Death of a Sunday Writer (8 page)

“Touché. Be it on your own head, then. Go and see a
guy called Jack Brighton. I'll call him that you're coming. Then go back to Longborough.” He gave her Brighton's address and his phone number.

Brighton's agency, J.B. Investigations, occupied the second floor of a building on St. Clair Avenue, just west of Bathurst, in an office as featureless as Trimble's. Lucy watched the numbers carefully, and when she decided she was close enough, she parked in the Loblaw's lot, just east of Bathurst, planning to shop for a few groceries when she was finished with Brighton.

The private investigator was about thirty-five. There was nothing about him to indicate his trade: he might have been a real estate salesman, or a professor of sociology, or even a librarian.

“Sorry about your cousin,” he said. “I met him a couple of times.”

“How do you know about him?”

“Buncombe called me. To ask me to help you if you came by. So what can I do?”

Lucy said, “I want to take over the agency. Keep it going.”

“Why?”

“I'm ready for a change.”

Brighton nodded. “So you want me to tell you how to take away my business? Okay. What do you want to know? You get two licences from the Ontario Provincial Police, one for the agency, one for you. That's all you need. You won't get much business, though, so why bother? Come and work for me. I'll teach you.”

“Why should I work for you?”

“Because I've got two totally boring jobs on right now that you could do. I need some help, and you won't get any work on your own.”

“Why won't I? And if so, why would you hire me?”

“Same reason for both. You're a nice, respectable middle-aged lady in from Coburg to do a little shopping. People looking for an investigator want someone lean and mean-looking, like me. But I need someone who looks like you, like a collector for the Heart Fund.”

Thank God for The Trog, Lucy thought. Without him, that's what I am. “I already have a case.” She told him about her client.

Brighton stopped acting laid-back and listened carefully. At the end, he said,” Does he want pictures?”

“Photographs? He didn't say anything about that. What on earth would he want pictures for? Pictures of what?”

“They usually like pictures to show you've been on the job. Agoraphobia. That's a new one. Who is this guy?”

“I don't know. My client.”

“He sounds like a flake. Watch it. She may not be his wife.”

Lucy felt at sea. “Then why is he paying me to watch her?”

“She probably knows him, and would run if she saw him. Sounds a little kinky.”

“What shall I do?”

“Take the money. Tell him where she goes, but find out who she is. At some point you may have to do something.”

“Like what?”

“Like telling her she's being watched. And on whose orders.”

Lucy looked at Brighton closely. “You're making this up. Trying to impress me.”

He laughed, and blushed slightly. “All right, but it does seem a little weird, doesn't it? If she is his wife, he probably suspects she's up to something on her night off.”

“That would fit. What shall I do?”

“Find out a little about agoraphobia, is my advice. Check that they live together. And stay in touch. Let me know how it's going.”

“But find out about her.”

“How?”

“You're the gumshoe.”

“There was another man,” Lucy began. Then, “Do you often have to trace missing persons?”

“Sometimes. I just finished one. Found him in thirty-six hours. I just sat in a bar, a drug-dealers' hangout, and he walked in the second night, just before they did for me.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“They knew what I was, and they knew I wasn't a regular cop, so a couple of guys with braided hair told me to move on. They wouldn't have told me twice. Luckily the kid appeared right after.” When Lucy had understood him, she said, “Looking for people sounds dangerous.”

“That's what I'm telling you. Ninety-nine per cent of our work is boring as hell, and the other one per cent is dangerous. Stay out of it.”

“Why do you do it?”

“I love it. I couldn't do anything else.”

“Can I ask you one more question?”

“What do I charge? Fifty an hour.”

“Thank you.” She had that right, then. “May I call you if I need you?”

“Sure. I charge for lessons, though.”

Lucy gathered herself together. “I do have one more question. What if you come across a crime being committed, even by your client?” In her reading, this was a standard dilemma that the detectives faced.

“Call the cops. Now, Buncombe said you were from Longborough. That right?”

