Who by water, p.2
Who by Water, page 2
Meera shook her head. “I think it’s from one of those Jurassic Park sequels Lewis made me watch.”
“Well, speaking of the past” — Dame picked up her phone from the coffee table — “Rachel called me tonight.”
“Like, Rachel Rachel?”
Dame nodded.
“What did she want?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t answer.”
“You aren’t the least bit curious?”
“Nope.”
“Huh. Maybe you really are moving forward.” Meera finished the rest of her glass and gave a little shiver. “Speaking of which, I should probably get going. If I leave Lewis alone for too long, the cat starts bullying him.”
“How is Elwy Yost these days?”
“Oh, man. I’m telling you, Dame” — Meera yawned — “this whole parenthood business is a slog.”
Dame smiled. “I’ve heard that.”
* * *
Moments after Meera shut the door, Dame lay back down on the couch. Almost immediately, she could feel the arms of sleep pulling her into a black embrace. At least until the sound of a second knock dragged her back into the real world.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she croaked from the couch. “Just come in.”
Undoubtedly, it was Meera again. No more than ten minutes had passed since she’d left, which — for Meera — was just enough time to realize she’d forgotten either her phone, her wallet, or both somewhere in the apartment.
“You lose something?” Dame asked when she heard the door creak open.
But the woman who stepped inside wasn’t Meera.
“Dame?”
The woman standing in her front hall was Rachel.
“I need your help.”
Rachel Rachel.
“Adam’s missing,” she said. “He’s been gone for over a week.”
Chapter Three
“Okay. Slow down. Start again from the start.”
Dame put a mug of tea in front of the woman and then sat down across from her at the kitchen table. Less than an hour ago, she was drifting off into a well-deserved unconsciousness, and now, she was making tea (“Do you have any almond milk?”) for Rachel Suarez. Rachel-husband-fucking-Suarez.
“Adam turned forty last month.” Rachel dabbed her eyes with a tissue. She was one of those irritating pretty criers. “For his birthday, I booked him some recording time in this studio on Toronto Island.”
“Okay,” Dame said, “then what happened?”
“Well, he scheduled the Monday off work —”
“He’s still with the Parks Department?”
“Yeah” — Rachel sniffed — “he manages a team now. Does mostly office work.”
Dame nodded.
“He was supposed to stay on the island for three days. Just three. The guy there — the engineer or whatever — said he could sleep on the couch and that there was a bathroom and shower and stuff. So, he just took a duffle bag, an old hunting jacket, and his acoustic guitar. You know, Suzanne?”
Dame nodded again. She knew Suzanne.
“And he left. Then, three days went by, and then four, and then six.” Dame could hear the panic blossoming in her voice. “He never came home. He never showed up to work. He wouldn’t respond to my texts or calls.”
As Rachel twisted the gold band on her third finger, Dame couldn’t help but wonder what happened to her own wedding ring. She almost threw it away when she found out about her husband’s infidelity, and then managed to lose it when she got her own place. Not that it really mattered to her anymore.
“Is it possible, Rachel” — Dame proceeded with caution — “that Adam just left? I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time he stepped out on someone, right?”
There was a momentary quiet in the room. “It’d be the first time he stepped out on me.”
Dame adjusted her glasses. “Well, I’m sorry this is happening to you, and obviously, I’m concerned about Adam” — she wasn’t really, he was probably off fucking some twenty-five-year-old — “but what exactly do you want me to do about it?”
Rachel frowned at Dame. “I want you to find him. Isn’t that what you do? Don’t you have some sort of — I don’t know — side hustle now?”
“My only ‘side hustle’ is trying to get my daughter to sleep through the night.”
Rachel stood up. She crossed the room and leaned against the counter. “We read about you in the Star. About how you caught Gus Morrow. What were they calling him? The West End Arsonist?”
“That wasn’t really detective work, Rachel. That was just bad taste in men. Something we have in common.”
The woman sat down at the kitchen table again and put her face in her hands. “He wouldn’t do this to me,” she said. “He wouldn’t do this to Luka.”
The mention of Rachel’s son filled Dame’s chest with ice. “What did the police say?”
“I filed a missing person report.” She shrugged. “They said they’d look into it.”
“Well?”
“Come on, Polara. He’s a six-foot-tall middle-aged man. Nobody’s going to be worried about him.”
“Exactly. Because Adam can take care of himself.”
“You learned all that private eye stuff from your dad. You’re good at this kind of thing. Let me hire you. I’ll pay you. Whatever it costs.”
“Rachel, I —”
“You know Adam. If anyone could find him, Dame, it’s you.” She was getting louder, now. Her hands gripped the table. “Please, just —”
“Rachel.”
From the other room, Rosie started mewling. “Ma-maa …”
Dame took a deep breath. “Look, I haven’t spoken to Adam in nearly three years. I have no idea who he is anymore — where he goes, what he does — and to be perfectly honest, I’m not all that sure I really knew him when we were married. I certainly didn’t know him when he started sleeping with you.”
“Maa-mah …” Rosie’s little voice came again from the nursery.
