Lion's Head Revisited

by Jeffrey Round

  Ted returned with Nick’s beer and set it down in front of him.

  “I’m doing double-duty tonight,” he told them. “Elaine’s off. I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your order.”

  “No rush,” Dan said as Ted turned away.

  Nick lifted his glass. “Cheers!”

  They clinked.

  “Your regulation drink,” Dan said.

  “That’s all it will ever be so long as I’ve got you.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “Absolutely. Any doubts about that?”

  “No doubts.”

  Nick eyed him. “But?”

  “No buts, just …” Dan shook his head. “I sometimes wonder what the future holds.”

  “Whatever you want it to hold. I told you, I’m the commitment type. I don’t scare easily.”

  “I know that,” Dan said softly.

  “You don’t sound certain. What do you want to know? I’m an open book.”

  “No — it’s nothing. I just don’t know the ropes here. I didn’t get issued a relationship manual when I grew up.”

  “You’re doing fine. In fact, we’re doing fine. I was thinking about having this discussion too, so maybe now’s as good a time as any. It seems to me we get along pretty well. It might be time to kick it up a notch.”

  “Meaning?”

  Nick held his gaze. “Move in together.”

  Dan felt himself stiffen. Worse, he saw that Nick saw.

  “Oops!” Nick said. “Too abrupt there, Nicky. Change of tactics. How ’bout those Blue Jays?”

  Dan fingered his water glass. “Sorry,” he told the glass absurdly.

  Nick laughed. “You’re not ready to discuss it.”

  “It’s just … big. And Ked back for the summer and everything.”

  “I know — you’re not sure about him. And then there’s your bestie who doesn’t seem to want to warm up to me.”

  “Donny?” Dan looked up. “He’ll be fine. He’s just not used to men sticking around for long when I meet them. He says I’m too intense. Like it’s a bad thing.”

  “Yeah, that. At least I can see through your seriousness.”

  Dan smiled. “That’s what I like about you.”

  “Is that all?”

  “There are a few other things.”

  “Sure. It’s just breaking through your icy reserve that’s so much work.” He winked. “Okay, subject’s been broached. We’ll take it up again later. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  They looked up as Ted returned.

  “What’s new with you, Tedster?” Nick asked. “Any gorgeous ladies in your life these days?”

  Ted shrugged and looked suddenly bashful. “You know me. I’m just staying clean and trying to get back on an even keel.”

  “Good. That’s really good to hear.”

  “I have to say, you guys are an inspiration. I see what you have together and I know what it took to get there, and I think to myself, I can do that too. And I am doing it.”

  “You can do it so long as you want to,” Dan said.

  Ted looked crestfallen for a moment. “I do, for sure.” He smiled again. “All right, enough serious talk. What are you having to eat?”

  Music played softly, a generic beat lulling diners into a state of reverie and encouraging them to prolong their stay. Dan relaxed, watching the candle flame flicker.

  “You haven’t told me how your day went yet,” Nick said.

  Dan looked up. “The usual.”

  Nick studied his face. “What exactly is ‘the usual’ for you, o man of mystery? I mean, my day consists mostly of looking like a tough guy and scaring stupid kids into behaving when I think they might do something they’ll regret for years to come. But you? I still don’t know what it is you actually do.”

  “I try to scare stupid kids into behaving too. Only some of them are grown-ups. And once in a while I even do some good and locate a person who may or may not want to be found.” He paused. “Today I had to talk sense into three millennials who weren’t going to report a ransom call on their missing kid.”

  Nick’s expression turned serious. “You mean they didn’t want to report a crime? That’s a code 22.”

  “That’s what I told them.”

  Nick nodded slowly. “Is this the four-year-old who went missing in the Bruce Peninsula? Autistic kid?”

  “You know the case. Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about it.”

  Nick shrugged. “The file is already on Lydia’s desk. She’s the Toronto liaison for the cops up north.”

