by Lou Allin
Dee looked up from her notebook and didn’t seem surprised to see her. Holly noticed the family resemblance in her classic features and strong cheekbone structure as she introduced herself. “I wondered about that other woman and her questions. Now it makes sense. Just because we’re old doesn’t mean we’re stupid.” Dee levelled knowing eyes at her. One visit was understandable. A second meant serious business.
Holly closed the door as Dee asked and drew up a chair. After giving Dee some background, she related the information about the stairs.
Dee spent a moment collecting her thoughts. She did not seem at all surprised. Then she reached for the comfort of Haggis and settled the large stuffed dog on her lap. Holly thought of children and the teddy bears many cruisers carried. “Over the years since…Clare’s been gone…seeing the girls grow up, I wondered. Not that I really wanted to know. The mill of God and all that baloney. I can’t tell you more. Marilyn can decide for herself.” She gazed out the window at a sparrow hopping for seed at a feeder. “What might happen to her? Can you arrest her after all this time? I’ve heard that—”
“There’s no statute of limitations on murder. If Marilyn set that trap on the stairs, if she doctored Joel’s drugs, she has to face those facts.” Holly looked into the faded sand-dune eyes. “No matter what I find, no matter what I can or can’t do with the information, I won’t turn back. And Joel’s death happened on my patch.”
Dee dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “She’s at the House of Alma. They’re putting in the gas for the stoves and for the fireplaces. Those big propane containers. Bringing in a crane, I imagine.” She seemed resigned.
“So close to realizing her dream. No points for atonement in this life. That doesn’t make this easier for me either.”
“The scales of justice must balance. I understand. As for blame? You won’t find this old lady pointing a finger.” Dee extended a paper-dry hand to Holly and squeezed for all her life. “He was an opportunistic little bastard. Took after his mother. No tears from me for his worthless life.”
“Where is it, then? Where’s the House of Alma?”
*
Back at the station, it was nearly five. Ann was straightening her desk prior to leaving. Holly went to a large topo map of the southern shoreline all the way to Port Renfrew. Marilyn’s property was west, in the San Juan foothills, a few kilometres into the heights. From a time when the island grew its own food, this area would have been hayfields supporting cattle and horses, even a few sheep. Since then, it had been a church camp. Any roads would be rutted and winding, part of the charm.
“I need the Suburban for some back-country work. What’s its status?”
“Apple pie order. Chipper just had it into TriCity for its 300,000 kilometre checkup. Even filled up now that gas costs less than champagne.” Ann tossed the keys to Holly, who caught them in one hand.
“Call me a bloody fool. I’m going out to the House of Alma to talk to Marilyn.” She told Ann about Dee’s reaction. “If I can get her to confess…”
Ann scored a three-pointer in the corner waste basket. “I thought you might decide to talk to her. But seriously, do you really think that she’ll admit to killing her mother and Joel? Everything is so circumstantial. A fall decades ago. A drug overdose long overdue. He was no fool. She couldn’t have injected him, so how—”
“But killing a parent. I don’t understand.”
“Yours loved you and defined your upbringing. All Marilyn had was Shannon, and that relationship was being threatened. Passions run high.”
Holly turned at the door. “Wish me luck.”
An uneasy look came over Ann’s square face. “What about back-up?”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Marilyn is no low-life.”
“Maybe so. But that’s bad country once off the main roads.
And as for radio contact, you might as well send up smoke signals.” Ann gestured to the computer screen, gone to sleep with its wandering shapes. “Something more disturbing. The Weather Network said that winds from the south are expected to reach over sixty kmh by early this evening. Bad news for those fighting forest fires. The Otter Point dispatch called up reserve staff and asked for volunteers.”
Holly went to the closet. “I’ll be fine. This won’t take long. If she stonewalls me, there’s nothing I can do. No prosecutor would go to court on this.” As she put on her jacket, she felt something in the pocket. The mask she’d given Chipper. Then she went back to her desk for one last item.
