Читать книгу Holly Martin Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - Lou Allin - Страница 12

Holly called the main number at Camosun and was routed to Gall’s department. The secretary told her that he had office hours every day at eleven. She took Sooke Road to the Island Highway, turned off at Hillside, and drove ahead to the Lansdowne Campus.

Once at the college, she parked and walked to the main building of the small enclave of four thousand students. Gall must feel like a large frog in this pond, she thought. Postmodern and utilitarian. Nothing like the stately halls of UVic a few miles away, where her father taught. Was Gall jealous of Norman’s prestige on the venerable university campus? To insiders, the hierarchy in post-secondary education was more than a matter of tenure or salary differences. University professors could be passport guarantors, while only an administrator in a college could sign the photo. “And they want to be called professors,” her father once said in a huff, rattling the paper as he read about a recent strike at the colleges. “Few have doctorates. Some have no degrees at all. Professors of welding indeed.” Her mother would have torn a strip off him for such elitism. For all Holly knew, she had.

Gall’s office was tucked away in a cranny at the end of a hall painted a psychedelic sunflower yellow and purple. A scribbled paper sign on the door read “Larry Gall. Social Work.” Posted nearby was his timetable with office hours highlighted in marker. Political cartoons taped on the wall featured George W. Bush, though a few involved the Prime Minister, to whose body were added horns, a tail and a long fork.

The door was closed, but she could hear vague music inside. Perky. Upbeat. Caribbean. Relaxing, sunny climes where fruit fell from the trees. She knocked.

“Come,” said a low voice.

On a quick assessment, she was surprised to see that Larry Gall was much younger than her mother, in his mid-forties even now. In opposition to her conservative, fussy father, his thick black hair was tied in a ponytail, and he wore chinos and a denim work shirt with a pelt of curly hair at the V. The bookshelves were crowded, and hanging baskets of spider plants and ivy competed for the sun through the institutional window. On the desk were requisite piles of marking and a CD case reading Songs of the Coffee Lands.

“Great music,” she said by way of opening the conversation. “Putamayo. Always cheers me up. Especially in the winter. Live here, you’ve got to make peace with the rain. Nirvana it’s not.” His lean face was brown and weather-beaten, as if he spent much time outside. A carved hiking stick with a silver knob leaned in the corner next to a battered pair of boots.

Holly gave the usual answer which helped islanders bond. “Don’t have to shovel it.”

He looked at her uniform, one corner of his thin mouth rising. “Speaking of shovelling, if you’ll pardon my French, you have me at a disadvantage. My name’s on the door. I don’t know yours, but you don’t look like a student.”

She extended her hand, and he gave it a perfunctory shake, earning 5/5 for comfortable pressure and duration. “Holly Martin. Bonnie Martin’s daughter.”

“Holly.” He made no effort to disguise the fact that he was searching her face. For her mother? A muscle twitched at the edge of his square jaw, a slight haze of beard showing. He pulled out a rumpled pack of French cigarettes and fingered one out, offering it to her. Holly shook her head. “Then this isn’t a social call.”

“Not exactly. But it could have been. I know you were...good friends with my mother.” Coy language sat ill with her, but she needed to find her bearings.

He groaned, tossing a glance of his head toward the wall behind Holly. She turned to see a large pastel portrait of her mother, expensively framed under anti-glare glass. Against her will, she gave a small gasp.

“I thought you might walk through that door some day. In fact, I hoped you would.” Then his face grew colder, as if a band of steel had tightened along his spine. With a book of matches, he lit the cigarette and pulled up a small ashtray shaped like a pitcher’s mitt.

Uninvited, she sat in an oak chair where many a student had waited. She expected no courtesy from this man, someone who had lurked in their lives all these years, yet she chose her words carefully. “Is that why you keep sending my father those notes? To bring me here?”

“I don’t keep tabs on you. That would be neurotic, but I see that you’re all grown up. Last I heard you were in university.” He drew in a long breath of smoke and exhaled with apparent contemplation. The air filled with the strange tang of exotic tobaccos foreign to North America. “The coward. He’d never come himself.”

She bristled at the insult, tempted to abuse her power. “Who’s the real coward if you don’t even sign these notes? You haven’t threatened him in so many words, but this harassment stops now. And this has nothing to do with my position.”

“The horsewoman rides to her doddering father’s rescue. Precious.” His lips appeared poised to spit. Yet he stood and went to the portrait, stroking her mother’s bright cheek, which shone with youth. She looked the same age as Holly, but she must have been older, because the hair had grey streaks. When had she posed? Or had the portrait been done from a photo? The glimpse into her mother’s other life frightened her.

“I loved her, you know.”

“You think you did.” She was still smarting about his comments about her dad. To many who didn’t look deeper, Norman was the quintessential professor, no mystique, no romance, just a dusty cypher.

