Читать книгу Granville Island Mysteries 2-Book Bundle - Michael Blair - Страница 10

The strangely unseasonable weather had moved in again. Fog haloed the street lamps, the lights of the cars and shops, the bulbs strung along the frame of the freight crane in the parking lot, hanging like a shroud over False Creek and cool on my face as I walked from my car toward the ramp down to Sea Village. It had been only two days since Bobbi’s attack and I told myself it was unreasonable to expect the police to have made much headway in the case, but I was discouraged nonetheless. Nor was I encouraged by the rate of Bobbi’s progress. I blamed it on being raised on television, where the bright young detective catches the bad guys or the brilliant but irascible doctor pulls his patient back from the brink of death just in time for the final commercial break. Real life didn’t work like that, I had to remind myself. In real life, the bad guys often got away. In real life, likely as not the doctor working on your kid’s case had graduated at the bottom of his class, drank too much, and was in the middle of a messy divorce. Who needed real life?

A man was sitting on the bench under the lamppost by the top of the ramp, wreathed in fog and cigarette smoke. He stood as I approached, a little unsteady on his feet, dropped the cigarette, and ground it out under his toe. It was Norman Brooks. Swell, I thought. Reality, as someone once said, bit. After which, I supposed, it sucked.

“Were you at the hospital?” Brooks asked gruffly, breath stinking of alcohol.

“Yes.”

“How is she?”

“The same. Haven’t you visited her today?”

He lowered his head. “They kicked me out.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied. “I bet.”

“Maybe you should try visiting her sober,” I said. He stiffened. “Fuck you,” he growled.

“Good night, Mr. Brooks,” I said, and started down the ramp.

He grabbed my right arm in a vice-like grip. “Don’t you walk away from me. I want to talk to you.”

I twisted free. He’d hit a nerve, literally, and my right hand tingled painfully. “Go home,” I said, rubbing my arm. “Get sober. Then maybe we’ll talk.”

“Jesus, you’re an asshole. I don’t know why my daughter thinks you’re so great to work for. I think you’re a pussy.”

“You’re mixing your meta-orifices,” I said.

He growled deep in his throat. “I know my daughter was assaulted on that boat, but I figure it was really you they were after. You pissed somebody off.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I agreed glibly.

“Was it this Waverley guy? You fucking his old lady or something? I heard she’s not too fussy. Or maybe you put nude pictures of her on the Internet. I checked you out. You like taking dirty pictures. Like of those lezzy twin sisters who run that porn website downstairs from your studio.”

“First,” I said, “I don’t know Mr. or Mrs. Waverley, carnally or otherwise, so I’ve no idea when or how I might have pissed either of them off. Second, as for taking nude photographs, it’s a dirty business, but someone has to do it. And third, Bobbi and I both work on Meg and Peg Castle’s annual calendar. They’re nice people, by the way, both married with kids.” I wondered if he knew that when Bobbi was in university she’d earned extra money by posing nude for life study classes. If not, it wasn’t my place to tell him. “And four, even if Mr. Waverley wanted to beat the crap out of me for some reason, why take it out on Bobbi?”

“So it was one of your drug-smuggling pals looking to settle a score.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I don’t know any drug smugglers.” Well, maybe I did. Sort of …

“Don’t give me that wide-eyed innocent crap,” Brooks said. “I told you, I checked you out. I’ve still got connections. Christopher Hastings and his girlfriend were smuggling dope to the States in that old boat of his, till someone set fire to it. Hell, for all I know, it was you that did it. Now she’s your girlfriend and she’s graduated from dope smuggling to making cheap porn.”

“Now that you’re retired from the Mounties,” I said, “I hope you aren’t planning to set up shop as a private detective.”

“Eh? Why?”

“Because you’re a lousy investigator. Maybe Chris Hastings was smuggling dope in his boat. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know him that well. I certainly wouldn’t call him a friend. As for Reeny, she doesn’t make cheap porn, she makes science fiction, and while it may be cheesy, it’s far from cheap.”

He shook himself, a little like a dog shaking off water.

“Tell me about the broad who hired you.”

“No, I don’t think I will. Besides, other than a physical description, which likely doesn’t mean much, there’s nothing to tell. Now, if you’ll pardon me, it’s late and I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

“I’m not done with you yet.”

“But I’m done with you,” I said. “You’re no longer a police officer, Mr. Brooks. Look, I know you’re upset about Bobbi. So am I. But blundering drunkenly about making a nuisance of yourself isn’t going to help her. Go home. Sober up. Then maybe they’ll let you in to see your daughter.”

