Seaweed on the Rocks

by Stanley Evans

  “He was never charged with murder . . . ”

  “But everybody knows he did it!”

  Footsteps sounded outside and Bernie came in, glanced at Charlotte, then closed the door behind himself and leaned against it with his arms crossed.

  “Ms. Fox has received another blackmail demand,” I said to preserve the fiction that we were ignorant of her private phone conversations. “The blackmailer’s told her to take ten thousand dollars to the Ada Beaven rose garden at nine o’clock tonight. She’s worried, naturally, although I explained that this plays into our hands because it gives us a chance to catch him.”

  “I’m more than worried,” Charlotte said. “I’m frightened. Silas wants me to act as a decoy, presumably while police lurk among the rose bushes, but I can’t face it.”

  “There’s little or no danger to you,” Bernie said. “We’ve a certain amount of experience in such matters. What usually happens is that the victim is sent to an intermediate place—in this case the Ada Beaven rose garden—from which he or she is directed to a new location. The blackmailer, of course, is already there, waiting and watching. At the merest suspicion of a double-cross, the blackmailer vanishes.”

  “If that’s the case, you won’t catch him,” Charlotte responded.

  “Maybe I’m repeating myself, but that’s not the way things usually work. If the victim cooperates, we generally get our man. You do want him caught?”

  “I guess so.”

  “You guess so?”

  “I want him caught, obviously . . . ”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that because the relationship between blackmailer and victim is often quite complex,” Bernie said. “But now, Ms. Fox, I have to ask you some personal questions . . . ”

  “That’s another of your standard lines, I suppose,” Charlotte interjected. “Silas said the same thing to me in almost identical words.”

  Bernie grinned. “When we interview people, we do tend to fall into certain habits of speech. But I can assure you that if what you tell us doesn’t help us get our man, we will, as far as possible, treat your replies with discretion.”

  “Does that include immunity from prosecution?”

  “That depends,” Bernie said good-naturedly. “By your own admission, that blackmailer knows something about you that you’d rather the world didn’t know. We won’t know how serious that something is until you tell us.”

  “I’ve been over that ground with Sergeant Seaweed. I did something rotten and wanted it off my chest, so I confided in Larry Trew. I’ve no intention of telling anyone else.”

  “Trew will sing like a bird when we catch him, Ms. Fox. You’re only delaying the inevitable . . . ”

  “Then I won’t help you catch him,” Charlotte said. “There’s no way I’ll face him personally.” And she left the office. Short of arresting her, there was no way to prevent it.

  “Goddamn,” Bernie said. “Now what the hell do we do?”

  After a minute’s thought I said, “How about getting Cynthia Leach to act as a decoy? She’s tough. And she’s very similar in size and shape to Charlotte.”

  Bernie frowned and then picked up my desk phone and punched numbers. When Cynthia Leach answered, he said, “This is Acting DCI Tapp. I’m calling to brief you on the job you’ve volunteered to do for us tonight . . . ” While he talked to Cynthia, I set off after Charlotte. We were going to need her SUV and her cellphone if this trick was going to work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Ada Beaven Memorial Rose Garden, located at the southeast corner of Windsor Park, is one of the city’s most tranquil and beautiful public gardens. About the size of a double city lot, it is surrounded by tall, sculptured hedges and trellises.

  Bernie Tapp had set up a command post on the top floor of the Windsor Park Pavilion from which the rose garden’s high hedge was visible—just beyond a cricket pitch and a soccer field. Male and female plainclothes police officers patrolled the neighbourhood on foot and in unmarked vehicles. The evening was overcast. A cool wind blew in from the sea bringing with it an occasional light drizzle. An elderly woman had been walking in the rose garden earlier, but after she left at 8:30, there were no further visitors.

  From up in the command post we saw Charlotte Fox’s Lexus SUV appear on Windsor Avenue at five minutes to nine, turn right onto Newport Avenue and park across the street from a mock-Tudor apartment building. Cynthia Leach got out of the Lexus and disappeared from sight into the rose garden.

