Seaweed Under Water Page 5

Henry took his toupée off. Without it, he was as hairy as an apple. He scratched his scalp and said, “This damn rug. It itches like crazy.”

  “I guess it does,” I said, not unkindly. “What’s it made of, re-cycled scouring pads?”

  Henry reached below his desk and produced a moulded-Styrofoam head with a happy face drawn on it with black felt marker. Henry placed the toupee on the foam head and said, “This is Mr. O’Haira.”

  “Hello, Mr. O’Haira.”

  “The first rug I bought was made of real hair. I asked the guy who sold it to me where the hair comes from. It seems there’s an industry based in Mexico. Buyers go from village to village collecting women’s hair. The women put the money toward their weddings.” Grinning, he added, “Under NAFTA it’s classified as slow-growth commerce.”

  “Fascinating as this all is, Henry, I’d still like you to answer my question.”

  “Which question was that?”

  “I asked if you’d installed bugs in the Rainbow Motel.”

  “I admit nothing. Even if I did, so what? It’s no crime to install closed circuit surveillance equipment on private property.”

  “That depends,” I said reflectively. “It’s probably not illegal to install them in a motel’s public entrance. Not in bedrooms. Not in washrooms.”

  Henry’s face composed itself to blandness. He looked at the yellow light streaming through his windows and said, “This sunny weather, I love it. It’s why I came down from Whitehorse. They talk about planetary warming, but I don’t know. It can’t get too warm for me.”

  “Mr. O’Haira,” I said. “Please ask your boss to turn round.”

  Henry swiveled his chair around to face me again. His eyes were wary.

  I said, “Henry. Tell me about the Rainbow Motel, and Harley Rollins.”

  Henry laughed nervously. “Boss Rollins? He’s a hard-ass logger.”

  “What else do you know about him?”

  “Millionaire. Owns a sawmill, I believe. Maybe a bunch of other stuff, but it’s all hearsay. I do business with that manager, Karl Berger, I‘ve never actually met Rollins.”

  “Do you know his sister-in-law?”

  “Who?”

  “Jane Colby. She was married to Neville Rollins.”

  Henry took a deep breath and then blew air out of his narrowed lips while he chewed that over. He shrugged and said, “As a matter of fact, I do know her. Slightly.”

  I already knew the answer, but I asked anyway: “Jane goes by the name Colby, now. Did she and Neville divorce?”

  “Hell if I know,” Henry said.

  “You seem to know quite a lot, though. How come?”

  “Just business. I’m a detective, I know all kinds of mostly useless information,” Henry said idly. “What’s your interest in her?”

  “Jane has been missing a few days, but perhaps you knew that too?”

  Henry rubbed the crown of his head with a hand and said, “We’re not that close, Silas. I don’t keep tabs on her.”

  “Okay. But it might help my enquiries if you have videotapes of her comings and goings.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have videotapes of her coming and going at the Rainbow Motel?”

  “I just answered that question.”

  “Henry. I bow to no one in my admiration of your probity and veracity, but these denials have a ring of disingenuousness.”

  Henry leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. His slippered feet poked beneath the desk like giant woolly caterpillars.

  I said, “The circumstances surrounding Jane Colby’s disappearance are beginning to look sinister.”

  The corners of Henry’s mouth turned down as he reached into a desk drawer and brought out his office bottle and two plastic glasses. He splashed Montreal Scotch into them and shoved one toward me. It tasted like iodine, but I didn’t say no when he offered me a refill. After he got settled again, Henry asked, “Okay. What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know if you have installed closed circuit videotape cameras or other electronic bugging equipment in the Rainbow Motel.”

  “The answer is no.”

  Henry stared down his nose and made a blubbery sound by blowing more compressed air between his lips. I waited. Henry said, “All right. I’ll tell you. I never installed any equipment in the Rainbow Motel. A while back, I sold them some video equipment, that’s all.”

  “Who are them?”

  “Karl Berger.”

  “You didn’t help Karl to install it?”

  “No. Next question.”

  “When is the last time you saw Jane Colby?”