“I don’t believe you about the Waverley woman. I think you do know her and that she or her old man is involved in Bobbi getting hurt. I’m gonna find out how. And if I find out it was you they were really after, that she just got in the way, I’ll pound the living shit out of you myself. Don’t think I won’t.”

He turned, a little too quickly, losing his balance and almost falling. He braced himself on the railing at the top of the ramp, regained his balance, and walked away with exaggerated precision. I hoped he wasn’t driving, but as I watched, he dug keys out of his pocket and fumbled at the door of a big GMC four-by-four parked in one of the spaces reserved for the staff of the Emily Carr Institute.

“Shit,” I muttered and trotted over to him. “You’re in no condition to drive,” I said. “Why don’t you take a cab home? I’ll put your truck in one of the Sea Village spaces so it won’t get towed.”

He got the door open and climbed into the truck. “I got here, didn’t I?”

“Probably blind luck,” I said. “Look, it won’t do anybody any good if you have an accident and end up in jail for killing someone with this monster. Give me the keys.”

“Piss off,” he growled. He was having trouble getting the key into the ignition.

He lived in Richmond somewhere, I recalled, out past Vancouver International Airport, a thirty-dollar cab ride at least. Maybe he didn’t have the cash. I had forty or fifty dollars in my wallet. Would his pride allow him to accept the offer of a loan? If it had been anyone else, I might have volunteered to drive him home, or even offered my sofa for the night, but I didn’t want to spend any more time with him than I had to, particularly in a confined space.

While I dithered, he managed to insert the key into the ignition and start the engine.

“Mr. Brooks,” I said, over the noisy clatter of the diesel engine. “At least come inside and have a cup of coffee or two before you drive home.”

I couldn’t believe what I was saying. I was almost thankful when he yanked the shift lever into reverse and backed out of the parking space, forcing me to jump aside or get knocked down by the open door. The door swung shut as he jammed the transmission into drive with a lurch and accelerated out of the parking lot.

Well, I’d tried, I told myself.

It was almost 10:30 when I let myself into my house. It was so quiet that I could hear every creak and groan and murmur as the house shifted gently on the tide. The message light on the phone in the kitchen was flashing. Without any great enthusiasm, I pressed the button that speed-dialled my voice mail, entered my password, and was told I had three new messages. They were all hangups. Curious, I pressed the button that displayed the Caller IDs of the most recent calls. All three IDs were blocked, which suggested that they had been placed by the same caller.

I got a Granville Island Lager out of the fridge and took it up to the roof deck. Tendrils of fog writhed around the lights on the metal skeleton of the freight crane. I slumped into a deck chair, put my feet up on the railing, contemplatively sipped my beer, and thought about Reeny Lindsey. More specifically, I wondered what the future might hold for us, if anything at all.

For the most part, and for a variety of what I considered very valid reasons, such as not having to pick up my socks, make the bed, or put away my breakfast dishes, except that I usually did, pick up my socks, anyway, I liked living alone. For the most part. Also for the most part, except for slightly more than a handful of years of marriage and the occasional live-in girlfriend or equally temporary boarder, I had lived alone for a good chunk of my adult life. I generally liked my own company. We usually got along. Usually. Every now and again, however, I wondered if I wanted to spend the rest of my life with just myself to talk to. I wasn’t that interesting, after all. Besides which, it was lonely sometimes. Okay, more than just sometimes.

All things considered, Reeny was perfect. She was smart, funny, and attractive, and we were good together in every important way, and some not so important ones. Her job required her to travel, so she wasn’t always underfoot, although truth be told, I wouldn’t have objected to her being underfoot a little more often. The problem was, when I thought about her and me, I didn’t think forever. Not that I ever had with any other woman, not even my ex-wife. But it seemed to me that if a relationship was to last, both parties had to believe deep in their hearts that it was forever, whether it ultimately proved to be or not.

I wasn’t ready to give up on Reeny. Maybe our relationship just needed a little tweaking. On the other hand, I thought, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have an alternate strategy, a contingency plan for my old age. Finding another person with whom one would want to grow old — and, more important, who felt the same way — isn’t quite as easy as opening a registered retirement savings plan or buying mutual funds. It requires much more careful planning, as well as considerable research, market analysis, and expensive albeit not entirely unpleasant consumer testing. The risk of losing one’s investment is significantly greater, too; there’s no such thing as a guaranteed investment certificate for relationships. Unfortunately, it’s an arena in which professional help is sorely lacking — I don’t believe in astrology, singles’ bars, or online dating services, although …

I awakened with a start, almost spilling what was left of my beer. The phone was ringing. I hurried downstairs — or below, if you insist — to my home office to answer it. It was after eleven, but I thought it might be Reeny calling from Germany, where it was only five or six in the morning. I almost crippled myself in the process, but I made it to the phone before the call was transferred to voice mail.

