Almost Criminal: A Crime In Cascadia Mystery Part 13

"You're with me? Long-term?"

"Yes." It wasn't true, but what else could I say?

He nodded, and his eyes lit up, suddenly conspiratorial. "Let's walk in and watch them freak out. Get the controller and follow me."

Randle waited until I was right behind him, then shoved the door open with both arms and strode through. It swung back on me, and with both hands full of controller, I had to slew a hip to catch its force and b.u.mp it aside to protect the equipment.

Behind the false front, the metal shop was a long, narrow structure with the arched Quonset roof, rusted and showing every one of its sixty-some years.

"We're doubling our grow capacity here," he said. "The next building came up for rent, so we're hooking our systems up and expanding into there."

Just inside the door, a reception area hid the works.p.a.ce from prying eyes. Its ancient oak desk, black telephone and cashbox looked like they dated back to the original occupants. Access to the rear was controlled by a curtain of vinyl strips that opened to allow people or equipment to pa.s.s, while preventing any view and containing the scent. From the smell, I knew that some of these plants were ready.

I gaped. This was no bas.e.m.e.nt operation. Fans and lights hung from the sheet-steel ceiling. Industrial shelving fitted with scabby metal plumbing was bolted to the floor.

When we'd pushed through the curtain into the growing floor, the place had been teeming with activity - a dozen or more budders working side by side, talking and laughing as they went about their business. Now, a frightened stillness reigned.

Randle boomed, "As you were, troops." Then, to me, he said, "What did I tell you? They thought we were cops. Skip'll be next door, you wait here until we clear a place to hook you up."

My arms were about to give out from carrying the heavy controller, and I shuffled awkwardly into the grow floor looking for a solid surface where I could deposit the thing. I smiled and gave a friendly nod to the workers to show them I was harmless. We didn't look much like cops, I didn't think, a seventeen-year-old and a ponytailed old guy in a linen jacket and handmade shoes. I saw an empty trolley, the kind that the workers used to roll their tools and clipped buds around on, and let the weight down with a relieved sigh.

Most of the women - they were all women - had returned to their tasks. They stripped and clipped the plants - six-foot high sinsemillas, unpollinated females, loaded with THC. Their bottom leaves were dropping, the buds were dry, almost burned-looking. They sorted the leaves into stacks, snipped and separated the gummy buds and hung the stalks on a rolling cart. When a cart was loaded with leaves and branches of bud, it was wheeled to the drying room, where someone else took over.

It looked like fun, in a way, like a quilting bee, a community at work. Since I'd been promoted away from Skip, I worked alone, visiting near-empty grow ops and warehouses, swapping money for dope in silent transactions. These women were a skilled, coordinated team. I bet they looked forward to a day on the job. They were probably pretty well-paid too. But I was pretty sure they didn't crack the two or three thousand a week I was making.

Then I saw her. It was like a bad special effect: the room lost focus except for one budder, halfway to the back of the building, who stood frozen, pruning shears in one gloved hand. The rest of the room dimmed and she stood in sharp contrast, highlighted, her body square to me, her feet planted on the ground. I had to grasp the trolley for balance. I knew Beth's thin frame, her yellow-white hair. This was her greenhouse job, the one that paid cash. Her face was drawn and bloodless, her eyes steady, unblinking, and locked on mine.

What do you say to your mother at a time like this? What does she say to you?

Beth ducked her head and pivoted. Turning her back to me, she bent over, pulled a machete from her cart and swung it at a thick-stalked plant with heavy, pendulous colas. She hacked and hacked, the leaves shuddering until the stalk was severed.

"Tate!" Randle called, waving me to the back, where he waited with Skip.

I pushed my trolley toward them. My route took me right past Beth, whose focus was locked on her task. I kept my eyes on my hands, on the controller that was balanced on the trolley, and the path before my feet. As I approached, she lifted the sheared stalk and swung it upside down, readying it to hang on her cart. It couldn't have been heavy, but it was ungainly and she was frail. She stepped back for balance as she angled the stalk for the cart, and put herself right in the path of my trolley. The steel corner of the controller struck her above the hip and she grunted in pain, but didn't turn or look. I spoke a quiet, polite sorry, and pushed past.

Chapter 15.

Supper was finished. Bree was was.h.i.+ng up, I was drying, and the kettle was on for tea. It was another heart-warming family moment, except that Bree was plugged into her iPod and our only interactions were the wet plates that we exchanged and the thwack of a hollow-sounding Jack Johnson snare drum leaking from her earbuds. Not a bad tune, but a bit girly for my taste.

