Booking In Page 7

  Maury looked at Biscuit, who nodded back at Maury.

  “Listen,” I said, “I didn’t pay a twenty-five-buck cab fare just for an omelette. You said it was essential I get here.”

  Maury leaned partway across the table. He said, “The safe wasn’t empty.”

  “So?” I said. “Fletcher put some other client’s papers in there?”

  “You don’t get it.”

  “Which part don’t I get?”

  Maury reached down to the seat beside him and lifted his black briefcase onto the table. Before he opened the briefcase, he took a pair of white gloves out of his pocket, the kind of gloves that hospital surgeons wear as part of their scrubs in an operating room. Maury pulled the gloves on, and only then, gloved up, did he slowly and deliberately pull the briefcase open and slide out a medium-sized file in a large brown envelope. He held the envel­ope in my direction, but when I reached for it, Biscuit handed me another pair of the white scrub gloves. I put them on.

  “Why are we going super cautious with whatever surprise you guys have come up with?” I said.

  “You’ll understand the reason in a moment, Crang,” Biscuit said.

  Maury allowed me take the envelope from his hand.

  “Have at it, Crang,” he said.

  I realized what I was holding in my hands the minute I opened the papers inside the envelope. I wasn’t any kind of expert on Victorian typography, but the filigrees and drop shadows and other delicate touches on the papers told me I was looking at a forged version of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. This was a copy of the Reading Sonnets, real or faked. I took my time, turning the sheets with thoughtfulness and respect until I had examined all forty-four of the sonnets.

  I looked up at Maury. “Whoever swiped what we assume are the forgeries of the sonnets put them back in the safe. And you guys reswiped them. Anything I’m leaving out?”

  “Yeah,” Maury said, “who done it? Apart from us, I mean? Who planted these mothers back in the safe they got stolen from in the first place?”

  Maury and Biscuit were still grinning like madmen.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Tell me who you guys are fingering as the guilty party.”

  “You want to take a guess before we tell you our expert opinion?”

  “It’s no guess,” I said. “From all the clues, it must be Charlie Watson.”

  Maury’s face lost the grin. Biscuit kept his.

  “You’re a sneaky son of a bitch, Crang,” Maury said. “How did you figure her?”

  “The first thing Biscuit must have done at the store last night,” I said to Maury, “was examine the lock on the back door. I’m betting it showed no signs of ever being picked, just as you yourself figured out the other day.”

  “Correct, Crang,” Biscuit said. “Which leads to the rest of your conclusions practically automatically.”

  “You found the lock on the safe similarly pristine,” I said. “Ergo, as I think Sherlock Holmes probably never said, the thief who stole the forged sonnets and the Walter Hickey letters probably got into the store with a key and into the safe with the combination.”

  “And as far as we know only two people fill the bill,” Maury said. “Namely Fletcher and this dame Charlie.”

  “I pick Charlie,” I said to Maury. “If it was Fletcher who did it, he’d hardly be likely to hire you and me to hunt down the purloined papers.”

  “Being as how we’re so frigging smart at this stuff,” Maury said.

  “Done,” I said. “Charlie’s our lead suspect.”

  Maury was drinking a beer and Biscuit had a Johnny Walker Black, which he took in very small sips. I raised my Coors, and the three of us toasted the previous night’s productive break-in.

  “One problem,” I said. “Charlie’s got an alibi for the night of the original burglary.”

  “Guilty parties always say they were nowhere near the scene of the crime,” Maury said.

  “She was with her boyfriend at his place.”

  “Who’s the boyfriend?”

  “According to Charlie, she has to keep his identity confidential for a while.”

  “What that probably means is we got another suspicious party.”

  “We do. The boyfriend could be Charlie’s partner in both the original swipe job and in the replacement operation. It could be that both of them got cold feet and bailed out of the theft, at least as far as the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems are concerned.”

  “How come they’d do that?” Maury said. “Give back the poems but not the letters about the Hickey guy and Norman Mailer?”

  “Seems to be a case of selective cold feet.”

  “Or else there were two separate safecrackers,” Biscuit said. “One for the poems and the other for the letters.”

  “The way is open for several possibilities,” I said.

  “That’s the kind of bullshit lawyers always say,” Maury said. “Their answer to every question includes something about ‘several possibilities.’”

  “We got our work cut out for us,” I said.

  “That’s another lawyer’s line.”

  “What I say, Maury,” I said, “is we start following somebody around.”

  “Now you’re talking, man,” Maury said.

  “Starting with Charlie. That’s because we need to identify her boyfriend.”

  “If you need more manpower for the tail than just you two guys, count me in,” Biscuit said.

  “We already only got one vehicle,” Maury said to Biscuit. “Crang’s currently carless.”

  “I recall a very elegant Mercedes of ancient vintage,” Biscuit said to me.

  “Holes in the floor from winter salt, Biscuit. Thirty-one years, and it was RIP for the Mercedes.”

  “You’re dependent on the TTC and shank’s mare?”

