wore glasses, and had on a pantsuit of the Hillary Clinton type, which made it about three generations out of style for this particular young woman.

  “Mr. Grantham isn’t expecting a caller,” she said to me in an accent I connected with New York City’s upper west side. “But maybe I can help you if you make it as quick as possible.”

  “You’re pressed for time?”

  “Up against a personal deadline.”

  “Right,” I said. “I’m sure Brent will be delighted to invite me in if you mention my name.”

  “Which is?” The young woman had a disarming smile.

  “Crang.”

  “I’m Shay Burton,” she said. “If you’ll wait on the porch, I’ll speak to Mr. Grantham.”

  When Shay turned away, leaving the door open, I noticed she had a not bad figure. Someone should tell her the pantsuit was all wrong. Or maybe Shay deliberately dressed dowdy under certain circumstances, though I couldn’t think what the circumstances might be.

  From inside I could hear her voice and Brent’s, his raised and querulous, hers even and deliberate. Two or three minutes passed before Shay returned. She wore a small smile.

  “Please follow me, Mr. Crang,” she said.

  “With pleasure.”

  Shay led me into the dining room, where the table was covered in spreadsheets and stacks of official-looking pieces of paper. The table, the paperwork, and the atmosphere generally conveyed the impression that something legitimately businesslike was going on. This was a small revelation. Shay, now sitting at one end of the table and riffling through a stack of papers, underlined the impression that big things were in progress.

  “I’m too frigging busy to bother with whatever you want this time, Crang,” Brent said. He was occupying a chair at the end of the table opposite Shay. “Anyway, we’re supposed to be finished with one another.”

  “Not quite,” I said. “Listen, Brent, what I’m about to say has nothing to do with why I’m here, but whatever you’re up to right now, in this room, I can’t help thinking it looks like the real deal in the commercial sense.”

  “The thing that’s happening, if you must know, I got Shay up here a week ago to straighten the wrinkles out of my plan to take over all the blood testing on a bunch of Caribbean islands. It’s the business I’ve been working on the last couple of years. Shay and I are getting it back on the rails in major-league shape.”

  “Just like it was until Cedric got light-fingered.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Crang,” Shay said, “there’ll be no Cedrics in the new operation.”

  “Shay’s a graduate of the Wharton School, magna cum laude,” Brent said. “Worked on Wall Street the last few years. I found her on the Internet, got her signed up on a one-shot deal last Tuesday to do what you’re looking at right now.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Shay’s the Wall Street brains you mentioned the other day.”

  Maybe Shay’s business status accounted for her homely dressing style. She wore a pantsuit during business hours, then changed into something glamorous later on.

  “Pardon me, Mr. Crang,” Shay said. “Are you involved in Brent’s business in a capacity that hasn’t yet been explained to me?”

  “He wants to badmouth me to my mother,” Brent said to Shay.

  “Or worse,” I said.

  “You’re a business rival of Brent’s?” Shay asked me.

  “Strictly a seeker after justice, Ms. Burton.”

  “In that case,” Shay said, “whatever brought you here tonight would be beyond my pay grade.”

  She turned to Brent. “I don’t want to lose the thread of what we were talking about before Mr. Crang arrived. Couldn’t we move along? My contract ends at midnight, don’t forget, Brent.”

  Brent stood up from his chair. “See what you’re doing, Crang? I need Shay for every minute I got her in town, and you’re screwing around with the timing.”

  “Step over to the front window with me,” I said to Brent. “I’ll lay out what I’ve come to tell you, and Shay will have all the time in the world to get your Caribbean project launched.”

  Brent looked peeved, but curiosity must have stirred in his brain. He lost the peeved look and motioned me to follow him. Both of us left the dining room and crossed the living room to the front window. Brent waited patiently enough while I took the iPhone out of my pocket.

  “See the car out front?” I said.

  “The black Miata?”

  “With the guy in it waving his iPhone at us.”

  “What about it?”

  I opened the screen at my email to Meg Grantham.

  “Hey!” Brent said, looking over my shoulder. “How’d you get my mother’s email address? It’s an exclusive thing with her.”

  “From my friend Annie who’s ghostwriting Meg’s memoirs.”

  “Her what?”

  “I’m sure you’ll get a mention in the book, Brent,” I said. “But the point that matters right now, my email to your mother outlines the events involving your various manipulations, most of them illegal. The theft of the Hickey letters, for example.”

