Quid Pro Quo (7 page)

Lot of good that did. Sherlock might have been able to see some pattern, but I couldn't.

I read each of the phone messages over again. Darlene, Elmore, Marge. Immigration Resource Center meetings. Appointments with the crown prosecutor. Reminders for Atula's secretary (yeah, right) to call Mr. Bigshot's secretary to confirm the date of the hearing. I was the one who had taken most of the messages, so there were no surprises there. When I went back to school, Andy and Atula just answered the phone themselves or let the machine pick it up. The pink message slips kind of dried up after that.

I looked at the photos. I arranged my school pictures by age, and it suddenly hit me. It was so obvious! Why hadn't I seen it before?

My teeth were way too big for my face! They looked like someone rammed a couple of Fig Newtons under my top lip. (I guess it would have helped if I'd brushed them.) I made a mental note to get them filed down to normal human size when I had the time.

I looked at the other photos. There was Andy at her graduation. There was Andy at the Poverty Coalition protest. There was Andy outside the new Immigration Resource Center. That one must have been taken the day it opened. Andy and Atula were standing on either side of this giant guy in a business suit. He had his arms around them and they were all smiling away like a bunch of monkeys who'd just won a lifetime supply of bananas. I figured he was the Center's honorary chairman, the guy Andy had gone on and on about. I could even see the fender of his famous green BMW poking out at the bottom of the picture. I thought it was kind of gross, to tell you the truth. Driving up to a place for poor people in a car that cost a hundred thousand bucks. Did nobody else have a problem with that?

Why wouldn't Andy have a problem with that?

It was stupid wasting my time thinking about that kind of stuff right then. I was supposed to be trying to find Andy, not figure her out. She'd die of old age before I could do that.

I moved on to the next pile: the used loose-leaf. The only thing I learned from that is that my mother is an excellent doodler. I just hoped they had a good art program at the women's penitentiary.

That left the unused loose-leaf. A less-sophisticated detective would have just tossed it in the garbage, but that's because a less-sophisticated detective wouldn't have spent his childhood years watching
Bobby Smye, Private Eye
. I took a blue crayon and rubbed it over the blank paper. I started to see the imprint of words Andy had written on the missing top sheet. A white phone number appeared in the cornflower blue, and then an address. My heart started to pound. I did another swipe with the crayon, and suddenly I knew what Andy'd been up to. She'd been trying to enroll me in an after-school course! “Political Activism for Teens.” For a second there, I was almost glad she had disappeared. I wished she'd just stop trying to improve me.

By this time, I was mad and frustrated and ready to quit, but if I quit, what would I do then? There was nothing to eat. I couldn't sleep. And I'd kill myself if I tried skateboarding in the shape I was in. I picked up Andy's appointment book and started flipping through it.

It was a mess too, with lots of stuff crossed out or unreadable. Even the stuff I could read looked like it was written in code. “EH Lw. Ct.” “D&F sep ag?” “JHG – Hng.”

I'd like to say that the Undisputed King of Scrabble had this all figured out in three minutes, but it didn't happen that way. I just stared at the letters for a long time and thought about Kool-Aid Blizzards and Mary MacIsaac and what the chances were she'd go to the school dance with me if I ever got the nerve to ask her. I came up with a few good lines to make her laugh and started thinking it might not be completely hopeless. Then I realized that the dance wasn't for three more weeks, and if I didn't find Andy by then (or at least some food money), I'd be so scrawny nobody would dance with me. They'd all just lean against the back wall and watch my bones rattle.

I had to concentrate. I looked at the address book again and a couple of things suddenly seemed pretty obvious. Lw. Ct. was law court. The capital letters were people's initials. Once I got that, I could pretty much figure out who most people were.

EH: Elmore Himmelman.

D&F: Who else? Darlene and Freddie. So that would mean that “sep ag” meant separation agreement, and the question mark meant “Are they finally going to break up or what?”

