Sundowner
Ubuntu
A Russell Quant Mystery
Anthony Bidulka
Copyright © 2013 by Anthony Bidulka
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bidulka, Anthony, 1962-
Sundowner ubuntu / Anthony Bidulka.
(A Russell Quant mystery)
ISBN 978-1-55483-104-3
Ebook edition ISBN 978-1-55483-119-7
I. Title. II. Series: Bidulka, Anthony, 1962- . Russell
Quant mystery.
PS8553.I319S95 2013 C813'.6 C2013-901471-3
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canada Book Fund.
Printed and bound in Canada
Insomniac Press, 520 Princess Ave.
London, Ontario, Canada, N6B 2B8
www.insomniacpress.com
For our beloved Mocha & Bali
Missing you
Belly scratches and love
Tony and Herb
Acknowledgements
I am writing this late on a Friday afternoon, after a long week of work, happy to take the time to recall the many people and places, events and celebrations that are woven into the intricate patterns that make up this book. After five novels, I know that writing a book is about much more than sitting in front of a computer. It is about YOU the reader, and it is about:
The faces I see, from the first launch, the first book reading, the first book club, the first promotional appearance, to the last. I wish I could name all of you here, but I do remember you, and you are dear to me. You celebrate with me; you bolster me; you communicate so much by being there. Then you give even more: e-mails, calls, gifts, flowers, letters, and cards. I am the luckiest man. From Humboldt to Houston, Swift Current to Seattle, and all the stops in between—it’s been a wonderful ride, and what a pleasure to have been on it with you.
Everyone knows there is nothing quite like feeling the love from your hometown peeps. October 26, 2006: I still fall to wordlessness when asked to describe that night. You do me a great honour by continuing to show up…no, not just show up…by being a wave of support that washes over me and buoys me and gives me the confidence to keep on going.
Once upon a time, in the magical land of Audit & Accounting, I worked for a firm called Ernst & Young. Our fearless leader was Shelley. Shelley led an incredible troupe of people, including Nikki, Karren, Bev, Rhonda, Ashley, Laurie, Donna, Lilly, Noreen, Sherri-Lynn, Trina, Cheryl, Gail, Janet, and sometimes, all the way from Regina, Ken. There are bits and pieces of our lives (and the people that go along with them) that stay with us forever, and thankfully, this is one of mine.
In a world full of news, I am especially appreciative when the women and men of print, radio, web, and TV give Russell Quant their time and attention. Be it a book review, broadcast, or back slap, you have my gratitude. I hope you know that.
Special moments and people abound—did I mention how lucky I am?—the Pacific Palisades party in Vancouver; Bouchercon in Madison; Saskatoon launch special guest Rob Harasymchuk; tableside dinner readings of my work by Lynne, Jill, Kelly, Marv, Herb, Rhonda, Shelley; Fran making it to Humboldt over skating rink roads. Britainy and Ned, thanks for the great coverage; PlanetS readers, thanks for putting me on your favourite author list again—I’m shooting for #1 some day! Sandra, you tingled my spine in that under-construction hotel bar; Jessica and Steve rock; Pat and Mike, zapiastock; Kathryn and Gerard and Judy, thanks for always showing up; Leona and Jerry, I look forward to many more great meals together; Robert, you give good Archives; Richard for much more music; I finally met Nigel—you are one special guy; Gord, Mary, Heather, Andree, Bill—avuncularly yours; Debi—loved meeting you in Seattle; hi, Pat & Jack, Dan, Judy, and Jim in Seattle too—what a treat to see you there; Holly—so glad you survived the Titanic; Jo-Ann, and especially Frances and cohorts, thanks for an evening below a sky of flying pigs; Farewell, Jim. Farewell, Dick. Travelling through Texas with Caro Soles—thank you to all the terrific people who proved that Texas hospitality is alive and well: Sue for a special day at Dallas’s Cathedral of Hope; Dan and Rosario for keeping Austin weird; Alex, Will, and the incomparable Wayne Gunn for a fantastic night out in San Antonio; Paul for the great work you do with Saints & Sinners; Ellen—I’ll dine out with you in New Orleans any time! Thanks, Mom and Moo, for taking on New York with such style and grace; Gio and Norm for the rock star jacket; all the entrants in the Frances Morrison Library Seniors Writing Contest for sharing your wonderful stories; book clubbers for many enjoyable nights. Presenting a Lammy is always fun—thanks, Charles. Congrats, Dori, on your new line of SOB undergarments. Thanks to the real Roy for ferrying us safely about South Africa and keeping us well informed; thank you to all our safari guides and companions, friends of David (Hi, Craig and Vicky and Pookie, thanks for the pink champagne in Cape Town!). We wish all good things for you, Kumelo. Who doesn’t want to meet Arthur Drache? Thanks for supporting HRC, Steve O’Neill. Thanks to family and friends for an unbreakable circle of support.
