The servers cleared our plates and returned with generous slices of berry pie. After I savored my last forkful, I looked across at Anna and was struck once more by her stunning features and charm. “You know, Anna, you look like some kind of performer. Do you act? Play music?”
“I do rap.”
Not what I expected. “Really? Rap?”
“Rap’s big with younger Haida.”
At one end of the table, Gene called out, “Hey. With some of the old folk, too.”
“Can I listen to you online?”
To this, William jumped in. “Anna wrote a song that’s gone viral. It’s about super tankers, the Northern Gateway pipeline, and our beloved provincial ex-Premier.” His intonation for “beloved” indicated the Premier was anything but.
I gave Anna an arm pump. “Wow, an environmental rapper. Outstanding. Could you do some of the pipeline rap for us?”
Anna glanced at William. After all, she hardly knew us. He winked, and in a clear, confident voice, Anna sang.
Oil, toil. Pipe the oil. Sell the soul. Hole in soil.
Oil, toil. Toil the oil. Pipe the oil.
You’ve sold your soul.
Look, Look. In the ground. A hole too deep
So deep it boil.
Anna repeated the refrain. We all clapped and whooped. Even Charlotte applauded. William kissed Anna on the cheek, and she blushed.
One person didn’t clap or whoop. Just visible around the corner of the porch, Lynne’s face was frozen into a piercing glare directed right at William’s lover.
9
It was dark by the time dessert plates headed for the kitchen. I asked Gene how to say “thank you” in the Haida language.
“Haw’aa.”
It sounded like “how ah,” so I gave that a try.
“Good,” he said. “Here’s another. Dáng an HI kil ’láagang. I thank you.”
I tried, “Dung un kill agon.”
“Close.”
The man was being kind.
“And if you want to say I thank you folks very much, that’s Daláng an HI kíl ‘láa áwyaagang.”
I opened my mouth then shut it with a shake of the head. Once more, Gene threw back his head and laughed.
We thanked everyone—in English—including the cooks cleaning up in the kitchen. People who lived elsewhere on the archipelago called out their goodnights in Haida and English as they disappeared into the night. Ted, Harvey, and I returned to the picnic table to compare notes about the exchange in the longhouse.
Harvey went first. “They were welcoming, of course, and very kind. Professional, you know. But I couldn’t tell what they really thought of us and what we told them.”
I nodded. “Given their history, you’d expect them to keep their cards close to their chests. Jennie’s account was incredible. I couldn’t believe it when the man turned into a real bear.”
Harvey and Ted glanced at each other. She said, “What bear?”
“You didn’t see…? Um, let’s talk about it later.”
Harvey cleared her throat and said, “Right.”
“Gene’s a smart guy who’ll think carefully about the whole conversation,” Ted said. “Jennie asked the question about fertilizer. That and her speech probably means she’s the rebel in the group. And Charlotte?” He shook his head. “Don’t know. She’s an enigma.”
“Actually, we had a really nice chat. An unusual woman. Leader of some kind.”
That piqued Harvey’s interest. “Huh. What’d she say?”
“Couple of things. For one, that my parents were dead.”
Harvey raised her manicured eyebrows. “Whoa.”
“I asked what she thought was most important.”
“And?”
“She said the Haida came from the sea, so only that was important.”
Harvey gestured toward the ocean. “Given their history, that’s an intelligent answer.”
“I still don’t get it. Europeans exploited the Haida big time, but they take up with a white guy from the States?”
“William did say that the Haida Nation wanted to be a leader in marine geo-engineering,” Ted said.
I massaged my forehead. “That might explain the sentiment, but not why they’d trust an outsider like Grant.”
“It’s getting late. We’ve each had a long day,” Harvey said. “Here’s where I think we are. They know a little about our backgrounds, why we were sent here, and where we’re coming from on iron fertilization. I think we worked well together in the meeting. Jennie’s description about their history with exploitation was very helpful. Anything else?”
