by Maia Ross
At the front door was a smiley older woman wearing a floral housedress and holding a plump beige pug. His tongue was hanging out of his mouth; it was hot outside today.
“Hi there,” I said. The hold music blasted into my ear. Someone had remade Bohemian Rhapsody as soft-rock techno, a mistake.
“Yes, and hello,” the woman said, an accent running through her words. She smiled all the way to her friendly sky-blue eyes. “I am Mrs. Sepp, your neighbour. We have waved to each other, I believe. Is Irma here?”
I wasn’t great with people in general and strangers in particular, so I took a moment to make sure I was smiling. I didn’t want to be rude to Irma’s neighbour. “We have, and I’m sorry, she’s in town.”
“Uh oh,” she said, glancing down at the dog, who was looking at me with interest. “The cats are ganging up on him again, and I need to go to the market. Do you know when she’ll be back?”
“She’s having lunch with some people about a fundraiser.”
“I see. Do you want to pet him?”
I still had R2 in my right hand, so I reached out with my left. The little guy sniffed it, then licked me. I smiled.
“Maybe you will take him?” Her voice rose hopefully.
“I’d love to, but I’m meeting Irma in town. I was going to leave in a few minutes.”
“Oh, I see.” She took a step back. The pug made a whining noise and reached a tiny paw out to me. “I’ll just take Mr. Pugglesworth to town with me, then. I can bring you as well if you would like?”
“Yeah, that’d be awesome. Thank you.” Getting a lift was definitely better than walking the forty-five-minute trek into town. She nodded sweetly and headed back to her place while I ran upstairs and grabbed my knapsack, stopping to text Max and tell him what I was doing.
Why don’t you just drop off the call and I’ll message you later? he replied. This is nuts.
Nah, I’ll hang on.
I locked up and met Mrs. Sepp in her driveway. When I went to open the passenger side door, she held up a hand and laughed. “I’m so sorry, that is Mr. P’s spot.”
“Of course it is,” I said, looking into the car. A child’s booster seat was firmly attached to the passenger area. “Sorry.”
We hopped in the car and Mrs. Sepp backed the car out of the driveway and into the street. It was a beige Caddy, circa 1972, and it was longer than my Toronto condo.
“So how do you know Irma?” Mrs. Sepp asked cheerily once we got going.
“I met her when I was a kid.”
“Oh, how interesting. Did you live here?”
“No, I came when I was sixteen for a summer intensive at the ballet school. Long time ago.” Twenty-seven years, in fact.
“How wonderful. We always go to recitals.”
I decided not to ask who “we” was.
“Irma has been involved in the ballet school for a long time,” she said.
“Yeah, she sat in on my audition.” I’d always been half suspicious Irma had funded my ballet scholarship, although I was sure she’d never admit it.
“So you are a dancer?”
“No,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. The truth was that at the end of that summer I’d traded a career in pointe shoes for a lifetime of ergonomic office chairs. I’d never danced again, no time for it. “Irma and I are both on the board of the ballet academy now. We reconnected a few years ago.”
“Wonderful,” she said, taking a corner so wide I was briefly afraid for my life.
Mr. P made a snuffling sound and pawed at the window. Mrs. Sepp said something soothing to him in another language before flipping on the radio. Mel Tormé blasted through the car as I glanced at my phone; the call with the bank had dropped. When I texted Max, he said he’d poke me when we had our answer from the bank. He tried to sound reassuring, but butterflies fluttered uncomfortably in my stomach anyway. Max had grown up in exactly the same place I had, the edge of everything, lying to teachers who wanted to know if things were all right at home, dodging the Children’s Aid Service. The only real home Max and I had was each other, ever since we met when I was sixteen and moved into the rooming house in downtown Toronto where he lived.
The car lurched forward, and it occurred to me that the woman driving the football-length Caddy was a complete stranger to me. I could only hope she wasn’t an axe murderer. I’d hate to be dismembered on my first real vacation.
