by Lou Allin
Stella shook her head and tucked her knitting into a woven bag. “Uw-wu, no, don’t go so fast. Your mother left no more than a small box that she kept in a closet. I found it the other day. At my age, bending down is not a position I enjoy.”
“What was in it? Did you learn anything that would help locate her?” If only the SUV had turned up. But the vehicle had been old and of little use if recognized. It might have had its number filed, been sold on a casual basis, or perished in a junkyard crusher.
Stella waved her porky hand, knobbed with arthritis. “Seventy years of milking goats. Puddling in papers isn’t my strength. I like numbers no more than letters. And besides, do I look like such a meddler? I gave it a little shake for my own curiosity. Perhaps the box is empty…but it doesn’t feel so.”
“But surely—” Stella was handing the torch to Holly after so many years. How well she remembered the fatal week when her mother had failed to arrive at her destination. “Go back to school,” her father had protested a few days later, his voice hoarse with strain. “You can’t do anything more than the police. That’s what she would tell you herself.”
Holly had changed majors after the semester. The natural sciences held little interest for her when real life had interceded. Nor did she ask divine guidance. No fan of conventional religion, she found her cathedrals in the woods.
Stella rose and took Holly to a work room in back. Inside were a handsome carved whorl for spinning, two looms, a carding machine, knitting needles lined up in gallon pickle jars, and built-in racks of patterns. The wall held a dozen elaborate fetish masks, worth thousands of dollars in the native shops. Holly looked at the proud eagle, his craggy beak and determined stare. Now that could have been her totem. Anything but a helpless deer.
Stella knelt stiffly, opened a small closet and took a box from the fir-plank floor. “Give me a hand up, girl. Go to my room and sit on the bed. It may take awhile, or it may not. Either way, I have things to do.” The stuttering roar of a helicopter made them both turn toward the window. The trademark yellow of a rescue flight flew low, heading west. Possibly someone was in trouble along the West Coast Trail. Three or four times a summer, hikers often tumbled into crevices, or sprained an ankle and needed to be lifted out. Holly needed to finish up and return to her territory.
In Stella’s room, monastic except for a single bed and dresser along with a scent of rosemary from sprigs in a clay bowl, Holly sat on the wool blanket and opened the file box marked “Bonnie”. As she had finding out about her mother’s raven pendant, she felt something warm resonate inside her, a connection across the years and miles. How she wished that she could have convinced Bonnie’s lover to give it to her. She hesitated for a moment, afraid to continue. A diary? At least an itinerary for that fateful weekend?
Holly had been returning to UBC for her final year, and Bonnie had taken her to the ferry. “Be careful, Mother,” she had said, wearing the lovely beaded deerskin jacket she’d been given. “Sometimes I wish you drove a Hummer.” Travelling was risky on the north island. It was only September, but in the higher elevations, snow was possible. That the jacket had been stolen on the trip made her feel worse. She should never have left it “saving” her seat when she went for a coffee.
“My Bronco, my pony, will take me anywhere,” Bonnie had said, laughing at Holly’s concern. Her shiny black hair was pulled back with a leather clasp.
“I know you love your job. It’s just…”
“Better that you look after your father,” Bonnie said. “Life isn’t quite real to him. He’s always miles away in his little world. If he is as happy there as I am in mine, why should we complain?”
Gold River had been her destination, yet she had never arrived. A call from a motel in Campbell River before she headed west had been her last message to them. Praying with all her heart that something useful lay within, Holly opened the box. Instead of files, all she saw was a battered map of the island, a pack of index cards, a small piece of paper and a blank notepad. A sob left her lips. Why had Stella raised her hopes? Why hadn’t she opened it and saved Holly the first-hand despair? The answer was easy. Her great-niece was no longer a child.
