in a two-storey semi-detached brick house on the east side of a street named Major. Major’s location positioned us in a neighbourhood called Harbord Village, which was close to the geographical dead centre of Metropolitan Toronto. Harbord Village bordered the Annex to the north, the Annex being as trendy as neighbourhoods could get in the city these days. Our village was not so voguish as the Annex, not so pricey, but we were gaining a little every year.
When Annie and I bought the house three years earlier, it had already passed through the renovation stage. It shone with new major appliances, a fully equipped kitchen, and a second-floor bathroom that came close to spa quality. But the backyard was a neglected wilderness of weeds. We brought in a garden designer renowned among her clients as the GG, short for Garden Goddess. Our GG and her crew converted the backyard into a dense paradise of berms and foliage, Japanese maples, a ginkgo tree, and plants in shades that ran to purples and deep reds.
While I was busy sipping my Sumatra and admiring the view, two women and a man, each trim and fit, walked into the yard from the side alley carrying the tools of the gardening trade. They were members of the GG’s crew, arriving for a maintenance visit. The gorgeous blonde in the lead was Lee, the outfit’s straw boss. The tall, slim, muscular guy behind Lee was Pony, and third came the serene Larissa. All were whizzes at weeding, planting, and placing plants and trees with the exactitude the GG required. As the three moved deeper into the yard, they were swallowed by the foliage, vanishing among greenery so thick that an entire army of gardeners could work out of sight back there without me in the dining room having the smallest awareness of their presence.
My iPhone read eight on the button; time to rouse Maury Samuels, hotel burglar now at rest from his old profession. Maury lived out in the sticks, somewhere near the borders of Scarborough. He’d need time to hustle downtown. I punched in his number on my cell’s call list.
“Crang, you darling man, you’re an early starter today,” a voice answered. The voice belonged to Maury’s girlfriend, Sal Banfield.
“You’re having a sleepover at the old guy’s place?” I said.
“Other way around,” Sal said. “He stayed at my apartment last night. I’d hand him his cell, but at the moment he’s using the facilities.”
“Hey, nice,” I said. “It’s convenient he’s at your place for what’s happening this morning.” Sal’s apartment was on St. George Street, four blocks from Major. “I got a paying gig for Maury if he can get himself over here in the next hour.”
There was silence from Sal’s end.
“Don’t sweat it, Sal,” I said. “Maury’s fee is going to be honestly earned. He’ll be helping a legitimate merchant solve a puzzle.”
Sal made scoffing noises. It was a sound that came to her naturally. Sal’s family was old Toronto money. She had grown up in a mansion in Rosedale, and she spoke with a light honk in her voice, a condition endemic to Rosedale women. Sal was lovely and twenty-five, making her more of an age to be Maury’s granddaughter than his girlfriend. Neither of them seemed to mind the gap in years. When they met a year earlier, Sal was working on her doctorate in American literature at the University of Toronto. She was still at it, writing her thesis on the novels of Richard Russo.
“You’ve been known in the past to get my guy in tight spots,” Sal said.
“Not this time.”
“Cross your heart?”
“Consider it crossed.”
Sal’s end went quiet again. Then she cleared her throat. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll get Maury moving in your direction.”
“Thanks, Sal.”
Before I could put the phone down, Sal piped up again. “How’s Annie enduring Auntie Meg’s intensity?”
“Meg Grantham’s your aunt?”
“Not a real aunt, as in the sister of my father or my mother. She’s just a neighbour and a very old friend of the family. Daddy invested money in Auntie Meg when her company was just getting started doing what it does, health care systems or whatever. Daddy made a pisspot of money out of his investment.”
“You think Ms. Grantham’s intense?”
“Goes with the territory is what I think. Auntie Meg is kind of permanently whipped up, like twenty-four/seven intense. Mummy says she’s been like that since way before she scored the billions.”
“I’m told it’s all of her own earning, those billions.”
“That’s probably what keeps her hyper. The money didn’t come from some rich guy, not divorce money or inherited money. Auntie Meg is proud of that.”
“And who can blame her?”
“Totally not me.”
When Sal and I ended our conversation, I sipped my second cup of Sumatra and wondered to myself whether beginning the week with a safecracking incident was a sign of good business to come.
Or the opposite.
Chapter Three
Maury was still an attractive guy to women who were into the rough-hewn look. The lines that bracketed his jaw were deeper than they’d been a dozen years earlier, his hair had gone silver, but his posture was still erect, his eyes clear, his voice sardonic. This morning he had on a lightweight suit in a shade that was usually called “wheat” in fashion magazines. His shirt was dark blue in a shade like mine. The shirt and the suit bore more wrinkles than Maury usually permitted.
“You ought to keep a change of clothes at Sal’s place,” I said. We were walking south on Major, on our way by foot to Fletcher Marshall’s store a few blocks away on College Street.
“I look that bad?” Maury said, his head turned down to study his suit.
“It’s more a case of you establishing a reputation all these years for fastidious attire. Which you’re not showing this morning.”
Maury made a grunting sound. He brushed at his jacket with his left hand, as if he could banish the wrinkles. In his right hand he was carrying a black bag more suited to a medical doctor than a former second-storey man.
“What’s with the bag?” I said.
“For carrying break-in equipment.”
“You’re coming out of retirement?”
“Consultation purposes only. This is an idea Sal came up with a while ago for something to do with what she calls my idle hours. Advise businesses on how to avoid guys who made their living the way I used to.”
“Stuff for show-and-tell, that’s what’s in the black bag?”
“Sal put a stethoscope in there, a pair of tight white gloves for handling evidence. I got a tablet-type computer thing from Apple. I’m equipped, man.”
“Impresses the heck out of me.”
“Some of it’s bullshit. Back in the day, I was strictly a guy who got through the doors. I could pick a lock with the best in the business. But cracking open safes, I knew a lot theoretically, but that was never a strong point with me.”
Maury and I had reached Harbord Street. We walked a block west to Brunswick, waited for the light to change, then crossed Harbord. We kept going farther south down Brunswick past the lovely old three-storey Victorian houses. The sun was hard and bright, the air not nearly as humid as it had seemed when Fletcher’s phone call started my day. I felt light-hearted, just a guy out for a stroll in his own neighbourhood with a friend who was revisiting his history in burglary.
“The way I always understood it,” I said, “you were the guy who went into hotel suites in the middle of the night, the guests asleep in there, and when you left the suite, it was with the guests’ valuables.”
“It was my role.”
“Sounds