When Blood Lies

by Richards, Linda L. ;

  “Are you saying there’s a false back?”

  But he didn’t answer. Instead, with a determined look on his face, he pulled a small crowbar out of his toolbox and moved in the direction of the desk.

  “Hey!” I said when it looked like he was about to resort to force.

  “If I’m right, what I’m about to break through wasn’t part of the desk in the first place.”

  “Whatever. I paid a week’s salary for that desk!” At that moment, it didn’t seem relevant that it had been mostly the newspaper’s money, not mine.

  He seemed not to have heard me, and it wasn’t long before I heard a loud crack followed by the splintering of wood.

  “Holy Dinah!” It came from Kyle, but it could just as easily have been me. He looked up, eyes wide, from where he crouched on the floor in front of the desk. He’d been right. With a few quick chops, he’d broken through what he’d correctly guessed was the false back of the drawer. And there was something inside.

  I watched Kyle, down on his knees, reach in and feel around. After a while his hand came back out. In it was what looked at first to be an oblong bundle of paper. He laid it on the floor and looked at me questioningly.

  I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Go ahead.”

  Cautiously, he pulled away layer upon layer of protective paper.

  When all the paper was out of the way, we saw that the wrapping had been protecting a wine bottle unlike any I’d ever seen. The glass was thick and dark, with letters embossed on it. The label was slightly yellowed but otherwise perfect. Kyle reached inside the drawer again and pulled out another bundle. And then another after that. In all, he brought out half a dozen bottles, which he unwrapped and lined up on the surface of the desk. Quite a pile of old paper was left behind. I gathered it all up and shoved it into the desk. I thought we’d deal with it when the time came to repair the hole my brother had made discovering the hidden chamber.

  “Concordia Monastery,” Kyle read aloud. “Very fine wine. Kelowna, British Columbia. You ever heard of them?”

  I shook my head.

  “Me neither. What do we do?” he said. We looked at each other without blinking. A family trait in times of pressure, that not-blinking thing.

  “Drink it?” I said.

  He gave me a long look. Then we both looked at the tea and back at each other.

  “I’ll go get glasses,” I said. Because drinking it seemed as good a place to start as any.

  As I was returning from the kitchen with the wineglasses, my phone rang. And before the ring had settled into our ears, Kyle’s phone went off as well. Our eyes met as we picked up. My mother was calling me. And Kyle? I could see right away that he was talking to Dad.

  I tried to focus on the voice. It was near hysteria, unusual for my mom.

  “We’ve had a break-in, lass. Imagine!”

  “You’re all right?”

  “Och, aye. We weren’t here. Your da was at the golf, of course. And I was down the way at Mary’s for a cup of tea.”

  “It happened during the day?”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m saying. They broke in bold as anything in broad middle of the day. Just now. Imagine!”

  “What did they take?”

  “Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? They made a big mess, but nothing seems to be missing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “That’s right. The place was ransacked. But nothing as we can see is gone.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Aye. That’s what we thought as well. And it’s not like we’re drug dealers or anything. Just simple people. We’ve nothing to hide.”

  There was more along these lines. I felt the unfamiliar shiver of concern for my parents that must be akin to the feelings parents always have for their kids. I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to them and hated that they were having to deal with something frightening that was out of my control.

  When I hung up, my brother was already off the phone. He was sitting there looking at me, concern raw on his face.

  “It was Dad. He was very upset.”

  “Mom too. I’ve got some time this afternoon. I’m going to drive up there and see if I can reassure them.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Kyle said.

  We drove out to Burnaby in my brother’s Volvo convertible. It’s a crazy car for an out-of-work artist, but he’s always liked nice things, and he’d married a woman who could afford to give them to him. For a while. The marriage had been over for years, but some of the residuals lived on. He’d kept the car. He’d gotten the cat. I didn’t judge. And ever since the relationship ended, he was always available to help me if I got in a jam.

  When we pulled up, Kyle and I could see that our parents’ home on Capitol Hill was teeming with activity. The driveway and the curb at the front of the house were lined with cars neither of us recognized. We exchanged a glance as we drove past. Kyle parked farther up the block, and we walked back.

  When we opened the front door we found the house flooded with the kind of noise that can only be properly made by Scots. A bunch of them.

  “Och, no, you don’t say.”

  “Aye, Gladys, that’s right. Ye can’t imagine.”

  And so on, a story being told and retold. And maybe it was growing in the telling. Changing shape. Kyle and I could only guess.

  “What the hell, Mom?” I said when I cornered her in the bedroom, separated for the moment from her gaggles of concerned friends. “You were never in any danger, right?”

  “Well, you don’t really know sich a thing, do you? He coulda still been in the house when we got back. The possibility seemed distinct.”

  Distinct. “Ah,” I said. “And did that prove to be the case?”

