Seaweed on the Rocks Read online

  Henry got up, shuffled to a cabinet on his obviously aching feet, opened a drawer and brought out a jeweller’s presentation box. He handed the blue box to me. I opened it. It contained an engraved silver cup wrapped in tissue paper.

  “Every time I talk to a cop it costs me money,” Henry complained. “I’m out three-fifty and change on this deal so far.”

  “You paid three hundred and fifty dollars for this cup?”

  “Why not? It’s sterling silver.”

  “Has Lawrence always been single?”

  “He was married till his wife fell off a balcony. Now he’s a widower.”

  “His wife fell off a balcony?” I said, taken aback.

  “A high balcony.”

  “Thanks for being so explicit. Maybe you can clear something else up for me. Trew has an MD from McGill, so why doesn’t he practice regular medicine?”

  “Because he’s barred. He practised in Quebec for a few years till something happened and he was struck off the register, which is when he pulled up stakes and moved to Toronto.” There was a pause before he continued slowly and, perhaps, reluctantly.

  “Ontario yanked his licence because he went nuts at a conference, beat the bejesus out of another delegate. He ended up in Vancouver, where he sold securities until he got his licence back and was registered with the BC Medical Association. The BCMA yanked his licence, too, after a patient accused him of slapping him around during a “consultation.” Larry didn’t even contest the accusation, just relinquished his licence, came to Victoria and turned to counselling. Anybody can set up as a counsellor.”

  “So he’s kind of volatile.”

  Henry shook his head. “Larry seems like a sweet guy, but I guess he has a violent side.”

  “Like Titus Silverman?”

  “Hell no. Tight-ass is a psychopath—front, back and sideways.”

  “Do you know Charlotte Fox?” I asked casually.

  Henry stiffened. “Sort of. I’ve seen her with Larry Trew. She’s kind of nice, which is more than I can say for her brother, George.”

  “George Fox?” I said, still acting the innocent. “What’s the scoop on him?”

  Henry shrugged—he’d told me enough for one day.

  I drained my plastic cup, carried it and the blue box as far as the door. Turning back, I said, “Henry, I need to keep this cup. Evidence. Do you want a receipt?”

  “No. I want three-fifty.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get the money. Make out an invoice and send it to me.”

  “At least give me the plastic cup back.”

  “No can do. I’m keeping it as well.”

  “That it, Silas? You sure there’s nothing else you can do to screw up my day?”

  “Just one more thing ,” I said, pointing to his copy of The Sun Also Rises. “Is it true that men who read Ernest Hemingway all have small penises?”

  “Yeah, but I must be lucky. The women I make love to all have small vaginas.”

  I made him wait ten seconds before I smiled.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Back on the street, I dropped Henry’s plastic cup into a garbage gobbler, spoke sternly to the bongo-playing deadbeats polluting the airwaves outside the Bay Centre and went back to my office. PC was out. I ran a computer check on Lawrence Trew. I was able to confirm most of what Henry Ferman had already told me about him. He was a 44-year-old widower whose wife had died in Toronto in 1999 after falling from a fifteenth-floor balcony.

  While I was at it and for lack of something better to do, I ran a check on Charlotte Fox’s brother, George. His resume was impressive. In 1992 he had bilked a salmon canner out of a million dollars in a money-market swindle. Two years later he was arrested in Jamaica in connection with a salted gold-mine scam. Legal fees and fines ate up his capital, and he ended up serving two years less a day in a tropical prison ruled by ganja-smoking thugs. His weight dropped to 95 pounds and he lost all of his toenails.

  Using forged documents, George Fox then went to California, where he convalesced, joined a spiritualist cult, learned how to manipulate Ouija boards, overturn tables with black wires hidden beneath his sleeves and produce ghostly cracking sounds using a compressive device strapped between his knees. In a matter of months he had developed a devoted following in Los Angeles. Things went swimmingly, and George did very nicely for himself until one night during a seance, US marshals showed up instead of visitors from the astral plane. They confiscated his forgeries and, out of pure malice, turned him loose on the Tijuana side of the Mexican border with nothing in his pockets except air. How he got back to Canada is anybody’s guess.

