Stain of the Berry (15 page)

I looked up at Duncan's tortured face, the area under his eyes seemingly growing darker with each passing minute.

"They were mine," he said. "I painted these, to remind me of home when I was a kid. Whenever there was room in the gallery I'd put them up, hoping to get some exposure. I don't even know when it happened. I just found them like this one day when I was closing up a few weeks ago." His voice was tremulous as he told me, "He did it. I know he did it."

"Who, Duncan? Who did this?"

A rattling noise came from the front of the gallery. The door. Someone was trying to get in.

We both turned and stared at the curtain as if we could see through it. Sudden choking fear filled the space like smog.

"Oh God," Duncan whispered hoarsely. "Oh God, he's here."

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Again the rattling. This time more insistent.

Duncan looked at me accusingly. "Who is that? Did you bring someone with you?" He began to back away from me.

"Duncan, no," I insisted. But in the back of my mind I wasn't so sure. Maybe I had, inadvertently, brought danger to Duncan Sikorsky's doorstep...in the form of a six-and-a-half-foot-tall Amazon. "I'm here to help you," I told him. "You have to believe me. I want to help you."

"I-I-I don't know you."

"Is there a back way out of here?" I asked, noting that my very survival that day seemed to hinge on the existence of back doors.

"Yeah, yeah," he said, nodding towards the back of the dimly lit storage area. "Over there. Leads into a back alley."

"Come on!"

We raced for the door, conspirators in our shared desire to escape whatever was behind the front door.

I watched impatiently as Duncan pulled and yanked at a series of deadbolts and locks. When he finally drew open the door, his scream was so loud the blast of it pushed me away. Standing in the doorway was a tall shadow wearing a dark raincoat; an arm came at us brandishing something long with a sharp tip.

Duncan fell back into my arms as the threatening figure moved towards us.

"I didn't mean to scare you," the man said as he lowered his umbrella and stepped into a dull circle of light. "I know I'm a few minutes late, but I really wanted to pick up my painting before the weekend." He had the sense to look a trifle sheepish when he saw the look of horror pasted on our pale faces. "Gosh, I'm sorry. I tried the front, but when it was locked I came back here hoping someone was still around. I'm really sorry."

For a second I’d've just as soon popped him one than accept his paltry apology, but propriety won out.

It took our heart rates a full thirty seconds to return to something approximating normal.

"I have to deal with this," Duncan said to me, obviously recognizing the customer and doing his best to pull himself together.

"Can we meet later?" I asked. "I'd like to ask you some questions."

Duncan looked at the man, then me, then back at the man and back at me. "Uhhhh...not tonight. I got something going. Uhhh... tomorrow?"

I nodded. "Sure. Absolutely. Where? When? I'll be there." Mr. Flexible.

"Fountainhead," he named a restaurant a few blocks away. "Noon?" And with that he galumphed into the front with umbrella man who was no doubt anxious to get his painting and get the heck outta there.

I took another look at the three ruined paintings with the letters B-O-O written across them, then followed. "Noon at The Fountainhead," I confirmed with Duncan as I passed by him and the man on the way to the front exit.

He looked up from where he was hoisting a plastic-wrapped, framed canvas from a pile of similarly wrapped paintings leaning against the wall behind the counter and nodded. I left.

It was Friday, July twenty-fourth-my birthday. When I'd first left Black Canvass the night before, my 64 of 163

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noon-next-day meeting with Duncan Sikorsky seemed oh so far away. The shoppers had retreated from Davie Street to Robson Street, the tourists to Gastown, the hawkers and stalkers to Granville, leaving the youngsters and hipsters, yuppies and guppies, gaybes and wannabes, all fresh on the street from crumpled-sheeted beds, rowdy loft parties, martini-infused happy hours and early movies. It was time to party in Vancouver, and since I was still in my
early
thirties-I would not admit defeat to thirty-five until the next day-I was damn well gonna join in.

