Stain of the Berry (7 page)

"Afraid?" he asked as if he'd just now heard the word for the first time.

I shrugged. "Of someone? Of having her apartment broken into? Of...of...of anything?" I was reaching here.

He raised his cup of tea to his lips and took a slow sip. "Afraid," he repeated. "Well, Mr. Quant, I have a passing acquaintance with fear. Generally I would say that Ms. Culinare was not afraid, but now that you mention it...that final phone call...yes, I suppose so. I suppose her manner could be described as someone who was afraid of whoever might be on the other end of the phone line." He let out a chuckle.

"But she certainly could not have been afraid of me...do you think?"

I shrugged. I decided I'd gotten all I could from Furberry, at least for the moment, and rose to leave.

"Thank you for your time, I appreciate it."

"Mr. Quant, you asked if any of the people in these portraits on my walls are family." He stood too and crossed over to an armoire and selected a heavy, bound photo album. "I want to show you something."

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I joined him and looked down at the album. He turned to a page that displayed a crumbling but carefully preserved picture of a rather rugged looking couple next to some kind of plough. "My parents,"

he said quietly. He turned the page to a picture of a young fellow who looked like one of those miner guys who sing in Rita MacNeil's choir when she does that song "Working Man"-what're they called? Men of the Deeps?-except a lot dirtier and a lot sadder looking. "This is Vilmer Kaufmann," Furberry told me using a faraway voice. "Every day this man lowered himself into the ground, into the dirt and choking dust of a potash mine, emerging only after many hours of bone-cracking labour looking like dirt himself. He hated every moment of it. He was often scared too."

I nodded, not sure what to make of this. "This is your relative then? Your father? Brother?"

"Me," he said, turning to look at me with one last raise of his mighty eyebrow.

I looked back at the face of the man in the picture, obscured by black grime and misery. Vilmer Kaufmann and Newton Furberry were indeed the same person.

I glanced questioningly at the portraits.

"Strangers," he said.

I nodded.

"I lived with my parents until they died. I lived a frugal life. I saved every cent so that the day I retired I could scour the grease and dirt from my skin, from my hair, from under my fingernails, change my name and buy myself the genteel life I'd always lusted after. I wanted to become a fine gentleman. I wanted people to believe the people in these portraits could have been my relatives." He closed the album and stared at its cover. "I just...I just wanted you to know that."

I reached for his hand and shook it warmly. Looking deep into his eyes, I said, "I suspect you've always been a fine gentleman, Mr. Kaufmann."

He smiled and held my hand a bit longer.

"Hello, my name is Warren Culinare. My sister was Tanya Culinare," I said to the woman I'd been directed to, having changed my persona on the elevator ride down from the peculiarity of Newton Furberry's apartment to the Gatorade-PowerBar-infused Fitness Corner gym.

"Oh my god," Donna Littlechild said with a surprised look on her face. "I'm so sorry. About Tanya I mean. It was terrible what happened to her. I can't believe it. I'm so glad someone else..." She stopped there. I guessed she was about to say she was glad someone else found Tanya. After all, she had landed near the front doors of this facility and as the gym's manager, Donna Littlechild could very well have been the one to discover her if it hadn't been for an early morning jogger who beat her to it.

"Did you know Tanya very well?" I asked.

She shook her head setting her dark ponytail swinging back and forth at the nape of her neck. "You know, I'm sorry, I really didn't. I knew she lived in the building, and she did have a membership here, but she pretty much came in, worked out and kept to herself. She was in good shape, knew what she was doing. She didn't need my help or the help of any of our instructors."

"I
see. I was wondering if you could let me into her locker, to get her things."

"Oh, gosh, yeah, I didn't even think about that. I wouldn't have noticed until her locker rent came due.

Do you have the key? Otherwise we'll have to break in."

I presented Donna with Tanya's key ring. "I'm not sure. Do any of these look right to you?"

