"Well," Eddie said. "As long as I can tell Chelsea it's over, and she can get back to blowing lines."
"You can."
"Well done, Prince Valiant. Well done." He gripped my hand in a firm handshake and looked up at me with a grin. "To be your age, Jonah," he sighed. "To be tall and strong like you. Christ, to have your hair! I'd have girls falling over me."
"That's nice of you to say, Eddie. But I'd rather have my fee."
"Don't worry, kid. I'm seeing Chelsea tonight at her hotel. I'll bring it by tomorrow."
"In cash, right?"
"Not a problem. You want a coffee, mighty one?"
"Can't," I said. "We have a ten o'clock client."
"So go meet your client and send Jenn."
"Don't start, Eddie."
"What? Start what? What did I say?"
"I can read it on your forehead like it's a drive-in screen."
"Can I help it if she's gorgeous?"
"Not to mention gay."
"The blonde hair, the blue eyes, the sweet face. And the body, my God, the body. The gayness just fades away."
"Just don't give yourself a heart attack before you get my money," I said.
"And those legs." He was panting, hamming it up now, dabbing his forehead with his tie. "She's so tall, I'd have to go up on her!"
"Eddie," I said. "What am I going to do with you?"
"Nothing," he said, and laughed. "I'm too old to change and I'm too young to stuff and mount. Anyway, you know I'm kidding. Even if she was straight, I wouldn't stand a chance. I've got daughters her age. I'm like a dog chasing a car, Jonah. What would I do if I caught one?"
"Just don't let her catching you talk like that," I said. "Come on. She'd know I was kidding. Wouldn't she?" "She'd stuff and mount you," I said. "Unfortunately for you, in that order." Eddie was right. Jenn Raudsepp exudes a wholesome sexiness that's hard to ignore, whatever her sexual orientation. Men and women alike take note when she dashes across a street or emerges legs first from her car or smiles or tosses back her blonde silk hair. Men stammer when they approach her. They mumble into their drinks. They become stupider than they were before the drinks.
I'll never know her sexual side. That belongs to her longtime lover, Sierra Lyons, who's a terrific match for Jenn and a good friend to me. Not to mention an ace nurse practitioner who can stitch wounds without commenting on how you look in your underwear. As an investigator, though, Jenn brings it all. She's smart, she's fun, she's good with clients and she works as hard as I do. And as placid as she can seem when she wants, a whole other side emerges when she gets riled.
One night, we were leaving the office late and came across a guy beating a Native woman in the laneway where Jenn had parked her Golf. He was stocky and built but clearly drunk, and when I told him to get away from the woman, he sneered at me, "You wanna do something about it?"
"No," Jenn said, stepping forward. "I do."
And she did. Unfolded those lovely long legs of hers and dropped him with a spin kick, then broke most of his ribs with a roundhouse. From there, she did everything but make him eat his car keys. I could have done it quicker but no better, and it seemed important to her that this particular world repair be done by a woman. The Estonian wonder girl did indeed have a pot of coffee brewing, a continental dark, and once I had a cup in hand I told her how things had gone with Stan Lester, giving her the details I had spared Eddie Solomon.
"Eddie pay you?"
"Tomorrow," I said. "A thousand in cash."
"Today would have been better. Scary Mary called from the bank."
I shuddered. Scary Mary is the assistant manager at our branch and a devout Christian with a phone manner so artificially nice, so honeyed with false promise that each of us usually tries to pawn her off on the other. I said, "So sorry I wasn't here to take the call."
"You should be. She likes you better, you know." Then Jenn, a gifted mimic who'd once been a member of a comedy troupe, nailed Scary Mary's breathless menace: "'This is Mary McMurphy from Toronto-Do-min-ion calling. Is that Jonah? What a nice name. Isn't that a Bib-lical name?'"
"Brrr. You do her better than she does."
"Why, thank you."
"If she calls back, tell her to relax," I said. "We'll have Chelsea's thousand and a retainer from Marilyn Cantor."
"How retentive a retainer?"
"My brother referred her," I said. "If she knows him, she's bound to have money."
"She called, by the way."
"When?"
"Ten minutes ago."
"Please say she didn't cancel."
"Just confirming her appointment."
"Phew."
"You have two other messages," she said, a wicked grin starting to form as she slid two scraps of paper across her desk.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Like hell."
I looked at the two slips she'd filled out. The first was from my mother. The second was from the Homicide Squad of the Toronto Police Service.
I looked at Jenn, at the sunbeam of a smile lighting her face.
"What?" I asked.
"Oh, you know. Homicide. Your mother," she said. "Just wondering who you call first."
CHAPTER 2
I met Katherine Hollinger last summer while I was still at Beacon Security. Her investigation into the murder of a Toronto pharmacist overlapped with the case I was working on: another pharmacist whose family had been targeted for extinction. Hollinger was about thirty-six and already a detective sergeant. Five-seven with a lithe build, glossy black hair and eyes whose colour was somewhere between honey and caramel. My feelings for a woman almost always start with the eyes; I liked her from the first look and felt it was mutual. Of course, I'd been stabbed the night before by a badass mobster and was sailing along on Percocet, so my judgment could have been skewed.
The next day one of my co-workers was shot to death and Hollinger, in addition to her many other charms, was the first to pick up on the heartwarming fact that the hit had been meant for me. She even turned up at my door late one night, supposedly to ask me about the shooting victim but really, I think, to check up on me.
After everything crashed to a head those last hot days of June, with more than half a dozen killings in two countries to account for, Hollinger and her mouth-breathing partner, Gregg McDonough, had more than a few questions for me. The sessions were long and tense. We sat in a small interview room with four bare walls, a small table, three hard chairs and a video camera that stood above us all on a tripod, recording every question they threw at me and every poor excuse for an answer I gave back. I bobbed and weaved my way through it, telling no outright lies but providing nothing near the truth. None of the killings could be attributed to me, though I had seen and done enough that I still wake up shuddering, chasing away images of faces under water, of bullet-riddled bodies in hot closed rooms.
Hollinger and I hadn't spoken since. I had thought about calling her half a dozen times, asking her out for coffee. Then I'd stop and wonder what exactly we could talk about.
How about those corpses in the Don River, Katherine? All that sorted out?
Well, not quite, Jonah. Don't suppose you could clear that up for me. And pass the skim milk.