Anthony Bidulka

by Stain of the Berry (lit)

  Riversdale is one of Saskatoon's founding communities, amalgamated in 1905 with the village of Nutana and the town of Saskatoon. This sometimes seedy, sometimes charming area is a culturally rich enclave of the city's Chinese, Ukrainian, German, Vietnamese, Aboriginal, Hong Kong Chinese and Filipino populations. I've spent many happy Saturday afternoons traipsing the aging blocks of infamous 20th Street, where one can find one-chair barbers with nary a blow-dryer in sight, confectioners and grocers that stock hard-to-identify foreign goods, and secondhand stores and pawn shops that deal in anything you can imagine (and more). There are clothiers, art galleries, sex shops, take-your-life-in-your-own-hands beer parlours and specialty restaurants serving mouth-wateringly good and plate-heapingly plentiful meals at wallet-shockingly low prices. If you want to drink till dawn and stagger home with others who do it for a living; if you want to sit in a booth and watch pornographic videos; if you want to buy a cheap couch; if you want to taste the best dim sum; if you want to attend a prayer meeting; if you want, well, if you want anything that a typical shopping mall is too prim and proper to provide, anything just off the edge of propriety, anything exploding with sensation, 20th Street is the place to go in Saskatoon. Except after dark. Then you're just being reckless with your life.

  I found V Madison Steel Products, Inc.-where Tanya had worked in shipping and receiving-a couple blocks from 20th (with daylight to spare). It was just off 18th Street West on the 400 block of Avenue M, a curious part of town that time seems to have, if not forgotten, at least misplaced. As I made a right turn at the southeast corner of the incongruously named Optimist Park, I was surprised to find myself on a gravel road. Had city crews simply run out of asphalt and neglected to come back? Did the neighbourhood forget to pay its taxes? Was city council mad at these people for some reason?

  I passed by a strip of businesses housed in those one-storey, circa 1950, squat, square, spare buildings, their exteriors matching the dull pallor of the gravel road. The street was littered with broken-down half-ton trucks and cars with doors, trunk hoods and side panels spray-painted colours that did not match. In the distance I could see the impressive domes of St. George's Church, the odd New Life Feeds building that looks like a giant 24-pack of Scott Towels and overhead a crazy criss-cross pattern of countless power lines. And every so often, amongst the dingy buildings of this mostly industrial community, I spied a rat-trap house squatting behind bushy-leaved trees and high fences, as if in hiding.

  I nose-in parked-as was the local custom-in front of a building near the dead end of a railroad track. I got out of the car and was surprised by the quiet. It was like the main drag of some western town right before the big shootout between the sheriff and a villain in a black cowboy hat. And there was me without my spurs and chaps.

  While I waited in the mouldy, stifling hot reception area for someone to answer the doorchime I'd set off, I glanced through a company brochure from a Plexiglas holder on the front counter. Apparently V. Madison was "Reinforcing the Steel Industry" with their product lines, which included steel beams, teleposts, rebar, wire mesh, epoxy rebar, carbon plates, quenched and tempered plates, water well casings, tie wire, loop ties, redi rod and a partridge in a pear tree.

  "What can I do ya for?" a big-bellied man who really needed to visit a laundromat asked me as he shoved his way through a swinging door on the other side of the counter from where I was standing.

  "I'm Warren Culinare," I said. I have no problem reusing a good disguise.

  "Good fer you," he answered, sort of snarly, sort of impatient. I guessed I was interrupting his afternoon coffee break and since I probably didn't look anything like the people who usually set foot into V. Madison Steel, he took me for someone who was either lost or a salesman, but certainly not a paying customer, and therefore expendable or suitable for some good, old-fashioned rudeness.

  "I'm Tanya's brother." Take that.

  "Oh shit, man," he said, realization dawning on him rather slowly. "You're Tanya's brother. Oh shit. We're real sorry she died, right?"

  Was that a question? "I was wondering if I could talk to someone here who knew Tanya."

  "Why?"

