Seaweed Under Water (25 page)

“All right, smartass,” Tess snapped, a little edge to her voice now. “So tell me. How
did
Janey finally wise up?”

“Jack Owens and Janey had taken a beating on a failed condo scheme. They were having trouble meeting their obligations. To avoid bankruptcy, Owens delved into Janey's knotty financial affairs. He found out what I found out, that as Neville's widow, Jane was part-owner of everything you Rollinses own, including the Rainbow Motel—a chunk of waterfront real estate now worth millions.” I gave Tess time to think that over, smiled at her and said, “Tell me. How did you handle it when Jane showed up demanding her share of the HANE money?”

Tess replied bitterly, “Believe it or not, I was very sweet with Janey. There wasn't much point in arguing because she had me by the short hairs. I fed Janey a few bucks to be going on with. Promised there'd be more when the Rainbow Motel came down and the new development progressed. She was satisfied.”

“For a while.”

“Right again, Silas. Janey was satisfied, if only temporarily. Janey was a heavy spender, and she started to up the ante.”

“Up the ante?”

“That's what I said, isn't it? Janey upped the ante, wanted more and more, because she was greedy.”

“Greedy?
You
tried to scam her out of a fortune, my dear. Janey became a nuisance, so you killed her.”

Tess started to dispute the point, but suddenly changed her mind. Staring at her fingernails she said longingly, “I suppose there's no way we can just drop it, is there? I mean, we'd make a great team, you and me.”

For the first time in minutes she looked directly into my eyes and said, “You're descended from a long line of nobility, Silas. Not so long ago, Coast Salish chiefs made their own laws. Now you enforce Whitey's laws, and for what? You earn $60–70,000 a year? Christ, I'm worth
millions
! Treat me right and we'll travel first class together for the rest of our lives. The money in that bag is yours if you want it.”

I shook my head.

Tess came out of her chair, knelt at my feet, put both hands on my thighs and rested her head on my lap. I put my hand on her shoulder as she wept. Her voice muffled, she said, “I'm not glamorous, not like your girlfriend is. Or like the old Janey was. Janey was a cow, but she had plenty of boyfriends. My brothers and Jack Owens weren't the only guys who ran after Janey Colby. I was always jealous of her. Nobody ever loved
me
. Not for myself. Nobody. I was the ugly duckling, still am. Guys don't want me for myself, they want me for my money. It's different for men, men can look like apes, but if they're kind, if they treat people right, there's all kinds of women will love them and make them happy . . . ” Her voice trailed away into dry sobs.

Tess was a murderer, and at that moment I felt sorry for her. But in a few minutes I was going to handcuff her and call a paddy wagon. She was going to spend the rest of her life behind bars, where her millions wouldn't matter. I said, “There
is
one loose end. Before Janey died, she had sex with somebody. Do you know who?”

“No. Karl Berger maybe? Janey was voracious, had a regular string of studs.”

Tess got up unaided, went back to her chair and sat down. A little wine remained in the bottle on the table beside her. She poured it all into her glass, drank a little. Eyes brimming, trying to smile, she put the glass on the table and asked, “Are you going to arrest me, Silas?”

“Not quite yet.”

“I was a fool, wasn't I, telling you everything?”

“They say that confession is good for the soul, and by the way, your confession didn't make much difference. I already knew that you killed Janey Colby.”

“How? What made you think that?”

“It took a while. The taxi driver who picked up the Native in Cadboro Bay was sure he'd picked up a man, so I suspected Harley. But it bothered me that he never actually saw this man's face—and that this man was very well dressed.” I paused for effect. “Harley always dresses like a bum. You're the fancy dresser, Tess. Plus, Harley didn't really care about money anymore. You
did
.”

“Except that I'm not a man.”

“But you have a low voice. Lower it more, deliberately, and you could sound like a man. You did the other night when you called me a liar after I told you I was off duty.”

“So how did I kill her, then?”

