Seaweed Under Water Read online

  It was freezing water, delivered straight from the Arctic to B.C., but I knew that if I dived deep enough, shotgun pellets would lose their killing velocity. I heard, or sensed, another explosive blast. My left arm was useless. I kept diving—down and out into deeper, blacker water, until I ran out of air and had to come up. Numb with cold and shock, my danglers fully retracted, I refilled my lungs and dived again. This time I surfaced in the air space beneath a float, where I was safe for the moment, and could breathe. Footsteps pounded back and forth on the deck above my head. Fireworks were still making plenty of noise.

  I heard somebody say, “We musta got him. Let’s go.”

  Ice was licking my bones. I had to get out of that water before hypothermia set in and I drowned. I submerged again and swam out from beneath the float. When I surfaced, I was too weak to lift myself one-handed onto a float. I was floundering hopelessly toward the shore when a woman said, “Here, catch!”

  A rope fell across my shoulders. I wrapped it around my wrists and held on. Hydraulic motors whirred. The rope tightened as I was hoisted clear of the water and swung aboard a large boat. I flopped around on a wide wooden deck while somebody untangled the rope then led me across the threshold of a cabin into warmth.

  My breathing was shallow and fast, my teeth were chattering. I couldn’t speak and my left arm was useless. The woman said, “You have to get out of those wet clothes, fast,” but my fingers were numb. I couldn’t help myself. The woman pawed at my buttons and zippers and ripped at me until I was naked. Feeling less than human, I was helped down a companionway and shoved into a shower stall. The woman opened faucets and got thoroughly soaked herself before she had the temperature adjusted properly and left me to it. I stayed in the shower long enough to empty the boat’s hot water tank. Mentally, things were still pretty much a blur.

  Monogrammed bath towels told me that I was aboard the Mayan Girl. As I was drying myself, the woman returned and opened the bathroom door partially. A hand appeared holding a white terrycloth bathrobe.

  My saviour said, “Here, put this on. When you’re ready, come on through to the main stateroom. I’ll have hot drinks waiting.”

  I reached for the bathrobe and managed to say, “Thanks,” in a tone that sounded reasonably human, but I was still disoriented. When I moved, it felt as if I were immersed in a thick viscous substance that resisted motion. I put the bathrobe on and sat on the floor shivering uncontrollably. Somehow, I had ended up in a laundry room. The clothes that I had been wearing were in a basket beside a washer-dryer unit. It was probably very warm in there, but my skin was covered with goose pimples. My shivers were getting worse, and my left arm hurt like hell. I couldn’t think.

  The woman returned and said something. I didn’t reply. She came right into the laundry room, dragged me to my feet and we went together into a stateroom with a king-sized bed in it. I fell into the bed, still wearing that bathrobe. The last thing I remember she was climbing in beside me. I felt her animal warmth as she encircled me in her arms before I passed out.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I woke with a violent start. In that uncertain moment between sleep and waking I didn’t know where I was. Reality asserted itself—I was in a large, luxurious stateroom. The room was dark when I got out of bed, except for grey portholes. I tested my left arm; it hurt when I tried to raise it, but no bones were broken. I drew a curtain and peered out through a porthole.

  A bearded fisherman was on the wharf staring glumly at the troller I’d tried to hide aboard last night. Shotgun pellets had punched holes through its deckhouse, wrecked the radar and smashed windows.

  My overnight bag was at the bottom of the Sound but a Lady Gillette razor, soap, fresh towels and a new toothbrush were laid out in the bathroom for me. I was finishing a one-handed shave when my rescuer knocked on the door. I put the bathrobe on and opened the door. She handed me my freshly laundered clothing and said, “Breakfast’s ready when you are. Grapefruit to start. Coffee. Bacon and eggs. Okay?”

  “I’ll say. Believe it or not, it’s my birthday. But for you, I wouldn’t have made it.”

  “Your hundredth?”

  “Fortieth. And thanks. Thanks for everything.”

  “Congratulations, many happy returns. I’m Tess Rollins. I checked your wallet when I emptied your pockets before washing your clothes so I know who you are.”

