Aloha, Candy Hearts (14 page)

In a movie, this would be the place for dirge-like chords of music. I knew what the San was. Most Saskatonians do. Even though the imposing building above the shores of the South Saskatchewan River was condemned and demolished in the late 1980s, its dark past lingers on.

The Saskatoon tuberculosis sanatorium—the San—was built in 1925 as part of Canada’s battle against an ancient malady.

Tuberculosis was a cruel and cunning disease. It often masquerad-ed as some other ailment and long defied treatment beyond simple bedrest and sunshine. Those caring for the sick ran the risk of being infected themselves. Finally, antibiotics and sulpha drugs arrived to save the day, and many lives. Nurses and doctors were vaccinated and most, remarkably, stayed healthy. Some did not.

Lily Comstock had been one of those.

“The last patient wasn’t discharged from the San until 1978, you know,” the receptionist told me as she concluded her story.

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Anthony Bidulka

I wanted to hug her. It all made sense to me now.

I knew that tuberculosis had once been thought to be a disease of punishment. It was the leading cause of death in the mid 1600s, so you could see how they might think that. More important to my case, I also knew, thanks to Anthony and Uncle Lawrence dragging me to see Les Mis, that tuberculosis was known as...drum roll...consumption.

The lonely trio I was looking for wasn’t here at the Sports Hall of Fame at all. It was at the San site, where nicknamesake—Lily Comstock—toiled to foil the disease, but ended up dying of it herself.

The San site is a little corner of dead space in the not-so-aptly named Holiday Park area of Saskatoon. It’s a picturesque place, alongside the South Saskatchewan River, with plenty of towering spruce and rolling lawn. Picturesque and abandoned.

Somebody should do something with this land, I thought to myself as I pulled up to the stanchions that blocked vehicular access at the end of Avenue K. The lot had remained untouched since the main building was pulled down more than two decades ago. Despite the place’s obvious beauty, no developer had swooped in and gobbled it up for a high-rise apartment building or condo complex. Too many people had lost their lives on this site. Enough time had not yet passed.

I stepped from my car and saw the beginning of a long, graceful driveway that curved into the property beyond a bluff of trees.

It was overgrown with grass and weeds, the pavement cracked and in some places gone altogether. It was as if the city tore down the building, then turned its face and ran. The politicians must have guessed that nothing they could do would exorcise the ghosts that lived here.

A sign near the blocked entrance displayed an eerie black and white picture of the massive sanatorium. A brief written account next to the picture told of the thousands who had died here during the TB epidemic. I shuddered.

On foot, I followed the crumbling driveway into the site. I felt DD6AA2AB8

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a chill. Looking up, I saw that the sky had grown overcast. How fitting.

As I slowly made my way up the road, I had visions of 1930s cars, with their narrow tires and bug-eye headlights, motoring up the curved drive, pulling up to the front doors of the Sanatorium.

With muted thunks of car doors and trunks, they’d discharge loved ones and their belongings. There’d be tearful farewells. How many were last goodbyes? I could see wheelchairs being pushed along the paths of the sprawling grounds by nurses in their starched, white caps and dark capes, thick blankets resting on patients’ knees, even on the warm days. I recalled once seeing an extraordinary sepia-tinted photograph of this place. There were twenty, maybe thirty men, sitting on folding chairs placed in a semi-circle on the lawn in front of the San. They were an orchestra, playing for the gravely ill, watching from bedroom windows and balconies. It reminded me of the scene from Titanic, where musi-cians played for the doomed, an offering of beauty to the ill-fated.

After walking through the empty park once, I retraced my steps to the black and white picture at the entrance. I studied it for signs of a lonely trio. There were three buildings in the picture.

Without the mature trees and background cityscape of today, they certainly did look lonely, plopped there like three toadstools on a vast stretch of barren prairie. Looking closer, I noticed there were trees there after all. They were quite short, saplings at most, obviously planted in hope of one day providing shelter and beauty. I tried to match the saplings in the photo to the behemoths that stood before me now. But something was off. I noticed a loop in the road that didn’t appear in the photograph. Maybe it had been added later? Or maybe I just couldn’t see it because of the angle the photo was taken from.

