It had been my idea to sit and chat with Val as she pedaled away on the Lifecycle or bench-pressed or engaged in whatever strenuous activity she intended to pursue. Val, however, clearly had other ideas. Dressed in teal blue sweat pants and a matching hooded sweatshirt, she met me at the door of her apartment’s gym/pool. After we hugged hello, she handed me a towel.
“Are we hitting the showers already?” I asked.
“Funny, Caitlin. No, we’re swimming.”
I thought of all those masticated fries now swimming in their very own pool of chocolate milkshake, and gulped. “Um,” I said lamely, “I’ve just had lunch. And besides, I didn’t bring my suit.”
“I brought one of mine for you,” she said, pointing to the towel. “We’re about the same size. And we’re not in training for the Olympics. It’s unlikely you’ll get cramps. Come on, Caitlin.”
I gave in, remembering thankfully that I had shaved my legs and armpits sometime within living memory. Otherwise, Val would have been swimming with The Human Brillo Pad.
As we hung up our clothes and squirmed into the Lycra suits—mine was plain navy blue, hers was green with white racing stripes up the sides—I asked when Val had taken up swimming. Or exercise at all, for that matter.
“Oh, about six months ago,” she said. “I turned forty in April. That may have had something to do with it. I can’t run—my knees click so badly they sound as though I’m sending Morse code—and I’m afraid to ride a bicycle. So, by process of elimination, I arrived at swimming. I just didn’t want to get fat and dumpy,” she told me, looking worried.
I looked her over critically. “Val, I can’t see one extra pound. Fat and dumpy is not in your immediate future.”
She picked up her towel and looked at me seriously. “Now that I’m . . . free, now that Baxter is dead, I’ve been doing some serious reevaluating of my life. I want to enjoy myself,” she said matter-of-factly. “I spent a lot of years denying what I am, being ashamed of it. Hiding. There are possibilities out there. People. Experiences. When they come along, I want to be able to enjoy them.”
“Oh, I get it,” I told her, grinning. “You’re an athlete in training for the great game of life.”
“How right you are,” she said, poking me playfully in the arm. “And you made it all possible. Let’s go swim a little and you can tell me whatever you came here to tell me. Oh, incidentally, Lorraine got you the interview you wanted at Living World. You’re lucky Maleck’s going to be there. It’s Wednesday at eleven—tomorrow. I hope that’s okay. And I’m not going to ask what you want it for.”
“Thanks for both things,” I said.
We swam a little—we were the only people swimming at that hour of the day—and as we breaststroked back and forth, I told her what I wanted.
“You want me to do what?” she gasped, inhaling water and losing her rhythm.
So I told her again. “I’ll give you some video footage. You get it aired on Friday’s six o’clock news. Simple, yes?”
“Simple, no,” she said. “What you’re asking is, well, serious business. And complicated, too. I’d need the help of someone in the newsroom. Someone I could trust. And if anyone found out, my head would roll.”
“I know,” I told her. “But I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.”
“Oh, Caitlin,” she said in dismay. “Sure, I could do it. I could switch one of the reporters’ tapes on its way to the control room. After it’s been previewed and timed and so on. But it’s so bloody risky. What is it, anyhow? Maybe you could give me the tape and let us make legitimate use of it. You know, give us an exclusive.”
“The station couldn’t use it legally,” I told her. “You’d get your license pulled.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “You’re going to break the law to get that tape, aren’t you?”
“Probably,” I said. She shook her head and swam away from me.
Diving underwater to make our turn, we kicked off the pool wall together. I opened my eyes to watch her, and saw her legs flash pale brown, straight and strong in the aqua half-light. Fat and dumpy, my eye. When we surfaced, I said nothing, not wanting to interrupt her train of thought.
“Okay,” she said. “What you want is possible. But you have to assure me that it’s for a good cause. A damned good cause.”
“Oh, it is. It’s—”
“That’s enough! Don’t tell me which one. When the station manager calls me in on the carpet, I want to be able to honestly say that I’ve never seen the tape. For the sake of the station as well as my career.”