  She moved all the way into the room and leaned back against the wall with both hands in her pockets; one knee bent and the sole of a bare foot pressed against the wall. She was a West Coast Native woman, wearing a short, low-cut summer dress that revealed expanses of flawless bronzed skin and the beginning of a cleft between her breasts. She looked about 40. Her face wasn’t beautiful. In fact, it was downright plain, even ugly, but her figure was lovely. I remembered that those strong shapely legs had wrapped me to her hips last night. She had a certain indescribable appeal—hard to explain, an allure that stirred my heart immediately. Perhaps it was the way Tess looked at me, her grace, her way of moving. Her voice was low and nicely modulated. A long time later I found out she’d taken elocution lessons.

  My spine tingled. She was Harley’s sister? Did she know I’d scuffled with Harley yesterday? Did she know about the goons, no doubt sent by Harley, who’d tried to murder me? I said slowly, “You’re Harley Rollins’ sister?”

  She smiled. “That’s right. Do you know him?”

  I dodged the question by saying, “Who doesn’t? The man’s famous.”

  “This is RCMP territory, so what brings a Victoria cop out this way?”

  “I’m off duty,” I replied. “Just looking around for something.”

  Tess smiled flirtatiously. “Me, maybe.”

  I smiled back and began to relax. But, still cautious, I decided to probe. “So how is your brother?”

  Tess frowned. “I dunno.”

  “You don’t know?”

  She shrugged. “We’re not speaking at the moment. Me and Mr. Temper had a fight.”

  That was good news.

  It was her turn to probe. “So how’d you end up in the water last night?”

  I held up both hands. “I wasn’t drunk, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Tess laughed. “Oh no, of course not!” Then we both laughed.

  “Seriously, though, a lot of people around here don’t like cops very much,” she said meditatively. “Maybe that explains why you ended up in the water.”

  “Maybe. I’ve got a bad habit of leading with my chin.”

  “I don’t know how you survived. You were in the water for ages before I dragged you out.”

  “I’m no lightweight. How did you manage it?”

  “I used the Zodiac winch. Welcome to Mowaht Bay.”

  I grinned at her. She smiled and went out.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Tess Rollins and I breakfasted together on the upper sundeck. The area covered by its laced-canvas roof was no bigger than a squash court. I stopped digging a silver spoon into my beautifully sliced and segmented grapefruit and looked out. A lumber carrier was steaming into Mowaht Sound. The vessel was in ballast and its propeller, half-exposed, churned water to foam at its stern. Its passing wake set the Mayan Girl rocking.

  I said, “The Mayan Girl was moored at the Rainbow Motel’s dock a few days ago. Karl Berger mentioned the boat was yours.”

  “What else did Karl tell you?”

  “About you? Nothing.”

  “Karl’s a world-class phony. Don’t believe everything he tells you,” she said caustically. After a pause, she went on, “Mowaht Bay can be a tough town. Saturday nights, it’s full of dull, bored rednecks throwing their weight around because they can’t think of anything better to do. But shooting people and trying to kill them is rare, even here. What’s going on?”

  “Funny you should ask. I came here because I’m trying to locate your sister-in-law.”

  She looked blank for a moment. “You mean Jane Colby?”

  “Do you have other si
sters-in-law?”

  “No, but it’s funny. I don’t think of Janey as being related to me. Not anymore. I mean, she was widowed ages ago. We’ve nothing much in common. She moved on, we both moved on.”

  She looked at me seductively, her eyes half closed, with the trace of a smile on her luscious lips. It was a very nice smile. I was feeling better every minute.

  Tess sipped a little coffee, leant back in her chair and crossed her legs. Her Mona Lisa smile became less enigmatic. She said, “What’s Janey been up to lately?”

  “She hasn’t been seen for a while. Your niece is worried about her, which is why we’re on the lookout.”

  “Poor Terry. Sorry if I don’t take this very seriously, because Janey was never exactly Miss Normal. She was always kind of a flake.”

  “So I’m finding out. A tracer job which at the outset looked fairly straightforward has turned out to be anything but.”

  Tess kept smiling.

  I went on. “Yesterday I visited your brother, Harley. I thought maybe he could help me track Janey down.”

  “And?”