I looked carefully. At the centre of the loop was a solitary tree.

It was perhaps the tallest spruce on the entire site. I shrugged.

Despite its awesome height, it looked like any other tree. But when my eyes travelled up its trunk, twenty-five or thirty feet, I noticed something strange. It was one tree, but there were three tops.

The lonely trio.

I let out a whoop of delight and ran to the tree. According to the treasure map, there was something beneath it, and I wanted it DD6AA2AB

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bad.

Surveying the base of the mighty spruce, I jumped at the sound of a ringing noise coming up behind me. I turned and saw four boys, about ten, racing toward me on their bikes. I waited, not sure what was about to happen.

Laughing about something ten-year-old boys find funny—

which could be pretty much anything—the kids whizzed by without giving me a second look. I let out a pent up breath. I was getting paranoid. I was in a public park in the middle of the day, I told myself. There aren’t bad guys waiting behind every rock ready to pounce.

I was about to get back to my task when I heard a lawn mower engine gun up. I stepped back a few feet and looked around. The owner of the house at the edge of the site had decided to get some yard work done. Then up a path that came from the riverbank, an elderly couple appeared, meandering at a snail’s pace. Suddenly, my lonely trio wasn’t so lonely anymore. Above me, I saw the clouds were still threatening, and selfishly hoped they would scare off my new friends.

I glanced about to make sure no one was eyeing me up. The couple, it seemed, had enough to worry about putting one foot in front of the other, the house owner was intent on his lawn cutting, and the boys were long gone. If I was going to make a move, I had to time it right. Now was the time.

I dropped to the ground, wincing as my scraped knee hit the rough surface. The boughs of the tree were thick and hung low to the ground, effectively hiding its base. After one last furtive look around, I made like a pig after truffles, and dove beneath the tree.

Although most of the branches gave way to my bulk, the sturdier limbs managed to poke and prod me in delicate spots. Long desiccated needles buried themselves in my hair and tickled as they trickled down the back of my T-shirt. It was dark down there.

The ground smelled of peat, the soil rich and moist to the touch.

Easy to bury something in. I scratched around a bit with my fingers but came up empty-handed. It was clear this was going to take a more concerted effort. I needed tools. Tools and privacy.

I crawled out from under the branches and brushed myself off.

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The elderly couple had settled on a bench, watching me. I smiled, waved, and walked nonchalantly back to my car.

I chose Saigon Rose for dinner, craving a hot bowl of Vietnamese beef rice noodle soup with a side of crispy spring rolls. As I wiped the last drops of broth from my chin, I called Sereena on my cell to check on Barbra and Brutus. They were doing fine. Then it was time for my requested presence at an event I could not remember happening before in the seven or eight years since I’d been running my PI business out of PWC: a tenants meeting. The four of us, Errall, Beverly, Alberta, and I, seemed to have gotten along quite nicely without one. Basically, Errall made the rules, and we followed them. And paid our rent on time. Otherwise Errall got grumpy. And a grumpy Errall was an Errall to be avoided. Still, the meeting had been called, with no explanation or agenda proffered.

We were meeting in Beverly’s office, which was, by far, the coziest of the bunch. Mine was nice enough, with a great view of the river, but it was the smallest. Alberta’s was bigger, but simply had no room for the four of us. She kept the place crammed with trunks and wardrobes and heavy pieces of furniture with no dis-cernible use. There was lots of draped fabric, overstuffed pillows littered every inch of free floor space, and it smelled of patchouli.

Errall’s was the largest, and certainly the most business friendly, in a stark, austere kind of way. It was a place you sat up straight and talked serious talk while someone took notes. Beverly however, had taken pains to make her office a comforting space for her clients. It was like a fifty-year-old soccer mom’s living room, complete with comfortable but not too soft places to sit, handy places to put your drink (or your feet) and pleasant, never outlandish or outrageous or even too-bright, pieces of art and doodads. It was a gentle, calming place. I felt serene just walking in.

