by Richard King
“I’m sorry. I sent the cheque. They’ll get it in a day or two. I should have called this afternoon. You won’t believe what I was doing.”
“OK, I’ll bite. What were you doing? Other than avoiding work, that is.”
“I was working on a murder case with my friend Gaston Lemieux. You know, the cop who reads Dickens.”
“Come on, a murder case? Couldn’t you just say that you wanted the day off? I wouldn’t have minded. Really. But a murder case. Do you really think I’m going to believe that? You’re a bookseller, not a private detective.”
“Jennifer, I discovered the body. The murder was at McGill, in the history department and you know the victim.”
“Me? Who?”
“Professor Hilliard. He orders, ordered I should say, a lot of books here.”
“Harold Hilliard was murdered? I did know him. I can’t believe it. I’ve never known anyone who was murdered before.”
“No. Me neither,” I agreed. “Did you ever talk with him? I quite liked him.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
Jennifer was one of the easiest people in the world to get along with so Hilliard must have had a pain-in-the-ass aspect to his personality that I never saw. Although I had certainly been hearing about it this morning. “Why not?”
“I suppose I should speak kindly of the dead but he was a lech. He was way older than me but he used to come on to me.”
“Really. Wow. I never knew.”
“I know,” she said. “I don’t tell you about every guy who comes on to me. But never mind that. Tell me about the murder. And don’t leave out any details. If you’re going to desert me for hours and hours the least you can do is let me share the fun vicariously.”
“When Gaston got to the scene, he asked me to help because, believe it or not, and this is the weird part, one of the clues is from the store.”
“This store?”
“Hilliard was lying on the floor, dead, and just try to guess what he was holding clutched in his fist?”
“Sam, be serious for a minute. How can I possibly know that?”
“He was holding one of our special order forms. Lemieux thinks it may be important, but we can’t figure out what it means. It almost got me into big trouble. First I discover the body and then the first clue points to me!”
“Gaston Lemieux thinks you’re capable of murder?” Jennifer asked incredulously.
“No, of course not. I was lucky he was there because another cop, one who doesn’t know me, might have been more suspicious. But the order form may have special significance. I want to check to see if there is anything about the order that will be helpful to the investigation.”
Jennifer got to a computer terminal before I did and asked, “Do you remember the name of the book? I’ll look up the order.”
“I have the order number,” I found it in my notes and read it aloud to her.
“Here it is,” she said from the computer. “Cambridge History of England, Volume 3, The Sixteenth Century. A pretty straightforward book order. Oh, wait a minute. This is unusual. The book wasn’t ordered by Hilliard, it was ordered for him. Jane Miller-More paid for it and left instructions to call Hilliard when it comes in.”
“She teaches in the history department too,” I said. “But I don’t see why Hilliard would use his last remaining strength to grab a book order form. If he was holding it when he was clubbed on the head he probably would have dropped it. Somehow he grabbed it as he was falling or just after he fell. But you can see why they wondered about me.”
“Why would you kill him if you went there to collect money?”
I told Jennifer the rest of the story, and when I got to the part about the missing laptop and how Gaston and I had wondered if anyone would really kill for a not-that-expensive computer, Jennifer, who is really a smart cookie, immediately interrupted, “Wouldn’t that depend on what was on the computer? Maybe Hilliard had something in a computer file they wanted to suppress.”
“We thought of that,” I replied loftily, although it was really Gaston, not me who made the connection.
Just then Lorraine, one of the two assistants, came in. Jennifer put her to work on the cash and tidying the displays at the front of the store. She then disappeared into the office. I followed, wondering if I dared tell her I was leaving again immediately, after my prolonged absence.
Jennifer was putting on a jacket, and putting a book into her large handbag. “I’m going out for lunch and a read,” she said. “It will help me get over the stress of having to run this place all by myself.”
“Why don’t I buy you lunch, as an apology?”
“Sam, you don’t have time for lunch. You have to investigate a murder.”
She flipped her hair at me as she turned and walked out the door. I couldn’t see her face but I knew she was smiling at having got the last word.
There was a time when Montreal was the only city in Canada in which you could get a decent bagel or cappuccino (although not usually at the same place). The Montreal diaspora has now spread its culinary culture thoughout Canada in the same way that the European diaspora brought it to Montreal in the first place. The displaced Montrealer’s need for good cappuccino combined with the modern business practice of franchising everything into large chains has led to the creation of a hundreds of cappuccino bars across Canada. Second Cup is one of those franchise operations. Amazingly, their coffee is quite good and I’ve been known to spend time at one of their locations when I’m not at the Café Paillon or one of the other independent cafés I frequent.
After making sure that Lorraine and the other bookseller, Yvonne, were not going to be leaving the store for any more appointments or headaches, I headed over to the Second Cup on avenue du Collège, to see whether anyone there could tell me if Allan and Sarah had come in that morning, together or separately. When I walked in, there were two young staff members chatting behind the counter, both wearing the Second Cup uniform—a black polo shirt with black slacks and a black apron with the corporate logo on it. There weren’t many customers at the tables. It was too early for the coffee-break crowd from the offices nearby and too late for lunch, and of course the after-work people who don’t hang out in bars wouldn’t be there till much later.