“You drowned her. You took a steel cable from a speedboat and hooked it around Janey's neck. Then you got into the speedboat and towed Janey Colby off the Rainbow Motel's beach into the Inner Harbour. Unfortunately, you ran into another boat, so I know exactly what time you did it.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. The Johnson Street Bridge operator noted the incident in his log. Afterwards, you beached the speedboat at Cadboro Bay and caught a taxi back home.”

“I knew you were smart. I like smart men,” Tess said, melancholy heavy in her voice, “but as long as we're being so open and confessional with each other, I've got another question.”

“I don't guarantee to answer it.”

“This white girlfriend of yours. Do you love her?”

Startled, I didn't say anything. I didn't need to. Tess inferred what she needed to know from the changed expression on my face.

She continued, “That night we ran into each other in the Cook Street Village. It wasn't an accident, Silas darling. I've been watching you for a while. I saw you go into her apartment building and I waited till you came out. I was going crazy, imagining what the two of you might be getting up to together. Did you make love to her?”

Tess had somehow made the mistake of thinking that Denise was Felicity
!

I said, “Stop torturing yourself. There are more important things to deal with right now.”

“What's more important than love? Death?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

Tess said, “Hate is stronger than love, and I hate that girlfriend of yours. Right now, I almost hate you, so here's something for you to wrestle with. For your girlfriend, it's all over.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Harley's got her; he's going to kill her if he hasn't done so already,” Tess said.

Her face expressionless, she reached under the patio table, brought out a .25 and stood up.

“You're not the only smart one, Silas. I've got brains too. I don't want to kill you, not ever, really. Right now I'm all messed up, though. I will kill you if I have to.”

“Killing me won't improve your situation. The only thing you'll gain is a few miserable hours of running and hiding.”

“Wrong, Silas, we've got it all figured out. Harley will take the fall for whatever's happened, not me.”

“Does Harley know that yet?”

“It's his own idea, it's what Harley wants,” Tess answered, not smiling. “He's taking some people with him as slaves, to serve him in the Unknown World.”

We were standing 10 feet apart. Her face was half in shadow but sunlight shone in her hair and I realized once again how strangely attractive I had always found her. Tess had been looking at my lips instead of my eyes. Her own eyes were hooded, clouded. The upraised arm holding the gun lowered slightly, but when I moved she re-established her aim and said, “Take that cell phone out of your pocket and toss it over here.”

I obeyed. She destroyed the phone by grinding it under her foot, then said, “Turn around, Silas, and head for your cabin. Keep your hands where I can see them. And remember, I'm nervous. If you do something stupid this gun might go off and you could end up with a bullet in you. That'd be a shame because in spite of the way things have turned out, I love you.”

“You love me so much, you're willing to kill me?”

“
Willing
is the wrong word. We're descended from killers, you and me, and we'd be killers still, if it hadn't been legislated out of existence by the guys who killed our culture. Let's just say I'm ready to do it if you force me to. Harley's different. He's got a slave-killer club with your name on it.”

I said stupidly, “A slave-killer club?”

“Yeah, a real antique stone club, it weighs about 20 pounds. One tap on the head and brains pour out of your ears. The good news is, death is quick.”

We went into my cabin. Tess Rollins ordered me to stand four feet away from a wall, lean forward and touch the wall with both hands. With my face turned away from her like that, I listened as Tess moved around. First, she closed the window blinds, after which she destroyed my desk phone and yanked the jack from its socket. I was thinking about slave-killers, and Denise, and feeling a bit sorry for myself.

“It's a shame things turned out this way,” Tess lamented. “I kidded myself you'd take the money, go along with my proposition. We'd have made a great couple, Silas, and now it's too late.”

“It's never too late to act sensibly. This is crazy.”

“Crazy or not, I'm committed,” she said. “Sure you won't take that money after all?”

“I can't.”

“That's it then, there's no backup plan. I've got to get you into my car and have you drive us someplace.”

“Where are we going?”

“You'll find out. Things might go better than you think.”

I was still stretched out uncomfortably, with my arms stretched against the wall. I said, “I'm getting a backache. How about letting me stand up and straighten out for a bit?”

“Fine, you do that. Just make sure to keep your hands up, and don't move your feet or turn around.”

