Never Hug a Mugger on Quadra Island

by Sandy Frances Duncan

  • • •

  Noel’s parents, Paul and Astrid Franklin, lived on the ground floor of a condo building near the beach in Qualicum. They’d moved there five years ago. In spite of Kyra’s promises to come up, this was her first visit. She’d known Noel’s parents since she was ten and her own parents had rented a cabin for the summer next to theirs on Bowen Island. The Franklins had taken her into their family as the daughter they never had.

  Astrid opened the door. “Kyra, my dear! It’s been far too long!” Their hug was intense. Kyra blinked back tears. How come she’d gotten so damn emotional . . . His mother hugged and kissed Noel.

  Alana was next. “Hi Unc.” A jocular almost-adult, not quite willing to call him Noel without uncle, not willing to call him Uncle Noel as she had since she was two. On her eight fingers and two thumbs, maybe fifteen rings.

  Paul remained in his chair in the living room. He’d lost a lot of weight, Noel had told Kyra. She remembered he stood a couple of inches taller than Noel but with the same slim build. “Hello, dear! Long time no see.” His voice was still strong.

  “You’re right.” Kyra grasped his hand. She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “My fault.”

  “You’re correct about that.” Paul smiled and squeezed.

  “I hope I will eventually be forgiven.” How quickly she’d adopted the patter she usually brought out for Noel’s father.

  “You could get on your knees for a thousand obeisances.”

  “Oh creak, creak.” Kyra half squatted.

  “Now, dears,” Astrid said, “brunch is ready and Alana’s starved, aren’t you?”

  Alana rolled her eyes. Everyone filed to the table.

  “You can tell us all the news,” Astrid said.

  Kyra followed Astrid to the kitchen. She had produced artichoke frittata, a small ham covered with chunks of pineapple, cinnamon buns, fruit salad. Kyra ferried them to the table.

  They sat. Kyra studied Astrid’s face. How has Paul’s cancer played on her? Suddenly thinking, How had she managed motherhood? She pushed that thought aside.

  Astrid’s skin had gone grey too; normal for people in their seventies? Slim like Paul, a narrow attractive face, her thin lips enlivened by an occasional wry smile. A couple of times while serving she sent a worried glance down the table toward her husband. Kyra noted Noel tracking them. Now he stood, pulled out a cell phone and took pictures of them all. Kyra had made him upgrade. A picture was more powerful than any verbal description, she’d insisted.

  “Smile,” he said again.

  They did, a variety of grimaces.

  As he sat down again, Alana asked, “Are you two working on a case now, Unc?”

  She was a pretty young thing, Kyra decided, bottle-blonde hair, even features. Though the plucked eyebrows, dramatic black eye shadow, and pierced nose didn’t do it. And all those rings. I am getting old, Kyra thought.

  “Yeah,” said Noel. “We are.”

  “What’s it about?”

  Should he be telling a seventeen-year-old kid about this? Well, seventeen seemed older these days than back in Noel’s own dark ages. “Kind of messy. A young guy, beaten badly, he’s in a coma. Dad, Mum? You remember Jason Cooper when I was in high school?”

  Paul said, “Sure we remember Jase.”

  Noel turned to Alana. “We were close from grade six on. Now he’s got three sons. The eldest, Derek, he’s the one who’s unconscious. Has been for three weeks.”

  “How dreadful.” Astrid’s hand covered her mouth.

  “Jase asked if Kyra and I could help. They live on Quadra but he was beaten in Campbell River.” He cut a small piece of frittata. “The middle son’s supposedly an impressive figure skater.” To Alana he added, “You still skate, Alana?”

  “Yep, but just for the fun of it. What’s the skater brother’s name?”

  “Shane Cooper.”

  “No—” her eyes bugged at Noel “—way! You know Shane Cooper? He’s Worlds! He’s maybe Olympics! He’s great!”

  “No,” Noel said testily, “I don’t know Shane. It’s their oldest son who concerns us. We don’t know a thing.”

  “Oh Uncle Noel, Kyra, may I come with you, please, please, please? I really really want to meet Shane Cooper!”

  “Alana. We’re dealing with the brother in a coma.” Uncle Noel gave her a severe frown. “Not the skater.”

  “Gran! Can I go with them. Please please?”

  “Noel?”

  “Please, Unc?”

