April Fool

by William Deverell

  He used to scoff at my ambitions, said I’d never be a writer…Oh, no, he was the writer, two self-published novels that went nowhere. He never gave me affection, he never hugged. He thought I wasn’t in the house one time, and I heard him tell Mother they should have just gone ahead and terminated the pregnancy…

  Another pause in the recording. “Here I am, honest to God, holding her fucking hand. I’m thinking fingerprints, I’m stuffing her used tissues into my pocket. Fingerprints on tissue? Anyway, it turns out that her literary loser of a father snuffed himself, put a bullet in his head. I wanted to explore this, but suddenly the heart-rending episode is over, the clouds break, the sun comes out, rainbows appear.”

  I’m being such a goose. I usually don’t drink this much. I’ve just had my first work of fiction published. Would you be interested in reading it? I’m just around the corner.

  I’ll walk you home.

  “Her flat is in an unhip metal-grey stack of units. She’s been fifteen years in the same apartment, which somehow doesn’t seem normal. I find myself entering the elevator with her–I’m a robot, programmed to follow a path to catastrophe. Her place has three locks, it smells of disinfectant, the décor is so square it’s cubic, with doilies. There’s a balcony with a kind of viewette of a strip mall. Sitting prominently on a table: a metre-high pile of movie magazines and about a dozen copies of this.”

  He passes Arthur a copy of Tales of Passion, April edition. The cover illustration is of a well-muscled man outside a window, a woman in a nightie peering out. Readers are invited to turn to page twenty-eight, a story by Adeline Angella, “You’re Not Supposed to Ask.”

  “She wanted to read it aloud. Over cognac. On her couch. The evening continues to morph into high surrealism.”

  Mind if I visit the little boy’s room?

  Yes, of course, freshen up.

  “Note, Arturo. I do not say, ‘I have to go to the washroom.’ I am regressing. I am talking her language. I rummage in the medicine cabinet, looking for a secret stash of rochies. Nada. The bedroom door is ajar, and I can’t help glancing in as I pass by, and there she is on the bed, pulling off her leggings, and she gives me this chiding tease, ‘You’re not supposed to lo-ook.’

  “I study the situation in the living room, where we have a soft light, cheesy piano music on the stereo, Tales of Passion open to her story. Cognac in liqueur glasses. Unthinkingly, I pick mine up, sip, and I’m overcome by a delusion that it’s been doctored with ten milligrams of Rohypnol. Angella comes out in bare feet, pink toenails, sits catlike on the sofa, pats a spot beside her, tells me it’s only twelve pages, and I should sit. I’m about to take a rain check on the literary reading when a paranoid rush hits: I’ve got my fingerprints all over everything, her cosmetics, her Parfum Fantaisie. Why not go all the way, leave a sample of my semen? I’m panicking, Adeline is tugging at me to sit down. Here are the final few minutes.”

  Don’t be a silly. It’s early. We can watch the Tonight Show after.

  I’m feeling ill. I’m allergic to Clorox. Let me borrow this, I really want to read your story…

  Arthur hears chimes from the laptop, the theme from the Fourth Brandenburg. This is an evil thing, Arthur thinks, the cellular phone. To keep one is never to escape the great sticky web of social intercourse, never to be alone.

  My goodness, Adeline, who would be calling me this late?

  Sit, sit.

  Boilershop Investments. To listen to our easy terms, Press one…Jesus…Well, hi!

  “Calling me at this ungodly moment, honest to God, was Professor Caroline L. Pomeroy. She knows it’s late, but she can’t sleep. ‘I want to hear your easy terms,’ she says. I am standing. I have the phone crooked between ear and shoulder while I fumble for a cigarette and struggle for the perfect nuanced response. Angella tries to grab the lighter from my hand. I nearly fall on her as we tug for control of it. Her liqueur sloshes all over the reading copy of Tales of Passion.”

  You’re not supposed to smo-oke. Ouch! Your knee!

  Brian demonstrates, going on his knees onto the couch, clutching his cellphone and a package of cigarettes. “The recorder not only picked up Angella’s heavy breathing but Caroline’s icy hang-up line.” From the computer, clear and sharp: I presume I’ve called at an awkward time. A click.

  That was a client, Adeline, he’s threatening to jump from Lions Gate Bridge!

