by Anne Emery
“Well, you had a higher blood alcohol reading than I did.”
“I won’t try to hide behind that,” she said. “I don’t want to waive my right to vilify all the other arseholes who do stupid things when they’re drunk.”
“So. Are you staying for the dinner?”
“Not much choice, given that I’m on the committee. But the last thing I need is another dinner with mashed potatoes. I can barely fit into some of my clothes.”
“Well, you’re pleasing to my eye, in or out of those tight, constricting garments.”
“Pòg mo thòn.”
“Somebody told me that means ‘pleased to meet you’ in Gaelic,” one of our fellow barristers chimed in on his way to the head table. “Do I have that right? I’m going over to Scotland for a conference on constitutional law next month, and I’d love to open with a Gaelic phrase. Pawk ma hawn, Pawk ma hawn, I’ll have to remember that.”
“Good idea,” Maura agreed, all innocence, as she sent the president of our local Bar Society off to Scotland with the greeting Kiss my arse.
“You’re bad,” I told her. “So. Why don’t you come sit with me and abuse me all through the meal?”
Abuse me she did, but I felt her heart wasn’t in it. Emboldened, I put my arm across her shoulders and leaned in to deliver a few words of intimacy.
“Let’s go get a room,” I urged her.
“What? Now?”
“It’s a hotel. Let’s get a room.”
“And leave in the middle of the banquet?”
“You’d rather sit through a bunch of after-dinner speeches than get naked in a great big king-size hotel bed? Come on.”
The fates were smiling on old Monty at last. It took some effort to wear her down, but there we were, together in a hotel room for several hours of rapture.
Afterwards, I was spent and exhausted, and still I could not bear to relinquish her.
“Monty, let me go. I have to get home. I need some sleep and I have to finish packing for the trip tomorrow.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. You’re not.”
“Well, I have to check out.”
“What for? You paid for the room. Stay in it.”
“No, I’m leaving.”
“You’re not making any sense, Montague.”
I wasn’t about to admit that I wanted to leave just so I could tack on another five minutes in her presence, from the hotel to the house on Dresden Row. She would be in Geneva and I would not see her for three whole weeks; June 7, 1991, seemed as far off as the year 2000.
We went down to the desk. “I’d like to check out.”
“Check out? Now?” the clerk inquired. New on the job, obviously.
†
I was in a daze as I sat in my office Friday morning not even pretending to do any work. I was capable of nothing more taxing than reliving the previous night in my head, over and over and over. I finally had to snap out of it — only temporarily, I promised myself — when Brennan called to say he had spoken with the Reverend Warren Tulk.
“Let’s meet for a picnic,” I suggested. The warm, golden spring day only enhanced my euphoria.
“Eat outside like a pack of squirrels, you’re saying.” “Maybe the odd pigeon; this will be a downtown picnic.”
So we bought sandwiches and joined the lunch-hour office workers in the city’s Grand Parade. “Choose your view, Brennan. God or Caesar.” At one end of the parade square was St. Paul’s Church, the oldest Protestant church in Canada; at the other end was City Hall, a sandstone Victorian building whose north-facing clock was stuck forever at 9:04, the time of the Halifax Explosion in 1917. We sat at the foot of the signal mast, and he gazed in the direction of the little Georgian church. I stared across Barrington Street at Dice Campbell’s old office building, with its corner terrace on the tenth floor, from which he had jumped — or been pushed — to his death.
“Warren Tulk and I are pals now,” Burke said. “Brothers in the Lord. I went to His Word Bookshop, ostensibly to buy a copy of the Summa Theologica. But not one of St. Thomas’s works was on offer. There was nothing in the shop to indicate that the church fathers had ever given their reasoned consideration to the great questions of revelation, theology, or metaphysics. No ancient texts, no modern theologians. I just can’t accept the notion that any old yokel can read the Bible and come up with his own interpretation, and that is considered just as legitimate as —”
“You’re such an RC. Why would you expect to find Catholic writings in a Protestant bookshop?”
“Why not? Wouldn’t you want to cover the subject from as many angles as possible? I read Jewish theologians and philosophers. Why wouldn’t a Protestant have a look at some of the great Catholic scholars?”
“All right, so you didn’t find anything to your liking in the shop. What about Tulk?”
“He’s a nice enough fellow. He spoke of this group he’s associated with. Very evangelical by the sound of it. Almost speaking in tongues, I suspected.”
“You mean like the early Christians whom everyone took to be drunks, but really they were filled with the Holy Spirit?”
“Monty! You give me hope. Your ignorance is nowhere nearly as profound as I have always feared. So much work to do here, I’ve always been thinking.”
“Get to the point.”
“Warren is concerned about social problems in the city or, as he also said, a complete moral breakdown. He blames the schools, the courts, the news media, et cetera, for the plight of so many young kids today. The schools because they have given up prayer and discipline, the courts because they are too lenient, the politicians for pandering to I forget whom, and the laws aren’t strict enough. Oh, and sharp lawyers are a big part of the problem, for getting criminals off on technical defences. You get the picture.”
