“Under new management,” declares the sign in the window of the Corner Coffee Shoppe, and Trina tentatively tests the door.
“Hi, Trina. I’m running the place now,” calls Cindy cheerfully, as the door opens into a new world. “Mrs. Jackson has put me in charge.”
“What about when Ruth comes back?” asks Trina, feeling somewhat traitorous as she enters the refurbished and re-carpeted café.
“After what she did?”
“Cindy. Ruth didn’t do anything.”
“So, how come she took out life insurance on him, eh? And how come there was blood all over a carving knife? And what about the poison?”
“Who told you ...” begins Trina, but sees the answer as Jordan’s mother emerges from the kitchen in an apron.
“What do you want?” snaps Gwenda Jackson, remembering Trina from her escapade in the dumpster.
“Just a herbal tea, I think,” starts Trina, turning up her nose at the cholesterol-filled cakes crammed into the cooler and the smell of frying bacon in the air. But Jordan’s mother has other ideas.
“You wanna keep your nose out of other peoples’ affairs lady,” she warns, then adds, “I don’t want you in here spreading your lies about my boy. You’re barred. Now get out.”
Trina’s tears are not for herself as she leaves empty handed—they’re for Ruth. The speed at which her ailing friend’s authority has been usurped has her so wrapped up in rage that she walks blindly toward her car and doesn’t immediately notice Tom, sneaking out of the shadows, until he’s forced her into a corner.
“What do you want? I’ll scream,” she shouts, not recognizing him in the pre-dawn gloom.
“It’s OK,” he says, stepping closer. “Don’t worry. Nothing’s gonna happen.”
“It will if you come any nearer,” Trina warns as she readies a kick.
“OK,” says Tom slacking off a fraction, but he’s got pressure at his back. Mort, the Brit from the porn studio, is at the wheel of his BMW, and watches through the deeply tinted windows from across the street.
“You know who I am, Trina,” continues Tom and she finally catches on.
“What do you want, Tom?”
“I just want a word about our friend Ruth,” he says, but the creepiness in his voice has Trina on edge.
“What about Ruth?”
Tom warily inches forward and darkens his tone. “My people have told me to tell you to just leave it alone, lady. That’s all I’m saying.”
“I’m not bothered about you and your silly games, I’m just trying to find her husband.”
“He’s taken off, and that’s all there is to it.”
“And you expect me to believe that?”
Tom shrugs. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll just leave it.”
“Am I supposed to be scared?” Trina asks, close to laughing.
“Lady, this ain’t no joke.”
“Are you smoking something, Tom? Isn’t it time you grew up?”
“Just leave it alone and I’ll get my people to back off.”
“Get stuffed,” she spits in his face then stalks off, scoffing over her shoulder. “Worms like you don’t have people, Tom. People like you have worms.”
Trina has a busy morning, but her mind is distracted by Tom’s warning as she cleans up the aftermath of her patients’ Christmas excesses, although, thankfully, she has no bodies to pick up. It’s mid-afternoon by the time Ruth gets a visit, and Trina is surprised to find Mike Phillips already there, sitting quietly by the bed. “My family are all back east in Ontario,” he explains, quickly releasing Ruth’s hand. “I just thought I’d see if there was any improvement.”
“No change?” queries Trina, checking out Ruth’s lifeless features and the array of equipment.
Phillips shakes his head sadly. “No. Although the chief has ordered an internal investigation, and Wilson’s pulled the guard off the door.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” says Trina, and goes on to outline her early morning confrontation with Tom. “I just don’t get it,” she confesses to Phillips. “Ruth’s in debt up to her armpits, so he ought to be happy that I’m trying to get her freed.”
“I definitely shouldn’t be telling you this,” says Mike, and swears Trina to silence before explaining. “I smelt him the first time I saw him. He’s a bottom-feeding money launderer. I bet he doesn’t want you, or anyone else, poking around in his cesspit in case we wonder where the stink’s coming from.”
“I warned Ruth about him,” fumes Trina. “I told her he was dangerous.”
“He’s slimy, but I’m not sure how dangerous he is. Although, I wouldn’t say the same for the people he works for.”