  Paul said, “Alana, I don’t want you near a case where a man’s been beaten up.”

  “I’ll be with Uncle Noel, it’ll all be completely safe.” And to Noel, then Kyra, “Right? Can I come with you? Please?”

  Noel stood. “A word, Kyra.” He led her to his parents’ bedroom. “I’m not hot on having her along. We need to investigate, not babysit.”

  “She’s hardly a baby anymore.” Kyra mused. “Maybe with a family of teenagers she’d sense things we didn’t.”

  “Hmm.” Noel mulled. “We’re too aged to understand the young?” He shrugged. “Maybe.” Back at the table he said, “It’s up to your grandparents, Alana.”

  Astrid folded her hands. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.” To Noel she said, “Can you deal with her for a couple of days?”

  Okay, just maybe this tough-looking young woman would note things he and Kyra didn’t. “I guess so.”

  “Back by Friday, Alana.” said Astrid. “I don’t need your parents angry with me.”

  Now Kyra was thinking, what have we let ourselves in for. And Derek wasn’t technically in his teens anymore. Alana Franklin, teenage detective.

  • • •

  “Jim! You in there?” The voice came muffled through the thick plastic wall.

  “Yeah! Be right out!” Jim Bristol wiped smudges of soil from his hands and glanced across the four-hundred-plus heritage tomato plants in the shed. Still small but the second crop of the season; he rubbed his chin through his thin beard and headed down the narrow aisle, stepped over a pan of shoe disinfecting liquid, and opened the door. “Hey, Dad. What’s happening?”

  “The bank’s what’s happening.” Brant Bristol, late fifties, once a tall athletic man, stood stooped forward with osteoporosis. He wore a dress shirt tucked into his jeans. “Got to go over to Campbell River and have another argument.”

  “Hey, I thought we were golden.”

  “I think they want us to refinance.”

  “They don’t trust us?”

  “That’s what I’ll find out. Sheds thirteen and fourteen may need less water. Plants seem to be growing too fast. Can you check it while I’m gone?”

  “Sure, Dad. Shit. Damn bankers.”

  “I’ll be back before dinner. Defrost a couple of steaks, would you?”

  “Sure.” Jim watched his father walk over to the car beside the house, a simple double-wide they’d trucked in three years ago and put together on a concrete slab. Funny and sad the way his father moved, like a man who was forever falling forward as he strode on to catch up with his shoulders. Firkin’ bank.

  He didn’t know where Ben was, hadn’t seen him come in this morning. Didn’t matter, Ben put in his time. Which was important, because Bristol Greens needed at least three full-time people—good thing his father could still keep up his load. He walked away from shed seven, one of three tomato sheds along with eight and nine. They also grew bell peppers, five kinds of lettuce, spinach, kale and chard. And in thirteen and fourteen, the cannabis. Two years ago they’d received their federal license to grow medical marijuana, last spring shipped out their first crop.

  Jim had convinced his father three years back that they should apply. With the greenhouse just barely breaking even, they needed a crop to jump them far enough into the black so that they could breathe more easily. The marijuana project was Jim’s primary concern.

  But the bankers didn’t like holding a mortgage on what was in their petty minds little more than a grow-op. That twelv
e of the sheds produced plain honest organic market vegetables made only a small impression. Legally the bank couldn’t call in the mortgage but they might try to shift the terms. Jim’s greatest wish: Get rid of the mortgage quickly and pay no more damn interest.

  He opened the plastic door to shed thirteen, stepped into the disinfecting pan, drew the soles of his running shoes back and forth twice, and walked over to the nearest row of plants. They looked tall and healthy. Maybe, as his father suggested, growing too fast for the water/nutrient mix they were getting? Speed was good, but height wasn’t the only criterion. They needed strength as well—in both senses: sufficient fiber manufacture to maintain good leaf production, and a high level of potency. The Compassion Club, of which Bristol Greens was a member, had produced a study making it clear that AIDS, glaucoma, and cancer patients much preferred high quality cannabis. Who wouldn’t, Sam had thought. On reading the details of the report he learned that patients preferred to take fewer puffs, smoking it for its pain-relieving effect rather than for pleasure. Bristol Greens would put only the best product possible on the market.

