And On the Surface Die (7 page)

“Paul? Anything wrong?”

Gable shifted his glance back and forth. “Nate, this is Corporal Martin.”

Her pulse off to the races, Holly stepped forward, her hand extended. Their shake was a mere gesture of civility.
Out with it.
The swift cut is the kindest.
“I have bad news. Your daughter, Angie, has been in an accident at Botanical Beach.” Damn. She hadn’t breached the battlements of the cruelest truth.

He stepped back as if struck, placing a workingman’s large hand on the door frame. His unshaven face paled, and his jaw hardened, a muscle at the corner pumping. “A car wreck? Damn those kids. I told her not to ride with anyone with a novice license.” He paused, staring in accusation at Gable. “You said you were taking vans. Call this responsible chaperoning? What the hell—”

“It’s not that, Nate,” Gable said, putting a hand on his shoulder and blinking, moisture in his eyes.

Holly swallowed back a sob. “She drowned, sir. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

As they stepped inside, she let Gable take him aside for a moment, opening her notebook in an automatic gesture. What did she really have to ask him anyway? A few muffled groans came from Nate, the paper dropping to the handsome fir flooring. Behind him, a polished mantelpiece was covered with shiny gold and silver trophies. On the wall, candid pictures of Angie poised at the starting blocks at her meets displayed the progress of a champion. Hadn’t Gable mentioned a son? An ancient golden retriever rose from a cushy corduroy pillow in front of the fireplace, shook its arthritic body, and ambled toward Nate to nuzzle his hand.

He straightened and cleared his throat. For a moment, though he opened his mouth, no words came. Suddenly he became aware of the dog and let his fingers brush the silken ears. “Buster. He’s nearly blind now. Got him when Angie was three. He was her guardian angel.”

Holly made sure that the dog saw her first before she stroked it. Like most goldens, it was quiet and amenable. A perfect therapy dog. Not as serious as shepherds, nor as bright, but a winning, dippy smile that made it one of North America’s favourites.

Nate pulled himself from Gable’s steadying arm. “When can I—”

Holly adjusted her voice for the gentlest tone. He was handling the death of a child better than she expected. Yet what else could he do? Keening and wailing was a woman’s province. Men had such burdens. No wonder they snapped. Her father had been dry-eyed throughout the crisis with her mother. For her a solid knight. But in private, she knew he mourned at every sunset, staring out to sea, alone and frozen in grief.

“Angie is at the Jubilee. There are formal procedures. An autopsy perhaps.”

“Is that necessary? She drowned. It seems simple enough. Why put us through...” His voice trailed off, and he finally let his legs shuffle him to a seat in a leather armchair.

“They’re ordered thirty per cent of the time. It’s rare but possible that physical causes were responsible.”

“What physical causes? She was a goddamn world-class athlete. She should have lived...” His voice trailed off, and his fists squeezed into themselves.

Holly took from him only what she needed for the time being, the evidence of a life. “We’ll give you a call tomorrow. And Mr. Didrickson, I’m so very sorry.”

As they walked to their vehicles, a boy about eight with a vocal VRRRROOOOM tore down the street on a mountain bike, bumped up a curb, and turned into the driveway. Gable gave a wave. “That’s the son. Robin.” He wiped at a tear in his eye. “I’m going to stay with Nate for awhile. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“It’s kind of you. I was going to suggest it if there isn’t local family. This is no time for him to be by himself.”

“He has a sister in Metchosin. Very nice lady. I’ll get her over here.”

Back at the detachment, Holly passed Chipper heading for his elderly Sunfire. He’d been taking the bus, but had recently got a loan from his parents to buy the thousand-dollar beater.

Under his arm, he carried a manila folder. “Taking my report home for another read,” he said. “One class assignment I wrote: ‘She said that she had been gone for fifteen minuets and that her ex-husband had stolen the cat for breading purposes.’” He spelled the offending words.

Despite the grim day, Holly produced a genuine laugh. “Spellcheck was invented to lull a writer into a false sense of security.”

“You’ve got that right.” He held up a battered Strunk and Whyte style manual. “Ann gave me this. Said she nearly wore out the pages. I never can keep
affect
and
effect
straight.”

