four turned to five, Shannon eventually dozed off, but her dreams were troubled and uneasy.
***
After a long night of gigging, I found myself travelling up Highway 404 that miserable Wednesday in driving rain. It was far too early to be up.
April can be a pretty grey month in Southern Ontario, but Toronto always looks extra grimy at the end of a long winter, especially when the highway spray kicks up a four-month accumulation of dirt and salt onto your windshield.
The day reflected my mood perfectly as the traffic crawled along south of Finch Avenue.
As I exited at Steeles, everything halted because of a collision in the intersection. By the time the traffic got moving, I seriously considered turning around and going back home. But my swollen eye was still throbbing, and that hardened my resolve to find out what the hell was going on – and possibly pay back the guy who’d popped me one.
As expected, I hadn’t heard a thing from Olivia. I’d toyed with trying to get in touch with her friend Maggie to find out if she knew anything, but considering the bad blood between us, I wasn’t sure what good it would do. She’d just blame me for what had happened.
With all these thoughts running through my head, I pulled into the small industrial mall where this O’Brien character had his office. It felt odd to be looking for a private investigator. Other than Dom – and that had certainly been news to me – the only people I knew who consulted private eyes were on TV or lived between the pages of books.
The previous evening’s events had so unnerved me, I had just driven up without calling first. Pretty stupid thing to do, if you think about it. What if they’d moved or gone out of business? What if they weren’t open regular hours? What were regular hours for a PI?
But the gods were with me that day, because O’Brien Investigates was stencilled right on the glass door, and lights were on inside the office.
Getting out of the car, I didn’t bother locking it. A thirteen-year-old vehicle doesn’t hold much interest to a thief – not when the only things holding it together are paint and rust.
Sticking my head in the door, I was greeted by a middle-aged bottle redhead with long fingernails to match. How she managed to type, especially so fast, with claws like that, I couldn’t imagine.
“New client?” she asked without looking up.
“Ah, yes.”
The woman stopped long enough to reach behind her for a clipboard with forms on it. Holding it out to me without looking up, she added, “Got a pen or pencil?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Please fill this out. We’ll be with you in a minute.”
I did as I was told, sitting on a cheap plastic chair, the kind you see in high school cafeterias. The whole place looked a little careworn: old filing cabinets, yellowing paint, a carpet that had seen better days and a rather shabby desk – although the computer on it looked new. If it hadn’t been for Dom’s first-rate recommendation, I probably would have left. Maybe their slogan was “Investigations on a Shoestring Budget”.
The form was filled with the usual questions, although they asked for my driver’s license number and quite a lot of credit info as well. That caused me to wonder how much I’d be willing to pay to find Olivia. The redhead finished her typing before I reached the bottom and sat staring at me as she tapped a pencil on her desk. At least her tempo was steady.
When I handed her the clipboard, she immediately went through a door to the right of her desk into what I supposed was the boss’s office.
Appearing in the doorway shortly after, she said, “Step this way, please.”
The smaller room I entered had recently been painted, and the desk was large and new. In one corner was a low circular table with four chairs, although judging by the jumble of papers and file folders on it, it probably didn’t see much use. Even more filing cabinets lined the opposite wall, and next to me was an aquarium of slowly waving plants and brightly coloured fish.
Standing just in front of the desk was not the heavyset, middle-aged man with a slouch hat that I’d been imagining. My eyes rested on a slender, honey-blonde with intelligent-looking eyes and a welcoming smile. I guessed her height to be close to five-eight and her age to be somewhere around forty. Dressed casually in jeans, a blouse and a tan jacket, she was quite pretty.
She extended a hand. “I’m Shannon O’Brien.” Picking up on the fact that I’d stopped partway into the room, not because of what I saw, but what I’d expected to see, she added, “I’m the proprietor of O’Brien Investigates.”
“Um, yeah.” When I didn’t move, she raised an eyebrow, so I added, “I was expecting someone else.”
“This business used to be jointly owned by my ex-husband and me. Obviously, he’s no longer here.”
Her blunt words were said in a kind way but made it perfectly clear that further illumination would not be forthcoming.
“Won’t you sit down?” she asked, indicating a comfortable chair in front of the desk. She looked down at the form I’d filled out. “I see we were recommended by a friend. I don’t recognize the name, so it must have been a job Rob worked on.”
“Yes, it was. A divorce case.”
Something flickered across her face, but it was too fast for me to read, other than that she looked sad. “Is your job also a divorce case?”
“No. It concerns a missing person. At least, I think she’s missing. Actually, I’m not really sure what’s going on.”
Ms O’Brien smiled again. “Sounds intriguing. Now, gather your thoughts and just tell me your story from the beginning. I find that’s the best way to start any investigation.”
Chapter 2
I had to cast my mind back four months to our steady gig at The Green Salamander Jazz Nightclub – to give its somewhat ponderous full name. The Sal (as it’s better known) has been a mainstay on the Toronto jazz scene for over four decades. Located in a basement space on Toronto’s King Street West near Portland, it is neither plush nor very spacious. Because of this, it has seldom hosted the really big names, unless it caught them on the way up – or down.
As I set up my drums that frigid Tuesday evening in the first week of December, I could see the end of the line approaching fast, an end to the steady gig we’d had for the past two years. Ronald Xavier Felton, our trio’s pianist, refused to acknowledge anything of the kind, but then he was like that. His reality was different from a normal person’s. Dom Milano, our bass player, always went with the flow – and the best payday. As long as the Sal paid, he’d play. When it didn’t, he’d move on – with or without us. He wasn’t mean-spirited, just practical. Jobbing musicians have to be like that.
I cursed under my breath. There were just about no other steady gigs in T.O. these days. Jazz was going through one of its dry periods. Two clubs had closed in the past year. Except for a few annual festivals, a handful of clubs that didn’t offer more than three-night gigs and the odd Sunday Jazz Brunch at a few restaurants, my hometown seemed
