Moonheart (11 page)

Tucker thought about that for a moment, recalling his own tirade against Hogue.

"Okay," he said. "I'll give you that. But now you listen to this: Suppose— just suppose— that Hogue's theories are valid, that powers like that do exist. Don't you understand why we have to get a handle on them ourselves? Imagine such power in the hands of terrorists Or... or anyone to whom human life means nothing. Then where are we?"

"Once again you make a strong argument,
inspecteur.
"

Jean-Paul looked away. He felt uncomfortable. For all the Inspector's brash mannerisms, he had a golden tongue. He wondered if Tucker lost very many arguments. He went over the Inspector's explanation, trying to convince himself that it was only so much imagination, but was not able to. Thomas Hengwr— the old man
was
odd. And Kieran— for several years now he'd been sending Jean-Paul occult books for Christmases and birthdays The Don Juan series Colin Wilson's
The Occult
and
Mysteries
The books hadn't convinced him of anything But what if they were a way of preparing him for... for what? Admittance into some secret sect? Jean-Paul found that hard to believe. But surely even the RCMP would not make up such an outlandish story to cover up some more sinister plot?

"I will do this,
inspecteur,
" Jean-Paul said at last. "I will keep my information to myself. For now. But you must promise me: If you find Kieran, you will get in touch with me immediately. You will let me speak to him, before you do anything to him."

"That I can promise you," Tucker said, his relief evident. "And if for some reason Foy gets in touch with you?"

"That will be my affair. I will speak with him first. Who knows? Perhaps he will agree to meet with you. But I find the thought unlikely. He will not overcome his feeling of betrayal so easily, I think."

"Then it's a deal," Tucker said.

He stood up and offered his hand. Sighing, Jean-Paul shook it.

"And the wiretap,
inspecteur?
"

"Perfectly legal. We ran it by Judge Peterson for authorization. I'll have it taken off. Say, how did you pick up on it?"

Jean-Paul smiled. "I didn't. It was an educated guess."

"Well, I'll be damned?"

"I hope not,
inspecteur.
Also, there is a man who followed me to work and another watching my house."

"I'll take them off. But listen up, Mr. Gagnon. Don't blow this on me. I'm trusting you. If I'm wrong about this..."

"I, too, am trusting you,
non?
"

"Yeah. I guess you are at that."

"
D'accord.
And now... we both have work that requires our attention, is that not so?"

Tucker nodded. "Thanks, Jean-Paul. Do you mind if I call you that?"

Jean-Paul shook his head. "No... John. Now please. I have much to think on."

When the Inspector was gone, Jean-Paul sat staring into nothing. Had he made a mistake in agreeing to go along with the Inspector? The man was... persuasive. Ah, Kieran, he thought.
Q'est-ce que tufais?
What are you doing?

12:10, Wednesday afternoon.

RCMP Superintendent Wallace Madison shook his head as Tucker finished his report. Madison was sixty-three, due to retire in a couple of years. His life, like Tucker's, was the Force. Period. He was tall and distinguished looking and needed a cane because of a hip injury in '69 that hadn't been treated properly.

"I don't know, John," he said.

"Know what?"

"Whether to promote or demote you sometimes. I really didn't think you'd have any luck with this Gagnon over at Health Protection. When Hogue came crying to me..."

Tucker lifted his gaze despairingly.

"What can I say, Wally?"

Madison sighed. "Not much." The bantering tone left his voice. "I need something hard for the Minister, John."

Tucker shook his head. "You've got to stall him. Give us a couple of days. Foy can't have gone far. Hengwr disappeared in Ottawa and, unless what Foy told Gagnon was a crock of shit, he's gonna hang around here looking for him. Then we pick him up."

"You've got a way with words, John. No doubt about it." Madison shoved the operation's file into his briefcase. "I'll do what I can. Do you have time for some lunch?"

" 'Fraid not. I've got to check out a couple of leads. You remember that stuff we found in Hengwr's room? The stuff Benson's been checking out?"

"Ted's got something?"

"Not exactly. What he
has
got is some guy that came into the museum with a bone disc that he wants to get dated. Thing is, it matches the set from Hengwr's room."