“Okay.” Treading water, I asked. “Then you’ll do it?” I had to be absolutely sure.
She stopped swimming, too, and we faced each other. Her green eyes were sober and serious, her dark hair plastered to her skull like an otter’s pelt. She looked like a mermaid, a silkie, a water spirit. Something otherworldly, exotic, and absolutely lovely. How had I missed this when I had worked for Val last year, I asked myself, marveling. I recalled that I had been more interested in her lover, Tonia. I had had no eyes for Val. She looked at me and I knew she knew what I was thinking.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I guess I’m like all those other people. I owe it to you.”
“I won’t ask you for another favor like this, in case you’re wondering. You’re off the hook.”
She smiled, eyes the color of malachite, teeth white against the tail-end of a summer tan. “I don’t necessarily mind being in your debt. Just as long as we both know what I can and can’t deliver.”
Was that a double entendre or what? I cleared my throat, feeling more than a little foolish. “Well, just be careful,” I said, trying to sound stern. “This is important, but it’s not worth losing your job over.”
She gave me an unfathomable look. “All right.”
“Let’s swim,” I suggested, not at all sure where I wanted this conversation to go. “Race you to the end of the pool and back.”
“Okay,” she said.
I won.
So far, so good, I congratulated myself, wheeling my MG out of Val’s parking lot. Things were shaping up nicely. Francis was working hard at his electronic shenanigans. Val had agreed to slip a pirate tape into the middle of the six o’clock news. Fun and games. I thought I’d better tell Lester we were on for tomorrow morning. And check to see that his flu was coming along nicely. After all, I didn’t want him to lose his job, either. I’d become fond of Lester, and I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I felt guilty that he’d almost gotten killed helping me last year. Or, what the heck, maybe I just liked him. It was possible for a woman to just like a man, wasn’t it? I thought so, but I wasn’t sure. My radical feminist friends would probably disagree, but then they disagree with me on almost everything.
I’m not far enough along in my process, they say. Whatever that means. I can hardly believe that people I’ve known for years, people I went through school with, actually utter this claptrap. Give me a break! Of course Lester was about half my age. Did that fact count? Did it mean that I could like him because he wasn’t a sexual threat to me? Or maybe there was another, deeper reason behind my liking. Maybe it was misplaced nurturing, like my ownership of Repo. A sort of mutated mothering instinct. I shuddered. Enough cerebration. Who knew what conclusions such unbridled thoughts could lead to. Ye gods—I might find that I was farther behind in my process than I realized.
Back at home, I phoned Lester, and was fortunate enough to get him just as he walked into the college newspaper office.
“Our interview is tomorrow,” I told him. “Eleven o’clock. Did you get the camera and the other stuff?”
“Yup,” he informed me in a co-conspiratorial tone. “It’s all in my jeep.”
“Good boy. Now what about that flu?”
“Well, thanks for the invitation,” he said, hamming it up for the benefit of whoever was listening, “but I feel too rotten. I think I’m getting the flu or something.”
“Nice touch, Lester,” I complimented him. “I�
��ll pick you up tomorrow at ten.”
I stretched and yawned, looking out the kitchen window. The day was still bright and blue. Although the prospect of a nap was tempting, I thought I’d better turn my attention to the leaves in the side yard. Besides, all that mindless physical activity offers the right brain even more opportunities for work. And I had a feeling I was going to need all the help I could get in the next few days—from my right brain or any other source.
