by R. E. Donald
" ... who taught us to pray," the man's velvety voice carried on with, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallow-ed be thy name ... " and El shut her eyes, tight, very tight, trying very, very hard to picture Randy's face, and she joined in.
"... for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever ... "
Amen.
The house was silent, although occasionally the whine of a motorcycle or the fading rumble of an unmuffled car on the highway a few blocks away wafted through the open window along with the soft night air. Gary had just turned out his light, arranging his body inside the sheets with a few small grunts. Suzanne lay on her back, her eyes open wide and staring unfocused into the darkness above her. Gradually the light fixture on the ceiling took shape, making a huge elliptical shadow in the grey light from the window. She felt exhausted and empty, but she knew she wouldn't sleep, not for a long time.
"Gary?"
He answered with a short muffled hum.
"How could Dad have even touched that woman, after Mom?"
There was a big sigh, like he knew Suzanne would never understand what he was about to say. "Like I said before, it's just a physical thing, Sue. Men sometimes ... ." He sighed again. "Don't make it into a big deal. It doesn't mean your dad loved your mother any less. We both know how much he loved her."
She heard his arm rustling in the sheets, then his fingers stroked her cheek, his touch soft and warm, like a baby's breath. "Any relationship he might've had with that woman was probably all in her head. She's a head case. Don't let her spoil your dad's memory. She's not worth it."
A tear trickled wetly into Suzanne's ear. "I wish I could stop thinking about her."
Gary moved closer, put his arm across her stomach and nuzzled her neck. "Remember how your dad used to take Jo and Veri out for ice cream in his tractor? And how he let them play hide and seek in the sleeper? And remember how they giggled that time he put Jo's teddy to bed in his bunk, wearing his Caterpillar hat?" He ran the tip of his nose along her jaw, then kissed her gently on the chin. "Remember? Huh?"
She nodded, laughing and crying at the same time. He stroked the hair at the crown of her head, straightened loose strands at the top of her pillow. She was glad he didn't try to make love. She hated to ever turn him down, but tonight, well, thinking of her dad and that woman, Suzanne couldn't stand the thought of sex.
"Gary?"
"Hmmm?"
"El said today after the service that if Ranverdan gets to be too much for us, we should tell her, that we could work something out. It sounded like she didn't think we'd be able to handle it."
Gary propped himself up on his elbow and looked into her eyes. "She wants to buy the company?"
Suzanne shrugged. She supposed that was what El meant.
"Did she say how much?"
"You know I couldn't sell Dad's company. I couldn't even think about it."
"But if we can't make it work ... "
"Who says we can't make it work? Why shouldn't I be able to make it work?" Suzanne's voice rose, and she could feel her anger rising. Why had she even mentioned El's offer? How could she have thought that Gary would take her side? Every time she discussed the business with Gary lately she ended up feeling she had to defend herself. And now with El it was the same way. Suzanne knew that El was convinced she couldn't make it work, either.
Gary sighed and lay back down, leaving only his hand nestled against the crown of her head. "Settle down, Sue. Let's not talk about this now." His fingers resumed their gentle stroking. "Look, you've had a very emotional day. Don't even think about it. Take it easy, be good to yourself for a few days, okay, honey?"
Take it easy. That's almost what El had said, too. Make it easy on yourself, she'd said. Give me a call if you need any help, she said. But what she really meant was, you haven't a hope in hell of making this work and you'd better bail out before you run the business into the ground. And Suzanne guessed that what really made her mad, what upset her most of all, was that she suspected in her heart that El and Gary were right. She was just a glorified office clerk who'd done a little dispatching and bookkeeping for her dad, and what did she know about running a trucking company? How could she dare to think that she could keep her father's company alive?
"Okay, Gary. You're right," she said. "It's been a rough day – a rough week – and I need some time before I make any kind of decisions." She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Good night, love," she said, and patted his fingers, which were still stroking her hair.
"Good night, babe. I love you," he whispered. He took the fingers away and turned himself over, burying his face in the pillow.
