Death of a Sunday Writer (25 page)

There was a lot to find out. “Where did you come from? That first night in Longborough?”

“I was on my way to Kawartha Downs and my car broke down. I'd had a good day at Woodbine, so I took it as an omen.”

“Why did you tell me all that stuff, Ben?”

“Would you have said yes to a guy who makes his
living betting?”

“Probably not, not so quickly.”

“I usually drove up after a good day at the track. To you. To celebrate.”

“It's a good thing I didn't tell anyone about you.”

He looked like a naughty child, but pleased with himself.

“Good story though, wasn't it? Our secret.”

“It makes me feel like a fool.”

“Tranter or Nolan, what's the difference? It's still me, Lucy.” He put his hand on her knee.

She brushed it off. It's not the same, she thought. Sleeping with a gambler and maybe a crook. Not the same as providing a safe house for Ben Tranter, secret agent. And Johnny was watching. Something else occurred to her. “The time I hid you for two days. What was that all about? More romancing?”

“Oh, no. I really had to disappear. I owed a guy. That could've been bad without a place to hide. But I raised a little money and he backed off.”

So someone had been trying to kill him. That cheered her up. “Why have you been avoiding me, here, in Toronto? Did you know who I was?”

“When you hear someone is looking for you you always find out who. Then I heard it was Dave's cousin, so I called your office, just to check. You remember someone hanging up a few days ago?”

“I get three or four calls a day from people who hang up when they hear my voice. David's customers. Did you know him well?”

“Oh, sure. We talked at the track most days. I placed a couple of bets with him.”

“Quite a coincidence. You landing on me in
Longborough, I mean.”

“It wasn't that much of a coincidence. Dave had told me he had a cousin running a bed-and-breakfast in Longborough. I asked the garage, and they knew you.”

“And then you came back to Toronto and told David. Did you tell him how good I was in bed?”

“I never said a word, Lucy, I swear. Sure, I planned to. But not when it turned out like that. You were too good to risk. Nah, Lucy, you were my secret, and a very nice one.” He tried to take her hand, but she moved away.

“And that's the only reason you didn't want to see me?”

“Why else? But you didn't know who I was so why were you looking for me?”

Lucy hesitated, then said, lamely, “I thought I'd write a little piece for the paper about David, sort of a memoir. So I wanted to talk to all his friends.”

Nolan frowned. “You sure worked a neat one to get to me. What did I matter? There's plenty who knew Dave.”

Lucy realised that they were too closely connected for her to be able to keep it up. She took the printout of the swindle out of her purse and showed it to him.

Nolan read it in wonder. “What the hell is this all about? I wasn't even here then. I was in the States. I phoned you.”

“That was the time you were after the master spy in upstate New York?”

Nolan blushed, his brown head turning plum. “I can't make any sense of this. Cowan paid out fifty thousand? Did the sky fall? Billy Woodhouse? Oh, for Christ's sake.”

“He made it up.”

Nolan blinked at her.

“He made it all up afterwards. He was trying to write a novel, so he was practising a plot that involved a diary that would be kept on a computer, that his hero would get access to.”

“Dave was writing a novel?” Nolan started to grin, looking around to see if there was someone he could share this last best absurdity with. “How'd you find out?”

Lucy explained, taking full credit.

“That's clever. You'll do a lot better in the business than Dave ever did. Have you talked to all the other guys about it?”

“Only Johnny knows it all. Everyone else thinks I'm writing a memoir.”

“Let's get Comstock over here.” Nolan waved to the trainer, who walked along the row and slid in behind Lucy.

“You know each other?” he asked.

Nolan patted Lucy's hand. “We're old friends.”

Again Lucy carefully withdrew her hand, not meanly, but with a clear signal to Johnny. Comstock leaned back, looked at the pair of them and raised his eyebrows. “Small world,” was all he said, but he looked as if this was as interesting to him as anything else she had told him. “That why you didn't want to see her?”

“None of your business, Comstock.” Nolan put the printout beside his plate. “You know all about this. What's Lucy going to do? What are you going to do?”

