own
Eventually my eyes ached and my frustration level had me shaking my head and tapping the page hard enough to break one pencil and threaten the welfare of another. And still I saw nothing. The inaccessible ranting of a pharmaceutically modified mind? Or a message? Or something else? Or nothing?
I was having trouble believing that a CD containing one song would suddenly appear fifty years after the disappearance of the person singing the song without there being anything significant about it. It made as much sense to me as the lyrics themselves. I hoped that Jill or Cobb would have more luck deciphering the thing and closed my notebook.
I decided to try something else. I’d been in situations before when having a story appear in the Herald and other national newspapers had been helpful. This was one time when I thought we really had nothing to lose. If reading and remembering the story jarred even one mind to recall a detail that had previously been unknown, then the story would be worth the effort.
And writing it would force me to review again what we did know — mostly from newspaper accounts and the file folder Monica Brill had given us during her visit to Cobb’s office.
I tapped at my keyboard for the next seventy-five minutes, constructing a piece I knew the Herald would use. I forced myself to stay away from conjecture and used only the information that was known: the details about what had happened in the alley behind The Depression that night and the few meaningful facts the police had managed to piece together as to what had happened after that.
As I read it over, I realized the story was pathetically incomplete. But it was all we had for the moment. I added a plea for anyone knowing anything at all to please get in touch with either Cobb or me, and I texted Cobb to let him know what I’d done and that I’d like him to see the piece before it ran. I wanted to be there when he read it to gauge his reaction and answer any questions he might have. I added that I’d read through Monica Brill’s file folder and would bring it along. He got back to me in less than a half hour to say he liked the idea and to suggest we grab coffee or breakfast in the morning.
I texted him back saying I was just heading out the door en route to Jill’s house and that I’d bring Monica’s file folder and a copy of the song lyrics the next morning. Then in capital letters I typed “BREAKFAST.” I was already running late for the strawberry shortcake festival, so I didn’t wait for the answering text.
Before picking up my car from the parking lot behind Cobb’s building, I stopped off at the two-storey brick structure that had once housed The Depression. Parm promised terrific pizza and great wine; neither was an unworthy goal, in my opinion.
Though Cobb and I had been in the place a couple of times, I’d paid little attention to the layout or decor. Once inside, I ordered a beer from the pleasant server I’d seen there before. She told me, in answer to my question, that she had been working there for a little over a year.
While I waited for the beer to arrive, I looked around. Parm was pleasant, clean, and friendly. And offered nothing in terms of instant clues to the world that had existed there fifty years before.
When the server delivered the beer, I asked her if she was aware that the basement of the building had once housed Calgary’s first folk club and coffee house. She shook her head and regarded me suspiciously. I introduced myself and told her I was writing a story about the club and other similar establishments from yesteryear for the Herald — sort of a “Where Are They Now?” piece.
I was skirting, or at least stretching the truth, but didn’t want to scare her off by relating that the place had been the site of one of Calgary’s most infamous unsolved crimes. Later when she came by to ask if I wanted food or another beer, I asked if I could have a look at the basement.
“It’s just storage now,” she said.
“I understand,” I told her. “Just a quick look — it would really help me with the story I’m writing.”
She looked around and apparently decided the young girl who was serving a couple three tables away from me could handle things for a few minutes while she showed me the downstairs area. She led the way to the stairs that wound their way to the basement level, turned on a light near the bottom of the stairs, and stepped aside at the bottom to allow me to see.
“Like I said, we use it for storage.” She sounded apologetic.
“No problem,” I said, and stepped past her to get a better look around.
The ceiling was low. One wall was decorated with a carousel that was a symbol of a later club that had occupied the space, and most of the rest of the place was, as she had stated, storage. Metal shelving units, beat-up chairs, some dishes, a few pots and pans, and one worn but decent-looking chesterfield were the highlights.
I stepped further into the room and tried to imagine where the stage might have stood, pulled out my phone, and snapped a couple of pictures of the space.
The truth was, there was nothing there to indicate that the place where I was standing had once been a happening folk club where Mitchell, Lightfoot, Cockburn, and others had performed in the earliest moments of their careers. I’m not sure what I’d expected. Spirits of long-passed singers? Discarded programs from 1965? A dust-covered microphone?
None of those things, of course, existed. And try as I might, I was unable to get any kind of feel for what had been there fifty years before.
It was a storage area.
I turned to the server and nodded. “Hard to imagine it as a club, huh?”
She glanced around, shrugged. “I guess.”
I thanked her, and we returned to the main floor. I finished my beer, paid my tab, and left what I hoped was a generous tip. Outside, I stood on the sidewalk and stared at the front of the building for a long while, again unable to conjure up ghostly images of yesteryear. I looked up and down the street, trying to determine what buildings still remained of those Monica Brill had noted on her map of the street as it was in 1965.
I walked down the block until I found an opening that led to the alley and circled around to the part of the lane that was directly behind the restaurant. I was standing in the vicinity, at least, of where two people had lost their lives in a hail of gunfire and a young woman had been abducted and never seen or heard from again.
Until now.
If the CD that had been left for Monica Brill was, as she and I suspected, her grandmother singing. I kicked a few rocks around, snapped a few more pictures, and made my way back to the street. I crossed it and then walked to the parking lot at the rear of Cobb’s building. I climbed into my Honda Accord and headed off for strawberry shortcake and a painful movie experience.
I hadn’t gone more than three blocks when I got a call — my first opportunity to try out the hands-free device I’d installed a few days before.
“Hello.” I hoped I sounded like a veteran hands-free guy as I spoke.
“Marlon Kennedy,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
I hesitated. “Kendall Mark,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“You got something?”
“I want to talk to you guys.”
“Sure,” I said. “Got
