Читать книгу Booking In - Jack Batten - Страница 11

It was late afternoon, and Annie and I were standing in the dining room looking out at the garden. Annie had arrived home a half hour earlier, dropped off at the house by Meg Grantham’s car and driver. She looked fresh and tanned, dressed in brown chinos and a plain white t-shirt, as slim as the young girls in Kensington Market. Her hair was cut short, still its natural inky black, and nothing but the laugh wrinkles around her eyes even hinted at the fifty-year-old Annie was. She greeted me with a full-on two-minute hug, then took a slow tour of the garden.

“The GG’s crew came in today,” Annie said back in the dining room. It wasn’t a question.

“You can tell after one inspection?”

“That’s the only explanation, sweetie, unless you’ve reinvented yourself as a master pruner.”

“Lee, Pony, and Larissa dropped by.”

“Oh my god, half the GG’s A-Team,” Annie said. “No wonder it looks so dreamy out there.”

We went inside, and Annie folded back the dining room window to let the fresh air drift in. The window was built in a series of four large partitions, which sat on a network of coasters. With a little application of muscle, Annie pushed the partitions into a collection against the wall on the right side. The result was direct contact from the dining room to the great outdoors.

In the meantime, I went up the four steps to the kitchen and made two martinis. Straight up and a twist for me. On the rocks, two olives for Annie. Polish potato vodka from the fine old distillers at Luksusowa for both drinks.

“The interviewing went well up there at the Grantham cottage?” I said after we’d settled at the dining room table with our drinks.

“Please, it’s a beach house, not a cottage. The place is like a Rosedale minimansion dropped onto a quarter mile of Georgian Bay beachfront.”

“But conducive to creative endeavours?”

“Six hours a day, I did interviews with Meg,” Annie said. “I got to hand it to the woman, she understands the way this is supposed to work. I ask the questions, she answers, and eventually, maybe eight or nine months from now, I organize the material and start writing her story in what will read like her own words.”

“Meg’s not going to go all egotistical like the opera diva you ghosted for a couple of years ago?”

“The woman thanked me for editing her memoirs.”

“You wrote every word.”

“The diva’s thinking was she couldn’t call the book her own unless readers were under the impression she herself had put every word on the page.”

“The insults of the freelance life.”

“And the answer is no, I don’t think Meg’s ego extend to claiming credit for roles she didn’t fill.”

“And she’s seeing to it you’re well paid.”

“A freelancer’s dream,” Annie said. “I’ve never come close to anything as lucrative as this job.”

“All thanks to Fletcher Marshall, as he mentions at every opportunity.”

Annie gave me a questioning look. “You’ve been speaking to the man himself?”

I took a long sip of my martini and told Annie all about my Fletcher dealings, a summing up of how the Walter Hickey letters and the forged Elizabeth Barrett Browning poems had vanished from the safe in his store, how he hired Maury and me to recover the missing papers.

“This involvement of mine with Fletcher’s case,” I said, “it isn’t going to trample on your Meg territory?”

“Maybe a little,” Annie said. “But it’s not going to cost me the job or anything else dire.”

“In that case,” I said, “let me ask a question. Has Meg mentioned faked copies of Sonnets from the Portuguese?”

“To be precise, you’re talking about what would be a fake of a fake, if I follow your description of Meg’s possible problem.”

“Double fake maybe, you’re right.”

“Not a hint of the subject so far,” Annie said. “But then she and I are going at her life story chronologically. So far, up at Georgian Bay, we just finished covering Meg’s noble ancestors. This is all before Meg was ever born.”

Both of us took sips of our martinis.

“Off the immediate topic, but have you and Meg touched on the part in her life about the source of all her moolah?”

“We won’t get to the specifics till later, but generally, if you’re keen to know, she made her money in blood testing.”

“Like when I go to our GP, and she says let’s have a look at how your liver, kidneys, and cholesterol are functioning, and I go down to the department where they take eight vials of blood out of my arm, that kind of testing?”

Annie nodded. “No need for the vials in the method Meg conceived. Only a bunch of little pinpricks.”

“They work just as well?”

“And are way cheaper. Meg’s marketed the method in a couple of American states, most of Japan and maybe a dozen European countries. Now she’s working on a deal with China.”

“You make it sound straightforward.”

“Always the best way,” Annie said. “But listen, sweetie, back to you and Fletcher, when you say you’re going to investigate the Elizabeth Barrett Browning forgeries, aren’t you overlooking something?”

