She Felt No Pain (27 page)

“Today they might be as obsessed about vampires or sorcery.”

Don found this amusing. His shoulders jiggled, and he stifled a cough. “Oh, my dear. No animal torturing or spells. Merely the epic struggle of good and evil that has fascinated mankind.”

“Evil. So who was the villain?” At the word
villain,
did she see his brow rise?

“Villainess, actually. Throughout Spenser’s saga, Duessa, the false one, takes on many beautiful shapes and forms, but she lurks everywhere. She enlists the Blatant Beast with his lies and slander, much like the tabloids today. Now the Salvage Man—”

“Salvage?” This man spoke a language long forgotten, and for good reason.

“A variant of savage. Untutored and entirely amoral. Like Nature, I suppose. Then there’s my favourite. Talus, the iron man, gave rise to those heroes in films who have a psychopathic sidekick to do the heavy lifting. Nothing is new under this old sun.”

“I took English lit, but it wasn’t my best subject. And I don’t remember Spenser at all.” The way he related the themes to the modern age made it come alive again.

“Indeed, it’s a formidable work even for graduate students. I read it through once a year. But those girls devoured it like candy. Total immersion. The Garden of Adonis vs. the Bower of Blisse. The lovely mutability which orders that winter must follow summer as opposed to the brittle and unchangeable fabrications of man. A flower cast of metal. Beautiful but sterile.”

She looked at the scrap again and the cast. “But is
The Fairie
Queene
a play?”

“An epic poem. Don’t look for that genre in Canada later than E. J. Pratt’s
Titanic
. The girls chose a play for the narrative possibilities. Simple iambic pentameter, not those tedious Spenserian stanzas. I suspect they planned to stage a few scenes for the class. Plays are not for reading. They are for experiencing.”

“Is this all there was?”

“Spenser’s work was never completed either. He had planned to cover all the ten virtues, twenty, some say.” He shrugged with a sad expression that urged his jowls downward. “Even on their smaller scale, the girls never completed theirs, other than the first three acts. But after they graduated, who knows?”

“Most of us leave our high-school days behind. I presume their interests changed.”

A dry laugh sounded from the folds of lizard-skin on his throat. “Nothing was beyond them, with their steely focus, but events caught up to them. It happened so fast. Marilyn’s mother died in the late fall. And I went on...sick leave after Christmas. And then I retired...early. I suppose you know all about that.” His gaze sent her a challenge that she ignored.

“Did you keep in touch with the girls?”

“I saw Marilyn in the Sooke library from time to time. Shannon became a nurse, I hear.”

Holly looked the old man in the eye. “The Duke has her father’s name, Thomas. The ghost’s invocation. What does that signify?”

“Ghosts are always appearing in Renaissance plays to give advice and warning, or charge the main character to make a pledge. Helps start things off with a bang. Catch the attention of the groundlings. You
did
read
Hamlet,
didn’t you?”

She gave an noncommittal monosyllabic answer. “Who are these two characters listed first?”

He held the magnifying glass over the words. “Faded, but you can make out the letters if you know what you’re looking for. Britomart and Belphoebe. They are key characters in Spenser’s poem. Britomart has an entire book to herself. A female knight the equal of Arthur himself. Belphoebe was raised by Diana. She’s a heroine of chastity and may represent Queen Elizabeth on another level.”

Marilyn and Shannon had committed themselves to a long-term relationship. “Surely Spenser didn’t intend...they weren’t...”

“Spenser was very conventional.” Don leaned back in his chair and assumed a lecturer’s voice. “The lady knight Britomart was in love with Artegal. Arthur’s equal, you see. Belphoebe was a huntress, riding through the woods. In the true courtly love tradition, the lover admires from afar. It derived from medieval times when lords were away fighting in distant lands, and their ladies, complete with chastity belts, had younger admirers writing songs for them.”

“And...”

“And look at the name of the play,
The Triumphe of Love.

Anyone who might threaten to part such destined souls...”

“Like Clare Clavir.” She found herself whispering, “Clarissa.”

“A fall down her basement stairs. Steep, those old houses. There were rumours that she...” He tipped a glass for effect. “I felt sorry for Marilyn. Once the mother came to a parent teacher conference. She was like a dog in heat. Ripe in more ways than one.” His long nose wrinkled in distaste. “Reeking of cheap perfume and hormones. Short skirts and plenty of cleavage. Scarcely the motherly type. You’d never have known they were related.”

