Faloon looks at those ventilation ducts again.
The booths in the visiting area are full on a Sunday, but it’s a non-contact zone, the visitors separated by a window, with a kind of walkie-talkie setup that is probably bugged. Claudette approaches, smiling. She had her hair cut, it makes her look a lot younger than fifty, at which age she’s still table grade. You’ve got to be someone who likes a little extra, though.
They were a regular team for over a year, except for that brief outage over the logging whore. Until he got busted, Faloon was planning to propose she give up her rental, make Nitinat Lodge her home. He kind of thinks he loves her, and vice versa, but neither of them have committed themselves to that concept.
As endearments fly, it floods in on him how much he is going to miss her, she is the only woman not in the trade he has ever opened up with. Because he’s so scrawny and generally homely he feels privileged that she’s fond of him. She’s enamoured about him being an outlaw, a jewel thief, but has this habit of encouraging him to be straight. “Isn’t it fun running a business?” “Don’t you feel good about yourself when you’re doing honest work?” As he’s swabbing out the toilets at the Nitinat Lodge.
Claudette is Nova Scotian. She cut out of school early and meandered across the country–apple picker, cocktail waitress, road flagger, patty flipper–but she had to stop at Bamfield, it was the end of Canada, and she’s been slinging pints at the Bam Pub for the last six years.
She asks, “You got my letters?”
“Read every one ten times, but you got to cut down on the scented paper, the tears smear it up.”
“Oh, Nick, I’m gonna fall apart. What are you doing in here, you’re not crazy.”
“Yeah, but don’t say that–they’re listening. For the record, I am innocent.”
“I explained that to Jasper Flynn till I’m blue in the face. You hate violence. I told him how you look down on robbers who use weapons. I don’t believe those DNA tests, scientists are always making mistakes, testing the wrong samples, stuff like that. Either that or they’re lying, and the cops are trying to set you up.”
“Claudette, when it comes to coppers, I have no enemy. I never met one who don’t like me. We’re tough competitors, just on different teams. There’s got to be some other answer. They ought to drill that condo developer with a few more questions.”
“Maybe you want to think about Holly Hoover.”
A name he never thought she’d mention without a profanity. This is the hooker who, three months ago, traded him sex for a free room. Lying about that to Claudette was about the hardest thing he’s ever done.
“Honey, are you sure you didn’t screw her?”
He gulps and nods. He’s going to live with this lie if lightning strikes. He waves her to be silent, mimes that she should just mouth what she wants to say–he’s good at lip reading.
The gist of what he makes out is this–while Claudette was working the bar at the Bam Pub, she saw Dr. Eve Winters and Holly, tight together on stools, talking about what, she doesn’t know. Some flirtatious signals started happening, heavy eye contact, a squeeze of the hand, a pat.
Faloon nods, a picture forming of Claudette watching the harlot through narrowed eyes, her every touch and wink, watching the two women hit on each other. To Holly, a jane is as good as a john, she’s a pro, she’s not gender-biased. He tries this new slant on Dr. Winters, remembers how when the Topeka fishermen were undressing her over their salmon, she chose the Owl to talk to as less offensive.
Holly left the bar first, then Dr. Winters followed ten minutes later. Claudette does a charade of her yawning, looking at her watch. Faloon doesn’t know what he should make of this, but he can’t see Holly knocking someone over. She may know something, though, and isn’t talking.
He holds Pomeroy’s business card to the glass, Claudette nodding, she’ll pass this bit to the lawyer. He mouths, Have you told the cops?
She nods, then shrugs elaborately. Faloon gathers they didn’t seem interested.
After they go on air again, Claudette tries to cheer him up with Bamfield vignettes. Rumours have spread that Faloon’s take from the Breakers Inn is buried somewhere in town, so half the population is wandering around with shovels. Faloon misses Bamfield. Despite slowly going broke there, it was an okay joint, he beat his habit for a while. It felt weird going straight, but he might have adapted if he hung in. Because there was Claudette.
