were countless glowing commentaries and predictions of a major musical career that would rival those of Baez and Mitchell. I put in another hour of Google searches and phone calls and finally came up with something. Nothing major, but something. I tracked the number of a former Herald writer who used to write a music column. I’d met Bert Nichol a couple of times, but he’d retired by the time I started at the paper, so I didn’t know him well, and I doubted he’d remember me at all.
I had no idea how old he was, but I figured old was the operative word. Nevertheless, I hoped he could tell me a little about The Depression … if he was still lucid. And willing to chat. I called the number. It was coming up on ten o’clock, and I knew I was pushing my luck, but maybe the guy was still up and about.
A woman’s voice came on the line.
“Hello. Is this Mrs. Nichol?”
“Who’s calling, please?”
Ah, careful. Good girl.
“This is Adam Cullen. I used to work at the Herald and met Bert a few times, although I didn’t really have the opportunity to get to know him. Right now I’m working with a detective on the Ellie Foster disappearance from 1965. We’ve been contracted by a family member. I was hoping I could speak to Bert if he’s still up.”
There was a long pause.
Finally she said, “He’s still up, the damn fool. He watches reruns of those game shows — says it’s research for when he’s a contestant. I think he’s kidding, but with Bert you never know. I’ll take the phone to him.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I’ll take the phone to him. Bedridden? Wheelchair bound?
A couple of minutes later, a voice that would have fit perfectly on an old 78 rpm record came on the line.
“This is Bert.”
I went through the self-introduction again, hoping I wouldn’t have to repeat it a third time. No danger there. Bert was 100 percent sharp. And business-like. Or maybe I was keeping him from one of his shows and he just wanted to get rid of me.
“What can I do for you?
“I wondered if you covered The Depression when you were writing music for the Herald and if you could tell me a little about the place?”
“I didn’t get the music beat until ten years or so after The Depression was gone from the scene.”
“Oh,” I said, knowing my disappointment was likely evident in my voice.
“But hell, I guess I knew the place as well as anybody. Went there lots — even took Rose a time or two — that was Rose, my wife, you were talking to before. I saw Ellie Foster perform maybe three or four times. In those days I was just dipping a toe in the music world, and I remember I wrote two or three pieces about her for a couple of smaller music publications — the ones that paid in free copies and once in a while an album in the mail. In fact, me and a couple of friends of mine, we were supposed to be there the night she was kidnapped or whatever the hell happened to her. But one of the Herald sports guys asked me to cover for him. The Saskatoon Quakers were in town to play the Calgary Spurs. Senior hockey. He was supposed to do a piece on Fred Sasakamoose, who was travelling with the Quakers at the time. You heard of Fred Sasakamoose?”
“I have, yes.” I’d caught a CBC documentary some years before on Canada’s first-ever First Nations player in the NHL. “Cree elder. Former NHLer.”
“Exactly right.” Bert sounded like he was happy I was up on my hockey history. Which I wasn’t. But I did know of Fred Sasakamoose.
“He’d retired as a player a few years before,” Bert Nichol went on, “but he was coming to Calgary with the Saskatoon team, so I got to interview him. Good guy, as I recall. But it meant I missed that night at The Depression, all the shooting and shit … ah, sorry, Rose … all that stuff that went down that night.”
He dropped his voice a decibel or two. “Heard about Ellie when I got home later that night. A goddamn … uh … bloody shame.” He dropped his voice even lower, to a whisper. “My wife doesn’t approve of bad language.”
“I understand,” I said. “Listen, Bert, do you still have any of those stories you wrote about Ellie Foster?”
A pause, then normal volume. “Naw. That was a long time before computers. I’d write ’em and send ’em off — lots of times, the editors didn’t even get back to me, especially if they didn’t use the stuff. Probably just chucked ’em. End of story.” He chuckled. “Literally.”
“Yeah. Listen, Bert, any chance we could maybe have coffee and talk about The Depression a little?”
“After all this time?”
“It’s a long shot, I know, but her granddaughter is hoping to bring about some kind of closure to it, and —”
“Granddaughter?”
“Yes.”
Another pause, longer this time. I was beginning to think I’d lost him when he finally said, “Listen, I know if it was my grandkids, I’d want people to help any way they could. Why don’t you come over here tomorrow afternoon? I don’t get out much, so meeting you somewhere might be a little difficult.”
“That would be great. Can I bring anything?”
A pause. “How about a Peters’ Drive-In milkshake? I could do with one of those.”
“Done. What flavour?”
“Chocolate and orange mixed.”
“Got it.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be much help, but what the … the … what the heck, right? Always worth a chat.”
He gave me the address, and we ended the call.
I had just put my computer to sleep and was about to head back downstairs to the ground floor camera when my phone offered the first few bars of Loverboy’s “Turn Me Loose.” I picked up, expecting to hear Jill telling me something she’d forgotten to say the night before. I was wrong.
“Just checking in,” Cobb’s baritone voice informed me. “Making sure you’re not lying in a ditch somewhere.”
“No ditch. Everything’s fine here, or at least as fine as terminal boredom can be.”
“I can imagine,” Cobb said. “Actually, I had a couple of reasons for calling. Wanted to keep you up to speed on our other case.”
“Ellie Foster.”
“Yeah. I called in some favours. I got the actual homicide file from the shootings and Ellie’s disappearance. What Monica Brill gave us was bits and pieces, a summary.”
The homicide file, I knew, was a comprehensive collection of witness statements, the reports of the investigating detectives, crime scene photos, forensics reports — in short, every piece of documentation pertaining to the homicide being investigated. I knew as well