  “No way!” Dan looked to see if Nick was joking, but his expression was serious.

  “Way.”

  “Then you probably know as much as I do. The call came this morning. I told them they had to report it.”

  “Why didn’t they want to?”

  “They were warned to keep quiet about it.”

  “Wait. You said three people?”

  “Two mothers, one biological and the other adoptive, plus a biological father.”

  “Oh, right — the modern family.”

  “They want me to run a parallel investigation because they’re afraid the police might not be totally on board with it.”

  Nick made a face. “Because we’re all so incompetent, no doubt.”

  Dan shrugged. “Compounding things is the fact that they don’t actually have the money. They’re thinking of asking the mother of one of the women. Apparently she’s rich, but won’t acknowledge the boy because of the facts of his birth.”

  “I thought blood was supposed to be thicker than water.”

  “In this case, I think it’s a matter of whether money trumps blood.”

  Nick cocked his head. “So if these three kids have no money, then someone must know that the grandmother does.”

  “That’s what I think,” Dan said. “I’ll look into it, but so far there’s enough motive to go around for the original three, including an abusive husband who got dumped when his wife left him for the woman she now lives with.”

  Nick whistled. “Sounds like a movie plot.”

  “It does, doesn’t it? Maybe I’ll have to phone Donny to find out which one. He’s usually good at that.”

  “Sure, but don’t tell him I said so.”

  Dan studied Nick’s face. “It bothers you, doesn’t it?”

  Nick leaned forward. “What bothers me?”

  “The fact that Donny won’t warm up to you.”

  Nick was silent for a moment. “He’s your best friend and he’s known you a lot longer than I have. It worries me, yes. I need to be able to get along with the people in your life. As you do mine, though that’s a bit easier, since the few people who matter to me are far away, except for my boss, who already likes you.”

  “And now it sounds like she’s leaving too.”

  Nick’s face took on a gloomy cast. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Tell you what,” Dan said. “I’ll see if Donny and Prabin are free for dinner. You can dazzle them with your cooking. How does Saturday sound?”

  “I’ll make it work.”

  THREE

  Faith

  THE DISMISSED NANNY wasn’t hard to locate. Dan found a listing for Marietta Valverde online. He called the number, explaining why he wanted to see her. There was a slight hesitation when he mentioned Jeremy, but she agreed to meet him.

  She lived in Etobicoke in a plain neighbourhood a lot of other immigrants called home. It was a throughway for city workers from the outlying suburbs who didn’t want to stop in this no-man’s land of quickly erected high-rises; street gangs were becoming more prevalent with the influx of competing nationalities, making it difficult for any kid living there to just stay a kid as long as possible. Marietta’s building was one of several with dilapidated balconies and overcrowded parking lots that threw back the sun’s glare from every windshield and shiny chrome trim.

  When she opened the door, she wore the look of a cornered animal. Her round face was pret
ty, but her eyes were wary. Dan’s appearance probably did nothing to relieve her. He towered over her. His rangy muscles and the scar on his temple gave him the aura of a prizefighter. Nevertheless, he saw she could hold her own if she needed to. He’d seen that same look in beaten dogs and street kids outrun by cops. They puffed themselves up with defiance before everything suddenly deflated, all fight and resistance gone.

  Marietta Valverde held out till the last moment then let go as Dan introduced himself, quietly explaining how Jeremy had disappeared while on a camping trip to the Bruce Peninsula with his mother and her partner.

  “I know. I saw it on the news. It’s terrible!” she wailed. “That little boy, he’s so sweet.” Her appeal seemed to suggest she hoped he would do everything he could to solve the problem.

  “We’d all like to see him brought home,” Dan assured her. “I just wondered if you would answer a few questions.”

  “Why does everyone ask me these things? The police came and scared us both,” she said, at last acknowledging the other presence in the room, a well-groomed young man in dress pants and white shirt. “That’s Ramón.”

