When Hell Freezes Over Page 14

  “I’m heading downtown to check on that license plate. I should be back at my office by mid-afternoon. If I’m not going to make it, I’ll call. Okay?”

  “Well, the airport is as good a place as any to hire a car, since it looks as if I’m going to need one for a few days.”

  Just before we split up in the lobby, Shannon touched my arm and I turned. “Michael, be careful. You don’t want those guys to catch you alone, and don’t think that they’ve given up. They’re still around. Don’t stay in your warehouse by yourself.”

  I had a lot to think about while waiting for the shuttlebus to pick me up for the ride over to Terminal 1.

  ***

  My car was in worse shape than Kevin had suggested on the phone. Since the snow was not the heavy, wet variety, I probably wouldn’t have to replace the leather interior, but the bonnet and boot lid were write-offs, as was every window and light and the trim around them. The bastards had been thorough.

  Trudging through the snow back into the shop, I called a towing service, then the car dealer to let them know what to expect. I toyed with the idea of calling my insurance company, but that would invariably mean the police being called in. My bank account could handle the repairs, although it would probably make a sizeable dent.

  Neither Kevin nor Johnny said anything about the state of my face, but I could tell they were dying to find out.

  After answering some phone messages and emails, I took a look at the schedule to see what was coming up over the next week. Business looked to be going through a boom period at the moment, and fortunately things so far had been easily handled by my experienced crew, since I hadn’t been of much use to them lately.

  Even though Hamed had to babysit the instruments we’d rented to the movie shoot (they had to work flawlessly whenever the cameras rolled), at least one of my crew would be around the whole day. As I settled down to try to make some progress on the mountain of paperwork, I had to admit to myself that Shannon’s warning as we’d left the hotel had me pretty spooked. The condition of my BMW had driven the point home smartly.

  By two thirty, I’d gotten all the invoices finished and readied the deposit for the bank, which I’d take care of on the way home. Other than a half sandwich Johnny had given me when he couldn’t finish what his mom had packed, I hadn’t eaten anything since early morning, and frankly, my stomach was making rude noises.

  In the middle of trying to decide what to do about it, my reverie was interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of the mellotron. Someone out in the warehouse seemed intent on butchering the Moody Blues’ classic “Nights in White Satin”.

  Coming out of the office, I was met not by Kevin or Johnny as I’d expected, but by Hamed with three other people.

  Hamed looked up at my footsteps. “Hi, boss. We can’t shoot until this evening, so we thought we’d come up and see the Beast.”

  The three that Hamed had brought certainly looked Hollywood. One was the producer, a short, roly-poly man with a glib tongue and sharp eyes. The director had come as well. He was big, balding and bearded, with an overwhelming air of being the most important man on the planet—or at least the warehouse. The young guy behind the tron attempting a “Moody Blues moment” turned out to be an actor from the movie. He didn’t seem impressed with himself, probably because he didn’t have a big enough role. I got the feeling he’d just tagged along on this excursion.

  “Quite a machine you’ve got here,” the producer said. “Your boy’s been telling us all about it. Is it true that the Beatles used it on Magical Mystery Tour?”

  I looked sharply at Hamed, who was standing at the back of the group. He flashed a wry grin.

  “Not this particular one,” I replied.

  He’d got them up to the warehouse (even if his story might have stretched the truth), and it could be worth a pretty penny if the movie shoot wanted to add my latest acquisition to the rental agreement, so why not really show them what a mellotron can do? Not many people have ever heard one of the big brutes live.

  As Hamed set up an amp and plugged it in, I explained how the tron worked, showed them the Rube Goldberg-like inner workings, then fired it up.

  It helped that I’d played it a few times since retrieving it from the airport, so I was able to put on a pretty good show. It was my take on the tail end of the intro to “Watcher of the Skies”, using the famous mixed choir sound on one keyboard and the brass/violin mix on the other that sold them. I must admit I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up, too—but that just might have been the volume.

  The director was beside himself. “I have got to use this in the movie. The unit is so...substantial, it will look terrific on screen and will absolutely make the big concert scene! It fits into the time frame of the storyline, and this thing sounds as magnificent as it looks! How long can we have it for?”

  The producer added, “And for how much?”

  Surprisingly, I was suddenly hesitant to hire it out. “Actually, I was thinking of using it for a gig I’m doing in Glasgow next month.”

  Where the hell had that come from? My mouth had moved seemingly without the expressed consent of my brain—or was it just my subconscious speaking out of turn?

  The director was adamant. Sensing my hesitation, he offered me a ridiculous sum. The producer grimaced but stayed silent.

  “What concert?” the director finally asked, exasperated by my continued refusal.

  “It’s in Glasgow with my old—”

  The actor snapped his fingers. “Now I know where I’ve seen you! You used to be in Neurotica. Man, I thought you were dead!”

  That really hurt—probably because it was so close to the truth.

  Twelve

  As she headed downtown from the airport strip, Shannon felt as if her head was going to explode.

  Driving was not easy, and she was having trouble concentrating properly. Most of the snow had been stripped from the roads, accomplished by the application of salt by the ton. So the sludgy, grey spray the cars threw up around her meant she had to clean her windshield every thirty seconds.

