Last Song Sung

by David A. Poulsen

  “I am.”

  She set her wineglass down and leaned forward to kiss me again. After a long moment, she pulled away.

  “Are you going to come into the bedroom with me, or will I have to get the lead pipe to convince you?”

  The lead pipe wasn’t necessary.

  I arrived back home just after nine the next morning. I went for a long, slow run through the streets of Bridgeland, then showered and made coffee.

  I called The Tumbling Mustard doorman, Ben Tomlin­son, again, and this time he picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Mr. Tomlinson? Adam Cullen. I called yesterday.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. I didn’t check my messages until this morning. Was going to call you in the next few minutes.”

  It was hard to tell if he was feeding me a line. I hoped the rest of the conversation would go well.

  “Whereabouts do you live, Mr. Tomlinson?”

  “Aylmer. On the Quebec side. Moved out here a few years ago from Gloucester. And prior to that, I lived in the Glebe.”

  “Finally got tired of the big city?”

  “Something like that. I can be in Ottawa in a half hour, if I need to be. The rest of the time, we can look at it from across the river. Best of both worlds.”

  “You said ‘we.’ You have a family, Mr. Tomlinson?”

  “Just me and my father. He’s confined to a wheelchair.”

  “I don’t know Ottawa that well, but if I remember correctly, the Glebe isn’t all that far from Little Italy, is it?”

  “No, not very far at all.”

  “Which brings us to the reason for my call.”

  “You mentioned The Tumbling Mustard in your message. A story you’re writing.”

  “That’s right. I’m a freelance journalist, and I’ve been looking at the disappearance of Ellie Foster. I’m sure you’re familiar with the incident.”

  There was a long silence.

  “An absolute tragedy. I met her when she performed at the TM. Then, just a few months later, she was gone. Hard to believe.”

  “I was given your name by another of the performers, Paula Pendergast.”

  “Paula … Paula. Yeah, yeah, now I remember. Terrific kid. Not Ellie Foster or Joni Mitchell in terms of talent, but pretty good … and just a really nice person. Kind, you know? How’s she doin’?”

  “Quite well, I think. She lives in Alberta now. She mentioned you were the doorman at the TM. I wasn’t aware coffee houses had doormen.”

  “I can’t speak for the others. I wasn’t in that many. But we had one, yeah.”

  “So why did The Tumbling Mustard have one, do you suppose?”

  “I can’t say,” Tomlinson said slowly. “Just the way management wanted it, I suppose.”

  “And management was who, exactly?”

  “That was Mr. Fayed and Mr. Laird.”

  “There wasn’t a third owner?”

  “Sorry?”

  “I came across a third name — Daniel Gervais. Apparently he was a part owner. I wondered if you knew the guy.”

  “Hmm …” There was another long pause. “Sorry, that name doesn’t ring any bells, and I’m pretty sure if he was an owner, even a silent partner, he would have been around the place. I saw pretty well everybody who came and went. Don’t remember a Daniel whatever, and I never heard anything about a third owner.”

  I didn’t want to give up on the idea just yet. “Let’s go back to that doorman thing. Whose idea was it to have a doorman at the TM?”

  “What?”

  “We just agreed most coffee houses didn’t have doormen. The Tumbling Mustard did. I was just curious as to how that came about.”

  “Actually, we didn’t agree on that,” he said. “You said most coffee houses didn’t have doormen, and I said I hadn’t been in that many.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth.”

  “Anyway, I have no idea why the TM had one, or whose idea it was.” A little snark had crept into his voice. “Like I said, maybe Fayed, maybe Laird, who the hell can remember that long ago, right?”

  “Yes, it was a long time ago.”

  “And I’m curious,” he said. “What exactly has the fact that there was a doorman at the TM got to do with Ellie Foster being kidnapped?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Probably nothing at all. Just trying to get a feel for the place.”

  I thought for a moment before making my next foray, trying to decide how hard I wanted to go at him. Decided to go for it.

  “Thing is,” I said, “this rumoured third owner was apparently in the movie theatre business. Lots of movie theatres had doormen, especially back in those days. Seems a strange coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid I’m not following you.”

  “Theatres had doormen. Coffee houses didn’t. Except for the one that may or may not have had a theatre guy as a part owner. Just seems weird.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, his voice decidedly less friendly than it had been at the beginning of our conversation. “First of all, it’s beginning to sound like you’re calling me a liar. And second, I told you I didn’t know that Gervais guy or any other owners who weren’t named Laird or Fayed. So, if that’s all your questions —”

  “I have just a couple more,” I said quickly. “And I’m sorry if I gave the impression I didn’t believe you. That wasn’t my intention. I was wondering if I could ask you to think back and tell me if you recall a time when Mr. Fayed and Mr. Laird were away from the TM for a while … a few days? A week? Anything like that come to mind?”

  He paused. “I really can’t recall anything like that. A day or two, maybe, and even then it was one or the other of them, not both at once. Again, that’s as near as I can remember.”

  “How well did you know Ellie Foster?”

  Another pause. Longer this time. “I guess I knew her about as well as I knew most of the performers.”

