April Fool (21 page)

Dooley is pleased with his place in history–he was the first to sight the returning male, talons clutching a love offering: a large, overripe fish for the female, who has taken to the nest. Other witnesses include members of an Oregon birding club who pause on the way down to show Arthur digital images: two fiercely frowning eagles perched by the nest.

The television crew appears, straining under the weight of equipment. Puffing along behind, as if drawn by the magnet of their camera, is Kurt Zoller, with a squawking walkie-talkie, Corporal Al issuing commands: “I want no more than half a dozen folks up here at a time, and I want them quiet.”

“Roger, copy that, over.” Because he has an authoritarian bent, Zoller is regularly deputized for traffic control. He takes up position to guard the pass.

Arthur decides not to tarry, Kim has made dinner. He'll return this evening for the changing of the guard ceremony. On his way down, he comes upon Nelson Forbish panting against a tree, looking as if he might explode. “How far, how…am I almost there?” Arthur knows he's not going to make it, and leads him back to the Gap. “I was the first one to hear, I could've had a scoop.”

At Stump Town, a guitar-banjo-bongo trio is warming up for a celebration. Reverend Al pours Arthur a hot toddy from his Thermos, and they click cups. “I have to admit the pagan ceremony brought faster results than mine. Little twinge of doubt there.” He has just returned from the Holy Tree, whose tenants are celebrating too. “They're having a gay old time
scripting a set-piece for this evening, though God knows what. They want you there. I'll pick you up.”

 

Though still smarting from Lotis's defection, Arthur is buoyed by the hope of reuniting tonight with Margaret. Tomorrow, he will make a vigorous pitch for Lotis–Santorini may not slap her in irons now that the eagles are nesting. He can hardly allow cutting to begin now anyway.

Reverend Al pulls into the driveway, beaming. “I'm thinking of incorporating a few Vedic ceremonies into my next service. One must borrow the best from other creeds.”

“What brings this heresy on?”

“We have eggs, Arthur, two of them. Enjoy this.”

A glossy photo: two frowning eagles perched by the nest, surveying their realm, the Kingdom of Gwendolyn Valley. Partly obscured by the lip of the nest are two grey oval shapes.

“Leif Thorson came out of retirement, fused vertebrae and all, put on his spurs, went up the rigging of the tallest fir on the bluffs, and rappelled to a tree overhanging the Gap. Two healthy-looking eggs, Arthur. Thirty-five days of incubation, eighty days before the juveniles leave the nest. Have we bought the summer?”

“I'm not sure.” Who knows what could happen with Santorini the Unpredictable. Never mind, if today's rustic ceremony plays out as he expects, Margaret will be home tonight. He has baked a lemon pie. A little scorched on top, but a respectable effort.

 

Musicians are playing again at Stump Town, the band swollen to six, augmented by fiddle, flute, and ukulele. Young people are dancing. Corporal Al is standing by his bicycle, panting in sweat-soaked regimentals but grinning with the accomplishment of his steep haul to the Gap.

“This is getting too noisy,” he says. “I'm shutting it down before Vern comes by with his trombone. Can't use the hall,
it's got a spring flower fundraiser, so I'll ask the Rosekeepers if they mind moving the party to their picnic grounds. It'll probably go all night, in case you boys feel overcome by the need to dance.”

Nearing the Holy Tree, Arthur hears two female voices, joined in a chant. In their aerie, Margaret and Lotis have their arms around each other, and are reciting a banal oft-quoted poem: “Woodman, spare that tree.” They're hamming it up, a vaudeville routine.

Cud Brown leans scornfully against the trunk, arms folded, refusing to add to some lesser poet's celebrity. The performance draws a sardonic cheer from a couple of reporters.

The rope ladder flutters down. Arthur wonders if he's expected to climb it, to participate in this revue, join them in a soft-shoe, or perhaps the grand quartet from
Rigoletto
. But clearly his role will be to receive Margaret in his arms as she descends from her throne. He should have brought flowers. He must think of bon mots for the intruding microphones.

Arthur settles under the ladder, holding it steady. She'll not forget the safety line, he hopes. Slappy knows what's up, he's wagging his tail fiercely. It's a beautiful scene, lit by a spike of sunlight through the trail. What descends, directly above, is a floppy pair of large boots below knobby knees and hairy thighs. Arthur steps back to widen the angle, confirms that the scruffy shape coming down is Cud Brown, with his old army rucksack. His sour face hints that this is not his finest hour.

Margaret launches one of her paper gliders. It takes a wide circle toward Cud, then catches a breeze and dips several feet down, and is finally hooked in the claws of a dead branch within Cud's reach.

