Invisible Dead

by Sam Wiebe

  27

  THE CRACKS BEGAN to show while Shay and I were wandering the showroom maze in Ikea, that great primary-coloured Disneyland for the menopausal.

  I’d borrowed the company van to help my mother refurnish her guest room in time for my half-sister’s arrival. River was starting at Langara in the fall and would need a computer desk and a bed. “A fresh start,” my mother called it. There’d been some unidentified trouble with River in the small-town prairie hellhole her family had moved to. She’d always liked Vancouver, and everyone involved thought it would be good for her.

  My marching orders were to pick up the furniture, paint the bedroom, regrout the upstairs bathtub, and tell her that becoming a private investigator was not the right career path for a girl with her brains.

  My mother had fallen behind in the kitchen showroom, the temptation to pick up a few odds and sods for herself simply too great. Shay stuck with me as I pushed the buggy. I’d already reached my tolerance threshold for particle board shelving with goofy names.

  In the rug and drapery section Shay made a joke about carpets matching drapes. We watched people pick curtain rods as if the wrong choice would lead to shunning and ruin. Her eyes alighted on a bin of sheepskin rugs. She picked up one and nestled her face amidst the white fur.

  “Feel it, it’s so soft.” I ran my hand over it and stroked her cheek. “We have to get one.”

  “At least one.”

  “One each,” she said.

  “His and hers.”

  “And look,” she said, letting out a delightful squeak. “Cowskin. Now feel that. Seriously, you need one of these for your floor in the worst way.”

  When she opened her arms to unfurl the rug to its full shape, her joy ceased almost immediately. It wasn’t oval or rectangular, but rather the cloud shape of a hide that has been removed from a once-living animal. She let it fall into the bin, full of other skins, and we made our way out.

  Once we’d returned to my mother’s house and my mother had turned in for a nap, I sat on the floor of the freshly painted room and slit the tape on the flat-packed desk and vanity. I handed Shay the instruction manual. Together we began performing the some assembly that was required.

  “Something on your mind?” Shay asked.

  “No. You?”

  “Not really. Are you around tomorrow?”

  “I have to return the van tomorrow morning. Figured I’d put a few hours in. It’s getting close to my monthly meeting with Jasmine Ghosh’s father. I should make sure everything’s updated. I’ll be out of there by noon, and I’m yours for the rest of the day.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “I do have to go away the day after,” I said.

  “Where? Why?”

  “Bowen Island. I need to talk to a man about a woman.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Just the day.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “I insist,” I said.

  “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “If you want to come, you can. I’d like it if you would.”

  “It’s a nice place, Bowen. My dad took me there when I was young.”

  “I’ve never been,” I said. “Never had a reason. Weird how that works. Something wrong?”

  She was clutching the instructions in two hands, clenching her face to hold back tears.

  “This can’t last,” she said.

  “What can’t?”

  “Any of it. It’s too good.”

  “How can anything be too good?” I asked, putting my arms on her waist from my sitting position. But I knew what she meant. Furniture shopping, day trips, the little moments other people took for granted. They felt wrong, like a simulation. Worse than that. It felt like the moments were real but we were the frauds, and sooner or later someone would revoke our passes. And I knew she was right. It wouldn’t last.

  “Let’s take a real vacation,” I said.

  “To where?”

  “Where would you go if nothing was holding you back?”

  “If I had my druthers?” she said. “Easy. Gay Paree.”

  “How soon can you pack?”

  “We can’t go to Paris, Dave.”

  “Sure we can, it’s one ten-hour flight away. That’s five Sandra Bullock movies and we’re there.”

  “I don’t have a passport.”

  “They’re not hard to get.”

  “But with my record.”

  “You’re not a murderer. I know a woman that runs a Remove Your Record business. She owes me. We can get you to Paris, that’s where you want to go.”

  “All right.”

  “Okay?”

  “All right.”

  She sat down, folding herself around me. We forgot about the instructions for a while.

  —

  It’s a short ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay to Snug Harbour on Bowen Island. You pay on the Mainland for a return trip, about ten bucks. The boat docks among the yachts in the marina. You walk over the ramp and see winding trails hewed out of the forest, produce stands, restaurants with umbrellaed patios offering cold beer and seafood. Heaven, you think. Then you remember that there isn’t a property to be had for less than two million, and far from being kind-hearted rustics, the islanders are real estate swindlers, corporate sleaze, tycoons, stock manipulators. And lawyers. Lots of lawyers. Bowen Island is a refuge for the undeserving.

  Shay accompanied me. So did my mother and half-sister. I toted a cooler behind them up the trail. River and Shay walked ahead, River lecturing her on bird species, Shay feigning interest.

  Past the salmon run with its spawning ladder, the trail took us to a lakeside, with a few picnic benches and an outhouse a healthy distance from the water’s edge. The water was still and dappled with leaves. River wasted no time kicking off her flip-flops and wading in. My mother wasted no time admonishing her.

  I’d brought lunch, and fixed up a sandwich for the road before leaving the three of them at the lakeside. I backtracked down the trail to the paved winding streets. The residences varied from cabins and trailers to art deco mansions. From the hill I could see across the water to the finger-like peninsulas of Gambier Island.

