The drive up went quickly—a little over two hours of good freeway through forest, farmland, the occasional town straggling off into junkyards and strip malls, then back into farmland.
Close to the border Jane was momentarily tempted by a discount shopping center in the middle of nowhere. Canadians, she knew, had for years flocked below the border to buy. Everything was more expensive north of the border and there was less selection.
The border itself brought back childhood memories of weekend trips to Vancouver. Peace Arch Park, a big and grassy expanse, dotted with the kind of formal English-style flower beds the Canadians did so well, surrounded a huge white monument, an arch right on the border itself, erected in 1918. CHILDREN OF A COMMON MOTHER it read across the top in gilt letters, a sentiment from a simpler time when both countries considered themselves firmly Anglo-Saxon. It had been put up right after both countries had fought together for the first time, in World War One, a time when a hunk of white plaster of heroic proportions didn’t seem corny at all. People weren’t afraid of sentiment then, and what’s more, the people putting up monuments generally agreed about what constituted a noble sentiment.
On the Canadian side, there was a big rectangle of flower bed planted firmly in the shape of the Canadian maple leaf flag, with elaborate borders around it of dusty miller and lobelia. The American side wasn’t so ambitious, but the flower beds were more labor-intensive and carefully maintained looking than most public landscaping in the States. They’d been shamed into it, she supposed, by the persnickety Canadians.
About forty-five minutes later, Jane was waiting in line for the BC ferry. She took out the scrap of paper Calvin Mason had given her. Gordon Trevellyan. She imagined a square-jawed retired Mountie.
During the two-hour crossing, she had a meal of fish and chips in the cafeteria (with the terrific malt vinegar that Americans too often forgot to provide), then took a walk on the deck. She noticed a framed picture of Queen Elizabeth, who was wearing a white ball gown, a blue sash and a pearl tiara.
The Queen’s picture, the Canadian accents she heard aboard the ferry, the dollar bills in blue and red and green, all gave Jane a familiar and pleasant feeling of foreignness. She realized that she always felt more at home, more in control in some way, as a foreigner. And, although Jane knew the United States and Canada weren’t terribly different, they were different enough to please her.
She’d always been able to tell English-speaking Canadians from Americans when she’d lived in Europe. It wasn’t just that they were often bristling with maple leaf lapel pins in a blatant attempt not to be taken for Americans. It was their manner—less expansive, quieter, more courteous. And their characteristic speech patterns. Scottish-sounding vowels, more precise enunciation and cozy little turns of phrase.
And of course, the ubiquitous “eh,” pronounced “ay,” used instead of the American “huh” as a short version of “what?” (although Canadians were much more likely to say “pardon me?” if they hadn’t caught what you said). “Eh” with a question mark was also added to the end of the sentence like the American “y’know?” to check that the listener was getting the drift. Without a question mark it served as a way to amplify a statement.
When the ferry arrived, she pulled over and went to a phone booth. Gordon Trevellyan had a bland English accent of no particular class, with an overlay of Canadian, and a friendly manner. He said he’d be glad to see her as soon as she wanted to come by, and gave her directions to his office on Pandora Street.
She distracted herself on the short drive from the ferry terminal at Swartz Bay into Victoria by looking for more evidence of Canadiana. McDonald’s hamburger logos dressed up with maple leaves. Mileage given in kilometers. Stucco houses. For some reason Jane could never understand, British Columbia, covered with dense forests of cedar and fir, also had more than its share of houses in ugly, gritty stucco.
Gordon Trevellyan turned out to be a small grubby man of about fifty or so with a bristly yellowish gray moustache that looked as if it might be nicotine-stained. He wore a light tweed jacket, bulging out a little at the elbows, and managed to give the appearance of a man clinging without much success to respectability. There was a spot of what looked like egg yolk on his striped tie. Jane flicked her glance up from the spot after just a millisecond, but Mr. Trevellyan was apparently quite observant. He noticed her notice.
“Mmm,” he said, looking down over his chins and scraping at the spot with his thumbnail. He coughed and turned his attention back to her. “The old regiment,” he said.
“Oh, so you have a military background,” she said. “I imagine most investigators have police backgrounds.”
He cleared his throat. “Did my share of intelligence work in the military,” he said. Jane, who was in the habit of creating biographies out of whole cloth for people she met, thought it more likely he’d been a military policeman. She imagined him twenty or thirty years ago, wielding a truncheon, breaking up a bar fight near some Allied base in Germany.
Maybe she would have done better out of the phone book, she thought to herself, glancing around his office, which seemed to be filled with dark Victorian furniture (where had it come from?) and smelled of Player’s cigarettes. There was a cloudy-looking colored print of King Arthur pulling a sword out of a stone. Jane was reminded of Uncle Harold’s Saint George and the dragon in her living room.
Gordon Trevellyan was making them both tea. He’d offered coffee or tea, but the jar of powdered instant she spotted on an old dark oak side table looked grim. She’d been spoiled by all that Seattle espresso. “Tea, please,” she’d said. He fussed with an electric kettle and pulled some tea bags out of a box of Red Rose.
“Have you done any missing persons work?” she asked him.
