Flight of Aquavit (18 page)

suit with a blindingly white, wide-collared, man’s

style shirt and a string of pearls. Her black hair

was in a tidy bun at the base of her neck and her

eyes were disarmingly piercing as usual. It struck

me then that even though Errall had taken up

smoking again, I never smelled it on or around

her, just the sharp, mildly spicy fragrance she

always wore. I looked past her through a window

onto Spadina Crescent. The early morning snow

had left behind a sheet of white crispness.

“I really don’t know but I got the distinct

impression she was hiding something from me.

She kept trying to change the subject.”

“Are you sure Russell?”

Anthony Bidulka — 139

I shook my head despondently. “No, I’m not.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, too suspicious, a quirk

of my profession. I just don’t understand why

she’s even here, staying with me for Christmas. I’m

realizing how little my mother and I know one

another.”

Errall quirked her head to one side and said,

“Maybe that’s why she’s doing it.”

For a moment neither of us said a word while

Errall’s insight sunk in.

“You know what?” I finally said. “I can’t think

about this right now. Listen, this isn’t why I came

in here anyway. I wanted to ask you about Kelly,

to see how she is. I’ve been trying to call her but

never get an answer.”

Errall’s face became a mask behind which I

was almost sure she was hiding something. Why

was everyone doing that?

“No change. She’s just…well she’s in a funk

and she can’t get out.”

“Maybe she needs some help, Errall, maybe

Beverly could…”

“I know. We’re trying that,” she said in a short,

clipped tone.

“Okay.” I quickly acquiesced. Getting profes-

sional help was a private matter and I didn’t want

to stick my nose too far in. “Maybe she’d want to

come over to visit Brutus? I know he really misses

her and she must miss him. She can come over

anytime.”

Errall nodded but the look on her face seemed

doubtful. “Y’know, Russell, she needs some-

thing…some…tonic of some sort, something to

140 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

give her a kick-start. She’s like a battery low on

juice—it wants to turn over the engine but just

can’t. I just wish I knew what it is she needs.”

I nodded and noticed Errall glance at her wrist-

watch. It struck me that she and I were living sim-

ilar lives. We each had personal issues begging for

our attention but were being pulled away by our

careers. Or…were we letting ourselves be pulled?

I jumped out of my chair and headed for the door.

Errall was already on the phone.

Chapter 8

UPSTAIRS IN MY OFFICE I grabbed a Diet Pepsi from

the refrigerator under my desk and settled in.

After making an appointment to meet later that

morning with Professor Marc Driediger, the con-

tact Anthony had set me up with, I updated my

suspect chart for the information I’d learned the

night before about suspect number one, James

Kraft, a.k.a. Jo. I then made some notes about the

landfill chase and last night’s tail by the blue car.

As I was still uncertain of the significance (if any)

of either event, I stuck them in the Herrings file—

the file I use for information I don’t know what to

do with but don’t want to lose track of. After I was

done I still had some time to kill before leaving to

meet with the professor so after again failing to

reach Kelly, I decided to revisit gays.r.us for

SunLover. After all, what else does a beach boy

have to do in the middle of winter but try to get

laid?

As I clicked my way into the now familiar

Saskatchewan gay chat room the thought

occurred to me that SunLover might be using a

different nickname. Chat rooms certainly provid-

ed a certain amount of anonymity, more so than a

bar or dating service, but I suppose even the best

disguises need to be changed every once in a

while. If this was the case with SunLover it wasn’t

good news for me. It would make it harder for me

to find him—but not impossible. No one calling

142 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

themselves SunLover showed up in the chat room

the night before, but there certainly were chatters

whose bios loosely fit the description Daniel

Guest had given me. I decided it couldn’t hurt to

pay special attention to any fortysomething Brad

Pitt types.

The Saskatchewan room was much quieter on

a Friday morning than it had been Thursday

night. When I entered there were only seven other

chatters and four of them were from Regina, two-

and-a-half hours away. I studied the bios for the

remaining three but found nothing even close to

what I was looking for. The dialogue box was

quiet, even the seven in the room weren’t talking

to one another, unless they were doing so in pri-

vate. I kept the room open but began sorting

through my mail that Lilly had brought up and

placed on my desk. It was several minutes later

when I heard, “Bing!”

I looked up. I had a private message from

someone named Big Quill. We chatted for about a

minute. He was seventeen and smooth and want-

ing to get raunchy over the phone. I turned him

down as politely as I could and surveyed the cur-

rent crop of hopefuls in the main room. Sunny

caught my attention. His bio was blank so I sent

him a private message.

“Busy?” I typed out the standard opening line.

“No,” he came back with.

“How are you?”

“Okay thanks. Stats?”

“34, bl/gr, 6, 180, athletic, gd lkg. U?” I

described someone close to Daniel Guest (in case

Anthony Bidulka — 143

SunLover was into that particular type) but not

quite (in case he wasn’t into repeats).

“39, blond & green, 6.2, tan, 40 chest, 28 waist.

U in Stoon?”

“Yes,” I told him, I was in Saskatoon.

Everything looked about right for this guy to be

SunLover except possibly the age. Daniel said he

was in his forties or maybe a bit older, but that

was just a guess. “Where r u?”

“Same.”