  After pondering this information, I hoisted the phone and called the Good Samaritan clinic. A woman called Tracy told me that Marnie’s condition was listed as critical but stable. I asked Tracy if she could transfer my call to Joe McNaught’s office, which she did. McNaught wasn’t there. I didn’t leave a message.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Lawrence Trew’s house on Terrace Lane was a big, two-storey, black-beamed Tudor with a cedar-shake roof, cream-coloured stucco and red-brick trim. In Victoria only the snootiest residential lanes are allowed to remain unpaved, and the unpaved lane leading up to Trew’s residence was barely wide enough for two wheelbarrows to pass side by side, and it had hedgerows instead of fences. The only thing missing was an Olde English varlet with a pitchfork across his shoulder, tipping his cap as I went by.

  An octagonal sign stuck in Trew’s front lawn told me that Total Alarm Systems protected his house, and I could see conspicuous strips of shiny metallic tape bordering the windows. Nobody answered the front door when I rang the bell, so I strolled around to the back of the house. A pillared oak portico sheltered Trew’s rear entrance. What I saw from that elevation was a long stretch of pristine grass flowing down to fieldstone walls beyond which, far away in the misty distance, America’s San Juan Islands floated like giant green frogs in the Salish Sea’s twinkling blue waters. Forty miles east, Mount Baker’s regal white pyramid rose up in Washington State.

  When I rang the bell, I could see dozens of fat houseflies buzzing inside the diamond-paned panels set in the back door. Another minute passed, during which a pair of blue jays that had been squawking up in a mountain ash flew down to the pampered lawn and hopped around joyously. After standing on tiptoes and flapping his wings, the male jay began his soft courting song.

  When nobody answered the back door either, just for the hell of it I tried the doorknob. It turned easily. As I opened the door and went inside, those fat houseflies flew out. Although Trew’s house had an intruder alarm, that wasn’t a problem because the alarm had apparently been deactivated. The back door gave onto a small mud room with built-in cabinets and wall pegs for outdoor clothing. There was an pew-like oak bench for people to sit on while they changed footwear. A door to the right led to a kitchen. Another door opened onto a wide hallway leading to a large living room with stuccoed yellow walls, heavy upholstered chairs, side tables with heavy turned legs, and—incongruously, I thought—walls covered with outrageous modernist paintings. Leather straps studded with horse brasses draped both sides of a fireplace big enough to roast an ox. The house was uncomfortably warm, and it had a peculiarly foul closed-up smell.

  I went back to Trew’s ultra-modern kitchen, which contained everything you’d expect to find in an ultra-modern, fake-Tudor house, including an Italian coffee machine that probably required a licensed operator. But what interested me more were the tiny splashes of what looked like dried blood discolouring some of the kitchen’s floor tiles. More red splashes were visible on the adjacent baseboard. There were no obvious signs of a disturbance, but I began to wonder—if those red splashes consisted of human blood, had Lawrence Trew been involved in another fight here?

  By the time I came up with this idea I was sweating, though at the same time I felt chilled. I went outside and circled the entire house, checking every window and door for signs of a forced entry. When I didn’t find any, I went back ins
ide and searched every room.

  The house did not appear to have been burgled. Nobody had tipped out any of the drawers or defecated on Trew’s expensive carpets. Just the same, I looked inside every drawer, cupboard, cabinet and bag and examined their contents. I checked clothes closets and bathroom cabinets. What kept me searching and poking and prying was that awful smell, because now I suspected that it was the reek of putrefying flesh. Those houseflies, of course, had smelled something days earlier, had laid their eggs in it, and baby maggots had feasted on it. Only there was no large dead thing lying in the house—at least not anymore.

  The stink drove me out to the front lawn again, where I used my cellphone to call HQ. I was telling Bernie Tapp where I was and what I’d found when a couple of Trew’s neighbours showed up. The man was short, bandy-legged, tweedy and sixtyish with a shaved head and a military moustache. Perhaps a golfer, he was holding a five-iron in a manner that suggested that, if provoked, he was ready to bend it over my head. His wife, twenty years younger, was skinny where her husband was stout, fluttery where he was pompous.