Her voice told me that Tess was about 10 feet behind me. She said, “All right, let's go. Open the door, walk slowly through your garden and get into the driver's seat of my car.”

“You want me to drive the krautwagen?”

“
Mercedes
, if you don't mind.”

“Does the Mercedes have an automatic transmission?”

“No, it's a five-speed,” she said, faintly mocking, “and don't pretend you can't drive it.”

“Believe it or not, I can't,” I lied. “I never did learn to operate a stick shift.”

Laughing outright she said, “Your MG has a stick shift.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Enough fooling around,” Tess ordered. “Let's go. You know what I want. Make no sudden moves or I might pull this trigger.”

I went slowly toward the door and, as Tess followed, I was trying to guess how close she was. Instead of opening the door immediately, I waited. She said, “Stop messing me about, Silas.”

I could tell she was about six feet behind. My heart racing, I took a deep breath, reached out for the doorknob, then gave it a sharp inward swing. As the door slammed open I dropped to my haunches and threw myself backwards. Tess's gun went off and a bullet flew into the ceiling. Our collision sent Tess sliding across the floor in a swirl of arms and legs. She ended lying on her back, her head against a wall. She pulled herself up into a sitting position, the gun still firmly in her grasp. Grinning, speaking as lightly as if we were playing some sort of childhood game, she stared at me in the slatted light and said, “Silas, it's been fun. Now the fun is over because you've been a fool. You've lost me. You've lost your girlfriend. You'll never meet her again in this life. Harley will see to that.”

Tess made herself more comfortable against the wall by shuffling her ass and raising her knees. I said, “One thing you ought to know. The woman you think is my girlfriend is actually a police constable. Her name is Denise Halvorsen. She lives in that six-storey condo on Cook Street.”

“You're a liar.”

I shook my head. Tess stared at me. As the import of my statement sank in, her jaw went slack. Then she put the muzzle of the gun into her mouth, and pulled the trigger. The gun clattered to the floor. Her eyes remained open. Her mouth stayed open wide enough to show the tips of her white teeth. Apart from a little trickle of blood collected at one corner of her mouth, Tess looked normal. The adrenaline rush that had kept me high faded. I was overwhelmed with a sadness that left me breathless, and I was crying real tears, whether in lament for Tess Rollins, for Denise, or for myself, when the door opened. Chief Alphonse came in. As he bent down to look at Tess, I said idiotically, “You're a bit late.”

“It made a lot of noise, that little gun,” the chief said, in the calm ironic voice of one who knows all about life's disasters, but is too wise to worry about them.

“The gun was big enough to kill her.”

“Suicide is a lot easier than it used to be, but it still don't make sense,” he remarked, gently closing Tess's eyelids. “Who is she?”

“Tess Rollins.”

“Tess Rollins is in the land of the dead now,” Chief Alphonse said, getting to his feet. “I'll say some prayers for her, make sure she sleeps in peace.”

I hadn't moved since he'd entered the cabin. The chief locked the door, covered Tess with a rug and knelt beside her. When he finished praying, he made some medicine over her body with his hands and then seated himself at my kitchen table. He said, “You all right now?”

“No,” I said, staring down at the rug-draped corpse. “According to Tess, Boss Rollins has kidnapped Denise Halvorsen and plans to kill her, take her to the Unknown World. Denise might even be dead already!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

We were in the loaner, travelling flat out along Mowaht Bay's unpaved road. Chief Alphonse was in the passenger seat beside me. “You might want to drive more carefully,” the chief said mildly, as we raced an 18-wheeler toward a one-way bridge. Gravel thrown up by the truck's wheels peppered my windshield when I pulled out to pass. The 18-wheeler's horn thundered. We were doing close to a hundred when a pickup truck appeared right in front of us. The pickup truck's driver and I hit the brakes at the same time. The steering wheel jerked in my hands. I braced myself as the car went into a slide, yet somehow, we skidded to a stop, still on the road instead of hitting a tree or plunging into Mowaht Sound. As the pickup truck sped by, I caught a glimpse of its white-faced driver.