“What’s the solution, from the Tulkian perspective?”
“For one thing, a pressure group composed of clergy and lay people from various Christian churches in the city.”
“Just Christians?”
“In his words, ‘our Jewish brethren’ are well-meaning, but too liberal on the issues.”
“I see. What else?”
“We were interrupted. Some sort of crisis came up. A woman burst through the door. ‘Warren! We had visitors. Jordan called me, and I just told him to stay inside. But —’ That’s when she spied the Papist lurking in the background, and the flow of words came to an abrupt and untimely halt. Significant glances were exchanged, and I knew the tactful thing would be for me to withdraw. So I stayed. But I wasn’t able to suss out what was going on.”
“This woman. Tell me about her. Was she his wife?”
“No.”
“What did she look like?”
“A little roundish, with grey curly hair. Plainly dressed in a skirt, blouse, and cardigan sweater. Sensible shoes, as my sisters would say. A pleasant face. But she had something up her arse that day. He closed up shop and left with the woman.”
“Did you go the extra mile and follow them home? You want that gold detective shield some day, and you’re not going to earn it sitting on your butt reading the life of Billy Graham.”
“I confess I did not. But they weren’t going home, or not to his house anyway.”
“Oh?”
“Tulk lives in Lower Sackville. This woman, or Jordan, or somebody, lives outside the city.”
“How do you know that?”
“She didn’t want to say anything with me there, so she engaged in a bit of subterfuge. She took out her wallet, which had a little pencil holder in it and a small notepad. She wrote out something for him to read. I couldn’t see the note but I did get a quick glimpse of her driver’s licence. I could not make out much in the short time I had, but her first name is Sarah, her last name starts with the letters MacL, and all I could see of the address was ‘County, Nova Scotia.’ Now I realize she could have been talking about a business or a shop of some kind, visitors showing up there, and Jordan being told to stay in
side. So we may be talking about two locations, her home out in the county and this other place. Or it may be one.”
“Why did you conclude this crisis was not at Tulk’s house?”
“Oh. Right. Because he called his wife, Jill, and told her something had come up, and he might miss dinner. It was obvious she was asking him what was going on, and he was putting her off.”
“Did he mention the other woman’s presence in the phone call to the wife?”
“No.”
“Did he ever say anything about having a son named Jordan?”
“He mentioned children, but I don’t know whether he told me their names. So. What now, Lieutenant?”
“We track her down, Sergeant. Too bad her name doesn’t start with Z, instead of MacL. Have you any idea how many MacLachlans, MacLarens, MacLeans, MacLellans, MacLennans, and MacLeods are in the phone book?”
“Have you any idea how tiny and insubstantial your phone directory looks to someone who is accustomed to the multiple tomes of the New York City white pages?”
“Very well, then. That wee tiny task is yours. Let me know when you’ve found her.”
“Then what?”
“Then we go out there, wherever it is, and find out why they don’t like visitors.”
“I’ve already blown my cover.”
“I’ll go in alone. If anything happens to me, you run in from the bushes and give me the last rites.”
“Sounds like a rational plan. Do you think all this is getting you anywhere?”
“Not yet, obviously. But I can’t proceed with litigation over a suicide if it’s going to turn out to be murder committed by someone else.”
“And you’re thinking of Tulk as a suspect?”
“I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call him a suspect.”
“Then why are you looking into him? Because you believe there’s a link between Leaman and Campbell, and Tulk raided one of Campbell’s parties?”
“He raided the party, he’s known to have very strong views on people he considers degenerates, he got turfed from the police force for his attitude. And didn’t you tell me sharp lawyers are on his blacklist? Finally, as I told you, I heard about a couple sounding very much like Tulk and this woman Sarah cruising, or at least looking, for young people in a rundown old parking garage downtown.”
“Looking for them for what purpose?”
“That’s what we have to find out.”
When our picnic was over, I walked back to the office for my last appointment of the day: Corey Leaman’s mother. I waited for her, but she didn’t show up. I would give her ten more minutes, then I would slip the surly bonds of office life, pick up the kids and head over to my brother Stephen’s for what I knew would be a sumptuous dinner. His wife, Janet Stratton, was the daughter of my senior partner. She had overcome her British joint-on-Sunday heritage and had become a superb cook. Janet hosted the dinner every year to kick off the Victoria Day long weekend in May. The kids and I looked forward to stuffing ourselves and playing with Steve and Janet’s two small children. The minutes passed, Leaman’s mother didn’t show, and I was off.
†
By mid-morning Saturday, Tommy had left to see his girlfriend, Lexie; I had dropped Normie off to play with her best friend, Kim; and thoughts of work began to encroach on my day; I wondered why Corey Leaman’s mother had failed to keep her appointment. Had I seen the last of her, once she learned there would be no advance payments from the Baird Centre? If she was legit — if she really was Corey’s mother — I wanted whatever information she could give me about her son. I was headed downtown anyway, so I went to the office and retrieved the file from the cabinet in the back corridor. Yes, she had given me her number.
I reached her on the phone. “Yeah?”
