Dan Sharp Mysteries 4-Book Bundle (82 page)

“How so?”

“My father left home when I was young. My mother didn’t want me, so I found someone who did. I just wonder if your urge to have sex with older men as a teenager was some way of making up for your father’s drinking, for his abandoning you emotionally.”

Dan shrugged. “You may be right. To tell you the truth, I don’t worry about it now. I like who I am.”

She looked at him. “Good. That’s important. You and I are survivors. We know who we are and what matters to us. What matters is today, not yesterday.”

“It’s the Gaetan Bélangers of the world we have to worry about,” Dan agreed. “I just wish …”

She waited. “What, honey?”

Dan drew a breath. “I just wish he would have talked to me that day. Maybe I could have said something to change his mind. Are there people who are past help? Too far gone for hope?”

Domingo shrugged. “No one can be nowhere.”

Epilogue:

Unhappy Endings

Jags dropped by. He wore a linen suit and casual slacks. White cotton. Deliberately disobeying the fall fashion injunctive: no whites after Labour Day. Perhaps he thought the seasons stood still for him too.

Dan listened as he explained how he wanted to take him on permanently. Thanks to the interest stirred by his book, Jags had a new recording contract in the works. That meant studio time and eventually a tour. It could be worldwide if the response was big enough.

“But what would I do for you?” Dan asked. “You don’t need me to keep you safe any more.”

“Maybe I just like having you around. I still need someone to tell me what’s what.”

Dan leaned back in his chair, thought briefly of touring with a rock band, backstage passes, visas, vetting the press. “It’s not for me,” he said.

Jags reacted predictably, offering him more money.

“Nah,” Dan said. “Besides, I don’t like feeling that I can be bought. I’m still a puritan about some things. A little struggle is good for the soul. Money can’t buy happiness.”

“No, but it can get you a really nice Porsche Carrera.”

Dan waited.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Jags said. “I’m sick of my life, Dan. I just don’t know what else to be.”

“Why not go away for a while? Somewhere they don’t know who you are.”

“Hey! There’s no such place. I’ll break your bones if you say there is.”

Dan laughed.

“You know what they say: tough guys don’t dance. I ain’t moving anywhere. Besides, I have to finish the recording. I’ve got at least one more great one inside me. I can feel it.”

“I hope that gives you reason to stay sober,” Dan said. “If you do, you could be back on top in no time.”

Jags snorted. “Yeah, for a year or two. You know what these entertainment industry assholes are like. When you’re up they offer you the moon, but when you’re down they can’t remember your name or whether you ever existed.”

“I don’t see you being that low on the totem pole.”

“Don’t fool yourself. It’s money we’re talking about, not fame or artistic reputation. If I can’t make someone a buck, I’m as good as dead.”

They hadn’t really discussed the events of the previous few weeks. Dan thought they weren’t going to when Jags suddenly mentioned Pfeiffer.

“It was that thing about making him take the host that really got me, you know? I can’t say I’ve never been inside a church, but I can guarantee you I’ve never taken the host with anybody. I’m a devout Jew, for god’s sakes.”

Dan thought for a moment. “That’s not what your book said.”

Jags laughed. “Of course not. You think my rock-and-roll readers want to hear I’m a man of spirit?”

“So that story about growing up in smalltown Ontario wasn’t true?”

“I was born on a kibbutz in Israel. Both my parents lived and died there. I have no family in Canada. The only part of my past I still have is a picture of them at their wedding.”

Dan pondered this. “Maybe you should tell the truth next time. That’s far more colourful than saying you were raised in a middle-class home in Belleville.”

“Colour I don’t need at this point in my life.”

The house was finished. Dan stood by the window in the newly completed sunroom. The place was amazingly still and quiet. It almost seemed like a dream home. But then that was what it was intended to be.

Two coffee mugs sat on the table. Dan’s was empty, Trevor’s half-full. They’d been up all night. Dan felt the fatigue.

He glanced at Trevor over the horizon of the tabletop, as though it represented the border of a possible but unimagined world, something beyond the ordinary, everyday world that confined and defined. He felt as if he were standing at the edge of the sea, trying to imagine what lay over the horizon, away from this place where everything ended.

He’d sent Ked off to his mother’s again. Weekends were convenient for serious discussions like this. Ked would be heartbroken, he knew. There was nothing he could do about that. It was his own heart he should have been guarding.

Dan shook his head. “I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, if that’s what you think.”

Trevor’s brow furrowed. “I’d never think you would resort to emotional blackmail.” He paused. “I just wish you’d give it a chance. Live here for a while and see how it feels.”

“This was supposed to be our home. I can’t live here without you.”

“You could try it for a while.”

Dan looked down the length of the house then back at Trevor. He shrugged. “My heart won’t be in it. Besides, I can’t afford the mortgage. I just realized I’m not cut out to be anybody’s bodyguard. I’ve got to go back to my routine of finding deadbeat dads and other scum.”

“You’ll make money. You’re good at what you do.”

Dan looked off again. “I know.”

Trevor searched for the words that would inevitably cut the cord between them. “I don’t want to be the one to drag everyone down. You and Ked have a great life here in the city. It suits you both far more than you know.”

“We could live apart. I’d fly out to see you on the weekends.”

Trevor smiled sadly. “I can’t have you part-time, Dan. I couldn’t do that. And it wouldn’t solve anything. I don’t belong here. You have to let me go.”

Dan saw it now, how Trevor was like a caged bird beating its wings against the bars, trying to remain tranquil, but all the while terrified and wanting to be free.

