Aloha, Candy Hearts (10 page)

The prize? Well, that part wasn’t so clear, nor was the reason I’d played the game to begin with. But like many worthwhile things in life, it was the journey that made things interesting and not the destination.

The hotdog found its mark. “We’re making inquiries but don’t have nothing much yet. This being a Sunday ain’t helping any,” he muttered, revealing the shocking insider details as he stuffed the last of his lunch into his mouth.

I sighed impatiently. Why was I here? I was getting nothing from Kirsch. I looked away and chewed on my own dog.

Why wasn’t I spending a lovely Sunday with someone other than this pug? Was I really that desperate to avoid my friends and family? Why? Was it simple post-vacation depression? I glanced down at my ring finger. Or was it because if I saw them I’d have to DD6AA2AB8

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explain the white gold band I was wearing there?

Kirsch, of course, would never even notice it. Or if he did, he couldn’t care less. Another reason I like hanging with the guy. No silly questions about rings.

The cop swiped some mustard off his chin and said, “Quant, this is all great and everything, having lunch in the park and all, but let’s cut to the chase. You said you had some information on Angel. Let’s have it.”

For a second, I hesitated, feeling proprietary over the information I had. But I quickly realized the error in my ways. There had been a murder, and I might know something that would help solve it. It was my duty—private detective or not—to divulge that information. So, I told him about the map, how I’d come to be in possession of it, and my halting success thus far in deciphering it.

Kirsch listened with the intensity of a practiced interrogator.

His eyes were narrowed and his brain chugged away so speedily I could almost hear it through his thick skull. When I finished, he waited for a second or two to ensure there was nothing more, then he asked with a face that was nearing what I might call fuming:

“And you never thought to tell the police about any of this before now?”

“As I already explained, I didn’t know I had the map until I got home last night.”

“You knew about the map’s existence on the plane,” he correctly pointed out, his voice growing increasingly annoyed. “You knew about it when the man who it belonged to was found strangled to death in the parking lot at the Saskatoon airport. You knew about it when you were being questioned by members of the Saskatoon Police Service. You’ve known it had been slipped into your carry-on for the past twelve hours. Quant, I should arrest your ass right now for withholding significant evidence in a murder investigation.”

Despite the fact that he was right about everything, I was indignant. “All that may be true, but I didn’t know—and I still don’t for that matter—if this map has anything to do with Walter Angel’s death.”

He eyes narrowed even further, like knife slits in his face; the DD6AA2AB8

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frown stayed where it was. “Then why are you coming to me now?

What’s changed your mind?”

I told him about the threatening white truck. Well, most of it. I left out the bit about first seeing it while I was parked outside Ethan Ash’s home, all doe-eyed.

The look on the policeman’s face changed. Despite our tendency to get under each other ’s skin—on purpose—neither of us wanted the other to be in true danger. It suddenly occurred to me, as it had to Darren Kirsch, that I was.

His measured voice was low as he warned me: “You have something the murderer wants, Quant.”

I gulped. I hate when that happens.

“When you searched the body,” I began haltingly, “did you happen to find a business card, say, with my name on it?” If the answer was no, I’d have a pretty good idea how White Truck Guy had gotten my cellphone number. And, it would pretty conclusive-ly tie him to the murder.

Kirsch shook his head. I figured as much.

The cop held out a hand. “It’s time you handed over the map.”

The disturbed look on his face told me what I already knew.

Giving him the map wasn’t going to make one little bit of difference to the killer. Not unless he or she was watching us right this second. Not if they suspected I’d never hand over the map to the police without making a copy for myself. (Which of course, I had.) It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the SPS to do a thorough job. But I just wasn’t the kind of guy to put my fate entirely in the hands of the police. Sure, the SPS was a good police force. I’d been a part of it once upon a time. But in the early hours of a murder investigation, their focus was going to be widespread. Mine, however, would be laser sharp: getting my butt out of the mess I’d landed in.

As the woman from the Marr Residence had told me, Trounce House was indeed teenie, weenie, and brown. I didn’t know if it was all that cute, though. It looked like any other old garage or storage shed in need of a major overhaul—except for one thing.

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A fence, maybe four or five feet high, had been built around the structure—quite recently by the look of it—as if it were in need of protection. Or maybe to keep it from the prying eyes of nosey tourists with a Sights of Saskatoon guide book? I wondered how many people walked down this nondescript back alley every day just to see the oldest structure in Saskatoon? Would they take pictures? Circle around it? If they did, their route would take them out of the public alley directly into the private backyard of whoever lived in the main house. Would they want to touch it? Try to get in? The owners had probably gotten fed up with having a munici-pally designated historic site next to their barbecue. I felt for them.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t comply with their wishes. I needed to get a good look at Trounce House.

I pulled my copy of the treasure map out of my pocket and read the third verse:

Morning, noon, night,

Behind a door too high,

Years and weather ingrain,

Now to fame’s portrait in a frame.

Behind a door too high. Hmmmm. At least that gave me something specific to work with. Even from my position on the wrong side of the fence, I could still see several doors on the house. The one at the east end looked to have been the original front entrance.

On the alley side was another pair, over what in a newer construction might have been considered a bay window. But the door that caught my attention was up high—too high you might say—at the apex of the gabled roof. It might have been a window at one point, but now it was a door, made of the same dog-brown clapboard.

That had to be it: the door too high. I’d found it.

Elation quickly wilted into frustration. There’s an obvious problem with doors that are “too high”: they’re too high. I needed to get a look behind it. How the heck was I going to do that?

I stood and stared at the door too high for quite some time, considering and abandoning various plans of action. But I wasn’t in the mood for failure.

