William Bell - Fanatics

I went on to describe what I was after. I needed room for a few large work and layout tables, machines like saws and planers, a booth for spray staining, and an electricity supply that would take the strain of all that equipment. I didn’t have the machines lined up yet, or the money to buy or lease them, but I could at least search for a place.

“Latte okay?” Marco asked when I had finished talking.

“Perfect.”

“How big an area d’you need?”

I looked around the restaurant. “About what you have here, give or take.”

Marco turned his head from side to side, taking in the room as if seeing it for the first time. “I got this cousin,” he said, but didn’t finish the thought.

I nodded to encourage him, took a sip of my latte, said, “Uh-huh.”

“A distant cousin.” He smiled, making creases like parentheses on either side of his mouth, and ran his fingers through greying hair. “Real distant. From the brainy side of the clan-the Corbizzis. Heard of Professor Corbizzi? Never mind. Anyways, the old prof passed away some time ago. I heard that whoever takes care of the estate wants to rent out the coach house. You prob’ly know about the old mansion.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s up the lake a ways. North of town. Sits out there on its own little peninsula. Course you can’t see the house from the water. Too many trees. Anyways, if you’re interested I’ll try to get you the phone number.”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

“Might take me a day or so. It’s unlisted, and I don’t know who inherited the place.”

“No problem.”

“One thing, though,” Marco added, “there might be a string or two attached.” He smiled again. “With the Corbizzis, there always is.”

THE RAIN SHOWER that began as I left Orillia had faded to light drizzle by the time I delivered the chest with the repaired drawer to a house on Big Bay Point. When I pulled into a parking spot across the street from the bus station in Barrie, the afternoon sun was shouldering through the overcast, flooding the street and the whitecapped waves of Kempenfelt Bay with honey-coloured light.

After a while, the Toronto bus turned onto Maple Street, its engine roaring, its brakes hissing, and swung into the station. The doors flapped open and the driver hopped out and heaved up the cargo doors. He began to pass cases and bags to the knot of passengers who had quickly gathered behind him. Raphaella was the last to step off the bus, a tote bag slung over one shoulder.

I stayed in the van for a few minutes, watching her. She would be expecting to see our old white van and wouldn’t notice me right away. She looked around as commuters flowed past her, rushing to taxis, the parking lot, or the line of cars in the pickup lane by the curb. Although their bodies were here on Maple Street, their minds were already somewhere else-at home, most likely. Whoever said you couldn’t be two places at once was wrong.

Raphaella wasn’t like them. She stood under the eaves of the station, beautiful as always in a black leather coat with caramel trim at the collar and cuffs. Her coal black hair, gathered behind her neck, fell to the middle of her back. The afternoon light seemed to highlight the wine-coloured birthmark on her neck and right cheek.

Even from my vantage point across the road I could sense the stillness that she wore like a comfortable cloak, the calm that sheltered her without making her seem vulnerable. Raphaella was the only person I knew who seemed secure in who she was, rooted and at home in the present, totally unlike the frantic passengers schooling past her.

But I couldn’t sit and feast my eyes on her forever. I tapped the horn and got out of the van and threaded my way across the street, dodging cars as they scrambled away from the depot. Raphaella caught sight of me and her face lit up. We had been together for about a year, but whenever she smiled at me like that I felt a nerve at the back of my neck wake up and tingle.

She set down her bag, threw her arms around my neck, and kissed me like we’d been apart for a year rather than a couple of days.

“I missed you,” she said after breaking the kiss.

“Me, too. How did everything go?”

“Perfectly-almost. They had everything we’ll need and the price is right, but the man I had to deal with is a leerer. With an aggressive comb-over.”

“Well… theatre people,” I remarked, earning a punch on the shoulder.

The Orillia Theatre Group was putting on a musical, and Raphaella was stage manager. This time it was Merrie Olde Orillia , written by a local author. She had turned Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town into a musical comedy. Naturally, I referred to the show as MOO. I hated musicals, but Raphaella loved them-the only defect in her otherwise perfect personality. She had spent the day in Toronto at the costume rental company.

“Let’s boogie,” I said.

She laughed. “You sound like your dad.”

We made our way across the street and climbed into the van.

“So you finally gave in and got a new vehicle,” she commented as we headed north. “Or rather, new-ish.”

My father had been forced to give up our white rattletrap when it shuddered and died in the driveway like an overworked draught horse. The “new” vehicle, brown this time, was ten years old.

“Yeah. No choice. Um, changing the subject, I may have a line on some rental space for a workshop.”

I told Raphaella about Marco’s possible connection.

“It may not work out, but it’s possible,” I said. “Anyway, you’re invited for supper at our place tonight.”

“Who’s cooking?”

“Me. I’m doing cold pasta salad with chopped olives and tuna, barbecued chicken on the side. Nothing complicated.”

“Oh, I am glad to be home,” she said.

WICKLOW POINT, north of town, was a peninsula that hooked into the lake and pointed back toward Couchiching Park. At the end of Wicklow Road and occupying the entire peninsula was an estate enclosed by a high stone wall with a wrought-iron gate set into granite pillars. The dense stand of trees beyond the wall was flagged every fifty metres or so with NO TRESPASSING posters, whose message was emphasized by a PRIVATE: NO ENTRY sign on the gate.

I had never been out there before but found it easily enough with the GPS mounted on the handlebar of my motorcycle, a vintage 650 Hawk GT. My dad the traditionalist gave me lots of grief for using the electronic gizmo so much. “Pretty soon you’ll need that contraption to find your bedroom,” he joked.

I coasted slowly up to the gate and pushed a button below a brass grille. A hollow, tinny voice responded after a few seconds.

“You rang?”

“It’s Garnet Havelock. I have an appointment.”

“You may enter,” said the grille.

There was a click, followed by the hum of an electric motor and the rattle of chains as the gates rolled aside. I heard them closing behind me as I guided the bike slowly up the gravel drive that curved through a grove of maples, birch, and a few conifers, and into a clearing where a big two-storey stone house brooded in the shadows.

It looked like something out of a history book-slate roof with three broad chimneys, flagstone porch, oak double doors adorned with black lion’s-head knockers, mullioned windows along the first floor and dagger-shaped windows, their tips glazed with crimson stained glass, on the second. To the right of the mansion, also built of quarried granite, was a three-car garage in a stand of birch, with a concrete apron in front and along the side. This must be the “coach house” Marco had mentioned.