  Don’t forget the magazine! Call me!

  I will.

  Promise?

  The sound of locks being released, the door opening, closing, a fast retreat.

  “As soon as I was safely down, I phoned Caroline back. No answer. This morning I phoned again. Caroline’s machine said, ‘Don’t bother.’”

  He sighs, picks up Tales of Passion. That’s when Arthur notices the residue of fingerprint powder. “The forensics lab I use took eight lifts off it, couldn’t match any with the unknowns in Cotters’ Cottage.”

  A letdown, but Arthur isn’t surprised.

  “After I left the lab this morning, I actually sat down and read ‘You’re Not Supposed to Ask.’ Within its gooey pages is a subterranean rape motif, a touching tale of how handsome Harry loses his key and has to go in though a back window, and it’s the wrong townhouse. You’re not supposed to ask, you’re not supposed to look, you’re not supposed to smoke, but you are supposed to fuck.”

  “Might we pause here, Brian? Did you happen to ask Angella where she was at two o’clock on April Fool’s morning?”

  Brian sags. “Shit, I forgot.”

  14

  Risking Syd-Air again, Arthur is above the knobby spine of Vancouver Island and can see, through gaps in the mist, the open ocean, its inlets and beaches. This will be Arthur’s first visit to Bamfield–a hamlet so remote it has been spared the uglier benefits of tourism. Claudette St. John, who has quit her job at the bar to run Faloon’s lodge, has agreed to show him about.

  He will be looking for the vestigia of Adeline Angella: metaphorical footprints, traces of an April Fool’s visit. Brian Pomeroy’s strange encounter has persuaded Arthur the woman is truly ill–it was as if she was re-enacting the great drama of her life. Maybe to make it seem authentic. He hopes Brian can be prevailed upon to nourish this relationship, to find out if she has an alibi. You’re not supposed to ask…

  Lotis Rudnicki is taking briefs from Winters’s three hiking mates today–they’ve invited her for lunch. She has also retained a distinguished scientist, head of biotechnology at the University of Victoria, to do a second DNA test of the incriminating semen.

  Arthur asks Syd to circle around Bamfield, for a mental mapping. The inner hills and valleys are a checkerboard of clear-cuts, but a strip along the ocean has been spared, Pacific Rim National Park: forest, lakes and bogs, the fjord called Pachena, and its wide, shallow, log-rimmed beach.

  Bamfield is picturesque from the air, a village Venice, cleaved in half by an inlet sheltered behind a thickly wooded peninsula. On the seaward side lies Brady Beach, guarded by high promontories. North of that, at the tip of the peninsula, is the Breakers Inn, advertised by large red letters on the roof.

  There is one venerable building in East Bamfield, the former Pacific cable station, now the Marine Sciences Centre; elsewhere, a scattering of dwellings, a motel, the pub. But his aircraft is coasting to a dock on the more interesting western shore, with its rustic cedar buildings by a raised boardwalk, artisans’ shops, shingled homes, gardens with daffodils and Red-flowering Currants.

  Greeting him at the dock is a plump woman with a dimpled smile: Claudette St. John. “Nick says you’re the best thing that happened to him since God made sin. Come along, love, I’ve made us a lunch.” She wrestles for his bag, and he is no match for her. “I don’t know if you heard–Nick and I are getting married.”

  Arthur feels the burden of her cheerfulness, her faith in his skills, and has a fretful moment–they’re becoming more frequent–when he prays he hasn’t come out of retirement to end his career in fa
ilure.

  The Nitinat Lodge is a two-storey log building with a trim lawn and early tulips, augmented by a few cabins tucked into a cedar forest. Several young hikers are on the grass, throwing a Frisbee.

  Faloon had problems running his inn, Claudette confides–maybe because of his limited experience in honest business. Or because his heart wasn’t in it. She shows him her new brochure–“Bed and breakfast in the forest, off-season rates, eco-friendly.”

  “I hired a Native girl to hand them out to hikers on the trail. Nick will go nuts when he sees we got a going concern here.”

  “I suppose you come across a lot of wildlife.” Arthur has in mind cougars, bears, and wolves, he has a slight phobia in that regard. Gentle Garibaldi offers no such dangers.

  “We had animals poking around the garbage a while ago, raccoons maybe, probably a bear–they get pretty hungry in the spring. Had a couple of cougar sightings.”

