44.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” said Ben. Anne was on the other end of that telephone call, still at her office, and still looking out her window.
“Shoot,” she said.
“Good news is… I’m officially opening an investigation into the Villier and Jollimore deaths.”
“That is good,” said Anne, and then added somewhat sarcastically. “Do I get to watch?”
“Ha, ha,” said Ben flatly. “You can look, but don’t touch…for now.”
“Thanks a lot. I’ll clean up my rose-coloured glasses, too.”
“Much appreciated.”
“And the bad news is…?”
“I’ll be out of town for a week or so.”
“You never watched many Westerns when you were a kid, did you, Ben? If you had, you’d have known that good guys don’t leave town ’til after they round up the bad guys. Cooper, Eastwood, John Wayne, Gregory Peck… Lee Marvin…et cetera, et cetera.”
“They didn’t work for the Province of Prince Edward Island.”
“Well, thanks, Ben. That image just sucked all the life right out of my ‘home on the range’ fantasy. Maybe I should just go shoot myself now.”
“That would be illegal…besides, moviegoers prefer happy endings.”
“So what’s this trip about?”
“It’s been in the works for a while. A sit-down with the gold braid at various law enforcement agencies off-Island. We just got the schedule this morning. I leave tomorrow, early. I’ll be gone five or six days. Kinda looking forward to it… Sarah might come, too. If I’m lucky, I might even catch a Raptors home game.”
“So you’ll be able to dig into my case when you get back?”
“Actually, with my laptop and wifi, I may be able to dig into something while I’m away. Here’s the thing though. I want you to keep a low profile. Don’t rock the boat. Get it?”
“Don’t rock the boat,” she said. “I got it.”
“I mean it now. There’s no need to rush ahead. None of the players are going anywhere.”
“Okay, okay, I can live with that…for a while. By the way, Eli was here.”
“Dit’s Eli?” Ben sounded incredulous.
“Yep. He swept my office and car. Guess what? Telephone was bugged. Car had a tracking device.”
“Figured. Check with Dit. See if he can assess the devices he recovered. Are they high-tech? Low-tech? Law enforcement issue? Or off-the-shelf junk? Serial numbers. They might lead somewhere, too, and could be that the program used by the tracking device is managed by an online company. If so, we might get a warrant for the account.” Ben was becoming excited. So he was surprised to hear only dead silence on Anne’s end. “You still there?” he added.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m still here. Sounds good but, better yet, why don’t you check in with Dit on that?”
“Yeah… I guess I could handle that, if you want.”
“Thanks.”
Ben caught a tone in that one word that sounded troubled. He had sensed something out of tune earlier in their conversation, but had ignored it. Anne had joked and teased, much as she always did, but he perceived an edge to her humour that was not customary. It was not mean, but it was dispirited and more callous than he would have expected.
“Mind if I make a suggestion?”
“If you feel the need.”
“Look, Anne. I know that you’ve had a rough few days…and no doubt you’re going to have a few more. It’s happened to me more times than I want to admit, but, whenever I’ve been in a fast game, and I couldn’t make the moves I wanted, sometimes I’d slow things right down…change the pace big-time. It throws the other team off. Know what I’m sayin’? Think about it.”
“Didn’t know you played basketball, Ben.”
“Never did. I’m Jewish. Remember? I’m talking chess.”