“Nothing.” The trainer explained how easily a false rumour could hurt him.

“Right,” Nolan nodded.

“Peter Tse, my landlord. He's been trying to look after me. He knows.”

The Trog considered.

“Anyone else?”

“One other person I can trust.”

“Not the police?”

“I was going to them last.”

“Good.” He looked at Comstock.

The trainer said, “There's just you, Nolan.” He stood up. “I'll leave you to sort it out together.” He shook hands with Nolan, and said, “Don't keep her too long,” and left.

Nolan said, “How about a pact, Lucy. If you hear that someone's telling the story, then you tell Comstock to spread the word about Ben Tranter, secret agent.”

“The Trog, secret agent.”

“What?”

“That just slipped out. I was thinking of something else.”

“No, you weren't. What did you call me? The Frog?” Nolan laughed. “Like, the prince?”

“That's right. You were a prince who turned into a frog. That's how I'll think of you.”

“That's all right, then. We can start again. When can I come down to Longborough?”

“I'm moving to Toronto.”

“Better. Here. When?”

“No.”

“Why not? It's still me. Not so glamorous, but still me.” He shook his head. “I'm just being polite. I can see where you're at now.” He looked up significantly at the windows of the bar, at the face of Comstock, watching them.

Lucy stood up. “We did have some nice times, Ben,” and held out her hand.

“It's a pact, okay?” They shook hands, and Lucy walked up to the bar.

It took Nina's ear to receive her reaction after the shock of recognition. First she told her the whole foolish story, punishing herself, steeling herself for giggles, then she explained why she would never see The Trog again, even if Johnny disappeared.

“The truth is that I liked sleeping with a liar. It was exciting, and I think it helped the thing itself. You know? Anyway, I have got Johnny. He's not going to go away. Funny. Part of the excitement with Ben was that I never knew when he would appear. I'd open the door one night and there he'd be.”

“I thought you said he always phoned first.”

“Okay. I'd pick up the phone and there he would be. Now, there's no reason why he shouldn't come by every Tuesday and Thursday. I don't want that. It would be like an aerobics class.”

“A lot of people our age would give their teeth for a Trog. Even one who bets. He's not James Bond, but in the real world he still looks pretty good. Especially if you only see him when he's had a good day at the track.”

“I suppose. Make a good pal, wouldn't he? I'll see.”

“Take your time, Lucy. A good Trog is hard to find.”

“No. I'm not serious. I don't need him now. Not like that. No. I really only needed him the first time. It's all connected, don't you see? Step one, I left Geoffrey, and Kingston. The Trog came along and saying yes to him was the next step, and my first one out of Longborough. When David died, I was ready to leave Longborough. Fate. I'm well away from Longborough, now, and light years from Kingston and Geoffrey. Like the girl at the end of the play, I'm free, Nina, I'm free. The Trog was important once. He isn't now. Anyway...”

“Anyway, you've got the horseman. So what's next? You going to join the police?”

“Oh, no. I feel a fool about this but I haven't given the detecting a real try yet. I think I'll like it. Who knows who is going to walk through the door? Oh, no. I'll be here for a while. I've still got another case to finish.”

“Mrs. Ago?”

“Right. It's Thursday. Are you with me?”

“I wouldn't miss it for the world.”

She put her own car in the garage and walked across the street to where Nina was to pick her up. When Nina arrived, they waited outside the back door of the Chicken Chalet for the woman to emerge.

This time, she drove south on Yonge Street, all the way down to the lake, and turned into the Harbourfront parking lot. She's gaining confidence, Lucy thought, glum that it could be just as much a sign that her agoraphobia was improving as a sign that her wings were getting stronger. They circled the lot until the woman had gone through the
south door of the building, then parked next to her, on the grounds that once Lucy had approached her there would be no need to hide.

“Together?” Nina asked.

“Why not. That was your idea, wasn't it? We are together. Friends from Detroit.”

