by Cathy Ace
“Lucky, and I work at it, Bud,” I retorted. Having what some call an “eidetic memory,” and what others call “a quick eye and a fast brain,” because they don’t think that eidetic memory exists, means I’m pretty good at this sort of stuff. I can see, understand, interpret, and encode information into my memory banks at great speed. It’s been a phenomenal help to me in my academic life. It also means that I carry with me images and sensations I’d really rather forget. Sometimes they haunt my dreams, as vivid as when I first saw, felt, and smelled them. I don’t just hold on to words on pages, I do it with everything that surrounds me. Insofar as I’ve been able to encode it accurately in the first place, of course. That’s the problem with my “ability.” Sometimes I encode things, or remember them, wrongly. I overlay them with my own, sometimes erroneous, interpretations. I color them with my attitudes and biases, often based upon my own incomplete knowledge. Because not even I, well read though I might be, know everything. It’s something that’s landed me in trouble in the past.
“So shall I tell you what I think about the writer before I tell you about what she’s written?” I asked, a bit testily.
“Sure. Whatever you think, Cait. I’ll take it all in, as best I can with my poor, feeble, non-superhuman brain.” Bud chuckled, and I had to stop myself from giving him a friendly slap on the arm.
“Okay,” I began, “Ellen Newman has written up a list of the people we’re going to meet through the weekend, with some background on each person. It’s a very thorough list. And I mean thorough. She’s obviously given it all a great deal of thought, and of course, she knows the people she’s writing about. So, what does this tell me about Ellen?”
I paused, for effect.
“Oh come on, Cait, just get on with it,” Bud said with a smile.
“Ellen likes to organize. Here she’s organized her thoughts, but I suspect she likes to organize everything around her, including people. Don’t get me wrong, Bud, I wish I could be a bit more like her in my own life. You know what I’m like with the piles of papers, textbooks, and reports I have to read and grade—I like to use the ‘strata method’ of filing, where the oldest things are at the bottom of the pile. It doesn’t matter so much for me, because I can recall when I put something onto a pile, so I can usually find it right away. But Ellen? I suspect her sock drawer has those little divider things in it, and she probably fills her kitchen cupboards with items in height order. You know the type. Right?”
“You mean she’s very tidy?” asked Bud.
“More than tidy,” I replied thoughtfully. “Highly ordered, I’d say. Who knows, maybe she’s bordering on OCD, or maybe not. The process she’s undertaken here is, after all, one that requires order. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt, eh?”
Bud nodded, which I took as a sign to continue.
“Moving on, let’s consider the cast of characters she’s detailed. Well, they’re an international bunch, with a variety of origins and some interesting stories behind them. I think the best way to help you understand is to explain the context in which we’re going to meet them first.”
Bud bobbed his head again. He was beginning to look like one of those nodding dogs!
“So . . . the Moveable Feast takes place every Easter and is attended only by those who are hosting meals and their invited guests—of which they are allowed two, maximum. Which is where we come in. Each host is responsible for providing food and drink, as appropriate to the meal they’re hosting, for all the guests. Everything is up to the host to arrange and supply. There are no budget limits. No sponsors are allowed but otherwise, there are no rules. There is a timetable. This evening we’ll attend a ‘cocktails and canapés’ reception, which differs from most of the rest of the weekend in that every host will have contributed something to tonight’s soiree, and it’ll take place at a venue they’ve hired. No one person is responsible for tonight.”
“Tomorrow and Sunday we have a breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day, and there’s a final breakfast, again un-hosted but contributed to by everyone, on Monday morning. After that, if we can still move at all, we’re free to leave.”
“Oh good grief,” said Bud, looking a bit taken aback. “I don’t even eat three times a day, let alone three special, probably very rich, heavy meals. At least I packed the Gaviscon,” he added, smiling.
“I packed Tums,” I chuckled, reflecting happily on how, for all our differences, we’re really very similar in some respects.
“Other than lining our arteries and broadening our beams this weekend, it seems that the other thing we’ll be doing is mixing with some pretty well-heeled folks.” As I spoke, I began to worry that my wardrobe wouldn’t stand up to the scrutiny of the people with whom we’d be mixing.
