Stain of the Berry (8 page)

Boyfriend problems? Anything like that?"

Scrawny shoulder shrug. "Hard to say. Didn't talk to each other much, as I says already. She jus' wasn't real stable, that's all. Lotsa women are like that."

A real feminist, this Stella. "I see. Well, maybe I could clean out her desk? Did she have a desk? Or work area?"

"Oh sure. C'mon back."

I followed Stella through the swinging doors into a large warehouse space with row after row of two-storey tall metal shelves stacked with V. Madison Steel product. Powerful fluorescents tried their best to lighten up the place, but with all the tall shelving and grungy-coloured steel, the alleyways between the shelves remained depressingly dim. We followed a maze-like path to get to the far left side of the warehouse where in one corner sat two face-to-face desks surrounded by several scratched up, dented file cabinets.

"I do the accounting 'round here," she said pointing to one desk. "But now I do shipping and receiving too since Tanya left." Okay, okay I got it. Tanya's death left you in a lurch. "Anything Tanya left behind that was hers and not the company's would be in that there desk." She nodded toward the other one.

"Here's a box," she croaked, holding aloft a cardboard container about the size of a boot box that she'd grabbed from a nearby receptacle.

I accepted the box and sat down on a metal folding chair (definitely not an economically savvy office environment here) in front of Tanya's desk and gazed at the piles of paper trail for steel products.

"Thanks."

As Stella slid behind her own desk, she lit up another cigarette and watched me. I began opening drawers in search of personal items. Even if they didn't relate to my case, somebody needed to do this, and it might as well be me. I could leave whatever I found here in Tanya's apartment to be boxed up at the end of the month with the rest of her things.

34 of 163

3/15/2011 10:56 PM

D:
BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

There wasn't much. Just a fake-suede-covered folder full of personal stuff like sales receipts from McNally Robinson, Audio Warehouse and some local area restaurants, a copy of her most recent tax return (I guessed she must have used her work computer to complete it) and some miscellaneous correspondence. I didn't want to go through them with the grey ghost watching over me, so I just stuffed the folder in the box. On the desktop was a Daytimer opened to the day before Tanya's death-just as she'd left it. I flipped back and forth and found that it was more of a manifest for shipping and receiving deadlines for various products and follow-up customer calls she'd planned to make. The only personal item I found in the pages I scanned was a notation about a month earlier for a haircut. I threw it into the box anyhow. There was a hand mirror, some cuticle scissors and hand lotion and that was about it. I decided to leave the pens and erasers, half-used pads of yellow stickies and calculator for the next lucky gump who landed this job-or long-.suffering Stella-whoever it ended up being.

"I
can show myself out," I told Stella as I rose from the desk.

"Okay, then," the words came out aloft a puff of tobacco.

I gave her a smile, tucked the box under my arm and headed for the front door. I heard the chime again as I exited the building and was enjoying a much needed lungful of fresh air when a wall of brute force slammed into me from behind and knocked it right out of me.

35 of 163

3/15/2011 10:56 PM

D:
BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

I literally flew through the air in one direction while the box of Tanya's things that I'd just collected from her work desk headed in another. I landed atop the hood of my Mazda, my lower belly taking most of the brunt of the collision. Everything happened so fast I didn't even have time to turn around to face my aggressor before I felt a huge weight fall on top of me. We flailed in that position for several seconds as the man tried to grab my arms and pin them behind me. By the pillow-soft cushioning I felt between me and him and a rather distinct scent of old sweat mixed with sausage and onion pizza, I was pretty certain my attacker was the Weight Watchers 'Before' Picture, "What can I do you fer" guy who'd greeted me so warmly when I'd first arrived. Knowing that tummies full of sausage and onion pizza don't like to get hit, I arched up my shoulders as far as I could (with three hundred extra pounds on me), positioned my elbows into sharp angles, and jacked them back, aiming for bloated central. When I met my mark, the fella let out a painful "whoooof" and fell back just enough to give me room to turn around and get in a doozy of a right-fisted punch to the face which landed square on his nose. He looked at me, startled, and put his hands to his face just in time to stem the flow of blood that started to burble from his left nostril.

