“Now, don’t get carried away,” I warned him. “I’ll take the first piece of serious dirt you can find. Let’s not hold out for quality.”
He sniffed. “You have no sense of style,” he complained. “No class. And you’re always in such a rush.”
“Ah, but I pay well, don’t I?” I reminded him sweetly. “In cash, and in advance.”
“Well . . .” he admitted.
“Come off it, you little leech, you know that’s the bottom line. Your favorite piece of reading material is your bank statement. Why, you’re such a tightwad that when you pull a dollar bill out of your pocket, the Queen blinks from the light.”
“Oh, all right, have it your way,” he said. “You know where to put the money, I presume.”
I resisted uttering the quip that sprang to my lips. “Yeah, I know. And Francis?”
“Yes?”
“Try to move your butt a little on this one, even if it does offend your sense of style. I’ll leave the five hundred at your mail drop, but if you can’t get me something I can use by Friday morning, early, you’re not getting another penny. I don’t care how many databases you have to burgle. Got it?”
He hung up. Good, that meant he got it. I walked back to my table, feeling a little drained. Doing business with Francis the Ferret was always such a big deal. His sense of the dramatic meant that I had to bluster and threaten, and he had to demur and protest. Then, after I got really tough and insulted him, he caved in and agreed to do what I wanted. Me Tarzan, him Jane. This tedious little charade had to be acted out every time we did business, and although it had been somewhat entertaining in the beginning, it was starting to be a pain in the neck. But I guess if you were as good as Francis, you could make your clients jump through hoops. He claimed that no database anywhere was safe from him, and from what I had been able to learn, he may well be right. He had certainly never let me down.
I shuddered, wondering how someone grew up to be Francis. Had he been born a snoop with the soul of a moray eel, or had his mother dropped him on his head when he was a babe, addling his wits? Come to think of it, it was hard to imagine Francis’s having had a mother. Poor thing—he probably had a complete dossier on her by the time he was six. And he was such an innocent-looking fellow—small, blond, rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed, cherubic. The boy next door. Except this boy was a piranha.
Motherly, gray-haired Dahlia, my favorite waitress, had noticed my return from the telephone, and produced my pancakes with a flourish.
“Lots of blueberries today, dear,” she told me in a conspiratorial whisper. “And I got you extra thick pieces of bacon. I’ll bet that coffee’s cold.” She shook her head, removing the offending brew. “You’re as bad as my daughters,” she opined, “always on the phone. You dig in, now, while I get more coffee.”
I dug in, and was soon scarfing down the pancakes, wondering, as I always do, what the restaurant’s secret ingredient is. My own blueberry pancakes invariably turn out as flat as flitters, with the berries in a clump, looking for all the world like landscape boulders on a suburban front yard. Clearly, I am not meant to cook, I decided, polishing off the bacon and thinking about ordering more. Dahlia brought the coffee, and I looked out at the sunny October sky, feeling optimistic. Two phone calls down, two to go. I finished my coffee, and fished a couple dollars out of my pocket as a tip for Dahlia. Working as a waitress was a tough job. I know. I put myself through a couple of years of college waiting on tables. I just hoped Dahlia’s daughters—the ones who talked on the phone all the time—appreciated their mom’s efforts.
“Hey, Lester,” I said breezily when he answered. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Well, the usual,” he said, sounding uncertain. “You know. Class. The paper. Then the camera shop.”
“Would you consider calling in sick?”
“Well, I suppose I could,” he said. “Do you, um, you know, need me?”
“Yes, Lester, I need you.”
“No problem,” he said, suddenly coming to life. No doubt he thought some glamorous adventure beckoned. Well it did, sort of. “Just tell me when and where.”
“Down, boy. The where I know, but I’m not sure about the when. You might have to be sick Thursday and Friday, too. I thought I should warn you.”
“I can handle that,” he said, obviously thinking out loud. “Trevor can put the paper to bed, and Alisha can handle things at the camera shop. Yup, I can do it.”
