by Myrna Dey
“Would you like a cup of coffee first?”
He shook his head. “Just get the shakes now and then. And I’m supposed to be asking youse that question.”
Dex told him we didn’t need anything and began reading. “You are prepared to testify in a court of law that Mitchell Pogue, an agent of William Hubbard, on trial for the murder of Harold Lorimer, threatened you with your life if you did not give Hubbard an alibi.”
Andy nodded.
“That William Hubbard sent his cousin Mitchell Pogue, also known as Macho Mitch, to your motorcycle repair shop, Lifecycles, just before closing on May 9, 2003. Pogue told you that you were ‘screwed’ if you did not comply with Hubbard’s wishes.” Dex looked at Andy for confirmation before continuing.
“When you were questioned by Constable Patricia Luknowsky of the Burnaby RCMP detachment, you told her that William Hubbard had brought his bike in for repair on Friday, April 18, 2003 between 20 and 21 hours.” From the transcript Dex then repeated Andy’s own spoken words to the officer: “‘I was working late that night. The bike had a short in the lighting system and Hubbard said he would wait while it was being fixed so I wouldn’t waste time ‘fartin’ around.’ The job took longer than I expected because I didn’t have the exact part in stock and had to make do with what I had. Hubbard left just before 22 hours. I was alone on the premises.’”
Andy hung his head, remembering the lie.
Dex went on reading from the file. “After Hubbard was arrested, Pogue returned to the cycle shop. It was just before closing on Friday, May 9 and Pogue told Lambert’s helper, Rodney Searles, to leave. When the two of them were alone, Pogue repeated to Lambert just how important his alibi testimony was for Hubbard. To make his point, he pulled out a knife, forced Lambert to kneel down, tied his arms behind his back, blindfolded him, and beat him on the face, abdomen, and legs with a tire iron. Before he left, Pogue untied Lambert and he collapsed bleeding on the floor. Pogue said: ‘You’ll heal in time for the trial. And if you don’t say the right thing, you’ll never talk again. We’ll cut your tongue out. And your heart along with it.’”
Andy shivered more severely. Dex and I observed a moment of silence for this broken victim of Hell’s Angels brutality, old beyond his years, trembling still as much in fear as from his other afflictions.
“You okay, Andy?” I asked.
“It’ll pass,” said Andy. “Until the next one. Doctor says my liver took the worst beating back then, besides what I done to it myself.”
“We’ll look after you,” Dex repeated, and Andy relaxed a little into the couch, his big dog licking him as he brushed against his head.
“How were you brave enough to go to the police after a threat like that?” I asked.
“My sister. I dragged myself to the office and called her. She came and took me home to Abbotsford with her to mend. I told Rodney to take charge of the place and reversed the facts — that I had a sudden call to look after my sister who was in an accident. Didn’t want to go to a hospital cause they ask too much.
“After I was back at work a couple o’ months, I seen in the paper where Macho Mitch Pogue had been picked up as a suspect in the murder of a sex trade girl. Him and another piece of scum threw her in the Fraser River, hands and feet tied. Maybe I ain’t so brave comin’ forward, knowin’ he was in jail. Not that I’m stupid enough to think they wouldn’t send someone else after me if I talked. But my sister won out. She had been at me the whole time to tell what I knew. ‘The police will protect you,’” he said in a woman’s voice. “And you have.”
“We couldn’t leave you in the lower mainland.”
“Could be a lot worse. Got another sister in Parksville looks out for me.” Andy directed his remarks to me, the newcomer to his situation. “Your boys keep an eye on me too.”
By that he meant the Parksville RCMP who included him in their patrol of the island highway. Dex stood up and put his hand on Andy’s shoulder. “That’s about it, then. We won’t take up any more of your time.”
“Time?” cackled Andy. “That’s all I got. Though maybe not so much — I’ll find out tomorrow at the doc’s. My sister’s takin’ me in.” He took a loose cigarette from his jacket pocket and lit it shakily. “Only my second one today, so don’t get on my case. Hope it don’t bother either of youse.”
I couldn’t say why, but this small wasted frame and slicked back hair produced in me an image of Roland Hughes. Is this what he looked like when he finally pulled himself off the floor after his wife and son died? Emaciated and shaking, but not without manners, as he addressed the new guardians of his twin daughters? Or did he scream drunkenly at them?