“Yes. Kingston originally, but Longborough for the last two years. Why?”

“This could be my lucky day.” He picked up a piece of paper and spun it across the desk at her. “How about doing this one for me? Get your feet wet.”

The paper was a letter from a firm of solicitors in Bournemouth, England, requesting a search as to the whereabouts of Brian Potter, who arrived in Longborough in 1940 at the age of ten to stay with his uncle, a farmer of the same name.

“He's a relative of someone who died,” Brighton said. “That's what those enquiries are about. There may be some kind of legacy, but don't tell that to anyone in Longborough until we're sure we've got the right one. It can't be much, or one of those English lawyers would have treated himself to a trip over here, so there's no hurry. Maybe by the weekend you could take a run up, see what you can find? How about it?”

“You mean it? You want me to do it?”

“You could start at the library.” He smiled slightly
to indicate that he knew that was where she worked.

Lucy held the letter out to read it again, wondering what to say. She got the feeling from Brighton that he expected her to refuse, that he was making fun of her. “What's the fee?” she asked.

“Twenty an hour, gas and meals. No hotels on this one, and check in every time you rack up six. Don't look at me like I'm a crook. Fifty is what I get; I pay you twenty and run the office out of the rest.”

“Rack up six what?”

“Hours.” He reached for the letter to put it away, giving up on her.

Lucy leaned forward and took the letter from him and put it in her purse, reminding herself she needed a bag to carry things in, maybe a briefcase. “I should have something in a week,” she said, naming what sounded like a reasonable period of time, and had the pleasure of seeing that he was slightly nonplussed.

Sergeant Ibbotson, in charge of the gambling detail, was waiting for her.” Go down to Woodbine,” he said. “You know. The racetrack? That's where he spent his time. Why do you want to know?”

“I want to find out what he was like, what he meant to people.”

Ibbotson blinked. “You know what kind of people that might be?”

“Bad people.”

“You got it, ma'am. Some of these guys make their living hurting people. You don't want to have anything to do with people like that.”

Lucy said, “Just each other, I've heard. They wouldn't hurt me. And my cousin didn't have much to do with the very bad ones, I hear.”

“What's it all about, anyway?”

“I'm going to get a licence and take over my cousin's agency, and I want to write a memoir about him. My first job is going to be to find out what he was like.”

Ibbotson was amused, but he was becoming sympathetic, as if she were an earnest teenager on assignment from her high school newspaper. “What can I tell you?”

“You knew him. Who were his acquaintances?”

“I knew of him. He didn't have a record. His friends did, though, some of them.”

“Who were they?”

“You want to know who he hung around with?”

“Yes.”

Ibbotson shook his head. “I don't think I can talk like this.”

Lucy pulled a slip from her purse. “What about these?” She read off the names she had found on the computer in Trimble's memoir.

“Nolan's still around. At least he was when I last looked. He and Trimble were great buddies.”

“Where can I find Nolan?”

“Out at the track. Any day.”

“What does he look like?”

“We don't give mug shots to the public.”

Lucy pulled out the photos she had taken from the walls of Trimble's office. “Any of these?”

Ibbotson glanced at them and shook his head. Then he looked at them again, selected one and said. “Him. Johnny Comstock. He's a trainer, but he wouldn't hang around with your cousin.”

“Why?”

Ibbotson looked out the window, saying nothing.

“I see. You mean he's an honest trainer.”

“I mean no trainer would hang around with your cousin, and yes, as far as I know, Comstock is strictly on the up-and-up.”

“Where will I find him?”

“Same place.” Ibbotson looked at the pictures again, then pushed them back to her. “What do you plan to do? Go up to each of these guys and ask him to tell you stories about Trimble?”

“I've got a better idea than that. Thank you very much, Sergeant. May I come back?”

“What for?”

“It's a very new world to me. I might need help to understand what I find out.”

“I'll help you right now. Forget it.”

“I can't do that. I think my cousin deserves some kind of memorial.”

“Peter,” she said. “Look at these pictures. I got them off the walls. Have you ever seen any of them before?”

