I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (49 page)

I ought to have mentioned Annabelle to Margaret. I tell myself I'm protecting the leader of the
Parti vert
from distraction, but wonder if it's more complicated than that.

I have assumed Stoney will wait for the cover of darkness before returning my truck, but I don't expect him before midnight. So I am pleasantly surprised when, just at bedtime, sharp-eared Homer barks,
It's back! It's back!
I go out in time to catch the Fargo rolling down the driveway and stopping by the barn, engine off, lights off. Dog is standing in the back, riding shotgun with a pair of garden clippers.

Stoney swings down from the driver's seat in his slow, stoned way and waits for me to hustle over in my slippers. He's standing under the dim light of a hanging bulb, checking out the barn, seemingly enjoying its dense fecal odours. “Got a message you were concerned about me, sire.”

My ruse seems to have worked, but I'm taking no chances, and I climb in the cab. The engine starts immediately, smoothly, its cough cured. Clutch, brakes, gearshift function; all the lights work except for the right bright, and there's even a quarter-tank of gas. I pocket the ignition key and climb out, holding my position between Stoney and the Fargo. I shall not fall for the predictable ruse:
We got no backup vehicle, man, so I'll return it in the morning
.

“Job one, as promised, eh, and it carries the usual warranty. As to the Mustang, I have arranged for a trusted emissary to retrieve it from the ferry monster. That will be Dog.” He's still standing up there, his back to the rear window. “I have instructed him not to make inquiries about my cherished gargoyle pipe. Up until I heard about your altercation with the law, I was scratching my head over where I'd stuck it. I got too many things on the go – I get distracted, eh.”

“Of course, Stoney.”

He tamps out a cigarette. “So how's the, ah, heat situation, as far as I'm concerned?”

“Ernst will lay off you. You might want to thank him.”

“I'll ask Filchuk if he minds letting Ernst have his grow. He's given up on it; it's all gone to seed.”

Stoney blows a smoke ring that is whipped away by a gust, a wind change that sends the yard light swinging and causes the barn smell to be replaced by a sweet, pungent odour. I twist around, still protecting the driver's door, and peer at Dog, who in fact is not standing. He has actually been sitting, on a tarp, newly reaped marijuana plants piled beneath it.

“I figured you wouldn't mind,” Stoney says. “They were a week away from prime, but I figured cut and run, man, just in case. Not that I mistrusted you to squeal, counsellor, heaven forbid. Anyway, me and Dog figured this old barn would be perfect for maybe an overnight or two. If that don't work out for you for some reason, we'll look for a different stash-hole and return the old girl in the morning.”

“No, I will drive you and your cargo home.”

Stoney is taken aback by that. “You okay with … like, driving a hundred K's of bud around this island?” Slow to recover, he picks up speed. “On a Saturday night, when both island cops are going to be out in force checking for drunks coming from that booze bash up at the vineyard? I believe you reported this here vehicle missing, so won't they be looking for it?” The disarming, apologetic smile says he thinks he has me.

And truthfully I am not at my sharpest, my mind clouded by Annabelle, still berating myself for pressing that invitation on Caliginis. But I am not going to stand here helplessly as Stoney disappears up the road in my 1969 vintage Fargo. “Haul those plants up to the loft behind the hay bales.”

T
he Point Grey cliffs, Spanish Banks, English Bay, Lord Stanley's forest pass below, then the elegant arcs of Lion's Gate Bridge, then we glide into Coal Harbour. I am once again in the heart of über-livable Vancouver, delivered by a Syd-Air Beaver on its noon flight from the Gulf Islands.

I wasn't planning to be in Vancouver until tomorrow, and then only as a stopover to Ottawa. This sudden, unavoidable excursus also means I can't carry out my threat to burn Stoney's cannabis at sunset if it isn't hauled out of my barn by then. It was to have been gone three nights ago.

I have hastened here because Gertrude phoned just after breakfast, to tell me Jimmy “Fingers” O'Houlihan is dying to see me. Literally – he's in a hospice, on his deathbed. Soon as possible, he told her. His calendar was free for maybe the next few weeks. “He said it was about Dermot Mulligan; that's all I could get out of him.”

I didn't keep up my relationship with O'Houlihan after 1962, other than bumping into him outside courtrooms as he waited to give proof of adulteries, and those were strained moments. Where he had been effusive, he became guarded. No mention of Mulligan and his affair with Rita Schumacher, no mention of the Swift case – it was as if he was embarrassed to be seen with me.

After Harvey Frinkell, his main revenue source, was disbarred, O'Houlihan closed up his detective agency and began flipping real estate in Florida. I heard he went bust in the Great Recession and returned to Canada to avoid fraud inquiries. He will be in his early eighties now. Liver cancer, Gertrude has learned. She will be meeting me, taking me to him.

Syd-Air has a berth at the Bayshore Inn, and that's where we four passengers alight. The hotel has had a few facelifts over time, a plush new tower, and though Trader Vic's is just a memory, I can never avoid hearkening back, when I am here, to National
Secretaries Day 1962, and the poor impression I made on nineteen-year-old Gertrude Isbister.

It's something she remembers quite well too. In the lobby, after we buss each other and she takes my arm, she recalls how I earnestly described over mai tais what goes into a Salish aphrodisiac. “I must say, Arthur, I tensed up.”

She's joshing me. I don't remind her of her youthful feelings for me, embarrassingly revealed in my biography.
I don't know how many times I flashed him some leg
. That constant straightening of stockings.