“Plenty,” he said with an unconvincing world-weary nod as he presented her with a mug of syrupy-looking brew. She glanced at it and decided she took milk.
“All I have is a name. Brenda MacPherson.”
“It’s a start, i’n’t it,” he said, sitting behind his desk, hunching over a yellow legal pad and jotting.
“And a general age. Late twenties.” She tasted the tea. She found milky tea rather depressing. It reminded her of a visit she’d made to England in the mid-eighties to visit some London friends—and found them in poorly heated homes, everyone seemingly on the dole and all embittered and grumbling about Thatcher.
“No date of birth?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Think she might have a criminal record?”
“I have no idea.” Jane thought for a second. “I sort of doubt it.”
“Married, single? Any kids?”
“Single as far as I know. And it’s unlikely she has kids.” Jane was struck with how little she knew about Brenda. Yet somehow she had an idea of what she was like.
“Citizenship?”
“Canadian. I’m pretty sure.”
He nodded, pleased she’d known something at last. “Good. And you have any idea where she is?”
“Somewhere on Vancouver Island. Before that—about two years ago—she lived in Seattle.”
“Got a picture? A general description?”
“No picture. She’s short, with fair skin and dark hair. Probably in pretty good shape. Trained as a dancer.”
Trevellyan poured milk and sugar into his tea and stirred it up vigorously, took a slurp, then made a few notes on a piece of paper. “Hmm. Well, if all else fails, you can stake me to a series of evenings in our famous Canadian stripper bars. A lot of dancers end up there.” He wheezed happily at what she assumed was a joke.
“I didn’t realized this was a hotbed of vice.”
“Oh, no,” he said, looking very serious. “It’s all very legit. Clean operations. The Americans come up here, they can’t believe it. It’s all very classy.” He gave Jane the impression he was a serious aficionado. “BC is famous for its stripper bars,” he said with a touch of civic pride.
“I see,” said Jane. “I haven’t been here in years. I remember when I was a kid, gentlemen and ladies had to enter a pub through separate entrances, and it was against the law to open a grocery store on Sunday.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Before my time, though. Things have loosened up considerably. This place is the California of Canada. Mind you, it’s still fairly quiet. On the surface, anyways.” He raised an eyebrow as if to suggest he was well acquainted with the seamy side of life. He offered her a Player’s, lit one for himself, then got down to business. “Well, I can’t tell you how long this will take. Could be pretty straightforward, could get complicated.”
“I just want you to get me started,” she said. “You don’t have to actually find her. Or contact her. Just get me an address somewhere.”
“Bound to be more than one Brenda MacPherson,” he said.
“Fine. Give me any Brenda MacPhersons you can find in the approximate age range.”
“Righto. How are you paying, love? Visa, Mastercard?”
“Cash,” she said.
“All right. I charge you a hundred an hour.”
Jane figured this was somewhere around eighty-five dollars U.S., depending on the exchange rate. “Okay. Would you like a deposit?”
“Sure.” He sounded casual, but Jane thought she detected a gimlety little gleam in his eye as he exhaled cigarette smoke. “Two hundred’ll get me started.” She removed two Canadian hundreds from her wallet under his watchful gaze, glad that she’d exchanged money at the border. She had a feeling Gordon Trevellyan would have tried to chisel her on the exchange rate.
“What I’d like you to do,” she said firmly, in case he planned to string her along with a lot of unnecessary charges, and try and dazzle her with the complexity of the task, “is check with a few of your usual sources. The phone company, maybe law enforcement, anyone with a big computer, and get me a couple of addresses. I’m assuming you’ve got some sources like that?”
“That’s right,” he said, looking a little wary.
“If it gets much more complicated than that, let me know.”
“Where can I get in touch with you?” he said.
“I’m not sure. I’ll call you in the morning, let you know.”
“All right.”
She rose to go, and he walked her to the door.
The essential snobbishness of the English culture seemed to guarantee that there was no sleaze quite like English sleaze. And nowhere better to find it than in some out-post of Empire like Victoria, British Columbia.
Jane was more than a little irritated. She imagined there were a good half dozen solid, professional investigative firms in Victoria, run by ex-RCMP with good contacts who knew the territory.
And Calvin steers her to a refugee from a Graham Greene novel! But then she brought herself up short. So what if he had egg on his tie and a shifty manner? She realized she was judging him by snobbish English standards. Maybe he’d do a perfectly fine job. After all, Calvin had told her about missing persons work. It was just as she’d described it to Gordon Trevellyan. A small bribe to someone with access to a computer somewhere. She didn’t see how Gordon Trevellyan could screw it up.
Jane spent the night in a grim little motel on the outskirts of Victoria, which she picked out of a tourist guide because of its low rates. It had a Ye Olde England theme, and was made of plywood plastered over and dressed up with some dark brown two-by-fours to look like Tudor architecture.
The War of the Roses was memorialized in the neon sign outside her room. The white rose of York shone brightly, but the red rose of Lancashire had a wicked flicker that penetrated the rather spongy curtains. That, and the valley of fatigue in the old mattress, made sleep difficult.
