Terry wore a long-sleeved rugby shirt with colourful stripes. Then from a washtub of ice, he hoisted a light beer and motioned her to a canvas chair. Holly accepted a soda. It wasn’t safe anymore in B.C., even for a woman her size, to drink one beer and pass muster with the breathalyser.
Ricki shielded her eyes from the sun and scanned the yard. “I’ll find that rascal Piper. I don’t want you to miss meeting your niece, Holly. I’ll bring you a plate, too. I bet you have a hearty appetite just like your family.” Giving her husband a teasing poke in the ribs, she turned and walked toward a group of children.
With his wife gone, it was time to get serious. They spoke for a moment about the raven pendant. “I remember Aunt Bonnie’s silver raven stealing the box of light, the sun in its beak. But you’re sure it’s the same piece of jewellery?”
“There are lots around, but this one had the same small flaw.”
“I hoped someone would, well, ask questions. Never made sense to me that she just vanished, along with that Bronco.” His dark eyes crinkled at the corners. “I figured you went into the law so that you might in a better position to find her someday.”
“So you think something happened to her, too. It’s good to talk to someone about it. Whenever Dad and I get onto that topic, it’s really tough.” She had long ago jettisoned the absurd idea that her mother would have left on her own. Maybe in fiction people developed amnesia and wandered off. Not in real life. “I haven’t been able to do much until I got back here. The files tell me nothing, and I’ve made so much of a nuisance of myself that when the records people see me coming, they shut the door. Everyone says that it’s a bad idea to investigate your own family.”
“Sounds like they’ve given up, and that pisses me off. Aunt Bonnie did so much for our women and families, but she ran into a lot of very bad people. That time when she faced down Joe Blough. He’d been beating up Jeannie for years. Your mom made sure she got a restraining order and then a fair divorce settlement. She stood right in his yard in front of the neighbours, shook her fist, and dared him to lay a hand on her. What a prosecuting attorney she would have made. Just didn’t like the court scene, I guess.”
“She was some debater. When she finally lost her first argument with me, I was eighteen.” She’d had the same thoughts herself that many men in Bonnie’s dark world must have hated her. “What happened to Blough?”
Terry shrugged. “He left for a mining job in Whitehorse. That was five years ago. Not long after, he was killed in an accident in the shaft.” He pounded the arm of the pink plastic Muskoka-style chair. “Bastard. The women had a big party in Cowichan that night. I wish your mother could have been there. She always said that despite the fact that Canada had no death penalty, some people had no right to walk Mother Earth. Even a life in jail was too good for them.”
“She was so passionate.” Holly remembered the times she’d seen her mother’s face stained with tears. Once a bi-polar man had killed his family of four with a sword, then committed suicide. “Jeannie was a success story, but not all the women were so lucky. Mom said that civilization lost its way when the old matriarchal societies changed.” She closed her mouth. Now she was sounding like an elder.
“Turning things around takes time. Aunt Bonnie did a lot of good in our community. To me she was a warrior.”
She waved away a bee buzzing around her pop can. “She knew the risks.” Like in policing, she thought. Percentages be damned, there’s no place we’d rather be.
Ricki arrived with a plate for Holly with a hot dog, salad, and chips. “Thanks, Ricki. Sorry to take your husband away.” She tried a hearty bite. Smoky, lean, and perfectly cooked. It might be deer sausage, one good use for her totem.
The woman waved her hand. “Family is important. I hope Terry has information that can help you. He told me about your mom when we first married. I’m so very sorry. I can’t imagine what you go through. Or your dad.” She looked away as she mentioned Norman. The younger generation seemed to have more understanding for him than those his age, who couldn’t comprehend why he loved that Ivory Tower.
When Holly had finished, she put aside her plate and rummaged in her pocket, handing Terry the receipt from Otter Aviation she kept in her wallet. He read it slowly and nodded, stopped to admire a balloon his daughter had brought over. Little Piper gave her a shy look. She was a living doll with long black, red-ribboned braids. Her shirt said, “Daddy’s Little Cub.” She’d never seen Holly before, and gave her a shy hug, prompted by her father.
Holly marvelled at how delicate and fragile a child’s body was. If she ran into a case of abuse, it wouldn’t be easy to stay neutral, maintain a civil demeanour when you wanted to apply a slap or worse to someone who had no business replicating. “Your Auntie Holly is a policeman,” Terry said, and the girl’s huge bright eyes saucered. “She finds the bad guys and protects us, don’t you, Holly?”
