Stinking Rich Page 14

  “Oh, I see,” said Linette, trying hard to refrain from licking her lips. “If that’s the case, why wasn’t anything done sooner?”

  “Something to do with an explosion way back when,” Auntie said. “Some people still feel bad for what happened to Ernie. Other folks just didn’t want to look heartless kicking a blind man out of his home. He had no family.”

  “No family at all?”

  “Nope. He was a foster kid. Grew up in Peterborough. Never married. Just a lonely old man. Nice enough to meet him, he was, but he pretty much kept to himself out by the lake.”

  Linette asked as nonchalantly as she could, “Do you know whether the township will auction the property immediately?”

  “There’s no bank involved, far as I know, so no one’s going to rush things.”

  “Be sure to let me know if anything changes.” Linette slid a business card across the counter toward Steven’s sweating hand and tapped it with her index finger. “Call me right away.”

  She gave him one last smile and headed out the door.

  It was almost too easy sometimes. A teensy part of Linette Paquin felt it was wrong to leverage her sexuality as freely as she did. But it paid off so often, it was darned hard to shut it down. The very fact she was interested in Ernie’s property had its roots in her booty business.

  A little more than a year before, she had purchased a high-end home theatre from Eyes and Ears Entertainment in downtown Peterborough. She wasn’t overly interested in audiovisual extravaganzas, but she liked it when Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s chiseled features filled her screen. And it would be nice to freeze frame on Benjamin McKenzie’s buttocks in the right pair of jeans.

  Hooking up all those cables might have been downright nasty. The store charged seventy-five bucks an hour for a service call, but Linette knew a six-pack of beer and the right nudge would get her the same result. Besides, the sales guy was kind of cute.

  With her gear properly mounted, they did a quick sound check and wound up testing more than her electronics.

  Later, when she said, “Tell me that isn’t the sexiest installation you’ve ever done,” her conquest misunderstood. With the ashtray rising and falling on his sweaty chest, he started gushing about an even better set-up he’d done the week before.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “The dude can’t hardly see, so he shells out for this massive screen and loads up on like a hundred Blu-rays to boot.” He went on and on about how the guy bought a generator because he had no electricity.

  Linette was not impressed. When he started reciting the names of the guy’s audio components, she tuned out. She stared at the ceiling, wondering what Gabriel Macht would look like out of his suit. She was about to kick the techno-weenie out of her bed when he said, “Ernie McCann. Because of him, I made salesman of the month. Got a certificate and everything.”

  McCann. Wasn’t that the old coot whose clothing Danny Grant had stolen the night he was caught running from a cannabis inferno? Grant had told the cops—and her—he stole the pants and shirt from some random clothes line, but he’d never given a good explanation for why he needed the wardrobe change. And they’d never recovered the duffel bag full of drug money. She didn’t buy the rumor her Legal Aid client had run with the dough. If he had access to that kind of money, surely he would have hired himself a better defense attorney.

  Unless it was all part of some diabolical plan.

  What if Danny Grant had stashed the money with the old geezer and then used Linette to run a quick plea bargain? After all, an out-of-work wannabe forklift operator couldn’t afford a real criminal defense lawyer. Coughing up the fee would have been as good as admitting he had the money. Instead, he was doing short time on the manslaughter charge, soon to get out of jail. And then what? Come collect a treasure? How was that fair?

  For a country real estate lawyer like her, penny ante Legal Aid work had been a crummy community obligation. Getting taken for a ride wasn’t part of the deal.

  And so, she’d gone for the prize, confronting Ernie McCann about his spending habits. The conversation on the old man’s doorstep started poorly and then fell off a cliff. “You want a piece of what?” He threatened to pump her full of buckshot if she didn’t clear the hell out.

  Linette Paquin was nothing if not persistent. No matter how many times he denied knowing about the money, she kept dropping in on him whenever business brought her near Century Lane. But her come-ons got her nowhere, and it turned out she wasn’t particularly adept at threats or blackmail.

  It became an obsession. One that lasted until the old man perished. Dead and cremated in his cabin by the lake. Gone. Along with whatever he knew about her client’s loot.

