She knew he was thinking of her mother. Ten years had passed since she had disappeared, past the legal time for a person to be declared dead, such an artificial line. She knew nothing about what life insurance the woman might have had. To ask would be not only crass but an affront to her father.
Her mother had First Nations blood, growing up on a Coastal Salish reserve near Cowichan. When Bonnie had failed to return from a trip to the Tahsis area to start a safe house for abused native women, a search had started. At first they thought she’d driven off the road in a snow storm, but days had gone by, then weeks. Even when spring had revealed the landscape, her Bronco had never been found. The months that followed had been grueling. It had even been whispered that her father had played a role, not surprising, given the statistics in domestic killings. Normally he was peaceable, but her mother’s long absences in her social causes exasperated him, and the neighbours beside the eighty-foot lot had heard arguments, she suspected. Nor did Bonnie appreciate his career. “A waste of time,” she would say, considering the plastic black-cat clock he had found at a garage sale and mounted in the kitchen. “Why chew old bones? Do something for the living, for god’s sake.”
“Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to—” He’d retreated into professor mode. Fifteen-year-old Holly had been outside on the deck, but with the thin walls of the house, she heard every word.
“Give me a break, Norman. I know all about the past...and so do the women I help. We’re trying to make a difference.” Bonnie left to answer the phone, one of many calls which arrived at all hours.
Coming back inside that sad day and trying to feign ignorance, Holly had never forgotten his defeated look. With his tenure assured at last, he’d bought the Otter Point Place house for Bonnie, a sunny change from their dark A-frame in East Sooke, where the sun cast a fleeting glance down through the dense firs, and lights burned in the daytime. But it hadn’t helped. She cared little where she hung her hat, straw in summer, a warm toque in winter. Holly supposed she got her contempt for fashion from her mother. Bonnie would have liked the freedom of the uniform. Imagine starting each day with a series of bothersome decisions about what to wear and what makeup might complement it.
After dinner, they took their desserts and tea to the TV room for his favourite channels, Turner Classics or American Movie Classics. In keeping with his Fifties theme, they were watching River of No Return. Robert Mitchum was solid and upright for a change, even if he had killed a man in self-defense. Marilyn was buxom and casual, a wasp waist cinched in her blue jeans. Her scenes with young Tommy Rettig, Jeff in the Lassie series, were honest and touching. “Weren’t we watching this movie when I left for university?” she asked.
“You can never see this couple too many times,” he said. “Mitchum wasn’t just the dope-smoking bad boy in the tabloids. He was talented in many directions. Did you know he composed a symphony that was played at the Hollywood Bowl? Orson Welles directed it,” her father said, a master of trivia.
A sea change from Mitchum’s villainous roles. Even here in a quiet backwater, chances were strong that a sociopath lived within range, whether or not the person would ever act violently. “No return, no return, no return,” the theme song warned as she thought about her mother.Was he thinking the same thing? She shook her head and finished the prune whip. Not as good as his floating island.
When the movie ended, she looked at her watch. “Damn.”
Norman yawned and stretched. “What’s wrong?”
“I should have written up my notes at the station. That’s going to take me at least an hour and a half.”
He wagged a finger at her. “You always were a bit of a procrastinator. Unlike your old man.”
She stuck out her tongue and headed upstairs to her bedroom, where a new Dell computer awaited. Once seated, she opened the palm-sized notebook. The routine had been laid down at the academy. Dates of each notebook on the cover, ink only, no erasures, any changes initialed. Crucial for a court case. Then the transcription into a formal report. No secretary for that, they were warned. Her handwriting wasn’t the best; she tended to think faster than she wrote. In university, she’d used a shorthand which helped her to take notes in heavy-content courses like Abnormal Psychology and Sociology of the Family. If she hadn’t memorized the Criminal Code, she could cite numbers on command. And not everyone realized that Canada didn’t have the official Miranda warning like on American TV shows, but a caution based on the Charter of Rights. Each notebook contained a glossary at the end, which included radio codes for incidents and other standard information.
She was a long time getting to sleep. And the half moon was rising, not over the mountain like Kate’s, but across the water, pulling Orion and its triple-star belt in its numinous wake. Her mother had said that when it formed a C for coming, it was actually waning. She got up, slid open the patio doors, and walked onto the deck to contemplate the strait. Cruise ships took polite turns with freighters to ply their way west toward the Pacific or east to Puget Sound, the lights on their wires and superstructures like a mobile amusement park. Getting back into bed, she burrowed into the down pillow. Tomorrow wouldn’t be pleasant. She could take a pass on the autopsy, but how bad could it be? Telling the family was worse, and she’d leaped that hurdle today. She wondered how Nate Didrickson was faring. His daughter had seen her final moon.
Boone called the detachment the next morning. “Daso’s got the autopsy scheduled for nine thirty. Just got around to checking my answering machine. Late night at the legion.” Holly washed down the thistle scratching her throat with bitter coffee. Chipper had arrived first, and apparently he liked his brew strong enough to trot a deer. “I’d like to be there. Do you think that—”
“Hell, we can still make most of it. Traffic’s light now. Pick me up fifteen minutes ago.”
He was standing in front of his doublewide behind the Kemp Lake store at the Olympic View Park when Holly drove up minutes later. The ocean-view spot catered to retirees, who owned well-kept modern units with elaborate porches or sheds, even a small plot of land. A white cat twirled around his feet like a fluffy fog. “Cassandra’s deaf,” he said, stroking its head. “Many white cats are. She doesn’t wander far. Knows she’d make a nice snack for a cougar.”
“Apparently there’s a wounded one at large in the John Muir area. Nearly took out a chihuahua.”
“Keep your voice down,” he said with a mock-worried look. “The old gal lipreads.”
At the first stoplight, they turned left and cozied in behind a strip mall. Nestled there was the latest Sooke coffeehouse, the Stick-in-the-Mud. Run by trained barista Dave Evans, a neighbour of Holly’s, it sold the best java in town, not a bitter bean in a carload.
The regulars were lining up, while others were in leather armchairs reading the Times Colonist or the free Monday tabloid with its radical Seventies flavor. Laptop computer keys clicked. While Boone went to the washroom (“prostrate,” he said with a chuckle). Holly ordered an Americano for herself, and a daily special, Kenya, for him, doctoring them at the depot. Then a raucous voice took her back to the past with the zing of a bungee cord.
“Holly! Holly-O. Damn! And check that uniform. You look maaaaaavelous.” Valerie Novince kissed her manicured fingers and planted her hands on her broad hips. Her dark brown hair was now platinum blonde and teased. The dimples in her merry face cheered any room.
Holly gave her a warm hug, flattered that Valerie remembered the “O” for Oldham, a family name dating back to their ancestral home in Devonshire. “Hello, friend. This is a wonderful surprise. What have you been up to?”
Valerie explained that she had spent two years in the army, then returned for real estate training at Camosun College. A curvaceous eyebrow spoke pages. “I was a baaaad girl, but the army gave me discipline. Remember when