Seaweed on Ice Read online

  “We exchanged a few pleasantries.”

  She nodded. “Anyway, Richard said that afterwards he wandered the streets for a bit, wondering what to do. When he heard about Mrs. Tranter’s murder he panicked. Then he remembered my cottage. He thought it would be a good place to hole up. He knows I’m away a lot.”

  “Did he tell you how he found out his aunt had been murdered?”

  She thought for a moment before shaking her head.

  “Do you believe his story?” I asked.

  “I’m sure Richard didn’t kill his aunt. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know. He left my place without saying where he was going.”

  “After reading the paper, you must have known he’s wanted by the police.”

  “Yes. I felt sorry for him. It isn’t wrong to want to help people, surely?”

  “In this case, yes. You must have known you were breaking the law. Aiding and abetting a wanted man is a serious matter.”

  She smiled. “Tell me—because I’ve always wondered—what’s the difference between aiding and abetting?”

  “Abetting is the same as inciting.”

  “Whatever I did,” she admitted, “it was probably a bad idea. But beneath all that bluster, Richard really is quite pathetic.”

  “Do you have a lawyer, Mrs. Exeter?”

  “Of course. I thought of calling him before I spoke to you, but I knew he’d advise me to report all this to the police.”

  “I am the police. Detective Chief Inspector Bulloch is the senior officer in charge of this investigation. You should go to police headquarters now and tell Bulloch what you just told me.”

  “No doubt I should tell him. But that’s not what I want to do.”

  I started to interrupt, but she held up a hand, smiled and leaned forward. “You’ve got a reputation for being a maverick. People say you don’t always do things by the book.”

  “Perhaps, but this is a murder investigation. Anything you know about Hendrix is material, and DCI Bulloch needs to hear it from you directly.” I gave her a smile. “Will you come quietly? Or do I have to arrest you?”

  “I’m one of those tiresome eco-activists, Sergeant Seaweed. I’ve been arrested several times, so another arrest wouldn’t bother me. But I’m not looking for trouble, either. What I’m really hoping is that somehow Richard will be cleared.”

  “Did Hendrix threaten you in any way?”

  “He cut the telephone wires to my house.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. He was in a panic, I suppose. After talking with me, he apologized.”

  “So what, exactly, do you want?”

  “I want the real killer found, of course, because I’m certain—I just know Richard is innocent of this. I’m afraid if he’s arrested he’ll start grandstanding and dig his own grave. I want him to have a decent chance.”

  She stood up and looked out the window, gnawing her bottom lip.

  I thought about what she’d said. Had Hendrix murdered his aunt? Possibly—but the timing was off. Hendrix didn’t have a car or, as far as I knew, a cellphone. To find and kill Mrs. Tranter before I got to the Red Barn Hotel, Hendrix would have had to find a taxi in an area where taxis were scarce. It was technically feasible, but only just. Police inquiries so far had failed to locate any taxi driver who had picked up Hendrix. Mrs. Tranter’s murder had received plenty of publicity—every cabby in Victoria knew about the Red Barn killing.

  Felicity had her back to the window now and was facing me. I asked again, “You’re certain you don’t know where Hendrix is?”

  “Quite.”

  I might have been scowling, because she looked away. I still had a hunch that Sammy Lofthouse might have some idea where Hendrix could have gone to ground. Maybe he could find out something through his network of low-life pals. I decided it was worth another shot, even if Bernie had already asked him about it. Lofthouse might talk to me.

  “Excuse me a minute,” I said to Felicity. I called Lofthouse’s office and asked the receptionist to put me through to him. Grace came on the line instead. When I asked her to let me to talk to Lofthouse directly, she didn’t say anything.

  “Still there, Grace?”

  “I’m here, Silas. But you can’t speak to Sammy—he’s not in the office.”

  “This is important, Grace. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He just vanished. I can’t find him anywhere.” Grace sounded distressed.

  “Vanished? Since when?”

  “Since viewing Mrs. Tranter’s body at the morgue.” She paused, then added, “He’s never done anything like this before.”

  “Isn’t Sammy married?”

