She Felt No Pain (16 page)

In an hour, she was driving past the town in all of its summer finery, flower baskets and bunting. The small former logging community had a healthy population of Natives and a thriving reserve. Like other parts of the island, it was becoming gentrified, huge summer homes going up for the wealthy as they took over cottage properties along Lake Cowichan. The first wave of three-storey condos had surfaced as if a Monopoly board game had come alive. With mall shopping in Duncan and Victoria only an hour away, the Warmlands community would get its share of retirees.

Travelling up Rice Road, named for a family that had been here before recorded time, she stopped at a familiar century cabin within a grove of apple trees. Memories of delicious fruits came flooding back. She’d bitten into many pallid imitators since. Stella had explained that the harvest had three seasons: early, mid-season and winter. Duchess and Melba varieties were best straight off the tree. From the Cox’s Orange Pippin and King, she made her famous hard cider and sold it in a roadside stand. And the winter Belle de Boskoop and Calville needed ripening in storage to enhance their flavour. Any tyro who imagined that all apples were Red Delicious was in for a pleasant shock.

Stella had five acres cleared for hay cutting and backing into the hills. A small barn and corrals helped manage her goat herd. A runty but perky white dog with snowy fur trotted out barking. It seemed to have fraternity with everything from Pomeranian to chow, spitz, husky and even poodle. Friendly but wary, it drew back from Holly’s outstretched hand. In the back seat, Boomer gave a bark and pawed the window, sticking his head out. “That’s enough, you. My car is sacred,” Holly said, opening the sun roof for ventilation and leaving the windows down. The day was mild, and a stiff breeze rustled the leaves, sending a rooster weather vane creaking slowly.

Out of the front door came Auntie Stella, brandishing a broom. “It’s you, sweetie. What is that dog you have with you? I hope not a male. We can’t have any lovemaking with Puq. She won’t be spayed until the end of the month. I’m bartering two wool sweaters with our vet.”

Holly nodded. “No worries. He’s in custody.”

Stella shook flour from her apron. She wore a generous gingham dress and a pair of soft moccasins. “So how do you like my new baby doll?”

The small dog had overcome its initial shyness and was rubbing its head on Holly’s leg. The blue pants didn’t take kindly to dog hair. Looking into the sharp brown-marble eyes was like reading a history book. “Who would have thought? Bringing the breed back from extinction. It’s better than
Jurassic Park.
”

Following Stella inside, Puq snuggled down on a comforter in a willow-wicker basket, head between her paws but her eyes tracking her mistress. The house had a wood cookstove in the kitchen and living space with a bathroom and two bedrooms in back. Stella laid a plate of seed muffins and a tub of fresh churned butter onto the large cedar-slab table with five hundred years of growth rings She took one for herself and slathered it. No one ever went hungry in Stella’s house, nor did she stint herself. Her first words jolted Holly back to reality and confirmed her own inadequacies. “What is the news about your mother?”

Holly swallowed a mouthful of her auntie’s aromatic cider. “I...well...I’m not making excuses, but...” From outside, an errant goat gave a protracted baaaaaaaaah.

Her auntie flicked a glance at the window then narrowed her round eyes at Holly. Though blearing lately with cataracts, they seemed to penetrate to her soul. Nobody put anything by Auntie Stella. If you didn’t have her good opinion in the community, you might as well leave town. “No? Listen to your own words. I’m not proud of you.”

Holly flushed, her appetite gone in seconds. She reached for the glass and saw that her hands were shaking, then clasped them in her lap. “But Auntie Stella, with a full-time job...it’s not like on television, where information comes at the push of a button.”

Before Holly could crawl like a guilty worm, Stella’s voice softened with the emollient of mercy. “That’s good that you’re working hard, making the island safe. But nothing is more important than your duty as a daughter. She would have moved heaven and earth for you. That was her job. This is yours.”

“I know.” Holly’s heart lost a beat, then picked up the pace. Was she mistaken, or did the cider have a kick?

“And much time has passed.”

“I did learn—”

Stella raised a hand that could part an ocean. “This morning I saw a deer track across the crimson sun. In the Warmlands is your mother’s ancestral home. Your journey starts here.”

