by L E Fraser
He finally spied a spiky-haired head bobbing through the crowd on the opposite side of the street. The crosswalk was a block down. Reece saw an opening in traffic and jogged across the street, quashing his guilty over jaywalking. A second later, Eli rushed over to him, short of breath and frazzled.
“I got off and walked,” he said, stating the obvious. “It is very hot out. There are lots of pedestrians. Traffic is bad. I could not cross at Jameson Avenue. Drivers would not give pedestrians at the crosswalk the right of way. People are very rude.” With jerky motions, he swiped away the sweat that dribbled down his forehead.
“It’s not a problem,” Reece said quickly, hoping to stave off a stress-related meltdown. “Take a minute and we’ll go inside.”
“I am good. I am fine. I am ready to go.” Eli marched in place with his arms glued to his sides. He clearly was not good, fine, or ready to go.
Reece spied a table and chairs outside a store, set out by the store’s owner to encourage neighbours to congregate. Seated at it were an older woman with a shopping trolley and a young man who was showing her a stunning abstract painting. The man noticed Reece and Eli and stood, waving them to take the table.
“Let’s sit for a minute,” Reece said to Eli.
Eli flopped onto a chair. His leg jiggled, his foot kicked the table leg in a two-four beat, and his eyes flitted across the sky, never settling on one focal point.
In a moment of clarity, Reece understood perfectly why Eli didn’t want to take his road test. Asperger’s didn’t just compromise his communication skills: it hindered his capacity to manage stress. Sitting beside a stern-faced examiner, while unable to interpret the person’s facial and body cues, would be torture. Navigating a world where over half of all human communication was construed from nonverbal elements must be outright painful. Eli did such a good job managing his Asperger’s that Reece often forgot how challenging it must be on a daily basis. He silently swore he’d back off about the driver’s licence. They could find a way around it.
After a minute, Eli unhooked a water bottle from his ever-present laptop bag and took a long drink. From his peripheral vision, Reece observed him. Eli’s nervous twitching gradually calmed and his eyes settled. He attached the metal water bottle back onto a carabiner and repositioned his satchel across his shoulder.
Reece stood. “That fresh bread smells amazing. I wonder what else they make.” He strolled the few metres down to Cardoon and held open the door for Eli.
Inside, art covered every centimetre of exposed brick. Along the back wall was a long wood bar topped with an antique domed-glass case. One half held trays of roasted vegetables, wheels of gourmet cheeses, and heaping piles of smoked meat. The other side displayed loaves of artisan breads, cakes, scones, cookies, and squares. Behind the bar, a gorgeous polished copper and brass Elektra espresso machine and matching grinder twinkled under soft, recessed lighting. The drawers of a vintage apothecary cabinet listed a variety of coffee beans for sale.
There was retro charm in the unfinished oak floors, eclectic accent chairs with vibrant printed seats, and bohemian sofas in jewel toned velvet. Josephine Baker’s haunting voice resounded from discreetly placed speakers, and the emotional strains of ‘Pretty Little Baby’ added to the sense of stepping into a Paris café in the 1920s.
Although it was mid-morning on a weekday, people occupied more than half of the seating. An older man with long grey hair, a tie-dyed shirt, and a fringed suede vest moved between the tables, chatting with the patrons. Reece motioned to him, and the man joined them at the bar.
“Help you?” he asked.
“This place is great,” Reece said. “Are you the owner?”
“Yup. Me and the wife.” He held out his hand. “Francis Chaudire. First time here?”
“It won’t be the last.” Reece shook his hand. “My fiancée works around the corner. I think we just found our new go-to place for lunch. Those custom sandwiches look amazing.”
Francis beamed. “You should taste the specials. My wife trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Today is stuffed pig’s trotters and morels.”
Reece’s mouth watered. When they finished their interview, he decided, he’d treat Eli to lunch. He automatically reached for his Crown attorney’s office id. With a sharp bite of shame he flicked open his wallet and displayed his Ontario private investigative licence. “I’m Reece Hash and this is my partner, Eli Watson. Mind if we ask a few questions about an unpleasant incident that happened to one of your staff three months ago?”
Francis studied the picture identification and then gestured to a table. “Sure. Can I get you a coffee?”
“An espresso would be great,” Reece said, resisting the urge to ask for a plate of pig’s trotters.
Francis looked over at Eli.
“Just water,” Eli said stiffly.
Francis called to a woman behind the bar. “Lydia, an espresso and a bottle of water, please.”
Once they were seated, Reece opened a picture of Annalise Huang on his phone and passed it to Francis. “Do you remember this woman?”
The man nodded. “We get all kinds in here. Sadly, some aren’t too enlightened.” He tapped the picture. “That woman made me doubt the human condition.”
“I understand she verbally abused one of your servers,” Reece said.
“Lydia.” Francis looked up at the woman operating the espresso machine.
“Do you know what happened?” Reece asked.
