by Rick Blechta
There was a god almighty row, the priest was brought in, the uncles and aunts too, and Gia had stood up to them all. She wanted to live her life her own way. Hard words were said on both sides, and it was then Gia found out her mother had committed suicide. That fact had been kept from her all those years.
“Wow!” I said.
“She shut down immediately,” she continued. “Maria told me everyone figured the strong words had finally gotten through. But about a month later, Gia packed a bag and just disappeared in the middle of the night.”
“She didn’t tell anyone what she was up to?”
“You mean like Maria?” Shannon asked. “Maria says no, but I’m not so sure. I think there must have been contact. How else would Gia have known that Mamma Vennuti was so sick? It seems likely two cousins who were as close as sisters might stay in touch.”
“When did all this happen?”
“Gia left when she was just eighteen, and she’s twenty-five now.”
“A lot can happen in seven years.”
“And with her, I’m sure it did.”
“So that’s it?”
“I think that’s a pretty good day’s work, don’t you?” Shannon laughed. “I’m certain I didn’t get everything I could from Maria. She got spooked when her mother came home. I know she works for the family business, a bakery in Broad Street.”
“Since when do Canadians say ‘in Broad Street’?” I interrupted.
“Since I got over here and cottoned on to how you Brits talk,” she shot back. “Anyway, I thought I’d go round to surprise her at lunchtime tomorrow. See what else I can shake loose. I’d also like a go at the mother.” She paused for a moment. “How was your day?”
Shannon might have actually wanted to hear what had happened at that first Neurotica rehearsal, but I didn’t really think that was what she was asking.
“What happened between us last night has been on my mind a lot,” I said.
“Mine too.”
“Shannon, I...”
“What?”
“I’m sorry I upset you this morning. I didn’t mean to.”
“You clammed up on me the way you always do.”
“So why did it make you so upset today?”
“Sorry to be blunt, Michael, but are you really that dense?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, Shannon, but—”
“But what?” she interrupted. “Was I just another girl in your bed, Michael? Is that it?”
“No, that’s not it at all!”
“What am I to you, then?”
That’s precisely the question that had been taking up a good part of my thoughts all that evening. It had been so long since I’d let anyone get within more than an arm’s length that I wasn’t sure if I knew how to do it any more. Right now I had the chance to bring this whole thing to a screeching halt. I felt confident Shannon wouldn’t go home, tail between her legs, that I could properly explain things to her. She’d come to the UK to do a job, and it wasn’t for me any longer. This was now about her family. I had no illusions about that. But I suddenly could not decide which way I wanted our relationship to go.
“Shannon, you hardly know anything about me, I mean... personally, you know?” Boy, that was a great start.
She wasn’t about to make this easy for me. “And I’m supposed to get to know you better when I ask you a perfectly simple question, and you just blow me off?”
“There are things about me I’ve never told anyone.” “And maybe that’s why you’ve been living your life like a damn hermit! How many friends do you have, Michael? When was the last time someone invited you to their place for dinner?”
The woman was relentless, and I could see what made her an effective investigator—but she was beginning to piss me off.
“Okay! You’ve made your point. Maybe I don’t live the most exciting life in the world. But I’m supposed to tell you all about me? That shoe can also be worn on the other foot! You’ve never told me why your marriage fell apart.”
“You never asked!”
“And if I had, would you have told me?”
“I...” Shannon sighed. “I suppose not. I would have felt it was none of your business.”
“That’s why I didn’t ask. It was none of my business.”
“Is it now?”
Shannon sounded unsure, almost vulnerable, and I hadn’t seen that in her before. Even when her ex had driven off with her kids, she had cried, yes, but it had been out of anger and despair and frustration. This reaction was very different.
“How did your marriage end?” I asked.
Twenty-Four
Shannon lay on her hotel bed in underwear and socks, one knee up and the other leg crossed over it, yakking on the phone, just as she had done countless times through high school and college. Many, many times the conversations had been about the man who was now at the other end of the line, and to her the experience seemed incredibly surreal. She was actually living out her teenage fantasy.
The subject matter of the present conversation added to that feeling of unreality: the death of her marriage. She was reluctant to talk about it with Michael, but she’d backed herself into a corner.
“If it wasn’t so pathetic, it might be funny,” Shannon said after taking a deep breath. “Anyway, O’Brien Investigates used to do a lot of marital stuff. I didn’t really enjoy it. Something felt, you know, sort of sleazy. Rob was all for it because it paid well and was generally easy. If someone knew we had gotten the goods on their spouse, they’d always pay well and promptly because they wanted that evidence.
“About eighteen months ago, this guy comes into the office late one Thursday, very agitated, as they usually are. He was convinced his wife was having an affair. I’d heard the same story far too often: a sudden, unexpected trip, New York in this instance. He wanted me to find out if she had anyone with her.
“I had a couple of things on the go, but agreed to handle it. Truth be told, I had ulterior motives. You see, my husband was in New York on an embezzlement case, so I decided that it might be really good for us to mix a little pleasure with business. We’d both been working our butts off, and some R&R would be just the thing. I was planning to surprise him.
