"Dr. Ruth!" Stacy called out. "Hi there. Detective Stacy Crean, Dockerty PD. Like to talk to you for a minute."

Lorna Ruth froze for a second, tried to smile. "Oh, h.e.l.lo. What are you doing here?"

"We're looking for Anya Zubrovskaya. We understand the two of you took a drive this afternoon."

"Oh. Yes. We did. She needed a lift." She looked over her shoulder to see Adele behind her, looking into the kitchen. "Excuse me. What's going on?"

Stacy kept moving forward carefully. "That's what we're trying to find out. Who were you calling to? Who's in the barn? Who is it you wanted them to 'bring out'?"

"This is private property, you know. And you are nowhere near Dockerty, Detective."

"These are simple questions, Dr. Ruth. Or is it Dr. Wisneski?"

"Goodness gracious, Stace. Look who's here! It's my old friend Serge. How you doing, pal?"

Stacy said, "Why don't you take the doctor inside with Mr. Siziva while I check on who might be in the barn?"

"Sure thing, partner. Toss me your cuffs. I only brought one set."

Stacy handed her cuffs to Adele, then crossed the lane, heading for the barn. Halfway there a figure emerged from the shadows carrying something that looked dangerous. Stacy's hand immediately went to the b.u.t.t of her weapon. Then Anya came into the light.

"Anya, you all right?"

"My favourite detective. Yes, thank you. I am fine. My wrists are b.l.o.o.d.y and I do not smell very nice, but I am otherwise all right. There is a man tied up inside the barn. I hit him with this."

"Would you mind putting it down now, Anya, please?"

"Oh, of course, I have been clutching it so tight. My hands are not working very well." She needed to use her free hand to pry the chair leg loose. She dropped it on the ground. "The man inside had a rifle. I pushed it under some straw."

"Good. Why don't you come and sit in our car? We'll take care of things from here."

"Yes. That's a good idea. I am a little weary." She began to fall and Stacy caught her before she hit the ground.

Stacy carried Anya into the kitchen and got her seated, got her a gla.s.s of water, had a look at her bleeding wrists. Adele was keeping her eyes on Dr. Ruth and Sergei who were sitting with their backs to each other. Whenever either one opened their mouth to speak, Adele told them, "Shut the f.u.c.k up!"

"There's a man tied up in the barn I should check on," Stacy said. "And a rifle somewhere."

"Go ahead, partner," said Adele. "We're all just going to sit here quietly and wait for a bus to take all these a.s.sholes to the slammer."

"Detectives!" Constable Maitland was coming through the door holding a man by the arm. "This guy was trying to slip out the back. He wasn't running very fast."

"Way to go, cowboy," Adele said. "Who have we here?" Charlie pushed the man into the room and Adele slapped both hands to her face in complete surprise. "Holy f.u.c.k!" she said. "Marty!" She shook her head. "In a bazillion years I wasn't expecting you, and that's a f.u.c.king fact."

Martin Grova shrugged. "I have nothing to do with these people."

"That's okay Marty. I'll make sure you get your own cell."

When it came to theatre, Orwell tended to favour sung drama such as Madame b.u.t.terfly or The Music Man, but he granted that Thornton Wilder's old chestnut Our Town was a relatively painless theatrical affair, folksy, mildly amusing, and proceeding without flubs, miscues or undue coughing from the audience. When the curtain fell and the applause died down, the crowd heading for the lobby appeared to be in a uniformly good mood.

Orwell and family spent the first few minutes fielding compliments about the impressive stage presence of the youngest member of the Brennan clan.

"She's great, isn't she?" Diana was proud of her kid sister.

"Her voice carries very well," said Erika.

Sam Abrams was easing his way in their direction through the crowded lobby. "Mrs. Brennan," he said, nodding politely. "Chief. And . . ." he did an elegant quarter turn, ". . . the new law partner of the redoubtable Georgie Rhem, Diana Daily." His bow was courtly.