  She was wearing a mike pinned to her collar and carrying a Nokia cellphone patched into Charlotte’s personal phone. “I’m walking between the rose beds,” she reported. “I’ll sniff the roses for a minute and then sit in the arboretum.”

  She was seated on a park bench when at exactly nine her phone rang. But instead of Cynthia answering, it was Charlotte who took the call. Unfortunately, it was one of Charlotte’s woman friends, trying to fix up a date for lunch, and Charlotte quickly got rid of her. Another several minutes passed before the phone rang again. This time it was the blackmailer.

  Obviously male, but speaking in a muffled voice, he said, “Have you got the money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good girl, you know how to follow orders. Now I want you to drive your car to Cattle Point. You know where it is?”

  “It’s that marine park off Beach Drive where people launch their boats.”

  “Right. Go to Cattle Point now. There’ll be some cars and trucks with boat trailers parked there. Park beside them and walk to the boat ramp. You’ll see a white five-gallon plastic pail beside the ramp. Put the envelope into the pail, go back to your car and drive home. Understood?”

  “I understand.”

  The line went dead.

  “We’ve got him! The only way in or out of Cattle Point is along Beach Drive!” Bernie shouted exultantly. The two of us discussed strategy briefly before Bernie switched his radio mike on and started barking orders. He was still organizing his people when I ran to my MG.

  I barrelled north along Beach Drive for half a mile, swung down a side road to Willows Beach, where I left the MG, and then sprinted up a steep, narrow pathway that I figured would bring me to Cattle Point, a rocky, heavily treed promontory bordering the sea. I don’t know that neighbourhood intimately, but I judged the boat-launching site to be two or three hundred yards distant. That whole woodsy area is criss-crossed by footpaths, and I hurried along a likely path that curved slightly away from the shore. On a clear day San Juan, Discovery and Chatham islands are all easily visible from there, but it was getting dark now and the drizzle was turning into rain so that the marine horizon was screened as if by a grey curtain. I was slowed down by Garry oaks, alders and tall bushes until I came out on a point overlooking Cadboro Bay. Forested land sloped down to long shelves of smooth glaciated rock that descended into the sea. The boat ramp was a fifty-yard strip of poured concrete flanked on its right-hand side by a steep bank that partially obstructed my view. To the left of the ramp, driftwood lay on a section of sandy beach exposed by the low tide.

  From my position nose-down in a patch of brush, I saw Charlotte’s Lexus arrive. Driving slowly, Cynthia parked it below me alongside a Ford Aerostar van with an attached boat trailer. I watched her get out of the Lexus. Carrying a conspicuously large envelope, she walked towards the boat ramp. From my position, I couldn’t see the five-gallon pail that she was aiming for, and I lost sight of her for an instant after she went behind the bank overhanging the ramp. Moments later she reappeared without the envelope. At almost the same instant, a minor avalanche consisting of loose soil, gravel and vegetation poured down the bank and spread out on the ramp. By night, forest shadows can play strange tricks upon the nerves, especially upon nerves already stretched, and Cynthia, momentarily panicked by the avalanche, cried out.

  At the same moment a green rowboat appeared from around a headland and came inshore. As quietly as I could, I moved twenty yards to my left to get an unobstructed view of the boat ramp
and the blackmailer’s white pail. Meanwhile, Cynthia had gone back to the Lexus, and when she drove away, the incoming rowboat and its lone occupant were still about a hundred yards out.

  Staying among the trees, I was moving cautiously towards a point directly above the boat ramp when someone wearing a black neoprene wetsuit emerged from hiding below me, snatched Cynthia’s envelope from the white plastic pail, shoved it into a shoulder bag and dove with it into the sea. In seconds the swimmer had vanished from sight around the headland. Cursing, I ran from my hiding place down to the boat ramp, clambered up the adjoining bank and began running across the headland. However, at one point my feet sank to the ankles in a patch of loose muddy soil, and by the time I’d pulled myself loose and crossed through the trees to reach a lookout point, the blackmailer had gone. A small black shape that appeared momentarily between me and the lights of the houses lining Beach Drive might have been a man paddling a kayak, but it also might have been my overwrought imagination playing tricks.

