Seaweed on the Street (31 page)

Hockey got out of the car and lit her cigarette with a box match. She did it like a practised outdoorsman, cupping her hands around the flame to shield it. I followed her inside the house. Hockey plunked her sample case in a corner, pointed to a wooden chair and asked me to wait. She went into another room.

The house stank of mildew, cats, ancient dirt and bathroom odours that no amount of airing could ever remove. Bits of clear plastic had been nailed over the sash windows' many broken panes. Dead insects shared the sills with empty jars and bottles. Heaps of newspapers lay everywhere, some neatly tied in bundles, others lying loose. There was a cracked teapot on the table, along with half an onion and several cloves of garlic. Rusty nails, bits of salvaged hardware and miscellaneous tools filled boxes and cans lying on the floor. The plasterboard walls had never been painted and were largely concealed by clothing dangling from nails. An unframed colour print of the Queen and Prince Philip was tacked up beside an airtight woodstove. Beside it was a big old sofa with stuffing protruding through holes. An assortment of wooden packing cases, spread with odd pieces of cloth, served as seats and tables. A black cat stalked in. Seeing me, the cat bolted, its tail straight up like a flag.

Hockey returned and stood in the doorway. “Ma says to ask what you want.”

“I want to talk to her myself, please.”

“Well, she's not used to visitors, Mr. Seaweed.”

She showed me her gap-toothed smile again.

“I won't keep her long. We probably know some of the same people. I'm hoping your mother can help me find someone.”

“What kind of work you do?”

“I'm a detective.”

Disappointment made Hockey's mouth droop. “But I asked you if you were from the insurance company, and you said you weren't.”

“I'm not from the insurance company.”

Hockey came into the room and closed the door behind her. She leaned against the wall and said, “This is awkward.”

I smiled at her and said, “Is your name Alison Harkness?”

Her shy smile reappeared. “Nobody calls me Alison now. When I was little, kids at school started calling me Harky — you know, from Harkness? Then it got sort of twisted around. Even Ma calls me Hockey now. Funny, isn't it?”

Her words set up little vibrations of excitement in my mind. I said, “Does your mother ever talk about the old days? That time before she came to the island? When she lived in Victoria, or Seattle?”

“Seattle? Ma lived in Seattle?”

“She never mentioned it to you?”

“Oh, no, never. See, Ma doesn't remember anything from those days. I thought we were from Vancouver, but I can't tell you why. I've never been to Victoria. Haven't been anywhere 'cept Courtenay and Comox.”

The door opened a crack. Mother Harkness's face appeared in the opening. I pretended not to notice her, but raised my voice so that she could hear me. “There are people in Victoria who remember your mother. Some of them might like to see her again, but it's not important. If she doesn't want to see them, she doesn't have to.”

“Are these the bikers? My daddy was a biker.”

“Some were bikers, some not.”

The door opened a bit more and Ma Harkness sidled in. She was still wearing the shapeless raincoat, tightly belted at the waist. Wisps of grey hair stuck out from beneath a headscarf. All her teeth had gone, and her lips were sucked together in a way that drew long hollows beneath her cheekbones. She had a faraway smile.

Addressing Hockey, I said, “Do you know a man called Fred Eade?”

Hockey was startled. “Sure,” she said. “Fred was here visiting a little while back. Fred's the one promised us the insurance money.”

“Fred Eade promised you insurance money?”

“Well, only if Ma would show him her tattoo. Fred said that if she showed her tattoo, she'd get insurance money.”

“And this tattoo. When he saw it, was he satisfied?”

“I think so. But Fred never came back.”

I said, “Marcia Harkness, the one that my friends know. She had a tattooed shoulder.”

Hockey looked at her mother and smiled. “Why don't you let Mr. Seaweed have a look at it?”

Instead of replying, the old woman scuttled out of the room.

“She'll be back,” said Hockey complacently.

I said, “Did Fred Eade ask for anything else, leave anything?”

Hockey thought about the question, then shook her head. “You mean papers?”

“Yes, old family pictures, documents, things like that.”

“He never asked for nothing. Seeing the tattoo was all he wanted. He was only here for a bit. Him and that girl.”