"h.e.l.lo, Sam," she said. "It's been a while."

"Not a bad show, don't you think? Leda's very good."

"I hear they might take it to Peterborough in a couple of weeks," Sam said.

"Leda on tour," Diana laughed. "Watch out, world."

"I need some air," Orwell said.

Erika looked over her shoulder as she and Orwell made their way to the exit. Sam and Diana were chatting comfortably. "He's married?" she asked.

"Sam? To the paper, maybe."

"She likes him."

"He's a nice fellow."

There were small groups of people on the sidewalk, a few clouds of smoke. Mayor Donna Lee Bricknell was coming toward them.

"Good evening, Chief. Mrs. Brennan. How nice to see you." She motioned Orwell to stand a bit closer. "By the way," she said. "I was speaking with a friend of mine on the Newry Township Acreage Preservation a.s.sembly. Your pet.i.tion for a severance should go through without any problem."

"Well now," Orwell said. "That is good news, Madam Mayor. I was sure I'd be going there hat in hand."

"These things can usually be accomplished smoothly, when we all work together." The Register's ace photographer, Kathy somebody, was pointing a camera in their direction. "One hand washes the other, as they say," said Donna Lee. "Now, let's have one of those big Orwell Brennan smiles."

Orwell bent his knees slightly and smiled at his friend, the Mayor of Dockerty.

Sam and Diana pa.s.sed by. "We're going across the street for a quick coffee," she said.

Orwell watched them cross the street, Diana in her high heels, Sam holding her elbow. "She giggled," he said. "I distinctly heard a giggle."

"Don't you interfere," Erika said.

"Wouldn't think of it," he said. His pocket began to vibrate.

Thirteen.

April.

Orwell Brennan was not by nature a whimsical man, but April 1st was for him a High Holiday. He considered April Fool's Day an appropriate date on which to begin a baseball season, since it was the one day a year that fans could be sure their team had a legitimate shot at winning the World Series. In most cases this hope would either be dashed or severely pummelled before the month was out, but for this brief moment at least, universal optimism was in the air.

The date was also a gentle reminder that however carefully he dealt with life, and with whatever attention to detail, the ultimate resolution of events would forever be outside his forecast or control. A clear case in point was the matter of the missing Russian ruby, a situation so complicated that the Blue Jays would be nicely settling into their yearly battle for third place in the tough American League East before even the first of the princ.i.p.al players made a court appearance.

Orwell was sincerely grateful that most, if not all, of the various crimes, had taken place far outside his purview, and that his personal involvement in the laborious untangling of personalities and circ.u.mstances was minimal. Stacy Crean was making frequent trips into the city for identifications, interviews, statements, depositions and discoveries and she provided him with regular reports, which occasionally made sense of what was going on, but, he had to admit, often confused the h.e.l.l out of him.

First there was the question of exactly how many crimes Dylan O'Grady had been personally responsible for. Since the accused was conveniently (or inconveniently, depending on one's point of view) dead, the Crown was having a tough time a.s.signing blame and framing charges to bring against the still-living partic.i.p.ants. It appeared that O'Grady was the most likely murderer of one Ludmilla Dolgushin in Montreal some twenty-nine years previous, the probable murderer of one Va.s.sili Abramov, eight years in the past, the presumable killer of one Viktor Nimchuk, in March, and at least partly responsible for the demise of one Louis Grova, some days later. The allocation of responsibility in these separate but obviously connected deaths was of serious concern. If a strong case could be made by a defence team that O'Grady was in all instances the lone culprit, then pending cases concerning Lorena Wisneski (a.k.a. Lorna Ruth), Haro Ruta (a.k.a. Harold Ruth), Sergei Siziva, Yevgeni Grenkov and Martin Grova would be greatly simplified. There was, alas, the matter of Dylan O'Grady's own death, for which he quite obviously was not guilty. While the Crown had a wealth of circ.u.mstantial evidence and theory, placing any one of the suspects definitively inside O'Grady's car on the night he sustained two gunshot wounds to the head, was proving to be very difficult. They were convinced that it had to be one of the princ.i.p.al players, but which one?

