"Sven, I know what I'm asking may be difficult for you to consider, but, well, do you think Walter might have been capable of committing blackmail?"
The bald head swung back and forth. It was the swiftest movement I'd seen from the man since I'd arrived. "Oh no. Oh no. I may be old and hard of hearing and can't see much and maybe losing my memory, but I know my Wally," he insisted. "He was a good man. He would never blackmail anybody. He wouldn't be able to live with himself. I'm telling you the God's honest truth, Mr.. ..mister man. And I don't want to hear that you're passing around those kinds of horrible rumours about my poor Wally, either. That clear?"
"I'm sorry, Sven." I really was. "I don't mean to upset you with these questions. I don't know if what I suspect is true. But someone killed your husband. I'm just trying to find out who, and why."
He nodded a bit. "Well, okay then. But just forget about this blackmail nonsense. It's just not true."
I sighed. "Sven, is there anything you can think of that might help me find Walter's murderer?" I was going to suggest enemies, money problems, that sort of thing. But I didn't think it would do me, or Sven, any good.
"I'd have to say a big no to that, young man." He petted the nest of dog fur in his lap. "And so would Friedrich. Or is this Kurt?" He stared at the animal. "Is that brown hair or red? So hard to tell in this light." He fiddled with one of his ear pieces, then said, "Mr. Quant, could I ask a favour of you?"
"Of course," I agreed, surprised he remembered my name when he'd clearly forgotten it earlier.
"Would you mind going into the kitchen cupboard and checking on how much dog food we have left? I can't see very well, you know, and I can only reach so high. I'm afraid to use the step ladder because I'm not too steady on my feet. I'm scared I might fall off. Wally did the shopping before he left for Victoria, but it's been a week. I don't know how much we've got left. Could you do that for me? I don't care about myself, but I don't want the kids running out of food."
While I scouted the kitchen cupboards for dog food, I took the liberty of assessing the people food supplies as well. By the looks of things, Sven was getting down to a diet of dry cereal and condiments.
About twenty minutes later, as I finished unpacking a few things I'd picked up from the corner store to restock Sven's and the Poms' basics, two Molly Maids from Ash House arrived. I made introductions, paid the cleaners including a hefty tip, and filed a mental note to have a talk with Ethan about Sven's future.
Churlish clouds filled the sky by the time I reached PWC. The temperature was dropping, the wind getting stronger, and I was almost out of time. Anthony and Jared's wedding was only hours away, and my meeting with Reginald Cenyk a couple hours after that. Maybe it was the weather, but a bad feeling was growing in my stomach. Was my archivist informant in danger? Was I? Instead of one murder, were we dealing with a string of murders? Was someone else about to get killed?
The news about Helen Crawford's death was interesting indeed. I now had a new twist to take into account. Had she truly died of natural causes, or was Walter Angel's death not the first murder tied to the Durhuaghe papers? Had someone killed Helen, then Walter? Were both archivists killed by the same hand? Was it Durhuaghe? Maybe he'd lied to me. Maybe he'd been blackmailed by Helen all along. He'd have thought with her death the blackmail would stop. But to find it would continue—in perpetuity— because of the existence of the treasure map, might have been too much for him to swallow. He'd have realized that he would be forever under the thumb of whoever had the map. That couldn't be an easy way to live.
Tuxedo in hand, I quickly scaled the fire stairs to the second floor of PWC and made it inside just as the first of a series of roving showers dropped on the city. I hung the garment bag on the back of my office door and plunked myself down in front of my computer. As I typed away, I kept one eye on the time indicator on the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
It took longer than I'd hoped to find what I needed. I dialled the phone number as I stripped. An answering machine took my call. I left a brief message and my cell number and hung up.
All I had left to put on, other than my jacket, was the cummerbund. I remembered the handy rule of thumb—or should I say rule of crumb—taught to me by Anthony. If you consider the cummerbund as your crumb catcher, you'll always know to put the thing on with pleats open to the top, making it easier to catch crumbs in. I guess people at fancy events must be notoriously messy eaters.