  “Can’t remember, I haven’t seen her for months. Probably ran into her on the street or something. Whenever it was, it was ages ago.”

  “Did you know she kept a room at the Rainbow Motel?”

  “No,” Henry said, with genuine surprise in his voice. “She has a house in Fairfield. What’s she need a motel room for?”

  “Good question,” I said, getting up to leave. I added. “By the way, do you have call display on your telephone?”

  “Yes. I get a lot of unwanted calls.”

  “You still haven’t told me what you were doing in the motel earlier.”

  “You’re a cop; your paycheque is paid by the government every month. You don’t have to worry about paycheques bouncing, being late, being short,” Henry said in a flat monotonous voice. “In the real world, things are different. Karl Berger is a slow payer. The sonuvabitch stiffed me out of nearly three grand. I was trying to collect.”

  “What will you do next? Sue him in small claims?”

  “I don’t know, I’m still thinking about it.”

  “So long Henry,” I said, getting up and shaking his hand. “I’ll be thinking things over too. If I come up with any bright ideas, I’ll let you know.”

  “Yeah, fine, you do that, Silas,” he said, although he didn’t sound optimistic.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  At Government and Superior, Raven was creating traffic jams. Two ambulances and a couple of prowlies were parked across the intersection with emergency lights flashing. Four uniforms directed traffic. Paramedics were tending an elderly woman splayed out lifelessly on the tarmac.

  Two rubberneckers were discussing the mishap. “Hit and run,” one man growled. “Some maniac ran a light and bowled her over.”

  “You saw it happen?”

  “Sure, right in front of my eyes. A Camaro, I think. Maybe it was a Mustang. Skidded round that corner like a bat outta hell, burning rubber till it went out of sight.”

  “What colour car?”

  “Dark. Maybe dark green.”

  “Let’s hope they catch the bastard and dump him in a bath of cyanide.”

  That was enough Christian charity for me. I entered a nearby government building and rode an elevator to the fifth floor. Mr. Bonwit, the man I wanted to talk to, was behind a door guarded by a secretarial dragon. I’d arrived without an appointment so she gave me a grilling. I stated that I was a policeman on a routine enquiry. It didn’t help. She interpreted my arrival as an immediate threat to herself, her boss, pension plan and working conditions.

  Breathing down her short, cute, fire-throwing nose, she said, “You should have phoned first. Mr. Bonwit is in conference, you’ll have to wait.”

  “Suits me. I’ll just rest comfortably alongside your air conditioner for a few hours. Hustling poolroom bums in weather like this is no joke, believe me.”

  She scowled, pointed to a steel-and-leather contraption. I lowered myself into it and crossed my legs. After giving me a long, frightening glare, she addressed herself to a computer, finger-and-thumbed herself along Cyberspace Highway for a minute, then looked out the window and noted, “Traffic’s moving again.”

  I extracted myself from the contraption. “Old woman accident fatality,” I said, looking down on the street. “Now they’re trucking her away in an ambulance. She was mowed down by a hit-and-runner in front of witnesses, but
nobody saw anything useful. If you ask me, that’s a metaphor for modern life.”

  The secretary sniffed. “That’s a very dangerous corner. You take your life in your hands every time you try to cross, even when the light’s green.”

  “Well, there you go,” I said. “Nobody’s got time for patience or courtesy these days.”

  “It’s like I keep telling my friend. Slow down, I tell him. It doesn’t do a blind bit of good.”

  “Courtesy’s as dead as a stuffed alligator. Everybody’s in a hurry, nobody’s going anywhere.”

  Friendlier now, she glided across to Mr. Bonwit’s door, knocked, opened it six inches, poked her head through the opening and exchanged words with the room’s occupant. Next, she held the door wide open and said sweetly, “You may go in, sir. Mr. Bonwit can see you now.”

  I went in. The office was deserted, except for Mr. Bonwit, seated behind a massive glass-and-chromium desk. The room had only one door so the people with whom he had been in conference must have jumped out the windows. Bonwit was as sleek as a cat. Longish black hair lay flat against his head and curled slightly along his white collar. He had a narrow face, shrewd dark eyes, dark eyebrows, pale skin and pale lips. I showed him my badge and told him who I was.

