Stain of the Berry (33 page)

Quite the entrepreneur. "Actually I'm not here for parts."

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3/15/2011 10:56 PM

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BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

Less friendly look.

"I'm a little lost," I kept on. "I'm looking for a fellow name of Frank Sadownik? I think he lives around here? I'm Arnold Ziffel, the superintendent of the Prairie Lilly School Division and we're looking to hire Mr. Sadownik. Just coming out to meet him in person."

"Oh, I didn't know Frank was thinking about getting back into teaching full time," the man said. "Sure, he lives around here."

"Maybe we could go outside and you could give me directions." And an oxygen mask.

"It's not far," he began, not moving from his spot. "Just head west as soon as you leave the yard here for about two miles till you come to a crossroad. You'll notice a big pine with a crooked top-you probably seen it on your way out here?-well, you turn right there and head another coupla miles until you see a yard with three newer looking grain bins. That's his place."

"You been neighbours with Frank a long time?" I asked, pretending to have committed his directions to memory.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Good guy then?"

"Yeah sure, I guess. Likes his religion more'n I do, but he's okay. You never know nowadays with neighbours, do ya? It's a roll of the dice who you're gonna get, even on the farm, so many people coming and going these days. Used to be you were neighbours with the same folks all your life, and then your kids were neighbours with the neighbour's kids, and on and on. Now, ya never know. Game of chance."

I thought that was an odd comment on things, but maybe pig farmer guy just liked to wax philosophical.

Regardless, I had to get him back on topic. "So you get along with Frank then? You think he'd make a good teacher?"

He frowned a bit. "I guess you'd know that better than I would."

"So you'd trust him with your kids?"

More frowning.

Maybe I needed to give him a little more reason to confide in me. "It's important in my line of work that we find out as much as we can about the teachers we hire. I like to talk to people like you, neighbours and acquaintances, kind of like getting references."

"Did Frank give you my name as a reference?"

Where was the toothless, big-bellied, grade-school educated, all-trusting, gossipy pig farmer of days gone by? "Ah no.. .I'm just lost."

"Well, I've given you directions then, haven't I?"

Yep.

There are only a few bus charter and rental businesses in the Saskatoon Yellow Pages and I called them all until I found one that recalled being hired by the Pink Gophers-luckily for me, a name that tended to stick in people's memories-for a trip to and from Regina last December. That was the easy part. Getting the last name and address of the bus driver was a little more work-but not much.

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3/15/2011 10:56 PM

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BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

I identified myself as Frank Sadownik (Jared had told me that, as the group's pseudo leader, it would have been Frank who arranged transportation to the competition). When I outright asked for the bus driver's information, the woman who answered my call had refused-and rightly so-until, that is, I told her how the Pink Gophers and Guy, the bus driver, had bought some lottery tickets as a group to commemorate the night they were stranded together in Davidson and that, surprise of all surprises, they'd won some money. The group simply wanted Guy to have his share. This, not surprisingly, is everyone's dream come true and the woman quickly acquiesced to my request. She revealed that Guy-last name Marcotte-had only been a part-time employee in the first place and, coincidentally, had not worked for the company since that December trip. She said his cheques went to a post office box but that she was pretty sure he lived in a trailer somewhere near the Circle Drive freeway and a railway because she remembered him complaining about the noise keeping him from a good night's sleep one day when he was late for work. After that it was as simple as studying a map of Saskatoon to find the right trailer park. I didn't have an address yet, and there was no listing for a Guy Marcotte in the phone book, but I was on his scent.

I pulled into a land where streets have no names and immediately felt ill at ease. I thought I knew Saskatoon pretty well, but here was a place I did not know at all. Sure, like any other city around the world, Saskatoon has its good parts and its bad parts; parts that are safe and parts less so; parts primarily inhabited by one specific segment of the city's varied demographic or another; parts for loud, parts for quiet; parts for richer, parts for poorer; dirty parts, clean parts; parts you visit and parts you don't. And this was one of those parts that kept itself well hidden until you took a wrong turn. It was like stumbling upon a room in your house you never knew was there.