He has the gall to open and read it. He shouts to its author: “Oh, real sensitive. I got feelings.” Cud resumes his descent and drops the now formless airplane. Arthur sticks it in a pocket. And now he's assailed by a miasmic stench. It's a whiff of Cud, now only a body length above him. The loosely booted
feet, when level to Arthur's nose, have a peculiarly rich tang.

“Whew,” says a young man helping hold the ladder. A flashbulb blinds Cud as he releases his rucksack. This fifty-pound object lands on Arthur's chest as he cranes to look up, and sends him hard on his rear, missing Slappy by a hair. An excruciating pain in the tailbone tells Arthur he won't be sitting for a while.

 

Arthur didn't want to look foolish by bringing a pillow, so this morning he stands at the back of a half-lit courtroom, watching a video on an eighty-inch screen, footage spliced together from newscasts. Denied his hope of breezing to victory, Paul Prudhomme is trying to persuade Santorini he's being mocked.

Selwyn seems in deep concentration, creating images from sound. Then a smile as Lotis says on screen, “Beam me up.”

“You might recall Ms. Rudnicki from this courtroom, milord,” says Prudhomme, “but without the green hair. Flouting, in front of the press, your order prohibiting anyone else going up that tree.”

Santorini lets loose a chuckle, but smothers it. Arthur cannot fathom the mood of this mercurial judge–he's watching intently, particularly the beaming-up, a camera focused on Lotis's buttocks. Her ascent, her backward glance, her fist of triumph, made it onto U.S. newscasts: the ex-Hollywood starlet who risks arrest for defending an American emblem.

Prudhomme does not inflict on them the bathos of
Woodman, spare that tree
, but does linger on Margaret waving at Arthur, launching her bad-news glider. It had a demoralizing effect on Arthur: a glum evening, sharing his lemon pie with Kim Lee.

Margaret's note was annoyingly upbeat. She's on the homestretch, nine days to go. (
We're winning, Arthur! We have eggs!
) Having survived a week and a half with Cud Brown (
A mop, a scrubber, and two pails of water–would you mind, Arthur?
), she'll
come down proudly when her term is up. As to the malodorous poet, she wrote:
What an animal–I was always picking up his greasy socks. Thank God for Lotis.
While Cyrano stalled at the starting gate, the Green Avenger raced to triumph, rescuing the fair damsel from the poet-in-exile's gamy consanguinity.

The courtroom gasps as the rucksack fells Arthur, his mouth open in clownish astonishment, Slappy darting away. This has Santorini in another struggle against laughter, his face going red.

“Meanwhile,” says Prudhomme, “the defendant Blake remains up that tree in defiance of your Lordship's strictures.” Prudhomme is carrying on stoutly, though rattled by Santorini's sniggers.

“Weren't you in the Appeal Court when they quashed my order? Never mind, play that last part again.”

Fast rewind, Arthur rising, looking goofy, Slappy scampering backwards. Again, the rucksack drops and Arthur sits down hard.

“Ho! That dog got out of there just in time.”

The usually sanguine Prudhomme is exasperated. “Milord, this travesty has been going on for two weeks now. Surely the plaintiff is entitled to some relief.”

“Whole different state of affairs. A pair of eagles, that's what we have, and two in the shell. You claimed that nest was abandoned, and now you've got yourself in a pickle.”

“Milord,” says Prudhomme, “may I have a few moments?”

“I'll wait.” Santorini can't help grinning as he looks at the standee in the back. “Would you be more comfortable if you sat, Mr. Beauchamp?” The room erupts in laughter.

The plaintiff's team caucuses: Prudhomme, two helpmates, and Todd Clearihue, whose smile is fixed and looks surreal. Selwyn's antennae may be picking up stray words–he fiddles in his briefcase, pulls out a file.

Prudhomme leaves the huddle. “The plaintiff wishes to inform the court it shares a concern about these majestic birds,
and will consider the more costly option of bringing in equipment by barge.”

“It is not an option.” Selwyn passes up a thick affidavit. “A sea otter habitat would be under threat.”

“That may be so, Mr. Loo, and we'll get to it when we get to it. Meantime, I'm granting a temporary restraining order against cutting within two kilometres of that tree. We'll put this over for one week. Counsel, will you join me in chambers?”

Santorini is shrugging his robe off as they enter, snapping his collar button loose. “Just going to make the last nine at Langara. It's a fundraiser, kids'hockey, I have to show up. Damn it, I almost split a gut in there. That Lotis Rudnicki–I finally figured out where I'd seen her, a TV commercial. ‘Did you use enough soap, dear?' I always laugh at that, the way she's so deadpan.”

