Seaweed on the Rocks

by Stanley Evans

  I said, “Harvey had a portfolio—dozens of drawings and paintings. The kids burned ’em to keep warm.”

  “Pity,” Bernie said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I walked through Chinatown to my office, went inside and closed the door. PC entered through the cat flap almost immediately afterwards and sat there on her haunches, eying me with her head tilted. When I opened the window blinds, sunlight put a silvery gloss on her smooth black fur. I parked my backside in the roller behind my desk and said, “Hi, Pussycat.”

  She jumped onto my blotter, assumed a Sphinx-like pose and began to purr. I was seriously thinking of stroking her when a woman called to complain that amorous raccoons had learned how to take her garbage can lid off and were trysting by night amidst her trash.

  “There’s no law against it,” I said.

  My caller was responding intemperately when Charlotte Fox came in. “Love makes the world go round,” I told my caller and put the phone down. PC had jumped off the desk and hidden behind a filing cabinet.

  Charlotte wore a green blazer over a white top and her smooth, shapely legs went from sight beneath a white skirt that ended four inches above her knees. Her green sandals had two-inch heels. She seemed preoccupied and, instead of saying hello, she stood near the window with her head turned away, gazing out at the bricks-and-mortar brigade across the street.

  “Is that what you really think?” she said without looking at me. “That love makes the world go round?”

  “Come to think of it, I guess love makes the world go smoothly,” I countered. “It’s sex that makes the world go round.”

  “What about money?”

  “Money helps, sure. But people survived for thousands of years before money was invented. A few probably still manage quite nicely in economies where money isn’t important.”

  “Name one.”

  “Igloo City?”

  She shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair. Emotion wrinkled her smooth brow. She began to talk about how nice it would be if we had dinner together after all—somewhere quiet where we could have a cozy tête-à-tête—but I was very hard to read, so she didn’t understand where I was coming from half the time, and besides, she was alone in the world without a single real friend as most of the people she knew were shallow and facile. Her voice was breathy as if she’d been running, and instead of looking at me directly, she remained half-facing the window. However, I was close enough to see a little pulse beating in her throat.

  I said, “Forgery’s not a crime, Ms. Fox, unless you try to pass it off as the real thing.”

  She turned to look at me, frowning. “Once again I haven’t the least idea what you’re getting at.”

  I shook my head. “Your talents are really wasted. You should be on the stage. The Belfry Theatre is doing Shakespeare again this year. I think you should audition for Macbeth’s wife.”

  Her eyes widened. “You are a bastard.”

  “And you’re a liar.”

  Her cheeks went as red as if I’d just slapped her. At last she said, “Perhaps I deserved that. I haven’t been completely honest. I told you that I had a friend who was being blackmailed . . . ”

  “Uh-huh. I remember. I just didn’t put any stock in it.”

  “Well, it’s not a friend, it’s a bit closer to home. I’m the person being blackmailed. He phoned me again this morning and I’m frightened.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” I said sarcastically.

  “I have to trust you because I have little choice, Silas. But if you pass on what I tell you to anyone higher up, I’ll deny everything.”

  “I suppose that could work, since you’re not under oath.”

  The planes of her pretty face tightened. She was holding herself together, but the effort was costing her plenty.

  “So you’re being blackmailed. Why?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Have you paid anything yet?”

  “Once. I made one payment,” she replied. “Shortly afterwards I received another demand.”

  “How much?”

  She hesitated. “Ten thousand.”

  “That’s a lot of money. But blackmail is like cancer—a tragedy for its victims. However, nowadays most cancers are treatable if caught early enough. Victoria’s police department deals with blackmail cases regularly. Even so, we know that many more cases go unreported because people know that if they report it, the first thing police will ask is why they’re being blackmailed.”

  “I did something wrong, something I deeply regret.”

  “Confession is good for the soul.”

  “The hell it is,” she said bitterly. “It was talking too freely that landed me in this mess.”

