Seaweed Under Water (15 page)

“Quite right,” the pathologist returned. “The garrote appears to have been a multi-strand steel cable. It's hard to believe, but a garrote was not the primary cause of death. She died by drowning, unquestionably.”

Tapp and I had seen enough. We went out of the room and along a corridor to an inner office with windows instead of walls. The clerk working at a desk inside the office was a tired-
looking older woman wearing a white lab coat. Dark liver spots discoloured the skin of her hands. A tin of breath mints lay on her desk. Bernie asked her when it would be convenient to bring Jane Colby's father in to view the body.

The clerk popped a mint into her mouth before making a telephone call. We heard it ring along the corridor. After a short conversation the clerk put her hand over the mouthpiece and said to us, “To identify it officially, right?”

Bernie nodded impatiently.

She put the telephone to her ear again. After listening she grunted, put the phone down and informed us, “They'll clean it up a bit first, do cosmetics and that. Her father will have hysterics otherwise. Let's say, three hours?”

“Fine, three hours,” Bernie said tersely.

Bernie and I left the building and stood on the sidewalk beside his unmarked Interceptor. He said, “According to you, Denise Halvorsen saw Jane Colby in Pinky's two weeks ago last Friday.” I made a mental calculation. Bernie had made the same calculation. He went on, “That's 17 days ago. Correct?”

“Correct. It's Janey's last reliably reported sighting.”

Tapp's cell phone rang. He listened to the phone for a moment, returned it to its pouch and said, “I gotta go. B and E on Dallas Road,” Bernie said. “By the way, remind me: what's Jane Colby's dad called?”

“Fred Colby.”

Bernie got into his Interceptor and fastened the seat belt. I tapped on his window, and he opened it. I said, “I've got a special interest in this case. I'd like to stay involved, if that's okay with you.”

“A special interest,” Bernie repeated, smiling grimly. “You horny bastard. I'll lay odds you're humping witnesses. Again. Who is it this time?”

“
Again
? What do you mean, again?”

“You want me to give you a list?”

“Pillow talk breaks plenty of cases.”

“Plenty of careers get broken the same way.”

“I'm concerned because Terry Colby's a Native.”

“Native? I've just seen Terry's mother. I'll lay you odds she's white, 100 percent. That means Terry's half Native, at most. And bollocks to the rest of it. Don't tell me, because I can guess. You spent the night on Tess Rollins' yacht. So that's it, right?” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I can't believe it, you're screwing the dead woman's sister-in-law, and this is a murder case. Will you never learn?”

“Bernie, I am not fucking and have never fucked Harley Rollins' sister.”

Bernie gave me a grin as tight as a fisherman's knot. “Do you have a suspect in mind?”

“Several, nothing definite.”

“Okay. Go ahead, just don't mess with evidence, is all,” he said, tapping the steering wheel with two fingers. “This woman, Tess. Good looking, is she?”

“Attractive, not good looking.”

“She must have something going for her.”

“Let's put it this way. I'd rather look at Tess Rollins, naked, than look at you in a detective chief inspector's uniform.”

Bernie drove away.

≈  ≈  ≈

I strolled back to police headquarters, deep in thought. Bernie had been right to suspect me, even though, this time, he was wrong. Having carnal knowledge of witnesses, although not expressly prohibited by Victoria's police code, certainly is a high-risk activity.

Back at Caledonia Street, I got into the Chev, drove it to the parking lot behind Swans Pub on Pandora Street, locked the car and walked across the street to my office. I let myself in, picked up the mail lying on the floor beneath the slot and threw it on my desk. PC, taking her ease on my blotter, leapt to the floor and bolted into the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet, where she'd been shredding valuable papers. Then the penny dropped. PC was getting rounder by the day; the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet had become the designated maternity area.

I opened the curtains wide and smiled at passersby for a minute before switching on my answering machine. There were two intriguing messages for me. The first, from “Killer” Miller, in forensics, informed me that fingerprints found on the plastic water bottle I'd left with him had been run through the computer. They did not match the prints found on the beer bottle that felled Jack Owens in Pinky's Bar, nor those of any known felon.