He feels buoyed by her, and as he watches her fight tears while being so perky and stand-up, he figures he’s in love with her, though he’s not sure because he’s never experienced it before. He says it anyway. “I feel like I’m in love with you.”
“Oh, Nick, I think I love you too.” The floodgates open.
He’s playing with being in love, enjoying the idea, even as Nurse Thompson puts him through a personality test about whether he has anti-societal feelings. She’s trying to get him to say the first thing that comes to his mind after loaded words.
He’s not very good at this game, his attention wandering because he unhappily recalls, in all the tears and excitement with Claudette, promising to get her a diamond as big as a walnut. It had the jarring ring of commitment. Engagement. Marriage.
“Blood.”
“Nose.”
“Nose? Why a nose?”
“Because I walked into a wall last night, and had a nosebleed.”
“Sleep.”
“Walk.” The nurse frowns, not happy with these results. “Because I was sleepwalking when I walked into the wall.”
“Death.”
“Suicide.” Faloon has already told her about his feelings in that direction.
“Anger.”
“Love.”
“Woman.”
“Love.”
Nurse Thompson gives him this distrustful look. “Is that all you can come up with?”
“On account of maybe I’m in love.”
“Why are you staring at me?”
Faloon worries she may think his feelings are for her, and explains about Claudette. How though it wasn’t at first sight, it ballooned into a romance, and how she is so big-hearted and has faith in him.
Nurse Thompson looks like she doesn’t believe him. Or isn’t equipped to deal with love.
On Monday, Brian Pomeroy drops in unannounced. Having asked around in the joint, Faloon has learned this counsellor is hitched but has a reputation for affairs that get him in shit. He’s courting extreme danger by planning to go out with Adeline Angella, and the Owl is impressed by that.
Since lawyers don’t usually make house calls except with bad news, he assumes there has been a wrong turn in his fortunes. But no, Mr. Pomeroy comes into the little interview room with one of his rare smiles.
“Are you holding up okay?”
“Basically, I’m in love. How about you?”
“I’m on Prozac. You’re lucky to have Claudette cheering for you. I should be so lucky to have such a partner. She tells me Holly Hoover is very outdoorsy for a hooker, has a big boat, also a canoe. No one saw them, but they may have gone for a romantic paddle in the drizzle. Maybe across the inlet. I gather Ms. Hoover rents a place not far from Brady Beach.”
“Ever since maybe a month ago. A trailer.”
“I want you to tell me, Nick, man to man–ever get it on with Holly Hoover?”
“I am committed to another woman.” Faloon must brazen it out, he can’t trust loose mouths not to talk, especially this one, with the smell of yesterday’s whisky on his breath.
“Holly stayed overnight at your place. Good-looking woman, I hear.”
“Whatever you’re insinuating, Mr. Pomeroy, I am in denial. She just rented a room.”
Pomeroy grins in a winking, skeptical way, then jolts him with good news: “Arthur Beauchamp is going to take you on.”
It’s as if the clouds have parted and the sun is shining on Faloon. In this elated state, he listens to how some of his colleagues visited Beauchamp and pleaded his case
. Coming out of retirement for Faloon is such an honour he feels a lump in his throat.
“We’re bringing you back to court tomorrow. I may not be able to help him much, because I’m having a few family problems.”
“I figured it was something like that, Mr. Pomeroy. You never even got around to asking if I did it. I never even…”
His hand says halt. “I want you to listen carefully, Nick, because I’m going to put a situation to you. It goes like this: Nick Faloon and Eve Winters strike up a conversation over dinner at the Breakers. She finds him droll, interesting, a character. Maybe he’s not a stud, but as a psychologist she sees beneath the surface. She wants to celebrate her strenuous hike with something more interesting than amateur night at the local, she wants to do something quirky and daring and totally off the wall, because she’s that kind of gal: she’s into experimenting, she’s innovative, curious, fascinated by all aspects of human sexual behaviour. So she asks Nick to wander by later to share a bottle of wine. And of course they get it on.”
