Sundowner Ubuntu

by Anthony Bidulka

  “Hi,” I said in a half whisper, not knowing what the decibel protocol was in this place. “My name is Russell Quant. You’re Kimberly, right?”

  She gave me a nice smile and nodded. “Yes. Can I get you some hot tea or Cup-a-Soup or something?” Her left hand was resting casually over her budding stomach, in the way of many mothers-to-be.

  “No, thank you. I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes though. Do you have the time?”

  “Sure, have a seat. I’m sorry, I don’t recognize you. What family are you with?”

  I lowered myself into one of the mismatched chairs around the table. “Actually I’m not here for a patient. I came to see you. I’m a detective.”

  This often gets people between the eyes for a minute or two. I kind of enjoy the reaction.

  “I’m sorry…what?” She let out a short laugh as if embarrassed by mishearing me.

  “I’m a detective, and I’m looking for an old classmate of yours, Matthew Ridge. I believe he was your boyfriend for a while?” I got this from one of Matthew’s track teammates.

  Kimberly blushed a shade that matched her smock and put down her mug on the surface of the oak table donated in memory of Grace Froesal. “I…I…yes, I guess that’s right. We did go out in high school, but that was, gosh, how long ago…grade nine or ten or something like that.” Kimberly was now married with a couple of kids, and I knew, regardless of the circumstances, discussing an old boyfriend or girlfriend can be an awkward thing for almost anyone. “You’re looking for Matthew…why?”

  “I’m working for his mother. She lost touch with Matthew several years ago, but she’d really like to reconnect with her son.” I was playing hard on the mother-son thing. If anything would convince a pregnant mother to help me out, this would be it. “Anything you can tell me about him would be helpful. Or if there’s a better time to do this…?”

  “I don’t know where he is now, that’s for sure,” she told me.

  I nodded. That would be too easy. I gave her a hopeful, near pleading look. “Anything?”

  She searched my face with pretty eyes and must have decided I was okay. “We did date, for most of a school year…I think it was grade ten, yeah, I’m pretty sure. My parents were furious with me, and of course, that made it all the more exciting,” she said with a chuckle, rubbing her belly. “It wasn’t serious or anything, but I did feel like he was able to talk to me about things he couldn’t talk about with his friends, the other guys I mean, and certainly not with his parents. He didn’t get along with his parents very well. I think that was part of the reason he always got into so much trouble, to make them mad, or maybe make them notice him. Well, that and…well, I’m not sure, but I think Matthew had some demons. Not that he ever told me exactly what they were, but I could tell.

  “He was inconsistent, y’know? A real conflicted soul. Like he loved team sports and hanging with his buddies, and for a while he’d go along with everybody else, play by the rules, but then he’d just go off and do something really stupid, be all rebellious.”

  “Like what?”

  She shifted her head to one side. “There was a volleyball coach Matthew really liked. And the coach liked him too, cut him slack lots of times when he was late or didn’t perform. I think he knew Matthew was a natural, that he could have been a great athlete if he’d only straighten up and focus. I remember this one time, Matthew completely lost it during a game. He stood right there, in the middle of the court, in front of everyone, and screamed at Mr. Slavins until the coach had to throw him out.”

  She sipped at her tea as she accessed more long- forgotten memories. “He wasn’t a bad guy, not really, but a lot of people thought he was. And I don’t really blame them. He did do bad stuff. He could be a bully. He drank, smoked up. A bad influence, my parents would say. And yeah, he had that adolescent rage, that streak of bad boy in him that so many young girls find compelling. I sure did,” she said with a small smile. “I’d tell my parents he was a star athlete. But they knew better.”

  “Do you remember him getting into trouble with the police?”

  She wrinkled her brow a bit. “I sorta do, but I wasn’t around when things got really serious. I moved.”

  “To another school?”