Selwyn is smiling broadly, a sight rarely seen. Prudhomme smiles too, but with the weariness of defeat.

“Looks like your lady got the better of both of us, Beauchamp.” Santorini takes off his striped pants. “You poor bugger, I could tell you were expecting her to come down. I saw how your expression changed, your jowls sagged. And when you fell…” He can't complete, his belly is shaking with laughter.

Loser of five straight murder trials, his manhood under test, Santorini has finally forced Arthur to the ground. Arthur is piqued at this razing. He didn't realize he had jowls. At least he has hair on his head.

But he accepts the ribbing. “The injury is confined to the area lyrically described by Shakespeare as the afternoon of the body. Otherwise, only my ego smarts.”

“Hey, I'm not laughing at you, I had that happen to me, some blind idiot caught me in his backswing with a five iron.”

Selwyn is expressionless. Santorini zips up a light jacket. “I'm off, but stay, relax, I'll have my clerk bring in coffee. Doughnuts in the fridge. You want to discuss reaching some kind of accommodation, gentlemen. Talk. Make love, not war.”

After the judge leaves, Prudhomme fetches Clearihue, who says, “We may have to appeal this and harvest some timber off the shore to pay the legal costs.”

“
Harvest
?” Selwyn says. “We're not talking about potatoes.”

“We can tough it out until the fall,” Clearihue says. “I'm not going lower than thirteen, twelve and a half bottom, plus our outlays have to be covered. Christ, we paid eight for it, where's our profit? And you know what? With the international attention this property is getting, the price may be going up.”

Arthur takes that as a bluff. Time is on Gwendolyn's side. The legal costs must be bleeding Garlinc.

Clearihue glances at Prudhomme, then adds, “We can give you maybe a month, then it's half down, the rest secured. I think the folks of Garibaldi–I'm including myself, I'll chip in my share–can probably raise a few million on their land, and we'll absorb all legal fees, how's that?”

Arthur packs his briefcase, rises. “I don't want to be late for the ferry.” He doesn't think he'll bother with tonight's AA meeting. The school, those hard wooden benches.

 

18

A
rthur puts on a suit for the Save Gwendolyn meeting–he would prefer clean country clothes but he can't decode the dials on the washer. He's still unable, a week after his fall, to sit comfortably in a vehicle, so he'll walk to the hall. There's no urgent cause to drive anywhere, though a visit to Nick Faloon is long overdue–he might worry that Arthur is defending him with faint heart.

It's April 25. Day Nineteen! (“
THE EAGLE HAS LANDED
!” cries this week's
Bleat
. “
OUR LOVEBIRDS REUNITE
!”) Not, however, the lovebirds of Bungle Bay, though Margaret, if she holds to her vow, has only two tree-sitting days left. The punkhaired sprite must return too. Or else. They've won, take a bow. There is peace in the forest. The threatened appeal hasn't materialized, but Garlinc won't come to the table, so they must return to court.

Edna Sproule waves from behind the barn–she is a saviour, attending births of eleven kids. A relief column of Japanese Woofers is on its way. Meanwhile, his waterlogged Fargo has been missing for a week and a half. So has Stoney, whose backhoe is still sitting by the lip of the non-pond. Margaret will not be pleased.

But she'll find the girls from Mop'n'Chop have cleaned the house from roof to basement. He has paid the bills, has stocked up. There will be daffodils in the parlour, hyacinths in the dining room, a sprig of lilac on her pillow.

He'll try to impress her with his key role in the struggle. Had he not landed so hard on his ass, Santorini might not have been so generous with his restraining order. And did he not lead a team of botanists to that tiny patch of Phantom Orchids? Was he not treated to a chorus of their hurrahs? He will regale her about the murder case, show her another Beauchamp, the hard-driving lawyer. She's a mystery addict, she'll love this whodunit. She'll love Arthur.

And what to do about hooky-playing Rudnicki?
Three, four days
, she said, now it's a week. Arthur was forgiving to a point. She had good intentions: quit smoking, reunite him with Margaret. She read Santorini accurately–no arrest warrants went out for the leading lady of his favourite commercial.

However, if she doesn't come down by tomorrow she'll be seeking new employment. He said as much in his last post to this act-on-a-whim wannabe lawyer.

Duties are piling up for her. Witnesses' memories could go stale if their words are not recorded soon, so Arthur has arranged a weekend trip for her, a cruise to Bamfield on the
Lady Rose
, an overnight stay at the Nitinat Lodge. She is to take signed statements from Claudette, from the Cotters, from Meredith Broadfeather, and the two Huu-ay-aht braves, and from Holly Hoover if she can cajole her.

