Reluctant Detective (20 page)

“Brandy?”

“And a bit of ice.”

Anne slid into the seat. It was cushioned and leathery and comfortable. Mary Anne plopped a large snifter of brandy on top of a coaster and sat down in front of her.

“I have some news for you,” said Mary Anne. “I'm not really sure
whether it's good or bad, though.”

“Well, what is it?” Anne asked impatiently after Mary Anne had just sat there staring somewhat pitifully at her.

“Delia McKay called me. She tried your cell, but she…”

“Is Jacqui okay? What's happened?” Anne's forearm flinched and
jostled the snifter, nearly overturning it. Her face turned a shade
paler than she already was.

Mary Anne held up her hand in a signal to calm down. Then she
began again.

“Nothing's wrong with Jacqui. She's having a good time. Fishing and cooking and touring the graveyard – though I couldn't see the
fun in that – but she's all right. That was her point.”

“So… what?…”

Mary Anne leaned forward as to divulge something in confidence.

“Some stranger was asking personal questions, she said. She
mentioned a man with a straw hat. Looked like a tourist and didn't at the same time.

“Did she say anything about a blue pick-up truck?”

“A grey sedan. Later it was parked near the farmhouse for a bit too
long. Made her uncomfortable. Anyway, Jacqui and her packed up
and went on a little side trip to visit some relative.”

“Where to?”

“The Magdalen Islands. She called me from there.”

“The Magdalens? Quebec? That's a five-hour ferry ride! What about the man with the straw hat?”

“She said that he got tied up in local traffic. He couldn't catch up.
So, is that good news or bad news?”

“It's worrying news, but it's not bad. Thanks, Mary Anne. You're the best.”

“And all this time I thought I could do even better,” Mary Anne
laughed and slipped out of her seat. “Maybe he can do ya some good, too.” She motioned to Ben Solomon, who had just come through the
door. “Table for three?” she asked, poking him in the belly as they
passed each other.

“A real smart-ass. There'll be no tip for you, kiddo. From
any
of us.”

40

By the time Ben sat down at the round table in The Blue Peter, Anne had nearly finished her brandy and had waved to Mary Anne for a refill. Her nerves had steadied with the first one, and she knew that the second one would lead her toward giddiness if she didn't get something substantial into her stomach. She was not used to drinking.

Ben knew that. He watched in silence as Mary Anne plunked another brandy snifter in front of her and swept the empty one away.

“Are you gonna tell me what the hell is goin' on here?”

“Whoa, all this time I thought I was gonna meet my old friend Ben here. And who shows up? Detective Sergeant Solomon of the Charlottetown Police Department. Today has been full of surprises.”

“I'm still your friend, but that other guy follows me everywhere. So, once again, what the hell is goin' on?”

“Why don't you order a drink and mellow out a bit? God, but you're uptight.”

“Evading the question. Classic defensive ploy. You're hiding something. So tell me.”

“You first,” she insisted. “What's happening?”

“All right, all right. The investigators on the case believe that Dit is definitely in trouble. He never showed for work this morning. Several people inquired about him. You made that list, too, by the way. Popular theory is that he's being held somewhere. Could be for ransom. Could be to extract information out of him. He has a lot of valuable information in his head: security systems of local banks and jewellers. Some high-end stores. He has a head full of classified technical stuff, too. Work he's done for the RCMP, the National Firearms Registry, and, not many know this, but he's developed specialized spook gadgets for a couple of foreign countries as well. So there's any number of potential suspects to shake out of the trees, and narrowing the field will take time.”

Ben still wore that mask of officiousness she noticed at Dit's house. It put Anne on edge, and she wondered if she could trust him enough to separate the cop from the friend and give her the help she needed.

“What did you mean this afternoon when you said that I had raised eyebrows downtown?”

“The RCMP doesn't confide in us, but I heard on my grapevine that
they picked someone up for questioning in a counterfeiting case.
One of my grapes described you.”

Mary Anne brought the usual draft beer for Ben and two dinner
menus. A broad smile spread across her face. She was about to
crack a joke when, noticing the sombre look on Ben's face and the uncomfortable expression on Anne's, she thought better of it. She said nothing. Her smile vanished, and so did she.