  The property owned by Eladio Perez had an A-frame and an old Airstream trailer, the latter balanced on a pyramid of cinder blocks. The house had been treated, years ago, and now the wood was a faded sickly grey. A clothesline hung between the trailer and house. A BMW and a Mazda pickup were parked on a driveway of equal parts gravel and pine needles.

  In lounge chairs arranged around a firepit sat a fat shirtless man, two women in exercise gear, and a short thin man in tennis shorts and a polo tee. This was Eladio Perez.

  The shirtless man was talking and the others were poised for laughter. They heard the crunch of my steps and looked over at me, all but the shirtless man, who barrelled through his anecdote before turning to see what had cost him his audience.

  “Are you lost, sir?” Perez asked, electing himself spokesman for the group. “Can I get you something?”

  “A moment of your time, please.” I handed him my card.

  “You’ve been leaving the messages.” He turned and gave a nod to the others. “You tracked me here?”

  “Not exactly the ends of the earth,” I said. “And it is important.”

  He relented. “Let’s go inside.”

  A considerable percentage of the A-frame’s square footage was given over to a main floor office. Perez had an ample desk, file cabinets, a law library, a separate desk for computer, printer and fax. If he spun his chair around, Perez could see out the kitchen portal to the driveway and road.

  “So.” Perez drummed out a ratamacue on the desk. “You’re a PI, you’re looking for a girl, you think I know her. I don’t. You said she was a sex trade worker. I handled sex cases for several years, but that was back in the mid-eighties. Probably before you were born, or just after. Wild time to do that w
ork, but I’d quit by the time your girl started. Chelsea Loam’s her name, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “Nice name, as names go. But I don’t know her.”

  “She went by Charity,” I said.

  “I’m sure she did. But if I’d known her through the office I’d’ve known her full name.”

  “No chance of a non-professional association?”

  “You mean my profession or hers?”

  “I mean you maybe see her at a party sometime?”

  Perez leaned over his desk. “I told you I don’t know her,” he said. “Never saw her. Don’t know how you’ve connected us.”

  “Your initials,” I said. “She knew a prosecutor with the initials C.P.”

  He smiled. “My old man called me Chucho,” he said. “That’s ’cause he was Eladio Senior. He said there was something weird about calling your own name to come in to dinner or to go to bed.”

  “So there’s no way you could have met Chelsea?”

  “I have a pretty good memory,” he said. “You came out here because of initials that aren’t even initials?”

  “I’m not trying to take this into court,” I said.

  “Obviously.”

  “Just trying to find out what happened to her.”

  “North America happened to her,” Perez said. “Everyone wants a share of the good things in life. No one wants to pay full price. That balance has to come from somewhere, and it’s from the people who can least afford it. Like Ms. Loam. Sad but it’s how it is.”

  “So it’s not worth looking into?” I asked.

  “My point was only that if you’re looking for someone to blame, Physician, heal thyself.”

  “I brought photos,” I said, not knowing how else to continue.

  “I’ve already said I don’t know her. Do you think I’m lying? If I am, do you think a photo will change things?”

  I put the photos charting Chelsea’s transformation on the desk. The two sets of eyes stared at him.

  Perez picked up the photo of High School Chelsea, blonde and smiling. “Mestiza,” he said. “At least half native. Something else in there, too. The blonde hair—in the black community they call that passing, dressing so you blend into the dominant culture. Her age I bet she was already conscious of what she was doing, how she wasn’t like the others. Something you maybe didn’t think of: she’d feel like she didn’t fit in among white folks.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  “But she’d feel equally fraudulent with people of colour, especially natives. ‘Not Indian enough,’ issues with status cards, tribal membership—blood quantum. All that would be equally daunting.”

  He put down the yearbook picture, gave a perfunctory glance to the mugshot, and passed both back to me.

  “That’s how I’d read her,” he said. “Caught between two cultures. I felt like that, my old man coming from Cuba.” He tapped the pictures and smiled. “I like this girl. I wish you luck.”

  He led me back outside. The others had killed the fire and were thrusting foil-wrapped potatoes among the coals. The smell of fried meat was coming from the trailer. I felt something land on my neck and draw blood.

  Back at the lake, my mother was sitting with the cooler and cutlery while River and Shay traversed the far end. We could see them, the two women checking River’s birdwatching guidebook against what they spied in the trees.

  “How’d your business go?” my mother asked, handing me a plate of salad unbidden.

  “Ah…”

  “It’s good for you.”

  I shovelled a bit up with a Tupperware fork. “Another dead end,” I said.

  “Don’t speak with your mouth full.”

  “You can’t hand me food and ask a question at the same time.”

  “I’m just saying, David. If you eat like that in front of your friend.”

  “You should see the way she eats.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “You’re happy. Everything is okay. And you’ll talk to River?”

  “I will.”

  “Because that’s not a life for someone as smart as her.”

  “But it is for me?”

  “Never mind,” she said. “Why don’t you set up the cribbage board and I’ll take some money from you?”

  I did, and she did.