“Do you mean Patty Nolan?”

Hockey became animated. “Yeah, Patty. I liked her. You know Patty?”

“I was talking to her yesterday.”

Hockey said, “Next time you see Patty, tell her she's welcome to come visit us again. She had us all laughing with her jokes and her antics. Maybe she'd like to hang out with us for a while.”

“I'll tell her,” I said, adding, “It would make my job a bit easier if you or your mother have any photographs or papers that I could look at.”

Hockey raised the lid of a packing case, took out an old steel fishing- tackle box and put it on the table. Before we looked inside the box, the door opened and Mother Harkness came in. She had taken her coat off and pulled down the sleeve of a baggy polyester sweater to expose her right shoulder. I saw the strap of a grubby brassiere, bulging whey-coloured flesh. And a mottled red scar at the point of her shoulder. The red scar was the faded tattoo of a rose. Exactly where it was supposed to be.

≈ ≈ ≈

The aircraft banked, then began its descent into Vancouver International. The man in the seat next to me stirred nervously, holding onto the armrests with both hands and jutting his elbows into my side. I hardly noticed, did not even turn to look at the city of Vancouver, laid out below. I was thinking of the marvels that had come from Marcia Harkness's fishing-tackle box. It had been full of Hunt-family documents and photographs. I saw Alison's and Marcia's birth certificates. There were pictures of both women as babies. There was a receipt for one of Marcia's boarding-school uniforms, doctor's prescriptions. Faded sports ribbons. A real ivory comb with missing teeth. An old celluloid doll with missing arms. The picture of a tall, slender young man wearing a ppcli uniform. Marcia Harkness had no idea who the soldier was, but I knew. It was Calvert Hunt.

≈ ≈ ≈

I rented a wreck and drove it south from the airport toward the Peace Arch border crossing. At White Rock I turned off. The rest home I was looking for was perched on a hillside overlooking Georgia Strait.

A nurse escorted me to Mrs. Coulton's room. The old lady was in a rocking chair, placidly knitting and watching tv. Outside, the sodden boughs of a Japanese cherry tree waved in the breeze. Patrick Coulton's widow put the knitting on her lap and clicked the tv off with her remote. My visit was expected. After introductions the nurse left us. Mrs. Coulton extended her hand. I took it gently, careful of the fragile bones beneath liver-spotted skin. Her hair was white. She looked serene, content.

Speaking with a soft Canadian-Scottish burr she said, “I asked Nurse to bring Paddy's things up from storage, but there isn't much left to show you. When Paddy died I sent most of his stuff to the Salvation Army.” She pointed to a side table. “There's his old logbooks and his expense books. I kept them because I thought the government might want to have a look at them. You know what the government's like.”

I said, “Have you remembered any more about the things we spoke of on the telephone?”

She shook her head. “Paddy was always very close-mouthed about his work. Didn't bring his troubles home, not like some. He never had much to say anyway. More of a thinker than a talker was our Paddy. He hated it when they made him retire. Policing was his whole life. That's why he went into the private investigations. It gave him an interest. Life's no use if you don't have an interest.”

I said, “Paddy was a good cop. Over 30 years with the Vancouver pd.”

“That's right. Before that, Paddy did three years in the navy. He liked the security and the benefits. When he retired officially, he had a good pension, Paddy did, which is why I can live here now, comfortable with my tv and my knitting. Old Paddy never did retire properly, though. He kept on messing about with this and that until the end. But you're just being polite. You want to talk about that girl who went missing in Nevada. The reason I remember it was because it was one of the cases where Paddy took me along. When we could, we mixed business with pleasure, so to speak. He was running around in the desert, doing his work, while I was in the casinos enjoying myself.” She had a faraway smile. “Paddy was Scottish too. Always close with his money. Not that he was mean. Paddy didn't have a mean bone. But still it was nice that he could get paid to go to Reno.”

“Can you remember what year that was?”

“Let me see. It'd be 1985 or 1986, I think. I know it was before young Marion was born.”

“Marion?”

“My granddaughter. She's top of her class at Kwantlen College.”

“Did Paddy find what he was looking for in Reno?”

