Seaweed Under Water (13 page)

Tess's face was grim. “I'm not nearly as smart as Neville, but I have other qualities. When I saw how Neville was being treated, I got anxious. Walked into Harley's office one day and demanded a piece of the company. He asked me why I thought I deserved it. I told him I deserved it because I was his sister.

“Harley didn't even hesitate. He made me a 33 percenter, then and there. That's how come I'm living on a yacht, instead of giving blue rinses to bitchy dowagers. The only stipulation Harley set on our deal, I had to promise never to give one dime to our brother Neville, or to Neville's wife. If I did, the deal was off. That was hard on me, but the arrangement I have with Harley is cast iron; my own lawyer drew it up. Then Neville went missing, never came back. For a while, I kept expecting him to show up. In a way, I'm still waiting.”

Tess stopped talking and looked at me expectantly.

I said, “Harley must have changed his mind about Janey, since.”

“It's news to me, if he did,” she said. “Harley hates and detests Janey Colby.”

“Why?”

“Because he thinks that Jane murdered his brother.”

“I heard you and Harley
both
believed that—and said so to the police.”

Tess sighed. “Sure, but I've had years to think about it since, and I don't think Janey had it in her to kill my brother. I don't. Harley still believes it though, and he still hates her.”

“In spite of which, Janey has the use of a free room at the Rainbow Motel.”

Tess nodded thoughtfully, “You're right, she does. I stand corrected. I was surprised, when I found that out. That's recent, though, it only happened these last few months. Love is very akin to hate, right? Maybe Harley's starting to feel sorry for Janey.”

“Maybe Tiger is changing his spots. I wouldn't count on it, though. I think there's still a bit of goon left in your big brother.”

Tess rejected that suggestion by shaking her head.

“How do you feel about Janey?” I asked.

“She's a bitch, how do you expect me to feel?”

“I looked at Harley's sawmill yesterday. It's shut down, been shut down for a while. I've heard rumours he's bankrupt.”

“He
is
bankrupt. Not yet officially, but near enough. I guess he'll salvage something from the wreckage. He won't end up with nothing.”

“And you? How will you come out of it?”

“I think I'll manage,” she said, still a bit heated because Jane Colby's name had come up. A moment later, her face was in complete repose, she looked sleek and satisfied, like a cat that had just devoured a saucer of cream and was ready for something even better. Tess appeared to size me up; her smile wasn't quite static as she finished her third bottle of beer. Her eyes were very bright, their pupils too small.

There was a lifesaving equipment locker on the starboard side of the deck. It was about the size of a camp cot, covered with a long leather cushion. She rose languidly from her chair, stretched, kicked off her shoes, said, “I'm tired of talking,” and lay down full length on that leather cushion, watching me with lazy eyes. She looked completely irresistible so I went and stood over her. She smiled, enjoying my unmistakable admiration. Her eyes closed. She opened her eyes and asked me if I'd ever been married.

“Once,” I said. “Her name was Nancy.”

“Any kids?”

“No.”

She began to tell me about the difficulties women like her faced—avoiding gold-diggers, for example. The world was full of con artists and gigolos looking for a meal ticket. Sometimes she went on cruises, package tours—tried to pass herself off as a working girl, but that hadn't worked either.

A slight breeze ruffled her hair. A few thin high clouds drifted in the turquoise-coloured sky. Mowaht Mountain rose in the distance. The heat was creating silvery water mirages—that Japanese freighter appeared to be floating on a thin strip of mercury. I was suddenly aware of an acrid odour, something unpleasant, like burning rubber.

She said, “Last night, when I crawled into bed with you. I hoped you liked it as much as I did.”

Her words didn't have the results she perhaps intended because I felt a sudden deflation of spirits, an unpleasant blow of depression that came out of nowhere. My trip to Mowaht Bay had turned into a disaster. Embarking with her on an exercise of trivial indulgence would make things worse. I had been avoiding looking directly into her eyes, but now I did so, and saw something dark and malignant.

“This is funny, right?” she said in a low voice. “Funny ha-ha
and
funny peculiar.”

“What's funny about it?”

