Aloha, Candy Hearts (5 page)

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Anthony Bidulka

was not a good sign, and neither was the approaching Air Canada representative.

“I’m afraid that is all the luggage from this flight,” he announced to the half-dozen of us left. “If you could follow me to the booth right over there, I can take your information.”

What followed was a chorus of discontent that I knew from past experience was utterly useless. I looked at Magoo and grimaced. “My bad luck, I guess.”

He nodded, looking even more disgruntled than I was. His eyes made a quick sweep of the concourse as if looking for something or someone, then he shrugged and said, “Well, m’boy, I guess I’ll be off then. It was a pleasure meeting you. I hope we get a chance to talk again soon.” And with that, he toddled off.

I joined the unhappy throng at the lost luggage counter.

Twenty minutes later, with Air Canada promising to home deliver my two suitcases as soon as they returned from their own getaway vacation to who knew where, I was in the airport long-term parking lot trying to recall where I’d left my silver Mazda RX-7. I usually park near a walkway, to make spotting the small vehicle a little easier. On the bright side, at least I didn’t have to bother with hauling a couple of heavy pieces of luggage after me.

It was getting dark out and I’d just spotted the car when I noticed a flurry of activity not far off. People were gathered in a dim corner of the lot, but something told me this was definitely more than just an impromptu tailgate party. There was unmistakable tension in the air. Voices were raised, and I thought I could hear crying. Something was wrong. I trotted over to take a look.

Squeezing through the circle of gawkers, I finally saw what the fuss was about. Someone had collapsed next to a car. He didn’t seem to be moving. A couple of parking lot security guards were attending to him, but the situation didn’t look good. Heart attack maybe? I could hear one of the guards talking to a 9-1-1 operator, asking for both an ambulance and police.

Although by virtue of my chosen career I am a professional snoop, I try to hold it to a minimum in times of private misfortune.

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Aloha, Candy Hearts

I was about to step away from this bad luck story when something familiar caught my eye.

An orange and blue scarf.

I drew in a sharp breath.

It was Mr. Magoo lying lifeless on the ground.

Then I noticed one more thing. Alarm bells started ringing in my head.

I charged forward, and yelled: “Seal off the parking lot!”

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Detective Darren Kirsch was not amused when after asking me—

five separate times—to identify the dead man in the parking lot, all I could answer was: “Mr. Magoo.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. I was. “I never asked his name. We were strangers who met on a plane. We chatted. I helped him with his suitcase. That’s it.”

“How did you know he was murdered?”

I winced. It turned out the orange and blue scarf around Mr.

Magoo’s throat was tied very tightly. He’d been strangled. In the Saskatoon airport parking lot of all places. It was shocking. On average, there are fewer than ten homicides each year in my prairie hometown. Most of those happen within a very specific area of the city. Most involve alcohol and knives, not an orange and blue scarf. A quick visual survey of the people still milling about the murder site revealed that everyone, cops and medical professionals included, was just as taken aback as I was.

“I didn’t know it was murder.”

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“Then why did you demand the parking lot be sealed off before anyone even suspected the death was suspicious?” Kirsch barked. It was his favourite manner of speaking, particularly to me. We’d worked together years ago when I was still a cop. We enjoyed being thorns in each other ’s sides ever since. Well, me more than him.

“I told you already. His luggage. I’d helped him, so I knew he had a carry-on and an argyle suitcase.”

Kirsch stared at me. He was probably wondering what

“argyle” meant.

“They were missing. And the body was too far from the car for him to have already stashed them in the trunk. I assumed he’d been robbed, not murdered. I thought if we stopped people from leaving the parking lot, we might be able to identify the thief by searching cars and finding out who had the luggage. I could have been wrong, I suppose, but I thought it was worth the effort.”

The big cop grunted. “I suppose.”

“Was that a compliment? Was that a, ‘Hey, good call, Russell’?”

Kirsch snarled. Unfortunately for him, despite the requisite dark brooding eyes, shovel jaw, and cheesy mustache favoured by Saskatoon cops, he was simply too teddy bear cute to pull it off.

“Don’t leave town,” he said as he stalked off. “I’m gonna need to talk with you again.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” I turned to go, then stopped and called out: “Have you been able to identify Mr. M…the dead man?”

“Angel,” he called back. “His name was Walter Angel.”

As I walked away, a troubling thought entered my mind. Had I read the look in Walter Angel’s eyes incorrectly? Had he been ogling me? Or was he afraid?

It was late—after ten p.m.—by the time I got away from the airport. I knew stuffing two happy-to-see me schnauzers in the RX-7

would be a bit tricky, but I was desperate to be reunited with my pups Barbra and Brutus after being away for a whole week. Using my cellphone, I dialled Errall’s number and got a two-word reply to my request. “Yeah, fine.”

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Anthony Bidulka

Errall Strane is my landlord, lawyer, sometime dogsitter, sparring partner, and oftentimes reluctant friend. She owns PWC, the downtown building that is home to my workplace, as well as her own one-woman law practice, Beverly Chaney’s psychology office, and Alberta Lougheed’s psychic realm of bizarreness. Errall was also Brutus’s former owner.

Her greeting upon my arrival was just as verbose. She had both dogs on their leashes, waiting for me on the front porch. It was Saturday night, but it was obvious she wasn’t entertaining guests.

All the windows were dark. Even the front porch light was off. I could barely see her face when she said, “Here,” and handed me the leads.

Barbra and Brutus are not effusive dogs. They lean more toward graceful and reserved, but I could tell they were thrilled to see me. As I was them. Their little tails were whirring fast enough to set them into flight, and they were letting out barely restrained whimpers of delight. Errall, on the other hand, was in a black mood. No tail wagging from her. She didn’t bother to invite me in.