The paper was a receipt from Otter Aviation, a small company which ran tourists around the interior of the island. Operating out of Chemainus, they flew float planes and a few fixed-wing machines. The receipt read “Bonnie Martin. One way flight to Williams Lake. September 13th, 20—. Two thousand dollars.” Holly whistled. Stiff fees, but what did anyone expect for private flights, perhaps at the last minute? Why Williams Lake in central B.C.? That made no sense. Her mother had been safe at home that night, a week before she had disappeared. The timeline had been so important to Holly years ago. She and her father had chewed over it, beaten it to death so many evenings with no results. So she hadn’t taken the flight. But why pay for it? Was that where some of the ten thousand dollars she’d taken from a joint account had gone? Not enough to establish a new life. Yet Bonnie had left several hundred thousand dollars of their mutual funds intact. Because two signatures were needed for such a transaction? Holly hadn’t thought about that before. Another of her mentor Ben Rogers’ corollaries about perfect crimes affirmed that there were only imperfect investigations.
Disappointed and confused, she picked up the notepad, half an inch thick, several pages torn off. What could you tell me? she thought, flipping through it like one of those cartoon pads where a character moves in stuttery fashion. Then as she turned to the light, she noticed indentations, as if someone had pushed down hard with a ballpoint on the previous sheet. Sometimes Victorian forensics trumped rocket science.
She took it to the kitchen, where Stella was peeling potatoes and humming to herself. “Do you have a pencil?”
Stella laughed, her eyes crinkling like shook foil. “The policewoman doesn’t even have a pencil?”
“We use ink in our notes and reports. I need a pencil to shade this. Something’s been written here.” Holly showed her auntie the notebook.
“So there was something useful. Let me get my glasses on.” Stella popped them onto her face, then rummaged in a drawer for a stub. “Here’s a tiny one. It even has an eraser.”
With Stella standing by and peering through her thick lenses, Holly sat and slowly shaded in the paper, her smile widening as she put the letters together.
“Flight confirmed. She leaves on the 13th at 10 p.m. Get the rest of the money in twenties. Send taxi to McD an hour early. LS will be there.”
It was her mother’s angular script, nothing like her father’s careful cursive. She’d thought faster than she wrote. Often Holly would have to ask her for a translation. These were notes to herself. Perhaps some of the last notes Bonnie had even written. She heard Stella grunt behind her then move to the table.
“Is Otter Aviation still in business?” And who or what is LS. McD could be a street or the golden arches.
“The Hamilton place? The older brother Bernie was killed in a crash over Denman Island. I think Phillip sold the business. What have you found? I couldn’t read that writing. Your mother never got better than a C in penmanship.” Stella put potatoes into a pan of cold water then dried her hands on her apron.
Holly shrugged and ticked off points. “We have an expensive flight she didn’t take. Talk of more money in small, transferable bills, like a getaway stash. I don’t know if I told you that Mom closed out a joint account with my father before she disappeared. He didn’t even tell me at the time. It wasn’t important to him.”
Her auntie stared at her then snapped off a sentence like the crack of a whip. “She did not steal it.”
Holly spoke with caution as she saw the hurt on Stella’s face. “Of course not. I wasn’t saying that.” Despite the cider, her mouth felt dry. “It’s possible she was helping someone leave the island. A woman, of course. But who?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“So you agree with me.” She had never been privy to the inner workings of
her mother’s trade. It was as if Bonnie were Superwoman and that to intrude upon the prosaic details of her business would have spoiled the magic. More than that, Holly had been a typical teenager, not a biographer. By little more than osmosis, she knew her parents’ parents, where they had been born, where Bonnie and Norman had studied and lived as adults. Self-absorbed as she was, nothing more concerned her.
“She helped many women get away from abusive relationships. Sometimes when mediation or intervention failed, that was the only choice.” Stella’s crossed arms indicated that she’d brook no criticism about Bonnie for taking that risk.
So her job had been more than arranging for support. Halfway houses, access to training and education. “What does ‘get away’ mean exactly?” Had Holly’s father known the risks Bonnie was taking? Or wouldn’t he dare to ask? The answer for someone in that ivory tower was obvious. It was a miracle that their marriage had lasted as long as it had.