I zigzagged around the café looking under tables and chairs as if I had lost something. I was able to give what I’m sure was a convincing performance, because I do have a tendency to misplace things, and have more than once had to search theatre aisles, buses, and classrooms for lost possessions. After a fruitless search for my imaginary missing papers, I approached the counter and the young woman, whose name badge identified her as Ellen, asked cheerily if she could help. Her male colleague league, Tom, stood at the espresso machine waiting for Ellen to call out my order so he could fill it.
“Actually, you can help me,” I told them. “But not with coffee.”
Tom must have thought that I was hitting on Ellen because he moved closer to her in a protective way. Ellen, more trusting than Tom, asked, “Tea?”
“I may have lost something,” I told them. “A large manila envelope full of term papers.”
Ellen clucked sympathetically and looked under the counter. “Nothing seems to have been turned in today,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
I pretended to be very disappointed, furrowing my brow and sighing, then, “Maybe you can help anyway,” I said, acting as if I’d just thought of something.
Ellen was all attention. It was clear that she was a Second Cup employee who took the company’s customer relations policy very much to heart. Tom, on the other hand, was beginning to look exasperated.
I played for sympathy, the absent-minded professor who is helpless in the real world. “You see, it wasn’t actually me who lost the envelope. It was one of my colleagues from the university. My teaching assistant” — I decided on the spur of the moment to go for broke and pretend to be an academic who was high enough on the totem pole to have a teaching assistant. I sure hop
ed Tom and Ellen didn’t ask for identification — “lost or misplaced the envelope. He said he would find it but I can’t really wait for him to get off his duff and do it. My students need their marks.” (I hoped that at least one of them was a student and would be impressed by my concern.) “He told me he met his girlfriend this morning for coffee and may have forgotten the papers in the café but then he ran off to a class without telling me what café he meant. It could have been here or the Paillon.”
“I wasn’t here this morning,” Tom said. “I started at noon.”
“I was here,” Ellen offered. “It’s a split shift day for me. What does your TA look like?”
I described Sarah and Allan as best I could, and suggested that they might be regular customers who stopped by at about the same time every morning.
“Oh yeah,” Ellen said. “I know who you mean. They’re students at McGill. I am too and sometimes I see them on campus. They’re always together.”
“You remember them, out of all your customers? You must have a very good memory,” I flattered.
Tom still seemed to be wondering why I was questioning Ellen with such interest. He had to leave us to wait on a customer, but I noticed he was keeping a beady eye on me as he ran the espresso machine.
“No, no,” Ellen was saying, “my memory is terrible, really, but there was something else about them, about him, that made me notice him.” She hesitated. She seemed embarrassed by the “something else.” My curiosity was definitely piqued. Did she have a crush on him, or what?
“What was that?”
“If it’s busy and he has to wait, he’ll read one of the newspapers.” She pointed to a rack of daily newspapers on a wall adjacent to the coffee bar. “Even when he’s with his girlfriend, which is most of the time, he’ll get involved in a newspaper and ignore her.”
I had yet to meet Allan Gutmacher but I had already formed an opinion of him as rude, politically unenlightened and self-centred. “And that made you remember him?” I prompted.
“Well, no.” Another embarrassed pause. “It’s kind of silly, but he, I think his name is Allan, sometimes takes things.”
“Takes things?” I asked. I was there to investigate a crime and already I had uncovered criminal activity. I had Gutmacher dead to rights — on sugar stealing. “What did he take?”
“The newspaper!” she blurted out. “Well, not the whole paper, just the section he was reading.”
“And what would that be?” I queried.
“Usually the editorial section of the National Post.”
I didn’t want her to get the impression I was grilling her, but I had to find out whether Allan and Sarah had been here this morning. I tried to think of a subtle way to phrase the question, and failed. “Did they come in this morning?”
“They usually do,” Ellen told me.
“But are you positive they came in together today?” I repeated. Really, my information-gathering technique needed work.
Ellen didn’t seem bothered. Her round, freckled face brightened. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“And do you remember if one of them, that is, Allan, was carrying an envelope? It would have been quite large.”
Ellen stopped to think. “Wait a minute, I’m wrong. They didn’t come in this morning. That is, not together. He came in first and waited a bit, for her, I suppose, then he bought two coffees and left. Later she came in and she also bought two coffees. I guess someone slept in or something. I didn’t see any envelope. He has a briefcase but he didn’t leave that here. I’d have noticed a briefcase.”
“Do they usually have their coffees here or do they buy them to go?” I asked.
“Oh, to go. They always buy them to go.”
“And you’re sure that he came in first?”
“Yes. Then her about half an hour later.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Obviously, he was here, but he must have left the students’ papers somewhere else.” I put on a glum expression.
Ellen said, “I’ll have another look.” She crouched down and looked under the counter again, doing a really thorough search for my missing papers. When she popped up again she had a sympathetic look on her face. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing back here.”