“Okay,” I told him. “Here’s what I need. Get your hands on a video camera and some tape. We need to look professional—we’re going to be impersonating a television camera crew. Get whatever you need to make a good showing—you know, lights, mikes, cables, that sort of thing. We’re going to do an interview. Maybe have a tour.”
“Indoors or out?”
“Indoors.”
“Okay. I can probably have the stuff by this afternoon.”
“Great, Lester. I’ll call you tonight and tell you if we’re on for tomorrow. It might be wise for your flu bug to make an appearance this evening.”
“Gosh, I think I feel it already,” he said. “I’ll mention how rotten I feel at the paper. Maybe swoon a little at the camera shop.”
“I knew I could rely on you. Talk to you tonight.”
One last call. Boy, the phone company was making money on me today. I let Alison’s number ring eleven times before I gave up. What was she doing? I wondered. Sleeping? Walking on the beach? Sitting in that big house alone, brooding? Was she still blaming herself for the disintegration of Ninth Life? And for Mary’s death? I leaned against the wall and stared out into the restaurant, realizing how little I knew about Alison. And how much I wanted to know. Giving myself a mental shake, I headed for my car.
Back at my house on Monterey, I parked, and was absent-mindedly inserting my key in the lock when I noticed a small, folded piece of white paper tucked behind the door knocker. It read:
Hi, Caitlin. I was out walking and thought I’d drop by. Sorry to have missed you. Call me later? I’ll be at home.
Alison
Irrationally, I felt that the day had become even brighter. Whistling, I went inside and locked the door behind me.
In my study, I found what I needed—a yellow legal tablet and several Bic ballpoints. Tossing paper and pens into a plastic portfolio case that my insurance agent had given me for Christmas one year when I was still a real, solvent person, I carried everything out to the kitchen table.
Maybe I wouldn’t make more coffee, I decided. Malcolm and Yvonne usually had some exotic coffee brewing at the cafe, and they knew it was useless to urge tea on me once I’d gotten a whiff of Jamaican Blue Mountain or Columbian Dark Roast. I briefly considered walking to the cafe, then remembered how quickly the weather had changed the other day. No, even though it was only a dozen blocks, I’d better drive. Besides, I wouldn’t want to exhaust myself. After all, there was serious detecting to be done.
Chapter 7
I headed for the back of Malcolm and Yvonne’s health food store, to the little cafe they had added when they remodeled. Yvonne was busy at the counter, making a smoothie for an intense-looking young man in a long white tunic and pants. I waved and helped myself to coffee. Kenyan, the sign by the coffee pot said. Yummy.
I claimed the little table by the back window, depositing my portfolio case and windbreaker on it, and as I waited for Yvonne to finish, I ambled over to read the bulletin board.
The west coast is a hotbed of New Age spirituality, and sometimes I think all the New Agers on the continent have passed through Victoria. They don’t stay here—instead, they flock to Orcas, in the San Juans. Orcas always has been a little off-the-wall—some of the residents believe that an angel who lives on top of Mount Constitution maintains the island’s therapeutic atmosphere. Louis Gittner, a local psychic and hotel owner, claims that Orcas is part of the lost continent of Lemuria, a place where human souls rest while awaiting reincarnation. No wonder the New Agers feel right at home there.
But nowadays the ordinary folk on Orcas are getting a little irate at the influx of dreamy-eyed souls from the mainland and the services they offer—channeling, breathing awareness, group midwifery. In the fall, a women’s peace group held a weekend-long vigil to bless a 33-acre peninsula on which condominiums are to be built, and, purportedly, communed rather noisily with the property’s past and future souls. That was the last straw for many longtime Orcasians. New Age is in disrepute on Orcas right now.
But judging by the number of fliers and business cards on the bulletin board, the movement itself was alive and well. Advertised were crystal channelers, aura cleansers, rebirthers, and energy balancers. There was even a flier asking for donations for a newsletter about living in trees. Clearly I was missing something. Should I try to get in touch with my past lives? Maybe Ray Kroc would be my channeler. Or Annie Oakley. Or the goddess Diana. Perhaps I was one of the daughters of Artemis. Or maybe I should have my aura cleansed, instead. Couldn’t hurt, I decided.
