“So, Silas. Reading between the lines, you do believe in magic?”
“What is magic?”
Bernie put both index fingers to his temples and pretended to gaze into my mind. “Magic is when things happen that have no natural explanation,” he said. “I mean, things caused by witchcraft, angels, creatures from other worlds. I’m talking about the real thing, not stage magic. Sleight-of-hand, conjuring, card tricks, smoke and mirrors, rabbits jumping out of hats … that stuff doesn’t count.”
“Natives do plenty with smoke and mirrors,” I told him. “Longhouse ceremonies evolved a long, long time ago, and there’s lots of staged stuff involving hidden trap doors, moveable black screens and boxes. Dancers fool the audience with wooden masks. White folks witnessing longhouse ceremonies for the first time are usually disappointed. They’ve seen David Copperfield in Las Vegas. Native rituals don’t compare. Real Native magic takes place offstage.”
“Where?”
“In another dimension.”
Bernie leaned forward. “Go on, keep talking.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and Bernie said, “What? You don’t like talking about it?”
I hesitated, wondering how to answer. The thing about Native spirituality is, it’s hard to explain and easily misunderstood. I got to thinking about shamanism, and the next thing I knew, Bernie was kicking my foot. “Earth to Seaweed.”
“I was thinking.”
“Wait a minute. Do Natives believe in a supreme being?”
“Some believe there’s a supernatural old man, Creator of the World—but he isn’t all-powerful. And there’s none of this good-versus-evil stuff you find in most religions. Some of our elders try to influence spirits.”
“So you admit it? You do believe in spirits?”
“I ought to. Until a century ago, when the missionaries showed up and did their number on us, the Coast Salish people shared their entire world with supernatural beings. Guardian spirits and demigods surrounded us. Shape changers and ghosts. Miracles were part of everyday life.”
“Pity they’re not part of my everyday life. We’d have this Isaac Schwartz case nailed down in a jiffy,” Bernie said, laying his hands down on the table and contemplating them.
I noticed a black half-moon under his right index fingernail. It must have been caused by tamping his pipe.
“Tell me what you know about whaling shrines,” he said.
“You asked me before and I told you—not much. What’s up?”
“We picked up a kid selling crack a few days ago. Brent Laker. Said he’d tell us about some big robbery being set up if we’d go easy on him.”
“And?”
“Laker didn’t actually know anything worthwhile. Just that there’s some street buzz about whaling shrines.”
“I’d like to talk to Laker.”
“You can’t,” Bernie said, standing up. “We charged him with trafficking, but Judge Mildred released him on his own recognizance. He’s long gone.”
≈ ≈ ≈
I had been struggling with my hostility toward DCI Bulloch all day. About nine p.m., my paperwork and takeaway pizza finished, I succumbed to a disloyal impulse. I locked up and went over to police headquarters, determined to stir things up. Unlike many Native ways, the Coast Salish way does not counsel against extreme measures. Sometimes it even encourages them.
A duty sergeant informed me that Bulloch had left for the day. So far, so good. I took the elevator to Bulloch’s floor and entered his private office. This was a definite no-no, but I knew it was worth the risk when I discovered that the box containing Isaac Schwartz’s papers was still in the bottom drawer of Bulloch’s desk. This was significant. In my considered opinion, that box should have been in Bernie Tapp’s possession, as key evidence in an active investigation.
I sat down in Bulloch’s rolling swivel chair to have a closer look at the box’s contents. The most intriguing item was the sales catalogue from Tuttle’s auction house. It described 200 lots of paintings, Old Master drawings and antique furniture that had been sold in Victoria in July 2002. About 50 lots had been drawings. A few of the entries were illustrated. Most of the Old Master drawings had been executed in pen and ink, about a quarter of which were colour-washed. There were reclining nudes, river gods, Pietà’s and architectural studies. Intriguingly, someone had circled half a dozen of these lots with black ink and noted their selling prices.
The first lot circled was a drawing of Daphne and Apollo by Alessandro Allori. It had sold for $38,000. There were two drawings by Marcantonio Franceschini—one of a draped woman, another of a seated philosopher. Each had sold for about $28,000. The fourth drawing was by Baccio Bandinelli, of a man leading a trained bear. It had fetched $64,000. The last drawing circled was by Giacomo Cavedone. It showed Jupiter in the clouds, hurling thunderbolts. This had brought $16,000. All of these fragile, beautiful drawings were hundreds of years old.