Holly told him about Joel’s life and death. “This fragment was found hidden near his body. As if he had some purpose for it.”

He looked sidelong at her. “Joel was in the bonehead English class, not mine. They read short stories and other trash. He was such a contrast to Marilyn. But it takes all kinds, doesn’t it? And if he were the blackguard you say he was, I leave you to conclude what he was doing with this evidence from the distant past.”

Holly collected her papers and stood as the brief sun flickered out behind a cloudbank. “Your information has been helpful, but we don’t operate on pure speculation, no matter how tempting. My discoveries keep leading me deeper into the forest.”

He waggled a bony finger. “Your images sound like Dante and his dark woods, or nearer to home, Robert Frost on that snowy evening. We are all of us lost at times. That makes life interesting. The object is to make the right choices at the crossroads.”

“Suppose there aren’t any more crossroads?”

S
IXTEEN

H
olly had dinner with her father, beginning with cocktail wieners and bacon-wrapped water chestnuts and pineapple, then spinach salad and chicken baked in mushroom soup with Minute Rice. A Jello poke cake made her fake a smile. Norman had put
Animal House
on the DVD player, but she begged off.

“Your mood ring is jet black. No wonder you’re so crabby tonight,” he observed.

“I’m still cold from that walk to the beach with Shogun,” she said, taking off the ring and placing it on the table. “This isn’t rocket science. It reacts to body heat.” As “The Way We Were” played, she thought of the girls and their alter egos. So much time had passed. If there had been a crime, where did it begin and end? At the old family home Marilyn had mentioned.

“I’m going into Sooke,” she said. “Gotta check something out.”

“Take Shogun. He loves car rides.”

Fifteen minutes later, she was in the town core. Turning at the stoplight, she passed rows of older bungalows on a geological plate. Rhodenite, Quartz, Pyrite and Talc streets spread out against a distant backdrop of steeper hills and valleys which “smoked” when warm air met cold. Marilyn’s former house at 125 Booster Avenue looked vaguely Victorian, as if it had stood there since the Spanish-American War, daring civilization to approach. On one side, a mammoth housing development was gnawing at its edges, the vegetation sheared off and erosion washing red soil from the nude hills. Next door, working overtime, a noisy backhoe with a diesel engine puffing black diesel clouds was moving its slow thighs to clear a final patch of land.

With two acres of gnarly and neglected fruit trees and slumped bee hives, the Clavir home had been one of the holdouts. Holly hopped out, leaving Shogun in the car, and began a methodical assessment. Three stories with an attic on top and dormer windows. A roofing job sometime after asphalt shingles had replaced cedar shakes. A dark basement with a storm door more practical for Kansas tornadoes.

All first-floor windows had been boarded, presumably to prevent access. In human form, the house would have begged for euthanasia. Yet overgrown lilac and spirea bushes, indefatigable red and white peonies and a pink rose climbing a lurching trellis showed a loving hand gone to the grave before Holly’s birth. Out back were a whimsical playhouse turned chicken coop and a rusted swing set, its bones creaking in the wind as one seat moved.

An ancient Douglas fir with large conjuring arms held split and greying boards from what Marilyn had described as Joel’s tree fort. Holly had taken many a tumble in her own climbs. Life wasn’t much fun wrapped in cotton batting with monkey bars now forbidden on playgrounds. Sometimes, like wood-duck chicks, you had to trust in luck and leap from the nest.

Mounting a set of cement steps, she tried the large front door with its round ringer in the middle of the panel. Locked. Then the back door to the kitchen. Both seemed firmly locked. On the overgrown lawn, a faded realty sign had fallen to the ground like a tired tombstone. A snail had left a trail of shiny slime on its mossy plane.

Perhaps someone with more nerve and fewer civic morals might have found a way to break in. Holly took stock of her information and her choices. Joel’s body had been found under suspicious circumstances, Chipper’s information about the Fentanyl, Ann’s talk with Dee, her own intuition, for what that was worth. Maybe old Dee was confused. And certainly Don had his own credibility problems and a past he wished buried. Hampered by her lowly status as a corporal, Holly needed all her stuffed cats in a row before throwing the carnival baseball. It was an entertainment cliché that the police arrested people on spurious causes, proving their case later. What could the sad house tell her?

