Seaweed in the Soup (24 page)

“I've no refrigerator, so there's no ice, sorry,” she said. “And no rye either. If you like whisky, there's plenty of scotch.”

“Scotch is fine.”

“How do you like it?”

“Neat, if that bottle I'm looking at is actually the Grand Macnish.”

She poured the whisky into two-cut glass beakers and added a little water to her own drink. She delivered mine along with an Irish linen napkin.

“Here's looking up your old address,” I said. “It's quite a hidey-hole you've got here, I never knew this room existed.”

“That is the general idea.” Smiling faintly, she sat down in one of the armchairs, with her knees together. I sat down, crossed my legs, and wondered, not for the first, time how nice it was to inhabit—even if temporarily—worlds where people drank $70 whiskies and used Irish linen napkins instead of paper towels.

“Sorry about the dust. I ran a vacuum cleaner around the room for a few minutes last week, but it really needs wiping down with a damp cloth, except I can't be bothered,” she said in an unapologetic tone. “In case you don't already know, and I suspect that you do, I'm the landlord that you were slandering downstairs. This room is exactly the way it was when my grandfather had it fixed up as a hidey-hole eighty years ago. It hardly ever gets used now.”

I licked my lips. “You've been using the room a lot, lately.”

She seemed mildly alarmed. “How on earth did you know that?”

“Because your washroom is directly above my washroom, and something's wrong with your plumbing. Every time your toilet flushes, it disturbs the water in my toilet downstairs. Until I figured it out, I was beginning to think that my bathroom was haunted.”

“My goodness, your glass is empty already. Would you like another?”

“I certainly would, thanks.”

“Are you afraid of ghosts?” she asked, crossing to the bar with my empty glass.

“Not particularly. In the popular imagination, ghosts are the disembodied spirits of the dead,” I added pedantically. “People who think they're seeing ghosts are probably seeing bog apparitions or wakeful-sleep hallucinations.”

“Wakeful-sleep hallucinations? My, you must be cleverer than I gave you credit for,” she said facetiously. “Do you Salish people go to heaven when you die?”

“Coast Salish,” I chided her. “When we die, we go to another world. We call it the Unknown World, which is a misnomer, because we actually know quite a lot about it. The Unknown World is a bit worse than the world we're living in now. In the Unknown World, for instance, we live the traditional life of our ancestors . . . ”

She handed me my refill. “No soap, no metal pots and no plastic raincoats?”

“Nope. We eat most food raw. Everything else is cooked on open fires. We live in unhygienic pit houses or in longhouses, as we did in olden times. Screwing like crazy, shitting in the woods, itching and scratching. We have slaves to do our bidding, which is a plus, but otherwise the afterlife is very like this one, except everything is backwards. The sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When it's summer here, it is winter there, and so on, until we're reborn into the Vancouver Island that we're living in today. Some of us get reborn as killer whales and thunderbirds. I keep coming back as a male human being.”

“Let's hope you keep coming back till you get it right,” she drawled. “Now. Tell me more about Sarah Williams.”

“I met her five years ago. Sarah's cousin had gone missing, and I helped to find her. Sarah called at my office with a man called Charles Service once. She happened to mention that this was one of your buildings.” I grinned. “What Sarah actually said was, as I recall: ‘This is one of Piggy's buildings.'”

P.G. Mainwaring smiled—the ice queen was thawing. “You're right about Sarah and me. We were at boarding school together. She used to call me Piggywig.”

“That would be the Crofton House School in Vancouver. And don't tell me. Let me guess. You and Sarah were best friends and you hated each other?”

“We might have been best friends once, but there's no love lost between us now, I can assure you. If you'd had the disadvantage of a private school education, as I have, you'd know exactly what I mean.”

“I went to St. Michael's. It's a private school, but your comment is still too obscure for my tiny brain. By the way, ‘Piggy' is rather casual. Your full name is Penelope Grace Mainwaring, so what would you like me to call you?”

She had been softening, but my question made her eyes widen and that snooty look reappeared. “Have you been checking up on me?”

“I'm a policeman; you are a person of interest.”

