Crazy Lady (27 page)

“I must have done twenty,” complains Daphne. “But he might have another alias for all we know.”

“I thought of that,” admits Trina. “And what if he paid cash and just picked a name out of the air?”

“Or he could be somewhere else altogether. He might have flown on to one of the other islands,” agrees Daphne. “What will we do then?”

“Well,” says Trina, paddling in a puddle under a drinking fountain to cool her feet. “We'll do this one first and move on if we have to later in the week. You wanted to see volcanoes.”

“Actually, I got an inquiry about your wife from someone at Scotland Yard late last night,” Mike Phillips tells Creston as they enter Craddock's house, and Janet's husband has no problem confessing.

“Yes. I asked one of my staff to make some inquires. I was worried about her.”

That's interesting
, thinks Phillips, eyeing the sharply dressed executive cautiously as they sit at Craddock's kitchen table, realizing that he must have left England well before the alarm was raised. “So, when did you last hear from your wife?”

Creston fidgets momentarily, but quickly stops when he sees the inquisitiveness in Phillips face and feels the jaws of a trap. “There's no point in me lying to you, Inspector. The truth is that Janet and I have been separated for quite some time.”

“But you still care.”

“I still love her to be honest… always have. But she had one or two problems.” He puts his finger to his forehead expressively, adding, “Psychological problems.”

“Well, she has other problems now,” says Phillips, and is intrigued by Creston's apparent lack of curiosity as the man simply inquires, “Can I visit her?”

Phillips shrugs. “I don't see why not, if you're her husband.”

“I'll do that then,” says Creston rising and he's half out of the door before Phillips stops him.

“Don't you want to know which hospital?”

“Oh. Yes. Silly of me,” says Creston, opening his pocket diary and using a monogrammed Waterman to take details. “Thanks,” he says, turning back to the door, when Phillips hits him again.

“By the way, how did you know your wife had been here?” Creston stops, asking, “In Vancouver?”

“No,” questions Phillips pointedly. “In this particular house, Mr. Craddock's house.”

Creston's mind is clearly spinning as he fights for a plausible reply, but his mumbled response about putting two and two together lacks both credibility and conviction, and as the Englishman walks down the driveway towards the street and his rented car, Phillips pulls out his cellphone and arranges for a surveillance team to be waiting at the hospital.

“And brief the guard on Janet's room,” he adds. “I don't want him left alone with her for a second.”

“Try Robert Davies,” persists Trina as she begins checking hotels again. But this time she's at the Ohana on Kuhio Avenue.

“Robert Davies,” repeats the female desk clerk loudly, and a man stops in his tracks as he passes. “That's right… Robert Davies,” reiterates Trina as Craddock takes in the scene and is in the elevator and on the way to his sixteenth floor room within seconds

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” mutters the cornered PI as he wills the elevator to speed up, and when a couple of Korean women try to get in on the twelfth floor, he roughly pushes them out and stabs the “close door” button.

Craddock is down the fire escape and out into the searing light of the mid-morning sun in less than a minute, while Trina is running in the opposite direction, intent on finding Daphne as quickly as possible.

It is early afternoon in Vancouver and still raining, though Joseph Creston doesn't seem to notice as he peers across the city from his wife's room with a hint of a tear in his eye.

“How did she get like this?” he questions, turning to the doctor who is checking Janet's pulse.

“Years of neglect probably,” the doctor suggests, though he steps back, admitting that it could well be self-induced.

“Self-induced?” questions Creston.

“Eating disorders; depression; general mental problems; self-loathing,” the white-coated medic suggests, running off a list of possibilities. “Anything ring a bell?”

“Probably,” admits Creston. “I don't think she really thought she was good enough for me.”

“And was she?”

The question seems to take forever to sink in. “Good enough?” repeats Creston eventually, and then finally answers, “Financially, we were miles apart. It didn't bother me, but I think she found my family a little daunting.”

“Well,” shrugs the doctor. “It's not unusual to find the in-laws overwhelming. Was there anything else?”

