white effervescence. Shogun spied a woman edging the surf like a tightrope walker and instantly ran forward, deaf to Holly’s cries. Everyone he met was a friend, a charming but annoying trait indicating a lack of control by the owner. “Sorry,” she said to the lady who was carrying a colourful golf umbrella. “Everything that looks like a stick must be one.”
“Border collies. Gotta love ’em. Smartest dogs in the world,” the woman replied, ruffling the dog’s fur, then setting off up the bank to a tiny driftwood cottage no bigger than Norman’s woodshed.
Open to debate, Holly thought, a matter of wiring, not problem solving. GSDs were the Einsteins of the dog world. Border collies were clever card-counters at a poker table, peeking out from under their green plastic eyeshades.
Shogun waded in and began herding waves, snapping and barking. The comic sight gave her the first laugh of the day. Along the shore, great mounds of seaweed had drifted in, kelp tangled like huge mounds of fat green spaghetti with bulbs at one end. A small tug miles out pulled a vast mat of chained logs. The captain chose his times with care. Serious wind and wave action could break the bonds and cause a shipping nightmare, not to mention the loss of tens of thousands of dollars of potential board feet.
She sat on a sun-bleached log and collected smooth white stones, placing them artfully as beachcombers often did, watching for the true prize, a piece of time-polished glass. The rote motions helped her think. Police work wasn’t all action. What if often helped, but that’s funny was an even better phrase. Who had given Angie the drugs? Would anything turn up at her house? If they found a meth lab in the bush, would that bring any answers? She shuddered, knowing that arrests often spread like a poisonous tide, revealing the rot underneath the pleasant surface. But progress beat stasis.
Shogun trip-tropped toward her, something odd in his mouth. His jaws were working like a baby’s with a soother. “What’s that?” Suddenly she froze. It was a splintery rib bone, probably from someone’s picnic. “Leave it!” She might be driving to the vet instead of forking down mac and cheese.
He caught her excitement and gamboled down the beach, glancing back in an insolent dare. She followed, tripping on the cobble, angrier by the moment, mostly at herself for a lack of vigilance. Finally, a wave caught his small body, and he dropped his morsel, eyes slitted and his prick ears floppy with water. She waded in, soaking her feet, and grabbed his collar. “You’re under arrest for possession of a controlled substance.” “Biting” him with her hand as his mother would have, she gave him a gentle shake to let him know who was in charge. “And you’d better not have swallowed anything. Ve haf vays.”
Seven
Whitehouse called that morning. “I had to stay at the Didrickson house until after eleven. Jesus. I hate that Sooke Road. The berm is crumbling between a couple of rock cuts, and the oncoming jackasses are over the line. I deserve danger pay,” he said.
Holly wished that she’d been invited to the search. “No surprises in her room, then?”
“Not one secret diary.” He paused. “Ferreting around in underwear drawers like a pervert. I didn’t sign on for this.”
Holly suppressed a smile at the more human image. “If you’re sure. I can go over it myself. Maybe a woman—”
“What do you mean, ‘sure’? Listen here. I’ve done a hundred similar searches. There was no sign of drugs of any kind. Are you suggesting that I take the Canine Unit over there to sniff the place out?”
Did dogs include crystal meth in their repertoire? Was this his idea of a joke? “Of course not. What about her computer?” Safe to assume every teenager had one.
His tone was gruff. “That’s the first place I looked. Her password for booting was automatic, so no problem. Doesn’t look like she had anything to hide.”
“Proves that she trusted her father. He seemed like a decent guy.”
“My kids zipped their lips around me. But while they lived in my house, I gave their rooms a thorough and unannounced search every month. Kept them honest, I’ll tell you.”
Holly couldn’t imagine her parents in this invasion of privacy. What kind of relationship did he have with his children? And where was his wife? “What about her history?”
“Just swim stuff. Didn’t even belong to Myspace or Facebook.” He paused. “That’s unusual in itself. She was no joiner, I guess. Her word-processing program was used for school assignments.”
“So she was serious and didn’t waste time. That fits with what we know. How about the Favourites command?”
A deep sigh came over the lines. She could sense him drumming his knobby fingers. “Winter Olympics. Swim information. University websites like Calgary and Waterloo. Nutrition. Crystal Meth B.C.”
“What?” Hair on the back of her neck prickled.
“She was a contributor. Signed in to the forums, even under her own name. Her posts were extremely anti-meth. That’s what the website’s for. To help addicts and inform the public.”
“What about the password?”
He sniffed in disdain. “Angie had a tiny notebook with all her dedicated passwords. Good thing no one tried to clean out her bank account.”
Holly remembered a few classes from basic training. No computer geek herself, she knew enough to protect herself from phishing. “Erased files can be retrieved.”
“Are you telling me that? I collected the hard drive to send in to Forensics. That’ll take another week.” He let a moment pass. “A waste of time. All we’re doing is looking for a smalltime pusher or someone who passed on this crap. This case has had all the resources it deserves.”
She told him about the memorial service. “Fine, fine,” he said before hanging up. At least he hadn’t asked her again about whether she’d contacted the staff. Clearly he was moving on.
The secretary at Notre Dame said that Kim’s free period was at ten, same as Terry Grove’s. That gelled with the memorial service at eleven. Taking her car, Holly reached the Sooke limits, turned up busy Grant Rd, then over to Church past one of the few surviving farms in the core. A small herd of beef cattle grazed the stony ground, oblivious to the rampant development around them. A familiar old black bull with a broken horn raised his head and lowed. That’s when she realized that she was driving the same route that had taken her to high school for three years. An assembly line for the petty kingdom of girls.
Notre Dame Academy on Warren Street had capitalized on a strong Roman Catholic presence in the post-war period. It had been well supported by the timber and fishing barons who wanted their daughters safe nearby. When enrollment gradually dropped, not long after Holly had left, it went coed. Now the ballooning population of the Sooke area, with its cookie-cutter developments for younger people and their children, might inject new blood.
The Romanesque red brick building with white trim had two stories, a gymnasium at one end, and a fenced athletic field out back with a baseball diamond and soccer goal posts. In Holly’s day, the Saints soccer team had excelled. She remembered watching some of their games at Fred Milne Field. Opponents came from all over the province. Today a homemade sign read: “Game of the Year. Comox. Meet at the Log. Bring your helmut.”
She entered the building as a bell rang, signaling a period