"I love you, too," she whispered back, but she felt empty, like she had no love to give him. She knew she did love him, and Jolene and Veronica, with all her heart, but she felt as though all the love that had been in her today, love that had poured out of her like blood out of a gaping wound and left her feeling numb and lifeless, like a drained battery, that love had all belonged to her dad. Now she had nothing left to give anybody, not even herself.
She hoped she'd have some more tomorrow.
Hunter arrived in Edmonton without incident on Thursday morning. John Semeniuk, the receiver at Waicom's Edmonton warehouse was middle aged, near sighted and obese, and smelled of garlic sausage. While the warehousemen went to work unloading the trailer with their forklifts, he put down a half eaten sandwich to sign for the load. His big open-mouthed smile disappeared as he read the paperwork. "Too bad about Randy, eh? I knew him for years, from back at my old job, even. Great guy." He shook his head, his jaw denting the huge cushion of fat beneath his chin. "Real straight shooter Randy was. Had a lot of friends around here." He reached for his sandwich.
Hunter felt respect for the man's obvious sorrow. "I hadn't known him that long, but I've never heard anyone say a bad word about him. This has been real tough on his daughter." He paused, watching the man tuck a stray round of sausage between slices of heavy bread. "Any reason you can think of why the load he was carrying last week didn't clear at the border?"
The sandwich stopped in mid air, and Semeniuk's eyes became guarded. "Why are you asking?"
Hunter shrugged. "I'm trying to help his daughter out. Evidently someone at your Vancouver office is giving her a hard time because the R.C.M.P. haven't released the freight yet, but it's still in bond anyway, so we wondered if there was some problem with the clearance. Randy did up an A8A bonding the freight on to Edmonton, but never had a chance to mention it to his daughter, or anybody else as far as we know."
The big man stared at his sandwich. "Can't say. Can't help you."
Their conversation was interrupted by a languid male voice. Hunter glanced over his shoulder and saw one of the warehousemen who'd been unloading Hunter's trailer standing behind him, a tall athletic looking man with a tight pony tail and a two-day beard. He gave Semeniuk the skid count and asked if there was anything to load on Hunter's trailer.
"No, that's it, Frank," Semeniuk said curtly. "Finish picking the Red Deer order." The warehouseman gave Hunter an appraising look, rubbing the black stubble on his jaw with the back of his hand as he turned away.
Hunter was pulling The Blue Knight away from the loading dock when Semeniuk signalled to him from the warehouse steps. Hunter stopped the truck and climbed down as the fat man jogged over to him. Semeniuk was breathing heavily and oily sweat glistened on his forehead. "I'd like to help Randy's daughter, but all I can tell you is, talk to Mel Collins at City Customs Brokers. He was a good friend of Randy's."
"What else?" Hunter leaned close to hear him over the sound of the engine.
"Sorry. That's all I can tell you." He waved Hunter away as he turned and walked quickly back towards the warehouse. As he drove out of the yard, Hunter saw the warehouseman, Frank, standing at the small window in the warehouse door, stroking his chin with his hand.
CHAPTER 9
- - - - NINE
Hunter had a pickup to make in Edmonton in the af
ternoon, half a trailer load for Vancouver. Ranverdan had some freight from up north that would fill the rest of his trailer. Hunter would have lots of time to pick it up in Kamloops over the weekend and still have the load delivered to Watson's yard in Vancouver by Sunday night. Mel Collins couldn't take time off to see him during the day, but agreed to meet Hunter at a hotel not far from the Yellowhead Trail after five o'clock. The location was Collins' choice, Hunter having asked him to suggest a place that would have space nearby to park a tractor-trailer.
Collins, a short, wiry man of about fifty wearing glasses and sporting a pale yellow golf shirt and light brown slacks, was standing beside his station wagon at the empty end of the parking lot and began walking towards The Blue Knight as soon as Hunter pulled in. Together, the two men walked in awkward silence to the hotel lounge, where they made their way to a table as far away from the big screen T.V. as they could get. Hunter ordered a glass of draft beer and Collins ordered a bottle of Coors Light.
