Amateur Night

by K. K. Beck

  Chapter 13

  The drive up went quickly—a little over two hours of good freeway through forest, farmland, the occasional town straggling off into junkyards and strip malls, then back into farmland.

  Close to the border Jane was momentarily tempted by a discount shopping center in the middle of nowhere. Canadians, she knew, had for years flocked below the border to buy. Everything was more expensive north of the border and there was less selection.

  The border itself brought back childhood memories of weekend trips to Vancouver. Peace Arch Park, a big and grassy expanse, dotted with the kind of formal English-style flower beds the Canadians did so well, surrounded a huge white monument, an arch right on the border itself, erected in 1918. CHILDREN OF A COMMON MOTHER it read across the top in gilt letters, a sentiment from a simpler time when both countries considered themselves firmly Anglo-Saxon. It had been put up right after both countries had fought together for the first time, in World War One, a time when a hunk of white plaster of heroic proportions didn't seem corny at all. People weren't afraid of sentiment then, and what's more, the people putting up monuments generally agreed about what constituted a noble sentiment.

  On the Canadian side, there was a big rectangle of flower bed planted firmly in the shape of the Canadian maple leaf flag, with elaborate borders around it of dusty miller and lobelia. The American side wasn't so ambitious, but the flower beds were more labor-intensive and carefully maintained looking than most public landscaping in the States. They'd been shamed into it, she supposed, by the persnickety Canadians.

  About forty-five minutes later, Jane was waiting in line for the BC ferry. She took out the scrap of paper Calvin Mason had given her. Gordon Trevellyan. She imagined a square-jawed retired Mountie.

  During the two-hour crossing, she had a meal of fish and chips in the cafeteria (with the terrific malt vinegar that Americans too often forgot to provide), then took a walk on the deck. She noticed a framed picture of Queen Elizabeth, who was wearing a white ball gown, a blue sash and a pearl tiara.

  The Queen's picture, the Canadian accents she heard aboard the ferry, the dollar bills in blue and red and green, all gave Jane a familiar and pleasant feeling of foreignness. She realized that she always felt more at home, more in control in some way, as a foreigner. And, although Jane knew the United States and Canada weren't terribly different, they were different enough to please her.

  She'd always been able to tell English-speaking Canadians from Americans when she'd lived in Europe. It wasn't just that they were often bristling with maple leaf lapel pins in a blatant attempt not to be taken for Americans. It was their manner—less expansive, quieter, more courteous. And their characteristic speech patterns. Scottish-sounding vowels, more precise enunciation and cozy little turns of phrase.

  And of course, the ubiquitous “eh,” pronounced “ay,” used instead of the American “huh” as a short version of “what?” (although Canadians were much more likely to say “pardon me?” if they hadn't caught what you said). “Eh” with a question mark was also added to the end of the sentence like the American “y'know?” to check that the listener was getting the drift. Without a question mark it served as a way to amplify a statement.

  When the ferry arrived, she pulled over and went to a phone booth. Gordon Trevellyan had a bland English accent of no particular class, with an overlay of Canadian, and a friendly manner. He said he'd be glad to see her as soon as she wanted to come by, and gave her directions to his office on Pandora Street.

  She distracted herself on the short drive from the ferry terminal at Swartz Bay into Victoria by looking for more evidence of Canadiana. McDonald's hamburger logos dressed up with maple leaves. Mileage given in kilometers. Stucco houses. For some reason Jane could never understand, British Columbia, covered with dense forests of cedar and fir, also had more than its share of houses in ugly, gritty stucco.

  Gordon Trevellyan turned out to be a small grubby man of about fifty or so with a bristly yellowish gray moustache that looked as if it might be nicotine-stained. He wore a light tweed jacket, bulging out a little at the elbows, and managed to give the appearance of a man clinging without much success to respectability. There was a spot of what looked like egg yolk on his striped tie. Jane flicked her glance up from the spot after just a millisecond, but Mr. Trevellyan was apparently quite observant. He noticed her notice.

  “Mmm,” he said, looking down over his chins and scraping at the spot with his thumbnail. He coughed and turned his attention back to her. “The old regiment,” he said.

  “Oh, so you have a military background,” she said. “I imagine most investigators have police backgrounds.”

  He cleared his throat. “Did my share of intelligence work in the military,” he said. Jane, who was in the habit of creating biographies out of whole cloth for people she met, thought it more likely he'd been a military policeman. She imagined him twenty or thirty years ago, wielding a truncheon, breaking up a bar fight near some Allied base in Germany.

  Maybe she would have done better out of the phone book, she thought to herself, glancing around his office, which seemed to be filled with dark Victorian furniture (where had it come from?) and smelled of Player's cigarettes. There was a cloudy-looking colored print of King Arthur pulling a sword out of a stone. Jane was reminded of Uncle Harold's Saint George and the dragon in her living room.

  Gordon Trevellyan was making them both tea. He'd offered coffee or tea, but the jar of powdered instant she spotted on an old dark oak side table looked grim. She'd been spoiled by all that Seattle espresso. “Tea, please,” she'd said. He fussed with an electric kettle and pulled some tea bags out of a box of Red Rose.