The meal had been takeout chicken and potato salad from the Safeway at the new mall, with some steamed veggies on the side. I'd bought it, warmed it up, and cut the brown bits off the beans from the back of the fridge. Bree had come to the table after two or three promptings and chewed her food in silence.

Beth was a no-show. The budders had been long gone by the time I'd finished setting up the controller and left the welding shop. She was probably driving around somewhere, planning the upcoming confrontation. Beth was not one for spontaneity. She preferred to plot out her strategies like a chess player, two or three accusations in advance, and I hoped I was up to it. This afternoon's weed tasting had left me dragged-out and foggy, even though I'd done my best not to inhale. How could Randle chain-smoke that stuff? He must have built up an amazing immunity.

AK-47, Maddie had called the last of the good samples. A bomb-a.s.s variety of Chronic from Humboldt County, a primo source for seeds. I rubbed my temples. Another one to avoid.

Randle couldn't possibly know that Beth was my mom. Beth was a subcontractor through her friend Georgina. Randle would know Georgina, of course, maybe Skip would too, but they wouldn't know or care about the lower level staff, the people that Georgina hired. According to Randle, n.o.body was supposed to know more than three or four others. Beth was only one budder among dozens, probably.

Randle loved playing with intrigue, running the organization in little cells of anonymity like it was the Weather Underground or the Red Brigades, so if anyone was caught, they wouldn't know enough to bring the organization down. It was a total crock, of course, because it wasn't a socialist collective out to overthrow the establishment, it was a highly profitable, completely capitalist marijuana business. And basically a one-man show. Perhaps n.o.body within the organization knew more than a few others, but everybody knew the only guy in Wallace who drove a yellow Porsche, who wore silk s.h.i.+rts and linen jackets and smelled like a doobie.

From the very first, I'd been careful. Neither Randle nor Skip knew anything about me or my family. We were too new in town to be in the phone book and even then, Beth and I had different surnames. Randle might have seen her on the job, but she was just one of the budders. He wouldn't have noticed her, and even then, he wouldn't make the connection. All he had on me was a Gmail address and the number for Skip's throwaway cellphone. When I was ready to disappear, it wasn't going to be hard. All I had to do was leave town.

The kitchen door let out a pained squeal and Beth's bag thudded on the floor. She was in mid-sentence before I could hear what she was saying.

"- where your new clothes come from. And staying out late again and again. I knew it wasn't the coffee shop, I know Jeannie. Those expensive shoes -"

"And the new sink and the new front steps." I finished her sentence. "That's where they came from, and every other repair in this broken-down dump. It was my money that paid for them."

If she wanted to go on the offensive, I'd cut her off right now.

"Hi, Mom," Bree spoke loudly over the music in her head, and Beth's lips thinned, registering her presence.

"You must be hungry after all that work," I said, as I dried a salad bowl and placed it casually in the cupboard. "Supper's in the fridge. We've eaten."

She nodded tolerantly, her smile almost a grimace, and closed the door, lifting it carefully to avoid the screech. She turned to me, one hand on a hip, the other with index finger extended.

I said, quietly, "They pay you well, the greenhouse?"

She closed the finger to a fist, and, with nothing to strike, swiped at the light switch instead.

"How can you see in here, it's so dark?"

Outside, the early evening sun shone brightly. Her eyes flicked to the overhead light, which remained off. "Doesn't anything work in this house?"

The switch had been broken the entire time we'd lived there.

"They should be generous, considering the risk you're taking. Have you thought about that?" Keep her off-balance, I figured.

"I will not discuss what I do. This is about you."

"Ah." I looped the dishtowel though a cabinet handle and reached for the tea. The kettle had calmed, its whistle just about to build. I said, "Green or black tea, or ginseng? I'm seventeen. A guy's gotta have a job."

"No -" she tried to cut in.

I wasn't having it. "You have responsibilities, you know. Bree, the house. What if you get caught? I mean, not to be impolite, but you're no young offender."

She thrust me out of her way and pulled down the teapot, slamming it on the counter with such force that I thought it would shatter. "I will not discuss this. Not here. But you - I forbid it. I'm your mother and I want you out of this business."

"The direct command. Wow, you think that still works?"

Bree looked frustrated as she hunted through the soapy water for anything she'd missed. She probably couldn't hear much through the music, and was desperate to know what we were saying. But turning the volume down meant wet-handing the iPod, and pulling out the earbuds would be obvious.

