“Well, Beauchamp, are you going to be able to sleep here tonight?” The only answer is a moaning of the wind in the trees.
A vigorous stroll, working off the beef stew, takes him up a hill to the Breakers Inn, a handsome log structure with a majestic overlook. The Galloways charge half-price for a late cancellation, which seems fair, but they’re sour and standoffish; despite that, he’ll return here for dinner.
By mid-afternoon, word has swept through town that Nick Faloon’s lawyer is sampling its delights-locals stare and fall silent as he walks by, treating him as they might a visiting gunslinger. He overhears two women giggling. One says, “He wants to hook up with Holly.” He turns to her, and she quickly puts her hand to her mouth. The entire village knows he seeks Hoover, courtesan of the lumber camps. She must know that too, and is in hiding.
He finds Meredith Broadfeather at the Clayoquot, a hefty woman whose jean jacket sports a large, defiant button: “Whose Home and Native Land?”
Since it is still a pleasant day, the sun burning away the mist, they choose a quiet table outside. He is quickly put at his ease-Broadfeather, a sociologist with the Huu-ay-aht Band Council, has no quarrels with Faloon. “I always liked him, poor old Nick. I just can’t imagine him raping or killing that woman. If he did, why would he wait for the cops to show up before he ran?”
She occasionally had coffee here with him, a polite, considerate man who often put up band elders for free. She shares in the suspicion-which seems locally held-that Holly Hoover was not frank with the police about her doings on the eve of April Fool’s Day.
“You can’t get across the inlet on foot-it’s pretty well impossible unless you’re a bear, it’s all swamp and bush. I bet Holly took Dr. Winters across. She uses her canoe a lot, to keep in shape. The next morning, Lennie Joe, he’s a fisher, saw it tied up this side.” She gestures toward a dock: a blue canoe is tied astern of a cabin cruiser. The Holly Golly. Small boat, big power, a pair of 225 Mercury engines.
“This woman seems to ply her trade very openly. I assume the RCMP feel she provides a necessary service.”
“Yeah, you’ll see Jasper Flynn over here occasionally, pretending to work her over, but real friendly-he pretty well gives her licence, like a kind of silent pimp.”
Holly Hoover, unemployed, single, a local, said Sergeant Flynn in his report. The entire biography. If Broadfeather is right, Hoover has been well protected: she has no convictions for prostitution, or for anything, according to the criminal records office.
He’s intrigued by Broadfeather’s second-hand account of a high-powered boat running without lights in dangerous reef-strewn waters. Two young volunteers had been occupying an islet as part of a Huu-ay-aht land claim. At around 3 a.m. on April 1, they were roused from their tent by the sound of a vessel racing north, though they couldn’t see it.
Arthur brings out an area map, and she points to the islet, one of the Deer Group. Deep-water channels converge there. Northwest lie the tourist towns of Ucluelet and Tofino, a paved highway. Northeast, up the long ribbon of an inlet, is an even more substantial community, Port Alberni.
“Did these fellows tell the police?”
“John Wayne over there?”
Arthur sees an RCMP boat at the coast guard dock, Jasper Flynn tying up. The sergeant has learned that the perpetrator’s lawyer is in town, up to no good. He intends to keep an eye on him.
“Our people don’t talk to him unless they have to. Anyway, he’s not asking. He’s got it sewed up.”
Arthur puts on glasses and studies the map again. The Deer Group, the Chain Group, the Broken Islands. Narrow channels, reefs, and dead-end inlets. A boater would need intimate local knowledge at night, radar, sonar. Flat out, it would be two hours to Alberni or Ucluelet.
He tries without much success to envision Angella racing through dark unknown waters in a high-powered cruiser.
Before returning to his cottage to clean up for dinner, he finds a pay phone and calls Kim Lee.
“All good at farm?”
“Good. Happy. Not worry.”
“Stoney?”
“Every day work hard. Take truck.”
“Margaret?”
“Happy.”
A wind has come up by the time he reaches Brady Beach, and he can see angry clouds rolling in. Mrs. Cotter has not locked up, but he finds the key under the mat as promised. He has to tug the door to open it. The interior is spotless, but the place still confounds him with dread.
He must shower, though he feels unnerved at the prospect-Dr. Winters’s nakedness, the bath towel on the bed, are clues that she was attacked after taking a shower. Avoiding the bedroom, he undresses under the cougar’s glare. He talks to it, needing sound: “Maybe she’s innocent after all.” Angella. “Or did she have a local confederate with a fast boat? Unlikely. Just can’t see that silly woman murdering anyone.”
Other possibilities are emerging, like mushrooms in the fall. He must take written statements from the two young braves. Inez Cotter, as well. It seems likely that the quarrel she overheard involved Eve Winters. The other person, Ruth-her surname escapes-is single, a UBC graduate student. The remaining two are paired.
He must not forget about the condo builder from Topeka, with his late-night rambles. Who knows, maybe he carries a vial of roofies in case opportunity presents itself. More important, what about Holly Hoover, who may well be familiar with street drugs? Could it have been the Holly Golly that the Native boys heard speeding away? Or was it just a beer-fuelled weekend jaunt, a couple of locals…
From the trail that takes him to the Breakers Inn, he passes by Hoover’s home-Claudette pointed it out to him, a renovated construction trailer. No lights within, but the evening hasn’t fully set in. He doubts that she will answer her door.
A couple of men with shovels are poking around in the bushes by the path to the inn. They follow him with their eyes, as if hoping he will lead them to the treasure. It has begun to rain as he climbs an outer staircase to the roofed deck. There he takes in the black western sky, sees the Deer Islands, the hazardous channels that separate them.
Within, a long table is set for seven, Mr. and Mrs. Galloway toting trays of seafood to it. Arthur engages a pair of German hikers. As they’re describing their close encounter with a black bear, he turns to see Jasper Flynn come up the stairs, bearlike himself in a bulky RCMP jacket.
He pretends surprise on seeing Arthur. “Now there’s a likely suspect,” he says. He declines the Galloways’ offer of a drink. “I’m on duty, just paying a courtesy visit.”
The owners seem anxious-a man in uniform is not good for business-so Arthur beckons Flynn to join him outside.
“Returning to the scene of the crime, Mr. Beauchamp?”
“I generally make it a rule to do so.”
“Always a good idea, sir. Especially if you lead us to the dough your client ripped off from this joint. Just kidding.” He tweaks his large, overgroomed moustache. “Glad you’re staying here. They’re good folk, the Galloways.”
“As it happens, I’m not staying here.” Flynn came up by the lobby stairs, so Arthur assumes he peeked at the guest registry.
“Oh, right, Nick’s lodge. I hear his girlfriend’s running it. Nice lady. Anything I can do to help you out?”
Mrs. Galloway beckons: dinner is served. “I hope you’ll have a chance to talk to this fine lady,” Flynn says as he turns Arthur over to her. “She heard them talking that evening-Faloon and Dr. Winters.”
Mrs. Galloway nods. “She told him exactly where she was staying, at Brady Beach.”
“Got to scoot. Try the butter clams, they’re always good.”
As Arthur trudges back down the road in soaking rain, his stomach starts to protest the butter clams. The way is tricky in the darkness-he has, of course, forgotten to pack a flashlight. He makes out that Holly’s trailer is still unlit. Twice, he wanders into dense foliage.