The second phone message was from Bernard Cole—the insurance adjuster I'd met at the Rainbow Motel construction site: Mr. Cole had an update on that missing speedboat. I rang him right away.

Cole said, “We've located the boat. It had been driven onto a beach near the Cadboro Bay village. Its bows were damaged, and it's undoubtedly the boat that rammed that seiner.”

“So we know, within minutes, exactly when the speedboat was stolen?”

“Correct,” Cole replied. “It rammed that fishboat 17 days ago.”

“
Sixteen
,” I said. “It would have been 17 days if the fishboat had been rammed before Friday midnight. The actual ramming occurred at 3
am
, Saturday morning, according to what you told me.”

Cole laughed and said, “You're exactly right. That was sharp. I don't suppose you know who the thief is.”

“Not yet, but I'm working on it. Where's the boat now?”

“It's parked outside the repair shop at the Oak Bay Marina.”

“Sorry, I know this sounds elementary, Mr. Cole. But there is no doubt that this is Harley Rollin's boat?”

“No doubt whatsoever; the serial numbers on the boat match those on Rollins' policy.”

“Good. I believe I'll just pop around to the Marina, take a look for myself.”

“Mind telling me why you're taking such an interest? I mean, it's only a missing boat.”

“It's part of an ongoing inquiry, and I owe you one, thanks.”

I examined my facts: Seventeen nights earlier, Constable Denise Halvorsen had seen Janey Colby at Pinky's. Present on that occasion also was Jack Owens, Janey's former boyfriend. During the course of the evening, a blow delivered by an unidentified assailant had felled Jack Owens. A few hours later, Harley Rollins' boat had been stolen from the Rainbow Motel. Were these items related in any way, or was it just simple coincidence that Janey went missing, that her boyfriend was attacked, and that Harley Rollins' speedboat went AWOL at more or less the same time? My brain stopped working. I felt stale, listless and, to a certain extent, frustrated. I was overdue for a workout session at Moran's Gymnasium. Punching a bag clears my mind wonderfully, sometimes.

PC was standing outside the filing cabinet, her back arched, claws extended and purring ecstatically as she shredded another folder. I checked her litter box, filled her saucer with milk, closed the curtains and went out.

First, I drove over to the Oak Bay Marina and parked near the Orca statue. Sunlight, glinting off the waves, was hard on my eyes, so I put my shades on. Sailboats were tacking around Jimmy Chicken Island in a light breeze. The island, I noticed, had been partially denuded of vegetation by recent grass fires. A couple of women were launching a two-person kayak at the Beach Drive launching slip.

A shiny black Lincoln turned onto Beach Drive from Windsor Road. The car's tinted windows prevented me from seeing the driver as it came into the marina parking lot. I ducked out of sight behind a Hummer stretch limo. Moving slowly, the Lincoln went past and parked near the coffee shop. The driver got out, locked the car then strolled down a flight of stairs out of sight. It was Tess Rollins' steward. I'd seen that Lincoln before—in Harley Rollins' garage.

Coming out from behind the Hummer, I could see that Harley Rollins' speedboat was up on blocks outside the boat-repair shop. It was a modest open Starcraft aluminum 22-footer—a basic mass-produced aluminum day-boat fitted with an adjustable canvas bimini and a Plexiglas windshield. The boat appeared to be about five years old, and the only thing special about it was two massive Evinrude outboard motors. Their propeller blades were bent like pretzels, with one blade broken off completely. Bits of pulverized wood lay deeply embedded in the boat's crumpled aluminum bows. I peered over the gunwales. Four damp flotation cushions and a couple of damp orange life jackets lay untidily in the bilges, along with plastic buckets, dirty foam coffee cups, rubber fenders and several fathoms of galvanized-iron anchor chain. The boat's Danforth anchor (disconnected from its chain) was stowed in a rack in the bows. One end of the anchor chain was shackled to the after bulkhead. The other end of the chain wasn't connected to anything.

I was pondering some mechanical damage to the boat's after bulkhead, when a workman wearing blue dungarees emerged from the repair shop. He lit a cigarette and sighed. “Quite a mess, eh?”

“Yes, although I suppose it can be fixed.”

