Alex Carrick’s Blog

The following are the jounal entries of Mr. Justin Smythe, a gentleman hobby farmer living outside the lovely theatre community of Stratford, Ontario where a widely-known Shakespearean festival is held each year. Mr. Smythe’s life proceeds quietly as he tends his cattle and occasionally takes walks in 30 acres that he has set aside on his property for Christmas tree cultivation. Evergreens are the best shelter from the sun to spur on the growth of mushrooms, which are harvested in October. 

October  10, 2000: I hate mushroom pickers. They come onto the property and create nothing but trouble. They litter. They toss away beer cans and candy wrappers. They pop up in unexpected places. Often they discard matches and cigarette butts, posing a fire hazard. Some even walk around with rifles taking shots at imaginary targets, scaring the bejeepers out of me. They don’t realize that I’m working on the property. They tear down “No Trespassing” signs faster than I can put them up. But today, I met a couple that was a complete surprise to me.

Mushroom pickers are usually of mid-European birth, with thick accents. They’re the only ones who know what they’re doing. Mushrooms can be dangerous. Eat the wrong ones and they’ll kill you. I sure don’t know anything about them, but apparently my property is ideal for their propagation. Every year around this time I have to fend off unwelcome visitors by the car-load.

George and Hannah are completely the opposite of what I’m used to encountering. They’re young, attractive and articulate. I think they might be brother and sister. They look so similar and they don’t interact like husband and wife. They own a little shop in town and serve baked goods as well as light meals to tourists and theatre-goers attending the main festival and other events.

They asked if I would be willing to let them grow mushrooms at the farm. I couldn’t resist. They were so charming. They offered to pay for the privilege, but I said there was no need. It will be nice to see them around from time to time. Hopefully we can get together and chat some more.

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Chief Inspector Beige was never more glad to be home. He’d spent three days entangled in the lives of the rich and famous and he had never been so off-balance before in his 45-year-old life. It had been a roller-coaster ride that lost its amusement appeal long before the final plummet.

Beige’s detective career spanned ten years. He was recognized as Toronto’s finest when it came to solving crime. That’s why he had been assigned to investigate the mysterious disappearance of paparazzi-favourite Shirley Soame, girlfriend of hockey legend Robert St. Pierre. Possible victim and villain were too high-profile to risk ham-handed treatment by anyone else in the force.

Shirley had been missing for four days when Beige was put on the case. The public relations firm she worked for contacted the police because she failed to show up for several key client meetings and there was no answer either at her home phone number or on her cell. She was a rising star with the firm and this kind of disregard for her responsibilities had never happened before.

There had been considerable coverage by the media of the fiery public spats that St. Pierre and Shirley engaged in. Their relationship was a volcano that often erupted and the lava outpouring would ignite many a social gathering. What was it doing to the feelings that the two principals had for each other? How long could such volatility be sustained without serious trouble?

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Tracy Tindale was at her wits end. This was the Olympics in which she was supposed to shine. Instead, she was struggling again. While most of the problem was mental, it wasn’t all her fault. In fact, her condition had recently been given a name. It was going down in the medical books as a modern ailment. Often, despite all efforts to resist, she would find her head spinning like a figure skating diva.

Her Olympic career had started at the Vancouver-Whistler Games. Tracy was a star in the firmament of ladies’ downhill, super G and giant slalom ski racing. At the age of 18 in 2010, she made a respectable showing but didn’t make it to the podium. That had never really been in anyone’s expectations, including her own.

The media spokespeople had used the usual phrases to describe her first appearances on the Olympic stage. She was coming back nicely from injury, a bad bruise from a nasty fall in a world cup event at Val d’isére France. She was well-positioned for the next Olympics scheduled for 2014 in Sochi Russia. And she recorded several personal bests. No wins, but personal bests. That was the consolation prize that had seen many another top athlete through a tough time.

When the 2014 Games arrived and Tracy again failed to medal, there was a little more disappointment expressed at her performances. But she stepped up in the rankings. Also, in events immediately prior to and after the Olympics, she did very well. In fact, her career took off. The product endorsements flowed in and life in general became much easier. Still, there was the nagging dissatisfaction with failing to achieve success under the biggest microscope of all, the Winter Games.

Now it was 2018 and this was supposed to be Tracy’s year. In fact, the whole nation was counting on her. What everyone else did not know, however, was that Tracy had developed a severe case of nervous distraction. The offending party was advertising. She had consulted, in secret, several sports psychologists and was surprised and relieved to hear that she was not alone in her distress.

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Bradley found that it was easiest to talk to his imaginary friend, Russell, when he was getting dressed before the full-length mirror in the bathroom. In such a setting, Russell became both a congenial valet and a good sounding board. He would stand to the side and let Bradley talk.

Russell had been around for as long as Bradley could remember. A little portly, a tad balding and approaching 30, the two of them even looked a lot like each other. Russell was more devil-may-care in his attitude, though. They had grown up together and now, getting ready for the most important evening of his life, Bradley needed to search out Russell’s opinion more than ever.  

BRAD: We’ve been together a long time and you’ve always given me excellent counsel. I have to come to you again, though, because this is one more time when I’m not sure what to do.

RUSS: I appreciate what you’re saying but as I’ve told you before, the advice doesn’t really come from me. It comes from a very dear friend of mine, someone that you refuse to believe in.

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David and Maria made sure to arrive home on a Tuesday evening before 6 p.m. after long hard days at work by both of them. They were a married couple in their mid 40s, with three children – William aged 20, Walter 10 and Wendy 5. Later that evening, they would be meeting with Maria’s younger sister, Lucy, and her acquaintance or boyfriend or common-law husband, Jerry. The exact nature of that relationship remained fuzzy. The occasion was Lucy’s birthday.

