Nightshade. Tom HenighanЧитать онлайн книгу.

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      To the Ficners of Westboro, Charlie, Jane, and Will. Sam would have liked you as neighbours.

      Cruelty has a Human Heart

      And Jealousy a Human Face,

      Terror, the Human Form Divine,

      And Secrecy, the Human Dress.

      — William Blake

      One

      It was a bright Wednesday morning in July, and Cartier Street reverberated with a pleasant din. Sam Montcalm was almost happy. He swung his sturdy frame around a delivery truck and the early shoppers, trotted on past the bustling market stalls and the restaurants — just preparing for lunch — and finally spotted what he was looking for. It was the place the Berthelets had recommended, right in the middle of the street action, but with an air of sanctuary about it.

      CAFÉ LEDUC, the sign said — something to do with the painter — a place without false chic or pretensions, its special ambiance evident in the alert and contented patrons chatting beneath the lazily drooping awnings, while black-garbed waitresses hurried back and forth between the front terrace and the shadowy recesses at the rear. The soft buzz of pleasant conversation made for an alert and reassuring sound, with nothing raucous or harsh about it.

      Sam relaxed at once, stepped onto the terrace, and found himself a table beside a steep stairway that led to the upper floors, for the Leduc was a B&B as well as a restaurant-café. A young blonde waitress in a fitted black top and a short black skirt, who made him think of an Ursuline novice, greeted him with a warm smile, and asked him in French what he was having.

      He hesitated, then decided on English. “I hear your coffee’s good. With a croissant or maybe two, if you have any left.”

      Her smile didn’t falter. “Sure. You want a menu, too?”

      “Why not?”

      Sam sat back contentedly. He could speak a little French, of course, but these days felt more comfortable in English. Despite his Quebec connections, he had grown up in the 60s and 70s in California and Ottawa, and preferred to pass himself off as a tourist in French Canada.

      Now he was on vacation, curious to learn more about his father’s roots in the “wilds of Quebec,” as the old man used to jokingly refer to his birthplace.

      Actually, Charles-Louis Montcalm hailed from a hamlet near the town of Neuville, just southwest of Quebec City. Montcalm senior had worked in Ottawa for Mackenzie King’s cabinet minister, C.D. Howe, but had left government in 1957 at the same time as his boss. Then he’d succumbed to the lure of California and entered a realm of family tragedy that nothing could have prepared him for.

      Sam closed his eyes. It had been his world, too, as a child — that sunny California of sea and mountains, hippies, surfers, red Camaros, the Beach Boys, and Richard Nixon. As he got older, up through high school, he had found it an exciting place — “one hell of a place,” as his Dad had told his Ottawa cronies. But all of a sudden Vietnam came along, then the protests, and Little Teddy (his six-foot-four, pacifist elder brother) began his run from the FBI and oppression. Then it was no longer “one hell of a place.” It was just hell.

      “This is as about as far away as it gets,” Sam murmured, as if to the waitress who appeared suddenly from nowhere. Embarrassed, he avoided her puzzled glance and gazed around at the animated patrons, the busy morning crowd rolling by on Cartier.

      “Far away from what?” the young woman asked. She set down the coffee and croissants, and gave him that curious, guarded, sympathetic look that he sometimes got from strangers.

      “You’re all in black, almost like nuns” he countered, smiling at her and nodding his head at the other girls zipping among the tables. “Does it mean something?”

      She stood up straight and pondered, pouting her lips. “We’re not Goths, anyway … and mostly not novices either. But we do serve the religion of coffee, I guess,” she added with a smile, then hastened away in the direction of the bar.

      Sam chuckled, impressed; he watched her move, and a few bars of Bach’s frivolous, catchy Coffee Cantata came into his mind. Since Justine had left him nine years ago, he hadn’t had a serious romance with anyone. Of course these café girls were really too young for him, but refreshing, direct, and nice to think about. By contrast, his job seemed to put him in touch with too many crushed and worn out, or desperately cynical, older women, some of them attractive enough, and quite willing to cry on his shoulder — Elena Holland, for one. She had even threatened to come along with him on this trip.

      Sam shuddered. Elena and her crowd — the people he worked for — were mostly feature items in Ottawa’s Point-Blank magazine, the scandal sheet and webzine that regularly displayed and mocked the rich, the powerful, and the foolishly notorious. Sam had opened up his detective agency after his father’s death, but he knew exactly what the old man would have said about his work and his clients.

      He frowned, and tasted his first croissant. Buttery, chewy, slightly crisp on the outside. No disappointment. He dipped it into the coffee, which seemed to be espresso, although in a large cup. He decided this was an okay place.