Stain of the Berry (31 page)

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3/15/2011 10:56 PM

D:
BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

I felt bad about leaving Richie Caplan and Kim Pelluchi, knowing that the boogeyman was real and somewhere out there on the streets of Saskatoon, waiting to get them. But what could I do? I wasn't a one-man security service or a caped crusader with nothing better to do. I couldn't protect everyone. I had my own client's interests to look after. It still felt rotten.

I'd had a long, long day-from Nunavut to Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan to a high-speed pursuit through Kinsmen Park and being kidnapped-it was time to go home. When I parked the Mazda in the garage behind my house well after midnight, I was bushed. For a moment I laid my head against the car's well-worn headrest and closed my weary eyes; the Arctic Circle, seeing my uncle, meeting Maheesh, learning Sereena's saga, it all seemed like a vision I'd had, a hallucination, but it wasn't. It was reality.

I entered the house through the back doors directly into the wet-nose welcome of two happy-to-see-me schnauzers. Errall would have been there earlier to let them out, feed them and pat their heads, but I still felt a need to spend some quality time. I poured myself the dregs from a bottle of Cave Spring Pinot Gris I found in the fridge and led the oft-repeated parade to our favourite room in the house in which to hang out together: the den. It was too warm for a fire, but we still piled up on the couch that faced the fireplace and got in several good minutes of ear scratches and belly rubs. As I did that, I sang them their favourite song:;

"You're two little teapots, short and stout; here are your handles and here are your snouts!" Brutus was the first to call an end to our menagerie a trois by dropping to the floor with an audible "oof." Barbra stayed with me a little longer, more, I think, to promote her primary claim to me and mine to her, than any real desire for prolonged petting. When that was over, I reached for my wineglass that I'd placed it on a side table and downed a healthy swig. Ahhhhh, that tasted good, peachy I think. I picked up the nearby phone to check for any messages that had come in since I'd been away. There were three.

The first message was a reminder from Espirita Salon about a haircut appointment; the next was a hang up; the third was Doug Poitras. The real one. "Russell, ah, hi, it's me, Doug Poitras. I'm a friend of Anthony's, we met at your birthday party...well sort of met...I wasn't really sure what was going on there?

Something about you thinking I was somebody else? Anyway, I was just wondering if you'd be interested in trying that again, maybe just the two of us this time, maybe a movie and drinks afterwards?" A little hesitation, then, "I'd really like to get to know you better. You can call me at 555-7411."

The computer voice gave me my options: respond, save or delete. I hit delete.

I must have made a sound within the expanded range of dog hearing because Barbra, who'd gone to lie down next to the dark fireplace, looked up at me with her soulful, understanding eyes. I swear that animal can read my mind. She knew that, as nice as Doug Poitras might be, the only man I could think about right then was Alex Canyon. Even though he'd left me that same morning on the tarmac outside Hangar 10

without so much as a backward glance, off to the other side of the globe, he was more present to me at that moment than any other man I could ever remember meeting. Without even trying, I could recall his scent, his voice, the heat that filled the air between us whenever he was near me. I laid my head back against the soft toffee leather of the couch, closed my eyes and summoned a vision of his handsome face.

He had sat on this very spot, only days ago, during that hot, steamy, stormy night and I could easily recall the smell of his damp skin as it dried in the heat of the fire. His eyes: so intense, so serious, so beautiful. I ached to reach out and touch him. Why had I let him go so easily? Why hadn't I said something to him, let him know how I felt? How
did
I feel?

I forgot to close the blinds. The end-of-July sun peeked over the horizon and into my bedroom sometime after six that Thursday morning. I attempted to roll over onto my tummy, away from the scourge of light, but found I was wedged between two lumps of immovable canine. I kept my eyes resolutely shut, but the bright new day had other ideas, burrowing through my eyelids with cheery sunshine that grew in intensity with each passing minute. By a little after 6:30, my brain, with no encouragement from me, began to list off the numerous things I should do that day and I gave up any chance of going back to sleep.

