“Why?”
“A quasi-paternal instinct.”
“My father would be a hard act for you to follow.”
“All the same, I think you need to be kept company, at least for a day or two until we catch him.”
“That’s hardly reassuring. You were supposed to catch him last night.”
“We slipped up. He outsmarted us.”
“Well, if you police can’t look after me, I’ll have to count on George, I suppose.”
“Does he know what happened yesterday?”
“Yes and no,” she replied, her voice turning to bitterness. “He probably realized I’d had a bad night.”
“You didn’t explain what had happened?”
“Of course I didn’t!” she snapped impatiently.
“Why ‘of course’? You’ve decided not to pay any more blackmail, so George is bound to find out what’s going on soon.”
Her eyes registered scorn.
It was no time for argument. I stood up and said, “Okay, I’m butting in. You don’t want any more of me so I’ll clear off. Only it’s as I said—I don’t think you should be left alone. Can you call someone, a friend perhaps, to keep you company?”
“No, don’t go,” she said apologetically, her changes of mood as unpredictable as the weather. “I’m being thoughtless, blaming you for something that’s my own fault.”
“But you’re right—we screwed up.”
She stood up and gently stroked my arm. “I’ll call someone to come and stay with me later. Would you care for some coffee?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll make a pot. Just give me a few minutes.”
She went out of the sunroom. I heard her moving about in the nearby kitchen before she went upstairs. Looking around from my comfortable chair, I saw an elaborate, multi-storeyed, wooden birdcage dangling amid the conservatory’s lush tropical greenery. Instead of live birds, it contained coloured glass Christmas tree ornaments. The slightly funereal odour of lilies, fat tropical plants and moist bedding soil was beginning to get mildly oppressive, when suddenly there was a loud, metallic click as the room’s arrangement of thermostatically controlled fans switched off automatically. As soon as they stopped, I overheard faint distant voices. As I went from the sunroom into the house, the voices grew louder, and I found that they came from a portable radio playing in the lounge. It was tuned to the police channel.
I returned to the sunroom. Charlotte Fox rejoined me soon afterwards carrying cups, saucers, cream, sugar and a carafe of coffee on a tray that she placed on the table. She’d brushed her hair, but was still wearing her robe and pajamas. Before sitting down, she adjusted the sunroom’s thermostat. The fans clicked on and the air became breathable again.
“Did you find it all right?” she asked.
I raised my eyebrows.
“The bathroom. When I looked in here just now, you were somewhere else.”
“I wasn’t looking for a bathroom. I was being nosy, just poking around your handsome house.”
“That ought to make me nervous, I suppose,” she said, pouring coffee. “Cream and sugar?”
“Black for me.”
“Find anything interesting?”
“Mildly. That radio in your lounge is tuned to the police channel. Not what I’d call easy listening.”
“That’s George. He’s an insomniac. Instead of taking a pill, he comes downstairs and either watches TV or listens to the radio. I guess he finds the police band more interesting than the chat shows you get on the radio after midnight.”
“Slightly off the topic—but George doesn’t like me very much, does he?”
She looked startled. “Is there any reason why he should?”
I shrugged. I decided that I didn’t want to get into after all.
Then, out of the blue, she glared at me and said, “My dad used to hunt game. When I was a kid, our deep-freeze was always full of venison and moose meat. Then he gave it up. He told me that when the season opened, there were some places with fifty hunters for every deer. He said there were too many hunters crashing around in the woods. But Dad didn’t give up hunting because it had become dangerous. He gave it up because he got sick of it.” She stopped talking but she didn’t stop glaring. I was wondering where she was going with all this when she continued maliciously, “Cops are hunters, and George has always been a target for them. I’m sure you know all about George’s checkered career, but there was a time in his life when George needed a break. He didn’t get it. The cops had him in their sights. Now why don’t you get the hell out of here and leave us both alone for a while?”
I wagged my head. “Whoa, Charlotte. I’m on your side, remember?”