  Heh heh. I like it when people catch me with a surprise question. "Well, as you probably know, I live in the States and Tanya and I hadn't spent much time together lately. I just wanted to talk with someone who might, you know, tell me about her." I did my best to look almost weepy.

  He looked confused for a moment, then said, "Jus a sec." And he disappeared behind the swinging door. A full minute later the door opened again and out came a woman so skinny and grey I thought she might be a tube of steel herself.

  "I'm Stella. You're Tanya's brother then?" she asked in a permanently hoarse voice. From the smell of her, I guessed a two-pack-a-day habit.

  "Yes. Were you a friend of hers?"

  Her bony shoulders hunched up a bit. "I don't know if I'd say that. We pretty much alls just come in here and does our jobs and go home, you know. We don't have time to make friends or nothing."

  "You didn't socialize after work or go out for lunch together or something?"

  She scrunched up her face. "This ain't no salon or someplace like that, mister. This place is open from seven o'clock in the morning til three-thirty. No coffee breaks hardly, ten minutes for lunch at our desks or wherever, then we go home, take care of our homes and kids and yardwork and alls that, you know."

  "Perhaps there is someone else?" I asked, hoping, but doubting it.

  "Ain't no one else really. The guys certainly don't hang out and chit-chat, not with us anyways. And there's only Tanya and me in the office anyways. Now it's jus me till boss hires again. Left me a bunch of work. Sorry to says, I know she was your sister and alls, but alls I'm saying is that it's hard doing work for two, you know. She was okay though, Tanya was. She did her work; I did mine. We weren't friends, but we got along fine. A little sensitive maybe, fragile like, you know?" She seemed pleased with her use of a word she'd not had many opportunities to use before. "Yeah, fragile, like she might just as soon break in half as anything else if youse said the wrong thing to her. 'Specially lately." Stella couldn't take it any longer and dug a cigarette out of a packet she had been grasping in her bony left hand. She lit up like a pro and stared at me through the resultant haze with the content eyes of an addict meeting her fix.

  "And why was that, Stella? Do you know why she was so fragile? Problems at home? At work? Boyfriend problems? Anything like that?"

  Scrawny shoulder shrug. "Hard to say. Didn't talk to each other much, as I says already. She jus' wasn't real stable, that's all. Lotsa women are like that."

  A real feminist, this Stella. "I see. Well, maybe I could clean out her desk? Did she have a desk? Or work area?"

  "Oh sure. C'mon back."

  I followed Stella through the swinging doors into a large warehouse space with row after row of two-storey tall metal shelves stacked with V. Madison Steel product. Powerful fluorescents tried their best to lighten up the place, but with all the tall shelving and grungy-coloured steel, the alleyways between the shelves remained depressingly dim. We followed a maze-like path to get to the far left side of the warehouse where in one corner sat two face-to-face desks surrounded by several scratched up, dented file cabinets.

  "I do the accounting 'round here," she said pointing to one desk. "But now I do shipping and receiving too since Tanya left." Okay, okay I got it. Tanya's death left you in a lurch. "Anything Tanya left behind that was hers and not the company's would be in that there desk." She nodded toward the other one. "Here's a box," she croaked, holding aloft a cardboard container about the size of a boot box that she'd grabbed from a nearby receptacle.

  I accepted the box and sat down on a metal folding chair (definitely not an economically savvy office environment here) in front of Tanya's desk and gazed at the piles of paper trail for steel products. "Thanks."

  As Stella slid behind her own desk, she lit up another cigarette and watched me. I began opening
drawers in search of personal items. Even if they didn't relate to my case, somebody needed to do this, and it might as well be me. I could leave whatever I found here in Tanya's apartment to be boxed up at the end of the month with the rest of her things.