I mimicked Beth's lecturing tone. "Let's review the situation. You're my mother. In what ways have you been mothering me? Have you fed me? No, I pay for the food. Cook it too, more often than not. Clothes? Oh, right, those are on me too. You provide the shelter, I'll grant that. You dragged us all the way up here for a free roof. Except that pesky sink wasn't free, or whatever else c.r.a.ps out. Who is the mother around here? I think it's been me, since you disappeared into the oncology ward."

That went too far. She was having trouble controlling her breathing.

"You sound like I did that to you."

I reached to her, but she pulled back.

I said, "Come on, you know how I feel. But what did you do to try to keep me in school? Did you ask anyone to come in and look after Bree, or did you just take it for granted that I'd drop out and get a job?"

Her face lit. "And when you leave in the fall, what then? Then I'll need a job, won't I?" She had an attack point. "I know more than you give me credit for."

Somehow she knew I'd been accepted back to school in the fall. I'd received the email a week ago, but hadn't told anyone.

I kept my voice calm and modulated, and, I hoped, below Bree's headphone level. "If you want a job, that's fine, but not that job. Picture this: I'm living in Vancouver going to university and you're working at the greenhouse when it's swarmed by men in flak jackets with 'Drug Squad' on the back. What happens then? When the authorities phone home, who's going to take the call?" I indicated Bree's back. "How will that go over with child welfare? And who's going to come up with Mom's bail?"

Beth sagged, suddenly shrunken and hollowed out. Bree pulled the plug to drain the sink, and then dried her hands, eyes down, her face florid and blotchy.

I said, "When you're locked up she won't be able to come live in my dorm. And if you expect me to drop everything again -"

Bree whipped off her earbuds. "This is about drugs."

"Darling, no," Beth almost wailed.

"I'm not selling drugs, I never did." She spoke in a monotone. "So you don't have anything to worry about, either of you. But you wouldn't believe that, would you?"

She b.u.mped me in the chest, hard with her muscled palms. She was larger than me, I realized, and still growing.

"I'm not with Nolan anymore. Hasn't anyone noticed that I'm here every day and every night? That I don't have any friends, that I don't do anything?" Her voice rose. "He tried something once, all right? It was stupid, but it was just once. And you wrecked it -" She shouldered me out of her way and left the room, tears streaming "- in front of everybody. And he hasn't talked to me since."

Beth gaped, dazed, at the s.p.a.ce where Bree had been. After a moment the sound of frantic typing carried in from the piano room.

Beth nodded to herself and moved slowly to the stairs. "I'm off to Vancouver now. For my show's opening. It's tomorrow, in case you'd forgotten."

"That's right." I had forgotten, completely. I followed her, offering a cup of tea. "Good luck, break a leg, whatever."

She bent down to me, laying her forehead on my shoulder, "Please, Tate, don't ruin your future. Please."

"It's my future, Mom, not yours."

The acceptance letter lay opened on my bed. It was a formality, the printed version of the email I'd received a week earlier. But it was addressed to me, not her, yet there it was, open. I had no privacy here. Or maybe she wanted to push me out too - make me angry and remove any lingering doubts I might have about leaving.

Yes, I'd been accepted, but the letter made it clear that I'd barely squeaked in. Not in so many words, but the message was unmistakable. I remembered the welcome letter they sent me when I was a high school prodigy: it congratulated me on achieving such a high academic standing, and was pleased to welcome me with a full scholars.h.i.+p, blah, blah, blah. This letter was a terse two paragraphs. It stated the fact of my acceptance and the procedure for registering my courses. I was in. And that was all.

However, acceptance was better than rejection. At the end of the year, there were scholars.h.i.+ps available, if my results were good enough. I opened my laptop to check my course options and texted Rachel at Five Star.

I'd phoned her every day when she'd first got the job. I liked talking to her, especially when I was on a long drive to a rundown farmhouse or some scary clearing in the deep woods. But some Five Star customer must have complained, or her boss had found out, because phone calls were now forbidden. Her boss didn't seem to know about texting, though.

I typed: u free after the s.h.i.+ft?

While I waited for her to notice the message and reply, I registered my new university ID and logged on. Tuition and student fees had gone up again. My estimates had been way low. Blowing that scholars.h.i.+p had been a really stupid move.

My bedroom was at the back of the house, in a cramped dormer with angled ceilings and a tiny window facing the forested slope. The room was pretty impersonal, I'd never really felt like I wanted to move in, and I'd done nothing to fix it up beyond tacking up a couple of band posters that I'd pulled off telephone poles. There was nothing that I'd care to bring with me when I left.

If I climbed out on the roof, I could look a hundred feet uphill and see the overhanging corner of the tree house where my money was stored and my truck was parked.