At least her staff got along with each other, she thought. Inside, she organized her notes and rerouted the answering machine to her house as officer on call. Then she set the security cameras and locked up. As quiet as Fossil Bay was, keeping the detachment open for more than one shift wasn’t feasible.

“Hello, baby,” she said to the 1985 Honda Prelude. When her Civic had coughed its last breath at 250,000 klicks, she’d traded it in at Sooke Motors, adding a new sound system for CDs. The Prelude was cherry in colour and condition, having been owned by an eighty-year-old retired jeweller who drove it only on weekends. The sound system was top of the line. She rolled back the sunroof and slipped in a disk of Sheryl Crow’s duet with Kid Rock. Holly’s mother had been no faithless spouse diving into a bottle, but lines from “The Picture” made her throat hurt. “I called you last night at the hotel/ Everyone knows but they won’t tell.” Did someone on this tight little island have information about Bonnie Martin? “I want you to come back home.”
As if she could
. From the beginning, Holly had known in her heart that her mother was dead.

She headed east a few miles on winding West Coast Road toward Otter Point, where her father lived. It had been too easy to accept his generous offer to share the large home. With her fledgling career and modest salary, buying a property was impossible with average prices shooting past four hundred thousand dollars. Legal (or illegal) suites were available only through close connections, and apartments were scarce. Park trailers were an alternative, but she wouldn’t be stationed here for more than a few years and didn’t want the hassle of selling.

Reluctant though she’d been to return to a place with bad school memories, she wanted to be sure her father was as well and happy as possible. The quintessential professor, he nursed his absentmindedness like a fond character trait. It allowed him a certain aloofness, especially from women. She wondered if he was lonely, because he’d never admit it. Neither did he mention female companions. Perhaps, with her dismal dating history, she was closer to him in personality than she thought. The social whirl never had meant much to her, busy and content in her own company.

She passed Kirby Creek, Muir Creek, Tugwell Creek, pioneer names from settlement. A metal sign on each bridge flagged the salmon habitat and urged people to protect “our” resource. Many feared the fishery might collapse, due to overfishing, sea-lice transfer from fish farms, or hungry seals staking out claims near spawning areas.

At Gordon’s Beach, a curious string of miniature homes perched on the narrow shoreline, elbowing each other like in a Disney film. Some were flimsy shacks, others brand new whimsical hobbit houses with gables, turrets, nooks and crannies valued at over half a million. With fifty feet frontage or less, they clung like limpets to the strip of land. Turning on Otter Point Road, passing a llama farm and saluting the dark brown shaggy male who gazed into another pasture at his harem, she took a left at Otter Point Place, a sunny hillside dead-ending in a turnaround. With the opposite side of the street still pasture returning to bush, it had an unsurpassed view of the ocean.

She stopped at the new mailbox pavilion. Nothing from Kevin in Nunavut. Why did she expect him to write? Even though they’d dated in Port McNeill, he’d made a deliberate attempt to keep their relationship casual. At first she’d been seduced by his gourmet Italian cooking and black belt in karate. Then, near the end, enter that new file clerk with the low-cut blouses and high-cut hemlines. He’d had such an odd look when she’d met them leaving the evidence lockers. After that, he’d been slow to return her calls, pleading the need to attend sessions of a court case.

As she opened the box, Telus, Shaw and B.C. Hydro bills spilled from the metal cubicle. Obviously, her father had neglected to collect the mail for at least a week.

Unlike the cottagey New England style of its demure neighbour, his was a white Greek villa, huge windows in the solarium, two decks, a hot tub, a rampant kiwi and a stand of banana trees. The lawn was dry and brown, even with the flushings from the septic bed. The monsoons couldn’t arrive soon enough. As she passed the peach tree at the side of the house, she smiled at the flourishing holly bush her mother had planted and her father had nourished. Tempting red berries protected by prickly leaves, a wry allegory for any independent woman.

Norman Martin taught popular culture at the University of Victoria and steeped himself in a different period each semester. The concept anchored his life and removed him conveniently from the realities of the present. A savoury stew infused the hall as she entered, a mysterious ingredient teasing her nose. Her father loved to cook for his research, and she loved to eat. She blessed him for waiting for dinner. Reunited only a few weeks ago, already they had an understanding that if she wasn’t back by seven, unable to call due to her remote location, he’d chow down.

