by Ross Pennie
Still covering his sniffer with the Kleenex, he nodded vigorously and told her, “Sort of. Give me a minute, please. That’s all I need.”
Drake cut out after a few more bars, and Zol put the Kleenex in his suit jacket pocket. The shop was full of scents, a veritable jukebox of aromas that could force-feed his synesthesia for an entire day. He should have stayed outside and interviewed the woman on the odourless sidewalk.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I should be okay for a while.”
She looked at her watch. “Can we get on with the questions?”
“Sure, sorry. First off, we’re interested in the tulips you buy from Vander Zalm Nurseries in Virgil.” He’d phoned Vander Zalm’s this morning and confirmed she was a regular customer and had taken delivery of their tulips for the past two or three years.
“So, I get my tulips from Vander Zalm’s. How’s that a problem?”
“Do you ever visit the nursery or do the shipments get delivered directly here to the shop?”
“I haven’t been there for at least a couple of years. I checked the place out initially, liked what I saw, and negotiated a fair price for their flowers.”
“What about Blessica? Has she visited Vander Zalm’s anytime in the past few weeks?”
“Certainly not. It’s a wholesale nursery. Why would she go there?”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course.”
“Do you know if she’s made a trip to Niagara Region in the past couple of months? Perhaps the Falls? Niagara-on-the-Lake? The wine country?”
“She and her friends don’t drive, she doesn’t drink, and she’s pretty much a homebody. On her days off, she hangs with her chums in Hamilton and Mississauga. There would be no reason for her to go to Niagara.”
“You’re certain about that?”
Tiffany Fonseca looked him straight in the eye and showed no hint of deception. “Absolutely. She and her Filipino friends hang out at Square One. It’s easy for them to get there by bus, so that’s where they congregate.”
The mall was in Mississauga, an hour’s drive northeast of Hamilton. Niagara lay in the opposite direction. If Blessica Velasquez hadn’t acquired her Zika infection from a mosquito anywhere in Niagara, she had to have been bitten in this shop.
“How often does she come into this store?”
Tiffany’s face tightened. “Twice a day. With Marigold. I’m still breastfeeding.” She paused, overcome by her own dark thoughts. Her eyes flooded with tears. “Oh my God, are you saying my daughter is going to get polio too?”
“What can you tell me about a woman called Thuy Nguyen? Do you know her?”
“From the nail salon? Of course. Why?”
“She comes here often?”
“Three times a week, at least. Her salon may be tiny but she keeps it beautifully decorated. Thuy has an uncanny eye for arranging flowers. Don’t tell me she’s sick too?”
Zol looked toward the back of the shop without answering her question. “May I have a look around? And please keep the door locked until I’m finished.”
“Please, Doctor. How could anyone catch polio from my flowers? Did something contaminate them?”
Zol spent about fifteen minutes looking around the shop, which included a large cold room at the back. He saw a few ants and aphids crawling on various leaves and petals, and there were houseflies buzzing at the windows. He saw no mosquitoes, even among the tulips.
When he returned to the front counter, Tiffany was on the phone. He caught the tail end of her conversation: “And you’re a hundred percent sure she doesn’t have a fever? I’m telling you, Mother, be sure to call me if that sniffle gets even the tiniest bit worse.”
She hung up and turned to Zol. “Marigold’s got a runny nose. Just started this morning. Do you think it could be the start of . . .” She was soon sobbing so forcefully she couldn’t get another word out.
“No, ma’am,” Zol said. “Polio doesn’t start with a sniffle.” He opened his briefcase and handed her a Kleenex. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
When she’d stopped sobbing, she wiped her nose and gestured to the rear of the store. “What were you looking for back there?”
“Mosquitoes. Have you seen any in here lately?”
“At this time of year?”
“Well, with global warming, anything’s possible. Have you noticed any insect bites on your skin?”