“H’lo?”

Nothing.

“Hello?”

Still nothing. Not even heavy breathing.

“Hello!”

Finally, a hollow click and the dial tone. I swore and put down the handset, none too gently.

The phone in my home office didn’t have a call display screen, but I was certain that if I went downstairs and checked the Caller ID on the phone in the kitchen, it would show that the ID had been blocked. I did it, anyway, and my suspicion was confirmed. I thought about calling Greg Matthias and getting him to have the VPD technical support division “dump my LUDs,” as they say on TV — my telephone local usage details — and trace the call’s origin. It seemed a bit extreme, though. Anyway, it was probably just an overzealous telemarketer, or the world’s most annoying real estate broker, Blake Darling.

I nearly jumped out of my shoes when the phone rang again. I peered at the LCD screen. No name, just a local cellphone number. I picked up the handset.

“Hello?” I said warily.

“Tom?” a woman said.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“It’s Jeanie.”

“Jeanie?”

“Jeanie Stone. Is something wrong?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong, Jeanie. Sorry, I’m a bit jumpy, I guess.”

“Tom, I just heard about Bobbi,” Jeanie said. “Is she going to be all right?”

“I dunno, Jeanie. She’s still unconscious.”

“I know it’s late, and a school night ’n’ all, but if you feel like grabbing a beer or two, I’m just five minutes away from Granville Island.”

I was waiting for her under the portico of the Granville Island Hotel when she emerged from the fog.

“Sorry,” she said. “Took me longer than I thought. Geez, what’s with this weather? It’s like driving through marshmallow topping.”

“You’re not on your way back to Squamish, are you?” I asked, as we went into the hotel. She lived in Squamish, at the head of Howe Sound, about halfway to Whistler. Although Squamish billed itself as the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada, the forest industry was still the town’s largest employer.

“I just drove down,” she said.

We went into the Dockside Restaurant, where we were given a seat by the window, overlooking the fog-shrouded Pelican Bay Marina. The high-rises and office towers on the far side of False Creek were pearly ghosts, the heart of the city just a diffused glow through an ephemeral mist, like an incredibly fine pointillist painting.

“Pretty,” Jeanie said.

“It is,” I agreed. “But I wish the CIA would stop messing about with the weather control machines they stole from the Russians.”

“Pardon me?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the scalar potential interferometer electromagnetic weather machines the Russians built back in the fifties.”

“Uh, no, I haven’t,” she said. “And here I thought global warming was to blame for the weird weather.”

I shook my head. “That’s what they want us to believe, but global warming doesn’t explain the popularity of reality TV or Jim Carrey movies. At this very moment we are very likely being scanned by the U.S. government’s scalar beams and our unique personal frequencies recorded in their supercomputers for later programming. Can’t you feel it?”

“Now that you mention it,” she said, dissolving into a fit of giggles. With some difficulty, she composed herself. “You had me worried for a second.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I have a neighbour, a sweet old guy, but barking mad. Lectures me on the dangers of scalar-beam weapons every chance he gets.”

The waitress came to take our order, two pints of Granville Island Lager.

“About Bobbi,” Jeanie said after the waitress left. “If we have to put off the calendar shoot, I’ll understand. I want you to know that.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Wayne and I should be able to handle it. If that’s all right with you, I mean.”

“Of course,” Jeanie said, but I sensed a little hesitancy in her voice.

“Mary-Alice can come along as chaperone,” I added.

“What? Oh.” She smiled. “Well, all right, if you think you and Wayne need protection …”

Our beers arrived in tall frosted glasses. “Cheers,” I said. We touched glasses and drank.

Beer always tastes better when shared with an attractive woman. Everything does. And Jeanie was extremely attractive, dark and compact and muscular, with a brilliant smile and an infectious laugh. I’d been a little concerned about mixing business with pleasure when I’d accepted her invitation, worried that she might have designs on my virtue, such as it was. I wasn’t afraid that she’d make a pass at me, just what I might do if she did. Besides being more than ten years younger than me, I didn’t need that kind of complication in my life right then.