Another find was an expensively bound book entitled The Prowdes of Peeling, published privately in 1952. It was a history of the Prowde family, tracing its roots to a certain Alfred Prowde, a freeman who settled in the Lancashire Fylde in 1153. Since 1682, the family seat had been Prowde Hall, near the village of Peeling. Half of the book was taken up with photographs, which were only slightly more enlivening than the prose.
I yawned through the tiresome pages without encountering anything of note—except that some of the pages had been ripped out. I wondered how Isaac had come by this particular book, and why he had kept it among his personal papers.
I put the box back in the drawer and used my cell to call Bernie at home.
“You again?” he grumbled when he came on the line.
“Meet me at Lou’s for breakfast. We need to talk.”
Our server brought us coffee and cinnamon rolls hot from the oven. I sliced my roll and covered it with a thick layer of butter. Bernie ignored his roll and chewed the stem of his unlit pipe instead.
I bit into my roll. “I don’t care how many units of cholesterol are in a scoop of butter, Bernie, I’m not giving it up for anybody.”
“That’s right,” said Bernie. “Enjoy yourself while you can. Bad times are coming.”
“For all of us?”
“Nope, just for you, buddy,” Bernie said, scowling. The scowl wasn’t directed at me. He was probably thinking about DCI Bulloch.
“What’s the latest on Sammy Lofthouse?” I asked.
“Nothing. The last I saw of Lofthouse was at the city morgue, identifying Mrs. Tranter. Since then he’s skipped out of sight—but that’s allowed under our democratic system.”
“And you have no views on the matter?”
“Sure, only I’m not getting my shorts into a knot about it. Maybe Lofthouse thinks his life’s in danger until Richard Hendrix is put away.”
“Lofthouse is a busy lawyer, Bernie. It’s not like he can take days off when he feels like it. You know that as well as I do.”
Bernie didn’t respond, so I kept pushing. “How did Sammy act at the morgue?”
“Act?”
“How did he look? What was his demeanour?”
“He’d been drinking. His stomach might have been upset. When they rolled Mrs. Tranter out of a cold drawer, he took one look, went white and vomited.”
“I didn’t think Sammy was squeamish.”
“Me neither, but I guess seeing that naked old body stretched out shook him.”
I finished my cinnamon roll and wiped icing sugar from my fingers with a napkin, turning it into a sticky ball. I said, “If I was Bulloch and I wanted to find Sammy, I’d search tax assessments. See whether he owned any secret real estate, some place he could use as a bolt hole.”
Bernie was paying attention, so I added, “If Lofthouse owns real property, he pays school taxes. In the school rolls there’ll be records of his telephone numbers, even unlisted ones. If he owns real estate there’ll be records of his occupation, how many children he’s fathered, how much livestock he owns.”
“Wonderful,” Bernie said, giving me a sideways look. “You know how to obtain unlisted telephone numbers—you’re beginning to sound like a detective.” He smiled and added, “Except Bulloch wouldn’t do any of those things. He’d get me to do them.”
“And?”
“We’ve been making the odd inquiry.”
I waited.
“Lofthouse owns half a dozen condos,” Bernie said. “Four in Victoria and a couple in Parksville. They’re all rented to long-term tenants. They’re tax shelters, not safe houses.”
“Sammy was under lots of pressure,” I said. “And not only because of Hendrix. There was a guy in Swans parking lot a coupla days ago shoving him around. A big Native wearing a toque and a navy pea jacket.” Bernie’s cinnamon roll was untouched. “Aren’t you going to eat that?” I hinted.
Bernie pushed his plate at me. “You’re a hungry young man. Take it.” He looked at his watch. “I gotta get going soon. What did you want to talk about?”
“Does Bulloch still think Isaac was killed by a Native?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Native or not, if Bulloch can get away with it he’ll lumber Richard Hendrix with everything outstanding on his desk. Bulloch hates loose ends.”
“If Hendrix killed Mrs. Tranter, what does Bulloch think the motive was?”