Three—Irma
The little scoundrel popped off a round at me and I scooted behind a dumpster. I mean, honestly, some people just had no manners whatsoever.
After a few seconds, I peeked out, my heart pulsing in my chest. But the van had disappeared.
After cursing for longer than one really should in peacetime, I returned to the jewellery shop. The store was pandemonium, and the police were just arriving to secure the scene. I currently had an uneasy truce with the local force; I’d been great friends with the old chief, but he’d recently retired. His replacement, it had to be said, was not my biggest fan. But I knew how important timely intelligence was when a hooligan was on the lam.
“Irma,” Officer Matthew Jones said to me, his mouth quirking into a grin. Matty was in his mid-fifties but looked ten years younger and had red apple cheeks that were constantly plumped out in a smile.
“They got Scooter.” I shook my head, thinking. “Have you called the ferry master yet?” The ferry was the only way for a car—or a van commandeered by a thieving hoodlum—to get on and off the island.
He nodded. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“Of course, dear.” I sketched in the description for him, including the two measly license plate letters. “They shot off another bullet in the back alley.” I described the spot.
“I’m going to need you to come to the station for a statement.”
“No problem, dear.”
“Thanks, Irma. We still on for tennis next week?”
“Absolutely,” I said as he smiled and moved away. Outside the store, a few officers were re-directing foot traffic, making sure the looky-loos didn’t contaminate the scene and shielding the tourists. It was time for me to get back to my abandoned tea. This was probably just a run-of-the-mill robbery.
Unless...
I pushed the thought away. It was none of my business. I was sure there would be security video of the event, and surely the store was insured; they’d get their losses covered. That settled, I made my way past the store, making sure to stay outside the crime scene tape. It was a beautiful shop, elegant display cases, minimalist decor, and champagne for engagement ring shoppers. A broken bottle of Veuve lay on its side, which was just a waste.
The glass-topped counters inside the store were mostly barren. Here, like in the front window, the displays were empty, but still neat and orderly, which seemed odd. But property theft was not my area of expertise, and the police had everything well in hand. It was time to go.
“Irma!” Renée Deschamps, the store’s owner, was slumped on the sidewalk, and she was crying.
“You poor dear,” I said, crouching down beside her. “Are you all right?”
She looked at me with the same bewildered expression I’d seen on many victims’ faces: ashen, all the blood pooled in their feet, the feeling that the world wasn’t exactly what they thought it was. Because it wasn’t.
She clutched at my arm, her breath coming short and shallow. In her fifties, she was normally polished and sophisticated, with a figure she honed at the local barre studio, topped off by jewellery from her store. But right now she looked like a bird had nested in her hair, and she was barefoot. For a moment I wondered if someone had absconded with her Manolos too, but then I spied a pair of cherry red stilettos abandoned on the sidewalk in front of the store.
“Oh, Irma,” she muttered. “What’s going to happen to Sean?” She sobbed the last part out, but I had pretty extensive experience translating for the recently hysterical, so I caught most of it.
I’d almost forgotten Scooter’s real na
me. “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” I said. Mentally, I reviewed the last time I’d seen him. He lived above Charlotte’s garage and—I gasped. Charlotte. Scooter was her nephew, her late brother’s only child.
Thankfully, Renée didn’t notice. She gestured a bit wildly with her hands. “He had, like, zero experience.” She dabbed at her eyes. “But his uncle asked me for a favour so I—” Another sob, “—hired him.”
“It’s not your fault, dear,” I said, my arm around her shoulders. Then she cried all over my shirt while dread lodged itself in my chest. “What happened?”
A few shuddering breaths. “It was so fast. He was here for maybe...three minutes? Four? The store was full of people, and he came in, shot a few times into the ceiling.” She pointed at the holes. “He made Sean take everything out of the display cases. Why would he want to take Sean? He did what he was told!”