  Arthur shivers. “And what would those folks over there be up to?” Several men in the adjoining field, labouring with spades, throwing up hillocks of dirt and grass.

  “Treasure hunters. Jasper Flynn let drop the stolen money is buried somewhere, and he’s got all the town idlers working up a sweat. I got them to turn over Nick’s garden for free. Careful of these stairs, love, Nick tripped there in the middle of the night. Mind you, he was sleepwalking.”

  She serves up a steaming beef stew. Arthur can see why Faloon is endeared of this woman–she is frank and guileless. But he is bothered about the sleepwalking, and asks about it.

  “Maybe it’s the phases of the moon, whatever, sometimes he just finds himself barefoot in the yard. Usually I wake him up, and he laughs it off and comes right back to bed, but once he walked off my deck into the blackberries, and lucky he was only scratched.”

  Faloon has never mentioned this tendency. Not once. That’s troubling in itself.

  Claudette still hasn’t been able to pin down Holly Hoover–she has a trailer nearby, but has rarely shown her face since the murder. She’s in town, though, was seen in the Bam Pub today, buying a six-pack of cider.

  “If she’s not in her trailer, check on her cabin cruiser, the Holly Golly. You’ll recognize her by the explosion hairdo, black curls.”

  Arthur can’t bring himself to ask if she suspects Faloon slept with Hoover. His bowl of stew is empty, and it would be impolite to refuse the second helping Claudette urges on him.

  “I want you to meet Meredith Broadfeather, it’s about a mystery boat. Say no more, you’ll hear it from her. Whisper a secret over lunch, and it’s all through town by dinner.”

  “I’m familiar with the process.” He produces a photo of Angella. Might Claudette have seen this woman in Bamfield? In the bar?

  “A lot of strange people wander through…Is she a drinker, then?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “To be honest, I can’t say. I see too many faces, dear, they start to blur.”

  Arthur tells her who it is, and Claudette looks more closely. “So this is the shameless hussy.” Though she must be curious, she asks no questions. A long-time bartender, she understands discretion.

  Arthur rises from the table, thanking her profusely. He must repair to his lodgings.

  “I’d love you to stay, but I’m full up right now. I just hope you’ll be comfortable in Cotters’ Cottage, given what happened there.”

  “But I’ve reserved for the Breakers.”

  Claudette seems as confused as he. “Mrs. Cotter told me they were expecting you, I saw her just this morning.”

  “This is a bit of a rigmarole.” The Cotter couple, two decades retired, let out the hideaway at Brady Beach where Eve Winters drew her last breath. He’d phoned them, asking to see it. Mr. Cotter, who seemed hard of hearing, said, “Yesiree, when can we expect you?”

  “Tomorrow,” Arthur said, but he shouldn’t have ended the conversation there. It will be awkward straightening matters out.

  Claudette joins him on the hilly fifteen-minute hike to Brady Beach, a stretch of brown sand protected by outcroppings that drip foam from surging waves. Shore pines, shaped and bowed by ocean winds, struggle for purchase on the rocks. The Cotters’ rental cabin can be got at from the road or from the beach, and it is the latter route they take, by tidal pools in which orange and purple starfish nestle.

  A stunning setting. This is what Margaret is missing. Had she been available, he would have brought her along. Her loss.

  The Cotters’ lot is surrounded by a picket fence, and is well cared for, with fruit trees in blossom, pink and white, rhododendrons in heavy bud. Three main windows face the sea, a smaller one above serves the loft. Inez Cotter, a spindly but agile woman of seventy-nine, interrupts her dusting to show them in.

  The interior offers worn but comfortable furniture. Full kitchen, bedroom, a loft, a staircase built into the wall. An airtight stove provides heat, though there’s also a fireplace, and, outside, stacked wood. Stained glass in the door and windows. The word cozy would come to mind had not a murder happened here.

  Mrs. Cotter looks weary, as if she has been cleaning all day. It cannot be an easy property to manage, she lives across the inlet. “Police had it closed down for two weeks, they were tromping through here like goats. We weren’t sure we were going to rent it out after that, but it isn’t easy getting by on pensions alone.”

  Arthur pays in advance for the night. He will try to cancel the Breakers, though he’ll keep his dinner reservation.

