"We're blood brothers, Samir and I. Two for one and one for all. The two musketeers. Where he goes I go."

  "It doesn't look good that you tried to cover for him."

  "I guess I made things worse."

  "The Hoffmans will try to identify you from a police line-up."

  "That's all right."

  Mark? I need you. My friends are in trouble. Now I got to think things through. Pepsi tried to help his cousin and made things worse. An innocent man, or men, might go to jail.

  "Sorry we took your poker, Annie. Sorry we went out to the float house when you weren't there."

  "I told Samir he could come out any time. He needed to get away sometimes. Like I do, by myself, I don't mind that.You both knew where the key is. No problem."

  "You're a good friend."

  It was my birthday and nobody remembered.

  "I'll go down to the station," Pepsi said.

  I saw Mark through the small window at the side of the front door. He was carrying a large plastic bag that said, ‘Support your local library’ on the side. I was poking around with something in the oven, thinking of the Sudanese and their vulnerability. Mark pushed the door open and I turned around. He was carrying a huge bouquet of red roses. He placed them into my arms. "These are real, Missy Anne, they're not an illusion like the Scarlet Pimpernel."

  Mark remembered. I put a rose into the buttonhole of Mark's suit jacket. He came in and sat in the wicker chair by the kitchen counter. I gave him scones, fresh out of the oven. They tasted like raspberry air freshener, but he enjoyed one, or that's what he said. Mark was a gentleman.

  I put the roses in a large crystal vase my mother had left in the cupboard. I was twenty-five that day, April twenty-seventh, and Samir had turned twenty-two last winter. Mark was at least nine or ten years older than me, I figured. I wondered if my mother would have liked Mark. I thought she would.

  "Pepsi called," I said.

  "I know," he said. "I saw him down at the station."

  "Do you think he was trying to protect Samir or trying to protect himself?"

  "I'm thinking this is an awful convoluted case and I don't have a clue who the hell did it."

  "You do."

  "Yes. It was Samir and this clinches it. Even Pepsi thinks Samir is guilty, this proves it. We'll go pick him up tomorrow. I want to give him time to give himself up."

  He's an aristocrat and so am I, I thought. I counted the roses (there were two dozen plus one) and spread butter on another scone.

  Chapter Sixty-two

  I found out the next morning, when Mark came calling at my float house before breakfast, that Samir was in a hospital in Vancouver getting his leg operated on. Pepsi had gone with him on the morning ferry after they got the call from the Civic Hospital. He'd seen the specialists in the clinic weeks before and they all agreed it could be done. I knew he was excited about the surgery to straighten his legs. They'd do the left one, the worst leg, first and then the right one was scheduled for surgery in six months when the left leg should have healed and be mobile with physiotherapy. That was the plan and I knew the plan. Just didn't expect him to be off the island right now with what seemed like a perfect excuse.

  I didn't miss Vancouver. I knew I had to go see Samir though, and Mark and I, maybe Tom or the sergeant, would have to stand guard over the hospital bed until we could bring him back here under suspicion of the Doc's murder. I hated going to the mainland. I was an island girl at heart.

  "Why don't you let me go?" Mark asked, always the gentleman. He acted like a cop around me a lot of the time, but would soften quickly when I got all vulnerable like.

  "Samir's my friend," I said. "I think it's up to me to bring him back. He wouldn't make a lot of trouble if I were by myself there, guarding him in the hospital room, and then making sure he gets an escort back to the island."

  "I disagree," Mark said. "He could be dangerous, and so could his cousin."

  "I don't think he's trying to get away. He got a call, like he was expecting, and had to pack his bags in a hurry and leave. Pepsi went with him to give him a ride, because he and Samir are like two bean pods on a vine."

  "He would have let you know, Annie, if he didn't have something to hide. I don't think he plans to come back."

  "How long will he be in the hospital?"

  "Less than a week, they said when I called this morning."

  "He won't be able to walk," I said.

  "No, he'll have a cast and crutches. Then later physiotherapy."

  "How do you know so much about it, Mark?"

  "I fell off a mountain ten years ago and broke my leg."

  "Wow. I didn't know that."

  "It still hurts sometimes when the weather changes."

  "That's such a cliché. Tell me another one," I said.

  He grinned and rubbed his thigh. "Really. I can't run like a cop. That's why I'm assigned to desk duty most of the time, I'm no good on the beat. Might have been the reason for my promotion. They promoted me beyond my level of capability. Murphy's Law."

  I thought about that some. Mark was not the super cop I'd taken him for, he wasn't assigned to the case here because he was the Green Hornet or something. He was here because he couldn't run proper and therefore was useless as a cop on the beat or someone who caught active criminals.

  "Wait a minute. That means you're here because of your brains. Right?"

  Mark's mouth twitched. "I have a university degree," he admitted. "I use it to help me think."

  "Psych," I said. "Do you know what I think of psych degrees? Dr. Blanche notwithstanding."

