"And tell him the rest," Kim urged but didn't wait for him to comply. "He was leaving his house to go to work one night and his doorstep was covered with marbles. He could have broken his legs or something horrible. And his house was broken into but nothing was missing. Then, two weeks later, he was taking some cold medicine and thank God his nose wasn't plugged up and he could still smell because the cough medicine bottle was filled with bleach! Imagine if he had downed that!"
Richie continued, shaking words floating on a tremulous voice, "I feel like I'm being followed all the time, I know he's been in the audience at the Shakespeare tent watching me...the audience gets comment cards to fill out after the show is done, and one night someone had filled in each blank with the word 'Boo,' so I know I'm not imagining it. I hear weird noises in the middle of the night, like someone's knocking at my door or scratching at my windows. It's...it's...it's driving me nuts."
I did not doubt it. My own stomach involuntarily contracted as I listened to these ghost stories, ghost stories that were true. I could also appreciate that what Richie and Kim and the others were living through was hard to empathize with; much of it was difficult, if not impossible, to prove with little solid evidence to take to the police. It was unrelenting: the constant presence of evil taking little bites out of their psyches, eroding their lives until slowly but surely they'd all become helpless balls of fear. Whoever this boogeyman was, he knew what he was doing; he was someone who had studied fear and how to instill it in others. To think that such a character was out there, roaming the streets of Saskatoon, was a frightening thing.
"When did this start?" I asked.
"February, I think," Richie told me.
"I didn't really notice anything until late March, April maybe," Kim said.
It fit. Everything that had happened to this group of people happened after December, after that fateful trip to Regina when they were snowed-in in Davidson and had their picture taken.
"So why us?" Kim questioned. "Is it a gay thing? Because we're a gay choir?"
"It could be," I said. "But I think it's more than that."
"What? What could it be?"
I decided to share my latest theory with them. "I think it has to do with a photo that was taken of the Pink Gophers."
Richie pasted a frown on his face. "A photo? What are you talking about?"
"Before Duncan disappeared, he left me a photo. It was a picture of the Pink Gophers, and Moxie Banyon, Tanya's girlfriend. Moxie wasn't a member of the choir, yet before she died, she too was suffering the same kind of harassment as the rest of you."
"So you think this has something to do with who was in the picture?" Kim clarified.
"Yes. Moxie was a target of the boogeyman just like the others, and the harassment began shortly after the picture was taken."
"It makes sense," Kim said, looking at her friend for agreement. "Don't you think, Richie?"
He simply nodded.
She looked back at me. "If that's true then...you think the boogeyman is one of us, don't you?"
"It's a definite possibility."
"But I thought you said every one of us has been a target for this guy. If that's true then..." She stopped for a moment, gave it some thought then reached the obvious conclusion: "Ohhhhhh...you think one of us is lying about being harassed?"
"Possible." It was best for me to stay as quiet as I could here, listen to what these two had to say.
"Richie, what do you think?" He said nothing and she kept on. "That's crazy though. I know these people. They may not be my best friends or anything, but we've spent a lot of time together, at rehearsals and concerts; we've partied together. None of them are capable of this kind of crap, no way, right Richie?"
"Yeah," he said, breaking a rather long silence. "No way."
"There's another possible suspect," I said, not sure if I yet agreed with them.
"Huh? Who?" Kim asked.
"Who took the picture?"
They stared at me.
"There were eleven members of the choir plus Moxie. That makes twelve. There are twelve people in the picture. Who took the picture?"
Kim glanced at Richie for help then back at me. "I...I can't remember, it must have been...well, gosh...who did take that picture?"
"You have a choir director, right?" I suggested.
"Frank," Kim answered, her brow knitted. "Frank Sadownik."
"Okay. So where was he? Was he the one who took the photo?" I asked.
"I.. .no, it wasn't Frank. He should have been there with us on the bus, but he wasn't. He stayed behind in Regina to visit with relatives. He'd made the trip down with his own car."
"The bus driver." This flat statement came from Richie.
"That's right, that's right!" Kim excitedly agreed. "That guy who drove the bus. He hung with us for a bit that night. He was just as stuck as the rest of us. But again, I can't really believe he'd do any of this shit; he seemed like a decent guy, didn't he, Richie? We barely knew him, I suppose...what was his name? Guy, I think. He's French."
"Yeah," Richie chimed in. "Guy."
"How about anyone else in the hotel that night, someone you might have met or had contact with or an altercation of some sort?"
They both shook their heads, then Richie said, "Well, I guess there was the hotel staff, but why would they hate us so much?"
Kim shook her head as if the idea didn't hold water for her either.
"Did you go out that night?" I suggested. "Leave the hotel for any reason?"
"No. We ate dinner in the hotel diner then hung out in our rooms a bit, had some drinks, then went to bed," Kim said. "We left early the next morning. Not much chance to get into trouble. Maybe you're wrong, maybe all this has nothing to do with that photograph. Maybe it's someone we met at the concert in Regina. Maybe it's someone from one of the other choirs...oh my gosh...do you think? Maybe one of the choir members we were competing against, or one of the choir directors, or maybe a relative of one of the singers got pissed off because we did so well and they decided to get some revenge!"
