It was the ring of the telephone that brought me around. I was lying aslant the bed, still fully dressed even to my shoes. I could feel the strength of my heartbeat in my right eye. There was a throbbing in my head that wouldn’t go away until I lifted the phone from its cradle.
“Benny?”
“Yeah? Who wants him?”
“Benny, I’ve got to see you.” It was Vanessa. For once she sounded scared. I hadn’t heard it in her voice when she first hired me, and I hadn’t noted it any time after. Fear puts humanity back into the most outrageous people. I liked Vanessa Moss sounding just a little as though she was caught up in the tangles of her own life. Fear was the right sensation for her to be feeling. It kept her human. Unless, of course, it was all fakery, acting for my benefit. If it was that, it sounded like she deserved an A in the course.
“Where are you?”
“Belmont Avenue. Number 365. You know where that is?”
“Don’t worry; I’ll find it.”
“What did the cops say about the 222s?”
“I haven’t got their report yet. Make sure you don’t dip into anything you can’t personally vouch for.”
“Okay, okay!” she said with irritation.
“Vanessa, does Barbara Turnbull work for the Star?”
“Yes. She’s been covering the murder investigation, and the network hasn’t ’scaped whipping. Why do you ask?”
“Tell you when I get there. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.” I hung up and took a quick shower. While under the water, I heard the phone ring again, but I thought I could live with an unanswered phone once in a while.
Forty minutes later I was leaning on the bell at 365 Belmont, a small, quiet street just off Yonge. There was still the purplish afterglow of dusk hanging about. The dark hadn’t taken hold of the night completely. An unwashed elderly red Volvo was parked across the street. For a moment, it looked as though there was someone inside. Since when are rusty Volvos the unmarked cars of choice used by the boys in blue? I tried to brace myself for whatever surprise Vanessa had in store for me. I could hear footsteps in the hall as the light above the door went on. She didn’t ask who was there, which, in the circumstances, might have been a good idea.
“Why didn’t you ask who it was?”
“Through the door? But I wasn’t expecting anybody but you.”
“And who was Renata expecting?”
“Oh, Benny! I see what you mean.” Her fingers momentarily tightened on the edge of the door, before throwing it open.
She was wearing a blue dressing gown; her hair had been brushed one hundred times. It glowed in a soft way that I had never seen before on Vanessa or on anyone else outside the movies. It certainly was not the Stella of the Grantham Collegiate Institute and Vocational School or the Vanessa of the National Television Corporation. “What happened to your eye?”
“It’s all included in the service, Vanessa.”
“Seriously, Benny. Have you been in a fight? I don’t think I’m paying you to get involved in barroom brawls.”
“You should have spelled that out back in Grantham. Anyway, this barroom brawl couldn’t be helped. I was collecting information.” She stood aside so that I could move past her through the hallway and into the tiny house. There were stairs leading up to a second floor, where lights were burning. In fact, the whole house was ablaze with electric light. She followed me into the hall at the foot of the stairs, then led the way into a living-room, which suited the Vanessa I knew as well as this new hairstyle.
“This house belongs to a friend, Benny. The cops said I could go home, but I’m still too upset to go back there. The owner of this house is travelling in Tuscany, so she let me have it until my place gets back to normal. Nice, isn’t it?”
“Why is everybody travelling in Tuscany this year?” I was thinking of the fair Anna Abraham and her mushroom millionaire. Vanessa didn’t bother with my question.
The living-room was done up in off-white walls and hangings with chrome and glass furniture, and expensive architectural magazines on the glass-topped coffee table. Lighting in the room was provided by three halogen lamps slung low over the backs of the couches and chairs. Large watercolours of lighthouses and wharves with lots of clouds showing broke up the walls with a calculated effect. It wouldn’t have been my mother’s way of doing a room. I suppose it told a lot about Vanessa’s friend, but I didn’t have time to decode the message.
“Vanessa, when you called, you said you had to see me in a hurry. Okay, what’s up?”
“I was going crazy, Benny. Too many people know I’m here. I tried to keep this place a secret, but I keep telling people. I can’t help myself. I don’t think it’s safe any more. Besides that, I feel so lonely on my own.” If she was frightened, why didn’t she pay more attention to whom she opened her door? Vanessa was determined to prove a paradox. Or was it just another one of her games?
“Nobody’s ever told me about the chill factor of raw fear before. I’m cold all the time.” She hugged herself to illustrate the chill. The gesture also pushed some cleavage through the top of her dressing gown. It was this part of the gesture that told on me, a mammal from the cradle.
“So, there’ve been no new developments? No pills you can’t account for? No threats, shotguns or frightening phone calls?”
“Not in that way. No. But I’m scared, Benny. And that’s real enough. I’m still getting used to the idea that maybe my 222s were drugged or poisoned in some way.”
I tried not to look too relieved. She’d hold that against me. From what she said, after announcing that she was trying to organize a cup of coffee for me, I gathered that she had been living here since soon after the police finished questioning her about the murder at her house. I followed her into the kitchen, where she squinted at the places where coffee might spring from. I found a kettle and plugged it in after filling it from a tap that gave me a choice of every kind of water but tidal. While that was coming to the boil, I found the instant in a cupboard. I took two mugs, brown and browner. Vanessa watched me pour out the instant powder like she’d never seen coffee made before.
“Vanessa, have you given my phone number to anyone?”
“Of course not! You mean at your hotel? No, I’d never do that. Maybe it was one of your police friends.”
“I don’t remember giving it to them either. Did you call me back after we talked the first time tonight?”
“No. I’d have remembered that. Are you sure I can’t give you anything for your eye?”
“Such as?”
“There’s a steak in the freezer, but I don’t think it will do any good until it thaws. I’ll take it out.” She did that, laying a slab of meat on the counter with a clunk.
“When your office door is locked, Vanessa, who has access?”
“In theory, nobody. In practice, there are a few keys about. Ted has a set. I suppose Security has another. Why?”
“I was thinking of the used shotgun shells found in your locker. Who else knew the combination to your locker?”
“Nobody had access.”
“Are you sure you didn’t have it written down someplace just in case you forgot it? I know I have a combination pasted to the bottom of a stapler in my office in Grantham. Usually, I remember it, but I’ve had to fall back on the stapler solution from time to time.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with my memory, Benny.”
“Before I leave, remind me to get the combination from you.”
“But the cops cut it off!”
“I still want to check it out.” By now I could fill both mugs with boiling water and stir up the powder.
Seated again in the living-room, sipping coffee, we pulled at a few more of the strands hanging from this bird’s nest of a puzzle. Most of it was repetition. I did what I could to reassure her that the villains hadn’t traced her here, that her enemies were not gathering on the porch and that I was on the job. It seemed to calm her, which was good, because both nervousness and fear are contagious.