I held her hand and turned the same question around in my head until she stopped crying. I knew almost nothing about property theft, but I couldn’t imagine that jewel thieves were known for murdering their victims. If they did, there’d be no one left to steal from.
But it bothered me, the robber taking Scooter.
When the police wanted to question her further, I made my way back to the restaurant. Charlotte and Emily were still there, dawdling over drinks. I was almost sorry to see that Snookie was gone. I was fired up enough to give her a real run for her money.
“Car backfiring?” Charlotte said with a half-smile.
I looked from Emily to Charlotte. Then I put my hand on Charlotte’s arm. “I have some difficult news.” Her eyes widened but the rest of her face stayed calm. She had grown up under the umbrella of an old island family and understood the importance of keeping up the family image in public. “Maybe we should go inside...”
She grasped her handbag and squeezed it as subtly as a lady of her station could without succumbing to her emotions. Then she looked me right in the eye.
“Charlotte. It’s Sean. Scooter.” I touched her arm. “There’s been a robbery at Renée’s. And…well, the bandit took Scooter with him.”
Emily gasped, her hand over her mouth. All I could see was wide eyes and purple hair. I returned my gaze to Charlotte. “I’m so sorry.”
She looked a little nonplussed, which happened sometimes. Shock, denial, disbelief. Standard stuff. “You must be mistaken, Irma. Scooter isn’t working today.”
I pressed my lips together.
“He’s not working today,” she repeated, but she sounded less certain. “Are you…are you sure, Irma?”
I nodded. “I’m so sorry.”
“I see. Anything else?”
“Well... That’s it, really.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said with a deep exhale. She glanced from me to Emily, then back again. “So when will you get started?”
I blinked. “Started with what?”
“Finding him.”
I put my hand on her arm again. “The police are already there. They’ll take care of everything.”
The purse squished under Charlotte’s hands as she gave me a meaningful look, one that reminded me of all the favours she’d done for me over the years, the connective tissues that ran from my family to hers. “Chef Phillipe is making Scooter’s favourite meal for dinner tonight. So I’ll be needing him back by then.”
I examined her to suss out whether she was in shock or delusional. It was neither. She was serious. That purse had been accordioned, and she didn’t even seem to care.
“And, really, we’re not going to allow people to run around kidnapping Van Oots. That would just not be proper.”
“Uh, Charlotte,” I started. Then I inclined my head at our other table mate.
“Emily,” Charlotte said crisply, “Irma and I are going to have a little chat. Do you mind—”
“I can help,” Emily said enthusiastically.
I frowned. Why was an event planner so eager to involve herself in an employer’s private business? You’re retired, Irma. Knock it off, the good Irma whispered. I’d always had a good Irma and a bad Irma sitting on my shoulders. Recently, good Irma had become even bossier.
“Thank you so much, but I’m quite well,” Charlotte said kindly.
“Of course,” the young party planner said before taking her leave of us.
“Charlotte,” I said, once I was sure Emily was gone and no one else could hear us, “I don’t know a thing about crimes of this nature. I would just be in the police’s way. We have to let them do their jobs. If civilians ran around interfering in police business the world would be nothing but chaos.”
“Well, I’m quite sure you know more than any of these uniformed whippersnappers. And how many times have you helped people on the island with their problems? Including myself.”
I held up a hand in protest. Charlotte was familiar with a sanitized version of my career but was somehow under the impression that I’d been some kind of vigilante. Like I was Jack Reacher in a girdle. “Those are just petty squabbles, Charlotte: a husband not paying child support, someone sticky-fingering a pair of musty candlesticks. And really, all I do is threaten them a little, and they always cough the goods right up. It isn’t even a challenge. But armed robbery and kidnapping is serious business. I have no backup here, no team, no tools, no intel at all. It’s simply not possible. I’m so sorry.”
“Mhhmph,” she said. “We are very proud of Scooter getting this job. He even has his own apartment in town now so he can be close to work. He’s finally starting to find himself. I can’t let anything happen to him.”
