The Always Anonymous Beast Read online

  “Mmmm,” I said enigmatically. “We’ll see.”

  “You’re sure you won’t change your mind?” Tonia asked as I dropped her at the address she gave me—a little house across from the beach on Dallas Road.

  “Maybe later,” I told her. “For coffee and dessert.” And a little wringing of Tonia Konig’s neck.

  She smiled at me, and I realized that wringing was not what I had in mind for this particular neck. Fortunately, she got out of the car at that moment and walked toward the house, thus sparing me the effort of further poetic recitations. Those efforts were getting tedious, and I have never been noted for my iron self-control. Besides, something was happening here. Just what I wasn’t sure. I groaned a little as I backed the MG out of the driveway. Professionalism, Caitlin, I reminded myself. Next thing you know, you’ll be pawing the turf. Right, I agreed again. Professionalism.

  With difficulty, I wrenched my thoughts from Tonia to Val. That was good for a massive infusion of guilt. Val and Tonia were lovers; Val was my paying client. What are you thinking about, you dumb broad, I asked myself irritably. I pointed the MG toward Beacon Hill Park and drove along by the dark sea, brooding, my burgeoning concupiscence neatly nipped in its steamy bud.

  Chapter Seven

  The television newsroom was a scene of controlled chaos. It was almost airtime and harried young men and women were scurrying back and forth to and from the control room with videotape cassettes and sheaves of paper. Valerie and her co-anchor — a pleasant looking redhead named Guy McLeod—sat in their places at the newsroom set, having their makeup applied by a willowy young man in a cerise shirt.

  “Can I help you?” a pleasant female voice behind me asked.

  I turned around. She looked to be about seventeen, with a short blonde crewcut on top, and longer hair in back. Conservative punk. I looked more closely. Nope, the back was definitely orange. I amended my opinion about conservative.

  “I’m Mimi Angstrom, script assistant,” she told me, showing about a pound of aluminum braces on her teeth. My God, she looked young.

  “Val invited me to watch,” I said, fibbing a little. “I don’t know where to sit.”

  “Oh,” Mimi said in surprise. “This is really Val’s day to have guests, isn’t it?”

  My stomach tightened a little. “Is it?”

  “Yeah. Know that man over there?”

  I looked where she was pointing. Off to one side, out of everyone’s way, a prosperous looking, beefy man sat in a canvas chair well behind the cameras.

  “No, who is he?”

  “Baxter Buchanan,” she said somewhat sarcastically, apparently emboldened by the fact that I was not a close friend of the Buchanan family. “He of the shiny black Jaguar. Do you know his license plates say WINNER?”

  I stored this bit of information away for future use. “Does he drop in like this often?”

  She nodded. “Just to keep Val on her toes, I guess. He’s pretty jealous.” She found me a chair, and I sat against the back wall. Mimi perched on an enormous roll of cable and scowled at Buchanan.

  I decided to see what other bits of information she might be willing to divulge. “Jealousy,” I sighed, arching my eyebrows meaningfully. “That kind of thing can be a real drag. Poor Val.”

  She nodded her head vigorously, glad to have found an ally. “He may be an MLA and all, but he’s a real turd,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. I guessed she had tangled with old Winner more than once.

  “Mmm,” I agreed. “Val deserves better.”

  “You bet she does! That pudgy little creep thinks he owns her. He only drops in like this to see if he can catch her screwing the sound man. Or the makeup boy.” She looked up to see someone waving frantically at her. “Oops. Gotta go.” She launched herself off the cable.

  “The always anonymous beast,” I said without thinking.

  “What?”

  “Oh, sorry. That’s a line from a poem. The husband has an overactive imagination and sees potential adulterers everywhere. But his wife is really innocent—there is no adulterer—and so the always anonymous beast is the husband’s jealousy. Sort of like Baxter and Val.”

  “I like it,” she said. “Beastly Baxter Buchanan. But you know, Val’s never given him any reason to act the way he does. Even if she did have the hots for someone else—and who could blame her—she’d never sneak around like he thinks she does. The lady has too much class. Listen, I really hafta run.” She trotted across the studio, leaving me to my solitary contemplation of the uxorious Baxter.

