The Always Anonymous Beast

by Lauren Wright Douglas

  Scuttling back over to the desk, I opened the stationery drawer, took twenty-seven sheets of bond and put them into white envelopes, then stuffed the whole lot into a new 10 x 15 brown envelope. When I was finished I had a package of about the same size and heft as the letters. I put the new package into the filing cabinet, and closed the drawer. Unless Farkas was addicted to reading the letters every day, only the poorest of luck would reveal the switch.

  There was no one in the hall outside Farkas’ office, and no one accosted me on the way to my car. As I drove away, the brown envelope containing the letters sat on the seat beside me like a quiescent cobra. I knew I wouldn’t feel confident until they were stashed someplace safer than the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet.

  It was now past six, so I had to abandon the idea of taking them to my bank and caching them in my safe deposit box. The lockers at the airport and bus station were too far away. I thought about my home, my health club, and the trunk of my car, and discarded them all. Ditto for my friends’ homes and cars. Then it came to me.

  I stopped at a Shopper’s Drug Mart, purchased a packet of large mailing envelopes, and ran back to my car.

  I was about to stuff the letters into one of the brown envelopes when a little bird of caution spoke to me. Read them, it said. I was appalled at the suggestion. Still, it was not without merit. Perhaps the letters would contain the explanation for Victor’s persecution of Tonia. Maybe she had said something that really ticked him off. I locked the MG’s doors and started to read.

  Half an hour later, I had finished. Feeling vaguely disgusted with myself, I folded the letters thoughtfully and put them into one of the mailing envelopes. Then I just sat there, mulling over what I had read.

  They weren’t really love letters at all. They were an accounting of the progress of guilt. Val had, as I suspected, succumbed to Tonia’s charms (although I gathered that Val, not Tonia, had been the instigator) and had promptly fallen into a fit of remorse. It seemed awfully adolescent to me. Val’s letters began by being guilty and self-abnegating, and ended by repudiating the feeling that she had had for Tonia in the first place. Tonia’s letters began by being supportive and understanding, and ended by being thoroughly pissed off at Val’s foolish denial of what she had felt. The ultimate piece of foolishness, to my mind, had been Val’s sending Tonia Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147. The Dark Lady Sonnet. I held the page up to the MG’s overhead light and read it again.

  My love is as a fever, longing still

  For that which longer nurseth the disease;

  Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

  The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

  My reason, the physician to my love,

  Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,

  Hath left me, and I desperate now approve

  Desire is death, which physic did except.

  Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,

  And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;

  My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,

  At random from the truth vainly express’d;

  For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

  Who are as black as hell, as dark as night.

  Pretty heady stuff, I thought. And very disturbing. Again, I hadn’t been bright. I had assumed from the one page of the letters Farkas had included, that I knew all I needed to know about them. Wrong. Val, it seemed, had an ax to grind. She evidently thought this horrible thing that had happened to her was all Tonia’s fault. Well, perhaps I should have a little chat with Ms. Frazier. Just to clear the air. A tiny spore of suspicion was now germinating in my brain. But first I had to attend to the letters.

  Stuffing the blackmail letters into one large mailing envelope, I sealed it shut, and wrote on the outside “Caitlin’s letters.” Folding the edges a little, I shoved it into another envelope, then wrote a short note explaining what the letters were, and what should be done about them should I fail to come and pick them up. Then I addressed the envelope to Jan on Texada Island, dug a one-dollar stamp out of the glove compartment, and tossed the envelope into the nearest postbox. There. The letters were as safe as I could arrange.

  A trip to the phone booth on the corner confirmed one of my suspicions—Val was not able to come to the phone. Her housekeeper simply informed me that Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Frazier had retired early for the evening and did not wish to be disturbed. When pressed, she replied that the happy couple would be leaving tomorrow right after airtime to spend the weekend at Buchanan’s farm. I could contact Ms. Frazier at the television studio tomorrow if I wished.