  “Well, yes, and to another city. My father got a job in Regina, and our family moved there for a few years; that’s where I graduated from high school. I moved back here after that. Saskatoon was where my friends were, but Matthew was…well, I don’t know where he was. We’d broken up before I moved, and well, that was it. By the time I came back to Saskatoon he was gone. I really can’t tell you more than that.”

  I handed her a card, thanked her for her time, and wished her luck with her pregnancy. On my way out I stopped at the flower shop on the main floor and arranged for a single white rose to be delivered to each occupied room in the Palliative Care Unit.

  It was nearing seven o’clock when I returned to PWC. I knew full well my dogs would be peeved with me for not rushing home to feed them (although they are used to it), but I’d been away from the office all day and wanted to check my messages to see if any of my queries thus far had unravelled any loose threads. Sometimes that’s the way it goes in the detecting life: when you don’t have much to go on, as was the case here, all you can do is start hunting for the beginning of a thread on a spool, then run with it.

  The building was deserted except for Alberta’s office. Alberta Lougheed is our resident psychic and all-around eccentric. She plies her trade in the second floor office next to mine and usually at the oddest hours. Although I admit to knowing little about what she does (and I like it that way), she seems to have a steady enough customer base to remain financially viable and keep her in the gaudy, fantastic, peculiar garments she favours.

  Her door was half open when I passed by, but because I could hear the murmur of voices (which I assumed were all corporeal) and smell heavy incense (and maybe some weed) I didn’t bother to stop in to say hello. I entered my office and closed the door, my eyes shooting to the little button on the phone console that I rely on to tell me if I have messages. It was unlit. Not only had the day netted me no leads on the Matthew Ridge case, but no one else (i.e., new clients) had tried to call me either. Sure it was disappointing, but thankfully, business had picked up since last summer, and my bank had once again begun using black ink on my monthly statements. Nothing major, mind you, but a stolen parakeet here, a fraudulent poker rally there, and I was keeping busy.

  I poked my nose in the direction of my in-basket and saw nothing deposited there by Lilly except for a few flyers that had arrived by mail. I picked up a colourful one from Wilson’s Greenhouse that teased the reader with the upcoming gardening season, and I dutifully felt stirrings of that old familiar spring fever that arrives each year with the first whiff of evaporating ground frost.

  Plopping myself into the chair behind my desk, I tossed aside the brochure and opened a new Word document on my computer screen to begin reviewing the day by typing up notes from my various interviews. I was soon done and studied the words on the screen. What did I have? A bunch of people who pretended not to know Matthew Ridge, or if they did know him, they couldn’t seem to remember much about him. Wouldn’t seem like much to the regular Joe, but I liked it. Something wasn’t quite right here; there was something someone wasn’t telling me. I just had to find out who and what. Simple. Yup. Uh-huh.

  Ideas about what to do next began to mix with thoughts of Alex Canyon who had left on a jet plane only twelve hours before. It seemed forever ago. This thing with the burly bodyguard was turning into the longest relationship I’d had since the heady days of my early twenties. Back then I’d proclaimed myself to be looking for love with a Prince Charming who was romantic, loyal, caring, sweet, a homemaker, humorous, devilishly handsome, and had buns of steel—and nothing less would do. It hadn’t seemed like an unobtainable list at the time, and I did find him—or thought I had—more than once. The first one had lasted almost
a year, although I was convinced we’d grow old together—until I found him banging one of my soon-to-be-ex club buddies. The second went on for fourteen months until he found me banging his brother—tsk, tsk, tsk, Russell. The third one—I was well-rehearsed by then—lasted just shy of four years. When that one ended, I reconsidered my list of must-haves.

  Some of them I didn’t want anymore, some were never a good idea in the first place, and the ones I decided to keep got stored on a back shelf somewhere in my head. I decided to just live and see what happened without getting into a relationship that required the “what’s your favourite colour” conversation or a first “something” anniversary present.

  I’d been surprisingly content ever since.

