Anthony Bidulka

by Stain of the Berry (lit)

  I was.

  "To be blunt, Mr. Quant, I'm not sure." He shot his parents a meek look.

  Anne Culinare drew in a sharp, shocked breath. "No, Warren!" she berated her son.

  He tried to ignore his mother and kept on. "I'm not as convinced as my parents, but even so, I can't accept a terse, one-line statement from the police as the last word on my sister's life. I need something more than that. I need-we need an explanation. Even if she did kill herself."

  Mrs. Culinare began to weep into a wadded ball of Kleenex and her husband placed a gnarled hand on her rounded lap, patting it as if it were a cat.

  "Mom.. .Mama," Warren said, reaching over his father to put a hand on her shaking arm. "Mama, I'm sorry. I'm not saying Tanya did kill herself, but I want to know the truth. If she did do that to herself, I want to know why, if she didn't, then I want to know how she really died." He turned back to me, his eyes red-rimmed. "Mr. Quant, we are serious about this. If Tanya died some other way...well, we can't let that rest. You understand?"

  "I do." I picked up a pen and pulled a pad of paper in front of me to indicate I was ready to do business. "You understand that I may not be able to get any more out of the police than you did, so I'll need all the information you can give me on Tanya: where she worked, where she lived, who her friends were. What she did for fun, what enemies she might have had, what worried her, that sort of thing. Can you help me with any of that?"

  Warren looked down at his hands, embarrassed. He named the place she worked, gave me her address and phone number and then stopped. He leaned forward and slid a set of keys across my desk. "These are Tanya's keys. For her apartment and car and that sort of thing, I guess. I'm not exactly sure what they're all for. You can use them to...to find out the rest."

  Boy, when he said they didn't know her, they really didn't know her.

  "I'm flying back to Seattle on Wednesday after I get my parents settled in back at home." He slid a business card towards me. "But you can call me any time at the numbers on there. I'd like to help in any way I can...I just can't think how, other than to hire you."

  I nodded mutely and stared at the nearly bare page on the pad in front of me. Not much to go on. We spent the next few minutes going over the business part of hiring a PI; son and parents bickered briefly over who would pay me until I mentioned my hourly rate and then the parents soundlessly backed off. After that we were done and I showed them out.

  "Kirsch," came Darren's standard barked telephone greeting.

  "Quant," I woofed back and immediately heard him groan. "I just had a visit from the Culinares. Wanna tell me what that's about?"

  "Whatsamatter? You not accepting new clients these days? It looked like you had plenty of time on your hands the other day, sitting around in your panties and sleeping till noon." A standard Kirsch slam.

  "Ever hear of someone taking a vacation?" I retorted.

  "Ever hear of boxer shorts?"

  Oooo, that pinched. Bastard. "Ever hear of nose hair clippers?"

  "What do you want?" He always gives up so easily. "I ain't got all day here, y'know."

  "Not that I don't appreciate the business, Darren, but what's up with the Culinares? Did you send them my way because of the note, or because you felt sorry for them or because you think there's something more to the case than a simple suicide?"

  "Isn't that your job to find out? Isn't that what the I in PI stands for?"

  "Don't jerk me around. You obviously want me to help these people or else you wouldn't have given them my name. So help me help them."

  "There's not much I can tell you, Quant," he said, his voice settling into a more businesslike tone. "As far as we're concerned, Tanya Culinare committed suicide. There was no sign of a struggle, or anyone else in her apartment at the time of her jump, or anything else to suggest foul play."

  "Then why send the Culinares to me if you believe that?"

  He was quiet.

  "It's the note, isn't it? The one with my name and number."

  "It's the only thing that doesn't quite fit the picture, Quant. Otherwise I would have told the Culinares to save their money rather than spend it on a detective. Which, by the way, was their idea in the first place, not mine. But when they asked if I knew of anyone, well, given the note and all, I thought you might be the right choice." The Culinares and Kirsch didn't have the exact same story but I decided to let it go for the moment.