“I need to go back to my forest, my trees. Joe’s ashes.”

“When?”

“Soon. But if you want me to leave right away …”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Trevor inclined his head. “It’s got to be soon. No use dragging it out. This will be hard on both of us. Not to mention Ked. Your son and I have grown very fond of one another.”

“Ked’s pretty adaptable. And I’ll get along. The one I worry about is Ralph. He doesn’t understand these things.”

He thought back to his meeting with Domingo at the restaurant, how she’d squeezed his hands and looked into his eyes.
You don’t need me to tell you
, she’d said.
You already know how it will go
. Was it pathetic or amazing to think that he had known all along and still denied it? He’d been too dependent on the dream, the illusion that he and Trevor had a chance at making it work. Because he saw now they never had. Not really. Not because the love wasn’t real or the need couldn’t bind them together, but because other currents held sway. Some seed planted in both of them had been destined to sprout at this moment and drive them apart. Not the love that conquers, but the fear that divides. Dan felt all the security and serenity he’d been nurturing over the past year ebbing away. It would never return.

“In any case, the market is pretty good right now. My agent said she won’t have trouble selling a ‘beautiful, newly renovated home in fabulous, trendy Corktown.’ I’ll make sure you get some of the proceeds, of course.”

Trevor shook his head. “I won’t take a cent from you.”

“But I want you to have it.”

“I can’t take it.”

“You could always give it away to the animal rescue shelter.”

Trevor smiled. “You can do that, if you like. I won’t take your money.”

Dan watched him, wondering what he’d miss most: the gentle smile, the eyes that crinkled softly around the edges, or the deep, confident voice that hid so many fears and insecurities.

“So that’s it then? Is there nothing I can say to make you change your mind?”

“I wish there was. I’m just too fragile to fit into your life. You won’t be content till you’ve solved everyone’s problems and put everything in its place. I would just worry us all to death and end up making you hate me. I’ll still worry about you, for that matter. I’m sorry.”

Dan shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. It had to happen, sooner or later. Better to happen before any more damage is done.”

“Yes.”

Rule Number Ten: The hero can never go home again.

Silence took hold for a moment.

This is it
, Dan thought. The ending. Finality. Everything stops here, like the last notes of a composer of genius squeezing out a few more drops of greatness on his deathbed, but one who has revealed himself mortal after all. He walked over to the table, cautious, not trusting things around him to remain intact, including the table and chairs. He sat and reality asserted itself, the laws of physics resuming their normal functioning, barely noticed by anyone. He looked over at Trevor, who somehow had never looked more beautiful, so glowingly right, despite the early hour and their mutual fatigue.

Dan recalled the first time they slept together, in Trevor’s villa on his island sanctuary. He remembered the shape of those early tentative feelings: hesitant and wistful. It had felt as though something was beginning to fill in what had till then only been an outline. Miraculously, of course, because he hadn’t known it was only an outline, like a cartoon figure breathed into life, or a kiss that awakens the sleeping lover, rising to meet the future with optimism; not knowing it had already eluded them, that it already lay in ruins behind them like the shape of what could never be.

A shadow fell across the table, dividing it into dark and light, as though everything was once again retreating to a mere outline.
The elusive mystery of life
, Dan thought.
We walk away from the edge, no longer daring to look at what might have been
. He sensed that he would carry this moment with him wherever he went, into every love affair, never finding what he was looking for: a life that does not grow old, a love that does not grow cold.

No one is dying here
, he told himself.
Life will continue
.

Perhaps that was the problem. He would stay here, in Toronto, and Trevor would return to his island. They would live apart, each knowing the other existed elsewhere, at the same time, but out of reach. Only just. He saw himself walking down a tree-lined street one day years from now, his feet scuffing the leaves and imagining for a moment that he was not alone, that Trevor was there beside him. Maybe he would recall a bit of conversation, speak a few words until he remembered and stopped himself before carrying on with a shrug.

“More coffee?” Dan asked.

Trevor looked over at him. “Sure. I’m going to need it.”

Dan picked up his cup and started to pour. Something stopped him. He looked out the window at his new backyard. Daylight was beginning to show at the edge of the sky. Here was one more day to get through, he thought. It sounded like a simple enough task, but then there would be all the others to follow after that.

It was time to start thinking about what he was going to do with them.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Mark Round and Lyn Nottingham for patiently explaining to me the elusive whys and wherefores of police protocol and then some. I also extend my gratitude to the kind folks at Dundurn who make me smile and give me reason to write, as well as to David Tronetti for being a good and careful listener. Cheers to David Bowie for the late-night vibes that kept me going.

Dedication

For all the courageous hearts.

Epigraph

“I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.”

— Charles Dickens

Chapter One

 L
eah Sampson couldn’t wait for the day to end. Twelve straight hours on the phone talking students through school jitters, boyfriend troubles, and suicidal thoughts was enough to make anyone go mad. Whoever said this generation had their shit together was dreaming in Technicolor. The problems she’d worked this lot through today had left her drained. A glass of Pinot, bowl of chocolate ice cream, and soak in a hot tub were long past due.

She turned her head as Wolf skirted past her desk to flop onto the couch positioned under a line of grimy windows. Darkness pressed against the glass and she glanced at her watch.
Ten to nine.
Ten more minutes and she’d be on her way home.

She tuned back into the girl’s voice droning into her ear and waited for her to take a breath. “If he threatens to hit you again, call me back,” Leah said. “We’ll talk further about your options. It’ll be time to decide whether you want to make a change. Yes, call anytime. We’re always here to help you through.”