Aloha, Candy Hearts (4 page)

My eyes widened. Never even thought about it. “I dunno.”

“When’s the big day?”

“I dunno.”

“Are you big, white wedding kind of guys, or into something small and intimate?”

Jeepers! Who was this guy? A reporter for the Oahu six o’clock news? “I dunno.”

Kimo frowned. “You have actually met the guy who you think is going to marry you, right?”

I gave him a face that said, “Very funny, smartass.”

He gave me an apologetic look. “Okay, okay. So what’s your fiancé’s name?”

And for one horrible moment that lasted an eon, my mind went blank.

Kimo let out a nervous chuckle. He checked his watch as if hoping it was time to go. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Alex!” I finally got out. “His name is Alex. Alex. Alex. Alex.”

“Russell,” he asked, his face suddenly serious. “Did you just meet this guy, brah?”

“No! Of course not. It’s just all so new for me. He only asked me to marry him last night. I haven’t quite processed it yet.” I was beginning to feel a little uneasy with the way the conversation was going. It was time to take it on a less intrusive detour. “So you’re a cop?”

He nodded.

I eyed up the T-shirt and silver bracelet embossed with surfboards. “And a surfer?”

He gave me a strange look before answering, “I like to surf, DD6AA2AB8

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yeah.”

“Is that…a good hobby?” It didn’t come out quite as I’d meant it to.

Kimo chuckled. “You mean for a guy my age?”

I gave him a mischievous smile. “Well, I’m sure there are many seniors’ surfing competitions you’d do really well in.” Even in the short time we’d spent together, there was something about this guy that told me our senses of humour jived.

He made a move as if pulling a knife from his heart. “You wound me, brah.”

We shared a look. The kind that two people attracted to one another, but knowing it can’t ever go anywhere, share. We drank some more coffee.

During the nearly six-hour flight from Honolulu to Vancouver, and the layover until I could board my plane for Saskatoon, I did more reading and eating than sleeping. So by the time I was wing-ing my way home, I was ready for a nap. I snuggled into the CRJ’s seat with about seventy other passengers and prepared for some shut-eye. But fate had another plan. It began with a series of sighs from the seat next to me.

I admit to being as curious as the proverbial cat. How can I not be, given my chosen career? So, although I was a little vexed by the noisy exhaling, it wasn’t surprising that I found myself abandoning the promise of pleasant dreams for a peek at my neighbour.

The man sitting next to me was a little odd in appearance to say the least. If there were a human version of Mr. Magoo, he would be it. Through the slit of one eye, I could make out a huge-ly bulbous nose, sticky-outy chin, wobbly jowls, sunken mouth, and a completely hairless, perfectly round head. His eyes, nearly hidden behind pouches of skin, sat below eyebrows shaped like inverted “V”s. Although it was summer, and the forecast for our evening arrival was balmy, he wore some kind of trench coat with a uniquely patterned scarf of orange and blue wound about his neck. If I had to guess, I’d say he was nearing seventy.

Just as I was about to lose myself back to sleep, the man sighed DD6AA2AB8

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again. This time it was accompanied by a gentle but definite “har-rumph.” I saw that he was intently studying a piece of paper. His scrunched-up mouth was travelling from one side of his face to the other, as if worrying over a particularly recalcitrant piece of gum.

I saw a crew member making his way down the aisle with water. Deciding that wouldn’t be a bad idea, I sat up and waited to be offered some. I exchanged a polite glance with Magoo.

“Good evening,” he said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No,” I lied. “I never sleep long on planes.”

He nodded absentmindedly as he returned his attention to the paper on his lap.

Dropping my seat table, I accepted water from the steward.

After one more sigh, the man carefully folded the paper and placed it in the breast pocket of his coat. He looked over at me with a lopsided, lip-less smile. “Going home?”

He even sounded like Mr. Magoo. Or was it Thurston Howell III from Gilligan’s Island? “Yes,” I told him. “It’s nice to get away, but always nice to come back home too.”

