Authors: Anthony Bidulka
here, a few thousand there. Pretty lucrative game
if you think about it,” I said, warming to my theo-
ry. “Jared is away so much of the time on model-
ling assignments, it’d be easy enough for him to
pull it off without his lover knowing. God, Errall,
it could be Anthony, it really could.” I’d obviously
been considering this scenario, somewhere deep
within my psyche. And now, I’d revealed it out
loud. I was pathetic. Anthony was my dear, dear
friend, the love of my dead uncle’s life, my hero,
and here I was, suspecting him of blackmail.
How could I? I felt ashamed. The shroud of dark-
ness overcoming the room seemed ever so appro-
priate for our ugly words of betrayal.
“Russell.” Her voice came from right behind
my ear. She had come up behind me. “You’re only
doing your job. And you’ll be happy to know that
when it comes to Anthony being the blackmailer,
you have no proof of that either. Either of these
men might be Loverboy. And you have to consid-
er both of them as serious possibilities. It’s your
job.”
342 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
I twisted around so I could look her in the eyes.
“How can I do that? How can I investigate my
own friend?”
“Don’t think of it as proving him guilty. Think
of it as proving him innocent.”
Our eyes hugged for what seemed like a long
time. Finally she backed away and disappeared. I
turned back towards the window. Still no snow.
I waited until six o’clock. I called my mother to
excuse myself from the evening meal—which,
actually she seemed to be okay with—and then
headed for DGR&R. On the way I slipped by the
drive-through McDonald’s window for a low-fat
salad thingy, low-fat muffin and a Diet Coke (my
mother’s cooking and NYC dining extravaganzas
were turning me into…well, into me at fourteen).
I chowed down on my meal parked about a
half-block down from Daniel’s office building. I
had a good spot. I could see the parking lot and
most of the office windows on two sides. I was
willing to wager that this being two days before
Christmas, there wouldn’t be too many slowpokes
out of the office. And I was right. By just after six-
thirty the last vehicle pulled out of the lot and the
only light visible was a night light through the
first floor reception-area window.
I took the last slurps of my drink and manoeu-
vred my car behind the building, up close to the
back door where most street traffic wouldn’t catch
sight of me. I hopped out and raced to the door and,
fingers crossed, typed in the security code I saw
Anthony Bidulka — 343
Daniel use the morning we’d met at this same spot.
Opening the door I was greeted by the welcoming
arms of silence. So far so good. And then, like a thief
in the night (as opposed to an intruder at dusk, like
me) I stole up the rear stairs, down a hall into the
atrium and into Daniel’s unlocked office.
It wasn’t just a need to do something, anything,
that had led me there. It was a number of things.
Loverboy was still out there; I could feel him. With
Daniel’s decision to bait him with a $10,000 payoff
letter, the chances of our blackmailer responding
quickly and negatively were high. Our main sus-
pect was dead. The others were…doubtful. My
client was not cooperating in helping to identify
alternatives. But, most of all, there was one thing
that was driving me to do this, to break into my
own client’s office—an action which I’m sure is
frowned upon in the
Being a Private Eye for
Dummies
handbook. That one thing was Beverly.
In her own incorruptible, honourable, scrupulous
way, she had been trying to tell me something the
day before—without really telling me. There was
something about Daniel I did not know. And
needed to.
The search of his office was slow, particularly
since I, to be careful, was performing it by flash-
light and really had no idea what I was looking
for. Being an accountant, Daniel had an abun-
dance of paper in his life—but to be fair, it was
meticulously organized paper—tabbed, labelled,
colour-coded, filed and bindered. And, it was in
paper where I eventually found something. I was
searching a file cabinet drawer, unlocked, in a file
344 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
labelled Royal Bank Statements. What alerted me
that this was somehow different from the several
other banking-related files I’d riffled through was
that the account was in his name only, whereas the
others were office-related accounts or joint
accounts with his wife. Nothing libellous about
that, but worth a look.
At first the bank statements seemed innocuous
enough, revealing not much other than a series of
modest deposits, withdrawals and Interac
charges. That is until a pattern emerged, a pattern
that began twelve months earlier and stopped
sometime in July. In that six-month period there
were regular Interac charges for the Riviera Motor
Inn. Sometimes five or six times a month. The
amount was always the same. About the cost of a
hotel room.
Cheryl Guest was right. Her husband
was
hav-
ing an affair—long before his assignations with
Anthony Gatt or James Kraft.
The problem was this: How to get my client to tell
me who he was meeting in the Riviera Motor Inn
Motel without letting him know I’d broken into
his office and gone through his personal records?
As I drove home from DGR&R I resisted a temp-
tation to simply call him at home and confront
him with it. We didn’t have time to fool around
and I didn’t have time for a client who was keep-
ing things from me. I chastised myself for not
being warier of this possibility. It wasn’t the first
time Daniel Guest had withheld information he
Anthony Bidulka — 345
thought I didn’t need. In the end though, I had
promised not to call him at home so as not to
arouse his wife’s suspicions even further, and it
was still in the best interests of the case to keep
that promise. And with all that was going on, I
wanted to go home to check on Mom.