"But then why Moxie?" Richie asked. "She wasn't in the choir."
"Even criminals can make a mistake," Kim announced in Nancy Drew fashion. "Maybe he included Moxie just because she was with us that weekend." Her eyes rolled around in her head a bit, and then she came out with, "Or maybe it's a disgruntled former member of our choir? Maybe it has nothing to do with Regina at all! See, Richie, you should have told me about this before. Now that I know this may be tied to the Pink Gophers, I can think up a million suspects."
Oh great.
"We have no disgruntled former choir members," Richie countered. "Anyone who can open their mouth and make a sound can join the Pink Gophers and stay as long as they want. That's why we're not that good."
"Well, yeah, I suppose, but, well, just give me a minute to think this through." She shot him a hurt look. "I think we're pretty good."
I was getting the feeling that if I allowed Kim Pelluchi much more time to dwell on this, she'd somehow find a connection between this case and the Office of the Prime Minister or Buckingham Palace. I stood up. "You've given me some good ideas, Kim," I told her. "Thank you. If you come up with any other plausible ideas for why this is happening or who the boogeyman might be, please give me a call." I handed each of them one of my business cards and made a move to leave.
"But what now?" Kim asked in a whimpering voice. "What about us? What are we supposed to do? How do we protect ourselves against this madman?"
It was a valid concern. Unfortunately I had no easy answers for her. "Just keep on doing what you've already been doing," I suggested, giving Richie a meaningful look. "Watch each other's backs."
Chapter 16
I felt bad about leaving Richie Caplan and Kim Pelluchi, knowing that the boogeyman was real and somewhere out there on the streets of Saskatoon, waiting to get them. But what could I do? I wasn't a one-man security service or a caped crusader with nothing better to do. I couldn't protect ev
eryone. I had my own client's interests to look after. It still felt rotten.
I'd had a long, long day-from Nunavut to Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan to a high-speed pursuit through Kinsmen Park and being kidnapped-it was time to go home. When I parked the Mazda in the garage behind my house well after midnight, I was bushed. For a moment I laid my head against the car's well-worn headrest and closed my weary eyes; the Arctic Circle, seeing my uncle, meeting Maheesh, learning Sereena's saga, it all seemed like a vision I'd had, a hallucination, but it wasn't. It was reality.
I entered the house through the back doors directly into the wet-nose welcome of two happy-to-see-me schnauzers. Errall would have been there earlier to let them out, feed them and pat their heads, but I still felt a need to spend some quality time. I poured myself the dregs from a bottle of Cave Spring Pinot Gris I found in the fridge and led the oft-repeated parade to our favourite room in the house in which to hang out together: the den. It was too warm for a fire, but we still piled up on the couch that faced the fireplace and got in several good minutes of ear scratches and belly rubs. As I did that, I sang them their favourite song:; "You're two little teapots, short and stout; here are your handles and here are your snouts!" Brutus was the first to call an end to our menagerie a trois by dropping to the floor with an audible "oof." Barbra stayed with me a little longer, more, I think, to promote her primary claim to me and mine to her, than any real desire for prolonged petting. When that was over, I reached for my wineglass that I'd placed it on a side table and downed a healthy swig. Ahhhhh, that tasted good, peachy I think. I picked up the nearby phone to check for any messages that had come in since I'd been away. There were three.
The first message was a reminder from Espirita Salon about a haircut appointment; the next was a hang up; the third was Doug Poitras. The real one. "Russell, ah, hi, it's me, Doug Poitras. I'm a friend of Anthony's, we met at your birthday party...well sort of met...I wasn't really sure what was going on there? Something about you thinking I was somebody else? Anyway, I was just wondering if you'd be interested in trying that again, maybe just the two of us this time, maybe a movie and drinks afterwards?" A little hesitation, then, "I'd really like to get to know you better. You can call me at 555-7411."
The computer voice gave me my options: respond, save or delete. I hit delete.
I must have made a sound within the expanded range of dog hearing because Barbra, who'd gone to lie down next to the dark fireplace, looked up at me with her soulful, understanding eyes. I swear that animal can read my mind. She knew that, as nice as Doug Poitras might be, the only man I could think about right then was Alex Canyon. Even though he'd left me that same morning on the tarmac outside Hangar 10 without so much as a backward glance, off to the other side of the globe, he was more present to me at that moment than any other man I could ever remember meeting. Without even trying, I could recall his scent, his voice, the heat that filled the air between us whenever he was near me. I laid my head back against the soft toffee leather of the couch, closed my eyes and summoned a vision of his handsome face. He had sat on this very spot, only days ago, during that hot, steamy, stormy night and I could easily recall the smell of his damp skin as it dried in the heat of the fire. His eyes: so intense, so serious, so beautiful. I ached to reach out and touch him. Why had I let him go so easily? Why hadn't I said something to him, let him know how I felt? How did I feel?
