Aloha, Candy Hearts (18 page)

I mulled that over for a few unhappy minutes. But then I got over it. There could conceivably be a thousand…well, maybe not a thousand…but lots of ways that someone could have gotten something into that blasted urn. Perhaps they knew someone who worked at the theatre; maybe they had an accomplice with darn good aim. I’d probably never know. But what I did know was that I could not leave that theatre without finding out if there was anything in that golden urn.

The movie finally ended and the teenage and not-so-teenage girls left. The lights went up as the credits rolled. Panic set in. If I was going to do something, it had to be now, before the next batch of moviegoers and theatre clean-up crew came in. I was desperate.

I ran down the centre aisle of the theatre, stopping just below the alcove with its tantalizing golden urn. I stared up at it, wishing for about the millionth time in my life that I was Samantha from Bewitched. A simple wiggle of my nose would bring me my greatest desire, which at that moment was whatever was in that damn urn. Was that too much to ask? Apparently so.

Hastily devising a new plan, I scoured the area for something heavy enough, but not too heavy. I finally settled on my cellphone, which I hoped had just the right amount of heft. I was pretty good at baseball in high school, so my hopes were high. With one last look around to make sure the place was still deserted, I took aim, and pitched the phone at the golden urn.

It connected! As the phone came whizzing back down—somehow or other right into my waiting hands—I watched as the metallic-hued urn tipped and tottered.

“Fall, damn you, fall!” I encouraged.

Finally, with a clatter, the urn fell to its side.

I groaned. The thing was still up there! Fortunately, the floor of the alcove was less than even. As I caught my breath, the urn began to roll, ever closer to the edge of the alcove.

Closer. Closer. Closer.

DD6AA2AB8

125

41

-B193

-AD32

-4CDB

-3503D88E1

Aloha, Candy Hearts

And then it fell, straight into my arms. Only then did I remember to breathe.

I quickly set the vessel on the ground, and reached inside. I felt wisps of spiderwebs wash over my skin as I searched for my treasure. My fingers fell on something. A tube of some sort? I was right!

I’d solved the treasure map! I pulled out my bounty. It was a spiral-bound notebook, rolled up and fastened with an elastic band.

Not exactly gold bullion, but who was I to complain?

“Hey! What are you doing?” a voice rang out from the back of the theatre.

Run, baby, run!

Luckily the exit was right there. Without turning to see who was after me—I didn’t want him to catch sight of my face—I smashed through the door and made like Sylvester after Tweety Bird. I made a beeline for the street and kept on going, never looking back. I was hoping that once my pursuer saw that I hadn’t stolen the urn, he’d leave me be. But just in case, I ran for several blocks, whizzing by people on the sidewalk, crossing streets against the walk light, dodging traffic. For a while there, I pretend-ed I was in some sort of heist caper and needed to get away from the bad guy. In this situation, however, I kinda was the bad guy. At least the Roxy folks would think so.

Finally, when I started not to recognize where I was, I stopped.

Although my lungs felt as if they wanted to explode, I was too exhilarated to care. Running away was fun. Finding treasure was fun. Now all I had to do was circle back to get my car. I could only hope a legion of cops weren’t waiting there for me.

They weren’t.

When it seems you’ve got nowhere to go, there’s usually one place left: home. For me, it was killing two birds with one stone (which I’ve always thought is a rather gruesome analogy). I’d spend time with my mother (who’d been complaining she hadn’t seen enough of me lately), and I’d have a safe haven while I figured out what my treasure was, how it tied in to the murder of Walter Angel, and what to do with it.

DD6AA2AB8

126

41

-B193

-AD32

-4CDB

-3503D88E1

Anthony Bidulka

Before making the forty-five minute drive to Mom’s farm, I checked my home answering machine and whooped with joy when it told me that Air Canada was finally in possession of my luggage. Instead of risking a visit to the house for fresh clothing, I could recycle my Hawaii duds. I swung by the airport, picked up my bags, then headed for my childhood home on the range.

As the Mazda and I headed north, I couldn’t help but feel a wee bit guilty. I’d promised Darren Kirsch that we’d work on the last verse of the clue together. And now I’d gone and done it alone, and taken the treasure out of town to boot. He’d be pissed. But it wouldn’t be the first time. It wasn’t as if he’d been big on the sharing-of-information thing in the past either. Then again, this détente could mean the beginning of a new era of improved communica-tions between the two of us. A private eye needs a reliable contact in the police department. By the time I pulled up to Mom’s place, I decided I would tell him what I had found. Just not right now.

