Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by Jeffrey Round

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Dan told him. “You’re wondering why the fun people always leave while the Grinch stays home? Is that it, boy?”

  Ralph silently wagged his tail.

  Dan had just crawled back into bed, hoping for one more hour of oblivion, when the phone rang. He rolled over and checked the clock: 8:57. He considered not answering but weakened on the fourth ring.

  It was Jags.

  “How are you tied in this weekend?” his employer asked, sounding like an aggressive trader keen on li-

  quidating his entire portfolio.

  Dan frowned. “Hello and how are you?”

  “Yeah, all of that. So how are things sitting with you?”

  Dan propped himself up on an elbow. “I’ve got a few things to do. Nothing pressing. What did you have in mind?”

  “I need to get out of town.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Pre-launch jitters. I need to get away from myself.”

  An interesting way of putting it, Dan mused, without pursuing the thought any further. He assumed this was one of Jags’ whims. If so, there was no use questioning it. He’d already said they came and went without warning.

  “I’m thinking a couple hours north of here,” Jags continued. “I’ve got a little cottage up Collingwood way.”

  “That’s a nice area. How long are we talking?”

  There was a pause. “I don’t know. A couple days at most, nothing more than that.”

  Dan tried to recall what Trevor had said about his return flight. Was it Tuesday or Wednesday? He’d written it down somewhere, but in his pre-caffeinated state he couldn’t think where. Oh, right — the calendar! He glanced over at the circled date: Wednesday. Dan had promised to pick him up at the airport. Ked would be back from his mother’s on Sunday evening, but he’d be fine on his own for one night or else he could stay with Kendra if he preferred.

  “So what do you think? I don’t mean to pressure you, but I’ve gotta get the fuck out of here.”

  An urgent whim then.

  The voice was edgy, bordering on anxious. Dan wondered what he might be faced with if he and Jags spent the weekend confined in a remote cottage. Did zoo keepers separate the bears come closing time or did they all sleep in one happy little enclosure?

  “I’m good till Wednesday,” he said, even as he regretted giving Jags such wide latitude.

  “We’ll be back by then,” Jags declared. “I need to be back for some press stuff on Tuesday afternoon. Anyway, that gives us three days. So we’re cool, yeah?”

  “Good with me,” Dan said. He had a sudden thought. “Oh, shit! The dog.”

  “Bring him,” Jags said immediately. “I like dogs.”

  “Are you sure? What about your car? He’s not really Porsche-trained.”

  Jags thought this over. “I’ll use a different car. Something that’s less noticeable.”

  Again it was a strange way of putting things, but Dan let it pass.

  “I’ll swing by in half an hour and pick you up. Don’t pack anything but a change of clothes,” Jags said. “I have everything you need up there.”

  Two hours passed. Dan was beginning to think Jags had changed his mind when he drove up in a beat-up station wagon, apparently the reason for the delay. He greeted Dan curtly, paying no attention to Ralph. For a man who claimed to like dogs, he seemed at a loss on how to deal with one. Ralph came up to him and waited for the obligatory pat on the head. Jags looked at him twice then walked away. Undaunted, Ralph followed.

  “Why is he doing that?” Jags asked.

  “It means he likes you.”

  “Oh. Kind of like a fan following me around.”

  “Something like that. Give him a pat and he’ll stop.”

  Jags touched the top of Ralph’s head. Satisfied, Ralph trotted back to Dan, who ordered him into the back seat, where he settled with a grunt and a look of satisfaction, knowing he was going on an adventure.

  They set off. Jags seemed distant as he navigated the maze of one-way streets leading to the expressway. Presumably this was one of those moods he’d warned Dan about. Don’t take offence. I piss everyone off, sooner or later. Sooner rather than later then, was what it looked like.

  “Is something wrong?” Dan asked when they’d been in the car ten minutes and Jags had hardly spoken.

  “No, nothing.”

  “You seem preoccupied.”

  Jags shrugged it off. “Just watching the traffic. It’s a weekend. You know how all the shitty drivers come out then.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “It’s just …”

  “Just what?” Dan prompted.