“When I got to his hotel, he was out, which was not unexpected, so I left a message and went off to do a little work on my own case. The suspected wife was at the Plaza up near Columbus Circle. I went there, did a bit of snooping, got her room number and sat in the lobby waiting to see if she came or went and with whom. I’d snap a fewphotos and get on to finding out who her guy was. After a few boring hours of waiting, nothing.
“So I decided to scope out her room, see who I might flush out, since I was in a hurry to get the job completed and have the rest of the weekend free.
“Rob had come up with a really clever dodge: call the room, pretending to be the front desk, and tell the person that a visitor had arrived and was on their way up. If any hanky-panky was going on, you’d almost invariably flush out the other party.”
Her laugh was harsh and bitter. “It worked like a charm, except the person I flushed was my goddamned, peckerhead husband. You should have seen his face when he saw me waiting at the elevator.”
“That’s horrible,” Michael said. “What a way to find out something like that.”
“It’s no worse than coming home and catching them in the act, I suppose. That happened to a friend of mine, and she almost killed her husband—literally. I just looked Rob up and down, pointed out that his shirt was buttoned wrong and told him to take the next elevator. First plane back to Toronto, I was on it. And there you have the whole sorry story,” she sighed. “It only took a little more legwork to discover two other flings he’d had over the years. Those were the final nails in the coffin. One we might have gotten through, but three, no way!”
Shannon realized as the silence on the line deepened that it felt oddly good telling the story this way: emotionally detached. She’d never been able to manag
e it before.
“Are you still there, Michael?” she asked after several seconds.
“Yes. I really appreciate what you’ve just told me,” he finally said, “but what you want to hear from me in return is impossibly difficult to tell.”
“Michael, I’m uneasy about this, too.” She was going to say more
but stopped to think for a moment. “Perhaps it’s not wise to talk about it now, I mean over the phone.”
“When will you be back?”
“Maybe tomorrow evening. Who knows? It depends what I find out from the cousin tomorrow noon.”
“We’ll talk as soon as you get back.”
While the phone call ended without the little words of endearment that might be expected from newly-minted lovers, neither did it end with Michael kissing Shannon off. The whole experience filled her with an uneasy ambivalence.
Had he understood the importance to her of sharing things on equal terms? Or had his question about her return to Glasgow been asked in an effort to buy time?
If what she’d heard from Michael when he’d talked in his sleep had been the recounting of a real event, then this man was hiding a very bad thing indeed.
Looking at her watch, Shannon decided that her kids should be home from school by now. As she dialed she reflected that her life felt as if she had suddenly been put on roller skates at the top of a very steep hill, then been pushed. Perhaps speaking to the two most important people in her life would make her feel more grounded.
Perhaps not.
***
Next morning, after a very poor sleep, Shannon ventured down to the hotel’s health club to kill a couple of hours before going after Maria for more information. It had been too many days since she’d gotten any sort of decent exercise. Everything about her felt flabby and out of shape—including her brain.
Wearing a pair of baggy shorts and top with her hair done up in a ponytail, Shannon knew she didn’t look her best, but despite that, two younger men took an interest in her, providing a boost to her ego. Michael Quinn wasn’t the only game in town.
Maria came out of the bakery on Broad Street shortly after noon, completely unsuspecting and fortunately alone. Shannon was on her in a flash, coming up from behind and startling Maria when she put a hand on girl’s shoulder.
“I’d like to buy you lunch,” Shannon said in a cheery voice.
Maria turned white. “What are you doing here?”she finally managed to choke out.
“I told you I might need more information, and it turns out that I do. It was easy to find your family’s business, since I doubt there are too many places called Rota’s Bakery in this city.”
“Clever you,” the girl said sourly.
Shannon hooked her arm in Maria’s and started down the street, making it impossible for her to balk without creating a scene. “Now, where’s a good place to talk and have lunch? My treat!”
Maria chose a fancy place with an extensive menu and outrageous prices. Shannon got the feeling her choice was a bit of payback.
“So what do you want to know now?” Maria said after ordering lobster thermidor and a glass of the most expensive wine on the menu.
Michael’s going to kill me for this, Shannon thought, then said out loud, “We got interrupted by your mother coming home last night, just as we were getting to the interesting part.”
“What’s that?”
“You know where Gia is right now, don’t you?”
“I never!”
“Come on, Maria. I’m not that dumb. How could Gia have found out your grandmother was so ill? By your own admission, you were the only one in your family who’d ever been close to her, other than your grandmother, and she’d severed those ties.”
“Okay. I did know where she was at the time, but I don’t know where she is now.”
“I’ll lay my cards on the table than, shall I? There are some very nasty men after your cousin, and if they catch her, she’s going to die. You can take that to the bank. Don’t you want to help her?”
“I told you I don’t know where she is!”
Shannon looked across the table intently. “I think you do.”