  "Is there anything else you found that might help me get started?"

  "No."

  "Can I see the police file?"

  "No."

  "Can I..."

  "G'bye, Quant." And he hung up. That is pretty much how the majority of our calls end up. The "g'bye" part was a new twist.

  I stared again at the nearly blank paper that contained everything I knew about my new case, then ran my hands over my face and through my hair. As I often do at times like these when I need to think, I got up from my desk, threw open the doors to the balcony and stepped outside for a breath of fresh air and, hopefully, some good ideas of what to do next.

  The morning had grown hot, already in the low thirties, and the park was dotted with mothers and children and small groups of summer session students on break from their classes at the U of S. The ash trees that line the street were fat and green with leaves that hung limp in the heavy heat. Cars were vastly outnumbered by bicycles, joggers, ice-cream carts and scooters and I could hear the rowdy calls of a nearby group of Hackey Sack players. Parking was only permitted on our side of the street and the majority of metered spots in front of our building were filled with shimmering, metallic-hued, over-priced SUV's (Errall's clients), sensible sedans (Beverley's clients) and beat-up VW bugs (Alberta's clients). I was about to pull back from the balustrade and take a seat in a Muskoka chair when I noticed something unusual. In stark contrast to the scantily clad people in the park was a figure in a serious brown suit. He was standing next to a dark blue Envoy with an Avis car rental sticker on the front bumper. None of that by itself was unusual; this part of town is jam-packed with business towers full of lawyers and doctors and chartered accountants and entrepreneurs of many varieties who often stroll down to the park for a stretch or a spouse-disapproved hot dog. What was unusual was that this guy had binoculars hanging from his neck. As I watched, he took good care to look both ways before crossing the street to the wide walkway that lined the park. He walked a bit further, stopped, then brought the binoculars up to his eyes. But instead of directing them at the more scenic South Saskatchewan River, he was staring straight at the business side of the street...at the buildings...at PWC...at...me.

  Chapter 3

  Tanya Culinare's apartment was in the Broadway Condominiums building at the top of the Broadway Bridge. The location is infamous for a once-upon-a-time five-way intersection known as Five Corners (until Saskatoon residents got fed up with figuring out confusing light signals, merging bridge traffic and right-of-way). So now it's down to three, but for many it will always be known as Five Corners. The Broadway Condos building has a speckled past including vociferous protest campaigns by local residents who felt the high-rise would obstruct their panoramic view of downtown (which it does), and the rumoured involvement of shady foreign investors (never screw with a guy named Yuri). Construction started, stopped, started, stopped, started, stopped and finally was completed sometime in the late '80s or early '90s. It's a twelve-storey building with stunning views of the South Saskatchewan River to the north, Broadway Avenue to the south and everything in between. In addition to regular residential units, the building also offers something called Premiere Suites- luxury furnished one- and two-bedroom condominiums for rent on a daily, weekly or monthly basis-and on its lower floors are a number of businesses including a popular gym called Fitness Corner (I bet the owners are glad they didn't call it Fitness Five Corners).

  Tanya's brother had left me the key to her apartment, giving me complete access, at least until the end of the month when a moving crew he'd hired wou
ld clean up the place and remove all of Tanya's things in preparation for the next tenant. I wondered where everything would go. Into storage? Her parent's basement? Did anyone care? And to top it off, a complete stranger-me-was given free rein to rifle though her personal belongings. The whole thing made me sad. How would Tanya Culinare feel about this invasion of privacy, about how easily her life could be boxed up and dispensed with?

  I must admit I was a trifle disappointed not to have to finagle my way into Tanya's apartment building using subterfuge and/or chicanery. Sometimes that's the most fun part of my job: figuring out how to get into someplace I'm not supposed to get into. But the keys on Tanya's ring allowed me unchallenged entrance to the building and her eighth-floor apartment and that's where I found myself late Monday morning.