  There was a pause. Jags glanced down at his phone. “I’ve been getting these weird calls. Hangups and whatnot.”

  “Crazed fans?” Dan asked, trying to make light of it.

  Jags grunted. “Maybe. It’s just that no one has this number.” He brightened. “It’s probably nothing.”

  “‘Nothing’ is good,” Dan said.

  Jags slipped a CD into the player. If Dan thought he was going to be serenaded with a full-tilt Jags Rohmer soundtrack on the way up, he was mistaken. Jags’ preference for travelling was light classical music: Telemann’s Paris Quartets, to be exact.

  Once past the city limits, Jags relaxed. His driving was every bit as expert in the wagon as it had been in the Porsche. His preference for speed was obvious, although Dan never felt unsafe. Dan caught him checking the rear-view mirror every few minutes. He saw Dan watching him and laughed.

  “Just keeping an eye out for cops,” he said. “I’ve got a heavy accelerator foot.”

  He slowed and pulled over to the outside lane.

  Dan was beginning to wonder if Jags was on something when his mood finally broke and he started chatting. His publisher had been in touch; they’d had a favourable notice in the Globe and Mail. A good sign, Jags said. As far as reviews went, it was the more

  literary of the newspapers. If they liked his style — colourful, breezy, and straight-up — then others would be receptive to the book.

  Once he started talking, he didn’t seem to want to stop. Dan found his observations engaging. Nor did he dominate the talk, relegating Dan to the role of prisoner-listener. He was equally interested in Dan’s side of the conversation. For his part, Dan resisted asking the obvious questions about his life and his colourful career. He talked with him as he would with a new acquaintance about whom he knew a little, but presumed nothing. Jags seemed grateful to be treated as just another guy.

  The drive was quiet and uneventful. Jags made good time, even in his unassuming old carrier. Two hours north of Toronto, long before they closed in on Collingwood, the famous hills appeared in the distance like a smudge on the horizon. Blue and smoky. Dan had always been intrigued by their colour, how they managed to look that same cool shade of cobalt every time he approached. He’d heard various theories: the colour was caused by the atmosphere over the mountains or how light from the clouds diffracted as it hit the range or even that the blue pine forest with its billions of needles gave the mountains their unique appearance. In fact, it was none of the above. The mountains were composed of an unusual form of blue clay. It wasn’t an illusion. They really were blue.

  Dan was pleasantly surprised to discover that Jags’ cottage was unpretentious and humble. He thought the rock-and-roll crowd was all about ostentation and a primal scream approach to life, but then Jags Rohmer had always been a cut above the rest. He could growl out a raunchy blues number with the best of them, but his voice took on a quiet yearning when he needed to embellish an emotion. He had an innate feel for dramatic phrasing, not unlike an opera singer’s. His voice was authoritative yet soothing, as though urging you to do your best while consoling you for whatever trials you might be enduring. He appealed to both heart and mind, without condescending to either, and with more than a little soul to back it up.

  Dan stood back and watched Jags unlock the door then toss t
heir bags inside. With Ralph leading the way, they took a quick tour. The property lay nestled in a small basin at the foot of the mountains, engulfed by the surrounding forest.

  “Nice place,” Dan said.

  “Thanks. I use it as an occasional retreat. A few days is usually enough for me. I can’t stay here long or I get antsy.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Jags shrugged. “When I bought the place, I had dreams of resurrecting my childhood. Lots and lots of solitude. The only problem is I’ve been a city dweller for my entire adult life, so coming here is always a bit of a shock. It hits me the way the chaos of the city hits people who aren’t used to that.”

  They wandered around the cottage and emerged on the far side. Jags looked ruefully at the building, as though reluctant to go in. He retrieved a couple of beers and they settled side by side on the porch. After a thorough sniff around the yard to make the acquaintance of the neighbours, both seen and unseen, Ralph settled at their feet and fell asleep. Apparently he’d found the drive taxing.

  Jags was relaxed now. He scanned the bush at the edge of the property line, as though measuring how far it had encroached in his absence. Despite his ambivalence for rural life, he seemed to be in his element. Dan felt he was seeing the real man at last.