She started to shake her head then stopped. Her eyes widened as she stashed the Kleenex into her apron pocket and thrust her left elbow toward his face. “This thing here, it’s itchy. Do you think it’s a bite?”
Above her elbow was a small, raised red papule. “How long has it been there?”
“A few days, I guess.” Her face darkened again. “Oh my God. Does it mean I’m gonna get polio? Please, Doctor, tell me I’m gonna be okay.”
He explained that every person affected by the current outbreak of polio had been infected with two viruses simultaneously. Even if she had been bitten by a virus-infected mosquito, the chance she would acquire the all-important second virus and come down with polio was minuscule.
“But Blessica got both viruses,” she said, “so why not me? She goes pretty much everywhere I go.”
The poor woman had a good point, and he had no answer that would make her feel better. “Let’s look at the places Blessica went to that you didn’t. Perhaps we should start with her days off.”
“I told you. She usually goes to Square One.”
“How often does she get a day off?”
“Once a week. Sundays.”
“And the evenings? Where does she go after the dishes are done and your daughter goes to bed?”
“To her room. She lives with us.”
“She never goes go out?”
“As I said, she’s a homebody.”
“What about hobbies, night courses, sports?”
“None of that.”
“Has she needed any time off during the day, lately? For an appointment of some sort?”
Tiffany started to dismiss his question with a wave of her hand but stopped and picked up her phone. She tapped the screen a few times and said, “I’m looking at my calendar. I had to get my mother to take Marigold a couple of times in April because Blessica did have two appointments.”
“What sort of appointments?”
“She was fussing about her teeth. Said she had a toothache. Her teeth looked perfectly fine to me but she insisted on seeing a dentist. It was extremely inconvenient because the dentist doesn’t work on Sundays. Mother had to give up her bridge game to take care of Marigold. Two weeks running.”
“When was that?”
She studied the calendar. “April 12th and 19th.”
Parvo-W was a brand new virus, so no one knew its incubation period. Those April dates, however, did seem to be in the right ballpark. “Blessica goes to your dentist?”
“Oh no. The Filipinos have their own. They wouldn’t trust anyone else. They call her Doctor Elle, and she charges them less than the going rate, which is a big plus.”
A dentist who charged less than the going rate and serviced an immigrant community of modest means — maybe he was getting somewhere. “She? What’s her full name and address?”
“I have no idea. She’s in Hamilton somewhere, I know that much.”
“The dentist must have given Blessica a receipt. Do you think you could find it?”
Tiffany shook her head. “Cash only. And never a receipt. My husband gave her an advance on next month’s earnings to cover it.”
Zol dipped into his briefcase and pulled out the page he kept with the names and demographic data of the outbreak’s now eleven cases. Tasha retained everything in her head. He needed the cheat sheet. “Does the name Emmalita Pina mean anything to you?”
&n
bsp; “Sure. She’s a friend of Blessica’s.”
“A nanny, I understand? From the Philippines?”
“Last I heard she was out of work. And couch-surfing.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t know what the real story is.” Tiffany paused as if uncertain how much she wanted to divulge. She ran a hand along her ponytail then said, “Blessica says Emmalita quit when the husband came on to her. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was fired for incompetence and made up the whole story, though. She’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
“Has she visited this shop lately?”
“Until Blessica got sick, she hung around quite a bit. I didn’t need two nannies, but if she was a help to Blessica, I didn’t mind. She asked for money to pay her dental bill, but I said no. If you give these people an inch they —”
Without thinking, Zol rubbed at a sting on his temple. A moment later, when he looked at his fingers they were wet with fresh blood. It couldn’t be a shaving cut — the spot was near his eye where whiskers didn’t grow.
Tiffany stepped back and made a face. “That looks like blood. What’s it from?”
He brought his hand closer to his face. There was more than blood on his fingers. He could make out the squashed remains of a delicate insect — legs, body, wings.
The damned thing had black and white stripes. Like a tiger.
Shit!
There was no way you could miss them.