He turned with a vengeance. “You know nothing of this. She and I were to be married.”

Standing abruptly, Holly mouthed the words like a death sentence. “Married. I don’t believe that.”

A desk drawer opened, and Gall lifted a pack of letters tied with a blue ribbon. “Here’s proof. She didn’t want to hurt your father, but by the time you left for university, our relationship had become serious. She was waiting for the right time to tell him. And she would have, except that...” He took a deep breath, then exhaled as if it were too painful to continue. “Anyway, I thought you were studying Botany, becoming a useless collector of information like the Professor.”

“I changed my mind, and you can imagine why and when.” She shot a finger at him. “So just before she disappeared, she was supposed to have told him?”

He cast down his oyster eyes, heavy with pouches, but creased at the corners from staring life in the face. The price of hard work, dissolution or genetics? “Does make you wonder, doesn’t it?” Then he gave a dismissive gesture, and a long ash dropped to the tiled floor. “She and your father had nothing in common. I don’t understand why the marriage lasted so long.”

“I can’t speak for either of them. But he would never have harmed her.”

“And you know that I didn’t. I was cleared from the start...unless you think I had a body double to speak in Calgary that week.”

“Move on with your life. I have.” Or had she? The past was returning to bite her on the neck like a loving vampire.

“Have you? I think about her every day, and if you’re the daughter she deserved, so do you.” He stubbed out the cigarette, punishing it until the paper separated from the tobacco. But though he said nothing, his eyes glistened.

“You said ‘deserved’. Why the past tense?”

He barked out a laugh and coughed a cloud of smoke. “Oh, come on. You’ve been watching too many of those old movies with your father. Don’t start living in other decades like he does. Christ have mercy. What a useless dreamer.”

She ignored the gibe and took out a fresh notebook brought for this purpose. Hers alone, off the clock. “Tell me about that last week. Where did you see her? What did she say?”

He remained silent for nearly a minute. Then he firmed his lips. From under his shirt, he pulled an ornament that glittered as a shard of light punched from behind a cloud. “Recognize this?”

Holly tensed, steeled herself from reaching forward. She didn’t want to appear weak, so she forced her trembling grip to the chair arms. The rawhide cord held a round silver image of a raven with the sun in its beak.

A corner of his mouth rose at her reaction. “I see you remember it. Your mother probably told you the story. It’s one of my favourites, perhaps because of her.”

Raven the Trickster was one of the most popular figures in native mythology across North America. Suddenly Holly was back in her childhood bedroom in that dark East Sooke property. The papery leaves of the eucalyptus whispered prelude to the croaky warble in the night. Her mother was explaining that when the world was in total darkness, Raven was tired of bumping about. He learned that an old man who lived in the woods with his daughter had a secret treasure, all the light in the universe packed into a tiny box. Spying on them as the girl was dipping her basket into the water, Raven turned himself into a hemlock needle. When she swallowed the needle, it grew into a human baby. She gave birth, and crafty Raven set to work coaxing his “grandfather” to let him hold the light. Losing patience, the old man threw the sphere to the child. Retransformed into a bird, Raven caught the light in his beak, flew out of the smokehole and escaped to bring sunshine to the world.

Suddenly she felt a squeezing in her chest. Was he admitting guilt by showing it to her? No one would be that stupid, or was it a clever ruse? “When did she give this to you?” It hadn’t always been in her mother’s life, though often it was unseen, nestled between her breasts to “keep it warm.” Had Holly noticed it first around the time she left for university? A milestone? The end of her dependence on the concept of family? Did that ever end?

“I brought it back from a trip to the Queen Charlottes and gave it to her. It’s Haida, a talisman. Very old. A hundred years, the seller said. It was tarnished when I found it, but I polished it. Cleaned up nicely.” He gave an ironic shrug. “Little good it did her.”

“And she gave it back? Why?” His alibi was solid. What did this mean?

“No. I found it.”

“How do you know it’s the same one?” she asked. He hadn’t answered her question about “when,” but she’d figured it out.

He pointed to a small scratch on the sun. “As I told you, it was an old piece. We thought that the flaw added character, a story within a story.”

He was right. Her mother had postulated that Raven had bumped into an overhanging branch as he left the house. Suddenly her eyes felt wet, betraying her, and she blinked. She leaned forward, and he sat back, splaying his large hands on the desk. Clearly he had no intention of removing it. “Then how did you get...when did—”

One of his stubby fingers waggled at her. “Not so fast. Here’s what happened.” He lit a fresh cigarette and opened the window. “Thank god there are no smoke alarms in here...yet. Damn nicotine Nazis.”

