Old City Hall (42 page)

“My parents sent me to camp one summer up here,” Greene said. It was very rare for him to ever talk about himself.

“Did you like it?” Kennicott asked.

Greene shrugged his shoulders. “Here, take a look at these,” he said, handing over some pages from his briefcase.

The first was a printout of the driving record of Jared Cody, 55 Pine Street, in Haliburton, Ontario. No criminal record. No outstanding charges. Just a couple of speeding tickets.

“Who is this?” Kennicott asked.

“A guy who was always at the café when I was there. Another bad habit of mine. I write down license-plate numbers. When I was up here last time, I’d put his on the back of a receipt for some denture cream I’d bought for my dad. I called the number in yesterday and got the readout. Look at the other pages.”

Kennicott looked at the next sheet of paper. There were two police occurrence reports. The first one was dated March 15, 1988. It said:

A number of citizens gathered outside the office of the Children’s Aid Society in Toronto. They carried protest signs and bullhorns and were shouting: “Give us back our children.” The leader of the group, Jared Cody, d.o.b. May 1, 1950, identified
himself as a child advocate lawyer. He and the group were cautioned with respect to causing a disturbance and trespassing. No arrests were made at this time.

The second was dated 1989.

A number of citizens gathered on the main street in the town of Haliburton. They carried protest signs and bullhorns and were shouting: “Give us back our children.” The leader of the group, Jared Cody, d.o.b. May 1, 1950, identified himself as a child advocate lawyer. Police officers attended, and a scuffle broke out. One officer was pushed from behind through the front window of a store named Stedmans. Ms. Sarah Brace, d.o.b. December 21, 1947, was arrested with respect to this occurrence and released. Charges were eventually withdrawn.

“Sounds like she pushed that cop pretty hard,” Kennicott said.

“From behind,” Greene said.

They drove on for quite a while.

“The road construction was really bad the first two times I came up here,” Greene said as they climbed higher. A folksy highway sign declared
WELCOME TO THE HALIBURTON HIGHLANDS
. “This extra passing lane here’s all new.”

“McGill said it was killing her business,” Kennicott said.

“It probably was. It went on for miles,” Greene said. “You know, it’s another bad habit. Once a case is over, I like to go back for one last look. There’s always something I overlooked. Usually it’s real obvious.”

About twenty minutes later they pulled into the driveway of the Hardscrabble Café. It was before twelve, and the parking lot was filled with a collection of cars, mostly pickup trucks.

Inside the café, Kennicott, smelling the fresh bread, was instantly hungry. The restaurant was packed. An overhead fan was rotating at
full force, but the room was warm. Beautiful flowers hung from the ceiling over every table. They took the last open table near the back window, and in a few minutes a thin waitress came up to take their order.

“Sorry to keep yous waitin’,” she said. She turned her little yellow pad over.

“Hi, Charlene,” Greene said. “What’s the fresh special today?”

Charlene looked at Greene. Clearly she didn’t recognize him. “Tomato and cucumber salad,” she said, looking at the back of her pad and reading. “All homegrown right here.”

Greene ordered the salad. Kennicott ordered homemade lasagna. As Charlene was about to leave, Greene leaned toward her, a conspiratorial look on his face. “Could you do me a favor?” he said, pulling out a spoon wrapped in a plastic bag. “Tell Ms. McGill that Mr. Greene is here and I’ve got some cutlery to return to her.”

The waitress’s eyes widened as she watched Greene put the bag on the table beside his plate.

They ate slowly. Greene was right, the food was good. Greene ordered raspberry pie for both of them. Just as they were finishing, Kevin Brace walked out of the swinging kitchen doors. Kennicott looked at Greene. Greene didn’t seem at all surprised.

Brace carried a rectangular orange plastic container and moved at an unhurried pace from table to table, piling up dirty plates and cutlery. He was methodical in his work. Plodding. In no hurry. Like someone on prison time, Kennicott thought as Brace approached their table.

Up close, Kennicott could see that Brace’s hair had been cut. A blunt, inexpensive haircut. Despite the heat in the room, he wore a white turtleneck. When he saw Kennicott and Greene, his sober face cracked into a bemused smile. He stacked their dishes slowly.

