“What is it?”
“You might be on to something.” He got up and came behind the desk. “Look at these three lines at the end.” “Someone’s speaking to him.”
“No. Someone’s speaking to you.” He reached for a pen. “A good cryptic clue gives you a definition, an action, and something to perform the action on. Listen again…” He read the lines:
A voice said, “You’re inside it now, aren’t you, Wise?”
Nick looked around. “Who… me?”
“Draw closer.”
“Repunctuate that first line – You’re inside it now. Aren’t you wise? Maybe that’s a challenge. ‘Aren’t you wise?’”
“Wise to what?”
“The first part is the action.” He nodded at the paper. “This is actually kind of smart. You’re inside it – that’s a container clue. It means that what you’re looking for here is hidden inside other words. The next two lines are ‘Who… me?’ and ‘Draw closer.’ Do you see it now?”
“Andrew, I don’t! That’s why you’re here.”
“What does ‘draw closer’ mean?”
“Um, to approach… to look into…”
“To home in on?”
“Okay.”
“The container is ‘Who… me?’ The word is home. It’s inside in the line. Wise ends up in a box, something he’s inside, but the writer wants you to draw closer. To what?”
She became very still and touched the lines on the page as if they were embossed there and she could feel their contours. “Home. He wants us to go to the house.”
“ Cherry Tree Lane.”
She pressed the intercom. “Melanie, get me Wingate.”
Her Detective Constable was in the office within seconds. Andrew showed him what he’d found. “Are you sure that’s what it means?”
“Once it’s unravelled, it doesn’t seem at all accidental,” said Andrew.
Hazel pointed to the words Cherry Tree Lane in the story. “Where is this?” she asked.
“Umm… There’s a Cherry Street, but I’ve never heard of a Cherry Tree Lane. At least not downtown.” He thought for a second. “Yeah, I don’t know what street he’s referring to. Maybe something out of downtown.”
“But he describes a drive to the city centre, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
She looked at her watch. “It’s too late to go now.” She looked up at him. “I need you to start on something else, James.” “You don’t want me downtown?”
“No. I want you to get some legal advice for me concerning a company that operates on the internet.”
He squinted at her, a bit confused, but he could wait for the details.
She continued, now talking to Andrew. “Anyway, I think I need someone who knows downtown and cryptic crosswords about equally.” He was looking at her suspiciously. “What? Were you planning on having a quiet Saturday?”
“No. But I wasn’t planning on being seconded by my ex either.”
“Would a decent sushi lunch make it worth your while?”
“Define ‘decent,’” he said.
“Set your alarm for eight.”
20
It was a drive like any they’d taken to visit one or the other daughter at school in Toronto, drives to campuses, the back seat loaded with Chelsea buns from the bakery, a box of Tide, a crate of apples, perhaps a couple new shirts or a case of local beer, and a suitcase packed for one night. Often these trips down to the city were precipitated by some crisis, usually minor, in one of the girls’ lives, and yes, if Hazel were honest with herself, it was usually Martha who spurred them to action. So often these drives were punctuated by feelings of anxiety and anticipation: what untoward shock had the girl prepared for them this time? And they’d arrive at her downtown sorority and try to ignore the accusing or worried looks of the sisters as they went up the stairs to Martha’s room to see what needed putting back together again.
They drove out of town and stopped at Tim’s, him ordering her what she’d always order: a large double-double and a raisin tea biscuit. He got himself a steeped tea and a maple dip. These first twenty or so kilometres were the most familiar to them: they paced them out of everything that meant home to them, or told them that they were returning to it. But even here, things were changing; the suburban imperative was spreading farther north. Just before the town of Dublin, cornfields were being converted to “Modern Country Living,” which was to say, a grid of streets surrounding a shopping centre were going to be plunked down in the middle of what was still good land. The sign along the highway announced excitedly that the ground-breaking would take place in the fall. She noticed Andrew shaking his head.
An hour later, they passed Barrie and the highway angled into its final, long approach to the city. This length of road always soured her stomach and made her heart race – in anticipation of the difficulties to come or just because she was truly out of her element – and this time it was no different. The urban lichen was well established at this latitude (a preview of what awaited them at Dublin), and the new suburbs, each one built around an unwieldy palace of worship – a giant mosque, a towering white church, an outlet mall – had much the same architectural weight as the plastic buildings on a Monopoly board: a tidy arrangement of buildings that hid the fact that the environment was built for money, not for people. It was intended to capture and keep captive some segment of the population, upend them in the crush of prettiness, and empty their pockets. It occurred to her that, at least, the city itself could not hide its agendas. What it wanted from you it asked for once you passed through its gates.
They were driving eastward beside Lake Ontario. Its bright blue-black expanse shone in the sun, with the green gem of the Toronto Islands just a kilometre offshore. Ahead of them the towers of the city rose over the downtown like crystal, the needle of the CN Tower at its centre; from this vantage point the buildings looked like massive toys ajumble in a box. It seemed impossible that this much steel and glass and concrete could be in the same place, but as they approached it, the buildings stepped apart and the streets appeared between them, and then the cars and the bicycles and the people themselves and they were within it and part of it. There was always a strange thrill here, for Hazel, to be in this bustle, no matter how it scared her. “I think this is the first time since the girls moved out that we’ve been here for some reason other than to put out some fire in their lives.”
“Well, Emmie lives in Vancouver now. Harder to drive to.”
“It just seems like a different city without some small problem to attend to. Like anything could happen here.”
“And it usually does,” said Andrew.
“Let’s get the street guide out and let’s try to follow this guy’s directions.”
Andrew took the Perly’s out of the glove compartment and flipped it open to the page they were driving over. The world outside the car windows flattened out to red and yellow lines. “Spadina goes up past the no longer new stadium,” he said. “And into Chinatown.” They drove north past the theatre district and into bustling Chinatown. At a stoplight, a vegetable seller hacked the tops off coconuts with a heavy machete. North of Chinatown, the crazy quilt of restaurants and grocery stores gave way to more institutional buildings. This was the western boundary of the University of Toronto. They tracked up to Russell Street and pulled over.
“Okay,” said Hazel. “This is where you get to shine. Find me a tree-street. Or a fruit-street. With a church on it or somewhere near.”
He held the mapbook open in his lap and clutched the page from the story with the directions to the house in his right hand. His eyes shuttled back and forth between his hand and the Perly’s. She leaned over toward him and scanned the pages along with him. There was a Hazelton Avenue, but not a Hazelnut, and a Concord, as in grape, but no Apple Street, no Banana Avenue. Leaning this close to his shoulder, she was reminded of what her mother had said about her father’s book bag and she pulled back a little.