The thin cleft between her eyebrows deepened. “A person of interest to the police? I'm not sure that I like that very much. In answer to your question, my close friends call me Nibsy. You may call me Miss Mainwaring.”

I let that one slide right by.

She looked at her hands and said coquettishly, “Tell me, Silas. Sarah Williams is very pretty, of course. Are you sure she isn't something more than just a casual friend?”

“Tell me, Miss Mainwaring. Is it true that you own a thousand apartment buildings?”

“Don't be silly,” she laughed, another thaw setting in. “Of course not.”

“Close friends address you as Nibsy, and you think
I'm
silly, Miss Mainwaring?”

“Oh all right. Call me what you like. But do tell me why am I person of interest to the police?”

“Because, Nibsy, you own a building recently destroyed by fire. To wit: Nanaimo's. Twinner Scudd's place of business. Three people died, and many others were injured. If that fire was an arson blaze, then those deaths will be classed as multiple homicides. You were seen inside the building just minutes before the fire started. I'm surprised police haven't questioned you already.”

“A dreadful business. My lawyer is taking care of it. If you are planning to nag me about it, I'd better call her now.”

“Oh, let's keep it informal. Besides, when you're talking to a policeman, you're not entitled to call for a lawyer unless you've been charged with something.” I grinned at her. “Cast your mind back to the night we first met. We were in Nanaimo's. When you left the outdoor deck after a few minutes of delightful badinage avec moi, you went upstairs with Larry Cooley and talked to Twinner Scudd in his office. Several minutes later, I saw you leave Scudd's office. In fact, you walked right past me. You looked just as attractive then as you do now, but you were angry. I don't think you noticed me.”

“I didn't notice you,” she said, adding thoughtfully. “I hate that man.”

“Twinner doesn't like you very much either, Nibsy, although I can't think why. I think you're very nice. Very nice indeed. Not to say lovely and accomplished.”

“Sarah will be jealous. Aren't you coming on a bit strong?”

“I don't know. Am I? I meant every word that I said.”

Maybe I'm getting to her
, I thought, because the edges of her mouth turned up slightly and her eyes lost focus as her thoughts went inward.

She had been sitting in a matching leather chair, directly opposite mine. We were facing each other from about six feet apart. Her empty glass was upright on the carpet beside her feet. She picked it up and went slowly across to the bar. My glass was empty again, too, but perhaps she was too preoccupied to notice that.

Instead of refilling her glass, as she had mine, P.G. Mainwaring took a clean glass down from a shelf and spent more time than was necessary to pour the scotch and add water. She had her back towards me, but I could see her face, reflected from the bar's mirrored back. Those circles beneath her eyes had grown darker. She was thinking and playing for time. She pulled herself together finally and returned to her chair.

I gave her another minute, during which time we exchanged timid glances and tentative smiles.

I remarked casually, “Twinner Scudd is a nasty piece of work.”

“True. He seems to think I'm a pushover, and we exchanged strong words. Scudd is behind on his lease payments, he owes me a lot of money. My agent hasn't had any luck getting him to pay up, and Scudd keeps ignoring notices to quit. I decided to talk to him as a last resort before we changed the locks and called the sheriffs.”

“Did you make any progress?”

“Scudd is a boor,” she said crossly. “He was rude and difficult, but he did promise to pay his arrears. He's made similar promises to my agent, so I wasn't optimistic. As you say, he's a nasty piece of work.”

“Is Larry Cooley just your agent, or something more than that?”

My sudden change of topic caught her unawares. Her eyes widened. “Larry is an employee. What's to know?”

“When I saw you two together in Nanaimo's, he acted as if he were more than that.”

“So what?” she snapped. “Is that any business of yours?”

“It might be,” I replied in a soft voice. “You can't always know in advance about such things.”

“If you must know, Larry has been acting like an idiot lately. I'm fed up. He's too forward, doesn't know his place,” she said, standing abruptly. The glass in her hand spilled most of its contents on the carpet, but she didn't appear to notice. When I stood up and faced her, she extended an arm towards me, her hand vertical and flattened as if to ward off a blow.

Without speaking or taking my eyes off her, I took the glass from her other hand and placed it on a side table.