Even though Mom’s yard, five kilometres from Howell, the nearest town, is decked out with flowerbeds spilling over with stunning plants, a meticulously cared for lawn, and many pleasant sitting areas, it is for show only. Kind of like the good guest china that never gets used, not even for guests. In Mom’s world, one only spent time outside for work, not pleasure. It wasn’t always that way with her. I have many fond memories of family picnics from when I was a boy. Me, Mom and Dad, my brother Bill, and even sometimes my older sister Joanne, when she was around, would pack up a picnic basket, a baseball for tossing around, some blankets, and head out for a Sunday afternoon in the pasture.

Somewhere along the line, I can’t even remember when, all of that changed. There were no more picnics.

Now, the concept of eating outdoors is foreign to my mother, barbaric almost. Why eat outside when there is a perfectly good table and set of chairs inside, where you’re close to the oven, there are no mosquitoes, and you don’t risk sunburn? Once, when she was visiting me in the city, I’d taken her to Earl’s deck for lunch.

She’d sat through the meal looking decidedly ridiculous wearing my Maui Jim sunglasses (as she owns no sunglasses herself), wincing with displeasure each time a fly landed on her plate, and glow-DD6AA2AB8

127

41

-B193

-AD32

-4CDB

-3503D88E1

Aloha, Candy Hearts

ering at the navel ring prominently displayed by our well-tanned and toned server. It was a veeerrrry long lunch.

Mom is short, stocky, sixty-seven, and speaks with a heavy Ukrainian accent, replete with rolling r ’s and wailing oi’s. She sports a tightly permed head of dark hair with occasional sprigs of white, horn-rimmed spectacles, a kindly face that bears a scowl just as well, and can most often be found wearing a dress, thick nylons, and black shoes with low, clunky heels (even when she’s gardening).

When I’d called from the car and told her I was coming for a visit, she told me she’d have supper ready. Big surprise there.

What she didn’t tell me was that I wasn’t the only visitor she’d be feeding that evening.

The first clue that something unusual was afoot was the rental car parked against Mom’s house. The driver had pulled right up on the lawn and had knocked over a planter of pink geraniums without bothering to set it right. The trunk was left open, as if the car ’s occupant couldn’t be bothered to slam it shut after retrieving whatever it was they’d wanted. I parked on the spit of gravel meant for the purpose and got my bag out of my own trunk. I strolled up to the car and took a casual gander inside. The back seat looked as if a family of beavers had moved in several months earlier. On the front seat and the floor were strewn a collection of candy bar wrappers (Oh Henry! and Eat-More), two full bottles of water, an empty cardboard coffee cup, a selection of pill bottles, and half a mickey of brandy.

Ahh. Now I knew.

My sister had landed.

I have two siblings. A younger brother, Bill, and a much older sister, Joanne. Bill is the most respectable, organized, prepared, controlled, solid kind of guy I’ve ever met. He’d had his entire life planned out in his head before he was twelve. He knew what he wanted to do for a living—be an accountant—where he wanted to live—Winnipeg, a province over—who he wanted to marry—a beautiful blonde with few career aspirations—and how many kids they’d have—four. He envisioned the salary he’d make, the suits he’d wear, the cars he’d drive, the house he’d live in, the vacations DD6AA2AB8

128

41

-B193

-AD32

-4CDB

-3503D88E1

Anthony Bidulka

he’d take, the church he’d go to, the sports he’d play, the fishing he’d do. And now that he had all that, his new goal was to do the same for each of his children. Why leave anything up to chance?

My sister, however, was a whole other story. If I were to imagine someone the polar opposite of Bill, that would be Joanne. I was somewhere in the middle.

I rounded the house and there she was, sitting on the side door stoop. For a moment, before she caught sight of me, I was blasted into the past. How many times had I seen her sitting in that exact same spot, looking like a train wreck, smoking a cigarette or a doo-bie.

“You moving in?” she asked, noting my luggage but showing no surprise at seeing me.

Mom must have told her I was coming. Why I didn’t get the same warning, I didn’t know. I smiled at my sister. I’d forgotten how her voice sounded like fifty miles of rutted, gravel road.

