As Mickey walked back to the bar, he said, “I think your date’s here.”
Charlie turned to see Declan coming through the door. He had a troubled look on his face.
What’s he been up to?
“Sorry I took so long,” Declan said with a weary smile. “Where do you want to sit?”
Charlie led Declan to a table near the front window beside the two young lovers, where the natural light filtered in through the windows. Mickey followed them and asked, “The usual?”
“Yes, please,” Charlie replied.
Declan just nodded.
“So, tell me what you’ve found out,” Declan said.
“Well,” Charlie started as he opened his laptop, “this is turning out to be more interesting than I thought. First, I looked into Sinclair Yamada. He’s thirty-three years old, single, born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has a master’s degree from Harvard and started work as an editor at Mount Temple Press in 2014. He’s written a dozen essays on the history of the treatment of the Japanese in Canada, which have been published inThe Globe and Mail,Maclean’sand theCanadian Historical Review, but has not ventured into fiction.”
“And that’s interesting?” Declan asked.“Anything else on him?”
“Only that he’s a top-level cricket player with a membership at the Glenmore Cricket Club,” Charlie said looking up at Declan, shrugging his shoulders. “Who knew we had a cricket club?” He focused back on the laptop. “He has a Facebook and Instagram page but he appears to have abandoned hisXaccount after posting a nasty comment about Elon Musk.”
Charlie paused as Mickey dropped off their drinks at the table. “Thanks, Mickey.”
“That’s it?” Declan asked as he took a swig from his drink.
“In a way, that’s what’s interesting. He feels a little too normal. I went as deep as I could on the internet—places you don’t want to know about—and found nothing. His remaining social media accounts are restricted to publishing, cricket and the occasional funny animal videos. He’s just a normal guy—who looks pretty hot in a Speedo, by the way.”
“Please tell me that’s not everything.”
“Oh, have a little more faith in me,” Charlie replied, smiling. “Next I started looking into the late Mr Tull. I discovered that he wrote a well-received first novel that was published by Mount Temple Press. Since he took over from Thomas Pritchard at Hoodoo House in 2008, he’s only written four books, and they’ve been mediocre mystery novels. I checked the sales rankings of the books on Amazon and they’re in the basement. Not a good showing for being basically on salary for fifteen years. My question is why would Mount Temple Press publish them? They promote themselves as Canada’s preeminent publisher of history, art andliteraryfiction, but mystery is a bit outside of their usual catalogue.”
Charlie took a swig of his beer.
“Maybe they just had to put the books out to justify expenses for the foundation?” Declan offered.
“Possibly. But why keep on someone who’s only a passable writer? They could have ditched him at any time.”
“From what we know about him, maybe he had something on someone in the foundation,” Declan replied.
“It also got me wondering about Tull’s predecessor, Thomas Pritchard. He was there from 1988 until his death in 2008. Guess how many of his books he published before landing the spot as first writer-in-residence?”
“Not a clue.”
“The only book I found that was written by Thomas Pritchard before moving into Hoodoo House was published in 1985. A science-fiction fantasy calledThe World Before Time. Again—don’t you think it’s kinda weird that they would choose to support a writer like that? Not art, not history and definitely not literary fiction.”
“Aren’t we being judgmental?” Declan said, smiling.
“I’m just saying science-fiction fantasy also seems a little out of place in their catalogue. The other thing about Pritchard is that during his twenty years with the foundation he published”—Charlie paused for effect—“onebook!”
Charlie said this loudly enough that the young couple sitting next to them jumped.
“Sorry,” Charlie said in a hushed tone. “Just one book. No other short stories or essays. Nothing.”
Declan sat back and took another sip of his scotch.
“It must have been a masterpiece.”
Charlie shook his head. “Not really. The critics called it long-winded and overly prosaic. It was six hundred pages long, but from what I read, it wasn’t something that you would think would take twenty years to write.”