Framing conspiracy charges against the six was also going to be hard, since it appeared that in many cases they had acted independently and often at cross purposes. It seemed likely that Martin Grova, in concert with his brother Louis, had been blackmailing Dylan O'Grady by threatening to release proof that he had murdered Ludmilla Dolgushin long ago. Martin Grova was refusing to release whatever proof he was holding until he had secured a deal from the Crown that he would not be charged with anything at all. Lorena Wisneski maintained that she had never even heard of Martin Grova until he had contacted her following his brother's death. The Crown believed their connection went further back than that, but were still trying to piece together when, and how, they were introduced. It was possible that Sergei Siziva had brought them together, but Sergei maintained that he had been acting alone and perfectly within the law for many years on behalf of the Soviet (and eventually Russian) government to effect the return of a national treasure known to have been in the possession of members of a ballet company who defected in 1981.

The eventual allocation of blame and disposition of the various cases being cobbled together by the Crown in Toronto would, in the fullness of time, reach some kind of resolution, he knew, perhaps in six months, or longer, it didn't much matter. The only case that had directly impacted the town and its citizens was the odd and coincidental (and no doubt for all miscreants involved, inconvenient) murder of Toronto Homicide Detective Paul Delisle, and in that instance Orwell Brennan could point with a measure of pride to how well his force had resolved the matter. Edwin Kewell was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Paul Delisle. He was sentenced to life, which would likely mean he'd be out in fifteen years. Doreen informed Mr. Kewell that under no circ.u.mstances would she be waiting for him.

That his daughter, Diana, had rather efficiently effected the freedom of a man who turned out at a later date to be part of an international and highly publicized (alleged) criminal conspiracy, was a topic of much entertainment value around the Brennan dinner table for much of April. Through it all, Diana maintained her sense of humour and bore the various j.a.pes and gibes with good grace. She wasn't in the least abashed, but she was a bit testy on the matter of Harold Ruth's bill, which might go unpaid for some time.

Anya Zubrovskaya, the only one of the alleged smugglers still alive, was initially considered by the Crown to be an invaluable a.s.set in building their cases, but ultimately it became clear that she would be no help at all. Her sole concern, it seemed, was that Dylan O'Grady be posthumously convicted of the murder of her dear friend Ludmilla Dolgushin. Beyond that she had no interest. She maintained that since the disappearance of her friend, she had been on the run from people who were trying to kill her. People who were trying to obliterate any trace of the initial theft of Empress Feodorovna's priceless crucifix, since it pointed directly to still-living persons high up in the Russian government. As to the centrepiece of the crucifix, the fabled "Sacred Ember," Ms. Zubrovskaya maintained (an opinion supported by many in the gemstone world) that the ruby was a fake all along, and that the real one had disappeared long ago when the freshly triumphant Communists sold off a fortune in treasures looted from the a.s.sa.s.sinated Tsar Nicolas and family. Sotheby's was still going through their records and so far hadn't turned up a specific reference to the Ember, but it was quite clear that Stalin and friends had sold enough treasure to finance their Revolution and provide them with a few good meals besides.

A positive development was the complete exoneration of Detective Paul Delisle and a posthumous commendation for his invaluable contribution to the investigation. It was determined that his revolver had been stolen by Dr. Ruth on the night he was killed, and that the gun in question had been subsequently stolen by someone, probably Yevgeni Grenkov during a break-in of the doctor's offices and returned to Detective Adele Moen by Sergei Siziva. The doctor denied having anything to do with the theft of Delisle's gun. Nonetheless, any question that Detective Delisle was involved in a crime was dismissed, his pension and insurance were secure and his picture went up on a number of walls of Fallen Heroes.

