Page 21 of A Breath of Life
The guy screwed up his face in disgust and turned around. Whatever.
I pocketed my phone, unable to respond to Memphis since the line had moved forward, and it was almost my turn to order.
With a steaming takeout coffee and a toasted bagel packed neatly in a paper bag, I weaved through the café crowd and headed outdoors. Aiming for my parked vehicle, I juggled my phone and purchases soI could read another text that had come through while I was busy paying.
You know I don’t like sharing men. Did you two flirt? Are you hooking up? What about Diem and all your talk about commitment? Don’t be a hog. I will fight you. Josh is mine.
“As if.” Chuckling, I debated how to respond. Sometimes, it was best to leave Memphis hanging. Let him think the worst. He was astoundingly dramatic when convinced I’d cheated him somehow. Besides, Diem would kill me if I told Memphis about the card. For whatever reason, he seemed exceptionally worried about people finding out we had it.
Less than ten feet from my car, while still debating how to respond, I dug through a pocket for my car keys. Not paying attention to where I was going, I collided with a man standing in the middle of the sidewalk, unbalancing everything in my arms. It was a miracle he didn’t wear the coffee. Somehow, despite the lid popping off, I managed to save us both from disaster and didn’t spill a single drop of the precious brew. Priorities.
The paper bag with my bagel, the car keys, my change from the purchase, and my phone, however, clattered to the ground. The coins clinked and rolled along the sidewalk and onto the road.
“Shit.” I immediately scrambled after the fallen items and checked that my phone screen wasn’t sporting any new cracks. The last thing I could afford was a new device. Diem would kill me. It was bad enough that I couldn’t go four months without breaking my glasses.
“I’m so sorry,” I stammered to the person I’d bumped into. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“Clearly,” said the low thrum of a deep voice. The man squatted and helped to collect the loose change.
Upright, phone safely tucked away, I noted the man’s appearance for the first time. He was taller than me by several inches, broader, and with dark brown skin and hard amber eyes. Their dispassionate expression was at odds with his austere clothing. The man wore black from head to toe: a buttoned dress shirt, trousers, and polished shoes. A Roman collar sat snug against his throat, indicating he was clergy.
Although my father had dragged me to church on plenty of occasions as a child—he a stringent Catholic—I wasn’t religious. I suspected those long-ago Sundays warming a pew were a test to see if I would burst into flames and confirm his suspicions about my sexuality. Alas, I survived.
The man studied me for a long moment as though seeking… something. His mouth sat in a flat line, his wrinkled nose conveying disgust. Apparently, I’d been weighed and found wanting. He held out my change, and I accepted it.
“Wealth you get by dishonesty will do you no good, but honesty can save your life.”
“Huh?” I glanced at the few quarters and dimes in my palm. “These are mine. From my coffee. I didn’t steal them.”
“Proverbs 10:2.” Then he tipped his head in a nod and headed off down the street.
“The fuck was that all about? Weirdo.”
I expected a man of God to be more repentant or concerned—perhaps friendlier—after an unexpected collision on the sidewalk, but I didn’t have time to ponder his accusations further. I was late for work.
At the office, I flicked on the lights and turned on the computer before checking if Kitty had left any messages. With my move to part-time, I didn’t work with the quirky older woman anymore. She came in on the two days I worked the PI business with Diem. I covered the remaining three.
My days were long and quiet with her absence. I missed doing crossword puzzles and listening to endless chatter about her granddaughter and the knitting group. I missed her witchiness and freakishly talented ways of knowing all the gossip while giving the impression she was nothing more than a withered old lady who couldn’t see beyond the end of her glasses. If something suspicious happened in the building, whether among detectives or with a case, Kitty always had the details. Knowing everyone’s business gave me life, so without her around, the records department was a sad place.
I located a handwritten note in the center of the counter addressed to me.I left chicken casserole in the fridge-freezer. There’s enough to share with my cuddle bear. Take it home for dinner.
Ipffed as I crumpled the note and tossed it into the garbage. “As if. Since when do I share food? Come on, Kitty, you know me better than that. Cuddle bear can make his own damn dinner. I’m a growing boy.”
My mother’s voice inside my head told me I was a bottomless pit. A fair assessment.
I spent the first part of my shift logging and updating the department’s website, as well as reviewing emails to determine if there were any requests for files that needed to be retrieved from the crypts, dusted off, and delivered to a specific detective. Documenting retired cases took time, and since Kitty didn’t do those jobs anymore, the accumulation of folders in the intake bin meant a couple of hours of work.
Once that was taken care of, it was midday. While eating Kitty’s delicious chicken casserole, I compiled a list of the sixteen divisions that covered the Greater Toronto Area and located extensions I would need to call when querying about lost or stolen goods.
Diem and I had discussed how I might approach the situation and agreed there was no harm in making specific inquiries by describing the card exactly. Either it would ping on someone’s radar, or it wouldn’t. No one had to know that we possessed the card or if they did, how we got it. It was always possible that a civilian had come in off the street and handed it over. I was simply trying to find its owner.
By mid-afternoon, my efforts proved fruitless. No one had reported an eloquently crafted ace of spades made of titanium, gold, and platinum. As much as the results excited me—if no one was looking for the card, then, by default, it was ours, right?—I knew in my heart that Diem would not be as easily swayed. Possessing it bothered him in a way I couldn’t understand.
I needed to devise a plan to convince Diem to find a buyer. We’d done our due diligence. It had been several days, and no one was missing the card. Fuck that noise about trying to return it to the man from the alley. That guy didn’t want it. Besides, we didn’t know the man’s name or where they had taken him. Hell, maybe he hadn’t survived and was lying dead in a morgue.
With that thought in mind, I pulled up the website for my favorite clothing boutique, the one I could never afford, and decided to make a new wish list of all the items I would buy if I came into a significant windfall. The day zipped by after that, and before I knew it, it was time to lock up.
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