  So he was jealous, was he? Well, Val had told me as much. But whereas his suspicions had previously been groundless, now things were different. At least I presumed they were. Val and Tonia hadn’t seemed especially warm towards each other when I had seen them together last night, but they had been lovers at one time. Or had they? What did the letters really say, anyhow? I realized I didn’t know. How much did Val have to be truly guilty about? For all I knew, the two of them may have just held hands and looked soulfully into each other’s orbs. If so, that would have been Val’s style, I guessed. Somehow, Tonia didn’t seem the sort to put up with that kind of self-denying nonsense. Well, that would account for the awkward atmosphere around them. I decided I needed to know what was going on. Or had gone on.

  I recalled Val’s guilty, furtive fear, and Tonia’s go-to-hell outrage. Two very different reactions to the prospect of being found out. Was it possible that Val, having discovered at her age a grande passion for another woman, had suddenly gotten cold feet? Perhaps she had decided she wanted out of the relationship before it had even gotten well started. I could understand that. The jump from heterosexuality to lesbianism entails a lot more than a leap into a different bed—it’s a leap into a different world. Maybe Val couldn’t cope. She seemed to have an excessively developed sense of what other people might think. In my experience, people are so fickle that even the juiciest scandal has a life of somewhat less than a week. But perhaps Val couldn’t stand living through that week. Or the changes that would come after. She would need an incredibly thick skin, a pretty well-integrated personality, and a lot of guts. Val seemed to me a little light in the guts department.

  So maybe Val had looked at the ramifications of loving another woman, and had been scared to death. So scared that she’d run for the hills? I was willing to bet on it. I liked the theory. It explained a lot. Even the Dark Lady sonnet Tonia had asked me about, which I guessed hadn’t been an idle question.

  Well, I couldn’t sit here all night. Obviously, Val hadn’t met with any skaters. She seemed okay. And with hubby hovering near, what harm could possibly befall her?

  I got up and walked across the set. Val saw me coming and smiled a little crookedly. Guy McLeod shuffled his papers and made no effort to give us any privacy. He gave Val a sidelong look of resentment, and I smiled at what I saw. Oho, I thought. Playing second fiddle doesn’t agree with the young Mr. McLeod. Never mind that Val had been in this business fifteen years longer than he had. He resented her nonetheless.

  “Hello, Val,” I said neutrally, bearing in mind McLeod’s vibrating antennae. “Can I call you at home later?” I asked her. “I have some interesting information for you on that project we were discussing the other night. We should talk about it.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, and I could see by what massive effort of will she was keeping herself under control.

  “I’ve been expecting to hear from you,” she told me cryptically. “But I may be tied up for a few days. I’m not sure. If I’m not, I’d like to get together with you.” She looked directly at me, and her composure slipped, just a little. She was a desperately frightened woman, I realized. I wondered if the presence of the possessive Buchanan had anything to do with her state of mind. Probably.

  “No problem,” I said reassuringly. “I’ll be sort of tied up, too, but I can make time for you.”

  “Thanks, Caitlin,” she said. “I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

&nb
sp; I winked at her. Chin up, kid. She smiled weakly back. McLeod rustled his papers and looked smug. On the way across the set I took a little detour. I wanted a closer look at Baxter Buchanan.

  I circled around to one side, stepping over cables and dodging cameras, and arranged to pass in front of him.

  “Excuse me,” I said, forcing a smile as I momentarily blocked his view of Valerie. He blinked, seeming to come back to earth from some distant plane, and turned to me, his expression quite blank. At that moment Val laughed, and like a dog attuned to his master’s voice, Baxter swivelled back toward the set. And I saw something I was clearly not meant to see—the coals of a well banked range smoldering somewhere behind his eyes. But there was something else, too. Something quiet and gleeful and deadly. I stopped dead in my tracks. Where had I seen something like that before? Suddenly it came to me, and I felt as if some entity had touched the back of my neck with bared teeth. Marc Bergeron had looked like that. Buchanan turned to me slowly, and I saw the mask of normalcy fall back into place. The MLA from Okanagan South looked up and smiled.