A modern day shaman, her auntie had a gift. Though she was untutored in academic knowledge, her intuition and common sense helped her find lost children, rescue marriages and solve problems beyond the abilities of so-called geniuses. As a judge of people, she was peerless, never suffering fools gladly. For the last twenty years, she had headed the tribal council and pushed through countless incentives to nourish and succor her people. Holly gulped back a lump of anticipation.

Stella began slowly rocking, as if it helped her think. She picked up her needles and yarn and paused to consider her pattern. “This is the hub of the wheel. Your mother came here often in the course of her efforts to help her sisters. You were with her, sometimes, until you went away to school. That was part of a plan. On that you have not faltered.”

Memories were returning. Happy, painful, necessary. With her interest in the natural world, Holly had paid little attention to her parents’ jobs. Her father’s campus she had visited to use the library or go to concerts. Bonnie had taken her to work until she began school. Stella was right about the hub idea. Her mother must have used the area as a mid-island base. From that point, it was possible to drive north as far as Port Hardy or west to Alberni, Tofino or Gold River in less than a day, weather permitting. Many isolated communities remained on the island, most without doctor’s care and few with schools or libraries. Bonnie took the resources where they were needed.

“Is there anyone I should talk to?”

Stella pointed at her eyes. “You need to look first before moving. Even a deer knows that.” She was off on her allegories again.

“But I don’t know—”

“Your mother used my spare room as an office.”

Holly stood up, her body pointed toward the bedrooms. Why hadn’t she thought of this? Her mother may have acted like a one-woman travelling band, but she had paperwork, even with the confidentiality of her job. “Her records are here? Why didn’t you tell me?” She recalled her mother’s faithful Bronco, filled with boxes of files and supplies, everything she needed at hand. Holly could count the Christmas holidays they’d spent together on the fingers of one hand. What holidays meant to Bonnie was more alcohol to fuel domestic disputes, the saddest time of year.

Stella shook her head and tucked her knitting into a woven bag. “
Uw-wu
, no, don’t go so fast. Your mother left no more than a small box that she kept in a closet. I found it the other day. At my age, bending down is not a position I enjoy.”

“What was in it? Did you learn anything that would help locate her?” If only the SUV had turned up. But the vehicle had been old and of little use if recognized. It might have had its number filed, been sold on a casual basis, or perished in a junkyard crusher.

Stella waved her porky hand, knobbed with arthritis. “Seventy years of milking goats. Puddling in papers isn’t my strength. I like numbers no more than letters. And besides, do I look like such a meddler? I gave it a little shake for my own curiosity. Perhaps the box is empty...but it doesn’t feel so.”

“But surely—” Stella was handing the torch to Holly after so many years. How well she remembered the fatal week when her mother had failed to arrive at her destination. “Go back to school,” her father had protested a few days later, his voice hoarse with strain. “You can’t do anything more than the police. That’s what she would tell you herself.”

Holly had changed majors after the semester. The natural sciences held little interest for her when real life had interceded. Nor did she ask divine guidance. No fan of conventional religion, she found her cathedrals in the woods.

Stella rose and took Holly to a work room in back. Inside were a handsome carved whorl for spinning, two looms, a carding machine, knitting needles lined up in gallon pickle jars, and built-in racks of patterns. The wall held a dozen elaborate fetish masks, worth thousands of dollars in the native shops. Holly looked at the proud eagle, his craggy beak and determined stare. Now
that
could have been her totem. Anything but a helpless deer.

Stella knelt stiffly, opened a small closet and took a box from the fir-plank floor. “Give me a hand up, girl. Go to my room and sit on the bed. It may take awhile, or it may not. Either way, I have things to do.” The stuttering roar of a helicopter made them both turn toward the window. The trademark yellow of a rescue flight flew low, heading west. Possibly someone was in trouble along the West Coast Trail. Three or four times a summer, hikers often tumbled into crevices, or sprained an ankle and needed to be lifted out. Holly needed to finish up and return to her territory.

In Stella’s room, monastic except for a single bed and dresser along with a scent of rosemary from sprigs in a clay bowl, Holly sat on the wool blanket and opened the file box marked “Bonnie”. As she had finding out about her mother’s raven pendant, she felt something warm resonate inside her, a connection across the years and miles. How she wished that she could have convinced Bonnie’s lover to give it to her. She hesitated for a moment, afraid to continue. A diary? At least an itinerary for that fateful weekend?