"That's enough," crowed someone from my right.

I swivelled to face the voice, fists at the ready.

"Ed, you go inside and get cleaned up," the woman said and big Ed complied without a backwards look.

I think he was feeling rather sheepish having been beat by a guy half his size. I was about to shout out that I'm gay too, but decided to contain myself.

"Now tell me who the hell you are!" the woman bellowed at me. She wasn't much lighter than Ed and had an almost perfectly round face topped with a mop of short, curly brown hair. Her eyes were chocolate covered almonds under knitted brows and her nostrils were flaring wide.

"Why?" I answered back, now a bit surly myself. "Because you got me just where you want me?" I crossed my arms over my puffed out chest and leaned back against my car, striking a pose that exuded more confidence than I actually felt. Shit...was that a rip in my shirt? "You should get your bodyguard better training."

"He's not a bodyguard. That's just Ed; he works the forklift around here."

"Forklift operator and attack dog, nice for the resume.”

"Who are you?" she asked again, this time with a little less hostility.

"Who are
you?"
Me not quite giving up on the hostility yet.

"I'm Vicky Madison. I own this place of business."

Oh.

"And I know you're not Tanya's brother. I met Tanya's brother at her funeral and you're not him."

Oops.

"Now tell me who you are and why you're stealing Tanya's things."

Finally, someone who seemed to give a damn. "I'm Tanya's other broth..."

She spit to the side then turned back to me with a look that said she wasn't buying what I was selling.

"Give me a break, jerk off. I know damn well Tanya only had one brother."

Well, it was worth a try. I had one more trick up my sleeve-the truth. "My name is Russell Quant. I'm a 36 of 163

3/15/2011 10:56 PM

D:
BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

private detective. Warren Culinare hired me to look into Tanya's death."

Vicky's face changed. Her nostrils returned to normal size, the throbbing at her temples subsided and her eyes miraculously turned from dark brown to a pleasant, almost hazel shade. How'd she do that?

"What do you mean, look into? We were told Tanya killed herself. Isn't that right?"

I nodded, taking a less aggressive pose as well. "That's what the police say, yes."

"Then...?"

"Her family wants to know if Tanya did kill herself, why she did it."

"If she
killed herself? You think there's a chance she didn't?"

I shrugged and watched her face closely. "What do you think?"

Vicky raised her hands in the air, palms out towards me. "Hey, I'm just her employer."

"I...the family would be grateful for anything you could tell me about Tanya."

Vicky's eyes narrowed as she thought about this and looked me over, as if deciding whether or not to trust me. "I got nothing to say to you." I guess the answer was not.

We stood there for a few seconds, regarding each other, assessing what more could come of our interaction. I broke the stalemate and handed the woman a card. "This is my business card. If you think of anything I should know..." I stopped there, thought of something and added, "I promise to keep anything you tell me confidential, even from the family, unless you indicate otherwise."

She looked at me hard, stuck the card in her workshirt breast pocket and stomped off.

I was feeling light-headed as I directed my convertible out of Riversdale toward Idylwyld, and it wasn't from my do-si-do with big Ed. The dashboard clock told me it was almost five and I hadn't had a bite to eat since breakfast. I zoomed up Idylwyld to Circle Drive-the freeway that's supposed to circle the city but is neither a circle nor a freeway-and headed for Tong's Wok. Two hours later I was home, had taken Barbra and Brutus for a jog at the dog run and was microwaving a heaping plate of Singapore Noodles, Wei Wonton, Tong's Wok Special Mixed Vegetables and Mushroom Egg Foo Yung all atop a hillock of steamed rice. When the micro beeped that my meal was ready, I prepped a tray with my food, soy sauce, utensils, napkins and a can of Kokanee. With a glass of water for me and bowl of water for the pooches, I carried my bounty outdoors to the table on the backyard deck. After winching up the patio umbrella and setting everything out, I went back inside to retrieve the box of Tanya's things I'd collected at V. Madison Steel. Once settled, I spent a few minutes satisfying my growling gut, shovelling food into it like a human garburator-not good for me, I know, but momentarily satisfying. After a bit I slowed down and took some time to sip my drinks and watch Brutus root around in a bush of spent peonies. Barbra was content to sit at my feet and watch as well, it being too hot by far for her to be anywhere but under the shade of an umbrella.