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She didn't take the ring, instead she turned on her heel and marched back to the front desk, consulted a binder-probably a listing of lockers and who was renting them-then led me deeper into the long, narrow facility. The place was empty except for an impressively fit fellow in his late sixties who, judging by his unfortunate wardrobe, really liked the Olivia-Newton-John-"Let's-Get-Physical"-headband look. "We'll have to see. Let me check if there's anyone in the woman's locker room and if not, you can come in with me. Y'know, I think she had one of those cheap locks with a key, not a combination lock. I remember because the one time I did have something to do with Tanya was when her locker was broken into. I told her to get a better lock."

Boing! "Her locker was broken into? Is that common around here?"

"Actually no," she said as I followed her around a corner. "I know you'd expect me to say that, but it's true. Until Tanya's breakin, some time in the spring I think it was, we hadn't had a locker broken into for over a year. It was unusual. That's why I remember it."

We'd gotten to the door of the women's locker room and Donna excused herself to check it out. She was back in a flash with an apologetic look on her face. "Sorry. There is someone in there. We could wait a bit, or I could see if I can open it myself."

She looked trustworthy enough. I gave her the key ring and slumped against a wall to wait, watch Oliver Fig-Newton John and think about when I'd get a chance to go to the gym myself that day. I was determined to get back into my wonderpants without wincing.

Donna emerged with her hands full. "Yup, got it right off. It was this tiny key here. I see she didn't take my advice after the breakin about using a stronger lock." She handed me a small pile of Tanya's effects, mostly toiletries and a fresh towel. Nothing of much use to me.

"Do you remember what was taken when Tanya's locker was broken into?"

Donna nodded slowly. "That was the other weird thing. She said nothing was missing. She seemed pretty shaken up by it though. Maybe she noticed something later and I didn't hear about it."

"Were the police called in to investigate?"

Donna shrugged her shoulders, deep caramel brown against the white of her tank top. "Investigate what? A broken lock? Nothing was stolen. Didn't seem like a big deal really. I even wondered if it wasn't a mistake. You know, someone goes to the wrong locker, the key doesn't seem to work so they break the lock off, realize their mistake but are too embarrassed to admit to it. It happens." I nodded. "I s'pose." I was not entirely convinced.

Riversdale is one of Saskatoon's founding communities, amalgamated in 1905 with the village of Nutana and the town of Saskatoon. This sometimes seedy, sometimes charming area is a culturally rich enclave of the city's Chinese, Ukrainian, German, Vietnamese, Aboriginal, Hong Kong Chinese and Filipino populations. I've spent many happy Saturday afternoons traipsing the aging blocks of infamous 20th Street, where one can find one-chair barbers with nary a blow-dryer in sight, confectioners and grocers that stock hard-to-identify foreign goods, and secondhand stores and pawn shops that deal in anything you can imagine (and more). There are clothiers, art galleries, sex shops, take-your-life-in-your-own-hands beer parlours and specialty restaurants serving mouth-wateringly good and plate-heapingly plentiful meals at wallet-shockingly low prices. If you want to drink till dawn and stagger home with others who do it for a living; if you want to sit in a booth and watch pornographic videos; if you want to buy a cheap couch; if you want to taste the best dim sum; if you want to attend a prayer meeting; if you want, well, if you want anything that a typical shopping mall is too prim and proper to provide, anything just off the edge of propriety, anything exploding with sensation, 20th Street is the place to go in Saskatoon. Except after dark. Then you're just being reckless with your life.

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I found V Madison Steel Products, Inc.-where Tanya had worked in shipping and receiving-a couple blocks from 20th (with daylight to spare). It was just off 18th Street West on the 400 block of Avenue M, a curious part of town that time seems to have, if not forgotten, at least misplaced. As I made a right turn at the southeast corner of the incongruously named Optimist Park, I was surprised to find myself on a gravel road. Had city crews simply run out of asphalt and neglected to come back? Did the neighbourhood forget to pay its taxes? Was city council mad at these people for some reason?

I passed by a strip of businesses housed in those one-storey, circa 1950, squat, square, spare buildings, their exteriors matching the dull pallor of the gravel road. The street was littered with broken-down half-ton trucks and cars with doors, trunk hoods and side panels spray-painted colours that did not match.