“Don’t say a word,” Yvonne warned, coming up behind me as I read.
“No ma’am,” I assured her. Suddenly I saw something I recognized—a brochure with a stylized claw on the front. Tacked to it was a piece of paper advertising a meeting of the CLAW Action Committee. Tonight. I grabbed my yellow tablet and scribbled down the time and place. Action, eh? That sounded right up my alley.
“I can’t believe you found something to interest you there,” Yvonne said.
“Well, yes, I did sort of,” I admitted.
“You must be becoming more tolerant,” she speculated, raising one blonde eyebrow.
I said nothing, not wanting to give her false hope.
“The books and clippings are over there.” She pointed me in the direction of a small bookcase near the coffee maker. “They’re for anyone to read, and they get quite a lot of use. People contribute to the clipping file, so it should be fairly comprehensive. Would you mind looking at the stuff here? You know, not taking it out of the cafe?”
“Not at all,” I said, showing her my yellow tablet. “See—I came prepared to take notes.”
She looked at me skeptically. “What’s this really all about, Caitlin?”
“Just . . . educating myself,” I said evasively. “I’ll be talking to the animals one day soon, and want to be sure I know the right language to speak.”
She shook her head and hurried back behind the counter to whip up some more smoothies. I looked at my watch. Nearly ten. If I didn’t hurry, I’d find myself eating lunch here, courtesy of Malcolm and Yvonne. I furtively studied the chalkboard, noting with sinking heart that the lunch choices were Leek and Brown Rice Soup, and Four Mushroom Casserole. Swell. I was willing to bet that the mushrooms had come in a cellophane bag with arcane Oriental script, and looked like dried boxers’ ears. No way was I eating here today, free lunch or not. I walked over to the bookcase and stood there for a moment looking at titles, hands in my pockets.
“Planning on doing some reading?” a disagreeable-sounding voice inquired from behind me. I groaned. Judith.
“It’s never too late to learn,” I told her with false heartiness. “Don’t educators tell us that learning’s a lifelong process?” I turned to face her.
She looked terrible this morning—pale and wan, her red hair lank and greasy. She was dressed in exactly what she had been wearing the night before and it, too, looked a little the worse for wear. I guessed Judith and Liz had had a busy night hustling brochures or plotting in a dimly lit room or whatever it was activists did. In reply to my question, Judith huffed a little and frowned.
I decided to take advantage of her weakened condition. “Let’s have a truce, Judith,” I proposed. “I am here to learn. Maybe you could help me.”
She blinked several times. “Oh?” she asked suspiciously. “Just what is it that you think you want to learn?”
“About all this,” I replied, gesturing to the bookcase.
She laughed—a bitter, grating sound. “No you don’t,” she assured me. “Not really. You can say we’re all fighting the good fight together, but we’re not. You don’t really care. Alison’s paying you to care.”
I said nothing. She had a point, albeit a tiny one: Alison was paying me. But I felt a little aggrieved, too. Heck, I liked animals as much as the next person. Who was Judith to say I didn’t care?
“Well?” she prodded.
“What can I say?” I asked her. “You have me pegged as one of the bad guys.”
“Well, aren’t you?”
‘‘I—”
Angry, she cut me off. “You what? You’re with us in principle? Bull! I’ve put my butt on the line for what I believe in more times than I can count. What about you? What do you do besides take money to poke around in other people’s business?”
I frowned. This was a reprise of last night. I didn’t deserve such antagonism, and in a small flash of clarity, I understood something. Judith was a soul in pain, and this attack on me was her way of dispelling the hurt. She was attacking me because she could—because I was a handy and acceptable target. But who was the real target? Who had really hurt her? I decided to push her a little to try and find out.
“Listen, you’re wrong about me. I care about animals as much as the next person.”
