LITMIR.BIZ

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office.

      Getting out of the car, I didn’t bother locking it. A thirteen-year-old vehicle doesn’t hold much interest to a thief – not when the only things holding it together are paint and rust.

      Sticking my head in the door, I was greeted by a middle-aged bottle redhead with long fingernails to match. How she managed to type, especially so fast, with claws like that, I couldn’t imagine.

      “New client?” she asked without looking up.

      “Ah, yes.”

      The woman stopped long enough to reach behind her for a clipboard with forms on it. Holding it out to me without looking up, she added, “Got a pen or pencil?”

      “Yes.”

      “Good. Please fill this out. We’ll be with you in a minute.”

      I did as I was told, sitting on a cheap plastic chair, the kind you see in high school cafeterias. The whole place looked a little careworn: old filing cabinets, yellowing paint, a carpet that had seen better days and a rather shabby desk – although the computer on it looked new. If it hadn’t been for Dom’s first-rate recommendation, I probably would have left. Maybe their slogan was “Investigations on a Shoestring Budget”.

      The form was filled with the usual questions, although they asked for my driver’s license number and quite a lot of credit info as well. That caused me to wonder how much I’d be willing to pay to find Olivia. The redhead finished her typing before I reached the bottom and sat staring at me as she tapped a pencil on her desk. At least her tempo was steady.

      When I handed her the clipboard, she immediately went through a door to the right of her desk into what I supposed was the boss’s office.

      Appearing in the doorway shortly after, she said, “Step this way, please.”

      The smaller room I entered had recently been painted, and the desk was large and new. In one corner was a low circular table with four chairs, although judging by the jumble of papers and file folders on it, it probably didn’t see much use. Even more filing cabinets lined the opposite wall, and next to me was an aquarium of slowly waving plants and brightly coloured fish.

      Standing just in front of the desk was not the heavyset, middle-aged man with a slouch hat that I’d been imagining. My eyes rested on a slender, honey-blonde with intelligent-looking eyes and a welcoming smile. I guessed her height to be close to five-eight and her age to be somewhere around forty. Dressed casually in jeans, a blouse and a tan jacket, she was quite pretty.

      She extended a hand. “I’m Shannon O’Brien.” Picking up on the fact that I’d stopped partway into the room, not because of what I saw, but what I’d expected to see, she added, “I’m the proprietor of O’Brien Investigates.”

      “Um, yeah.” When I didn’t move, she raised an eyebrow, so I added, “I was expecting someone else.”

      “This business used to be jointly owned by my ex-husband and me. Obviously, he’s no longer here.”

      Her blunt words were said in a kind way but made it perfectly clear that further illumination would not be forthcoming.

      “Won’t you sit down?” she asked, indicating a comfortable chair in front of the desk. She looked down at the form I’d filled out. “I see we were recommended by a friend. I don’t recognize the name, so it must have been a job Rob worked on.”

      “Yes, it was. A divorce case.”

      Something flickered across her face, but it was too fast for me to read, other than that she looked sad. “Is your job also a divorce case?”

      “No. It concerns a missing person. At least, I think she’s missing. Actually, I’m not really sure what’s going on.”

      Ms O’Brien smiled again. “Sounds intriguing. Now, gather your thoughts and just tell me your story from the beginning. I find that’s the best way to start any investigation.”

      Chapter 2

      I had to cast my mind back four months to our steady gig at The Green Salamander Jazz Nightclub – to give its somewhat ponderous full name. The Sal (as it’s better known) has been a mainstay on the Toronto jazz scene for over four decades. Located in a basement space on Toronto’s King Street West near Portland, it is neither plush nor very spacious. Because of this, it has seldom hosted the really big names, unless it caught them on the way up – or down.

      As I set up my drums that frigid Tuesday evening in the first week of December, I could see the end of the line approaching fast, an end to the steady gig we’d had for the past two years. Ronald Xavier Felton, our trio’s pianist, refused to acknowledge anything of the kind, but then he was like that. His reality was different from a normal person’s. Dom Milano, our bass player, always went with the flow – and the best payday. As long as the Sal paid, he’d play. When it didn’t, he’d move on – with or without us. He wasn’t mean-spirited, just practical. Jobbing musicians have to be like that.

      I cursed under my breath. There were just about no other steady gigs in T.O. these days. Jazz was going through one of its dry periods. Two clubs had closed in the past year. Except for a few annual festivals, a handful of clubs that didn’t offer more than three-night gigs and the odd Sunday Jazz Brunch at a few restaurants, my hometown seemed to have firmly turned its back once again on the music I love.

      It wasn’t as if we hadn’t had a good run at the Sal.You couldn’t sneeze at knowing where you were going to be every Tuesday through Thursday for two years. With weekend run-outs, weddings, trade shows, corporate receptions and the like, my finances had never looked rosier.

      I’d been able to keep Sandra out of my hair about child support and had gotten to see a good deal of my daughter Kate. That had certainly made the aftershocks of the breakdown of my marriage much less severe on everyone involved than they might have been if I’d been on the road all the time.

      Harry, the club’s owner, had begun dropping hints that if business didn’t pick up in a big way, he was going to be forced to shut the doors. Considering he was in his late seventies, that made sense, but he’d also been quoted as saying that the only way he’d ever give up his club was to be taken out feet first.

      Weekends were still reasonably good, since he could book touring soloists to be backed up by all-star local pick-up groups, but it was our weekday nights that were killing him, and that meant the Ronald Felton Trio wasn’t pulling its weight.

      What had been our Ronald’s brilliant solution? An open mike night. He also wanted to bring in promising local student soloists from programs like the one at Humber College, where he taught two days a week. He’d gleefully told Dom and me that we wouldn’t have to pay them, and they’d fill the place with all their friends.

      Dom, his string bass swathed in its padded soft case, the fabric reminding me of a green quilted diaper, stepped onto the low bandstand and gently laid his baby down.

      “Think this is going to work, Andy?” he asked.

      “An open mike night for vocalists?” I yanked the strap on my trap case, pulling it tight, and shoved it behind the curtain at the back. “It’s only a step above karaoke, for Christ’s sake.”

      “Should be good for a laugh, though.”

      “The laugh is that Ronald is convinced this will work.”

      Dom looked up with a grin splitting his face. “We both know he’s delusional.”

      And so it began. That first night didn’t have too many disasters, mainly because our “delusional” pianist had salted the audience with a few capable friends, along with some of his Humber students who also sang.

      The weeks went on, and as winter slowly began inching its way to spring, word spread – helped along nicely by a piece in the Toronto Star. More hopefuls than I would have imagined stepped onto the bandstand to strut their stuff. And surprisingly,

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