Giving a guttural groan, the old Suburban roared into action. Without a functioning air conditioner, hot blasts rushed through the open windows like the punishing mistral winds. As she accelerated up the first hill, dollars blew through the exhaust. Maybe TriCity had rebuilt the carburetor, but the response was jerky. She passed Point No Point resort, then the former logging flats of Jordan River and China Beach. The fog across the strait had blown north, enveloping the land and disorienting her. Washington State to the south might have been as near as Asia. Finally she headed up an old logging road into part of the Jordan River watershed. Nearby in the hills, a massive steel pipeline snaked down.
Someone had started upgrading, Holly noted as the tank-like vehicle shuddered forward on the washboard. Tracks showed where a grader had passed, followed by pit-run gravel dumps to level dips. People spending hundreds for a spa weekend wouldn’t appreciate leaving a muffler behind. When the tires spun, she stopped and switched to Four-Low gear for more traction. Stress clamped her jaw. She was coming to accuse a woman she liked of murder. Denial could keep Marilyn safe, but would her body language betray her?
Now that she could see how far she was from the main road, being out of contact added a second worry. The island’s problematic CREST emergency radio system, constructed at a cost of seventeen million dollars in 2003 to unite police, fire, ambulance, military and transit agencies didn’t work west of Fossil Bay.
At the top of the ridge, as a rising wind rustled the undergrowth, she gazed across the strait at the changing view. Huge cumulus clouds brooded over the blackened waters with not a boat in sight. Ann had been right about the dangerous weather. Then she headed north as the dirt road smoothed between wide brown meadows of former grazing land. Old-fashioned split-rail cedar fences stood after a hundred years. Heavy lug marks indicated that a large truck had passed. Probably delivering propane tanks, followed by a gas truck for the fills.
She heard a solid wall of crackling, ear-splitting cicadas in a group mating effort. Pick me, pick me, their whirring wings seemed to plead.
As she drove, the wind increased, and tumbleweeds of tangled brush blew across the road. Ringing the property like rolls of barbed wire were burn piles of second-growth aspen cleared to improve the view. The grass was golden and dry, wild shafts of timothy hip-high like a Kansas wheatfield. At a padlocked gate, she stopped the vehicle, her lips parched. Sweat poured down her brow, wicked off by the wind, and she felt like removing her confining vest. Had she been wrong to come without backup? In a three-person detachment with one out of commission? This wasn’t a drug bust of Hells Angels. But she needed to remember that life often had a blackberry custard pie up its sleeve.
After parking, she stepped over the heavy chain meant to keep out motorcycles and ATVs. The crack of thunder in the distance made her jump as she smelled faint ozone. Roiling clouds launched themselves across the strait as if Woden himself was orchestrating the Ring cycle, tossing lightning bolts for emphasis. Like a dark grey velvet curtain concluding a final act, the sky was darkening, even at five thirty in the afternoon. She felt exposed in the face of nature, especially since that typhoon last year. Spruces and firs six feet in diameter had crashed to the ground like toothpicks, their rootballs groping twelve feet into the sky. After a year of cleanup, many monsters still lay in the deep woods back of town, mute witness to a century storm which took no prisoners.
New hydro poles marched to the complex. A main log house and several outbuildings appeared, their wood r
efreshed with varnish. A handsome sign, “The House of Alma”, featured a dove nestled in strong, welcoming hands. Holly’d learned online that in The Faerie Queene, Alma’s castle represented the balanced body under command of the rational soul. Mens sana in corpore sano, Sister would have said. Banks of white feathered pampas grass led down the drive, with freshly mulched beds planted with drought-resistant agaves, yuccas and heather. Scottish highlands met the desert. A series of barks overhead startled her, and she looked up at a single bird, fighting the winds as if floating in place. A rare snow goose, not the usual grey Canada version or smaller, darker short-necked cackling relative. Its cries were more raucous. Warning or announcing? As she trod the dusty track, her boots complained and her toes ached.
