Stain of the Berry (4 page)

Jared was already there when I was shown to our table next to the firepit on the ivy-covered deck that hangs off one side of the Earl's building on 2nd Avenue. It was a busy night with the young, beautiful staff showing off toned and tanned legs and arms while serving up pitchers of mixed drinks and frothy mugs of beer to rowdy patrons wearing their trendy best. Jared was in a gauzy, peach, striped shirt with light-coloured slacks, a combination that looked ridiculously good against his suntanned-bronze skin and head full of relaxed copper curls.

"You look fantastic," he enthused with his heart-shaped smile as I took my seat.

Jared was generous with compliments that never seemed insincere. I regarded my tan, short-sleeved sweater and matching pants, thought it might look okay, and hoped the outrageously expensive belt from gatt helped to hold in what I, in this den of youthful physical perfection, couldn't help but feel was an ever-expanding paunch. We ordered dirty martinis and made juvenile comments more suitable to horny high-school boys about our cute waiter until he returned with our drinks.

"Have you heard anything?" Jared asked for about the zillionth time since Sereena had pulled her vanishing act.

He knew I'd know exactly what he was talking about, but I sometimes like to play coy. "About what?"

His expression remained admirably unchanged while he sipped his cocktail and said nothing.

"Why do you ask?"

"You look a little gloomy."

I frowned at him. "I thought you just said I looked fantastic."

"Gloomily fantastic."

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"You've been talking to Anthony."

"We are spouses. We do that sometimes."

"She's disappeared, Jared," I said to him, sounding matter-of-fact to cover the real jolt of pain I felt each time I thought about it. "She's just gone." I guzzled my drink and wondered how soon I could order another.

"You know, even though I've known Sereena since she moved in next door to you," Jared said, leaning into me across the table, "I've wondered these last months since she's been gone whether maybe I never really knew her very well at all. Where was she born? Does she have family? How did she get that scar on her chin?"

He flipped an olive into his mouth and after a quick chew continued on. "I know some of the stories-or are they rumours?- about how she dated this king or that prime minister, how she once had a house in Belize and an apartment in Venice, gambled away fortunes, and we all know her story about Mick Jagger and the pineapple-you know some other stories. Anthony does too, but put them all together and we still have...nothing. Her life before Saskatoon is this colourful movie that has kept us entertained for years, but now that she's gone I've been getting this feeling-you know the one-where you've left the theatre and suddenly can't remember the plot of the movie you've just seen? How can that be? Wasn't I paying attention?"

I took a deep whiff of summer air, lightly singed with the cloying aroma of annual forest fires burning hundreds of kilometres north of the city. I knew what he meant. I'd felt it too. It was surprise and confusion mixed with a lingering guilt that we'd somehow had this superstar character living amongst us but, as with real superstars about whom one reads endless details in tabloids and newspapers, we really knew nothing of substance about her. But I was done with guilt.

"You know what I think, Jared?" I asked, feeling the heady effects of the cloudy gin. "Our relationship with Sereena and hers with us was just as she wanted it, just as she manipulated it to be. She had this way about her that made it feel as if she'd pulled us close, but really she kept us at a distance that felt safe to her. She was a genius at it.

"Sereena really gets to know the people around her, who they are, what they do, what they love and hate, what makes them interesting. She knows that given the slightest opening, people love to talk about themselves; I've done it, you've done it, we all have. But her ability to have people reveal themselves to her without reciprocating is also her way of hiding from them, like some kind of protective barrier."

Jared nodded thoughtfully. "So while we're self-importantly gushing on about ourselves and our lives, all we've managed to learn about her are the snippets of gossip and anecdotes she's judiciously meted out."

"All of them insignificantly small pieces of a big life," I said, "none of which come even close to revealing the bigger picture. And, unfortunately, that fact has made it virtually impossible for me to find her. I've been such a lousy detective when it comes to this, Jared. Over the years there've been clues about her cloudy past that I noticed but did nothing about: the elevator operator in New York City who called her Mrs. Ashbourne; the mysterious man aboard the yacht whom she refused to identify or even acknowledge existed. Her initials are SOS, for Pete's sake!"