  “No problem,” he said. I had already forgotten what action of mine he was responding to.

  I muttered something, and walked toward the door. Chilled to my bones, I made my way out to the MG, and locked myself in.

  As I drove back to Dallas Road, I made a mental note to find out whatever I could about Buchanan. Maybe he was just weird. Your standard overly possessive husband. But I was willing to believe what I had seen. A hunch? The Llewelyn prescience? Whichever. After a few minutes my flesh stopped crawling, and my stomach began to rumble. Real life asserting itself again. Coffee and dessert just wouldn’t do it, I decided, and pulled into McDonald’s with guilty thoughts of Yvonne. However, I managed to devour a Big Mac, large fries, and a chocolate milkshake without a twinge of regret. I think McDonald’s adds something to their food. Something that undermines all our good intentions. Something addicting. Ah well. I licked the last of the sauce off my fingers and sighed. Time for coffee, dessert, and the tail end of a rousing philosophic discussion. Oh goody.

  “Come on in,” a slim, grey-haired woman said, meeting me at the door. “Tonia told us you were coming. I’m Kay Allen.”

  “Caitlin Reece,” I said, stepping in gratefully out of the rain. Kay, an attractive fifty-year-old in black pants and heavy white fisherman’s knit sweater, locked the door behind me.

  “Everyone’s downstairs watching the movie,” she said.

  For one long moment I wondered if I was at the right house. What movie? I must have looked as uncertain as I felt, because she laughed a little and ushered me into the kitchen. A pot of coffee was just finishing its perk cycle, and like a good Pavlovian subject, I began to salivate. She checked on something in the oven, and a wonderful odor of cinnamon escaped. I suddenly decided I didn’t care if I was at the wrong house. I’d bluff.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she said, and I took a seat at the big pine table in the corner. “Coffee?”

  I nodded. “With milk, please.”

  She smiled and handed me a big white ceramic mug with a cobalt whale on it. The coffee smelled delicious. “There’s someone here who’d like to talk to you,” she said, looking me over with frank interest.

  “Oh?” I couldn’t imagine who.

  “Yes. Jan Principal. It’s her movie we’re watching. Lorimar bought one of her books.”

  I paused, the coffee mug halfway to my lips. “Jan?” I couldn’t believe it. The last time I had seen Jan had been ... how long had it been? I closed my eyes. Texada Island. Four years ago this month. I sighed.

  “Jan told us what you did for Lorraine Shaver.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Jan’s friend Lorraine had been my first client. Lorraine’s husband had kidnapped their three-year-old daughter. Lorraine had been half out of her mind with worry because the husband was an abusive, alcoholic bully from whom Lorraine had fled eleven months earlier. She was unwilling to go through the courts to get the child back because the husband threatened to expose her lesbian lifestyle. It was a no-win situation. Jan came to see me to ask for my legal opinion. After I explained that I was no longer working in the Crown Prosecutor’s office, I gave my legal opinion, and dispensed some free layperson’s advice, too—stay out of the courts, and send someone reliable to get the child back. Lorraine offered me the job. Once I satisfied myself that the child really would be better off with her, I took it.

  I made an equivocal noise.

  “Are you doing the same sort of thing for Tonia?” she asked, pale eyes sparkling with interest.

  “What did Tonia say?” I countered.

  Kay made a small moue of disappointment. “Only that you were...friends.”

  Friends? Ye gods. “Well...”

  “Well what? Caitlin Reece, at a loss for words?”

  “Jan!” I exclaimed.

  Kay disappeared into the lower part of the house, and Jan closed the door after her. She stood against it, looking at me. She hadn’t changed a bit. Tonight she was dressed in a black wool sweater, black pants, and boots. Her blonde hair had been recently cut in the long-layered shag that suited her so well. She looked like an Amazon, and I couldn’t help grinning.

  “Four years,” she said. “You know, I’ve been keeping myself informed about your exploits. Some of them have been pretty wild. Not bad, for someone who had retired from the human race at thirty-five,” she teased.