  “I’m s
upposed to be shaking in my boots. Is that what this is all about?”

  “If you don’t play ball, answer some questions I got, or if you do something really stupid like threaten to inflict grievous bodily harm on me, my friend in the Miata is going to zip the emails to your mother and Beth.”

  The effect of my little speech seemed not what I hoped for. Instead of appearing co-operative, Brent looked like a guy in the act of blowing a fuse. I had the feeling that my showdown with Brent might be shaping up as one more setback on a no-win day. First I’d enraged Fletcher; now I appeared to be bringing Brent to a full-fledged boil.

  “Brent,” Shay called from the dining room table, “I need your okay on my division of the money that goes to the three Manhattan brokers.”

  “Be right there,” Brent said. He had a croak in his voice, probably brought on by exasperation. He gave a cough and spoke to me in a lower tone. “See what you’re doing, you dumb bastard. Shay’s got me ready to score big, and you come in here and slow down the operation when we’ve moved to damn near the final step.”

  “If I have anything to do with it, your final step is the one you’re going take to the slammer.”

  “Prison? Are you crazy? For doing what?”

  “At a minimum? Attempted murder.”

  “You’re out of your mind, Crang.”

  “Tell that to the Homicide cops.”

  Brent shook his head in a show of aggravation. It looked almost genuine. “Just tell me one thing,” he said to me. “Who the hell am I supposed to have attempted to kill?”

  “A little guy named Biscuit. And there’s no ‘supposed’ about you killing him.”

  “Biscuit? That’s a real name?”

  “Brent, please!” Shay said. She was standing in the middle of the living room. “Whatever you and your friend are discussing is going to have to wait. In case you forget, I’m in my car at midnight sharp and on my way out of the country and back home.”

  Now that I looked at Shay with a little more concentration, her colour was pale and she showed deep smudges under her eyes.

  “You’ve been working overtime?” I said to her.

  “The first night here, Brent told me I needed to pull an all-nighter, and I haven’t taken a day off since then. Lunch is the only thing I’ve insisted on, lunch somewhere out of this house. It’s been a total grind, but worth every minute. Brent’s got a beauti­ful setup, Mr. Crang, if you would just finish with whatever you came here to talk about and let us tidy away the details in our own business.”

  “The first night?” I said. “That was Tuesday a week ago?”

  “Jesus, you’re a pain in the ass, Crang,” Brent said.

  “Brent was here the whole time on the first night?” I said to Shay.

  Shay nodded a yes. I got the impression her small store of patience was running close to empty. “Except,” she said, “when he took naps on the sofa over there.”

  The sofa she referred to was extra large-sized, had a deep-brown corduroy covering, and was placed opposite the fireplace.

  I turned back to Brent. “You never left the room that first night?” I said.

  “What is your point, Crang?” Brent said, on the verge of a burst of supersize anger.

  My point? My point was that I had goofed monumentally. Brent wasn’t the guy in Fletcher’s on the night Biscuit got bashed. The very respectable Shay was Brent’s witness that he’d never left his house at any time relevant to the murder.

  “Ah, yeah, listen, Brent,” I said, “I think I’ll be on my way, but let me just comment on the collection of handguns up there on the wall. Beautifully chosen, I can tell.”

  I was pointing to the twenty or thirty sets of crossed pistols that were mounted in rows on either side of the fireplace.

  “I put a lot of research into my collection,” Brent said, suddenly mellowing, though I suspected the mood wouldn’t last. All I was hoping for was a calmer atmosphere before I made my getaway from the debacle I’d created.

  “Those two in the middle, they look Russian maybe?” I said. As a diversion, talk about guns seemed to be working. If I could get Brent to relax a little, I might be able to slip away with a minimum of agitation.

  “Was that a guess?” Brent said. “Or do you know guns?”

  “Let’s say I have a passing acquaintance with firearms.”

  Brent crossed to the wall and took down the two pistols I’d indicated. “These are called PSS, self-loading pistols. They’re Russian-made, like you could probably tell from the writing on the side.”

  “Cyrillic alphabet. I noticed.”

  “Six-shot semi-automatic is what these beauties are,” Brent said. He held the guns closer to me for a full inspection. “You want to take a guess at who the Russians developed these for?”