As the sky turned black and sheet lightning flashed, Holly expected to feel raindrops, but none came. “Hello,” she cried, but the words blew back in her face. She continued to the main house, noticing only Marilyn’s Audi. The workmen must be gone for the day. Beside the house and another large building which might have been a cookhouse and mess hall, two enormous propane tanks on cement pads hunched like bloated toads.
Noting the new red metal roof, she stepped up to the full-length porch with fresh-milled boards and a handrail for security. An attractive rustic swing set, chairs and side table gave a cozy welcome. Huge wooden shutters were lowered across the front of the house, though a can of paint and brush sat waiting. Then she knocked.
“Is that you, Mike? Why so formal? Just come on…”
Then the door opened, and Marilyn stood in a faded denim jumpsuit, smear of paint on her nose. “Holly, what a surprise. You’re the last person I was expecting. I thought it was the carpenter come back to pick up a load of shingles for the dump. You can see we’re almost ready to go. And the propane people were here earlier with our tanks. Then the delivery came to fill them. That was a punch to the pocket. You’ll have to try our water. They went down four hundred feet, and it’s sweet as—”
She seemed to be talking uncommonly fast, perhaps swept up in the thrill of the moment. Holly felt like she was delivering a deadly telegram or a letter edged in black. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Oh, you’re not intruding at all. I was about to break for dinner. Please come in. As you can see,” Marilyn’s arms swept the room with pride, “it’s painting time. Something easy I can do myself. Sweat equity, they call it.” A large grin illuminated her face as Holly came in from the blast outside.
Marilyn closed the door and latched it, giving a little shudder. “What a wind. Sweeps up the hills like the wrath of God, doesn’t it? But not a raindrop yet.”
She ushered Holly down a short hall across the burnished, wide-planked firwood floor to a wicker chair in front of a large picture window in the rear. It overlooked a ravine down to a creek, trees as far as the eye could see, with the San Juan Range in the distance.
“How about some iced green tea? I’m ready to quit. There’s fruit, cheese, bread, all the necessities of life,” Marilyn said, and Holly postponed the moment of truth. Something dark and sour snaked up her esophagus. The woman took Holly’s silence for acquiescence and excused herself.
It was nearly pitch outside, as if it dusk had fallen. Holly’s eardrums thrummed with pressure, real or imagined. The idea that something terrible was about to happen made her heart batter its ivory cage. She willed herself to calm down, but an unresponsive primitive brain held sway. Should destroying Marilyn’s life to discover a buried truth be left to a higher power? Why had this information been given to her like a solemn burden?
A tinkling sounded, and Marilyn returned from a side room with a tray, pitcher and two glasses of ice cubes. As they both sat snug against the blast, shutters banging in the wind, she raised her tea in a silent toast, and to her own discomfort, Holly obliged.
“So it’s settled. You can stay, I hope. Get ready for a loonie-special tour,” Marilyn said as a crack rent the air outside. “That was close. We need the rain desperately. I can’t even risk burning the building debris. No permits are being issued. Mike will have to lug everything to the dump.”
Holly ran a hand through her hair as she reached into her core of strength and lifted as if she were bench-pressing twice her weight. “I don’t know how to say this…”
Marilyn caught the look, and something alien flickered in her grey eyes. Once they had seemed soft, but now the colour resembled tempered steel. She lifted her chin, clasping her hands. “You sound so serious. What is it? I thought your father had recovered.”
A second passed. “It’s about your mother.”
The words aged Marilyn a hundred years, shot in a vital spot like an elephant sinking to its knees.
“What…about her? She died many years ago. I told you that.” Her voice was even, but underpinning it was a treble bar.
Forced to bluff, Holly reached for the oldest line in the world, a roll of the dice, an insult to an intelligent woman. But intelligence was not wisdom. “I know what you did.” Aware that her every motion could be read, she crossed one leg and sat back in the chair. Keeping her face impassive would be a heavy task.
“Go on.” Marilyn matched her, motion for motion, sisters in a mirror.