“I’ll bet he left them at home,” I said. “He may not have misplaced them at all. He could be just trying to get some extra time to mark them.” I pasted a smile on my face and looked at Ellen and said, “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”
So, I thought to myself as I turned to leave the café, Allan did have opportunity and perhaps a motive to commit murder. I would be able to bring Lemieux another suspect when I met him later. I was feeling so pleased with myself that I forgot to look where I was going and I tripped over a briefcase leaning against a chair near the door. To prevent myself from falling over I instinctively reached out to grab something for balance, and found myself clutching the leather-jacketed shoulder of the guy whose briefcase I had just kicked.
“Hey, buddy,” he exclaimed aggressively, pulling away from me and getting ready to defend himself.
“Sorry,” I said, embarrassed. “I didn’t see you. I was thinking about something. Sorry.”
I have a mortifying tendency to blush and I knew my face was probably a deep red by now. Oh, well, it all contributed to my fumbling professor act.
“OK, but watch where you’re going.”
He was sitting with a laptop computer open on the table. I had almost knocked him, and it, onto the floor. What the hell, I thought, maybe I literally stumbled on Hilliard’s missing computer. Then I felt foolish: there were laptops all over the place, how likely was it that this was the one that had been stolen?
“I’m glad I didn’t knock your computer over,” I said to the guy. “What kind is it?”
He looked at me for a minute trying to figure out what I was up to. First I almost knock him down and then I start poking my nose into his business. But pride of ownership won out. “It’s a Mac,” he said, looking pleased. “I just got it.” I was pretty sure that the secretary had said that Hilliard’s computer was a Toshiba.
“Expensive?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going in the hope that I might learn something of value.
“Not if you know where to shop,” he told me in a conspiratorial tone of voice. I wondered what that meant.
“Really? I’m kind of in the market for one myself, but they’re so expensive. Where did you buy it?” I didn’t know where the conversation was going, but I thought that I would play it out and see.
“Sometimes you can get a deal, if you know what I mean.”
I was beginning to understand. The guy had bought a hot computer. Maybe I wasn’t so far off the mark.
“Right,” I said joining in the conspiracy and sitting down in the chair next to him. “Maybe I could afford one if I got a ‘deal’.” I did my best to look sincere so that he would trust me with information.
“You a cop?” he asked in a low voice, almost a whisper.
I didn’t want to risk the two staff members hearing our conversation and blowing my cover so I whispered back, “No. I’m a bookseller.”
“Oh, well then,” he said. Obviously that explained why I would need to get things cheap. “I’ll tell you where I got it. But you didn’t hear it from me.”
“No problem.”
I sensed that my new friend enjoyed playing the part of a shrewd operator. He leaned over and said in a low voice, “Go down to the Brasserie Lachance. Do you know where it is? It’s on Peel. Look for a guy named Ronnie Pepper. Convince him you’re not a cop and he’ll do business with you.”
“How will I recognize him?”
“Think of a guy who never got past his Elvis years and you’ll spot him, no problem. And one more thing: his office hours are five to seven. No earlier, no later. Get it?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I’ll let you know how I make out.”
“No, you won’t,” he told me and winked. He actually winked. I played along
and tapped the side of my nose with my index finger.
“Right,” I said, and left the café. It was just about three o’clock. So I went back to the store to make amends to Jennifer by catching up on some paperwork and phone calls until it was time to leave to find Ronnie Pepper.
chapter seven
The Brasserie Lachance is on Peel Street on the west side of the block south of Ste-Catherine Street. It is an oasis of architecture in a desert of black aluminum-fronted fast food restaurants. The Brasse is situated in a 125-year-old two-storey red brick building that housed the Windsor Tavern during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. At some point as the city of Montreal grew up around it, the name was changed to the Peel Street Tavern. When the men-only taverns of Québec came to a legislated end, it became the Brasserie Lachance, either because the owner of the place was a M. Lachance, or because he had a sense of humour and this was his comment on the beer-serving business.
The brick of the building was maroon, almost black, with age and soot. The heavy wooden doors were slightly off alignment and you had to kind of lean into them to get them to swing open. You could still just barely make out the words “Windsor Tavern” in the tiles of the entryway floor. The interior of the Brasserie was finished in dark wood and mirrors. A century of smoking and drinking had helped the wood to age to a rich dark matte and to fade the mirrors.
I’m not much of a pub-crawler. I had only been to the Brasse a couple of times when I was a student. The overall atmosphere of the place when I knew it had been warm, friendly, and noisy. At that time it was popular with students and workers and a bunch of old guys who looked like they were born at around the time the building went up and who were rooted to its foundations.
Things had changed over the fifteen years since I had last been there. The old guys were still there but now they were surrounded by a mob of grey-business-suited men and women from the high-rise office towers along René-Lévesque Boulevard. The students and workers were gone. I had expected a near-empty beer joint, where Ronnie Pepper would be easy to spot. I didn’t know how I would find him in that crush.