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.

www.dundurn.com

A YEAR LESS A DAY

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.

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 ...