Quid Pro Quo (11 page)

In and out.

In … And out.

I closed my eyes. I just kept taking these long slow breaths until I stopped shaking. I got kind of woozy from all the oxygen, then kind of dreamy, then I had this really nice thought. It instantly made me feel all better. I smiled. I couldn't help it. I opened my eyes. I got up and practically skipped the rest of the way home.

This is what I thought: I'm not that smart.

chapter
thirty-one
Sue

To bring a civil proceeding against a person.
To take someone to court

L
ike, who was I kidding? I was thirteen years old. Did I really think that I was smarter than the police? That I was the only person who knew what an estoppel was? That the cops wouldn't be onto Chisling too, if he'd actually done anything?

Clearly, I'd made a mistake. Clearly, Chisling wasn't guilty. He didn't burn down the building so he wouldn't have kidnapped Andy either. He wouldn't have any reason to. She was probably just late for dinner like she said she was going to be. Really, really late for dinner.

Boy, it felt good being stupid. For about ten minutes, that is.

I was a block or two from home when I remembered the look on Chisling's face. I stopped feeling good. Innocent people's eyes don't go that psycho.

Chisling was behind the fire, and he was behind Andy's disappearance. I was sure of it. I couldn't pretend that he wasn't just to make myself feel better. The estoppel. The parking. The rabid-dog eyes. It all made sense.

So why weren't the police after him? I started kicking a pop can up the street and considered the possibilities.

Maybe they didn't know about the estoppel. It was a hundred years old. Maybe nobody thought to do a title search.

Could be, I guess, but you'd think the Heritage Preservation people would know about it. They bought the Masons' Hall. They would have done a title search. Somebody would probably mention it to the police. It would be an obvious motive for burning the building down.

Or maybe the cops had so much evidence against Byron that it wasn't worth following any other leads. People knew Byron was going to the Masons' Hall that night. The cops found his fingerprints there. He disappeared right after the fire. He was an ex-con. Hey, if I didn't know the guy, I'd think he torched the place too.

But there was another possibility. The one that made most sense to me.

Maybe the cops put two and two together and got the same answer I did. Chisling set the fire.

All right then, why weren't the police charging him? I winged the pop can into the side of MacLeod's Drugstore a few times and thought about it. What did I know about the fire?

It was a protected heritage property.

The pop can made this really satisfying
pwong
sound when it hit the aluminum siding.

Homeless people went there.

Pwong.

A guy died.

Pwong.

On August 20.

Pwong.

Pwong.

Pwong.

Hmm, I thought. That was a big day. The Masons' Hall burnt down, I became a teenager … But something else had happened too. What was it?

I had this little brain tickle thing going on. Like I had an itch I couldn't scratch. I was forgetting something important. Something about that day… I winged the pop can some more and tried to think.

What happened on my birthday?

Nothing. The usual. Work. A Big Mac combo. A game of Scrabble.

I still had the brain tickle. There was something else.

I wound up and booted the pop can as hard as I could. It banged into the drugstore window and bounced onto the street.

I don't know if it was the way the pharmacist's breath steamed up the window when he yelled at me, or the big ad for Listerine on the wall, but suddenly I got it.

Halitosis.

Bike race.

Chisling won the Halitosis Bike Race on my birthday!

In Saskatchewan.

That was it!

Chisling was a zillion miles away on the day of the fire. He didn't do it. He couldn't have.

You'd think I'd feel good about that, but I didn't. It just meant I was back on the roller coaster again.

He didn't do it. I saw the picture in the paper.

He did do it. I saw the look on his face.

Did not do it.

Did so.

Did not.

Did so.

I went back and forth and back and forth. Chisling did it—he had the motive. Chisling didn't do it—he had an airtight alibi.

At least now I knew why the cops weren't charging him. Even if they thought he had something to do with the fire, they needed proof. Real proof. Evidence. Eyewitnesses. “Reasonable and probable cause.” Without it, they couldn't do a thing. Charge Chisling on a hunch, and he'd sue the pants off them.