  “Well, no. I came home to this.” She indicated the bedroom we stood in. A half-stripped bed, dresser drawers open, waste-paper baskets overturned. “This is not the way I left things.”

  I just looked at her. I didn’t doubt her words for a heartbeat. I could not imagine a situation where Mom would leave the house with the bed unmade, let alone things strewn on the floor.

  “Do you have any idea who it might have been?”

  “Oh no, lass. Not at all. You know, we’ve never had such a thing happen.”

  “And you say nothing is missing?”

  “Not so’s we’ve been able to tell, at any rate. It doesn’t appear to be. But Marjorie MacDougall said when she was broken into last year, it took her and Hamish a whole month to realize the extent of what was gone. They took her eyeglasses, if you kin imagine. And the wee change purse she’d kept after her mother went on, poor soul.”

  I resisted the urge to travel with her through the recollection of Marjorie’s break-in. “So far nothing though, right?”

  “Aye.”

  “And certainly, if there was danger before, it’s now passed.”

  We settled them down as well as we could. Large amounts of tea were consumed. We ate a bunch of biscuits. After a while Mom and Dad seemed to calm, and Kyle said he had to go because he had a thing. I asked him to drop me at the office on his way. My parents stood in the driveway, waving goodbye as we left. They suddenly seemed so small and vulnerable to me. I felt a wave of something indefinable and unfamiliar wash over me. It was love, sure, but something else too. Something that tasted a bit like fear.

  FOUR

  The offices of the Vancouver Post are big and impressive. An office tower near the ocean in the financial district. I’m used to it now. I hardly think about it when I’m comin
g and going, but the first time I came through the big front doors, I had to hide the shake of my hand and try to ignore the butterflies in my stomach. It was all so big and impressive. And me? I was naive. And so green, I thought that as a journalist I would bring evil to light and change the world.

  I’d been one of the top students in my graduating class. My grades had been quite good, and I guess I’d shown promise. I’d landed one of the half dozen intern spots available at various media outlets in the area. In the natural course of things, that might have helped me get a job after graduation. But something happened that gave my career a shove instead of a push. The guy who had been doing the paper’s society beat for thirty years died. Nothing mysterious or even especially out of the ordinary. He just wore out. But there had been no warning—he just keeled over in the middle of a week when a lot of important events were happening that needed covering.

  So there was me, beavering away in the homes section during my internship. Writing reviews of new condo developments. Rewriting press releases about the latest high-tech kitchen taps and the newest laundry-room technology. In the middle of that, someone from the city desk had put his head through my doorway.

  “You know how to use a digital camera?”

  I’d looked at him and let him look back at me. Based on my age and gender, was there any possibility I did not?

  “I do,” I’d said finally.

  “You have any problems with going to parties alone?”

  This had seemed a potentially loaded question, so I’d tried to think fast before I answered. I couldn’t see the end game, though, so I’d answered honestly.

  “I do not.”

  “Okay, great,” he’d said, looking relieved. “There’s a fashion show at Turmeric 95 tonight.” I knew the nightclub. It was on Granville. I’d gotten the idea he was glad I’d said yes. That if I hadn’t been up for it, he would have had to do it himself.

  And that was how it had started. As easy as that. I went to the party. Took the pictures. Identified and made nice with the key folks. Went back to the office and wrote about it.

  To call what I do reporting is a stretch of anyone’s imagination. But it gives me a paycheck, and not a bad one, and at least I am working in the industry I trained for. Not everyone is lucky enough to do that.

  All of that said, it didn’t mean I wanted to leave the building in a box in twenty-five or thirty years, the way my predecessor had. I liked my job and I didn’t want to lose it, but I knew from the beginning that, as things were, it wasn’t enough. Not forever anyway. And maybe not for long.

  After I’d collected my mail and read through my various invitations, I went to the newsroom and plunked myself at an empty desk. I picked up the phone and dialed a direct line to the Vancouver police department. Sergeant Itani answered right away.

  “Hey, Rosa,” I said, “it’s Nicole Charles at the Vancouver Post. There was an arrest at Lively Auctions yesterday. I was in the house. And it happened to be the guy I was bidding against. So truly, it could not have been better timing. I ended up getting an amazing deal on a desk.”

  Rosa laughed. “Oh dear. Though I guess that’s good?”

  “Yeah. Anyway, I thought I’d call and see if I could impose on you. I need information, and all the other ways in seem too steep. Can you find out who the guy was?”

  It wasn’t Rosa’s job to give me information. She wasn’t a communications officer. But we’d met a few months earlier and hit it off. I knew she’d dig to get at whatever information was available. And she knew I wouldn’t ask her to go any further than she felt she could.

  “Hmmmm…let me check. What day did you say it was? Yesterday? And what time?”

  I told her, then heard a computer keyboard clacking.

  “Yes. I see it here in the system. Your guy was arrested on suspicion.”

  “Suspicion of what?” I wanted to know.