  “Have you done any missing persons work?” she asked him.

  “Plenty,” he said with an unconvincing world-weary nod as he presented her with a mug of syrupy-looking brew. She glanced at it and decided she took milk.

  “All I have is a name. Brenda MacPherson.”

  “It's a start, i'n't it,” he said, sitting behind his desk, hunching over a yellow legal pad and jotting.

  “And a general age. Late twenties.” She tasted the tea. She found milky tea rather depressing. It reminded her of a visit she'd made to England in the mid-eighties to visit some London friends— and found them in poorly heated homes, everyone seemingly on the dole and all embittered and grumbling about Thatcher.

  “No date of birth?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “Think she might have a criminal record?”

  “I have no idea.” Jane thought for a second. “I sort of doubt it.”

  “Married, single? Any kids?”

  “Single as far as I know. And it's unlikely she has kids.” Jane was struck with how little she knew about Brenda. Yet somehow she had an idea of what she was like.

  “Citizenship?”

  “Canadian. I'm pretty sure.”

  He nodded, pleased she'd known something at last. “Good. And you have any idea where she is?”

  “Somewhere on Vancouver Island. Before that—about two years ago—she lived in Seattle.”

  “Got a picture? A general description?”

  “No picture. She's short, with fair skin and dark hair. Probably in pretty good shape. Trained as a dancer.”

  Trevellyan poured milk and sugar into his tea and stirred it up vigorously, took a slurp, then made a few notes on a piece of paper. “Hmm. Well, if all else fails, you can stake me to a series of evenings in our famous Canadian stripper bars. A lot of dancers end up there.” He wheezed happily at what she assumed was a joke.

  “I didn't realized this was a hotbed of vice.”

  “Oh, no,” he said, looking very serious. “It's all very legit. Clean operations. The Americans come up here, they can't believe it. It's all very classy.” He gave Jane the impression he was a serious aficionado. “BC is famous for its stripper bars,” he said with a touch of civic pride.

  “I see,” said Jane. “I haven't been here
in years. I remember when I was a kid, gentlemen and ladies had to enter a pub through separate entrances, and it was against the law to open a grocery store on Sunday.”

  “That's right,” he said. “Before my time, though. Things have loosened up considerably. This place is the California of Canada. Mind you, it's still fairly quiet. On the surface, anyways.” He raised an eyebrow as if to suggest he was well acquainted with the seamy side of life. He offered her a Player's, lit one for himself, then got down to business. “Well, I can't tell you how long this will take. Could be pretty straightforward, could get complicated.”

  “I just want you to get me started,” she said. “You don't have to actually find her. Or contact her. Just get me an address somewhere.”

  “Bound to be more than one Brenda MacPherson,” he said.

  “Fine. Give me any Brenda MacPhersons you can find in the approximate age range.”

  “Righto. How are you paying, love? Visa, Mastercard?”

  “Cash,” she said.

  “All right. I charge you a hundred an hour.”

  Jane figured this was somewhere around eighty-five dollars U.S., depending on the exchange rate. “Okay. Would you like a deposit?”

  “Sure.” He sounded casual, but Jane thought she detected a gimlety little gleam in his eye as he exhaled cigarette smoke. “Two hundred'll get me started.” She removed two Canadian hundreds from her wallet under his watchful gaze, glad that she'd exchanged money at the border. She had a feeling Gordon Trevellyan would have tried to chisel her on the exchange rate.

  “What I'd like you to do,” she said firmly, in case he planned to string her along with a lot of unnecessary charges, and try and dazzle her with the complexity of the task, “is check with a few of your usual sources. The phone company, maybe law enforcement, anyone with a big computer, and get me a couple of addresses. I'm assuming you've got some sources like that?”

  “That's right,” he said, looking a little wary.

  “If it gets much more complicated than that, let me know.”

  “Where can I get in touch with you?” he said.

  “I'm not sure. I'll call you in the morning, let you know.”

  “All right.”

  She rose to go, and he walked her to the door.

  The essential snobbishness of the English culture seemed to guarantee that there was no sleaze quite like English sleaze. And nowhere better to find it than in some out-post of Empire like Victoria, British Columbia.

  Jane was more than a little irritated. She imagined there were a good half dozen solid, professional investigative firms in Victoria, run by ex-RCMP with good contacts who knew the territory.

  And Calvin steers her to a refugee from a Graham Greene novel! But then she brought herself up short. So what if he had egg on his tie and a shifty manner? She realized she was judging him by snobbish English standards. Maybe he'd do a perfectly fine job. After all, Calvin had told her about missing persons work. It was just as she'd described it to Gordon Trevellyan. A small bribe to someone with access to a computer somewhere. She didn't see how Gordon Trevellyan could screw it up.

  Chapter 14

  Jane spent the night in a grim little motel on the outskirts of Victoria, which she picked out of a tourist guide because of its low rates. It had a Ye Olde England theme, and was made of plywood plastered over and dressed up with some dark brown two-by-fours to look like Tudor architecture.