“Hi, Russell,” Beverly greeted me in her velvety tones.

“Welcome back from Hawaii. I haven’t seen much of you around here since you got back.” She was wearing a summer green blouse and skirt set, with mauve earrings and necklace, and a wheat-coloured belt.

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I didn’t have a chance to respond because Alberta, seated on a recliner, piped up with, “He’s so obviously hiding something.”

I glared at her. Say what you want about psychics—as I often do myself—but over the years I’d experienced Alberta pulling a few very suspicious rabbits out of her outlandish hat. Rabbits I couldn’t explain. I’d long ago decided the best way to deal with it was not to try. Alberta is also what one might describe as “fashion forward,” or, more succinctly put, a nutty dresser. Today she was rocking a red-and-white striped, Cat-in-the-Hat hat. Over an every-colour-of-the-garden patterned shift of a dress, she’d thrown a jacket that was vaguely Michael Jackson-ish. A fine match for her chunky-heeled leather boots. And, as was her style, everything was just a little too tight for her generous figure. Yet somehow, seeing it all right there in front of me, I couldn’t imagine her wearing anything else.

“Am not,” I shot back.

“Are too,” she countered, at the same time stifling a yawn with her hand, which nicely showed off turquoise nail polish.

“Are you bored?” I asked, accepting a cup of green tea from Beverly and sitting down next to my aura-seeing fellow tenant.

“What’s this meeting about, anyway?” she asked. “I don’t usually get up this early.”

I checked my watch. “It’s eight p.m.,” I informed her. “And should a psychic have to ask what a meeting is about?”

“Hi, everyone,” Errall called out in a chipper voice as she swept into the office. She was still wearing the white outfit from that morning, but was now madeup in full businesswoman war paint. “Thanks for coming. I know it was kind of short notice.”

“What’s this all about?” Alberta wanted to know.

“Can I get you anything?” Beverly offered. “Tea? Glass of water? I have a few muffins and a bagel or two left from today. I could warm one up.”

“No. But thanks.”

Errall was being polite. And…nice. Sure signs of the Apocalypse. I was getting worried.

She and Beverly took to their seats. We were all within two or three feet of one another in a rough circle.

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“As you know,” Errall began without preamble, “I’ve had a tough couple of years. First Kelly leaving. A few bad relationships.

Then Kelly coming back. Then Kelly dying.”

We all murmured our sympathy and empathy.

“But if you knew Kelly, which you all did, you knew that the one thing she was excited about was life. She wouldn’t want me to dwell in this state of…of misery. And neither do I. So I want to move on.”

“You’re so right about that, Errall,” Beverly cooed. “I’m thrilled to hear you say it.”

I could see Alberta’s eyes narrowing. Did she know something before the rest of us did? From the look on her face, I hoped not.

“So I’ve made a few decisions,” Errall kept on in a light voice.

“And one of them will affect all of you. Which is why I called this meeting.”

I wasn’t a psychic, but something in my gut told me I wasn’t going to like what was coming.

“I have decided,” she began, a sharp smile cutting her fine features, “to leave my law practice.”

Oh. Well. That wasn’t so bad. Was it?

“Errall,” Beverly said. “I’m surprised. You love the law. You love the work you do.”

“That’s true. But I work too many hours. And the work is always so serious. People in trouble. People arguing with one another. People wanting to stick it to someone else. Kelly always said all that negativity was going to start wearing me down sooner or later. She was right.”

But Errall thrived on negativity. She had it every morning with milk and a cup of coffee.

“It’s high time I started having fun in my life.”

Fun? Errall Strane? I didn’t know if I’d ever quite put the two together before. Nor, for that matter, had she. I sat, dumbfounded, looking at the woman in front of me. I wondered who this creature was, and what she’d done with Errall.