“Go on then, I can take it,” urged Bud. “Tell me all about them. But bear in mind I’m going to need the potted version.”
“First, then, let’s talk about where we’re staying. The Anen House Bed & Breakfast is the old Newman homestead. The late Annette lived there after the death of the Newman parents, but, since her death, Ellen has set it up as a B&B with two double rooms and a restaurant that, obviously, supplies breakfasts, but not just for residents. Apparently it’s the place to go for breakfast in the whole area. You even have to book! The chef there, Pat Corrigan, makes award-winning sausages. It seems that while Annette Newman might have had a lock on all the gold medals when it came to wines, your Ellen has found herself a chef with the same sort of stranglehold on the world sausage-making circuit. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I must say, though, that I like the sound of it. I suppose that’s why breakfast will be served there on both Saturday and Sunday, which makes life a little easier for us in the mornings.”
“True,” replied Bud, “and I guess it must be very good.” He sounded quite excited.
“Anyway—there’s the married couple who live at Anen House. They’ve been there since the place opened about eight months ago. Pat Corrigan is, as I said, the chef, and his wife, Lauren, is the housekeeper. Ellen hired them from a restaurant near Dublin, when it closed down. Clearly, she likes him, but merely tolerates the wife, whose cleaning standards are not quite the same as her own it seems, which is a bit alarming, since we’re staying there. Mind you, it’s unlikely we’d either of us notice the odd cobweb?”
“True,” Bud replied. “I’ve got the excuse of having a muck-loving dog living in the apartment with me. I’m not sure you feel the need to have an excuse for not owning a long-handled feather duster, right?” He grinned.
“Oh, I own one,” I countered. “I’m just not sure I remember where I left it . . .”
I grinned back, though Bud didn’t see me because, very sensibly, he kept his eyes on the greasy road ahead.
“And there’s me thinking you remember everything . . .” Bud smiled. Bud’s smile can be very distracting.
“Possible cleanliness issues aside,” I continued, “Ellen seems content that she has the right people running the B&B, but, from our point of view, as murder suspects—”
“Hey, they’re your suspects, Cait, not mine. I’m still not convinced this wasn’t a suicide.”
“Okay, from my point of view,” I conceded, “as murder suspects, the Corrigans, who I’m assuming are not just from Ireland but are in fact Irish, cannot be considered to be in the frame at all. They weren’t in the country when Annette died.”
Bud looked disgruntled, even though I’d given in to his rather sharply made point.
“Onwards and upwards,” I continued, as our route did exactly that. “There’s a whole collection of people listed as ‘suspects’—Ellen’s word, not mine, before you get on your high horse again, Bud Anderson. Saturday lunch will be hosted by the MacMillan family at their home, Lakeview Lodge—which I’m going to go out on a limb and guess overlooks the lake. He’s something big in oil in Calgary, and she lives in Kelowna, in fine style by the sound of it. Ellen seems to think that Sheri MacMillan spends all her time wandering from d
ay spa to day spa, sitting on committees, shopping, lunching, and spending her husband’s money. She refers to her as ‘vapid and fussy, but harmless.’ Apparently, Rob MacMillan shows his face from time to time but basically spends the year in Alberta, where they have another house. Ellen admits to not knowing him very well. They have a seventeen-year-old son, who lives with his mother and attends high school in Kelowna, who Ellen describes as ‘weird’: she says he’s quiet, lacks social skills, and is known for cycling around the area too fast. All three MacMillans were in town at the time of Annette’s death, though Rob left on an early flight to Calgary the morning Ellen discovered her body. Ellen doesn’t give any reasons for why any of these people might want Annette dead, so don’t hold your breath waiting for motives to emerge,” I added. I thought I’d better tell Bud sooner rather than later.
“I wasn’t actually expecting any motives to be forthcoming,” he replied calmly. “Ellen’s told me on several occasions that Annette was universally loved and respected.”
“Hmmm . . . well, that’s not true about anyone,” I replied, “except you, of course,” I chuckled.
“Oh Cait—now you know that’s not true . . .” Bud sounded sad, and I realized, too late, that I’d just said something stupid, thoughtless, and painful. The guy who’d shot Jan, Bud’s late wife, had meant to kill Bud himself—of course there were people who hated him and wanted him dead.