  He ventured a question that had been on his mind since they’d met.

  “Where’d you go for the last ten years? What drove you away?”

  Jags swatted at a fly. He lifted his bottle and took a swig, his eyes searching the horizon again. “From the pop music circus, you mean?”

  Dan nodded. “Yeah, that.”

  “I got tired of it. You know John Lennon’s ‘Watching the Wheels’?”

  Dan nodded.

  “He wrote that song just as he was coming out of a five-year hiatus from recording. He wanted the world to know he’d stepped off the merry-go-round and was just living his life.”

  “Right before he was shot dead.”

  “Yeah — thanks for that little reminder. Anyway, that was me. I was a burnout. I just wanted to sit on the sidelines and watch it all going by. I had what everybody thought they wanted: fame, money, power. But they all had something I wanted.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A normal life.”

  Dan laughed. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  Jags scowled. “No, I’m not fucking kidding you. What are you laughing at?”

  “Jags, there’s no such thing as a normal life.”

  “Well, try living the kind of life I lived, where everybody has a claim on you, where everybody has expectations of you, and then you’ll know what I mean. I have no sense of what reality is.”

  Dan shook his head. “While you’re feeling sorry for yourself, stop to think about what everybody else has: kids who need things from you, spouses who want things from you, and — worst of all — demanding, insensitive employers who expect things from you. There’s no such thing as normal, Jags.”

  Jags seemed perturbed by this, like an astronaut returning from an extended voyage in outer space and confronting G-forces for the first time in years. “Well, anyway, I’m tired of people wanting things from me. I just want to be left alone.”

  “Yeah, you and Greta Garbo. Good luck with that.”

  Jags looked at him from the corner of an eye. “Asshole,” he said.

  Dan shrugged. “Pretentious twat.”

  They both laughed at the same time. Jags grabbed him by the wrists and shook his arms.

  “See, this is what I’ve been dying for. Someone to treat me like the idiot I am. Someone to tell it to me like it is.”

  “You should have had kids,” Dan reflected. “They do it for free.”

  “Fuck. Do you think maybe I’ve just taken myself too seriously for too many years?”

  Dan shrugged. “Could be.”

  Jags let go of his wrists. “Thanks, buddy. For telling it to me like it is.”

  “Any time.”

  Half an hour later, they headed inside. A stone chimney dominated the centre of the room. Jags took a bottle of bourbon off a shelf and poured two glasses, sliding one across to Dan.

  Dan shook his head. His mind was buzzing with half-remembered sensations of all-night drinking sessions long past. He didn’t want them to return.

  “Can’t do it. I’m on the wagon,” he said. “Besides, I won’t be much good to you as a bodyguard if I’m drinking.”

  Jags didn’t appear to be listening. He downed his glass then stood and kicked an empty firewood cradle.

  “We’ll need to get a few logs in, in case we feel like a fire later,” he said. “Not that it’ll get cold, but it’s always nice for atmosphere.”

  The cottage was open-concept, apart from a bathroom and a single bedroom furnished with double bunk beds. Dan wondered for a moment if Jags did have kids after all, but then remembered it was his own childhood he said he’d been trying to recreate. The other sleeping spaces included elevated lofts at either end, open to the rest of the cottage. Dan worried how comfortable he was going to be without privacy, but then they weren’t planning on a long stay.

  “Where will I sleep?”

  “Wherever. Pick a bed or a couch and make yourself comfy when the time comes. There are blankets and pillows in the closet. You can sleep on that couch there” — he pointed out a long grey sofa that resembled a giant cigar with back support and end flaps — “if

  you want something really snazzy. Big designer number.

  It cost me ten thousand dollars.”

  Jags pulled something from a satchel and tossed it at Dan. “Here,” he said. “In case you get bored.”

  Dan looked down at a copy of Jags’ autobiography with a happy-looking Jags beaming at the world from the cover.

  “Nice shot,” he said.

  “Yeah. It’s not the real me, though.” Jags shrugged and looked around the space. “It’s too fucking quiet in here.”