After a pit stop at my hotel room for a shower, spritz of Bulgari and a new outfit: an El Barrio T over red and gray patterned Etro pants with a two-button close and Le Coq Sportif shoes, all topped off with a navy skullcap, I was ready to go. My first stop was the long, elevated bar at Glowbal Grill and Satay on Mainland Street in Yaletown, a mere hop, skip and jump from Opus, where I filled up on marinated seafood on skewers and dirty martinis and watched the pumped-up and primped-up crowd who were there to be seen (or to talk animatedly on near invisible cellphones rather than to each other). When I was done with that, I made my slightly inebriated way (by this point I actually was hopping, skipping and jumping) to Odyssey nightclub on Howe where I danced and flirted until 3 a.m. Even later I found myself in a hotel room that wasn't my own.

Dumbass.

I woke up on Friday feeling every second of every day of all of my thirty-five years.

Double dumbass.

But I'm nothing if not professional-even if I had been busy sublimating the fact that I didn't want to be thirty-five. Regardless, by the time I swung open the door to The Fountainhead Pub, I was perky, fully caffeinated and ready to detect.

I waited for an hour, becoming much less perky as time passed by at the speed of a Celine Dion lullaby, hoping that perhaps I'd heard noon when actually he'd said 1:00. But that wasn't it and I knew it. Duncan Sikorsky had stood me up.

Giving up, I dashed out of the restaurant and galloped the several blocks down Davie Street to Black Canvass. I threw open the door and startled a Pippi-Longstocking-fallen-on-hard-times type character. I asked where Duncan was and she told me that his shift didn't start until 3:30. I ran out of there, back the way I came, up to Nicola Street, all the way to Duncan's building. I was certainly working off (and paying for) the dregs of my night of debauchery. I clumped up the steps to his second floor apartment and banged on the door with my fist. I waited an unrespectable amount of time before pulling out my set of lock picks from the back pocket of my jeans and made short work of Duncan's knob.

And of course, he was gone. As were most of his clothing and personal effects.

Whatever other things Duncan Sikorsky was hiding from, I was now one of them.

It was a dejected Russell Quant who walked those ten-kilometre-long blocks back to Opus that day. Had I screwed up? Should I have waited Duncan out, refusing to leave the gallery last night until he told me all he knew? Should I have approached him differently in the first place? He knew something important about all of this, about why Tanya and Moxie were so scared...possibly about why they died the way they did. I should have done whatever it took to get it out of him when I had him. Now he was gone, who knew where.

All three of them, Tanya, Moxie and Duncan had received the same eerie message: Boo. And now two of them were dead. I couldn't blame Duncan for being petrified. But who was doing this to them? My best 65 of 163

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hope of finding the answer had just taken a powder. I'd never find him in this city-if he was even in Vancouver any longer. He might have caught a ferry to Seattle or a flight to Zimbabwe for all I knew.

There was nothing else for me to do but go home and hope to catch a fresh lead there.

After I showered to wash off all the running-around sweat, and confirmed my flight with Air Canada-another connector through Calgary-I packed my bags and headed for the lobby to check out. To my surprise, with my bill came a package. The hotel clerk told me it had been delivered for me, by a man, at noon. I paid and rolled my suitcase to a relatively quiet corner of the lobby. The package was a large brown envelope with my name handwritten on the front. No note accompanied the package but I knew it was from Duncan. He'd delivered it himself when he knew I'd be away from the hotel, waiting for him at the restaurant.

Inside the envelope was a single sheet, an 8 x 10 glossy photograph. It was a picture of about a dozen people, arranged like a class photo or some other such related group. The background was an off-white wall with oak wainscotting, unremarkable and unidentifiable (at least by me). I searched the faces. I recognized three: Duncan, Tanya, Moxie.

And then one more.

It never fails to impress me, the seeming ease with which one can make the transition from mountain and oceans to prairie flatland and countless lakes in under two hours. The Air Canada jet touched down just as the yellow ball that was the sun plopped itself into a blanket of neon pink, blazing orange and raspberry-jam crimson almost too extraordinary to believe. After collecting my luggage, I retrieved the Mazda from long-term parking and headed for home, restless and worried. And thirty-five years old.

