Cut to the Bone. Joan Boswell

      Dedication

      For Nick, Katie, Francis, Trevor, Christy, Brendan, and Tyler

      ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

      I would like to thank Allister Thompson and Sylvia McConnell at Dundurn for their support and editing as well as my writing group, Barbara Fradkin, Mary Jane Maffini, Sue Pike, and Linda Wiken, who carefully read the manuscript before it was submitted. Also thanks to my family for always being there for me.

      ONE

      Hollis Grant slumped in her uncomfortable office chair thinking that she hadn’t expected her life to turn out this way. When she’d read the advertisement in the Toronto Star, it had seemed like the answer to a prayer.

      “Immediate vacancy for mid-size apartment building superintendent. Salary and two bedroom apartment.”

      She’d rationalized that the job wouldn’t be as time consuming as being a community college professor, her former occupation. It would give her time to paint as well as providing a bedroom for her eleven-year-old foster daughter, Jay Brownelly. She’d grabbed the bait like a hungry trout and signed a year’s contract without investigating further. That had been in February. Now, three months later in early May, she hoped she’d made the right decision.

      The apartment building had surprised her. Four years earlier a developer had bought the elegant but aging eight-storey building and begun renovations working from the roof down. He’d completed work on the top four floors, where he’d ripped out walls to create large apartments and added upscale bathrooms, granite countertops, the best of the best. To match their luxury he’d upgraded the lobby, the gym, the party room, the guest apartment, the office, and the security system — all located on the first floor. But he’d gone broke before he reached the lower floors. The next owner sold the renovated apartments and charged high monthly maintenance fees.

      Initially, all the building’s balconies had been condemned as unsafe, and those on the top four floors had been refurbished. Now, scaffolding festooned the lower floors and a Dumpster squatted on the ground below a chute for the disposal of the disintegrating concrete.

      Small rental apartments crowded floors two, three, and four. The super’s apartment on the first floor across the hall from the spiffy office retained its original fixtures. The tenants, a mix of seniors, students, and middle-class single women, lived in cramped quarters and frequently needed tradespeople to attend to their decaying wiring and plumbing. Hollis found that responding to the tenants’ demands took up more time than she had hoped.

      The building reminded her of an aging movie star. The surgery, the Botox, and the hair extensions couldn’t conceal the aged hands, the thickening waist and ankles.

      Hollis hadn’t envisaged being quite as busy as she was, and every day she rose hoping for a few hours to dedicate to painting. Sitting in her office she thought longingly of the half-finished painting on the easel in her apartment. Should she play hooky and ignore several phone messages from tenants? Not a good idea. Reluctantly, she left the office door open and anchored a baby gate in the apartment doorway to allow her two dogs, Barlow and MacTee, to see her.

      She played the machine’s messages, dealt with them, answered mail, called the plumber to arrange an appointment for a second-floor apartment’s blocked toilet, and leaned back. She glanced at the wall clock and pushed herself away from her desk, a large, ostentatious chrome and mahogany job bought by the high-end renovator.

      Eleven thirty. Could she spend time on the painting before she collected Jay? She ran her hands through her curly blonde hair and repositioned her red-framed glasses on her nose. More than three hours before she leashed her over-exuberant Flat-coated Retriever puppy, Barlow, and her Golden Retriever, MacTee, and walked to Jay’s school. She believed the child was more than capable of walking home, but Jay’s father, still playing a role in his daughter’s life, insisted that she be accompanied to and from school. Hollis used the walk for her own and her dogs’ exercise.

      Barlow and Jay, both recent additions to her life, provided an equal measure of pain and pleasure. Given the constraints imposed by the job, the dogs, and the child, it seemed likely that the year she’d allotted to establish herself as a full-time artist might not be enough to provide a true test.

      “Sorry to bother you,” a voice said.

      Both dogs barked.

      Hollis looked up to see a slim, brown-eyed young woman clutching a green plastic shopping bag hovering in the doorway. Her long, shiny black hair framed an anxious face.

      Ginny Wuttenee, a new tenant on the fifth floor, had dropped in several times before to talk to Hollis and ask for information about Toronto.

      “No bother. What can I do for you?” Hollis asked.

      Ginny caught her lower lip between her teeth and frowned. “I have a problem….”

      “Tell me,” Hollis said, hoping it would be a simple one. She might just get in an hour on the painting if nothing else intervened.

      Ginny stepped into the room, leaned on the doorframe, and looked ready to bolt momentarily. “The painters are doing Sabrina’s living room.”

      Sabrina. Hollis ran through the photo gallery of tenants she knew and fastened on a long-legged, blue-eyed brunette who also lived on the fifth. Sabrina Trepanier loved dogs and had dropped in several times to pat MacTee and Barlow.

      “Yes, I know Sabrina.”

      “Her apartment is being painted. She’s allergic, so she slept in my small bedroom last night. This morning when I got up I didn’t hear her. I went out to buy croissants and groceries at Bruno’s.” She chewed on her lip. “I didn’t take my key. I figured she’d be up by the time I got back, because we’d agreed to go shopping and have a late lunch at a Japanese restaurant, because I’ve never eaten sushi. Sabrina has been really nice to me since I moved in.” She placed the bag at her feet. “I’ve rung the buzzer, phoned her cell phone, tried the land line, and I don’t get an answer. I guess she must have gone out early, but I can’t imagine why. Will you let me into my apartment?”

      “Of course. And don’t worry about bothering me. That’s what I’m here for and you’re not the first person to leave without taking a key.” Hollis stood up, unlocked a wall cabinet, and removed a ring of keys, relieved that the problem was nothing more serious than a forgotten key.

      “Maybe she’s a heavy sleeper. Give her another call,” she temporized.

      Ginny whipped out her cell phone, tapped in the number and listened. She snapped it shut. “I get not available, leave a message.”

      “Give me a minute to lock up.”

      “I’m really sorry to bother you,” Ginny said, again shifting her bag from hand to hand. “It’s probably nothing. Maybe Sabrina was up really late and took a sleeping pill. I do that sometimes. You have to sleep, and since they started work on the balconies there’s banging and crashing all day. When will they finish?” She grinned ruefully. “The truth is I shouldn’t complain because I hate absolute quiet. When I moved in it surprised me and made me happy that the builder wired every room for sound. I play CDs or leave an easy listening station on night and day.”

      “Why don’t you like the quiet?” Hollis asked as she removed the baby gate and shut the dogs inside the apartment.

      “I don’t know. I guess I always listen to see if something or somebody is creeping up on me. I know it’s weird, but I’ve been like that for a long time. I come from Saskatchewan and sometimes when the wind stops blowing, it’s so quiet the silence hurts your ears.”

      “Lucky for you that you have the music.