Aloha, Candy Hearts (13 page)

“Sure. As long as you promise not to go on any porno sites,”

she said sweetly. “I think Daddy has those blocked anyway.”

I stared at her while attempting to dislodge my tongue from my throat. There was that not-a-girl-not-quite-a-young-woman thing that was so…disarming. “Uh, sure, I promise.”

“Okay. I’m going to go check on how they’re doing with the doghouse.”

“You’re getting a dog?”

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“Two, I think. I haven’t decided yet. Daddy says that studies show that elderly people respond well to having pets around. I will too, I think. I’m going to get the kind that live inside the house, but they should have someplace to go when they’re outside too, don’t you think? How are your dogs?”

“They’re pretty good. I’ll tell them you asked about them.”

She giggled. “Don’t be silly. Do you like my hair today?”

Simon had Ethan’s—and her mother ’s?—silky brown locks.

She’d obviously taken some care to put them into a French braid.

Or had Ethan done it for her?

“It’s killer.”

“Thanks.” And with that the little girl was gone to play doggie house contractor.

I sat down at Simon’s desk. The pink surroundings and not-quite-adult size desk and chair made me feel a little like a bear in a twink bar. But I got over it. I tapped a few keys and connected to the Internet. I had work to do, and I had some ideas I wanted to follow up on.

With the cursor in the browser, I typed “famous lily.” I reviewed the first ten websites that came up and found nothing that struck me as helpful. Then I tried “portrait of a lily.” This too got me nowhere. A few “lily” permutations later, brilliance struck.

Of course! I typed in “Saskatchewan flower.” The first site listed confirmed what I’d thought. The official flower of Saskatchewan is the western red lily. That’s a pretty good claim to fame for a lily.

This had to be it. I tried several more search parameters, including

“western red lily portrait,” “western red lily picture,” and “famous western red lily.”

For the next several minutes I did plenty of reading and viewing of pretty pictures. Nothing slapped me in the face as a clue to where to go to find “fame’s portrait in a frame.” Things were going nowhere fast.

I began to wonder if “Saskatchewan” and “western red” were too broad for my needs. This was a local treasure hunt after all.

My hopes not particularly high, I typed in “Saskatoon lily.”

In a flash, a slew of new sites were put on offer to me.

And that was how I met the Saskatoon Lily.

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From various hits I was able to piece together a quick biography of a woman I’d never heard of before. Now I have to admit, I’m not as up on my 1920s, female, track and field Olympians as I could be. But the news of one from Saskatoon was rather astonish-ing.

It turned out that Ethel Mary Catherwood was not actually from Saskatoon (or even born in Canada for that matter, she later revealed). But she most definitely lived here as a youngster. Her time in Saskatoon marked the beginning of a meteoric rise to fame as a celebrated athlete. Apparently, as a young girl, Ethel excelled at baseball, basketball, and track and field, but it was her ability to jump that catapulted her (pun intended) to unexpected heights of glory.

Ethel Catherwood was one of a group of seven Canadian women who competed at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam (the first Olympics to allow female competitors in athletics). Blessed not only with athletic aptitude but great beauty too, there was considerable focus on her physical attributes during the Games, earning her the nickname “Saskatoon Lily.” A New York Times correspondent dubbed her the “prettiest girl athlete” at the Olympics. Backing up enormous promise with performance, Ethel took home the world’s first ever gold medal awarded to a female high jumper.

I did a bit more checking and found out that our hometown heroine still held the title as the only Canadian female athlete to have won an individual gold medal in an Olympic track and field event. In one snarky article I came across, the reporter even went so far as to call it the “Catherwood Curse.” At least as of the date of the 2004 article, every time a Canadian hopeful tried to end the decades of women’s track and field Olympic drought, she failed miserably.

After Ethel’s triumphant return from the Olympics, she was so widely admired for her athletic prowess and great beauty, she was offered a movie contract. And that’s when things began to turn sour for the pretty young woman.

Scandal reigned. Ethel declined the movie offer. The media unveiled a secret marriage. The Olympian ran off and filed for a DD6AA2AB8

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quickie divorce in Reno. She hurriedly married again. Pregnancy rumours swirled. It was all too much for a prudish public. In the nineteen twenties and thirties, people demanded a more virginal type than their Olympic darling was turning out to be. Canada resolutely shunned Ethel Catherwood.

Fleeing to the U. S., Ethel unsuccessfully tried to compete once more in the 1932 Olympics, this time as an American. The press hounded her every move, treating her like a Britney Spears who could jump and throw a ball, focusing on her missteps more than her skill. Viper-like, Ethel struck back with a vengeance. She scorned everything and everyone that had brought her fame and glory in the first place. She was unabashedly contemptuous of Canada. She claimed to hate sports of any kind. She rebuffed all interviews, often in the most colourful, unladylike language. She claimed to have sold all her medals and trophies. Ethel was pissed.

What a pip, I thought to myself.

After digging a bit further, I discovered Ethel Catherwood had died in 1987, alone and unknown, in Grass Valley, California, of bone cancer. She was 79.

Growing weary from the computer screen, I stood up, stretched, and walked over to the bay window. My eyes did a sweep of the developing property. Freshly laid squares of sod were being sprinkled. New flowerbeds, carved into the slightly scooped out backyard, were awaiting mulch. A workman was attaching the diving board to the swimming pool. The place was taking shape at a speedy clip. It had to: in five days, it would be the scene of a wedding.

Far off to one side of the yard, I spotted a bunch of lilies. How apropos. Their vivid orange faces were pointed up, drinking in the sun. Ethan or one of the landscapers must have planted them in full bloom.

