“It’s a dildo!” a fan said.
When he spotted the pair of presidents, Rex turned to the right. The dildo swung a millisecond later.
“Rex’s got a dick around his neck!” another fan said.
Hearing his name called, Rex swung to the left. The dildo stopped at the top of its arc, then flopped back around. The crowd roared with laughter.
A camera flashed.
Lane headed for the door followed by Matt and Arthur. The presidential impersonators will be headed for the parking lot, he thought.
Outside, Lane watched a vintage Lincoln race out of the parking lot.
“That them?” Matt asked.
Lane looked at Matt.
Arthur looked worried as he stood behind the boy.
“Did you get the plate?” Arthur asked.
“Nope.” Lane looked at Matt. “Did you?”
Matt said, “Too far away. How’d you know to look out here?”
“Think like the guys in the Speedos. They had to have planned an escape. So, just think ahead a bit.”
Matt smiled, “Cool.”
Lane looked at Arthur. A frown darkened Arthur’s face.
“How about we go get something to eat?” Lane asked.
“I’m starved,” Matt said.
“Good idea,” Arthur said.
Matt’s growing on me, Lane thought. This could get complicated.
Matt was asleep on the couch. Arthur had covered the boy with his mother’s quilt then promptly fallen asleep on the recliner.
Lane watched the TV. Text ran across the bottom of the screen. CNN was describing the latest US military adventure. A reporter wearing a kevlar helmet stood in front of a tank.
The phone rang.
Lane picked it up right away, hoping it wouldn’t wake the sleepers. “Hello?”
“It’s me,” Harper said.
Arthur snored.
“What’s that?” Harper asked.
“Arthur’s asleep.” Lane kept his voice low so as not to wake him.
Harper laughed. “Hope you two have separate bedrooms. Sounds like a freight train. Look, I just got a couple of interesting calls. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Go.”
“I called Bobbie’s church. The minister called me back about an hour ago. He went on for fifteen minutes about how Bobbie was his idol. Kept calling her a saint. Ever since Bobbie’s name went up on the sign outside of the church, it’s been packed on Sundays. Did I mention that he said she was a saint?”
Lane said, “Go on.”
Harper said, “Here’s where it gets interesting.
About twenty minutes after that, I got a call from a woman. She must have been calling from a pay phone, because there was the sound of traffic in the background. She told me to check into a resort in Jamaica. Said it might help me to find out the truth about Bobbie. She wouldn’t leave a name and hung up when I asked for one.”
Lane watched the muzzle flash of a tank on the television. “Won’t hurt to check the resort out.”
Arthur snored. Matt made it a duet.
“I wonder who it was who called from the pay phone?” Harper asked.
“My bet would be the minister’s wife,” Lane said.
Wednesday, October 14
Chapter 8
LANE DROVE UP the 14th Street hill south of 17th Avenue. He turned right, onto a street lined with apartments and four-plexes. Just across from Buckmaster Park was a four-suite apartment. To Lane, it looked early ’50s, which the white stucco and green trim confirmed. He and Harper had divided up the interviews to save time. Harper was trying to find out if there was anything to yesterday’s Jamaica tip.
Lane thought about the telephone conversation he’d had with Charles’ sister. She’d said, “You come to my place and we’ll talk. But you’d better be prepared to listen.”
He walked up to the door then downstairs to her apartment. The moist scent of mould reached out to him. The woman who opened the door was a little taller than 150 centimetres. Her hair was somewhere between brown and blond. She had a round, no-nonsense face and might have been thirty or thirty-five. But that was a week ago, Lane thought. Grief had added a decade to her age.
“Are you Lane?” she asked.
Lane heard the exhaustion in her voice. He thought, She’s cried herself out. “Yes, Ms. Reddie.”
She took a deep breath before she said, “Call me Denise.” She closed the door behind him, then pointed at the living room. “It’s tiny. I like it that way.”
There were two chairs in the room. Lane took one.
“I’m gonna have a cup of coffee. You want one?”
Denise said.
Lane hesitated, then said, “Please.”
“Cream and sugar?”
“Black,” Lane said.
She shuffled back with a cup for each of them.
Lane took a sip. “Good stuff.”
“Charles liked the way I made coffee. Aren’t you gonna ask me any questions?” She sat across from him.
“You said you wanted me to listen.”
“That’s right,” Denise said.
Lane waited.
Denise watched Lane for at least a minute before saying, “My brother had to work for everything he got. Bought an old welding rig and built up his business until he could afford a new truck. Then he built a house. Did a lot of the work himself or got friends to help out. That’s the house Bobbie and Cole live in.”
There was something about the way she said “Bobbie”, Lane thought. It was a curse on Denise’s lips.
“He and Bobbie met at my wedding.” Denise laughed. It was laced with irony. “A bad omen. My marriage lasted for three years. Anyway, Charles and Bobbie got married six months later, and six months after that, Cole was born. Charles told me he was getting ready to break it off when they found out she was pregnant. After they got married, I saw less and less of Charles. Bobbie wanted him all to herself.
“Then, Charles got in touch with me a couple of months ago. I hadn’t heard from him in almost a year. He came over here and started crying. You see, Bobbie had gone to Jamaica with a bunch of fans from some radio-show contest. It was one of those deals where women phoned in to win a free trip to a resort. Apparently, that really helped Bobbie’s ratings.”
Lane leaned closer to hear all that Denise said. Tone of voice was crucial. She wasn’t looking at Lane now.
She was seeing her dead brother the day he had come to visit her months earlier.
“She went on her trip. Charles stayed home with the kids. They picked her up at the airport. Right in front of the kids she told Charles she’d found someone else. Told him she was going back to meet this guy-I think his name was Frank or something. Bobbie was bringing him back to Canada. And that was it for Charles, his kids, and the house he built.”
“Did this Frank come to Canada?” Lane pulled out a notebook and began to write.
“No, Bobbie went back to Jamaica a week later.
Returned alone. She acted all sorry. Said she wanted to patch things up with Charles, but he wasn’t having any of it.”
“What happened then?” Lane asked.
“Things got nasty.”
“How do you find these places?” Harper asked. He looked around. They were at the back of Colombian Coffee House. The white, eight-foot fence gave them plenty of privacy. They sat in green plastic chairs and sipped coffee. None of the other three tables were occupied. The owner was inside making their sandwiches.
“I don’t know. I just keep my eyes open,” Lane said.
“So, what did Charles’ sister have to say?” Harper took a sip and looked at Lane over the rim of his cup.
“She said Bobbie wanted a divorce after she went on a trip to Jamaica. Met some guy named Frank. She went back to Jamaica to get Frank but came home alone. She wanted Charles back. When he said no way, she started making threats,” Lane said.