“Get away and stay away. Start new lives with different identities. It was harder with young children.”
“Different identities? Easier ten years ago, but it costs money, no matter how often it occurs in the movies.”
These details were sketching a new and fearful picture of her mother. Money changing hands. Secret plane trips. Angry men looking for her. “Sounds like she should have carried a gun,” Holly said, regretting as a law-abiding Canadian the very idea.
Stella’s even white teeth showed in an amused smile. “What makes you think she didn’t?”
“Did she mention any names?”
“Never. Bonnie was very disciplined. It was better that I not know. She would tell me that she’d had a call from this one and that, that they thanked her. Nothing written, either. That’s why she had so few files. She liked keeping things in her head. Bonnie had a photographic memory.” Stella tapped her temple with one stubby finger.
Holly remembered how her mother could read a page and recall it days later. She envied that gift. Norman used to joke about Bonnie never needing to pull an all-nighter. “But it’s a burden, too,” Bonnie would say. “Just try to forget what torments you. That’s impossible.”
Holly’s head was whirling. She needed to get organized, to take one small step at a time. Start with the cold facts. “Is this Otter Aviation place still on Poirier Road like the receipt says?”
Stella’s brow furrowed. “I’m not familiar with the new owners. They fly a lot of rich people around the island and to the mainland. Fishing, hunting, even honeymoons. Your second cousin Terry Hart used to work there as a mechanic.”
“Used to? What happened to Terry?”
“Now he’s in Sidney at Eagle Air. He does well for his wife and children. The training he got paid off.”
Stella sent Holly off with a half dozen muffins, a bag of dried Winston apple rings, and a jar of blackberry preserves. “Don’t be a stranger. You are home now. Come to the games this summer.”
“I’ll try. In another few years I could be transferred.” It could be anywhere across the country. She was here now, and she had to make the best use of her time.
Stella placed her hand over her heart. “A job is important, but without family we are rolling stones. Do not waste a minute. Something sent you back.”
“Are you talking about fate? Karma?” Holly searched her auntie’s face for the pride she had seen there as a child. But pride was earned.
“The exact words do not signify. In all beliefs, the meaning is the same. Justice.”
A bark sounded from outside. Stella waved her off. “You’re on a trail now. You won’t disappoint me.”
The old woman showed such trust and confidence. Holly gulped back a lump in her throat and thought about her next move. The later afternoon was heating up, warmer than she was used to with the strait winds. She brushed a bead of sweat from her lip.
*
Otter Aviation occupied several acres out of town down Route 1, outside the tourist mecca of Chemainus with its famous murals and summer theatre. A windsock flapped in the breeze. A small floatplane was taking off as Holly arrived, its tiny wheels spinning under the grey metal pontoons. Two hangars and a cinder-block building anchored the small complex. After parking amid the vortices of dust in the lot, she opened the door. A desk and file cabinets and two folding chairs filled the room, along with a wall calendar, bulletin board and coffee service.
“Hello, there. May I help you?” said a pleasant, gap-toothed lady in her forties with sleek dark-brown hair.
Holly showed the woman the receipt. “I need some information, but I understand that the Hamilton family no longer owns this business.”
The woman shook her head. “It was a tragedy for the family. Bernie went down in a swamp in an accident. His brother Phillip couldn’t make himself carry on. I can’t tell you where he is now. Went back east somewhere.” Odd how people spoke. It was never back west. The frontier went in one direction.
“Records must have been kept. I’m interested in files from ten years ago. Flight plans. It involves my mother. She went missing about that time. This business and a trip to Williams Lake were mentioned in a note. But it wasn’t…specific.”
The woman put her palms up in a gesture of futility. “We retained the files back thirty years, but they were lost in a fire shortly after we took over. Some electrical problem. You’ll notice this building is new. Everything was burned to the ground, not that there was much of it. One of our planes was damaged, but the rest were safe.”
“That was fortunate. Thanks for your time.” Holly accepted the woman’s card as a courtesy. “Do you have a phone book I can use?”