Gertrude has brought a laptop and a video camera. I don't want to take a chance on O'Houlihan expiring before we record whatever relevant tidbits about Mulligan he withheld from me. The appeal is six days hence, and if Jimmy gives us value, we'll have to make immediate disclosure to court and Crown. Gertrude has assured me a
DVD
can be packaged and couriered in an hour.

Frinkell never did send me copies of the intimate photographs his private eye took from the balcony of the Schumachers' bedroom. With the case closed, I gave up pursuing the matter. But I retain vivid impressions: Dermot and Rita in rut, a dark exposure; Dermot putting on his horn-rims, his stumpy penis at rest; Dermot helping heavy-breasted Rita into her clothes.

I also remember an odd comment by Jimmy Fingers:
Missed out on a financial opportunity
. “How so?” I say aloud.

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, Gertrude. I have been talking to myself incessantly, another side effect of age.”

“Nonsense, you started doing that in your thirties. I do wish, Arthur, you'd stop making such a thing about your age. You really haven't changed at all, just found new things to worry about.”

How true. A terrible scenario could develop if loose lips mention those hundred kilos of pot that Blunder Bay is harbouring. That has been bothering me all morning. How stupid of me, how unthinking – the repercussions for Margaret would be awful.

Gertrude turns north on Georgia, toward the park and Lion's Gate. The hospice is in the North Shore's hilly suburbs.

“I may have to delay tomorrow's flight to Ottawa.”

She asks me why. I withhold details, explain it's about an unfinished matter on the island.

“Arthur, you're on WestJet out of
YVR
at ten. You will be just in time for dinner with Margaret at her favourite restaurant, La Bretonne. Afterwards she is taking you to the National Arts Centre. Carlos Prieto is performing Dvořák's cello concerto and they're doing Beethoven's Sixth, one of your favourites. It's all laid on. You will be on that plane.”

The Loving Interlude Hospice is in Lynn Valley, down a wooded ravine – at a dead end, fittingly. A Cancer Society facility where patients end their days in as much comfort as their ravaged bodies will permit. Most of those in the sitting room are in wheelchairs, dolefully reading or playing cards. On a bulletin board, a tattered Kestrel Dubois flyer. There has been a tentative recent sighting of the young Cree, a dubious one, on the
UBC
campus. The story is slipping from the headlines.

A care worker takes Gertrude and me down a wing of suites, knocks on A-14, and pokes her head in. “Are we presentable?” Apparently, because she ushers us in. A small room with a balcony overlooking a mix of conifers. O'Houlihan is in his robe, sitting up in bed on a drip, bald, skeletal, but sharp of eye. He's been writing on a pad. Beside him, a few shelves with books, files, memorabilia.

“You have some guests.”

“I will receive them.”

“Is there anything we need?”

“We could use a hand job.”

“You are being very bad. No more smoking. You've been warned.”

“Hey, gorgeous, I ain't had a cigarette in forty years before I came here. It ain't going to kill me. Give a man his dying wish.”

He blows her a kiss as she departs. “Bring a bottle, Artie?” Rattling laughter. “Forget it, morphine rocks. Anyway, I heard you sobered up, went
AA
. Tried it, couldn't stomach the rampant sincerity.” To Gertrude: “He's my saviour – got me off a tough beef.”

I ask, “Did you pay off that witness, Jimmy?”

“Sure did. That's a dying declaration.” He cackles. Refusing help, he works his way off the bed and into his wheelchair. “Cirrhosis. I maybe got a month. But I ain't complaining. Never figured to make it to sixty, let alone eighty-one.”

He picks up an inch-thick file folder and wheels past Gertrude as she sets up her computer and camcorder. “Can you help with the balcony door, love?” As she opens it, he switches on a desk fan, puts on a slouch hat, and pulls a pack of Rothmans from the pocket of his robe. “Trouble with morphine, it ain't addictive enough.”

An eight-by-ten slides from the folder as he lights up, and he tucks it back. “Harvey and I figured to earn at least a champagne cruise off of this. He did the paperwork while I did the dirty. Phoned Mulligan, told him I wanted to avoid him some embarrassment. When he had the kindness to come to my office, I explained I was raising money for a highly recommended charity for the hungry.” Another croaking laugh. “Frinkell set it up – all legit, even a bank account.”

That speech was a physical effort, and he pauses awhile to wheeze out smoke, enjoying this, the story he'd kept cooped up.

“I suggested a substantial mortgage on his lovely house could help feed a lot of tummies. Mulligan looked them over, my photos, and went off to think about it.” A theatrical sigh; he's playing to Gertrude's camera. “Our dreams of Caribbean cruises dissolved when he joined the choir eternal. Suicide, I figured, soon as I heard they found his clothes.”

O'Houlihan flicks the remains of his cigarette over the balcony railing onto the grass, then navigates back to the bed, leaving the folder of photos with me. A dozen black-and-whites, all poorly lit because only a bed lamp had been left on. They disclose that Dermot did not go directly out the back way, as Rita had advised.
Instead he dallied, trying out her clothes. Stockings, panties, garter belt, a full-figure bra into which he stuffed socks. A girdle. A slip. A white blouse and dark pleated skirt. A splashy-looking party dress. Looking at himself in the mirror.

“These were real slow exposures. The perv was taking forever. My balls almost froze off. Last one's a beaut.”