  “Was. His ex, Serena, lives in Vancouver. Serena hates Sammy’s guts. But there are a couple of little kids, so they keep in touch. I’ve phoned her, of course, but she says she hasn’t spoken to him lately.”

  “Is your office busy these days?”

  “Very busy.”

  “Who’s handling Sammy’s cases during this absence?”

  “We have a loose arrangement with another firm. They step in if Sammy’s sick or on vacation. But our clients don’t like it. Sammy has the fastest mouth in town.”

  I refrained from saying that he was so fast he was downright slow.

  “Right now I’m so worried I can’t think straight,” Grace said.

  “Well, let me know if you hear from him, all right?”

  Grace promised she would, and I hung up.

  Felicity had picked up a highway-safety manual from the top of the filing cabinet and was idly leafing through it while pretending not to listen to my telephone conversation. She felt me watching her and put the manual down. I wanted to say something that would make her smile and erase the two deep lines that had appeared between her eyebrows. But what I said was, “Hendrix has a short fuse. I saw a sample of it the other night. It’s possible he killed his aunt during one of his rages. If he killed once, he might kill again. It’s supposed to get easier every time. I mention this because your own life could be in danger. Maybe you should keep away from your farm for a few days, to be on the safe side.”

  “Richard is no threat to me, surely!”

  “I know you have a social conscience, but I’m not sure Richard is a suitable object for your concern. He’s a liar, and he’s violent.”

  Felicity sat down again. “It was only a little lie, Mr. Seaweed, a touch of male vanity,” she said. “I knew Richard didn’t beat you up. It was obvious from the way he said it. You beat him up probably.”

  “I just stepped on his toes a little.”

  “I’m impressed. Richard must have been quite a handful. All the same, I’m convinced he wasn’t lying about his aunt.”

  “Why are you bothering yourself with this? We have a good legal system in this country. People don’t get railroaded nowadays. If Richard didn’t do it, he has little to worry about.”

  “Come, Mr. Seaweed, is that what you really think?” she said scornfully. “What about the Milgaard case? Sentenced to life for a murder police knew he probably didn’t commit. What about those poor saps prosecuted for Satanism in Saskatchewan a year or two back? Satanism, in the twenty-first century! Come on!”

  As she looked directly at me and continued, I saw that her eyes were not dark blue, as I’d thought, but a dark emerald green.

  “Poor Richard. He hasn’t a single real friend, not one. He’s done a number of things in his unhappy life, none successfully. Now he’s alone and miserable. I just want to help a little, show him that somebody cares.”

  “Okay, that’s fair enough. Just don’t expect much. Hendrix may not be a murderer, but he’s pretty unpleasant all the same.”

  Felicity studied me for a moment, then said, “You’re not what I expected, Mr. Seaweed.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Sarah Williams is a friend of mine. I believe you were very helpful to her and her family on
ce. Sarah speaks highly of you.” She cocked her head to one side and said, half-smiling, “Well? Won’t you help me, too?”

  “I’m a lowly neighbourhood cop. Your next step is to see DCI Bulloch. Call your lawyer first is my advice.”

  She stood up and started for the coat rack, but I beat her to it and held her coat for her to slip into. Her hair brushed my cheek and I inhaled her fragrance again.

  She jammed both hands into her coat pockets and looked deep into my eyes. That’s when my door banged open and DCI Bulloch strode in. He had trouble written all over him, even before he noticed the cardboard box on my desk and found out what was in it.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  I had been ordered to wait in Bulloch’s outer office. Felicity Exeter and her lawyer had been closeted with Bulloch for nearly an hour. Now they had gone. It was my turn.

  Bulloch was lolling in his chair behind the gleaming mahogany desk, his face flushed. In a voice of cold hostility he said, “Just remind me, Seaweed. How long have you been a policeman?”

  “About eight years, sir.”

  “You went to cop college, didn’t you?” he said derisively. “You were exposed to the same kind of training as every other officer?”

  I wondered if this would be the day I’d lose it with him. Reach across that desk, grab him by the collar and add another bump to his broken, red-veined nose.