“We’ll call you again before the trial and make arrangements for your transfer,” said Dex. I joined him at the door, wondering what my role had been in this assignment. He could easily have handled it by himself.
“You’re a pro,” I said, once back in the vehicle.
He gave two quick farewell honks of the horn to Andy, still standing at the front window watching us. “You sound surprised.”
I grinned, promising myself not to join in the groans and eye rolling next time he acted like a jerk. The rain had let up, but from the colour of the skies, we knew it was only a breather. It was almost suppertime when we pulled into Nanaimo. I didn’t want to desert Dex, but I was eager to see Janetta. I was raised never to call on anyone at mealtime, so I waited to phone until Dex and I had stuffed ourselves on a seafood platter at a fish house on the harbour.
Janetta coaxed me to stay with them, but another of Retha’s company rules was to consider the extra sheets to wash. I insisted my hotel room was booked, and I would come over in the evening and again for breakfast. We had Monday off for the return trip, so there was no sense in rushing back. Unless you were Dex, I discovered. He informed me he was going to take the first ferry back in the morning to be at work before ten. If I wanted the car, he could catch the express bus from Horseshoe Bay into Vancouver and the LRT to Burnaby. Of course, I refused the work vehicle for my personal use and assured him I could get home on my own. My new resolve about Dex was going to require a lot of discipline.
He delivered me to Janetta’s house, where she hugged me so tight I thought she must have had a bionic heart transplant. Lawrence showed his pleasure at my presence less obviously by taking me back outside to the steps to see his latest creations. As if I could have missed them: three glowing white clusters of fluorescent bulbs — short, medium, and tall — topped with red flame bulbs. “I leave them on till Ukrainian New Year.”
“Your family are German, aren’t they?”
“Out of respect.”
Janetta made tea and brought the pot into the living room. She was wearing a royal blue velour lounge suit and settled back on the recliner as I pulled my feet up under me on the sofa. I felt comfortable being back in this home laden with family connections, most prominently my aunt herself, bringing Sara back to earth in so many of her expressions. Something set them apart, however, and what it was gradually came to me. The shade of her outfit. Sara avoided primary colours and would never have worn royal blue. Hers would have been seafoam or indigo or slate. She liked colours that couldn’t be easily named, and I realized how much she had influenced me when I bought my last blazer. The tag listed it as oregano, and I was undecided until three different shoppers, all strangers, stopped to say “That grey looks good on you,” “I like that shade of green,” and “What an interesting brown.” I was sold. But Sara’s daughter was less complicated than both of us and looked just fine in her choice of lounge wear.
I thanked her for the bangle and handkerchief for my birthday, and together we marvelled at the four pairs of hands that had possessed them over more than a hundred years.
“I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t go through Mother’s things any earlier, and would not have gotten to it now if you hadn’t asked about the letters. She must have divided the treasures from her mother between your dad and me: photo for him, girl’s
things for me. She gave them to me when I got married, and they’ve been put away since then. Isn’t that awful?”
Seeing the direction the conversation was taking, Lawrence, who had been hovering around the dining room waiting for his chance to show me something else, excused himself to the basement to watch TV. “Call me when Bella needs her ride to the hotel.”
I told Janetta all the details of our visit with Wendell Mingus and of the difficult call to his sister in Calgary. How Mona said Aunt Lizzie had sent letters to her mother, which seemed strange to us because it was Lizzie who told Sara Janet was dead. And how Dad had had a flash of recollection about Sara receiving her packet along with Lizzie’s death notice when they were unpacking in Vancouver.
Janetta lifted her feet to an ottoman, ankles swelling above fluffy pink slippers. “Lew always did have the better memory. I was only eleven at the time and was busy washing cutlery in the kitchen, but I do remember Mother sitting down for a couple of hours with those letters and then being quiet the rest of the day. I was feeling sorry for myself because Lew had been mad since he first found out we were moving, now Mother wasn’t speaking, and Dad was at work. No one seemed to care I had to leave my friends in Red Deer behind too.”
I helped myself to more tea. “Is Laura still alive? Would she know anything?”