  Danny’s cheek lay flat against the window of the Greyhound bus. Every few minutes he shifted to find a fresh patch of cool air-conditioned glass. Out the window, farm fields were cut by woodlots, two hundred-year-old grey barns, beef cattle, sheep, and, every so often, a horse or two. It was good to be out.

  It was only two o’clock. He wouldn’t be an escaped convict for another three hours. Technically, he was still on day parole, though riding a bus out of town breached the conditions of that parole. If caught, he’d be arrested, re-processed, and returned to Collins Bay, or worse. On the other hand, if he got off the bus and hightailed it back to town by five o’clock, he could be home at Frontenac in time for roll call, dinner, and free time in The Zoo. It kind of creeped him out to be thinking of his shared cell with Carson as “home.”

  Not that the thug from the diner was any more pleasant. The guy had biker written all over him, brown suit or not. Whoever he was, he now had a rather personal reason to be angry with Danny.

  The crackle of the bus driver’s two-way radio broke Danny’s reverie. The engine hum and the white noise from the bus’s air conditioner made it impossible to eavesdrop. Still, Danny convinced himself it was bad news. He watched the driver’s face in the cabin view mirror. The driver caught his eye and held his gaze for a moment, sending a shiver down his spine.

  Were they onto him? Maybe someone had spotted him getting onto the bus in Kingston. Or maybe the biker thug had squawked to the cops. Or the guy at the ticket counter might have picked up on his nervousness. Whatever it was, he needed off the bus. Nothing would be worse than getting caught by the cops like some runaway sheep. Besides the extra time added to his sentence, the guards and the other cons would make his life hell for screwing up the escape.

  When the bus stopped to pick up passengers in Norbold, Danny made his getaway. The driver shot him a friendly smile and waved as he shut the door and drove off.

  Norbold resembled any number of small Ontario towns whose heyday had passed. The train yard in the middle of town had seen busier times. A few stray flat cars were covered in heavy chains that once held loads of lumber in place. Empty barrels stood in a corner and a stack of tarred railroad ties lay next to the one-room station house. In the days when the lumber mill still operated, there would have been two trains a day. Now the freight train only made special deliveries. Passenger trains had given up on the town entirely.

  Across from the rail yard, the hotel had stopped renting rooms in the eighties. A sign in the tavern window encouraged locals to drink Molson Ex and watch sports on the “NEW Widescreen TV!” Danny’s mouth watered but fifty cents wouldn’t buy him a taste, even here. He felt someone staring at him and looked up the street to where a man loaded cans of paint into the back of a pickup. The fellow grinned and squinted as if trying to place Danny. Then he waved and went back about his business. Danny gave a half wave back and strode down a side street like he knew where he was going.

  Away from the main street, the town was even quieter. Kids would be getting out of school soon enough but in the meantime the only people he saw were a couple of old timers sitting on a broken porch in front of a senior’s home. They stopped chatting to watch him walk by. He felt exposed.

  By the third block, the houses thinned out to half-acre lots a
nd he moved quickly down one driveway then across the unfenced backyard to the house next door. It only took four tries for him to find a bungalow with the back door unlocked and a grey Volvo parked outside. He stepped in and shouted, “Anybody home?” Silence.

  The keys to the Volvo hung on a peg by the back door which opened directly into the kitchen. Empty cereal bowls filled the sink and three pots with smallish houseplants crowded the counter by the window. One looked like the Swedish Ivy his mom used to grow. He helped himself to a stale tuna sandwich from the fridge and packed a bag with apples, beer, rye bread, and salami.

  Danny walked out the kitchen and down a short hall to the bedrooms. In the master bedroom, he found a spare change bowl with over fifty dollars in loonies and toonies. His pockets jangling with the coins, he checked out the second bedroom. Above a child’s bed and a crib, someone had painted an amateurish mural: a barnyard with a cow that looked rather like a zeppelin, a reasonably good scarecrow, and a windmill. Danny’s gut clenched when he spotted the shelf full of Dr. Seuss books. The same ones he’d grown up with.

  He felt light-headed walking back down the hall, through the kitchen and out the backdoor. He took the child seats from the Volvo and leaned them up against the house. By the time the last house on the edge of town was in the rearview mirror, his heart no longer raced. He marveled at his calm.

