“Put these on. And watch yourself grubbing in the brush. I’m sure you heard about the man we found here. He was a drug user.” Suddenly she felt a sense of responsibility as the dangers of man overshadowed nature’s.
“Here’s the reading!” Sean said and hustled over to a rotted stump. “It has to be in here.” He mucked around, tossing twigs and moss, rooting like a terrier. “Something’s weird. This is the exact location, but where is it?”
Holly looked up. Fifty feet above, hardly noticeable in a western hemlock, was a small yellowish parasitic growth, branched and tufted. This “witch’s broom” caused a distorted growth of the tree. A west-coast variety of its namesake. “Good eye. There’s the mistletoe.”
Sean whistled. “I never noticed that. Creepy stuff.”
“So what do you think happened? Have you come across this before? Found the exact spot but not the treasure?”
They sat for a moment on soft moss clumps and divvied up the soda. “For sure. I hate that.”
“It’s not a very funny joke, making people come all this way.”
“Owners are supposed to maintain the sites, refresh them, make sure they’re not falling apart through the winter rains. And if they take them down, they’re supposed to report back online. Keeping good records is important.” It was obvious that this was a serious business to him. She found the idea endearing.
Far overhead, a pair of geese took their morning flight to the grassy fields at nearby Malahat Farm for a free lunch. Holly marvelled at the timing, but then she heard geese every day...and most nights. “Right. So people like us don’t go on a wild goose chase.”
As Auntie Stella said, she needed the patience of a deer. Giving up wasn’t setting a good example for Sean. She stood up and assumed an official stance.“Look around, in and under everything. We’ll establish a logical perimeter. Could it be buried?”
“Uh-uh. You can’t make people dig. No shovels allowed, no knives, nothing.” Sean finished the soda, flattening the can on a rock for easier carrying.
Twenty minutes later, under a suspicious pile of rocks and broken roots, they found a Tupperware container wrapped in a new plastic bag from BC Liquors. A smear of dirt marred Sean’s freckled brow. “This is pretty far away. Why did someone move it? No fair.”
Together they knelt and took off the bag, revealing a plain plastic container with a watertight lid. “Wow,” Sean said. Removing his gloves, he took out a couple of action figures. “Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia and Chewbacca. Cool.” His eyes glowed. Joy in small things after a hard-won fight.
There was also a compact logbook, a cheap ballpoint and scribbled entries from people during the last year, all before Joel’s death. This cache had been popular. She tried to put herself in his mind, addled by drugs. In all likelihood he didn’t even know what he had found, probably some kid’s pirate treasure. But in his craft and cunning, he’d changed the location.
A smudged white envelope lay on the bottom. While Sean was inspecting the toys, Holly opened it. Instead of the money she’d expected, it was a few folded pieces of lined paper from an old exam book, ripped out and ragged at the edge. The careful printing seemed to be the cast of a play and the description of a few scenes.
“What’s that? Another log?” Sean asked, putting his small hand on her shoulder and peering. “A letter? Weird.”
“It’s...like a story.” Was the paper as aged as it looked, or had it weathered in the damp?
“What’s it about?”
“It’s called...” She struggled to make out the blurred title.
“Triumphe of Love: Godde Save Gloriana.”
He squinted as he looked at the words. “Godde? That’s not spelled right. Stupid.”
A tiny smile broke out on her face. “I think it’s meant to sound very old. They used to spell things differently.”
His little eyes scanned the paper as he cocked his head in concentration. “Metchosin? Something or other of Renfrew? I know those places. What’s it all mean? Are you supposed to, like, add to it?”
“I’m pretty sure not.” Holly’s right ear itched, and she scratched it thoughtfully. “There’s no mention of this...story online, is there?”
“No, it just says the action figures.”
“It’s possible someone else left the envelope. Someone who didn’t know about the game.”
“You can take it,” he said in an officious tone, “if it’s not part of the cache. But what will you do with it? Does it have anything to do with that dead guy?”
“I’m not sure,” she said, thinking about how she’d been about to give up the search. As for taking it, this was no crime scene. Or was it?
Sean looked at her, his cherubic face serious. “Can we update the log?”
“If that’s the idea, why not?”