Africa introduced us to the spirit of ubuntu, which we will do our best to keep with us. From that experience grew new relationships with special children who needed help, and for that we are grateful.
Author! Author! So many writers who I admire, love, and learn from have given me their time and the benefit of their wisdom and friendship over the past year. From conference panels to GWR to drinks to dinners out to joint readings to quick hugs as we find time for them; let’s do it all again soon.
And to the booksellers, I thank you for your hard work, dedication, and creativity; for welcoming Russell Quant; and for striving to keep the world of reading alive and well.
Mike, Gillian, and the rest of the Insomniac gang, thanks for putting these stories between covers. Michele Karlsberg, thank you for your continued support, guidance, and friendship—I hope you enjoy Aquavit.
Excerpts from an editor’s letter: “Your penchant for long, often five-line sentences is getting under control…the sub-mystery is really a grand diversion…I really wasn’t sure what the heck was going on…the reader is able to stay focused on the mystery storyline while you quietly follow up with past circumstances…is this an inside joke?...I did find it incongruent…I want to see what he looks at for seven hours…I’m a bit torn in terms of directing you one way or another…either I’m suffering from brain sludge or I’m being too picky…really great here, no easy answers, no easy outs…the reader is left wondering about outcomes but with some hopefulness…confident, comfortable, and believable…” Thank you, Catherine, for helping to make it so. Your heart and mind are so clearly a part of this.
And Herb.
Chapter 1
Murder.
There are many reasons to commit it.
Mine? My mother asked me to.
The snow was crunchy underfoot as I approached the weathered house where he lived. Although in my head I knew it was impossible, I had a feeling in my sour gut that he knew I was coming for him. As I hesitated outside the door, I passed the knife from hand to hand, feeling its unfamiliar heft in my sweating palms, then tested the glistening blade’s sharpness against my thumb.
My eyes crinkled against bright morning sun. “Quant,” I muttered under frosty breath, “what the hell are you doing?”
But, disgusted as
I was, I could not turn away.
The door shuddered, then made a scraping noise as I slowly pulled it open, wrecking my hope for silence so as not to announce my arrival to Mr. Crow—or anyone else—inside. Not that it mattered much; my course was set. I poked my head inside and was instantly assaulted by an acrid scent: eau de ammonia. Cloying warmth encircled me. As my pupils adjusted to the darkness, I heard sounds of burbling disturbance and discontent. Our eyes met. And so it began.
I quickly circled behind him, grabbing him and locking him in my arms. Surprisingly, he barely struggled as I took him outside. He knew. I splayed him on the white ground beneath my greater bulk, my knees and thighs keeping him in place, and shivered at the thought of what I was about to do. I began to entertain wild thoughts of alternative courses of action.
It was too late to turn back now.
I pulled back his head, revealing his vulnerable neck to the nippy air. Only then did he make gurgling sounds of protest. Maybe he hadn’t really believed I’d be capable of this until right then, in that last, defining moment of his life. But it was too late for Mr. Crow, way too late. This had to be done.