“Sure, we can fix anything, only this job won't be cheap. Them Evinrudes will need new legs, for a start. What makes me so mad is, it's all so bloody unnecessary. I mean, some hooligan steals the boat and takes it for a joyride, right? That's bad enough. Only, what does he try to wreck the boat for?”

“Beats me,” I answered truthfully.

“Bloody maniacs. Speed demons, thieves, they're all cut from the same cloth,” the mechanic said, with rising anger. “Tell me something. How many outboard motors do you think get stolen from this marina every year?”

“I haven't the foggiest.”

“Last year, we lost 19. Nineteen outboard motors were pinched from this very marina. This year, we've already lost 10.”

“What about security?”

“The marina's locked at night, on the land side. That doesn't stop engine thieves though. They come by water, after dark. In and out in two minutes. Some of these outboards are worth thousands.”

“Do you ever catch 'em?”

“The odd one. Kids, mostly,” the mechanic said, tapping ash from his cigarette. “Generally, they're too young to prosecute. The Oak Bay police take 'em to the station, give 'em a good talking to, call their parents, and that's the end of it. Professionals never get caught.”

“What happens to the stolen motors?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. They move 'em across the province; sell 'em through the classifieds maybe. People are always looking for reliable used outboards. There must be good money in it, because the thieves are so brazen.”

The mechanic threw his half-smoked cigarette to the ground, trampled it underfoot and returned to his repair shop.

I checked the rivets securing the Starcraft's serial number plate to the hull—the rivets were original, had not been tampered with. I would have been highly surprised to find things otherwise. I took another, closer look at the mechanical damage on the rear bulkhead. It appeared as if somebody had been raising and lowering an anchor chain across the stern. I knew enough about boats to recognize this as unusual. It is customary to swing anchors over the bows. It is also customary, and wise, to keep anchors securely shackled to their chains. I was still wondering about all that when I went across to the Marina Coffee Shop.

Ralph, Tess's steward, was drinking coffee and eating Danish pastries at a table beside a window. I picked up a tray, bought myself coffee and smoked-salmon quiche at the lunch counter.

I needed information, and the steward might be able to provide it. I wondered how to go about obtaining the information without setting off alarms that might reach Boss Rollins' ear.

I carried my tray over and said, “Remember me? I'm Silas Seaweed. Mind if I join you?”

“Mr. Seaweed,” he said, surprised but apparently not discomfited by my arrival. “I'm Rhenquist. Ralph Rhenquist. Sure, sit down, how are you sir?”

“Fine,” I said, smiling to let him think that nothing serious was intended. “You're a long way from home, Ralph.”

“Please just call me Rhenquist. It makes life so much easier if I maintain a certain distance from my employer's friends. I hope you understand.” I grinned at him.

He pointed across the blue sparkling waters of the bay to a headland, a mile from where we were seated. He said, “In one sense, sir, I'm not far from home, because I was born over there, on Ten Mile Point. My grandparents lived on Tudor Road in the '20s. I was born and grew up in their house, actually.”

“I hope you still own it, Rhenquist. A house on Ten Mile Point is worth a bundle today.”

“Alas sir, I do not. The house went out of the hands of my family in the '60s.”

Rhenquist was small and wiry. His face was as brown as a walnut and as wrinkled as a dried apple. He had the modest, self-effacing manner of the perfect gentleman's gentleman, along with the appropriate diction and vocabulary. He was wearing a neat blue suit, a white shirt and a black tie. His black shoes gleamed like wet olives.

Rhenquist went on, “Practically speaking, nowadays I have
no
home. I have my own cabin on Miss Rollins' boat, and a room in Miss Rollins' house here in Victoria, and that's that.”

“What brings you here from Mowaht Bay?”

“It's my day off, actually. Mr. Rollins knew I was coming into town, so he asked me to take some things in to the drycleaners.”

“Didn't I see you drive up in a Lincoln?”

“I suppose you did, sir. That is Mr. Harley's car, although he hasn't driven it for a while. It appears that he wants to start driving again soon, so he asked me to give the Lincoln a run. Make sure everything's all right.”

“And is it?”

“Oh, perfectly, sir. All it needed was a good polishing and an oil change.”