Unless a miracle happened and she located Phillip Hamilton, Terry Hart was the only one left with possible information. The last time she’d seen him, they’d been around fourteen. He’d taken her halibut fishing in his small boat off Chemainus. The more moderate Strait of Georgia was benign, nothing like the wild waves on the Juan de Fuca. Thanks to his advice and strong arms, she’d caught a twenty-five-pound chinook beauty. Auntie Stella had cooked it on a cedar plank, nudging Bonnie, who was serving. “Only one I know who can bugger up fish and a flame,” she had said. Bonnie had stuck out her tongue.
Holly dredged up an old plastic jug from the trunk and gave Boomer a drink from the tap at Otter Aviation. “You’re going home, pal. But I have one more stop. Cross your fingers.”
She used her cell to get the number for Eagle Air. “Terry?” the manager said. “You’re out of luck for now. He and his family went up to Yukon for a month-long trip. Fishing for him, hiking and camping for the wife and kid.”
Holly thanked her and hung up with a mild curse. Stopped in her tracks. Would Stella understand this frustration? In her slow and methodical mindset, where five centuries nestled in oral traditions, she would have the patience.
As Holly headed down the perilous Malahat, through death-defying high-wire scenery looking across the Georgia Strait to Vancouver and majestic Mount Baker, alarming news came on Northwest Public Radio, a powerful American station which always gave the Canadian weather. Summer was erupting with a vengeance. In Washington State east of the Pelouse, blazes were raging. The area had experienced an uncharacteristically light winter, and like the island, was parched for rain. The preponderance of thunderstorms with lightning was making the situation worse. Arson was suspected in a number of central Vancouver Island burns, and over 200,000 hectares in the province had been affected. At one point, with nearly eight hundred fires raging, the province had more aircraft aloft than the entire Canadian Air Force. Holly thought of the local fire protection, one lone station at Otter Point Road for all points west. Flames would be fanned into hell on earth from those ocean gusts. Burning ordinances at parks would be easier to enforce with a $345 fine for illegal campfires, but an errant cigarette from a car might torch the bush.
An hour later, as she sheared off Highway 1 heading towards Sooke, Holly snapped back to reality. It might be the weekend, but she still had to find Marilyn and te
ll her that her brother was dead.
NINE
The next day, having seen the Audi in the drive, Holly stopped at Marilyn’s. Behind the Audi was a flashy Mini Cooper. A flat of purple petunias sat ready to plant in a border bed. Trust Marilyn to take time for flowers to feed her soul. Under a shady plane tree, an unusual sight on the island, was a small mound planted with marigolds. Brittany had a super view of the strait.
The rounded-top cottage door opened, and a very thin lady in an Indian print dress and sandals strolled out, waving behind her. Glancing with surprise at the police presence, she got into the car and slowly backed out of the driveway as if she were taking a learner’s lesson. Marilyn stood at the door, a quizzical look on her face. “Oh dear, I hope this visit isn’t bad news about Norman.” She craned her head as if to see if he were along.
“No, he’s fine. Never better in fact. I think your massage has made a new man of him. It’s…something else.”
“Come in, please, I was just about to relax for an hour between appointments. Sometimes the masseuse needs a massage. Rather like the shoemaker’s children going barefoot.” Her voice was musical.
“It must keep you in shape,” Holly said. Marilyn’s upper body looked strong and toned. In long shorts, her legs were well-muscled, if untanned like most of the islanders’. She wore comfy pink clogs.
“We’ll have some tea. And I have some wonderful flax coffee cake from a client. They’re generous with their baking and jams. I simply don’t have the time.”
“Thanks.” Holly entered the house and was taken through the front work area to a rear sitting room, where a wood fireplace with an ornately carved mantel provided a cozy atmosphere. On the walls were collages and still-life paintings of pears and other fruits. A Grandma Moses-style picture had a small farm with cows, a bull, sheep, goats, ducks and pigs.