Rachel stared at the floor for a moment. “Do you think it was easy to come here?” Her voice was quiet. “Do you think I would’ve come here if I had any other choice? I need your help.”
“Maa-maah!” Rosie’s voice was reaching peak levels of agitation.
“I’m sorry, Rachel.” Dame stood up. “I hope you find Adam. I really do. But I have someone else who needs my help now.”
* * *
“So?” Meera leaned against Dame’s desk and lowered her voice. “How’s the new guy working out?”
“Who, Terrence?”
They glanced over at the young man sitting at his computer.
“Seems nice,” Dame said.
“‘Nice’? That’s it? Just, ‘nice’?”
Dame frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t think he’s handsome? Or funny? Or” — Meera looked over at Terrence again — “kind of broad-shouldered?”
Dame snuck a peek at her new colleague. He was certainly handsome and broad-shouldered, but he was also a good decade younger than she was.
“Meera —”
“Did you know he has a six-year-old nephew? He’s probably really good with kids.”
“Meera, you’re his boss. You shouldn’t be talking about him like that.”
“Well, there’s a reason I hired him, Dame, and it wasn’t just because he’s ‘nice.’” She gave Dame a pointed look. “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
“God, Meera. You’re an HR nightmare.”
She sighed. “Being single is wasted on the unwed.”
“So did you just come in here to play matchmaker? Because some people have work to do.”
Meera was quiet for a moment. “Okay. Here’s the thing. I’ve got a teensy bit of news.”
“What now?”
“The Crown Attorney needs someone from Heritage Planning to testify in the new Marinetti case.”
“And?”
“And I may have suggested you.”
“Again? Come on, Meera —”
“I’m sorry. I know you spent months in court after everything that happened with the Sainte-Marie Hotel, but this new case has some real teeth. And if the Crown can prove that he’s — shit, what did they say? — that he’s ‘engaged in a pattern of concealment and obfuscation,’ then there might be real consequences this time.”
“Meera, none of the developers that Peggy helped cheat the system faced ‘real consequences.’ They all got a slap on the wrist and then kept on tearing down whatever piece of history they wanted.”
“Well, it didn’t help that Peggy basically disappeared from the face of the Earth before the trial started.”
“So, what’s another trial going to do?”
“You know Marinetti’s rap sheet better than anyone. Maybe you could make it stick this time. Think about it. He’s the biggest player, the worst offender, and this trial could really hurt him.”
“When’s it happening?”
“In about a month.”
Dame sighed. For years she’d hated Phillip Marinetti — blamed him for the fire that ruined her father’s health and killed a little boy — but she’d been wrong. Marinetti hadn’t torched the Sainte-Marie Hotel, and he wasn’t a murderer. He was just a run-of-the-mill corporate crook.
“Well, I’ll do my best, but I’ve still got a ton of permits to deal with this month.”
“Just give them to Terrence.” Meera smiled and started heading for the door. “He’s got to be good for something around here.”
Dame hadn’t told Meera about Rachel’s visit the night before. She was still actively trying to pretend the whole thing had been a bad dream. But at lunch, she made the mistake of Googling “Adam Hoffman.”
When she used to creep her ex online, she’d find his social media posts, his name on the Parks Department website, or even old interviews from when he was still playing in a band: “When asked why they named themselves Long Walks on the Beach, guitar player Adam Hoffman, 28, just smiles and adjusts his Expos ball cap. ‘Well, everybody likes long walks on the beach, don’t they?’”
Now, the first hit was “Police Searching Toronto Island for Missing Forty-Year-Old Man.”
Dame wasn’t sure whether she should be more or less concerned that he’d made the news. On one hand, it seemed unlikely that she could chalk this up to Adam flaking out. On the other, it meant the police were doing their job, regardless of what Rachel said.
* * *
When she got home from work that afternoon, Dame had a solid hour before she had to pick up Rosie from daycare. It was an hour to tidy, wash a few dishes, and prepare for the long haul single mom weekend.
The apartment really was a disaster, but she was trying to cut herself some slack. Since Rosie was born, she cleaned the place more in a day than she ever had in a month, and somehow it was still filthy. She was amazed, at times, that any of her plants could survive under these conditions. She couldn’t remember the last time she watered them, but the snake plant, the devil’s ivy, and Peggy’s old monstera were all thriving. It was as though all of her maternal instincts had kicked in at once. This past weekend, Dame had even tried her hand at baking.
She fished a blackened chocolate chip cookie out of a very cracked, tiger-shaped ceramic jar. The cookie was rock hard and likely carcinogenic, but still, she nibbled on the burnt sugar as she shuffled through the mail on the kitchen table: credit card statements, bank statements, laughable offers to sell the house she didn’t own. When she came across her name in a familiar hand, she stopped.
The return address on the envelope read “Central North Correctional Centre, Penetanguishene, Ontario.”
Bad guy in jay-yo.
She didn’t open the letter, but instead added it to a stack of seven or eight just like it, in the little cupboard above her fridge.