“For a minute there, I thought I had a handle on you. Maybe I was wrong.”

I mumbled something about being tired and went to my cabin. Tess stayed away.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I woke after a long doze. I cleaned myself up, brushed my teeth and got dressed. Passing along a companionway, I came across a large cabin that turned out to be Tess Rollins' office. The door was open, so I poked my head inside. She wasn't there. As an office, it was first class, with a Mac computer, executive recliner, built-in cabinets, the works. The walls were decorated with framed black and white photographs.

Tess was up on deck, wearing a monogrammed white terry-cloth robe with nothing underneath it. Every time she moved, she showed plenty of beautiful bronzed leg. She was moving around a lot I noticed, making strawberry waffles from scratch with an old-fashioned electric waffle iron that looked incongruous amid the yacht's modern hi-tech gadgetry. I sat down at a table set with monogrammed silver cutlery and linen napkins. The table's centrepiece was a cut-glass vase full of fresh yellow chrysanthemums.

The day was now quite beautiful. The mountains, which last night had been black and forbidding, appeared now as variegated strips of green between folds of blue-grey water and unsullied blue skies. Tess's carefree manner suggested a return to our former footing; now she couldn't do enough for me. She smiled winningly and asked, “What'll it be, Silas? Champagne or Chardonnay?”

It occurred to me then that life is sometimes a matter of comparison between having stress and not having stress. I looked at her, composed, smiling and coming on. “Chardonnay,” I said.

Tess pushed an intercom button and spoke a few words. Seconds later, a man dressed in a steward's uniform, looking to be around 60, arrived on deck with a bottle of Chardonnay in a silver ice bucket. I'd never seen him before, although I should have suspected his existence—the
Mayan Girl
was obviously too much work for a single-handed owner.

The steward uncorked the bottle, doled a finger's worth into a glass and indicated that I was to taste it. The bottle had a French label, the contents tasted okay. He filled two glasses and departed. I handed Tess a glass. We drank, looking into each other's eyes. Hers were sparkling. We ate a great many strawberry waffles, washed down with cold white wine. When the first bottle ran dry, the steward reappeared as if by magic with a new one. Tess laughed a lot and we both had a pleasant buzz. She looked smooth, sleek and contented, like PC after a can of tuna.

I said, “About Jane Colby. There's something bothering me, maybe you can explain it.”

“What's that?”

“It strikes me as very peculiar that Jane abandoned Terry. Terry must be very difficult to live with and control. Jane drank too much, but women who abandon older children must be rare.”

“Women who murder their husbands are rare too, but they exist.”

I held my wine glass up to the light and smiled at it.

“Janey has a lot of character flaws,” Tess continued. “As I told you, my dad was a longshoreman. Fred Colby was an accountant. Mowaht Bay is blue-collar and Janey had a very irritating habit of reminding us that she belonged—or thought she belonged—to a superior class. When she and Neville got married and the HANE empire started making big money, she became practically unbearable, an insufferable snob who even insulted members of her own family. My mom and dad couldn't stand her.

“Janey doted on Terry when she was a baby, treated her like she was a Christ-child. That all changed after Terry's accident. After that, Terry was brought up by babysitters and maids. See, a less-than-perfect child didn't fit into Janey's value system.”

In the ensuing long silence, I became aware of the subdued whine, emanating from the distant dock, where cranes were transferring Vancouver Island's timber to a Japanese freighter.

Something bumped the side of the yacht, and a male voice yelled: “
Mayan Girl
, ahoy!”

Tess and I looked down over the railing. Urban Kramer had arrived in a Boston Whaler and was tying up at the wharf. With a muttered, “Oh hell,” Tess threw her napkin down on the table and disappeared below. I went to the head of the boarding gangway. When Kramer saw me standing there his smile vanished and the look of astonishment which replaced it was almost comical. He walked aboard and said, “Good Christ, it's you, Seaweed. What are
you
doing here?”

“Just finishing brunch,” I said, backing away from the nimbus of Old Spice.

He stared around for Tess, didn't see her and said doubtfully, “Somebody said you'd been hurt.”

“Who said?”

“Everybody. It's all over town that a Victoria cop was roughed up last night.”