  I didn’t like this one bit. It wasn’t reasonable that Val would arrange to be incommunicado this weekend. She knew as well as Tonia when the blackmailer intended to call. Damn! Had Val arranged this, or was it something over which she had no control? Maybe I’d made yet another mistake in not keeping Val under closer surveillance.

  Well, there was no help for it now. I had a more pressing problem—how to call Farkas off. And right now I had no good ideas about that. Something told me, however, that I’d better have a bright idea soon—one that tied this whole thing together—or someone was going to get hurt. Well, shucks, that shouldn’t be hard for a big thinker like me. Especially since I’d been so bright about everything up to now. I slammed the MG’s door in disgust and floored the accelerator, hearing the tires howl as they spun on the pavement. Better them than me.

  I closed the front door to my house as quietly as I could. I had no desire to talk to Tonia. Her ill-concealed lack of confidence earlier today had not exactly endeared her to me. She would want to know what I had found and what I planned to do about it. And whereas I could describe the former, I would have to admit my poverty of ideas about the latter.

  Sounds of intermittent typing came from the spare room, so I took a beer from the fridge and went into my bedroom and lay down on my bed in the dark. Repo came to join me, and I cuddled him into the crook of one arm. My arm itched and burned, and I tentatively fingered the sutures. Repo complained, so I tried to lie still. I finished the beer, put the bottle on my night table, and decided to rest for just a moment before I resumed serious thinking.

  I yawned, wondering if Tonia and I were now engaged in a battle of wills. There was no doubt that we were attracted to each other, but would either of us be able to put aside our philosophic differences long enough to permit the attraction to flower? I sighed and closed my eyes. Oh well, casual sex is the junk food of the heart, I reminded myself. Sure it is, I replied ruefully as sleep laid its black velvet hands on me and pulled me under.

  Friday

  Chapter Twelve

  I awakened in a panic. I was lying on my bed, fully dressed, my heart pounding madly. Outside it was daylight. What time was it? I checked my clock radio—only eight-thirteen. Thank God. All the pieces of this puzzle rushed into my head like bees returning to the hive. The boy burglars. Vic Farkas. Baxter Buchanan. Val. Tonia. The letters. My brain buzzed. Well, one thing at a time.

  I picked up the phone and called Lester Baines. One of his buddies went to fetch him, and I could hear a lot of masculine guffawing at the breakfast table in the background. Obviously Mr. Baines was not exactly a ladies’ man.

  “Lester, it’s me,” I told him. “The lady who came to chat with you yesterday.”

  He made a strangled sound, then quickly recovered. “Yes?” he said in a distinct soprano.

  “Come on, Lester, calm down for God’s sake. Pretend you’re getting a phone call from a nice young lady, not from Khadaffi.”

  “All right,” he replied, his voice falling at least an octave. “Er, how are you?”

  “Atta boy. Try to act natural. Can we talk on this phone?”

  “Um, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Hmm. Can you meet me somewhere?”

  “Well, all right. But I have to be at class at ten.”

  “Lester, relax. What I have to say won’t make you late.” Such dilig
ence.

  “Okay,” he said with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “Where?”

  “Just walk out to Oak Bay Avenue in twenty minutes. I’ll pick you up on the corner.”

  He sighed resignedly. “I’ll be there.”

  He was on the corner right on time, and apparently alone, but I drove down Redfern just to check. He had kept his mouth shut after all, it seemed. I honked the horn and he hurried over. I drove to British Fish ‘N Chips at The Junction, and parked.

  “Had breakfast, Lester?” I asked as we perused menus.

  He looked a little ill. “No, but I think I’ll wait and get something on campus. You aren’t going to eat this stuff for breakfast, are you?”

  “Sure,” I said cheerfully. “As Mark Twain said: ‘Eat what you please and let the food fight it out inside.”’

  He ordered only coffee. I, however, had the halibut special. Halfway through my cole slaw, I sprang the news on him.

  “I found the letters.”