I ran downstairs to check myself out in the full-length mirror.
Not too shabby. Anthony and Jared had selected cream-coloured tuxes with fawn accents for their attendants. It looked good with my not-yet faded Hawaiian tan and sun-bleached hair. I pulled up the jacket and turned around to assess the assets. Not exactly up to wonderpants standard, but the caboose was looking A-okay.
The Mazda was purring out of the parking lot a few minutes later when I slammed on the brakes. I raced back into PWC, opened the safe in my office, retrieved the wedding rings I'd been storing there for months, and galloped back to the car.
As an overcast sky continued to threaten rain, delivering every half hour or so, an anomalous mist swirled about the tents behind Ash House in which one-hundred-and-fifty guests were gathered, awaiting the nuptials. The whole setting was beginning to look a little like a Sherlock Holmes movie starring Basil Rathbone. The only disparities in my foggy little dreamscape were Sereena's candy hearts, now set up on the lawn, bleating their sad-looking orange, yellow, and pinkness through the blur of grey. In its own way, it was a rather oddly beautiful scene. Not exactly the warm, dry, sunny day hoped for, but as Sereena always says, a sign of a person's intelligence is their ability to adapt.
I found Jared in a second floor bedroom, fussing with his bow tie.
"I told Anthony to go with the pre-tied bow ties," I said as I entered the room and took over the tying.
"You'd think as a former model I could handle this. But my fingers are all thumbs today." He laughed nervously. "Gawd, listen to me. I've been spouting cliches all day. Next thing you know I'll be hunting for something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. Do you think my hair looks okay I shouldn't have had it cut yesterday it always looks best several days after a cut it's too new I need some product and these shoes are killing me but you look great Russell I love your hair that way and can you believe the weather thank god for the tents I suppose we'll miss seeing the sunset now like we planned I mean what's the point of a sunset wedding if you're in a tent but we knew..."
"Jared. Jared. Jared!" I took hold of his shoulders and gave them a bit of a shake, setting his copper tinted curls to bouncing. I'd never seen the man so jumpy before. Ever. Jared was always the cool, collected one.
"I know, I know," he responded with a lopsided smile. "I've walked runway in front of thousands of people, and it never fazed me. But this.. .this getting married stuff is.. .well, it's just crazy. My heart feels like it's going to burst out of my chest. Imagine the mess!"
We laughed. Not because the visual was funny, but because we really needed to.
"Do you remember, Russell?" Jared asked, suddenly serious again. "A couple of years ago? After this." He indicated the scar tissue on his face.
I hardly noticed the disfigurement anymore. Jared's spirit, not to mention his killer smile and flashing green eyes, easily shone through anything any deranged attacker could have done to him or his appearance. When I looked at him now, I saw the same lovely face I saw, only inches from mine, on the day we woke up together in that country barn and realized we'd survived being abandoned and left for dead in a raging winter storm. I saw my friend. I saw a man I loved, who was beautiful inside and out.
"Remember," he urged again. "I came to you, and asked you to help me leave Anthony?"
I nodded. It had been a horrible, ugly time in my relationship with Jared. He'd decided that the mutilation had made him into a different person. That he was no longer the same man Anthony fell in
love with. Anthony and Jared had long been admired for being one of the most strikingly beautiful pairs in all of coupledom. How they looked, how they dressed, how they lived larger than life, was hard to separate from their love affair.
Jared stared at his face in the mirror, unconsciously busying his hands by trying to straighten his curls. "After her original cancer diagnosis and mastectomy, I watched Kelly run away from Errall, from her life in Saskatoon. She escaped. She ran away and found another life. I envied her. It's what I wanted. I wanted it for Anthony too. I thought he deserved another chance with someone else."
"You were stupid," I said bluntly. And of course, the second after I said it, I realized it probably wasn't the nicest thing to say to a groom on his wedding day. But fortunately...