  We’d lost him.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  It was long after midnight, and the Coast Guard and its helicopters had abandoned the search for the aquatic blackmailer. Bernie Tapp and I were sitting in his office with the Fox file—now large enough to bulge an accordion folder—lying open on his desk.

  “That,” Bernie said, “was a humongous fuck-up, but you’ve got to hand it to the guy—he is one smart individual.” He began sorting through the reports that had been deposited in his in-basket while we were out chasing the blackmailer.

  “The question is, what will he do now? Instead of ten grand, he’s got a mitt full of scrap paper.”

  “He’ll blow the whistle,” Bernie predicted. “We came so damn close to nailing him that he won’t take any more risks.”

  “Bernie,” I scoffed, “we never came anywhere near catching him. And the kayak he used to make his getaway was probably stolen . . . ”

  “If that really was a kayak you saw!”

  “Whatever. There are a hundred places within an hour’s paddle of Cattle Point where he could go ashore unnoticed.” But something else was bothering me. “You know, Bernie,” I said, “from what we know of Trew, I wouldn’t have expected him to be that athletic, that smart. He’s as cunning as a fucking weasel.”

  Bernie looked up from the report he’d been scanning. “Mr. Weasel isn’t as smart as he thinks he is, because now we’ve got DNA samples.”

  Astonished, I straightened in my chair. “Since when?”

  “Take it easy, Silas, I haven’t been holding out on you. This is the DNA lab report that just came in. Remember the letters that the blackmailers sent to Charlotte Fox?”

  “Slow down, Bernie. Did you say blackmailers? You mean there’s more than one?”

  “That’s the way it looks. Whoever they are—or were—the senders were dumb enough to lick the envelopes sent to Charlotte Fox. This report says that at least two people are involved, perhaps more. The DNA on that first envelope—the one typed on Titus Silverman’s Underwood—doesn’t match the DNA found on the second, hand-written envelope,” Bernie said, grinning sardonically as he filled his pipe.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “They’re certain that Silverman licked the envelope containing the first blackmail demand. However, the lab won’t commit to anything definite on the second envelope yet because there’s a problem. The DNA on it closely matches the blood found in Lawrence Trew’s kitchen, but that blood may or may not be Trew’s. I told them to check it with Charlotte Fox’s DNA, too.”

  When I got over my astonishment, I remarked lamely, “I wasn’t aware that we had obtained a sample of Charlotte’s DNA.”

  “Nice Manners took care of it. Followed her to a cafe somewhere and picked up a paper napkin she’d discarded. It was his idea.”

  “Good thinking, but where does it get us? Are you suggesting Charlotte is blackmailing herself?”

  “Stranger things have happened . . . We only have her word for it that she paid out to the blackmailer the first time, and she refused to carry the money tonight . . . ”

  I shook my head. “I’m lost. It’s like being trapped in a labyrinth. You know there must be a way out, but . . . ”

  “All we can do now is wait till the DNA lab specialists get finished. They’ve promised us a definite answer within a couple of days.”

  I was lost in thought.

  Bernie went on, “Well, what do you think, Silas?”

  I shook my head.

  Bernie shrugged.

  “I’m tired,” I said, standing up and going to the door. “Something is staring us in the face but my brain’s dead, I’m going home.”

  Going home, going home . . .

  Those words kept repeating themselves in my head as I unlocked the door to my cabin and stepped in out of the rain. It was cold enough for a fire that night. I opened a fresh bottle of Scotch, poured myself a couple of ounces and stood by a window, looking out to sea and trying to unravel the puzzle.

  Calmed by the rain and the absence of wind, the sea looked like hammered pewter. White foam bubbled along the shoreline. I finished my drink, rejected the idea of having another and cleaned my teeth instead. Undressing for bed, I took all the stuff from my pockets and laid it on the night table, and that’s when I noticed that my cellphone had been switched off for an hour or two. I switched it on and read a couple of text messages. Fred Halloran, ace reporter, wanted me to give him a call. I glanced at my watch—it was after three. I switched the cellphone off, finished undressing, climbed into bed and spent most of time until morning examining the ceiling above my head. It stopped raining about six.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Apart from a few scraps of grey cloud floating above the Sooke Hills, the day had broken crisp and clear. I was frying bacon and eggs when Fred Halloran phoned. “No comment,” I said, interrupting his opening remarks.