In the distance I could see the impressive domes of St. George's Church, the odd New Life Feeds building that looks like a giant 24-pack of Scott Towels and overhead a crazy criss-cross pattern of countless power lines. And every so often, amongst the dingy buildings of this mostly industrial community, I spied a rat-trap house squatting behind bushy-leaved trees and high fences, as if in hiding.

I nose-in parked-as was the local custom-in front of a building near the dead end of a railroad track. I got out of the car and was surprised by the quiet. It was like the main drag of some western town right before the big shootout between the sheriff and a villain in a black cowboy hat. And there was me without my spurs and chaps.

While I waited in the mouldy, stifling hot reception area for someone to answer the doorchime I'd set off, I glanced through a company brochure from a Plexiglas holder on the front counter. Apparently V.

Madison was "Reinforcing the Steel Industry" with their product lines, which included steel beams, teleposts, rebar, wire mesh, epoxy rebar, carbon plates, quenched and tempered plates, water well casings, tie wire, loop ties, redi rod and a partridge in a pear tree.

"What can I do ya for?" a big-bellied man who really needed to visit a laundromat asked me as he shoved his way through a swinging door on the other side of the counter from where I was standing.

"I'm Warren Culinare," I said. I have no problem reusing a good disguise.

"Good fer you," he answered, sort of snarly, sort of impatient. I guessed I was interrupting his afternoon coffee break and since I probably didn't look anything like the people who usually set foot into V.

Madison Steel, he took me for someone who was either lost or a salesman, but certainly not a paying customer, and therefore expendable or suitable for some good, old-fashioned rudeness.

"I'm Tanya's brother." Take that.

"Oh shit, man," he said, realization dawning on him rather slowly. "You're Tanya's brother. Oh shit.

We're real sorry she died, right?"

Was that a question? "I was wondering if I could talk to someone here who knew Tanya."

"Why?"

Heh heh. I like it when people catch me with a surprise question. "Well, as you probably know, I live in the States and Tanya and I hadn't spent much time together lately. I just wanted to talk with someone who might, you know, tell me about her." I did my best to look almost weepy.

He looked confused for a moment, then said, "Jus a sec." And he disappeared behind the swinging door.

A full minute later the door opened again and out came a woman so skinny and grey I thought she might be a tube of steel herself.

"I'm Stella. You're Tanya's brother then?" she asked in a permanently hoarse voice. From the smell of her, I guessed a two-pack-a-day habit.

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"Yes. Were you a friend of hers?"

Her bony shoulders hunched up a bit. "I don't know if I'd say that. We pretty much alls just come in here and does our jobs and go home, you know. We don't have time to make friends or nothing."

"You didn't socialize after work or go out for lunch together or something?"

She scrunched up her face. "This ain't no salon or someplace like that, mister. This place is open from seven o'clock in the morning til three-thirty. No coffee breaks hardly, ten minutes for lunch at our desks or wherever, then we go home, take care of our homes and kids and yardwork and alls that, you know."

"Perhaps there is someone else?" I asked, hoping, but doubting it.

"Ain't no one else really. The guys certainly don't hang out and chit-chat, not with us anyways. And there's only Tanya and me in the office anyways. Now it's jus me till boss hires again. Left me a bunch of work. Sorry to says, I know she was your sister and alls, but alls I'm saying is that it's hard doing work for two, you know. She was okay though, Tanya was. She did her work; I did mine. We weren't friends, but we got along fine. A little sensitive maybe, fragile like, you know?" She seemed pleased with her use of a word she'd not had many opportunities to use before. "Yeah, fragile, like she might just as soon break in half as anything else if youse said the wrong thing to her. 'Specially lately." Stella couldn't take it any longer and dug a cigarette out of a packet she had been grasping in her bony left hand. She lit up like a pro and stared at me through the resultant haze with the content eyes of an addict meeting her fix.

"And why was that, Stella? Do you know why she was so fragile? Problems at home? At work?