"I was stupid," he wholeheartedly agreed. "Kelly realized it too, didn't she? She eventually figured out that she ran away from the only thing she really needed. The only thing she couldn't live without. That's why she came back. To die with Errall back in her life."
More nodding from me. An impossibly huge lump was growing in my throat. I wondered when thoughts of Kelly would no longer do that to me. Probably never.
"She ran out of time. But I'm not going to wait that long. I love Anthony. He loves me. My life could not be more perfect than it is right now."
I was in awe of this man, whose celebrated beauty had been taken from him, destroyed in mere seconds by a glassful of acid tossed into his face by another man with a damaged mind. He was getting through it. He was leaving it behind.
"It's time." Sereena was at the door.
I finished with Jared's tie, gave him a kiss on the cheek, then we were off.
It was a beautiful wedding. Except for the plough wind.
The United Church minister was just getting to the good part when the sides of the tent began to quiver. Her voice rose to be heard over the bellowing wind. Guests on the outside aisles leaned away from the shuddering canvas walls. The only warning that bad was about to get much worse, was a menacing whipping sound that filled the air, like rope being pulled through giant eyelets.
And then the top of the tent disappeared.
Chapter 15
Cries of panic and alarm ripped through the air.
Thankfully, the driving force of the plough wind, like a runaway locomotive made of air, moved on as abruptly as it had arrived. Unfortunately, it took the top of the wedding tent with it.
By the time the crowd settled down, the canvas sheet was probably sitting in a field someplace far, far away like North Dakota. Surprisingly, pretty much everyone had remained where they were. So when the blustering wind suddenly died down to barely a whisper, everything looked just as it had before. Except, that is, for the great lengths of flower garlands, and anything else that was lighter than a human, strewn about the space in an unholy mess.
We all looked at each other, at first struck numb and dumb by the freakish thing that had just occurred. I caught sight of my mother across the room and expelled a sigh of relief to see that she was unharmed and seemingly unfazed. Slowly the tent—or what was left of it—filled with murmuring, reassurances that we were all okay. We stared up at the sky above us—now visible where the roof had been—almost accusingly, angry at the churning clouds, thick with rain, for what they had just done to us. Then murmur turned to mumble turned to all-out cacophony as people began to recount what happened, as if no one else had seen it but them. Eventually, that too died down. We fussed with our hair, straightened collars and hemlines, then fixed our gazes expectantly on the preacher.
Just as her mouth opened, so did the sky. The rain that fell on us was heavy but warm. We might as well have been in a shower, in a shower with our finest clothes on and eighty dollar updos. And two grooms waiting for the words they'd waited years to hear.
It was a disaster. The makeshift wedding chapel was in total disarray. The guests were soaking wet. The decorations were slowly making their way down stream to the South Saskatchewan River. The preacher was discombobulated, not knowing whether she should go on with the ceremony, try to turn some of the water to wine, or race for the hills. Everyone was looking at our grooms with pity in their eyes. Should we cry? Get angry? Scream in frustration?
I caught Anthony's eye. I was jolted by what I saw there. A gleam. A sparkle. The look of a man who knows, without doubt, what the important things in life are. Not only do you not sweat the small things, you don't sweat the big ones either. Just keep your eye on the prize. And today, his prize was Jared, and making that man his husband. No matter what. Everything else was just window dressing.
The sound that came next was the most unexpected of all. Anthony and Jared threw back their heads...and laughed.
They were laughing so hard, they had to hold on to each other to keep from falling down. Their upturned faces were being christened by sluicing rain, perfect hair flattened against their skulls, tuxedos soaked through. What a couple they made. Nothing on the outside meant a thing. Anthony, at fifty-eight, an aging James Bond, and Jared, the once breathtakingly handsome supermodel with a scarred face. They were perfect for one another.
No one knew what to do at first. But of course, there was only one thing left to do. We joined in. First me. Then the other attendants. The minister. Everyone else. I'm sure the gales of rollicking laughter could be heard all the way to that field in North Dakota.
