A Year Less a Day Read online

  A YEAR LESS A DAY

  A YEAR LESS A DAY

  An Inspector Bliss Mystery

  James Hawkins

  A Castle Street Mystery

  Copyright © James Hawkins, 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Copy-editor: Michael Hodge

  Design: Jennifer Scott

  Printer: Webcom

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Hawkins, D. James (Derek James), 1947-

  A year less a day / James Hawkins.

  ISBN 1-55002-480-9

  I. Title.

  PS8565.A848Y42 2003 C813'.6 C2003-903530-1

  1 2 3 4 5 06 05 04 03 02

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario ArtsCouncil for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on recycled paper.

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  A YEAR LESS A DAY

  acknowledgements

  All characters depicted in this novel are fictitious and any resemblance they may have to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. However, I acknowledge that this work was inspired by the habitués of coffee shops around the world, including La Poet, Cannes, France; Perkins Coffee, Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, British Columbia—especially Sunnie and her staff; The Sunflower Café, Ladysmith, British Columbia; and most especially by the wonderful poets, musicians, writers, artists, patrons, and staff of The Corner Coffee House, Newmarket, Ontario, all of whom I have the privilege of calling friends.

  Kathy the carer, John the engineer, Andrea the director, Carol the singer, Mabel the florist, Nancy the birder, Catherine the scrabbler, Mary the banker, Dave the mineralogist, George the superintendent, Kevin the librarian, Gillian the actress, Jesse the bird whisperer, Lynne the therapist, Mikaleena the fashion designer, Debbie the dairymaid, Lisa the herbalist, Innez the plivate eye [sic], Sandra the writer, Mike the builder, Pete the guitarist, Paul the photographer, Malcolm the novelist, Jenna the tot-teacher, Patrick the sailor, Ron the big guy, Paul the gemmologist, Katie the personal trainer, Lillian the sweetest woman in the world, Stanley the sweet and sour shrimp guy, Sharon the nurse, Patti and Donna—the mums, John and Cynthia—the greatest Brits, Diane the channel, Caroline and her caricatures, Ralph the barrista, Bob the musical director, Jim the cigar man, Sylvie-Anne le made-moiselle, Susan the lawyer, Tom the arranger, Rosie the hummingbird, Noreen the nightingale, Bernice the poet, Elaine the PI, Ted the accountant, Anna the hairdresser, Goldfinger Ron, Donna at the library, Roy the reporter, Angela and her fairies, Jim the market guy, Al and Kerry on the web, Rick the drummer, Tamara the bookseller, Jackie at the dead centre, Jeff the artist, Cara and Bene the Moonrakers, Carol the teacher, Kate at the kindergarten, Janice and her teens, Jim at Chapters, John the drycleaner, Peter the meteorologist, Artful Claire, Lara the songstress, Gord the storyteller, Ron the golfer, Mo the squirreller, Thor the constructor, Grant the plumber, Wendy the veterinarian, Elizabeth the jeweller, Diane the councillor, Leo the actor, Chris the Major, Jack the raconteur, Trish the entrepreneur, Tony the realtor, and the entire biker gang.

  The staff: Cynthia, Brooke, Candace, Ann, Jessica, Debbie, Nancy, Lindsay, Jagger, Stephanie, Katherine, Kay, Cathy, Anouk, Chris, Robyn, Vilija, Sandra, Stefany, Mary Lou, Sunny, Christine, Philip, Kathryn, Megan, Anthony, Allison, Kristen and Sara.

  Very special thanks to:

  Michael Rowbottom for his many years of friendship and for his kind permission to quote his poem, “Trouble.”

  My greatest apologies go to all those I have missed and, above all, my greatest thanks goes to Sunshine, without whom none of this would have made any sense.

  This book is dedicated to my younger daughter, Emmeline.

