Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island Read online

  He returned to his desk. Four more grant applications before dinner.

  The moment Kyra awoke, she felt irritated, again, that there was no morning flight from Bellingham to San Juan. She decided right then to cancel the afternoon reservation and take the ferry instead. She ate breakfast while she packed. Friday Harbor social life was surely casual, all the more so in August. So, jeans, shorts, into the suitcase. Bathing suit? Why not. Two skirts, blouses, a dress, sneakers, low heels. She’d wear her sandals—

  An association rising. Summer clothes meant this was summer, right? And-in-summer-you-need-a-ferry-reservation-for-your-car, right? Right. She called. Too late for the 8:30, the 10:35 went only as far as Orcas Island, the 12:35 stopped at Lopez and turned around, and the 2:40, which wouldn’t get her in till 3:45, was fully booked anyway. At least she hadn’t canceled her flight.

  So. An extra morning. How to fill the time. Noel always used his time so damn well. What would he do with a morning in Bellingham? In Nanaimo, while he waited? She could go shopping, buy a wispy new dress so she’d look good for Noel and convince him to give her the sperm she needed to make a baby.

  Not effing likely. He’d remain obdurate. What could she do. Time to think of another donor? Yeah, but who? This business of finding a father, way more complicated than it should be. Some man she’d known in the past? She didn’t want any casual ex-partner, someone she’d given up on—or worse, who’d given up on her. But better those than one of her ex-husbands; gawd! Vance the wife-beater, no way. Even more no way, Simon; he’d killed himself. And Sam, way too much of a moralist; she wouldn’t want a kid with those genes. An anonymous donor found for her by the Perlman Institute? Somehow that grossed her out. Like plagiarized sperm? She giggled. Aha! Did that mean she’d started thinking about their case? A case at a university. And at least academic misdoings wouldn’t put them in danger. But who’d have thought any of their other cases would have either?

  Back to it, Kyra. The donor. Only Noel will do.

  No, not only Noel. He was smart, good-looking, healthy. So were plenty of other men. But she trusted Noel. Did she not trust other men? No one she could think of, right now. So what was it? Afraid of an unknown man’s sperm? Having suddenly thought this, it felt like a real explanation to her. Afraid. Knowing this, did it make her feel better? That she didn’t know.

  Distraction. She needed to be distracted. Four hours before her flight. Her juggling balls lay beside the suitcase: take them? But right now she had no choices to make, so no decisions to juggle into existence. The balls had helped her often in the past: keep three or four in the air, each labeled with a possible option. The one she held at the end guided the way. Sure, why not. But why this bit of reluctance? Was she outgrowing juggling? Hope not.

  She made space for her toilet kit in the suitcase, hairbrushes, threw in two more T-shirts, a sleeveless top, two blouses. Her pistol, in a white plastic bag, she wrapped into her pajamas for protection. Couple of extra bras. The mace she enfolded in a light camisole—criminal to carry, but the law was blurrier about its role in a suitcase. A few pads and tampons, just in case her timing was off—since she’d lost the fetus, hard to tell. Now she knew she’d have kept it, even though it had been the result of a speed-dating affair. Anyway, it’d all be moot if she could convince Noel what his role had to be.

  The phone rang. She glanced at the screen. Northwest Sky Ferry? She picked it up, listened. “Damn!” she said, and then, “Okay, nothing I can do, right?” and slammed the phone down. Leaving half an hour late. She’d have preferred to learn that when she got to the airport. Wrong.

  Okay, really. What would Noel do? She knew the answer without much reflection. He’d find out what he could about San Juan Island.

  She remembered a state tourist office a block from her favorite Seattle’s Best coffee bar. Noel would just start up his computer and get online; she saw herself as a field person. She drove, the morning already too hot to walk. At the office a pleasant crew-cut young man who had never been to San Juan gave her a handful of brochures, a stylized map, and a copy of the San Juan County News. At the coffee bar she ordered a double latte and opened the newspaper. The fall hazardous waste roundup had been rescheduled. Report from the ferry advisory committee. A Council meeting scheduled, once again not in Friday Harbor. Earthquake and tsunami preparedness information was now available at the Council office. Right. She’d save the brochures for the airport.