Holly nodded semi-seriously but added a wink. Piper giggled and ran away to find her friends. They were so innocent at that age. No wonder Ann liked to go to the grade school for her DARE program to educate about drug use. Ricki excused herself.
“You worked at Otter, Terry. Is there anything you remember that might help? It was a long time ago. Even the slightest and stupidest detail might make the difference.” Her eyes sent a silent plea. Terry had always come through.
Ricki was calling for him, waving a large knife. It was time to cut the cake and sing. He stood and tapped his watch, holding up five fingers to his wife. “I was at Otter for three years as an apprentice. When I got my papers, I hated to leave them but the offer here in Sidney was too good.”
“And the owners, the Hamilton brothers? Tell me about them.”
“No way had they anything to do with the disappearance. They were straight-up guys. They thought of Aunt Bonnie like a sister. Gave her special rates and dropped everything if she needed a flight. You know that sometimes she had to go where there weren’t any roads or where it was quicker to fly. Like Esperanza, Zeballos, Tahsis.” He named tiny settlements on the wild west coast, a land of fjords.
“She took her Bronco to Tahsis, her destination. Past Gold River. The last we heard from her was at a motel in Campbell River. Then she vanished. The early snow storm in the hills didn’t help. That country is brutal.”
His eyebrows contracted in sympathy. “What about the files at Otter? Did they say more about this one-way trip?”
“Gone in a fire years ago. Bernie was killed in a crash on Denman Island. Phil went east. Nobody knows where. He was pretty depressed about his brother when he sold the business.”
Terry nodded. “He had a breakdown, I heard. Bonnie knew plenty of people on the mainland. Her reputation was huge.”
“And I remember the date of the receipt. She didn’t go to the mainland to Williams Lake at all. She was home. So who did, and why? What the hell’s there except for hunting and fishing and a road to Prince George?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Seems I asked Bernie that myself. I did all his tune ups. Normally he’d talk your ear off. This time he clammed right up. Said that if I didn’t know anything, I was all the better off. Mentioned a chain. And weak links.”
A chain. Of events? Of people, like the Underground Railroad? How many others were involved? “Nothing more?”
“A couple of times I saw your mother with other First Nations women. Usually from up north. I didn’t know them. They used the flights to get off the island as quietly as possible.”
That made sense. She remembered something her mother had said about some people being too broken to fix. And then you either left or paid with your life. “I got some initials from a notepad. LS. Probably a person. Sending a taxi to McD.”
“Micky D’s. It’s a common meeting place.”
“That much I figured out. LS mean anything to you?”
“Your mom was pretty discreet about naming names. And I was doing my mechanic’s stuff, not sitting around with the clients.”
“But Williams Lake. Maybe I can see why she used Otter Aviation.”
“Major airlines have schedules, traceable records. I’m betting that in these cases, the Hamiltons didn’t file flight plans. They were pretty loose that way even if they could forfeit their licence. And she could go door to door, not fool around flying to Vancouver first. There are plenty of fields where you can land a small plane like that.”
“You’re probably right. Cash only, too. My mom took several thousand from a joint bank account around the same time. She could have taken a lot more from their other accounts. You know how Dad socks it away.”
“That’s not much to go on, all these years. Nothing else has turned up?”
Taking a breath, she told him about the tote bag. The more she learned, the less sense it made.
“What? That’s crazy. The same bag with the cool German shepherd on the side? Sure I remember it. And you don’t know when it was left on the ferry?”
“I’m trying to make it fit, imagining that Mom took the ferry to the U.S., came back, and headed for Campbell River, two hundred miles in the opposite direction. The logistics are ridiculous. Did someone steal it from her? Maybe if I finally get in touch with this retired guy, I can pin it down. The bag is distinctive. He should know if it was found a year ago, or five, or ten.”
“Wish I could help. There’s an image, though … a word … every now and then it jumps in and out of my memory. I’m not even sure that I’m not imagining it or receiving it through another sense. My grandpa was a shaman, or what passed for it fifty years ago.” He pinched the bridge of his nose until it was white. Seconds ticked by. For once Holly wished she were a hypnotist, able to re-summon lost memories. “A harp.”