  —

  On the ferry ride back, my mother snoozed, lying across two seats. River and Shay made plans to hang out, for Shay to show her around the city. I looked out at the southernmost finger of Gambier to our left. I could’ve mentioned to River that her mother’s first husband lived there. Had a cabin and electricity, hunted and gathered berries and laid prawn traps and had the rest of his supplies shipped in every month. My father, by some definitions. I didn’t say anything. I turned and watched Vancouver approach.

  28

  “YOU HAVE SIX MINUTES,” G. Calvin Palfreyman said.

  I’d accosted him outside of court, in the long white atrium with the sloping glass wall. The B.C. Supreme Court building was another of Arthur Erickson’s creations. It looked like a combination greenhouse and military base.

  Palfreyman was finished for the day. His suit coat was slung over his arm and his tie had been loosened. I’d watched him hand his court gown to an assistant. With his armour off, he looked like a retired general, or an abdicated dictator. His hair was a square slab of gunmetal, his mustache two neat triangles of iron filings.

  I introduced myself and told him what I wanted to learn from him. At the mention of Chelsea Loam, his eyes narrowed.

  “I have nothing to say. I don’t know the woman.”

  He started past me. I kept pace, held up the photos for him to check out. He kept his gaze fixed on the parking lot.

  “I’m not trying to leverage you or embarrass you,” I said as we crossed the street. “I know you know Terry Rhodes. She was with Rhodes. I think you know what I’m talking about.”

  “Is that who you work for?”

  “No.”

  “Son,” he said, drawing himself up as the door handle of his Lexus came in reach. “The wrath of the British Columbia Crown Prosecutor’s Office is about to descend on you. I’ve refused officially, and now you’ve got my answer anyway. I don’t know the woman. Proceed further and we enter my territory.”

  I stepped between him and the car door, keeping my hands behind my back.

  “Sue me,” I said. “Bring it all out into the light. This point, I’d pay to see you put your lawyering against the things I know.”

  We stood there awkwardly. Palfreyman was the first to break eye contact. His hand found the lever on the door. His eyebrows raised, asking, May I? I stepped away from the door and allowed him to open it.

  “Maybe it doesn’t have to go to court,” he said quietly.

  I watched him drive off, my anger lingering like so much exhaust.

  —

  Gail Kirby had few relatives other than Caitlin, but her employees, friends, and the beneficiaries of her charitable work seemed to number in the hundreds. Her ashes were interred on a marble wall in Peace Arch Cemetery, a few klicks from the American border.

  The funeral was non-denominational, or maybe pan-denominational. The speakers included a rabbi who administered the Kirby Scholarship, a representative from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church who had gone to school with Gail, and a minister who worked downtown, who I knew to say hi to.

  I learned from Rabbi Sarah Lefkovicz that Gail had wanted to name the scholarship after Chelsea, but that had seemed strange since Chelsea hadn’t shown much interest in higher education. They’d been working on setting up another award, for mature women returning to college. That award would be named for Chelsea instead.

  I met family friends who remembered Chelsea and Caitlin as happy teens. I heard good things about Chelsea, how smart she was, her artistic aspirations. No one kept in touch with her after she left her foster mother. I heard repeatedly what saints Gail and her husband were for taking her in.

  It was Caitlin
I’d come to observe. She wore a traditional black mourning dress, accompanied by her partner Nettie, who wore a black pantsuit and tie. They stuck close. Several times during the eulogies I saw Caitlin clench her hand for support.

  As the funeral ended I saw a tall bald man approach and shake Caitlin’s hand. He offered his hand to Caitlin’s partner. She glowered at him. The bald man drove behind them back to Gail Kirby’s house, where the wake had already begun.

  I watched the man. Evidently he was supposed to be here—meaning whatever falling out he’d experienced with Caitlin, propriety dictated he pay his respects, and pay them through the wake as well as the funeral. He shook hands and traded condolences, swigging imported beer and keeping out of Caitlin’s orbit.

  Ladies from the church had brought perogies and borscht. The gathering grew maudlin and sentimental. Rich food and booze, memories of the dead—I felt a vicarious melancholy. I hadn’t known Gail Kirby long. I’d utterly failed her in the task she’d assigned. I was still at it, though. Maybe she would have appreciated that.

  As the wake dragged out, Caitlin saw me but didn’t seem surprised or angry. I wondered if the end had purged her of bitterness.

  Nettie was a think tank economist based out of Ottawa. Caitlin would be moving there soon. Nettie seemed nominally moved by the funeral, and agitated by the bald man. When their two conversational circles were linked by a boisterous aunt, they both politely retreated to neutral corners, like fighters obeying a referee.

  Caitlin and Nettie withdrew from the living room. To a sober crowd, that would have been a sign the wake was over. People were cooking and popping open wine bottles in the kitchen. On the back deck, children were sipping pop in their formal wear and making each other laugh.

  The bald man had been throwing back beer steadily. When Caitlin withdrew he seemed on the verge of following her, but someone passed him a mug of wine—Gail’s good crystal had already been claimed—and he was forced into a symposium on how the internet was ruining reading skills. Finally he was permitted to disengage.