  She did buy a new dress, less than wispy but long and draping, cream with coral piping on the low-cut bodice. At home it went into the suitcase, further protection for pistol and mace. No need for the computer; Noel never left home without his. She had her phone and iPad.

  On the way to the airport she picked up a sandwich. She parked in the long-term lot. At the Northwest Sky Ferry desk, a woman told her the pilot had a tail wind, they could leave on time, they’d been holding the plane for her, hurry and get on please, she shouldn’t keep everyone waiting. None of which contributed any lightness to Kyra’s mood.

  She needed to wind down. So she spent the time not looking down at the play of gray-green islands and the sparkling white-flecked strait but reading about San Juan. She wondered if Noel had researched the Pig War between the English and the Americans. The propeller-powered twenty-two-seater landed softly after an uneventful ride. Arriving informed, she was.

  Joseph Martin, director of EST-K-Sum, waited for the phone call. He had founded EST-K-Sum only six years ago, but already they were the third largest supplier of information technologies, first and foremost for the CIA, but also for the DoD and the Department of Homeland Security, the DHS. These three organizations together annually invested twenty-six billion dollars in EST-K-Sum. As a venture capital firm, they produced no technologies of their own but sought out information technology created by others. They focused on software.

  Martin stared out his office window. In the distance rose the powerful thin tower of the Washington Monument. Below him, humans scrambled like insects. It was essential that he acquire the rights to this piece of technology the like of which the world had not seen before. It depended on this telephone call.

  The negotiations had begun weeks earlier. The contact had explained the nature of the Rossini Project. Yes, Joseph Martin was extremely interested. Excited, though nothing of this entered his voice. How Rossini had come to produce this complex of technologies Martin didn’t ask—he’d purchase the package as it came. But no deal had yet been made. Martin had consulted with his market representatives. He needed to be confident the buyers were in place, how much they would offer, and over what period of time. These issues were now close to settled. On that end.

  The similarity of the Rossini Project to another, brought to him by a distorted phone voice two weeks ago by someone calling himself Edgar Vaillancourt—the details arrived the next day by courier—astounded Martin. Whatever, he wanted the rights to both these projects. The project Vaillancourt represented would soon be available, he’d been told. As for Rossini, he claimed he was uninterested. His lack of a sense of the consequences bordered on the obscene. Even after the mention of a sum of money far larger than any Rossini could dream of. Martin would have to try again. More forcefully.

  Martin’s telephone rang, the direct line. Name and number of source blocked. He had already given instructions to one of his experts: when the call came in, it must be traced. Though he desperately wanted this product, he had an aversion to dealing with people he didn’t know. He picked it up. A mechanical voice said, “Hello.”

  He recognized the voice by its alteration: Vaillancourt. “Hello again. I hope you are well.”

  “I am prepared to tell you that I’ll have the carbon structures and the algorithms in place for you in less than a week.”

  “We’ll look forward to that,” Martin said.

  “The money will be transferred at the moment of the exchange. I need to tell you, there are other potential buyers. I will be back to you in seven days, at just this tim
e.” The line went dead.

  What other buyers? Was the seller going to turn this into a bidding war? There’d been no mention of any interested others. Till now. Who? Germany? Not likely. China? India, possibly. Probably not the Japanese; they’d have less use for it.

  He picked up the office line, pressed 44. “What did you get, Jim?”

  “Too short a call.”

  “Damn.”

  “From inside the country, though. We’ll try again when they call back. Setting up the exchange will take longer.”

  “Okay.” He put the phone down. He wanted to know where they were located before the exchange happened.