As they packed up, Sean added a tiny yoyo to the box, promising to log the cache online and post about the different location. “Never leave food,” he said. “It gets stale and animals come around.” They put the Tupperware into the liquor-store bag and tucked it under the log.
Going back down, Sean seemed to remember something. “Hey, I was gonna ask you about Scott Bouchard. Everyone’s saying he’s in deep shit..sorry, I mean trouble.”
Word spread quickly in the small community. “It’s against the law to deface public property, but he seems to have learned his lesson. No one wants a quad confiscated.”
“For sure. I don’t like him anyhow.” He bit his small lip as his voice assumed the conviction of an older boy. “He’s a big fat liar.”
“A liar?” This interested her in the face of his accusations about Marilyn. She hadn’t denied that they’d quarrelled, but she’d downplayed the level of violence.
“For sure. He couldn’t tell the truth unless he thought he was lying.” He laughed at the joke. “That’s what my friend Pat says. He’s in Grade Eight at the middle school in Sooke, same as Scott.” Fossil Bay had only one school Sean’s elementary one.
In their conversation, other noises were blocked out. Then Holly heard a sound that stopped her heart. It was a faint but determined huffing, coming closer. Then a scrabbling in the bush. A streak of black. “Sean,” she said, “make noise. Lots of it.” What a time to be caught without pepper spray. She’d left her duty belt at home.
He caught her hint. They started whistling and clapping their hands, and as she walked slowly back along the path, Sean sang, “Bear, bear, go away, come again some other day, go back in your den and stay, I don’t really want to play.”
Nothing pleased them more than the brushy sounds of retreat. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear... Dramatic though it was to actually meet Bruna, either up a tree or nose to nose, it was better not to. Both species had made the wiser choice to head in the opposite direction. “That was a great song,” she said as they stopped to catch their breath.
“Works every time. My grandpa taught it to me. But you have to stay calm. They can tell if you panic. They can smell your fear.”
Back down at the trailhead, Sean unlocked his bike and saluted Holly. “Wait until my sister hears about this. We went on a real mission, didn’t we?”
“Tell her you’re our number one scout,” Holly said.
Driving home, her heart rate returned to normal. This had to be the envelope Pastor Pete had mentioned. The proximity of the body was too coincidental. But why did Joel want it kept safe? This was no item of value. The writing was so small that she couldn’t read some of it in the muted light of the rainforest.
* * *
At home that night at her desk, dictionary in hand, she was better able with a strong lamp and a magnifying glass to decipher the words. As for Joel, he had been farsighted, as Bill had said. If he could barely read it, how could it have any meaning to him?
On a piece of foolscap, she jotted the names. Lord Thomas, a ghost. The Duke of Metchosin. The... Earl of Renfrew. Eville Clarissa. Then the knights, whose names she couldn’t decipher. A Page, Messengers. It seemed like a childhood fantasy exercise. Harry Potter in the middle ages. To what purpose?
This rough outline started with the Ghost’s invocation. Hadn’t there been something similar in
Hamlet
, which they read in Grade Twelve? Then came a scene in Hell with Ate and Lust.
Lust
she understood, but
Ate?
Act Two involved a kind of inquisition with comic relief from a Moorish servant and a cook. Act Three brought a test involving a temptation and an echo scene, whatever that was. In the last act the Eville Clarissa perished, having been cast from the ramparts. Ramparts? She thumbed the dictionary. Battlements in a castle. In a final scene, complete with a song, Gloriana was crowned during a celebratory masque. Masque? A dance, a pantomime. Was this a comedy or a tragedy, a little of both? Amateurish, though, even to her untutored eyes. English lit courses were as far from the practicality of criminal-justice courses as her father’s profession was from her mother’s.
This wasn’t her father’s area of expertise. But there was someone who could help. Sister Clementine at Notre Dame, Holly’s old alma mater in Sooke, the private school where her father had sent her against her mother’s wishes. Bonnie had felt that she should swim with the rest of the common folks, not paddle in an elite pool. Would the good sister still be working? Until they pried the chalk from her cold dead hands.