  His surprise was slapstick. “You did? Where?”

  “In your friend Victor’s office.”

  “Then I’m off the hook, right?”

  “Not so fast, Lester. You have to do something for me. That was our deal.”

  His shoulders sagged in disappointment, but he nodded.

  “All right, Lester. Here it is. I want you to take that trusty camera of yours and photograph all the stolen property in your house. Make sure you get the serial numbers. I want the negatives developed and in my hands by Saturday morning. That’s tomorrow.”

  He gulped, then opened and closed his mouth several times, reminding me unpleasantly of a fish drowning in air. “But that’s no time at all! How can I—”

  “Just do it. How is up to you.”

  He closed his eyes. Perhaps he was invoking the god of photography. If he wasn’t, I felt he should consider it.

  “That’s the easy part,” I told him.

  “Oh, God,” he said faintly. “What else.”

  “Farkas is probably going to want to collect his money tomorrow night. While he and I are transacting business, I want you to have a little chat with your friends. You’re going to have to be very persuasive, Lester.”

  “Why?” he squeaked.

  “Because by the time Farkas gets back, I want you busy little burglars to have returned all the stolen property to its rightful owners.”

  “Oh nooo,” he moaned. “But, but, um, even if I could persuade them, we don’t know who the property came from.”

  I handed him a list with two columns on it—serial numbers and descriptions down one side, names and addresses down the other. “Now you do.”

  “They’ll never listen to me,” he whispered. “Especially not Harrington.”

  “Make them listen, Lester. Because I’m going to arrange for the police to meet Mr. Farkas at your house tomorrow night,” I lied shamelessly. “Do you think he’s going to protect the three of you? Dream on. He’ll finger you for the burglaries so fast it’ll make your heads spin. But if there are no stolen goods there...”

  “I get it,” he said. “So you’re going to turn Farkas in for blackmailing Dr. Konig?”

  “Yup,” I assured him. While it wasn’t strictly true, it was close enough. “And I think you kids deserve another chance. I’m inclined to be generous—I’ll let the three of you walk away from this. All you have to do is give the goods back.”

  He swallowed nervously. “That’s all? Well, maybe I can convince them. In fact, I’m sure of it.” He began to sound more confident.

  I decided to dispense a piece of unsought advice. “And if I were you, I sure wouldn’t take the stolen property back myself. I’d call cabs, or use delivery companies. Some of your victims might recognize you from campus. Also, I’d pack up my belongings and move out tomorrow night. After talking to me, Farkas is going to be in one very foul mood. When he returns home to find all his stolen property gone, even Victor will begin to suspect that all might not be right with the world. And if the police were to be a wee bit late,” I embellished, “he might have time to take his ire out on those around him.” Actually I was afraid for the kids. Especially Lester.

  Lester looked dazed and sick. “Right.”

  I was beginning to worry about him already. “Are you taking all this in?”

  He nodded.

  “All right. Do you still have my number?”

  He patted his shirt pocket. I was touched. He was carrying it next to his heart.

  “Call me if there seems to be any problems. Otherwise, you’ll meet me here tomorrow at, say, ten. With the pictures.”

  “Okay.”

  “Want some more coffee?”

  He shook his head.

  “Let’s go then. You’ve got a class to get to. Have a nice day, Lester.”

  I drove down Foul Bay Road to the water. The ocean looked troubled today—grey and choppy. Across the Straits of Juan de Fuca, the Olympics were almost invisible—grey, hulking giants, lurking behind cloaks of clouds. It was not an inspiring sight. I decided to do something to make myself feel better, even though it meant a long drive out of town up the Saanich Peninsula. If I were going to have to stand toe to toe with Victor Farkas, I wanted help. Fortunately, I knew where to get it.

  Gray Ng was not at home. I hadn’t expected she would be. But I needed to leave a message, and at the Ng farmhouse there is no phone. As I drove up the hill and parked, Gray’s aunt came out to greet me. Couldn’t I come in for tea, dinner, drinks, or whatever I might like? I was touched. Auntie remembered me.