“Get in here. Your old dad’s nearly faint,” he said, waving a wooden spoon from the kitchen. He wore a gingham apron over his chinos. Definitely not her mother’s. Bonnie Martin had never made a meal in her life. Food was a fuel to reach her goals, the simpler and faster the better, often no more than fruit, bread and cheese eaten on the go in her Bronco and washed down with cold green tea.

“Let me climb out of this gear. The vest is smothering,” she said, taking the winding staircase to the upper floor. Oblivious to its view, his nose in books, he had given her the master suite, taking the two back rooms for his bedroom and study. It gave her an odd feeling to have her parents’ room, but its double occupancy had been short. Perhaps her father wanted a fresh start, too. For all she knew, he’d abandoned that room to far-off memories. But he hadn’t sold the house, though he knocked around in its sprawl. Did he hope Bonnie would come home?

After a quick shower, she tossed on shorts and a T-shirt. At the pine table in a sunny, adjoining alcove overlooking the strait, she sat down to a Fifties meal. Shelves in the oak kitchen were lined with cookbooks, from Mrs. Beaton to Betty Crocker to
Joy of Cooking
to the Barefoot Contessa. He served a rich beef stew made with beer, boiled potatoes and a can of green peas. Starving, she dug into the meal, pausing only for appreciative nods and sips of the rough red wine he made at a local do-it-yourself vintner for three dollars a bottle. No need to make conversation. His commentary would be forthcoming.

Norman blotted his mouth with a pure white cloth serviette. “If they couldn’t get to a market or raise their own, even in summer canned vegetables would be welcome. Birdseye had just brought in the frozen variety.” He scrutinized the soft, mushy pale-green balls. “A different animal, but I crave them from time to time. Takes me back to my boyhood in Sudbury. Had a friend in Little Britain there whose mother served them mashed with fish and chips.”

Holly was transported to her childhood. “Mushy peas, I remember.”

Norman, never Norm, Martin was closing in on sixty, but she knew he’d retire only when they wrenched the cold chalk from his dead hands. Whip-slim at six feet, recently his shoulders had assumed the beginnings of a stoop, and his sleek blond hair was shading to grey. She doubted that he got regular exercise, though Otter Point had many excellent walking areas, from residential streets to clear-cuts, and the shortcut to the beach. Except for his professorial mien, an off-putter for some, he was an attractive man. She could imagine him fending off advances from middle-aged female staff. Sometimes she wondered about the unmarried departmental secretary, Frances, who baked him blackberry pies and used to call in a worried voice when he was running late.

Like companionable stablemates, they quickly slipped back into old familiar routines. “How did everything go, little freckle-pelt?” he asked. That curious lichen had been her pet name, a step up from the ubiquitous frog-pelt which Bonnie had showed her in the
Plants of British Columbia
guidebook, a gift for her twelfth birthday.

On the stereo in the tiled solarium down the stairs, a CD of Kate Smith played “When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain”, then “Be My Love”, and “Danny Boy” as she gave him an update. His tastes in music were as eclectic as his many rotating historical periods. One semester he was enjoying Scott Joplin, the next the Beatles. “That woman could belt them out,” he said, pumping his fist in an unusually assertive gesture. “Whenever I hear ‘God Bless America’, I could almost march off to war myself.” An incongruous comment from a peace-living NDPer who drove a Smart Car, she thought as she managed another swallow of ghastly wine. If it had been in the bottle three weeks, she’d be surprised.

“Sorry, what did you say about the poor girl? That must have been a rough introduction on your first day. This is supposed to be a quiet place. I was relieved when you got the post. Never liked it when you were so far from civilization in that darn bush.”

“Sometimes the bush is safer. Give me bears over brawls. We’ll know more when the medical examiner takes a look,” she said.

He seemed pensive, shook his head and pushed the last pea to the side. “Terrible place for young girls. The morgue. So wrong. Any woman...” He paused and gazed across the strait to Washington State. A bank of clouds was dissecting the landscape, suspending a cruise ship in the air. Each year five thousand vessels used the passage. The possibilities for accidents were becoming exponential. Another Exxon-Valdez waited around every cove.

She knew he was thinking of her mother. Ten years had passed since she had disappeared, past the legal time for a person to be declared dead, such an artificial line. She knew nothing about what life insurance the woman might have had. To ask would be not only crass but an affront to her father.