  He checked out the gauges on the vats providing water and nutrients to the plants through an irrigation system of bleeding pipes he, Ben and his father had put in the year before. He had researched the Federal Medical Cannabis Program handbook, a loose-leaf collection of studies and reports that were constantly being updated, for suggested ratios of nourishment and liquid. The Program recommended a small but allowable range of possibilities. He increased the nutrient side by point-four. In shed fourteen he found precisely the same conditions but here he left the balance as it was. He’d check again tomorrow, see what happened.

  Goddamn firkin’ bank. And goddamn Derek, too. Sam had gone to see him in the hospital, found him looking more like a mummy than a human. Poor guy. A close friend since grade one. Sam’d trust Derek with just about anything, including a few kilos of marijuana. And Sam would’ve trusted him a lot more times with weed skimmed off the crop. What the hell had happened, Sam thought for the thousandth time. He’d heard from Gast that the deal had been made, Gast had gotten his cut. So whoever worked Derek over did it for Sam Bristol’s four thousand dollars. The government paid okay for marijuana, but from private buyers you got much more. Money to give to his father to reduce the firkin’ mortgage. And now, shit. He closed up shed fourteen and headed to the house.

  That was another thing, their house. Until five years ago, before his mother died, they’d lived in a big house down on Discovery Passage, a perfect Quadra house. He’d grown up in it. Then his father had sold it, paid off his mortgage there, started the nursery here. They trucked in, and moved into, the double-wide to be close to the sheds. But then bringing the nursery up to an ever-changing code first cut into the profits then threw them into debt. Which meant the new mortgage.

  Yeah, it’d take a few years, but they’d make this place profitable. If he could find somebody to replace Derek, that’d happen faster. Going to be hard. He’d trusted Derek absolutely. Maybe Derek would pull through. And if he did? Sam figured Derek wouldn’t ever deal dope again. Not for any money.

  • • •

  Noel and Kyra, with Alana, set off up-island after brunch. They drove up the Qualicum connecter to the new Island Highway. A well-engineered road, speed limit 110 kilometers per hour. Noel’s Honda wanted to go 130, not much traffic so why not. Except he’d heard from friends that the Mounties were fierce with tickets on this stretch. Didn’t make sense: build a beautiful road, put a fast car on it, then penalize the collusion in speed between road and car. But an accepted way to finance municipalities and regional districts.

  Alana sat beside Noel, earplugs in residence. In the back, Kyra had a hard time looking out the front window between the two headrests. She leaned forward. “Alana, how do you know about Shane?” She spoke in a voice loud enough to carry over road noise and earplugs.

  Alana turned her head, fiddled with something, probably the volume control. “A friend met him at Juniors, last year. Lucy. She told me about him and I’ve followed him ever since. He’s cool, Kyra, just so cool. He’s going to be champion. Worlds. Even Olympics!”

  “What makes that apparent?”

  “Oh, he’s just awesome! Wait till you see him. He’s a bundle of talent.”

  “I hear you’re a good skater too.” Kyra knew nothing about Alana’s skating.

  “I can stay on my feet, sure, but he’s awesome.” Alana pulled her earplug out and turned off the machine. “He’s just miles better than anyone else. I can’t describe it, you’ll have to see him.” She half turned toward both of them. “Remember Toller Cranston?”

  “Not really,” said Kyra, thinking: how old does this kid think I am?

  “Yes.” Noel flicked a glance to his right. “Your grandmother watched him every time she got a chance. Your gramps grumbled, but Mom and I found Toller gorgeous.” Noel raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Fluid, artistic, a whole new style.”

  “You think Shane could be another Cranston?” Kyra asked.

  Alana fiddled with her earplug. “I don’t know. Shane’s his own skater. But he could set a new style like Toller.” She stuck her earplug back in, fiddled with the gadget, then leaned back. Kyra caught Noel’s half smile in the rearview mirror. His niece, back in teenland.

  This new inland highway was zippy but boring. Kyra watched trees, fields, fences, an occasional mountain whiz by. The peaks of Mount Arrowsmith on the way from Nanaimo to Qualicum; now it was more trees, hydro tresses and No Hitchhiking signs. New-growth Douglas fir clad the sides of the highway. Beyond them, clearcuts.

  Jason, thought Noel. Jason’s son in a coma. What had happened to him? And to Jason over all those years? The pain of Jason walking away when they were eighteen was long gone. But now Noel didn’t know what Triple I, what he could do for a kid in a coma. For an ex best friend.

