Chapter Thirteen
Dame sighed and allowed herself to be pulled onto her feet. She wiped her hands on her pants and looked past Felski down the sidewalk. She turned and squinted in the opposite direction. There was no sign of the woman.
“Fuck.” Dame pulled the toque off her head. “Fuck!”
“What’s with the potty mouth, Dame? Everything okay?”
“I’m fine, Felski,” she said through gritted teeth.
“You sure? Looks like you dropped something there.”
Dame’s flashlight rolled down the sidewalk in a slow-motion attempt to escape. The damaged copy of Wuthering Heights lay face down on the concrete. She swung her backpack off her shoulder and stuffed them both inside.
Dame paced a little, gave herself a moment to catch her breath and give Felski the once-over. He hadn’t changed all that much in the last fifteen years. What was left of his hair was unnaturally black and brilliantined to his scalp. His belly pushed against the turquoise satin of his Miami Dolphins jacket. Clamped to his head were a pair of furry ear muffs.
According to Dodge, some people became private investigators because they had a knack for it. For others, the job was a consolation prize. A few months after Dodge hired Felski, he found out the guy failed the police psychological screening exam on at least three separate occasions. He was never really sure if Felski was crazy or stupid or a little bit of both.
“You know,” Felski was saying, “My math was never all that great, but I think you might be a bit old for high school. Especially one that just burned down.” He cupped a cigarette against the wind and lit it.
“Did you see a woman run by?” Dame asked. “Blonde. Leather jacket. Tattoo on her neck.”
“Can’t say I did.” The cigarette bounced in the corner of his mouth. “But she sounds like a swell gal. Friend of yours?”
“Something like that.”
“I’ve got to say, Dame, all this poking around behind the yellow tape is a little more up Dodge’s alley.” Felski took another drag and gestured toward the high school. “You working for the old man again?”
“I work for City Hall now, Felski. You know that.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t exactly explain why you’re playing midnight hide-and-go-seek with Blondie the Tattooed Lady, does it?”
“This building’s on my caseload. I caught her trespassing.”
“Caseload. Right. Interesting hours you City Hall types keep.”
“Why are you here?”
“Professional curiosity.” Felski sucked on his teeth and looked up at the destruction beside them. “Been tailing some broad for a few weeks. Couple times she wound up here. Then I hear on the news that the whole place went up in flames.”
“What do you think she was doing here?”
“Oh, the usual, I imagine. You know how it is. Some people like satin sheets. Some people like abandoned high schools, am I right?”
“She was meeting someone.”
“Never saw anybody, but yeah, probably. I finally caught her with some good-looking guy last week, but it wasn’t here. It was at this fancy French restaurant in Yorkville.”
“Huh. You think she had something to do with the fire?”
“Couldn’t say. But you know, it’s funny.” Felski smoothed the edge of his moustache with a little finger. “Even before I could show him the photos, her husband — this guy named Hobart — gave me the heave-ho. And now you’re here, snooping around, asking all these questions.”
She narrowed her eyes. “So?”
“Look, we both know Dodge isn’t quite the detective he used to be. Maybe we should all pool our resources, you know? Help each other out. Like we did in the good ol’ days.”
“The good ol’ days? Back when it was Dodge giving you the ‘heave-ho’?”
“Ah, hell. You know what they say: This river I step in is not the river I stand in.”
Dame squinted. “Heraclitus?”
“Beats me. Saw it written above the Queen Street Viaduct.”
“Pretty sure that’s Heraclitus.”
“Well, either way, it’s all water under the bridge.” He winked and handed Dame his card. It was bright turquoise, the same colour as his jacket.
“Anton Felski,” Dame read, “Discrete Detection.”
“Classy, right?” he said. “You be sure and tell Dodge that if he needs some help, he can always give me a call.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and started heading down the sidewalk. “See you around, sunshine.”
Dame waited until she got home to take a proper look at what she’d found. Sitting on her couch, she pulled the old novel out of her backpack. If there had been a dust jacket, it was long gone, and the once-navy cover had faded to a brownish purple. The spine cracked in protest when she opened the book, and the paper inside stank of smoke and mildew. There were no messages written on the pages, and nothing pressed between them. It was a perfectly plain 1972 edition of Wuthering Heights, and there was nothing special about it except for the fact that it had recently survived both fire and theft.
At least, that’s what Dame thought until she reached the back cover. It was there that she found the little paper pocket, with the library card still inside. The borrowers listed on the card were unfamiliar to Dame, with the exception of one. The last one. And according to the date stamped next to Aki Miyamoto’s name, the book was almost twenty-six years overdue.