I went out the back door and across the yard into the little shed that I shared with Malcolm and Yvonne, hunting around for my heavy work gloves. After a few minutes of searching, I gave up. Who could find anything in the jumble of things I had tossed into the corner? An assortment of red clay flowerpots, bags of potting soil, miscellaneous bottles of B-1 plant food, some hand tools, a paper bag full of seed packets, and several dozen peat pots which attested to my attempts at gardening. Alas, I think I’m destined to not garden in much the same way I’m destined to not cook. Under my tender ministrations, plants immediately turn up their toes and die. Some have been known to expire on the way home from the nursery, which is, I’ve always thought, really quite premature of them. After all, I might have improved—read a new book, even taken a class. To tell the truth, I’ve read dozens of books on plants. Magazines, too. Organic Gardening is one of my favorite publications. But my problem is that I like to read about gardening a lot more than I like to garden. Stories of people who develop new strains of squash under grow-lights in their bathrooms, or harvest enough food to feed the entire neighborhood from an intricately watered and mulched twelve-square-inch raised-bed system make me depressed. It’s not that I don’t think these people and their efforts are admirable—believe me, I do. It’s just that I’m not up to all the planning and preparing, the mulching and ministering, the weeding and watering. Give me strength. All that for a few dozen tomatoes? I’d rather go to Safeway.
What does interest me, however, and what I’ll look at far into the wee hours of winter nights, are all those wonderful flower catalogs. Yup—I’m a seed catalog junkie. I got hooked on Park’s and Burpee when I lived in the east. In Toronto, reading about zinnias and marigolds in the middle of January was almost a religious experience. But I never do (or did) get around to ordering anything in time to plant seeds. Then, when I start feeling a proprietary longing for my very own plot of nasturtiums, the plants never seem inclined to cooperate. Ah well. Maybe I should content myself with vicarious pleasure. After all, Victoria isn’t called “Canada’s best bloomin’ city” for nothing. There were plenty of neighboring flower beds for me to admire. And no weeding to do.
I peered out through the shed’s window at Yvonne’s and Malcolm’s veggie garden and shook my head in bemusement. Another of Victoria’s wonders. I recognized the knee-high broccoli and cauliflower plants, but only because my tenants had taken me on a tour. The rest of what was growing in that garden was a mystery to me. In fact, several of the specimens bore a decided resemblance to the malevolent little plant in the movie Little Shop of Horrors. The rolls of plastic and hoops of metal stacked against the garage indicated that plans were afoot to insulate these horticultural marvels from the winter’s chill. I shuddered. That was fine with me. Just as long as I didn’t have to meet any of them in a casserole.
I spotted a rake on the other side of the shed, and was just about to grab it and go tackle the leaves when the phone rang. I hurried back inside.
“Caitlin,” a worried voice said, “it’s Alison. I went by your place earlier and left a note.”
“I got it,” I told her, a little surprised that she was calling. Her note hadn’t suggested an emergency. Still, I was happy to hear from her. “I was going to call you tonight. What’s up?”
I could hear her take a deep breath. “It’s Judith. She came back to the house early this morning. We had a talk. She said she wanted me to understand that she needed to break away from Ninth Life, to join a group that will let her express feelings more directly.”
“That’s nothing new. She told us all about that last night. In no uncertain terms.”
“I know. But Caitlin, it’s what Judith didn’t say this morning that I found disturbing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she didn’t mention Mary. Not once. And when I did, she changed the subject.”
“That’s not so hard to understand.”
“Oh?”
“Think about it. Isn’t it logical that she resented Mary’s role in Ninth Life more than she let on? The glamorous newcomer going bravely undercover—that kind of thing? You and Judith go back a long way. She probably felt, well, aggrieved. And I’m sure she entertained a number of unkind thoughts about both of you over the past few weeks. Now that Mary’s dead, Judith may well be feeling guilty for what were perfectly natural reactions.”
A sigh. “You make it all sound so reasonable.”
“Mmmm,” I replied. Reasonable? Hardly. Feelings are, by definition, never reasonable.
“Caitlin, Judith had something else on her mind. I know her too well to be mistaken. She wanted to tell me something, but couldn’t.”
Aha. “Do you think it was something about Mary?”
“I’m not sure. She did try once or twice to say something, and each time it was a comment of mine about Liz and CLAW that prompted it. Caitlin, I’ve not known her to be so inarticulate. Usually she can come right out and say what she thinks. This is clearly something difficult for her.”
Interesting. “Well, there would seem to be two possibilities. Either she has something to tell you about Mary, or something to tell you about Liz and CLAW.”
“Right.”