Harbourfront is an old sugar warehouse converted into a swank shopping concourse, mostly catering to visitors from out of town. As the two women walked through the door by Spinaker's restaurant, they spotted her four yards away, window-shopping. Lucy dug her fingers into Nina's arm and pulled her into the foyer of the restaurant. Nina squawked slightly at the pressure of Lucy's nails, and two men at a table in the corner looked up. Lucy was shocked to realise that she knew one of the men very well and nearly waved until she realised that the man was famous and that she knew him only from his picture on the jacket of a dozen crime novels. “My God,” she said, forgetting her purpose for the moment. “That's Clive Sparrow.”

“Who?”

“Clive Sparrow. He's a mystery writer, from England. What's he doing here?”

“Who's that with him?”

A shortish, solid-looking character with not much hair and glasses. “I don't know him. Looks like his bodyguard.”

The waiter approached them. Nina shook her head and pulled Lucy out of the restaurant and across the hall, where they could see that the woman on her side had made hardly any progress.

“There is something odd going on,” Nina said. “She's spent five minutes looking at the curtains in
that restaurant window. There isn't even a menu. Now look at her.”

The woman had stopped now, and was looking behind her.

“She's looking for someone,” Nina said.

“Me. She's looking for me. Let's just make sure. Leave me alone. I'm going to let her see me, then disappear. Watch her. See what happens. She's looking for someone alone. The two of us fooled her. Thank God you're here.”

Nina glided off and took up a position by a pillar fifteen yards away. Lucy crossed the aisle and began moving along the row of windows towards her quarry. The woman disappeared around the corner of the shops and Lucy turned back and made her way on the outside of the crowd to Nina.

Nina shifted her weight on to the other hip. “You need lessons on how to stand about inconspicuously,” she said. “I feel like Marlene Dietrich playing a hooker. You know, Underneath the Lamplight, only with a bigger bum.”

“Where is she now?”

“She hasn't moved. Look at her.”

Once more the woman was revolving slowly, without a doubt now looking for someone following her.

“I don't like this,” Lucy said.

“Don't worry, Nina's here. Now let's go home and I'll tell you what's going on.”

“Home?”

“Somewhere.” Nina urged her out of the building.

Lucy allowed herself to be carried off to the car. “Where now?”

“Somewhere quiet. Somewhere near the garage. Let's eat something. I'll tell you when I've had a drink.”

Lucy held her tongue until they reached Browne's Bistro where, over a shared lamb sausage pizza, Nina told her what was going on.

Lucy waited in her office the next morning, until eleven o'clock, for Lindberg to appear. She had asked Peter Tse to leave his door open and listen, and across the street Nina sat close to the window ready to dash over if she saw Lucy in any trouble. There was no apparent reason why he should be violent, but it was unfamiliar ground, and it was best to be prepared for anything. By eleven o'clock, he was evidently not coming, apparently having decided that his weekly jolly would have to be managed in front of someone other than Lucy in future. He had obviously drawn the right conclusion from Lucy's flight. She wondered who he would get next time, who would do. She added up the account and figured that she owed him fifty dollars, if he ever came to collect.

“It was the picture,” Nina had said the evening before as she drank her wine. “There was something phoney about it from the start that bothered me. If you look at it again you can see he probably took it himself with a timer.”

“I'm no good at this job.”

“Don't be silly. I have expert knowledge. I married one.”

“A...”

“Transvestite, honey. Call them cross-dressers. My husband only did it at home, but that was enough for me when I came home early one day.”

Nina's revelation made Lucy feel she had straw in her hair, not because of its content, but in the casual way Nina had lifted up the corner of her otherwise mysterious private life. Nobody in Longborough had talked about transvestites, not to her, anyway, but, then, Nina's secret, if that's what it was, wouldn't have lasted five minutes in Longborough. Lucy forced herself to stop staring at Nina. “Should I tell the police?” she asked.

“Why? It's not illegal. It's not even a big deal. There are thousands of them around, even in Longborough. There are degrees, I guess, but most are satisfied to totter about on high heels behind closed curtains. Harmless enough. He paid you fifty an hour for the thrill of fooling you. He got his money's worth.”