can’t get to Glory’s until Wednesday morning.”
“Wednesday might be too late. If you want the money, you’ll have to get over there right away.”
I stopped listening. Something had been niggling at the back of my mind for the past half-hour. The straggly plants in the solarium, the smelly cigarettes without filters …
I pictured the fern-like plants in their plastic pots, the separate little branches and the clusters of buds …
“Damn it, Dougal!” I shoved his legs off the chair and kicked him on the ankle, hard. “You’re growing marijuana!”
Chapter
THREE
An hour later, I felt my way through the woods that surrounded three sides of Glory’s property. It was silent as a cathedral except for the burbling sound of a small stream. I slapped at the black flies swarming my head and wondered, not for the first time, why the hell I just didn’t give up hope of suing the Weasel for my half of our marital property. I could live with my sister in Toronto and work on my master’s degree in library science. Blyth even had a job waiting for me as a co-op student at one of the University of Toronto libraries, where she was head librarian. And I wouldn’t be crawling around in a bug-infested forest, trying to find a greenhouse. In my opinion, raw nature is greatly overrated.
“Mike will never surrender a dime,” Blyth repeatedly told me. “How are you going to beat him on his own turf — the courtroom?” I didn’t know how, but I wasn’t going to give up everything I helped acquire during the eight years of our marriage.
I finally resorted to inching along on hands and knees. My ex-cousin-in-law, Glory Yates, owned the most expensive real estate on Arlington Mews, a neighbourhood where Donald Trump would feel at home. The pine trees that separated her from her neighbours grew so densely, I soon lost all sense of direction and staggered from tree to tree as the black flies insinuated themselves under my hairline and up my sleeves.
It was ink-black in the woods, and a menacing shadow lurked behind every tree. This was no place for an established coward with a vivid imagination. I chastised myself for not bringing the flashlight from the saddlebag of my bike. It would have been prudent to wait until morning, but Prudence was not my middle name and, once I decided to take the job, I wanted to get it over with. Any conversation with Glory that didn’t involve the state of her toilets or the alleged cobweb in the corner of her ten-foot parlour ceiling was bound to be uncomfortable. Before I rang her doorbell on a day other than a Wednesday, I needed solid evidence she was harbouring a fecund Titan Arum.
I found the greenhouse only because it was lit up like a centenarian’s birthday cake. I followed a faint glow that grew brighter until I glimpsed steel beams and glass walls blending seamlessly into the forest.
Even before I peeked through the glass, I felt confident I would find a Titan Arum. Although Glory was undeniably rich, she didn’t spend a penny more than she had to unless it was on her hair or body. She paid me minimum wage and hadn’t given me so much as a box of cheap chocolates for Christmas. Even though, during my former life, we had played tennis together for years at the Lockport Country Club.
So there had to be a good reason why the greenhouse was artificially lighted after the sun went down. I crawled up to the wall and raised myself high enough to peer into the interior.
My mouth fell open. After spitting out either an oversized black fly or an early mosquito, I closed it again and pressed my nose against the glass to get a closer look.
Then I plunked back down on the damp, spongy ground and muttered out loud, “Jee-suz.” I batted at the insects and stood up for another look. Still there.
Glory was making no pretence of growing orchids or geraniums or any other normal plant in her greenhouse, which was at least twice as big as Dougal’s solarium.
Oh, there was a Titan Arum in there. It sat in the far corner of the greenhouse in a pot identical to Dougal’s. The spike reached up, way up. The spathe-thing was barely visible over the rim of the pot and appeared to be at about the same stage of development as Thor.
But, it was the rest of Glory’s crop that drew my attention. Weed, pot, Mary Jane, grass. She had twenty or thirty pots of them, far more than Dougal. I almost felt ashamed of myself for yelling at him about his paltry dozen.
While moisture from the soft earth soaked the seat of my overalls, I replayed my heated discussion with Dougal before I left his house.
“Many people, including you obviously, don’t know that it’s legal to grow marijuana in Canada for personal medical reasons,” he told me.
“Dougal, the government has a list of people who are allowed to buy or grow marijuana for specific illnesses, and I don’t think agoraphobia is one of them. You can’t grow your own unless you’re registered, you idiot.”
“Well, let me put it this way, you little freak. The cops aren’t going to come knocking on my door looking for pot. And, since I find it’s the only drug that helps me, I sure the hell am going to keep using it, so mind your own business.”
“I wonder how an agoraphobic like you will fare in a nine by nine prison cell. I can just see the police dragging you out of your house, screaming and clinging to the door frame with your fingernails. But you aren’t bad looking, so I’m sure you’ll find comfort in the arms of a burly Hells Angel. You can be his new bitch.”
The conversation went south at that point. Neither of us changed our stance on the subject of home-grown weed, so I had grabbed my lasagna from his fridge and marched out the door. After stowing tomorrow’s dinner in my saddlebag, I drove the block and a half to Glory’s property and tucked the bike under a towering maple, well away from the streetlights that were blinking on and casting long shadows onto the street.
Now, deep in the bush, the only light came from Glory’s grow house. In places, the pines grew tight against the glass, and I was betting the artificial lighting shone during daylight hours as well as the night, so the sun-hungry pot plants could get the energy they needed to mature. I hoped that pilots wouldn’t mistake this shining beacon for the small airport west of town. I hugged the walls, forehead to the glass, until the concrete planter was directly in front of me.
Up close, the Titan Arum appeared to be slightly taller than Dougal’s, seven feet perhaps. The spathe was beginning to unfurl and the faintest blush of pink showed on the inside.
A pinecone bounced off my head and rolled across my shoulder as I leaned against the greenhouse wall. I took a minute to reflect. My cell was in the saddlebag of my bike with the flashlight, so I couldn’t call Dougal and describe Glory’s Titan. Should I go back to his place and tell him what I found, or should I try and broker a deal with Glory right now? She hated Dougal, so there needed to be something in the deal for her. With a last glance into the greenhouse, I followed the flagstone path along the side of Glory’s Tudor mansion and ended up at a locked gate. I shinnied over it and climbed the stone steps to the front door.
Glory answered the ring, a glass of white wine in one hand and an exquisitely waxed eyebrow arched in surprise.
“Why, Bliss.” Her sea-blue eyes widened and she shook her mane of red waves in sudden understanding. “I forgot to pay you on Wednesday, didn’t I? Well, wait right here and I’ll get your money. I’m so sorry.”
“You paid me, Glory.”
“Well,