  Noel had shifted into a short-sleeved shirt and gray summer flannels. He left the house at 1:45. First he’d driven into Friday Harbor to pick up tonic and some limes; Kyra would expect that with her vodka. Then he drove out to the airport and parked in an ample lot which was nearly full, fifty cars easily. Lotsa San Juaners flitting back and forth to the mainland, he figured, maintaining a car here and another there. He stepped inside the long, low, glass-fronted terminal. Handsomely done but strange to find a landlocked airport on an island. Back home, islands were serviced by float planes. He figured these San Juan folk must prefer their terra firma. But he believed strongly in float planes: safer. In an emergency, you could land on any body of water.

  At the airline desk, he asked if Kyra’s flight was on time. And why should it not be, the attendant chirped. He explored the terminal. The runway, he learned, was nearly 3,500 feet long, limited to a weight of 12,500 pounds of incoming—and presumably outgoing—traffic. Also available, space for forty-five small planes to tie up. Which, he guessed, explained the large number of cars in the lot; life gets simplified with your own aircraft parked between your two motor vehicles.

  Earlier, after leaving his breakfast place, he’d checked in again at the Chamber of Commerce. The same young woman with the black hair sat at a desk behind the counter, still smiling. “Hi there,” she said. “You find your way to the university okay?”

  “I did, yes. But I need your help again.”

  “Of course.” The smile broadened, and warmed.

  “I’m trying to find someone I know who lives here on the island. His name, if you can believe it, is Spider Jester, and—”

  She cut him off by laughing for a couple of seconds. “Oh, I know Spider.”

  “Oh? Great. You think his name is funny?”

  “Oh no. I think it’s first-rate. We were in high school together. In fact he took me to the senior prom.”

  “Ah,” said Noel. These island towns, everybody knows everybody. Handy. “Then you know where he lives?”

  “I do indeed. With his parents in Roche Harbor, at the north end.” She gave Noel his address. “A big white house a couple of minutes from the village.” She took a brochure like the one she’d given him yesterday and spread it flat, map side open. With a red pen, she circled Rouleau Road. “You can’t miss it.”

  “You have his phone number too?”

  She giggled. “I think I can remember that.” She wrote it on the blue water of Haro Strait.

  Noel had thanked her, returned to his car and called the number. No, a woman’s voice told him, Spider wouldn’t be back till about four.

  Now, outside on the runway, a two-prop plane approached the terminal and slowed to a stop. A woman in overalls rolled a set of stairs to the plane’s near side. A door opened and passengers descended, Kyra the ninth. He waved but she likely couldn’t see him through the glass. At last she was in, broke into a smile, and walked quickly his way. She looked well, he thought; that yellow top and the white jeans fit her perfectly. Now she was giving him a hug. “Hiya, partner,” he said.

  “Yeah, good to be working together again.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Have to wait for my luggage.”

  Which came off the plane quickly. They marched out to Noel’s car, the new Honda Civic, replacement for the Civic that had been totaled. The insurance company had come through nicely. Neither of them spoke of any of this now.

  “So tell me, what do we know?”

  He put the car in gear and laid out for her where the investigation had gone so far: friendly fellow, this Jordan; no hard matches for his novella on the Internet; hung out at a bar and restaurant called Thor’s; and a waiter there, Tom, mentioned a possible girlfriend, Susanna—no chance yet to follow up on her. Supper tonight at their client’s home.

  “And what’s he like?”

  “Pleasant guy. Affable. He and I had dinner together last night.” Noel chuckled. “He’s getting a divorce. Peter’s thinking he might be gay.”

  “Ah,” said Kyra. “Peter.”

  He took his eyes off the road for a moment and glanced her way. “Ah?”

  “Is he attractive?”

  Noel stifled a sigh. “You’ll see for yourself at supper.”

  Kyra smiled.

  Noel said, “You want to go to the place we’re staying, get unpacked, lie down for a while?”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “Around four, have a talk with Spider Jester, friend of the alleged plagiarist.” He waited. No response. “You coming?”

  “Sure. That’s why I’m here. Let me dump my bag at this house that”—small smile—“Peter is loaning you. Where does this Spider live?”