  “Maybe, because you’re Indian, a visible minority, instructors made special allowances?” he went on. “Gave you a pass on the hard courses? Skewed marks in your favour, that sort of thing?”

  My fists bunched automatically, so I put my hands in my pockets.

  “Evidently, Seaweed, you skipped the chain-of-command lecture. The one that explains that sergeants and constables do whatever the fuck inspectors and chiefs tell them to do. I have told you, not once but a thousand times, that you are not, repeat not, a detective …”

  After a few minutes of this sort of thing, Bulloch had worked himself into a panting rage. He poked Isaac’s cardboard box with his index finger and pounded his fist on the desk. His chair crashed backwards as he stood up, leaned forward and jabbed the same finger into my chest. “You’ve gone too far this time, Seaweed. The articles in this box are evidence, and you were holding onto it. Concealing evidence from a senior officer.”

  Just what Isaac’s junk was evidence of wasn’t clear, but Bulloch’s face was completely red so I listened as his tirade continued. “I’ve got your number,” he shouted. “You’re a glory hunter, planning to work this case yourself and grab the headlines. Well, we’ll see about that.”

  Bulloch opened the deep bottom drawer of his desk, shoved the box into it and kicked the drawer shut with his boot. “Now get the hell out of my office.”

  I placed both hands on his desk and leaned in toward him. I was satisfied to see him flinch.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was time for Isaac’s memorial service at the Good Shepherd. The mission’s free hot lunch had ended. Homeless men and women shuffled around on the steps outside the building, psyching themselves up for another cold lonely day on the streets. A skinny old Native man was in the Good Shepherd’s small chapel, arranging a pair of sawhorses before the altar. It was Nimrod, Isaac Schwartz’s friend.

  I said, “Ya, hey, Nimrod. Is Pastor McNaught around?”

  Nimrod squinted short-sightedly. He didn’t recognize me. “Pastor’ll be out in a minute,” he muttered.

  I sat on a chair in the front row and gazed at the wooden cross over the altar. A door opened and four pallbearers entered, carrying Isaac’s coffin. They were new to the task and handled the coffin clumsily. When they lowered it to the sawhorses, one pallbearer lost his grip. There was a loud crack as the coffin suddenly tipped. The sawhorses wobbled a bit, but held. Scowling as the embarrassed pallbearers hurried out, Nimrod carefully tested the coffin’s stability by pushing it timidly with one hand. Satisfied, he covered the coffin with a purple velvet cloth and spent a few minutes patiently smoothing its folds. After that he came and sat next to me, his narrow shoulders bowed, looking at the floor.

  We waited in silence until Moran, Tony and a half-dozen gym regulars arrived. I was expecting Bernie to attend, but he never showed up. Recorded music swelled in volume on the PA system until the Mormon Tabernacle Choir had drowned out the noisy dishwashers working in the kitchen. Then Pastor Joe McNaught entered.

  McNaught was a reformed drunk and one-time prizefighter. Now he was bringing muscular Christianity to Victoria’s street people. His declared commission was to feed the hungry and bring sinners to the arms of Jesus. He had a bushy beard, and his sparse remaining hair encircled an enormous shining dome. It was a joke on the street that McNaught’s clothes were made by Jones Tent and Awning. He had on a long black sleeveless vestment over a black shirt and white clerical collar. He looked like a World Wrestling Federation heavyweight impersonating the Messenger of Doom, but he was nobody’s fool.

  McNaught and I were the same age. We had been in the fight game together and had fought a couple of times. McNaught had been a dirty, ring-smart boxer. If he could blindside the referee he’d bring his knee up in your groin, stomp your instep; stick a thumb in your eye. I’d quit the swindle early, but McNaught boxed on for years. Long enough to get a broken nose, cauliflower ears and, some people thought, scrambled brains. His fighting weight had been 225 pounds, but I guessed he’d push the scales at over 350 now. Too much booze and too many punches eventually caught up with him, and he spent years on skid row before he found Jesus and dried out. Victoria’s established churches had him pegged as a religious fraud. To me, he was the enigma he had always been.