Chapter 39
Jesse pulled his Mazda into a parking spot near Limeridge Mall’s south entrance. He’d been raised within cycling distance of this place in the part of Hamilton that everyone called the West Mountain — local code for the neighbourhood built in the 1960s above the rim of the Niagara Escarpment in the city’s southwest. As a teenager, he’d hung here with his friends. The place was so big that kids skipping school or chilling on weekends blended in with the serious shoppers, and no one in authority gave them grief. The shops were constantly undergoing renovation, and the rotunda had been redesigned a few times, but he knew the place well. From the entrance, he walked past the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fragrance and cosmetic counters on the ground floor and took the escalator to the mall’s administrative offices on the second. It was down the hall from the washroom in which he’d had his first kiss. (A bit disappointing; their second kiss was better.)
He showed the receptionist his Ontario Public Health ID card and asked to speak with Darryl Oxman’s boss. The woman’s eyes glistened as she said how sorry everyone was about Darryl. She introduced herself as Rose and asked Jesse to wait for a moment; she would see if Mr. Melville was available.
A minute later, Rose led Jesse from the counter to one of four offices in a pod behind it. She introduced him to Mr. Richard Melville, physical operations manager.
Jesse showed his card to the heavyset middle-aged man seated at a desk. Holding the card in his beefy fingers, he scrutinized it then said, “Health department? Again? What’ve we done wrong now? You guys never —”
“Nothing, sir. I’m not here to . . . um . . . point any fingers.”
“So, what do you want, son?”
“I’d like to learn as much about Darryl Oxman as you can tell me.”
“Darryl? What a tragedy. And it happened so fast. We certainly didn’t see it coming.” Mr. Melville picked up the ballpoint on his desk and clicked it several times. “Best janitor I ever had.” He stared at his desk for a while then wiped his nose with a tissue from his pocket. “Always on time. Never missed a speck of dirt. Of course, he could only work half days, four days a week. But still . . .”
Jesse did the math then asked, “Was there a reason he worked only sixteen hours a week?”
Mr. Melville looked up. “That was all he could take. Any more and his outbursts would start. Just harmless mutterings to no one in particular. But he had a loud voice at times, and it would upset the shoppers. There’d been complaints.”
“Why did he have them, these, uh, outbursts?”
“What’s wrong with you guys? Don’t you have his medical file?”
“We do know he collapsed at work . . . on . . .” Jesse tried to flip through his notes to find the date, but his hands were so sweaty that the pages stuck together.
“April 26th,” said Melville. “Right here in this office. I was the one who called the ambulance. Three days later, he was dead. April 29th.”
“It must have been a shock.”
“To us, you bet it was. But to his family . . .” Melville shook his head in disgust. “Well, I haven’t heard a peep out of any of them. They haven’t even called about the stuff in his locker.”
“He was estranged from his parents and siblings?”
“I guess that can happen when you’re on the spectrum.”
“Darryl was autistic?”
“Big time. But it never worried me. My son’s the same. Works for a computer gaming outfit. Half the guys on their payroll are on the spectrum.”
Jesse pictured a locker stuffed with Darryl Oxman’s belongings. It could be teeming with the sort of clues Dr. Zed had sent him hunting for. “I’ve been sent to trace Darryl’s movements during the three weeks prior to his collapse. We know he must have come in contact with whatever is causing the polio outbreak, but —”
“Needle in a haystack.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Good luck tracing Darryl’s movements. He was here like clockwork, eight a.m. to twelve, Mondays to Thursdays. Outside of that, it was anyone’s guess what he was up to.”
“He was secretive?”
“A loner. And liked it that way. Loved puzzles and codes. You know, DaVinci Code stuff. I never saw him write anything down in plain numbers and letters. Always in code. What do you call that? Ciphering?”
“Do you know if he kept a diary?”
