MY office phone woke me up around 6 a.m. I managed to get down the loft stairs in time to grab it before our message machine clicked in.
JP was wild.
“I didn’t, I didn’t …”
“JP! JP! Calme-toi!” I said, telling him over and over that I believed him.
Finally he just groaned. Michelle took over the phone and said JP had been up all night after he had been released at night court, pacing and swearing in her apartment. I told her to tell him to take the next two days off, rest, take long walks, and try to relax.
“And Michelle, if you can, come with us to meet my lawyer on Thursday. There was something about a girl in a car at the hardware store in Maniwaki …”
“Oui, oui, I know, in a Honda. But it wasn’t us!”
Now Michelle was getting bent out of shape.
“Okay, okay … Look, just bring JP here for 9:30 on Thursday morning. We’ll all go together to see my lawyer. Try not to worry. We’ll get this sorted out.”
I got the coffee machine started, had a shower in our rudimentary stall in the staff washroom, put on fresh clothes, found another old donut in the fridge, and was more or less ready for the day by 7:15.
Back in my office, I pulled the phone toward me. Isabelle was always up early and Angela arrived at 7 a.m. each day to help her, so I placed that call first. I apologized to Isabelle about her having to be questioned by the police about my whereabouts at the time of Albert’s murder.
“Not at all, Conn, it was all very interesting. I soon put that plod Mister Phillips straight. I haven’t had that much fun on the phone since the old days.”
She clucked with sympathy when I told her about JP’s predicament.
“You are having a bit of a time of it, Conn. Why don’t you come and see me tonight. We’ll chat about it over a wee dram. That is, if you don’t mind talking to an old biddy?”
I had to smile at this. We talked some more. I learned that Jerry seemed to be responding to ministrations from caregivers Angela and Jane.
“I think it’s turned out to be a good thing for the bairn, Conn. She’s good with the cat and it’s giving her something to care about, aside from herself.”
I asked after Sandy.
“Oh, she had to go to Kingston yesterday, something about a co-operative literature program between universities. She should be back this evening.”
I talked to Marjorie, Reg, and Dougald in my office about my removal and return the day before. And JP’s predicament.
“I’ve told JP to take a couple of days off. He’s pretty upset about all this, and swears up and down he had nothing to do with Bartlett’s wallet. I believe him, and all I can say is I’ll back him to the hilt.”
Dougald spoke up: “That’s not a surprise, Conn.”
Reg looked a little dubious, but nodded and murmured: “He’s a good lad, really. Innocent until proven guilty is good enough for me.”
Marjorie looked pensive. “But how did the wallet get inside JP’s apartment?”
“I don’t know. You hear about planted evidence and such. My understanding is that JP’s hardly ever there, that there are roommates coming and going all the time.”
I told them my lawyer was on the case and that one way or another we’d get it resolved.
They were curious about Albert Archambault’s murder, which had been all over the newspapers and radio since yesterday. Thankfully, there was no mention of Britfit or me.
“Well, again, it must link back to that blue S-Type Jaguar somehow. Don’t be surprised if we get more visits from the police here. They’re still investigating the arson as part of this, don’t forget.”
We broke up shortly after, and all went back to work. Various cars were coming in and out, but still no fresh Jags. I opened my contact book and called the number I had for the Jaguar club’s librarian. I caught him between meetings at his government office somewhere in the uptown office tower canyons.
“Let me talk to a few of the members, Conn. Jim certainly put the word out by e-mail to the entire membership that he believed your guy took his wallet. But I take your point about no case proven. You know Bartlett. Bit of a hothead. We all certainly prefer your shop over any other, but it’s a fairly serious charge.”
“I know. But I stand by JP unless he’s proven guilty and I’d just like you to bear that in mind.”
“Fair enough, Conn. Give me time to talk to a few people, and I’ll get back to you.”
“What do you recommend?”
“For you, since you are a mangacake, I’ve gotta good veal piccata today. Wit’ one of the Friuli wines: Pinot Grigio would be best. For your friend, he’s Italian, I can see, he should have our gamberi alla marinara today. The same wine. And some bruschetta to start.”
Tony raised his comically thick black eyebrows at me, and then looked at the elderly somewhat humpbacked waiter.
“Okay, make it so.”
“Grazzi, Senor.”
“Prego.”
It was late Tuesday morning. We were settled in just before the main lunch crowd at Trattoria Venezia at Preston and Gladstone in Ottawa’s Italian district not far from my shop. There must be two dozen Italian restaurants doing business there, running up Preston Street either side of the Queensway. Tony had swung by the shop in his unmarked Lincoln shortly after 11:30 following our brief chat on the phone.
“I like this place,” he was saying. “The waiters are insulting.”
“What’s a mangacake?”
“A cake eater. The English people, they eat cake. It’s not a big deal.”
“Don’t Italians eat cake?”
“Yeah, a little, I guess, but it’s not the same thing. Don’t worry about it.”
The waiter, who earlier today may have been sampling some of the wine himself, placed a bottle and two glasses on the table, then was back with a plate of bruschetta followed by a jug of water and two more glasses. He weaved a little throughout all this, but managed not to spill or drop anything.