Holly felt pressure build behind her temples. Gall owned some precious part of her mother. She wanted to throttle him, to wrench the necklace from his chest. Bridge the gap to her mother with something intimate and palpable.

“She saw the rawhide getting thin. You can buy replacement strips at craft stores.”

A flame long guttering sprang to life. “So then what?”

He sat back in an odd reflective mood as if puzzling out the situation step by step. “That’s the funny part. I do some family counselling for the CASA in Sooke. They gave me clothes to take to the St. Vincent de Paul depot. That’s when I saw it. Must have been a couple of years after she...left.”

“Someone was wearing it?”

“No. It had been attached to a fresh piece of leather and was in their jewellery display. Costume junk for kids and teenagers.”

It might have been there for a while. She knew the cramped little building that provided cheap clothes, bedding, furniture, the occasional toy or bike for those with meager resources. “Did you ask where it came from?”

“One of the part-time clerks at the depot washes cars at Westcoast Collision. Got sucked up in the vacuum, he said. He heard a funny sound but didn’t think anything of it until days later when he changed the bag. The occasional spare change turns up. There was the amulet. The leather thong was broken. Didn’t like Indian stuff, he said, so he donated it. Someone else fixed it.”

Holly sat back in amazement. Back only a few weeks, and now this. If she’d been here from the first... Something hurt in her throat as her voice rose. “But the car, the truck, whose was it?”

With care and reverence, he tucked Raven back into his shirt. “I tried to find out. They do a hundred vehicles a week, more in tourist season. The kid’s honest but not that bright. He thinks it might have been a luxury car, like a Buick, leather seats. Maybe an SUV.” He tapped his temple in a “nobody home” gesture.

“That’s not much help.” She shot him a look. “Did you go to the police?”

“Bastards told me their resources were too stretched to expend any energy on a cold case. Years had passed. How did they even know this belonged to her? Others could have owned one. I lost my temper, tossed some papers around, and they threw me out. End of story.”

She gazed out the window to where students trudged back and forth in the quad, burrowing under umbrellas in the pounding rain. Her thoughts running too fast to express in any coherence, she let silence fill the musty room. Gall’s eyes followed her. From contempt or interest? Could she trust this man?

“Something occur to you?” His tone was cautious. As he lit another cigarette, his sleeve moved up his arm, revealing a medical bracelet, which indicated some vulnerability, from mere allergies to serious heart problems.

“Was she wearing it the night she disappeared? That’s the important point.”

He shrugged, reached for a cold cup of coffee. He hadn’t offered her any, but judging from the rime on the cracked cup, that was fortunate. “The last time I saw her, yes. A few days before Calgary.”

Rising slowly, she eyed the pile of letters. “I have to go. Any chance you’ll let me look at those?”

“What the hell for? There’s nothing relevant to her disappearance. You’ll have to believe me.”

“Why should I? I just found out that you exist.”

He grinned. “Funny, but you sound like your mother.” He glanced at the copier. “It might be painful for you. But if you’re sure you can handle it, why not? You’re a big girl.”

He made duplicates of the letters, put them in a brown envelope, and handed it to her. Then he picked up another CD. Women of the World, acoustic music by some of the world’s leading female artists. “Take this. I bought it for her last week. I’m always buying her things, almost forgetting that she’s...gone.” Holly took the gift with thanks. She hadn’t expected to like him, but the gesture was kind. He was exposing his wounds to her. “What do you think happened to my...to Bonnie?”

He took his time replying, as if the process opened deep wounds long scabbed over. “She was headed past Gold River, then up some backroads over to Tahsis on the west coast. Something about setting up an information centre, making contacts, that sort of thing. Helluva wild country, but she’d dare anything with that bloody Bronco. Last she called me was from a motel in Campbell River. The rains were bad that weekend. Even snow at the higher altitudes. It’s possible that she might have run off the road and never been found.”

“As simple as that?” The words were dust in her mouth. Somewhere, if she looked long enough... She couldn’t finish her own thought.

“Despite the notorious clear-cuts and the publicity about Clayoquot Sound, most of this island is still wild and lonely territory. But think about this: If you’re going to help good women get away from bad men, those men aren’t going to love you. They’re substance abusers, and they’re violent. The worst have served time. Their women and children are their only possessions.”

“Anyone come to mind?” How much did he know about Bonnie’s work?

“So many ugly cases over the years. She didn’t discuss names with me. Breach of ethics. And in a small community, I might even know the person.” His eyes were slightly narrowed, as if sizing her up. “So now that you’ve met the ogre in his den, what are your plans?”

“I’m posted to Fossil Bay now, and I have access to records. There’s a chance we might find out what happened to her.” She was conscious of using the word “we”, and suddenly felt traitorous towards her father. But surely they all had the same goal. “I’ll stay in touch if anything turns up.”

