in Ottawa Ellie Foster had played a few weeks before her Depression gig. I found excerpts of the book online and they were interesting, but the part I thought might be helpful was the list of people — performers, owners, staff, and volunteers — who were part of the history of the club at that time. I googled several of the names and found what appeared to be something fairly current relating to a guy who’d been the assistant manager at the time of Ellie’s disappearance, a guy named Armand Beauclaire.
I googled the name and tracked a phone number for an Armand Beauclaire who lived just across the river from Ottawa, in what was Hull and is now Gatineau. I punched in the number and was greeted three rings later by a cough, a clearing of a throat, and a rumbled “Hello.”
“Mr. Beauclaire?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Adam Cullen. I’m a freelance journalist, and I’m researching a piece I hope to write on the life of Ellie Foster. She was a folksinger in the sixties who disappeared while performing out here in Calgary. That’s where I’m calling fr—”
“The Depression.”
I paused before replying. “Yes, that’s where she was performing at the time of her abduction. I was wondering if you knew her at all.”
“Of course I knew her. In fact, I booked her. She’d performed twice at Le Hibou, and she was scheduled to come back a few months after her last appearance. But then she … she … ” There was a hint of a French-Canadian accent, but the guy was clearly bilingual. I wouldn’t need Cobb and his fluency in French — at least not yet.
“Mr. Beauclaire, I —”
“Armand, just make it Armand.”
“Okay, Armand. Listen, I’m sure you’ve probably thought about it a lot, especially at the time of her disappearance, but do you have any ideas at all as to what might have happened, who might have had a reason to want to kidnap Ellie Foster?”
There was silence on the other end of the line for a time. “You’re damn right I’ve thought about it. We all did. Denis Faulkner was the co-owner and ran the place. It hit him really hard. Ellie was a sweetheart. I can’t say I knew her that well, but audiences loved her. Everybody loved her. There was absolutely no reason in the world for that to happen. Unless the kidnappers got the wrong person — one of those mistaken identity things, you know?”
“When you hired Ellie for Le Hibou, did you deal directly with her or did she have an agent?”
Another pause. “There was a guy. Not a booking agent, nothing like that. He called himself her business manager, I remember that much. It was him I talked to.”
“You remember his name?”
“Hmm, let me think about that. The guy was a loser, so he wasn’t somebody I wanted to remember all that bad. Last name was Bush — that’s all I got. And I remember that only because we all made jokes about him being ‘bush-league.’ The guy wasn’t well-liked, if you catch my drift.”
“Any reason for that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. People form opinions about other people. Smoke a little weed, have a coupla beers, and make a determination about someone. I did that a lot. All of us did. Maybe the guy was an asshole; maybe he wasn’t. Half a century later … I can’t honestly say.”
“Did you see him after Ellie disappeared? He come around at all?”
“No, never.”
“So he didn’t represent any other artists?”
“None that we hired.”
“So you can’t tell me if the guy’s still alive, or where he might live if he is alive?”
“Sorry, can’t help you there.”
“Anyone else who was around Ellie — roadies, band members, boyfriends — anybody you think I should maybe talk to?”
“Jesus, it was fifty years ago.”
“Yeah, I know, Armand. I know it was fifty years ago. Just thought I’d ask.”
He cleared his throat. “No, no, you’re right. And I do remember Ellie like she was standing across the room, her guitar around her neck, singing some sad song I didn’t totally understand but would have listened to all damn night, you know?”
“I’ve heard that about her.”
“I’ll tell you something.” Armand Beauclaire’s voice was quieter now. “Ellie Foster was going to be big, and I’m talking about as big as Joni. That’s the gospel truth right there. And whoever pulled her into that car in a goddamned back alley in Calgary, they took that away from us.”
“Look, Armand, I understand that the prevailing sentiment is that she was loved by all. I’ve heard that from everybody I’ve talked to. And I hope this doesn’t sound callous, but somebody didn’t love her. Somebody abducted her, shot two people, and drove off. Can you think of anything or anyone I should be asking about … looking into? However remote … anyone at all?”
Long pause. “Jesus, it’s tough, you know? And like I said before, I loved her to death, everybody did, even that last time.”
I waited a few seconds for more. None came.
“What did you mean by ‘even that last time’?”
Beauclaire cleared his throat. “Like I said, she’d played Le Hibou two previous times. This time, she wasn’t the same. It wasn’t big, like she was a raving, weird-ass bitch or anything, but she was just different. Quieter, maybe. Introspective. Almost like there was something on her mind, something she wanted to talk about, but never did. But hell, maybe it was a lover or something. I mean, that shit happened all the time. But it was like after she played the other place, she was a little different.”
“The other place?”
“Yeah. There was another club. Up in Little Italy. Wasn’t around long. Maybe a year, two at the most. Ellie was one of the first acts they hired. I think they wanted to kick our asses. Didn’t happen. Ellie said she’d never play there again. And she didn’t. Nobody did. At least nobody who mattered. And then it was gone.”
“Remember the name?”
“Sure. The Tumbling Mustard. Cool name. But that was the only cool thing about it.”
“You ever go there?”
“Once. Cold coffee. Bad talent. I didn’t go back.”
“You know the club operator?”
“Nope, not really, except there were two of them, I remember that. Blew into town from the States somewhere, Arizona maybe, or California. Gone in a year or so. Maybe back to the States. I didn’t pay a lot of attention once I figured out they weren’t real competition.”
“Remember either of their names?”
Another pause. “Christ, I can’t remember where I left my glasses, but I’ve got one guy’s name. Fayed. Middle Eastern dude.