  “Hello, sir.” Ramón nodded to Dan, his deference close to servility.

  “Hello, Ramón.”

  Dan looked around. The room was drab. Brown furniture, everything worn or second-hand. A lovebird twittered in a cage over in the corner, its colourful plumage in stark contrast to the rest of the room. The door to a bedroom lay wide open. He glanced inside. No chance they were hiding a small boy in there.

  “The reason I’m here,” Dan began, “is because I’d like to get a full picture of Jeremy’s life. There might be some detail you can recall that his parents overlooked. Maybe a person you remember who seemed a little too interested in Jeremy or possibly someone who held a grudge against his parents.”

  “No, there’s no one,” Marietta said. “I told the police I can’t think of anyone.”

  “When did you leave the Bentham residence?” Dan asked.

  Marietta sighed and shook her head. “April.”

  “That’s four months ago.”

  She nodded. “They told me I had to get out. Just like that.” Her expression hardened. “It wasn’t fair, even if they gave me a month’s wages. My parents are coming to Canada. I had to get another job.” She nodded to a framed photograph where two elder Filipinos gazed curiously out at the room. “They didn’t even have a good reason to fire me, you know?”

  “They seem to think Ramón stole from them.” Dan glanced over at the young man, who dropped his gaze.

  “But it’s not true, Mr. Dan. Ramón never stole in his entire life.” She turned to her boyfriend, who was becoming more fidgety by the second. “Ramón, tell him it’s not true.”

  “Sir, I didn’t steal the money.” Ramón spread his empty hands before him as if offering proof of his sincerity. “I wouldn’t steal. It’s not right.”

  “He never stole anything,” Marietta interjected. “That’s not Ramón.”

  The boy looked sulky, but not aggressive. He seemed like a kid who had been kicked around one too many times and would put up resistance if cornered, but not start a fight he knew he would lose.

  “What do you do, Ramón?” Dan said.

  Ramón’s eyes flitted to Marietta then back to Dan. “I don’t have a job, sir. I used to work at a tile factory, but I got fired. Now I’m on welfare.”

  So when the money went missing they automatically suspected you, Dan thought.

  “I don’t have much education,” Ramón continued. “I’m not dumb, but I didn’t finish high school. I got caught selling drugs and I was expelled.”

  “But he’s good now,” Marietta pleaded, as though Dan were a higher court of appeal and this her last chance to convince anyone of his reformation. “He doesn’t do things like that now.”

  “Can you recall anything unusual around Jeremy’s home before you left? Maybe a stranger who passed by the house a lot? Anything like that?”

  They stared at him blankly. It was tricky asking questions without seeming to be directing the answers; people were often too willing to tell him what they thought he wanted to hear.

  “There was always someone around,” Marietta said at last. “I don’t know if they were strangers.”

  Ramón said something in Tagalog. Marietta nodded and spoke a few words in return.

  “It could be for revenge,” she said softly. “Because of those two together like that.”

  Dan’s interest was piqued. “Which two?”

  Marietta looked to her boyfriend for reassurance or confirmation they were on the same page.

  “In our church, it is not okay for two women to raise a child together like man and wife.” She looked to Dan, who nodded for her to go on. She put a hand on her heart. “We say ‘love the sinner but not the sin.’”

  “You think someone kidnapped Jeremy because his parents are two women?”

  Marietta nodded. “What they are doing is wrong,” she said, with the unquestioning conviction of the simpleminded.

  “Yet you didn’t mind working for them,” Dan said.

  “Because I needed the money,” she replied, as though the need excused her hypocrisy.

  “Can you tell me where you were when Jeremy disappeared? It was the twenty-ninth of July. This past Sunday.”

  Marietta brightened. “On Sundays we’re always at church.”

  “It would have been some time between midnight and dawn,” Dan added. “So, technically, we’re talking about Saturday evening. Janice and Ashley stayed up late at the campsite then went to bed. Jeremy was missing when they woke in the morning.”