“Who ...” starts Trina, then sees from the look on Phillips’ face that she’s not going to get an answer. “Never mind,” she says, then explains excitedly that she’s had all the records checked and discovered that no registered health care worker had visited Jordan Jackson in the dingy apartment building within the past three months. “He’s not in the system anywhere, and neither is that address—not for a Jackson anyway.”
“How did you find that out?” puzzles Phillips. “I thought health records were supposed to be confidential.”
“I just lied to the admin clerk,” declares Trina with a degree of pride, and Phillips can’t help smiling as she adds, “I’ve been doing it so long they just assume I’m authorized.”
“So what was Jackson doing at the apartment?”
“The other woman,” pronounces Trina unhesitatingly. “I bet he’d set himself up with a bimbo on the Internet, and he’d spend half the week with Ruth and the other half horizontal jogging in the downtown eastside. No wonder Ruth said he was always worn out by the time he got home. I bet he’s run off with her, whoever she is.”
“Slight problem,” says Phillips as he digs into his briefcase and comes out with a photocopy of a death certificate. “I’ve been pulling favours as well.”
“Jordan Artemus Jackson,” Trina reads aloud. “Cause of death: Metastasized carcinoma.”
“Twenty-second of November,” Phillips adds, saving her the trouble.
“Cancer,” she breathes. “But I don’t understand ...”
The solution, when it unfolds, is so obvious that Trina runs with it while Phillips nods agreement. “Jordan wasn’t being treated,” she muses aloud. “He saw his own doctor, found out his chances, and decided to die. Ruth would never have agreed, he knew that, so he even bought a box of Zofran and left them where she’d find them to add weight to his story.”
“That’s what I suspect,” continues Phillips, picking up the plot. “And each week he’d spend a few days at the apartment while he pretended to be at the hospital.”
“Where is he buried?” asks Trina.
“He was cremated a couple of days later.”
Trina sits back digesting the information, then she leaps in delight. “That’s great. She’s off the hook. He died of natural causes.”
Phillips is less enthusiastic. “There’s a couple of minor problems,” he says, dragging her back down. “First—Ruth maintained he was alive until the day you discovered him missing so that she could claim on the life insurance policy—not exactly kosher.”
“And thousands of others would have done the same in the circumstances.”
“That doesn’t make it legal though.”
Maybe not, but she never tried to cash in on the policy.”
“Only because she was in jail.”
“You don’t know that was the reason,” says Trina fiercely. “She might never have gone through with it.”
“It doesn’t make any difference. She broke the law when she fraudulently took the policy out, and she wasn’t in jail then,” says Phillips, then drops his eyes sheepishly.
“What’s that face about?” questions Trina, and Phillips opens up.
“You didn’t hear this from me, but I’ve seen it happen before. The only way to justify what happened in the cell
s will be to throw the book at her—attempted fraud, several assaults, possession, and trafficking. Most of it won’t stick in court if she has a good lawyer, but it will destroy her credibility.”
“That’s terrible ...” complains Trina.
“It’s a tough life,” admits Phillips as the door opens and Raven glides in like a black wraith. Trina looks up in delight.
“Hi, Raven. Where’ve you been? I heard you won the lottery.”
“No. I just got the booby prize,” she says, though she isn’t interested in giving details until she has found out about Ruth’s condition.
“Her husband’s dead,” explains Trina as if that somehow accounts for her comatose condition.
“I heard,” muses Raven as she lovingly strokes Ruth’s forehead, “and I’d told her that I saw great things in her future. I don’t understand it—Serethusa is usually so right.”
“Like she said I wasn’t going to have an accident,” teases Trina.
“Bus ... I said quite clearly that you weren’t going to get hit by a bus, and I was right. Anyway, what’s happened to Ruth?”
Trina and Mike Phillips start to lay out the case for Raven as they sit either side of the bed, each holding a hand, but she stops them with a gesture.
“Wait,” says Raven, with a close eye on Ruth. “She can hear. I saw her aura change when you started speaking.”
“Her what!” exclaims Phillips with naked skepticism, but Raven shushes him. “Just keep hold of her,” she continues as she glides her hands in the air above Ruth’s face and stares off into another world.