"Do you know Suzanne, Randy's daughter?" Hunter began.
"I've spoken to her a number of times, but we've never met. I have to call the Ranverdan office sometimes about arranging weekend customs clearances, locating lost paperwork, that sort of thing. Why do you ask?" Collins was soft spoken and came across as precise and polite.
Hunter had planned an approach that he hoped would justify his inquiries. He couldn't just flash his badge anymore and say he was conducting a police investigation, and why else would someone like Mel Collins agree to answer his questions? "Suzanne ... is ... concerned about the load that Randy was hauling at the time of his death. She's been getting some pressure from the company who owns the freight, Waicom Electronics. It appears that the freight was supposed to clear customs at the border, but Randy decided not to let that happen. He cut an A8A bonding it on to Edmonton." He debated whether to mention that it was John Semeniuk, the receiver at Waicom, who had referred him to Collins, and decided against it. Semeniuk had seemed fearful of someone or something, although the source of his fear wasn't likely to be Collins. In his mind's eye, Hunter again saw the warehouseman's face at the window, the aggressive set of his jaw as he'd stroked his two-day beard. "Seeing as you're a friend of Randy's, I wondered if you might know anything about it." The beer arrived and both men silently watched the waiter deal out coasters and set the glasses on them.
"Who are you?" Collins took a sip of beer and placed the glass back precisely in the middle of the coaster.
Hunter ran his finger through the condensation on the side of his glass. "A friend of Suzanne's." He sat back. "To be honest, I didn't know Suzanne before Randy died, but my dispatcher, Elspeth Watson, has known them both for a long time. She asked me to help out, both as a driver, and to poke around a little, you know, set Suzanne's mind at ease." Collins was staring into his beer, either thinking it over or being stubbornly silent, Hunter couldn't decide which. Seconds passed. Hunter sighed. He'd hoped he wouldn't have to say it. "I used to be with the R.C.M.P., that's why they think I can get information that they can't get on their own."
When Collins looked up there was a slight smile on his thin lips. "I've had a couple of run-ins with Elspeth Watson. Guess you couldn't say no." They both laughed.
The customs broker's face grew serious, and he dropped his voice so that Hunter had to lean forward to hear. "Randy didn't tell me everything, but he suspected there was something illegal going on. It had something to do with the Waicom Electronics shipments from Seattle, but he didn't know what it was. He said there were some weight or piece count discrepancies, a few other things that made him suspicious, but he didn't volunteer any specifics. He called me on Tuesday morning from Vancouver, said he was picking up a load in Seattle, and wanted a chance to examine the load before anybody else did. He said it would be set to clear at the border as usual, but he didn't want the regular people involved, so he was going to bond it on to Edmonton. We do the customs work for Waicom here, so I was going to get a buddy of mine at customs to unseal the trailer on the pretext that the paperwork was lost and I had to remove invoices from the cartons. It'd be at our bond warehouse, so it wouldn't have been any problem. Then Randy and I were going to go over the freight to see if it was all in order." He drank some more beer, set down the glass, and turned it in little circles on the coaster.
"Did you know what you were supposed to be looking for?"
Collins shook his head. "I don't know if Randy knew either, except that it was probably illegal. He wouldn't let anybody or anything tarnish Ranverdan's good name. That company was his pride and joy, and Randy himself was straight as an arrow. He'd have dropped Waicom like a hot potato if he found out there was smuggling involved." He smiled wanly. "Randy was so happy when his daughter got involved in the business after Ronnie died. He figured he had a few good years of driving left in him, then he was going to go fishing and leave the day-to-day operations to Suzanne. Life isn't fair, eh? He never got a chance to reap the rewards of all his years of hard work, he and Ronnie both." He looked mournfully at Hunter, then drained his glass. "I doubt that I can tell you anything else that'd help."
"You said Randy would've dropped Waicom like a hot potato if he'd found something illegal going on. Do you think Randy would have contacted the authorities as well?"
"Damn right. He wouldn't let something like that go. Not a chance."