  “It’s all your fault,” I told her. “If you hadn’t come to hassle me that day, I might still be fishing. Have you learned how to swim yet?” I teased back.

  She shook her head. “Hell, no. I’m waiting for another smelly young ex-CP lawyer to come along and tackle me.”

  We laughed, and I thought how good it was to see her. I wished Texada Island closer, and myself less busy.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” she said.

  “I really am,” I told her. “Thank you.”

  “Good,” she said and we smiled at each other. “Pack a toothbrush and come over some weekend.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “I’d like that.”

  The door opened behind Jan, and Tonia emerged. She looked from Jan to me curiously.

  “Ready to go?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “I’ll just get my coat.”

  “Good luck,” Jan said, putting an arm around my shoulder and hugging me. “I mean that. Tonia’s a good person. I hope you can help her.”

  “I’m doing my best,” I said. “But so far that hasn’t been good enough.” I put my hands in my pockets and fiddled with my car keys. A sudden thought occurred to me. “Listen, Jan,” I said, lowering my voice. “I might want to talk to you. About Tonia. Are you going back to Texada tonight?”

  She shook her head. “I’m staying with Kay for a few days. Then I’m flying to Toronto. If you want to talk, it will have to be before Friday.”

  I had no wish to talk about Jan Principal, so I steered Tonia in another direction before she could ask any questions.

  “Does Baxter Buchanan know you?” I asked Tonia as we pulled out of the driveway of Kay’s house and onto Dallas Road.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Oh, I suppose he might have seen me on a talk show, or on the interview Val did with me. But it’s unlikely. I’ve never been to the apartment when he’s there. Which is seldom. He spends most of his time at the family farm in the Okanagan Valley, on the mainland.”

  “Lucky Val,” I said, recalling the way I had shivered when Baxter dismissed me. To my surprise, Tonia spoke my thoughts aloud.

  “If she doesn’t get away from him, he’ll do something really crazy,” she said feelingly. “He knows he can’t have her, but he doesn’t want to give her up to anyone else.”

  The dog in the manger syndrome. And from what I had seen of Baxter, he wasn’t about to let anyone else even close to the manger.

  I decided to ask the questions that had been bothering me about Tonia’s and Val’s relationship. What the hell—To
nia could only tell me to mind my own business. “Is Val leaving Baxter for you?”

  Tonia burst out laughing. “God, no! Sorry, Caitlin. No, it’s not like that. I’m very fond of Val, but I have no illusions that we could ever have had anything together. At one time we both thought it was possible, but maybe that was mostly wishful thinking. You see, Val’s suffering from a severe case of the guilts. She may or may not get over them.” She laughed again, a little bitterly. “The irony of it is that we haven’t done anything for her to feel guilty about. I think her attraction to me has simply served as a focus for a lot of guilt she’s been carrying around.”

  “Guilt about what?”

  Tonia shrugged. “About not being a successful wife. About not wanting to have children. About not wanting a life in her husband’s shadow. About loathing politics. About being more successful at her work than Baxter is at his. About being attracted to women.” She added the last point very softly: “About thinking she was in love with me.”

  “Hmm,” I replied. “That’s an awful lot of guilt.” I thought over what Tonia had said, and concluded that their relationship had never had a chance.

  “Now what?” I asked her. “For you and Val.”

  “First we sort out this blackmail mess. Then, if Val is still in one piece, we have to...conclude. Wrap it up. Maybe we can still be friends. Maybe not.”

  “Hmm,” I said again. So I had been right in my sensing something of the sort when I had seen them together. Well, first things first. Sorting out this blackmail mess, as Tonia put it. That, at least, was something I could understand.

  “Are you surprised?” Tonia said, breaking into my thoughts.

  It was my turn to laugh. “At what?”

  “At my cold and heartless analysis of the situation.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Damn it, Caitlin, you’re impenetrable,” Tonia said in exasperation.

  “No, I’m not,” I said, tiring of the image she seemed determined to create of me. Tough little thug. “You just haven’t found the chinks yet.”