“What the ...” starts Phillips, but Raven and Trina silence him simultaneously. “Shhhh ...”
“Ruth ... Ruth,” calls Raven in a barely recognizable voice. “Ruth, it’s time to wake up now.”
The noises in Ruth’s head quiet to a murmur as Raven’s words penetrate, like a pinpoint of light in the blackness, and as Raven’s hands float over her body Ruth battles dreamily with the possibility that her spirit is struggling to flee.
Heaven is waiting for you, says a muffled voice somewhere so deep in Ruth’s head that it could be God, but Ruth knows that it is the Devil, and she fights against the growing spotlight.
“Her aura’s changing again,” enthuses Raven without opening her eyes as she wills Ruth to the surface. “I can feel her chi returning and her chakras opening to allow the life-force back in.”
“Come again?” queries Phillips but Trina, with her hand on Ruth’s pulse, suddenly shrieks, “Yes!” in delight as she feels the slightest twitch of Ruth’s wrist under her fingers. “She moved. I felt it. She moved. She moved.”
A nurse barrels into the room at the sound of Trina’s cry, runs her eyes over the monitors and immediately assesses the situation. “Ruth,” she coos, gently brushing the sleeping woman’s forehead, “can you hear me?”
A slight flutter of Ruth’s eyelids signals the beginning of a long, steep climb, but the nurse, and the trio of friends around Ruth’s bed, whoop in delight at the spectacle and Trina kisses everyone.
“Thank you, Raven,” yells Trina, with tears in her eyes. “You’re terrific.”
“Thank Serethusa, not me,” says Raven, beaming. “But now we have to find Jordan’s spirit so they can be reunited.”
“But he’s dead!” exclaims Trina. “Mike’s got the death certificate.”
“Trina,” says Raven, patiently, “what you call death is only another step in life. Jordan’s earthly body was just the shell that enabled his spirit to experience what we call life. He’s still alive, he’s just in another world, that’s all.”
“Ruth’s in luck if the judge believes that,” mutters Phillips, but Raven hasn’t finished.
“I must contact Serethusa again. I was wrong about Jordan. I even told Ruth he was going to be fine. What will she think of me? I’m usually so right.”
Trina gives Raven skeptical look, but keeps her thoughts to herself as the lanky seer unwinds herself and heads for the door. “I’m going to have to consult Serethusa and my books again,” she says. “Something’s wrong; I couldn’t focus on his aura the last time I saw him—something dark and shadowy was blocking me, but I didn’t see him passing over so soon.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t see my accident coming either, did you?” reminds Trina, and Raven explodes.
“I said ‘bus,’ Trina. Not a fucking kid on a bike.”
chapter eleven
Vancouver is a low-rise city, dwarfed by a coronet of snow-capped mountains and encircled by verdant foothills crowded with cypresses, cedars, and firs. “Beautiful British Columbia,” scream the licence plates of a million gas-guzzlers that cram its streets and smog its skies, but, on a rare winter’s day, when the clouds have been pushed over the Rockies to Alberta, and the fog has lifted off the Pacific Ocean and melted in the warming sun, Vancouver’s glassy towers shimmer like golden nuggets in a river bed.
It’s the last day of January, nearly six weeks since Ruth Jackson collapsed in the cells, and in the mid-afternoon sunshine, Trina Button watches the traffic on Oak Street from Ruth’s window in the Women’s Hospital until she spies Mike Phillips pulling into the entranceway.
“OK. He’s here,” she bubbles excitedly as she pushes a wheelchair up to Ruth’s bed. “We’re taking you to the park, Ruth,” she prattles, as a nurse helps her lift Ruth’s willowy remains into a wheelchair. “Would you like that?”
“Yeah,” replies Ruth with difficulty. “I’d like that.”
“Mike has borrowed a van, so we can just shove you in,” carries on Trina as she tucks a blanket around her friend, then she heads off at full speed for the elevator like a kid with a doll’s carriage. “Wheee ...” she calls, and she hears Ruth chuckling at the thrill.