  I had to wonder, though, if this thing with Alex really counted. Sure it had been about eight months, but for most of it he’d been doing his security work everywhere but in Saskatoon, and most of our time together had been spent sweating and grunting, rather than talking or cooking or taking long walks together like other new couples do. What I was sure of was that I was extremely attracted to him and he was to me; there was something about his very being that turned my belly to jelly and my knees into cheese: his voice, his skin, his eyes, his smell.

  I wasn’t used to thinking about this kind of stuff anymore; it used to be fun (and at times gloriously torturous) to endlessly contemplate love and relationships, but now, well, there just seemed to be a lot more at stake. Another thing I know is that you can’t force introspection, so I decided to go home and have a nice dinner and an early night with my dogs. I had gotten up at four a.m. after all; I couldn’t be expected to solve all my woes, personal and professional, on less than five hours of sleep. Right?

  Alberta’s client was making some strange humming-chanting noises when I left my office, so I made my way down the stairs as furtively as I could and headed for the back door.

  As soon as I stepped outside I saw him. Waiting for me.

  I heard the PWC door whooshing shut and locking behind me.

  Sitting cross-legged on the hood of my Mazda was some kind of bizarre, evil-looking, yoga-instructor-gone-bad guy, all in black, with a balaclava covering his face.

  Chapter 4

  My first thought was to wonder if the asshole was putting a dent in the hood of my car, sitting on it like he was—especially since he looked to be a good two hundred pounds when he climbed down from his perch to confront me at the back door of PWC. I took a quick glance around, but at this time of night in this part of town—with its preponderance of churches and business buildings—the neighbourhood was virtually a ghost town. No help there. Could I get Alberta’s attention somehow? If she was as good a psychic as she claimed to be, couldn’t she sense I was in danger? I thought about hollering my head off, but I’m not much into screaming and decided to hold off on that route until it seemed absolutely necessary.

  The night had grown glacial, as it is apt to do at that time of year, and my jacket was no warmer than it had been that morning in the Mount Royal Collegiate parking lot. It struck me that I seemed to be having a lot of parking lot conversations and would have to start dressing appropriately.

  “You’re the guy looking for Ridge, right?” the man asked in a baritone, no doubt influenced by watching way too many Godfather movies.

  “Who wants to know?” Sounded like a standard reply, so I used it.

  “That would be none of your business, buster. I’m just here to give you a friendly little message.”

  If I heard anything about swimming with the fishes or cement shoes, I was going to have to laugh in this guy’s face. “How friendly?” I asked in all innocence.

  He had the sense to hesitate, a wee bit confused (after all, I had veered from the banal). “You just stop this business, bringing up all this crap about Ridge,” he barked. “Just forget about it and go on with your other business. It’s old news. It’s done news. It’s over. Forget about it, you hear?”

  Or else? C’mon, hurry up with it.

  “Or else next time won’t be so friendly,” he finished off.

  I had to give it to Saskatoon; playing out like little Chicago in the forties, complete with this mafioso-lite ruffian and all. But really, how many detectives ever get rousted like this and say: “Oh, okay, you’re right, I really should keep my nose clean. Don’t worry about me, Mr. Brass Knuckles, I won’t give you any more trouble.” Well, on second thought, maybe some, but those guys aren’t in the movies.

  “Soooooooo, is that it?” I asked.

  Another hesitation, then the final words: “Just quit, all right?”

  I was silent, flicked my eyelashes a couple of times.

  “So, are ya gonna?”

  I raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Gonna…?”

  The bulldog was becoming exasperated with me and not quite sure if I was just playing with him or just too dumb to know when I was being threatened. “Are ya gonna quit doing what you’re doing?”

  “You actually want an answer tonight?”

  “Well…yeah.”

  “I’ll have to get back to you.”

  “You do that!” he blasted out before thinking about what he was saying.

  “Great. Well, why don’t you give me your phone number, and I’ll call you.” I was having fun now.