Sufficiently sated to continue my meal at a more leisurely pace, I opened the box of goodies from Tanya's desk and pulled out the suede folder. Piece by piece I assessed each item for its usefulness to my case. The pile of "useless" grew quickly, and the pile of "useful" was discouragingly barren, until I came upon an envelope stuffed into the inside flap of the folder. It was a standard size envelope with Tanya's name and c/o work address typed on the front. No return address. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a single word of text on it:

BOO!

I drew in a quick breath, taken aback by the jarring simplicity of the word, loaded with as much striking power as an unexpected slap to the face. A million obvious questions jumped to mind, not least of all 37 of 163

3/15/2011 10:56 PM

D:
BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

which was: Who would send her such a thing?

So Tanya did have at least one enemy. Is this why she barricaded her apartment door? Kept a bat under her bed? Who was she protecting herself from? Why didn't anyone seem to know anything about her?

Were they just unwilling to talk to me? Or was I talking to the wrong people? The two people who did have an opinion about Tanya-Newton Furberry and Stella-thought she was fragile and possibly unstable.

Were they right?

I pushed aside my plate, downed the rest of my beer and reached for Tanya's Daytimer. I began in January and studied each entry for anything that would give me some clue about this woman. Other than obvious work-related notes, she was very concise in her entries, often relying on only one or two words to jog her memory. By the time I reached July, only two things stuck out. She'd made very few notations for the time period outside working hours-other than a couple of haircut appointments-except for the letter

"M" which was always followed by a time in early evening, such as "M - 7 p.m." or "M - 5:15." After March, the M's disappeared. The second thing I noted was a noon-hour appointment, every two weeks, with someone called Dr. D.

I had to put some thought into how I could possibly track down a Dr. D amongst all the possible doctors with a D beginning their first or last name in Saskatoon. So I focused on the hopefully easier M clue and began to recite M possibilities to myself: "Mom...call mom? Milk? Money...Madison...could it be her boss?

Was she meeting her boss at night for some reason? What else? M...m...mmmmmustard?" There was one more obvious option. I ran inside the house and came back seconds later with the address book I'd found in Tanya's apartment. I flipped to the "B's" and saw the entry for Moxie Banyon, the girl in the photo, the same one who Newton Furberry saw entering Tanya's apartment with her own set of keys.

I ran back in for the cordless phone. When I returned, Barbra lifted her head from the cool deck floor and gave me a questioning look, but she was nowhere near inquisitive enough to actually get up. Brutus came loping over for a head pat and slumped down next to his sister, having gallantly rid the yard of all dragons. I punched in the numbers next to Moxie's name.

"The number you have dialled is a long distance number..."

I hung up and looked at Moxie's address. Chestnut Avenue. I hadn't heard of such a street in Saskatoon, but then again I hadn't heard of a lot of streets in Saskatoon, especially in some of the newer suburban areas that seemed to be spreading like wildfire on the outskirts of town. The first three numbers of her phone number were six-nine-two. These sounded even less familiar. Well, as long as the number was somewhere in Saskatchewan I should still be able to reach her without much trouble. I keyed in the number with the three-zero-six Saskatchewan area code prefix.

Bingo. It rang, then, "We're sorry, the number you have dialled is no longer in service, please..."

I hung up. Crap. I dialled 4-1-1 for the operator.

"This is Brenda with Sasktel. How can I help you?"

"Brenda, I have a Saskatchewan number beginning with six-nine-two. Can you tell me where that number is located?"

Silence, some clicking in the background, then, "Six-nine-two is a Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, number, sir. Can I direct your call?"

"Yes. The number I have seems to be out of service. Do you have a number in Moose Jaw for Moxie Banyon?" I spelled both names.