Francis shook his head. “We had a packed house that night. I was in the kitchen when I heard the commotion.” He held Reece’s phone and stared at Annalise’s picture. Sadness shadowed his eyes. “The way I heard it, she stood in the centre of the room, screaming vile things at Lydia. A couple of customers tried to intervene but she verbally attacked them, too. By the time I came in, it was over.” He passed the phone back to Reece. “I don’t know what was said, Lydia won’t tell me, but she hasn’t worn a skirt since. After cancer took her leg, she worked hard to accept her prosthetic. Now she’s ashamed again, hides behind the bar as much as possible. People’s cruelty has no limit at times.”
“Can we speak with Lydia?” Reece asked.
“You can try,” Francis said. “She’ll be over in a minute with your coffee.”
Reece scrolled through his phone and held out the photo of Harold Taylor. “What can you tell me about this man?”
Francis peered at the picture. “Harold Taylor. I banned him about six months ago. Hated to do it, but it couldn’t be helped.”
“What was his story?” Reece asked.
Francis shrugged. “Older folks sometimes cling to antiquated prejudices. Harold was one. He disliked anyone with a special need, but he took a special dislike to Billy, another one of my employees. He has Downs. Back in Harold’s day, those kids were institutionalized.” He crossed his legs with a deep frown. “Downs and autistic children were considered uneducable, and lots of parents refused to acknowledge them. That was Harold’s mindset.”
“Do you hire people with disabilities because you can pay them less?” Eli asked bluntly.
If the question offended Francis, he hid it well. “No. We pay above minimum wage, offer benefits, and we don’t accept government bursaries.” He looked around at his servers. “Everyone who works here is a blessing to us. They’re the reason Cardoon exists. My wife and I wanted a place where people could celebrate community. That’s what this used to be.”
“It isn’t now?” Reece asked.
“Yes and no. For the past few years, Parkdale Village has been battling the gentrification beast. Urbanites who want to live closer to the city core are changing the dynamics of the area,” Francis said. “Indifference and desensitization are a plague that’s causing more causalities than people admit.”
“Your business is thriving,” Reece said, watching the bustling clientele.
“We owe it to an influential food blogger and a great review from the Globe and Mail f
ood critic.” Francis sighed. “I’m not complaining, but I miss the neighbourhood spirit we used to have.”
Reece showed him the pictures of the other three victims he suspected were linked to Harold and Annalise.
Francis studied them carefully but shook his head each time. “Can’t say I remember them. What’s this all about?”
“Annalise Huang committed suicide three months ago. We’ve been hired to follow-up on her movements prior to her death.”
“What do the other folks have to do with it?” Francis asked.
“We’re trying to determine if these five people knew Annalise,” Reece said. “Do you recall a regular customer who was in the restaurant when Annalise and Harold were here?”
“Like I said, the reviews attract people. If you’d asked me a year ago, I could have named more than half of the people in here.” Francis glanced around the restaurant. “It’s different now.”
“You have a security camera,” Eli stated. “How long do you store footage?”
“No clue. One of the line cooks takes care of it for me. He’s good with technology.”
“I would like to copy it,” Eli said, opening his satchel and removing his laptop and a portable hard drive.
“That’s fine by me,” Francis said.
Lydia came to the table, put down their drinks, and tucked the tray under her arm.
“This is Reece and Eli,” Francis said to her. “They’re PIs and would like to speak to you about the woman who harassed you back in April.”
“Okay, I guess. I mean, if you want me to,” she said hesitantly. She tugged nervously at the fabric of her right pant leg.
Her slacks were baggy and unflattering. They didn’t match the bold style of her peacock-emblazoned T-shirt, turquoise belt buckle, and feather earrings. It angered Reece that Annalise Huang’s hateful behaviour had made this cancer survivor insecure over something that should have been an inspirational badge of courage.
Francis stood and addressed Eli. “I’ll show you where the security equipment is.”
Lydia perched awkwardly on the edge of the seat Francis had vacated. Short blonde hair framed a full face with huge blue eyes. She flicked her pink-streaked bangs out of her eyes and studied Reece with apprehension.
“Do you know why Annalise verbally attacked you?” he asked.
She spun a wedding ring around her finger. “I saw her a few nights earlier. My husband and I were at a martini bar in the Entertainment District. She had an altercation with a man sitting beside me.” She cleared her throat and yanked at the leg of her trousers.
“Did something happen in the bar?” Reece asked.
“The woman threw a ring in the guy’s face. It fell on the ground and I tried to pick it up. I moved my leg wrong and lost my balance.” Lydia looked up at him. “I wasn’t going to take the ring. I was grabbing it before someone kicked it under the bar.”
“Did she think you were trying to take it?”
“I don’t know. She yelled at me about stealing what wasn’t mine,” Lydia said. “But I don’t know if she was talking about the ring or her boyfriend. She said nasty stuff about my ugly prosthetic.” Her eyes filled with tears. “The guy got up and dragged her out before my husband came back from the washroom.”
“How did Annalise end up here?” Reece asked.
“She came in with another woman,” Lydia said. “I served them at the counter. When I took the order over to their table, they saw my prosthetic.” She tugged so hard on her pant leg that Reece heard fabric tear. “I was wearing a skirt.” Her nose crinkled in disgust. “I know better, now.”
“What happened?”