Hands trembling, she refilled her coffee cup, spilling a little into her saucer. I reached for a paper napkin, folded it into a square and placed it under her cup.
“Thanks, “ she said without looking at me. “Do you think I’m a coward?”
“No. I find you mysterious, but that’s a very attractive quality. Besides, if you’re anything like me, you’re a mystery to yourself. I look back at my own actions sometimes and think, what in God’s name made me do that?”
“Right. But you’d probably feel better about me if I’d been the one in Ada Beaven’s rose garden last night instead of letting that policewoman take the risk.”
“You did it the first time, remember?”
Her eyes widened.
I said, “When the blackmailer contacted you the first time, you made the drop all by yourself. That took courage. Especially when you were sitting on that park bench, waiting for his phone call, and that dog came over and snapped at your ankles.”
“Oh sure, the dog,” she said lamely. “To be honest, I don’t remember much about it. It’s all a blur now. I was scared senseless actually.”
She was sitting tense and upright.
I watched a black and purple butterfly—one of a pair that had been flapping about the sunroom—land on a cactus as green and spiky as a hedgehog.
Abruptly Charlotte said, “I’m sorry, I’ve a busy day ahead. I really must ask you to leave here now.”
I said goodbye. I might have appeared sad going out of Charlotte Fox’s sunroom, but I wasn’t as sad as I looked. One thing was certain—conversations with her were often frustrating, but seldom unrewarding. In fact, I was beginning to see a tiny candle flickering dimly at the end of a very long tunnel.
I drove to the foot of Moss Street and turned right along the waterfront. I was trying to work something out, but it was a beautiful day and there were many distractions. Even apart from glorious mountain and ocean vistas, there were windsurfers, kite flyers and bikini-clad sunbathers lying on the beaches. Three paragliders hovered in the thermals above the Dallas Road cliffs. One had had risen about 300 feet, and were it not for the day’s obscuring heat haze, I figured he’d have been able to see as far east as Mount Baker, as far west as the Pacific Ocean. A stilt walker came by juggling three orange balls, and for just a moment he obscured my vision of a war canoe coming around Ogden Point. Paddled by a dozen of my Native brethren, it was on course for the Olympic Peninsula, twenty miles across the Salish Sea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It must have been seven o’clock that evening before I finally returned to my office, and it took me a couple of hours to dispose of the routine paperwork that had accumulated. Then I switched the lights off and was all set to pull the blinds and go home when PC—who, when she’s not prowling Chinatown’s back alleys for mice, does the same thing in this old building—came in through the cat flap that Nobby Sumner had installed at such great expense. She complained noisily until I opened a can of anchovies and dumped the contents into her personalized stainless steel bowl. PC likes anchovies, but instead of eating, she sat on her haunches, eyeing me mysteriously.
“You’re a funny one,” I said. “What’s going on inside that head of yours?”
She was busy scratching her neck with a hind leg when footsteps so
unded in the hall outside, and she vanished into the shadows behind my filing cabinets as my door opened and Fred Halloran came in. He was wearing a brown fedora and a brown raincoat with bulging pockets. I switched the lights on again.
“Silas,” he said, his dentures gleaming like alabaster tombstones at high noon, “you’re a hard fellow to nail down.”
“You’re the Word Man, Fred, not me, but is that a tautology or a non sequitur? We spent an hour together not so long ago.”
“Hardly a tautology. If you ask me, it’s a sophism, an example of what—before women invaded newsrooms and a lovey-dovey courteousness became the norm—we used to call feminine logic,” Fred replied with uncharacteristic savagery. “Are you planning to pour me a drink voluntarily or do I have to come right out and beg?”
I reached for the office bottle. It was half full. I splashed some into my Tim Hortons mugs and shoved one across the desk.
“That was quite a performance Bernie Tapp put on for the TV cameras,” Fred remarked insincerely. “It was all over the news.”
“I didn’t see the news.”