“I’m impressed by Gene’s professionalism,” I said. “We’re fortunate there. Maybe he asked Jennie and Charlotte so we’d see a range of ideas.”
“Caleb didn’t hesitate to voice his opinion,” Ted said. “There’s some strong emotions around all of this.”
“Lots at stake—a million dollars, the Haida Nation’s self-rule, dignity,” I said.
We ran through the meeting for a while and then decided it was late.
Ted put his hand on my shoulder. “Quick walk down to the water?”
It was my chance to explain that I needed more time to myself and why. I rotated the ring on my pinky finger. “Ah, sure.”
Harvey got up. “Night, kids. Just don’t wake me when you get back to the longhouse.”
Ted waited while I zipped up my fleece jacket. We’d reached the top of the porch stairs when voices from inside the building startled us. We both stopped dead.
The first was a woman’s. It was not familiar. “You bastard. We were engaged to be married. How could you do this to me?”
A male. William. “I’m sorry, Lynne. Really I am. But things happen. We meet—”
“We?” She repeated the word louder in a higher pitch. “We?”
“Lynne.”
“I didn’t change. You…” The young woman stopped. It sounded like she was crying.
William’s voice was pleading. “Please, Lynne. I love you like a sister. But not a wife. I went to S’G̱ang Gwaay Llanagaay and asked my ancestral spirits what to do. They told me that to find peace I should follow my heart. You are not my heart.”
Haltingly, she got out the words. “We were born—on the same day. For—as long as I can remember, we were supposed—.” She coughed. “To be husband and wife. Everyone, your parents and mine. They all knew. Everyone knew.”
William tried again. “Lynne.”
“Bastard. Get your hands off me.”
A door opened, slammed shut, and a dark figure with long, flying hair ran down the steps. Ted and I didn’t move. Another person followed. In the moonlight, head bent, William took each step as if the effort hurt.
Ted and I waited until we were sure he was gone.
We didn’t speak until we were nearly to the beach.
Ted said, “Boy, that was painful.”
“Young love hurts. But it’s so incredible out here. Let’s leave what we just heard behind for now.”
Unsettled weather had passed, leaving a cloudless sky. Moon shadow defined a steep incline as the path dropped to a ribbon of shingle still exposed at high tide.
We stopped at the water’s edge and stood before the Haida sea. Gentle waves slid landward, retreated, slid up again. Pebbles rolling up and back with the water momentarily hypnotized me.
“A little different from the ocean we dealt with today,” Ted said.
I blinked and turned to face him. “For sure. I’m always amazed how quickly the ocean can change. From tranquil to furious in minutes. One reason why kayaking’s dangerous. Hey, what you did for me today—”
Ted gently put a finger on my lips. “You’re okay. That’s all that matters. I never want to lose you.”
He pulled me in tight and kissed me hard.
Ted stepped back and took both my hands. Moonlight turned his curls silvery, but his face was in shadow. “Mara, what William said about his heart. I want you to know what’s i
n my heart.”
“Ted, it’s been great. Actually, I’d like to—”
“It’s more than that.”
My throat tightened. “More?”
“Mara, someday I want you to be my wife.”
My mouth flew open. It was a good thing he couldn’t see my face. “Um—”
“Not now. We’ve only known each other for a few months. In a year or two.”
I stepped back, dropped his hands, and put one of mine on my chest. My heart pounded so hard it pushed up against my palm. “Um, yeah. Last couple of months we’ve had a really nice time together.” Considering Ted’s declaration, that was pretty lame. I added, “But I’ve not thought—”
“Sorry. I did spring that on you. Between William, this beautiful night, what happened today. It’s just, like I said, I never want to lose you. We’ll talk about it later.”
Ted took my hand. We returned to the path and ended up at the longhouse clearing. Thoughts racing, I didn’t remember a thing about the walk.
