Seaweed Under Water (24 page)

“For your benefit, they're still investigating. If a bullet hit a tree, they might find it and will let us know. In the meantime . . . ” Bernie shook his head. “It's only your word against his.”

“Even you don't believe me?” I asked.

“There's something wrong with this picture,” Bernie said heartlessly. “First, you tell me, Tess Rollins did her best to
fuck
your brains out. Now, you tell me, Harley Rollins did his best to
blow
your brains out. So, with what's left of your brains, think this through again. Take your time, there's no hurry.”

I took a deep breath and began to speak. Bernie listened politely, but he didn't seem impressed. When I'd said my piece, again, Bernie leaned back in his chair and twiddled his thumbs. He made a slight sucking sound with his lips and said, “Buddy, I think you've earned yourself a little convalescent leave. Take a few days off, why don't you?”

“Thanks very much.”

“We seem to have reached a stalemate. If you have any more bright ideas, give me a ring. With a bit of luck, who knows? Maybe we'll crack this case yet.”

I went home.

≈  ≈  ≈

I woke after lunch, sweating in my bed and wondering which was worse—my pounding head, my aching molars or that sore ear. It was a close-run thing. I threw cotton bedsheets aside and put my feet on the floor. After a while, the world stopped spinning. When I reached up and touched my ear gently with my fingers, it felt swollen but intact. My only consolation was the bottle on my bedside table. I took a long swig to pacify my teeth, following which, after one unsuccessful attempt, I managed to stand. It was not my finest hour. I staggered outside to the privy and reached it without falling down. That rustic one-holer, situated in a cedar grove downwind of my cabin, is a very private place. I sat there for a while, posed like Rodin's
Thinker
, with the door open.

Fog blanketed the reserve; it was too dense to see anywhere but up, where the fog was thin enough to reveal the sun's diffused golden orb. Once, a low-flying float plane passed overhead. My headache slowly diminished and my teeth settled down, although I began to wonder if I had an infected ear. That led to dark musings about the dating possibilities available to one-eared bachelors. Such dates might be dismally few. I'd probably end up like Henry Ferman, a figure of fun in a Brillo-pad wig. I returned to my cabin, poured another two fingers and sipped it while fixing coffee and bacon and eggs.

Last year, I had treated myself to wrought iron patio furniture, so I ate breakfast in my garden. Summertime, that little oasis is sunlit all day. As gardens go, it's small—a mere 20 feet square—surrounded by a cedar privacy hedge. The Garry oaks and arbutus trees make acidic soil, so for years, I've been digging seaweed in to sweeten it. Now, I grow dahlias with heads as big as cabbages, along with chrysanthemums, hollyhocks, pansies, begonias and a buddleia. The rest is lawn that I keep short with a hand mower. One of these days, maybe, I'll get around to building a small greenhouse in here.

When the fog burned off, a one-legged raven flew in and perched on a totem pole near the Warrior Longhouse. There was something in the raven's unwinking stare I didn't like. It was still glowering when somebody drove up and parked outside my hedge. A door slammed, and the raven flew off. I peered through a gap in the hedge, and there was a shiny S-Type Mercedes convertible. The garden gate opened and Tess Rollins swaggered in.
Unbelievable
, I thought.

She looked pretty good; her eyes were drawn as boldly as Tutankhamen's. She was dressed in a crisp white shirt that showed off sensational cleavage, shorts made out of some kind of shiny white rubber and white leather sandals. A leather bag draped her shoulder. It was a simple outfit that even I could recognize as ruinously expensive. She smelled of sandalwood and seemed uncharacteristically shy.

She smiled and acted as if yesterday had never happened, and I went along with it. After all, I reflected, if she tried any funny business I could always strangle her. I even gave her a brotherly kiss and a brief hug, carefully maintaining discreet
airspace between our pelvic regions. Then we started to laugh and our tensions faded, although not entirely.

“You look wrecked,” she observed, sitting on one of the chairs beside my table. “And I don't like the colour of that big fat ear. Is it
supposed
to be green?”

“Just passing?”

“I've got a few minutes to waste,” she replied, taking a bunch of grapes from her bag. She handed them to me saying, “Forget what I said about your ear.”