Janetta made a face, looking even more like her mother on the verge of a critical opinion. “She’s an oddball. Mother asked me to look her up when we first moved here, because she herself wasn’t fussy about coming back to the island, even to visit us. I guess those early years left their mark.”
“What was she like?”
“Unfriendly. Religious. Not exactly slow but not what you’d call normal. I told her my mother had remembered her fondly as a child and she listened — she even said she missed Sara when she left their home — but after fifteen minutes she had to go to a Bible study group. She showed no interest in getting in touch with Mother or seeing anything more of me.”
“She and Mona Mingus would make a good pair. What’s with this antisocial branch of our family?”
Janetta shrugged. “Laura must be more outgoing in her church. Or maybe they take her the way she is. When I gave Mother my report, she said she was thankful Laura belonged to a group who had her welfare at heart, even religious extremists.”
“How old would she be now?”
“Late eighties, ninety, if she’s still alive. Lawrence reads every obituary and we haven’t seen one for her.”
“I wonder…”
“Why not?” said Janet reading my mind. “Let’s get the phone book to make sure she’s still listed. Lawrence always wants an excuse to go to Duncan for German sausage. We could drop you off and pick you up on our way back. I doubt you’ll want much time there.”
“You won’t come?”
“Been there, done that.” She laughed.
“T Owens” was still listed. Keeping her father’s initial for seventy years definitely said something about the woman. The trip was on. We chatted a bit about Doug and Lenny, Dad and his book, my move back to the apartment, and the Kubik baby case, which was on everyone’s mind. Her drooping eyelids told me when it was time to leave. Again she regretted I wouldn’t stay, but I insisted I would be tempted to keep her up too late talking. My chauffeur was already in the kitchen, past his bedtime.
“I’ve been weighing the pros and cons of phoning Laura,” Janetta said when Lawrence brought me from the hotel for breakfast the next morning.
“And?” I asked, sitting down to the muffins, mini quiches, and fruit salad Janetta had laid out on the table.
“I think not,” she said, pouring our coffee and taking the chair next to me. Lawrence did not join us in this spread, having explained to me on the ride over that he had already eaten his porridge and would now chart the best route to our target. “She’s so suspicious of the outside world — or was back then — that she might find an excuse not to see you. If she’s not home or won’t let you in, we’ll take you on a scenic tour to Duncan.”
I nodded agreement and we ate quickly, both of us impatient to set out on this adventure. The skies were clear for a change, but the air was chilly and Janetta put on a fire engine red car coat (Sara’s would have been brick or salmon), pulling the collar up around her thin neck.
Ladysmith carried elegance in its name. I always associated Paul Simon’s song “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” with the word, because of the link between diamonds and a lady, and also the vocals by Ladysmith Black Mambazo. That was even before I learned in my history course of the African connection to our Ladysmith: that the former Oyster Bay settlement was renamed in 1900 in celebration of a British conquest over the Boers at Ladysmith in South Africa. Our British colonizers doing their best to rule their subjects with common ground.
Here I was in the back seat of Uncle Lawrence’s car heading toward a destination I knew only from books and as Pamela Anderson’s birthplace. Lawrence didn’t miss a chance to rub it in. “Guess you city people don’t find the island interesting enough to visit.”
My nervous laugh was meant to deflect anything more personal. As a child, I never thought about why our two families didn’t see more of each other, though Janetta herself explained last night that Sara wasn’t keen on being back here. And Dad claimed Janetta was intimidated by Mom’s superhuman energy. Mom never voiced any superiority; she just kept stacking up accomplishments. Maybe Janetta viewed our few visits to Nanaimo as acts of condescension — like a president flying into a war zone to have Christmas dinner with the troops.
But I was now pleased to be in the company of my aunt, more lighthearted than ever. Had her brush with death given her a new freedom, or had she finally come into her own as the only female survivor, no longer in the shadow of the other two dynamos? Maybe she had always laughed this much and no one had given her a chance to show it.