  Mrs. Cotter has no guest register, just a book in which tenants are asked to comment on their stay. Only two notations for March: “Much enjoyed by all, saw a bear.” “Totally groovy.” None from Eve Winters or her companions.

  Mrs. Cotter recalls her as easy to talk to–she had tea with her twice, saw no indication she felt in danger. “Not a concern in the world. She just wanted to escape for a while.”

  “Tell him what you overheard,” says Claudette.

  “Well, her girlfriends stayed over the first night, dog-tired from the trail, but not so tired they didn’t have a loud argument in the morning. I was standing at the door with extra linen. One of them was ranting. ‘It’s over, Ruth,’ and then, ‘Repeat, it’s over. Do you receive?’ And then, Ruth, I guess, pardon my language, she says, ‘Ef you, your effing highness.’”

  “Did you tell this to the police?”

  “Sergeant Flynn thought it was funny, he laughed.”

  Arthur is left alone to unpack. He is gratified to see an oilskin hanging by the door–rain is promised this evening, a storm. From the wall, a mountain lion stares coldly at the camera, red reflections in its eyes.

  In the bedroom, a double bed, rustic wooden table–as in the police photographs, but lacking Eve Winters’s sprawled corpse. It’s a good thing after all that Margaret couldn’t come–spending a night here might not fit her concept of romance.

  “Well, Beauchamp, are you going to be able to sleep here tonight?” The only answer is a moaning of the wind in the trees.

  A vigorous stroll, working off the beef stew, takes him up a hill to the Breakers Inn, a handsome log structure with a majestic overlook. The Galloways charge half-price for a late cancellation, which seems fair, but they’re sour and standoffish; despite that, he’ll return here for dinner.

  By mid-afternoon, word has swept through town that Nick Faloon’s lawyer is sampling its delights–locals stare and fall silent as he walks by, treating him as they might a visiting gunslinger. He overhears two women giggling. One says, “He wants to hook up with Holly.” He turns to her, and she quickly puts her hand to her mouth. The entire village knows he seeks Hoover, courtesan of the lumber camps. She must know that too, and is in hiding.

  He finds Meredith Broadfeather at the Clayoquot, a hefty woman whose jean jacket sports a large, defiant button: “Whose Home and Native Land?”

  Since it is still a pleasant day, the sun burning away the mist, they choose a quiet table outside. He is quickly put at his ease–Broadfeather, a soc
iologist with the Huu-ay-aht Band Council, has no quarrels with Faloon. “I always liked him, poor old Nick. I just can’t imagine him raping or killing that woman. If he did, why would he wait for the cops to show up before he ran?”

  She occasionally had coffee here with him, a polite, considerate man who often put up band elders for free. She shares in the suspicion–which seems locally held–that Holly Hoover was not frank with the police about her doings on the eve of April Fool’s Day.

  “You can’t get across the inlet on foot–it’s pretty well impossible unless you’re a bear, it’s all swamp and bush. I bet Holly took Dr. Winters across. She uses her canoe a lot, to keep in shape. The next morning, Lennie Joe, he’s a fisher, saw it tied up this side.” She gestures toward a dock: a blue canoe is tied astern of a cabin cruiser. The Holly Golly. Small boat, big power, a pair of 225 Mercury engines.

  “This woman seems to ply her trade very openly. I assume the RCMP feel she provides a necessary service.”

  “Yeah, you’ll see Jasper Flynn over here occasionally, pretending to work her over, but real friendly–he pretty well gives her licence, like a kind of silent pimp.”

  Holly Hoover, unemployed, single, a local, said Sergeant Flynn in his report. The entire biography. If Broadfeather is right, Hoover has been well protected: she has no convictions for prostitution, or for anything, according to the criminal records office.

  He’s intrigued by Broadfeather’s second-hand account of a high-powered boat running without lights in dangerous reef-strewn waters. Two young volunteers had been occupying an islet as part of a Huu-ay-aht land claim. At around 3 a.m. on April 1, they were roused from their tent by the sound of a vessel racing north, though they couldn’t see it.

  Arthur brings out an area map, and she points to the islet, one of the Deer Group. Deep-water channels converge there. Northwest lie the tourist towns of Ucluelet and Tofino, a paved highway. Northeast, up the long ribbon of an inlet, is an even more substantial community, Port Alberni.