by Rick Blechta
“How is that fair?” she shot right back.
“I didn’t say anything about fairness, my dear. First of all, I’m not ready to go to sleep, and you were starting to doze off a moment ago. Besides, do you want me to get into bed with you?”
Her eyes got big, and the years slid away from her face. It was very obvious that in her head, Shannon was seventeen again, and her rock star heartthrob was about to make a woman of her. I had experienced that sort of thing before back in the day, and I’d always resisted. Seeing it in her eyes that snowy evening so many years later made it much easier to resist temptation.
“I thought not,” I said softly. “I’ll tell you what, though: if I get uncomfortable in this chair, I’ll come over and lie on top of the covers. Take it or leave it.”
She nodded, then lay down in bed and rolled on her side with her back to me. “Good night, Michael.” Within a couple of minutes, she had dozed off.
I hoped her rock star heartthrob hadn’t proved too big a disappointment.
***
Shannon woke up in the late hours of the night, disturbed by a movement on the bed next to her.
Michael had been as good as his word and was lying on the bed, fully clothed and on top of the covers. He seemed to be in a very uneasy sleep.
What in God’s name had she been thinking earlier in the evening? Had her brain deteriorated so much that she’d been actually considering what she knew would have been a very, very stupid thing to do?
Shannon remembered back to slumber parties where she and her friends had daringly talked about what they’d do if they ever caught their favourite movie star or musician alone. It had all been silly, totally unrealistic both in form and content, but it had also been been quite exciting. Surely she’d moved past that! Still...if she were being completely truthful with herself, she couldn’t help admitting there was just a twinge of disappointment at how the evening had ended.
Michael was different from any person she’d ever met. He didn’t act anything like what she would have expected. Now that she’d gotten to know him a bit, he seemed more like—she stopped to think—a university professor or something. That was it. Michael Quicksilver was an intellectual. But every now and then, the rock star would peek out, as it had the other day when she’d caught him practising.
He twitched again and moaned softly. She wondered if he was ill. If not, he was enduring a very powerful, unpleasant dream.
She toyed with the idea of waking him up, but hesitated, remembering that he said he never slept well. From the dark circles under his eyes and the way he’d sometimes sag tiredly when he thought no one was looking, she believed him.
Getting up gingerly, she padded off to the bathroom, shutting the door quietly. She picked up her watch from the counter. Almost six o’clock. Maybe the roads would be plowed enough that she could get home. Traffic would still probably be light, especially if schools were closed—something Little Robbie had certainly been praying for.
She washed her face and quietly left the bathroom. Peeking through the edge of the curtain, she could see that the snowfall had slowed, but far below, Avenue Road looked pretty treacherous, and the sidewalks were knee-deep. The 401 would be in better shape, but Shannon was concerned about the back roads she’d have to travel to get home. Even with four-wheel drive, that wasn’t something to be undertaken lightly. The previous winter, she’d misjudged where the side of the road was after one bad snow storm, and almost rolled the SUV into a ditch.
Not wanting to disturb Michael by turning on the TV , she crawled back into bed but moved her pillows so she could sit up. She had a bit of thinking to do.
Some of it had to do with his case. It had become obvious the previous evening that things must come to a head. Quite clearly, life couldn’t go on like this for Michael. Sooner or later the bad guys would run him to ground, and the outcome would not be good for him.
He was just an unwitting pawn in a larger game. He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the hands of a person like this Regina/Genevieve/Julia/whatever-the-hell-her-name-actually-was, he’d been an easy mark. He wasn’t the first, and he wouldn’t be the last. Women like her preyed on gullible men. That hood’s nephew Angelo, the boyfriend who’d taken the fall for the drug heist, Michael... Shannon was certain the list of men started much farther back.
The key to resolving the situation hinged on finding her.
To be honest, she fascinated Shannon, and the detective longed to talk to her, find out what made her tick. “What does it feel like to actually live the way the way you do?” would be her first question.
Her inner discussion was disturbed by Michael, who was sweating profusely, and had begun to mumble and groan in his sleep. Most of the words were too low to catch, but one phrase came through quite clearly, “We’re making a big mistake!”
Seeing his increasing distress, she decided to wake him. “Michael... Michael... You’re having a bad dream.” Reaching out, she touched his face the way she had often touched her children’s when they were upset after a nightmare.
She’d meant it to be gentle. His response was anything but a gentle wakening.
His eyes flew open, and his expression was wild as his hand closed on her wrist like a vice, yanking her hand away from his face. “Don’t touch me! Stay away!” As he came further out of his dream, his expression changed to one of confusion. “Shannon?”
Shannon had shrunk away from him. Her shock at his response must have shown on her face.
Michael groaned, then said, “I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have seen that.”
“Seen what? What’s wrong?” He looked at her for a moment, then got up off the bed, went into the bathroom and shut the door. He didn’t come out again for fifteen minutes.