The death of the children seems to have slipped Creston's mind as he seriously ponders the question, leaving Mike Phillips, who has quietly sidled into the room behind the visitor's back, shaking his head perplexedly.

“Ah, Mr. Creston,” says the officer seeming to arrive with his notepad in hand. “I was hoping to catch you.”

“Is there something I can help you with, Inspector?”

“Yes. I just need a statement.”

“But I don't know anything.”

“Formality, sir. I'm sure you understand.”

“In case she dies, Inspector,” says Creston harshly. “Is that what you're saying?”

Phillips' cellphone saves him. “Excuse me a moment,” he says, taking the call.

It's Trina, breathless. “Mike, he's in Hawaii,” she shouts excitedly. “Craddock is in Hawaii using the name Robert Davies.”

“Hang on,” says Phillips with a wary eye on Creston, and then he excuses himself, saying, “I'll be back in a second, sir.”

“You are brilliant, Trina Button,” says Phillips once he's in the corridor. “Now go to the nearest police station, tell them what you know, and get them to call me, all right?”

“Right, sir. Roger, wilco, sir.”

“It's Mike, Trina. Don't get carried away.”

“OK, Mike.”

“Now, sir,” says Phillips returning to question Creston. “You were telling me how you knew that your wife had been at Mr. Craddock's house. Would you mind explaining that again — just for the record?”

While Inspector Phillips waits for Creston to try to worm his way out of that question, he is mentally preparing the next: “Are you psychic, or was it just a very lucky coincidence that you happened to arrive in Vancouver before we knew that Craddock had kidnapped her?”

It takes half an hour for Trina and Daphne to get through to the smartly dressed Polynesian officers that a wanted man is in their midst, thanks largely to Trina's over-excited inability to focus on one thing at a time. Beautiful, Craddock, guinea pigs, dead babies, banana sandwiches, and religious freaks all get confused in a gushing tale that runs the officers around in circles.

In the end, Daphne shuts Trina up with a scowl and starts from the beginning.

It take another hour for enough men to be rounded up to surround the inexpensive hotel, and by the time that a passkey opens the private eye's door, the fugitive is on a small plane bound for the volcanoes of Hawaii's Big Island.

“Now what?” questions Daphne, surveying the hastily abandoned room.

“We could always go catch some breakers,” suggests Trina with a grin.

Almost half a world away, not far from the Eiffel Tower, David Bliss is dreaming of Yolanda as his mind prepares for
his return to St-Juan-sur-Mer. But the anguished spectres of past centuries surrounding the beautiful, though seemingly malevolent, Château Roger become entangled with her image and drive him out of bed much earlier than his alarm clock planned.

“I don't really want to go back,” he told Samantha the previous evening. “There's too many memories there.”

“Warm memories?” queried his daughter.

“Very,” he said.

“In that case go back; think of the good times, remember what you had. It'll spur you on to finish your book and get her back again.”

“Thanks, Sam,” he said, cheering, and he meant it.

Now, with his bags packed and — unlike Craddock — his hotel account settled, he still has two hours before the first southbound train. His suitcase drags heavily as he struggles along the deserted platform, tempting him to turn north and walk away from his ghouls — the masked man, the massacred resistance fighters, and even Yolanda — but he shakes off his fears, driven by the knowledge that their souls will be forever lost should he fail in his resolve.

As Bliss's day begins in France, another marathon is winding down for Mike Phillips in Vancouver.

“There is something very odd going on here,” he confesses once he's gathered his team together for a late-night debrief. “This big-shot Creston knows a lot more than he's letting on.”

“He hasn't left her room all day,” pipes up one of the surveillance officers.

“I know,” says Phillips. “But he's on the phone non-stop.”

“Can we bug him?”

“Cellphone,” says Phillips throwing his hands wide, knowing the difficulty of tapping into digital radio waves. “Anyway, we'd need a warrant and we've got nothing to go on.”

“So,” asks one of the sergeants, “what's his connection with that religious joint up in the mountains?”

“That's what I'd like to know. Get onto it in the morning will you? Have a word with Zelke, the cults and sects guy, see what he's managed to dig up.”