The next morning she gave herself a stern lecture about fortitude and being cheerful, but her resolve faded a little as she stepped into a tin shower cubicle that buckled under her weight with a metallic warping sound. She scrubbed at herself with some sort of carbolic soap, the kind she imagined prisoners might be issued to make sure they were properly deloused.
The hell with it, she told herself, as she slammed her possessions into her suitcase. From now on, no motel rooms that smelled of industrial disinfectant and were equipped with mildewing shower curtains and polyester towels. She looked around the room and sneered at the velvet painting of a knight in armor, tastefully attached to the wall by screws at each corner to make sure no one would steal it. On closer inspection she realized that as an additional security measure, a Phillips screwdriver would be required to remove the hideous thing from the wall. A mere dime wouldn’t do the trick. Only the most persistent art lover could make it his own.
And from now on, she vowed, no motels without complimentary shampoo and conditioner, cable TV and opaque curtains that met in the center of the window. Surely Uncle Harold wouldn’t have wanted her to live like this? A curmudgeonly phrase she had heard somewhere floated into her consciousness. “If you can’t afford to travel, stay home.”
But if she stayed home, and didn’t pursue a hopeless case, she might never be able to travel. Even if this wasn’t the right hopeless case, she was mindful of the bargain she’d made with God. She’d work hard and unquestioningly at whatever crumbs were thrown her, and she’d get a decent case one way or the other. Jane, while believing intellectually that it was theologically unsound to make deals with God, nevertheless did it all the time. She felt she might be getting too old now to break a lifelong habit.
She checked out, paying cash. When the little old overrouged lady at the counter asked her very sweetly how everything was, Jane merely said, “Just fine, thank you.” What was the point of telling the poor thing that the place was enough to practically precipitate a clinical depression? After all, Jane could leave.
The little transaction seemed to put everything all back in perspective. Jane stopped feeling sorry for herself and drove back into Victoria in better spirits.
When she got there, she parked her car near the museum and set out toward the Empress Hotel. The Empress was opened in 1908 by the Canadian Pacific Railway to give travelers a reason to go to Victoria, and it still dominated the harbor exuding all the confidence of the British Empire at the height of its powers.
The massive structure, looking like a French château, equaled in grandeur provincial parliament buildings nearby, and squarely faced the small harbor.
Like everything here, it was surrounded by perfectly kept gardens and lawns. A statue of the Empress herself, Victoria Regina, in her younger days, looked out at her corner of Empire with dignity, as tourists in tank tops and shorts, many of them from day boats from Seattle or from cruise ships, shuffled among the restored buildings of the harbor.
Jane found a rare parking spot nearby, locked the suitcase in the trunk, smoothed out her black dress, which she wore in an attempt to look like a traveler perhaps, but not a tourist, and went into the lobby of the Empress. They’d done a fabulous restoration since she’d been here last, and the old girl was looking pretty good, with soft carpets, gleaming carved wood and big, well-balanced spaces. Jane felt at home here. She often felt at home in surroundings she could not afford, and out of place in surroundings she could, as if some dreadful mistake had been made. She decided to eat breakfast here, damn the expense, but first she called Gordon Trevellyan.
“Where are you?” he said. “I should be able to get back to you with something this afternoon.”
“I’ll be downtown,” she said. “You can leave a message for me at the Empress.”
She went to the desk, explained that she wasn’t a guest but that she might be expecting a message here, and tipped the desk clerk ten dollars. He took it with apparent squeamishness, but said he’d take care of it. She went to the newsstand and bought herself a Times-Colonist, then picked up a few brochures from the concierge’s desk. She made a point of smiling nicely at the young woman there in a blue blazer, as if she were a guest who might need some help later.
In the restaurant, she settled into a corner table with a view of the room, and ordered eggs Benedict. She skimmed over the international news, which there wasn’t too much of, and read about an ongoing dispute between local timber interests and environmentalists over clear cutting on the island.
There was also a story about some tourists from Quebec who’d been collecting hallucinogenic mushrooms on the Queen Charlotte Islands to the north. Some of the Haida natives had come upon them, and, resenting their intrusion on their land, held a gun to their heads and forced them to consume their entire sackful of mushrooms. The tourists had been flown by float plane to a medical clinic where they’d had their stomachs pumped.
Queen Victoria’s little corner of Empire still had something of the untamed about it, Jane decided. These wild and woolly goings-on were interspersed with items about flower shows, pony clubs, ratepayers’ meetings and movie and book reviews, all of which paled in her mind beside the story of the tourists from Quebec.
She imagined them babbling in hallucinogenic French in the little clinic in the bush, and wondered if they’d had those Gallic, Rousseau-like romantic notions of Indians living in harmony with nature. Until they’d found themselves on the wrong end of a gun.
She put the paper down, turned her attention to her eggs Benedict, and looked around the incredibly civilized room, quiet except for the chink of glasses and cutlery and low murmurs. At the table next to her sat a good-looking man in a dark suit, who appeared as if he were on a business trip. His thick brown hair was still a little wet above his collar from his morning shower, and he had an appealing, freshly shaved look.
Traveling and hotels brought out the libidinous in her, she thought to herself as she admired him. There was something romantic about the idea of strangers in transit, and the delicious sense she got when traveling of never knowing what might happen. Which was probably why she’d traveled so much.