“If it’s sufficiently important, she’ll probably try again, don’t you think?”
“I hadn’t considered that,” Alison said, sounding more cheerful. “But now that you mention it, I think she will. You know, despite what she says, I don’t think she’s totally committed to CLAW. I get the feeling that despite her desire for action, there’s something about CLAW that she doesn’t quite like.”
“Maybe it’s what they’re planning for Saturday,” I guessed.
“Maybe so. Dammit, I wish I knew what Liz has up her sleeve.”
“Maybe we can find out.” I told her about the flier I had seen on Yvonne’s bulletin board.
“But how can you go? They’ll recognize you for sure.”
“Well, I’ll change my appearance a bit,” I told her.
“Are you serious? A disguise?”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
She laughed. “Okay. If you say it’ll work.”
“It’ll work,” I told her. “It has to. We need to know something about what they’re planning and this is a meeting of the action committee.”
“If they’re going to survive, they can’t keep advertising their meetings,” Alison said thoughtfully. “To be effective, they’ll have to be more secretive. After all, they don’t want outsiders to learn their plans.”
How right she was. But thank heavens that in their inexperience, they’d told the world about this action meeting.
“They probably feel under pressure for Saturday night,” she continued. “I know I would. And they’re awfully new at this.”
“Well, I’ll see what I can find out. This is an edge we need.”
“You’re right.” Then after a pause, she added, “Caitlin?”
“Yes?”
“Would you like to come over afterward? You could tell me what you learned.”
“Sure,” I said with studied nonchalance, trying my best not to sound like an over-eager fourteen-year-old. “I could do that.”
“See you then,” she said.
“Right,” I agreed.
I sat and smiled at the phone for a full minute before I realized she had hung up.
Fueled by a resurgence of libidinous thoughts, I wielded my rake with enthusiasm, and in record time had the leaves piled into three humongous stacks by the garage. The phone call from Alison had, in a
ddition to recharging my batteries, effectively reminded me that I had done nothing to earn the money she had given me to look into Mary’s death. I had set the wheels in motion to help Ninth Life, but what had I done for Alison? I decided to remedy that.
I returned the rake to its resting place inside the shed and washed up. Taking a Diet Pepsi and an apple from the fridge, I sat at the kitchen table and dialed Sandy’s number at the Oak Bay Police Station. After a shorter-than-usual wait, he came on the line.
“Alexander speaking.”
“A slow crime day, is it?” I asked. “Why aren’t you out there nabbing criminals instead of warming the seat of your office chair? My goodness, what do we taxpayers pay you boys for, anyhow?”
“Some of us have all the luck, I guess,” he replied. “What are you up to, Caitlin Reece? I haven’t heard from you in a dog’s age.”
“Oh well, you know,” I told him evasively. “This and that. Listen, Sandy, I need a favor.”
“Big or small?”
“Small. You can take care of it with a couple of phone calls.”
“Shoot.”
“There was an automobile accident on Sunday night. Monday morning actually. A dark red VW Bug went through the guard rail on the Pat Bay Highway. Ended up in the bay. I need to get a look at the car. And I need to know the blood alcohol count of the driver. Mary Shephard was her name.”
“Letting you have a look at the car will be the easy part. The other I’ll have to get from the Medical Examiner’s office. That’ll take time. He’s a lazy swine. Monday,” he muttered. “Yesterday. Hmmm. It won’t be in Impound yet. Most likely it’s still in Forensics’ lot, awaiting someone’s pleasure. Hang on and I’ll call over there.”
“Thanks.” He put me on hold, and I slurped Pepsi and chomped my apple, waiting for him to get the information. Good old Sandy was really Detective Sergeant Gary Alexander of the Oak Bay Police Department, Major Crimes Division. A Scot, he was about fifty-five, with a sunny optimism about life I found daunting, and the most amazingly aggressive moustache I had ever seen. Sandy and I were in each other’s debt for a dozen favors that dated from the time I worked in the Crown Prosecutor’s office. But unlike most people, Sandy paid his debts.
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