I guess that meant I had an advantage over the police. I didn't need proof. I just needed to find Andy.

chapter
thirty-two
Harboring a fugitive

Hiding a criminal from justice

I
let myself back into the apartment with Andy's keys. I wanted to just turn on the TV loud enough that I didn't have to listen to my brain fight with my gut anymore. But I didn't. I sat down, stared at the wall and tried to figure out a theory that made sense. What was everybody up to, and why? It took me a long time to put all the pieces together, but this is what I came up with.

Byron was in the Masons' Hall the night it burnt down. He saw something. Maybe he saw somebody start the fire. But he was an ex-con, trespassing on private property. Who was going to believe him? Maybe he even guessed the cops would blame it on him.

He already knew about Andy somehow—my guess was through the Immigration Resource Center. He was a big volunteer, he spoke Spanish. I could see him helping out down there. Maybe he saw her or heard about her and realized that that big-time lawyer (ha ha) was little Squeaky, all growed up. He didn't say anything—he probably wanted to see her even less than she wanted to see him—but then the fire happened and he needed her. He needed a place to hide. Byron tracked her down. She took him in.

The thing that stumped me for a long time was Consuela. What did she have to do with it? I went through everything I knew about her.

She was an immigrant.

A Spanish-speaking immigrant. That would be a connection with Byron. Maybe he was one of the few people she could talk to.

She was a Spanish-speaking immigrant with a bandaged arm.

Was that a burn by any chance?

I ran into the kitchen and took another look through the freezer file. It was time to decipher Andy's notes. What did Consuela tell her at that meeting in the park?

I looked at the loose-leaf and realized I might never know. Andy's handwriting was unbelievably bad. I mean, I could have written more clearly with a broken crayon stuck between my toes.

I'd seen notes like this before. Andy used to do the same thing in class — not look at what she was writing and then get home and have no idea what the scrawl meant. I remember lots of nights trying to help her figure it all out. I guess I should be glad I had such good practice.

I smoothed down the paper. I squinted at it. I turned it upside down. After half an hour, this was about all I could make out.

C.R. imm. 99. Kds in Mex. Hsekpr B.C. $$$ stole Jn. BC Dprt CR?

See DOH-NUTZ

B.C. sd mt. No 1 hrt. K Died. C.R. wnt to B.C. B.C. sd jail. No kds.

chapter
thirty-three
Menaces

Threats of injury in order to force
a person to give up something of value

H
ave you ever had a test you forgot to study for?

That's what this was like.

I stared at the words for a long time thinking, I have no idea what any of this means. I'm going to fail! But this time, instead of somebody giving me a lecture about how it's my responsibility to know when my homework is due, somebody was going to hurt my mother.

If they hadn't already.

That kind of helped me focus on the problem in front of me.

I got practical. I tried not to think about what I didn't know and started to concentrate on what I did know.

DOH-NUTZ. Easy—and typical. Andy was hungry. Kind of weird, I thought, that she'd have to make a note to herself about it right in the middle of talking to Consuela, but that was Andy. Kind of weird.

One word down, thirty-three to go.

After a while, I realized the rest wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. Andy was just doing that thing again where she left out the vowels. I could see “kids” and what I figured was “June.” Some of the other abbreviations I recognized from Andy's law school notes. Sd=said. Mt=empty. Imm=immigrant/immigrate. And “Dprt” had to be “deport.”

But the thing that really hit me was “Hsekpr B.C.”

Think about it: Hsekpr. B.C.

Housekeeper, Bob Chisling.

Consuela was Chisling's housekeeper! That's why she was there. That was the connection.

I was so pumped now. I knew exactly how scientists must feel when they discover a cure for cancer, or the dweeb gene, or the way to keep Cocoa Puffs crispy even in milk. It was like “Yes!” I could do this. I could work this out myself. I went flying through the rest of Andy's notes.

C.R. imm. 99. Kds in Mex. Hsekpr B.C. $$$ stole Jn. BC Dprt CR?

Consuela immigrated to Halifax in '99 to work for Chisling. She left her kids in Mexico. She stole money in June. Chisling caught her and was going to have her deported.

