Through Dark Water Page 3

  “Aunt Bee!” Alice elbowed her. “It was not my fault you couldn’t sleep.”

  “Wanna bet?” She tugged a strand of Alice’s blonde hair.

  “Well, then, thank you for your interest, but I suggest that you head back to your kayaks and let us do our job here.”

  The good constable couldn’t be any clearer. “Okay. Come on, Alice. Professor Wilbur, I hope to see you either out on the water or at the Whale Interpretive Center.”

  She nodded at Constable Burns and ushered Alice slip-sliding back the way they’d come, pondering what she’d seen. It was bad enough the whale had died. Light Fin had become something of a cultural icon. Heck, she’d even had posters of the whale leaping in her classroom. She’d had her class write papers on what that image meant to them and most of them wrote about her as a symbol of freedom that her students personally yearned for. Rick had.

  That someone would deface the animal like that left her all tied up inside.

  Chapter 3

  It was a good thing that they left the whale when they did. The constable had done them a favor kicking them out of the crime scene, because the tide had eaten almost the entire beach so that water was rolling over the tops of the slimy rocks making the footing more treacherous. Overhead the marine cloud had blown away, leaving a vivid blue sky and sunshine that seemed inappropriate, given the tableau back on the rocky shore. When Phoebe glanced over her shoulder, the constable and John Wilbur were crouched beside the whale’s head, obviously inspecting the wounds to the mouth.

  The wind was brisk as they reached the boat launch, now serving the last of the line of motorboats to be launched. They clambered back up on the concrete only to find the kayaks just about to be rented to some walk-up customers.

  It took some smooth talking to get their kayaks back and the box lunches they’d been promised, but then the lad helped them carry the kayaks down to the water. He was a youngster, too—twenty or thereabouts—with bleach-tipped brown hair and a white-toothed grin that looked like it had been tattooed on, because even arguing about the kayaks hadn’t wiped it off his face.

  “So you take care of all the kayaks, do you?” They were good kayaks—fiberglass—one yellow and one tropical turquoise blue. Both showed the scrape marks of rental kayaks, but the spray skirts and paddles looked like they’d been cared for.

  The kid nodded. “I do. All the rentals that come through the resort.”

  “Is it busy this time of year? I’m surprised you were able to find kayaks for that other couple.”

  He shrugged. “They’ll just have to wait for me to bring ‘em down. Won’t take but a minute once I get you two out on the water.” He helped Alice slide her boat into the cove and then held it steady as she waded in and then settled in the cockpit.

  “I’m surprised it’s so quiet,” Phoebe said.

  “It has been the last few summers,” he said as he helped Phoebe get her yellow kayak onto the water. “I guess the recession in the US has really hit the number of people coming up here to see the whales. Foreign tourists, too. If they do come, it’s just a whale watching trip. And with the news always talking about the failure of the salmon stocks, fishermen think there’s nothing here to fish, even though there is. The latest thing is the disappearance of those girls. It’s stopped a lot of the family trade.” He shook his head. “It keeps on like this, Dad’s really going to have to rethink this place.”

  “Your dad’s Sam? The manager?” she asked as she waded to the boat, straddled it, and sank onto the back of the cockpit before sliding her legs and hips inside.

  “Nope.” He helped her pull the spray skirt down around her cockpit to keep out water and handed her the paddle. “He owns the place. Has these past fifteen years. I’m Trevor, by the way. When you bring the kayaks back today, it’ll be Donnie taking care of things. Ask him to call me to come pick them up. Sometimes he forgets.”

  He gave her kayak a good shove out into the water and waved goodbye.

  She dipped her paddle into the water and then paused in a quiet spot to get her rudder foot pedals in the cockpit adjusted to her leg length. When she’d reattached her spray skirt, she found Alice floating beside her.

  “You got your rudder set up properly?” Phoebe asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Sunscreen on your face and hands?”

  “Yup.”

  “Something to tie that mop of yours back? Because loose, it’s really going to whip your face.”

  “Aunt Bee…”

  “Fine. Have it your way, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I haven’t had short hair all my life, you know, but make your own mistakes, don’t listen to someone older and wiser.”