  “We were here!” she said. “I told the police. We don’t even drive, like. So how can we get somewhere else if we don’t even drive?”

  “There are buses,” Dan reminded her, though he doubted this couple capable of planning a daring kidnapping and making their way over rough terrain in the middle of the night to do it. “Or someone else could have driven you.”

  “I know — but it wasn’t us!” she wailed, her voice rising. “You have to believe us, Mr. Dan. We were here all night. We don’t even have money to go to a movie. I work at Dollarama till four o’clock almost every day. Saturdays too. The pay is really bad. It was supposed to be better to come here in Toronto, but it’s not for us. It’s worse.”

  “Was there anyone else here? Someone who can vouch for you?”

  Marietta shrugged. “No one else was here but us. We made dinner. I made fried chicken.”

  “Did you talk to a neighbour at all that evening? Take the garbage out or see anyone in the hall?”

  She shrugged. “No one. I never went out once. Neither did Ramón. All we did was sit and watch television. And also I talked to my sister back home. That’s it.”

  “You talked to her by phone?”

  “Yes, that’s it. I didn’t see nobody.”

  “When did you talk to your sister?”

  “One hour we talked. It’s a good rate. We talk every Saturday night at ten o’clock. She is in Manila. It’s already morning there.”

  “Did Ramón talk to her too?”

  “Yes, a little. He was watching television and I had to tell him to turn it down. Ramón always puts it too loud. He said hi to her.”

  “And you went to church the next day?”

  “Yes, for sure. In the morning for mass. It’s my day off from Dollarama. We never miss church.” She smiled at her boyfriend. “Sometimes Ramón is lazy, but that day for sure I made him get up and come with me to pray for my parents to come safely to Canada.”

  “Did you tell the police you made the call to your sister?”

  “No, I forgot, I guess. They made me so nervous.”

  “Your phone records will show that you made a call,” Dan said, getting up. “Make sure you let the police know this if they come back to talk to you.”

  Her face showed surprise. “My phone records?”

  “Yes, they will show what number y
ou called and for how long. And I’m sure the people at your church will remember if you were there.”

  She scratched her head, as though the simplicity of it had evaded her. “I didn’t think of that,” she said, smiling. She turned to her boyfriend. “You see, Ramón? I told you it’s going to be okay. I prayed last night. And now everything is okay.”

  Dan wished it could be that simple for everyone.

  “The ex-nanny said she spoke with her sister in Manila on the phone around ten o’clock. Apparently she does so every Saturday evening.”

  Dan had just left Marietta and Ramón’s apartment and was on his way back downtown.

  “Yes, I remember those calls,” Janice said. “They were like clockwork when she lived with us.”

  “Still are, apparently. She says the boyfriend also spoke to her sister. I guess the police would have to get her to swear to that. According to Marietta, the next morning they both went to church. Just simple, good-hearted people apparently.”

  “Then obviously they couldn’t have done it.” She sounded almost pleased.

  “Not necessarily,” Dan said. “They could have driven up after the phone call. It’s what, three hours?”

  “About that. Maybe a little more.”

  “So it’s possible they left here at eleven and arrived at your campsite by two, two-thirty in the morning. An all-night drive would put them back here in time for church.”

  Janice sighed. “I don’t know how they could have known we were there. Though honestly, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

  “They’re sticking with the story of Ramón’s innocence about the thefts. She’s working at a Dollarama, but he’s out of work right now. I gather they’re very much in need. Did you know her parents are coming over?”

  “Yes, she’s sponsoring them. It’s one of the reasons we found it hard to fire her. But Marietta’s hard-working. We knew it wouldn’t be difficult for her to get another job.”

  “Are you aware they think you and Ashley are sinning by being together?”

  “Really? They told you that? It’s the first I’ve heard of it, considering all the time she spent with us.”

  “She never discussed religious beliefs with you? She never said she disagreed with the fact that two women were parenting a child together?”