Holly had been returning to UBC for her final year, and Bonnie had taken her to the ferry. “Be careful, Mother,” she had said, wearing the lovely beaded deerskin jacket she’d been given. “Sometimes I wish you drove a Hummer.” Travelling was risky on the north island. It was only September, but in the higher elevations, snow was possible. That the jacket had been stolen on the trip made her feel worse. She should never have left it “saving” her seat when she went for a coffee.

“My Bronco, my pony, will take me anywhere,” Bonnie had said, laughing at Holly’s concern. Her shiny black hair was pulled back with a leather clasp.

“I know you love your job. It’s just...”

“Better that you look after your father,” Bonnie said. “Life isn’t quite real to him. He’s always miles away in his little world. If he is as happy there as I am in mine, why should we complain?”

Gold River had been her destination, yet she had never arrived. A call from a motel in Campbell River before she headed west had been her last message to them. Praying with all her heart that something useful lay within, Holly opened the box. Instead of files, all she saw was a battered map of the island, a pack of index cards, a small piece of paper and a blank notepad. A sob left her lips. Why had Stella raised her hopes? Why hadn’t she opened it and saved Holly the first-hand despair? The answer was easy. Her great-niece was no longer a child.

The paper was a receipt from Otter Aviation, a small company which ran tourists around the interior of the island. Operating out of Chemainus, they flew float planes and a few fixed-wing machines. The receipt read “Bonnie Martin. One way flight to Williams Lake. September 13th, 20—. Two thousand dollars.” Holly whistled. Stiff fees, but what did anyone expect for private flights, perhaps at the last minute? Why Williams Lake in central B.C.? That made no sense. Her mother had been safe at home that night, a week before she had disappeared. The timeline had been so important to Holly years ago. She and her father had chewed over it, beaten it to death so many evenings with no results. So she hadn’t taken the flight. But why pay for it? Was that where some of the ten thousand dollars she’d taken from a joint account had gone? Not enough to establish a new life. Yet Bonnie had left several hundred thousand dollars of their mutual funds intact. Because two signatures were needed for such a transaction? Holly hadn’t thought about that before. Another of her mentor Ben Rogers’ corollaries about perfect crimes affirmed that there were only imperfect investigations.

Disappointed and confused, she picked up the notepad, half an inch thick, several pages torn off.
What could you tell me?
she thought, flipping through it like one of those cartoon pads where a character moves in stuttery fashion. Then as she turned to the light, she noticed indentations, as if someone had pushed down hard with a ballpoint on the previous sheet. Sometimes Victorian forensics trumped rocket science.

She took it to the kitchen, where Stella was peeling potatoes and humming to herself. “Do you have a pencil?”

Stella laughed, her eyes crinkling like shook foil. “The policewoman doesn’t even have a pencil?”

“We use ink in our notes and reports. I need a pencil to shade this. Something’s been written here.” Holly showed her auntie the notebook.

“So there
was
something useful. Let me get my glasses on.” Stella popped them onto her face, then rummaged in a drawer for a stub. “Here’s a tiny one. It even has an eraser.”

With Stella standing by and peering through her thick lenses, Holly sat and slowly shaded in the paper, her smile widening as she put the letters together.

“Flight confirmed. She leaves on the 13th at 10 p.m. Get the rest
of the money in twenties. Send taxi to McD an hour early. LS will
be there.”

It was her mother’s angular script, nothing like her father’s careful cursive. She’d thought faster than she wrote. Often Holly would have to ask her for a translation. These were notes to herself. Perhaps some of the last notes Bonnie had even written. She heard Stella grunt behind her then move to the table.

“Is Otter Aviation still in business?”
And who or what is LS.
McD could be a street or the golden arches.

“The Hamilton place? The older brother Bernie was killed in a crash over Denman Island. I think Phillip sold the business. What have you found? I couldn’t read that writing. Your mother never got better than a C in penmanship.” Stella put potatoes into a pan of cold water then dried her hands on her apron.