Arthur has received assurances from high officials of the Save Gwendolyn Society that Lotis's bubble is about to burst. Several complaints have been made about her jumping the line. Reverend Al will argue the case for Arthur at the meeting this afternoon.

“You've sacrificed enough,” he told him. “First your wife, then your Woofer, or whatever she is.”

 

“‘Laurel is green for a season, and love is sweet for a day; but love grows bitter with treason, and laurel outlives not May.'” Sung aloud to a forest glen, Swinburne's “Hymn to Proserpine.” Yes, she has laboured well this spring, the goddess of vegetation.
Grass thick in the fields, apple trees pinking, skunk cabbage bursting from the swales with yellow spikes in yellow cups.

He must stop to catch his breath on Breadloaf Hill, at a plateau overlooking Garibaldi's first land-use mistake: a fifty-lot subdivision, Evergreen Estates. Septic problems in a rain catchment area. A smell comes from the taps of the community hall.

Inside the creaky wooden building, sixty locals and a dozen off-islanders are in noisy debate. Cud Brown is on his feet. Tabatha Jones is glowering at him, the debaucher of her only child.

Presiding is Leif Thorson, a repentant former logger, lost in a forest of points of order. Arthur has walked into a procedural quagmire, and follows Reverend Al outside before being called upon to untangle it.

“We have some excellent candidates,” Al says, “high-riggers, canopy experience, to replace those two recalcitrant women, so we're bringing them in from the cold.”

“What is Cud carrying on about?”

“He's off on a wild tangent.”

They look in again. Leif Thorson is saying, “The way I figure it, Cud, if you're gonna nominate someone to go up that tree, they got to consent. Who do you want to nominate, anyway?”

“Tabatha Jones.”

Leif turns to her. “Tabatha, you consent?”

“I certainly do
not
.” Furious, she stands, marches over to Cud, wags a finger at his nose. “You're not getting close to her, she's with her dad in the city.”

Reverend Al moves quickly to avert violence, leads Tabatha out. She turns and shouts, “You're
my
age, you pedophile!”

That prods Cud to rise in pursuit. “She's eighteen, she's ready for life!” He stops at the doorway, calls. “Hey, Tabatha, Felicity says you stifle her artistic growth.”

As Reverend Al leads her down the hill, she shouts, “Your poetry stinks, according to what I read before I flushed your book.”

The meeting is far more sober when it reconvenes. The society hears a presentation from three strapping lads, Reverend Al's high-riggers. They will haul up climbing gear, tools, two-by-fours, coils of cable, for an emergency supply route by zip line. After their bid is accepted, they head off in a van packed with supplies. Handsome fellows, Pyramus, Leander, and Adonis.

A discussion ensues about how to entice Lotis from her lair: there's concern that the deposed rebel leader–she's in her element, centre stage–won't bow to the diktat of the Central Committee. Arthur can't sit, tires of standing, sneaks off.

He's still muttering about Lotis an hour later as he puffs past his farm gate. “There's no room for an immature prima donna on the Nick Faloon defence team. You can't run a murder trial this way. It's not a film set where you can replay the scene a hundred times to get it right.”

A pleasant rhythmic sound from behind a big-leaf maple pulls him up. Squirt, splash. He carries on around the tree to the goat-milking parlour and sees Lotis milking a nanny. The lens-loving schismatic returned in a flash, she's back without a struggle, she's a Woofer again. He wonders how much of his rambling she heard. He steps forward, pretending he was reciting verse. “‘The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets.'”

“What's that?”

“Milton.”

“Didn't sound like Milton earlier.” Squirt, splash.

“Very well, I was musing about how a fine career would have been nipped in the bud if you hadn't materialized.”

“I like this last bit, where you spank the udder to get the last few pulls of milk.” She slaps Annabelle on the rump and sends her away. She has milked other nannies, has a full pail. She looks tested and tough. A tangle of faded green hair. A pack of Nicorettes in her shirt pocket.

“And how
did
you materialize?”

She takes off her rubber apron, washes her hands. “Actually I sneaked down before dawn. I wanted to meet with my Greenpeace team, go over their presentation.”

“
Your
Greenpeace team.”

“Yeah, I put in an order for some of their top climbers.” The three high-riggers.

“How did you place this order? Through telepathy?”

“Satellite phone. We must use the weapons of the counter-revolutionary pigs to our advantage.” A fairy smile, her flower-petal lips. Teasing him, knowing such jargon rankles him. “These guys are running a zip line up to the bluffs, just below Gwendolyn Pond. Though maybe I shouldn't tell Arthur Beauchamp, he talks to himself
very
loudly.”