  I should have checked the fluid level on the last fill-up, she thought sourly.

  Part of Shannon’s thoughts was occupied with the usual worries of any mother. Robbie seemed to be having such a hard time buckling down in school this year. Rachel had now become really interested in boys, and with her wild streak, Shannon was bracing for a lot of trouble over the next few years. She hoped the problems with both children were not further fallout from the divorce. She and Rob had done their best to keep personal acrimony separate from their roles as parents, but you never knew with kids. Sometimes she thought hers had come with built-in radar.

  In her shoulder bag she now had a good likeness of the girl Michael had gotten himself mixed up with. Men could be so damn gullible! With that thought, the inner spotlight immediately turned on her, though, and she had to admit that some women could be pretty damn gullible, too. Sighing heavily, she forced her thoughts back to more constructive channels.

  She had come up with a workable theory on why the girl had shown up in Toronto. She’d known the goons after her in Birmingham wouldn’t give up easily. If they’d been only reasonably smart, they’d have gotten the number of the Jag, and armed with that, Shannon knew how easy it would have been to get an address in Scotland.

  Knowing what might soon go down, the girl would have needed a solid alibi. Who better than Michael in Toronto? Then there was what she’d done in the hotel’s elevators. If she’d wanted to avoid detection, could have used the stairs or averted her face rather than staring brazenly upward at the security cameras in the elevators the way she had—unless she had wanted a hard record of her visit to Toronto.

  How much of what she’d told Michael had been the truth? That was what Shannon really had to find out, something that would likely prove very tough. Montreal was the only lead she had. Unfortunately, on the home front, it couldn’t be a worse time to be out of town.

  Sha
nnon felt certain Michael was in real danger. The creeps she’d caught off guard the night before meant business and wouldn’t be such easy marks next time. She would have to be very careful about this. Michael still had no idea what he’d gotten into.

  God, he had a stiff neck. And all that false bravado! It didn’t impress her one iota, and besides that, it was stupid. Thugs like the ones after him wouldn’t think twice about lopping off a finger or two to get the information they wanted. After that, Michael would have to die. She somehow had to make him understand.

  Swinging onto the eastbound QEW from the 427, her thoughts drifted sideways again. It was so bizarre to be working for someone she’d idolized so long ago, actually talking to him like he was just a normal person. He obviously thought he was normal. She didn’t know if she could ever completely feel that way about him.

  During her last two years in high school, she’d been absolutely smitten with Michael Quicksilver. Her bedroom ceiling had been covered with posters of Neurotica so she could look at him as she lay on her bed. All her friends thought Rolly Simpson was the hottest thing ever, but Michael with his dark good looks and that faraway stare had always enthralled her. She’d seen him do that a few times during the past day, and it still brought on goosebumps, remembering how she’d fantasized about him, learned everything she could about him.

  She realized now that she’d known only the things breathlessly imparted in fan magazines. She really had no idea who this man was—other than someone in a pack of trouble, and he was counting on her to get him out of it.

  So the great private detective was now getting the chance to help her teenage heartthrob. Life could sure take some strange turns...

  ***

  Shannon spent a useful two hours at Toronto’s police headquarters, calling in a few favours in order to get information on the thugs who’d attacked Michael. That tag number had been easy to make. The car belonged to a punk named John Smith, of all things. He’d been busted for boosting cars and was suspected of a couple of break-ins, but so far he’d managed to stay out of the slammer, except for two short stretches. It didn’t surprise anyone she spoke to that Smith would do strongarm stuff for hire. As for “known associates”, there were several, including a guy who’d recently arrived from somewhere out west and who sported a ponytail. The latter had the reputation of being more than a little nuts, and the person Shannon spoke to about him thought he might be capable of almost anything given enough exposure to the “poorer elements in Toronto”.

  “Watch out for Andrew Stokowski if he’s involved with this,” Shannon had been told. “He’s a bomb waiting to go off.”

  Stokowski’s mug shot (two arrests for aggravated assault) confirmed that he’d been the dark-haired one knocking Michael around with great gusto the evening before. Smith had been the blond one holding him. Shannon drew a blank on the third goon, not unexpected if he had come in from Britain.

  As for the girl, she hadn’t expected to get any information. Everyone promised to keep their ears to the ground for her.

  Shannon had a lot more to think about as she started up the Don Valley Parkway—not least because three people had asked after her husband, unaware that they’d split up.

  ***

  I went back into my office, shut the door against the aural onslaught of the actor trying out one of our bigger guitar amps in the warehouse, sat down behind my desk and took a deep breath.

  It had suddenly hit me that I’d be performing in a few weeks and with sentiments like, “I thought you were dead,” I would have to bemore than good when I hit the stage in Glasgow.

  Rolly had left messages twice with updates on the concert preparations and to try to nail me down for rehearsals. So far, I hadn’t returned his calls, but I couldn’t decently hold my mates up any longer, regardless of what was going on in my life.

  I felt like a bug facing an oncoming windscreen.