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3/15/2011 10:56 PM

D:
BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

"This has to stop," I mumbled to the dogs as I began to nudge them awake. "You cannot sleep on this bed. You have perfectly good mats on the floor."

With that Brutus hopped off the mattress, as if he'd been awake the whole time and was offended by my uncalled-for diatribe, and went to stand by the French doors that led to the backyard and his morning ablutions. Barbra was a little slower going. Her head rose from slumber and she stared at me as if to ask,

"You're sure about this?"

I stumbled out of bed and-thanks to well-planned (and slightly overgrown) backyard foliage-I was free to follow Barbra and Brutus outside without bothering with a robe to cover my nakedness. It's not that I didn't have one within easy reach, but this is a rite of summer that simply needs doing every now and again. The dogs ran off to take care of business while I luxuriated in a mile-high stretch, grasping at a pure-blue sky. Through squinting eyes I regarded the offending ball of sun, but who could be mad at such an irrefutably joyful sight, like a giant piece of lemon candy on a peaceful blue background, promising to only get sweeter and yellower as the day progressed. There was nary a breath of wind and my skin felt toasty after only a moment outdoors. It was a day meant for gardening or swimming or lazing about on a lawn chair, but none of those activities were on my schedule that lovely mid-summer's day.

By the time I reached PWC around 9, my head was filled with what-abouts, what-ifs and how-comes.

Although I suspected that Kim Pelluchi had been tossing her net too wide, I couldn't help but wonder if maybe she'd been right about some of her possible scenarios and suspicions. Suppose everything that happened had something to do with the competition the Pink Gophers had attended in Regina, an event I knew very little about. Who had been there? Were there any sore losers? And what about the choir director, Frank Sadownik, and the bus driver, Guy somebody-or-other? Were they potential suspects?

Were all the members of the choir innocent, or was one of them the true culprit? I had a lot to do that day, and to top it off, I couldn't help but think about my secret voyage to the Arctic Circle: my uncle was alive and Sereena hadn't disappeared: she was in hiding. What would happen now? Could I really go on as if I knew nothing? Would I be able to keep these secrets from Anthony? From my mother? The only help for me was to keep busy, and that would be no problem.

I spent the morning collecting information, sometimes by good old-fashioned research, sometimes by cajoling, sometimes by trickery and fakery (my personal favourites). By noon I had a plan of attack in place and was heading out of town in the Mazda with a takeout meatloaf sandwich from Colourful Mary's and a bottle of Dasani on the seat beside me. Martensville is a small town twenty minutes northwest of Saskatoon, and Frank Sadownik lived on the outskirts, farming in summer and teaching school in the winter.

I stopped in town only long enough to track down someone to give me directions, and soon found myself motoring along a dusty gravel lane that led off the main road (also dusty and gravelly) into the Sadownik's farmyard. The yard itself was a collection of buildings in various states of disrepair and dilapidation, except for a neat row of three, steel-sided granaries that looked shiny and new. There was a stand-alone garage that appeared in better shape because of a fresh coat of barnyard-red paint, but upon closer inspection was just as old as the other buildings around it. Surrounding the yard was an aged windbreak of dead or nearly dead ash trees, forever-thriving poplar trees and spindly-looking caragana. As I pulled up in front of a single-storey house, I was greeted by several laying hens, one rangy-looking rooster and a very old dog who reminded me of a miniature woolly mammoth.

Unsure of the mammoth's intentions and biting habits, I gingerly stepped from my car, ready to hop back inside at the first sign of aggression. The animal regarded me with weary eyes and attempted a bark but did not quite succeed, instead letting forth from a jowly snout, a sound reminiscent of a coughing cow, along with a fair bit of graying froth. His nose went right for my crotch, no doubt trying to get a bead on Barbra and Brutus's scents and I pulled away, shy as Billy around Captain Highliner. I swung around at the sound of something landing on the car's ragtop. It was a scraggly looking tabby who mewed at me plaintively, as if hopeful that a being of matching mental superiority had finally come to rescue it or at least have intelligent conversation.