  A golden heart who brings light and laughter to all who know her.

  chapter one

  Life, love, lies, and lotteries are adventures so perilous that it is surprising anyone would willingly participate in any of them, but when all four coalesce and start ticking down in conjunction, the chance of a simultaneous joyous outcome is hardly worth a wager. Yet, the day Ruth and Jordan Jackson set such an escapade in motion, neither thought it at all risky.

  Life was given to the couple nearly forty years ago by their respective parents with almost no consideration of the consequences, but their love had been more measured, though it had certainly taken friends and family by surprise—especially Ruth’s. They may be of similar age, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Jordan is tall enough to look arresting in uniform, and handsome enough to be a politician or a pilot, whereas Ruth had suffered plainness at birth and has gone downhill ever since.

  “Oh, what a ...” but lovely, beautiful and pretty had stuck in crib-side throats.

  “... nice baby,” was as far as anyone had strayed from reality. “Lovely personality,” friends and family would say as she grew dumpily through puberty, and Ruth’s few friends who had shown up at their wedding had been more curious than congratulatory. However, life was not totally unfair to the dark-haired, plump young woman. Her premature pregnancy had been easily lost in the folds of flesh and the flow of her wedding gown, and Jordan continued loving her even after the stillbirth of their only child a few months later. Jordan’s mother, on the other hand, had never loved her, and was very quick to assert that the loss of the child was clearly ordained by God.

  As the years passed, Ruth’s waistline inched apace; one inch per annum come feast and famine; binge and starve; high this, low that; quirky and quacky diets; blood, sweat, and tears—tears mainly. If only the tears had dissolved fat at the same rate as sweat does, Ruth would have found herself alongside Fergie in the tabloids, but, in the long run, the tears never helped.

  The coffee house is her enemy. Lattés with whipped cream, double-chocolate explosions, and white-chocolate mousse bombs—death by chocolate. “Live by the sword ...” the maxim begins, and Ruth followed the maxim to the letter the day she and Jordan borrowed a fortune from his begrudging mother and opened the coffee house. “I’ll expect interest with no excuses,” Mrs. Jackson senior had said, and had turned up on the last day of each month to pursue the point. “This is just the interest, mind,” she’d say with her hand in the till.

  The day the fateful clock starts ticking begins a nanosecond after midnight, but only comes to life for Ruth at dawn, when crepuscular rays warm the curtains, and she wrestles against bedclothes and gravity to give Jordan a shake.

  “I’ll get the coffees going,” she says, and hears the key in the lock downstairs as
the baker’s deliveryman lets himself in. “The baker’s here,” she carries on, as she struggles into a dressing gown. “Oh, come on, Jordan. Cindy’ll be pounding on the door any minute.”

  “Damn woman,” mutters Jordan, and Ruth wants to believe he’s referring to Cindy, the part-time waitress.

  “You haven’t forgotten that I have to go to get those test results today,” calls Jordan as Ruth’s heavy footsteps on the wooden stairs vibrate through the old building. “Damn woman,” he mutters again, and takes a chance on another thirty seconds before Ruth’s voice shatters his dream.

  “Jordan—Get up, now! Cindy’s here.”

  Cindy is forty, but is stuck, like her name, in permanent adolescence. In her own mind she is barely out of college, the consequence of an unnaturally prolonged spinsterhood, and she still sports the ponytail, the obnoxious attitude, and the geeky glasses to prove her point.

  The nauseating smell of stale coffee hits Ruth as she opens the door to the café. Cindy slips in the front door under the baker’s nose and uses her wet coat to demonstrate her annoyance as she angrily fights it off.

  “How come he gets a key an’ I don’t?” she moans. No, “Good morning, Ruth. How are you?” No pleas-antries; just bitching.

  “Because you lost the first three we gave you,” snaps back Ruth. “Anyhow, you wouldn’t need one if that lazy ...”

  Jordan’s footsteps on the stairs behind her cut her off. “I’ve gotta be at the hospital by ten,” he says, seeking recognition of his suffering, hoping for a touch of sympathy, perhaps.