He caught her gaze, smiled at her, and she found herself smiling back. She managed to finish her breakfast without resuming eye contact, but when she left she gave him another little smile over her shoulder.
Her spirits lifted by the brief encounter, she spent some time walking the historic streets, past cute little shops with tartans and bone china for the Americans, then went into the provincial museum and looked at Native art—dramatically lit massive totem poles in pale, bleached cedar. Stylized ravens, eagles, beavers, frogs, wolves, bears and killer whales transmogrified themselves into each other, faces sharing space with stomachs, wide eyes alert, with now and then blank-faced humans humbly intertwined in the composition, no match for the power of the thunderbird with his powerful wings. The exhibits were somewhat defensively labeled to indicate that the various chiefs had sold these works to the museum for reasonable amounts of cash back in the teens and twenties, and they hadn’t been stolen by marauding colonial collectors.
In the afternoon, she went back to the lobby of the Empress. There was a message for her at the desk from Gordon Trevellyan. She found a pay phone and called him back, noticing that the Canadian quarter bore an out-of-date portrait of the Queen. It had been minted at least one chin ago.
“I’ve got what you want,” said Trevellyan—a little nervously, she thought. “A printout with Brenda MacPhersons from twenty-five to thirty years old. But there’s been a bit of a wrinkle. How about if I come by your hotel and talk to you about it? I can be there in half a tic.” They arranged to meet in the lobby.
He came in looking rumpled and seedy—the elegant surroundings made it even more apparent—and she shook his hand, catching the smell of tobacco and whiskey as he came toward her. “Let’s go into the bar where we can talk quietly,” he said. “The tourists’ll be coming in for their damn tea in a sec.” He looked at his watch and chewed a little at his yellowish moustache.
In the bar, tricked out like Rangoon in the days of the Raj with lots of potted palms and Indian brasses, he looked around with the air of a slightly eager regular, apprising himself of who was here. No one took any notice of him, and they sat down at a small table at the back.
“Got four of them,” he said. “All over the map.” He shoved a page across the table, fired up another Player’s and hailed a waitress. There was a list of four addresses. One in Tofino, two in Victoria, one on Denman Island. There was a date of birth with each one. “That what you need?”
“Yes,” she said. He’d mentioned a printout, but the information had obviously been transferred to this sheet. It had been typed on what looked like an old manual typewriter.
He ordered a large whiskey and soda, and she decided that teatime was late enough for a sherry.
“Forgive my asking, Mrs. da Silva,” he said. “But was this a collection matter? I wasn’t quite sure what your interest in this person was,” he said, tilting his head sideways like a bird. “So I wasn’t sure if you’d be interested in knowing about any other individuals who might be interested in this person.”
“Someone else is looking for her?” said Jane.
“Very common in collection work as I’m sure you know. Maybe the two of you could get together?” He paused delicately. Jane imagined there’d be a fee involved. She’d love to know who else was looking for Brenda. What she didn’t want was for the individual to know who she was and what she was doing.
“I hope I can count on your discretion,” she said. “I’d just as soon no one knew I was looking for Brenda MacPherson.”
“Fine,” said Trevellyan. “Just thought I’d check.”
“This person who’s also looking for her? Is it a client of yours?” said Jane, trying to sound casual.
He cleared his throat and ground out his cigarette in the glass ashtray. “Not exactly.”
Jane decided she was tired of fencing around with him. After all, didn’t he work for her?
“Listen, Mr. Trevellyan,” she said pleasantly but firmly. “Can we be very direct?”
He looked slightly alarmed.
She smiled and tried to reassure him. “I can’t help it, really, being American. Any more than you can help being subtle, because you’re English.”
“I’m not English,” he said with dignity. Damn. Now she’d offended him somehow, just when she was trying to be charming. He was probably a naturalized Canadian and was all prickly about the old country like some first-generation people could be.
“I’m Cornish,” he said, sticking out his jaw resolutely.
“Cornish? From Cornwall?”
He looked defiant. “That’s right. We’re not really English, you know. The Anglos and Saxons and Normans and all that lot never really penetrated into Cornwall. We kept them at bay.”
“Yes,” said Jane, who vaguely remembered hearing something about Cornwall at some point. “The Cornish language is related to Breton French, isn’t it.”
“That’s right,” he said, with a gleam in his eye. “A Gaelic language.”
“Do you speak it?” said Jane, fascinated. His English was certainly free of any colorful dialect.
“Well, no,” said Mr. Trevellyan with irritation. “Di’n’t have much chance now, did I? The English stamped it out along with most of our culture. But it was spoken up to the eighteenth century.”
“It’s wonderful that there are Cornishmen like you who haven’t forgotten,” she said stoutly. The picture of King Arthur on his office wall flashed into her memory. She remembered his castle was supposed to have been in Cornwall.
“King Arthur,” she said dreamily. “Tintagel.”
“That’s right,” he said, warming up to her now. “Perhaps you’re familiar with the Cornish nationalist movement,” he said rather breathlessly. “Some of us feel that what with the EC and that, there’s no reason for us to be part of England anymore.” All the craftiness had gone out of him. His blue eyes were rounded and betrayed the glaze of fanaticism.