JHG – hng. For a second there I thought it was “John Hugh Gillis – hanging,” but they haven't hanged a man in Canada for, like, forty years. And even then, I doubt they ever hanged someone for a couple of break-and-enters. I guessed that “hng” had to mean “hearing,” the one the court set up to figure out what John Hugh's sentence would be on that last B-and-E.

Breaking the code after that was pretty easy. I got stuck on a few words until I realized Andy wasn't just keeping track of work stuff. “T. M.” was her hairdresser, Taryl Melanson, the one who talked her out of the purple spikes, and “ct” this time wasn't “court.” It was either “cut” or, more likely, “chat.” (The two of them could gab like you wouldn't believe.) CM – dnt. ck-up meant I had an appointment at the dentist that week (I just pretended I didn't understand that one).

But there was one entry that showed up over and over again that I couldn't get: “BC – Wtrfrnt.” Andy usually just left out the vowels in the words, so the last part was pretty easy to figure out. Wtrfrnt = Waterfront. I guessed she'd been meeting somebody at one of those fancy restaurants overlooking the harbor.

Boy, did that make me mad. I'm eating Mr. Noodles for lunch every day while she's out dining like a queen. Aren't mothers supposed to look after their children first?

Even while I was mad, though, I knew something was wrong with this picture. I just couldn't see it: Andy eating out and not even bringing me back a doggie bag. Maybe this wasn't about work either. Maybe this was a boyfriend. I knew she'd had a few over the years, but not because she'd ever admit it to me, that's for sure. I'd catch some guy putting his arm around her, or some girlfriend of hers would let slip about Andy's “big date,” and Andy would never talk to her again. If she was out having some romantic meal with some new love (barf), she wouldn't bring me back a doggie bag, because she wouldn't want me to know about it.

Made sense.

But who was the guy this time?

B.C.

B…C…

B…

C…

I knew someone with those initials. I was sure of it. I ran through all the guys' names I could think of that started with B.

Bill. Blair. Brendan. Ben. Bert. Bart.

Byron.

Byron Cuvelier.

B.C.

chapter
twenty
Statutory rape

Former charge for sex with a minor

I
hadn't slept in, like, thirty-six hours. I was so wired I didn't think I'd ever sleep again, but that night I did. I just kind of passed out at the kitchen table. Maybe that's why I had such a weird dream.

Byron was my father, and I had a stump for my hand too, and we were living in this sort of tent thing that we had to keep moving all the time. Kendall lived with us too, I think, or he was around, anyway. He gave me this special skateboard that only had three wheels. I could do these amazing moves on it, but only because I was missing a hand. Andy was in the dream too, sort of. You know what dreams are like. I could hear her voice or smell her smoke or talk to her on the phone, but I could never actually see her. One time, I even had to wait outside the bathroom while she used it (our tent had a phone and bathroom, quite the camping experience), but somehow she slipped out without me noticing.

The whole dream was like that. I wanted to see her—I'd go looking for her, I'd run after the sound of her voice—but I didn't want to see her too. I knew she'd take away the skateboard, but that wasn't what I was really afraid of.

I was scared she was going to be mad at me when she found out Byron was my father.

As if it was my fault.

It sounds completely stupid now, but when I was dreaming, it was like it was really happening. I was freaked when I woke up. I could barely catch my breath.

I looked around the kitchen for a long time, just telling myself it wasn't real. That helped for a while, until I realized that reality was even worse than any dumb thing I could dream up.

I thought about Byron and Andy having their little secret meetings at the waterfront. What were they thinking? Like they wouldn't stick out there! Andy, in her Salvation Army specials, and the aging chick magnet trying to blend in with all those people in expensive business suits. If they wanted to keep their secret, why would they meet there?

Because they were so in love they couldn't think clearly.

Oh, bleh.

Kek.

Ack. Ack. Ack.

Gag.

I practically barfed. It sort of made sense. I knew Andy acted like she hated Byron and wanted to get rid of him, but you know how weird people can be when they like someone.