Tightening my grip around the wooden handle of the knife, knuckles white, I pressed the sharp cutting edge of the instrument against his throat. I was surprised by the ease with which the knife did its evil duty. I was even more surprised by the amount of blood and how it spurted and spewed. The body underneath me shook with a death fury that unhinged me with its intensity. Although he was no match for me in size, I felt myself being bucked off; I fell back, slipping on an ice patch as I attempted to get a grip with my Timberland boots and pull myself up.
Dumped on my ass, the first thing I noticed was the knife still in my hand. It looked perfectly clean, as if I’d wiped it off, yet I hadn’t. The steel had been cold, the blood hot; the two did not stick together.
The second thing I noticed was the headless body of my victim rising to his feet.
My face contorted in horror as I realized that Mr. Crow was not dead.
He turned a full 360 degrees, swayed left, then right, hopped from one foot to the other, then he turned again.
I haltingly made it to my feet, the knife falling to the ground, burying itself beneath reddened snow. Mr. Crow made a jarring move towards me.
Then he charged.
I turned and ran for the hills, a scream burning in my throat.
“Dat’s goot, uhuh?” my mother, Kay Quant née Wistonchuk, asked for the millionth time as I forked another heap of her home cooking into my mouth.
March had come in like a lion, a roaring storm chasing me from Saskatoon to Howell as I’d headed for my mother’s homestead farm for what was supposed to be a two-hour visit. That was two days ago. I’d been storm-stayed—and desperately trying to shovel my way out ever since.
“You haf no chicken?”
Damnation, she’d noticed. I thought for sure that with all the other meats—meatballs, beef slabs, veal cutlets, farmer’s sausage—she wouldn’t.
“You don’t like de chicken, den? It’s goot.” She passed me the platter, heavy with deep-fried, golden pieces of Mr. Crow, and urged me with her eyes. “Have the letka.”
“My plate’s full right now, Mom,” I begged off on her offer of the drumstick, the leg of the same chicken that had tried to chase me down in that bloodied field of trampled snow, even after it had lost its head. “Maybe later.” Like never.
I just couldn’t bring myself to eat it, and perhaps I will never eat chicken again. Each time I would see a leg or some other readily identifiable chicken part, I’d picture the Braveheart battleground of Mr. Crow’s last stand. Sure, he’d come to his execution willingly, with uncommon dignity even, but things got ugly after that. That damn Mr. Crow, named—by my mother—after his morning ritual, seemed as capable of living without a head as he was with one (at least for several, horrifyingly long minutes, and he’d made the best of them). By the end of his pursuit, during which he’d demonstrated an uncanny sense of where I was (sans eyes to see me with), the previously pristine landscape surrounding the henhouse—once gleaming white from the storm’s snowfall—was splattered a grisly crimson, as though a game of paintball had gone dreadfully wrong. I had taken refuge atop a nearby grain seeder turned flowerpot, amongst brittle stalks of long-dead delphiniums and shasta daisies, and watched in utter horror as Mr. Crow danced headless to his slooooooooooow death.
“Vell, ve go to town tomorrow, and I buy odder meat mebbe, uhuh? You tell vhat you like, and I buy,” my mother offered.
I finished chewing a tasty pickled beet before giving the reply I knew she’d been dreading. “Mom, I’m going home tomorrow morning. I’ve been here two days, and I really have to get back to work.”
“Not two days,” she argued back. “You vant cream in coffee? Vhat for dessert? I heat up some nalesnehkeh.”
“Yeah, Mom, two days.”
“But de roads, not safe yet. You vait one more day, dey be much better den, uhuh.”
I knew it wasn’t the roads she was really worried about; it was loneliness, the result of cabin fever that commonly sets in with farm folk, particularly near the end of long winters. She wanted me to stay. She always does, as a matter of fact, winter or summer. It makes me feel wanted, for sure, but it’s difficult being a detective from a desolate farmhouse, nestled in the hills that surround Howell, Saskatchewan, population too low to count.