“That’s refreshing to hear from a young person,” he said. “I suppose with the local economy booming the way it is, more and more youngsters like you are staying in Saskatchewan.”

I was enjoying being called a youngster. Especially since I’d just turned thirty-eight. A few years back, my ultra-stylish friend Anthony had cajoled me into using a line of Clinique skin products for men. I guess they were worth the ultra-stylish cost. Although I steadfastly refuse to wear a moisturizing mask to bed. “Yes, I hear that’s true.”

“What line of work are you in?”

“I’m a private detective.”

That answer is always good for a reaction. And Mr. Magoo did not disappoint. He shifted in his seat to get a better look at me.

Although the flaps covering his eyes were nearly impenetrable, I spied a flash of blue, brilliant as a newborn’s.

“No!” he said, truly astonished.

I’d run into this before. I dug a business card (you never know when you might meet a potential client) from a pocket of my cargo shorts and handed it to him. He studied it carefully before burying DD6AA2AB8

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it in his jacket pocket.

“So you investigate murders and that sort of mayhem?”

I nodded. It was the truth. I had been involved in at least a few murder cases—granted, sometimes peripherally—since leaving the Saskatoon Police Service several years earlier. There was Tom Osborn found afloat in Pike Lake. James Kraft shot in a New York City hotel room. The drag queen who looked like Phyllis Lindstrom from The Mary Tyler Moore Show pushed off the side of an ocean liner. And Tanya Culinare, who jumped from the eighth-floor balcony of her Broadway Avenue apartment. Oh yeah, I investigated murders all the time.

“I wouldn’t have thought there’d be much call for that sort of thing in a city the size of Saskatoon,” the old man commented.

At about a quarter of a million people, Saskatoon is not a big city. And indeed, in between my higher profile cases, most of my time as a prairie detective is spent chasing down errant husbands, runaway kids, lost pets, and, in one instance, discovering whether a local restaurant had indeed used Mrs. Galabruch’s perogy recipe and passed it off as their own. But no one needed to know about that. I nodded again and said, “A hot economy has benefits for my line of work too. More people, more action, more crime.” Gosh, I love prosperity.

His mouth made a chewing motion as he considered what I’d said. Then he asked, “You wouldn’t be interested in something a little less dramatic, then?”

I was very interested. Not only do I like being able to pay my bills (that damn Clinique stuff is expensive), as compelling as my infrequent murder cases are, they aren’t necessarily my favourite kind of work. Murder means death. Death means grief. Usually for many people. Death is gruesome. Death is just not a nice thing to spend all your time around. So, although I might outwardly whine about being asked to find out if Sophie Underwill’s beagle from down the street is responsible for the daily deposits of doody in Mr. Kindrachski’s bed of prize-winning lilies, inwardly I rather enjoy the work.

Then again, sometimes there’s nothing better than a good murder.

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“I might be,” I told Mr. Magoo.

“What about treasure maps?” he asked. “Are you any good with treasure maps?”

Now it was my turn to look astonished. Treasure maps? I suddenly had memories of being eight. I loved movies and books about adventurous pirates in exotic locations in search of treasure.

I daydreamed of chests filled with gold and jewels and countless coins. But the man sitting next to me did not at all resemble a pirate: no eye patch, no bandana around unruly black hair, no peg leg or missing teeth. I was going to be disappointed. I was sure of it.

Magoo rifled around in his pocket and pulled out the piece of paper I’d spied him studying earlier in the flight. He pulled down his seat table and flattened the paper on top of it. Although I hate being snoopy—okay, that’s a lie—I couldn’t help taking a peek. It was a rather crude drawing, a few squiggles and symbols, inter-spersed with lots of words. The thing looked more like a poem than a treasure map. Treasure maps were supposed to have a com-pass rose and a trail of arrows over sketched terrain, which usually included mountains and valleys and swamps. And there should be a castle and a few warnings about quicksand or dragons or something good like that. So yup, I was disappointed.

“I don’t know what she was thinking when she did this,”

Magoo muttered. “But I shouldn’t be surprised. Helen always was a quirky one.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What exactly is this?”

