Dead Politician Society (23 page)

Let me help you with that, Mom.” Jonathan watched his mother strain to reach the top shelf.

“Got it.” Anita showed her son the honey bear she'd retrieved. “You could put this on the floor for me, though. That horrible businessman is out there, so I'd prefer to stay back in the kitchen.”

Jonathan took the honey and put it at the coffee station, scowling at the man in the cheap suit who flirted too heavily with his mother. Did the guy think that because he tipped her a quarter each morning on his lousy cup of coffee, Anita should be grateful enough to go on a date with him? His mother was too good for the assholes who patronized this place.

Jon smiled at Wendy, the woman with Down Syndrome who'd been working the cash since his mother had opened the café. He was sad that this would end soon. In the last several years, in addition to the smoking by-law that had cut business by half overnight, property taxes had risen to such a level that the small coffee shop would have to triple its numbers in order to keep its doors open, never mind run a profit. At least he liked to blame the property taxes. It was easier than questioning his mother's business acumen.

Wendy smiled back. “Is that girl Jessica your girlfriend?”

“Not yet. But I'm hoping.” Jonathan ducked back into the kitchen.

“A boy called Brian phoned,” Anita said when Jon returned. “He said thanks for last night, and could you give him a call before today's meeting?”

Why did his mother insist on calling friends his age “boys”?

“What did you tell him?”

“I said you'd phone back. Is that a problem?”

“It's perfect.”

Jonathan pulled his iPhone from his pocket and went out into the back alley for privacy.

“Brian. Hi.”

“Jonathan? Thank you so much for getting me that catering job last night. It was amazing. I know it sucks that John Alton collapsed — you heard he died in the ambulance, right? But wow — to be that close to so many cabinet ministers. It was amazing.”

“I would have thought politicians would be old hat to you. What with your dad so involved.”

Jonathan fished his marijuana pipe from his pocket and lit it. It looked like a cigarette, in case anyone wandered by.

“The Communist Party has never won any seats.”

Jon held his breath a moment longer, then exhaled. “Well, you're welcome. Now are you sure you want to crash this meeting?”

“More sure than I've ever been about anything.”

“Okay.” Jonathan looked around. Of course no one was listening. “Here's what to do.”

I think we can narrow our field down to three main probabilities.” Penny passed Laura the cappuccino she had just finished making.

“Great,” said Laura. “Then we're ready to go to the police.”

“Not just yet.” Penny pursed her lips thoughtfully. “We have all this information at our fingertips. Wouldn't it be great if we could narrow it down and hand them only the theory that's right?”

“It would be fantastic.” Laura sipped her coffee, and thought it would taste better if she hadn't had so much to drink the night before. “But don't you think, with all their detectives and resources, they might come to that conclusion faster than we can?”

Penny shook her head. “Just hear me out. First, there's Project Health — although we're still missing the explanation for Libby Leighton in that case. This would make Marisa Jordan, Sam Cray, and Simon McFarlane the next likely deaths.”

Laura decided to humor Penny, at least for the moment. “Do we know the result of the Big Think?”

“Nothing of significance. Mostly shuffling around resources. Deciding which hospitals got
MRI
machines, that kind of thing.”

“Why would McFarlane be on that committee? Isn't his specialty business management?”

“I think that was the point,” Penny said. “The left-wing city council wants to show that it can think like a businessman, too.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “If our politicians spent half as much time on substantive concerns as they do on their image, we'd have the best-run country in the world.”

Penny grinned. “Some might argue that we do have the best-run country in the world. Barring those perfect places like Denmark who just do everything right.”

“What else did this think tank do?” Laura asked. “Allocated
MRI
machines, anything else?”

“They decided which hospitals would close their emergency rooms and become mainly research or specialty centers.”

“I remember that. It caused a bunch of havoc — when my son broke his ankle playing football, we had to drive him around to three hospitals before we found one with an
ER
.”

Penny sipped her coffee. “Next we have the integrated public housing bill, making Marisa Jordan the only remaining victim. Unless the killer goes after the civil servants on the committee as well. But something tells me he or she will stop with politicians.”

“Poor Marisa. She's on both lists. So in this second scenario, is Carl Haas our culprit?”

Penny's eyes twinkled. “Possibly. But his son goes to U of T. Maybe Susannah knows him?”

“How could I possibly find that out? She's gone, remember?”

“You don't have her cell number?”

Laura shook her head. “I'm not calling.”

“Right. We'll look into that later. And our third possibility is homelessness.”

Susannah's pet project at the Brighter Day. “Why homelessness?” Laura said. “I thought we'd ruled that out.”

“This one's complicated. Hayden increased business taxes every year he was mayor.”

“Okay.” Laura breathed easier. Susannah would definitely not care about that.

“One of the reasons he cited year after year was the homelessness budget.”

Again, this should make Susannah pleased, not displeased.

“And then a committee was formed.”

“How familiar that sounds.”