  “They have an older look,” I said. “So I guess they go back a few years. I’m still guessing, but I’ll say they were KGB weapons.”

  “Very good, Crang. Putin himself probably packed one of these.”

  “No doubt pulled its trigger too,” I said.

  Brent smiled at me. Was my gossip about guns building a bridge over troubled waters or whatever the right metaphor was for this ridiculous situation I’d got myself in?

  “You have a collection of suppressors for your handguns?” I said.

  “Indispensable,” Brent said.

  He stepped over to a small bureau on the other side of the fireplace, slid open the top drawer, and brought out a metal tube, narrow and sleek and about five inches long.

  “This one fits those Beretta 92FSs on the other wall,” Brent said, holding the tube up for the two of us to check out. “You want to hear about the guy who invented the suppressor? It’s fascinating stuff.”

  “I should be off, Brent,” I said, sliding a couple of steps in the direction of the front door. “Time and tide wait for no man, as you no doubt understand more than most of us.”

  “Wait a minute, Crang. What about this guy I’m supposed to have killed? Cookie or whoever?”

  “Biscuit. Consider yourself cleared of all charges.”

  I had my hand on the front door knob.

  “You don’t get off that easy, you son of a bitch.”

  “Brent,” Shay said in a raised voice. “Let the man go. We’ve got work to finish, unless you want to do it on your own after I’ve split from this town.”

  “Better listen to your partner, Brent,” I said.

  “She’s not my partner,” Brent said in an emphatic tone. “She’s a paid bloody employee.”

  “Who’s going to hold out for a hike in remuneration unless you get over here,” Shay said, her voice still raised.

  “Jesus, woman,” Brent said, turning toward Shay. “You’re already getting six figures for a week’s work.”

  While Brent’s back was to me, I opened the front door and bustled down the walk, taking the steps two at a time.

  Maury had the Miata’s motor running, the passenger door wide open. I slipped into the front seat, and Maury pulled away from the curb. I looked back in time to see Brent slamming shut the door to his house.

  That made two slammed doors in one day. A personal record for me.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Maury chortled. He was driving north on Yonge Street, putting distance between us and my latest failed encounter.

  “You gonna cross young Brent off your list?” Maury said, now making a sound more like a giggle.

  “I don’t have a list,” I said.

  “Two names make a list. You still got the second name, which I keep telling you. That idiot, Fletcher.”

  “Let me think a bit, Maury.”

  “Where do I drive while you’re making like a deep thinker?”

  “Head across to Avenue Road and cruise around Forest Hill. It’ll be quiet, away from the traffic.”

&n
bsp; “Not to mention it’ll be kind of dark.”

  “This isn’t a scenic tour, Maury. I just want to consider how not to mess up my next step, whatever it is.”

  “Disasterwise, you’re chalking up a top-notch record.”

  “Just drive, all right?”

  Maury turned on to Old Forest Hill Road. With the overhead streetlights plus the floodlights and other illumination from the houses, it was easy to appreciate the architecture of the neighbourhood’s older homes, the original Forest Hill mansions. It was just about shameful that so many of these elderly houses had been replaced by teardowns with all their looming ugliness. Offshore people with big money, a lot of Russians, bought the nice old houses strictly for the location. Then they knocked the places down and built their own stone edifices that had all the grace of penal institutions.

  As Maury drove, the notion of a vanishing Forest Hill began to depress me, and I couldn’t seem to switch my brain back to the immediate problem of what to do about Biscuit’s murder. My head felt empty of inspiration.

  “Stay on this street,” I said to Maury, “and head all the way across to Burton, keep going till you hit Bathurst.”

  “You have an idea?”

  “No, I just want to get away from poor old Forest Hill.”

  “Nobody who lives around here is exactly poverty-stricken.”

  “Except in aesthetics,” I said.

  Maury reached Bathurst and turned south. As soon as he made the turn, something clicked in my brain. It felt like an idea.

  “Pull over in the next block,” I said. “I’m getting out.”

  “Crang, for chrissake, it’s almost eleven o’clock.”

  “I know, you’re due home. You can just drop me here.”

  Maury looked out the window. “Hey,” he said. “The woman from Fletcher’s store lives somewhere close. She’s the reason you’re bailing, right?

  “I got some questions Charlie probably knows the answers to.”

  “Jesus, Crang, anything bad happens to you,” Maury said, “Annie’s gonna burn my ass.”