  There wasn't much. Just a fake-suede-covered folder full of personal stuff like sales receipts from McNally Robinson, Audio Warehouse and some local area restaurants, a copy of her most recent tax return (I guessed she must have used her work computer to complete it) and some miscellaneous correspondence. I didn't want to go through them with the grey ghost watching over me, so I just stuffed the folder in the box. On the desktop was a Daytimer opened to the day before Tanya's death-just as she'd left it. I flipped back and forth and found that it was more of a manifest for shipping and receiving deadlines for various products and follow-up customer calls she'd planned to make. The only personal item I found in the pages I scanned was a notation about a month earlier for a haircut. I threw it into the box anyhow. There was a hand mirror, some cuticle scissors and hand lotion and that was about it. I decided to leave the pens and erasers, half-used pads of yellow stickies and calculator for the next lucky gump who landed this job-or long-.suffering Stella-whoever it ended up being.

  "I can show myself out," I told Stella as I rose from the desk.

  "Okay, then," the words came out aloft a puff of tobacco.

  I gave her a smile, tucked the box under my arm and headed for the front door. I heard the chime again as I exited the building and was enjoying a much needed lungful of fresh air when a wall of brute force slammed into me from behind and knocked it right out of me.

  Chapter 4

  I literally flew through the air in one direction while the box of Tanya's things that I'd just collected from her work desk headed in another. I landed atop the hood of my Mazda, my lower belly taking most of the brunt of the collision. Everything happened so fast I didn't even have time to turn around to face my aggressor before I felt a huge weight fall on top of me. We flailed in that position for several seconds as the man tried to grab my arms and pin them behind me. By the pillow-soft cushioning I felt between me and him and a rather distinct scent of old sweat mixed with sausage and onion pizza, I was pretty certain my attacker was the Weight Watchers 'Before' Picture, "What can I do you fer" guy who'd greeted me so warmly when I'd first arrived. Knowing that tummies full of sausage and onion pizza don't like to get hit, I arched up my shoulders as far as I could (with three hundred extra pounds on me), positioned my elbows into sharp angles, and jacked them back, aiming for bloated central. When I met my mark, the fella let out a painful "whoooof" and fell back just enough to give me room to turn around and get in a doozy of a right-fisted punch to the face which landed square on his nose. He looked at me, startled, and put his hands to his face just in time to stem the flow of blood that started to burble from his left nostril.

  "That's enough," crowed someone from my right.

  I swivelled to face the voice, fists at the ready.

  "Ed, you go inside and get cleaned up," the woman said and big Ed complied without a backwards look. I think he was feeling rather sheepish having been beat by a guy half his size. I was about to shout out that I'm gay too, but decided to contain myself.

  "Now tell me who the hell you are!" the woman bellowed at me. She wasn't much lighter than Ed and had an almost perfectly round face topped with a mop of short, curly brown hair. Her eyes were chocolate covered almonds under knitted brows and her nostrils were flaring wide.

  "Why?" I answered back, now a bit surly myself. "Because you got me just where you want me?" I crossed my arms over my puffed out chest and leaned back against my car, striking a pose that exuded more confidence than I actually felt. Shit...was that a rip in my shirt? "You should get your bodyguard better training."

  "He's not a bodyguard. That's just Ed; he works the forklift around here."

  "Forklift operator and attack dog, nice for the resume.”

  "Who are you?" she asked again, this time with a little less hostility.

  "Who are you?" Me not quite giving up on the hostility yet.

  "I'm Vicky Madison. I own this place of business."

  Oh.

  "And I know you're not Tanya's brother. I met Tanya's brother at her funeral and you're not him."

  Oops.

  "Now tell me who you are and why you're stealing Tanya's things."

  Finally, someone who seemed to give a damn. "I'm Tanya's other broth..."

  She spit to the side then turned back to me with a look that said she wasn't buying what I was selling. "Give me a break, jerk off. I know damn well Tanya only had one brother."

  Well, it was worth a try. I had one more trick up my sleeve- the truth. "My name is Russell Quant. I'm a private detective. Warren Culinare hired me to look into Tanya's death."

  Vicky's face changed. Her nostrils returned to normal size, the throbbing at her temples subsided and her eyes miraculously turned from dark brown to a pleasant, almost hazel shade. How'd she do that? "What do you mean, look into? We were told Tanya killed herself. Isn't that right?"