More word association time. Crazy varieties of the term shot through her mind. Harp seal. Harp on something. And the old-fashioned instrument in a hundred shapes and sizes. “A harp? Are you sure you heard right? What could that possibly mean? Are you seeing a picture of it, or is the memory verbal?”
Memory was an elusive animal. The faster you ran after if, the faster it ran. But if you relaxed your guard, it could come bumping into you of its own accord.
“It was something I overheard. ‘Look for the harp.’” He spread his hands in frustration. “I was doing a tricky carburetor adjustment in the big Quonset hut while Aunt Bonnie and Bernie were walking through. I wasn’t paying any attention. It didn’t seem important at the time. I’m sorry.”
He turned as Ricki called again with a little more salt in her tone. Then he put his broad hand on hers and squeezed gently. It was calloused and scarred from the dangers of his profession. “Listen, I have to go. If anything else comes to mind, if I think of anyone who worked at Otter back then, I will call you faster than an arrow.” He mimed a shot at a tree.
Holly took her last bite and put down the plate. “You’ve given me one lead, Terry. Thanks.” She glanced at her watch. “Now I really have to fly before the Pat Bay gets clogged with the 2:30 ferry arrival.” Victoria had only three bottlenecks: The McKenzie–Island Highway intersection, the Colwood Crawl, and the arrivals of the ferries in Sidney. Ten minutes of traffic was a cheap price for life in paradise.
As a cheer went up from the kids, Holly closed the pretty little gate behind her, brainstorming all the way to the car. Harp. A pub name? The island, more English than the English, had its share. An advertisement for Guinness or Harp beer? Images of St. Patrick? She nearly pulled out in front of a scooter carrying a very large man, Canadian flag on a pole dangling above him.
All Ann heard in
the office was the persistent ticking of the wall clock, louder and louder until her ears ached as much as her heart. Chipper’s desk sat as a reproof. Every day it gathered more of Ashley’s trash. “That’s it. I have to get out of here. Even for twenty minutes.” She tossed down her pen in disgust and watched it bounce on the floor.
Since Chipper had been MIA, she’d been coming in earlier and earlier, hoping that the music from his Mustang would reach her as he returned to work. He reminded her of her son. She’d been scarcely twenty when she had Nick. His bastard of a father had taken off. Back to Newfoundland and his family’s lobster boat. One blind date had changed her life forever. Add a forty ouncer to a two-hundred pounder and let ’er rip. Rod had been charming with that Newfie accent and off-colour jokes. Sure she had had a few, but back then they would have called it consent. Willingly, she’d driven with him in his car to a spot overlooking the ocean on a moonlit night. In denial at first when her period was late, then fearing reprisals from her dragon mother Phyllis, she let it go too long. Then there had been no turning back. Months in cheap rooms in Vancouver had been a nightmare, but she’d worked her ass off as a waitress, then as an administrative assistant, and when Nick was in his teens, finally took courses and got on with the force, determined to make up for lost time.
Holly wasn’t due until ten, and Ashley had called in with cramps again. No one was available for traffic duty. Ann got in the cruiser, welcoming that old familiar feeling of action. She drove a few kilometres to the pull-in area near Shirley, their favourite hidey-hole for speed checks. A few cars whizzed by, then seeing her, slowed suddenly, their red lights flashing as they braked. Ann narrowed her hooded eyes. Smoky’s onto you, fella. She opened her aluminum car cup and took a sip of Rooibos tea strong enough to trot a mouse. Chipper had introduced it to her when he gave her a selection for Christmas.
It felt good to be out of the office and away from that imprisoning chair. If Holly called her on it, she’d say that with Ashley away, someone had to show the colours. Getting out of the car after fifteen minutes to stretch her back, she saw something moving way up the hill behind her. Bears were no big deal, especially with the car for refuge. But suppose it crossed the road. North of Victoria, four cars had hit a bear on the Malahat and caused a ricochet collision.
She picked up a sizable stick and began beating an alder. “Go away, Bruno or Bruna! Get back into the woods!” She yelled again and kept up the thrashing.
“Are you crazy down there? I’m not an animal,” came a woman’s voice way thirty feet up the slope in a thick patch of bushes.
Ann gave a self-conscious chuckle and tipped her cap back to better observe. “My apologies. Are there still any berries up there? I thought they were long gone.”