Madison nodded. "I can use that with the Minister. Following some hot leads."

Tucker grinned at the Superintendent's sarcasm.

"It's the only break we've got so far, Wally. I'm going to take a run down and have a talk with this guy. Benson's stalling him for us."

"If you get anything..."

Tucker smiled. "I know where to reach you. Kissing ass in the Solicitor General's office."

"Get out of here!"

"Yes,
sir!
"

They both laughed.

On Wednesday morning, Sara woke up feeling better than she had in ages. She wasn't normally a morning person; even with ten hours sleep, it took her two coffees and as many cigarettes just to creak her eyes open and start the gears turning. But today she woke up vibrant and alert.

Her alarm clock informed her that it was eight-thirty. But instead of burrowing her head back under the pillows, she jumped out of bed and set about getting dressed. A few minutes later, she headed down the stairs to the Silkwater Kitchen wearing jeans, moccasins and a pink sweatshirt with a picture of David Bowie in his "Ashes to Ashes" clown makeup on the front.

There was a fresh pot of coffee simmering on the stove— a sure sign that she wasn't the first up, she deduced with what she thought was a splendid show of deduction for this hour of the morning. She poured herself a mugful and settled down at the table that overlooked the garden to roll her first cigarette of the day. She leaned back in her chair and contentedly blew a wreath of silvery-grey smoke up to the ceiling.

She was seriously considering even having some breakfast, when she happened to glance out the window. Blue's new friend Sally was in the garden, wearing a burgundy Danskin top, leotards, leg warmers and black Chinese slippers. She was performing some esoteric warm-up ritual that looked like a cross between ballet and Kung Fu. Her movements were slow and deliberate and she spent as much time holding a pose as getting to it.

Sara watched until Sally finished, then got up to get more coffee as Sally headed for the kitchen.

"Morning!" Sara called and motioned to the pot. "What do you take in it?"

"Just black, thanks."

"You must be freezing."

"It's not so bad, once you get going." Sally slid into a seat across from Sara's. "You're up early. Blue said to go up and give you a shake if you hadn't dragged yourself down by nine-thirty. Said it was the only way to get you up."

"Usually is," Sara replied, pushing Sally's mug across the table to her. "I don't know what's come over me today. I just feel great. Alive! I'll probably collapse around noon when my brain finally realizes how long it's been awake." She looks so serene, Sara thought, studying Sally over the brim of her mug.

"What was that you were doing?" she asked.

"Tai chi. It's a meditation of sorts."

"Oh, yeah? Looks like something Bruce Lee would do." Sara made a couple of quick chopping motions in the air with the flats of her hands. "Slowed down."

"They're quite similar, actually. Only I like to think that the martial arts are just tai chi sped up."

They both laughed.

"So what're you up to today?" Sara asked.

"We're going for a ride up the Gatineau. If Blue ever wakes up."

"Brrr." Sara shivered. "You'd think he'd put his bike away by this time of year. But he never does."

"Not till the first snowfall, he told me. It won't be that bad."

"Wanna bet? I can lend you a parka. Then again, the way you were prancing around outside just now..."

Sally shook her head. "I don't feel the temperature when I'm doing tai chi."

"My offer still stands, then. For the parka."

"I think Blue'd be insulted. I've convinced him that I'm terribly hardy. It wouldn't do to blow the image too soon. Are you working today?"

"Umhmm."

"At the risk of seeming very snoopy, I've been wondering about something. You don't really
have
to work. So why do you?"

"Oh, I don't know. Gets me out, I suppose. The House can get such a grip on you that if you didn't
have
to go out, you could spend the rest of your life here, wandering aimlessly through the halls like a ghost. Sometimes I'm not so sure that there aren't ghosts in here, you know, doing just that."

Sara glanced at the old Coca-Cola clock that hung above the kitchen door. The time was nine-thirty.

"Speaking of work," she said, "I've got to get going and open up. You should drop by sometime. I'll show you the wonders of the antiquarian business— sure to dazzle your mind and baffle your senses. Or something like that."

