mistake. There’s no proof. Hundreds of people pass through. We don’t have a...what do they call those spy things?” He passed a hand through his thinning hair.
“Eyes in the sky. Closed circuit television.” In the driveway, a caterwauling emerged. Felines from the surrounding houses made the front lawn a combat area. “Give me a name. You must have your suspicions.”
He blew out a heavy breath. “Larry Gall. I’m sure he’s behind this nonsense. That’s why I never keep anything. Why let the idiot get to me?”
Shogun growled and raised a lid over one sleepy eye. She was becoming used to his grumblings. “So who the hell is Larry Gall?”
“He teaches social work at Camosun College, or so I presume he still does. He and your mother were quite...close, so some say. Activist causes brought them together. I wouldn’t be surprised if he goaded the police into...” He sucked at his tongue as if a bad taste lingered. “You know. Their investigation.”
She had another thought, but considered the phrasing carefully. “If they were...close, do you think that he had anything to do with her disappearance?” She refused to say death to her father. The lie kept hope alive.
“I can’t believe so, but you know me. I like to think the best of people, not imagine that they could harm others. She always spoke well of him. I respected your mother’s opinions on...most subjects. We were different, but we shared the important values.”
Bonnie had a temper, but she rarely meant the harsh words she said and calmed down later. Norman was slow to anger. But to protect what he held dear, nothing was beyond him. On one of their rare hikes, they’d met a cougar. Placing little Holly behind him, he’d raged and waved his arms, jumped up and down until the beast retreated. Then he sat on a stump and cried, shaking with relief. He’d saved their lives. She owed him one.
“Why didn’t you tell me then about Gall? Why let all these years go by?”
He shook his head slowly from side to side. “You were working so hard at your studies. You wanted to come home and help search, but I talked you out of it. It was just gossip. I’ve never even met him.” The hesitant look on his face made her sure that he was still trying to convince himself. “The man is harmless. He’s just a wounded beast, striking out at the only person left.”
“Even if he hasn’t made any threats, this is harassment. I’m going to talk to him.”
Norman folded his hands on his chest. “Don’t do that, my girl. Waste of time. He’ll never admit it...or perhaps he will. That would be like the man. Those kind think that they can save the world. Tell me, is it getting any better?”
Eight
Holly called the main number at Camosun and was routed to Gall’s department. The secretary told her that he had office hours every day at eleven. She took Sooke Road to the Island Highway, turned off at Hillside, and drove ahead to the Lansdowne Campus.
Once at the college, she parked and walked to the main building of the small enclave of four thousand students. Gall must feel like a large frog in this pond, she thought. Postmodern and utilitarian. Nothing like the stately halls of UVic a few miles away, where her father taught. Was Gall jealous of Norman’s prestige on the venerable university campus? To insiders, the hierarchy in post-secondary education was more than a matter of tenure or salary differences. University professors could be passport guarantors, while only an administrator in a college could sign the photo. “And they want to be called professors,” her father once said in a huff, rattling the paper as he read about a recent strike at the colleges. “Few have doctorates. Some have no degrees at all. Professors of welding indeed.” Her mother would have torn a strip off him for such elitism. For all Holly knew, she had.
Gall’s office was tucked away in a cranny at the end of a hall painted a psychedelic sunflower yellow and purple. A scribbled paper sign on the door read “Larry Gall. Social Work.” Posted nearby was his timetable with office hours highlighted in marker. Political cartoons taped on the wall featured George W. Bush, though a few involved the Prime Minister, to whose body were added horns, a tail and a long fork.
The door was closed, but she could hear vague music inside. Perky. Upbeat. Caribbean. Relaxing, sunny climes where fruit fell from the trees. She knocked.
“Come,” said a low voice.
On a quick assessment, she was surprised to see that Larry Gall was much younger than her mother, in his mid-forties even now. In opposition to her conservative, fussy father, his thick black hair was tied in a ponytail, and he wore chinos and a denim work shirt with a pelt of curly hair at the V. The bookshelves were crowded, and hanging baskets of spider plants and ivy competed for the sun through the institutional window. On the desk were requisite piles of marking and a CD case reading Songs of the Coffee Lands.
“Great music,” she said by way of opening the conversation. “Putamayo. Always cheers me up. Especially in the winter. Live here, you’ve got to make peace with the rain. Nirvana it’s not.” His lean face was brown and weather-beaten, as if he spent much time outside. A carved hiking stick with a silver knob leaned in the corner next to a battered pair of boots.
Holly gave the usual answer which helped islanders bond. “Don’t have to shovel it.”
He looked at her uniform, one corner of his thin mouth rising. “Speaking of shovelling, if you’ll pardon my French, you have me at a disadvantage. My name’s on the door. I don’t know yours, but you don’t look like a student.”
She extended her hand, and he gave it a perfunctory shake, earning 5/5 for comfortable pressure and duration. “Holly Martin. Bonnie Martin’s daughter.”
“Holly.” He made no effort to disguise the fact that he was searching her face. For her mother? A muscle twitched at the edge of his square jaw, a slight haze of beard showing. He pulled out a rumpled pack of French cigarettes and fingered one out, offering it to her. Holly shook her head. “Then this isn’t a social call.”
“Not exactly. But it could have been. I know you were...good friends with my mother.” Coy language sat ill with her, but she needed to find her bearings.
He groaned, tossing a glance of his head toward the wall behind Holly. She turned to see a large pastel portrait of her mother, expensively framed under anti-glare glass. Against her will, she gave a small gasp.
“I thought you might walk through that door some day. In fact, I hoped you would.” Then his face grew colder, as if a band of steel had tightened along his spine. With a book of matches, he lit the cigarette and pulled up a small ashtray shaped like a pitcher’s mitt.
Uninvited, she sat in an oak chair where many a student had waited. She expected no courtesy from this man, someone who had lurked in their lives all these years, yet she chose her words carefully. “Is that why you keep sending my father those notes? To bring me here?”
“I don’t keep tabs on you. That would be neurotic, but I see that you’re all grown up. Last I heard you were in university.” He drew in a long breath of smoke and exhaled with apparent contemplation. The air filled with the strange tang of exotic tobaccos foreign to North America. “The coward. He’d never come himself.”
She bristled at the insult, tempted to abuse her power. “Who’s the real coward if you don’t even sign these notes? You haven’t threatened him in so many words, but this harassment stops now. And this has nothing to do with my position.”