“You kids these days are obsessed with your phones,” Melville said and eyed Jesse’s iPhone peeking from the front pocket of his pants. “But Darryl, he didn’t have one. He was scared of it being hacked. He probably had a diary of some sort. He was always well organized.”
“May I look in his locker?”
The man thought for a moment. “I don’t see why not.” He looked at his watch, and his eyes hardened. “Darryl collapsed two weeks ago tomorrow. If his family cared two hoots about his things, they’d have let us know by now.” His jowly face brightened slightly. “Tell you what. You seem like a nice kid. You sign for them, and I’ll let you take the entire contents away with you.”
Jesse’s phone buzzed in his pocket. The ring tone told him it was a voice call, so it couldn’t be a friend or his roommate, and it certainly wasn’t his sister.
He could feel himself blushing as he reached for his pocket. “Sorry, Mr. Melville. This might be my boss.”
“So, go ahead. Answer it. That’s what it’s for.”
Jesse whipped out the phone and saw the caller’s face on the screen. “Hey, Dr. Zed. How’s it going?”
“I don’t have much time, so listen carefully. I came across a promising lead a few minutes ago.”
If the lead was so promising, why did Dr. Zed sound upset? Was he angry? No, it sounded like nerves straining his voice, not anger. “You found something in the flower shop?”
“Have you talked to the young janitor’s boss?”
“I’m with him now.” Jesse looked up and caught Melville’s eye. “Mr. Melville is being incredibly helpful.”
“Ask him about your guy’s teeth. We need to know if he’d seen his dentist recently. If he had, I want the dates of his appointments.”
“Sure thing.”
“We think she’s running a clandestine operation. You know, without a license.”
“That sounds kinda weird, Dr. Zed.”
“Yeah, long story. Her office won’t be easy to find.”
“Her?”<
br />
“She goes by Dr. Elle.”
“Like the magazine, E-L-L-E? Or is it L as in Lima?”
“I suppose it could be either.” Dr. Zed coughed and cleared his throat. “You know? I never asked. But listen, Jesse, the name and address of that dentist are absolutely essential to our investigation. Without them, we’re cooked.”
Thanks for the pressure, Dr. Zed. It makes the job so much easier. “On it, Dr. Zed.”
“Call me as soon as you get anything. Even the smallest tidbit. See you later.”
“Sorry, son,” Mr. Melville said when Jesse asked about Darryl’s dentist. “Darryl never missed work for any reason. He arranged his appointments for the afternoons. And for Fridays, I guess. I never had to know about them.”
“Did he talk about having tooth problems?”
Melville thought for a moment then picked up the phone. “Rose, did Darryl ever talk to you about his teeth? Really, eh? That much pain? And then what? A root canal?” He caught Jesse’s eye. “Poor guy, I hate those. When did he have it, Rose?” Mr. Melville jotted her response on a pad by the phone. “And the name of the dentist? Oh . . . that’s too bad. You’re sure? And no address? I know, Rose, that was just like Darryl.”
“You followed that?” Melville said. “Rose says Darryl had a root canal that involved two or three appointments around the beginning of April.”
“Does she have any idea who the dentist was?”
“None.”
Chapter 40
By mid-morning, Natasha’s nausea had disappeared and she’d devoured a container of blueberry yogurt, a bowl of granola, and a piece of toast with peanut butter. She’d felt antsy sitting at home when there were so many unanswered questions surrounding the polio patients and their next of kin. But now, in the car on her way to Caledonian Medical Centre, she was struggling to blink away the tears and feeling like a fool for having them in the first place. She pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot on Mohawk East, put the car into park, and had a good cry.
When he’d called from his car, Zol had broken it to her as gently as he could. But damn it to hell! Why had he let himself get bitten by one of those freaking Aedes Tigers? She’d warned him to be generous with the DEET so that neither an Aedes albopictus nor the Zika virus would get him. He hadn’t been generous enough with the repellant. She pictured him in ICU with a big tube in his nose and that awful machine going hiss-cluck-hiss beside him.