  A long-suffering expression on her face, Alice held up her hand to display a wrist with a hair elastic around it. “I got it, okay? If I need it.”

  Far be it from her aunt to harp on a subject, but when the wind came up hard, about the last thing you had time to think about was fixing your hair. Let the kid find out the hard way. It seemed to be the only way the young ever learned. It had been that way for her, and for every intervening generation that she’d seen. What did that say about human nature?

  She dug her paddle into the water and the little boat slipped across the waves of the cove, perfect as you please. Light glittered off the ripples and the paddle spray as she turned the kayak’s nose toward the strait and paddled out of the harbor, Alice at her side.

  It really was a lovely day, regardless of how it had started. Back on shore, a large blue pickup had arrived and there were two more small figures down along the now-tide-swept shoreline with the carcass. Fisheries and Oceans. She wondered what they would have to say.

  “Aunt Bee! Look!” She came back to herself and followed Alice’s paddle, pointing out onto the water. A distant group of fins jutted up from the water, the sleek black backs dolphining through the waves. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”

  “Maybe we can catch up to them. Come on!” Phoebe propelled the kayak forward, skimming through the waves. Around them spread the grandeur of Johnstone Strait. It ran northwest to southeast along the northeastern edge of Vancouver Island, bounded to the east by the Broughton Archipelago that filled the space between Vancouver Island and the mainland coast. This area of the Inland Passage had a rich ecology, including many species of animal.

  But most of all there were the whales. The great dark fins cut through the glistening water, back-dropped by the misty green of the archipelago islands about three and a half miles distant and the ragged white peaks of the coastal mountain range beyond. At a distance, a red kayak flew like a bug across water. Alex, most probably, going to be with live whales after being with the dead. Farther out on the water, a few sport fishing boats were pulling up their lines and aiming for the whales—it seemed everyone wanted to see them.

  Phoebe dug in her paddle and checked over her shoulder. Alice was giving it all she had, but the girl wasn’t as powerful as Phoebe was. She lagged behind, her gaze locked on the whales that were getting too far ahead. The darn blackfish were getting away.

  Phoebe slowed her paddle and Alice came up alongside. Her jaw was set, her eyes narrowed against the sunlight, her cheeks bright with exertion.

  “I don’t think we’re going to catch them, sweetie,” Phoebe tried.

  “No. We’re going to. We just have to keep paddling.” Alice wouldn’t even look at her and her eyes were shining too brightly—as if she was close to crying.

  “Honey, there’ll be other days when we’re out for the five-day camping trip, and maybe even more today. There’s supposedly over a hundred and fifty orcas in Johnstone Strait. That means our chances are pretty good. So don’t go exhausting yourself today.”

  Alice gave her the unhappy glare. “You don’t know that. You have no idea whether I’m exhausted or not.” She shook her head as the whales disappeared down the coastline beyond them, then thunked her paddle down on the top of the kayak. “So if we’re not seeing whales, what else is there?”

  “We-ll,” Phoebe knew she had to tread carefully here. She and Alice had always had a great relationship. It was what had made it seem like such a great idea for her to take her niece who was—according to Becca—growing testier every day, and give Phoebe’s long-suffering sister a break.

  “We could race for the shore because I understand that there could be otters around and maybe even a beach to have lunch,” Phoebe said. “Or I could dump your kayak and see if all those re-entering-your-kayak exercises we did at home really meant something. Your choice.”

  She rested her own paddle on her kayak and made a show of enjoying the scenery. It wasn’t exactly a show. The place was world-class gorgeous with the tall trees coming down to the rocky cliffs along the water, the surf lightly crashing, and even an eagle floating on thermals overhead.

  “Look!” she pointed at the bird. “He’s struggling. It looks like he’s got a big fish or something.”

  Alice shaded her eyes. “You’re right! One big fish.” When she looked back she was smiling again. “Sorry I got upset. I just really want to see whales.”

  “Gee, ya think? But we will. Today, though, is all about getting our paddling worked out so that tomorrow those whales won’t stand a chance.”