She nodded solemnly, as if the idea were neither new nor eccentric to her, and their drinks arrived. He broke off when the waitress came to their table with their drinks. Maybe he thought she was an English spy.
Jane racked her brain for more Cornish lore. All she could come up with was that she’d once known a Marjorie Warmington who’d told her Warmington was a Cornish name. She felt she’d managed, nevertheless, to establish some fellow-feeling with Mr. Trevellyan, and seized the moment to get back on track. “What I was wondering, Mr. Trevellyan,” she said, “is who else is looking for Brenda MacPherson, and why? And how you know about it. Could you tell me that?”
“Well there is a question of confidentiality,” he began.
Jane smiled. “I’d be glad to reimburse you for any extra work the answers to my questions might have required.”
“Well it’s a little sticky,” he said. “You see the source I used to get this information, well she’s the one who told me someone else was looking for the same party. It made it awkward for her to run this name by the people on the Third Floor, that is, they wondered why there was so much interest in this person and it put my confidential source in an awkward spot.”
“The Third Floor?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “My source was very keyed up about the whole thing. Had to do some fast talking. Claimed I put her in a bad spot.”
“How much,” said Jane, “would it require to put her more at ease?”
He smiled. “Another hundred might do the trick. As a token of our appreciation for any awkwardness she might have encountered.”
“Fine,” said Jane, reaching for her bag.
He looked a little more relaxed.
“Do you know who he is?” she said, sliding a bill across the table as discreetly as possible. Thank God the currency was color-coded. Hundreds had a kind of wine-colored ink. It made it much easier than if she’d had to root around in her wallet.
“Just that he’s an American. And that he is staying at this hotel.”
“That’s it? That’s all you know?” Jane looked at her hundred a little forlornly. Even with the exchange rate she felt it was too much for the skimpy information. She wasn’t about to add to it.
She leaned across the table. “Mr. Trevellyan,” she said, steadfastly maintaining eye contact as his hand darted out for the bill. “I wish you’d tell me everything you know. I feel I can count on you. As a Cornishman. You see, my maiden name was a Cornish name. Warmington.”
“It was?”
“Yes. My grandfather told me wonderful things about the Cornwall where he grew up. He always told me we weren’t English, we were Cornish.” She fixed him in her gaze and looked as intent as possible.
He didn’t say anything for a while, and she kept staring at him. Finally, he smiled a little and said, “Well, you’re stubborn enough to be Cornish. My source works for a doctor. Every once in a while, as a favor to me, she calls up the people at BC Medical and gets some addresses. Some story about paperwork with the doctor she works for. They can run a search by name and approximate age. The addresses are right about seventy percent of the time. More if they’re self-employed.”
“I see,” said Jane.
“Anyway, a day or so ago, some American got ahold of her name somehow and asked her for the same thing. I didn’t realize she was doing this sort of thing for just anyone.” He sounded peeved, as if he’d somehow been cuckolded. “She said she didn’t want to call back and ask for the same information twice.”
Jane’s eyebrows rose. “So she didn’t keep it?”
“No. Passed it on to this guy. Took me a while to convince her to run it all through again. She came up with some story for them about having lost the first run. But she didn’t want to do it. Repeating it like that would bring attention to the whole thing.”
“But you convinced her?”
He nodded and took a sip of his drink. Jane wondered how he’d convinced her. Subtle blackmail, perhaps? She couldn’t imagine the authorities approved of medical personnel getting into people’s medical records, even if it was just an address.
“And the upshot was the people there at 1515 Blanshard questioned her rather sharply about the whole thing. The poor thing was afraid the RCMP would be around to question her. I calmed her down.”
“Good,” said Jane. “And you managed to get out of her what you told me. An American, staying at the Empress. You didn’t get a name?”
“No.”
“You didn’t, by any chance, give him mine?” said Jane.
“No!” he said, looking shocked. Jane wasn’t sure she believed him.
“But your source,” said Jane, “she must have gotten a name.”
“I presume so,” he said, looking uncomfortable.
“Well you must have talked about him some. After all, she told you he was staying at the Empress.” Jane vowed to hang on like a terrier.
“Ye-es,” he said.
“Well, how did that come up?”
“Because she said she contacted him here. Left an envelope for him.”
“So she presumed he was staying here,” she said. Of course, that didn’t mean anything. After all, she’d made arrangements for the desk to take a message for her. And they had.
“I had the feeling,” sniffed Mr. Trevellyan, “that she’d hoped to see him again, and seemed disappointed that she could only drop it off.”
“So he was presumably charming,” she said.
“Well that’s the whole thing,” said Mr. Trevellyan. He snorted. “She made a point of telling me how attractive this fellow was. I had to act vaguely put out, as if he were a rival. You need a bit of charm to get someone like Lucy to help you. I mean, she doesn’t really need the money. You have to butter them up a bit, you know?”
“I see,” said Jane, nodding and trying to look as if his powers of persuasion with the female sex were a given.
