Lion's Head Revisited

by Jeffrey Round

  “Was he still working when you knew him?”

  “Yes. He worked at a tile store out on the Queensway. The Tile Factory, I think.”

  Dan made a note of it. “With her parents moving to Canada, they’ll be in need of cash.” He stood. “I’d like to take a look at Jeremy’s room while I’m here.”

  “Sure.”

  Janice led him down the hall to a room filled with stuffed animals and cut-out paper hearts on the walls. A small dresser and bed took up most of the space. The walls were painted bright blue, a colour that soothed Jeremy, according to Janice. It looked like any child’s room.

  “We do our best to keep him happy,” she said, leaning against a wall. “It was a shock when we got the diagnosis. It was about a year ago. He had hit several early developmental landmarks, so we thought everything was normal. Then came the fits and the withdrawals. The doctors said he’d regressed somehow. I still don’t really understand it. Each day there’s new territory to navigate. The paperwork alone and the applications for funding — it’s endless.”

  “I’m sure it must be difficult,” Dan said, looking over a set of plastic dinosaur figurines on a dresser top.

  “You have no idea. The meltdowns can be terrible. There are so many triggers — loud sounds, even twinkling lights on a Christmas tree. Other kids taunt him in playgrounds. One little girl hit him with a plastic baseball bat when he wouldn’t respond to her. She was only four, but she knew he was different. When I asked her why she did that, she said it was because she thought he was an alien.”

  “Children are cruel,” Dan said, turning to her. “Have you come to a decision about the ransom?”

  “The police said we should sit tight and wait for the next call, but I want to be ready. I spoke with the bank. I’m going to meet with them. Though honestly, I was hoping somehow it wouldn’t come to this.”

  “You mean that Jeremy would just turn up?”

  “I know it’s not very realistic.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not.”

  “I still haven’t talked to my mother.” She shrugged, as though to say it was beyond her.

  Dan opened a closet. Everything was neatly arranged on shelves at the height a four-year-old would find comfortable. One set of cotton shirts was out of line with the others. He reached down and felt beneath the bottom shirt till his fingers grasped something cool and hard. He pulled it out: a small silver pendant.

  “Oh, that’s where that went,” Janice exclaimed. “I lost it a while ago.”

  Dan let it slip into the palm of her outstretched hand. He finished his search then left with a firm order to report the strange woman’s reappearance to the police.

  The Tile Factory was an impressive showroom on the Queensway. Lots of glass and flags on poles around the front entrance. The man who greeted Dan with a big smile settled into a more casual expression once he realized he wasn’t a potential customer. He gave Dan’s investigator card a quick glance and sighed. Still, he must have decided he liked him for some reason, as he started to talk. Either that or he just liked gossiping about former employees.

  He chewed gum while he spoke, exhaling a minty breath and toying with a blue dolphin tie pin.

  “Yeah, buddy used to work here. One of our best shipper-receivers. Worked hard at first and gave us no trouble. I was even considering him for management. Then all of a sudden, a couple months ago he starts to be a problem … showing up late, forgetting orders. I knew something was up.”

  “What exactly did you think it was?”

  “Not sure.” His fingers stopped their twisty movements, leaving the dolphin pin upside down. “I gave him a chance, had a friendly talk with him, but he didn’t improve. In fact, he got worse. He was even kinda surly and belligerent with me. Told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “Do you think he had a drug problem?” Dan asked.

  “Never saw a sign of it, and I’m pretty good at spotting that sort of thing.”

  “Would you take him for a thief?”

  “Ramón? Not a chance. He used to stay late some nights. I never for a moment distrusted him.” The man thought about it for a moment. “Tell you what I think. I think he wanted me to fire him.”

  “But if you fired him, he wouldn’t get employment insurance,” Dan said.

  “Exactly. There was a guy not long before who asked me to lay him off. Said his wife’s mother was sick and they needed to move to Victoria, but he still needed a bit of income to tide him over to the next location. I worked out a way for that to happen.”

  “But Ramón didn’t seem to care about that?”

  The fingers began their fidgeting again. “Nope. As I said, it was like he wanted me to fire him. So I did.”

  “Did he complain?”

  “Not at all.”

  Janice had had a crisis of conscience when she fired Marietta because of the timing with her parents arriving from the Philippines. Why would Ramón deliberately jeopardize their financial situation even further?

  “Did you ever meet his girlfriend? Marietta?”

  The dolphin had worked its way upright again.

  “Yeah.” The man smiled. “She came to our Christmas party last year. Pretty girl, but tough. Not sure how she ended up with him. He was always kind of a softie. She was the one wearing the pants, that’s for sure. No way would he have screwed up without her knowing it.”

  Dan left, thinking over that curious information.

  ELEVEN

  Polygraph

  DAN WAS PARKED OUTSIDE Marietta’s high-rise at eight the following morning, a Sunday. He didn’t know what church she went to, and there were far too many to check them all; he just knew mass started early. Although he suspected he would find Ramón at home if he buzzed, he waited to catch Marietta on her return so he could confront them together.