  He’d become a bona fide crook.

  For all his forty-four months in the slammer, Danny had felt wronged and out of place. Sure, he had killed Lester, but that was self-defense. And his job at the grow op had been, well, a job. It wasn’t as if the pot was really his. He never sold it to anyone. He hadn’t even really stolen the $750,000. He hadn’t meant to take it, after all. And, besides, how wrong could it be to abscond with the proceeds of crime from a bunch of bikers? Hell, the government did that all the time, didn’t they? By comparison, the low-lifes Danny had lived with in prison were serious criminals. They were put there for all sorts of reasons, and everyone he met inside had been there at least once before. It seemed most of them had been introduced to the system as juvies and spent the rest of their lives rotating between prison and the world outside.

  Danny could relate to none of them. Not the lifers. Not the gangbangers. Not the petty criminals on the rise. He certainly wasn’t the only person in jail to claim he didn’t belong there, but in his case, he really believed it.

  Until now, he thought, driving out of Norbold in the stolen Volvo. Now I’m a car thief, a home burglar, an escaped convict. Part of him was excited by the distinction, part of him afraid. And a big part of Danny Grant was ashamed.

  Soon, the Volvo’s owner would arrive home from work and find it stolen. Danny doubted the “Sorry” he had scratched on the notepad by the kitchen phone would earn him much forgiveness. When word of the theft got into the system, how long would it take for them to connect it to his no-show at the end of day parole?

  He could drive most of the way to Buckhorn before then, but the gas tank was less than a quarter full, so he’d better fill up sooner than later. The first service station he came across after leaving Norbold had a pair of pumps out front of a two-bay garage. There was no self-service sign but Danny figured if he waited for a mechanic to wander out from the bay, he could be there all afternoon.

  He pumped twenty dollars’ worth of regular and walked in to pay. The mechanic who took Danny’s handful of coins had a lazy left eye which looked at him incredulously. “Only twenty bucks?” He snorted in disbelief. “Lemme check.” They walked side-by-side back to the gas pump. “Ain’t goin’ too far today, are ya?”

  Danny tried to appear nonchalant while he did his best to look the mechanic in the face while avoiding his laggard left eye.

  “A short ride is all. Pay day isn’t until next week.”

  “Uh huh. Turn it on, would ya.”

  Danny got back in the car and turned the ignition. When the man stuck his head in the window to look at the gas gauge, he breathed stale beer in Danny’s face.

  Straightening, he said, “Well, then, have a nice short ride.”

  “Yeah, bye,” Danny said and gunned the accelerator, cursing himself for kicking up gravel as he drove off the lot and back onto the road.

  The mechanic wandered back into the garage bay in no particular hurry. “That dude just ripped off Todd Porter’s Volvo,” he said to his workmate.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yep. Sure as sugar.”

  “So you gonna call the cops?”

  “Nope.”

  “Nope?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not? Todd’s a good customer. We oughtta look out for him, don’t you think?”

  “Yep,” Lazy Eye spat on the floor, “but that guy said he ain’t goin’ for but a short ride.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yep. Besides, Todd’s Volvo has a diesel engine...and that moron just put sixteen liters of gasoline into a near empty tank.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’ll be a real short ride.”

  “For sure. And Todd’ll be back. And his insurance will pay for it.”

  “Yep. That’s about it. Turn up the radio would ya? That’s Guns ’n Roses.”

  Nineteen

  A little after lunch on the day of Linette’s visit, Judy made her way to the local grocer’s in Buckhorn. Too small to be a true supermarket, the owner stocked it with more than the bare necessities, especially during the summer and shoulder seasons when urban cottagers could be counted on to buy seven dollar jars of salsa and over-priced tomatoes with the vines still attached. He brought in fruits and veggies every two days during cottage season, as opposed to once a week the rest of the year.

  Judy missed the organic products you could buy in the city, but a local cooperative of farmers’ wives supplied fresh pies. Most were of the canned variety, but the thought was nice.

  Judy was deciding between broccoli and rapini to accompany her whole wheat penne al olio when a woman in a worn Toronto Raptors jersey sidled up and said, “Too bad about your neighbor, eh?”