  “What the hell’s shank’s mare?” Maury said.

  “Poetic, don’t you think?” Biscuit said. “It’s ancient Scottish for legs.”

  “I rent AutoShare in emergencies,” I said. “AutoShare, Zipcar, car2go. There’re probably eight or nine cars from those outfits parked in nice little spots within five minutes of my house.”

  “I can just see us in one of them cars on a tail job,” Maury said. “The people in the car we’re following, they tell one another, hey, everywhere we look we keep seeing this car with big AutoShare decals on the side doors.”

  “Unsubtle,” I said.

  “So it’s agreed,” Maury said. “We’ll do the tail job in my car.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “Just one thing,” Biscuit said. “What about these poems we got out of the safe last night? You want me to put them back?”

  Still wearing the white gloves, I picked up the copy of the sonnets I’d taken from the brown envelope.

  “Let me hold on to them for a few days,” I said.

  “Keep doing what you’re doing with the white gloves,” Biscuit said. “Always put them on before you handle the papers.”

  “To protect the documents?”

  “And preserve them from your fingerprints.”

  “Rule number one in burglary, never leave your prints behind,” Maury said.

  “The thing about me hanging on to the documents for a while,” I said, “keeping Fletcher baffled about the poems’ whereabouts might stir something useful.”

  I turned the pages to sonnet number 43. Then I read its first lines out loud, though not loud enough to reach an audience beyond our table.

  “How do I love thee?” I read. “Let me count the ways./I love thee to the depth and breath and height/My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight.”

  I stopped and put the pages down.

  “Too bad I didn’t remember the lines the other day at Kensington Market,” I said to Maury. “Fletcher wo
uld have had to choke on his sneery crack.”

  I read the rest of the sonnet to myself. It all came back to me.

  Chapter Twelve

  By four that afternoon when I got home, Annie had been cooped up all day in her office. She worked in the space that was once the house’s dining room before the later addition was built on the back. Annie had already edited the notes from her weekend chats with Meg Grantham and begun sketching out a list of questions for her next interview session. The day’s work in that confined space left her feeling in the need of something to chase the fog out of her brain.

  We went for a walk, west along Bloor past Bathurst, then north through the back streets of the neighbourhood west of the Annex. The area was called Seaton Village, the designation coming from a titled fellow named John Colborne, 1st Baron Seaton, who was Ontario’s lieutenant governor in the mid-nineteenth century. Seaton Village was a pale, scaled-back version of the Annex. It made for a comfortable and unexciting stroll, the sort of ramble that brought calm to Annie’s state of mind.

  We kept going along the back streets and up side alleys until we emerged at the corner of Christie and Dupont. A café called Faema was on the northwest corner. We went in and ordered two cafés au lait plus a plate of biscotti. Faema took up most of the ground floor of a six-storey building, and it had a very high ceiling. The coffee was first-rate.

  “You’re doing a stakeout tomorrow night?” Annie said.

  “Long enough to find out Charlie Watson’s mystery boyfriend’s identity.”

  “I get that, but why Saturday night?”

  “It’s date night all over the city, our best opportunity to catch Charlie with the boyfriend.”

  “Date night for everybody except you and me.”

  “I’ll think of something swell to make it up to you.”

  Annie reached over and squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said. “I’m looked after. Reruns of Silk start Saturday at nine.”

  “With Martha Costello? My favourite television lawyer? I may have to cancel the stakeout.”

  “Lots to admire about Martha Costello.”

  “I love her style in front of the judges.”

  “You think Martha’s sharper in the courtroom than you are?”

  “Tougher than me,” I said. “Maybe I’m better on tactics.”

  “Answer me this: would Costello go on a stakeout?”

  “Not in a million years.”

  “So what’s that make you?”

  “As a lawyer, I’m definitely more hands-on than Martha.”

  There had been four biscotti on the plate the waitress brought us. Annie had already eaten two. I hadn’t touched either of the other two.

  “You mind if I ask you questions about Meg Grantham?” I said.

  “Shoot,” Annie said. “But let me remind you again, I know nothing about the Reading Sonnets, forged or double-forged.”

  “What’s Meg got in the way of family? Husband? Kids?”

  “How’s that figure into your case?”

  “I’m just building a general picture of the woman’s life. Maybe it’ll reveal a different kind of connection between her and the forged sonnets. Who knows what might be helpful?”

  “Meg’s been married twice. Divorced the same number of times. Currently unattached. Got two children, both male, both by husband number one, both now grown men out in the world, more or less. The older guy, late thirties, is Brent. Brent bills himself as an entrepreneur. The younger is Hughie, who has some involvement in the natural food industry, but don’t quote me on the natural food part. I’m not sure I grasped what Hughie’s all about.”

  “For somebody who says she’s only spent time talking to Meg about her ancestors, you’re not bad on the contemporary Grantham family story.”

  “Most of what I just told you came from gabbing with Meg when we were eating a meal or sitting around with a morning cup of coffee.”