  “What?” He wavered a bit, then, “Oh, you’re a smart guy, are you? You just better pay attention to this, buster, or else next time….”

  Yeah, yeah, I know, it won’t be so friendly.

  “Good night,” I said as he jogged off into the dark, scary land of bad guys. He was probably late returning the balaclava to the rent-it store.

  Thump. The delicious sound of the first rotten apple hitting the ground. I love when bush-shaking works.

  I could have just stood there and let the dramatic moment play out and fade to commercial, but that isn’t my style either, so I took off after him…on the sly-like. There were only so many places for him to go, and I was determined to find out which was his. All in all, this had been a juvenile, high-school-prank-quality job, and I was betting whoever was behind it was an amateur with no idea what they were doing. Amateurs are easy to catch.

  After a quick little jag down an alley, the guy skipped across 24th Street toward a parked SUV—engine running—on 6th Avenue. He ducked into the black Lincoln Navigator, on the passenger side—so he had an accomplice, probably the guy who’d hired him (or talked him into it)—and the vehicle sped off like in a Fast & Furious movie. I jogged back to PWC to the rhythm of the three-digit, three-letter licence plate number I was repeating in my head.

  “I can’t believe you won’t help me on this,” I near-bellowed at Constable Darren Kirsch over the phone the next morning.

  I was back in my office, he was in his at the police department, and we were going at it a little more vociferously than usual. We’re supposed to help each other out when we can. That is our unspoken deal (well, according to me anyway). There are certain things a cop can do that a detective can’t and vice versa—or at least do more expediently within the confines of the sometimes irritatingly restrictive letter of the law. Kirsch and I went to the police academy together in Regina. Eventually I went my way, and he went his, and I think he’d hoped that would be the last he’d ever see of me. Ever since, I’ve tried to make sure his wish never comes true. A real fairy-tale love story.

  Although I never let on, I know Darren is a good cop, continually rising in the ranks, honest as the day is long, a little mucho on the macho side of the scale for my taste, but we’ve learned to work around that. He’s broodingly, darkly handsome, sturdy as a pine tree, and, on a few rare occasions, manages to remove the stick from his butt long enough to have a sense of humour (I take full credit for that).

  “Quant, I can’t believe you’re asking me to open a young offender’s sealed file and spill the beans to you about what’s in it, like some high school Chatty Patty. Fer crissake, man, that’s stupid, even for you. Didn’t you learn anything when you wer
e on the force? Jeeeeeeeee-zzzus!”

  I was quiet for a moment, wounded by the realization that he was right and I was wrong. I would get nothing out of Darren Kirsch about Matthew Ridge’s adolescent scrapes with the law. But I felt a little more gleeful when I realized this just might work to my advantage when I asked him for favour number two: to trace the plate number I’d gotten off the Lincoln Navigator that carried off Balaclava Guy. He quickly agreed, I think more to get rid of me than anything else, but he wasn’t done with me yet.

  “How’d you like it if somebody started opening files and telling the world about all the nelly-ass things you did when you were a teenager with all your b—”

  The time had come, as it does in all my telephone communications with Constable Kirsch, to hang up the phone and move on. And just as I did, it rang. He couldn’t be that fast. Could he? “Hello?”

  “Is this Mr. Quant?” A voice which, thankfully, didn’t sound to me like it was about to continue disparaging my youthful activities.

  “Yes it is. Who am I speaking to?”

  “Kimberly Enns. I’m a nurse at St. Paul’s. We met yesterday?”

  Cha-ching. “Yes, of course, Ms. Enns. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. Listen, I did some more thinking about what we were discussing yesterday, about Matthew, and I remembered one more thing.”

  Angels singing. “Tell me about it. Or would you rather I meet you somewhere to talk about it?”

  “No, this is okay. It’s nothing big, really, maybe it won’t help you at all, but, well, I remembered I did see Matthew one more time after we broke up, after I returned to Saskatoon from living in Regina.”