  “And how well was that?”

  “Again, I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.”

  “Was it ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ Or was it sitting around the dressing room shooting the breeze? Maybe a drink after the place had emptied out?”

  “I guess somewhere in the middle. Mostly it was just ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ but once in a while we’d have a coffee between sets and talk a little bit. That’s about it, I guess.”

  “How would you describe Ellie Foster?”

  “As a performer or as a person?”

  “How about both?”

  “Amazing performer, and as far as I knew a very good person — friendly, easy to work with. Not all of them were, you know. Other than that, I guess I can’t say much more about her.”

  “I understand there were frequent conversations between Fayed, Laird, and other people around the coffee bar — sort of intimate, maybe secretive conversations. You recall seeing much of that sort of thing?”

  “Can’t say I did.”

  “From where you were located as the doorman, could you see the coffee bar?”

  “Sure, if I looked in that direction, I could see it.”

  “But you didn’t notice the kinds of conversations I’ve described happening?”

  “Didn’t notice, so it couldn’t have been all that big a deal.”

  I thought about that. Had to decide whether to keep pushing hard or to go in another direction. Seeing as being aggressive hadn’t worked that well earlier, I decided on the latter course of action.

  “You ever run into anyone from The Tumbling Mustard days — former staff, performers? Like you said, everyone who came and went from the place had to pass right by you. I just wondered if you still keep up with anyone.”

  “Nope, nobody. Kind of sad, really, but that seems to be the way it goes. You think you’re g
oing to be friends with this person or that person forever, and then life gets in the way and you drift apart.”

  “So you didn’t really keep up with anybody from those days?”

  “I think I just answered that question. Listen, I have to run here. I’m meeting some people right away, and —”

  “Just one last question, Mr. Tomlinson. What did you do after The Tumbling Mustard?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For a living. I just wondered what you did after the TM shut down.” I wasn’t sure why I’d asked that — maybe just curiosity.

  “I went back to school. Had a few different careers after that — you know the deal, right? A guy moves around some. Maybe that’s why I lost contact with the people. Anyway, like I was saying, I’m gonna have to end this.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Tomlinson. If you think of anything you feel might help me in my research, I’d appreciate a call.”

  “Sure. Will do.”

  And he was gone. There was more I would have liked to ask him, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. At least not right then.

  The meeting with Keller was brief, a one-coffee chat. He didn’t give us much more than what we’d discussed the day before, but I was nevertheless glad Cobb heard it as well to corroborate my opinion that Keller was legit and had given us real information. And that there was at least a chance that Fayed and Laird had been in The Depression the night Ellie was abducted.

  When Keller had gone I said, “I’m assuming you will never again scoff at the efficacy of the tip line.”

  Cobb smiled. “It’s like call-in shows on sports radio. You listen to fifty calls that are total shit, and then — bang! — somebody who has actually thought about things and is coherent and sober calls in. Makes the whole godawful night worthwhile.”

  I shook my head. “Where did you come up with that analogy?”

  “Am I right or wrong?”

  I thought about the Bernie calls and had to laugh. “You might be right.”

  I stood up and got us more coffee. When I was back and we’d each sipped a couple of times, Cobb said, “By the way, I got less than nothing on Gervais. The guy hasn’t existed for a few decades. I’m guessing either he’s long dead or he moved to a Third World country and is living in a hut on a beach.”

  “Okay, so what’s next?”

  He didn’t answer right away. We’d finished most of the coffee before he set his mug down and looked at me.

  “You ever seen the Parliament Buildings?”

  “I have, yeah.”

  “Maybe it’s time to see them again.”

  Eleven

  Cobb, earbuds in, was watching Sportsnet highlights of games from the previous night. I was reading Louise Penny’s latest. We were maybe an hour into the WestJet flight from Calgary to Ottawa, and so far there’d been little in the way of conversation.

  I noticed that Cobb was now watching the same set of highlights for the second, maybe third time, so I closed my book and tapped him on the shoulder. He looked at me, pulled the earbuds out, and dropped them in the seat pocket in front of him.

  He looked at me again, clearly waiting for me to say something.

  “We haven’t talked strategy, and I’m curious,” I said. “Is the idea for us to split up, or to talk to people together? Are we going to call people, or just randomly stop folks on the street and ask if they happened to know anything about a singer who disappeared a half century ago?”

  “Well, that’s certainly one approach, but I think we’ll leave that for later. For now, we have an appointment with a retired RCMP man.” Cobb worked at unwrapping the cookie things the flight attendant had brought earlier. I hadn’t had the courage. “Pretty high up in the force by the time he retired. He spent quite a few years working on national security cases. He wasn’t in that department in the sixties, but he knew what was going on. Or at least that’s what he told me. We start there.”

  “What are you hoping to hear from him?”

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I don’t really know what he’ll tell us. But the lyrics of the song, if we’ve interpreted them even somewhat accurately, point to something going on at some political level. Maybe he can enlighten us a little.”

  “Enlightenment would be helpful.”

  He looked over at me. “Everything okay with you?”

  “Sure, why do you ask?”