Tony Martello was a big man, six foot two and pushing 250 pounds. He looked a bit like the late comedian Jackie Gleason, but with frizzier hair and bushier eyebrows. Now in his early fifties, he’d come up the hard way through the RCMP and was now happily ensconced in the Immigration and Passport Special Investigation Section at their national headquarters on the Vanier Parkway.
Today he was wearing a nice light blue suit with a polka dot necktie now hidden by the linen serviette he’d tucked into his collar and spread over his chest to protect his clothes from bits of tomato from the bruschetta. This looked a little funny, but nobody laughed at Tony. At least, anyone who made the mistake of doing so soon regretted it.
“So, Conn, how’s your love life?”
It was gratifying that my friends were concerned about my single status enough to constantly ask about this aspect of my life. It was done with the best of intentions, I knew. But it was also getting a bit tiresome.
“I’ve met a nice girl named Sandy.”
“Italian girl? Sandra her real name?”
“No, not Italian. Her married name is Elliot.”
“Yeah? You want me to run her through CPIC? ”
He asked this with a straight face. This check would determine whether Sandy was wanted for anything by any of over three thousand police departments and agencies across the country.
“No, Tony. I don’t think that’s necessary. But thanks for the offer anyway.”
He shrugged.
“It would take about six months to do anyways, these days, even if CPIC wasn’t ‘down’ half the time.”
After the 9/11 attacks, security agencies worldwide had rapidly expanded their information-gathering capabilities, draining increasingly strained budgets. CPIC, or the Canadian Police Information Centre, was a computerized system that was continually being reconstructed. It had been notorious for breakdowns long before the terrorist attacks against the US.
The waiter brought our main courses, and we tucked in. It wasn’t until the waiter had taken away our nearly empty plates and brought our coffee that we got down to brass tacks.
Tony was a good listener. He heard me through the whole story and then asked me to take him again through the Public Works complications about the work done on the S-Type and Tate’s lack of success in finding out who in his department had authorized purchase of the blue Jaguar in the first place. But Tony was most interested, of course, in the documents I’d noticed on the walnut desk near the front window of Albert’s apartment on Saturday morning.
“And you think they were passports?”
“From where I was sitting, at first they looked like a bunch of bank booklets. But on reflection, I’m sure they were passports.”
“What were the colours again?”
“Dark blue, dark green, dark red … there were lots of them. But then I got talking to Archambault and didn’t get another look.”
Tony looked pensive.
“Okay. Foreign passports, perhaps. Morrison was Chief of Staff to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration …”
“Well, it’s called Executive Assistant. The title used to be Chief of Staff, but it changed …”
“Okay. But same job, right? In charge of the MO staff and the Minister’s right-hand man. Fingers in all the pies.”
“Right.”
“Did his little friend Albert work for CIC or in the MO, too?”
“No. I’m not sure what he did. Worked at a restaurant uptown somewhere, I think.”
Tony thought some more.
“Did your seeing – what you now think were passports in Albert’s and Morrison’s apartment – did that come up at all when you were questioned by Ottawa PD about the murder?”
“No.”
“What were the names of the Ottawa PD detectives?”
“There was a DS, Quinn, first name Sally, I think. She was the senior. Her partner was Phillips …”
“John Phillips?”
“Might have been. Yeah, I think so.”
“Forty-ish? Balding, bit heavy, wore a gray suit, reading glasses on his nose?”
“Yes, that’s him.”
Tony smiled.
He looked around for the waiter, spotted him leaning against a doorway near the cash register, and waved him over.
“Bring the bill, per favore, and give it to my friend here.”
The waiter stumbled away and soon we were sitting in Tony’s idling car in front of my shop.
“I’m going to make a coupla calls,” he said. “We heard from one of our guys in Toronto about a tip involving CIC and foreign passports … I wonder …”
He turned to me after flipping the switch to unlock the car doors.
“I’ll get back to you, Conn. Thanks for lunch.”
“Did I have a choice?”
Tony grinned, peering up at me from the driver’s seat of the Lincoln as I leaned from the sidewalk into the open passenger door.
“Not really. Hey, and Conn? Why don’t you find yourself a nice Italian girl, huh? With black hair, good cook, and curved like a viola, huh?”
I shut the door and he peeled away in the dark brown Lincoln.
Back in the shop, things were pretty much of a muchness with Reg and Dougald working quietly on cars and Marjorie clicking away on her computer and answering the phone. It seemed strange not to see JP popping up and down the basement stairs carrying parts. It also seemed strange not to have Jerry around, either curled up in one of his customary places or checking out his various food and water bowls under the coffee maker.
Sighing, I reflected that I needed a separate in-tray for people who would be ‘getting back’ to me. Tony Martello, the Jaguar club librarian, DS Quinn … We were also waiting for some finality from our insurance company about settling up on the various claims related to the arson.
Oh well, when in doubt, do something.
I pulled on my work overalls and headed into the shop to see what Dougald and Reg needed help with.