By 8 p.m. I was comfortably laid out on a loveseat
in my living room, alternating my lazy gaze from
the crackling fire my mother had set in the hearth
and the clacking crochet needles she was manipu-
lating into creating another in a lifelong series of,
as far as I could tell, identical doilies.
Never looking up from her toil, my mother
said, “I tink about leaving da farm.”
Just when you think it’s safe to go home.
I was astounded. When my father died, every-
one—the kids, friends, neighbours, relatives—
expected Mom to move away from the farm—per-
haps into a small house in Howell, or even a
condo in Saskatoon, or maybe to move in with
Joanne or Bill with his house full of ready-to-be-
spoiled children. Instead, she stayed where she
was and, with the exception of renting out the
farm land, continued on as if nothing had
changed. She grows a garden that could feed
Prince Edward Island, keeps chickens, a few pigs,
a milk cow, a dog and some cats and still tireless-
ly maintains a house and yard meant for a family
of five even though it had dwindled down to one.
She never complains, never asks for help and
accepts visits from her children with surprise
346 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
rather than expectation. Her health is good and it
seems, in her early sixties, she’ll be able to go on in
that same fashion for many years.
Still, my siblings and I worry about her being
alone in a somewhat remote location. But we also
realize that everyone makes choices in life. Some
not as obvious or as safe as others, but still valid.
That was what Mom had done. She’d sooner risk
being scared or sick or lonely than be holed up in
some apartment in a city far away from the familiar
surroundings she loves so much. So to hear her
suggest a change was a shock.
I sat up on the loveseat and stared at her and
her busily crocheting hands. “What are you talk-
ing about?” I asked. “You’ve never talked about
leaving the farm before. Did something happen?
Are you feeling okay?”
“No, no, no, all goot,” she answered as if she
were discussing nothing more serious than a
recipe. “But I tink about tings. Tings change. I’m
old lady already.”
“That’s not true. You’re only in you’re early
sixties. You just need to slow down. You don’t
need to put in such a big garden. Buy your veg-
gies. Get rid of that damn cow. Milk is cheap.”
“But de cream, Sonsyou, noting like goot,
fresh, farm cream.”
“Welllllll…you shouldn’t be using so much
cream in everything anyway. It’s not good for
you.” Where was this going? “Don’t you like it on
the farm anymore?”
“I do, ya, uh-huh,” she said. “But I could leeve
for tventy more years.”
Anthony Bidulka — 347
I nodded. She could be right; my grandmother
had lived into her nineties. “Exactly, so why give
up now?” I challenged her. “You have a lot of
good years left on the farm. You don’t have to give
it up.”
She finally laid down her handiwork on her
aproned lap and took off her glasses to clean them
with the partially completed doily. Aha, so that
was what they were for! “But mebbe dat’s not
vhat I vant to do vit tventy more years.”
This was as surprising to me if she’d told me I
had wings. But, come to think of it, she used to call
me her angel.
“When Dad died, Eva Demchuk tell me…you
remember Eva? She bury two husbands, poor Eva.
She tell me, don’t change anyting for one year.
After den you decide. So dat’s vhy I deedn’t leave
de farm. For years. And I vas happy. But I vonder
vhedder time for change has come.”
“You’re going to sell the farm?” I asked, still
shell-shocked.
“No, no, no,” she said. “Are you hungry,
Sonsyou?”
I frowned.
“I sell notting. The farm is for you kids,” she
said.
“Mom,” I said, “you know none of us are inter-
ested in becoming a farmer. You don’t have to
save it for us.”
“Your dziadzio came to dis country to claim
land for de family name. Not for sale, de farm.”
Barbra came up alongside Mom’s chair, seeking
one of the head pats she tends to solicit sporadi-
348 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t
cally throughout any given evening. Mom com-
plied then resumed crocheting. “To sell…vell…I
leave dat up to you kids—if dat’s vhat you vant.”
My mother: fiendishly clever buck-passer and
guilt-monger.
I wasn’t about to get into an argument about
how the world had changed since Grandpa had
come to Canada. Instead I stayed with current-day
reality. “You have no other income, Mom, you
need the land for yourself. If you’re serious about
moving away from the farm, the money from sell-
ing the land would help you buy a new house or
condo somewhere and nicely supplement your
pension income.”
“No house.”
What? What’s this? Then where would she go?
She couldn’t realistically be thinking of a retire-
ment home at her age. Bill’s? Joanne’s? There was
a third choice. A choice I had soundly ignored.
Why? Because I thought she’d be more comfort-
able with Bill or Joanne? Or maybe…I thought
I’d
be more comfortable too. But why? It didn’t have
to be that way. Was I being a homophobe about
this? Had I automatically downgraded my abili-
ty and appeal as a provider and companion for
my mother just because I’m gay? There
was
a
damn fine third choice. THE ROOM ABOVE THE
GARAGE. She wasn’t saying the words, but I was
hearing them loud and clear in my head. I had
ever since the day I’d found her up there. And then,
even louder words were telling me what I had to
do, should do…wanted to do?
“Well, you’ll just move here then. The room
Anthony Bidulka — 349
over the garage, we can fix it up, it’ll be perfect.”
“Ya, uh-huh,” she murmured, heavily concen-
trating on her work. “You hungry, Sonsyou?”
I smiled and lay back down on the loveseat, let-