“Only a baboon’s going to buy that, Mr. Pomeroy.” He wonders how much Prozac this fixer has been doing. “This was a very refined lady. No way she would stoop to hustling a low-class citizen like me.”
Pomeroy keeps on with his scenario. “She forgets to lock the door when Nick leaves, and the prowler strikes.” Finally, his voice trails off with the absurdity of the proposition.
“Mr. Pomeroy, I don’t even want Claudette to know that idea ever got mentioned. Not to be personal, but…maybe you should be getting help with your marriage? Like, ah, maybe a relationship analyst like Dr. Winters?”
“Thanks, we have one. Except that I’m the outsider in their relationship.” The lawyer is showing emotion and has to pull himself together. “Anyway, this brings us to the ironical possibility that you, too, were victimized on April Fool’s Day.”
“I am listening.”
“Someone may have planted your seed in the victim. The someone we have in mind is Adeline Angella.”
Faloon isn’t startled, he’d played with the thought but rejected it–there wasn’t much sense to it, or any motive. Unless Angella was offended by what he testified in court, implying that after the big sexual come-on she wasn’t that hot in bed.
“You used a rubber, right, Nick? That’s what you said in court.”
“She says not, but on God’s word, Mr. Pomeroy, she provided it. She went to the bathroom, came back with a Trojan.”
“Her version is that she begged you to put on a condom as you held a knife to her throat, and you refused.”
“What I was holding was not a knife.”
“And what happened to the skin?”
“I don’t know, it was the wrong size, too big. If you have to know, Mr. Pomeroy, I don’t have very much circumference in that department. Somehow it kind of slipped off and got stuck up there.”
“Up her pussy?”
“I guess. I never saw it again.”
“Nor did the cops. A doctor examines her an hour later, takes a couple of swabs, and not surprisingly they’ve got your come on it. Meanwhile Angella has fished out the safe and put it in the freezer with the ice cream.”
This theory showed almost as many gaping holes as the scenario of Faloon making it with Dr. Winters. Why would Angella have kept some of his discharge? Only madness would drive her to a deed like this, a murder, trying to hang it on him.
After the lawyer leaves, he tries out that word again. Madness…
Maybe he didn’t see that side of her because he was blinded by lust, it was three years since he went to bed with a woman. But she practically offered it on a spoon, took him to a small apartment that was so clean it didn’t seem lived in. The first thing she did after pouring him a snifter was show him her book of clippings, stories she wrote, which were mostly for low-rent publications, not regular magazines.
Again, she asked him for the inside story of the Kashmir Sapphire, and he kept putting her off, saying maybe some other time. He continued to make up fables instead, Angella purring, “How exciting, it’s just like a Cary Grant film.” She had a taste for old caper flicks, Cary Grant, Errol Flynn. Somehow they got onto the romantic side of such movies, then sexual fantasies involving masked intruders, and that’s when Faloon started to feel strange about her, she seemed to want to act out a movie role, scripted.
She put out the lights until there was just a glow from the bedroom like an invitation, and that’s when he asked if he could kiss her.
“You’re not supposed to ask,” she said.
10
Arthur rises early this morning to assemble himself for the courtroom, feeling ill prepared after his long hiatus. He remembers his brogues, and selects a poorly fitting suit of a cut he hopes has returned to vogue after a decade. Brian will meet him at the Victoria ferry terminus, so he’ll go as a foot passenger. The Faloon hearing ought not to take long, a few housecleaning items, sweeping out the garbage that has collected around the case, the claim of insanity.
The Gwendolyn injunction is also set for hearing this morning. Arthur will wander in when he can: he doesn’t want Santorini thrusting him into the role of counsel–Selwyn Loo is more than capable, though his larder of arguments is growing bare. He has filed photographs of the nest, of a solitary eagle on a nearby branch. The Save Gwendolers are worried–why has its mate not been seen for several days? Selwyn will plead for more time.