“And what about Margaret? Is she on her way down?”

“After she does her full stint–two more days, that's her goal. She's a stick-to-it gal, give her a break.”

Arthur is silent as he totes the pail to his house. After they pour the milk in the cooler, he says, “Am I to understand that these…these eco-acrobats are going to be sharing the tree with her for two nights?”

“Jealous much? Come on, Arthur, they're not planning an orgy.”

“I'm only worried about arrangements,” he says sharply. “All those cables and tools and two-by-fours, how can there be any room for people? How can the platform hold the weight?”

“It's all being hauled up into canopy, Arthur. As we speak.”

He hopes Margaret's new roommates, unlike Cud, do their armpits. “So what brings you scurrying back? The guilt, I suppose, now that the theatrical urge has been satisfied.”

“The Faloon case was bugging me. I kept thinking about how his semen ended up in Eve Winters. The theory that Angella kept it keeps dialling a wrong number.”

This ruse will not succeed. She wants him to think that while he was fuming, she was pondering, working.

“Something Claudette said kept niggling at me,” she says. “The bear or raccoon or whatever was getting into the garbage at Nitinat Lodge. I'd never thought to ask if she and Nick were using birth control, or what kind, so I got on the horn to her today. She's not on the pill. Sometimes they played Vatican roulette. Otherwise, condoms. They're on a septic field, so they don't flush them. They go into the trash.”

According to Claudette's best recollection, the last time the marauding pest showed up was three nights before Eve Winters's murder. Unseen, in the blackness of the night. Though garbage was strewn, the culprit left no proof of identity, no bear-pies.

Arthur has a hard time seeing obsessively neat Adeline Angella rooting about the garbage for a discarded condom. On the other hand, the theory expands the list of perps who could have concocted an ingenious plan to murder Dr. Winters and leave Nick grasping at one chance in ten billion.

“What do you think?” Lotis asks. “It'll float?”

Odd question–there are the makings of a reasonable doubt here, with some intensive digging and prepping the soil. “Why shouldn't it float–isn't it the truth?”

Her cocky smile.

“I'm going to presume this isn't something made up between you and Claudette,” he says. “She volunteered this information?”

She looks shocked. “Of
course
, Arthur. Please.” She pulls out the Nicorettes.

 

On this, Day Twenty, the prospect of Margaret's imminent return home is causing Arthur butterflies. He's not eager to be in a courtroom today, he should be at home creating another lemon pie. Champagne is in the fridge–Margaret has every right to get a little tiddly tomorrow.

He was ribbed ferociously this morning at the General Store. “Hope your wife don't find it too crowded up there with
all them young studs.” “I bet
she's
gonna come down smiling.” Arthur took it like a man.

The injunction hearing was put over to the afternoon, and it's nearing two as he and Lotis make their way into the Great Hall of the Vancouver Law Courts. Themes, goddess of justice, greets them, proudly blindfolded. There are other sculptures, Inuit, on display where Selwyn Loo is waiting, his fingers lightly caressing a soapstone bear. “We don't have Santorini today.”

Their judge has run off to the dry hills of the Okanagan, a pro-am charity event–he's teamed with a guest celebrity, a Masters winner. There's media coverage. Santorini has let it be known that nothing short of a terrorist attack–certainly not an environmental crisis on Garibaldi Island–will dislodge him from those fairways and greens.

“Fine, we'll adjourn the matter until he gets back.” None of the other judges will stand in. This case has already bounced to the Appeal Court and back, and is likely regarded as in the same category as dogs' breakfasts and cans of worms. Unless forced to by rare circumstance–such as Santorini drowning in a water hazard–no judge of sound mind will want to pinch-hit. But why is Selwyn looking more dismal than usual today?

“The Chief Justice himself insists on stepping in, Arthur.”

Arthur feels his jaw drop. Wilbur Kroop? Surely Selwyn is joking. Arthur looks up and locates Garlinc's legal team at level four, in amiable conversation. It's no joke, they're enjoying their good fortune.

“I hear he can be difficult,” Selwyn says.

“He's an irascible fathead.”

The wars are legendary. Twenty years ago, Arthur spent three nights in jail before surrendering to him, apologizing in court. Three nights withdrawing from alcohol were more than he could take.

“He won't be pleased to see me,” Arthur says. “I'd best stay hidden.”

Despondent, he watches Court 41 fill with lawyers, public, and press. The door closes on them. He paces. There had been hope with Santorini, at bottom a fair-minded man. Wilbur Kroop sees protestors as outlaws bent on challenging the sacred institutions of capital and state. Society's imminent collapse into anarchy is a theme that garnishes many of his judgments.