“I'm frightened, Silas,” she said. “Scudd said that if I didn't stop bothering him, he'd kill me. He threatened Larry too. I'm just so terribly worried and afraid. And Larry's gone missing. I have an irrational fear that he might be dead or injured. If they find me, they might kill me too. Why else do you think I'd be hiding in this pokey bloody room instead of living in my house?”

Shivering and crying, she lowered her hand, moved closer and laid her head against my chest. I put my arms around her and made the sort of noises you use to calm weeping infants. Her sobs faded, and she stopped shivering. She pulled her head back and looked deeply into my eyes. In those depths I saw something that had been staring me in the face all night.

Her face moved closer, her eyes were bright with desire. When I kissed her, she put her tongue in my mouth. P.G. wanted to get laid. The next thing I knew, she had unbuckled my belt, unzipped my trousers and was bent over the desk with a pair of lovely frilly silks around her ankles.

“Well hello, sailor,” she grunted, hanging onto her grandfather's onyx desk set for dear life as I shoved myself in.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

P.G. Mainwaring had gone. She didn't tell me where she was going. I didn't ask her. I went downstairs to my office instead. To divert my thoughts I switched the computer on, poured myself a hefty dose of rotgut and exchanged glances with PC. Another complicated unpredictable female with a keen understanding of the male psyche. She leapt onto my notepad. After stroking her for a while, my blood pressure probably dropped ten points. “PC,” I said, “I've really fucked up this time.”

No kidding. I poured the rotgut back in the bottle instead of drinking it and went walking in the rain.

Apart from a couple of security lamps on poles casting moving circles of light as they swayed in the wind-driven rain, the small commercial marina at the foot of Pandora Street was dark. The Johnson Street Bridge loomed blackly overhead. The
Polar Girl
, Twinner Scudd's hundred-foot yacht, moved in the harbour's modest swell. Too big to manoeuvre into any of the marina's inside berths, the vessel was tied up to the marina's outermost float. It was white, an Italian-built liveaboard palace all ready for sea. Twin radars rotated; twin diesel engines thudded. The pilothouse and the main saloons were well lit. Eddie Cliffs, Twinner Scudd's tattooed bodyguard, was moving around on the yacht's boarding deck. I watched him come ashore. Wearing yellow wet-weather gear, he unhitched the yacht's spring line from a dock bollard, then went back aboard and pulled the line in by hand. After coiling the line neatly, Cliffs went into the main saloon. Before he disappeared down a circular staircase, I noticed the shiny metallic splint taped across Cliffy's ruined nose.

Seagulls, dozing atop pilings, opened their beady eyes and watched me move nearer to the boat and find a patch of shadow where I could see the yacht without being seen. Across the harbour, British Columbia's legislative building was lit up like a Christmas tree. Occasionally, cars and taxis rumbled across the bridge. Rain trickled down my neck and inside my shirt. More rain fell before Twinner Scudd appeared in the
Polar Girl
's pilothouse and busied himself at the steering console. Eddie Cliffs reappeared on deck. Scudd's head showed at an open window. They exchanged words, whereupon Cliffs unhitched the yacht's bow line and brought it aboard. White water splashed against the dock when Scudd activated the yacht's bowthruster. The
Polar Girl
's elegant bows inched away from the dock. By then, Cliffs was pulling the stern line aboard. I stopped watching him when a woman who had been lying on a sofa in the main saloon suddenly stood up. She reminded me of someone. She reminded me of Maria Alfred.

Water churned at the yacht's stern as twin propellers bit into the water. The
Polar Girl
was outward bound.

A police siren bleep-bleeped towards the marina from uptown and then abruptly faded.

If I had been drunk, by then I was sober. It was still pouring. I was soaked and a little bad-tempered. The
Polar Girl
had steamed from sight behind Ocean Point. Walking up Pandora Street to where I'd left the MG, I saw an RCMP patrol car parked outside my office. At that moment, a VPD blue-and-white barrelled around a corner. Its screaming siren sank to a purr as it came down the street towards me. I was still walking, fretting about guilt and the way I'd betrayed Felicity, when the blue-and-white skittered to a halt. Two constables leapt out. One was Harry Biedel, a constable I'd known for years.