He tossed her one last question. Impertinent or frank. “Are you going to show the letters to the old man?”

The Old Man. She supposed he meant in it in the vernacular. Her father would never be old, would he? Mustering her dignity, with an even voice, she answered, “And break his heart? No one could be that cruel.”

At the Kangaroo Road curve that night, she was nearly sideswiped by a logging truck over the line. Her blood pressure spiked, but the Prelude held the road like a cat in gumboots. She thought of her father and that damn tiny car. With the burgeoning population in the Western Communities, the traffic to Victoria was a crapshoot with loaded dice. He avoided rush hour traffic and travelled only three days a week, but she shuddered to think of how that toy might collapse like a billfold.

She mentioned it to him after dinner. “Gas has gone up to 1.295 a litre with hell between us and peak oil, and you think I should get a larger car? My dear girl.” He finished the last crumb of chocolate layer cake and tossed down his serviette. “Follow me. I want you to see something amazing. I did not purchase that vehicle on a whim or because I’m merely...frugal. Give your paterfamilias credit.”

They went upstairs to his computer, where he spent a few minutes clicking on Google, then Videos. Bouncing in his seat like a kid, he turned to her with a grin. “Here we are. Road tests of the Smart Car. It’s made by Mercedes, you know. Precision German mechanics. They lost the war but not the engineering race.” Then he turned up the sound.

She watched in horror as the unpiloted car barrelled down the road cartoon-style, hellbent on its mission, then smashed into a concrete barrier and bounced to a stop. When the dust settled, the cage was intact, the integrity complete. She let out a giant breath. “Whooee. I am so impressed.”

Her father stood back, arms folded in an “I told you so” pose. “Now where am I going to get into an accident like that? Eighty miles per hour. I’m hardly driving over fifty kilometres most of the time. Your mother was the speed demon, remember?”

Later that night, reading in bed, she welcomed Shogun up with her for moral support. Then she started examining the letters. At first they were innocuous enough. Something about missing him, which could have a collegial interpretation. But the last two seemed to support Gall’s scenario. Her mother’s idiosyncratic angular handwriting made time disappear. “I’ll need to think about your proposal,” it read. “But my heart tells me that we have such little time on earth. Holly is on her way, building her own life as it should be.” Then in the final letter, dated the week before she disappeared, she said, “I’ve made up my mind. Leaving will sting Norman, but his career will sustain him. And he’s a good-looking man. It’s possible he’ll find someone else, given time. Next week I’ll contact Richard Mayhue. If he can’t handle the divorce, he’ll know someone who can. This time in a few months, my love, we’ll be together forever. Or as much together as my life can manage.” Something rose in Holly’s throat as lyrics from an inane disco song wormed into her ears. “Together forever, forever, we two.”

Holly moved her legs under the quilt, and Shogun growled and jumped off the bed, looking at her accusingly. Had an event in his past spooked him about certain movements? Had he been kicked off a bed as a pup? She heard a toilet flush and shoved the letters under a pillow. Sometime she might tell her father. Perhaps he already knew. But that gave him a motive for...she didn’t want to follow that thread. It would destroy her life.

The door, already ajar, opened as she heard a discreet “knock, knock.” She looked up, afraid that the letters under the pillow were burning a hole in the mattress. “So there you are, Shogie. In a lady’s boudoir, no less.” Norman gazed at Holly in assumed innocence. “Are you two good friends now?”

She cast a suspicious glance at the dog, now lying on the carpet and grooming one foot in a meticulous fashion, the little prince. “Whenever I move my legs, he does this Charlie Manson act.”

Her father chuckled, rubbing his chin. “Just a border collie. Ignore him.”

She laughed. “Like you’ve been reading to me from the forums on the net? My dog eats holes in the drywall. Oh, it’s just a border collie. Barks my ears deaf if I stop to talk to someone. Oh, it’s just a border collie. Rolls in dead salmon. Oh, it’s... You get the point. These dogs get forgiven for everything.”

Her father snapped his fingers, and Shogun got up to leave. “Be a realist, Holly. He’s not a GSD. To serve and protect is not his watchword.”

She fluffed her pillow, then sat back. “I wonder what his watchword is?”

“He’ll let us know. Don’t they always?”

She slept fitfully that night. Two geese, identified by their companionable chatter, had put her house on their flight path. Not at all migratory, the local flock flew daily rounds to visit farms and pastureland. Why bother with that north and south nonsense when they could stay in paradise? Where in this unnatural Eden did they nest safe from cougars, in swamps where the skunk cabbage grew? Their honking, at times canine and at others almost human, kept awakening her from the deep REM levels that would refresh her. Pounding the pillow, she remembered a news story about a grandmother killing her family after hearing “commands” from the geese. Now there was a unique excuse. Had it worked?