“Just visiting for a couple days,” I said as I came closer.

I did the math and realized that my sister was nearly fifty years old. If having a sibling that age made me feel old, I wondered what it felt like to her. Then again, I guessed she probably didn’t care.

She looked every year of her age and then some. Always had.

A life of glut, with plenty of bad times offsetting the good, can’t help but show on a person who’s lived through it. With my neighbour Sereena, every drug-filled night, doomed relationship, and life taken too early, appeared on the planes of her life-hewn face.

Yet somehow, an inner beauty, a sprightly spirit, an indefinable aura, shone through, making her almost painfully stunning. It helped that she’d been a beautiful woman to start with. But so had my sister. Pictures of her when she was in the bloom of young womanhood showed a healthy looking Joni Mitchell type, with shiny blonde hair, large eyes, rounded cheekbones, thick lips, and skin that glowed. But no longer. Life had exacted a toll, and the price was as obvious as a tag hanging from her nose.

She reached up to me. In her hand was a dark skinned cigarillo. I marvelled at the contrast of her beautiful French tips stained bronze by tobacco. Joanne liked the good things in life, and with equal fervour, lusted after the bad.

DD6AA2AB8

129

41

-B193

-AD32

-4CDB

-3503D88E1

Aloha, Candy Hearts

“No thanks. I don’t smoke.” I hadn’t for years.

“No one does anymore,” she commented, taking in a drag of smoke and holding it for a count of five.

“And you? Are you here for a visit?”

She laughed. It was maybe the only thing left of her that was pretty.

Or maybe…maybe she still sang? She must. It was the only way I ever knew of that she supported herself. Or tried to. When I was young, people would tell me: “She sings like a wounded bird.” I had no idea what that meant. I hadn’t heard her sing in years. Her voice today certainly wasn’t making melodic sounds.

“Oh Russ, why don’t you just come out and ask what you really want to ask?”

No one called me Russ. Only Joanne. And that’s the way it would stay, if I had anything to say about it.

“You want to know how long I’m staying. And why I’m here in the first place.”

She was right. Joanne rarely came home. Even so, she and Mom managed to keep up a close relationship from what I could tell. They’d always had a special bond, often spending Christmas or other holidays together. I don’t know how it worked out that way. Joanne rarely lived in the same city, never mind same apartment, for more than a year at a time. But I’d hear about an invitation, and the next thing I knew, Joanne had driven down and spirited Mom away to some resort or ski lodge or cabin in the woods she was looking after.

To me, it seemed like a crazy amount of driving for Joanne. But both women preferred driving to flying it seemed; Mom once explained that the long car trips were part of the visit. Joanne loved to drive. She said highway trips were the only time she had to really think. I couldn’t begin to imagine what my sister thought about during those long hours.

Our (indoor) meal that night consisted of meatballs with a sweet-and-sour sauce made by mixing together barbecue sauce and Mom’s homemade jam, a full roasted chicken, fried perogies with mushroom sauce, cabbage rolls in an onion-y tomato sauce, DD6AA2AB8

130

41

-B193

-AD32

-4CDB

-3503D88E1

Anthony Bidulka

baby potatoes fresh from her garden in a cream sauce, and a salad without one store-bought ingredient except for the creamy Caesar dressing. As we ate, along with giving my arteries a good testing, Mom caught my sister and me up on local goings on—mostly who died, who was sickly, who missed church on Sunday, and whose garden wasn’t doing so well this summer. For dessert there was zucchini cake.

After supper, Mom poured me a strong rye and Coke, and Joanne had the same (without the coke), and we settled in to play canasta for three hours. Mom also told me I should cut my hair, which I’d let grow long and a little wild for the summer. It had lightened from its usual sandy brown to near golden blond in Hawaii. I kind of liked it. So did Alex. Kay Quant neé Wistonchuk did not. Joanne was indifferent.

Begging off one last hand and a late-night snack, I escaped to my boyhood bedroom near on midnight. Closing the door behind me, I laid my head against it and, with eyes tightly closed, slowly sank to the ground. I felt a shudder run through me. This was waaaaay too surreal. Way too reminiscent of childhood. I half expected brother Bill to come banging on the door asking me to check the assumptions in the compound interest schedule he’d created to forecast the cash he’d have on hand in his weekly allowance bank account by the time he finished high school. What a dork.