I pulled the treasure map from my pocket and read the last line of the third stanza: Now to fame’s portrait in a frame.

My mind began to tick. It was a very Jessica Fletcher moment.

I love when that happens.

Rushing back to the desk, I speedily navigated through several Web pages. I’d just seen something…

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Yes! There it was. I read the passage out loud: “In 1955, Ethel Catherwood was inducted into the Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame in 1966, and the Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame in 1986.” Fame in a frame.

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Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame is probably in the East, Toronto or Ottawa likely, I though to myself as I sped down College Drive.

The Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame is in Regina, nearly three hours away. But the Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame is right here.

And this was, after all, a Saskatoon treasure hunt, was it not? At least, that was my fervent hope on my jaunt to the Saskatoon Field House sports and recreation facility where the hall of fame is housed.

As I headed for my destination, I began to wonder about the original author of the treasure hunt. What was it Walter Angel had said again? A friend had given it to him. Glenda, was it? No.

Maybe Helen? I was betting that whoever Helen was, she was intimately familiar with the history of Saskatoon. In particular, she had a keen interest in female pioneers: Baby Minnie, Margaret Marr, Ethel Catherwood. At least I hoped Ethel was on the list. I had still to prove my latest theory correct.

Who was Helen? And why had she put together this elaborate DD6AA2AB84

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treasure hunt in the first place? And, the most interesting question of all remained: what was the treasure? And what was Walter Angel going to do with it when he found it? I had to admit, the closer I got to the prize, the more excited I was becoming. I didn’t know if I could give up the chase now, even if I had to. Was I becoming…a pirate?

Leaving the still dented and bruised RX-7 to cool its wheels in the parking lot, I dashed up the front sidewalk to the entrance of the Field House. Once through the glass doors, I was confronted by a reception desk.

“Sports Hall of Fame?” I asked the lady sitting there, looking bored.

Her head tilted right. And there, just past the desk, beneath a red-flame-in-a-torch-holder logo, were walls and walls of framed, black and white photographs. As I approached the large display, I saw that the pictures were divided into three categories: athletes, teams, and builders. That would help. The athlete section ran along a wall that led up a set of stairs to a second storey. There were a lot of them, but it didn’t take me long to find my quarry.

The likeness of Ethel Catherwood was so beguiling, I was sure almost anyone would be drawn to it, whether they were looking for her or not. True to her press, Ethel was an uncommon beauty.

Her photo further distinguished itself by being the only one where the athlete was wearing long dangling earrings and a high, ruffled collar that looked like Persian lamb, or fur, or some kind of luxuri-ous fabric I was unfamiliar with. She could have stepped out of a 1920s jazz club, with her bobbed hair, puckered lips, and perfect complexion. Ethel stared into the camera as if daring the viewer to deny her loveliness. After a tumultuous life of great highs and lows, this is where she’d ended up, as a photo on a wall. But unlike some of her neighbours, Ethel Catherwood did not appear lost in time, an unmoving representation of something long gone and forgotten. I could see life in her eyes. I was willing to bet her spirit and spunk had been great companions to her in spite of her tra-vails. At least, I hoped so.

I pulled out the treasure map. On to verse four.

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Beneath the lonely trio

Where consumption did reside,

Nicknamesake toiled to foil

Then died.

Reciting the words in my head, I climbed the stairs to the second floor. This allowed me a bird’s-eye view of the entire collection of photographs. I searched for a lonely trio. Somewhere there had to be three pictures all alone.

No such luck.

To the right of the facilities entrance was a small café.

Consumption? Was the poem talking about consuming food or drink? Consumption resides in a café!

I ran down the stairs and into the cafeteria. It seemed to be closed for business, but the wide open front invited access. I slowly made my way around the room. There were more photographs here. I studied each one. Maybe it wasn’t a trio of pictures I was looking for, but a trio of people in a picture. Or maybe it was a trio of something else all together.

Forty minutes later, I was growing tired and irritated at my lack of success. I’d scoured the cafeteria from top to bottom. I studied the walls and halls of fame until my eyes hurt. Maybe I was wrong about Ethel. As I’d fretted early on, one wrong move in this hunt, and I’d quickly find myself in a pie shop without a fork. For the umpteenth time, I returned to Ethel and stared at her likeness a bit more, hoping for inspiration.

None came. My eyes began wandering, admiring the faces of the many Saskatoon athletes who’d accomplished admirable sporting feats. One in particular caught my attention. On the left, two photos over from Ethel, was another female sports superstar.

Her name: Lily Comstock. Ethel’s nickname was the Saskatoon Lily. Could Lily Comstock be the nicknamesake who toiled to foil?

Nicknamesake. Was that even a word?

“Are you looking for someone in particular?” The woman from the front desk had come up behind me.

“This woman,” I said, pointing at Lily’s photograph. “Do you know anything about her?”

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“Oh yes. I’m a bit of a buff on our local sports heroes. Ask me anything and either I’ll know the answer or I can find it out for you. I was quite a curler myself when I was younger. I did pretty well in broomball, too.”

I nodded politely, then repeated my question.

“I love the female athletes from a few decades ago the best, I have to admit. Their stories always seem so dramatic, don’t you think? All the things they had to go through to do what they did.

Lily Comstock’s was a sad story, though. She really was a hero. In more ways than one.”

“How’s that?”

“She was certainly considered a sports hero by a lot of people.

That’s why she’s on the wall, of course. She was one of the best, if not the best softball player in the province in her day. She helped her teams win tons of championships. I think she even played a season with the All-American Girls League in the States. Quite something for that day.”

“For sure. What happened to her?”

“Oh well, she knew she couldn’t play sports forever. And she never got married. So she trained as a nurse. Ended up working at the San.”