The Oak Island Affair

by Jane Bow

  “Please Brig’, give it a rest.” But Vanessa couldn’t help getting up, coming to look at the screen.

  Sanger’s favourite charities were UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, libraries, symphony orchestras—

  “You know the type,” said Brigit. “His limo is parked in the ‘No Parking’ zones outside boutiques in Vancouver, Toronto, New York while his wife shops. Meanwhile, back in the office he is authorizing the dumping of ‘harmless effluents’ into South American, African, Asian rivers, signing the death warrants of hundreds of thousands of people with his gold Cross pen—”

  “Oh stop it.”

  But Brigit was on a roll, searching the New York Times archives now, typing in “Gold International+1988,” the year Vanessa’s family had had to leave Spain.

  “Gold Company Manager Disappears From Ancient Spanish Seaport.”

  She read the article out loud.

  “‘Sources say Gold International’s Institute for the Study of Roman Ruins, which has been instrumental in the discovery of several major ruins that tell the story of the Spain that existed prior to its medieval invasion by the Moors, has had to shut its doors because the gold company’s European manager has disappeared. Also gone is the Institute’s operating budget.’”

  Vanessa dropped onto the couch.

  “His name was Eduardo Hessler. He was a little bowling ball of a man in a black and white checked suit. I remember the day the Hesslers moved into their new house, just down the road from us. They had a little girl, so my Mom asked them over for a swim in our pool. Señora Hessler’s little girl came all dolled up in a white lace party dress trimmed with red ribbons, and it was about a hundred degrees in the shade, and there were Carlita and Paco and Adrian and I doing cannonballs. I felt so sorry for that little girl.

  “I’ve told you about the night after they disappeared, when we broke into the Hessler house.”

  It had been after midnight when Santi’s voice had called up to Adrian’s bedroom window.

  “Los Hesslers se han desaparecido.”

  Santi and Paco were going into the house, just to look. By the time Vanessa reached her window Adrian was halfway down his knotted rope ladder so she pulled on her jeans and tiptoed downstairs, after him. Paco was waiting under a street lamp and look! Coming the other way, slinking through the hedge shadows, was a white ghostlike shape: Carlita, still in her nightie!

  If the boys didn’t let them come too, they would tell.

  Pieces of broken glass had been cemented into the top of the brick wall around the Hesslers’ house but there was just enough room on each side for a foot. One of the tall dining room windows had been left open, the moonlight shining on a long white marble dining table. In the centre was a round crystal bowl. Fresh apple blossoms were still floating in it, scenting the air. Adrian’s flashlight ran over walls that were paneled in white wood and apple green silk embroidered with tiny white flowers, but—

  “Mira!” Someone had driven a knife blade through the silk, high up, and then brought it all the way down. Another slash, and another. Whirling arms must have reached up again and again, ripping. Whose? What person could have contained such hatred? The impeccable Señor Hessler? His wife, who had floated the apple blossoms?

  Upstairs in the master bedroom a round king-sized bed was covered in red satin. Vanessa and Carlita jumped onto it, were doing shoulder stands when they discovered the mirror on the ceiling above it.

  “Qué verguenza!” (What shame!)

  Paco sat down on the bed beside Vanessa, tried to twist his head upside down to look. She toppled over, slipping onto the floor.

  “Look at this!” Adrian called from the ensuite bathroom. “Gold taps!”

  Empty brandy snifters, sticky wine glasses littered the white gilt-trimmed bedside tables. Señora Hessler’s dressing table was strewn with open make-up tubes and jars, hair clips, brushes, a container half full of purple pills. The air reeked of stale perfume and cigar smoke and rancid bodies.

  Carlita had gone into the walk-in closet where, at one end there was a row of evening gowns, summer dresses, at the other, suits and shirts.

  She came out wearing a fur stole, gold lamé high heels. Vanessa found a purple felt hat with an ostrich feather. Down at Señor Hessler’s end of the closet, beside a long line of shoes, there was a shoebox. Inside it were videos.