This made Adele Moen very happy. On Orwell's recommendation she had secured the services of Rhem & Dailey to establish a trust fund and expense account for Danielle Delisle, which would be solid, protected and probably enough to put her through university and give her a solid start in life. While it was also necessary to maintain regular support payments to the exMrs. Delisle, these would cease upon Danielle's eighteenth birthday.

Rather than go through the horror of moving, selling or disposing of everything in Paul Delisle's apartment, Adele, with Danielle's total blessing, simply sold off or gave away the contents of her own spa.r.s.e and underfurnished apartment and moved into the place. She felt comfortable there, surrounded by Paul's stuff, the record collection, sound system, furniture, memories. It wasn't bad. Some nights it was a little sad when the music and the wine got to her, but mostly it was a comfort.

It was clear that the trials would be lengthy, and in some cases at least, avoided entirely by the possible deportations of Siziva, Wisneski and Ruta, although it had yet to be determined exactly to what country Haro Ruta belonged. Grova and Grenkov were both Canadian citizens and, in all probability, not involved with each other. Grenkov was free, pending developments. It was doubtful that he would be charged with anything. He was still considering a civil suit against Stacy Crean for grievous a.s.sault, but it was highly doubtful that would even be considered. He was advised to leave the matter alone and to be more careful in his choice of a.s.sociates.

Martin Grova, on the other hand, was believed by many to have been the driving force behind subsequent developments, but as yet there was nothing substantial they could pin on him. His contention that the "old diamonds" in the crucifix were more trouble than they were worth and that he had refused to touch them was dubious to say the least. According to Sergei Siziva, Martin Grova had taken possession of, and sold at great profit, over one hundred and fifty carats of high quality stones. This information, however, was entirely hearsay, since it was supposedly pa.s.sed on to Sergei by the dead Louie Grova and as such, worthless as evidence. Martin Grova maintained that he had never touched the diamonds, had encouraged (nothing more) Dylan O'Grady to search hard for the four Kashmiri sapphires, but that he had never been presented with even one. He, too, believed that the ruby everyone was interested in was a fake and of no interest to him whatsoever. And he still refused to help the police in their investigation of Ludmilla's murder until he was given a complete discharge. It seemed likely that he would get his wish.

Mikhael Tomashevsky became quite a familiar figure in the Toronto courts. As a recognized expert in all matters pertaining to missing treasures and specifically the crucifix once in the possession of the Dowager Empress Feodorovna, he gave testimony on many occasions. He also expended a great deal of effort lobbying for the return of the three Kashmiri sapphires known to exist, one of which had to be somewhat forcibly removed from the finger of Dylan O'Grady's wife, an event that was recorded by some enterprising teen on a cellphone camera and subsequently went viral on YouTube.

The fourth sapphire was still missing. Darryl Kamen, heir to Louie Grova's p.a.w.nshop and collectibles, was (with the help of law enforcement and Canada Revenue Agency) still searching for it. Hopes were not high.

Closer to home, Donna Lee Bricknell was reelected Mayor of Dockerty. The vote wasn't even close. Gregg Lyman and his lovely wife, Cheryl, moved back to Port Colborne to rea.s.sess their plans for his political future. Orwell and Erika secured, without difficulty, the severance of ten acres of the "Brennan Estate" to give to his daughter and son-in-law as a wedding present. Patty Brennan and Gary Blomquist loosely set a date for their wedding, sometime in June, and were now discussing, at length, the details of the service. Gary, a Quaker, explained to the Brennans that weddings were entirely simple affairs at the Meeting House, with no rings exchanged, no ministers involved and merely a public declaration of their desire to be married. Erika was hoping to persuade Patty to at least partic.i.p.ate in a second, more celebratory service with cake and perhaps some music. Negotiations were ongoing. Diana took an apartment in Dockerty. She seemed to be happy working alongside Georgie Rhem and seeing Sam Abrams socially. Leda Brennan was considering a career in the theatre. She was also considering careers in art and literature, and was determined to save the planet. Her budding romance with the young man named Peter dissipated when he moved to Toronto to try his luck as a standup comic.