“Doesn't it?” Penny smiled. “Its job was to assess the costs — administrative, shelter, food, et cetera — that the city was paying, per homeless person, to offset the homelessness issue.”

“Offset the issue?” Laura laughed bitterly. “They threw money at the problem, but nothing ever changed. Maybe some bureaucrats got fatter salaries, but any real change happened at ground level, from volunteer efforts.” An opinion Laura knew Susannah shared. It was what had brought them together in the first place.

“Right. Except that the committee assessed the costs at
$40,000
per year per homeless person. Someone said at the time that it would have been cheaper to send all the homeless to Cuba to an all-expenses-paid resort.”

“So who would the victims be?” Laura asked. “The committee who assessed the cost, or the politicians who spent the money?”

“I think the politicians.” Penny consulted a piece of paper in front of her. “Hayden is clear enough. He was mayor. Leighton makes sense, too. She didn't care what she spent, if she could get her picture in the news. I'm having trouble connecting John Alton into this. Manuel Ruiz did introduce a homelessness bill, and generally supported large spending — so again, he makes sense, even if obliquely.”

“Who would the next victims be?”

This theory was the murkiest, and the one Laura feared the most.

“That's just it.” Penny shook her head. “It could be almost anyone in city politics.”

“We have to go to the cops,” Laura said.

“No! Laura, you promised. Give it until the end of the day. We're so close to solving this thing.”

“I promised until the end of yesterday. But all right. One more day. Then we go to them together.”

“Sure.” Why didn't Penny sound convincing? “Tomorrow. Absolutely.”

Clare revved her engine and sped out from the parking spot behind her apartment. A small stone flew up and smacked her helmet. She knew she should be more careful on the gravel, but at the moment, road safety was the last thing that concerned her.

Cloutier was an ass. Who the fuck was he to criticize her work? If Clare had taken her cues from him since the beginning, she would have been back on her beat and doing paperwork by now.

She glared at the lines on the road. She didn't have a destination in mind, but she soon found herself heading north on Highway
400
, toward Orillia and the trailer park where she'd grown up. She hadn't been home in ages, and of course while on assignment she wasn't supposed to go now. But Clare was in a mood for breaking rules. She was clearly going to lose her job anyway; it might as well be on her terms as theirs.

She had loved the trailer growing up. It wasn't thrilling — she spent the average summer evening sitting on the porch with her parents, drinking iced tea while they guzzled a two-four, chatting with whatever neighbors wandered by. But it had been companionable, a pleasant place to be. Not like now.

Her father's good days were numbered. He had been diagnosed with emphysema two years before, and Clare knew that he was still smoking. So far — she had no idea how — he'd managed to fool his doctors into thinking he'd quit, so he remained a lung transplant candidate, but if they saw the signs of smoking, he'd be off the list immediately. Clare couldn't figure out if the addiction was too powerful (she knew her own was, though she always told herself she'd stop on her twenty-fourth birthday, which was still two years away). Or was it worse than that? Did her father, the town's official arm wrestling champion for twelve years running, simply not feel that he had anything to live for?

When she arrived in Orillia, she stopped downtown first. Her mother loved flowers, and her father never bought them anymore. Clare parked her bike, but she kept the helmet with her. The bulky half sphere served as a constant reminder that she'd moved beyond this place; that she'd packed up after high school, zoomed away, and created a life of her own.

She saw Shauna Bartlett in some stupid yellow skirt. Even half a block away, there was desperation in Shauna's walk; it was too bouncy, too obvious in its attempt to look purposeful. How could Lance begin to find her attractive? Clare smiled broadly as they passed on the sidewalk.

She hugged the helmet tight against her body. There was Ricky with a shopping bag from the butcher's, dancing to some tune inside his head. Had he really left Lorraine, like Roberta had said? Clare had always been attracted to Ricky, quietly offbeat, comically self-deprecating. She unzipped her leather jacket and let the straps jangle with the movement of her body. She nodded a greeting, told him maybe she'd see him later that evening at bingo.

Bingo was her mother's preferred way to pass a Sunday evening. If Clare stayed until evening. She went into the florist and picked out some sunflowers — her mother's all-time favorite, and her own. But on the way back to her bike, she dumped the flowers in the trash. What was she thinking, going home while undercover?

As she sped back toward the city, Clare told herself it was job devotion that had kept her from continuing on to see her parents. She told herself again, but she didn't believe it. She couldn't bear to hear her father's wheezing, then listen to his half-baked excuse about going to the store for some milk, or popping by the garage to check on someone's car, when Clare knew all he wanted was to go and be alone and smoke a cigarette.

When Clare pulled back into her parking spot at home, she was lost. So much for taking a ride to clear her head. She felt worse than when she'd started out.

She needed to blow off some steam. Not through drinking — she'd tried that once this week already, and besides, it wasn't obliteration she craved. She wanted to skydive or mountain climb or do something big, that could use up some of her wild energy.

Like spy on a society meeting.