  They drove onto the Morsely campus. Kyra found the Mansion impressive and said so. They drove on. Noel parked and took her suitcase into the house. She decided on the bedroom with a regular bed, not bunks, thanks. She wondered if Noel was personally interested in their client.

  Back in the car, he showed her on his map where they were going.

  “Oh hey,” she said, “right past English Camp.”

  “What’s that?”

  Very satisfying to know something about this island that Noel didn’t. “That’s were the British had their fortifications in the Pig War.”

  “Oh yeah.” He stopped at the T, then turned left. “I’ve forgotten the details.”

  So she told Noel about a British pig rooting up a just-planted potato crop belonging to an American farmer named Lyman Cutlar. In 1859. San Juan Island, then called Bellevue, was maybe owned by the British, but given the confusion of a treaty signed thirteen years earlier, farmed by whoever was there. Cutlar complained about the pig to the British Authority, the Hudson’s Bay Company, but they did nothing about the grievance and the pig continued to steal Cutlar’s potatoes. So Cutlar shot the pig. Much unrest between the British and the Americans. Then the governor of British Columbia sent a warship to San Juan in support of the Hudson’s Bay officials, who demanded Cutlar be punished. So an envoy from the American president convinced both sides that the island be divided into two camps at opposite ends of the island, Americans south, British north. Life continued over the next few years because the Americans had found themselves in a much larger and bloodier strife, another division between North and South. On San Juan, peace prevailed. In the end, both sides agreed that binding arbitration should decide the fate of the island, and brought in the German kaiser, Wilhelm I. In 1872, thirteen years after the pig had gobbled down the potatoes, the kaiser gave the island to the Americans. “So there’s still an English camp and the American one. In the sixties they became two parts of a national park. I’d kind of like to see both.”

  Noel checked his watch: 3:35. “If there’s time.” Little desire to be a tourist today. And they had to be at Peter’s at 6:30. Let her judge for herself whether the client was attractive.

  Wold Road became Boyce, which took them onto West Valley Road. Minutes later Kyra said, “Hey, there’s English Camp!” Pleased with herself.

  “Just where the map said it should be.” He drove past the entrance, onward toward Roche Harbor Village.

  “We’ve got to check it out later.” She leaned back in her seat and watched Noel’s face. His determined-to-get-on-with-business look.

  Noel glanced at the clock. Nearly 4:00,
in time for Spider Jester’s return home. Given that it took about half an hour to drive the length of the island, they’d have a couple of hours before they were expected at Peter’s. Might be time to stop at that camp on the way back. A right on Harbor Road, a left on Rouleau. Just as the Chamber woman had said, a large white house. With red shutters beside each of the windows. He parked beside a white picket fence with a gate protecting the driveway, and they got out. No cars parked in the drive.

  A cement pathway led to the front door. The grass on either side had gone brown, as had several bushes along the façade. Up two steps to a small landing, the wood once painted gray, now faded or gone bare. Noel pushed the doorbell. Inside chimes played “My Dog Has Fleas.” A shuffling sound and the door opened. A large woman in brown pants and a faded Disneyland T-shirt faced them, her mouth set hard. “Yes?”

  Noel introduced himself and explained that he’d phoned; he wanted to talk to Spider Jester.

  “Well you better come in. He’s not home yet. I’m his mother, May Jester.”

  Noel introduced Kyra. To her, May Jester smiled, transforming her face. “Welcome, dearie.” She led them into a parlor. “Will you have some tea?”

  At ten minutes to five, Spider Jester still had not appeared. May Jester had excused herself and gone off to her study—she needed to finish writing the minutes of last week’s Museum Society meeting and send them to everyone over the Internet; Spider kept saying she must move at least into the twentieth century. Kyra and Noel had sat and chatted, paced and chatted, Kyra increasingly irritated.

  “He didn’t know we were coming,” Noel said.

  “Maybe not, but it still pisses me off.”

  Somewhere a phone rang. A couple of minutes later, May Jester appeared. “Sorry, that was Spider, he’s meeting some friends this evening and staying at the south end. You maybe can find him at Thor’s, it’s right in—”