It has taken more than a month, but, thanks to Raven, Ruth has finally drifted out of the fog of unconsciousness, and is climbing back into the full light of day. Any cloudy patches in her future can wait, and her face lights up at the sight of Mike Phillips in the parking lot.
“Hello, Mike,” she pronounces, syllable by syllable, and he bends to gently stroke her pallid face.
“Hi, Ruth. Trina says we’re going to the park.”
“I know.”
Stanley Park is a remnant of temperate rainforest that somehow ducked the pioneers’ axes as they cleared the Fraser valley. But now it clings precariously to the edge of the cliffs, in constant fear of being toppled into the estuary by the burgeoning city at its back.
“What would you like to do first, Ruth?” asks Trina once they’ve arrived and unloaded her.
“I want to go home,” she croaks painfully and Trina chokes back the tears as she says, “Soon, Ruth. You’ll soon be home. But today we’ll go to the forest and the beach and watch the ducks and gulls, shall we? Hey, we might even see an eagle.”
“I want to go home.”
Ruth’s home, together with her husband and her livelihood, has vaporized into history, but her future is not totally bleak; at least the Crown Prosecutor no longer objects to her being granted bail. Faced with a tide of civil suits from Hammer Hammett, and an urn full of ashes accompanied by a valid death certificate, the Vancouver Police have backed off a tad—though, just as Phillips had predicted, they are determined to press ahead with the assault and fraud charges.
“OK. Beach it is, then,” chirps Trina. “Then the duck ponds. Mike’s brought a load of bread, though I bet the seagulls will snap most of it up.”
“Then we’ll find somewhere nice for tea—if you’re not worn out,” adds Phillips.
Ruth faintly smiles as they push her toward the sandy shore. “Thank you, Mike,” she says under her breath.
Ruth Jackson is not the only person with an urge to go home. The dreariness of January in Westchester is beginning to weigh on Bliss, and he has his sights set on the brighter lights of London. The weather has been generally gloomy since Christmas, but so has Daphne. Not that she would admit it. Indeed, every time Bliss has even hinted at her m
elancholy she has primped herself up, saying, “Rubbish. I’m fine.” But she has not been her usual irrepressible self, and “Doctor” Bliss has diagnosed that she is suffering from an increasing sense of impending doom. For someone racing through life with their foot on the floor like Daphne, the possibility of running out of gas must be daunting, he believes.
Bliss is no closer to finding Ruth’s father, although he has eliminated two of the surviving suspects. Having tracked down the last known addresses of the five young men in the photograph, he has written to each. Only two have replied, now old-age pensioners. They had kicked off the Beatles’ 1964 North American tour as young roadies, but had jumped ship in the casinos of Las Vegas and never made it as far as Vancouver. Neither the spirit’s choice, Geoffrey Sanderson, nor the other two, have replied, and Bliss is sitting on the case while he considers his next course. He had planned to post a plea in the Merseyside Mail, but he had backed off in the middle of January when the seemingly innocuous Freddie Longbottom legend had misfired.
A scruffy young reporter from the Westchester Gazette had turned up on Daphne’s doorstop one day, having been tipped off about the impending reunion by his counterpart in Liverpool. “My editor wants me to do an obituary piece about Freddie Longbottom and his connection to the Beatles,” he’d told Bliss, as he’d scratched his scalp with his pen. “But I can’t find any record of his death. Not in the past year or so. Do you know anything about him?”
“Ms. Lovelace isn’t here at present,” Bliss had truthfully replied. “I expect she’ll know. I’ll get her to give you a call when she gets home.”
“Now let’s see you get out of this one,” he’d laughed as he gave Daphne the reporter’s card when she’d returned from the butchers’.
“Oh, you worry too much, David,” she had snapped, and seconds later she’d been on the phone to the reporter, explaining that he was undoubtedly very confused, and was clearly thinking of the wrong Freddie Longbottom. “My Freddie hasn’t lived in Westchester for forty years or more,” she had explained with absolute sincerity. “I think they said he died in Rangoon or Kathmandu, but you know what these foreign telephones are like. Anyway, you’ll be the first to know if I get any more information.”
A Year Less a Day Page 16