***
Shannon was disgusted she couldn’t get home right away. She’d hardly seen the kids in the past few days, and knew her mom could use a break. When they’d spoken on the phone before she’d left Michael’s hotel room, she’d heard Rachel and Robbie going at it hammer and tongs in the background. Rachel had met her mom’s request to clean her room with stony silence.
Probably still mad about the slap on her face, Shannon thought as she crawled north on the Don Valley, and immediately felt ashamed all over again.
It was after nine when she arrived at the office, and Janet, her receptionist, wasn’t there yet. Not surprising, but she was probably on her way, because she would have called Shannon’s cell otherwise.
If she were lucky, today would be a quiet one in the office. Michael’s situation had been taking up far too much of her time lately, and a number of other jobs had slid. Her two part-time operatives had picked up the slack admirably, but there were reports that needed to be written up, calls to attorneys who had cases coming to trial, etc, etc.
But first she had to get the image of the girl, the break-in footage and the fingerprints she’d lifted from Michael’s piano the previous evening off to the Scottish police to see if they could make some headway where she hadn’t been able to.
It was about time Michael caught a break.
***
I got rid of Shannon as quickly as I decently could. Once the door had closed behind her, it had taken every ounce of self-control not to tryto punch a hole through the wall.
The dream that she’d woken me from earlier had been my worst ever. The whole thing had been grotesquely twisted up with what was presently going on in my life. The man who’d opened the door to Rolly’s room had been the big goon from Brum. The worst part had been the girl lying in the bathroom. It hadn’t been the same face that had been seared into my memory for all those years. It was slowly morphing into something else, something I knew I didn’t want to see.
That would have been bad enough, but to wake up and know that Shannon had seen me in the grip of this terrible dream was more than I could bear. Through all the years of therapy, I’d had to make up stories about the dream, and somehow they always fell short of the horror of w
hat had actually happened. The therapists had never understood why I was so overwrought. After that, I had just bottled it up, kept to myself as much as I could, and tried to get on with my life.
Deciding it was high time I called the shop to find out what was going on, I picked up my cell. There were several messages. The first was from the front desk of the building I lived in.
Joe, the daytime security man, picked up. “Oh, Mr Q. Thanks for calling back.”
“About what?”
“Well, Mr. Trembath who lives down the hall from you heard sounds coming from your apartment late last night.”
“What kinds of sounds?”
“He said it sounded like you were moving furniture. You know, rearranging your apartment. He complained to me about it this morning as he was leaving. I asked the night guy if he knew anything about it. He tells me no.”
“Last night I didn’t make it home.”
“Really? Well, I’ve been up to your floor, and your door looks okay. No marks, and it’s still locked. Want me to call the cops?”
“No. I’ll come down there to see if everything is all right.”
“Great, Mr. Q. If I’m not at the desk, I’ll be outside clearing some of this frigging snow!”
As I put on my coat, I seriously wondered whether it was worth going down there. I bloody well knew what I was likely to find.
Eighteen
Infinitely depressed, I was standing in the hallway of my apartment when my cell phone rang. Shannon.
“Where are you?”
“My apartment,” I answered.
“I just got here. Old Joe at the front desk called my cell.”
“What the hell are you doing there?” she asked sharply. Thinking her tone indicated I was about to get a ticking off on the dangers of doing something so rash, I snarled back at her, “Looks as if we really pissed them off last night!”
“What do you mean?”
“You know my gold and platinum awards? Every single one of them: destroyed, stepped on, smashed into a million pieces! Other things got smashed, too.”
“Oh, Michael!”
“Serves me right for being so smug. After what that bloody asshole did to my car, we should have expected something like this.”
She was silent for a long time, and if it weren’t for the background noise, I would have thought the connection had gone dead.
“You’re right, Michael. I haven’t been doing a very good job.”
“That’s not why I said it! I knew what I was up against. He is an animal. You haven’t seen him up close and personal.” I leaned against the wall and rubbed a hand over my face. “I’ve been a bloody idiot!”
“Michael, have you checked out your apartment thoroughly? Is anything missing? Anything else smashed?”
“My computer was taken, but that’s all I can see. Those awards were smashed to teach me a lesson. That’s three times the bastard has done this to me.”
Shannon’s voice got suddenly soft and very tense. “Michael, are you alone in the apartment?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“They didn’t smash those awards to teach you a lesson. They wanted to smoke you out and knew that was the best way. I think they’ve proven by now they know how to pick your lock pretty easily. Go over to the door and slip on that deadbolt. Now.”
I hurried down the hall. “Done!”
“I’m on my other line right now, dialing the police. Do not open your door until they get there and tell you that I sent them. I don’t care how real they look, if they don’t mention my name, you do not open that door! I’ll be on my way as soon as they are.”
I was still by the door when I heard it: somebody in the hall. There was scratching around the lock, then the door handle went down.
My front door is metal and thick, but I could make out whispering through it. I raised my eyes to the heavens, thanking Shannon’s quick wit and the lucky chance that had led her to call when she did, otherwise, I’d have been dead meat.