“It’ll be repeated later. Bernie gave you a very flattering mention, said you were involved in the Cattle Point stakeout last night and in this morning’s follow-up,” Fred said, draining his glass and pushing it forward for a refill.
“Did Bernie say what we found?”
“Sure. What you found and who. Bernie thinks you’re a hell of a guy.”
“And so I am,” I answered modestly, refilling our mugs and thereby emptying the bottle.
“Feel like telling me the whole story in your own words?”
Suspicious by nature, I picked up the phone, dialled headquarters and asked for Acting DCI Tapp. When Bernie answered I said, “I’m with Fred Halloran. He tells me that you told the world all about Cattle Point this morning. Is that correct?”
“Sort of, we’re still playing it close to the chest in that we haven’t mentioned the blackmail angle. But we’ve come clean about who we found buried.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you later,” I said, hanging up.
I leaned back in my chair and sipped a little whisky. “As you probably know, you need a machete to get through some of the vines and blackberries in the brush around Cattle Point, but last night somebody—blundering around in the dark—noticed a patch of loose earth out there. It was dark at the time and we were busy with other stuff. But this morning when we went over there with shovels, we saw that the patch was about six feet long and three feet wide, roughly rectangular. We started digging. It was a shallow grave, and it contained a male corpse.”
Fred Halloran eyed my bottle. It was empty. He reached into his capacious pockets, produced a mickey of Chivas Regal and refilled our cups. “Right,” he said then, reading from his notebook, he went on, “The body was identified as that of Lawrence Trew, a doctor. He lives on Terrace Lane and practices hypnotherapy on Fort Street. He’d been missing for a while.” Halloran looked up from his notes. “I never knew the gentleman. What was he like?”
“I can’t answer that because I never met him personally. It’s probably fair to say that during his lifetime Lawrence Trew was sometimes improperly and unfairly maligned.”
“A chap who shoved his wife off a balcony?” Fred made a sour face. “Well, maybe you’re right, Silas. But you can’t say the same for Titus Silverman or Tubby Gonzales.”
“What’s Tubby Gonzales got to do with this?”
“Nothing,” Fred said, laughing self-consciously. “His name just popped into my head, I don’t know why. Thirst must be making me light-headed,” he said, reaching for the mickey.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The mickey had been drained, and Fred Halloran had departed. I sat in the dark for a while thinking before I switched the lights on once again and phoned Chief Alphonse. As usual these days, he wasn’t home. I opened my computer. Charlotte Fox’s Lexus was stationary somewhere inside Donnelly’s Marsh.
I phoned her home number. Nobody answered, not even the voice mail. Instead of leaving a message, I said goodnight to PC, locked up and went outside. Pandora and Government streets were choked with late-evening traffic. Pedestrians jammed the sidewalks and parked cars lined the curbs. A parking ticket was tucked under the MG’s wiper blade. I resisted a boozy temptation to tear it asunder and stowed it instead in my glove compartment, where it joined a dozen of its neglected cousins.
I drove down Highway 1 again to the View Royal turnoff, past the north end of Esquimalt Harbour, past the Great Canadian Casino and the used-car lots. When the Donnelly house loomed up ahead, I stopped the car. The night was warm and full of stars, and a sliver of moon had risen above the trees, but as soon as I turned the MG’s headlights off, the house became just a black rectangle in the darkness. I reached underneath the driver’s seat and carefully detached my Glock from its magnetic clip. The gun felt heavy and awkward when I slid it into my shoulder holster, but its presence was comforting.
I had locked up and was just putting the keys in my pocket when a familiar voice said, “We finally figured out how you did it.” Charlotte Fox was sitting on the porch in one of the old Cape Cod chairs. “Now come on up here and have a drink,” she said, “and tell me why you did it.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I should be asking you that question.”
“Ladies first,” I said.
“If I told you I was waiting for you, Silas, would that make you happy?”
“I’m always happy when I’m near you, Charlotte. But how did you get here?”
“I drove, of course. The Lexus is behind the house. Come on up and have a drink.”