When he reached for the spoon in the plastic bag, Greene’s hand shot out and covered it.

“The fingerprints on this spoon are the reason you’re a free man today,” Greene said. His voice was neither angry nor conciliatory. Just factual.

Brace looked Greene right in the eye and then nodded. The smile remained. Not a hint of celebration in it.

Kennicott remembered what Howard Peel had said about Brace: “The whole damn country sucked the guy dry.” He was probably happy to be in jail.

Grinning widely, Sarah McGill emerged from the kitchen, a dish towel slung over her shoulder, and sat in the chair beside Greene.

“Hello,
Mr.
Greene,” she said, a glint in her eye. Brace kept stacking the dishes, like any other employee getting paid minimum wage.

“I’ve got something to return to you,” Greene said, pushing the sealed bag toward her.

“Maybe I should call the police, report a theft.” McGill laughed. So did Greene.

Kennicott watched Brace. His eyes gave away nothing. He just reached for the spoon, pulled it out of the bag, and dropped it into his plastic container. There was a layer of soapy water on the bottom, and Kennicott watched the spoon gradually submerge.

“How’s your garden this year?” Greene asked McGill.

“Good. It’s been hot.”

“Food is delicious,” Greene said.

“Thanks,” McGill said. She put her hand on Greene’s arm. Brace stopped stacking the dishes, and the table grew silent. No one said a word. Clearly McGill was thanking Greene for more than complimenting her food and returning her spoon.

“’Scuse me. Sorry, Ms. McGill,” a voice from behind Kennicott said. He turned and saw the young waitress, Charlene. “We’ve got a spill at table four,” she said.

McGill took one last look at Greene. Kennicott saw her squeeze his arm. “I’m coming,” she said, reaching for her towel.

“I don’t see Mr. Cody here today,” Greene said. “The fellow who always complains that you close on Mondays.”

McGill eyed Greene, then laughed. “Jared’s gone fishing,” she said. “Besides, now we’re open seven days a week.”

Greene stood quickly, held his arm out to McGill, and shook her hand. “The best of luck to you and your husband,” he said.

Back in the parking lot, Greene tilted his head at Kennicott. “Let’s go look at her garden,” he said. “It’s out back.”

They walked around to the far side of the building. A rectangular plot of land was under cultivation, the whole thing fenced in by high chicken wire. There were a number of elevated rows of plants in straight vertical lines, with all kinds of vegetables and herbs growing in labeled, neatly ordered batches.

“My landlord would be envious of all this land they have up here,” Kennicott said.

The back door of the café opened, and an awkward-looking man wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey jersey walked out carrying a yellow pail and a pair of scissors. He looked over at Kennicott and Greene for an instant, then looked away as he unlatched the back gate and let himself into the garden.

Greene stood motionless beside Kennicott. The man was almost the spitting image of his father. The same deep brown eyes. He was tall too, but hunched over.

Stepping precisely between the rows of plants, Kevin junior carefully snipped a handful of lettuce and herbs, all the while humming slightly off-key. Then, putting his pail on a wooden side table, he bent down over a newly hoed row, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a tomato-seed packet. He shook his head. Seemingly upset.

He looked over in their direction again, not making eye contact. He looked at the sky, then shrugged his shoulders, as if resigned to some terrible fate. Kennicott looked up and saw the full moon, visible well above the horizon.

Kennicott looked back just in time to see Kevin junior gently tap the seeds into the virgin soil, take out a marker, and slowly, precisely, write out a label.

Mr. Federico would approve, Kennicott thought, looking at Kevin junior so at home amid his plants.

Back in the car, Greene was silent. The road was empty and they made good time. As they descended through the granite rock cut, Greene turned to Kennicott. “Any thoughts?”

“Food’s good, just like you said. And fresh. I remember when I was
a kid, my mother had a garden at our cottage and—” It hit Kennicott with a jolt. “That’s it.”

“What?” Greene said. His eyes darted over toward Kennicott, then back to the narrow road. “What?”

“The Leafs,” Kennicott said. “The Toronto Maple Leafs.”

I
can’t believe I’m back here again, Nancy Parish thought as she slid into the hard plastic chair in interview room 301 at the Don Jail. The same chair she’d spent half the winter sitting in, across from the inscrutable Kevin Brace.