I took the leads. “Did Barbra and Brutus behave themselves?”

They always did, but I liked getting a report anyway.

“Sure.”

“Errall,” I said, “Is everything all right?” I suspected it wasn’t.

“Yep.” She pulled back inside the house and turned away, kicking the door shut with her heel.

It was a beautiful August evening, but I didn’t dare leave the top down. Not with two antsy dogs in the seat next to me. So I went through the machinations of covering up. I love my little car, but it is twenty years old. It doesn’t have any of the push-one-button technology of newer convertibles. I had to unfold the top canopy, flip some flaps and doohickeys, get back in the car, turn a knob, wait for it to lift and fall into place above our heads, flip the flaps and doohickeys again, and then it was done. Barbra and Brutus watched and waited with admirable patience. It was a little tight quarters for all three of us in there, but all the better for a few minutes spent cuddling, petting, patting, and licking (I was the lickee, DD6AA2AB8

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not the licker). We’d missed each other.

When that was done, I shifted into drive and headed off, planning to go straight home. It was late. I hadn’t had much sleep in the past twenty-four hours. Someone I knew, however briefly, had just been murdered. You’d think home was where I’d want to be.

But somehow I found myself steering the car in an entirely different direction.

I ended up on a leafy lane in an old part of town. I parked across the street from a charming house painted in hues of bur-gundy, harvest yellow, and dusk blue. A hand-carved sign swing-ing from a newel post identified it as Ash House, the home (and business) of Ethan Ash. Ethan was a man I’d met while on a case a couple of years earlier. I waited for a truck to pass before rolling down my window for a clearer view.

What are you doing here, Quant? I asked myself. Barbra snuffled her wet nose into my ear, asking the same thing. Or maybe she was wondering when she could finally get out of the cramped car.

Both very good questions.

I shook my head. This was insane. I shouldn’t be skulking around outside some guy’s house like a lovesick schoolboy. I’m an engaged man. I love Alex Canyon. I’d accepted his offer of marriage. So why, oh why, can’t I let this go? Another vehicle passed by. Damn traffic.

For years, my friends had chided me for being devotedly single and liking it. I’d been in love once, a long time ago. But when that was over, it seemed, so was my ability and desire to fall that far again. I’d had my crushes—usually on men who were totally unsuitable or un-haveable—like my best friend’s boyfriend, or a Roman Catholic priest, or a guy who lived in New York City, or my best one yet: a murderer. Was I unlucky at love, or just not trying very hard? I’d been happy enough without it. Complete without it.

I had great friends and family, a great job, great home, great dogs.

I loved my life. But now I had fallen in love. Twice. With two different guys. At the same time. Rather inconvenient to say the least.

No, that wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. I couldn’t be in love with Ethan Ash. We first met when I was hired to find a man who turned out to be his ex-lover. Ethan ran Ash House—kind of a frat DD6AA2AB8

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house for the senior set in Saskatoon. Oldsters who were in pretty good health but maybe needed a little help with day-to-day chores, preparing meals, or just wanted to avoid loneliness, moved into Ash House where Ethan looked after them. He also looked after his twelve-year-old daughter, Simon (short for Simonette).

Ethan is a sweet, caring, gentle bear of a man. He’s smart, jovial, and loves to laugh. He’s a big, beefy guy, with poker-straight, shiny brown hair, rosy, dimpled cheeks, smiling eyes and an open, friendly face. The natural set of his features seems to be stuck on “happy,” but when you catch him unaware, maybe looking a little wistful, his pleasant face turns downright beautiful.

And although it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how he does it, sex appeal just oozes from his pores like syrup from a waffle.

When I first met him, I felt an unfamiliar spark—well, actually there were several sparks, in several different parts of my body.

During the course of the case I was on, Ethan had been badly beat-en and I visited him in the hospital. It was then, while sitting next to his bed, holding his hand, that I first fell in l…

No!

Not love. I had a crush. That’s all it was.

Jeez, how old was I? When was I going to stop with the crushes?

Normally, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Cases eventually end. Time passes. People move on and I don’t see them again. But that didn’t happen. As fate would have it, Ethan had become a bigger part of my life. Or at least the lives of my circle of friends.

Ethan and my boutique-store-owing friend, Anthony Gatt, were already acquaintances. Anthony’s long-term partner, Jared Lowe, had recently ended his life as a jet-setting, internationally acclaimed supermodel. This was due both to the end of his thirties and the loss of his unblemished beauty when a maniacal stalker threw acid in his face. Although surgeries had taken care of some of the latter, when combined with the former, a screeching halt to his career was the undeniable consequence. So Jared had been looking for new opportunities, and now, he and Ethan were about to become business partners.

An aging Saskatchewan population and booming economy DD6AA2AB8

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had combined to make Ash House more successful than ever. The place was bursting at the seams. In shrewd contemplation of this, Ethan had purchased a small acreage just outside the city limits, right before local real estate prices went through the roof. His plan was to build a bigger and better facility (and a home for himself and Simon). But then construction costs went crazy and he needed a bigger loan than he could handle.

Enter Jared with his buckets of modelling profits. With Anthony’s guidance, he’d invested his savings wisely and the asset side of his ledger had added up rather nicely over the years.

After some research and soul searching, Jared offered to assist Ethan in the financing and building of the new Ash House, with the proviso that he could help run the expanded operation once it was done. Ethan was more than grateful to get the investment dollars, as well as the help with taking care of the much bigger property and its residents. Jared was thrilled to find something he could pour his passion into. He hadn’t been looking forward to the nine-to-five world of regular, non-model folk. When completed, the new Ash House would be right up his alley. It would allow him a flexible schedule and the chance to help other people. The fact that some older people had poor eyesight and most simply didn’t care about his altered looks, were side benefits he never publicly admitted.