Date with a Sheesha (12 page)

“Neil had a boyfriend in Dubai?”

“Well, I don’t know that for sure. He never wanted to admit to it, y’know. I don’t know if it was because of the whole gay-hating environment he was in, or just that he thought it would hurt my feelings. But he mentioned this one guy quite a bit, especially in his emails.”

“What was his name?”

“Fahd something or other.”

I’d have to check when I got home, but I was pretty sure that was one of the liaison names on the itinerary I’d gotten from Colin Cardinale.

“I don’t know if Fahd was his last name or first name.”

“And you’re sure this was the name of a boyfriend?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m not. You know how it is with 79

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email. It was hard for me to tell what was really going on. And I didn’t want to ask. It wasn’t really any of my business. I suppose I could have gotten the whole thing wrong. Jealous ex-boyfriend paranoia kinda thing, y’know?” he said with a small chuckle. “It was weird how he talked about that guy.” He paused, then,

“Sometimes it seemed like there was something special about this guy, but sometimes…”

I saw a strange look cross Good’s eyes.

“Sometimes what?” I pushed.

“Sometimes it seemed like he was scared of him.”

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Chapter 6

“You think Neil might have been scared of this Fahd person?” I asked Darrell Good.

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I mean, I don’t even know why I just said that. It just came to me. It must be something about the way he talked about Fahd in his emails.”

“Can you think of anything specific? Anything Neil might have written to you that made you think that?”

He slowly shook his head. “I’d have to think about that, look back at some of the emails.”

I did my best to control my excitement. “You’ve saved your emails?”

“Well, not really. But the last several would still be in my pro-gram’s deleted messages file.”

“Could I see those emails?” I asked as calmly as I could.

Seeing correspondence from Neil Gupta in the days leading up to his death could be very useful.

“Uh, I suppose so. I don’t really have time to look for them 81

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right now. But I could maybe do it later today. Is this really important? These were personal emails. I don’t want to just put them out there for everyone to see.”

“Please, Mr. Good, don’t worry about that. I will treat them with complete confidence and respect. I don’t know if they’ll help me find out anything about Neil’s death, but it’s worth a try, don’t you think?” In his own way, Darrell Good did love Neil Gupta. I was counting on that to get his help.

He hesitated, then said, “I suppose. But I don’t know if they’ll do you any good. I mean I’ve read them. Nothing really weird jumped out at me.”

And that, I wanted to say (but didn’t), is why I am a detective, and you are not.

After a few more questions that revealed little else, I gave Good my email address so he could forward me the messages between him and Neil Gupta. Stepping out of the office, I felt the pale, grey eyes of Good, Senior land upon me. Like a hawk, that guy. As I hurried through the showroom, fastening my winter accoutrements, I shot the Envious green Solstice one last lingering look of lust. Outside, my matronly, burgundy minivan awaited me.

I was leaving for Dubai in less than forty-eight hours. I had much to do before I left, and too little time to do it in. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I’d arranged to meet Unnati Gupta at Colourful Mary’s at eleven-thirty so she could deliver my “study”

materials. She was going to be downtown anyway, dealing with arrangements for the symposium being held at the conference centre, Teachers Credit Union Place (sometimes known as TCUP—teacup—for short.) Then my mother was to join me at twelve for our welcome-to-town lunch.

Colourful Mary’s is a restaurant-slash-bookstore owned by my friends Mary Quail and Marushka Yabadochka. Its well-earned reputation for fabulous food, much of it influenced by the Aboriginal and Ukrainian (respectively) heritage of the couple, is enhanced by the owners’ predilection for redecoration. At 82

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Christmastime the eatery becomes a yuletide wonderland.

Hallowe’en might see the place transformed into a forbidding dungeon. During the annual Jazz Festival, it’s a New Orleans speakeasy. Other times the decor simply reflects a particular season, culture, country, or whatever theme happens to strike Mary and Marushka’s fancy. It was marketing genius, really. Each new creation brought with it hordes of new customers to see what all the fuss was about, and old customers returning to check out the redecoration. From there came even more publicity and never-to-be-underestimated word of mouth. More than once, their efforts have been showcased in the local press.

I hadn’t been to Colourful Mary’s since they’d pulled down their holiday baubles, so I was looking forward to seeing what they’d come up with for the rest of the winter. I found a parking spot only half a block away. As I walked the short distance to the front entrance, I saw that, once again, they’d outdone themselves.

Somehow or other—no doubt thanks to lesbians with tools—the facade of the restaurant had been mocked up to look like a log cabin or rustic ski lodge. Stepping inside, the aromas of cinnamon, mulled wine, and hot chocolate battled for supremacy. Just perfect for an icy January day. Burly-looking wooden beams had been attached to the ceiling, from which were hung swags of pine branches and acorns. The walls were adorned with every type of wintertime sports equipment you could imagine: from skis to snowshoes, snowboards to ice skates. Draped over every free surface were thick, cozy blankets, colourful scarves, and heavy, hand-knitted sweaters. There were lovely groupings of candles in various shapes, sizes, and colours and several portable fireplaces crackled with flame-kissed logs. The effect was like coming in from the cold into a warm, welcoming hug.

Marnie, a hostess I knew, greeted me at the entrance, dressed as Bob McKenzie. She directed me to a table I favoured for its close proximity to the bookstore section of the place. I checked my watch and saw I had a few minutes’ grace before I was expecting Unnati. I settled in and glanced about, wondering if I’d see Bob’s brother, Doug, wandering around too. Instead, I saw another time-honoured character of the Great White North: my mother.

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What was she doing here, half an hour early?

