Riviera Blues. Jack Batten

lemon, it tasted like shellac. I tried an oatmeal cookie to take the taste away.

      “Well, okay,” I said, “you had an affair with Jamie Haddon, maybe still are having one, which is something you’d better clear up, the maybe part, and you spoiled him rotten. Car, clothes, other treats.”

      “Yes.”

      “It’s a cliffhanger so far,” I said. “What next?”

      Pamela put down her cup and saucer. She’d polished off the tea. The woman had a cast-iron stomach.

      “Five weeks ago,” she said, “Jamie sprang this silly three-month leave of absence on us all. I hadn’t an inkling until he announced it one night when we were all at Daddy’s for dinner. There I was, I’d invested so much of myself in him, affection, time, gifts, God knows I even risked my marriage for him, and he decides to traipse off to Europe.”

      “I see,” I said. “A woman scorned.”

      “That’s just it, scorn didn’t come into it as far as I could make out, not the way Jamie behaved. He continued to act as passionate and attentive as he’d been all through our relationship. Nothing seemed to change in his attitude to me except that he picked up and left for three months.”

      “Ah well, the spontaneity of youth.”

      “Don’t give me that crap,” Pamela said. The harsh shift in her voice brought back memories of the tiffs we’d had during our married days. “This kind of spontaneity needs a few thousand dollars.”

      “Which you didn’t give him.”

      “For once.”

      My tea was a quarter of the way down the cup, where it was leaving a dark ring. What was it doing to the lining of my stomach? I ate another cookie and left the tea alone.

      “Jamie has a job, right?” I said. “He must be earning good bucks of his own at C&G.”

      “Loan officer,” Pamela said. “That’s his title, not bad for someone of Jamie’s age and experience. But you know Daddy, he really does pay his junior people dreadfully.”

      “Explains how the rich stay rich,” I said.

      “To be fair to Daddy,” Pamela said, “there’s another side to the story. Jamie knows he’ll be brought up through the ranks, as far as he wants to go. He’s family, even if he does come from those addled Haddons.” She interrupted herself. “You do remember the Haddons?” she asked me.

      “Gerald’s the one who didn’t come in for mollycoddling.”

      “Honestly, the man practically cornered the market on hopelessness. He’s been very lucky Granddaddy gave him that little job at the C&G branch in Strathroy.”

      “Gerald’s still there?”

      “Who else would hire him?” Pamela said. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Jamie. He’s very much the Haddon exception, bright and charming. Daddy’s very supportive of him, he’s the son Daddy never had, I sometimes think. Daddy put him through school, you must remember that, Ridley College and then Queen’s. And he’ll bring Jamie along at the trust company. At Daddy’s own speed, that goes without saying.”

      “I feel like I’m on the inside of the Forsyte Saga.”

      “In the meantime,” Pamela said, “Jamie has no money to speak of.”

      “Well, maybe not for you to speak of.”

      “Crang,” Pamela said, edgy, “keep your eye on the main question. All right, of course, I wanted Jamie to live well, dress well, be fabulous, while we had the affair. Are having the affair. So I paid for things.”

      “What’s the main question I should be keeping my eye on?”

      “Where did Jamie get the money to finance three months in Europe?”

      “Ask him.”

      “I asked.”

      “And?”

      “Basically evasive.” Pamela reached for another cigarette. “He let on the trip was going to be on the cheap. A big adventure, camping out, drinking the inexpensive local wines.”

      “Nothing wrong with inexpensive local European wines.”

      “There is when somebody’s been stocking your cellar with Châteauneuf-du-Pape for a year.”

      The lighter in Pamela’s hand went snick. She took a drag on the cigarette and blew a wispy cloud of smoke.

      “So, the chores you want done,” I said. “One, I track down Jamie in Monaco and two, I ask after the source of his travellers’ cheques.”

      “Ever heard of finesse, Crang?”

      “Put my mind to it, I do excellent finesse.”

      “Please. And let me know what you’ve found out when you get back.”

      I shifted in my chair as a prelude to standing up and saying goodbye.

      “Not yet,” Pamela said. Her hand was waving me back into the chair.

      “There’s more?” I said.

      “Dante.”

      “I take it we’re not talking Italian poets.”

      “Dante Renzi,” Pamela said. “He’s a young man Jamie met through business at the trust company. That’s what Jamie said at any rate. He said Dante had lost the place where he was living and did I mind if he stayed at the apartment till he found something new.”

      “You gave Jamie an okay?”

      Pamela nodded. “But Jamie knew I was annoyed.” She had a retrospective look of annoyance on her face.

      “Not your type?” I asked. “This Dante?”

      “Nice-looking. I didn’t mind that, nice-looking in a dark, soft sort of way. But, Lord, he blew it whenever he opened his mouth.” Pamela shook her head back and forth. “Completely inarticulate. No breeding.”

      “Listen, I don’t want to sound like I’m in a rush to wrap up our little chat, but is this dark, dumb chap relevant to what we’ve been hashing over?”

      “Wait for it, Crang,” Pamela said. “Dante put in his appearance five weeks ago.”

      “Aha. Do I detect an uncanny coincidence?”

      “I didn’t put two and two together until after Jamie left, but the announcement of the bloody trip to Europe and the arrival of bloody Dante happened at about the same time.”

      “Suspicious,” I said, “but not necessarily an authentic four. If we’re speculating that Dante might have some bearing on the leave of absence, wouldn’t it depend on whether Jamie and Dante left for Europe together?”

      “They didn’t.”

      “You phoned your man at Air Canada?”

      “Air France. No record of a D. Renzi on Jamie’s flight. I don’t know where the little shit has got to.”

      “The apartment?”

      “Not him or his clothes.” Pamela lifted her cigarette from the blue ashtray. “Thank God.”

      “Want me to check out Jamie’s companions in Monaco for someone along the Dante Renzi lines?”

      “Do that.”

      I started shifting in my chair again, but something in Pamela’s attitude kept me in place. She was hunching forward, generating an atmosphere I interpreted as a windup to even more intimate revelations.

      Pamela tapped her cigarette lightly on the edge of the blue ashtray. She had a way of rolling the cigarette that left the ash looking like a miniature log.

      She started again.