"Mysterious man on a yacht?"

I slugged back the last drops of my martini. "You know, the last time I saw Sereena was on a yacht-the
Kismet
-in the Mediterranean. I noticed a man, really just an indistinct character in the shadows, but he seemed intent on watching me. Yet, when I confronted Sereena about him, she acted as if I were seeing things. Later, when I researched the ownership of the boat, I found it was registered to the A&W

Corporation. When I dug further, I discovered that A&W stands for Ashbourne and Wistonchuk."

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Jared's brow furrowed. "Ashbourne...the name the man in New York called her."

"Yes, and Wistonchuk is my mother's maiden name!"

"What? How...what does it mean?"

I shook my head like a dog with stick-on fleas. "Who knows!" My months-old exasperation was beginning to show. "Sereena, or Mrs. Ashbourne, or whatever her real name is, is gone and my mother claims ignorance...which I tend to buy; she's about as mysterious as a bowl of mashed potatoes. Since then, all my investigations have run into solid dead ends. Every time I think I've found a lead, it dries up like a dandelion and blows away. It's as if the whole world is in cahoots in hiding her from me. And I'm not good enough to find her, too stupid to figure this whole thing out!"

Jared reached across the table and laid his hand over mine and through sheer force of will urged my eyes to meet his. "Russell, you know that isn't true, don't you? None of this is your fault. Not finding her is not your fault. We've all seen what you've gone through these past months trying to find her. You think we haven't noticed, but we have. You have tried to move mountains to find her, all at the expense of your own time and money and career. Sereena hasn't been found because she doesn't want to be found. She wasn't stolen away; she's not some helpless damsel locked away in some tower awaiting your rescue.

"She's our friend-she's one of your best friends-so it hurts that she's not here, that you can't do anything to bring her back, but it's not through lack of trying. It's not because you're not good enough or smart enough. It's because this is the way she wants things to be. And as much as I hate it too-we all do-we have to respect that. We have to accept it and move on. You have to accept it."

"Have you?" I asked him.

He waited for a moment before answering, then, "I have. But only because I really feel she'll be back."

His ran his fingers gently over the bumps of my knuckles. "She'll be back, Russell. Some day."

I wasn't so sure.

I woke up late Sunday morning, with some whisker burn (obtained long after Jared went home to Anthony) and a nice big smile on my face. I spent the afternoon in my yard, cutting grass, pulling weeds, trimming dead branches off mock orange bushes that hadn't wintered well for some unknown reason. I deadheaded flowers, played with the dogs and downed gallons of diet iced tea. Around 4 p.m. I had a quick shower, prepared tapas and a pitcher of margaritas and fell onto a sun lounger in a gloriously exhausted state and napped and sipped and ate and napped and slurped and ate and read Ellen Hart's latest until the sun set, sometime around 10 p.m. A proper day off.

Monday morning appeared mere hours later and I was up unusually early (despite the margaritas). By 9:30 I was heading for the office in my Mazda, top down, freshly washed hair drying in the wind, whistling a happy tune. The cure for summer blahs? Get laid. It puts a definite bounce in one's step. And yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear Anthony's voice: "I'm not talking about random crushes followed by randy sex."

I strode into PWC, by all appearances the successful private investigator, even having set aside my wrinkled cotton shorts and flip flops in favour of a pair of sharply pressed black dress shorts, a fitted, white, short-sleeved shirt and a pair of closed-toe (but open-heel) black sandals; a summer-y yet put together look, I thought. Anthony would be proud; I was learning a thing or two. There were several people on Errall's side of the room, and a couple others on the other; obviously clients of Beverly's because they were much too conservative looking for Alberta. I threw Lilly a smile and wink and headed for the stairs. She smiled back and waved me over.

Lilly is a blond Snow White-several years post-fairy-tale-wedding-whose Prince Charming-hockey-playing-beer-drinking-husband finally agreed to her working outside the home. Perhaps he'd come to 20 of 163

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understand that she was more than just a pretty face, and singing with birds and picking daisies in the forest were not nearly challenging enough for her.