It was eight p.m., but in high summer during the real-estate rush and the wealth of light, Valerie Novince was cruising 24-7. Feast or famine in her risky business. She answered on the first ring. “Holly-O?” The middle name of Oldham came from her great-grandfather in Devonshire. Only Valerie knew about it, and for good reason. With schoolyard tongues and taunts, Holly would have been called Old Ham.

“Lemme pull over and still my heart. Back for friggin’ months, and you’re finally calling me to get together? I was beginning to think you didn’t like me any more. Or do you want to buy a house? The market’s full of bargains for first-timers, and you don’t even have to sell yours. Tired of living with your father? He’s a doll, but a girl needs her independence and—”

Valerie could talk the pants off of the prime minister, an unnerving concept. “Slow down and breathe, you. I need to see a house.”

“Reeeeeeeeally? Getting married, are we? Tell Val.”

“Give me a break. As if I have time to date, keeping you safe. Call it research.” Holly felt almost embarrassed at being tossed back to adolescence. Val had been her one friend, heading straight from high school to a stint in the army before growing up. Now she had a seven-year-old and a handsome Norwegian husband who ran a specialty woodworking business.

A loud guffaw ensued, and Holly pulled back the phone. “So you are
cereal.
..or
serial
. What was that joke we used to—”

“Get serious for once. I need your help.” With a friend like Valerie, a decade could pass like an hour.

“Not one customer in two weeks. Only poor sods who want to sell. And only four closings since Christmas. I was thinking of trolling the pubs. Now, what kind of—”

When Holly described the property, Valerie’s voice dropped a few decibels, along with her enthusiasm. “God, the old Mattoon place? That’s been on the market for dog’s years. Rental in between minimal cleanups. More run down each time, like an old whore without lipstick or powder. I was surprised it didn’t burn to the ground some Hallowe’en, the kids these days, my dear daughter aside.”

Holly laughed. “You’re sounding your age, which is mine.”

“So true, girlfriend. You always knew me best. Didn’t we do detention together every week? Wait a sec. Lemme get my Blackberry. Don’t know what I did without it.”

There was a sudden quiet. “Some people look at houses for free entertainment. Have me drive them all over on Sundays blowing gas bills out my butt then never make an offer. Sheesh.”

“So can you come through for me?”

“I’ll need to call the listing realtor at ReMax and get the key. Let’s say tomorrow morning. Ten sharp. Suit you?”

“Meet you at the Stick.”

* * *

Chipper took his cap from the closet as Holly came in the next morning. “Gotta head out to Bletcher Road. Grass fire started when some idiot tossed a cigarette. The roadside’s like tinder now.”

“What about the Fire Department?”

“Already there, but they need traffic control. Just pray the wind turns, or those new houses might go up. They’re just shells with heaps of scrap lumber around.”

“Jesus. When are people going to learn?” As he turned to go, Holly added, “Take that face mask in the closet. Smoke’s no fun, especially from toxic building materials.”

He put on his duty belt and snagged the Impala keys from the hook. “I remember when a barn of pot went up near Prince Albert. It was like one big doobie. I didn’t come down for a week.”

“One of our perks.”

Chipper examined the mask like a fashion accessory. “This won’t do much good except keep off sparks.”

“That baby face will thank me. And be careful.” She gave his shoulder a friendly prod.

* * *

At ten over in Sooke at the Stick, Valerie was sharp as ever in a tailored butter-leather jacket over beige slacks, a silk blouse and lizard print low-heeled boots. Her hair had left the bottle for a softer ash brown, a natural improvement. The curly tangles were corralled in a scrunchy.

After munching a warm brie-on-brioche, Valerie led the way to a flashy Lexus SUV. She patted the hood, planting an air kiss on it with her plump pink lips. “It’s a hybrid, so don’t sneer. Last year I made a fortune. Now we’re eating home-made beans. And it’s leased anyway. Soon you might see me driving an antique like yours.” She elbowed Holly in her usual madcap style.

“Hey, beans are back in style. Good carbs.” Holly hoped Val wouldn’t wallow on about the steep drop in house sales as the North American economy faltered. Government services would be next. Would they lose an officer or transfer Chipper? Suppose they shut down the detachment and sent her to Fort St. John just as she was starting to investigate her mother’s disappearance?