North of 115th Street, just off where the communities of Sutherland and Forest Grove don't quite intersect, is a triangular patch of land that hugs the CPR rail line, and therein lay the trailer court Guy Marcotte called home sweet home. I didn't even know if the place had a name.

I directed the Mazda off Central Avenue, down to the end of Powe Street and the first thing to catch my eye was a flat-roofed building, boarded up with cheap plywood, with a sign above a set of barred front doors that identified it as Hagar's Confectionery. I couldn't even be sure whether or not the place was closed for business or just poorly-very poorly-kept up, and I certainly wasn't inclined to stop and find out.

Nevertheless, Hagar's seemed a fitting sentinel for this hidden enclave.

I decided to case the area before making any other moves, and slowly wound my way up and down the short, narrow, bland streets of the trailer park neighbourhood. As I did so, I marvelled at the countless types of trailers in every shape and size imaginable: skinny, fat, metal, wood. Some had decks and built-on extensions, others had barely enough nails to hold them together; some were freshly painted in bright hues, while others sat dejected and unloved in sickly yellow, pale green and industrial grey. The yards were uniformly small but the similarity ended there: some were alive with cheerful pots of marigolds and pansies swinging from eavestroughs, healthy patches of lawn and pretty little outdoor sitting areas, whereas right next door the plots grew thick with weeds or had been left unattended for so long that all that was left was a scabby parcel of dead earth. Hagar's Heath-as I'd fondly come to think of the place-was where massive satellite dishes, souped-up cars and plastic yard ornaments went to live after the rest of the city's population had tired of them.

There was a lakeside-cabin-y feel to the whole place, with un-pruned, unruly tree limbs hanging low over trailers that pointed end-out at an angle toward the street, somewhere no one would ever think to live year-round, but certainly would consider sufficient for a summer weekend getaway. Trailer parks are odd places in general; the homes are meant to be mobile, yet usually the only transient thing about them are the people who live in them.

After a few minutes of driving back and forth, I was beginning to get noticed by locals, many of whom seemed to be milling about as if in search for somewhere cooler than the unairconditioned boxes; they called home. I wasn't sure if it was my sporty Mazda RX-7 with its top down that was seizing attention or the fact that a suspicious stranger had come to town, but I was definitely as foreign to them as they were to me. And this was their turf.

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3/15/2011 10:56 PM

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BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

Finally, I pulled to a stop in front of an off-white trailer with a massive bay window. Below it was a long-abandoned flower bed where two stalky delphiniums had managed to poke up through crackled earth so dry it was almost white. I waited until two young women on a leisurely walkabout, pushing three separate baby carriages, were about even with my car and called out a friendly, "Hello."

They slowed down, did not stop, stared at me, but otherwise did not respond to my greeting.

"I was wondering if you could tell me where Guy Marcotte lives?" I asked in a pleasant voice.

They kept on truckin' and never looked back.

Okay.

Maybe they speak another language here in Hagar's Heath, I mused to myself.

I moved along until I found a guy working under the hood of his monster truck. The thing sat so high off the ground, on wheels that had to be twice normal size, he needed a stepladder to reach the motor. Again I pulled up and called out a greeting and asked for directions. The guy gave me and my car a careful looking-over then told me to get lost. So I did. I tried this tactic twice more until I finally found a more talkative resident. She was old, ninety if she was a day, wearing baggy trousers, a Hawaiian shirt and dirty white sneakers. Her blowsy hair was dyed red-about ten years ago-and her face was as wrinkled as a Shar-Pei hound.

"Why you want to find him?" she asked me from her perch on an ancient, wooden kitchen chair she'd positioned in a slice of shade next to the front (and only) door of her trailer.