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In all the time I’d been in the back alley, I’d yet to see another person, a car, or even a roaming pet. And especially, I’d not seen a white F-150. (I’d taken extra precautions getting to Trounce House, and my stealth had apparently paid off.) So, as interesting as Trounce House was, apparently it didn’t draw a big crowd on a regular basis. This was good news for me, especially since the plan I’d finally settled on involved some not-exactly-legal activity I’d rather carry out without witnesses.

This was yet another example, I rationalized to myself, of why I was better suited to pursue the treasure map clues than the police. By the time they had jumped all the hoops to be nicey-nicey with the house owners and get official permission to check behind the door too high, it could take days. My way was much more expedient, if not exactly neighbourly.

The way I saw it, the only way to get to the too-high door was via the roof. If I could get on the roof and scale it to its topmost point, all I’d have to do was reach down, open the door and see what was behind it. Sounded simple. Looked simple.

It wasn’t simple.

The first obstacle was getting on the roof in the first place. The damned privacy fence was a problem. It was doing its job, keeping me well away from the historic house. How could I get on the house’s roof if I couldn’t even get to the house?

As I studied my circumstances, I began to wonder if the fence might actually be part of the solution rather than a problem. I stood back to get a better overall view. I judged the distance from fence line to house to be about five feet. I’m not the greatest at estimating distances, but it didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was whether or not I thought I could leap from the top of the fence onto the roof.

With no other readily identifiable options, I decided I could.

As it turned out, I was only partially correct.

After scaling the fence and squatting atop it, all wobbly-like, like a drunken cat, I leapt towards the roof. This wasn’t exactly a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon move on my part. It was more Humpty Dumpty. I didn’t jump because I was ready to, I jumped because if I didn’t I’d have toppled off the narrow fence and all the DD6AA2AB8

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king’s horses and all the king’s men would have laughed me out of the back alley.

Only half of me landed on target. The other half, meaning my lower torso and legs, missed the mark. As I flailed madly, trying to find purchase on something that would help me up, I could only hope that some good Samaritan wasn’t witnessing my Mr. Bean moment and calling 9-1-1.

With a bit of scrambling and a nasty scrape on my knee oozing blood, I finally hoisted the rest of me onto the building. For a moment I lay there, on my back, looking up at the sky, wondering what I would have been doing today if I’d decided as a young man to become a farmer like my father. Would I be stranded on top of a stranger ’s roof, with a wounded knee, in a quest to find a hidden treasure? Probably not.

Inwardly I smiled. Good decision, Quant.

With a heave-ho, I rotated onto my stomach and regarded my situation. The pitch of the roof was gentle, and so I began to crawl.

Before long, I reached the highest point, just where I wanted to be.

After a short congratulatory speech, I maneuvered myself until I was straddling the peak like a sawhorse. I then laid myself flat out, and inched forward, until my head and arms were hanging over the peak right above the door. Only then did I allow myself to think about whether or not it was locked. This would be inconvenient to be sure. But, in my career as a PI, I’d yet to come across a locked door I couldn’t get through one way or another.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to call on my lock picking expertise this time. Using my fingernails as prying mechanisms, I urged the door and smiled in triumph as it stuttered open.

Edging even further over the roof’s edge, I lowered my head down and peered inside.

Now, I don’t know exactly what it was I was expecting to see.

A gleeful woodland pixie, revealing the treasure’s whereabouts, was too much to hope for, I suppose. But certainly, after all I’d done to get up there, I deserved something better than what I got: a big, empty, black space.

It was a disappointment to say the least. And then, things got worse.

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“What are you doing up there, Mister?”

My gaze shifted from the black nothingness to the alley. At least the voice wasn’t coming from the backyard. That would have been downright awkward.

“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to fall?”

The voice belonged to a young boy, maybe eight or nine. He had a ball under his left arm and was chewing a piece of gum that, by the way his jaw was moving, had to be the size of his fist.

“I’m just looking for something.” I said the first thing that came to mind after “Shoo, boy, shoo.”

“What are you looking for?”

Was I this inquisitive when I was a boy? Probably. However, I had preferred jawbreakers to globs of gum.

“Well, to tell the truth, I’m not quite sure.” I swung the door back as far as it would go, allowing the kid to see that whatever it was that years and weather were supposed to have ingrained on it was nowhere to be found.

Instead, he said, “That’s kinda cool.”

“Huh?”

“That flower on the door. Did you do that?”

Uh, no.

I looked down at the door and couldn’t see a thing. What was this kid talking about? Did he have x-ray vision or something?

“You see a flower?”

“Yeah, right on the back of the door. Can’t you?”

I examined the back side of the door. All I could see was a scarred piece of aged wood. No flower here.

“Okay. See you.” And the kid was off.

Wait a second, I wanted to yell out: tell me more about the flower! But I was in no position to be doing any yelling or calling attention to myself.

Obviously, I needed to see the door from the kid’s perspective.

Up there I was looking at it upside-down and from way too close.

Or maybe it was all the blood rushing to my head that kept me from seeing what he saw.

As I began creeping down the side of the roof, I quickly became aware of an unfortunate fact. There was no way I was going to get DD6AA2AB8

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off the same way I got on. I couldn’t jump off the roof onto the narrow top edge of the fence. Instead, I did what I needed to: I dropped off the roof, landing ungracefully on my ass on the strip of ground between Trounce House and its protective fence. I was now formally trespassing in the owner ’s yard. Until then I’d only been on fence tops and roofs. Certainly fence tops and roofs were considered public property? But, with no time to debate the issue, I hurriedly hoisted myself up and over the fence into the back alley.