Читать книгу Booking In - Jack Batten - Страница 16

By four that afternoon when I got home, Annie had been cooped up all day in her office. She worked in the space that was once the house’s dining room before the later addition was built on the back. Annie had already edited the notes from her weekend chats with Meg Grantham and begun sketching out a list of questions for her next interview session. The day’s work in that confined space left her feeling in the need of something to chase the fog out of her brain.

We went for a walk, west along Bloor past Bathurst, then north through the back streets of the neighbourhood west of the Annex. The area was called Seaton Village, the designation coming from a titled fellow named John Colborne, 1st Baron Seaton, who was Ontario’s lieutenant governor in the mid-nineteenth century. Seaton Village was a pale, scaled-back version of the Annex. It made for a comfortable and unexciting stroll, the sort of ramble that brought calm to Annie’s state of mind.

We kept going along the back streets and up side alleys until we emerged at the corner of Christie and Dupont. A café called Faema was on the northwest corner. We went in and ordered two cafés au lait plus a plate of biscotti. Faema took up most of the ground floor of a six-storey building, and it had a very high ceiling. The coffee was first-rate.

“You’re doing a stakeout tomorrow night?” Annie said.

“Long enough to find out Charlie Watson’s mystery boyfriend’s identity.”

“I get that, but why Saturday night?”

“It’s date night all over the city, our best opportunity to catch Charlie with the boyfriend.”

“Date night for everybody except you and me.”

“I’ll think of something swell to make it up to you.”

Annie reached over and squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry, sweetie,” she said. “I’m looked after. Reruns of Silk start Saturday at nine.”

“With Martha Costello? My favourite television lawyer? I may have to cancel the stakeout.”

“Lots to admire about Martha Costello.”

“I love her style in front of the judges.”

“You think Martha’s sharper in the courtroom than you are?”

“Tougher than me,” I said. “Maybe I’m better on tactics.”

“Answer me this: would Costello go on a stakeout?”

“Not in a million years.”

“So what’s that make you?”

“As a lawyer, I’m definitely more hands-on than Martha.”

There had been four biscotti on the plate the waitress brought us. Annie had already eaten two. I hadn’t touched either of the other two.

“You mind if I ask you questions about Meg Grantham?” I said.

“Shoot,” Annie said. “But let me remind you again, I know nothing about the Reading Sonnets, forged or double-forged.”

“What’s Meg got in the way of family? Husband? Kids?”

“How’s that figure into your case?”

“I’m just building a general picture of the woman’s life. Maybe it’ll reveal a different kind of connection between her and the forged sonnets. Who knows what might be helpful?”

“Meg’s been married twice. Divorced the same number of times. Currently unattached. Got two children, both male, both by husband number one, both now grown men out in the world, more or less. The older guy, late thirties, is Brent. Brent bills himself as an entrepreneur. The younger is Hughie, who has some involvement in the natural food industry, but don’t quote me on the natural food part. I’m not sure I grasped what Hughie’s all about.”

“For somebody who says she’s only spent time talking to Meg about her ancestors, you’re not bad on the contemporary Grantham family story.”

“Most of what I just told you came from gabbing with Meg when we were eating a meal or sitting around with a morning cup of coffee.”

“Your recording apparatus was off?”

“It was casual conversation, so I’ll be returning to the topic of immediate family much later when the narrative gets further along in Meg’s life.”

“Anything else you can give me?”

“Like what?”

“Like the two husbands.”

“Neither tried to cut off a slice of the billions for himself.”

“Straight shooters, in other words?”

“Meg’s not the type to chose a mutt for a husband.”

“Was either guy a con man?”

“Both of them successful businessmen with their own money. Neither is a billionaire, but they’re probably millionaires.”

“That seems to let them out as persons of interest in any regard as far as my case is concerned.”

Annie leaned back in her chair, looking up at Faema’s uncommonly high ceiling. “You know,” she said, “this place has the strangest contours of any coffee shop I’ve ever been in.”

“That’s because it didn’t begin life as a coffee shop.”

“Crang, old sport, that part I figured out already.”

“It was an automobile showroom.”

Annie looked around the room, taking in the broad open space and the sweeping windows on two sides.

“Yeah,” she said, “it has that look.”

“The whole building opened a hundred years ago as a Ford assembly plant.”

“You’re kidding me,” Annie said.

“The history is on plaques pinned up around the building. Ford opened it in 1915. The car parts were delivered by train on the tracks that still run past the north side of the building. People assembled the parts on three floors, then they test-drove the finished product on the roof. Down here where we’re sitting, this was the showroom.”

“Aren’t you just a fount of local history.”

“I got more if you’d care to hear it.”

“I’ll coast for now, thank you.”

Annie had almost finished her café au lait.

“Are you going to eat either of those other two biscotti on the plate?” I said.

“If you confine yourself to just one of them and leave the last cookie for me,” Annie said, “I’ll tell you something that might pique your interest.”

“Some more Grantham family material?”

“This is guaranteed juicy.”

“Just one biscotti,” I said. “And the revelation has got to be juicy as promised.”