  “It’s just that some of your quips seem to have more of an edge than usual. Feels like there’s some bitterness there. Everything okay with you and Jill?”

  “Never better.”

  “And Kyla’s all right?”

  “Kyla’s fine.” I realized that my waspish answers were probably reinforcing his belief that there was something bothering me. And I wasn’t about to tell him what that was.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m just frustrated with the case … wishing we could move ahead a little faster.”

  “I remember going to my uncle’s farm in the summers.” Cobb leaned his head back on the seat, closed his eyes like he was seeing the place. “He had some cattle, a few horses. And he used to say ‘The only way to move cows fast is to move them slow.’ Grammar issues notwithstanding, he was right. This case feels like that. The more we try to rush things, the less progress we make. A lot of cases are like that. Our job is to stay focused and not overlook anything that might be important.”

  I nodded, trying to look less stressed than I was, wondering if my face was a better liar than my voice was. “So first stop, retired RCMP guy.”

  “Then we see about tracking the doorman, Tomlinson, and with any luck at all he’ll be a little more forthcoming in person than he was with you on the phone. And the movie theatre guy, the maybe-or-maybe-not third owner — I’d like to find him, have a visit with him, too. That’s a start. Anybody you’d like to add to the list?”

  “The one guy I haven’t been able to get any sort of track on is her manager-agent. All I have is a last name, Bush. No last known whereabouts. I’ve got nothing on the guy. And maybe he doesn’t matter, but if we could find him maybe he’d be able to tell us something about Ellie’s mental state in those weeks leading up to and including her time at The Depression.”

  “What have you done on him?”

  “The usual stuff. Google, phone directories … I mean, I don’t even know how old he was at the time. He may have been dead for thirty years or so by now.”

  Cobb nodded. “Bit of a long shot, but let’s keep him in mind.”

  I turned and looked out the window at the prairie landscape thirty-eight thousand feet below. I looked back at Cobb.

  “Something I’ve been thinking about.”

  “And that is?”

  “Somebody put that disc in Monica Brill’s car.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But without a note or anything, how would they know that she’d turn it into a search for her missing grandmother?”

  Cobb frowned, considered, finally nodded again. “You raise a good point. She could just as easily have played the thing a few times and then set it aside, and that would’ve been the end of it. Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The very fact that someone actually broke into the car and left the disc there. I mean, if it was just a gift from someone who thought it would be nice for her to have this remembrance of her grandmother, then why not walk up to her on the street and hand it to her, or put it in the mail with a note that said, ‘Thought you might like to have this’?”

  I thought about that, didn’t really have the answer, so I responded with a shrug.

  “The thing was done surreptitiously, by an unidentified individual with no note, no clue, nothing — I’m guessing the whole point was to pique her curiosity and get her thinking about seeing what she could do to solve a fifty-year-old mystery.”

 
“But again, why not just tell her or write to her and say ‘Hey, your grandma’s out there somewhere, and you should look for her’?”

  Cobb nodded. “I’ve thought about that, too, and the only thing I can come up with is that the person responsible for getting the disc to Monica feared for his or her own safety if it became known that he … or she … had been in contact with Ellie Foster’s granddaughter. That, and the lyrics themselves — I know I’m beating the thing to death, but they have to matter.”

  I turned back to the window and closed my eyes. I slept for a while, but I’ve never been a good airplane sleeper. I had a weird dream in which I was looking at a giant screen with strange, off-kilter pictures in the foreground — pictures of Ellie Foster, The Depression, the alley behind the Unruh murder scene, even Jill and Kyla — and in the background a video was playing. The video showed a bunch of MFs lined up on their Harleys, with Mrs. Scubberd front and centre. She was speaking to me, explaining how the arrangement that I had just agreed to — in fact, asked for — worked. Then she laughed and said, “What’s the expression — the devil is in the details? Well, if you leave off the d, that makes it the evil is in the details. Thanks for the beer, Mr. Cullen.” And she laughed again. Her husband was standing next to her, and he wasn’t laughing.

  I woke up with a headache. I felt cold. I looked over at Cobb. He was sleeping and looked like he was a whole lot more relaxed than I was and enjoying his high-altitude nap more than I had. Probably hasn’t sold his soul to the devil, I thought.

  Jack Beacham had retired from the RCMP in 2013. He was an inspector at the time of his retirement.

  He was a big man with greying brown hair that hadn’t seemed to co-operate with whatever plan Beacham had had for it that morning. He was wearing an Ottawa Redblacks hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. He looked like a guy who got some exercise and could still be a pretty effective cop. The smile creases around his eyes were those of a man who appeared to be enjoying retirement, and the enthusiastic grin with which he greeted us said he was also a man who was happy with where life had taken him.

  We had agreed to meet at the Pasticceria Gelateria Italiana, a bakery and restaurant on Preston Street. After five minutes in the place, I decided that if they rented rooms, I’d move in later that day. The mix of baking and cooking smells, as well as the ambiance of the veranda on the front of the building where two older Italian guys were having an enthusiastic conversation, made it a place where I could spend some serious time.