The following conversation was conducted between the master bedroom and the adjoining bathroom as David and Maria prepared themselves. Weeknights out were rare in their household.

DAVID: So how’d your day go, sweetheart?

MARIA: The usual. A mad rush. Worked too hard. Would have rather stayed home in bed.

DAVID: Did they say anything at day care when you picked up the kids?

MARIA: Yep. Apparently Walter came out with another one of his beauts. You know they went on a field trip to the art gallery. Our little treasure wanted to see John the Baptist’s head on a platter.

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Hostess Betty Bernard didn’t know what she was letting herself in for when she invited the television producer Mark Gatheral and the newspaper critic Gracie Phitts to the same soirée. Mr. Gatheral was a corpulent, but still handsome, man of 45. Ms. Phitts was an attractive dynamic go-getter in her early 30s. They could both be charming, but they were also career obsessed.

Betty was the socialite widow of an agri-business bio-engineering king. The bottom line, she was overburdened with money and loved inviting her friends and acquaintances to dinner parties. Her gatherings were always a mix of people at the top of their professions. Unfortunately, she didn’t always do background checks or keep up with the latest gossip. While she didn’t have a mean bone in her body, it sometimes transpired that her guest list turned into a virtual setup.

She held court on the 60th floor of a five-star hotel and condo complex just up from the city’s waterfront. One particular evening in early March, 10 well-attired individuals perused, fondled and roamed among the mahogany, chintz, Wedgewood and Limoges of Betty’s home.

The canapés and hors d’oeuvres were served and consumed in the living room as a prelude to the meal that was to come in the dining area. Mark and Gracie were able to keep their distance at first, by circling around opposite sides of the room. Once everyone was seated, however, and the two of them were facing each other across the table, the inevitable happened.

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Pug-nosed Pat and gum-chewing Chris, two long-time Irish cops, were back on the day shift after a month spent on the night rotation. Their patrol area ranged from the entertainment district in the east to the upscale shopping district downtown. Being a cop in these days was quite a different experience than it had been for their family forefathers on the force. The city-state had changed beyond recognition.

At the turn of the 22nd century, the world had changed considerably from what it had been 100 years before. War and most other manifestations of violence had been eliminated. Peace gained a stranglehold. Social media monitored and controlled all economic activity. Women held every managerial and leadership position.

The transformation began slowly in the early years of the preceding century, then exploded. The first big shift came with the founding of the FLYT Corporation. In the same way that the word NEWS is derived from North, East, West and South, FLYT is a combination of the first letters of Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. FLYT Corp., in a brief period of time, took over all communication on earth – news, messaging, broadcasting and entertainment for starters, then inventory management, data processing and the full range of other business functions stored in the clouds. The resulting paradigm shift was unprecedented.

When FLYT took flight, women finally achieved their full potential. The ladies were far more adept than the men at welcoming and making use of the new tools at their disposal. The sisterhood, through a shared heritage of quilting clubs, book clubs, watching Oprah and The View, coffee klatches, spas, trips to the hairdresser and a willingness to seek advice was much more adept at social networking. Sure, men had their lodges and their drinking buddies, but these were technologically ancient.

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Liz Stuckey’s marriage to her husband, Brian, was not without its rewards. First, there was their daughter Abby who was a delightful child of eight and accounted for much of Liz’ appreciation of life. Then there was her comfortable existence in the suburbs, with a 3,000 square-foot home and a Lexus in the driveway. Of course, it was Brian who drove the Lexus, but the cachet still enveloped the whole family. Liz drove a serviceable but hardly glamorous Dodge Caravan.

Brian, however, was another matter. Most nights, he wasn’t home. He either stayed late at work or he was out with the boys, playing in a house-league game or hanging around a tavern watching one of Toronto’s numerous professional sports teams on TV. Both Liz and Abby felt some sense of betrayal and abandonment, but most of the time, they got by alright.

Liz had her own pre-occupations buried in her family history. There was a matter about which she felt a weighty sense of obligation. Perhaps there was more she could have done. Liz’ older brother Edward had turned into a troubled young man. Throughout his university years, his professors had marked him as brilliant. But he’d been overwhelmed by emotional problems.

Try as they might, the Smith family elders had never been able to rescue him from his demons. Bouts of rehab and mood-altering drugs all came up short. The upshot was that Edward disappeared into the legions of the homeless in the city’s core when Liz was only in her teens. She had been too young to do anything about it then and her sense of loss and impotence had never left her. There was no doubt in her mind that she still had a duty to perform.

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Herb Green was frustrated beyond containment. His toxic mood might not have been impossible to deal with except that he had newly acquired a truly foul vocabulary. He started swearing like Regan in The Exorcist. Furthermore, he lacked the originality to be entertaining in his gross verbiage. No, he was disgusting to listen to. His wife, Wanda, was really fed up with him. She had once dated a rapper and swore that she would never again breathe in that kind of atmosphere.

Under normal circumstances, Herb was a soft-spoken decent man. But these were not normal times. In fact, these were the most difficult economic times ever experienced by someone of Herb’s age. He knew about the Great Depression through what he’d learned in school. Even his father was a child in the Dirty 30s. Herb wasn’t equipped to handle the emotional roller coaster that saw him lose all of his money and go deeply into debt in the latest Great Recession.

Now he swore and cursed about his depleted finances all day long. He turned the air blue with his ranting. Wanda instituted a new rule in the house. Every time Herb cursed, he had to put a one-dollar IOU in a large glass jar. In quick order, Herb was in debt by another $1,000. This distressed and depressed him even further. That is, until he came up with a novel idea.

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