Wayne Browning may have a vault full of skeletons, but unearthing them will take more than a lone specialist officer. Since Trina's visit to Beautiful the pharisaic religionist has been weeding out all reference to Creston and his enterprises and building a pyre.

“What about Craddock, boss?” pipes up another officer as the debriefing closes in on midnight.

“He's on the run again. Honolulu was the last sighting, but he could be anywhere by now.”

“And the Thurgood woman?”

“I suppose she's technically the Creston woman now,” explains Phillips. “She'll probably make it.”

“Some good news then.”

“Yeah. Although I've given orders that she's not to be left alone, even for a second, with her husband.”

“You think he might pull the plug?”

“There's something fishy about him,” admits Phillips, although he has nothing solid. However, the late-night call from a Scotland Yard chief superintendent, apparently acting on the executive's behalf, doesn't take away any of the smell. “This guy has got clout,” Phillips continues to his crew. “Big clout, but I'm just not sure which side of the fence he's on.”

Joseph Creston has lost steam and has finally fallen asleep, slumped into an armchair by his wife's bed in a luxury room. “I want her to have the very best at whatever cost,” he told the hospital administrator earlier, but the man shook his head.

“This isn't America, Mr. Creston. Everyone gets the same treatment here regardless of ability to pay.”

“Right, I understand,” he replied, but the administrator coughed to indicate that he wasn't finished.

“The only problem is that, legally, it seems your wife is not registered as a Canadian resident.”

“She's been here forty years.”

“I'm aware of that, but she's never registered or made contributions.”

“What are you saying?”

“Well, naturally we'll treat her, but there may be a question of payment.”

“Oh,” said Creston catching on. “Maybe I could make a small charitable donation.”

“You could, but only if you want to.”

“Say a quarter of a million dollars? How does that sound?”

“Qua… qua… quarter of a million?” the administrator stuttered.

“All right,” Creston cut in and watched the man choke, “let's make it a half million. I'm sure there's some vital piece of equipment you could use in Janet's care.”

Nothing has changed in Bliss's apartment on his return. The warm memories of Yolanda in his bed are instantly chilled by the knowledge that she is no longer here and may never be here again. “What if she marries him?” he worries as he peers over the balcony and finds the single lemon still on the grass, but then he pulls himself together.
She wouldn't do that
, he tells himself.
She admitted that he didn't really love her, not like me. But what if he insists, just to spite me, just to make sure I can't have her?

“Keep writing,” Samantha's voice in his mind tells him. “Keep writing and do it quickly. Get it done and send it to her before she makes the biggest mistake of her life.”
Craddock, alias Robert Davies, has slipped under the radar of the Hawaiian police department and is working his way towards the very edge of Polynesia as Daphne and Trina take the evening off in Waikiki.

A grassy beachside stage, overhung with banyans and loaded coconut palms, hosts a ukulele band and a trio of hula dancers as the sun turns to a fireball and burns a hole in the Pacific. The fiery spectacle stops the musicians and they turn, together with the audience, to applaud the celestial show before picking up their swaying rhythm again.

“Who would like to hula?” cries the bandleader, and Daphne is not at all surprised when Trina is plucked out of the crowd to end up on stage in a grass skirt.

“Come on, Daph,” shouts the exuberant Canadian as she takes the spotlight with a perversion of hula that somehow combines elements of breakdancing, the Twist, and kick-boxing. The audience goes wild, but the band-leader throws up his arms and his ukulele in despair.

“Boy, that was great,” screeches Trina with her baseball cap on backwards as she comes off stage, and the two women head to the international market where vendors switch back and forth between English, Cantonese, and the local pidgin as they push “local” souvenirs made almost entirely in China.

Fendi, Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Armani all have glitzy stores backing on to the beach, but carbon copies of most of their products can be found on the market stalls just a pebble's throw away. Ten-dollar RayBans, twenty-dollar Rolexes, and a thousand other glassy knock-offs sit side by side with glossy fool's gold and tempt the wary and unwary alike.