So far she had admitted nothing. Where could Holly go now? Interrogations were like a chess game. The accused could hang himself with his own words, but if he stayed silent, the onus was on the interviewer. Would Marilyn ask for an attorney? The Canadian version of Miranda was on the back page of every pocket notebook, nothing more than reassurance of a fair and speedy process.
Suddenly another crash outside made them both jump. Marilyn shook her head. “Even closer.”
Seconds ticked, and a third crash rattled the room, and from the kitchen, glassware on shelves tinkled. But they were both frozen in a tableau.
Her throat dry from stress, Holly took a drink and held the glass against her forehead. Her hand was close to quivering, as if she suffered from familial tremor. “I—”
Marilyn’s shoulders sank, and her resolve melted faster than the disappearing cubes in her sweating glass. “Oh, my dear. I never was any good at this kind of game. It all started so long ago in a parallel universe. I was a different person. Can you believe that?”
“Arcadia.” Holly’s vision drifted to a large book on a table. Handmade, it had a velvet cover with that word.
“Arcadia was a child’s dream. This is different. The House of Alma will be perfectly pure and good. Tell me, because I am curious. How did you learn about Arcadia?”
Another crash, but with the tension of the moment, outside noises were as easy to ignore as an errant mosquito. “Joel had a few old papers. The master plan of the play.” She explained how she had found it in the cache. “That was the beginning.”
A dark looked passed across Marilyn’s stately eyebrows. “I suspected as much. He took it from my desk drawer that night. An old draft. I can’t throw away even fragments. This precious book never leaves my side.” She picked up the treasure and clasped it to her breast like an infant. “A world apart. I used to read it every night, but the pages are so fragile. Once more won’t hurt. Come see.”
Holly leaned forward at the opened page. “The calligraphy is beautiful. A medieval effect. It must have taken months.”
“Two years. We wrote the story together. I was Britomart. And Shannon was Belphoebe. It was a way to escape. And then she was going to take me away. To Toronto. Before it was finished. So I had to…we had to…” She closed the book with reverence. “There was no choice.”
“Tell me your side of the story. Was Joel blackmailing you?” Leading the witness by giving them self-serving options. Would she never learn the techniques? But how different in a textbook and in the flesh and neurons of reality. On one side, decency. On the other, Clare and her dangerous son. She was rationalizing, resorting to the means-to-an-end fallacy. That some people deserved to die. A fatal option for a law officer.
Marilyn nodded, then rubbed her temples as if to press
away pain. “He wasn’t content with a reasonable sum. Twenty thousand, even thirty. He wanted to destroy this place, make me liquidate everything. All of the lottery money had been committed. Shannon and I had put our hearts into it. And it will be a success. A monument to her and the worthwhile lives we made together. We help people. You do understand.”
“Finding out about your supply of Fentanyl. Discovering the cache. Timing wasn’t on your side, much less fate itself. Ask yourself why.” Will it be a success? The future tense gave her a window to Marilyn’s mind.
“Convergence of the twain. The Titanic in search of an iceberg.” Marilyn gave a bitter laugh. “Joel wasn’t stupid. He learned fast on the streets, but he had a feral cunning. When he saw the manuscript at my home, it all became clear to him. He had shed no tears for Clare. All he cared about was that it meant he wasn’t going to get to move to Toronto.”
“I can see why you did it.” Did what? She left the question open. Was she setting snares for herself?
“Suppose I told you that Joel had abused me. That he was the twin of my mother. Once I stole a few pennies for candy, and she burned my hands on the stove.” She held them out, flexing her joints. “It’s ironic, but I don’t have clear fingerprints. Luckily there is feeling.”
The pads were blurred. Marilyn wasn’t lying. But why suppose I told you? “Was there no one to help you? Aunt Dee?”
Marilyn’s laughter was bitter and short. “This isn’t today, where a whisper can bring down a child care centre. Dee was only visiting that day. She lived up in Campbell River before Clare died.”
Clare, not Mother. “I can’t pretend to—”
“How can you know? Your father is a prince, like mine was, but you never lost him.”
But I lost my mother. This was no time to contest Marilyn’s claim. The woman needed validation to draw out the poison.