Lotis at Arthur’s ear: “What’s under her left eye isn’t all mascara.” A camouflaged bruise, maybe a gift from one of her regulars, feeling betrayed. Having branded Hoover an informer, Jasper Flynn has probably put the Holly Golly out of business.
Buddy asks, “Your occupation is…?”
“I’m a sex worker.”
“Can you expand on that?”
She stares at him for a moment. “I’ll expand on that by saying I’m a recently retired sex worker.” A casual, stoned way of talking.
“Okay, but tell us something about how you do it.”
“I usually do it on my back.”
This has Kroop bawling for order. Giggles continue to escape from the gallery as Buddy reorganizes. “I meant the nature of your…your area of operations. You have a boat, I understand.”
She makes no bones about having been hostess of the Holly Golly. One of the jurors, a business writer, is making notes, intrigued by such entrepreneurship. “By the way, I’m trying to sell her, if anyone’s interested.”
A rebuke from the judge. “Must I remind everyone that a trial is a commercial-free medium?”
“Let’s go to March 31, Ms. Hoover, in Bamfield. You were in the bar that night.”
“I didn’t have a date, decided to go straight. Almost didn’t. Should’ve kept my mouth shut.”
“Let’s back up here.”
“Okay, backing up. There was a band at the pub. That’s why I went.” Arthur can’t get a handle on her. Is she scornful of the prosecutor, the judge, the process? What kind of high is she on? Stoned yet aware. Flynn still won’t meet her eye, though she occasionally looks his way. He’s doing a lot of moustache twirling.
Hoover recognized Eve Winters, told her she was a fan. “I should’ve stuck with that, should’ve settled for an autograph.”
“What you should’ve done doesn’t matter, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. So we picked up we were on the same length.”
Buddy sends a hard look to Ears, who presumably messed up the pre-trial interview. “I’m a little lost here, Ms. Hoover.”
Kroop’s piping whine: “If you’re lost, Mr. Svabo, how do you expect the jury not to be? Please find yourself.”
“You were on the same length-what’s that mean?”
“She was coming on. I was coming back at her.”
“Wait. You mean sexually?”
“Totally.”
A tale known to Arthur, but not to Buddy. Flynn whispers something to him. The jury seems uncertain how to take Hoover, her unexpected frankness.
“Move it along, Mr. Prosecutor.”
“Ms. Hoover, did you give a different version of this to Sergeant Flynn?”
“No, I gave him a shorter version.”
“Why is that?”
“He told me not to complicate my story, it would only get me tangled up in this. And there’s another reason I didn’t say much.”
Buddy is getting the kind of answers one expects from blind questions. He’s too afraid of Kroop to ask for a recess, has no choice but to tough it out. “What’s the other reason?”
“I didn’t want to malign Dr. Winters’s name, she’s an honourable lady. She has a reputation and I have none.”
“Continue with your story,” says Buddy, sweating because he doesn’t know where it will go.
“I knew she was staying over in West Bam, so I asked if I could give her a lift in my canoe. I didn’t want her suspecting I was a tramp, and said I made beads and bangles and bath oils. Which I used to. Guess I’ll go back to it.”
“Just stick to what you did that night.”
“Right. So we agreed to leave separately and meet on the pier. I figured her as fairly straight for gay, careful socially, but she’d just done the West Coast Trail, she was hyped for a new adventure. A kind of shipboard romance, not knowing the Titanic is going to sink.”
“Mr. Svabo, please control your witness.”
“Ms. Hoover, I’d ask you not to ramble. Please, please, just answer my questions.”
“You said, ‘Continue.’ That’s what I was doing. Continuing.”
Arthur goes to Lotis’s ear. “What is she on?”
“I bet she ate a bunch of pot. Slow-acting fudge pot.”
The rest of her tale, embellished by detours Buddy can’t reroute, is as was told to Arthur while the elements warred outside Cotters’ Cottage.
“So what made you think she was inviting you over?”
“She said, ‘I have a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a corkscrew.’”
Buddy huddles with his advisers. Who knows what comes next-maybe a casual admission that after asphyxiating the Rohypnotized Eve Winters, she doctored the body with Faloon’s semen. Buddy looks up at the clock, then to the bench.
“Too early for the afternoon adjournment, Mr. Svabo. You haven’t earned an adjournment. You have not properly prepared this witness. You will have to slog on.”
“Then what, Ms. Hoover?”
“She said, ‘I don’t know what your situation is, I’m just out of a relationship.’ I felt I had to be up front, I told her I was a sex worker but this wasn’t business. She was nice about it, asked a lot of questions, but the romance deflated like a flat tire. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.” She’s wandering again, and no one is trying to stop her. “I wouldn’t be in this courtroom if I’d stayed with her that night. She’d probably be alive.”
That comes to Arthur’s ears with such credibility that he shelves the possibility she is the murderer. His cross will be difficult, he won’t have his heart in it. But why had she kept the truth from the prosecutors until now?
Buddy shows visible relief, fear of the unknown dissipating, as his witness explains how, after several awkward minutes, they took leave of each other, Winters to her cottage, Hoover to her trailer.
Arthur is moved by this rainy, misty parting. Hoover is torn with guilt that she was honest with Doctor Eve when a lie might have saved her life. A conundrum of truth and consequences.
“Okay, so you went directly home?”
“I stood there doing a slow burn with a cigarette, feeling like an idiot. Went up the hill. Unlocked the door. Showered, painted my toenails, and went to bed.”
“And to sleep?”
“Eventually. Played some music. Smoked some grass. Cried a little.”
“You were there all night?”
“By myself.”
“No more questions.”
“Okay, but I have something else to say. I don’t appreciate being falsely outed by Jasper Flynn as an informer…”
“I said, no more questions!” Buddy, drowning her out.
“Order! Cross-examination will begin after the recess.”
So as not to overhear Buddy’s tirade against his helpmates, Arthur spirits Lotis to an empty interview room, chortling. “She had Buddy practically standing on his head. Flynn’s hold on her is broken, he’s sabotaged her, ruined her, driven her from Bamfield. She’s in no mood to help the Crown, has nothing to lose by telling the truth. I hate to say it, but we have an honest witness on our hands.”
Lotis looks horrified. “You bought that…that show-and-tell?”
Arthur is taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”
“Whoa, Arthur, you’re too exhausted to see through her smoke.” She sits him carefully in a chair. “She’s an actor doing a stock character, the prostitute with a heart of gold.” Mimicking: “‘I didn’t want to malign her name, she’s an honourable lady.’ Hey, man, this stoner has given three or four different stories about how she met Eve, she’s a chronic liar.”
“Her account is entirely the same as that I heard two months ago.”
“She’s a world-class manipulator. Told you how cute you were, and gave your cock a rub to seal the deal.” Grinning. “It’s awesome that you can blush on command. Damn it, Arthur, she’ll have you buying the Holly Golly before she’s through.”
Arthur almost hears a clank, the rusty gate of his mind swinging open to a different view. The bossy nymph (and how he hates to admit this) could be right again. What if Hoover’s the assailant? What if her whole thrust is to disarm the notorious Arthur Beauchamp? Someone told me you were a vicious son of a bitch in court.