I skipped the doughnut thing and went on.

B.C. sd mt. No 1 hrt. K Died. C.R. wnt to B.C. B.C. sd jail. No kds.

Chisling said empty. No one hurt. K died. Consuela went to Chisling. Chisling said jail. No kids.

Consuela knew Chisling set the fire! She was going to rat on him! He said, If you do, I'm going to charge you for stealing the money.

Yes! I had it.

No. I didn't.

Chisling was in Saskatchewan the night of the fire. I kept forgetting that.

I stared at the paper again. All the words made sense now, but they didn't add up right yet. What was I missing?

DOH-NUTZ!

Why didn't I think of that before? Andy didn't write “dnts” or “dnuts” or “donuts” or whatever little codeword she needed to remember to pick up a dozen on the way home.

She wrote “Doh-nutz.” The name of the chain. In fact, she wrote “See Doh-nutz” in great big letters. She was talking about a legal case! Suddenly, it was all coming together.

You know how Andy used to go crazy when I made fun of Atula's clients. She'd give me those lectures about “how the world really works.” She had a homeless lecture (“All I'd have to do is lose my job, and we could end up on the streets ourselves. So I wouldn't be so smart if I were you, Cyril MacIntyre.”), a crazy person lecture (“One in three Canadians ends up with a mental illness sometime in their life. It could be Atula. It could be me—or it could be you. So I wouldn't be so smart if I were you, Cyril MacIntyre.”), and a poverty lecture (“In this country, three hundred thousand kids a month survive on food from the Food Bank. Someday, it could be three hundred thousand and one. So I wouldn't be so smart if I were you, Cyril MacIntrye.”).

Andy also had an immigrant lecture. That's what came barreling back to me right then. Or at least, bits and pieces of it did. We were on our way to Tony's Donairs for supper one night and I made some crack about that Korean guy who used to come into Atula's. I can't even remember what it was. Andy went nuts and started ranting away at me about parents who have to leave their kids behind so they can come to Canada and make some money just to survive. About how hard it is to live in a place where you can't speak the language. About how easy it is to be taken advantage of. BLAH. BLAH. BLAH.

Then she started telling a story about this guy from Afghanistan, I think, who got this job working in a Doh-Nutz shop in town here. People would come to the drive-through window and order some type of donut the store didn't sell, say “anchovy fudge crullers” or “cauliflower danishes” or something like that. The Afghanistan guy was confused, but what did he know about donuts? The owner told him it was nothing to worry about, just hand the customers these special Doh-Nutz boxes he kept behind the counter. The Afghanistan guy was supposed to ring it in as a dozen apple fritters and put the envelope the customer gave him in the cash register.

Anyway, one day the Afghanistan guy dropped a box by mistake and it popped open and he saw a little bag of drugs stuffed into one of the donut holes. He was going to tell the police, but the owner found out and said, “Look. You're the guy that's been selling the drugs. Your fingerprints are all over the box. You call the cops, and who are they going to believe? Me—a successful Canadian businessman? Or you, some immigrant just off the boat? Go ahead. Call. See if I care. They'll send you back to rot in some Afghanistan jail so fast you won't know what hit you.” The Afghanistan guy was too scared to do anything about it. It probably would have gone on like that for years if some new employee hadn't accidentally donated the “Cocaine Crunch” donuts to a church tea and sale. (I wish I'd seen that.)

That's why Andy wrote “See DOH-NUTZ.” That's why she told me to buy a box of donuts with “the special filling.” She was saying the same thing happened to Consuela. Somebody set her up too.

I chewed on my hangnails while I reworked my theory.

Okay. I knew Chisling was already in money trouble because both his construction projects got shut down. He needed to start building again. Let's say he'd somehow found out about the estoppel on the Masons' Hall. He knew that if anything “happened” to the building, the land under it went back to him. He couldn't help thinking it would make a lovely parking lot.

But how was he going to get rid of it? Simple. He faked the robbery, blamed it on Consuela, then blackmailed her into burning the Hall down for him while he was conveniently out of the province.