“Revenge,” Bernie said, with a straight face. He pushed himself up from the table. “I’ll see Bulloch today. Let him know Isaac left big money to McNaught’s mission. I doubt it’ll change his thinking.”
“The biggest change needed around here is a new DCI,” I said.
Bernie studied me thoughtfully, neck tendons jutting as he bit down on his pipe. “You watch your ass around Bulloch, Silas, or he’ll have you off the force. He’d like nothing better.” And with that he headed out the door.
Lou refilled my coffee. He had a morose air. “Somebody was asking for you earlier. A pretty lady,” he said.
For a wildly optimistic moment I thought it might have been Felicity Exeter. My hopes were cruelly dashed when Lou added, “Little woman about 30, dark hair, spoke with an accent.”
“Canadian, Irish, French? What?”
“Gimme a break. I’m Yugoslavian. Everybody’s got an accent, except me.”
≈ ≈ ≈
Mrs. Tranter’s death was, in Bulloch’s words, none of my goddam business. But out of curiosity, I detoured by the Tranter house on my way home that day and circled the block, looking for parked police cars, marked or unmarked. There weren’t any. The stakeout was over.
Two empty garbage cans stood beside Mrs. Tranter’s garden gate. I hadn’t noticed them on my last visit. I climbed the front steps to the house, twisted the old-fashioned bell switch and heard tinny peals inside. Nobody answered. I banged on the door once more, then circled the veranda. The back door was a flimsy hollow-core affair with a cheap lock. I opened it in two minutes using my Swiss army knife.
The house was damp and cold. It stank of cooking and of tobacco smoked by people long dead. I opened curtains and looked around the ground-floor rooms. Upstairs were two large unfurnished dormer rooms with dusty bare floors.
Mrs. Tranter’s archaic wood-burning stove was largely responsible for the house’s spectacular filthiness. The kitchen cabinets hadn’t been cleaned in years. Dust lay on counters and grease coated the stovetop. But everything was stowed neatly—plates, saucers and knives were where they were supposed to be. If you were blind, you could live with dirt, but you couldn’t live without order. Things improperly stowed would be lost.
In the living room, I looked again at the chair by the fireplace where Mrs. Tranter had sat the night she changed her will—where she must have often sat, alone, friendless, nourishing bitter thoughts about her feckless nephew.
My hands got dirty from opening drawers and moving things around on shelves. Looking for what? I didn’t know. Forensics had already searched the place thoroughly. I roamed from room to room, feeling uneasy. Something was wrong, out of kilter.
Puzzled, I went outside. The grounds seemed as before: overgrown, neglected. Beyond Hendrix’s former shed stood a small greenhouse with many broken panes. Near it, a 50-gallon drum incinerator was dissolving to rust, flakes of red oxide leaching into the muddy earth. Inside the drum was a soggy mass of half-burned kitchen debris and newspapers.
Haunted by the vague sense that I had overlooked something important, I went back inside the house. Then I saw it. Propped against the wall near the fireplace was Mrs. Tranter’s white cane. Why hadn’t she taken it with her when she left for the Red Barn Hotel? Without it she must have been nearly helpless.
CHAPTER TEN
I measured half a cup of Quaker oats into a saucepan, added one and a half cups of water and a sprinkle of salt, and left it to simmer on my wood stove while I shaved and half listened to CFAX radio news. By the time I realized I’d heard Richard Hendrix’s name mentioned, the story was over. I flipped to another station and heard the same news item. The RCMP had picked up Hendrix. A logger, only too happy to blow the whistle on the detested activist, had spotted him on northern Vancouver Island.
My porridge was perfect. I’d timed it just right, lifting the pan from the stove at that critical moment when the oats start to congeal in the bottom of the saucepan. A few seconds too long and it burns, becoming inedible to all but Yorkshire terriers and a few hardy Scots.
It wasn’t yet dawn, but people were stirring all over the Warrior Reserve. There must have been 500 visitors camped in tents and trailers in the parking lot. Smoke rose from barbecues and campfires where people were preparing bannock, bacon and eggs, and coffee. The ancient winter feast and the magic that my Coast Salish cousins had come to witness awaited us.