Ben had not broken eye contact. He waited for a reply or comment
with no indication that he would let it go. Finally, Anne's eyes
dropped to the tabletop. She nodded ever so slightly. Then she began her account of the Client, her accidental mixing of the counterfeit with the real money, her bank deposit and subsequent arrest and
questioning. As she recounted those details, she felt like some
schoolgirl admitting her truancy in the principal's office. She didn't know why. She'd done nothing wrong. She hadn't knowingly broken
any law or violated any ethical standard. But that didn't stop her
from feeling guilty. Perhaps being marked with the appearance of
guilt is just as potent as having earned it.

The eyes that lifted from the tabletop and into Ben's were seeking some peace and maybe a teaspoonful of sympathy, but Ben pushed on.

“Is that it… or is there more?” he asked bluntly.

“There's more,” she said.

“Is this where the incident at the Hole in the Wall comes in?”

“How did you find out about that?”

“You asked me about Sean McGee a while back. It's not a giant step
from one to the other. The jungle drums claim some girl was at the
centre of that, too.”

“Am I going to get arrested for that?”

“I'm off duty, and the witnesses were either drunk, stoned, or
covering their asses.”

“Thanks,” she said meekly.

“You could have been a bit more up front. I
can
be trusted, ya
know.”

“Sorry, Ben, but you didn't seem too happy about me taking over Billy's agency.”

“Still don't, but that's no reason for shuttin' the door. Advice you
get from me, even if you don't agree with it, is still advice from a
friend.”

“As it just so happens, I'm finding myself in the market for advice… and maybe some help, too.”

“Ask away.”

“It's not that simple, Ben. You being a cop and all complicates things. I've got some serious problems, sure. But I also have two
plans in place. If I pull them off, and I'm sure I can, everything else will fall into place. I don't want to be sidelined because some of the players are dangerous. If I let you into this, then you have to let me run with the ball.”

“One question, and it's off the record. Is what you're doing illegal?” asked Ben.

“No. You have my word on it.”

“If that's the case, then I might be able to conduct an unofficial police investigation for a day or so.”

“Then we have a deal?”

“First, give me all the details leading up to today. Then we'll talk.”

A waitress brought their supper platters, and they dug into them.
Between mouthfuls, Anne unravelled the entire story. She moved
ahead from Sean and Carson's theft of the suitcase to her tracking it down and snatching it from Cutter in his lair. Anne became quite animated as she described the Hole in the Wall incident. Ben grew
a shade paler. He picked at his meal. She recounted Dit's help
producing and stocking a duplicate suitcase and his aid in identifying
MacLaren as the Client's accomplice.

Then Anne told Ben that his investigators had got it wrong. Dit wasn't a pawn in the intrigue of some sophisticated crime gang
or industrial espionage agents. He was a hostage of Sean McGee, a local hustler working for Cutter Underhay. They wanted the phoney
money just as much as the Client did, and she was sure that Cutter had orchestrated Dit's kidnapping from his lock-up in county jail. Finally, she described her plan for two money drops, both of them
tomorrow evening during the Canada Day festivities. And she vowed
that neither the Client nor Cutter would get the money if she had any say in the matter. Then she leaned back, a sign that she could
recall nothing more.

“Whaddya think?” she asked. “Deal?”

For the last ten minutes of her tale, Ben had sat in stony silence,
punctuated by small, almost inaudible snorts of disapproval and
his head wagging back and forth like a man with palsy. In the end, “Geeeez,” was all he could say. Then he raised his palms to his face
and let them cover his eyes and massage his temples. It appeared
that he had grown suddenly quite weary.

41

Finally, Ben munched through the rest of his large plate of spaghetti and spicy, home-made meatballs. At the end of it he
seemed more relaxed, Anne thought, and after a large slice of cherry
cheesecake, a silly grin played about his mouth and he closed his
eyes for so long that Anne thought he was falling asleep. But it was a short rest and, when he opened them, he said, “There's something
else you should know.” Then he took his time to sip his coffee,
unbutton his suit jacket, loosen his tie, and lean back in the booth. “That counterfeit money you came across? It isn't regular.”

“What on earth are you talking about, ‘not regular'?” she asked, a little annoyed that he was taking so long to say nothing.

“It's not your run-of-the-mill counterfeit.”

