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Jim Pantaleo’s phone winked out sometime after 6:00 a.m. on Aug. 1, 2012. The last message he sent before it died was to his wife, Allison. “Love you forever,” it said. And then, nothing.

Jim had spent the day before writing and drinking, slowly. From his perch at the corner of an L-shaped bar at a pub in Toronto’s east end, he tapped away at his laptop. He sipped beer and he did shots of “liquid cocaine,” a mix of Jagermeister and Goldschlager schnapps.

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Jim had arrived at the pub, Rails and Ales, at about 3 p.m. “He seemed very normal,” says Len Grammenopoulos, the bar’s owner. He ate some food. He joked around. Sometime after midnight, he sent his mother an email with seven letters inside. At about 2:30 a.m., he paid his tab — maybe $60, $70. He high-fived Len and he walked out. “I remember him saying ‘I’m gone,’” Len says. “And that was it.”

Jim was gone.

Photo by Supplied Photo

Three years before he walked out of that bar, Jim was a different man. He was newly married. He owned a pub with Allison. The two had planned on starting a family soon. Then they bought a house, and everything fell apart.

Within weeks of moving in, they say, their new floors buckled. Their pipes froze. Their ceiling cracked. They also say that their foundation began to shift. One day, just months after signing their mortgage, they became so concerned with the condition of the house that they grabbed their cats, packed their car and fled — afraid their walls might collapse.