“Wanna meet?” I asked brazenly. If only I

could be this ballsy in my real personal life.

“Okay. Do you have a place?”

Hmm. This guy used Bare Ass Beach in the

summer as his meeting place, but obviously had

none in the winter. I certainly didn’t want him

coming to my home. Then again, I suppose my

mother would be happy to have someone else to

cook for. “No,” I replied, “Any ideas?”

“How about we meet in the parking lot at

Confederation Mall?”

Huh? This was a new one. How would that

work? I guess I was still a newbie. “Sure,” I typed.

“Okay. Right now?”

That wouldn’t do. I had to arrange for Daniel

to be with me to ID the guy. I had no idea whether

he was free right now. Chances were he wasn’t.

“Can’t. How about early this evening?” That night

was the DGR&R Christmas party, but I’d have to

convince Daniel to join me in the parking lot

before hand.

“It’ll have to be late. I have a thing. How about

11:30?”

144 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

Darn. Well, at least dinner would be over and

any dancing and drinking would just be starting.

“Okay,” I agreed, hoping I could deliver.

“11:30 Confederation Shopping Mall parking

lot.”

Suddenly I felt nervous and excited, like I was

accepting an invitation for dinner and a movie

with someone I had a crush on. “See you then.”

“You’ll be there?”

And now I felt bad. His question seemed

almost pleading, a little sad. He’d obviously been

stood up before, left sitting in a deserted parking

lot in the middle of the night, waiting for someone

who would never show up. At least I would

show up—just not for the reason he expected. Oh

well, a person had to accept certain risks when

arranging blind dates over the internet. “Yes I

will,” I typed back. I had to get going to my next

appointment. “Bye.”

“Bye,” typed Sunny.

Marc Driediger’s office in the College of

Education building was a small space overflowing

with paper in every form imaginable: books,

bound reports, loose-leaf, in binders, foolscap,

bright white, coloured, embossed and glossy, cov-

ered in longhand, typed on and scribbled on. The

man who sat behind an overburdened desk was in

his late thirties with a face and body that, despite

a valiant effort to thwart genetics, were thickening

with age. He had covered his jovial face with a

scruffy moustache and beard and his body with

Anthony Bidulka — 145

sedate clothes that looked as if they were about to

become too tight. Marc Driediger had a wide,

friendly smile, sparkling eyes behind wire-rimmed

glasses and a head of curly brown hair thinning at

the crown.

“Thank you for seeing me on such short

notice,” I said after I was seated on a chair recent-

ly rescued from beneath a stack of student essays.

“No problem at all. I owe Anthony tons of

favours.”

I wondered why but decided not to ask. There

are very few things I don’t consider my business,

so when I run into one, I pride myself in letting it

go. “I understand you know a man by the name of

James Kraft.”

“Yes, I do,” he said easily. “And I’m happy to

tell you about that, but not if I thought it might

somehow get James into trouble.”

“Is there some reason you think it would?”

He chuckled. “Anthony said you were clever

and that I should watch out.”

Bastard!

I gave him a clever smile. “James may be

involved in a case I’m working on. I’m interested

in finding out more about his character, his back-

ground.” What I was hoping to find out was if

James was the type of person who’d commit

blackmail. “Anything you could tell me would be

helpful. Anything at all.”

“Anthony probably told you James and I dated

a couple years ago?”

“No,” I told him. “He never mentioned it.”

Obviously James was into older men, first this

146 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

professor and then Daniel, both more than ten

years older.

“Oh. Well it wasn’t for very long.”

Oh goody, I thought. No gay man ever had

anything good to say about this type of relation-

ship.

“It was perfect. Six really terrific months.”

Bugger.

“He was a student here at the U of S. We met at

a campus GLBT club meeting.” He sniggered at

the thought. “They host these really lame wine

and cheese nights; usually a couple warm bottles

of Lonesome Charlie—appropriate don’t you

think—and a block of dried-out cheddar.

Normally about four people show up, and two of

those are the organizers. It’s not really my thing,

but I’d been single for a while and didn’t know

how to meet people. So I decided to go one night

and, as luck would have it, so did James. Besides

James and myself, there was this really bitter les-

bian and a straight, Chinese girl who could barely

speak English and thought she was at a chess club

meeting. Well, let me tell ya, we got out of there

pretty quick, giggling like girls and with a bottle

of Lonesome Charlie under James’ jacket.”

Aha! He was a thief!

I was grasping.

I let Marc continue. I suspected I wasn’t going

to get any useful information from his story but he

seemed to be deriving such pleasure from telling

it. “We sat in my car and talked until the wine was

gone. He was such a cool guy and I was so sur-

prised that he seemed interested in me. I mean,

Anthony Bidulka — 147

I’m not exactly Lorenzo Lamas and I’m a fair bit

older than James is. But he insisted he was into me

and couldn’t we have some fun? He was still liv-

ing with his folks, so we went back to my place

and did just that. We had lots of fun. And I don’t

just mean the sex. He was such a fun-loving, nice

young guy. A real sweetheart. Six months later,

when the term ended, I was going abroad to start

a sabbatical and he was, I don’t know, working in

Saskatoon at a bicycle shop or something…so we

just parted ways, very amicably.”

I smiled and nodded. He had such an affable,