Somebody pushed hard on the door. I braced against it, just in case the deadbolt had to take more force than it was made for. It was a good thing I had. The whole door shook, and I was certain two bodies had just bounced off. More talking in the hall, really angry now. I began to worry that they might try some shots at the door, and I wasn’t sure if the thick metal was enough to stop bullets.
Finally there was silence, but I was far too shaken—and smart—to even consider checking out the hallway. I just stood there waiting for the cavalry to arrive.
They didn’t take long: about ten minutes—pretty good considering the weather. Shannon must still have had some clout with her former employers. Since I didn’t know how much she’d told them, and figured the time was right anyway, I just told the two constables the whole story. They called for backup, and one went to check outside for anyone watching the place.
Shannon arrived shortly after two detectives did, and even though there was “hail fellow, well met” all around, she still got the third degree. She’d come prepared with all her files and laptop and made them true believers in a very short time.
I sat at the far side of the room on the piano bench, contemplating how quickly one’s life can go right into the dustbin.
She confirmed that the prints on my piano weren’t from either of the two local bad boys, and weren’t mine or hers, either.
“And you’re certain no one else has been in your apartment who might have touched your piano?” one of the detectives asked.
I shook my head. Shannon looked at the prints again. She’d transferred them to her computer. “These are definitely made by a person with huge hands.”
“So what do we do now?”
Eventually, we all left for the police station, me with the boys in blue and Shannon following in her vehicle. There, I had to sign some papers, and they asked me if I wanted protection.
“You might seriously consider leaving town for a while,” one of the detectives said.
“I don’t think it would do any good. They’ve already followed me from the UK . The only thing I ask is to keep this out of the press. Can you do that?”
“We’ll try.”
We decided to have the cops drive me back to the hotel. I went in the main door and immediately out the door leading to Yorkville where Shannon was again waiting to pick me up.
“I’ll come back later, get your clothes and check you out.”
“Where are we going now?” I asked. Perhaps it was the aftershock of how close I’d come to getting nabbed, but all I wanted to do at that point was sleep.
“I’m taking you out to the farm. They won’t find you there.”
“Can’t they just trace the plates on the SUV ?”
“Nope. It’s registered to the business.” We were stopped at a light, and Shannon reached across to pat my hand. “Remember when I said that I knew of a place you could practise? Well, my ex set up an exercise area in our barn. We maybe use a third of the space for our equipment. There’s tons of room for those keyboards of yours. You can spend your days practising and running your business from your cell phone. We can make this work!”
“Do I detect just a modicum of guilt involved with this offer?”
She looked down briefly. “No. Well...yes. I should have worked harder to convince you that you needed to go to the police with your problem. That’s where I’ve really failed you.”
We were now swinging around Queen’s Park, heading south to the Gardiner. “What about all the evidence you gave to the cops? Think they’ll come up with anything?”
“Maybe. At least they know who’s involved. I also fired off everything to that detective in Scotland. We’ll see what he comes up with. If we’re really lucky, then they will have found matching prints in the house where your friend was murdered.”
“Remind me to keep my fingers crossed,” I responded dryly, but she took no notice.
It was all a rather good plan. Too bad it didn’t work out.
***
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br /> Next morning, Shannon tapped on my bedroom door shortly after eight. “You awake?”
“Actually, I was asleep,” I called out.
“You told me you hardly ever sleep,” she answered playfully.
“I got to sleep again at 6:12, to be precise.” Pulling myself to a sitting posture, I leaned back against the headboard. “Come on in.”
She brought in a steaming mug of tea.
“So now that I’m awake, what can I do for you?”
“I just got off the phone with your DCI Campbell.”
“And?”
“He has someone working on the fingerprints I sent him. They haven’t made a match with anything at the murder scene, but we weren’t really counting on that, were we? Anyway, he seemed very interested in what’s been happening here in Toronto and what I was able to find out in New York and Montreal. I think they may send someone over, maybe even him. Reading between the lines, it’s my feeling that they’re not making much progress in their investigation. The people who did your poor friend in are not amateurs.”
“Don’t go out of your way to fill me with confidence.”
“I’m just trying to be realistic. But also remember this: most crooks are busted because they make dumb mistakes. Maybe deciding to touch your piano will turn out to be one of those.”
“We can only hope,” I sighed. “How are you fixed for my equipment to be delivered this morning?”
“It should be fine. I got the kids to help me clean up the barn after you went to bed last night, and boy, were they thrilled—not! You don’t have to go help them move it from the shop, do you?”
“Not when I’ve been warned against going within a league of my business.”
“Do I detect a certain lack of approbation on your part?”
“Lordy, woman! It’s far too early in the day for big words!”
Shannon laughed. “Look, it’s for your own damn good.” She’d already left for the office by the time I’d showered and shaved. Going downstairs, I found her mum in the kitchen, taking two loaves of freshly baked bread out of the oven. It smelled heavenly, and I was immediately transported back to my own Gran’s kitchen. She had lived in Litchfield, and we would take the train out from Birmingham most Sundays, the day she baked the week’s bread. I hadn’t thought about that in years.