  “Oh, hi, Brenda. Yeah, it was pretty horrible. I only hope Ernie didn’t suffer. I just can’t figure why he didn’t up and leave.”

  “They said there would have been a pretty good blow-up from the propane tanks. Guess that would have done him in. I mean, it’s not like he would have had a hard time finding his way out or nothing, ’cause of the smoke, I mean, him being blind as a bat and all.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “I read in the paper where there was some hero saved your dog? Terry someone?”

  “Wort was pretty shook up. He won’t let me leave him alone for more than a few minutes at a time since the fire. He’s tied up outside the store right now, and hating it.”

  Across the vegetable stand, a woman wearing a hot pink tummy top two sizes too small compared tomatoes. The straw basket over her arm, her turquoise flip flops with a spray of plastic daisy on each toe, and her bum hanging out of her short shorts in spite of it being late October all screamed “Tourist—Just Passing Through.” Judy could tell she was half-listening to their conversation so she looked over and smiled a friendly hello.

  “Beautiful day for a boat ride, isn’t it?”

  “Huh? It certainly is. You live in a wonderful part of the world, you do.” The tomatoes were so big and juicy, they overflowed the petite woman’s palm. She was practically fondling them, running her pink-nailed finger tips back and forth across their paper thin skin.

  “Local,” said Brenda. “They’re like as not McKendrie’s from down Fifteenth Sideroad. Best darn tomatoes you’re likely to find anywhere. Hothouse now, but you should see ’em in July. Positively gushing with flavor.”

  “They do look fine,” said the tourist. “Hey, pardon me for snooping. I just couldn’t help over-hearing about the fire. My...er...that is, a friend of mine, well, this fellow I know, is a fireman and, well, I guess maybe he was there, too.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “Hi
s name is Terry Miner.”

  “Really? He’s the one who saved my dog,” said Judy. “Is he a good friend of yours?”

  “Oh, no, just a guy I ran into barbequing down by the locks. My husband and I are mooring here and over in Bobcaygeon for a week before taking Miss U2—that’s my husband’s boat—back home for the winter.” The woman had chosen the plumpest tomato she could find and put it into her basket, her fingers lingering on it just a little bit too long.

  “Well, that fireman friend of yours—not sure what exactly he did to save my dog—but he somehow got it in his mind that I’d be grateful enough to let him put his big rubber boots under my bed. He tried to come on to me with some line about being Mr. February in the Buckhorn Fire Fighter’s Calendar.” Judy blushed, without knowing why.

  “Ooh!” The woman’s hand squeezed the tomato hard, two of her fingers piercing the skin. Juice and seeds spurted across the aisle. “Oh my.”

  “Told ya they were somethin’ special,” Brenda said, selecting an English cucumber and putting it in her basket. “Tell ya what, though. Sooty or not, a fireman comes knocking on my door, he’d better be ready for something hot, I tell ya,” she threw her head back and exposed a mouthful of fillings. “My Jerry’s been pretty much useless at putting out my fire ever since he retired. Hard to tell just what he’s good for besides cutting the grass, these days.”

  Judy suppressed a giggle, took a plastic bag from her purse and started to fill it with baby spinach. “Where is home for Miss U2?” she asked.

  “New Jersey,” said the tourist, her face nearly as red as the tomato she had just skewered, and clashing badly with her pink halter. “We came up earlier this summer. Ran all the way up to Georgian Bay. It’s kind of like a late honeymoon. We got married two years ago—my second, George’s third—and we waited ’til he semi-retired—he has a car dealership—his son’s going to run it now—so we could have a nice long time together. Most of the time, though, he’s gone fishing or golfing or playing poker with buddies he meets along the way. He’s friendly that way. Makes friends in an instant. We always have people over in the backyard at home, too. Not that I mind, I mean, it makes it like a party with the pool and all, but they’re all like fifteen years older than me, and...oh my, am I rambling again? I’m sorry. I guess I don’t get to talk to folks much...kind of lonely on a boat...except for the barbeques and stuff...everyone’s so friendly, you know. Do you boat much?”