I needn’t have worried.

“Relax, Tom, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “Maybe when the calendar’s done I’ll let you take me to some place nice, ply me with fine wine, and take your best shot. Assuming you’re not spoken for. Are you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that.

“In the meantime,” she said, “you seemed like you could use someone to talk to and I’m a good listener. I’ll even talk shop, if you want.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I said.

“Would it be all right if I visited Bobbi?”

“Of course,” I said.

Her eyes were an odd shade of blue, like the flower of the chicory plant, and looked almost as though they were lit from behind by LED Christmas lights. They were in startling contrast to her dark complexion and coal-black hair. Although she undoubtedly spent a lot of time outdoors, the skin of her face and neck was smooth and fine-grained. She didn’t appear to be wearing much makeup. Her hands were small, blunt, and strong — shaking hands with her had been a humbling experience. Her fingernails, though short, were painted a bright Chinese red.

“How did you hear about Bobbi?” I asked.

“Your sister told me,” she said.

“You and Mary-Alice are still on speaking terms, then.”

“Sure.” She smiled suddenly, releasing almost as much wattage as Bobbi did. “Say, it turns out we have a mutual acquaintance.”

“Who’s that?”

“Walter Moffat.”

“Not sure I’d call him an acquaintance exactly. He is — or was — a potential client. I’ve never met him. Mary-Alice knows him, through his wife, I think. How do you know him?”

“I guess I can’t really claim to know him, either,” she said. “I only met him once. He wangled himself an invitation to speak at our annual general meeting last month. He’s running in my riding in the next federal election. I’m not sure what he was hoping to accomplish. We’re not a big organization. Or likely to endorse a candidate who seems to know as much about the forest industry as I know about, um, scalar-beam weapons. When I talked to him afterwards he seemed to have a hard time believing I was a logger.”

He’s not alone, I thought.

“He was quite charming,” she went on, “and very good-looking, but he was, well, artificial, like he was just mouthing words written by someone else. No great surprise, I suppose. Many politicians are just sock puppets, aren’t they? Now, Mr. Moffat’s campaign manager, Woody Getz, he’s another thing altogether. A real piece of work.”

“How so?”

“Imagine a used-car salesman with a two-thousand-dollar suit and a bad comb-over.”

“I know the type,” I said, thinking of Blake Darling.

“It’s weird,” she said, with a mischievous chuckle.

“What is?”

“A lot of women would call Walter Moffat drop-dead gorgeous,” she said. “He’s not my type, but he had quite a few of our members all girlish and gooey-eyed. ‘Creaming in her jeans’ is how one of them put it.”

If all female forestry workers were even remotely like Jeanie Stone, I found it hard to imagine them getting all “girlish and gooey-eyed” over anyone, never mind the cruder allusion. What was Jeanie’s type? I wondered, as she went on.

“He probably could have had any one of half a dozen women for the night, just for the asking,” she said. “One of our out-of-town members even claims she slipped him a note with her hotel room number on it. But he was a complete gentleman, polite and just attentive enough to make you feel like he cared, but not that he wanted to get into your pants. Woody Getz, on the other hand, practically drooled on the floor the whole evening. Despite being downright homely, he hit on just about every women who came within range. He even hit on me, for Pete’s sake.”

Don’t say it, McCall, I told myself, but I wasn’t listening. “And why not?” I said. “He might be a piece of work, as you say, but at least he exhibited a remarkable amount of good taste.”

“Um, thanks,” she said, squirming uncomfortably.

I was an idiot. I didn’t want her to think I was hitting on her. Not only because I was more or less “spoken for,” but I didn’t want to be placed in the same category as a used-car salesman with a bad comb-over. We chatted for a while longer — I tried not to say anything else too stupid — until we’d finished our beers. Jeanie asked if I wanted another. Although I was tempted, if only to prolong the pleasure of her company, I said, “It’s getting late, and we’ve got a lot to do to get ready for the movers on Saturday. I think I’d better call it a night. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said, signalling the waitress. “I should get some sleep, too. I’m meeting with my thesis advisor tomorrow.”

“Thesis advisor?” I said stupidly.

“I’m doing a masters in geology at UBC. My thesis is called ‘Movement on the Cascadia Subduction Zone and Liquefaction: Risk Assessment in the Metro Vancouver Region.’ Catchy, eh?”

“Very. If it means what I think it means, it makes me glad I live in a floating home.”

“As long as you’re home when the Big One hits,” she said with a smile.