Careful not to wake Harvey, we crept into the longhouse. Long rectangular slits of moonlight filtered through the windows and illuminated the interior. In a dark corner, our sleeping bags lay on either side of Harvey’s. Ted took off his outer layer of clothes and slipped into his bag. I did the same.
“Good night, Mara,” Ted whispered. His breathing slowed to a regular cadence.
With a sigh, I nestled into my bag and looked at the ceiling. Despite the taxing day, sleep wouldn’t come. My skin itched; my legs twitched. I rolled onto my right side, left, my right again. No good. On my back, I stared into the dark and tried to sort out my jumble of emotions and thoughts.
Ted’s statement about marriage had come out of nowhere, and scared the hell out of me. For god’s sake, we’d been going out since the spring, and it was only August. Yes, I liked being with him. Ted was great company. We went out to dinner, ran, and kayaked together, and the sex was terrific. But my claustrophobia was very real. I wanted him to understand that I needed time alone and wanted to take our relationship one day at a time.
Marriage had never crossed my mind.
On the other hand, Ted’s quick thinking had saved my life. I was in his debt. But surely that didn’t mean I owed him something that big.
A story by Dorothy Sayers, my favorite mystery author, came to mind. After Lord Peter Wimsey saved Harriet Vane from the gallows, he asked Harriet to marry him. She declined and said, “I’m sorry. I know I’m being horribly ungrateful…”
Gratitude. That was it. You couldn’t marry someone out of gratitude.
Round and round I went with questions and worries. Hours passed. At home, when I was anxious in the middle of the night, a hot shower often helped me sleep. Kinuk didn’t have showers, but it did have hot pools. I could go down to the pool we visited earlier and soak in hot water until I felt sleepy.
The moon had set, leaving the longhouse completely dark. I wriggled out of my bag, groped for the flashlight beside me, found it, slid out of my bag, and grabbed my clothes. Ted and Harvey each breathed steadily.
Out in the clearing, I flipped off the light and scanned the sky. With no artificial lights, the stellar display was astounding—the big and little dippers, arc of the Milky Way, and a bright twinkle that might be Saturn. I turned on the flashlight and stepped into the forest. The path was pitch black. I fixed on the tiny circle of light on the footpath to insure no missteps into an unexpected cedar tree or, worse, an eight-legged creature’s web.
Despite an extra layer of fleece, I was chilled by the time I reached the bathhouse area. Below, pools overlooking the sea gave off a sulfur smell. I used the privy and stopped in the bathhouse to get a towel. The flow of hot water in and out of the tub Harvey and I had shared kept the single room warm. Back outside in the still, cold night air, the rustle of what sounded like leaves startled me. I directed my light up toward the sound but saw nothing.
“The wind or some critter,” I whispered. “An ermine or maybe an owl.”
I picked my way down the footpath. The sulfur rotten egg odor grew stronger. It actually was a smell I liked because it reminded me of home—salt marshes, rotting eelgrass, and seaweed washed up on the rocks. The Maine coast. I reached the bottom of the path, threw the towel across a rock, stripped off my clothes, and slid down into the pool. The water was gloriously warm. Just what I needed.
The night was chilly, and I wanted to keep my hair dry. In a high ponytail, it probably wouldn’t get wet. But just to be safe, I spread my arms over flat-topped rocks bordering the pool and kept my head out of the water. My outstretched legs floated before they dropped down to the bottom.
My toes touched something absolutely not rock-like.
I jerked back. Water sloshed to the other side of the pool. Just enough starlight reflected off the water’s surface to illuminate the horror that slowly emerged directly across from me.
Mine wasn’t the only body in the pool. But I knew right away that the other one, William’s, was dead.
10
At three-forty-five a.m., dawn woke the rainforest on Haida Gwaii. Calls of thrushes echoed through the village of Kinuk. But this morning, everything was different.