  It was a busy building, with people coming and going constantly. He’d have to keep alert not to miss her. Sure enough, at a quarter past the hour he saw her approaching. He waited as she stepped into the elevator then gave her two minutes and followed, making a mime of checking for his keys as the next person arrived.

  Upstairs, a bag of garbage had been left outside Marietta’s door alongside two discarded shoeboxes. Hiking boots, one pair each of men’s and women’s. Interesting footwear, Dan thought. There were two voices coming from inside the apartment. At first he thought he could make out a few words, something about “today and yesterday,” but then he realized they were speaking Tagalog.

  Marietta answered his knock. Her eyes betrayed fear on seeing him, but her defiance was well in place.

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “No, you don’t, but I could talk really loudly right here,” Dan said. “If you’d like me to let your neighbours know about Jeremy’s kidnapping, that is.”

  Her eyes flitted up and down the hallway. Ramón came up behind her.

  “You need to leave us alone,” he said. “We don’t want trouble.”

  “I think you may already be in plenty of trouble,” Dan said. He held up the rosary, making sure the initials were visible.

  Marietta’s hand flew to her mouth. “It’s not mine!”

  “Then why do you look so frightened?”

  “I’m calling the super,” Ramón said.

  “No, wait.” Marietta reached out and took it in her fingers. “Where did you get this?”

  “I found it in a cave on the Bruce Peninsula,” Dan said, retrieving it and wrapping it back in the handkerchief.

  “Who cares?” Ramón demanded. “Even if it’s Marietta’s, what does it mean?”

  “It means that one or both of you were near where Jeremy Bentham disappeared.”

  Marietta shook her head repeatedly. “It’s not true!”

  For a moment Dan thought she might collapse.

  “You’re crazy. We didn’t hurt that little boy,” Ramón said, putting his arm around her. “Marietta loves him.”

  For once Dan detected a spark of
anger in this quiet young man who had so far been docile and subservient.

  “What happened to your job, Ramón?”

  “My job at the Tile Factory? I got fired.”

  “Why? Did you do something wrong?”

  Ramón glared at Dan without speaking.

  “I had a chat with your boss. He seems to think you were one of his best employees until your attitude changed recently. He said you acted as though you wanted to be fired. Now why is that, if you’re so poor? Are you coming into some money, Ramón?”

  All his bravado vanished. His mouth quivered. “Please go away and leave us alone. We can’t tell you anything.”

  “Please!” Marietta said.

  “I’ll go away,” Dan told him. “But the police will come back to ask the same questions. I don’t think that call to your sister in Manila is going to count for very much.”

  The door closed on Marietta’s frightened expression. Dan almost felt sorry for them.

  Nick sat on the far end of the couch, looking out his window to the lake where the afternoon sun spotlit a bevy of sailboats tilting their way around Toronto Island. He was quietly fuming. It seemed to be the theme for the day. Dan had just admitted that, in effect, he was tampering with evidence to a crime.

  “It’s a grey area. I didn’t lie. I just decided not to hand it over to the local police at the time. They can have it now that I’m done with it.”

  “I don’t like this one bit,” Nick said.

  Over the past year, Dan had learned a little of his partner’s views on life. When asked why he became a cop, Nick had replied that it beat laying bricks. That was when Dan gave up trying to outguess him. But one thing he knew for sure — Nick was serious about police work and upholding the law.

  “Technically I’m not tampering,” Dan said calmly. “I found something and I brought it in. I’m giving it to you, an officer of the law.”

  Nick’s face was pure disgust. “What the hell am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Bring it to your superiors.”

  “You should have left it there and told the local cops,” Nick said.

  “And what if some happy-go-lucky cave explorer had come along and pocketed it in the meantime? Then there would have been nothing for them to find. Look — it was a lucky strike on my part. I didn’t know it was evidence until I brought it out into the daylight and saw the initials, but now at least we know it is. So ultimately I’ve done someone a favour by doing their job for them.”

  “Is this what being a private dick means to you? To run a countermand operation to official police investigations?”

  “What would you have done in my place?” Dan stared him down. “I mean, if you weren’t an officer of the law. Would you have just left it there?”

  Nick shrugged. “Probably not. But I would have given it to someone who worked for a law enforcement agency up on the Bruce rather than bring it back here.”

  “Why?”

  Nick’s face screwed up in exasperation. “Because they’re in charge!”

  “Well, they missed their chance. So I’m giving it to you and you’re going to give it to them. I saved them the delivery charge.”

  “This is nuts.”

  “Talk to Lydia. She’s a smart cookie.”

  Dan waited as Nick had a brief conversation with his boss. He hung up his phone and turned back with a shrug.

  “She says, ‘Good catch.’” Dan started to speak, but Nick cut him off. “Don’t get smug on me. It will still piss me off. I’m not going to support vigilante operations.”

  Dan waited till Nick’s temper abated.

  “That’s not what I am, and you know it. I’ve helped the police before. Consider me an extra pair of eyes. I’m not trying to make the police look bad. I want what’s best for my clients. Just trust that I will always play fair with you too.”

  “You’re exasperating, you know?”

  “Ked says the same thing.” Dan cocked his head. “Come to think of it, I say the same thing about him. Could be a pattern there.”