  "I took criminology at the Police Academy. Forgive me?"

  We were sitting in the sunlight on the settee, together on the orange and gold blanket, with mugs of steaming tea on the floor between us.

  "How'd you find out Samir and Pepsi were out of town?"

  "I went around to the Powolskis this morning and Meredith said they'd left early. She knew all about it. They'd taken the ferry, Samir packed his bag before they left, Pepsi took a leave of absence from his job in maintenance so he could be with Samir. It didn't seem to be any secret. I don't know why he didn't call you, though."

  "I guess he was still mad at me for confronting him," I said.

  "Oh, I suspect he's pretty deep when you get to know him." Mark traced a line of moisture down the side of his ceramic mug.

  "What are we doing here? We're wasting time."

  "Samir's in surgery this morning, the unit clerk said on the phone," Mark shared. "He isn't going anywhere. Constable Tom left a few hours ago to catch the Island Queen to the mainland. He'll be standing outside the OR with a gun in his holster."

  "A SIG Pro?" I thought I was being clever.

  "Nah. We're more modern than that. I carry the M&P40 semi-automatic pistol. We used to carry revolvers. Lorne has brainwashed you."

  "He taught me all I know. Now he's under suspicion for a horrible murder. I feel like my guts dropped out of my skin."

  "You figured it out."

  "Sometimes I'm too damn smart," I said. But I didn't feel smart anymore. I didn't feel anything at all, except maybe depressed just sitting there, with Mark, talking about Samir and Lorne as though they were bugs on a griddle.

  Chapter Sixty-three

  The Attention Deficit Disorder Avon rep, Tess Russell, came by later that day with my coral lipstick and the blue nail polish. She bent to get through the door and stood there, looking awkward, with her stupid Avon bag in her hands and her order book all filled in from last time. I looked at it. Perfect. Amazing.

  "Thanks," I said. "I'll give you a call. Busy now. Murders all over the island, it's all up to me and Mark."

  "Really? I sure like that Detective Snow. He's real handsome, isn't he? Does that scooter outside belong to you? Oh look, the sun is shining and yesterday it rained." She was priceless. She was young, so that was some excuse for being scatterbrained. I knew ADD when I saw it, though. Sort of like me.

  Except I'd learned to live with it. The Zyprexa took care of the voices and the Flupenthixol took care of the visions. Nothing could treat the OCD very well, but I didn't ruminate now the way I used to. That was an improvement, because nobody can work worth a squat if they're obsessing about something that can't be helped, maybe something that happened before, like Samir's past or when I first met him.

  I remembered meeting Samir. Pepsi was there but it was Samir I noticed.

  I always loved to teach, though I didn't think I was very good at it. It tickled something inside me though, to know about something, like a little precious stone I could hold next to my heart and warm, and then give away to somebody who might love it too, and need as much as I did. So when I came off the street when I was seventeen and my mom died, wasted away with stomach cancer, I lived at the float house for a couple of years and then decided to volunteer to teach. Tickled my fancy. That was before I come to the Powolskis through Social Services and the court system.

  Between stealing cigarettes and booze, and living off the proceeds of fencing stolen property, I thought I'd like to volunteer with classes in English as a Second Language, or ESL for short. You know, teaching English to those immigrants unfortunate enough to end up with me as a teacher. Even in those days I wanted to make more of myself than I was.

  One of those dudes I taught was a long lean drink of soda water from the Sudan. He sat in a group of tall, thin, good-looking Africans who all looked very handsome but just the same, to my eyes. To the eyes of the immigrant officials, too, presumably. Because practically all of this group had come into Canada on somebody else's passport and with somebody else's name.

  They were quite mannerly on the surface but I felt them mocking me under their cool exteriors. Some of them went to a Christian church down the block. They all lived in the same area, in a sort of Sudanese ghetto just off Hoyt Street near the intersection of Port and Livingstone. They had quite a bit of money from the Immigration Department. They’d come here from Toronto where they'd learned some English, got their dental work done, got requisitions for furniture and apartments, and some of them sent money back home. They were all well dressed.

  I noticed after a couple of weeks that one of the black dudes was different from the others. Whereas most of my students picked up the work rather quickly, they exploded into different directions when the bell rang for the end of class, and only a few of the women stuck around to collect the papers I'd marked at the beginning of class. The men worked in the lumber yard for the most part, prime source of employment here on the island. They'd be anxious to get home to their walk-up apartments and watch TV, drink a bottle of beer, play with their children.

  Samir was different. He stuck around after class to collect his papers and asked questions if he didn't understand something I'd written or said in class. I was careful to be professional but gradually this quiet, crazy guy with a limp piqued my curiosity and I started spending more time with him after school finished at nine p.m. He seemed okay with that. Pepsi usually went directly to his job at City Hall and the medical building after class. I came to know, however, that Samir and Pepsi were connected at the hip, and I was careful to include Pepsi in any conversation I might have with Samir.