  When they were fourteen, fifteen, pimples covered Jason’s face. Noel, six months younger, still had a clear complexion but worried about acne lying in wait. There’d been a burly, tall guy with a little moustache and acne scars, he was sixteen, in their grade ten English class, who picked on Jason: “Hey, Pimple Face! Hey, Jerkoff!” One day toward the end of term he strong-armed Jason against the lockers. A teacher came by, frowned and the confrontation ended. Next day, outside the corner store that sold candy and newspapers, where Jason and Noel had agreed to meet, there he was again—Matt, that was his name—and he had another go at Jason: “Yo, Pimple Fuck! Zit Heaven!” He poked Jason in the chest with his fist.

  Noel appeared, saw them, let loose at Matt: “Hey, leave him alone or—!”

  “Yeah? Or what?”

  “You get those scars from picking at your zits?”

  Matt went for Noel’s throat. But his hands didn’t make it that far. Jason pulled at him from behind, Noel backed away. So did Jason. So did Matt, saying, “Two against one in’t fair!” His shoulders slumped and he turned and kicked the shit out of a bench. Noel and Jason walked away fast. They glanced at each other, a silent thanks. That was the look Noel now remembered, driving up the Island Highway.

  At the best of times, Kyra couldn’t read in a moving car. She didn’t have morning sickness, she refused to have morning sickness, besides, it was afternoon. She crossed her arms beneath her tender breasts and stared out the side window. The highway crossed a bridge, abutments on each side and a sign: Nile Creek. She couldn’t see any creek. Immediately another bridge, another sign: Crocker Creek. Again, no visible water. Kyra had always thought of creeks as little trickles, yet these were long bridges. Enough to span the Mississippi—or at least an arm of the Fraser. Another sign: McLaughlin Creek. Soon Rosewall Creek, then Waterloo Creek. Noel zipped along. Furry Creek, Buckley Bay—not a creek, an exit—Hart Creek, Bloedel Creek, Trent River. Ah, a river! That deserved a bridge but it didn’t look any different from the creek bridges. Damn engineers built this new highway to get from point A to point B fast and safely, so no quaint wooden bridges a me
ter above sparkling creeks. Nope, stay up on the ridge, cruise along, pretend you’re in a plane.

  “How you doing back there?” Noel called.

  “Creeks! Hell of a lot of creeks. Makes me need to pee.”

  “Half an hour till we’re there. Can you hang on?”

  “I’ll try.” She was going to say, you’ve never been pregnant. But she knew Alana’s earplug wouldn’t block conversation. She wanted to say: When you have to pee, it seems you have to pee. “Oh now they’re promising us elk!” She crossed her legs. “Look, they’ve built a fence”—she looked out the other window—“on both sides. No worry about elk on the highway.” She leaned forward and said around Noel’s seat back, “Tell me more about our client.”

  Noel thought. “Can’t tell you much. Derek’s got broken ribs, a smashed tibia, a shattered cheekbone, possible brain damage, internal injuries. Linda, she’s a nurse, got him medevacked down to Victoria. After ten days they brought him back. Middle son’s the figure skater. Youngest son I don’t know anything about.”

  Kyra’s bladder made her cross her legs the other way and tighten her pelvic muscles. “Would you speed up a bit, please.”

  Noel looked ahead, behind, and obediently did.

  Kyra, to keep the demands of her body at bay, went back to reading creek and elk signs.

  They turned off the brilliantly engineered boring highway—stunning mountains around them now—onto a narrower new road leading down into Campbell River.

  “Gas station,” said Kyra. “Quickly, please.”

  “First one,” Noel replied, semi-sympathetic. Bloody hell, is pregnancy nine months of demands? What if we’re doing surveillance?

  A gas station at last. They all used the restrooms. Noel filled up with gas, couple of cents a liter cheaper than in Nanaimo. In the store Alana, still plugged in, picked up a small bottle of unsweetened fruit juice. Kyra, who’d been thinking about pop, thought, oh shit, and grabbed the same. Uncle Noel smiled at both of them and paid.

  Jason had said the hospital was on 2nd Street. Back in the car Noel appointed Alana official navigator and gave her the map. She took it, releasing neither music or juice. Noel turned left, as he knew he had to.