  “Whatever you say to me, Charlotte, I will be discreet, but if I do get involved, there’s no way of knowing what I’ll stir up. When you put ferrets down holes, it isn’t just nice furry rabbits that pop up.”

  She turned back to the window. “Perhaps coming here was a bad idea. Maybe I should hire a private detective.”

  “Things probably won’t improve if you do, and maybe they’ll even get worse.”

  She said after a long pause, “I’m being blackmailed by a man I was seeing.”

  “Seeing as in ‘dating’?”

  “Yes,” she said, coming over to the desk at last and sitting across from me. “It wasn’t serious. It didn’t go anywhere. But I told him something I now regret. A secret.”

  “Have you confided in anyone else?”

  “Certainly not.”

  I didn’t say anything because I was trying to interpret Charlotte Fox’s body language. She’d stopped looking me in the eye and she was smoothing her hair with a fluttery hand. She continued evasively, “Who was it that said that nobody can look back on their lives without self-contempt?”

  “Dr. Phil?” I said mockingly.

  “Maybe I’m misquoting. Anyway, this thing, this secret, is something I’d rather you didn’t know either. The details, I mean.”

  “In other words, you trusted a casual boyfriend but you don’t trust me?”

  She had been looking into space. Now she raised her eyebrows and stared at me. Her eyes were cold and dark. “Don’t make it so difficult. I want you to think well of me. Is that so terrible?”

  “Charlotte, here beginneth the first lesson: blackmailers are heartless. They are pathologically greedy, uncaring, vicious and unprincipled by definition. Do you think the man blackmailing you is somehow different?”

  “If he is who I think he is, I know he doesn’t fit the ordinary profile.”

  “Have it your own way then,” I snorted. “He’s a nice guy . . . as blackmailers go. Only, greed brings out the worst in people, Charlotte, even blackmailers. Face it. This affair will get even nastier unless this guy is stamped on.”

  “Can I rely on your discretion?”

  “Up to a point, but I’m sworn to uphold the law, and I have to assume that somebody’s putting the bite on you because you’ve done something dishonest, probably criminal and actionable.”

  She managed to smile, but it was quite an effort. I let her think for a minute before I said, “Are we talking about Lawrence Trew?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I continued, “Because if we are, he’s already the subject of a police inquiry. Officially we’ve listed him as missing, but he might be dead.”

  She shook her head. “Oh no. Larry’s very much alive.”

  I sat upright. “You’ve seen him?”

  “No. I’ve just heard from him.”

  “You’re accusing Lawrence Trew of blackmail?”

  She turned pale and pressed her hands together between her knees. Eventually she nodded.

  “Ms. Fox, you’ve been lying to me since the minute we met,” I snarled. “ I don’t know what game you’re playing or why, but if you really do have a serious problem, give it to me straight, because all I’ve had from you so far are half-truths and evasions.”

&nbs
p; Her shoulders slumped as misery overwhelmed her. She burst into sobs. Little drops of moisture appeared in her nostrils, tears washed mascara down her cheeks and she made little racking noises deep in her throat.

  I took a couple of Tim Hortons coffee mugs from the bottom drawer, splashed two fingers of my cheap Scotch into each and shoved one to her across the desk. “Here,” I said harshly. “Drink this.”

  “God, what a fool I’ve been,” she exploded, her wet eyes glittering with abrupt hatred. “I’m worse off now than I was before.”

  “You and me both,” I snapped as she stood up and rushed out of the office.

  I drank my Scotch, licked my lips in satisfaction, poured her drink back into the bottle, took both mugs out to the lavatory, rinsed them under the tap and dried them on the roller towel. When I got back to the office, Charlotte Fox had returned and was once again seated in the visitor’s chair. She’d done nothing to repair her makeup and was dabbing her eyes with a cambric handkerchief edged with fancy lace. I put the mugs back in a drawer and sat down. As I watched her, I was thinking that, like most of us, Charlotte had two identities—the one she showed to the world and the one she kept hidden. I figured she had shown Lawrence Trew the one that was concealed from the rest of us.