  Three years ago I had helped Gray buy the property—a rundown farmhouse and a quarter section of land that no one wanted. Literally just off the boat from Vietnam, Gray and her family were lambs to be fleeced, and the realtor who had listed the property saw Gray coming a mile away. Overnight the price of the property tripled and poor Gray thought she was obligated to pay. Fortunately a lawyer in the Vietnamese community in Victoria knew Virginia. I paid the owner of the property a nocturnal visit, and persuaded him to be reasonable. It didn’t take much persuasion. Gray was able to take possession the next day, at the originally listed price. Her family loved the land, and at once began to grow flowers and vegetables. Now they shipped daffodils and tulips all over Canada.

  Gray herself, however, was one of the strangest people I have ever met. Spooky. She loved animals, and for a time worked at a veterinary hospital in Saanich. However, her strange ideas about interspecies communication eventually lost her her job. She tried out her theories once too often on the patients, and her boss panicked. I’ve seen Gray at work a few times, and if there ever was anyone who could talk to the animals, it’s Gray. Ferocious dogs become gentle with her; frightened cats, tractable; skittish horses, calm.

  And of course, during the time Gray worked at the vet hospital, she acquired her own collection of unwanted animals. Next to her cats, my favorites were a pair of female Great Danes — the brindled kind — that someone brought into the vet hospital to be destroyed. They were savage and uncontrollable, the owner claimed. Gray took them home with her that night, worked her magic on them, and brought them back tame as lambs the next morning. That was the straw that broke her boss’s back. He declared, so Gray’s aunt told me, that she was a “damned Asian witch” and ordered her off his property. Knowing Gray, she probably just smiled and went.

  Several times, when I have needed to seem exceptionally persuasive, I have asked Gray to borrow “the girls” as she calls the Danes. Sometimes she has accompanied me; sometimes not. When I have the girls, I always wonder who Gray considers is really taking care of whom.

  I figured that Saturday night would be a night I would like to have the girls along. I wrote a note and asked Auntie to have Gray get in touch with me. There was a phone over at the flower packing barn—Auntie assured me that Gray would call. There are very few things one can count on in this world, but the word of an Ng was one of them. I drove down the hill from the farmhouse feeling that things were slowly comi
ng together.

  On the way home from Gray’s house, I got caught in the tail end of commuter traffic. Resignedly, I crawled along until I found the McDonald’s on the highway just out of town. With guilty anticipation, I pulled over.

  Spotting a pay phone just outside the restaurant, I ran over. Business first. As I had feared, Francis’ number was busy. Well, he was probably hooked up via his modem with some hapless host computer, electronically breaking and entering. I certainly hoped he was finding something useful. My mental itch about Baxter Buchanan was demanding to be scratched.

  I hung up and went back to my car. As I ordered from the drive-through, I thought fancifully that one could probably navigate one’s way across the country using the Golden Arches as ancient navigators did stars. Fortunately, my supper arrived just then, and I abandoned abstraction for the reality of junk food.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I fought my way up out of sleep, yelling my head off. It was Aunt Fiona’s Dark Lady. She was shuffling and twitching her way up the cellar steps after me, making a horrid breathy cackling sound.

  Caitlin, she whispered, Caitlin... at last.

  Paralyzed with fear, I stood on the top step and waited for her.

  After I had shouted myself awake, I sat on the edge of the bed, soaked with sweat, and ran my hands through my damp hair. Brother. Many more dreams like that and I’d be ready for a padded room.

  I changed into a dry sweatshirt and pants, and went out to the kitchen where I sat in the dark for a few minutes, trying to decide between a nice healthy belt of Scotch or a glass of milk.

  A grey shape materialized in the darkness of the kitchen doorway. I lunged for the light switch. When I saw it was Tonia, my pulse dropped about fifty beats.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, appearing genuinely concerned.