I forgot to close the blinds. The end-of-July sun peeked over the horizon and into my bedroom sometime after six that Thursday morning. I attempted to roll over onto my tummy, away from the scourge of light, but found I was wedged between two lumps of immovable canine. I kept my eyes resolutely shut, but the bright new day had other ideas, burrowing through my eyelids with cheery sunshine that grew in intensity with each passing minute. By a little after 6:30, my brain, with no encouragement from me, began to list off the numerous things I should do that day and I gave up any chance of going back to sleep.
"This has to stop," I mumbled to the dogs as I began to nudge them awake. "You cannot sleep on this bed. You have perfectly good mats on the floor."
With that Brutus hopped off the mattress, as if he'd been awake the whole time and was offended by my uncalled-for diatribe, and went to stand by the French doors that led to the backyard and his morning ablutions. Barbra was a little slower going. Her head rose from slumber and she stared at me as if to ask, "You're sure about this?"
I stumbled out of bed and-thanks to well-planned (and slightly overgrown) backyard foliage-I was free to follow Barbra and Brutus outside without bothering with a robe to cover my nakedness. It's not that I didn't have one within easy reach, but this is a rite of summer that simply needs doing every now and again. The dogs ran off to take care of business while I luxuriated in a mile-high stretch, grasping at a pure-blue sky. Through squinting eyes I regarded the offending ball of sun, but who could be mad at such an irrefutably joyful sight, like a giant piece of lemon candy on a peaceful blue background, promising to only get sweeter and yellower as the day progressed. There was nary a breath of wind and my skin felt toasty after only a moment outdoors. It was a day meant for gardening or swimming or lazing about on a lawn chair, but none of those activities were on my schedule that lovely mid-summer's day.
By the time I reached PWC around 9, my head was filled with what-abouts, what-ifs and how-comes. Although I suspected that Kim Pelluchi had been tossing her net too wide, I couldn't help but wonder if maybe she'd been right about some of her possible scenarios and suspicions. Suppose everything that happened had something to do with the competition the Pink Gophers had attended in Regina, an event I knew very little about. Who had been there? Were there any sore losers? And what about the choir director, Frank Sadownik, and the bus driver, Guy somebody-or-other? Were they potential suspects? Were all the members of the choir innocent, or was one of them the true culprit? I had a lot to do that day, and to top it off, I couldn't help but think about my secret voyage to the Arctic Circle: my uncle was alive and Sereena hadn't disappeared: she was in hiding. What would happen now? Could I really go on as if I knew nothing? Would I be able to keep these secrets from Anthony? From my mother? The only help for me was to keep busy, and that would be no problem.
I spent the morning collecting information, sometimes by good old-fashioned research, sometimes by cajoling, sometimes by trickery and fakery (my personal favourites). By noon I had a plan of attack in place and was heading out of town in the Mazda with a takeout meatloaf sandwich from Colourful Mary's and a bottle of Dasani on the seat beside me. Martensville is a small town twenty minutes northwest of Saskatoon, and Frank Sadownik lived on the outskirts, farming in summer and teaching school in the winter.
I stopped in town only long enough to track down someone to give me directions, and soon found myself motoring along a dusty gravel lane that led off the main road (also dusty and gravelly) into the Sadownik's farmyard. The yard itself was a collection of buildings in various states of disrepair and dilapidation, except for a neat row of three, steel-sided granaries that looked shiny and new. There was a stand-alone garage that appeared in better shape because of a fresh coat of barnyard-red paint, but upon closer inspection was just as old as the other buildings around it. Surrounding the yard was an aged windbreak of dead or nearly dead ash trees, forever-thriving poplar trees and spindly-looking caragana. As I pulled up in front of a single-storey house, I was greeted by several laying hens, one rangy-looking rooster and a very old dog who reminded me of a miniature woolly mammoth.
Unsure of the mammoth's intentions and biting habits, I gingerly stepped from my car, ready to hop back inside at the first sign of aggression. The animal regarded me with weary eyes and attempted a bark but did not quite succeed, instead letting forth from a jowly snout, a sound reminiscent of a coughing cow, along with a fair bit of graying froth. His nose went right for my crotch, no doubt trying to get a bead on Barbra and Brutus's scents and I pulled away, shy as Billy around Captain Highliner. I swung around at
the sound of something landing on the car's ragtop. It was a scraggly looking tabby who mewed at me plaintively, as if hopeful that a being of matching mental superiority had finally come to rescue it or at least have intelligent conversation.
"You can have her if you want," a voice called out to me.
I spotted a young boy, maybe eight, standing near some trees and fingering a toy tractor in his dirty little hands.
"Don't you want to keep your cat?" I asked stupidly. I was raised on a farm and if this place was anything like most farms I knew, for every cat you saw, there were probably six more.
He decided the question was rhetorical and instead went right to business (I liked that about the kid): "Mom told me to come out here to see who it was. Who are you?"
"My name is Russell," I told him, glad the woolly mammoth had finally grown bored of my crotch and lumbered off in search of other things to sniff. "Is your daddy home?"
"How do you know who my daddy is?"
Anthony Bidulka Page 24