  “Oddly”—Rosa sounded perplexed—“that’s a little unclear. I’ll check and get back to you.”

  “Great. Can you email deets on the perp?” Yes, I realized I sounded like a reporter on a television show. I really had to quit watching late-night TV.

  “The ones I can release now, sure.”

  I’d promised Mike a story, but I really didn’t have much to write about. Yet. An arrest at an auction house. Sure, it was something. But not enough to make it into the story I needed if I had any hope of ever getting off the gossip beat.

  I got Rosa’s email a half hour later. It gave me enough for a small item. I knew even while I wrote it that it would get buried deep in the first section, but I didn’t have a choice.

  AUCTION-HOUSE ARREST INVITES QUESTIONS

  A mysterious arrest at Lively Auctions in North Burnaby on Monday interrupted the sale and left attendees wondering what was going on.

  Half a dozen uniformed officers appeared in the early afternoon and arrested Joseph MacLeish (28) of Vancouver on suspicion of criminal activity. Vancouver City Police would not release further information in what is an ongoing investigation.

  The disturbance unsettled an auction in progress. The sale continued once MacLeish was been taken into custody and removed from the premises.

  It was an insignificant item that contained almost no information, but it was the best I could do with what was available. I’d have to hope I found more to add for the next day’s edition.

  With the first story written and filed, I thought I’d try to get a little more information on what I’d found in my desk. It occurred to me that Clark Biederman, wine expert, author and colleague, might have some answers. If not about the wine itself, at least where it had most recently come from.

  I checked the company directory for Clark Biederman’s direct line. Voice mail greeted me when I dialed it.

  “Clark, this is Nicole Charles. Fun hanging with you last night, and all the best with your book! I have some questions on an unrelated topic. Please call me when you get a chance.”

  After I hung up, I thought about what I knew. Admittedly, not much, though I felt I was close to seeing something right in front of me.

  For lack of any better ideas, I typed “Morrison Brine” into a search engine. As I already knew, Brine had been a key player in the development of mid-twentieth-century Vancouver. He had died at age eighty-nine—no spring chicken—and in his younger years there had been shadows. Nothing was said outright, of course. Not in newspaper stories. But it seemed to me there were things between the lines. I made a note to delve further.

  His career had been above reproach. He was best known for an office tower in Taipei in the 1980s. Although some of the designs he had made in Vancouver rivaled that building for sheer stature and innovation.

  Beyond all of this, what caught my eye was a photo. Morrison Brine in the 1970s, looking strong, handsome and oddly familiar. I was sure I’d never met the man, but there was something in this photo that made me think again.

  I wanted to see more photos, so I did an image search and got some satisfying results. It seemed that from early on in his career, Brine had been a star in his field. There had been many awards, many opening days, many splendid events…and many photos. In all of them, I saw the same thing. He was handsome, distinguished-looking…and very familiar-looking to me.

  While all of this was interesting, it didn’t take long for me to realize that this particular line of research wasn’t moving me ahead. With my first story completed on deadline, it was time to see if I could find anything more on Joseph MacLeish. But it’s a big world. And I knew better than most that there are a lot of people with Scottish names in it.

  So I tried a new search: “Joseph+MacLeish+Vancouver.” And a whol
e lot of things I knew to be unrelated to my search came up. Dead old guys. Sports heroes. Entertainment personalities.

  Buried deep on the fourth page of results, I found a link to a notice of a stock splitting, and when I followed it, a photo opened, almost large as life. The remnants of my Morrison Brine searches were still on the monitor, and MacLeish’s picture opened right next to one of Brine. And I felt my breath catch. With MacLeish onscreen next to the Morrison Brine of thirty years ago, the two could have been brothers. There was so much that was similar about them. The cut of the chin. The cast of the eyes. I had seen that Brine was a tall man, and I already knew that MacLeish was too.

  Looking at them side by side, it seemed obvious to me. And the timing was right: the two men were a generation apart. But it was too much of a coincidence for sure. Surely it would be too flukey if MacLeish was Morrison Brine’s son.

  FIVE

  Before I had the chance to really digest any of this, my phone rang. Clark Biederman was returning my call.

  “Have you ever heard of Concordia Monastery?” I asked when our greetings were complete.

  “Why, yes, of course,” he responded.

  I waited a beat before pushing forward. “And…?”

  “And…what?” he asked.

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Oh yes. I thought…well, I thought since you were asking that you knew.”

  “Knew what?” I asked, trying my hardest not to sound exasperated.

  “About the winery.”

  “I. Do. Not,” I replied, careful to keep my voice calm though I felt close to bursting.

  “There was a winery near Kelowna called Concordia Monastery.”

  My eyes shot toward the ceiling. I counted the panels between the air-conditioning outflow and the wall. One. Two. Three.

  “Yes…” I prompted.

  “For a good long while, it was the top winery in the province. You will have seen it mentioned in my book.”