  She said, “Do you have to be such a bastard?”

  Scowling, I slid deeper in my chair, clasped my hands together and gazed at her over my crossed fingers.

  “A little while ago, Larry Trew asked me to lend him ten thousand dollars,” she said in a sudden rush of words. “I’m reasonably well off and ten thousand isn’t much, I suppose, in the grand scheme. I asked him why he needed it. He told me that he’d lost money in a hedge-fund meltdown. That was probably a fib, but instead of turning him down flat, I said I’d think about it. I’d been seeing him once a week for ages, and I knew he had plenty of clients and he charged hundreds of dollars an hour. So the question was—why did he need to borrow money? I decided against helping him. Besides, I’d reached a point where I no longer benefited from our sessions. His asking for money precipitated my decision to wind things up, so I cancelled my upcoming appointments, mailed him five hundred dollars in lieu, thanked him for his services and wished him well.”

  “Did he send you a receipt?”

  “No,” Charlotte said, adding, “A few days later I received his first blackmail demand. A letter.”

  “He signed it?”

  “God, no. Larry isn’t that stupid.”

  “Then how can you be certain that Trew sent the letter?”

  “I’ve already told you that I’d confided in him. I told him something I’ve never told anyone else.”

  “Are you certain of that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “This blackmail letter. Was it delivered by regular mail?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Turning away and addressing the wall instead of me, she said. “Stupidly, I burned the letter.”

  I said, “You claim that Dr. Trew asked you to lend him ten thousand dollars. On the face of it, it’s an odd request from a man who drives a Porsche and owns a million-dollar house.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Larry only lives like a millionaire. I found out his house is leased, and I’ll bet that Porsche is leased, too. Still, I was incredibly shocked when his letter arrived. I didn’t do anything about it for a couple of days, just kept reading it over and over again. Eventually I calmed down, burned the letter and did nothing. A week later I got a phone call.”

  “You recognized his voice?”

  “No, it was muffled but I know it was him.”

  “Tell me exactly what happened next.”

  “He gave me a week to come up with the money or he would expose me. He told me to get used banknotes, put them into a large envelope and take it to Beacon Hill Park. There was a map showing the exact spot I was to go to. It’s in an open area about ten feet from a park bench and a garbage can. He told me to sit on the bench and wait for my cellphone to ring. He said he’d be watching me and that if he saw anybody in the neighbourhood who looked like a policeman, I’d be sorry.”

  “You followed his instructions?”

  “Exactly. I was sitting on the bench, holding the envelope with the money in it, when the call came. He told me to drop the envelope in the garbage can and leave the park immediately. I did exactly as he said, and more fool me because a couple of days later I received another letter saying the next installment was due.”

  “It came by regular mail again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you keep that one?” When she nodded yes, I said, “Let me see it.”

  “It’s at home, locked away,” she said lamely.

  That was an obvious lie, but I let it go. “How much have you paid him in total?”

  “I only paid him once. That ten thousand in the garbage can. I guess it would have been better if I’d given him the money straight off when he asked for a loan. I might have saved myself a lot of heartache.”

  I brooded for a minute before saying, “You and your brother are Coast Salish . . . ”

  “Half,” she said, interrupting me. “Our mother was Coast Salish from Washington State. Dad was a White man from Calgary.”

  “I know. But what I don’t know is what brought you to Victoria, and why I didn’t know of your existence until recently.”

  “There’s no reason why you should know about me. I’m not ashamed of my Native blood, but I’m not interested in living on a reserve or involving myself in Native affairs. Neither was Mother. She got off the reserve when she was barely sixteen. When she and Dad met, she was a legal secretary and hadn’t set foot on a reserve in ten or twelve years.”

  “Where did you go to school?”

  “Calgary, mostly. After high school, I went to California and got a degree from UC Berkeley.”