Ladysmith was closer to Nanaimo than I thought. And Chase River was merely a suburb we passed through to get there. Strange how these areas seemed like separate worlds from my research and Jane’s letters, and on foot, they probably were. For me, the region was a commoner’s version of Camelot, a realm that once existed through folklore and was now paved over with Tim Hortons and Rona, and architecture that could have been found anywhere else in North America. As we descended through the residential area, Ladysmith revealed itself as a delightful seaside resort, restored with pride of heritage: lantern streetlights, a traffic circle with an anchor fountain. “You want to see it in summer,” Lawrence said, “with all the flowers. Voted one of the ten prettiest towns in Canada.”
Single-minded pilots like Dex and Lawrence have their drawbacks; it might have been interesting to get lost for a few minutes on these quaint streets. Or even to slow down when Janetta pointed out landmarks of interest like the Temperance Hotel from 1900. We did agree to meet at a coffee shop bakery on the main street where I would walk and wait for them if the visit with Laura became tedious.
Laura Owens’ little house stood on one of the side streets leading up a hill. I was surprised to see a number of miner-style bungalows, but the others had been refinished more recently and, in some cases, enlarged. Laura’s sagging glassed-in verandah and flaking white siding with a few remaining slivers of blue trim spoke of neglect but not abandonment. The front yard was spread with small stones. “Less grass to cut,” said Lawrence. “Someone did her a favour.”
Janetta shook her head in wonder. “It didn’t hit me on my last trip that this is the original mining cottage where Mother went to live after her mother died. It must have been repainted and reshingled — quite a while ago from the looks of it — but the structure is over a hundred years old.”
Sliding out of the back seat, my curiosity gave way to apprehension. I almost hoped there would be no answer when I rapped lightly on the glass door of the cold, empty porch before letting myself through to the main entrance. Janetta and Lawrence stayed parked on the street, like parents seeing their daughter saf
ely into a new school. I knocked gently again, three times, and was about to turn back when a little old lady in a loose black dress opened the door.
“Laura Owens?” I asked, feeling like Gretel at the gingerbread house.
When she nodded, I said in a rush: “I’m your cousin Arabella Dryvynsydes — second or third or fourth, who knows? Sara Hughes was my grandmother. She lived with your family as a child and spoke lovingly of you.”
From a head and body that quavered uncontrollably, she regarded me with more shrewdness than suspicion. Finally she spoke in a voice that came in little puffs between tremors, as if someone was giving her the Heimlich manoeuvre after every word. Like Katharine Hepburn. Even her grey hair was pinned up at the back and rolled at the front in the same style, but that’s where the similarity to the actress ended. Laura’s face was round, her grey eyes wide. “You may come in.”
I turned, waved Janetta and Lawrence on their way, and followed her into the house. Nose-clogging staleness attested to the years that were layered here. If I were to compare home odours of this trembling old lady and the trembling not-so-old man we had visited the day before, I’d say both could be traced to infrequent laundry and baths, but this place gave off a dry mustiness of mothballs and dust where Andy Lambert’s trailer reeked of damp, smoky, mildewy, leaky dog smells.
Inside, the house was more spacious than it appeared. I’d taken calls to similar-sized bungalows that had not started out as miners’ cottages. The living room opened onto a large kitchen at the back, and through an archway to a corridor on the left could be seen two small bedrooms and a bathroom. What distinguished it from my clients’ residences in Burnaby was that it was crammed with religious mementoes. I was no stranger to Hindu and Sikh prayer rooms, but could not remember seeing Christian adornment on this scale. The Lord’s Prayer carved out of lace hung on a feature wall; three-dimensional plaster plaques of hands praying, crosses, and the head of Jesus were mounted all over the remaining walls. Ceramic figurines of the Virgin Mary, Jesus holding a lamb, lambs by themselves, and Jesus by Himself stood on every table and shelf, underlaid by doilies. Yellowed doilies also covered the arms of an old brown velvet sofa and easy chair. Was the largest disintegrating piece of lace on the back of the sofa what Sara had in mind when she made jokes to me as a kid about not sitting on Auntie Mc-Cassar? Thinking of Sara in this very house caused me to catch the breath I was so cautiously inhaling. In my mind I morphed the little girl in the picture from a child through puberty to the young woman she was when she escaped, all without guidance or encouragement. Laura Owens now waited for me at the kitchen table, so I left this museum and sat down across from her.