  Of Señora Hessler. They huddled together on the end of the bed, watching on the television screen as she knelt on this same bed. Naked except for two red tassels stuck to her nipples and a thong. A man’s square back and round bum cheeks — whose? Señor Hessler’s? — came into the frame.

  Adrian punched the television’s “off” button, said he didn’t want his sister watching porn. Down the hall, in the little girl’s pink bedroom, the shelves were stuffed with abandoned teddies.

  The next night after dinner Vanessa’s father had pushed back his chair and told them they would have to leave Spain.

  Brigit was scrolling through related articles.

  “A year later this same Hessler was found electrocuted in a hotel shower in what is now Croatia.”

  “No! I didn’t know that.”

  “Suicide, they called it.” Brigit read on. “It was one of those primitive showers where the heating element is right there, plugged in beside the shower stall. Hessler’s wife and child and the money were never found.”

  “Good. Poor woman.” Vanessa had been struggling to keep her eyes open.

  Brigit turned in her chair.

  “What if Hessler was killed, Van? I’m telling you, predators like Blackbeard will stop at nothing.”

  Out in the fuzzy reaches at the edge of her mind, Edward Sanger’s voice echoed, … Wits, guts, muscle, whatever it takes … But scotch, wine, duckling, Kahlúa, torte, dancing, there was a limit beyond which a person’s brain ceased to function.

  “I’m going to bed.”

  Something in Gran’s bedroom was not right. Vanessa looked blearily at Gran’s silver hairbrushes still lying on the lace runner across her dressing table. There was nothing much in Gran’s jewellery case—a string of cultured pearls and matching brooch, a tarnished silver pendant engraved with her and Grandad Holdt’s initials — and these had not been touched. So what?

  The edge of the little area rug beside the bed was rumpled. Vanessa knelt to pull it straight and noticed that her suitcase, under the bed, lay on an angle. The little padlock had been pried open.

  “Oh no. No, no, no, Brigit!” She pulled the case out.

  It was empty.

  “Oh my God, Van!” Brigit sank on the edge of the bed. She had been in the living room cruising the Internet all evening, had taken one short walk, just to the end of the road. “Whoever it was must have been watching me the whole time, waiting for me to go out! When I came back the front door was unlocked and I nearly died. I knew I had locked it. But nothing was missing from the living room — the laptop, stereo — my purse was lying right there on the table and the cash, credit cards were all still in it — so I didn’t think to look any further. I thought that real estate agent must have dropped by for some reason, and I wondered how he could have been so careless.” She looked stricken. “I’m so sorry.”

  Vanessa’s brain felt thick.

  “So whoever it was must have come specifically for the diary.”

  “And they knew exactly where to look. Which means they’ve been watching us, but who knows about Brother Bart except you, Mademoiselle and me? You didn’t tell Blackbeard?”

  “No, of course not! And anyway, he wouldn’t—”

  “Didn’t you say that he came into the library kitchen the other day while you were showing the diary to Mademoiselle?”

  “He only saw the metal box.”

  “What about this morning then, on Oak Island? He could have been sneaking around, listening—”

  “The man I had dinner with would not do that.” I have never needed to rape and pillage. But Vanessa stared down at the broken lock. Winning, p
itting whatever it takes … The thought of someone thumbing through Brother Bart’s pages, leaving oily fingermarks—

  The pan-roasted breast of duckling reappeared at the base of her throat. Vanessa ran into the living room. The exercise book containing her translation was still jammed in among the dictionaries in the bookshelf, where she had shoved it after their trip to the library.

  “Thank God … But …” She looked at Brigit, “|How am I going to finish the translation?” She reached the toilet just in time.

  Brigit had a mug of chamomile tea waiting in the living room.

  “You weren’t meant to discover the loss tonight. It’s just lucky you sensed that something was wrong. And you know as well as I do that the only person who could have done this is Blackbeard.”

  Vanessa looked into the tea.