I followed the porridge with half a grapefruit, thinking about Hendrix. By now he’d be locked up tight inside the Campbell River jail. Would he be savvy enough to keep his mouth shut until he’d consulted a lawyer? Probably—over the years he must have acquired some prison smarts. He’d survived more than one skirmish with the law, but in all likelihood he’d soon be blabbing about his stay at Felicity Exeter’s cottage.
I had been thinking about Felicity a lot, wondering whether there was a man in her life. Maybe she would enjoy hugging a Native policeman for a change, instead of a tree.
I dialled her number. A recorded message informed me that the phone was not in service. Then I remembered—Hendrix had cut her line. Should I drive out and speak to her in person, discuss Hendrix’s arrest? Any excuse to see her would suffice.
The weather report called for snow systems moving south. Up-island, north of the Malahat, there were 10 centimetres of new snow on the roads; highway travel without chains was impossible.
I wondered how my MG would handle in that much snow. I’d bought my sporty little head-turner with virtually no rust with insurance money when my previous vehicle—an ’82 Chevrolet—crashed and burned. My favourite mechanic, Ted, a cockney cynic, had been uncomplimentary when I drove my new acquisition into his garage, complaining about its defective headlights.
“Those are Lucas lamps,” he’d smirked, wiping greasy hands on his sleeves before rolling himself a cigarette. “You’ll never be happy with ’em. Joe Lucas invented darkness. People say he did it as revenge against America.”
“What did America do to Joe Lucas?”
“Nothing, personally. But us Brits have long memories. We haven’t forgotten our beloved George the Third.”
Five hundred dollars later, Ted had replaced the MG’s original twin-6 batteries with a single 12-volt system. He renewed yards of wiring, fixed the windshield wipers and the clutch. With a bit of fine-tuning, Ted told me, the engine would be all right, but he doubted whether the steering would last much longer without a major overhaul.
“How much?”
“You can’t economize on steering gear, Silas.”
“Cut your cockney blarney. I’m not turning you loose on this thing without an estimate.”
“For you, S
ilas, I’ll do it for $900. Plus tax. I’ll make the new bushes myself, using oil-impregnated neoprene. The car will steer better than new.”
“How much to make the bushes out of ordinary neoprene? Don’t forget I’m already into this bomb for two and a half grand!”
“You buy a champagne car, you gotta pay champagne prices,” Ted shrugged.
“What have you got against old MGs?”
“Nothing, I love ’em. Every time I get one in the shop, I admire the beautiful design, those nifty little rust patches on the sills, those cute red carpets rotting on the floorpan. All the bits falling off are of genuine British manufacture.”
But after Ted’s ministrations, the MG was running like a thoroughbred.
Thinking of things British reminded me of the Bainestons. I had a sudden idea and phoned the British Consul General’s office in Vancouver. After identifying myself and explaining what I wanted, I was connected to a secretary named Joan Wilson. “I’m involved in a criminal investigation,” I told her, “and I’m seeking information about pre-war Germany. Is there any possible way of determining if there’s anybody still alive who was employed at the British Embassy in Germany between about 1937 and the outbreak of war?”
“You want to ask them questions, is that right?”
“Exactly.”
“I expect there are, but they’ll be long in the tooth by now, of course. And their memories may no longer be reliable,” Joan replied, with a lovely English accent. ”But I’ll see what I can for you and call you back. Don’t hold your breath, though. It’ll take me a while I think.”
I gave Mrs. Wilson my cellphone number, thanked her and hung up.
≈ ≈ ≈
Before he disappeared, Sammy Lofthouse had told me that Ellen Lemieux worked as a checkout clerk in an organic garden shop near Elk Lake. Elk Lake is miles out of Victoria, but I drove there anyway. The shop was a converted roadside barn surrounded by fields in winter fallow. In addition to fruits and vegetables, the shop sold vitamins, dried foods, free-range eggs and fireweed honey. A bored teenaged girl was tending the checkout, glancing through a magazine instead of polishing apples or taking an interest in me, her lone customer. I roamed the aisles with a shopping basket, selected a head of romaine lettuce, a bunch of spring onions, five pounds of potatoes and some apples, and lugged them to the checkout. “Is Ellen Lemieux around today?” I asked casually.
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