* * *
That evening, Dame had to cycle through Rosie’s bedtime routine four times before the kid finally fell asleep. It was a lot of night nights for one night. She managed to catch a few hours of uninterrupted sleep before Rosie started hollering again, but when she got her eyes unstuck and looked at the clock, it was barely five in the morning. Living with a two-year-old was like living with a smoke detector that had a faulty sensor. She could go off at any moment. And often did.
When Dame stumbled into her daughter’s bedroom, Rosie was already standing up in her crib, gripping the bars, demanding her release. For a brief, unguarded moment, Dame’s brain let her think about Rosie’s father. She quickly pushed the thought out of her head.
“Good morning,” Dame said.
“Poop,” Rosie said.
In the beginning, changing diapers had been high on Dame’s list of Scary Things About Motherhood. But with the exception of one very messy and very public incident on the TTC, it hadn’t been the ordeal she’d expected. Breastfeeding turned out to be the real horror show. Latching, pumping, leaking — her body seemed to fight the process every step of the way. Not to mention the damage Rosie’s baby teeth had done. Dame didn’t think her nipples would ever be the same.
At the change table, she strapped the new diaper onto her daughter and dropped the old one in the Diaper Genie. A sour belch escaped the waste container before she could shut it.
“Pee-ew!” Dame said. “That’s stinky.”
Rosie wrinkled her nose. “Pee-ew!”
Dame coaxed a little food into her daughter and then coaxed her daughter into some clothes. She slathered the little girl’s face and arms and chubby thighs in sunscreen.
“What do you think, partner?” she asked. “Should we hit the road?”
For the past couple years, Dame had been driving her father’s Buick. But the old sedan needed a new transmission, and neither she nor her father had the four grand needed to fix it. So instead, Dame pack-muled her way down the front steps of her house, Rosie in one arm, umbrella stroller and diaper bag in the other. By then, the sun was just starting to show itself, not in the flashy colours of dawn, but the slow, grey retreat of night.
After she had clipped her daughter into the stroller, they headed south on O’Hara, then east on Queen. They spent most of their morning at Masaryk Park, Rosie trying to climb the play structure, and Dame trying to keep her from falling off of it. Occasionally, the little girl would toddle around in the grass, dragging her stuffed raccoon, and Dame would stare into her phone, hoping her daughter didn’t discover a used condom or an uncollected pile of dog shit.
It was following one of these moments of digital distraction that Dame looked up and noticed a white Chevrolet Caprice crawling down Cowan Avenue. A brief chill flashed through her body, but when the car pulled over, Dame was relieved to see two teenage girls climb out and disappear down the sidewalk. She reminded herself that Anton Felski, the man Peggy Beckers hired to kill her, was still behind bars.
By nine o’clock in the morning, Dame felt like she had put in a full day. As they started to head back, she was surprised to receive a text from Meera. Hey are you home?
Funny she was already up. Maybe the new cat had meowed her out of bed. Not yet, she replied. Should be in about ten minutes.
We’re going to stop by.
Dame was hoping the “we” included Elwy Yost. So far, the only animal Rosie had regular contact with was the cataract-riddled, incontinent poodle that lived in the apartment next to Dodge’s. Maybe when life was a little more sane, they could get a dog. Maybe a rescue. Something gentle and steady.
But when she got to her end of O’Hara, Elwy Yost was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Meera and Lewis sat waiting on her front stoop, their eyes both disguised by sunglasses. Meera’s hair was up in a bun.
“Hey, guys.” Dame crouched down to unclip Rosie from the stroller. “You’re here bright and early.”
“Dame,” Lewis said, “have you heard about Adam?”
She hoisted Rosie up into her arms. “Well, I mean, yeah. Rachel made a surprise appearance at my apartment on Thursday. She had some sob story that he was missing.”
Meera and Lewis looked at each other.
“He’s not missing anymore,” Meera said. “They found him this morning.”
Chapter Four
Nothing about Adam’s service felt real. Maybe it was all the weird ceremony — the bowed heads, the boxy suits, the cloying a cappella performance of “American Pie.” None of it seemed to reflect the man she once knew.
The closed casket, in particular, gave her the odd sensation that this was a funeral for somebody else. As she stood there, bits of wet grass sticking to her new, uncomfortable shoes, she could almost convince herself that she was at the wrong cemetery, that her ex-husband wasn’t dead at all. She could imagine him off living some life that had absolutely nothing to do with her. And yet here she was, once again pulled back into his stupid orbit.
Only the faces — made unfamiliar by both time and grief — anchored her in lousy reality. Funerals were always a little awkward, but there was something about being the deceased’s ex-wife that elevated Dame to a whole new level of social anxiety. Where else could she encounter her ex-mother-in-law, her ex-sister-in-law, her ex-nephews, and a wide assortment of ex-friends, all in the same crowd? Dame didn’t want to even think about the fact that, only four days ago, she had booted Adam’s widow — her ex–best friend — out of her apartment. As Dame listened to a hired officiant describe Adam’s modest accomplishments — family, musicianship, fatherhood — Rachel’s hard, guttural sobs punctuated the eulogy. Eventually, her four-year-old son crawled up onto her lap and buried his face in her neck.