  I nodded, taking a less aggressive pose as well. "That's what the police say, yes."

  "Then...?"

  "Her family wants to know if Tanya did kill herself, why she did it."

  "If she killed herself? You think there's a chance she didn't?"

  I shrugged and watched her face closely. "What do you think?"

  Vicky raised her hands in the air, palms out towards me. "Hey, I'm just her employer."

  "I...the family would be grateful for anything you could tell me about Tanya."

  Vicky's eyes narrowed as she thought about this and looked me over, as if deciding whether or not to trust me. "I got nothing to say to you." I guess the answer was not.

  We stood there for a few seconds, regarding each other, assessing what more could come of our interaction. I broke the stalemate and handed the woman a card. "This is my business card. If you think of anything I should know..." I stopped there, thought of something and added, "I promise to keep anything you tell me confidential, even from the family, unless you indicate otherwise."

  She looked at me hard, stuck the card in her workshirt breast pocket and stomped off.

  I was feeling light-headed as I directed my convertible out of Riversdale toward Idylwyld, and it wasn't from my do-si-do with big Ed. The dashboard clock told me it was almost five and I hadn't had a bite to eat since breakfast. I zoomed up Idylwyld to Circle Drive-the freeway that's supposed to circle the city but is neither a circle nor a freeway-and headed for Tong's Wok. Two hours later I was home, had taken Barbra and Brutus for a jog at the dog run and was microwaving a heaping plate of Singapore Noodles, Wei Wonton, Tong's Wok Special Mixed Vegetables and Mushroom Egg Foo Yung all atop a hillock of steamed rice. When the micro beeped that my meal was ready, I prepped a tray with my food, soy sauce, utensils, napkins and a can of Kokanee. With a glass of water for me and bowl of water for the pooches, I carried my bounty outdoors to the table on the backyard deck. After winching up the patio umbrella and setting everything out, I went back inside to retrieve the box of Tanya's things I'd collected at V. Madison Steel. Once settled, I spent a few minutes satisfying my growling gut, shovelling food into it like a human garburator- not good for me, I know, but momentarily satisfying. After a bit I slowed down and took some time to sip my drinks and watch Brutus root around in a bush of spent peonies. Barbra was content to sit at my feet and watch as well, it being too hot by far for her to be anywhere but under the shade of an umbrella.

  Sufficiently sated to continue my meal at a more leisurely pace, I opened the box of goodies from Tanya's desk and pulled out the suede folder. Piece by piece I assessed each item for its usefulness to my case. The pile of "useless" grew quickly, and the pile of "useful" was discouragingly barren, until I came upon an envelope stuffed into the inside flap of the folder. It was a standard size envelope with Tanya's name and c/o work address typed on the front. No return address. Insi
de was a single sheet of paper with a single word of text on it:

  BOO!

  I drew in a quick breath, taken aback by the jarring simplicity of the word, loaded with as much striking power as an unexpected slap to the face. A million obvious questions jumped to mind, not least of all which was: Who would send her such a thing?

  So Tanya did have at least one enemy. Is this why she barricaded her apartment door? Kept a bat under her bed? Who was she protecting herself from? Why didn't anyone seem to know anything about her? Were they just unwilling to talk to me? Or was I talking to the wrong people? The two people who did have an opinion about Tanya-Newton Furberry and Stella-thought she was fragile and possibly unstable. Were they right?

  I pushed aside my plate, downed the rest of my beer and reached for Tanya's Daytimer. I began in January and studied each entry for anything that would give me some clue about this woman. Other than obvious work-related notes, she was very concise in her entries, often relying on only one or two words to jog her memory. By the time I reached July, only two things stuck out. She'd made very few notations for the time period outside working hours-other than a couple of haircut appointments- except for the letter "M" which was always followed by a time in early evening, such as "M - 7 p.m." or "M - 5:15." After March, the M's disappeared. The second thing I noted was a noon-hour appointment, every two weeks, with someone called Dr. D.