And that was how Anthony and Jared became Mr. and Mr. Anthony and Jared Gatt-Lowe. Protected from a whirlwind of turmoil by a cocoon of love, our love for them, their love for each other.
As the wedding party, including me and Errall, made our way down the sodden aisle, out of that wrecked tent, a clear voice rang out. Someone was strumming a guitar and singing. I searched the space and found my sister, Joanne, perched on a stool in one corner, near a flapping gape in the tent wall. Her eyes were closed, head tilted slightly back, revealing tendons and muscles toiling at her slender throat. The song was unfamiliar to me. Something about her riding her pain like the wind. It was loud. It was inappropriate for the occasion. And it was perhaps, the most haunting-ly beautiful sound I'd ever heard. It was her gift to Anthony and Jared. It was indeed the song of a wounded bird.
The major disaster that was the wedding weather, helped dwarf the minor one that occurred as I continued down the aisle. My cellphone began to jangle. Anthony and Jared were too busy smiling and waving and ducking confetti to notice a thing. The guests were entranced by the grooms and the music accompanying their first walk as husbands. Errall, walking next to me, was another matter however. I smiled weakly at her. She glared at me with something akin to murder in her eyes.
As soon as we breached the edge of the tent and were outdoors, I ran away. More to escape Errall's wrath, than to catch the call.
"Hello," I answered as I took cover from the insistent rain under the roof of a nearby gazebo.
"I'm calling for Russell Quant," a voice told me. "I hope I have the right number."
"This is Russell Quant. Who am I speaking with?"
"My name is Susan Crawford. Helen Crawford's sister."
Hallelujah. I thanked the woman for calling back and got right into it.
"Well, I don't know anything about a treasure map," Susan said after I'd finished giving her a quick rundown of the past week's events (just the parts she needed to know.) "But I am familiar with the Durhuaghe archive items you describe."
Double hallelujah.
"Helen swore me to secrecy when it all began. But she needed someone to talk to. Someone independent of the archives. Although we lived in different cities, and rarely saw one another in person until she retired and moved here, my sister and I have always remained close. We spoke on the phone several times a month." I marvelled at this.
"What exactly did she tell you about the Durhuaghe material? Helen found the journal and letters in the items he donated ten years ago, isn't that right?"
"I don't recall if it was Helen or one of the other archivists
who first discovered the material," she said, "but I do remember that the discovery caused quite a commotion at the time. There was a great deal of disagreement amongst the archivists about what to do with the item in question. Should they destroy it, return it, or keep it in the archives in the spirit of full disclosure? You can see how opinions might vary.
"Helen took her stewardship role very seriously, Mr. Quant. She loved history. And books—she started out as a librarian, you know—and she loved the world of great literature and revered the people who created it. Simon Durhuaghe was among her favourites. To her, he truly was a god. She knew that by allowing the information in those journals and letters to become public knowledge, she would be responsible for a disastrous blow to Durhuaghe and his career. She simply couldn't bring herself to play a part in that.
"It took my sister weeks of intense deliberation and soul-searching to decide what to do. A minute in the shredder, and no one would be the wiser. Yet to return the material to Durhuaghe would make her an accomplice in a different kind of act she also could not stomach: subverting history.
"Helen was in a horrible bind, Mr. Quant. Although she didn't want the papers to see the light of day, she also did not feel she had a right to be part of making them disappear forever. We talked about this over the phone for hours and hours. Our phone bills were astronomical. Helen did accept that perhaps, one day, the information should be made known. Just not under her watch. She did not share her final decision with me. If she hid the journal and letters, where, or how, I cannot say, Mr. Quant. She considered that privileged information. But this map you talk about, the poem with the historic clues, although I couldn't swear to it, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to be told my sister had created it. She was peculiar in that way. Using the past to hide the past, oh yes, there's a certain nice quality about that. Helen would have found great pleasure in it."
I was surprised by how much the sister knew, and disappointed by what she didn't. "If she didn't tell you about what she did with the material, why would she involve Walter Angel? I understand they weren't that close."
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