That did it. A fanatical gleam came into Judith’s eyes and color blossomed in her cheeks. “And you’re just as ignorant as the next person,” she hissed. “Willfully ignorant. You and all the other ‘next persons’ are like the good German burghers in World War Two who denied there were death camps. You and the rest of the public don’t want to know what you’re really paying for when you support medical research. Well? Do you want to know?”
Even though I didn’t, I nodded yes. Anything to keep her talking.
“Let’s take all the tax dollars being poured into our number one health scourge—cancer. The Big C. Where does most of it go? Into research on animals. And why in God’s name are we giving thousands and thousands of lab animals lung cancer when we already know that we could wipe out the disease if people just stopped smoking? I mean, this isn’t hard to understand. This isn’t Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. This is a relationship any school kid knows—smoking causes lung cancer.”
Agitated, she ran a hand through her hair. “And for that matter, how many of the results from animal models are directly applicable to humans, anyhow? We’re not rabbits, or cats, or rats. Thalidomide was tested to a fare-thee-well on half the rodent population of the world, and look what good all that testing did.”
She shook her head. “No, you and the rest of the animal lovers of the world just don’t want to know certain things.” She cocked her head and looked at me accusingly, and I had to admit she was right. I really didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to see the awful pictures. Relentlessly, she continued. “If you think what’s done to animals in medicine and industry is bad, then you certainly don’t want to know what happens to your dinner while it’s still an animal, or what the fresh-out-of-college boys in government research facilities do with their lab animals. Nope, you certainly don’t want to know about that, Miss Tough Detective. Well, do you?”
I cleared my throat. “If I have to.” Even to my ears, I sounded wimpish.
She skewered me with a disgusted look. “No you don’t,” she said. “Because if you and all the other animal lovers had seen a fraction of what Alison and I have seen, you wouldn’t be the same. No one wants to think about caustic paste being smeared in rabbits’ eyes or veal calves being confined to spaces so small they can’t turn around. But all you so-called animal lovers use shampoo and eat veal. You’re happy to make use of these products. You simply blind yourselves to the price—another creature’s suffering.”
She made a disgusted sound. “Liz was right—look at that leather jacket.”
By this time, I felt like an accessory to murder.
“Speciesist,” she accused me.
But somehow, it was she, not I, who was d
istraught. To my amazement I saw her eyes brimming with unshed tears. Something was very wrong here. “Judith,” I said softly, putting one hand on her arm.
She gave a choked sob, turned, and ran from the shop.
“Damn,” I said, half-tempted to go after her. I had been close to something, I sensed, something that lurked behind the fireworks display. Something Judith desperately wanted to conceal. Oh, her accusations had certainly been accurate—I still smarted from some of them—but I had the feeling this was rote.
I looked back at the bookshelf and suddenly I had no more stomach for educating myself about animal abuse. Maybe Judith was right—maybe I wasn’t tough enough for all this. And as I gathered up my notepad and pen, a thought occurred to me. Judith had left one accusation unspoken. Perhaps the most important one.
If I and all the other so-called animal lovers ever acknowledged that we ought to extend to animals the same consideration we owe each other, then we would really be in trouble. Because then we’d be forced to make changes in our behavior. We’d be forced to do things differently, or live with ourselves knowing that we’re hypocrites.
It was an uncomfortable thought. Because if I agreed with Ninth Life—if I truly agreed—then I would have to change my habits: what I ate, what I wore, what I used to shampoo my hair, brush my teeth, wash my dishes. It was a daunting proposition. And Judith was right. I wasn’t up to it.
Feeling guilty and depressed, I escaped from the Oak Bay Natural Foods Emporium and Cafe into the bright blue afternoon. It was lunchtime and, feeling ravenous and anxious, I hurried for my car. I had intended to pick up a Big Mac on the way to meet Val, but somehow, it didn’t seem appropriate. Darn it, now what? Feeling pensive, I drove through the local Golden Arches and ordered two large fries and a chocolate shake. That would just have to do until I had some time to think things over. My God, was it possible that I was about to become a vegetarian? Horrors. I shuddered at the thought, polished off the last of the fries, and pulled into the parking lot of Val’s apartment at exactly noon.
Ninth Life Page 7