Seaweed Under Water (11 page)

I found it lying along a trail. It appeared uninjured, but it was dead. I stood beside it, bowed my head and said a Coast Salish prayer. When I looked up, the sun was shining directly into my eyes through a break in the trees. Squinting myopically, I noticed a large unnatural shape in a dark patch of bush. It turned out to be a steam-powered logging donkey.

A hundred years previously, that chunk of obsolete hardware had been the last word in hi-tech logging. Outmoded for decades, nowadays rarely seen outside forestry museums, it consisted of a steam-powered winch and a vertical boiler. The whole rusty contraption was built on a steel platform supported on long wooden skids instead of wheels.

My cell phone rang. Texaco Tommy said, “Urban Kramer just gave me the bad news. I'll be with you in about an hour.”

I sat down on the donkey's raised platform. My thoughts wandered aimlessly, until I focused on an interesting fact: Earlier, I had noticed Boss Rollins' Lincoln. Now I remembered Rollins' DUI conviction; he'd had his licence suspended for six months.

It was very hot, and my eyes closed; perhaps I dozed for a few minutes. I stood up, stretched and took a final look at the steam donkey. It had been built long ago by the Victoria Machine Depot and, given its antiquity, was reasonably well preserved. Why hadn't Rollins sold the donkey for scrap, or donated it to a museum? Then I noticed something peculiar. The boiler's furnace door was welded shut. Why? Perhaps, I thought, to prevent kids from climbing inside the furnace and latching themselves in. Earlier in my career, I'd been called to investigate the death of a small boy who had suffocated inside one of those old-fashioned fridges with self-locking doors. Once inside, the poor lad had been doomed.

Something moved in a patch of shrubbery. I became aware of bad-smelling air, and of a low unearthly wailing.
Kids!
I thought.
Kids throwing stink bombs.

I ran into the shrubbery and began to look around. I saw nobody, although a circle of flattened grass showed where a dog or a wolf had been lying. The ground felt cool to my touch—no animal had lain there recently. That foul sulphurous odour increased, trees began to creak, branches rustled, the earth moved beneath me. I didn't imagine this. The ground definitely shook, I felt it distinctly. Some weird force was at work and whatever it was, that force, or agency, meant to harm me. I was remembering Tommy's remark about Sasquatches when there was a crash as something massive fell over. The earth trembled again, and a humanoid face appeared—or something like a face; it was a parchment-coloured oval with eyes, partially concealed by green leaves.

Like a man in a nightmare, trying not to panic, I backed away. There
are
secret places in Coast Salish territory where ghostly creatures linger—or can be summoned. As I moved, the ground sloped precipitously. I lost my footing and began to slide. Seconds later I was dangling face down over the edge of a bluff. The only thing separating me from permanent oblivion was a slender young arbutus. I grabbed its smooth trunk and dragged myself to safety. When my heart stopped hammering I moved to a place where I could see down without danger. In a steep valley below, a narrow trickle of snowmelt widened out into a large circular pool.

By the time I reached my wrecked car, my jitters had faded. All the same, I was very relieved when Texaco Tommy showed up in his wrecker and I put that spooky place behind.

CHAPTER TEN

Two hours later, I was at the Bee Hive's counter, digesting one of Ronnie's mushroom, sardine and olive omelettes. Four rambunctious teenagers were bingeing on ice cream sundaes in a booth behind me. Ronnie, leaning against a cooler, filled his lungs with what passed for air in there and used enough of it to say, “How you enjoying Mowaht Bay so far?”

“As compared to what? Afghanistan?”

“Tommy gave you bad news, did he?” Ronnie said glancing out the window across the street, where his brother's legs were visible beneath the wrecked MG.

“It could be worse. Your brother thinks it'll be driveable by tomorrow afternoon. I'll have it fixed properly in Victoria, after the insurance adjuster sees it.”

“Does that mean you're staying the night here?”

“Stay where? All due respect, Ronnie, but Mowaht Bay reminds me of a girl I used to know: she was nice on our first acquaintance but soon got tired of me.”

“Chrissie has a room above her beauty parlour that she rents out sometimes. Maybe it's available. Want me to phone her and find out?”

I was turning the idea over when Ronnie added, “It's across from the Legion Hall. Nothing fancy, just a bachelor pad.” Amusement writ large on his face, Ronnie added, “I hope you're not a light sleeper. The Legion gets noisy on weekends.”

“Okay, but tell Chrissie it's only a one-night stand.”

The teenagers were ready to leave. After they paid and went out, Ronnie lifted his phone off its wall-mounted cradle, dialed a number and spoke a few words. He put a hand over the mouthpiece and said to me, “Chrissie says the room's yours if you want it. It'll set you back 40 bucks.”

“Tell Chrissie I'll be right over.”

I paid for my dinner. Ronnie put a CLOSED sign in his window, locked up and followed me out.

“That's it,” Ronnie said, pointing to a wood frame commercial building, adjacent to the government wharf. “Chrissie's in her parlour, waiting for you.”

It was Saturday night and getting dark. Texaco Tommy had stopped work and was in his office, taking off his coveralls. Loggers and mill workers were cruising back and forth in hot rods, SUVs and four-by-four pickups—raising dust and hollering at the girls congregated near the Legion Hall. Couples strolled arm in arm, enjoying the cool of the evening.

Ronnie joined his brother inside the gas station. I unlocked my car, and I was reaching inside for the overnight bag I carry for emergencies when a series of minor explosions disturbed the night—people were setting off fireworks over by the school. The twins hurried off to witness the excitement as rockets began lighting up the sky.

Just then, two masked men appeared from behind the Legion Hall. They came toward me carrying baseball bats and wearing generic plaid shirts, dark jeans and caulk boots. “That's him,” one of them said, raising his bat. Only it wasn't a bat. Oily metal glinted as he aimed a shotgun, fired and missed. The sound of exploding fireworks cloaked the Sound. A third masked man emerged from the shadows.

Boxed in, I ran across the street onto the government wharf. The wharf's plank deck was slippery underfoot as I raced out along a float between fishboats and pleasure boats. When I reached the end of the float, I was jammed. Instead of diving into the icy water I jumped aboard a troller and tried to open its cabin door. It was locked. Looking around for a weapon of some sort I noticed a box, full of fish-line sinkers. Made of cast lead, they were the size of tennis balls and weighed a good 20 pounds each.

The goons had followed me onto the wharf but in the darkness had lost sight of me. Now they were getting their bearings. I heard them talking before they moved toward me, so I picked up a lead sinker. A man with a baseball bat reached me first. When he leapt aboard swinging, I hit him with the sinker. He collapsed at my feet with a broken jaw, but his bat struck my left arm first. The man with the shotgun showed up next and skidded to a stop. He was taking aim when I threw another sinker at him with the full strength of my right arm then dived into the water.

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.