Sally laughed. "Okay. I'll take you up on that."

"Are you going to be around for awhile?" Sara asked. "I mean in Ottawa."

"I think so. I've only been here a few months, but I really like it here— being with Blue and everything."

"I hope it works out," Sara said. "Blue's never had much luck with relationships. Most nice ladies don't look any further than his biker image. And as for the women who
are
are attracted by it—" She put her hand over her mouth. "I didn't mean..."

"That's okay. I know what you meant."

"How'd you guys meet, anyway? All I know is one day you weren't here, and the next you were. With Blue."

"We met in the National Art Gallery, of all places. It was so unexpected. I noticed him— how can you miss him?— standing and staring at some piece of modern art, just shaking his head, and I couldn't figure him out. There he was in his jean jacket and T-shirt, pierced ear and ponytail, going through the gallery like the art critic from
The New York Times
or something. Very serious."

"He gets like that."

"Well, I know that now. I suppose it's not very fair judging people by their appearances, but it just seemed so strange. I was feeling very bold, I suppose, so I marched up to him and introduced myself. I just
had
to know what he was doing there. I suppose I was expecting a cocky answer or something, but he started talking very earnestly about this painting— I forget who it was by, but it was one of those dreadful abstract things that I've never cared for— and what with one thing and another, we ended up going for lunch. And then, after a"— Sally smiled—"whirlwind romance, I ended up here."

"That's perfect! It's like the plot of one of those Hollywood musicals— you know, with Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds. So. Are you going to stay?"

"In the House? I'm not sure. I think so. I'd like to. It depends on how it all works out. Everything's happened kind of suddenly."

"Well,
I
hope it works out. I think it's just great." Sara looked at the clock again. "Oh, Lord. I've got to run. I'll see you later. Maybe you can show me some of that tai chi of yours— if you don't mind someone who's a total klutz and stumbles all over herself."

"I'd love to. It'll give me someone to work with."

Sara smiled. "I don't know. If it entails getting up this early every morning... Today's the exception more than the rule, you see. But I'd like to give it a try. See you tonight. That is if you make it back from your adventure in the frozen wilderness."

"I think I'll survive."

Sara raced up to her room, grabbed her coat, a scarf and her knapsack, and headed for the store, her hair blowing every which way in the wind. She was a couple of blocks from the House before she realized that she was still wearing her moccasins, but by then she decided she was too far along to go back and get her boots. The sky was overcast, but maybe it wouldn't rain. She grinned to herself. Today was the sort of day where nothing could go wrong. Last night's dream was as far from her thoughts as her old beau Stephan was. And she wasn't thinking of him at all.

Sara was sitting in front of her Selectric in The Merry Dancers, with Alan Stivell's harp music trickling from the speakers above the door. The sense of heightened awareness, or clarity, that she'd woken up with hadn't deserted her yet. In fact she'd just figured out what to do with her main protagonist— something that had been holding her up for a week or so.

She was in the middle of typing up the reactions of her lead female character when the phone rang.

"Damn," she muttered, missing the 'T' key so that "heart" came out reading "heary." She frowned at the phone, willing it to stop ringing, gave up after the fifth shrill jangle and picked it up. "The Merry Dancers, good afternoon," she said. "This is a recording. If you would like to leave a message, please speak clearly and—"

"Sairey?"

"Oh, hi, Jamie. What's up?"

"I'm afraid we've got a bit of a problem."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know where to begin. Remember I said I'd take your painting into Potter's this morning? I decided to go up to the museum and show Ted Benson your little bone button first. I knew he'd have to send out to Energy, Mines and Resources on Booth Street, so I thought I'd get that done right away."

"Jamie, what's happened? Your voice sounds all jittery."

"I..."He cleared his throat. "I've just finished an interview with an Inspector Tucker from the RCMP. It seems that your bone button was stolen from an art exhibit and—"

"Stolen? But that's impossible! I found it in that box in the back of the shop. It'd been there for years."

"Well,
I
know that. I tried to tell this Inspector and he— he's a real thug, Sairey. Talks like he stepped out of a Mickey Spillane novel."