  “Hey! Who are you and what are you doing here?” the man said, glaring at me suspiciously.

  I showed my police badge.

  “Delighted to meet you, I’m sure,” the woman announced.

  “We’re the Treeloves,” the man said, lowering his five-iron. “We live next door. Something wrong, officer?”

  “Why? Did you expect something to be wrong?” I had addressed myself to Mr. Treelove.

  His wife answered, “No, not necessarily. It’s just that we haven’t seen Dr. Trew for a week.”

  “Ten days,” Mr. Treelove corrected.

  “No, it was exactly a week ago,” his wife corrected him. “Don’t you remember, darling? We were looking after Dorothea’s children. Julian lost his ball and we all came over here to look for it. Dr. Trew was standing right where you’re standing now, Officer, having an argument with that chap.”

  “Yes, that’s right, but it wasn’t a week. It was ten days ago,” Mr. Treelove responded impatiently. “A week ago we spent all day organizing things for the church jumble sale.”

  “Flea market, dear,” the woman said. “One doesn’t say jumble sale anymore.”

  “So,” I said, “a few days ago you saw Dr. Trew arguing with a stranger. Can you describe him?”

  For once the Treeloves agreed on something. The stranger in question had definitely been tall. Other than that, they were at odds. Mrs. Treelove insisted he had been wearing a pale-coloured suit, possibly linen, and a Hawaiian shirt. Her husband said the man wore a tweed jacket, green corduroy trousers and a blue-checkered shirt. To clinch the truth of his version he added, “I’m a trained observer. Spent twenty-five years in the military, not to mention being involved with Neighbourhood Watch. Needless to say, living in a wealthy part of town like this, we get a lot of opportunistic thieves. They keep stealing our garden ornaments, you know. It’s pure bloody jealousy, of course. Why don’t these people go out and get a job and work like the rest of us?”

  “Is that a rhetorical question, darling?” his wife asked.

  “So,” I said yet again, “Dr. Trew lived alone?”

  “Yes. He’s a jolly bachelor.”

  “If he’s a bachelor, I suppose he has a cleaning woman.”

  “Yes, of course,” Mr. Treelove answered. “And that’s another thing. We employ the same woman, Mrs. Widderson. She was telling us that she hasn’t been able to do Larry’s this week because she can’t get in.”

  “Because of the burglar alarm?”

  “Exactly. Mrs. W. does him on Saturday mornings, but if he’s not home, she’s stumped.”

  “Is your home equipped with a burglar alarm system?”

  “Oh yes. This area, they’re an absolute necessity. The chap that bought that house across the lane last year thought he’d economize. The poor fool went away for a month’s holiday without telling us, and when he came back, his house had been stripped clean, absolutely clean. Furniture, antiques, built-in washer. Hah! We laughed our heads off.”

  Smiling broadly and swinging his five-iron, Mr. Treelove wandered off between the evergreens and flower beds. His wife followed discreetly a few paces behind. By then, police emergency sirens were closing in on Terrace Lane. A blue-and-white arrived a few moments later, followed immediately by Nice Manners in his unmarked black Interceptor. This time he was dressed in smart casual—pressed jeans and a suede jacket over an open-necked blue shirt. He lit a cigarette and said, “You again.”

  “This is getting to be a habit,” I said.

  “And there’s no body this time either, Tapp says.”

  “And no bears. Just a couple of suspicious bloodstains and a very nasty smell.”

  “That’s exactly what Tapp said—suspicious bloodstains and a rotten stink. I thought he meant you.”

  “Right. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Still, those stains in the kitchen should be checked because you never know . . . ”

  “What I do know, Seaweed, is that you’re wasting a helluva lot of my valuable time.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Bernie parked his car outside the Ogden Point Cafe, and we went in together for a late lunch. As we slid our trays along the counter, the women behind the glass display cases filled my order for Melton Mowbray pie, Caesar salad and a pot of Earl Grey. Bernie chose spinach quiche and a beer. We carried our trays to a table overlooking Victoria’s cruise ship terminal.

