There was no response, and I thought maybe she didn’t hear me. She poured the sangria in slow deliberate movements then lowered the pitcher to the table, took her glass, looked me in the eye, and guzzled half of it down, then set her glass carefully on the table. Finally she said, “It’s no big deal,” and turned to look out the window.
I waited a minute, sipped my sangria. She avoided my gaze. Finally I put my glass on the table and leaned forward. “I think it is,” I said softly. “I think it’s a very big deal, and I think it might help to talk.”
After our evening of cleaning and hauling her short hair was in disarray — the bedhead look that some people spend hours to achieve — and I could see a tiredness pulling at her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Finally she turned back to me. “Look, you don’t have to act like I’m going to burst into tears or something because I’m not. Okay? We worked together, things got intense.” She shrugged. “It didn’t work out. That’s all.”
“Things got intense. Does that mean you had a relationship or were thinking about having a relationship?”
Dinah laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “That depends on how you define relationship. We were sleeping together, but I’m not sure that means we were having a relationship. It was all in the closet because Cindy didn’t want anyone to know… her career and all that shit.”
“JJ knew.”
“Yeah, well, Cindy had a fling with him just before me. Can you believe it? That jerk? But then things started to heat up between her and me. We were out in the field a lot, one thing led to another, then it just sort of happened. She wanted out of her relationship with JJ, so she told him about me, thinking it would get him off her back, but he went ballistic. He started following her around, threatening to tell everyone what was going on between us, begging her to return. He’d show up at her apartment and bang on the door at two in morning. Sometimes he’d yell he loved her, sometimes he screamed he was gonna kill her. That’s why she had to leave Madden’s lab. JJ wouldn’t let up.”
“So what happened?” “He finally backed off. Maybe he found somebody else to harass, I don’t know.”
“And what about you and Cindy?”
She gave an impatient sigh and a shrug. “With JJ off her back I thought things would get better, but to tell you the truth, nothing changed. We had this sort of thing going, but I was about fifth in line after Elaine, experiments, animals, gear, you name it. And Cindy wanted it all undercover. Since I wanted the relationship to work I didn’t have a lot of options, but about two weeks ago something changed. She got really weirded out; maybe about the missing fish, could have been the stress of the field season, maybe it had something to do with our relationship. I’m not sure. Then a couple of days ago she suddenly tells me she needs some space, she needs to think things over. I’m not an idiot. I know what that means, and I’d kind of had it. I told her to take all the space she needed but not to expect me to sit around waiting.”
“Nice, Dinah. Very caring.”
She gave me a petulant shrug. “I was pissed. Then when you told me she’d left for New Zealand I was furious. I mean, that’s just like Cindy. Don’t deal with it, run away. But then other things started to happen. She didn’t leave instructions for her work, she abandoned her samples in the truck… “ She had pulled a taco chip from the basket and was toying with the salsa, taking a minute to run over the whole thing in her mind again. Finally she shook her head and said uneasily, “I don’t know. I don’t doubt she’d jerk me around, but screw up her work? That doesn’t make sense.”
The waitress arrived with the food, chicken enchiladas for me and a bean and cheese tostada for Dinah. We were both so hungry that there was no point in even trying to talk until the plates were half empty. Before the waitress could get away I ordered another pitcher of sangria and took the next few minutes of fussing with napkins, cutting up food, and chewing the sublime concoction to consider my next move. The discussion of Cindy was a sidebar for me. Although there was always a chance it was connected to my case in some way it wasn’t the main attraction, and I still had a lot of ground to cover with Dinah: JJ, Graham, Riesler, and Elaine. On the other hand, Cindy was good currency. If Dinah trusted me I’d get a lot more out of her, and we would have a long day working together tomorrow.
Dinah poured herself another glass of sangria. It was depressing to think of that nice alcohol buzz being wasted on something irrelevant, but what can you do.
“Why don’t you call her?” I asked. “Just to make sure she’s all right.”
Dinah looked up with a full mouth of rice and beans. She shook her head. She swallowed and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “She wanted space. I promised I wouldn’t call her, that I’d let her contact me when she was ready. Anyway, I couldn’t call even if I wanted to. I don’t have a number in New Zealand. Her moth-er’s remarried and has a different name, which I don’t know. You can see how far our relationship got.”
I shook my head. “You sure she’s worth all this?” She sighed. “No… but unfortunately, I love her. I mean, I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’ll get the number through the office —”
“They won’t give it to you.”
I brushed that aside, “— and I’ll call Cindy in New Zealand. I’ll use her research as an excuse, say I’m calling for Elaine and we all want to know when she’s coming back. How about that? At least you’d know if she lied about her mother.”
For the first time Dinah’s bravado seemed to completely slip away. “I’d like that,” she said quietly. “I’d like that a lot.”
The rest of the meal was depressingly unproductive. I was starting to numb out with fatigue, making it difficult for me to keep all my thoughts on track. Dinah was slowing down as well, the result of way too much sangria. She was going to be sorry tomorrow morning. On the other hand, she was under twenty-five. At that age a healthy body can take a hell of a lot of abuse.
I did manage to ask her about Graham. “An arrogant little prick,” were her exact words, but she seemed to have no suspicions that he might be involved in anything unsavoury or illegal. JJ, she confirmed, was constantly short of money and always on the verge of getting rich, or so he bragged to the technicians. On the topic of Edwards she was strangely positive, given her negative opinion of everyone else in the department. I waited until the end of dinner to broach the subject and tried to come at it obliquely.
“I’ve known Elaine forever,” I said as we were getting up to leave. “I’m curious about Edwards.”
“I like Jonathan,” she said defensively. “I think Elaine screwed up.”
I was surprised to hear her echo my thoughts completely. “So what happened?”
Dinah was ahead of me and she pushed open the door into the cold night air. “All I know is that one day Elaine came into the lab really upset. She asked if Edwards ever came in when she wasn’t around. I knew they were going out together, but what a weird question. Of course he wouldn’t be around if she wasn’t there. Why would he be in our lab? Then she tells me to keep him out of the lab and call her if I ever see him hanging around. Next thing I hear she’s split with him and he’s moved to Natural Resources. I guess he didn’t want to have to face her every day.”
Dinah’s story squared up nicely with what I knew so far. I was pretty sure that Edwards didn’t move by choice, and I now knew who and what to ask to discover the truth.
By the time I got Dinah home it was almost eleven. She lived near the restaurant on the top floor of an old Kitsilano house. As we pulled up something caught my eye.
“Is that van always parked there?”
She