A better question was: Why was I surprised? I shouldn’t have been. Firstly, my mother is a cautious driver. I’d gone over the route from my house to Colourful Mary’s with her before I’d run from the house that morning (chased out the door by a skillet of fried potatoes and sausage). She’d never been here before. Not fond of city driving, she wanted to know, turn by turn, exactly what to expect and how long it would take (so she could add on an extra ten minutes for every turn, fifteen for each stoplight).

Secondly, she also preferred being ridiculously early to being even a minute late. Punctuality was next to godliness in her book.

Instead of jumping up to greet her, I enjoyed the rare opportunity to watch her without her knowing I was there. It was like being on a prairie safari, spotting the little-seen, and very rare, Ukrainian country baba, on the hunt in an area foreign to her species. I frowned when I saw that she was holding two or three books under her arm, along with her big, black, going-to-town purse. What on earth could my Harlequin-Romance-cookbook-reading mother find of interest in a bookstore stocked primarily with gay genre material?

Oh god.

I leaped from my chair, almost knocking it over. A young couple gave me matching divalicious sneers when I hip-checked their table on the way by, almost making them lose the marshmallows from the tops of their twin hot chocolates.

“Mom!” I yelped as I reached out for my mother, just as she was about to lay hands on a copy of
Big Beef
, a glossy magazine that had nothing to do with how to prepare a roast.

“
Sonsyou
,” she smiled when she saw me. “I come a leettle bit early, uh-huh.”

“So I see. Why don’t you come back to the table with me? We can order you some coffee.”

“No, no, you safe your money. I haf coffee at home,
Sonsyou
.”

“Hot chocolate?” I suggested hopefully. “With marshmallows on top?”

“Vell, maybe coffee den. But first I pay for dese books. Goot for me to haf someting to read vhile you go avay.”

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“Ah, why don’t you go sit down, and I’ll pay for them?”

“No, no, you need your money for your treep. I pay.”

“Can I see what you got there?” I asked, my cheeks turning red, sweat beginning to seep through my sweater.

She handed me the books. One was called
Upon a Midnight
Clear
.

“Chreestmas stories,” Mom let me know, in case the bare-chested Santa on the cover wasn’t clue enough.

She’d obviously missed the subtitle:
Queer Christmas Tales
. By Greg Herren. Although I hadn’t read this particular book, I knew Herren’s work. He was talented. Funny. I enjoyed his mystery novels. But he also wrote erotica, and something about the fact that Santa was also wearing assless chaps made me think this book might be not quite right for Mama Quant. I glanced at the second title. It was a chapbook called
Hot Buns
.

“You know, Mom,” I said through clenched teeth and a pasted on smile, “I have these two books at home. You don’t have to buy them. You can just read mine.”

“
Tahk
?” she said. “Is that right? Deed you try de hot buns, den? Deed you like? Goot recipe?”

I almost choked getting out: “They were very, very good.”

“Come,
Sonsyou
, ve get you some vater.”

Thankfully back at the table, I ordered water from our server, who introduced himself as Domiwaitress.

“Vhy she dress like dat? She’d be very preetty girl if she dressed nicer,” my mother decided.

The room had gotten very hot. I felt a bit dizzy. Whose bright idea was it to bring my mother here?

Apparently mine. She’d met both Mary and Marushka several times at various events over the years. Both women kept asking Mom when she was going to visit Colourful Mary’s. I simply couldn’t put it off any longer. Then again, in my version of how it went, I did not allow my mother to roam free. That was never a good idea, no matter where we were.

“Russell! Kay!” Mary had just spotted us.

Mom looked up with a hint of suspicion, not quite recogniz-ing the new arrival.

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“Mom, you remember Mary? She’s one of the owners here.

You know how you’ve been wanting to come see the place.”

“Oh,
tahk
,” she agreed—though I think she was just being polite. “Hello, Mary. Very nice, very nice. You make
pehroheh
here den?”

Mary gave me a look.

Behind Mom’s back, I mouthed the word: perogies.

“Oh, yes we do. Well, actually I don’t. Marushka does.”

“Oh, vell, dat’s nice, uh huh.”

“Would you like to say hello to Marushka? Maybe see what she’s up to in the kitchen?”

Again, trying to communicate with the irritatingly oblivious Mary without Mom seeing, I madly shook my head. My mother never entered a kitchen without taking it over. Marushka herself was known to be rather protective of her cooking area. It was her private kingdom. I feared what would happen if the two kitchen monarchs came together. I think there was some kind of law of nature that would not allow them to occupy the same space without causing a cataclysmic event.

“Why don’t you see if Marushka can just come out here to say hi?” I suggested helpfully.

Mary smirked. “How many times have you ever seen Marushka out on the floor, Russell?”

She was right. In all the years I’d been coming to Colourful Mary’s, the closest I’d ever come to seeing Marushka out of the kitchen was when she’d shyly stick her nose out the order window to watch an old customer trying a new dish for the first time, or a new customer trying an old dish for the first time.

“I go see,” Mom offered, as she lifted herself off her chair. She thrust her purse into my arms. “You vatch dis, okay den?”

“Okay, then,” I said, feeling defeated, and shooting Mary a warning look.

“It’ll be fine,” she whispered as she escorted my mother to the swinging doors that led into Marushka’s sanctum.

God help us all.

But I didn’t have time to stew. I looked up just in time to see Marnie leading Unnati Gupta, along with Hema, to my table.

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Without their saris, wearing sharply tailored winter coats, Unnati in black, Hema in winter white with a matching tam, they looked quite different from when I’d first met them.

I stood up to greet the women. “Thank you for meeting me here.”

“Of course,” Unnati said briskly.

“And Hema, good to see you again too. I didn’t expect to see you today. I suppose this will give us a chance to get to know one another a little before we head off on our trip.”