“Charlotte—”
“Irma,” she said, fixing me with her eyes. “Please?”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. Regret swirled inside of me, and I wondered if the look on Scooter’s face would haunt me like some of my other defeats. But I was a newly-minted civilian, and it was time to start acting like one.
But Charlotte was now focused on something else. She’d always been completely incapable of winking, for some strange reason. Her winks—when she attempted them—always manifested with her entire face scrunching up like a dried-up apple. Or a tiny epileptic fit. So she only winked on special occasions. Generally when she was up to something.
Like right now.
I tried to quell my unease when I saw her face scrunch up in my direction, but it was a challenge. She was a formidable woman. And something told me she wasn’t done trying to win this argument.
I got a car to take Charlotte home, winking and all. Then I popped by the station house to make a statement about the robbery before making my way down to the wharf that ran parallel to Main Street.
It was a lovely walk, the day a perfect early June tableau. I made sure no one was following me, as one does; checking behind me in the reflections from storefront windows, avoiding a few chokepoints, blending into the crowd. I spotted worker bees around Spa Lala, decorating the front of the shop with posters that sported tiny beavers on sailboats. The June regatta was just about to kick off, so decorations with bucktoothed beavers with pirate hats and sextants were about to explode all over town. I couldn’t wait.
I found my current houseguest, Violet Blackheart, on a bench in the shade, her bare toes in the sun, the rest of her tucked into a wedge of shade, her face in a computer like usual. At least she was getting some vitamin D, which was nice. Without more sunlight in her life, the poor thing was definitely going to turn into a vampire. I’d made it my mission to make sure that didn’t happen.
“What was all that noise?” she asked.
“Robbery, kidnapping, mayhem,” I said absently. The disappointed slump of Charlotte’s shoulders was going to stay with me for a while, I could tell.
“What?” Violet’s lovely amber eyes widened. She was forty-three, a hardcore nerdy girl, the owner of a Toronto tech startup. There was little she didn’t understand about computers, which was why she was clutching that electronic gizmo so tightly while her wavy brown hair blew in the wind. It was impossib
le to know what the rest of her looked like because she was always wearing baggy t-shirts and jeans, but I had to look up to talk to her, that I knew for sure.
“I just can’t figure out why he shot at me. I was unarmed, not a threat. Why—”
“What do you mean, unarmed? Why would you be armed? And who shot at you?”
“I chased the kidnapper a little. Not that much. But why didn’t he break in at night? He could have just picked the lock.”
Horror was splayed across Violet’s face. “Are you all right?”
I patted her arm. “I’m fine, dear.”
“Well, how hard is it to pick a lock if there’s no alarm system set?”
“Not very. And—”
“See, Irma, it’s those kinds of comments that I struggle with. How would you know something like that?”
“I’m just...you know, spitballing here. Anyway, the thief could have come in from the back entrance in the alleyway. In the middle of the night, nobody would have been there. He could have been in and out in ten minutes.”
“Maybe he was an amateur?”
“Maybe.” I fished around in my purse. Drat. “Violet, dear, may I please borrow your cellular telephone?”
She extracted it from a belt holster like she was palming a gun and adrenaline pulsed through me again as I called the ferry master. Since there were no bridges off the island I’d memorized his number years ago. “Asif,” I said after he’d answered the phone with his usual sunny cheer, “Any news about that van from the robbery?”
He chuckled. It wasn’t the first time I’d called him with this type of question, although I tried not to abuse his good nature. Thankfully, he thought I was just a nosy little old lady which, of course, I was, minus the old part. “The police called me about all that a while back, but I haven’t seen any white vans. No vans at all, actually.”
Of course, the hoodlum could have ditched the car and switched to another vehicle. “Any strangers?”
“None today. It’s been real dead for some reason. I think everybody came earlier in the week because the weather was so good.”