"Good weekend?" I asked as I approached her desk.

"Oh, terrific. You too?"

"Uh-huh. Hey, your cheeks look a little rosy." Rosier than normal I should have said. "You were out in the sun, eh?"

Lilly's big blues, the type you see on day-old babies, made a swing over to the waiting room and back.

"Those people are here to see you."

Ahhhhhhh...what? I glanced over my shoulder and saw a near middle-aged man with two elderly people, another man and a woman. They were staring at me with expectant looks on their faces. I turned back to Lilly and whispered, "Who are they?"

"The younger man is Mr. Warren Culinare. He's here with his parents."

Culinare? Could they be relatives of Tanya Culinare, the woman who'd committed suicide?

I thanked Lilly and went to greet my unexpected visitors. We shook hands, introduced ourselves (the parents were Anne and Mike Culinare), they all turned down coffee, and I led them upstairs to my office, which I hoped I hadn't left too messy.

"How can I help you?" I asked once we were settled around my desk.

Anne and Mike, a stout, grey, wrinkle-faced couple nearing their seventies remained silent and looked at their son as if only he could explain.

"We were sent here-or rather it was suggested that we come here-by Officer Kirsch of the Saskatoon police," Warren Culinare said. He was forty and despite stylish clothing, careful grooming and a gym membership, he couldn't deny genetics. In thirty years he would be his father; already his belly was expanding over his belt line and youth was melting off his face. "He was the officer who looked after things when Tanya, my sister, died."

I gave them a sympathetic nod. "I heard about Tanya's suicide. I'm sorry for your loss." I wondered what Kirsch thought I could do for these people. Did he think I'd been lying to him? Did he think I'd tell
them
why their sister and daughter had my phone number with her when she died?

"That's not true!" Anne Culinare spoke for the first time. "She didn't commit suicide." Her light accent was hard to place. Polish maybe.

"Mom," her son warned her off. "Let me handle this. I'm sorry, Mr. Quant, we're all just, well, very upset. You see we buried Tanya on Saturday."

I nodded. I'd seen the obituary in the paper.

"But Mom is right. We don't believe Tanya killed herself."

The mother shook her head but said nothing. The father's sad eyes travelled from wife to son and back again, but never looked directly at me.

"I don't understand," I told the family. "Did Constable Kirsch say something...?"

"No, not really. He said the investigation pointed toward suicide. I got the feeling they weren't going to be looking into things any further. I told him there was no way Tanya would have done that :o herself.

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Never. She wasn't that kind of girl. He said there was nothing the police could do unless we had some proof."

"And do you?"

He hesitated before admitting, "No."

"My Tanya did not do this thing," Mrs. Culinare told me again, but she seemed to have little else to add to the statement of what she believed to be fact.

"Before we left the police station that day," Warren continued, "the officer took me aside, told me your name and said that maybe you could help us."

Really? Darren Kirsch had never referred me to a client before. Most cops never would, unless they thought the police couldn't help any longer. Was that the case here? Did Darren believe there might be something more to find out even though the police were ruling Tanya's death a suicide? He'd obviously not told the Culinares about the paper with my name and phone number on it. But he must still think there might be some connection between me and Tanya Culinare, even if I didn't know what it was myself.

"What kind of help are you looking for?" I asked.

"My parents live in Kindersley, a few hours away by car, and I live in the States, in Washington. There's no other family in Saskatoon, no one who can tell us more about Tanya. You see, our family...well, I hate to admit it, but we didn't know Tanya very well any more. We all ended up living so very far apart; my parents are getting old, and my sister and I are twelve years apart in age and...oh well, I guess there are no good excuses...we always just thought there'd be plenty of time-some other time-to get together. We didn't even spend Christmas together for the last couple of years. We won't make that mistake again." He shared a meaningful look with his parents. "Other things always seemed more important at the time. But, as always, that's a stupid mistake to make in life. Stupid." He stopped there to swallow hard, then continued.