“But who exactly told you?”

“Gee, what's the difference?” he said nervously. “I was in the Bee Hive earlier, people were talking. You look pretty good for a guy was beaten up and ran into a deer.”

“I've been lying down, recuperating.”

“Best thing for you, probably. Where's Tess?”

“She's around here somewhere.”

“Is Ralph here too?”

“Ralph?”

“Tess's steward.”

“That his name? Yeah, Ralph's aboard. Fancy a glass of cold white wine?”

“Damned right. It's hot again, today.”

Kramer had shed his logger persona and morphed like a butterfly. Today he was ridiculously overdressed in a Harris tweed suit, yellow vest, a white shirt with a starched collar and a knitted wool tie that matched his tweeds—totally unsuitable garb for a summer's day in B.C.

He sat down at the table and yanked off a pair of rubber overshoes to reveal maroon brogues. That morning his face was the colour of hammered liver. There were purple crescents beneath his eyes. But if he wasn't the best-dressed logger on the coast, Prince Charles doesn't play polo.

“You managing to stay warm enough, Urban?”

He looked down at the clothes he was wearing and laughed, “I am now. But I've been out in the whaler. It's cold on the water.”

I took another look at Urban's whaler. It didn't match the description of the boat missing from the Rainbow Motel. I poured him a glass of wine, refilled my own glass and waited for him to say something interesting. He obliged by asking, “Known Tess long?”

“Not long.”

“I thought you were staying at Chrissie's place, over the beauty parlour.”

Kramer seemed to know all about my movements. “I was supposed to. But, one thing led to another and I ended up here.”

“You spent the night with Tess?”

“I spent the night
aboard
. There's a difference,” I said sharply. “Let's not start any rumours.”

The rebuke threw him for a minute. Instead of pursuing the topic he said, “Hear that ruckus last night? I suppose you must have. Drunken lunatics were setting fireworks off,” he said self-righteously. “Them rockets are still red hot when they land, create a fire hazard. Next thing you know, the forests are ablaze from here to Port Renfrew, sawmills and other logging-operations are all shut down.”

“You're a logger yourself?”

“Not me. I'm a government scaler,” he replied complacently.

I asked, “Did you know Neville Rollins?”

“Yeah, sort of. I used to see him around, I guess.”

“How would you describe him?”

“How about a short, runty little wagon-burner?”

“I'm more interested in your impressions of him as an individual.”

“He was the most vindictive little bastard I've ever met,” Kramer began. Then footsteps sounded, and he turned away to admire Tess Rollins, looking splendid in a white shirt and shorts and white kidskin deck shoes.

Kramer lost all interest in me. He bustled to his feet, clasped Tess by her upper arms and tried to kiss her on the mouth. Tess turned her head away and Kramer's lips brushed along her cheek. She seized his hand, shook it awkwardly and said, “Urban, meet Silas Seaweed.”

Kramer was like a football player who'd just caught a grenade instead of a ball. “We've already met,” he mumbled.

She was tense; we all were. That day, two men and a single woman definitely made a crowd. To spare everybody further embarrassment I said rather formally, “The Texaco guy's probably got my MG ready to roll by now. So, thanks for your hospitality, Tess. It's time I was getting along.”

“No no, you can't go yet, let's have more wine,” she said with an attempt at vivacity, but her smile was thin. She grabbed my arm and whispered, “Don't leave me alone with him,
please
.”

Turning to Urban she asked, “Had breakfast yet, Urban?”

“Of course not,” he said, flushed with anger. “I had coffee at the Bee Hive, that's all. We had a breakfast date. Did you forget?”

She clenched a fist and put it to her forehead, as if suddenly remembering, but the gesture was contrived. She said, “I'm sorry, Urban. You two get acquainted; I'll put my apron on, make some waffles.”

“Don't trouble yourself,” Kramer said stiffly.

They were conscious of me but I wasn't a participant in what was going on there. I was an object to talk across, like a garden wall. I didn't mind. I no longer wanted to leave. I wanted to see where this sparring would lead. It led downhill. Looking angry and perplexed, he muttered a terse goodbye and hurried ashore down the gangplank.