“Oh, bless my soul, I can't tell you, Mr. Seaweed. He never said a blind word to me about it if he did.” She pointed to the logbooks. “Why don't you have a look in them. Take 'em with you if you want. Maybe you'll find something to help you. I can't make head nor tail of 'em myself.”

After studying Paddy's books for a few minutes I wasn't able to make head nor tail of them either. Entries were written in a private code. Cases were referred to by number instead of name, and I was unable to find a key. But now I knew for certain that Paddy had traced a missing woman as far as Reno. Would a cop as dedicated as Paddy, following a fresh trail, fail to find her?

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was three in the morning when I parked my Chevy on Foul Bay Road. A white half-moon watched me through scudding clouds and illuminated piles of leaves raked onto boulevards. A slight wind sent down more leaves as I approached Calvert Hunt's new security gate. It was locked, of course; I had to climb a stone wall to get onto the grounds. As I went up Hunt's driveway a family of raccoons emerged from the rhododendrons and scurried single file across the lawns. One halogen lamp, shining from a pole, lighted up Ribblesdale's main front entrance. A smaller lamp, its light half-diffused by thick ivy, shone above a second-storey fire escape.

It was very dark outside Charles Service's office. I found a suitable pane in a leaded-glass window, masked it all around with sticky tape and dislodged it with a stiff blow of my elbow. The glass bowed into the room with a sharp crack, but the tape prevented it from rattling onto the floorboards. I backed away from the house and watched from a distance. The house remained as silent as before; no lights came on. I waited five minutes, went back to the window and reached inside for the bronze catch. The window opened easily.

I climbed inside and with my flashlight checked Charles Service's cabinet. It was a substantial metal cube, as big as a clothes dryer. The lock was too tough for an amateur safecracker like me, so I went looking for its key in Service's desk.

Somewhere deep within the big house, stairs creaked. I switched my flashlight off and felt a little buzz of adrenaline as soft footsteps crossed the floor above. In the ensuing silence I heard the faint hiss of water running through pipes. After a moment the footsteps retraced their route.

Service's desk had seven drawers but the safe key wasn't in any of them. I checked the filing cabinets, but they were locked and I didn't know how to open them without making a racket. I went back to the desk again, removed the drawers, one at a time, and felt around in the spaces behind. Eureka! The keys were hanging from a cup hook screwed to the back of a drawer.

One key opened the big cabinet. It contained half a dozen small deed boxes and six large, flat, neatly wrapped packages. I slit a package open with my pocket knife and found what Victoria's detective squad had wasted five years looking for — the paintings removed from the walls by the gang that killed Harry Cunliffe.

I spent a few minutes removing traces of my visit, but couldn't do anything about that broken window. The pane was partially concealed behind curtains, though. Maybe Charles Service would notice a draft or find the broken window and think that raccoons had done it. Maybe there really is a Santa Claus.

≈ ≈ ≈

I slept late. While shaving, I thought about food. It had been days since I had lived a normal life. Meals and sleep had suffered, and now I needed a decent breakfast. I could always go to Lou's, have the usual eggs and bacon. Shoot the breeze with Bernie and Chantal, listen to Lou's latest beef. No, I wanted something peaceful. The case was solved. Wrapping it up shouldn't take long. And with any luck Chief Mallory would be so pleased with my efforts that he'd restore funding to my neighbourhood policing scheme.

Outside Mom's Café, boats bobbed in the swell. A strong southwesterly whistled through the rigging of that old Atlantic fishing trawler. Winter was coming apace. The nautical dreamers were still loading stores aboard their rusty ship. I envied them their coming trip to sunny Guatemala. I went inside the café and ordered corned-beef hash with poached eggs and multigrain toast.

Somebody tapped my shoulder. It was Captain Bloggs.

“I see in the newspaper that they arrested the dame what killed Fred Eade,” the captain said by way of introduction.

I invited him to join me and said, “Patty Nolan? The police have her in custody, but she didn't kill Fred Eade.”

“Think so, eh? If it weren't her, why did she run away?” Without waiting for my reply, the captain added, “But just the same, it's a helluva way to go. Fred was no great shakes but he deserved better than being shot like a dog.”