  He flicked on the stereo. Something loud and punk filled the room. Dan found it irritating. He preferred the Telemann. He followed Jags into a bedroom that doubled as an office. A skull sat on a bookshelf, face turned to the wall. Dan picked it up. The thing leered at him. It looked real, though it might have been a monkey skull, he reasoned. Wasn’t it illegal to own human remains?

  He looked at Jags. “What’s this for?”

  “Gift from an obsessive fan. Memento mori. You know what that means?”

  “Sure. ‘Remember you will die.’”

  “That’s right. Not something we can afford to forget. Death comes to us all.”

  Dan set the skull back on the shelf, aiming the eye sockets at the room like twin camera lenses. “A bit maudlin, isn’t it?”

  Jags looked up and grimaced. “Yeah. Could you just turn it back around?”

  Dan angled the sepulchral leer to the wall. Over in a far corner, a noose dangled from an exposed ceiling beam.

  “And that?”

  Jags sipped his bourbon. “Just a prop. From one of my tours.”

  “Nice. Adds to the décor.”

  “That’s why I like you. You don’t stand there and pretend it’s raining when someone’s pissing on your head.”

  Dan laughed. “I’ve heard it said in much less flattering terms. Thanks for the literary spin on it.”

  Jags lifted his glass and drank. “Any time.”

  The music got raunchier as Jags got drunker. He shifted his focus to a pile of papers, riffling through them — who knew what lay there, maybe a year’s worth of laundry lists or a brilliant set of song lyrics never heard by the public — leaving Dan on his own.

  Jags’ agent called. Jags answered but left the music turned up loud while they talked. They seemed to be quarrelling over something, though it might simply have been his way of conversing over loud music. Dan went outside, letting the screen door bang. If Jags wanted noise then he could provide a reasonable soundtrack without much difficulty.

  Jags’ voice followed him out of the house and into the
yard. The surrounding brush was dense and led to an even denser forest not far off. The tree line was broken occasionally by barren rock that cropped up here and there. A crescent moon hung in the sky. Dan could never remember when it was on the wane and when newly reborn. Waning, he guessed.

  Ralph got up and followed Dan around the back of the cottage. It was nearly dusk. A bat flitted through the air, hungry for its first taste of insect. Dan liked bats, even if other people feared them. On the other hand, he disliked bugs. Bats ate a third of their weight in insects each night. If bats went extinct, he reasoned, the world would be overrun with creepy-crawlies. Therefore it was better to like bats.

  He returned with a few pieces of firewood in hand and dropped them beside the fireplace. Jags finished his call and began to make supper. The meal wasn’t particularly memorable as far as Dan was concerned, having been spoiled by Trevor’s gourmet skills the past few months. During dinner, Jags kept the bottle of bourbon beside his plate. He refilled his glass as soon as it went down a bit. He drank much faster than Dan had even in his heavy drinking days. His speech soon got a little rough around the edges.

  After supper he egged Dan into a game of chess. Dan hadn’t played in years and knew his game was rotten. Even drunk, Jags beat him after a half-dozen moves. Jags sneered and put the board away. He went out on the porch and lit a cigarette, staring off into the darkness outlining the trees.

  Eventually, he came back in. He sat with his glass and tilted the bottle toward him, sending an amber rivulet across the table. He didn’t bother to clean it up. It ran over the edge and onto the floor. Dan had seen this sort of drunken behaviour before. He wasn’t going to start pandering to an overgrown slob. Besides, it wasn’t his cabin.

  As Jags got sloppier, Dan was reminded of how his father used to drink himself to sleep. Or to oblivion, whichever came first. The drinking went on till Dan left home at seventeen. Presumably it continued till his father’s death ended the long, sad saga.

  Dan looked over where Jags lay with his head on the table. As far as he was concerned, his bodyguard duties didn’t include putting drunken rock stars to bed. He could stay there till morning and wake with a crick in his neck or maybe he’d be lucky and have to get up to puke in the middle of the night and crawl off to the bedroom. Either way, Dan was prepared to leave him at the table to fend for himself, invoking the self-righteousness of an ex-drinker.