Down the path came a walking salal bush. When the twined bundle hit the ground, a tall thin wiry woman in heavy Carhardt overalls, rubber boots, and a toque stood before her. Collecting the evergreen leaves was one way enterprising people made money year round. They sold the greens to florists to highlight bouquets. How much they made, Ann couldn’t imagine, but it must have provided incentive, especially for retirees on a fixed income.
“Officer, are you setting up for one of those mean old speed checks?” The woman had a horsey, weathered face and sensible pigtails for her iron-grey hair. “I don’t even have a car.” She pointed into the underbrush, where sat a rusty Raleigh bicycle. The woman put down the bunches, tied them with string quick as a wrangler, and wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand. She had a healthy, rawboned look, the kind which might make it to a hundred.
“Busted,” said Ann and extended her hand. She grinned when the woman turned it into one of those hippy shakes, which had about three positions. “Do you come here often?”
Elaine Robson, as she called herself, replied with a pucker to her thinning lips, “Nearly every day. Almost ready for another spot. Don’t want to milk the horn of plenty.” She smiled at her own mixed metaphor, then took a plastic flask from her belt and gulped down half a litre. “Hot work, though.”
Ann felt a curious hunch overtake her like an opponent in a race closing in. “Were you here two weeks ago? I mean in this spot?” Chipper would have been in the area when he stopped the Buckstaff girl’s car.
Elaine screwed up her face in memory. A few scratches worked down her long neck. “It’s likely. I have about ten picking spots. Next up will be at the Invermuir Road intersection. Most people don’t know I’m in the underbrush. Those blackberry brambles do a number, though, even though I have my armour on.”
“So you’ve seen us before on traffic checks.”
Elaine tucked her bottle back into the holder. “That gorgeous young Sikh. Another woman younger than you. Then recently a different woman. Tall drink of water. Struts around like she owns the place. Free entertainment, watching those poor, unsuspecting sods pulled over. Mostly they go quietly. Some get mad, though, as if something wasn’t fair about the catch.”
Ann was holding her breath. Her ears were hot with a sudden burst of excitement. “What about the day the man stopped a young girl? She was driving a gold sports car. Worth a chunk of change.”
Elaine leaned against the cruiser and shook with amusement. “I remember that. The girl was pounding on the car and doing all sorts of damn fool antics. I felt sorry for him.”
“Think carefully because it’s very important. Did you see him touch her at all? Even a hand on a shoulder?”
“Are you kidding? I’d sooner kiss a rattlesnake, not that we have them on the island. She had the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard. He just stood with his arms folded a good five feet away and tried to reason with her. Wasn’t no use. She was having none of it. Quite the brat.”
“Then you observed the whole incident? Including the taxi arriving?”
Elaine gave a hoot, and a bead of sweat dripped down her nose. “To be honest, I was embarrassed to be listening in, but I couldn’t help it. I saw the whole thing. An older man, was it her father? They left together in her car. Should have taken her to jail for that cheek. That young fellow had the patience of a saint. Me, I would have slapped her six ways to Sunday. Damn, the world is going to hell. Not sorry I’m checking out in another twenty.”
“You heard
everything
the officer said to her?”
“Certainly. He was the model of courtesy. He wasn’t yelling, but his deep voice carried quite well.”
“And the father?”
Elaine pushed her bottom lip forward to moisten it. “You can see where the daughter got her bad manners. He was yelling things like ‘You’ll regret this. Do you realize who I am? I’ll have the best lawyer in Canada on the phone in half an hour. Blah, blah. Your badge is on the line….’” She stopped short. “‘Paki.’ What a bigot, and stupid, too. Anyone could tell the man was a Sikh. That’s not their usual territory if I remember my geography.”
“And the officer’s reaction?”
“Nothing but sir this, and sir that. He was telling them that they could either pay the fines by mail or contest them at a court date.” She gave Ann a tongue in cheek expression. “Of course we know how those go unless you can prove some kind of extenuating circumstances.”
Ann let out the loudest whoop and stopped short of tossing her hat in the air. Her back had even stopped hurting. “Lady, I’d like to buy you a drink. In fact, I’d like to buy you a whole bottle. Some people need to talk to you, and I mean yesterday.”
The friendly creases on Elaine’s weathered face arranged themselves into a smile that matched her buck teeth. “Any time, any place. Make it Crown Royale Black.”