"Straight as an arrow, huh?" said Hunter.
Collins nodded. "Straight as an arrow."
The June heat was enervating, the air still and parched, when Hunter arrived in Kamloops on Saturday afternoon. He called ahead, and was met at the yard by Suzanne. She and the two kids were sitting on lawn chairs in the scant shade of the old house trailer finishing up soft ice cream cones. Dressed in a checked white and pink sundress with bows at the shoulders, Suzanne looked not much more than a girl herself. Her hair was held in a loose ponytail by a bright pink terry cloth band, and her nose was pink from the sun. She asked him to unhitch the trailer and park his rig, saying that Gary would look after the freight transfer later, assuming Hunter didn't mind staying the night. The full trailer would be back in the yard, ready for him to hook up to again by ten on Sunday morning.
"I haven't had a chance to talk to you since last time you were here, Hunter, so I wanted to pick you up myself and ask if you would come to dinner. Anyway, Gary's out with his friends." She shrugged and dropped her eyes. "You are still looking into things, aren't you? I mean, I know it's not your job or anything."
"El won't let me forget," he replied, smiling. He decided not to say anything yet about his meeting with Mel Collins. He was afraid of telling her too much too soon. All he had for now was speculation and suspicion. "Here, I'll give you a hand."
They folded up the lawn chairs and stowed them in the trailer, then she buckled the little girls into the back seat of the minivan and drove it out the chain link gate. Hunter padlocked the gate, threw his duffel bag in the back of the van and jumped into the passenger seat for the short drive to Randy's house. Suzanne dropped him off, and said there'd be a cold beer waiting for him at her and Gary's house whenever he was ready.
Hunter showered, changed into clean jeans and a clean shirt. He went downstairs to the empty Ranverdan office and seated himself behind Suzanne's desk. His plan was to contact Bill Earl first to see if there was any news, then call his daughters, hoping he'd find at least one of them home on a Saturday afternoon. Was it really almost a month since he'd last talked to them? That thought gave him a sudden sense of urgency that he knew was ridiculous, but he decided to call them first. Punching in their number, then his calling card number, he drummed the fingers of his left hand on the desk as he waited for the connection. The line was busy.
He was lucky enough to find Bill Earl at the detachment, just closing out his shift. Bill had reviewed the mechanics' report on Friday as soon as it arrived. The Western Star tractor had been in top condition, no indication that the brakes, transmission or steering could have failed. Careful examination of the
tractor's paint had revealed no traces of a collision prior to leaving the road. Any damage was entirely consistent with the bouncing and rolling a fall down the steep bank would have generated, and all paint scratches could be attributed to rocks along the rough slope and at the bottom.
"What do you get from that, Bill?" Hunter asked.
"Just what it says, Hunter. It was a single vehicle accident, probably caused by driver error. He fell asleep, maybe, or he wasn't watching the road, or he made the mistake of swerving to avoid hitting a deer or a moose. Why?" His voice was wary. "What do you get from it?"
Hunter raked his damp hair back from his forehead. "Veteran driver like Randy Danyluk -- who knew better than to swerve to avoid a moose, who knew better than to drive if he was drowsy -- no mechanical problems with the vehicle, no sign of a heart attack or stroke, it looks more and more like it wasn't an accident. That's what I get from it." There was silence at the other end of the line. "Well?"
"Not enough, Hunter. If you can dig up something else, something more substantial than your gut feeling – like a motive, maybe – I might be able to recommend to Staff Sergeant Walker that we put some manpower on this. But right now, I don't need to make waves. Walker's reprimanded me a couple of times for poor judgment, which of course wasn't poor judgment at all. It was just a different way of looking at things, which Walker, being a WASP, would never understand, but that's beside the point. The upshot is, I can't afford any more black marks from him. I've got to keep working with him because I have to stay here in Kamloops. I want my kids to grow up here on Shuswap land, listen to Shuswap stories, talk to Shuswap people. I can't go out on a limb for somebody else's hunch. Can you understand that, Hunter?"