Arthur sent ten handwritten pages up the dumb waiter yesterday, a collage of farm concerns–they’re down to one Woofer–a denial of the rumours of film stardom, a ponderous explanation about owing a debt to Nick Faloon, and an obliquely worded invitation to come to ground. He sought reaction as Margaret read it. Was she relieved he’d stopped being a doornail? Irritated to have been shunted onto a sidetrack and having to share the family spotlight? She looked startled for a moment, but it was only the onset of a sneeze.
In the end, she deflated every expectation with a shrug. “Why even think about it? If you feel strongly, go for it.” The inference was inescapable: she’s not about to abandon her post. Still, like Minerva on her throne, who gave Ulysses strength, Margaret blessed this project. And, like Ulysses, Arthur has set sail for the Isles of the Blest, fully aware the legend is unclear whether he reached those shores or capsized.
He dusts off his elderly, sagging briefcase, and gathers up the Faloon file, its pages scattered to every reach of the dining-room table. He spent a day absorbing witness statements, exhibit lists, synopses of laboratory tests. It will take him months to bone up on recent law and forensics. DNA profiling was in its infancy when he quit practice.
Staff Sergeant Jasper Flynn wrote up the file in typically stilted police prose: “The scene of the incident is the property of Gerald and Inez Cotter, 85 and 79 respectively, who reside in East Bamfield, and advertise said cottage for rent.”
The Cotters knew Faloon casually, but “suspect never visited them or had access to the key to their cottage.” Twenty-four fingerprint lifts were taken, “none matching suspect, twenty-two others identified as known individuals.” Not known to the defence, however. Intriguingly, there were two unidentified prints.
Eve Winters stayed there four days, after hiking the West Coast Trail with three women friends, who batched with her one night, then returned to Vancouver. The inelegant Sergeant Flynn refers to two of them as “admitted lesbians.” Professional women: an anaesthetist and an accountant. The third is a graduate student in history at the University of British Columbia.
The pathologist’s report discloses no external injuries, other than the chipped front tooth, abrasions to the undersurface of both wrists, and light bruising around the mouth, possibly from the panties being forced into it. The few tiny cuts and sores on her body were days old and consistent with scratches and sore feet earned during a wearying hike. Why didn’t Winters resist more forcefully? The Crown may have a problem rationalizing that–the jury, too, as they look upon the meek, runty figure in the prisoner’s dock.
Eve Winters was five inches taller, and fit.
But Adeline Angella doesn’t weigh much more than Faloon–how could she have taken on the athletic Doctor Eve without suffering the worst of it? Unless a weapon was used–Winters yielding to the threat of a gun, allowing herself to be tied. This would account for the abrasions on the wrists. No rope or cord was found.
Harvey Coolidge is the Topekan developer who went for a walk to settle his stomach. His wife, a heavy sleeper, has only a dim memory of him rising from bed, then returning. He denies being anywhere near Brady Beach; he was strolling the deserted town. No one seems to have asked him why he would take so much money to a fishing resort in an isolated village and keep it under his pillow. He was duplicitous enough to have exaggerated his loss, probably for insurance reasons.
Another person of interest is a woman in the sex trade. Brian telephoned last night to tell him Claudette St. John suspects there was an apparent liaison between Winters and Holly Hoover.
“Apparently she swings either way, and Eve has similar inclinations.”
“Were these observations reported to the police?”
“Claudette spoke to Jasper Flynn. But his attitude was, don’t bother me with trivia, don’t complicate matters, the Mounties already got their man.”
In all seven pages of Flynn’s summary of evidence, the interview with Claudette St. John merited not even a footnote. Arthur finds this either lazy or negligent. Holly Hoover earned two sentences. “Witness was talking at the bar with deceased about music, hiking, and the weather. She was thrilled to meet her, having read her column.” No hint of romantic overtures, no mention that Holly Hoover practices the ancient profession. Truly, this is a mind settled.
Briefcase in hand, Arthur emerges into the grey April day. It will feel odd returning to the arena; he can only hope he can slip into the routines, as one slips into old shoes, with remembered ease.
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