  McNaught stood behind his pulpit and opened his mouth to speak, but the chapel door opened again and he delayed his words until a late arrival had taken a seat at the back. Then he pushed a button on his lectern and, to everyone’s surprise, a tenor’s voice rang out over the PA:

  On the Road to Mandalay

  Where the flyin’-fishes play,

  An’ the dawn comes up like thunder

  Outer China ’crost the bay …

  Without the least sign of perturbation, McNaught pressed another button. The Rudyard Kipling song ended abruptly and was replaced by the Mormon Choir’s version of “Abide with Me.”

  Smiling as if nothing had happened, McNaught waited for the music to fade, then said, “We are here today to say farewell to our departedbrother, Isaac Schwartz. Isaac and myself wrestled with demons together many a time, and I loved him. He led an interesting life.”

  “Amen,” said Nimrod, stirring in the chair beside me.

  “Some ancient horrors are best forgotten, some tales best untold, and the grave claims all secrets in the end,” said McNaught, squinting at his notes. “But Isaac’s history should be remembered.

  “Isaac was born in Berlin, Germany. He came to manhood between the great wars and took himself a wife. In time, he fathered three children.” McNaught peered at the tiny audience and adjusted his eyeglasses until they were balanced on the tip of his nose. He continued, “Isaac was born into the Jewish faith. Everyone knows the misery that Hitler’s regime inflicted on Jews during those terrible years.”

  McNaught gave us a moment to reflect before continuing. “Pre-war Germany was an age of madness and terror. For the ‘crime’ of being Jewish, Isaac and his family were arrested by the Nazis and transported to concentration camps. Isaac spent five years behind barbed-wire fences, enduring hardships that we, in this tolerant democracy, can hardly imagine. Isaac was beaten and starved and forced to work as a slave. His sufferings were made worse because he did not know what fate had befallen his wife and his children. Isaac ended up in the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. In 1945, more dead than alive, he was liberated by the British Seventh Army. Afterwards, Isaac learned that his whole family had perished.”

  McNaught blew his nose on a big white handkerchief before continuing. “Isaac came to Canada in the 1940s. He worked as a camp cook in the northern woods
. In his spare time he loved to fish.”

  Nimrod nudged me with his shoulder and muttered, “Isaac wasn’t no camp cook. He was a bullcook.”

  McNaught fingered his clerical collar and turned a benevolent eye on Nimrod. “Later,” he went on, “Isaac was employed at Moran’s Gymnasium, where he was well known and respected by Victoria’s sporting fraternity.”

  McNaught stared at Isaac’s coffin. “The final bell has sounded for Isaac Schwartz. Now the Referee is checking his scorecard. I believe that Isaac was a champion who will dwell in the Lord’s corner forever.”

  At the back of the room, somebody coughed. We recited the Lord’s Prayer, then the Mormons sang “Amazing Grace.” When the music faded there was a minute’s silence during which a chair creaked at the rear of the room. I twisted around and saw an elderly woman in a fur coat hurrying out. Nimrod, head bowed, was mumbling a private prayer.

  Joe McNaught made the sign of the cross with his hand, smiled at the congregation, and that was that. Isaac’s memorial service was over.

  I followed Nimrod into McNaught’s office for the funeral feast. Moran and the others couldn’t stay, so there were only three of us, sitting around a big desk. McNaught, who had a specially reinforced steel chair to sit on, poured three glasses of orange juice and invited us to share a plate of ham and cheese sandwiches.

  Nimrod picked up his glass and said shakily, “This is for you, Isaac.” He tipped the juice down his throat and held out his glass for a refill.

  I looked at him and said, “Well, how you been, Nimrod?”

  “Do I know you?” he asked, peering at me.

  “You should. I picked you up for shoplifting at Eaton’s, 1997. They had you in that back room. Your pockets were full of ladies’ lingerie.”

  Nimrod focussed his narrowed eyes. “Shit,” he said. “It’s Silas Seaweed. Sorry, Silas, I don’t see nothing since I busted my glasses.”