  Mr. Bonwit stood up, put his hand out and said, “I hope you haven’t been kept waiting long, Sergeant. Please take a seat.”

  I sat down and said, “I’m making enquiries about a woman called Terry Colby. Terry is living in a care house on Crowe Street, where, I guess . . .”

  “If she’s a ward of the government, you might be wasting your time,” Bonwit interrupted apologetically but firmly. “As you undoubtedly know, our files are confidential.”

  “Would it be against the rules for me to inquire if she’s a ward of the government?”

  “Strictly speaking, I need an order . . . but I assume the matter’s important,” he said. Smiling a little, he swiveled his chair to face a computer screen, shuffled a mouse, got what he wanted and studied it in silence.

  “Yes,” he said. “Keep it under your hat but Terry’s one of ours.”

  I asked him why she was in care.

  Spots of colour appeared on Bonwit’s pale cheeks as he said, “I’m very sorry, but I can’t tell you.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Both, sorry.”

  I stood up and glanced out of his window. Bonwit had one of the best views in Victoria. The provincial capital building was laid out before me in all its splendour. A statue of Queen Victoria stood on its green lawns, its regal bronze gaze directed toward an immense sailboat, the size of a cross-channel ferry, rounding Laurel Point. A Twin Otter float plane was taking off for Lake Washington in Seattle.

  After pondering for a minute I sat down again and said, “Terry’s mother is missing, Mr. Bonwit, and I’m starting to have a bad feeling about things. It probably doesn’t appear on your files but 20 years ago Terry’s father went missing as well. He hasn’t been seen since. His body was never found and several highly experienced detectives think Terry’s mother murdered him.”

  “So you’re telling me what? That this is a murder inquiry?”

  “It’s too early to say. If she has been murdered, the sooner we get on top of things the better.”

  “You’re a police sergeant. Murder cases are generally supervised by a more senior officer, are they not?”

  “Ordinarily, but I’m a Native, as is Terry. I have a special interest.”

  Bonwit sighed. Leaning back in a chair he said, “Strictly off the record?”

  “Strictly off the record.”

  “Terry’s dull, mentally subnormal. Some time ago, we received information that she was prostituting herself. Terry was apprehended and assessed. Terry can be hard to manage and was being shuffled around between her mother and her grandfather, both of whom found her to be a major challenge. After hearing expert testimony, a family court judge ruled her incompetent. That’s how she ended up with us.”

  “And that meant Crowe Street, or jail?”

  “Crowe Street isn’t perfect, but we had little choice in the matter. Few agencies accept violent clients. We count ourselves lucky that we got her into Crowe Street.”

  “Terry doesn’t seem a violent type.”

  “She isn’t. Not generally. Not until a trigger sets her off, and she explodes,” Bonwit said, moving uneasily. He cleared his throat and muttered, “Actually, we received two separate complaints about Terry’s behaviour. The calls were anonymous, so it’s no use asking me who made them. Before we could act on the first call, another came in. Terry was a minor and apparently she had been prostituting herself. Anonymous or not, we take such calls seriously. A government worker investigated. Ms. Colby couldn’t even manage Terry properly when she was little. Now Terry’s grown. She needs 24/7 supervision and wasn’t getting it.”

  “This prostituting allegation. Was it credible?”

  “Of course. That goes without saying.”

  “Terry’s family-court hearing. Was it her first court appearance?”

  “It was, but Terry Colby has been on our files for years,” he said, standing up and putting his hand out. “I can’t say another thing and I sincerely hope that what I have said is kept strictly between you and me.”

  I thanked Bonwit, shook his hand, gave my card and said, “If you think of something later, something in the public domain that might help my inquiry, please call me at this number.”

  We parted friends. Bonwit was tapping his front incisors with my card when I went out.

