“I hope this is strong.”
“Extra strong Columbian for both of us.”
She settled herself on my patched bench and pulled her yellow chenille bathrobe more tightly around her toned curves. Sunday was Rae’s day of rest, and it was sacrosanct. The bathrobe stayed put until she put on her church-going clothes for an hour, then it returned for the duration of the day.
“I had a really good week,” she began. “Fourteen clients.”
“Geez, Rae, that’s more than two a day. How can you stand it, and where do they all come from?”
“Two a day is usually my limit, but I have my regular customers like Ewan Quigley and some of his friends, and I don’t like to turn any of them down. A couple of the guys were willing to pay extra if I fit them in, so I thought, what the heck, it’s all money in the bank, right?”
“I guess.” Ewan Quigley? Eesh. I guess if you closed your eyes, you could pretend you were doing George Clooney.
Rae was a hooker, and quite a successful one. She charged a hundred dollars a pop, so made at least twelve hundred dollars a week, tax-free. Rae also taught water aerobics to seniors at the high school three afternoons a week for minimum wage. Since her income from this legitimate job was so limited, like mine, she never paid a lick of income tax. But she filed religiously each year to keep Revenue Canada happy — and ignorant of her more lucrative career.
Rae was only twenty-five, but she had been investing her money since she was eighteen. She took endless aesthetics courses and figured that by age thirty she would have enough money to open her own spa. She already had a name picked out: Pamper U.
“Today we’re doing your hair, remember?” She indicated the plastic shopping bag hanging off one arm.
“I forgot. I don’t think I have time today, Rae. I have a real estate client at one o’clock. Nothing will come of it, as usual, but Elaine Simms made the appointment with people from out of town, so I have to meet them at the Barrister house.”
“We’ll be done in less than two hours. Come on, quit stalling. I’ve been dying to get my hands on your hair for ages.”
“Rae, I don’t think …”
“Come on, Bliss. Don’t be such a chicken. I do my own hair and, look, it’s fine.” She shook her multi-shaded blond mane. It did look good, but I didn’t really want to look like the cheerleader Rae once was.
“Look,” she coaxed, “I have a base colour that’s the same as your own. Then I have two accent colours to highlight with, copper and caramel. It will be subtle, but look gorgeous. And I’ll trim your hair just a bit. That way you can still pull it back in a ponytail when you’re working.”
My hair badly needed a cut, and cheap shampoos and no conditioners had faded my light brown colour to a shade not unlike the lichen on a pile of north-
facing rocks.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Two hours later, Rae had gone back to her own trailer to dress before church and I was contemplating myself in the chipped mirror in my tiny, non-functioning bathroom. I had to admit my hair looked good. I swung it back and forth and applied lipstick and eyeliner. The mascara and the light green eyeshadow had dried out long ago.
Grabbing a mystery paperback I’d started months ago, I made myself comfortable on the front step and let the sun warm my face and bare arms. Beside me, the shiny purple paint on Rae’s trailer shot shards of light into my eyes. I changed position, and this left me facing the Quigley residence.
Ewan and Sarah Quigley’s trailer was, like mine, still the original beige it left the showroom in thirty or forty years ago. Two webbed lawn chairs that had seen better years sat out front beside a pile of empty beer cartons. The stringy, sixtyish Sarah was fond of sitting in one of the chairs in her leathery birthday suit, but thankfully she was absent today. Several times, I waved at her and called out a friendly greeting, but she stared silently across the compound until I turned away in embarrassment. Now I pretended not to notice her tanning her wrinkled hide.
I kept an eye on my watch. I wanted my weekly treat at Tim Hortons before the house showing, and for a moment I let myself fantasize about closing the sale. The Barrister house was listed at one hundred and sixty thousand, so if the buyer offered a hundred and forty-five, say, and the commission was six percent, which I would have to split with Elaine, I would get …
Visions of enough money to find an out-of-town lawyer brave enough to take on the Weasel danced in my head. When I heard voices behind me, I turned in alarm, thinking that some of Ewan’s disreputable friends might be drunk and ready for love. Not that I could easily be mistaken for Rae.
Instead, I looked up into two sets of mirrored sunglasses, one worn by a female cop and the other by … definitely not a female.
Damn. Somebody ratted on Rae and the cops were here to arrest her for prostitution. I glanced at Rae’s purple trailer. Some days you could see the trailer rocking, but since it was Sunday, all was still. I was determined to know nothing and say nothing about Rae’s activities.
“Are you Bliss Cornwall?” asked the taller of the two. I noticed that his uniform was a good fit, tailored exactly to his body measurements. His hands rested on his belt, close to his gun.
“Yes?”
He took off his hat, revealing short, spiky blond hair. “Well, you are or you aren’t Bliss Cornwall. Which is it?”
“Yes, I am Bliss Moonbeam Cornwall. Can I help you?”
“Moonbeam? Interesting middle name you have.” The female cop snickered. She had a slim figure and was close to my age. Dark hair was pinned back under her cap.
“My parents were wannabe flower children. They were too late for the sixties, so they tried to compensate by naming their daughters Bliss Moonbeam and Blyth Starlight. I believe it has strengthened our characters.” Celebrate your own uniqueness. That was another of my rules.
She had the nerve to laugh out loud. “So did your parents embrace any other trends from the sixties, like free love or pot smoking?”
Oh. My. God. They knew about Dougal’s marijuana! Maybe Glory’s too! I tried to swallow the panic caught in my throat.
“Hard to say, I never dared ask. They retired to Vancouver Island where I believe they are camping in a forest in their fifth wheel, or maybe chained to a giant redwood so the socialist developers won’t chop it down and build a row of condos.” I managed an uneasy smile.
“Please, can we get down to business,” admonished the male cop. “Ms. Cornwall, I am Chief Neil Redfern and this is Constable Thea Vanderbloom.”
He flashed an identification card. I remembered seeing his picture in our weekly newspaper several times. Since Chief Redfern was relatively young and not ugly, although I wasn’t attracted to fair-haired men, he made good media copy. He had left his job as a Toronto detective to take up the post as Lockport’s Chief of Police about two years ago.
“Now we all know who we are, why are we here? I lead a blameless life, I assure you. Frankly, I’m too busy to even jaywalk.” Shit, it was jail for Dougal and Glory, and I would be forced to appear as chief witness for the Crown.
Constable Vanderbloom pulled a small black notebook and a pen from her breast pocket. She looked down at me and waited expectantly. I was nervous, and desperately tried to think of a way to avoid answering direct questions about two affluent Lockport homes where grass was cultivated and served.
Chief Redfern said, “Do you know Julian Barnfeather?”
That threw me. What the hell. Was the creep accusing me of something?
“Is this a trick question? Because I might want a lawyer, but then again, all the lawyers I know are