  “What in?”

  “Art history.”

  “Tell me exactly when and under what circumstances you first encountered Dr. Trew.”

  “I met Larry about two years ago. It was a bad time in my life. Father had just died. I’ve had mild insomnia most of my adult life, and a doctor had prescribed sleeping pills and I was becoming dependent. I was drugging myself to sleep at night and feeling half-bagged all day. A friend recommended Larry Trew.”

  “Why did you give him that ten thousand bucks?”

  “Because I’d rather give it to him than spend years in a jail,” she retorted angrily.

  “Years?”

  Instead of answering, she shrugged.

  I said, “What were your first impressions of Larry Trew?”

  “I guess I’m a poor judge of human nature, because I liked him right off the bat. Not everyone is a good subject for hypnosis, but it appears that I am. He weaned me off sleeping pills after a few sessions, and I started having good natural sleeps for the first time in ages. He really is a terrific therapist. He was always so kind, so considerate. That’s why I was terribly shocked and hurt when this blackmail started.”

  “Did you even wonder why he was practising hypnotherapy instead of conventional medicine? He’s an MD, after all.”

  “Yes, I did wonder about that at first, but he told me he’d suffered from asthma his whole life until an acupuncturist cured him. After that his approach became holistic. He was open to traditional Chinese medicine, hypnotism, whatever. He’d even experimented with orgone-box therapy. As for him being an MD, so what? He was principally a counsellor. Psychiatrists have MDs, and what do they do except counsel people?”

  Suddenly a jackhammer started up across the street, and neither of us said anything, waiting for it to cease. When silence came, I said, “You told me that you burned Trew’s first letter. Why don’t you want me to see the second one?”

  “I didn’t say that I didn’t want you . . . ”

  “I know. You told me the second letter is locked away at home. That’s a lie, isn’t it?”

  Her chin quivered. She opened her bag, removed a business-sized envelop
e and slowly shoved it across the desk towards me.

  The envelope was stamped and addressed. It had been delivered by regular mail to Charlotte Fox’s Moss Street house. The enclosed letter, written in large childish block lettering, was undated. I read it out loud:

  youv been a good girl so far get another ten thousand dolars reddy for me inside of two weeks youl be heering what to do with the money by fone no tricks

  I put the letter down on the desk. After rereading it, I flattened the envelope—which had become slightly creased—by running my hand lightly across it once or twice. “Sent by some half-smart guy pretending to be completely ignorant,” I said, “but you’ll notice that where accuracy is required—I’m speaking about the ten thousand—he can spell properly. What’s really tragic is that you burned the first letter.”

  “Why tragic?”

  “There’s no telling what a police graphologist might have gleaned from it.”

  “But the first letter was written on a typewriter.”

  I’d been slumping in my chair. I sat upright and said urgently, “This might be very important so please try to remember. Did that letter have the same kind of spelling mistakes and syntax? Did it lack capital letters and punctuation—periods, commas, exclamation marks?”

  “Well, yes. There were no capital letters, and there were stupid spelling mistakes. And no punctuation.”

  “Do you know anybody who uses a manual typewriter?”

  “No, I can’t think of anyone.”

  I tried to remember where I had seen one lately. And suddenly it came to me—the Underwood in Titus Silverman’s office.

  “Banks flag large cash withdrawals nowadays,” I mused aloud. “Raising ten thousand in cash without setting off alarms must have been quite a challenge.”

  She didn’t say anything. The phone rang and we both looked at it. After the fifth ring, the caller hung up.

  Charlotte relaxed a little. She said, “I thought you liked me.”

  “I used to.”

  “What changed?”

  “You did.”

  “And now you think you’ve got me hooked, you’re playing hard to get,” she said, only half-joking. She stood up, opened her mouth to say something more, and then her glance fell on the blackmail letter lying on my desk. She snatched it up, waved it in my face and said excitedly, “I’ve just remembered something! That first letter, the one I burned . . . ”