“You didn't soak these grapes in cyanide, did you?”

“Hell no,” she said, popping one into her mouth.

The grapes were sweet and delicious. I ate a few, adjusted my chair till it faced hers and said, “So. What's up?”

“To tell you the truth, I'm feeling horny. I guess it was all that excitement last night. So I thought, What the hell, let bygones be bygones, right? So how about it?”

“How about what?”

“Don't be coy, Silas, you know exactly what I mean,” she said, wiggling her tight little rubber-clad butt. “How'd you like to jump my bones?”

“I thought we'd left that merry-go-round. How about coffee instead—or perhaps you'd prefer a drink?”

“A drink would be a start. And another kiss to show there's no hard feelings?”

Laughing in spite of myself, I stood up. She stood as well, gently kissed my cheek and nibbled my good ear. Her voracious sexuality was repellent and attractive at the same time. She was trying to fondle my balls when I pulled away.

Grinning wickedly, she said, “Got any decent Chardonnay?”

I went inside my cabin, took out a bottle of homemade white plonk from my fridge and put it on a tray along with a couple of glasses. When I got back outside, Tess was using my outhouse. She'd left her bag on the table so I opened it. It was chocablock with freshly minted $100 bills.

When Tess rejoined me, I gave her a glass of plonk, clinked it with my own glass and said, “Cheers.”

“
Skol
. Did you like what you saw inside my bag?”

“You were keeping an eye on me from the privy?”

She gazed at me with steady dark eyes.

I grinned at her and said, “Sure, I love money. What's it for?”

“You, possibly, only it's not a gift. If you want the money, you'll have to earn it.”

“To change the topic just slightly, do you know Pinky's?”

“That club on View Street?” she said, apparently a little puzzled. “Yeah, I've been there a couple of times. It's not very upscale—I prefer the Bengal Room.”

“Sometimes, income governs taste. Janey Colby spent the last night of her life in Pinky's.”

“Did she?”

“You
know
she did.”

“I hope she had fun,” Tess said cheerfully, ignoring my comment. “Oh and by the way, I love this wine. Is it just me, or do I detect traces of eucalyptus, kerosene and wormwood?”

“Berries and English crumpets. According to witnesses, Janey was drunk. She'd been drinking heavily all night. More importantly, Janey had been watching triple-X movies in the back room. One movie featured her daughter having sex with your brother. Harley and Terry are blood kin, so it was incest.”

Tess Rollins' happy mood faded noticeably. She moved uneasily in her chair and bit her upper lip, but didn't say anything.

I drank a little wine and went on, “It's time for a revisionist history.”

Tess shook her head. “That might be okay, if I knew what ‘revisionist' meant. Why don't you explain it to me in simple words?”

“I'm talking about the history of the Rollins family. There's
your
version, and then there's the truth.”

Our glasses were empty. I emptied the bottle, filling them up. “You and your brothers were involved together in HANE Logging, a private company. When Jane Colby went missing, before I knew that Jane had been murdered, I started making inquiries in Mowaht Bay. That's where we first met, right?”

“I remember it vividly, and it was a lucky break for you. I saved your life, don't forget.”

“Yes. I owed you one. Now we're even.”

“And here I've been kidding myself that you were unique. But you
do
keep score. You're like every other man I've ever met.”

I grinned at her with my head on one side. “You gave me a thumbnail history of Harley and his company. Your reasons for doing so weren't apparent to me then, but they are now. You told me that Harley Rollins founded HANE Logging while your other brother, Neville, was away at college. You were working as a hairdresser. Janey Colby was Harley's longtime girlfriend. You gave up hairdressing and joined Harley's company as a bookkeeper. Neville combined forces with Harley after graduating from UBC. Neville contributed greatly to HANE's success. Everything in the garden was lovely, until Harley Rollins found out that Neville was two-timing him with Janey. After that, according to you, things changed. Neville got Janey, but Harley made him pay for it by freezing him out of the company. You began to worry that Harley might freeze you out too, so you asked him to make you a partner. You ended up with a one-third interest in the entire operation.”

Tess grinned and said, “What is it that you don't believe?”