  She got a nod from Alice and then the rotten kid sent her kayak surging forward. “Last one to the shore has to roll their boat!”

  No way in heck was she going to be stuck doing that. She’d thought she was going to drown the last time. Upper body strength was not exactly her forte.

  She sent her kayak after Alice, listening to the girl’s shrieks of laughter as she realized her aunt was catching up. Their kayaks surged toward the rocky cliffs, but there was no place to land so they angled southeast and headed down the coast side-
by-side. Both of them settled into a nice comfortable rhythm that worked the upper back and not the shoulders. The day around them was a blue-green dream of warm sun, light breeze, blue ocean and sky.

  As the sun rose higher, they rounded a headland and found a secluded little cove with a strip of white beach backed by forest. The two of them coasted into shore together in silent agreement, their race long forgotten.

  The fiberglass hulls of the kayaks shushed against the sand as Phoebe pulled her spray skirt loose and shoved herself up out of the cockpit. Alice did the same, but a darn sight quicker, and stepped onto shore. “You lose. You have to tip your kayak,” said in a triumphant sing-song voice.

  “But-but-but… I thought we weren’t racing anymore!” Phoebe said in mock indignation and splashed into shore.

  “You might not have been, but I still was.” Alice’s big baby blues shone up at her. Then she grinned and gave a long-suffering sigh. “All right. I guess I can let you off this time.”

  “You better. I’ve got the food.” Phoebe beached her kayak next to flotsam that included a bit of marine rope and a cast-off sneaker—by its size, likely some kid’s off one of the fishing or whale watching boats. She gave Alice a hand drawing her kayak up the beach. Then Phoebe made camp in the middle of the sun-warmed sand beside the kayaks. She spread a blanket that had been stowed in her boat while Alice explored along the shoreline.

  It was so quiet. The sound of the waves shuffling along the shoreline, of Alice’s footsteps in the sand as she picked up stones along the water. The distant drone of a boat engine on the strait and the sound of an eagle’s cry, though she could not spot the bird.

  Seated on the blanket, she leaned back on her braced arms and raised her face to the sun. This was why she’d come here—for a quiet place to get her thoughts back in order after the crash and burn at work. If she could just have time like this to decompress, then maybe she could go back to work again and not “retire” as the school board and her doctor had asked her to do. She was still a young woman, relatively speaking. It was just the pressure of the job that had got to her.

  A shadow blocking her sun brought her eyes open. Alice, looking windblown but happy.

  “You ready for lunch?” Phoebe asked.

  “Famished. Sorry, but your scrambled eggs didn’t really fill me up this morning.”

  “Growing girl.” Phoebe sat cross-legged to leave room for Alice and pulled their lunch bags open. Two bottles of water. Two multigrain bagels with cream cheese and something that looked like tuna and alfalfa sprouts. An apple and an orange so they would need to arm wrestle for the apple. Last were two gigantic oatmeal cookies chock full of raisins.

  Alice set a palm-full of pretty stones she’d collected on the top of her kayak and then folded down onto the sun-warmed blanket.

  “Did you find anything interesting?”

  Alice shrugged as she bit into her bagel after examining its contents with a curled-lip frown. “I don’t like cream cheese, but this is pretty good.” She munched thoughtfully. “That was really bad this morning, wasn’t it? The whale, I mean.”

  Phoebe nodded. “Pretty sad. Light Fin. I remember using her as a jumping-off place to get my students thinking about the environment. She was like an ambassador to the wild.”

  “I wrote about her when I was in grade three. They made us watch an old video about her and write an essay. The video said she was a dead ancestor come to bring Aboriginal people a message. For my essay I wrote about what that message was—to save her people, the whales. I did a whole bunch of research about how endangered all the whales are. It was scary to think of a world with no whales in it. Especially when you listen to their music.”

  Phoebe took a bite of her sandwich and pulled Alice into her side. “Sometimes you make me really proud, you know.”

  They leaned back against the blue kayak side-by-side and let the wind play with their hair as they finished their sandwiches. They decided to save the fruit and cookies for later.