“Mrs. Lea — Mrs. Carter?”
“What.”
“This is Monty Collins. You had an appointment with me yesterday. Did you forget about it?”
“Oh, yeah, right. I had other things on my mind.”
“I see. Well, I was wondering if we could schedule another appointment so you can bring in whatever information you have about Corey.”
“Kinda hard to find anything in here today.”
“Is there a problem?”
“I’d say it’s a problem when somebody breaks in and tears the place apart and makes off with my personal belongings!”
“You had a break-in?”
“Oh yeah, big time.”
“When was this?”
“Night before last.”
“Were you home at the time?”
“If I’da been home, don’t you think that fucker woulda had a fight on his hands before he lifted my brand-new TVand remote?” She was wheezing just telling the story; I couldn’t quite imagine her fighting off a burglar.
“Have the police been there?”
“It was prob’ly them.”
“Probably them what?”
“That done it.”
“Why would you say that?”
“They always had it in for me and my family, that’s why.”
“Still, I doubt they would burglarize your place. Do I take it you didn’t report it?”
“They’re useless.”
“Listen. Hang on there and I’ll come over.”
“Suit yourself.”
The Leaman/Carter family home in Lower Sackville was a rundown bungalow with avocado-green siding, which was coming away at the corners and around the door.
Vonda Carter was in a purple track suit this time. She invited me inside. The living room had a soiled rust-brown carpet and a suite of furniture covered in orange, gold, and green floral fabric. A print of a garish yellow and pink sunset was the only decoration; it appeared that a plaque had been wrenched off the bottom of the frame, giving rise to the inference that the print had been swiped from a motel room. Things had not yet been put to rights after the burglary. A number of bowling trophies and other objects were strewn across the floor; a set of metal shelves stood empty. Vonda sat in front of a black plastic table on which there was an overflowing ashtray with a cigarette burning in it, and the scrapings from a collection of scratch-and-win lottery tickets.
“Look at this dump. What kind of animal would do that?”
“Don’t you think you’d better call the police?”
“Fuck it.”
“When did you get home and discover this?”
“Around ten in the morning.”
“You’d been out all night?”
“Yeah, I was out all night.”
“Do you think it might have been somebody you know?”
“Nobody even knows I’m back in town yet!”
“Well, the person you spent the night with knows.”
“Like, I wouldn’t notice if he got up and left for two hours, then came back with the stuff he stole outta my place? Gimme a break.”
“I meant if he knows you’re back in town, he may have told somebody else. Word may have got around.” No reply. “Was there any trouble here when you were away?”
“Never.”
“Was someone living here in your absence?”
“Most of the time.”
“Who?”
“My cousin.”
“Where’s the cousin now?” She shrugged. “Did the cousin report anything suspicious?”
“More like the neighbours ratted on him, than him reporting on anything else.”
“What did the neighbours say?”
“Called the cops on him for a couple of parties. They came, but they didn’t find nuthin’.”
“As far as you could tell, when you got back from Kingston, was everything still here?”
“Like what?”
“I mean, did you notice anything missing when you got home from prison?”
“There was nothing missing.”
“When had your cousin moved out?”
Another shrug. “Months before that.”
“So, what was taken in the break-in?”
“My TV, remote and VCR, a set of knives, and other stuff,” she said, then added: “and a picture!”
“What kind of picture?”
“By that guy. You know, he’s Canadian.”
“His name?”
“I don’t remember his name, but he did that picture with the binoculars.”
“You don’t mean Alex Colville?”
“Alex! Yeah!”
I didn’t bother to respond to that and neither, I guessed, would the claims department of her insurance company.
“What do you think they were after?” I asked her.
“Beats me. The fucking pricks.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I’ve got that back.”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve got that back that hurts. When it gets better or if I take a couple of Tylenol Threes, then I’ll put this mess back together.”
What could I say? “Do you want me to help you?”
She looked ready to jump at the idea, then had a change of heart. All of a sudden she didn’t like the idea of me going through her things.
“Nah. Thanks anyways.”
“While I’m here, though, could you put your hands on anything you have relating to Corey?”
“No, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because whoever was in here took all my personal papers.”
“What kind of papers?”
“I had a box where I kept all my bills, prescriptions, letters, old probation orders, the usual shit.”
“Did these papers include things relating to Corey?”
“I guess. I never looked at them for a long time.”
“What might have been in them?”
“Old pictures he drew, maybe a couple of report cards, stuff about his treatments, I don’t know.”
“Do you have any other children?”
“Yeah, Shonda Lee. But I never seen her for years. I think she’s out in Vancouver.”
“Did the burglar take stuff about her too?”
“All my papers,” she repeated.
“How about family photos? Do you have any of those?”
“I suppose so.”
“Could you check?”
She heaved herself up from the chesterfield and made her way into a back room. I got up and looked around. I saw an old Bacardi box in the corner with a couple of papers in the bottom. But they were just credit card receipts. A cable television bill and an old Lotto 649 ticket were caught in one of the carton’s flaps. This may have been the vault. I heard her chugging in behind me.