  “You’ll have to go by yourself,” says Ruth. “Cindy and Coral can’t manage lunch on their own. And knowing that place, you’ll be there all day.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbles as he shuffles into the kitchen to fire up the stove for breakfast.

  Cindy is still bitching about “the crappy evening girls” who didn’t wipe the tables properly—who never wipe the tables properly; her crappy landlord, crappy men, crappy life, crappy job ...

  “If you don’t like it ...” starts Ruth, then lets it go as she switches on the percolators. With Jordan shuffling around like a constipated duck, she doesn’t need the hassle of trying to find a replacement for the woman. “I’ll get dressed,” she calls to Cindy as she heads back upstairs, then stops at the sound of tapping on the glass front door.

  “We open at seven ...” screeches Cindy, then hardly drops a notch as she looks to Ruth. “It’s crappy Tom.”

  “You’d better let him in,” says Ruth, “Or the poor old guy will crap on the doorstep.”

  Tom rushes through like an express, scoops the daily paper, and hits the washroom at full speed. “Thanks, Cindy—I was bustin’,” he calls in his wake.

  “Shut the crappy door this time,” shouts Cindy.“Nothing worse than some jerk fartin’ in the morning.”

  “You haven’t been married, have you?” chuckles Ruth, halfway up the stairs, and starts Cindy off again. “Nah. Crappy men ...”

  The open front door is a magnet. “You open?” calls Trina Button, strolling in with wide-eyed innocence.

  “Looks like it,” laments Cindy, “but the coffee ain’t ready yet.”

  “Herbal tea and horoscope is all I want,” replies Trina as she drapes her jacket on one chair, her purse on another and sits on a third. “Can’t do anything without my horoscope. Where’s the paper?”

  “It was here... Tom,” Cindy calls, “you got the paper in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  She turns to Trina and shrugs. “I would buy your own if I were you—God knows what he does with it in there.”

  “I’ll wait,” says Trina, “I’m not going back across that road again without checking my stars. It might say I’m gonna get hit by a bus.”

  “Not today,” says a new arrival who’s swept silently in, as if on skates. “You’re safe today, Trina.”

  “Tomorrow, Raven. What about tomorrow?” demands Trina of the newcomer, as if she was looking forward to the experience.

  “Ah. You’d have to consult me professionally about that,” says Raven while fumbling in her purse for the key to her consulting room at the back of the café.

  Raven is not the young woman’s real name, but is so apropos of her startling appearance that no one challenges it. When Ruth had placed an ad for the small room in the window six months earlier, there were only two inquirers: the impossibly tall, sleek-bodied, black-haired psychic channel, who appeared from nowhere one suitably sultry morning; and someone equally dark who was exceedingly circumspect about his intended use. Raven got the room partly because she had held Ruth’s nigrescent eyes in her gaze and announced, matter-offactly, that as she could see the future, she wouldn’t have bothered to apply unless the outcome was assured. It was a logic that Ruth had been unable to refute.

  Raven, who may well have been hanged for her beliefs in less enlightened times, set up shop in the back of the café and lived on herbal tea and tofu while she read palms, auras, and fortunes for a pittance. However, her practice grew phenomenally when word leaked out that, for a more respectable fee, she would lay stark naked, inert, on a black velvet chaise-lounge, while spirits channelled through her. Why Serethusa, her spirit guide, would only speak to her when she was nude was a question no one had ever asked. It was the message, not the medium, that people came to hear; although quite a few—men and women alike—were happy to pay to see the medium.

  “You’re early ...” starts Cindy, but Raven is impatient.

  “Where’s Ruth?” she demands. “I’ve lost my damn key.”

  “Don’t expect her to give you another ...” complains Cindy, but Ruth is back down, dressed, and cold-shoulders Cindy as she unlocks the office door for the incredibly slender woman.

  “There you are. Take no notice... Man trouble.”

  “No it ain’t. I ain’t got a crappy man.”