  “I think I’m just going to lie here for a while and catch a bit of a nap,” Phoebe said. And think about Light Fin. How had she died? Who would scavenge her teeth?

  “’Kay. I’m just going to explore the beach.”

  “Just don’t go too far and remember that there could be bears coming down to the shore. You stay by the water. If you hear anything in the woods, you hightail it back here. Okay?”

  Alice nodded and stood, heading back to explore along the receding shoreline. The tide, which had come in after Light Fin had been found, had started to recede again in the few hours they’d been paddling. It had receded farther since they’d beached, revealing an area of round pebbles and larger, seaweed-covered rocks that would provide lots of nooks and crannies to explore.

  Her niece was crouched by a tidal pool as Phoebe lay back and closed her eyes. After the few hours’ sleep last night, a nap would be heaven. Her mind wandered over the black-and-white body on the stones of the harbor. She fell asleep wondering just what or who would do that to an orca.

  Dark night. Dark waves. Dark whale. She was alone, cutting through the water in search of her pod, powerful tail sending her forward like a torpedo, breath coming in powerful bursts from her blowhole. She had to go faster because something was coming. Something was after her, big and dark and powerful that stole the stars from the sky, blocked the light of the moon. It shook her world around her and stole all the breath from her lungs. A blow and she was dying, fighting to stay afloat, to live, to protect her unborn calf.

  “Aunt Bee? Are you all right?”

  The voice brought her, gasping, up from a dark place where her voice was drowned and she felt so helpless she could scream. Her eyes opened on blue and for a moment she couldn’t remember where she was. Wind in her hair. Sun on her face. She should be in the principal’s office, convincing him he was wrong. They had to do something instead of sitting in her office.

  “Aunty Bee?” The worry in the voice brought her up to sitting and she blinked to steady herself. Not an office. A beach. And she was—her eyes flickered from her niece, who should be three thousand miles away with her mother, and then locked on the kayaks beside her. Kayaking with Alice. Right. She scrubbed her face.

  “My goodness, that was a nightmare. I dreamed I was Light Fin and something killed me.”

  Alice was looking at her with concern in her eyes. She held something in her palm, but she closed her hand and shoved it in her pocket. “You—you’re okay now, though, right?”

  Was she? She felt shaky as heck and weaker than she’d felt since… well… since she’d gone off work. “I’m fine.” She pushed up to her feet, but had to lean on her yellow kayak to steady herself while she checked her watch. “Two o’clock! You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long!”

  “You looked like you needed it. And you were so peaceful—until the last bit. I—I tried to wake you, so I grabbed your shoulders and shook. You still didn’t wake. I—I slapped you. I’m sorry.”

  The look of concern had melted to reveal an underlay of visceral fear. The poor kid was on a beach three thousand miles from home and the only adult she knew had gone wonky. No wonder she was afraid.

  “I’m sorry, Ali. Really sorry. I don’t know what happened. I must have been more tired than I realized.” But she’d had vivid visceral dreams like this before, hadn’t she? She shook her head trying to rid herself of the haunted feeling. This wasn’t the same. This was a whale, for God’s sake. She stood fully upright and grinned. “Up for more paddling?”

  “Are you sure? Maybe you need more rest,” Alice said, far too old for her age—the problem with being an only child.

  “I’m a-okay to get paddling. It’ll get the blood circulating and maybe we’ll see more whales.”

  With the tide ebbing, the beach had gotten considerably larger since they’d beached. They had to haul the kayaks down the sand and over pebbles and then slip and slide over a rough bench of slimy stone and barnacles before they reached enough water to set the kayaks down. Both of them were puffing by the time the two kayaks were shifted and they’d donned their spray skirts and settled in their cockpits again.

  ‘You all right, Aunty Bee?”

  “Just fine, honey. Now quit being concerned. I just needed to wake up is all, and believe me, I‘m awake now.” She pulled on her sunglasses and noted that Alice had tamed her hair into a ponytail. “How about we go a little farther down the shore and then we can head back to Pirate Cove, get cleaned up, and have dinner in one of their restaurants?”