  Back on the street, a TV crew had set up a command post at the accident scene. Both ambulances had gone, but traffic squad uniforms were still running around with tape measures and cameras, and questioning witnesses. A man with a microphone was telling A-Channel viewers that the world would be a better place if hit-and-run killers were strung up to the lampposts and left dangling as a caution to the rest of us.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next day when I woke, it was pouring. Clouds of mist were impaled on the totem poles near the longhouse. A yellow school bus, parked almost invisibly outside the reserve office, its emergency flashers blinking like giant red eyes, looked like a mythical beast. What do you know? I thought. The chief was right about the weather. I put a hat and rain slicker on over my T-shirt and shorts and made the short obligatory morning dash through the downpour to my outhouse. After the recent spell of tropical weather, it felt distinctly chilly; the temperature had dropped steeply overnight. When I left the outhouse, I stood under the cedars for a minute, watching the school bus, now fully loaded and driving out of sight along the reserve’s unpaved roads.

  Alfie Scow came by with a fishing rod over his shoulder. He said, “Hiya, Silas.”

  I asked Alfie what was going on.

  “Chief Alphonse is taking the kids to Mystic Vale this morning,” Alfie replied. “He thinks it’s time they learned some ritual.”

  The kids had a long road ahead of them, I was thinking, as I returned to my house.

  At nine o’clock it was still pouring. I’d already downed two cups of coffee, shaved, put on jeans and a wool tartan shirt and a pair of leather boots and driven myself to Lou’s Café. It was Saturday, nominally my day off. Lou’s regular breakfast crowd was absent. The place was empty, except for parking meter attendants, girding themselves for another major offensive against Victoria’s vehicular scofflaws.

  Lou is a short, burly, angry man, born in a country that had then been called Yugoslavia. He spent his formative years as one of Marshal Tito’s resistance fighters, battling Axis foes in conditions of appalling discomfort, cold and danger. You’d think—for a man who’d survived such experiences—that peacetime would be a piece of cake and he’d never waste another minute fretting about life’s mundane trifles. Au contraire. Lou worries about everything.

  I draped my slicker over a hat rack and sat at my usual table under a window. When Lou came over, I ordered coffee, bacon and eggs, pan fries and sou
rdough toast.

  Lou folded his arms and said, “What are you guys doing about the oil deficit?”

  “What oil deficit?” I asked. “Alberta’s awash in oil. And gas.”

  “If that’s the case, how come guys are buying my used cooking fat?” Lou countered. “A guy comes in yesterday, offers me 10 cents a gallon. Uses the stuff in his diesel truck engine.”

  “I reserve comment until after I get my breakfast.”

  A young couple came in, holding hands and laughing. Lou and I watched them sit in the far corner of the room, facing each other across a table. Still laughing, the man leant across and kissed his girl on the mouth.

  Lou forgot about world oil shortages and went across to take their order.

  I was thinking about Mystic Vale and young Vision-Questers, when somebody with a grip like a pipe wrench grabbed my elbow. It was Bernie Tapp. He said, “Yo, dickhead.”

  I replied, “And congratulations to you, Detective Chief Inspector.”

  “Acting,” Bernie said. “Acting DCI. What are you doing here? It’s your day off.”

  “Waiting for breakfast, but I’m a slave to duty, as you know.”

  Bernie crossed to the percolator, filled two cups, brought them back and gave me one.

  “I’m fiddling around with a missing-woman case,” I said. “A woman called Jane Colby.”

  “Did you report it to Missing Persons?”

  “Sure.”

  “Clever of you, Silas, because Missing Persons is my business now. Better keep your nose out of it, if you know what’s good for you. If I find you messing with my stuff I’ll bust your balls.”

  He was smiling. I drank some coffee.

  Bernie, who has a way of dominating whatever space he’s in, went on seriously, “On the other hand, how about joining me on the detective squad? Keep your nose clean and maybe we’ll bump you up. Sergeant to Inspector isn’t impossible. Just think what it’ll do for your pension.”

  “Not a chance, I’m happy with my present job.”

  “You call that dog and pony show a job? Give your head a shake. Helping little old ladies to cross the road isn’t work. I’m offering you something you can get your teeth into.”