Regardless of her cantankerous demeanor, when I realized she would actually talk to mc, I got out of the car, came to within two metres of her and her chair and stopped, not wanting to push my luck and thinking it wise to stay close to the Mazda in case I needed to make a quick escape (this place was really giving me the heebie-jeebies). "I have something for him," I told her, not quite prepared to spin a fanciful tall tale (you see I had thought I'd ask someone for directions, and they'd give them to me; that's how this kind of thing is supposed to work).

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

Fortunately, I can be quick with lies if pressed. "I'm from the bus company where he used to work."

"Oh yeah." She began picking her teeth with a toothpick. Just finished a late lunch of Spam, I thought.

"I have his final cheque."

"Couldn't mail it?"

Patience, Quant, patience. I gave a little laugh. "Well, we misplaced his address." I knew what the next question was going to be so I cut her off at the pass. "But I remembered him saying he lived out here, so I thought I'd deliver it in person."

"Mighty nice of you to do something like that outta the goodness of your heart." Was that sarcasm I heard?

Enough of this. "Do you know where he lives?"

"Don't know if I should tell you. That's private information, now isn't it?"

By this time, a neighbour, a skeletal-looking man in overalls, who'd been doing very little to hide the fact that he was listening to our conversation, gave us a
harrumph.
The woman looked at him and said,

"This guy wants to give money to Guy Marcotte."

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3/15/2011 10:56 PM

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BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...

That seemed to be enough information for him. He waved his hand in a dismissive way as if we'd interrupted his life in a most rude way, and ambled off with a sideways gait.

"He's down there," the woman said, her voice suddenly tired-sounding. "The brown one on the end behind all those damned lilacs."

Finally. I chuckled. "You don't like lilacs?" Everyone likes lilacs.

"Smell of the flowers drives me bonkers. And they attract bees! Bees everywhere, all spring long until those damn flowers die."

I nodded in empathy and thanked the woman and returned to my car. As I drove off I felt her eyes, and the eyes of several more of Hagar's peoples, on the scruff of my hot neck.

I pulled up in front of Guy Marcotte's home, mostly hidden from the street by several large, globe-shaped lilac bushes. I got out of the car again and picked my way down a gravelled walkway through the bushes, noticing an abundance of brown, dried-out blooms. They were long done emitting their sweet, bee-attracting aroma; now they simply smelled...brown. The trailer was shabby looking and all the windows in my sight were covered over from the inside, no doubt in an attempt to keep the sun's rays from making the metal box like a microwave oven. I mounted three steps to the door, rapped my knuckles on it and waited, taking a quick survey of the surrounding area and detecting the unmistakable scent of marijuana. It took a second knock before the door finally opened.

Now Guy Marcotte was what is known in gay lexicon as a Bear, and a cute one too. At well above six feet, he had about three or four inches and forty pounds on me, some of it muscle, some of it gut and butt.

Although his head was shaved, you could tell it wasn't because he was trying to hide male pattern baldness, but rather he was going for a look. He hadn't shaved for a couple of days and dark bristles were poking up everywhere. His Tom of Finland face was tanned and he sported a mighty, dark-brown moustache that turned up at the ends like a happy face smile. He was wearing a leather vest (in this weather!), snug jeans and lace-up boots. He smelled of man.

"Yeah?" he grunted as he stepped out of the doorway, shutting the door behind him as if he was just leaving. I guessed I wasn't going to be invited in for dainties.

"Hi," I said, backing down the steps as he stepped into my personal space, either as some sort of intimidation tactic or, like some people, he just didn't understand polite speaking distance. "My name is Russell Quant and I wanted to talk to you about a job you did last December for the bus company. You drove a choir called the Pink Gophers to Regina?"

He nodded and shrugged his mighty shoulders. "Yeah, so what?" He clumped down the steps so he was now on ground level with me.

"I'm investigating several cases of harassment against the members of that group and I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about that particular trip?"

"Well, whatever, guy," he said. "But it can't be now. My girlfriend will have my ass if I don't pick her up at the mall in like five minutes ago. So some other time, huh?" He nodded, not unfriendly-like, as if to seal the deal and began to head down the path toward a dusty old Chevy parked in a makeshift driveway.