Randy Vogt turned in his papers and retired from the Dockerty PD to take a private security job in Toronto. This left Emmett Paynter with an odd number of investigators. For the foreseeable future, Stacy Crean would be able to resume her role as utility detective, a situation she embraced happily. Any thoughts she might be harbouring about moving to Toronto to become a big city detective were, at least for the time being, placed on hold. Joe Greenway, her wandering fishing-guide boyfriend returned from a lengthy sojourn in B.C., to find the rowan trees in Stacy's front yard well established, and the woman herself happy to see him.

Stacey Crean, dedicated investigator that she was, dropped in on Anya Zubrovskaya often. There were many questions that she felt needed answers. But while Anya contributed what she could to unravelling the story, all she really cared about was the sad fate of her friend Ludmilla. She had some sympathy for Va.s.sili Abramov, whom she believed had been so in love with Ludmilla that he kept poking and snooping until he tracked down the ident.i.ty of the mysterious "big black musician." It was too bad for him the musician turned out to be a murderous policeman.

Anya was also visited, at least once, by Mikhael Tomashevsky, who told her, "The government of Russia would be prepared to pay a reward, a finder's fee if you like, to the person who could help with the return of the Ember. No questions asked."

Anya found that an interesting idea. "Really? Yes, I suppose, considering how it wound up lost in the first place. They might not care to have the full story come out."

"The finder's fee would be quite substantial."

"And discreet?"

"Of course," he said. "A person could perhaps have enough money to start a new life. Without always looking over their shoulder."

"There is that."

He gave her his card. "If you should hear of anyone . . ."

"Yes, if I should hear of anyone."

It was possible that Mikhael wasn't convinced that the ruby in question was a fake at all.

Anya Zubrovskaya had no intention of returning the ruby. She had no need for riches. She did not need much to live. A little school, a small apartment, a promising student now and then. What else was there for her now? Mrs. Lytton had offered her a teaching position in the new arts centre, if it ever got built, or maybe she could go back to Russia, they might welcome her, it would be nice to speak her own language again. Who knows? The rest of Louie Grova's money might make a good start to a travel fund. But for now she was content to live her quiet life in her quiet town without too much fear, and with fewer and fewer nightmares as time went by.

She would keep the ruby. It was safe, hanging in plain sight on the wall of her little studio, surrounded by a few framed photographs, safe inside the toe of a battered pink dancing shoe, protected by the scrawled signature of Yuri Soloviev, the greatest dancer she had ever known.

The cat was on the fire escape. At his feet was the black-feathered carca.s.s of a crow.

"A gift? I am honoured. You have outdone yourself. Crows are not easy to catch. He was either very stupid, or you are very smart. Which is it? I will go with the latter. Are you coming in? The dead thing can stay outside. If that is all right with you."

She opened the window to let the cat inside. Crows were cawing above her, but she didn't care. They were just birds, and she had an a.s.sa.s.sin of her own.

Author's Note.

For those who care about such things:.

Although certain organizations familiar to Canadian readers are referred to in the story, the people mentioned are fictional and their involvement in those organizations is imaginary.

MARC STRANGE is a writer and actor. He is co-creator of the hit television series The Beachcombers, and between 1972 and 1990 wrote, directed, and/or story edited over seventy episodes. He has appeared in many Canadian and Hollywood feature films and television series. Strange is the author of two Joe Grundy Mysteries: Sucker Punch (2007), shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel, and Body Blows (2009), the winner of the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original.

Also by Marc Strange.

Sucker Punch.

Body Blows.

Follow Me Down.

Copyright Marc Strange, 2012.

end.