Seaweed Under Water (27 page)

“You ready to talk about Tess Rollins now?” Bernie asked.

I came back from wherever I was.

Bernie went on, “Why did Tess have to kill Jane Colby? It doesn't make any sense.”

“Tess wasn't as rich as everybody thought she was. She spent way more money than she could afford, and the Rainbow Motel was mortgaged to the max. Tess just didn't want to share what was left.”

“So that's it? The motive was greed?”

“Yes, it's pathetic.”

We were still there when the undertaker's men placed the last lilies on that heaped up mound of earth, and then trundled off in a cemetery buggy loaded with planks and ropes.

Bernie gazed at his muddy boots, cleared his throat and said, “They did her proud. I doubt if there'll be many mourners at that Rollins funeral in Mowaht Bay. Are you going, by the way?”

“No. The sooner I forget that fivesome, the better.”

“Five?”

“Boss Rollins and Tess Rollins. Donny. Joe Bickle. Neville.”

“Oh yeah, right. I'd forgotten about Neville,” Bernie said. “Not that there's much of him left to bury. All they found was his skull and a couple of bones.”

“There's one more. Jane Colby.”

“She was buried last week. I went to her funeral. Only six or seven of us attended.”

“And who were they?”

“Jane's dad. Terry. Four Crowe Street nuns and a drunken Irish bartender,” Bernie said.

“How is Terry these days?”

“Pretty good. She's working part time at Safeway now.” Looking down at his muddy boots he added, “My feet are cold. What say we go to headquarters, join in the wake?”

“No thanks. It'll be fun for a bit, but you know how it'll end. People will drink too much and start telling jokes.”

“Sure they will, laughter's a relief valve. Nobody grieves forever. It's not healthy.”

“You go then. I'm in no mood for jokes,” I said, as we started walking. “I want to think about the way she was the last time I saw her.”

“Which was?”

I pictured her in my mind's eye and said, “Denise was lying on a sandbank. I had my arms around her, and I was kissing her.”

“Jesus, Silas, have you gone off your meds?”

“I've been off my meds for a week. I'm getting seven hours sleep every night. I'm as sane as you are.”

“What you had your arms around, Silas, was the back end of a dugout canoe,” Bernie said. “That's what saved you from drowning in the Gorge whirlpool. We had to pry your fingers loose before we could drag you ashore.”

But that's not the way I remember it.

Felicity was in the Range Rover, waiting for me at the cemetery gate. I got in and said, “Home, James.”

“There's something we must attend to first,” she said.

≈  ≈  ≈

Sir John A. Macdonald's bronze statue had a fresh green shine after the rain. In the cool fall sunshine I could see all the way down Pandora Street to where an elderly lady in a large white hat was wheeling a poodle in a perambulator. Felicity parked outside Swans pub. Various tiny ideas were gnawing the inside of my puzzled head, otherwise full of B.C. air, when Felicity took a mahogany picnic hamper with a covered top from the back seat of her vehicle.

We let ourselves into my office.

“I'll open the blinds,” Felicity said, putting the picnic hamper on my desk. “Why don't you just sit down?”

I sat behind the desk, admiring the hamper's shiny brass fittings.

Felicity went over to the filing cabinet, knelt down and came up holding a large oval plastic basin. PC's black ears showed above the basin's rim.

“Well, Silas. Guess what your clever cat's been doing?”

“Oh Lord,” I said. “How many?”

“Eight, but you don't need to worry,” she said, laying the basin on my blotter. “I can always use another couple of cats in my barn and the rest are spoken for.”

PC jumped out of the basin, glared at me, then jumped to the floor and stalked out of the office, quivering with indignation.

“My goodness, eight little bits of mechanical fur,” I said, looking into the basin. “Boys or girls?”

“Silly, you can't tell at this stage. A few of each, I expect.”

“This calls for a toast,” I said, reaching down for the office bottle and the Tim Horton mugs.

“Put those things away,” Felicity said, reaching into the hamper for a bottle of bubbly. “We'll do this in style. You can propose the toast.”

“To new beginnings?”

Felicity popped the cork. “New beginnings, that's perfect. You are clever, Silas.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

STANLEY EVANS' is the author of two previous novels,
Outlaw Gold
,
Snow-Coming Moon
as well as the Silas Seaweed series, which includes:
Seaweed on the Street
,
Seaweed on Ice
,
Seaweed under Water
,
Seaweed on the Rocks
, and
Seaweed in the Soup
. Stanley and his family live in Victoria, BC.

Introducing the
SILAS SEAWEED
mystery series

From TouchWood Editions

"Makes great use of West Coast aboriginal mythology and religion . . . The voice of Silas Seaweed . . . is Evans' own, and it works beautifully."
–
The Globe and Mail

"The writing is wonderful native story telling. Characters are richly drawn . . . I enjoyed this so much that I'm looking forward to others in the series."
–
Hamilton Spectator

D
ISCOVER MORE GREAT MYSTERIES LIKE THE ONES HERE AT OUR WEBSITE,
TOUCHWOODEDITIONS.COM

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YSTERY
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ALDER

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ASEY
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ONG

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ULU
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UPECEK

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SLAND
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NVESTIGATIONS
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YSTERY
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ANDY
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UNCAN AND
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EORGE
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ZANTO

Never Sleep with a Suspect on Gabriola Island
Always Kiss the Corpse on Whidbey Island
Never Hug a Mugger on Quadra Island

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ARGARET
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PENCER
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OUTHIN

Death in a Family Way
In the Shadow of Death
Death on a Short Leash
Death as a Last Resort

T
HE
S
ILAS
S
EAWEED
M
YSTERY
SERIES
BY
S
TANLEY
E
VANS

Seaweed on the Street
Seaweed on Ice
Seaweed Under Water
Seaweed on the Rocks
Seaweed in the Soup

Copyright © 2007 by Stanley Evans

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, audio recording, or otherwise—without the written permission of the publisher or a photocopying licence from Access Copyright, Toronto, Canada.

Originally published by TouchWood Editions Publishing Co. Ltd. in 2007 in softcover
ISBN 978-1-894898-57-7

This electronic edition was released in 2011
ePub ISBN 978-1-926971-34-6

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

Edited by Ed Strauss
Proofread by Marial Shea
Cover design by Jacqui Thomas (image courtesy Miguel Angelo Silve/iStockphoto.com)

The author is grateful for the expert help and advice of Dr. John Marsden, Dr. John Tibbles, James Clowater, George Easdon and Michael Layland in the preparation of this manuscript.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

TouchWood Editions acknowledges the financial support for its publishing program from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), Canada Council for the Arts, and the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.