  I like to win, he had said and, Show me big business anywhere that doesn’t do what Enron did. Wasn’t that what had drawn her? The sense of raw power that, refusing to be bridled, delivered all the accoutrements of beauty, grace, freedom? She saw him leaning across the table, telling her about Bacon and Freemasonry and the carved knight. He had been testing her, giving her the chance to tell him about Brother Bart. When she had not done so—

  How dare he!

  “I’m calling the police.”

  “There’s no point, Van. By the time we convince them to get a search warrant Sanger will have sent Brother Bart’s diary to Philadelphia to be translated.” Brigit got to her feet. “The only thing we can do is steal it back. Now, tonight, before he knows that we know it’s missing, and before he can send it anywhere.”

  XI

  A MIND’S SECOND WIND, loosened by alcohol, sharpened by caffeine, blows free of care, sees only the shape of its objective. Vanessa saw no surrounding colors, no shadows. It was 2:00 a.m. If he had stolen it, Sanger would still have Brother Bart’s diary with him in his room. He would not risk discovery by using the hotel safe.

  Brigit parked her rental Jeep halfway up the Stewart Hall drive, facing downhill, out of sight.

  “The last thing he will expect tonight is us.”

  But to decide to take a risk was one thing. To actually do it—

  Was to get even. To show him. To use this rage to beat him. To get Brother Bart back.

  Still, breaking in—

  “Let me know when you’re ready.” Brigit’s hands were resting on the steering wheel.

  But how could she drag poor Brigit into such danger? Even though Brigit had been the one to come up with their costumes: the lacy see-through nightie Vanessa had bought on a whim last summer, her raincoat over it, and running shoes. Tight black jeans, a low cut blouse and beret for Brigit, her face heavily made up, a splash of scotch at her throat. If anyone raised the alarm on their way up the drive, Brigit would start calling, “‘Scuse me, ‘scuse me?” She was trying to find her way home — hic! — was there someone here who could help her?

  Vanessa would hide. The staff would not disturb their prized guest.

  But now, how to get her legs to move?

  Outside the window on Vanessa’s side a rabbit broke cover, bounded across the moonlit drive.

  Right! Vanessa opened her door.

  Up through the underbrush to the rose trellis in the side garden. The few wild roses already blooming tossed their perfume into the night, luring whoever passed this way through the trellis archway into the chess kingdom. The black king’s phalanx of horses, bishops, castles, pawns and the crazed queen cowering in a corner looked as if they had been conjured by a moonlit nightmare. Brigit clutched Vanessa’s arm.

  “Sorry,” Vanessa whispered, “I should have warned you.”

  Across the lawn at the front of the Hall the terrace and the dining room windows behind it were dark. So were the two big sea view bedroom windows on the second floor.

  “He’ll be in one of those,” said Vanessa. They came back around the side of the Hall toward the kitchen at the rear. The air was as still as it gets in the small hours, the birds and bugs asleep, the grass wet with the night dew. Nothing moved.

  A patch of yellow light came through the panes of the kitchen door.

  It was still unlocked. Inside they could hear the staff finishing the evening’s dishes. They looked at each other.

  “Remember,” Brigit whispered, “we’re brazen.”

  Vanessa took a breath, opened the door, moved quickly past the dishwasher, the fridges, guessing her way, trying to control her chattering teeth, trembling limbs.

  “Evening, Marlena.”

  Brigit sidled along behind. There was a pause in the kitchen conversation.

  “Excuse me, Miss—”

  But by the time Marlena reached the kitchen door, Vanessa and Brigit were halfway up the oak staircase to the mezzanine. Vanessa put her fingers to her lips. Marlena blinked, and suddenly it was as if Vanessa had split into two people, one pulling open the raincoat to show off her nightie, winking and pointing to the two bedroom doors on the mezzanine: which one? The other watching, amazed.

  The waitress pointed right. Hussy-Vanessa gave her a lascivious thumbs up. Marlena withdrew.

  They needed an empty room close to Sanger. They would wait in it all night, until he left his room for his early morning run. He had rented the entire Hall so it was unlikely that he would lock his door.

  “Anyway we can get a key.” Vanessa had seen the hotel’s duplicates hanging behind the reception desk.