  As I slipped the correct key into the lock of apartment 863, I noticed something strange. I ran my hand over the surface of the wooden door. It was smooth and dusty and discoloured, as if it had recently been sanded in preparation for re-staining. I pulled back to see if the same could be said of the other doors on the floor, but they all seemed to be in normal, un-sanded shape. I filed that under 'C for curious and entered the apartment. The air smelled stale in the way typical of places where no one had lived for a while or where someone had died. Tanya'd been gone less than a week, but her home was already letting her go.

  I took a quick preliminary look around: nothing out of the ordinary. Just a regular apartment, probably a little nicer than some. I strode over to the living room drapes, pushed them aside and opened the sliding doors to let in some much needed light and fresh air.

  I gingerly stepped outside onto the balcony and into the space where Tanya Culinare ended her young life. Her body had been found on the sidewalk near the front entrance of the Fitness Corner gym. I leaned against the balcony's narrow, black metal railing and peered straight down. To land where she did, Tanya would have had to climb up onto the rail ledge and taken a flying leap. I shuddered at the image.

  Tanya had a corner suite and the balcony wrapped around, giving her unimpeded views in two directions. Her apartment faced southwest, and from it I could see Broadway Avenue with its ongoing Fringe festivities (somewhat slack in energy on a hot Monday morning) and beyond that, tree-topped 8th Street and the older suburban areas of Nutana, Haultain, Queen Elizabeth and Avalon. Nice enough, but sad that there was no final glimpse of ocean, mountain or stunning sunset before Tanya took that fatal jump into nothingness. She was thirty-one.

  It was like an oven on the balcony. I spotted several potted plants; a couple stalky, pink geraniums still flourished, enjoying the stress of abandonment, but everything else had withered and dried into brittle sticks of brown. I stepped back into the apartment and closed the door behind me.

  I began an in-depth search of the place, starting with the back rooms-two bedrooms and a bathroom-progressing to the front-living room and kitchen/dining room area. Even though I knew everything was destined for a box or the garbage, I still tried to be neat about my work, leaving things where I found them, which isn't as easy as it sounds when you're fingering every piece of clothing, handling every piece of paper, looking in and under every spot conceivable including the refrigerator, toilet tank and garbage cans. I'm good at searching, I'm methodical and I take mental notes.

  It took me just over an hour to finish. I came up with four things of interest. First was an abundance of pictures of Tanya with another girl, about the same age. They were similar in many ways, both tall, lean, athletic looking with angular, attractive features and short hair styles. Tanya, however, was blond, with slanted, sharp eyes the colour of chestnuts-cat's eyes. The other girl's hair was softer looking, tar-black, and she wore a wide, generous smile in most of the pictures whereas Tanya's mouth stayed a straight, serious line above a pointed chin. On the back of one of the photos was a notation: Tanya and Moxie. I was betting Moxie was Tanya's best friend. Best friends are a detective's best friend when trying to find stuff out. I'd need to find Moxie. The second thing was Tanya's address book. She either wasn't very good about recording phone numbers and addresses for family and friends or else she simply didn't have very many people in her life that fell into those categories. But, it did include information for a Moxie Banyon, so I stuck the address book and one of the photographs in my shorts pocket for later use.

  The third and fourth interesting things were sort of related. One was under her bed: a baseball bat. The other was a fifty-by-sixty-five centimetre impression on the carpet in front of the front door, as if something very heavy had sat in that unlikely spot either for a long time or very recently or both. Not far from the front door was a battered piece of wooden furniture, about waist high, which looked about the right size and shape. I tried to move it and was stopped by its great weight. I supposed I could have moved it if I'd really wanted to, but not without plenty of effort. I knelt down in front of the thing, opened the cabinet doors and found inside an upside down, antique sewing machine. I knew the type: my mother had one at home. You open the doors, flip up the machine, swing out some hidden drawers, and voila, a sewing machine, the kind with a foot pedal and torture-chamber-looking pulleys and thingamabobs. The sucker weighed a ton, yet Tanya Culinare, who as far as I knew was not a heavyweight wrestler, had, at least once, moved the beast in front of her door. But why? Why the bat, why the barricade against her door? Sure, I know different people take different precautions depending on who they are, where they live, if they live alone, if they're male or female, but in an eighth-floor, cushy apartment in a safe part of town? Did it make sense? Was Tanya Culinare frightened of something or someone in particular? Or just paranoid?