  Bernie, dressed in a scruffy green bomber jacket, whipcord trousers held up by black suspenders and high-top leather boots, looked like somebody who’d just spent the last ten years pumping iron in the joint. Except Bernie is a very smart man who happens to be the Victoria police department’s acting chief detective inspector.

  “Tony Roos told me you gave mouth-to-mouth to a crankster,” Bernie said. “You’re a hero in my book, pal, but you’re a fucking idiot as well. Now there’s gossip that you’re dying of full-blown AIDS from diddling hookers.”

  “There’s been gossip I should make horse noises and gallop away ever since I joined the VPD.”

  Bernie forked some quiche into his mouth. “So give me the scoop about Marnie Paul and Hector Latour.”

  “Marnie was born on the Warrior Reserve. She was a bright, good-looking kid and we thought she’d been streetproofed, but two years back a pimp shattered that assumption. He moved her to Calgary. Then we heard she was in East Vancouver. A few weeks ago she was spotted back in Victoria. By then she was dog meat and had hooked up with Hector. By the time I caught up with her on Donnelly’s Marsh, it was too late.”

  “So you’re personally involved, and now you want to break Hector’s balls, right?”

  “What? I sound angry to you?”

  “No. Funnily enough, you sound calm to me. Just the same, I know you’re angry.”

  “If I am angry, I’m not angry at Hector . . . well, maybe a little bit, but he’s an addict, too. In a way he’s as much a victim as Marnie. The guy I really want to get my hands on is probably the handsome young stud who met Marnie coming out of a Saturday matinee and took her to Starbucks. Maybe he sprinkled a little angel dust in her triple-shot café latte. The next thing Marnie knows she’s doing crack and working the streets. So if it’s all the same with you, Bernie, I’m going to put some more time into this case.”

  “That’s okay. You’re entitled, since Natives are involved. But try not to get up Nice Manners’ nose too much.”

  I shrugged.

  After finishing his quiche, Bernie pointed to the fishermen out on Constance Bank and said, “Think they’re having any luck?”

  “There’s a good run of spring salmon in the Strait right now. People are catching ’em on herrings and crocodiles just off the bottom. Halibut fishing is supposed to be hot out at Sooke, too.”

  Bernie stood up and said, “I’m going to get myself another beer. You want one?”

  I shook my head. Out on the water, sports fishermen and a couple of commerci
al boats were trolling their lines. A catamaran ferry, outward bound from Victoria to Seattle, exchanged horn signals with an oil tanker. A Coast Guard helicopter, hovering above Ross Bay, made a sudden 180-degree turn and headed at speed towards Mount Douglas.

  When Bernie came back, he sipped a little beer, burped noisily—to the amusement of four Japanese tourists occupying an adjacent table—and said, “Just run the Trew office story past me one more time.”

  I told him what Henry had told me about Trew’s medical career, vicious temper and the fact that Trew’s wife had died after falling off a balcony.

  “A suspicious fall?”

  I hesitated. “Given the advantage of retrospective knowledge, I’d have to say yes. It happened years ago, when Trew lived in Toronto.”

  “You think he gave her a push?”

  “I don’t know about her, but I’m beginning to think that the guy was born to end prematurely in a zip-up body bag.” Then I added, “Hector and Marnie broke into Trew’s office, probably after drugs. Trew was practising hynotherapy instead of medicine so they came up dry, but they were burgling the place when he walked in on them.”

  For about the third time, Bernie asked me how I knew all this. I told him.

  Bernie said, “The Hector Latour that I know is a weedy ninety-eight-pound addict who’d be overmatched against Paris Hilton. And Trew sounds like a guy who can handle himself.”

  “So what?”

  “So this—if Hector and Trew got into a fight, I wouldn’t expect Trew to lose hands down.”

  “But Hector brained Trew with a candlestick.”

  “Sure, but when Trew came into his office, he surprised Hector, so Trew had the initial advantage,” Bernie said, grim lines etching his face. “Trew is a bad ’un. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

  “It’s as plain as a steak on a dartboard,” I countered.

  “Plain as an old boot in a dish of fettuccini alfredo,” Bernie was saying when his cellphone rang. He looked at it, groaned and said, “I gotta run. Keep your nose clean and your head down.”