“Him,” Tse said immediately, pointing to the picture of Comstock.

“That's where I'll start, then. Tomorrow I'm off to the races.”

“Lucy, what are you up to?”

“I told you. I want to write a little memoir about David.”

“So you say, but I don't believe you. I've been thinking about you. You think somebody killed David, don't you?”

“No, no, of course not. How could that be?” Lucy moved some objects around the desk like the operator of a shell game.

“That's what you're trying to find out.”

“Well, I do think it's strange. I know he had a heart attack, but he might have been threatened, which would bring it on. Why was the office broken into? There's
something at the bottom of it. Was there anyone in the office before the person across the street arrived?”

“His door was locked. I opened it.”

“Locked door murders are a dime a dozen. There are books, collections of them.”

“It was nine o'clock in the morning. Dave's friends don't get up that early.”

But it wasn't good enough. It had to be proved.

Tse shook his head. “Well, for God's sake be careful who you ask. I'll come with you to the racetrack.”

“That would be nice. I don't even know where the race track is. What time do we have to go?”

“The first race is one-thirty. We'll leave at eleven-thirty. Have lunch at the track.”

“Good. Now I have to get ready to do my first job.”

“What?”

“My first client. I'm keeping the agency. I told you.”

“I thought you were kidding.”

Her client had said that his wife would be leaving the building at eight o'clock in the evening. She was blonde, he reminded Lucy, medium height, slim. She parked her car — a dark blue Volkswagon Jetta, licence 040 KOO — in a municipal lot on Pleasant Boulevard. All Lucy had to do was wait by the exit, and follow.

Lucy circled the block three times and decided that she could wait just past the garage, near a driveway, so that she could turn quickly if the woman went the other way.

At ten past eight the Jetta emerged, flashing a signal indicating that she would be driving past Lucy on her way out to St. Clair Avenue. Lucy followed closely until her quarry turned on to Mount Pleasant Road, and
tucked herself into the slow lane going south. She allowed a car to get between them and settled into pursuit. The woman turned right onto Charles Street, then drove along to Bay and turned north and then west on to Yorkville Avenue, where she left the car in a lot opposite Bellair Street. Lucy followed her in, found a space on the same side of the lot, waited for her to start walking, then quickly trotted after her, trying to keep out of sight.

They walked down Yorkville to a bar near Old York Lane. When her eyes got used to the gloom, Lucy spotted her target in the corner of the room, and she took a seat on the far side, seating herself so that if the woman tried to leave by the back door, she could follow immediately, aware that it would be easy for the woman to disappear in the corridors around the kitchen and the washrooms. She ordered a gin and tonic, remembering to pay for it immediately so that she could be ready to leave instantly at the first sign from the woman.

They stayed for half an hour, then Lucy followed the woman down old York Lane to a second floor restaurant on Cumberland Street. Here Lucy nearly trapped herself, almost bumping into the woman at the top of the stairs where she was waiting for a table in the tiny restaurant. Fortunately, she turned away as Lucy appeared and Lucy stepped back and studied a poster for a few minutes until her quarry was seated by the window, then asked for a table in the back “away from the street.” She fiddled with the menu, trying to lip-read the woman's order to the waiter, establishing only that she was having an elaborate meal, then Lucy ordered an omelette and a bottle of mineral water for herself. At this point it seemed to her that her heart had been beating
at twice its normal rate for about three hours. In the end, she had time to drink two cups of decaffeinated coffee before the woman paid her bill and left.

Lucy tried to do what she had seen done in the movies a hundred times — to drop a bill on the table and follow the woman downstairs. But she could not remember what the omelette on the menu cost, with the two taxes and the tip added in. And the mineral water? And the coffee? She guessed that the total would be about nineteen dollars, so a twenty would not leave enough of a tip. Thirty would have done the trick, a twenty and a ten, but she had only three twenties and some change. Desperate, she dropped two twenties on the table and headed for the door. The waiter barred her way, and she pointed at the money on the table