  I closed the curtains, took one last look around and left.

  I knew given the time of day that my chance of finding neighbours to talk to was not great, but I gave it a whirl anyway. And indeed all the eighth-floor doors I knocked on were answered with silence until the last.

  "Who is it?" came a faint male voice.

  "Hullo?" I called through the door. "My name is Russell Quant. I'm investigating Tanya Culinare's death-your neighbour? I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions."

  A second or two, then, "Just one moment please."

  And indeed I waited an entire moment. What was he doing in there? Laying carpet?

  The door creeped open ever so slowly with a bit of a creak and finally produced the apartment's resident, a slender man in his seventies, with a black, pencil moustache and silver hair severely greased back a la Clark Gable (although he more closely resembled Mr. Furley, the Don Knotts character from Three's Company). He wore a paisley, black-collared smoking jacket over a white shirt, black pin-striped pants and gently worn house slippers.

  I held out my hand. "I'm Russell Quant."

  The man arched a thin eyebrow astonishingly high on his forehead, tipped his head to one side and slightly forward, and pursed his freshly Blistexed lips all at the same time. He offered me his hand, palm down as if he wanted me to kiss the large ruby ring on it, and said, "My, my, yes you are. Welcome to my home, Mr. Quant."

  I shook the hand-passed on the ring-kissing-and gave him a smile. "Thank you. May I come in?" I wasn't sure if I really wanted to anymore. I smelled something off about this guy.

  "Where are my manners?" he said with a blush, but still did not step aside. "Of course you may enter. My name is Furberry, Newton Furberry. Good afternoon."

  I looked down at my watch. It was nearing twelve-thirty. "Oh my gosh, Mr. Furberry, I didn't realize the time. I must be interrupting your lunch. I can come back another time."

  He chuckled a practiced chuckle. "No, no, my dear boy. I don't sit for lunch until two. We've plenty of time. Please," and now he stepped aside, "come in."

  I brushed by Mr. Furberry, getting a healthy dose of freshly spritzed aftershave-barbershop quality.

  "Please, just down the hall and to your left."

  I followed the instructions and found myself in a world of...well, I wasn't sure wha
t it was meant to be...perhaps a mix between old world grandeur and garage sale kitsch. Other than a small television in one corner of the room, it looked as if Mr. Furberry hadn't been shopping in several decades. Not that anything looked particularly worn or dirty or ruined, just...old. The walls were covered in a velvet-flocked wallpaper of deep, ruby colours, and sepia-toned portraits of distinguished-looking people. The floor was hidden beneath thinning Oriental area rugs and heavy, dark wood furniture. Every surface was littered with books, photographs (some in albums, some just lying about), and tchotchkes of glass and bronze and crystal. On the ceiling was a chandelier that could have used dusting and mottled light came through windows muted by layers of silk and organza. There were no fewer than three fresh flower arrangements in great vases throughout the room, and next to a grandly stuffed armchair was a trolley on which was a bud vase with a single red rose, a half-eaten plate of chocolates and a recently used tea service. This must have been where Mr. Furberry had been sitting in repose when I'd come a'calling. The room smelled of mint and mothballs and was so dim it was hard to believe that on the other side of the wall was bright summer sunshine. In the background I could just hear the strains of some foreign language opera from a...CD? Radio? Gramophone? All in all, the atmosphere wasn't unpleasant, just...peculiar.