By six, officers from the archipelago’s Queen Charlotte detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were busy gathering information that might be relevant to William’s death. After the police had officially declared William dead, they contacted a coroner on the mainland. Regulations for sudden, unexpected, non-traumatic death—especially of someone so young and healthy—called for an investigation. That meant interviews with key people, which RCMP Sergeant Fred Knapton conducted in the dining building. I’d found the body and was, unfortunately, of particular interest.
Knapton interviewed me from one side of a scratched wooden table. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man too large for his chair—or the room, for that matter. He’d shed his jacket and pulled his tie loose. His hair, baby-fine brown and in need of a cut, fell over his forehead, and a cap—dark blue with a wide yellow band—sat to his right within arm’s reach. It wasn’t the tan broad-brimmed one I associated with the Mounties, but the bright red and gold crown stood proud on top of the badge.
Opposite Knapton, I shifted in a metal folding chair while he fiddled with the tape recorder. I was drained of all emotion, exhausted from lack of sleep, and shattered by the bizarre turn of events. Elbows on the table, I rubbed the back of my neck with both hands. “Never done this before.”
Knapton slid the recorder to the middle of the table and looked at me. His brown eyes were kind. “You’ve had a shock. Just answer my questions as best you can. If you recall anything later, you can tell us.”
“Before we start, I overheard something that may interest you.” I described Lynne’s angry outburst. “I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that William died soon after that, but—”
Knapton who’d scribbled the information in his notebook, nodded. I got the idea that he already knew about friction between Lynne and William. He turned the recorder on and in a monotone stated his name plus the time, date, location, and circumstances. He asked me to say my name, occupation, and address.
“Thank you. Now, describe what happened in the hot pool.”
“Well, like I said, he—ah William—just rose up out of the water on the other side of the pool. Kind of like a seal does, you know.”
If Knapton thought that was a strange analogy, he didn’t show it.
“Can you describe what William looked like?”
I closed my eyes, tried to picture the dreadful scene, blinked them open. “The stars were bright, but it was pretty dark. I had the impression his face was a funny color, purplish I think. But like I said, it was dark.”
“Anything else?”
“His eyes.”
“What about them?”
“He stared at me, but was nothing was there.”
Knapton nodded.
“You said your feet touched his?”
My legs jerke
d. “Yes.”
“Anything to say about that?”
“His legs felt stiff.”
Another nod. “Anything else?”
“I knew something was wrong right away.”
“Why is that?”
“Because he didn’t say anything. I don’t—didn’t—really know him, of course, but William didn’t seem like the type who’d play Halloween jokes on visitors in the middle of the night.”
“And why were you in the pool in the middle of the night?”
I explained my insomnia and hope that hot water would make me sleepy.
“Earlier that evening when you left the dining area, you had no plans to go into the pool?”
“No. It was spontaneous.”
“So no one else knew you were going to do this?”
“That’s right.”
“Who else slept in the longhouse?”
“Just my two colleagues. Harvey—Harville—Allison and Ted McKnight. Both were asleep when I left to go down to the pools.”
“Did they leave the longhouse during the night?”
“No. I was wide awake the whole time and would’ve heard them.”
“After you left the longhouse, did you hear anything or see anyone?”
“No. Wait. There was something. I went into the bathhouse to get a towel and was startled by a noise when I came out.”
“What kind of a noise?”
“Like rustling leaves. I thought it was some animal or maybe the wind.” I frowned.
Knapton said, “What?”
“The night was calm. There was no wind.”
The room swayed. I leaned forward and cradled my head in my palms.
Knapton said, “Take your time.”
I coughed and sat back. “Someone could’ve been there when I left the bathhouse. That would, um, mean William was… He was murdered.”
“All we know now is he was dead when you found him. There’s a lot more we don’t know—how or why he ended up in that pool, if he died from a natural cause, who last saw him alive, if there was foul play. I’d appreciate you keeping your thoughts and questions to yourself, okay?”
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