  “Yeah, I’ll say.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad to know Lydia supports me.” He winked. “If you feel the need to apologize, I’d be happy to be taken out for supper.”

  Nick managed a smile.

  Ted greeted them at the café door like an innkeeper welcoming a pair of preferred travellers. “My two favourite customers,” he said, beckoning them to their usual table.

  “I bet you say that to all the boys,” Nick joked, already in a better mood.

  “Sadly, no. I wish even half of them were worth the effort.” He smiled. “Get comfortable and I’ll be back with a couple of menus. We’ve got some really good specials today. Anything to drink?”

  “Soda and lime,” Dan said.

  “Ditto,” said Nick.

  “You got it.”

  It was early. The place was nearly empty. Ted returned with drinks and menus. When he began reciting the house specials, Dan put up a hand.

  “Why don’t you tell us what we’re having?”

  “Want me to surprise you?”

  “Sounds good,” Nick said.

  Ted gathered up the menus and headed back to the kitchen. When he’d gone, Nick reached across the table and gripped Dan’s wrists.

  “Are you taking my temperature?” Dan asked.

  “Your blood pressure. It’s cool and calm, as always.” Nick held on tightly. “You’re a hard man to read, but I’m getting to know the signs.”

  Dan looked down at Nick’s fingers. “If I didn’t know you better, I might think this was a lie-detector test.”

  “It is. So be careful what you say next.” Nick cocked his head. “First question: do you love me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Evasive, but correct. I do know you do. You even texted me a love note while you were away. It was short, but very welcome even though you forgot the ‘undying, forever and ever’ part. We can work on that.” He smiled. “Now let’s try a harder question. These two kids — Marietta and Ramón — do you think they’re the kidnappers?”

  “Ah — I knew this was a trick.”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I could make a case for them on the evidence as it stands,” Dan said. “It’s up to your guys to do a DNA sweep of that cave and see if they were there.”

  “I need a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ That’s how polygraphs work. My interpretation is that you think they might not be.”

  “I don’t think anything. For now, I know two things. First, the nanny was fired after money and jewellery went missing from the home. There’s your potential motive. Second, a rosary with her initials was found in a suspicious location. There’s your evidence. But it’s circumstantial. I still need to know what a DNA search turns up in the cave, then I might think something, one way or another.”

  Nick’s eyes held Dan’s. “You’re being unusually vague on this.”

  “Not really. I’m normally undecided until I know things for sure. I learned a long time ago not to make assumptions that could end in a prison sentence for an innocent person.”

  “I can’t argue with that. Do you mind at least telling me who your other suspects are?”

  Dan shook his head. “I don’t have suspects. I have leads. I follow them up and see where they go.”

  “Okay, smart guy. Then what other leads are you currently following or looking into?”

  “Janice’s husband, Dennis Braithwaite, for one. He spent a lot of money on fertility clinics, only to discover the boy wasn’t his son. After the fact, that is, because Janice lied. He also just found out that the kid is autistic and it’s costing her a lot of money. Not content with the normal lawsuit-type revenge, he refused to include Jeremy on his insurance. He and Janice are still legally married, so he could easily have adopted the boy and claimed him on compassionate grounds. But he wanted to make them suffer.”

  “Sounds like a prick. I’ll make sure Lydia takes a closer look at him. Anyone else?”r />
  “Didn’t they give you guys the same list of names they gave me?”

  “I’m sure they did, but I have to say your insight is proving a tad more accurate. I’d like to tell Lydia I’ve done due diligence on my end, and that includes probing your observations as the guy who found the first piece of tangible evidence in the case.”

  “The first as in the only piece of evidence?”

  “As in the only. That’s right. The guys up north haven’t come up with a thing. As far as they’re concerned, this kid vanished into thin air.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Exactly.” Nick released Dan’s wrists just as Ted came back with a basket of bread.

  “I like the lovey-dovey stuff,” Ted said, grinning.

  “I was being interrogated,” Dan said.

  “That’s always fun too.” He set the bread on the table. “I’ve got a couple of ace specials coming up for you guys in a few minutes.”

  “Tedster, we are everlastingly grateful,” Nick said.

  “No prob.” Ted grinned. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a pretty cool cop?”

  “Not often enough, but thanks for the compliment. How often do you get told you’re a top-notch waiter?”

  “Yeah, just about never.”

  “Well, you are. So thanks for that too.”

  Ted retreated. Dan eyed Nick over his soda. “A pretty cool cop, eh?”

  Nick shrugged. “You gotta take compliments where you find them.” He waited. “So who else?”

  “The surrogate mother needs a closer look. She’s a meth-head who wants people to believe she’s pregnant again.”

  “But she’s not?”

  “No. But she seemed worried about some kid. She said something terrible happened to him.”

  “Not Jeremy?”

  “I don’t think so. She’s on probation after a bank robbery she committed while high, but the judge was lenient.”

  “It happens,” Nick said. “Especially if they think it won’t happen again. Who else is there?”

  “There’s also the mysterious older woman who keeps showing up. Ashley got a good look at her this time. She can’t say for sure if it’s her mother. One thing is clear, she never wants to see her again.”