  “That’s what I mean, Cindy,” says Ruth. “And I’m not surprised, the way you treat them.”

  “Harrumph!” Cindy exclaims, as she marches back to the counter and finds Trina using the phone to wake her kids for school. “You might have asked,” Cindy moans. “Anyone would think you work here.”

  In the harsh light of a fluorescent tube, Raven’s office is stark and cold, the chaise-lounge sleazy. The young woman hustles to light candles then, turning to Ruth, she stares as if she has sunk into a sudden trance.

  “Do you ever buy lottery tickets, Ruth?”

  “No. Just the government’s way of taxing the stupid and the poor,” she answers, then questions, “Why?”

  “Buy one today Ruth ...”

  “Ah. I don’t think ...”

  “I know you’re not a believer. Just humour me. What have you got to lose?”

  “But, I don’t ...”

  “Today’s your day, Ruth. Everyone has a day.” Raven is earnest as she continues in a sing-song voice—like an ersatz preacher hosting an evangelical television show. “You mustn’t waste your chance. The rest of your life hinges on today, Ruth. I came in especially to tell you ... I received a message from my channel. ‘Tell Ruth it’s her day.’ Serethusa said, as clear as ...”

  Cindy barrels in. “Quick. Trina’s had an accident and crappy Coral’s phoned in sick again. I’m pissed off working ...”

  “What d’ye mean, accident?” starts Ruth, but Trina hobbles in with blood streaming down her leg and collapses on the chaise-lounge. “Fine bloody psychic you are,” she moans to Raven as she tries to stem the blood.

  “Was it a bus?”

  “No. A kid on a blasted bike. I was just going to the 7-Eleven for a paper. . .”

  “See, I was right. Told ya you wouldn’t get hit by a bus.”

  “It’s gonna be one of those days again,” muses Ruth as she grabs a handful of tissues and dabs at the blood.

  “It will be if you don’t get someone to help at lunch,” gripes Cindy as she storms off.

  “Remember what I said,” whispers Raven in Ruth’s ear. “Today.�
��

  “Yeah, OK. But first I gotta get someone to do lunches. Jordan’s going to the hospital ...”

  “He’ll be fine,” cuts in Raven with a degree of knowingness rare even for her.

  “Good. Perhaps you could tell him that. Then he wouldn’t need to go.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” says Trina. “She said I wasn’t gonna have an accident.”

  “‘Bus,’ I said. And I was right ... It wasn’t.”

  Ruth thinks her day has bottomed out an hour later when she calls in the coffee order and finds herself talking to a credit manager. “There has to be a mistake,” she says, though she knows there is no error; knows that the baker had delivered without quibble—if his cheque hadn’t bounced, whose had?

  “Where the hell is Jordan when I need him?” mutters Ruth, then sinks with a pang of guilt. Hospital—suspicious streaks of blood in the toilet bowl; more to worry about than an unpaid bill for both of them.

  “I need help out here,” calls Cindy, sticking her head into the tiny office. “I haven’t had a crappy break yet, and customers are walkin’ out.”

  “All right.”

  “No, it’s not all right, Ruth. Mouthy Dave just threw a crappy fit cuz I put sugar in his espresso ...”

  “All right—I’ll be there,” Ruth yells, then promises that the coffee deliveryman will get cash.

  “No cash, no coffee,” says the credit manager, and Ruth knows she’s over a barrel.

  Raven is locking her office and leaving. It’s barely eight-thirty. “Don’t forget, Ruth,” she calls over the counter as Ruth is already fogged up with information—was it three cappuccinos, two with sugar one with caramel and a vanilla latté with skim ... or was it ... “Forget what?” she queries testily.

  “Your day,” repeats Raven resolutely. “Today is your day. Serethusa said so.”

  “I’m quitting right now,” bleats Cindy, tossing a pile of dirty cups in the sink—hoping one or two might break. “I’ve had enough of this crappy place. Dave just grabbed my fuckin’ ass again.”