She wasn’t supposed to be here this afternoon. But this morning Ted DiPaulo, her partner, had slipped into her office.

“Nancy,” he said, “you won’t believe this.” He tossed a square envelope of fancy stationery across her crowded desk. The envelope was already opened. Inside was a finely embossed, thick piece of paper.

Mr. Philip Cutter and Ms. Barbara Gild, Barristers and Solicitors, are pleased to announce the opening of their new offices. Please attend our opening celebration on July 10.

Parish laughed as she tossed it back at him. “Ted, you can go for the firm.”

“Not in a million years,” he said, not even cracking a smile.

DiPaulo was still fuming at the treatment Cutter and Gild had received from the Crown’s office. Instead of being summarily fired, they’d been allowed to resign quietly and even keep their pensions intact. Now, without missing a beat, they were joining the defense bar. It offended him to the core.

He put the envelope down and reached for Parish’s key chain, which she’d tossed among the piles of paper strewn about her desk. Without asking, he adeptly began to work one of the keys off the chain.

“This is what partners are for,” he said.

Parish had picked up yet another Law Society form that she was supposed to have filled in months ago. She looked back up at him. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Taking your office key.”

“What?”

“You’re banned from here for the rest of the week.”

“You can’t do that,” she said, playfully grabbing at his hands.

“Too late,” he said triumphantly, holding up her key in his hand.

“Ted—”

“Nancy, I’m serious,” he said. “Those stacks of paper aren’t going to get any smaller by you moving them around again. It takes a long time to get over a big trial. The weather’s beautiful. Take the week.”

“But it’s only Monday.”

“You’ve got four days. Go plant some petunias.”

Parish frowned. “I tried that when I bought the house a few years ago. I spent five hundred bucks on annuals.”

“Great.”

“No. They all got leggy because I never pruned them.”

“Go prune. Just go out into the sunlight.”

Parish knew he was right. It had been six weeks since the Brace trial ended, and she’d gone through all the predictable withdrawal stages. The first week she did little but shuffle paper around her office and linger over lunches, reading her way through all four major daily newspapers. For fun, she deleted the perpetual voice-mail messages from reporters wanting to interview her about the case.

Her friend Zelda dragged her out for a night of vodka and talk about Zelda’s favorite topic—her sex life. A guy at a bar had asked Parish for her number, and she’d actually given it to him. When he called a few days later, she told him she’d get back to him in a month or two. He sounded genuinely disappointed.

The next week she solemnly promised herself to be more productive and actually did a short trial, a few guilty pleas, and some JPTs. Her perceived “big win” in the Brace case had kicked up a host of potential new clients. Some were interesting, but many were losers. People with hopeless cases who wanted to switch lawyers in the vain expectation that she could pull a rabbit out of a hat.

At the end of the third week, she couldn’t put it off anymore. She went home to her parents’ house and actually managed not to get in a fight with her mother for two whole days. My Bridget Jones weekend, she thought as she found herself late on Saturday night sitting in her old bedroom, the window wide-open, smoking the first cigarette she’d had in years.

The last few weeks had been an indistinct blur. Ted was right to kick her out of the office. She’d gone straight to George’s Garden Centre. George, a crusty old goat who seemed to wear the same pair of striped overalls all year round, greeted her in his usual irascible style.

“Good day, Counsel,” he said as he picked the buds off some dangly-looking plants.

“Hi, George,” she said. George’s usually bountiful botanical supply looked thinned out, picked over. Clearly all the good plants had long since been snapped up by the conscientious, responsible gardeners.

“You’re later than ever.”

“I’ve had a busy year.”

“I think I saw you in the paper once this spring. When I was wrapping up some perennials for clients who buy in season.”

“Is there anything decent left?” she asked.

Just then her cell rang. George rolled his eyes as she answered it.

“Nancy Parish,” she said, turning away.

“Ms. Parish,” a male voice she didn’t recognize said, “I was given your number by a former client of yours—”

“Can you call the office, please?” she said. “I’m taking the week off, and my partner—”

“I shared a cell with him all winter,” the man said. “I think you’ll want to see me.”