  “Harley wasn’t much use. Maybe you might have some suggestions?”

  “Have you talked to Janey’s dad?”

  “Yes. And to Jack Owens.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “For a short while he was Jane’s significant other. Neither he, nor Janey’s dad, have seen her for a couple of weeks.”

  “So, basically, Janey’s been missing for a couple of weeks,” Tess said with a laugh. “That’s what all this fuss is about?”

  Tess’s brown eyes were flecked with gold, the skin around them completely smooth and too unwrinkled. I wondered if she’d had Botox injections or plastic surgery. Unexpectedly, she reached forward and touched my hand. “Sorry Silas, but don’t you think maybe you’re taking this matter too seriously? I mean, two weeks? If I go out on my yacht I lose touch with the whole world for months at a time.”

  “To be precise, how would you describe your present relationship to Janey?”

  “I thought I already had. Our present relationship is nonexistent. We were friends once, when we were going to school and growing up.” Tess added wistfully, “People change, you know. Janey’s not the girl she used to be.”

  “How is she different?”

  Instead of replying immediately, she slowly sipped more coffee. I thought she was going to ignore my question until she finally said, almost apologetically, “It’s very sad, but people tell me that Jane is drinking too much.”

  A couple of tugboats were nudging that cargo ship in toward a distant wharf, where three immense cranes bestrode mountains of raw logs, ready to load another cargo for Asia.

  Tess said, “We’ve all changed. Our dad was a longshoreman, one of the few guys on the reserve with a real job. When I was a kid all I wanted was to get out of Mowaht Bay. Escape. I set my heart on becoming a hairdresser; it was the height of my aspiration. Harley wanted to be a welder. He took a vocational course at Camosun College in Victoria. The fees wiped him out so he had to sleep in a car, live on Ritz crackers and bottles of ketchup filched from the school cafeteria. After getting his diploma, Harley worked at the Esquimalt dockyard, honing his skills.”

  I said carefully, “Now some people say he’s a witch.”

  “If so, they’re idiots, and I hope you’re not one of them,” she said heatedly. She seemed to realize she’d been too vehement, because she laughed then explained, “Some lazy people would rather believe he had help from the supernatural to reach his success. They should drag their idle butts off the mattress before dawn every morning. Go to work early and keep at it till dark—which is what Harley did for years.”

  I grinned at her.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be venting like this. Where Harley’s concerned I get carried away, tend to run off at the mouth. Besides, this black arts crap people talk about, it’s all fraud and bullshit.”

  “Maybe so, but there are places around these mountains where I prefer to have company after dark. I’m not the only one. If it’s all fraud and bullshit, why do people feel this way?”

  “Because we’ve been brainwashed for hundreds of years?” she replied, laughing.

  “Assuming it wasn’t all witchcraft, how did Harley parlay a welding diploma into the HANE logging empire?”

  “A big part of the credit goes to brother Neville. Neville inherited the brains in our family. He was the youngest. Two years younger than me, seven years younger than Harley.”

  She seemed to run out of things to say. To prompt her I said idly, “Did you fulfill your life’s ambition?”

  She eyed me quizzically.

  “What I meant was, did you become a hairdresser?”

  “Actually I did. Got a job as an apprentice beautician in Vancouver. As it turned out, the hairdressing life wasn’t as fabulous as I’d expected. I was ready to quit and relieved when Harley offered me a job. The minute he did, I handed in my curling tongs, moved into Harley’s front office. General secretary and gofer. I couldn’t even type, initially. I learned as I went along. We all did.”

  She stopped talking and gazed at the Sound, but perhaps she was peering down memory lane.

  “As I was saying, Neville had all the brains. He won a Harold Macmillan scholarship. Neville was the first guy on the reserve to finish high school. He went to UBC and came out with honours in forest management. Harley always made good money, welding, and he idolized his little brother. Harley subsidized Neville through the four years he was away studying.”

  She stopped talking and said suddenly, “Gee, it’s nearly noon. Talking is thirsty work. You fancy a beer?”

  “No thanks, I wouldn’t mind more coffee.”

  “Help yourself,” she said, going to a small refrigerator set up behind a counter in the yacht’s dining salon.