  I’d kept my chops in shape over the years and actually played a lot better technically than I had in my Neurotica days, but I had a spotty memory of most of our material. Being a keyboard player, my parts were often too far back in the mix to hear clearly, and I dreaded the effort I’d have to put in to lift them off the recordings. Lastly, there was my reluctance to just play the old tunes without taking a fresh look at them. Twenty-four years on, I felt we certainly owed it to ourselves to do a lot better than that.

  Once Elvis had left the building, and it was safe to go back out to the warehouse, I assembled the troops, telling them which keyboards and monitoring system I wanted. It only took us a few minutes to move everything into the front room, which would have been the reception area if I ran a normal business. My employees mostly used it as a lounge/lunchroom, though we’d often press it into service to demo instruments for clients if they wanted a spot of privacy.

  Once we had the Hammond organ and mellotron in place, I told everyone to clear out, since I could set up the four synthesizers and the digital piano alone.

  A short while later, I fired everything up and tried a few hot licks. Since it wasn’t the set-up I’d used in the past, I thought the change might help me re-think things as I went along. Pretty soon, I realized that I liked what I’d come up with; the only change I would make for the concert being to use a real piano in place of the digital one.

  I was playing the few Neurotica things I did remember when I felt someone watching me. I looked up to find Shannon standing in the doorway.

  “Please don’t stop!” she said. “It was really fascinating. And don’t roll your eyes at me, either! You were playing ‘Don’t Push Me’, weren’t you? Boy, does that bring back memories! But I’ve never heard it like that. It was so slow.”

  I began shutting down the keyboards. “That’s the way Rolly and I originally conceived it. If you pay attention to the lyrics, it’s not a particularly happy song. The producer on our first album made us do it up tempo, and I guess he knew what he was talking about, because it was a big hit.” I shrugged. “But I still hear it slow in my head.”

  “You should talk the band into doing it that way for your concert. I bet it would set a few people back in their seats.”

  “Not likely. Audiences like their favourites played straight up.”

  “No, no. I’ve just had a brainstorm. You could play the slow version in the middle of the concert somewhere then do the hit version as an encore. I bet the audience would go nuts. I know I would.”

  The years had fallen away from Shannon, and I could see the seventeen-year-old she’d been when Neurotica was in its prime. Then I flashed to her as I’d seen her the night before: dedicated mom talking to her kids about their homework. If Rachel could see her now, she’d probably roll her eyes.

  Do we ever really grow up? Is the younger person always lurking inside just waiting for a chance to get out?

  “What?” Shannon asked when she caught me staring intently.

  “Nothing,” I answered as I checked to make sure the mellotron and organ were turned off.

  Shannon, leaning against the door frame, related what she’d found out downtown as I again studied the photo of Regina the hotel had provided. Her expression as she looked up at the camera made me feel very odd, almost as if she’d known I’d see it eventually.

  “So it seems pretty obvious to me that your girl—”

  “She’s not ‘my girl’,” I interrupted rather harshly.

  “The girl we’re looking for then, if that suits you better. Anyway, as far as I’m concerned, the only reason she had for following you to Toronto was to get herself an iron-clad alibi. She knew she’d be nabbed if she stayed with Angus, so she had to get away—”

  “Yes, and leave poor Angus with his head in a noose!” I interrupted again.

  “You don’t know that. Maybe she tried to get him to leave.”

  Shannon was probably right. A mere slip of a girl like Regina couldn’t make Angus do anything he didn’t want to. No one could. “So where do we go from here?”

  “To Mon
treal. Well, at least I go to Montreal. I’m not counting on much, but who knows? I may get lucky.”

  I was about to ask how long she’d be away when the bell for the side door rang. “Why have those boneheads locked the door?”

  “Perhaps because they were leaving for the night?”

  Looking at my watch, I saw that it was after six. How long had I been playing? “Wait here a second. I’ll see who it is.”

  My private investigator shook her head. “Not a good idea.” She indicated the other door out to the front of my building. “Do you have the key to that?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “I want to sneak around to see who’s bothering you after hours.”

  We always kept the curtains closed in this room. To be on the safe side, I’d also changed the lock, so a key was needed to go in or out.

  Before disappearing into the night, Shannon said with surprising earnestness, “Lock this after me. If I’m not back in five minutes, call the police. Whatever you do, don’t come out looking for me! I’ll give three quick knocks when I come back. You don’t hear it that way, you don’t open the door.”

  Eyes glued to my watch, I waited a very long two minutes before hearing three soft raps. Shannon slipped in and switched off the lights as I relocked the door. She was breathing hard as she sat on the floor to brush the snow off the bottom of her jeans and out of her trainers.

  “Just what I thought. They’re out there. Must have been waiting for your crew to leave, either hoping to follow you or catch you alone.”

  “How many?” I asked, trying not to act as scared as I felt.

  “Just the two bozos who manhandled you last night. The big shot isn’t here. That’s probably why they tried pretty much the same stunt.”

  “What do we do now?”

  She sprang lightly to her feet. “We sit and wait. Sooner or later they’re going to try this door. I don’t want to take a chance on going out until they do.”

  I went over to the far corner and grabbed a stray mic stand, turning it upside down. With the big weight on the bottom, they make a very effective weapon and have been used by many a musician in bar fights.