“Harley never froze Neville out of HANE. You lied to me.”

“How did I lie to you?”

“The Rainbow Motel property was, and still is, wholly owned by HANE Logging. The principals in that company are Harley Rollins, Tess Rollins
and
Neville Rollins.”

“How do you know that?”

“I searched the title.”

“So what? Neville's dead. A dead man can't own anything.”

That absurdity made me smile.

Tess drained her glass and said, “That's a cheap bottle of wine. Got anything better inside?”

I went into my cabin, came back with another bottle of homemade and refilled our glasses. Tess scowled when she saw the label, but steeled herself to drink an inch.

I sat down and looked at her. Tess still seemed quite composed. I said, “The actual facts are these: Your brother Harley founded a sawmill and ran it as a single proprietorship until Neville graduated from UBC, when they created a private partnership.
That's
why it was called HANE—the brothers' combined the first two letters of Harley's name, and the first two letters of Neville's name. Originally, Harley owned two-thirds of the company. Neville owned one third. You, Tess, ended up owning half of Harley's share. Am I right?”

Tess nodded, but she was pretending to be more interested in her surroundings than in what I was saying. I went on, “Neville's marriage to Janey created bad feelings between the brothers. Harley tried to force Neville out, but Neville wouldn't budge. So Harley murdered him.”

“No he didn't,” Tess said flatly.

I smirked at her politely. “The way I figure it, Harley murdered Neville Rollins and put his body into a furnace.”

Shaking her head in denial, Tess said softly, “It wasn't murder. It was an accident.”

“How do you know?”

“The day it happened, Harley had called a directors' meeting at his house. I was there. Harley ordered Neville to sell his shares back to the company. Neville refused, they ended up arguing—fighting and smashing furniture, throwing things at each other. Neville was disgusted. Turned his back on Harley, left the house and started to walk away. Harley had a gun, a .25. Neville was 50 yards off when Harley fired a couple of shots. Kind of wild—they weren't intended to kill Neville or even hit him. Harley just wanted to scare him. You'd have to be a pretty good shot, to kill a man at 50 yards with a .25. Harley wasn't that good.

“By a fluke, one bullet struck Neville and it killed him instantly. It was terrible, awful. Harley went to pieces. We ought to have called the cops immediately, that's obvious now. But we lost our heads and shut Neville up inside that old logging donkey, told people that when Neville disappeared he had been working alone on a log boom. Everyone assumed he'd fallen into the water. Then we started a rumour that he'd been murdered, tried to blame Janey. Gradually, the fuss died down.”

Tess took a long deep breath and her voice fell to a whisper. “Neville wasn't the only one who died that day. Something died inside Harley. He lost all interest in HANE Logging. Harley gave me another big piece of it and spent his time messing around with sorcerers, diving into the Gorge, trying to contact the Unknown World. Spooky stuff. HANE Logging went downhill fast. I took care of my money and ended up richer than Harley.”

Tess reached for the bottle and refilled her glass without offering to fill mine. It wasn't rudeness—Tess was somewhere else.

I waited a minute and said, “Now we've got that settled, let's look at Karl Berger's part in this drama,” I said, trying but failing to catch Tess's eye. “Karl wasn't just managing the Rainbow Motel. He had a sideline distributing triple-X movies. It was a marginal operation—too much competition—so Karl branched out, started making home movies. Harley didn't know it, but he was one of Karl's stars, as was Terry Colby.”

Tess was staring up at the totem pole. The raven had gone; the sun was very hot. Tess said wistfully, “Poor little cow. Harley used to pick Terry up from her care home and take her to the motel. Nobody knew he was banging her. The nuns never suspected a thing.”

“You knew about it?”

“Not at first.”

“When did you find out?”

Tess dabbed her upper lip with her tongue and said absently, “When Janey told me.”

“In other words, the same night Janey herself found out.”

Tess nodded.

“Here's another screwy thing,” I said. “Until almost the end of her life, Janey Colby didn't know that her dead husband was Harley's legal partner. I guess that during their short marriage she wasn't interested in learning just exactly where Neville's money came from. Obviously, she never asked. Many of her years were passed in drunken ignorance.”