When the food arrived, Maria seemed to have lost her appetite— except for the wine, which she drank down in two gulps. Another was ordered.
Shannon decided to turn up the heat a bit more. “These same people have gotten it in their heads that a friend of mine also knows where Gia is, which he doesn’t, and they’ve played very rough with him, me and my two children. You got that, missy? Two kids! If you know anything more about Gia, you better tell me, and you better do it now!”
As she picked up her fresh wine glass, Maria’s hand was trembling, the detective saw to her satisfaction.
She put her hand over Maria’s other one in a friendly gesture. “Come on, Maria, do the right thing. I know you want to help. This is for your cousin, too. She’s in a tight corner, and I can help her.”
A tear ran down Maria’s cheek, followed by another, then more. Soon she had her face covered by her napkin, sobbing quietly.
Giving the girl a little more time, Shannon got busy on her salad. Maria eventually returned the napkin to her lap and sat looking off into the distance. Shannon hoped she’d come to the right decision, but if all else failed, she’d play the “Don’t force me to go to the cops” card.
Finally, the girl cleared her throat. “All right, I do know where my cousin is, but I want you to know that I promised on that soul of my father that I wouldn’t tell anyone. When Gia ran off, she went to London to try her hand at acting. That led to New York and Hollywood, but nothing much ever came of it. She was in a couple of plays, got two bit parts in movies and even did a voiceover in an animated show on the telly. I think it was called ‘Happy Submarine’.”
That had been one of Robbie’s favourite shows a few years back, and Shannon wondered if she’d ever seen an episode with Gia’s voice on it. Maybe the internet would have some information about it.
“After that, I lost touch with her for two years,” Maria continued. “I’d get the occasional postcard, and they were from all over. She never explained, but Gia’s like that. She’s always adored being mysterious.”
“But how did you know where to find her when your grandmother took ill?”
“She gave me an email address, one of those Hotmail accounts. If I ever had to contact her, that was the way to do it.” Maria looked down at her congealed lobster. “That’s all I know.”
Shannon took out her notebook and a pen and pushed them across the table. “Write down the email address.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“Write it down anyway.”
The girl picked up the pen, made a show of trying to remember then wrote out the address.
“Can I go now?”
“Just one last thing, Maria. Please also write down the address in Germany where I can find her.”
That stopped her. “How do you know about that?”
“I told you I make my living investigating. I get paid to know things.” Shannon tapped the notebook with her index finger. “Now write down that address, okay?”
With a dazed expression, the girl did as requested.
Shannon reached over for the notebook. Hamburg. She really did not want to do any more globetrotting, but it looked as if a trip to Germany was on the docket. Too bad she spoke zero German.
Doing a bit of quick thinking, Shannon said as if to herself, “Boy, Germany. That trip’s going to take me a couple of days to get together.” Then she looked up at Maria.“Is your cousin pretty good at answering emails? Perhaps that’s the best way to get in touch with her.”
The girl just nodded. “Can I go now?”
“Yes.”
Maria bolted for the door.
Shannon finished her lunch, then lingered over a cup of coffee, deep in thought.
***
“Germany?” Michael said that evening when Shannon gave him her report of the day’s events.
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“Yeah, I know,” Shannon replied. “Trouble is, I have no way of knowing whether it’s a wild goose chase. I couldn’t just ask Maria if Gia was there, since I was pretending that I knew all about it. She didn’t contradict me, but she was plenty shaken up at that point, so I don’t think she was lying. If money’s the problem...”
“No, no, it’s not that at all. I’ll pay for your ticket and expenses. That’s part of the deal. It’s just that I was hoping you’d be on your way back here, not somewhere else.”
Shannon couldn’t help smiling. This was a good sign. If Michael was thinking of giving her the brush-off, he’d be all for a trip to somewhere else.
“Believe me, I’m not looking forward to the trip, but I’ve got to strike while this info is hot. I tried a bit of smoke and mirrors on Maria today, telling her that I wouldn’t be able to get the trip together for a few days. I should be at Gia’s apartment before noon, though.”
“So this is all on a hunch?”
“It’s a good hunch, Michael, the best we have right now.”
“I’m certainly willing to bet on you. So far, you’ve done rather well.”
“Thanks. Now, how are the rehearsals going? Is this show going to happen, or are you all at each other’s throats?”
“So far, so good. Some things have changed over the years, and some things haven’t. I guess my tolerance for the things that haven’t is high at the moment.”
“Is Rolly behaving himself?”
“You always cut to the heart of the matter, don’t you, O’Brien?” Michael laughed.
***
The simple truth was, the rehearsals had been going suspiciously well, making me wonder when things were going to fall apart.
Based on the previous day’s rehearsal, I’d felt confident enough to show the Neuroticands my idea for the show’s beginning. John helped out with some of his ideas, and to their credit, the others listened right to the end.
Tommy was unequivocal. “I think it’s effing brilliant.”
“I think it’s shite,” Lee grumbled.