Cover
Cut to
the Chase
Joan Boswell
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Text © 2009 Joan Boswell
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
Cover design by Emma Dolan
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.
RendezVous Crime an imprint of Napoleon & Company
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
www.napoleonandcompany.com
Printed in Canada
13 12 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 1
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Boswell, Joan
Cut to the chase / Joan Boswell.
ISBN 978-1-894917-89-6
I. Title.
PS8603.O88C8827 2009 C813’.6 C2009-904779-9
For Nick, Katie, Francis,
Trevor, Christy and Brendan
Prologue
The old-fashioned word “besotted” exactly described Danson Lafleur’s feelings for Angie Napier, his fiancée. He’d fallen for her in high school and never lost his amazement and gratitude that she loved him. Now, university behind them, they planned to marry. They’d be together forever—the thought filled him with joy.
Rays of late afternoon sunshine filtered through the trees encircling the patio behind a popular Danforth watering hole and bathed Angie in light, setting her apart like a beautiful painting. Danson wanted to hold the moment forever. He wished they were sitting in their own garden instead of a crowded, noisy restaurant.
Angie, laugh lines crinkling, brown eyes flashing and shining brown hair swinging, pushed her hair behind a delicate ear as she leaned towards him. “It’s time for us to make a decision. Should we elope? Do you have a long ladder?” she asked and laughed.
Danson grinned and grasped her slender hands. “No, I expect you to let down your long brown hair and let me creep up into the tower.” Her engagement ring sparkled as her hands moved.
“Seriously, should we have a wedding wedding—brides-maids, ushers, fancy dinner, speeches or...” she lowered her voice and whispered, “should we recruit two witnesses, your sister and my brother maybe, and hurry off to City Hall?”
Danson would do anything that made her happy. He loved her with an intensity he’d never believed possible. “Whatever you want,” he said.
“We could have a party afterwards. That way we’d be relaxed, and we’d have fun. Maybe a strawberry social or a fancy dress ball or—” she stopped, as a loud bang startled the diners. Then she looked surprised, let go of Danson’s hand and clutched her chest.
Danson watched an obscene red stain flower and spread over her pale yellow dress before she pitched forward face down on the table. He was vaguely aware that others were screaming and fleeing from the restaurant.
He could only focus on Angie’s stillness as her head rested on the table. It had to be a bizarre joke. How could this be happening? He sat frozen for seconds while his mind processed what he was seeing.
Jumping to his feet, he leaped to Angie’s side. “Call 911. Help us,” he shouted.
Not that anyone could. She was dead.
Danson felt as if a huge earth-moving machine had torn out his heart.
* * *
Eventually, Danson learned that a gang member who’d briefly served time before being deported had returned to Canada and taken up his old life. Angie had died in the gun fight between rival gangs.
Anger at the system that had allowed this to happen consumed Danson, and he vowed he would track down returning criminals and have them deported. He owed it to Angie to see that no one else died as she had, and to himself that no one else should suffer grief as he had.
No longer interested in his promising career as a tech consultant, he took a job that would put him on the fringes of the crime world and give him access to the information he needed.
One
Brush in hand, red-framed glasses perched on her nose, Hollis Grant studied the large canvas positioned on the easel set under the north-facing skylight. Earlier she’d cranked the window open to allow Toronto’s unseasonably warm late October air to flow into the room. The third floor attic apartment remained hot, but she ignored the heat, focused on her work and tried for the moment to ignore her concern for her landlady and friend, Candace Lafleur.
She intended to create a golden puzzle, a painting that would draw the viewer in and make them search for meaning. There would be tones and textures of gold with half-revealed hidden messages. Except for the reference to gold, this description could refer to Candace. For the past week, Candace had been a women obsessed with a problem but unwilling to share the details.
The painting wasn’t working. Damn.
She plunged the brush into the water on the tambour beside the easel. She felt like pulling out her hair. She momentarily envisaged herself bald as an egg and the floor littered with curly blonde hair.
What if she couldn’t fix the painting? Couldn’t paint what she visualized? Couldn’t succeed as an artist? These depressing thoughts sidling into her mind frightened her.
Not again. She’d suffered bouts of depression in the past, and they’d immobilized her. Bad enough to have painter’s block—she couldn’t allow depression to overwhelm her.
Exercise—that would help, she decided.
Several years earlier, her soon-to-be ex-husband had challenged her to take up running to lose weight and improve her fitness. Surprisingly, once she’d accomplished these goals, she hadn’t given up running; the process and the joy it produced had hooked her. Another plus had been its slimming effect on her slightly corpulent golden retriever, MacTee. They’d become committed runners, although sometimes,