  The War of the Roses was memorialized in the neon sign outside her room. The white rose of York shone brightly, but the red rose of Lancashire had a wicked flicker that penetrated the rather spongy curtains. That, and the valley of fatigue in the old mattress, made sleep difficult.

  The next morning she gave herself a stern lecture about fortitude and being cheerful, but her resolve faded a little as she stepped into a tin shower cubicle that buckled under her weight with a metallic warping sound. She scrubbed at herself with some sort of carbolic soap, the kind she imagined prisoners might be issued to make sure they were properly deloused.

  The hell with it, she told herself, as she slammed her possessions into her suitcase. From now on, no motel rooms that smelled of industrial disinfectant and were equipped with mildewing shower curtains and polyester towels. She looked around the room and sneered at the velvet painting of a knight in armor, tastefully attached to the wall by screws at each corner to make sure no one would steal it. On closer inspection she realized that as an additional security measure, a Phillips screwdriver would be required to remove the hideous thing from the wall. A mere dime wouldn't do the trick. Only the most persistent art lover could make it his own.

  And from now on, she vowed, no motels without complimentary shampoo and conditioner, cable TV and opaque curtains that met in the center of the window. Surely Uncle Harold wouldn't have wanted her to live like this? A curmudgeonly phrase she had heard somewhere floated into her consciousness. “If you can't afford to travel, stay home.”

  But if she stayed home, and didn't pursue a hopeless case, she might never be able to travel. Even if this wasn't the right hopeless case, she was mindful of the bargain she'd made with God. She'd work hard and unquestioningly at whatever crumbs were thrown her, and she'd get a decent case one way or the other. Jane, while believing intellectually that it was theologically unsound to make deals with God, nevertheless did it all the time. She felt she might be getting too old now to break a lifelong habit.

  She checked out, paying cash. When the little old overrouged lady at the counter asked her very sweetly how everything was, Jane merely said, “Just fine, thank you.” What was the point of telling the poor thing that the place was enough to practically precipitate a clinical depression? After all, Jane could leave.

  The little transaction seemed to put everything all back in perspective. Jane stopped feeling sorry for herself and drove back into Victoria in better spirits.

  When she got there, she parked her car near the museum and set out toward the Empress Hotel. The Empress was opened in 1908 by the Canadian Pacific Railway to give travelers a reason to go to Victoria, and it still dominated the harbor exuding all the confidence of the British Empire at the height of its powers.

  The massive structure, looking like a French château, equaled in grandeur provincial parliament buildings nearby, and squarely faced the small harbor.

  Like everything here, it was surrounded by perfectly kept gardens and lawns. A statue of the Empress herself, Victoria Regina, in her younger days, looked out at her corner of Empire with dignity, as tourists in tank tops and shorts, many of them from day boats from Seattle or from cruise ships, shuffled among the restored buildings of the harbor.

  Jane found a rare parking spot nearby, locked the suitcase in the trunk, smoothed out her black dress, which she wore in an attempt to look like a traveler perhaps, but not a tourist, and went into the lobby of the Empress. They'd done a fabulous restoration since she'd been here last, and the old girl was looking pretty good, with soft carpets, gleaming carved wood and big, well-balanced spaces. Jane felt at home here. She often felt at home in surroundings she could not afford, and out of place in surroundings she could, as if some dreadful mistake had been made. She decided to eat breakfast here, damn the expense, but first she called Gordon Trevellyan.

  “Where are you?” he said. “I should be able to get back to you with something this afternoon.”

  “I'll be downtown,” she said. “You can leave a message for me at the Empress.”

  She went to the desk, explained that she wasn't a guest but that she might be expecting a message here, and tipped the desk clerk ten dollars. He took it with apparent squeamishness, but said he'd take care of it. She went to the newsstand and bought herself a Times-Colonist, then picked up a few brochures from the concierge's desk. She made a point of smiling nicely at the young woman there in a blue blazer, as if she were a guest who might need some help later.

  In the restaurant, she settled into a corner table with a view of the room, and ordered eggs Ben
edict. She skimmed over the international news, which there wasn't too much of, and read about an ongoing dispute between local timber interests and environmentalists over clear cutting on the island.

  There was also a story about some tourists from Quebec who'd been collecting hallucinogenic mushrooms on the Queen Charlotte Islands to the north. Some of the Haida natives had come upon them, and, resenting their intrusion on their land, held a gun to their heads and forced them to consume their entire sackful of mushrooms. The tourists had been flown by float plane to a medical clinic where they'd had their stomachs pumped.

  Queen Victoria's little corner of Empire still had something of the untamed about it, Jane decided. These wild and woolly goings-on were interspersed with items about flower shows, pony clubs, ratepayers' meetings and movie and book reviews, all of which paled in her mind beside the story of the tourists from Quebec.

  She imagined them babbling in hallucinogenic French in the little clinic in the bush, and wondered if they'd had those Gallic, Rousseau-like romantic notions of Indians living in harmony with nature. Until they'd found themselves on the wrong end of a gun.