“Oh Bud . . . I’m so sorry . . .” I faltered. At that moment I was terribly aware that Jan would always be with us, in some way.
“It’s okay, Cait. It can’t be helped,” replied Bud, still sounding grim.
“Yes it can. I can be more damned thoughtful!” I was cross with myself, not Bud, but it didn’t sound that way.
“Alright then, if it makes you feel better, go ahead and beat yourself up about it. But I won’t do it for you, Cait. Blame. Guilt. ‘Would-have. Could-have. Should-have.’ None of it gets a person anywhere. Trust me on this: I’ve become something of an expert.”
I didn’t say anything for at least two minutes, which, for me, is a very long time indeed. I watched the road wind far ahead of us. I reasoned that I couldn’t always walk on eggshells. I allowed the millions of trees covering the rolling mountains surrounding us to become a soothing blur.
Finally, Bud said, “Are you going to tell me about these people, or what? We’re almost at the summit, so not much longer now. You’d better get a move on. I know you’re bursting with it,” and he smiled a warm smile that dissipated the tension and freed me to continue. Bless him.
“Right. Next up are the fabulous Sammy and Suzie Soul,” I announced, rallying.
“The Sammy Soul?” queried Bud.
“Yep, the Sammy Soul who famously took every drug, drank every drink, and bonked every groupie available through the ’60s and ’70s.”
Bud looked confused. “Bonked?”
“Yes, you know, ‘had biblical knowledge of.’ Though I cannot imagine there was any sort of ecclesiastical element involved.”
Bud nodded. “Is that a Welsh-ism? Bonked?”
“No, but I suppose it’s very British. Bonk means hit. You can bonk someone on the head; or cyclists bonk when they’re tired, because they’ve hit a wall; and we Brits use it to mean hit in the sexual sense. But not like when North Americans say ‘he hit on someone’—that just means chatting them up, not bonking them . . .”
“Ah, the joys of being separated by a common language,” mused Bud, smiling. He often said that, especially when I lapsed into Brit-speak, as he liked to call it, or, even worse in Bud’s book, Wenglish—a sort of middle ground that exists between Welsh and English, which really only exists around the Swansea and Swansea Valleys area, where I’m from, so it’s hardly surprising he can’t make head nor tail of it!
I pressed on. “As I said, yes, the Sammy Soul who was well known for hell raising and womanizing, when he headed up his band the Soul Rockers. God, he could play that guitar! I have to admit, I thought he’d be dead by now. He probably should be. It looks as though he bought a winery in the Okanagan, now called SoulVine Wines, and he’s been there for about twenty years. Who knew?”
“Well, not me, for one,” said Bud, playing along.
“And not me, for two,” I added, grinning. “He lives there with his wife, Suzie. She must be quite the strong character to have put up with him for the almost forty years that Ellen says they’ve been married. They also have a daughter, Serendipity. Poor thing. Imagine growing up with that as a name.”
“Seems to fit the bill for the child of a rock star. Weird names were quite the fashion, once upon a time, right?” said Bud.
I chuckled. “You know, it could have been much worse for her, I suppose.” My mind wandered to all those bizarre names that are carted about by the children of the hip and wealthy. I mentally thanked my parents for being so traditional in their choice. “Ellen reckons she’s turned out to be quite a star in the kitchen. She trained in France and has an excellent reputation as a chef. She runs the restaurant at her parents’ vineyard, SoulVineFineDine, which seems to be quite a mouthful for the name of a restaurant, but maybe that’s the point. Anyway, it’s where we’ll be having dinner on Saturday evening, so we’ll have a chance to see if Serendipity is all she’s cracked up to be. Ellen only has good things to say about her, but her less than flattering comments about Serendipity’s parents seem to indicate that Ellen’s not too keen on them. She calls Sammy Soul ‘drug-addled’ and ‘lacking a moral compass,’ and she refers to his wife as ‘a man-eating whore.’”
“Good grief.” Bud seemed shocked. “I had no idea Ellen could be that—well, bitchy is the only word, right?” Was Bud checking if my female perspective allowed for that word to be used?
“Well, maybe catty,” I replied, “but, you know, I’m trying to not be too judgmental, Bud.”