Encouraged, he expanded on his theme. “That’s why you don’t go for the young, pretty ones. You go for the middle-aged ones with some fat on them. They like the attention. And besides slipping them a few bucks, you send them a box of chocolates or something.”
“Very shrewd,” said Jane. “You’re telling them they’re not really fat.” Mr. Trevellyan himself had quite a stomach of his own—the kind Jane usually associated with boozers.
“That’s right. Besides, if you send flowers, the other girls in the office want to know who they’re from.”
“Do you think you could persuade Lucy to tell us this guy’s name?”
“I tried,” he said. “Just in case you were interested,” he added hastily. Again, she sensed just a shade too much expression in this last phrase. Unless it was her imagination, Mr. Trevellyan was an appallingly transparent liar. It had to be a handicap for a private investigator to be saddled with body language and vocal qualities that functioned like a polygraph machine.
She imagined he’d tried to get the guy’s name so he could sell him something. Like Jane’s name, perhaps.
“Do you think I could talk to Lucy?” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said. “She wouldn’t want the world to know she was involved in anything irregular.”
“And of course, she wouldn’t want to think you blabbed her name around,” said Jane. “After all, there can’t be that many Lucys who call the Third Floor at BC Medical once in a while and ask for addresses and other confidential patient information.”
He narrowed his eyes a little, and she thought maybe she’d overdone it with her implied threat. She actually felt a little sorry for him, but she forced herself to move right on to the close.
“Could you call Lucy and ask for the guy’s name?” she said.
“It might be a bit awkward,” he replied.
“Oh?” said Jane.
“Mmm,” he said pensively. “She’s feeling a bit skittish after BC Medical questioned her. I’ve just managed to calm her down. I wouldn’t want her all upset.”
“Maybe we can see what we can find out at the hotel,” she said. “We don’t have his name, but we have Lucy’s. Or you do. Maybe we can ask if the envelope she dropped off got to the right party. Something like that.”
“Umm, we could do that, I suppose,” said Mr. Trevellyan in a tone that indicated they weren’t going to do any such thing.
Jane decided to take his statement at face value. “Good,” she said, pushing back her chair. “How about you just tell them that Lucy dropped off an envelope and you want to see if it went to the right party, and you forgot his name or something.”
“Bit thin,” said Mr. Trevellyan.
“Maybe you can thicken it up,” said Jane, with a nice smile.
“I suppose so,” he said gloomily.
“How’s this?” said Jane. “Tell him Lucy So-and-so of your office dropped off some papers that were supposed to go to Mr. Smith, but that she mislabeled them, and you’re not sure who they really went to. And you have to get them back and you want the name of the party who took charge of the envelope.”
“Well, I suppose . . .”
“Of course, I’d be glad to do it myself. But you don’t want to give me Lucy’s name.”
“Mmm,” he said.
“Of course I could try and get her full name from BC Medical,” she added disingenuously. She doubted this would work, but she didn’t doubt that he’d be put out if his source were compromised by an off-the-wall phone call from her.
“That would never work,” he snapped. He ground out his cigarette and looked at her with an analytical eye. She figured he was trying to decide if she was threatening him on purpose or out of stupidity. She smiled.
“Well, I’ll give it a try,” he said. “No guarantees. I doubt Lucy left her name along with the envelope.” He knocked back his drink, with the gesture of a man about to embark on the kind of task he wants to get over as soon as possible. “I’ll be right back,” he said.
As soon as he left, Jane settled the bill, gave him a head start, then went down to the lobby to see how he was doing.
He was dutifully hanging over the counter and looking appealingly desperate. She sidled up to him and gave the clerk a nervous smile. Trevellyan was obviously irritated that she was standing next to him, and shifted his weight a little from foot to foot.
“Without the guest’s name,” said the desk clerk, an appealingly well-scrubbed-looking young woman in a peach-colored blazer that matched the decor, “I’m afraid there’s not much we can do.”
“Oh, it’s all my fault,” said Jane. “I’m the one who gave her the wrong envelope.”
The clerk looked puzzled, but Jane plunged on, wishing she’d stuck to Trevellyan from the beginning. She wasn’t quite sure what he’d said. “Did you explain it?” she said to him.
“Just briefly,” he said, mercifully catching on. “I told her we delivered the envelope for Mr. Clark to this American by mistake.”
“You see,” said Jane, “I put the Clark papers in the wrong envelope, and Lucy was going to put the American’s name on it, but she was the only one who knew his name, and now she’s gone on vacation, and Mr. Clark will be furious.”
The clerk didn’t seem sufficiently moved by the urgency of the situation, so Jane took a deep breath and added, “It took us forever to get his ex-wife to sign off and now we have the buyer, but without the papers with her signature . . .”
“There’s a substantial real estate transaction going here,” said Mr. Trevellyan. “Hong Kong money. Cash.”
“My God, I feel terrible,” said Jane.
“You should,” snapped Mr. Trevellyan with a vehemence that startled Jane.
“She brought it in yesterday?” said the clerk, frowning disapprovingly at Trevellyan for yelling at Jane.
“Yes,” said Jane. “He’s Lucy’s client. All we know is he was an American, staying here. She said he was quite attractive.”