“Helen, my…friend…left this for me,” he said, his fingers busily fumbling over the surface of the paper. “It’s a map of Saskatoon.”

I leaned in and peered closer. “It is?”

“Sure it is,” he said, pointing at a blob that I suppose could have been a castle. “See, that’s the Bessborough Hotel.” His finger moved from blob to blob. “And there’s the river. And the university campus. Downtown.”

I thought he was giving the artist greater credit than deserved, but geographically speaking, if I squinted and turned my head just right, I could see a general resemblance to the city where we were DD6AA2AB8

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about to land.

“And what’s all the writing over top of the map?”

“Those are the clues,” he whispered in a way that urged me to do the same. “You see, I have to figure these out in order to find it.”

“Find what?” I asked, my curiosity gene on full alert.

The man stared at me. For a moment he seemed uncertain, as if suddenly realizing that maybe he’d said—and shown me—too much. Finally, his cartoonish face broke into a conspiratorial smile.

“A treasure,” he enthused quietly. “If I decipher the clues correctly, I find the treasure. Simple as that. It’s like a game.”

“I see.” The man didn’t need to hire a detective. He needed a playmate.

“I’ve been going over the clues,” he said, thick fingers pointing at the first stanza of the treasure map poem. “I think I’ve got some of them figured out. But the rest, well, I just can’t seem to. I need help. I guess maybe I’m getting a little too old for this sort of thing.

The brain isn’t working at top form anymore.”

“Maybe you’re just tired,” I suggested helpfully.

He nodded. “Travelling does take the stuffing out of me these days. Perhaps I’ll be more clear-headed in the morning.”

“Yes, I’m sure you will,” I assured him. “Why don’t you give it another go when you’re feeling better? If you still need help after that, you can give me a call. You have my card.”

“Do I? Oh, my, yes I do. You just gave it to me! See what I mean? Dotty as a drunken donkey.”

I chuckled. “I haven’t heard that one before.”

“Feel free to use it, my boy.”

And with a ping of the seat belt sign, we began our descent into Saskatoon. It was good to be home.

I felt the arm thread through my own just as we entered the second floor arrivals lounge that overlooks the main concourse—

okay, the only concourse—of the John G. Diefenbaker International Airport. I looked down at the little person who’d attached himself to my left side. It was Magoo.

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“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, staring up at me with a sweet smile. “I feel like a doddering old auntie, but my gout is acting up, you see. Would you mind escorting me to where the bags come out?”

There was something odd about the smile on his cartoonish face. It didn’t quite go with the look in his eyes. Was he ogling me?

I couldn’t be sure. But how could I turn him down? “Of course not,” I said.

Together we traversed the short distance down the escalators to the luggage carousels. Within a few minutes the track began moving and my unexpected companion clapped his hands with glee when his one small, argyle-patterned bag was among the first to arrive. I pulled it off the carousel and handed it to him with a goodbye at the ready.

“What about you?” he asked, seeming a bit discombobulated by the sudden farewell.

“I’m afraid my bags haven’t come off yet. Do you need help getting to a taxi?” I offered. “I can come back for my bags after we get you set.”

“Oh,” he said, looking a bit vague. “No. I have my own car in the lot.”

I wondered how he was going to drive if his gout was bothering him as bad as he’d claimed. My mother suffered intermittent-ly with gout, so I knew about the pain associated with it. “Are you sure you can drive? Maybe you should take a cab home tonight.

You could come back for your car tomorrow.”

“Of course I can drive. Why not?”

“Your gout?”

“Oh. Oh that. Well, I’m suddenly feeling much better.”

“That’s good news.”

He stood there, unmoving, a perplexed look on his face.

“Would you like me to walk you to your car?”

“I wouldn’t want you to go to the trouble. Are your bags here yet?”

I searched the conveyor for my luggage. Even though most of the other passengers had already retrieved their bags and begun migrating toward the exits, mine were nowhere to be seen. This DD6AA2AB8