In her room, Beth made a bad-tempered clatter as she packed to leave. She cursed as she rummaged through the bathroom for toiletries, slid coat hangers around and thumped her suitcase. When her closet door stuck on the warped floor she slammed it so hard the mirror in my room quivered.

My phone chirped: sorry. 2morrow?

Tomorrow she had the afternoon s.h.i.+ft, so her evening was free: ok. drinks on me.

The response was instant: yum. cu @ marina No, I didn't want to go to the marina again. I wanted somewhere special to celebrate, where we could watch the sun go down and to talk about our fall courses, together. Somewhere private. I'll surprise you.

The reply was quick: k I'd never seen her naked.

Down the hall, Beth clunked her suitcase downstairs. She didn't call out her usual goodbye, but the door squealed open and closed, and a minute later the Volvo groaned to life and drove away.

The screech of the kitchen door jolted me. I'd dozed off in the muggy heat of my cramped room, exhausted by aggravation and too many long nights on darkened roads.

"It's me," Beth called out for all to hear.

I fought off the fog of sleep. What was she doing back home? I'd been so far gone, the sound of the Volvo's shredded m.u.f.fler straining uphill hadn't roused me. Or maybe she'd been forced to walk back home after some gasket had finally blown. She must be stressed over the delay in leaving.

Her voice was directed at me. "I have made a decision. I am not going to Vancouver -"

She was going to miss her opening?

"- although my show is opening tomorrow, my first show in years, and you both know what that means to me, I am not going because I'm needed here. This family is in a crisis." Something smashed. Pottery, a dish, maybe.

She'd gone for a drive and decided on a new angle of attack - and attack was the word. She was past any form of discussion, she was going to throw things and break things until I caved in, simply to make her stop. She'd win at any cost. I'd seen it before.

A heavy thud and the clang of piano strings. Something had hit the Bosendorfer, or she'd pushed its teetering leg off the thesaurus that held it up. "I hope you're happy, Tate," she called, barely audible over the one-person war. "Because of you, I'm missing my own opening. Lord knows what Eleanor will say. Or the press." In the next room, Bree locked her door. She'd be safe, this wasn't about her.

Violence and guilt were Beth's endgame. No debate, no discussion, she just threw things while screaming the same points again and again until she wore her adversary down. When I was younger, I'd face off with her, and I'm ashamed at the things I could do and say, but the end result was always the same, and I have the scars to prove it. This time, I decided to skip the intermediary steps, skip the conclusion, skip all of it. I slipped my laptop in its case and slid it out onto the roof. Stuffed my messenger bag with a handful of clothes and tossed it out too. I paused, thinking, this is too f.u.c.king Huckleberry Finn, but her footsteps came stomping up the stairs and it was out the window for me.

I didn't dare put a light on in the tree house, not with her down there, screaming my name out every window and door. If I thought the neighbours could hear her I might be embarra.s.sed, but if any of them were home they'd be snug behind their triple-glazed windows, sound m.u.f.fled by the air conditioning.

It was only nine or so and there was still plenty of summer-evening light to see by. After some time to sit and breathe, I put my mind off her with busywork. I counted my money and revised my budgets based on the final numbers for tuition and fees. I was still short, a.s.suming that I had to support Beth and Bree as well as myself.

Beth must be making decent money as a budder. If she kept it up she might not need my help. But if she chose to make a dramatic moral stand about the dope business (which is what I expected), she'd probably quit her job and dramatically reject my corruptly obtained money. Which looped back to the fact that I'd have to support the two of them, which I could only do by working for Randle, whether or not she knew about it. At least until school began.

The only way I could manage that was to keep my distance. For that, the tree house was perfect. All I'd need was an air mattress. Like camping, but easier. When Beth was out, I could go down to the house and use the plumbing and hot water, and check on Bree. If Beth stayed angry, I'd keep on avoiding her until I was settled in Vancouver. From there I'd make the first overtures and we'd all reconnect. It might be easier to deal with her once we had some distance between us.

I pa.s.sed an hour or so trolling the Internet, researching home hydroponic systems and nutrients. Randle wasn't the only one with a turnkey grow op. There was an apartment-sized grow-room kit that you could order from some unspecified address with a California phone number. There were self-contained units the size of refrigerators, which fit a few dwarf plants, and smaller grow boxes disguised as bar fridges. One looked exactly like a floor-standing PC. Even a dwarf variety could pull in five hundred bucks a plant, minimum. One or two of those in a college dorm could definitely supplement my income.

"You can't leave me alone with her," Bree said from the shadows.

"d.a.m.n, you scared me." I jumped to hide the money, then realized she must have been watching for a while. Stacks of bills covered the floor.