“Probably a lot of things, but which one have you got in mind?”

“From what you’re telling me, Fletcher doesn’t want you to bother about the forgeries for now.”

“Except tangentially.”

“You’re supposed to concentrate on the Hickey letters first, the insurance on them, a possible two-million-dollar claim and so on.”

“Personally,” I said, “I’m more partial to the whole idea of two ambitious book collectors forging volumes of poetry, outfoxing the literary critics of the day.”

“You want to find out whether the break-in at Fletcher’s place was primarily to swipe Meg’s forged poems?”

“It sounds like it has more potential for intrigue.”

“But come on, Crang, that’s contrary to the direction Fletcher wants you to steer your investigation.”

“Your point being that Fletcher is the guy paying me to find the stolen collections.”

“And he’s siccing you on Walter Hickey’s daughter.”

“I’m having second thoughts about Fletcher’s order of priorities.”

Annie shrugged. “Oh well, you’re the guy who has to deal with Fletcher.”

“Except for the difference of opinion over options, it’s been comparatively smooth going with the guy so far.”

Annie held out her empty martini glass. “Before we go any further in this little discussion, you think we could have another? As perfect as the first?”

I stood up, kissed Annie on the lips, and went up to the kitchen. The Luksusowa, vermouth, lemon, olives, and melting ice cubes waited on the counter. I mixed the drinks. From the cupboard I took down a can of unsalted nuts, opened it, dumped the nuts into one of Annie’s gorgeous deep-blue bowls, and carried the bowl and the drinks back to the dining room.

Annie took a sip of her second martini and made a small humming sound, indicating pleasure. Then she leaned forward in the manner of a person about to deliver a piece of confidential information.

“The last month or so,” Annie said, “two things about our man Fletcher have been driving me a little crazy.”

“These are associated with him leading you to the Meg Grantham memoir?”

“Entirely independent of it, I’m positive.”

“You’ve got no beef with Fletcher on that score?”

“I’m deliriously happy and eternally thankful.”

“But there are these two irritations, which are what?”

Annie took a deep breath, then said in a small rush, “Fletcher has halitosis, and he’s nursing a small crush on yours truly.”

“A crush? How do you define a small one as opposed to the kind composers once wrote song lyrics about?”

“In Fletcher’s case,” Annie said, “he stands so close to me, he’s invading my space, and he praises what he calls my entrancing beauty. My shell-like ears. The nobility of my cheekbones. The soft swell of my breasts.”

“Breasts?” I said. “When breasts get mentioned, it’s usually a prelude to hitting on the woman.”

“Crang, my darling, coming from Fletcher, his lines sound like he memorized a teenage boys’ guide to romancing adolescent girls.”

“Is this an insecurity thing of some brand that Fletcher’s labouring under?”

“Obviously,” Annie said. “But not often found in a man of sixty or more.”

“Maybe if he cleaned up the halitosis, his problem with women would fade.”

“Forget the halitosis. I’m beginning to feel sorry I mentioned it.”

“But if he’s standing in your space, the bad breath must be an annoying factor.”

“Criticizing his mouth odours sounds too much like I’m belittling the man, which is the last thing I want to do.”

“Okay, the halitosis is off the boards.”

“Besides, as everybody knows, it’s a minor health problem that’s easily remedied.”

“Somebody should tell Fletcher.”

“I agree with all my heart,” Annie said. “But the somebody isn’t going to be me.”

I fiddled in the bowl of unsalted nuts, looking for cashews. I found two and ate both of them.

“Honestly, sweetie,” Annie said, reaching across the table for my hand, “don’t be hurt by what I told you about Fletcher and his weird brand of romance.”

“Surely, my dear,” I said, affecting a deep Sam Elliott voice, “you’ve taken note of how studly I am in all manner of personal relations?”

“Except when you get a bee in your bonnet.”

“You think I’m going to get obsessed about Fletcher and his crush?”

“Heavens, no, but you’ve got a bee about the forged Elizabeth Barrett Browning poetry.”

“There’s that.”

“And in my view it’s going to lead nowhere except trouble.”

“Trouble?”

Annie held up a hand in to signal stop. “Don’t say it!”

“Say what?”

“‘Trouble is my middle name.’”

“You just beat me to it. But it’s one of my mantras, so I’ll say it again.”

“Please don’t,” Annie said.

I thought about it, and in the end the line didn’t cross my lips again, but given my past experiences with bizarre cases, I couldn’t help thinking it was a line that accurately reflected part of my work-a-day life.