The girl was sounding more interested in Jane’s problem. “We get a lot of Americans here, naturally,” she said. “Let me just go ask if someone else remembers handing an envelope to an American guest.”
After a second, she came back. “Could it have been Mr. Johnson? Caroline remembers handing an envelope to Mr. Johnson. He was here from San Francisco.”
She clacked away at her computer. “There was a message for him yesterday that there was something for him at the desk.” She looked apologetic. “We have a lot of guests. I can’t run through them all, I’m afraid.”
“We’ll give him a try,” said Trevellyan, taking hold of Jane’s elbow and trying to pry her away from the counter. “We’ll just give him a ring on the house phone.”
“Oh, but he’s checked out,” said the clerk. “I remember him now. I checked him out myself. This morning.” She paused for a minute. Jane figured she was deciding whether he had been attractive. A little half smile told Jane she’d decided he was.
“Did he say where he was going?” said Jane.
“I don’t think so. Oh, wait, the concierge had arranged a booking for him. I remember, because she was gone for a second and he wondered if she’d taken care of it or not.”
“Thank you very much,” said Jane.
Trevellyan was looking very uncomfortable. Jane got the distinct impression he hadn’t wanted her to find out about Mr. Johnson. “May not be the right fellow,” he said gruffly. Which made Jane suspect they had the right man and he knew it.
She stepped away from the counter and turned away, so the clerk couldn’t see her facial expressions. She wanted to be firm with him, and so she had to abandon the persona of the remorseful and browbeaten clerical. “I’ll take care of it from here on,” she said.
“All right,” he said. He seemed ever so slightly put out, as if he’d lost face. Perhaps it was because she’d horned in on his attempt to get information about the other person who was looking for Brenda. He managed a pleasant good-bye and said he’d be glad to help her anytime she needed it. “And give my regards to Mr. Mason,” he said, as if he and Calvin were old chums, which Jane knew wasn’t the case, but which she assumed was his way of trying to make himself seem more legit. She was delighted to see him go, and found it incredibly easy to find out from the concierge where Mr. Johnson was headed.
Mr. Johnson, whoever he was, was going to Tofino. One of the places where Trevellyan had uncovered a Brenda MacPherson. Jane had planned to do some phoning from Victoria. Call those Brendas with some story, still vaguely forming in her mind, and check out the most obvious possibilities first.
But Mr. Johnson had the jump on her. Presumably, he’d done some legwork and decided to start with Tofino. Or maybe he wanted to find Brenda without warning her. Jane was intensely curious about who he was and why he wanted to locate Brenda. Maybe, if she made it to Torino in time, she could find out.
She went out to her car and reached for her map of the island. Tofino, a small town on the west coast of the island above Pacific Rim National Park, looked very far away, and as if it were at the end of a long and winding road. She estimated the distance at over three hundred kilometers. She checked her watch. She’d have to start right away if she wanted to get there before dark.
She drove along the harbor to the tourist information kiosk, which she’d spotted earlier. It was housed in what looked like a restored art deco gas station. Art “Deco” Nazimova, she felt, would have approved.
Inside, she picked up a handful of brochures on Tofino, glanced quickly at them, and got a quick impression of long sandy beaches, crashing waves, rain forests and whales. She also asked a young man with red hair, who looked like a college student, about the drive to Tofino.
There was only one road to the west coast of the island, with the exception of some rough logging roads. He told her it was paved, with just two lanes with the occasional passing lane. There was virtually nothing on it after Port Alberni except fabulous scenery, so she’d better gas up there. And he warned her that as it was tourist season, “You should probably book a room as soon as possible.”
She made a phone call, got the last room available at what sounded like a nice enough place on the water, and headed north on the highway that ran up the east coast of the island, then turned inland to Port Alberni.
It was around seven o’clock, and still light by the time she got there. She drove through a McDonald’s and ate as she drove, filled the tank and had them test the tire pressure and check the oil, wished she had a more powerful car than Uncle Harold’s old Chevy, and headed west.
Within a few miles she found herself traveling through postcard country, each curve bringing forth a new vista that could have come off of one of the innumerable brochures she’d picked up at the tourist information center.
Vast lakes, looming mountainsides full of fir and cedar bluish in the evening light, and, at the side of the road, sculptural compositions of rock and gravel, interspersed with wildflowers—the bright yellow of Scotch broom, blowsy wild rose and blue lupine, the occasional early daisies and Queen Anne’s lace among grasses with reddish clouds of seeds hovering over the stalks.
Traffic wasn’t too heavy, but she found herself frustrated to find herself stuck every once in a while behind slow-moving campers and trucks. Because the road twisted and turned, it was hard to find the opportunity to get around them. Negotiating past these slower vehicles became kind of a game to help her pass the time.
As night fell, around nine o’clock, when the signs told her she was about a half hour out of Tofino, she saw the full moon, appearing and disappearing behind mountainsides now silhouetted black against the sky, and, when she passed a huge lake, making a shiny path across the water.
Besides the occasional boat-launching or camping signs, and the red taillights in front of her as she negotiated the broad arcs, climbed hills and descended on the other side in corkscrew turns, there was no sign of human habitation. Logging, though, had left its mark. Vast tracts on the hills were completely clear-cut and bare; other areas were full of heavy stumps, recently burned over, dotted with magenta fireweed and young alders.