  They stopped outside the two bedroom doors. Was the second sea view room, beside Sanger’s, empty? Yes. CEOs do not allow their servants to have equal status. Vanessa held her breath, looked at Brigit and turned the knob.

  The curtains were open, the moon showing them the empty bed, a dressing table, their faces ghostlike in the mirror above it. There was a stuffy unused smell. Vanessa shrugged off her raincoat, unlaced her running shoes, tried not to breathe — there must be no sound. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she could see the closet and a painting over the bed head. It was in shadow. Just as well, no doubt.

  They sat side by side on the bed. After awhile Brigit whispered, “I have to pee.”

  “You can’t!”

  “I can’t help it, Van. This always happens—”

  “Well then, find some faraway bathroom. And hurry!”

  Vanessa sat alone, listening to her heart pounding out the seconds.

  She should have gone with Brigit to show her the way because what if she opened a squeaky door, what if—

  Alone, she was just one Vanessa, terrified. She came to her feet, pulled open the door, needed to be with Brigit. She was halfway down the mezzanine hallway when the overhead light came on. Sanger’s driver appeared at the other end. Reading glasses, slippers, a white terry towel bathrobe made him look more like a professor than a bodyguard or dogsbody. He stopped, surprised, took in her body in the shameless nightie.

  Hussy-Vanessa glanced toward Sanger’s bedroom door, put her finger to her lips, mouthed the question, “Another bathroom?” as if she did not want to wake him now.

  The driver pointed to a door on the other side of Sanger’s. Brigit appeared then disappeared again.

  Vanessa opened the bathroom door and went in. Stood waiting for the driver to go away. But now there came a scuffling sound. She opened the door a crack. The driver had Brigit by the wrist.

  “Yeah, well ‘scuse me! I was just tryin’ — hic! — to find …”

  “Shut up, bitch.” The driver hauled Brigit down the stairs.

  Oh dear God.

  Sanger’s door opened.

  “That you, Harvey?”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Sanger. Don’t disturb yourself, sir.”

  But he was already leaning over the mezzanine railing.

  “Who is that? It’s not—” He went back into his room, came out wearing a white terry towel robe — they must belong to the hotel — and went down the stairs.

  His door was not locked. It would take less than a minute to slip into his room. But Brigit was being held, S
anger descending, and it was the middle of the night, and now Vanessa saw Eduardo Hessler, his short, naked bowling ball body hanging—

  She slipped into the second bedroom, grabbed her runners.

  “All right, I’ve had it!” She stamped down the stairs. “We were just trying to bring a little fun into your life, Ed.”

  Sanger looked up, startled, and took in Vanessa’s see-through nightie.

  The driver was still holding onto Brigit, the telephone in his free hand, but now his attention too had fastened itself to Vanessa’s body.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Vanessa took Brigit’s other arm.

  “He’s calling the police, Van!”

  “Oh for pity sake, Ed, where’s your sense of humour?” She yanked Brigit’s arm out of the driver’s grasp. Sanger was still staring at her nightie, but now she could see his brain switching on. “As for you, Gorpo,” she told the driver, “do you want me to tell your boss what your dirty little mind’s been ogling? Come on, Brig’.”

  They were pushing the kitchen door open when the voice with the power to destroy entire corporations, to make or ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, sounded.

  “Just a minute.”

  But then Marlena appeared in the doorway.

  Thank you, God. Vanessa looked over her shoulder at the two men.

  “You go ahead and call the police if you need to, Ed. You know where to find us. And then, since beauty sleep seems to be your preference, I guess you better get back to bed.”

  Past Marlena, through the kitchen, a minute spent jiggling the back door lock open, then down through the bushes into the night.

  They kept their hands steady enough to pour the single malt scotch Gran had kept for Christmases then collapsed, Brigit onto the living room couch, Vanessa into Gran’s wingback chair, nerves exploding.

  “Oh God Van, you should have seen yourself: ‘Oh for pity sake, Ed!’ And, ‘as for you, Gorpo—’ I couldn’t believe it!”