corporate structure of Vista Mar Care Group. And that was that. Let him pick up the thread when he got back from breakfast, or trying to tickle LaReine’s cervix with his eyelashes, or whatever he was doing besides dumping his work on me.
If Jay Silver had ever been in trouble professionally, there was no record of it on the Registered Pharmacists’ Association of Ontario website. An archive of news releases going back to the year 2000 included an alarming number of recalls of drugs found to be unsafe or counterfeit. A handful dealt with Internet sales to the United States and actions taken against Ontario pharmacists who had violated new rules against them.
There was no mention anywhere of Jay Silver. If he had ever given someone the wrong drug, adulterated drugs, copped them for his own use or showed up to work naked, it hadn’t been in the new millennium.
Elsewhere on the RPAO site was a staff directory. I scrolled through it and called the office of Winston Chan, director of investigations. “I’m not sure there’s much I can tell you,” he said. “Our confidentiality regulations are very strict.” But he did agree to see me at ten the next morning.
The phone rang seconds after we ended the call and I wondered if Chan had changed his mind. But it was Franny. “Thanks for the message,” he said. “Now I only got one more favour to ask.”
“Aw, fuck, Franny.”
“Last one, I swear. Go out to this Meadowvale place and look it over.”
“You’re kidding. It’s way the hell and gone out Kingston Road.”
“Well, I’m in the west end now so you’re closer.”
“I have things to do.”
“What? The newspapers? You didn’t clip them already? Clint said you were available to help.”
He had me. I couldn’t say anything about the Silvers or even hint I had something going on outside of work. “Helping you is one thing. Doing all your work is another.”
“You think I wouldn’t do it for you?”
“It’s never come up.”
“Listen, Jonah, you want me to tell Clint what a great help you been, or that you bitch every time I ask?”
I sighed into the phone and hung up. Sighing wouldn’t change anything but it didn’t hurt either. I was pondering the best route to Meadowvale when Jenn flopped at her desk and dropped her knapsack at her feet. She was glistening with sweat. Her cheeks were bright red and strands of her hair were pasted to her neck.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked.
“Outside,” she panted. “Since five this morning. No A/C. Just heat. Humidity. Smog. Misery.”
“What were you doing?”
“Kelly Pride called in sick.”
“Again? She’s threatening Franny’s record.”
“Girl gives pride a bad name. She usually saves it for Fridays,” Jenn said. “But she’s too smart to work outside on a day like this.”
“Where does that leave you?” I teased.
She fixed me with a glare.
“Sorry. What’s the assignment?”
“You know that place out by Cherry Beach where they tore down the old refinery?”
“Where the new sports complex is being built?”
“Yup. Construction doesn’t start until August,” she said. “Meanwhile, someone has been dumping barrels of PCBs and other toxic waste there. We’re trying to catch whoever’s doing it so the owner can sue their ass and recover the cost of cleaning it up. I’ve been hidden in a little blind in the brush that overlooks the site, baking, sneezing and donating blood to mosquitoes.” She pulled a bottle of spring water from her knapsack and drained it. “At least I’m not doing the night shift,” she said. “Bugs’ll be ten times worse.”
“Why don’t you go down to the gym and grab a shower.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, am I offending you?”
“Only if you still smell like that when I take you to lunch.”
“Ooh, lunch,” she crooned. “My other favourite L-word.”
“Well, a fast lunch, anyway, and then a drive.”
“Where to?”
“Deepest darkest Scarborough.”
“What’s there?”
“A place called Meadowvale.”
“Sounds cool and shady.”
“How shady is the question,” I said.
CHAPTER 14
So who are we?” Jenn asked.
“Allan and Linda Gold. Good friends of my parents. My brother’s godparents, actually.”
We were stuck on Kingston Road in the eastern beaches, as a kid with a scruffy blond chin beard tried to back a beer truck into the narrow alley beside a pub.
“Okay, Al,” Jenn said. “Whose parent are we committing?”
“It’s not a mental institution,” I said. “We’re placing my mother there.”
“And where do we Golds hail from?”
“Same as in real life. I’m from Toronto, you’re from Feedbag, Ontario.”
“That’s Fordham, city boy. Will they want to know what we do?”
“They’ll want to know we have money.”
“And do we?”
“A family fortune.”
“I like it,” Jenn said. “How much?”
“As long as we’re fantasizing, let’s go big. Five hundred thousand, left to us by dear old dad when he passed.” As opposed to the zip, zilch and bupkes my dad had left us.
“How long have we been married?”
I looked at Jenn in her yellow floral-print sundress that showed her tanned arms and legs to enormous advantage.
“Three years,” I suggested. “Three rapturous sex-crazed years.”
“In your dreams.”
Indeed.
“So what are we looking for?”
I filled her in on what I had learned so far. “Let’s see if they pressure us to accept Bader as Mom’s doctor. And where they keep their records.”
Ten minutes later, we parked in front of a ranch-style building of fieldstone and stucco with large windows and well-kept grounds. There was neither a meadow nor a vale in sight, but as nursing homes went, it was less bleak than I had imagined. It could have been a golf course clubhouse.
“Linda, darling?”
“Yes, Al?”
“Just to avoid any slips, let’s not use names in there.”
“Terms of endearment only?”
“Yup. Call me honey, sweetheart, dear. God of Thunder.”
“Dickhead okay?”
“Regrettably, I’ve been called that more than God of Thunder in my time.”
We crossed the parking lot toward the main entrance where a man who had just exited was lighting a cigarette. This guy was short but solidly built, with a round face a grandmother would want to pinch. His cigarette had the distinctive smell of American tobacco.