  Even at that time, I was feeling an attraction for Samir that went beyond sympathy or even pity.

  So when I got caught for the last time shoplifting and fencing stolen property, and was given a break with Lorne O'Halloran doing community work, I was forced to apply for Social Services benefits to keep me off the street and give me some income. Understand that the ESL teaching job was voluntary. Nobody would really hire somebody like Annie Hansen to teach their new citizens. I knew that and accepted it. When I went on Social Services benefits and was sentenced to two years’ probation and community service work, I needed a safe place to stay as the court system didn't want me on my own. Not responsible, they said.

  So they sent me to the Powolskis’ and Samir was there, too. That made our living arrangements a bit iffy because there was only the one spare room upstairs. So we pretended we were married. Nobody really caught on. Except of course, the Powolskis guessed. But Samir and I worked it all out after class before we ever moved in together. Social Services hadn't figured out there was only the one room and the Powolskis never told them. They got paid for two rooms. There was two beds, which Samir and I didn't share.

  So he limped and wanted to kill himself a lot when I first moved in. I like to think I trained him not to think that way anymore. He hasn't talked about killing himself since the cat ate the pretty bird that day before Thanksgiving when Samir left the cage open and blamed me.

  Maybe that did something to his brain but he seemed to get a lot wilder after that, and a lot more outgoing. It might have been something to do with me moving out, or him getting settled into Canadian society and not being so homesick for his parents and friends, the Sudan and what had happened back there. He had no choice, of course. I knew he sent money back with the missionaries. Who knew if his parents ever got it? Some word always leaked out, though.

  I felt secure in thinking that his parents were still alive. I didn't know what Samir thought, though. His touch was gentle, surprising in a man like that who often swore, took drugs, drank too much, and limped with a simple ferocious gait at my side to the ESL office until I had to quit and do community work instead.

  We seemed to fit together like two spoons at first.

  Something went wrong but we were too intertwined by that time to realize the other's manipulative behavior or the resentment that soured and bubbled below the surface.

  Samir might have tried to make me believe I was crazier than I am, and he might have succeeded partially. He might have been manipulative but he'd learned it as a survival skill.

  I forgave him for that. I hoped he'd get his leg fixed. I hoped he hadn't killed the doctor, but it didn't look promising for Samir right now. He'd turned twenty-two, and he'd already lived more than most people three times his age.

  Our history bonded us. I felt like my intestines were being squeezed up my belly and out my throat when I thought about Samir in jail, or on death row if the death penalty came back to Canada.

  Dr. Hubert, of course, was a hero in the media's eyes. Nobody else knew the truth. The mayor too, a hero in the eyes of everyone not connected with the island.

  To me, the motive seemed thin; drugs and money, and why the horrid method of execution, but the story wasn't over yet.

  I didn't believe Samir had done it.

  I had no reason not to believe. I just didn't believe it and I think it was a very powerful wish, but it was more than that, it was a primeval and gut knowledge.

  I thought I knew who murdered Doc Hubert and the mayor, but I'd have to prove it. My hands were already soiled with knowledge of evil beyond my twenty-five years. I felt that was a strength.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  I didn't know the day would end with another shooting, that Friday that I dropped into a yoga class at the community league where nurse Molly took karate. Good thing we don't know the future.

  I had brought a couple cans of tomatoes and beans for the Food Bank and got in free. I had a reason for wanting to attend but most of it was because I thought it would be good for me to relax and stretch. Little did I know the yoga class was hatha yoga and taught by a wild and crazy student who didn't know the meaning of gentle stretch.

  After an introduction to Sun Salutation and the camel, the child's pose, and the Warrior's pose and shoulder stand, we started the hard stuff. I found that the rest of the class had been attending since September the year before and were well versed in more advanced asanas.

  I enjoyed stretching my limbs and the balance. I found at the end of it, when we lay flat on our backs in the Dead pose and listen to the singing bowls and the student chanting, that I felt more energized than I had for months. I was interested to note that I enjoyed the physical stress and the visualization that came at the end in the lotus pose like sentient pretzels.

  I made a new friend, the girl next to me who stretched like a lioness and helped me with my balance when the student teacher wasn't looking. It was all very nonjudgmental and supportive.

  Covered with a cotton blanket, I lay still in the Dead pose as the student teacher played the singing bowls. Namaste, I repeated after her and bowed, then gathered up the borrowed yoga mat, blanket, and rolls, and stashed them in the closet at the side of the large room. The teacher stayed after class, answering questions, but I was too shy to approach her. Not now. Maybe next week. I vowed to myself to come back the next week, and maybe bring some better food now that I knew it was worth the small price of admission.

  I stopped at the desk outside the room and signed up for more classes: a karate class on Tuesday evenings for the cost of a large latte, and indicated my willingness to learn meditation with Serena before yoga classes next Friday. The classes were mud cheap because they were subsidized by the community league. As a recipient of a disability pension, I got a free pass to most of them.

 

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