  “Yeah-yeah, I know. There’s a media blackout on last night’s Cattle Point debacle, but de genie’s out of de bottle.”

  “What debacle?”

  “The word on the street is that it was a drug bust went wrong.”

  “Sorry, Fred. It was probably one of Bernie Tapp’s operations. I can’t tell you anything,” I said sweetly before hanging up.

  The bacon was crunchy, my two eggs were slightly brown on both sides, and my whole-wheat toast was a bit overdone, which is exactly how I like it. I was just chowing down when Halloran called again. I switched the phone off, finished eating, washed the dishes and then went out to the MG and drove to work. On the construction site across the street a member of the bricks-and-mortar brigade was deepening a hole with a shovel.

  An idea that had been gnawing at me for several hours grew stronger.

  I phoned Bernie Tapp and said, “Anything new?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Fred Halloran has called me a couple of times. He’s asking about last night, thinks it was a drug operation.”

  “Yeah, that’s the line we’re feeding the media. Unofficially.”

  “Is Charlotte Fox’s house still under surveillance?”

  “No. I pulled the guys off because my overtime bill is through the roof.” After a pause Bernie added, “You know how short-staffed we are, especially since last night.”

  “That’s too bad, because I need a couple of good stout constables with shovels to do a little digging.”

  “What for?”

  “Last night in all that rain there was a minor landslide at Cattle Point. A couple of yards of loose muck washed down a slope and onto the boat ramp. I didn’t think anything of it. A minute or two later when I was chasing along the trail in the dark, my feet sank into a patch of loose dirt. I didn’t think anything of that either. Not then.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Bernie growled, “but keep talking.”

  “I’ve been wondering what sort of natural phenomenon would cause that soil to be loose in the first place.”

  “You think somebody’s been digging.”
/>
  “Yes, well, it’s a bit improbable, I suppose, but . . . ”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  It was about four in the afternoon before I drove across town to Charlotte Fox’s imposing Moss Street house. Bernie Tapp had scheduled a news conference for five, and I wanted to speak to Charlotte first.

  I got out of the MG, crossed the street and knocked on her front door. As I waited, I was aware of the sun shining and the hummingbirds buzzing among the flowers. Nobody answered my knock. I followed the concrete pathway that ran between the side of the house and a tall evergreen hedge and opened onto a flagstone terrace dotted with large terracotta urns abloom with geraniums and nasturtiums. I was admiring a bronze sundial mounted on a granite plinth when I became aware of a movement off to my side. Ten yards away, Charlotte Fox was watching me from the doorway of a sunroom that jutted from the back of her house. She wore a woollen robe over yellow silk pajamas, and her hair was tousled as if she’d just crawled out of bed. I said hello. She gave me a deadpan look and, leaving the door open, disappeared into the sunroom. It was very warm in there. Bamboos, bougainvillea and hibiscus grew in profusion from more huge terracotta urns and planters. Water flowing endlessly from a naughty bronze boy’s anatomically correct, uncircumcised pecker trickled into a small rectangular lily pond banked with clivia and azaleas. Six black wicker chairs with white cushions and a circular table draped with a white linen cloth complemented the sunroom’s black and white floor tiles.

  “Sorry for barging in unannounced,” I said. “When nobody answered my knock, I guessed you might be round the back.”

  She shrugged. To judge by the dark crescents beneath her big brown eyes, she hadn’t slept well either.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” I said, sitting across the table from her. “You handled your end well and we let you down.”

  “It’s what I expected,” she said ungraciously. “Do you have any news, or is this a social visit?”

  “Just checking in. There’s nothing new to report,” I lied. “The blackmailer’s still out there. I’m not entirely happy to find you here alone, however.”