I went up the steps. She held a glass of wine, while a bottle of wine and two empty glasses were beside her on the porch railing. “It’s a Pinot Noir. Help yourself,” she said, her voice strangely amused. “Sorry there’s no rum and coke.”
I poured myself a drink and sat on the chair next to hers. In the moonlight I could see she was wearing a shimmery copper tube top, a short, light-coloured skirt and low-heeled shoes. “Skoal,” I said. “It’s a nice evening and you look lovely, Charlotte. May I call you Charlie?”
“Of course. Would you like to kiss me?”
“Yes, I would, Charlie,” I said, the lie coming easily to my lips, “in a minute, but I see you have a third glass here. Are you expecting more company?”
“Who knows?” she said, laughing lightly. “But listen to this—I’m sure you’ll find it interesting—Georgie took my Lexus to the dealership for its fifty-K checkup . . . and guess what the mechanic found?”
“Mud?” I suggested. “A busted shock absorber from driving around back-country roads?”
“Oh, the mechanic didn’t mention shock absorbers. What he found was a cellphone duct-taped under the dashboard.” Charlotte’s voice still carried the same highly amused tones. “The phone had a GPS chip, so it must have been put there by someone wanting to keep tabs on me. A lovestruck swain, perhaps. What do you think, Silas? Should I be flattered?”
“Evidently I have a rival for your affections.”
“What on earth do you mean, Silas?” she asked, cocking her head to one side as she smiled at me. “What rival?”
“I don’t know, my dear. Whoever he is, thank goodness he’s not here now.”
“But he is here, Silas,” she said, laughing. “You’re the one who put the phone there, aren’t you?”
“Well, no,” I lied, “but let’s pretend that I did do such a crazy thing. That wouldn’t explain how you and I both came to be here tonight.”
“Oh, but it does, Silas. Instead of smashing the cellphone, we took it to an electronics shop. It’s your cellphone, and it’s on the seat of the Lexus right now. So you’re here now for just one reason.”
“And what reason is that?”
Playfully she said, “The same reason that prompted you to ‘accidentally’ run into me at the Stick In The Mud. You’re here because you’re still following me. Now will
you kiss me?”
I placed my glass on the porch railing, stood up and was moving towards her when I saw her eyes widen and one of her hands fly to her mouth. She screamed.
I turned. Lumbering towards the house was a bear—massive, immense, silent—and it was walking upright on two legs. Unlike my first encounter with this bear, my mouth didn’t go dry. I didn’t feel my heart bouncing against my ribs. But Charlotte was still screaming in fright and the bear was almost upon us. After an instant of inertia, I dragged my Glock from its holster. Before I could aim and shoot, Charlotte leapt from her chair. Scampering towards the door to the house, she jolted my arm and my shot went wide. The gun clattered to the floor and slid off the porch. The bear was now only ten feet from the steps, and I raced into the house and slammed the door in its face. Somewhere in the dark interior behind me, I could hear Charlotte moaning, and I felt my way along the hallway until I found the kitchen door. When I opened it, she was dimly silhouetted against windows. “It’s me,” I was saying as she slid to the floor in a dead faint. Her head cracked against the floor with a horrifyingly loud thud. I took my jacket off, put it beneath her head as a pillow and straightened her out on the floor.
Beads of sweat trickling down my face, I went back along the hallway to a room at the front of the house and looked out into the moonlit night. There was no sign of the bear. Nothing moved out there except a slight breeze swirling in the grass. I returned to the hallway and slowly opened the front door. My Glock was out there and I needed it. I was standing on the porch, trying to decide where the gun would have landed, when feet scraped on the decking behind me, and a powerful arm came around my neck and jerked me backwards. As I tried to turn and grapple with my assailant, I caught a glimpse of a face, but it was no more than a white blur in the darkness.
“You had plenty of warnings but you never listened,” he said.
The blow to the back of my head buckled my knees. Then, with his arm still around my neck, he delivered a second blow. I don’t remember hitting the deck.
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