When it comes to where I prefer to lay my head at night, I am much like my mother: stubborn. If at all possible, I want to be in my own bed, in my own house, with my dogs and things surrounding me, in the nest I’ve worked a lifetime to build. I want running water that is hot consistently, rather than on a whim as it is on the farm. I want it gushing from the shower head, not dribbling out between globs of rust. I want to flush the toilet with careless abandon, rather than with bitten lip in fear of the septic system acting up, as it so often does. I want Internet access and more than three channels on the TV. I want 7-Eleven and Mr. Sub and a gym to go to rather than an exercise routine that includes a few laps around the barn with a mouldy German-shepherd-husky-cross nipping at my heels and looking at me as if I’m crazy for running around with nothing to chase.
I do not want to murder my supper.
She was lonely. I got that. My father had died several years earlier, and Mom had decided to maintain the status quo and remain on the farm. She did what she could to keep things as they had been, which included blocking her son from returning to his life in the city every chance she got.
“The graders have gone by a couple of times,” I told her. “The roads are good. I checked when I was outside earlier.” While escaping the beheaded Mr. Crow.
She nodded as if not really caring and rose to reheat that morning’s coffee in an old tin pot that sat atop the stove.
“Why don’t you come into the city with me for a few days?”
Some time ago we’d even talked about her moving in with me—well, into the space above my garage, so technically she would be moving in next to me. Mom’s only sixty-seven, but I worry about her living in relative isolation. Even I get a bit creeped out being on the farm; it’s really dark, and when the coyotes start to howl at night it sounds as if they’re right at your doorstep.
What a city boy I’ve become.
“Vhat for? Vhat I do in city? You go. You go and take care of dose dogs. Your poor dogs, vhat’s happened to dose poor dogs?”
“Carol is looking after them,” I told her. By Carol I meant Errall, and by Errall I meant Sereena. When I’d called her about being stuck in the country, my neighbour Sereena had agreed to look after my pooches, Barbra and Brutus. My mother and Sereena have met, but their very essences are at such polar extremes, they’ve chosen to ignore the existence of one another. So that’s why I told Mom that my friend, Errall—which she pronounces as Carol—was looking after the dogs.
“We can hang out, go to movies, whatever, but, Mom,” I said with an unpleasant lump of guilt in my sto
mach, “I’ve really got to get back.”
“I know, Sonsyou, I know.”
Clara Ridge was half an hour late for her appointment, which was going to make things tight; I had to be at the airport by five.
“I’m very sorry,” she apologized as she lowered herself into the chair in front of my desk, pulling off black leather gloves by their fingertips. “I hate being late.”
Usually a statement like that is followed by an explanation, but when it became apparent none was forthcoming I moved along. “Are you sure I can’t take your coat? Would you like a coffee or something else to drink?”
She shook her head, and I noticed her hair, styled to within an inch of its freshly dyed life, moved along with it, without one hair falling out of place. “Thank you, but your receptionist already offered. I’m a little chilled, so I’ll keep my coat on.”
Clara Ridge was a handsome woman in her mid- fifties who’d obviously gone to some trouble to appear in my office looking well groomed. Along with the too-perfect hair was a spotless makeup job and fresh manicure complete with bright red nail polish. Her coat was dark fur, real fur; don’t see those around much anymore.
“I saw your ad in the Yellow Pages,” she told me. “I hope that’s okay. I haven’t been referred or anything. You know how it is with doctors—specialists, especially—if you haven’t been referred by another doctor, they simply won’t see you, no matter how long you’re willing to wait for an appointment. Are private detectives like that? I don’t know; that’s why I’m asking.”
I smiled. “Not this one.”
In fact, I wasn’t too picky at all about how my clients came to me. Being a detective in Saskatoon, a small prairie city, has its challenges. There isn’t a mysterious dame (or dude) smoking a long, slim cigarette, wearing a jaunty hat low over worried eyes, silhouetted against the frosted glass of my office door at midnight, nearly often enough to keep a private dick like me in continual work. I’d been lucky of late though, working fairly regularly, usually on rather pedestrian cases, affairs of domestic or financial distress, but they pay the bills and allow me a few indulgences (nice coats and scarves in winter, bedding plants in summer, shoes and good wine always).
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