Seaweed Under Water (12 page)

“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 sisters-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. Harley 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.”

“It sounds terrific.”

“It was terrific. Till Harley found out that Neville had been banging his girlfriend, and was going to marry her.”

Tess's beer bottle was empty again. I padded across to the fridge, took out two fresh cold ones, screwed the caps off and gave one to her. We touched bottles. I said, “Cheers.”

Tess's eyes were clear and brilliant; in them, I perceived a hint of anger. She went on, “Harley and Neville were never partners in anything but name. It was Harley's company, 100 percent. They did everything on the basis of a handshake, if that. Maybe they never even shook hands. After Neville and Janey got married, though, things changed.

“HANE Logging was becoming a huge success. People with MBAs from Harvard and Queens were being hired to manage the head office in Victoria. Harley branched out into other businesses, property investments, who knows what all. After Harley started making all this money, he deliberately set out to break the brother who'd made it possible. Harley took his time. First, he demoted Neville from chief sales manager to office manager. A few months later, he busted him even further, to assistant manager of woods operations. When Neville went missing, he was working as a foreman on the booming grounds. God only knows why he put up with it. Maybe Neville kept remembering that his big brother had put him through college. Maybe he had a guilty conscience about Janey.

“I didn't like what Harley was doing to Neville. Still, Neville had brought misfortune on his own head. Besides, Neville was a big boy. He didn't have to put up with anything he didn't want to. He was young, and he was very, very smart. He could have worked for somebody else, started his own outfit. He could have just walked away from Harley at any time, there was nothing stopping him.”