“I’ll try.”
“In case you need incentive, Cheryl has a very nice friend coming with us-very nice. Just in case love for ha- aretz isn’t enough.”
Love for ha-aretz, for the land of Israel. It had never been enough.
Shortly after eight-fifteen, Jay Silver walked out of his house to the midnight-blue Lexus in his driveway. He wore a brown tweed jacket that looked too heavy for the heat. He put his briefcase on the rear left seat, then pulled off the jacket and hung it on a hook inside the door. His shirt showed damp spots under both arms. He put his hands on his hips and stood staring at his front door. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, folded his arms across his chest, then put his hands back on his hips.
“Are you coming or what!” he called.
“Just a minute,” a woman replied.
He paced back and forth, looking at the house, at his watch, at the house. “What’s taking so long!”
Laura Silver appeared in the doorway. She was what my mother would have called a Jewish Beauty, right before passing me her phone number: dark curls tumbling past her shoulders, a heart-shaped face with wide green eyes and a full mouth, her body slender but not starved. She said. “I’m just putting sunscreen on Lucas and we’ll be out.”
“Putting on sunscreen takes this long?”
“You know how he squirms.”
“Who’s in charge?” Silver said. “You or him?”
“Don’t start, Jay.” She was keeping her voice level and even, non-threatening, like you would with a dog whose temper you weren’t sure of.
“Who’s starting? I’m just asking, are you in charge or is he? If you didn’t indulge him so goddamn much-”
“Jay!” There was steel in her voice now. “What is it with you these days? We are not late. We are in good time. Please don’t make a big deal out of it. I’d rather take one extra minute to get Lucas ready than upset him and have to deal with that for the rest of the day.”
“You’re spoiling him, can’t you see that? You’re letting him know that if he fusses about something he’ll get his way.”
“Like you’re doing now?”
That shut him up. Had I not been schooled in the art of unobtrusive surveillance, I would have stood up through my sunroof and cheered. But Silver wasn’t through. He walked briskly up the driveway and into the house. His voice was too muffled to make out words, but his tone was impossible to miss. A moment later, he came striding out, pulling Lucas by the hand. The boy seemed small for five. He wore a Blue Jays cap and a T-shirt with a drawing of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, holding hands and walking into a sunset. “Best friends,” it said. With his shorts and sandals, he looked for all the world like a little sabra, a native Israeli. Even at a distance I could see the boy’s lip trembling as he tried to fight back tears. Silver yanked the rear door open and hoisted Lucas into a car seat, then buckled him in as the boy’s face crumpled.
Jay Silver looked like he was going to slam the car door shut on his own son, but then the anger seemed to go out of him and he just stood with his hand on the door frame, his head down. Laura Silver came down the walk with Lucas’s backpack, glared at Silver until he moved aside, then leaned into the car to calm her son. When order had been restored, she looked at her husband, her anger fading to concern. She spoke too softly for me to hear but Silver nodded. She patted his big upper arm, closed the side door and walked around to the driver’s side. He got in the passenger side. They backed out and, with me following, Laura took Bathurst north to Eglinton, then headed east on Eglinton. She handled herself reasonably well for a Torontonian. Didn’t run a single red light, mount any curbs, crash through a transit shelter or give anyone the finger.
The Med-E-Mart was one of half a dozen big-box retail stores in a power centre on Laird south of Eglinton. There was also a supermarket, a sporting goods store, an office supplies emporium, a hardware giant and a government liquor store. Jay got out at the curb in front of his store and leaned in to say something to Lucas, then held out his palm for a low five. He didn’t get one. After a long moment, he withdrew his hand and straightened with a look on his face that struggled between contrition and anger.
As his wife pulled away from the curb, I watched Jay Silver put on his heavy brown jacket, perhaps to cover the sweat stains on his shirt, and trudge into his place of business.
CHAPTER 12
B eacon’s business-services database showed that Jay Silver was the sole owner of Med-E-Mart. No partners to want him dead. It didn’t seem he had ever gone bankrupt or stiffed anyone. What could he have done to deserve the horrible death someone intended for him, this civilian in a clean white smock? Given someone the wrong medication? Diluted it, like the one who’d been caught in Kansas? Could someone have died because of a mistake he’d made?
“Hey, Jonah, quit breathing so goddamn loud.” I turned to see Franny cruising in at ten to ten, looking worse than he had the day before. “I got twenty guys in my head with jack-hammers going. You got something for a headache?”
Yesterday’s shirt had a few new wrinkles and a brownish stain just under the collar. His pompadour was at less than its majestic best. I said, “Sorry. Ask Jenn when she gets back.”
“My notes typed yet?”
“Been home yet?”
Franny winked. “What’s home, eh, but the place I lay my head? Chalice, I’d rather be where I can lay LaReine. That woman could crush coal between her thighs and turn out diamonds.”
“That would account for your headache.”
“Very funny. Listen, do me a favour.”
I handed Franny the transcript of his interview with Errol Boyko. “Another one, you mean.”
“Don’t worry, when you start getting cases again I’m gonna be there for you, you’ll see.”
“What now?”
He scribbled a note on a scratch pad, tore it off and handed it to me. “This is the lady from the ministry who recommended Meadowvale to Boyko.”
“Darlene Tunney.”
“Yeah, like the fighter. Ask her if they’ve been in trouble before.”
“I thought you were looking into that part.”
“I was going to, only I have a breakfast meeting.”
“Looking like that?”
“It’s with LaReine, she won’t care.”
“Franny, you just got in.”
“Exactly my point. Who’s had time for breakfast?”
Darlene Tunney answered her phone in a thin, nasal voice that carried that air of unfounded authority favoured by provincial bureaucrats.
“Ms. Tunney, this is Jonah Geller from Beacon Security. I’m looking for information about a nursing home in Ontario.”
“Have you tried our website? It has everything you need to help you choose the right home for your loved one.”
“I’m not looking to place anyone.”
“No?”
“We’ve been asked to look into the death of a resident at a nursing home called Meadowvale.”
“We?”
“Yes. Beacon Security.”
“By whom?”
“That’s confidential.”