  “Your recording apparatus was off?”

  “It was casual conversation, so I’ll be returning to the topic of immediate family much later when the narrative gets further along in Meg’s life.”

  “Anything else you can give me?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the two husbands.”

  “Neither tried to cut off a slice of the billions for himself.”

  “Straight shooters, in other words?”

  “Meg’s not the type to chose a mutt for a husband.”

  “Was either guy a con man?”

  “Both of them successful businessmen with their own money. Neither is a billionaire, but they’re probably millionaires.”

  “That seems to let them out as persons of interest in any regard as far as my case is concerned.”

  Annie leaned back in her chair, looking up at Faema’s uncommonly high ceiling. “You know,” she said, “this place has the strangest contours of any coffee shop I’ve ever been in.”

  “That’s because it didn’t begin life as a coffee shop.”

  “Crang, old sport, that part I figured out already.”

  “It was an automobile showroom.”

  Annie looked around the room, taking in the broad open space and the sweeping windows on two sides.

  “Yeah,” she said, “it has that look.”

  “The whole building opened a hundred years ago as a Ford assembly plant.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Annie said.

  “The history is on plaques pinned up around the building. Ford opened it in 1915. The car parts were delivered by train on the tracks that still run past the north side of the building. People assembled the parts on three floors, then they test-drove the finished product on the roof. Down here where we’re sitting, this was the showroom.”

  “Aren’t you just a fount of local history.”

  “I got more if you’d care to hear it.”

  “I’ll coast for now, thank you.”

  Annie had almost finished her café au lait.

  “Are you going to eat either of those other two biscotti on the plate?” I said.

  “If you confine yourself to just one of them and leave the last cookie for me,” Annie said, “I’ll tell you something that might pique your interest.”

  “Some more Grantham family material?”

  “This is guaranteed juicy.”

  “Just one biscotti,” I said. “And the revelation has got to be juicy as promised.”

  Annie rubbed her hands together and began talking. “Meg told me over coffee one morning, though the coffee wasn’t as good as Faema’s, that she wanted to see her children enjoy some of their inheritance before she, Meg, croaked. So four or five years ago she gave each child, Brent and Hughie, a big chunk of money.”

  “How much?”

  “Ten million dollars plus a house for each of their own choosing, the price be damned.”

  “Generous stuff, even for a billionaire.”

  “For sure, but that’s not the point.”

  “What is?”

  “The point is wrapped up in the line that Meg threw out at the end of this casual little conversation with me.”

  “Which was?”

  “Meg said, ‘That may not have been such a good idea.’”

  “Giving the kids a bunch of money before she died didn’t work out the way Meg hoped?”

  “That’s the implication I took,” Annie said. “Now, may I have a biscotti?”

  “Be my guest.”

  Each of us tucked into our cookie, and when we finished, Annie flashed me a big smile. “This has been a pretty balanced exchange of information we’ve had here today,” she said.

  “My story about the Ford assembly plant for your tale of Meg Grantham’s family money dilemma?”

  “Exactly.”

  “A fair trade,” I said.<
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  Chapter Thirteen

  Early Saturday evening, a couple of hours before the sun went down, Maury and I were sitting in his car parked on a street called Heathdale Road at a corner where it met the west side of Bathurst Street. Heathdale was a stone’s throw south of the bridge over the Cedarvale Ravine. From the position where Maury had pulled to the curb, we looked across Bathurst to the apartment building at number 1597. The building was home to Charlie Watson.

  Bathurst had two lanes running both ways, and all four teemed with vehicles. I got out of the car and walked down Bathurst to the traffic light a block south, crossed to the east side, then back up to 1597. The sign over the building’s entrance read “The Hemingway.” It had a vintage 1920s look and was a modest five storeys high. I stepped into the Hemingway’s small lobby.

  The mailboxes and the row of entrance buzzers told me the building had twenty units. Number 1597 had probably begun life as a humble apartment building, but the apartments had since been converted to condos and priced upward accordingly. From all indications in the lobby, the units came without indoor parking.

  I took note of Charlie’s apartment number, left the building, and walked down a driveway on the south side to check the parking situation out back. The yard at the rear had been given a rough paving job, but the twenty parking slots were clearly marked, each bearing a resident’s unit number in large letters. The slot with Charlie’s number on it was occupied by a Mazda. It was a deep green colour and had a dent in the left rear fender.

  I walked back to Maury’s car.

  “She’s at home?” Maury said.

  “Her car is.”

  “Maybe it’s the boyfriend’s turn to visit her. He could already be in the apartment over there.”

  “I’m betting she goes calling on him.”

  “My experience, Crang, stakeouts can be a crapshoot.”

  “Watch for a green Mazda coming out of the driveway. That’ll be Charlie.”

  Maury’s car was comfortable for long waits. It was a Buick with lots of space for the legs and not old enough to have lost its nice new-car smell.

  “You going to tell me why the apartment’s named the Hemingway?” Maury said.