“Anybody listening to you would think you overdosed on that cheesecake and were slipping into a coma. Spit it out, Ben.”

Ben wasn't about to be rushed. In fact, he stretched out the vague preface to whatever he was going to say even further. Using Anne's
complaint as a starting point, he ruminated on the lost virtues of patience and cool-headedness, all the while staring off into an
empty corner, as if he were talking out loud to no one but himself. Anne knew Ben was baiting her and, if she wanted to find out what he had to say, it was better to let it go, she thought. She did. She let him have his fun. And it worked. When he realized that he couldn't get a rise out of her, he got to his point.

“Those bills you deposited in the bank the other day, they weren't just good. They were damn near perfect.”

“Well, that's interesting,” she said, and she tried to look interested
in order to humour Ben, but she couldn't imagine how the difference
between a good counterfeit bill and a great one had anything to do
with her. Anyway, she already had more than enough real problems to deal with.

Ben looked pleased at Anne's show of interest. She leaned forward on the table, and that encouraged him to go on.

“He called them ‘supernotes,'” Ben said.

“Wait a minute. Who are we talking about here?”

“The teller. The one who caught the counterfeit notes in your
deposit. He used to work at the foreign currency clearinghouse at the bank's headquarters in Toronto. He retired, moved to PEI, and got bored. He took a part-time job with your bank.”

“You were investigating me?!” she cried. Now Anne was leaning very forward over the table. Her elbows and hands were poised as
if she had planned to jump over the table at him. Ben leaned back, a concerned look on his face.

“Take it easy,” he said. “You'd already been brought in by the
Mounties. They were digging into your background, probably following your activities, could have tapped your phone for all I know. Who
better to look after your interests?”

Anne loosened her grip on the table and slumped back in her chair. Ben continued on.

“Anyway, the Mounties don't own this investigation. They just think they do. Arrogant bunch, some of them.” Ben's eyes searched
the ceiling for the broken end of his train of thought. When he
found it, he continued on. “Oh yeah, the teller. He got pretty good at spotting counterfeit. They had special machines to detect it, but his eyes got good, too. So did his sense of touch.”

A waitress swept in and filled both their cups with coffee. Ben
added a double cream and sugar.

“So he could feel a difference in the texture of these supernotes,” Anne concluded.

“Actually, no,” said Ben. “It was the same paper the Bureau of
Engraving uses. Seventy-five per cent cotton and twenty-five per cent linen.”

“It can't be the same,” said Anne.

“You tell me. Supernote paper, he said, even incorporates coloured
micro-fibres, a thin security thread marked ‘USA 100' in microprint,
and a special watermark.”

“I thought that paper was impossible to get,” said Anne.

“It is,” Ben replied, “but that's not all. The quality of the printing's as good as the real stuff.”

“Real paper and a quality printing press. That's a great combo if you've got good plates, too.”

“The peculiar thing about that, says Mr. Bingham – he's the
teller – is that there's only one press that can produce that quality.
It's Italian. Giorgio or Giorio or Gloria in excelsis something, I can't
remember, but it costs upwards of 50 million for one new. Maybe 30 mill for a used one at the Thrift Store.”

“Who can afford that kind of start-up?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. You could buy a lot of politicians
for that much dough, and probably get a bigger return on your
investment.”

“I guess that explains why the US Secret Service parachuted their boy in from the embassy.”

“Get a jump start on a lead,” said Ben.

“I don't get it, though. If the paper is perfect and the printing is flawless, how did Bingham spot it as phoney?”

“He couldn't see any flaws, and he couldn't feel any, but he flashed
it with an ultraviolet light. Some banks use them to check for fake Canadian bank notes. Bingham does it just for fun, like those guys who go out with metal detectors on weekends. When the UV light
hit one of the hundreds, some numbers disappeared.”

“So you're saying that the engraving was faulty.”

“No, Bingham said that the engraving was second to none.”

Anne's face clouded with bewilderment. Perfect paper, perfect printing, perfect engraving. An enormous bankroll to get things rolling. Obviously top-notch technical support. A huge operation.
And they screw up on something as basic as an infrared or UV scan?

“That makes no sense whatsoever!” she blurted out.

“Absolutely none,” said Ben, and an enormous Cheshire cat grin
played out across his face.