Anthony had told me about my surprise birthday party, but although today was my actual birth date, the soiree was planned for tomorrow night, Saturday, and I was glad for it. I was definitely not in a party mood and wanted nothing more than to hit the mattress of my own bed for as many uninterrupted hours of sleep as I could string together.

So I wasn't thrilled to find my house being watched.

Most of my neighbours have garages and, even in the summer months, we tend to park indoors rather than on the street. So as I drove past my street heading for the back alley that led to my garage, the unfamiliar white car stuck out like a drag queen at a monster truck rally. Not because there weren't any other vehicles unfamiliar to me parked on the street-I'm no Gladys Kravitz-but this one had a man sitting behind the steering wheel. I suppose the fella could have been waiting for a friend or lost and consulting a map, but as a detective, I'm naturally suspicious. Besides, I had a pretty good idea who he was.

Instead of making for my garage, I spun a noisy U-ball, sped down my usually peaceful nighttime suburban street and pulled up about half a centimetre behind the white vehicle with a threatening screech.

I stepped out, pulled my wardrobe bag from the passenger seat, tossed it over my shoulder and began a slow sashay toward my front yard gate as if nothing unusual was going on. About half way there I stopped, turned and stared at the man in the car, whose face-although it was dark so I couldn't tell for sure-must have been registering surprise.

I nonchalantly walked back toward the car as if I'd just noticed it by happenstance and rapped my knuckles against the driver's window. I heard a little motor whir as the window came down, revealing...wowee, quite the face; Anthony had outdone himself.

"You're Doug, I presume?" Doing my best Rhett-Butler-Frankly-Scarlett-I-Don't-Give-A-Damn routine.

"Yes," a bass voice confirmed after an understandable hesitation.

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That Anthony. The bugger couldn't wait for tomorrow but had to have my "gift" delivered on my actual birthday. I stared at the man. He certainly didn't look desperate for a date. Yet here he was, sitting outside my house, waiting for me, like a puppy with a red ribbon tied around its neck. Well, maybe not a puppy...more like a black lab /husky mix, un-spayed and fully mature.

Although I was fatigued, hot and vexed with my friend for putting me in this awkward situation, the eyes and hands had me. Doug Poitras had striking eyes, the colour of freshly roasted cocoa beans, surrounded by thick fringes of brunette lashes, crowned by gently curving brows, giving him a slightly mischievous yet intelligent look. One of his hands was resting on the steering wheel, the other in his lap. I don't know why I like hands so much...whether it's the thought of what they can do, how they can touch, feel or make me feel, or perhaps it's the knowledge of how effortlessly these daily-used instruments can move from swinging a hammer, signing a business document or maneuvering a jet, to caressing a lover's body, driving him to brinks of indescribable joy. It's the shape, the strength, the texture: it was Doug Poitras' hands that got me. Touch Me! God, I was tired. But not that tired. I invited him in.

The house was deadly quiet without Barbra and Brutus bounding about, and I was sorry they weren't there to give me their first impressions of this man. I knew he was tall, six-three at least, dark and handsome, but do dogs like him? Always an important question to get an answer to.

Despite the lateness of the hour, it was still tinderbox hot outside so I directed Doug to the backyard deck, asked him to light a few citronella candles in case any mosquitoes were still awake and excused myself to get out of my airplane clothes-not my idea of first date attire. I hustled to the bedroom, stripped and debated a quick shower but knew that was just silly. Instead I threw some cold water over my face and chest, threw on a pair of knee-length cotton walking shorts and a tight T-I'm not beyond showing off once in a while-some scent, and I was back in the kitchen in a jiffy. I stuck my head out the back door and asked, "Beer or wine?"

He was sitting rather rigidly in a deck chair next to the patio table. He looked up, hesitated and answered, "Er...a beer would be great, thanks."

I noticed he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of pants that were obviously the bottom half of a conservative suit. Weird thing to wear on a blind date in the middle of summer, especially since he'd no doubt had Anthony's famously intrusive wardrobe guidance. If he could resist that, well, then he couldn't be all bad. I stifled a grin, thinking he looked like a Jehovah's Witness gone bad.