“I guess she recognized me from the bar.” She swiped her eyes and looked away. “Maybe it had something to do with the guy she was yelling at that night. I don’t know. She went ballistic, screaming about how I was hideous and deformed.” She lowered her head and chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t want to repeat what she said.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you. Did anyone intervene?” Reece asked.
“A few tried, but the woman was a total psycho. It was scary.” She sighed. “Besides, let’s face it, people love to watch humiliation. Some even took out their phones and videotaped it.” Lydia lowered her eyes in shame. “The people who posted the video raged online over what happened, but they still put it out there without my permission. My husband and I are private people. We had to shut down all our accounts.”
“Do you recall if there was anyone in the restaurant who’s here frequently?” Reece asked.
Lydia shrugged. “A few, I guess. Why?”
“Do you know their names?” Reece asked.
“Not off hand. Francis might. There’s a really nice nurse who comes in a lot, I think she works at St. Joseph’s Withdrawal Management.” She looked around. “She was here a minute ago with a man, but I don’t see her now.”
“Can you think of anyone else who might have witnessed it?” Reece asked.
Lydia thought for a minute. “It was late, so someone from the food bank could have been here. Francis donates our overages.”
“I’d like to speak to some of your regulars. Can you give me a list?” Reece asked.
Lydia’s back stiffened and her lips thinned. “Why? Are you working for her and trying to prove I deserved to be humiliated? I knew I shouldn’t have spoken to a PI,” she stated heatedly. “Detective Martina, from the real police, talked to me in the spring after it happened. He said it was a hate crime."
This was exactly why Reece hadn’t wanted to interview her under the guise of a PI. Had he been able to use his Crown attorney credentials—an office that protected victims—she wouldn’t have jumped to conclusions about his motive.
“I’m not suggesting you did anything wrong,” Reece said quickly, but she was too angry to hear him.
“Leave me alone or I’ll call Detective Martina.” Lydia grabbed the tray from the table, her face flushed with anger. She stomped back behind the bar, slamming the flap behind her.
Eli returned from the kitchen, holding a paper bag at arm’s length. He handed it to Reece with a grimace. “This is the special from Chef Chaudire.” He rubbed his hands against his jeans and leaned in to whisper. “It has hooves in it. I saw them. They were disgusting.”
“How did you make out with the security footage?” Reece asked.
“Most businesses keep a maximum of ninety days of footage,” Eli said as they made their way through the crowd to the door. “This set-up downloads the camera footage to a sixteen-terabit external hard drive,” he said. “When it is full, they switch it to a secondary hard drive. Talk about over-kill. Anyway, they had not erased the first. I gave them two of mine and took both of theirs.”
Reece held open the door and scorching heat smacked him in the face. “Meaning?”
“There are over eight thousand hours of footage on the full one. There are six thousand hours on the second one.” Eli turned and faced him, his expression grim. “We have to go through a year and a half of video.”
Reece’s heart sank. They had a snowball’s chance in hell of identifying one person near all of their suspected victims.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Journal
A VIGOROUS SHAKE pulled me from an unsettled sleep. The harsh beam of a tactical flashlight blinded me. Bewildered, I raised my hand to block the piercing light. The screaming wind that rattled our house sounded unnervingly human, and steady rain lay down a backdrop of white noise that rose in volume and intensity. I bolted upright in my bed. Confusion and dread merged into raw fear.
Hurricane Rita had made landfall. Her manic fury was slaughtering everything in her path.
“Get up,” my father ordered. “It’s Pearl.” He disappeared into the gloom and his uneven footsteps faded away down the loft stairs.
The fear churning in my stomach crystallized to ice-cold terror. The high, ululating screams were not the wind—it was Pearl. I gro
ped to find the flashlight I’d left on my bedside table and flew downstairs.
My mother stood motionless in the corner of the room, her eyes glazed with horror and her mouth moving silently. Six propane lanterns highlighted Pearl, writhing on white sheets drenched in blood.
“There’s too much intrapartum hemorrhaging,” my father told me. He threw a blood-soaked cloth to the floor. “Start an IV, hang saline, and get her vitals.”
I grabbed a bag of saline and a needle, panic swirling around me like the hurricane winds outside. “Is it placenta praevia? That’s what you feared, based on her pregnancy difficulties, right? Do we have to do a C-section?” I fired the questions at him, yelling over the screeching wind that hammered against the metal shutters on the windows.
“Blu, calm down. I need your help,” he said. “Hang the saline.”
The tremor in his voice scared me more than the copious amount of blood that saturated the sheets beneath my beloved sister.
Pearl’s agonized howls echoed against the bedroom walls, and my hands shook as I doused them with alcohol-based sanitizer. I grasped her upper arm and wrapped a rubber tourniquet around it, but I couldn’t see a vein. I was hurting her and she didn’t understand. She stared beseechingly at me and the expression of betrayal in her aqua eyes wounded me deep within my soul.
“I need to help you,” I said. “Let me help you, chère.”
Her wails of agony faded to strangled whimpers of anguish as her strength waned. Her wide eyes mutely begged me to stop the pain, to hold and protect her. Instead, I was torturing her because I was too inept to find a vein.
