call you 'bout something?"
"Yes, yes, that's right," I said, getting up and walking away from the bank of legal bandits to what I hoped was a quieter location near the glass doors of the front entrance. "Thank you for calling back, Mr.
Hannotte. As you must know, one of your building's tenants committed suicide last week."
"Yeah, 863."
I guess Tanya was just an apartment number to him. I put on my best detective-pretending-to-be-a-cop voice. "Due to the nature of the death we're doing some investigating and I had a question for you."
"Sure officer, whatever."
Sure was noisy in that casino, barely heard what he called me. Oh well, whatever. "When we searched Ms. Culinare's apartment, I noticed her front door looked as if it had been sanded down. Had you been doing repairs to it recently?"
45 of 163
3/15/2011 10:56 PM
D: BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...
"Uh, yeah," Roger said. "It was weird. Vandalism I guess."
"Did someone write something on the door? Graffiti maybe?" A threat?
"Graffiti? Uh, no. Like I say, it was weird. Graffiti I could sorta understand, but this was some whacked-out stuff."
He had my attention. "Why, Mr. Hannotte? What was it?"
"The door was covered with scratches," he said. "Deep scratches. It was like some kind of animal or something was trying to get into that apartment."
An unbidden shudder ran through me. The boogeyman. I was beginning to form an image in my mind of what he might actually look like. It wasn't a pleasant picture.
After hanging up from my conversation with Roger Hannotte, I stood for a moment staring at nothing, thinking about what he'd told me, feeling a little spooked. What could possibly have made those marks on Tanya Culinare's door? A neighbour's dog? A really aggressive Avon representative? When I'd asked Mr.
Hannotte what Tanya had told him when she reported the damage, he'd said she'd told him she didn't know how it had happened.
Through the glass of the casino doors I could see that it was dark outside, very dark, and lurking somewhere out there I could imagine a creature...oh blast it! I admonished myself; I do not believe in the boogeyman. I was about to head back to my hotel room when my eye caught something just outside the front doors and part way down the block.
No way.
Couldn't be.
A dark blue Envoy. It had an Avis sticker on the front bumper.
I'd last seen the exact same vehicle in Saskatoon, parked outside my office. Only that time it had been accompanied by a man looking at me through a pair of binoculars.
I pushed my way through a gaggle of grey-haired women who'd just been dropped off at the casino entrance by a harried looking man driving a van-possibly the sole widower amongst a group of energetic widows from the local care home. Just as I stepped outdoors onto the pavement, I heard the squeal of tires and watched the blue vehicle pull away from its spot. Damn. I decided to give chase on foot, thinking maybe I'd get lucky and catch up with the SUV at the nearest red light or at least get close enough to get a peek at the driver or the plate number. Fate, however, had a different plan for me.
I was getting up a good head of steam, repeating the mantra, "I know I can, I know I can," when an arm shot out from the shadowed depths of a doorway. The forearm caught me right at the Adam's apple and pulled me up short, leaving me stunned and staggering. The force of the unexpected impact had spun me around and I narrowly avoided a fast trip to the sidewalk. As I fought to catch my breath, I saw a man closing in on me.
"Are you okay?" he asked in a surprisingly sincere voice, even though he'd come this close to decapitating me (well, not really, but I was in the mood for over-dramatization).
"Are you crazy?" I queried the man as if he just might be. My voice was a raspy, smoker's, hard-drinker's version of its normal self. Now that I knew this wasn't an attack and the Envoy was long gone, I lowered my hackles and took
"Yes, yes, that's right," I said, getting up and walking away from the bank of legal bandits to what I hoped was a quieter location near the glass doors of the front entrance. "Thank you for calling back, Mr.
Hannotte. As you must know, one of your building's tenants committed suicide last week."
"Yeah, 863."
I guess Tanya was just an apartment number to him. I put on my best detective-pretending-to-be-a-cop voice. "Due to the nature of the death we're doing some investigating and I had a question for you."
"Sure officer, whatever."
Sure was noisy in that casino, barely heard what he called me. Oh well, whatever. "When we searched Ms. Culinare's apartment, I noticed her front door looked as if it had been sanded down. Had you been doing repairs to it recently?"
45 of 163
3/15/2011 10:56 PM
D: BOOKS/Anthony Bidulka - Russell Quant Mystery/Anthony B...
"Uh, yeah," Roger said. "It was weird. Vandalism I guess."
"Did someone write something on the door? Graffiti maybe?" A threat?
"Graffiti? Uh, no. Like I say, it was weird. Graffiti I could sorta understand, but this was some whacked-out stuff."
He had my attention. "Why, Mr. Hannotte? What was it?"
"The door was covered with scratches," he said. "Deep scratches. It was like some kind of animal or something was trying to get into that apartment."
An unbidden shudder ran through me. The boogeyman. I was beginning to form an image in my mind of what he might actually look like. It wasn't a pleasant picture.
After hanging up from my conversation with Roger Hannotte, I stood for a moment staring at nothing, thinking about what he'd told me, feeling a little spooked. What could possibly have made those marks on Tanya Culinare's door? A neighbour's dog? A really aggressive Avon representative? When I'd asked Mr.
Hannotte what Tanya had told him when she reported the damage, he'd said she'd told him she didn't know how it had happened.
Through the glass of the casino doors I could see that it was dark outside, very dark, and lurking somewhere out there I could imagine a creature...oh blast it! I admonished myself; I do not believe in the boogeyman. I was about to head back to my hotel room when my eye caught something just outside the front doors and part way down the block.
No way.
Couldn't be.
A dark blue Envoy. It had an Avis sticker on the front bumper.
I'd last seen the exact same vehicle in Saskatoon, parked outside my office. Only that time it had been accompanied by a man looking at me through a pair of binoculars.
I pushed my way through a gaggle of grey-haired women who'd just been dropped off at the casino entrance by a harried looking man driving a van-possibly the sole widower amongst a group of energetic widows from the local care home. Just as I stepped outdoors onto the pavement, I heard the squeal of tires and watched the blue vehicle pull away from its spot. Damn. I decided to give chase on foot, thinking maybe I'd get lucky and catch up with the SUV at the nearest red light or at least get close enough to get a peek at the driver or the plate number. Fate, however, had a different plan for me.
I was getting up a good head of steam, repeating the mantra, "I know I can, I know I can," when an arm shot out from the shadowed depths of a doorway. The forearm caught me right at the Adam's apple and pulled me up short, leaving me stunned and staggering. The force of the unexpected impact had spun me around and I narrowly avoided a fast trip to the sidewalk. As I fought to catch my breath, I saw a man closing in on me.
"Are you okay?" he asked in a surprisingly sincere voice, even though he'd come this close to decapitating me (well, not really, but I was in the mood for over-dramatization).
"Are you crazy?" I queried the man as if he just might be. My voice was a raspy, smoker's, hard-drinker's version of its normal self. Now that I knew this wasn't an attack and the Envoy was long gone, I lowered my hackles and took
Similar Books
