LITMIR.BIZ

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out in a cloud of blue smoke. With a sigh, Holly went inside to type her report. Then she set out the package of prints for the courier the next day.

      By nine, her father had already gone to bed, but he’d left her a plate of meatloaf, garlic mashies and carrot coins in the fridge. She heated the tasty meal in the microwave, then sat in his recliner in the solarium. The wind had been up all day, the tides at a horrific 9.5, and from the beaches surf pounded the rocks like incoming mortars. As she finished the last juicy bite and stretched back in the fullness of comfort, she saw in a seat fold the newspaper he had been reading, a tell-tale piece of white sticking out. Inside was an envelope type-addressed to him with no stamp or postmark. Her hand hovered over it as she weighed the ethics. A plain piece of cheap copier paper lay inside. With hesitation, she read it. “I hope you’re still losing sleep. You won’t get away with it, you know. The mill of God grinds slow but exceedingly fine.” Her heart chilled like a cold marble slab. No wonder he hadn’t been himself. And the wording. “The mill of God.” Hardly garden-variety prose. Who was harassing him, and for how long? Was he being blackmailed? She got up, her knees wobbly and her strategy uncertain. Secrets buried in more than one heart never kept their own counsel.

      She climbed the circular stairs slowly, thinking at each step.

      Then she looked at his door, closed against the unwelcome night heat rising from the woodstove in the foyer. A slit of light appeared under it. “Knock knock,” she said.

      An umhmmm followed, so she opened the door of the smaller corner bedroom. Only a highboy dresser and bed table served for furniture, and piles of books and magazines leaned in pillars. Wearing striped pajamas and a silk paisley dressing gown, Norman was propped up by pillows in a monkish single bed. A patchwork quilt covered one end, his mother’s work. Shogun lay on a soft foam pallet on the floor, his head sprawling, and his legs splayed, exposing his pink belly in a position of complete trust. A rope tug toy lay beside him. He was snoring. Another reason not to sleep with dogs.

      The sight amused her, but she hadn’t come for this. She sat at the end of the bed, focusing on her father’s eyes, sad as an old bloodhound’s. When the woodstove started burning in the fall, he developed allergies, a vicissitude of age, he claimed. “I have to confess something, Dad,” she said.

      “Oh my,” he said. “Your old man’s not a priest, though sometimes I live like one.” He put down his book. Peyton Place. “Bestseller in 1956. We kids used to find the paperback copies in the drug store and read the forbidden pages.”

      Wasn’t he a wizard at sidetracking, or was he covering embarrassment for the personal approach? “You’re joking. Show me one.”

      A slight smirk on his lips, he leafed on, then passed her the book. Something about getting it up good and hard, Rodney.

      “That’s it? Pretty tame for these days.”

      He was chuckling when she touched his shoulder, a rare gesture, brought his sea-blue eyes to hers, fawn like her mother’s but with emerald flecks. They saw the world so differently, he in his historical tower, she on the drawbridge tossing criminals into the moat. “This is serious. I found that note. Didn’t mean to... No, of course I did. I was wondering why you were a bit thoughtful lately.”

      He said nothing, but reached for a glass of water by the bed. Then he took off his black horn-rimmed Mr. Peepers glasses. “Don’t worry about...those letters. They mean nothing.”

      “Now letters? How long has this been going on? And no Judy Garland imitations, please.” She tortured herself about the unspoken fact that her father had been a suspect, had no alibi other than being in his office late that night marking papers. An old maintenance worker had claimed to have glimpsed a figure in his office, but the man had serious cataracts, a less than ideal witness. With no sign of her mother or the Bronco and no other forensic trails, the police had been forced to declare the case cold.

      “A poison little note comes every year around the anniversary of your mother’s disappearance.” In clear sorrow, he rubbed the bridge of his hawk-like nose where the glasses had left a mark like a bruise. “Anniversary. What an ironic word.”

      “Who’s doing this? Where are the rest? You know, we could have dusted them for prints. Was the stationery always just copier paper?” She gave a laugh. “My god, we could have taken DNA from under the flap.”

      “Same paper and the same message, with minor variations. And the envelope’s never sealed.”

      “Cleverer than I thought. How do these messages get to you?”

      “They’re left around the department, the offices, sometime in the week before the date. Often a cleaning person finds one and brings it to me. Last year I didn’t get anything. Maybe it was thrown away by 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

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