  From the way she looked, walking away, I stopped thinking of her as plain and was beginning to realize she was one of the sexiest women I’d ever met. She was something, all right. She came back with a bottle of beer, said, “Cheers,” and drank straight from the bottle.

  She rambled on, “After a couple of years at the dockyard, Harley went into business for himself. He bolted a portable welding outfit to the back of a junky old pickup truck. Harley’s motto was, ‘Have stinger, will travel.’” She laughed. “It was corny, but it worked. Harley travelled around, doing emergency and maintenance welding in back-country logging camps and sawmills, every sort of job that came his way. Harley soon built up a good reputation. If fancy, difficult welding was needed, he was the guy they called for.”

  She stopped talking and leaned forward to pick up the bottle. That low-cut dress cooperated. She took another drink and sat back, a faraway look in her eyes.

  I asked, “How did Jane Colby fit into this picture?”

  Tess stroked the side of her face with the cold bottle. “She was right in the middle of it, from the beginning. Harley was like me; an ugly little squirt. Janey was beautiful. Harley, believe it or not, was Janey’s first boyfriend. Harley was just nuts about her. People never understood what Janey saw in him. A pretty white girl running around with a ragged-ass reserve Injun. But they had a helluva lot of fun together, while it lasted.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then Janey took up with Neville. The sneaky cow was two-timing both of my brothers. Virtually the whole time Neville was away at UBC, Janey was seeing him, sleeping with him. Harley didn’t know. He never suspected a thing until the day Janey told him it was over, she was going to marry Neville. I’m getting ahead of myself though. Neville had graduated with his forestry degree by that time. Harley and he were in business together.”

  “Partners?”

  “Not exactly,” she said, hesitantly, adding, “You know Harley has a police record.”

  I nodded.

  Tess grinned. “Harley soon realized that the profits he made fixing other peoples’ sawmills were peanuts, compared to the profits his customers raked in by cutting timber. H
arley wanted a piece of the main action himself. So he set to work and built his own little sawmill from scratch, hired first-class sawyers to run it for him. Harley’s main trouble was finding enough logs to keep his mill running. A lot of the time, Harley had orders he couldn’t fill. The big forest companies had a lock on most of the available timber and kept squeezing him out.”

  Tess drained the bottle, put it back on the table and showed a bit more anatomy crossing her legs. Maybe she didn’t even realize it. She went on, “Harley couldn’t buy all the logs he needed legitimately, so he stole them. He drove a logging truck into the bush on weekends when the big camps were shut down. Helped himself to all the lumber that was lying around loose. He was a thief himself, and he bought stolen lumber from truckers. Harley paid top dollar and got caught more than once. Caught, convicted and fined. Harley just laughed. The fines he paid were penny ante compared to what he was making. And don’t kid yourself; Harley wasn’t the only cowboy roping timber out there.”

  “True. Harley was just the boldest, and the biggest.”

  “Rubbish. The biggest log thieves of all time are those guys granted tree farm licences by the government. They were given virtual monopolies to limitless quantities of B.C.’s Crown timber and became billionaires, every single one of them. Guess who got screwed?”

  “British Columbia’s taxpayers?”

  “Goddam right. B.C.’s taxpayers and B.C.’s Indians. Till 150 years ago, we had all the trees we wanted. Next thing we know, there’s all these white Europeans in our midst. They’re pissing on our heads, telling us where to live and what to do. However, all that’s beside the point. If we ever settle our land-claims issues, we’ll get our forests back. The point is that Neville came home from UBC.”

  “And?”

  “Harley’s modus operandi had been crude. He was a clumsy old-style thief and fixer. Harley bribed people. He paid goons to strong-arm uncooperative logging-camp guards. Neville changed all that. He was a modern fixer. Neville wore expensive suits, joined golf clubs and developed winning cocktail-party manners. Instead of bribing camp guards, he gave mid-level government bureaucrats season tickets to Canucks games. He schmoozed with B.C. cabinet ministers. He didn’t give people boxes of chocolates at Christmas. Hell no. Neville gave people holidays in Fiji. It was no great surprise, after Neville laid the groundwork, that when HANE Logging applied for B.C. timber licences, they started to get ’em.”