C
hipper yawned and stood to stretch his tall frame. It was after five, but he was staying late to finish traffic stats, the downside of his job. Numbers of speeding tickets. Types of accidents with or without injuries. A routine seat-belt check at the Fossil Creek Bridge had yielded ten violations in one afternoon. One elderly woman claimed that the belt must have slipped open because she was “religious” about fastening it. When she saw the $167 fine, he thought he was going to have to radio for an ambulance. “Twenty-five dollars less if you pay in thirty days, ma’am,” he said, touching the bill of his cap. Bean counting. If he’d liked that so much, why not become an accountant? Getting drunks off the roads pleased him most.
Holly had asked him to monitor the situation near Port Renfrew, where a landslide had washed out one lane. Only rudimentary repairs had been made. A visit down the road showed that the way was passable, but barely. More warning for motorists was needed. They’d need to call for official signage. Plastic cones alone weren’t cutting it. And kids were stealing them. He had an idea about addressing the Port Renfrew grade school. If kids growing up formed a positive impression of the police...
For once, he was in no hurry to get home to his small room at the apartment. His grandmother was visiting from Durgapur, and since she was nearly deaf, the television had been blaring sitcoms every evening. His mother ruled the house, but she had to defer to her own mother. “When are you getting married, Chirakumar? Your cousins have all given me grandchildren. You will be an old bitter man and die of loneliness like the moneylender on our corner. Warn him, Gupta. He needs to hear it from his father,” she’d say, wringing her small brown hands. Telling her his nickname had elicited a hiss worse than a cobra’s. “What abomination is that? It sounds like a biscuit.”
He rested his head on his hand and crossed off another day on his desk calendar. Six more before they took her to the airport. It was sweet of the old lady to make rosewater puddings for him, stuff him with parathas and pakora until he squeaked. But the apartment was too small for three, let alone four.
He was pondering whether it was “compliment” or “complement” to describe a group of officers when the phone rang.“Officer Singh? This is Mindy from the Sooke Animal Hospital,” a melodic voice said. “You called earlier to ask about something you read online about Fentanyl being used to treat animals.”
Someone else working overtime. He felt an instant camaraderie. “Thanks for calling back. We had a fatal overdose which involved that drug and have been trying to track down any local sources.” He chastised himself for using the word “fatal” to make his business more important. Was it because he was talking to a girl? The last marriage prospect his parents had introduced was a cousin of some Victoria heart specialist, who’d seen his father for a check-up. A beauty on the plump side, she was as dumb as a box of rocks. And the way she’d fawned on him. Her jalabis were delicious, but sweets could be purchased. You didn’t go to bed with them every night.
“I spoke with the doctor. We’ve used it a few times to treat severe pain, such as non-repairable hip breakdowns, spinal degeneration, older animals where the answer isn’t an operation. A temporary solution to make the patient comfortable in the final days. Palliative care, it’s called.”
Chipper perked up and made a fresh note. Holly would need to hear about this. But he needed more details. “Are we talking about pills? Powder? A liquid?”
Mindy excused herself to get the information. She sounded really friendly. But smart. Good vocabulary, too. Was she married? Did she like tall guys? What about officers? He hadn’t been on a date since he’d transferred to the island.
“Here we are, constable.”
He shook himself back to reality. It wouldn’t look good to be flirting with someone he met on the job. But she wasn’t directly involved in a case. What could a coffee hurt? “And please call me Chipper.”
He heard a little giggle. “We use the transdermal patch.”
“A patch? I’ve never seen anything like that. How does it work?”
“It’s designed with a porous membrane for timed absorption. The animals seem to know that they’re being helped and don’t try to pull it off.”
No patches in this case. “That doesn’t fit our situation. Any other forms for this Fentanyl?”
“Ummm. There is a kind of lollipop animals can suck. The drug is applied lingually. Through the...mucous membranes.” She cleared her throat.
A modest girl his mother might approve, even if she wasn’t East Indian. His pulse quickened.
“Hello? Chipper?”
He blew out a frustrated breath. No patch or lollipop for Joel. “I see. Thanks, Mindy, for your help—” He hesitated to ring off, wondering if he could find a reason to see her in person. She didn’t seem in any hurry to end the conversation.
A buzzer sounded in the background. “Oh, sorry. That’s the dryer. I’m washing some of our crate blankets. But in one case, I remember now, the doctor prescribed the powder. To be used very, very judiciously for pain. One of our older dogs.”