I couldn't shake the idea that Byron was Andy's boyfriend, and all those late-night arguments were just lovers' spats. It was so gross and probably pretty stupid, but my mind wouldn't give it up. It was like my subconscious or whatever you call it wanted to prove the worst was true, rub my nose in it. It said things to me like “She was just playing hard to get.” And “There was obviously something going on. She let him stay, after all!” Somehow blackmail didn't seem like enough of a reason for anyone to put up with Byron.

I saw little pictures of things that happened while Byron was living with us. Him singing, him giving Andy that “hey, baby” smile, her making sure he got his salad just the way he liked it. Then I remembered seeing that C.C. tattoo on his biceps when we were arm-wrestling, and all the blood ran out of my face. I suddenly knew what it stood for.

Cyril Cuvelier.

I really was his son! And the stupid mistake Andy said she made when she was a kid was me! And the reason Byron went to jail was because Andy was only fourteen when he got her pregnant, and that's illegal.

Oh, God.

It all fit. I even remembered what they called it. “Statutory rape”—sexual relations with a minor child. An adult can't do it with a kid under fourteen, even if the kid wants to. It was one of the few things they talked about at law school that I actually found interesting.

I wanted to go back to sleep and just forget about everything. But I couldn't. I still didn't know why Andy'd just disappear like that. I still didn't know where she was or what she was doing. I still didn't know how I was going to survive.

I heard the newspaper land at the front door. I needed to pee anyway, so I went and got it. I was really stiff, and my eyes burned when I opened the door and the light shone in. I grabbed the paper, slammed the door and went to the can.

I didn't trust my aim, so I sat. I scratched my head and rubbed my eyes. I put my elbows on my knees and looked down at the newspaper on the floor.

There was a big red headline: “Suspect Sought in Masons' Hall Fire.” Below it was a picture, one of those jailhouse photographs where the guy holds the numbers up in front of his neck. The guy was twenty-something, I'd say. He had a moustache that hung below his chin, and one eye was swollen shut, but I still knew right away it was Byron Cuvelier.

chapter
twenty-one
Arson

The intentional setting of fire to a building

Halifax Daily

SUSPECT SOUGHT IN
MASONS' HALL FIRE

ANNA VON MALTZAHN
CRIME BUREAU

Halifax Police have released the name of a suspect wanted in relation
to the fire that destroyed
a historic landmark and
killed a homeless man
on August 20 of this year.

Byron Clyde Cuvelier,
37, of no fixed address,
is described as being
5'11 and having a slim
build and blue eyes. His
arms and chest are extensively covered with
tattoos and he is missing his right hand. He was
last seen at the Life's
Work Shelter for Men
on the night of the fire. According to witnesses,
he left around midnight
to go to the Masons' Hall.

Mr. Cuvelier served six
years in Dorchester Penitentiary for the robbery
that cost him his hand,
but is not believed to be
dangerous. According to
acquaintances, Mr. Cuvelier began frequenting the men's shelter about
eight months ago upon
his return to Halifax after several years of
travel. He was apparently well liked by all.

Gisele Theriault, Director of Life's Work, described him as “kind and extremely intelligent. Byron was always helping the other guys with their problems. He spent time in Guatemala doing aid work so he knows how to relate to people in crisis.” Based on his experience, Ms. Theriault had just offered him a part-time job as a counselor at the shelter.

Police are releasing
few details, but sources reveal that an anonymous phone call this
week provided the first
real lead in the suspicious fire that killed Karl
Stafford Boudreau, 49.

The Masons' Hall had
been vacant for over
three years while heritage activists struggled to raise money for its
restoration. During that
time, homeless men
often camped out in
the five-story Victorian
building. An illegal drug-
making operation is believed to be the cause
of the fire. Sources say
a worker on a construction project next door
provided evidence linking Mr. Cuvelier to a
crack cocaine operation.

Mr. Boudreau suffered
from mental illness and
diabetes. Friends say
Mr. Cuvelier was often
seen helping him with
a weight loss program.