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3/15/2011 10:56 PM

D:
BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

"You can have her if you want," a voice called out to me.

I spotted a young boy, maybe eight, standing near some trees and fingering a toy tractor in his dirty little hands.

"Don't you want to keep your cat?" I asked stupidly. I was raised on a farm and if this place was anything like most farms I knew, for every cat you saw, there were probably six more.

He decided the question was rhetorical and instead went right to business (I liked that about the kid):

"Mom told me to come out here to see who it was. Who are you?"

"My name is Russell," I told him, glad the woolly mammoth had finally grown bored of my crotch and lumbered off in search of other things to sniff. "Is your daddy home?"

"How do you know who my daddy is?"

I wanted to ask, "How do
you
know who your daddy is?", but that was just nasty. Instead I went with,

"Is your daddy's name Frank Sadownik?"

"He's on the field."

"Oh."

We stared at one another for a bit until I suggested we go talk to his mother. The boy, whose name turned out to be Gerald, led me behind a line of bushes and through some thick undergrowth down a well-worn path to a break in the windbreak where a woman and another child, a girl of about four, were toiling in a large garden plot. It was scorching hot out there, away from the protective shade of trees and buildings, and although the garden seemed plentiful, it looked dry. Bordering the garden was an endless field of maturing wheat and every so often a light breath of air would cause the green-yellow heads to ripple ever so slightly, sending us a whiff of their yeasty sweetness.

The woman, who was on her knees amongst several rows of vining peas, looked up when Gerald announced our presence with a "Hey, Mom!" She raised the back of her left hand to her brow to push away a stray curl of dark hair and at the same time shade her eyes against the blaring sun. She gave us a wide grin as she gracefully pulled herself up into a standing position. Immediately I wished I had an easel, canvas and palette of paints, for here was a sight that begged to be painted (even though I am not an artist and I am as gay as a Christmas carousel). Stella Sadownik was gorgeous. She was a traditional prairie beauty, the kind of girl seen on the wheat fields of Saskatchewan, dairy farms of Iowa and steppes of Ukraine. Her complexion was pure as fresh milk except for a slight ruddiness from a little too much wind and not enough sunblock, her eyes were sparkling marbles, her lips were full, as were her hips and bosom.

She had an unblemished, unadulterated country loveliness that could effortlessly have convinced Hugh Hefner to settle down to a life of hard work, hearty meals and a house full of straw-haired children.

"Hullo!" she called out as she made her way to where I stood at the edge of her garden. Gerald had already abandoned me in favour of squishing potato beetles. She was wearing a faded housedress that had seen better days (or maybe not) and a pair of ancient sneakers with the laces missing. Her knees and hands were earth grey and under one arm she cradled a chipped, enamel-coated bowl. When she got near me, she reached into the bowl, pulled out a handful of peas and handed them to me as if this was as natural as shaking hands. "New peas, sweet as baby's breath."

I used my thumbnails to open up a pod, rolled out the barely there peas into my palm and tossed them into my mouth. She was so right. They tasted like miniscule beads of juicy sugar. It was a taste from my childhood; the first peas of the season, too small for anything but raiding from the garden and melting down one's throat. I smiled at her and nodded my appreciation.

"Good, right?"

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3/15/2011 10:56 PM

D:
BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

As I tossed back a few more of the tasty green morsels, we introduced ourselves. When that was done I glanced around to check if either of the two kids was within overhearing distance. They weren't. "I'm a detective and I'm investigating the death of a woman named Tanya Culinare."

Stella Sadownik gave me a blank look.

"I believe she was a member of the choir your husband directs?"

"Oh dear," she said with surprising sincerity. "Frank will be so sad to hear about this. Is there anything we can do, something for her family?"

This woman was as sweet as the peas she dispensed. "That's very kind of you. I was hoping to talk to your husband about Tanya and the rest of the choir."

"Of course. He's on the field right now, doing summer fallow on the hill piece. I usually take lunch out for him after one o'clock, but he never complains about an early meal. If you can wait a few minutes, I'll put it together and take you out there."

"That would be terrific, thank you."