“Oh, okay, touché!” He grinned. “I guess I can be a bit judgmental, too, under certain circumstances.”
“Hmmm, right. Well, we’ll both have a chance to assess Ellen’s judgment tonight, when we meet these folks at the cocktail party, but, in the meantime, on to the next hosts. After another breakfast at our own domicile on Sunday morning, we’ll be heading off to the Faceting for Life Restaurant on Pandosy Street in downtown Kelowna, where the owners, Grant and Lizzie Jackson, will be our hosts, and where Ray Murciano is the resident chef. Ellen says that Lizzie Jackson is an alarming woman originally from Phoenix, who met Grant Jackson at a ‘Faceting Camp,’ whatever that is, about five years ago. It’s his second marriage, but it’s Lizzie’s first. He’s originally from Vancouver. It seems that the Jacksons are into that whole sustainability/organic movement, as well as this Faceting thing, which Ellen reckons is the ‘crack-pot scheme of some flaky so-called guru in Sedona’—her words. Bud raised an eyebrow-in-training. I chose to ignore him. “Lizzie Jackson is a ‘healer.’ Ellen says she practices hypnotherapy and aura alignment. She uses crystals, which is all bound up with the Faceting dogma, apparently. Sounds interesting,” I added, pulling a face that Bud couldn’t see.
His eyes were locked on the road ahead, which was a very good thing because we were at Pennask Summit, and swathed in icy fog. The road was slick and challenging, the winter’s snow piled so high at the sides of the road that it towered over the huge trucks we carefully passed as they crept along. I inwardly praised Bud’s insistence upon packing a shovel, warm blankets, a thermos, and lots of snacks.
From that point on, the journey was, quite literally, all downhill. It wouldn’t be long until the landscape would open up ahead of us and show us the Okanagan Valley and the beauties it held. But there was a way to go yet. I carried on with my assigned task.
“In summary, we have the Irish Corrigans who live at the B&B; the Canadian and American Jacksons who live at Anen Close, located immediately below the B&B, and who run a shop and restaurant in Kelowna itself; the all-Canadian MacMillans who live in Lakeview Lodge, farther along Lakeshore Drive than Anen Close and the a
ll-American Soul family, at SoulVine Wines in West Kelowna, the other bank of the lake. Other residents we’ll meet are Gordy and Marlene Wiser, who also live in Anen Close, opposite the Jacksons, and have been there about four years. Both the Jacksons and the Wisers have lived in the two houses that comprise the Close since they were built, on part of the land that used to belong to the Newman homestead. Ellen says that the Wisers are very nice people, old, reliable, and trustworthy, but that he’s a real nosey parker and she’s fixated on her garden. Take that as you want.”
“Then there’s the du Bois family—parents Marcel and Annie, and their two daughters, Gabi and Poppy—they own and operate C’est la Vie, the French restaurant where we’ll be dining on Sunday night. It seems that the parents had a background together in the food business in Montreal before they arrived in Kelowna, when they bought a rundown hole-in-the-wall and upgraded it to become a very well-respected brasserie-type restaurant, with a traditional menu and a reputation for fine ingredients and good cooking. He runs front of house, she’s the chef, and the two girls wait tables. I must say, that’s probably the meal I’m looking forward to the most. There’s just something about French food . . .”
“That’s not what you said when you got back from France last year,” quipped Bud, still concentrating.
“True . . . but those were extraordinary circumstances, you have to admit,” I added. “And in any case, I’m over all that now. And I mustn’t let myself be sidetracked, even if I am hungry. Our final group are those Ellen describes as ‘latecomers/others.’ By ‘latecomers,’ I gather she means those who have been in the area for less than five years or so. I suppose that having grown up in the area she thinks of everyone who’s been there for less than a lifetime as a latecomer, but this is her term so I’ll use it. But, as far as her use of the word ‘others’ is concerned, well, it seems to me that she’s discounting these people as suspects. First there’s a guy called Vince Chen, who’s the new vintner at SoulVine Wines. He’s been in town for less than a year, so wasn’t there when Annette died, and was brought in by Sammy Soul from a winery in Niagara, though he’s originally from Vancouver. It seems that Sammy Soul’s last vintner had to leave, because Ellen’s sister Annette left him her half of the family wine business in her will.”