I’M BACK HOME, sitting in my studio, staring at a painting that just isn’t going to be finished. I’m thinking of naming it “The Unfinished Work,” but I’ve used that name already. Maybe six or seven times already. I’ll get back to this painting at some point. But I’ve hit a dry patch for now. I’ll have to find something that stimulates the creative muscles again. Maybe finishing this blog will be the thing to get me back into it.
But that’s unlikely.
I’m looking at the TV, but there’s nothing on except static. I have cable, but it’s my neighbor’s cable, so I’m at the whim of whatever’s happening with his connection. It’s offline at the moment. Luckily, his Wi-Fi is still up and running. Oh, yeah, don’t tell him, but I’m stealing his Wi-Fi as well.
Dinner tonight is toast. It’s all I’ve got right now. I don’t even have butter. It all goes bad so fast. I’ve made a cup of decaf and it’s just as bad as you can imagine. Nothing a little cream and sugar wouldn’t fix, if I had either of those things. Maybe I need to make a run to the grocery store.
To those leaving comments, no, I never saw Jim again. And no, I’m not going to kill myself. Thanks for your concern.
It occurred to me that this thing was bigger than just Jim at this point, and that Jim and Wendy weren’t just finding obscure places in Ontario for a tryst. It was possible that Jim and Wendy were working together on something outside work, and outside a love affair. With the addition of this new guy—let’s call him Zander, or something. With the addition of Zander, this case was getting a little bigger than just a typical snoop job.
Another thing occurred to me, which I hadn’t considered until just then. It was possible that Jim wasn’t even involved. Or maybe he was, but he wasn’t the mastermind. Could be Jim was just some rube who was able to get something needed by Wendy and Zander.
But that seemed pretty far-fetched, no? What was the likelihood that Jim was being used by a couple of con-artists? Especially one who got a job in his plumbing company as a sales rep.
And for what reason? Industrial plumbing supplies? Was Jim secretly rich? Was he a candidate for royal succession? Did he have access to some kind of hidden government secrets? Well, no. There was nothing important about this guy that I could find. Granted, I hadn’t done a deep dive on Jim’s background, so maybe that was the next step.
Or maybe the next step was to follow Wendy around for the next couple of days and see what she’s doing in her spare time.
It wasn’t hard to catch up with Jim’s car, and eventually, Wendy’s. I followed her casually, trying to remain unseen in my rental. After about twenty minutes, I caught Jim’s car turning off at Pembroke, probably heading back to Toronto, and, more likely, Kitchener. Wendy, however, was following Zander’s pickup truck. They continued on the Trans-Canada, heading east towards Ottawa.
After about two hours of tailing in increasing traffic, I lost sight of Zander’s pickup truck as he exited somewhere near Kanata. He was less important to me than Wendy at this point, so I continued on her tail into evening rush hour in west Ottawa. She took the exit to Bells Corners, and I followed, but maybe too close, since she then floored it and took off down the road into an industrial area. I increased my speed, but resisted the attempt to get into a car chase with her, instead guessing which direction she was heading, and taking a similar turn in order to catch up with her later.
It worked. I saw her making a right turn on to a shopping plaza road, so I took a preemptive turn in the same direction. After driving around for a while, I caught sight of her again a couple of blocks away and eased back onto her tail.
As I describe this, you might be visualizing something akin to a neo-noir setting: rain-slicked streets in a twilight-shrouded evening, on a drab industrial road, punctuated by flashing neon signs, worn cars, and big-rig transport trucks. Honestly, that’s not what Ottawa looks like. It’s quite a beautiful city. Bad transit system, but nice otherwise. The area we were driving through was more like any medium-sized suburb with shopping malls, tree-lined streets with the occasional dividers and traffic lights. Suburban fast-food places, the occasional oil change garage, chain gas stations, and the like.
We kept heading west, back towards Kanata, and the suburbs gave way to food processing plants, less dense shopping, food trucks in empty parking lots. As we got to the edge of town, she sped up again and took off down a country road. Either she was in a hurry, or she caught sight of me again.
Or she was like most Ontario drivers when they clear a city and hit the open road.
By this time, it was only the two of us, and I let her go. I figured it wasn’t worth it for me to follow her and cause problems. Car chases often end up as car accidents. I know a guy who used to own a BMW. It also got into an accident because of a car chase.
I figured the rest of the day was a wash, so I went looking for dinner and maybe a place to stay for the night. I was five hours from home, and didn’t feel like driving anymore, so I continued on to the next town, Eaglesons Corners, to see if they had a fast-food place and a motel. At this point, I’d take a bullet for a McMuffin and a cup of coffee. Luckily, I didn’t have to make any turns to get to the main strip. And I didn’t have to take a bullet to get a breakfast sandwich.
As the golden arches came into view down the road, something else also caught my eye. Not just one, but both vehicles I’d been following all afternoon were just sitting in the parking lot of a mixed-use industrial building; a place with a weight loss clinic, a computer store, and a physiotherapist. Food would have to wait for a bit.
I pulled over, grabbed my camera, and crossed four lanes of traffic. The parking lot had a border of landscaping stones and large bushes on the west side, and I eased my way around them, climbing over the big square stones and sat down. If they hadn’t parked so close together, I might not even have recognized them.
They were standing near the entrance to the building, a two-floor industrial development with a white corrugated exterior, punctuated by windows and red brick every four meters. They were meeting a third man who had come from within the building. He looked Middle Eastern, well-dressed, and he looked like he was in a hurry. I zoomed in with the camera and he kept checking his watch and gesturing with an expensive briefcase, like it needed to catch a flight and didn’t enjoy sitting in an overhead compartment.
There was a lot of hand waving, too. Some shrugs, and a lot of fingers pointing—mostly at Wendy. I got the impression that either Wendy was in real trouble, or this was one big contract for industrial plumbing.
There wasn’t more I could do, so after snapping as many photos of them as my camera allowed, I headed back to my car and got some food and rest before heading home the following morning.