She put herself on a kind of automatic pilot, as if the car were being drawn through these mountains, and watched the moon set, almost as if it were a sun, over the mountains until it was finally just a sparkling dot like a star, then vanishing altogether.
She stopped thinking about Brenda, about Jennifer, about Kevin, presumably lying on his bunk in Monroe while she swooped like an owl through this landscape. She had a single focus now, to get this ribbon of road past her, to get to Tofino, and once there, to think of her next move.
But until then, she relaxed, lulled along by the feeling of heading to the end of the road, the end of the world.
When the road did end, with the open Pacific presumably somewhere in front of her in the dark, she turned north again, through the park on a straight road into the town itself, which seemed to consist of a main street with a few spurs off to the side. It gave the impression of something fairly recently thrown up for the tourists. The buildings were low, squarish and simple, some set in grassy, unweeded patches, the whole managing to impart a sense of impermanency. After all, it was nature they were selling here—the buildings were just afterthoughts.
It was easy to find her motel, one of the largest buildings in town, stained a gray-blue and facing a dock shooting out into a bay.
She carried her suitcase up some stairs to the lobby. A young woman, with the kind of polite, gentle, patient Canadian inflection Jane was becoming accustomed to, was explaining whale watching to some elderly German tourists, who, with German thoroughness, wanted to know exactly what to expect about the expedition they were taking the next day.
The wife translated simultaneously for her husband, and Jane, still a little buzzy from her drive, listened in two languages.
The guides took you out in Zodiacs among the reefs and islands nearby. The guide service didn’t guarantee you’d see whales, but the word was whale watching had been good the last few days. A few of the grays stuck around all season. In any case, there were other things to observe—sea lions and seals and puffins and eagles if you didn’t see whales.
They should walk over to the office across the street and up a ways to confirm their reservation. Somebody might be there now. If they wanted to visit the hot springs, they should bring towels and something to eat, which they could get at the Co-op supermarket next door. Yes, the hot springs were lovely, at the end of a short trail through rain forests. You could sit in rocky pools and stand under a hot waterfall.
The couple debated the merits of the hot springs expedition. They seemed to have a German confidence in the therapeutic qualities of mineral waters.
Finally, they completed their interrogation, and Jane checked in, vaguely wistful she couldn’t get out on the water and look for whales. Standing under a thermal waterfall in a rocky grotto in a rain forest sounded even better.
Her room was neat and pleasant, a definite step up from the Ye Olde Tourist Trappe where she’d spent last night. And there was a real bathtub and shampoo and conditioner.
It was too late to look for Brenda right now. Her plan was to just show up. Phoning people just put them on their guard.
She’d go down to dinner, but first she lay down on the bed and flipped on the TV. There were about a million channels—she’d noticed a big satellite dish outside the motel—and she picked up some news from Seattle. After only two days in Canada, where everyone seemed so well scrubbed and wholesome, the American female newscasters looked a little cheap—overcoiffured and over-made-up.
She let her mind wander a little. She had to come up with some story for Brenda, some way to get her confidence before she tried to get her to talk about what Jennifer might have seen. Saying she was a friend of Jennifer’s might not be that terrific an idea. After all, they’d parted on less than amicable terms. Besides, from what she’d heard, Jennifer hadn’t really had any friends.
Suddenly, she felt a frisson. They were talking about Jennifer Gilbert on the Seattle news. Jane heard her name and turned her attention back to the broadcast.
“In a new development in the University District slaying of office manager Jennifer Gilbert, police have released an Identikit drawing of a man wanted for questioning in the case.” A black-and-white drawing popped up on the screen. Jane was sure it was the man Arthur had seen visiting Jennifer a few days before she died. He had a suggestion of a cleft chin, a neat haircut of dark, thick hair, good brows. Of course, like all those police artist pictures, he looked crude and scary. The picture was just there for a frustrating second. Jane thought he looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. Maybe he was Sean’s father, the dentist. She imagined Arthur had provided the description, and probably found the process thrilling in a morbid way.
“Police emphasize that the man is just wanted for questioning and is not a suspect at this time,” said the announcer. Her solemn face transformed instantly, like some victim of multiple personality. Now she was perky and cheerful. “In a lighter vein, our roving reporter Chuck Lundquist found a man who collects gum wrappers—that’s right, gum wrappers. And he’s been doing it for a long time.” She clicked off the set just as an image of an old codger in a baseball cap standing proudly next to a huge silver ball came onto the screen.
She wanted to see that composite sketch again. Maybe Calvin Mason could get a copy and fax it to her here. But later, when she went down to dinner, she realized why the face looked familiar. It was the man she’d checked out at breakfast this morning in the Empress Hotel. The one who looked so nice and clean and freshly shaven and prosperous and respectable. She knew she was right—as right as anyone could be about one of those composite sketches.
Because the man was here, in the dining room at her hotel. He was wearing a yellow lamb’s-wool sweater and khaki trousers, and he was eating a large piece of salmon and reading Time magazine as if he didn’t have a care in the world.