Twilight Is Not Good for Maidens (24 page)
“How did you find me?” she asked Al, still amazed at the miracle of her rescue.
“Constable Packke,” he said. “She was in Rennie. Saw your car and came onto the docks about the same time the boat started up. She watched Rudy hop on board and head out like the hounds of hell were on his tail. She called Fossil Bay, and they made connections with us and one of the West Coast Marine units. You’re damn lucky one of ours was in the vicinity on manoeuvres with the Coast Guard. Normally they’re based in Nanaimo. Any more cutbacks and we’ll be paddling kayaks.”
From around the peninsula, a large police boat was charging toward them like a one-man cavalry. In the lashing rain, she squinted into the distance. Turning to Al, she said, “Is that …”
“Yes, ma’am. Not bad for a rookie, if you get my drift.” He looked at the blood dripping from her arm onto her pants. “Say, do you know how bad you’re hurt?”
In the prow was Ashley, waving for all she was worth. A small tear formed in Holly’s eye and she swiped at it, beginning to feel the sting of her cuts. Had the constable really wanted to see Avatar Grove, or had that been merely pretence to befriend her? Whatever the case, Holly owed her a life.
She turned to Al, whose face was getting darker, like everything around her. “Down in the hold, get the jewellery.…”
Sore head and seven
stitches in her forearm, Holly was back to normal. Knowing that the next day she’d be at the detachment with her staff gave her more of a lift than the shot of Demerol she’d been given after a concussion was ruled out.
She’d been on a razor edge climbing onto that boat without a warrant, night-vision goggles or not. The first thing that Ashley told her when they met en route to the hospital was that she was prepared to say that she had witnessed Holly being grabbed by the toxic pair and taken aboard. When Ellen fell apart in the first rounds of questioning and turned against Rudy to save herself, Ashley’s little lie became a moot point. Holly was still mulling over the ethics of her constable’s means-to-an-end philosophy.
Her father had outdone himself: pot roast and Yorkshire pudding with pureed parsnips flavoured with maple syrup, canned corn, and fresh sweet-potato pie with a flaky lard crust. “Don’t ever put yourself into that kind of a situation again,” he told her, shaking his finger for emphasis. He still wore a touch of flour on his temple. “If I lost you, I …” His voice trailed off, and to distract them both, he poured more Canadian champagne, a rare treat.
She hadn’t told him what she’d found out about the Hamilton brothers and the flights her mother arranged. The strange harp image. Sometimes she needed to digest the information before reopening his wounds. As she finished her pie and cut another piece, she chose her words carefully. Her brain was still fogged from a night at the hospital and a nap at home until an hour ago.
He looked at her without blinking, his sky-blue eyes bright with interest. “But as you say, Bonnie never took the flight. She was home that weekend with us. So who did?”
“One of the many women she helped, I guess. If we can only find her. What could that harp mean? I’ve free-associated as far as I can.”
He looked at her down his aquiline nose. “It rings no bells with me. One of us is going to have to go to the mainland,” he said. “To Williams Lake. So much time has passed. If only I’d known some of this.” The private detective he had engaged in the beginning had come up empty-handed. Every year Norman put a search ad in the paper and was usually approached by con men out to make a quick buck.
“I managed to talk to Bob Filman this morning,” she said. “He remembered when the tote bag appeared because it was his wife’s sixtieth birthday and he thought he might take it for her if it wasn’t claimed. They had sheps. The date was a year after Mom disappeared.”
“And that could mean?”
He wanted her to tell him that Bonnie could still be alive. But she couldn’t. “I don’t know, Dad. She was never without it.” It’s misdirection, she thought. It has to be. Either that or it was stolen from her before that last ….
Fog was rolling its slow thighs over Otter Point to the east as dusk fell. How alive the strait was. One minute all was hidden, and the next, the bank blown to the U.S. side, the sun would come out and all would be revealed. Step by slow step, she hoped that she was approaching the answer to her mother’s disappearance, but the adult in her said that sometimes, the answer did not arrive in a person’s lifetime.
“I have a week’s vacation coming up.”
The CD player started up “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” with Mary Martin singing her heart out. Shogun snored in his dog bed. She’d come too close to dying this time. Meeting her mother in the world beyond was not the current plan. “I’m going to find her and bring her home.”
She Felt No Pain
A Holly Martin Mystery
9781926607078
$16.95
The verdant lushness of Vancouver Island is not without its dangers.... Summer on Vancouver Island gets off to a rocky start with the discovery of the body of a homeless man. RCMP Corporal Holly Martin notices drug paraphernalia nearby, and the autopsy reveals death from a combination of heroin and a synthetic opiate. Information leads Holly to believe that he had hidden something of value at the site of his death. As Holly struggles to connect the dots, a record drought heats up the vacation paradise, and one match could send Canada’s Caribbean into flames.
And on the Surface Die
A Holly Martin Mystery
9781894917742
$15.95
In this new series by the acclaimed author of the Belle Palmer mysteries, RCMP Corporal Holly Martin takes charge of her first post, a detachment in tiny Fossil Bay on the wild south coast of Vancouver Island. Drunk drivers, speeders, and the occasional theft from tourist cars lead the crime roster, but her first day starts with a distress call. A scuba diver has found the body of a girl in the surf. A tragic drowning caused by a fall? The late arrival of tox-scan results for crystal meth, the most recent plague to hit the island, raises ugly questions. Just before Holly makes an arrest, a record-setting typhoon roars in, empowered to destroy everything in its path. As the wind howls and trees crash around her, Holly struggles to survive and to bring a murderer to justice.
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Copyright © Lou Allin, 2013
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, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Editor: Jennifer McKnight
Design: Jesse Hooper
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Allin, Lou, 1945-
Twilight is not good for maidens [electronic resource] / by Lou Allin.
(A Holly Martin mystery)
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-4597-0603-3
I. Title. II. Series: Allin, Lou, 1945- . Holly Martin mystery.
PS8551.L5564T85 2013 C813’.6 C2012-904645-0
We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Canada Book Fund
and
Livres Canada Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit
and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
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