The Bells of Ys Chapter 7

[To Beginning of Story]



Tina



After more than a hundred years of dealing with rain in all of its various forms, Seattleites become connoisseurs of the stuff, just as they have become experts at coffee and micro-brew beers. Like the Innuit and their twenty four different words for snow, we in Seattle recognize the distinction between rain, drizzle, mist, light mist, light drizzle, showers, storms, rain-breaks, heavy fog, deluges, and so forth. It's not just a matter of how much rain is coming down, but what the clouds look like, how much light is available, the smell in the air, how intermittent the rain is, even the shape of the rain drops.



It was still raining when I pulled up to Hal Lindstrom's condo, but this was a heavy mist rather than the steady deluge of earlier in the day. The area, about a mile south of Medina off the northwest edge of Lake Washington, had the curious juxtaposition of partially submerged buildings that had made up the former waterfront a decade ago, along with buildings at the lake's edge that had never been intended to be waterside property. The moniker of "lake" was no longer really true either - rising sea levels had caused both Lake Washington and Lake Union to merge into a single Kidney shaped body of water, wiping out much of the tony real-estate that had built up along their edges, and only an all too temporary dam kept Lake Washington from joining up with the Puget Sound on the south. When that happened, and Kira had told me that it may be some time this year, Seattle would be an island.



And now we were seeing mermaids. I shook my head in spite of myself. Kira was a good friend but more than a little bit of an alarmist, convinced that we were seeing the end of the world in what was probably just some really bad weather. Floods were troublesome, especially for the idiots that wanted a waterside view of the beach, but people adapt. We weren't all going to need to sprout fins and start singing like Ariel any time soon.



Lindstrom's place was surprisingly nice, as was the Mercedes visible from within the open garage. A man was working at the end of it at some kind of bench, and it took me a moment to realize that he was working a potter's wheel. He briefly lifted up his hand in acknowledgement that I was there, then went back to the very delicate ewer that he was shaping there. On the walls were other shaped pottery, some already fired and glazed, others apparently awaiting some rework. The small of baking clay made me suspect that he had a kiln around as well, probably in the semi-walled off alcove behind him.



He finally slowed the wheel and looked up again, a not unhandsome man in his mid-thirties.



"I'm sorry about not getting up immediately, but this was coming along too nicely and I didn't want to damage it," Hal Lindstrom said, "Let me clean up a sec - the last thing you want to get on your hands on a day like this is clay."



He walked back to a sink and wished the wet clay off his hands and face, dried off with a clean work towel, then came up to me with his hand extended, "Hal Lindstrom."



"Tina McCarthy," I replied, shaking his hand.



"Come on inside. Can I get you something to drink?"



We headed into the condo proper, an obvious bachelor pad though a tasteful one.



"Throwing pottery must be profitable," I said as he handed me a glass of tea, a beer in the other hand for himself.



"It is if you have a couple of IPOs under your belt," he replied with a grin. " I used to manage resource companies, then VC'd my way through the last decade and let everyone else do the real work. Let me get some clean clothes on or I'll get this damn potter's clay everywhere. Make yourself at home."



Hal headed off to his bedroom, pulling off his shirt on the way, and I averted my eyes reluctantly from a well muscled back. Throwing pottery also was apparently quite good for developing abs and shoulders.



The man had taste, there was no question about that, and apparently enough money to indulge that taste. Paintings, some of recognizable Seattle landmarks, some more abstract in nature, were scattered on the walls, and a book shelf to one side seemed to be filled with books on economics, political theory and philosophy. Like most of the houses I've been in of the independently wealthy, there was no television, though a very high end sound system, and she noted a computer console and keyboard tucked discretely off in one corner. It took me a moment to realize that there was also music, something by Bach, I believed, playing in the background. Very nice sound system.



He emerged, considerably cleaner and wearing a black turtleneck sweater that suited him perfectly ... yummily, in fact. Settling into thick, padded (and seductively lulling) chairs, he grinned at me.



"You probably weren't quite expecting this, if you got your report from the police."



"Um ..." I started, brilliantly. He was entirely too good looking, and I had to fight down some very deep seated instincts. "No. Not really. I was kind of expecting some idiot of a kid who'd had a little too much to drink to be honest."



"Nah, just taking advantage of one of the few sunny days left. I like sun, and we get so little of it anymore," he paused. "I'm afraid that you've probably come out here for nothing."



"Oh?"



"I saw her again ... the mermaid. She showed up at my door last night, with a bundle of my clothes, dry cleaned. She was most sorry she'd taken them, but apparently she had need of them when she took them."



"I take it she had legs."



"Sadly, yes. Very shapely ones, from what I could see in the skirt she was wearing. She was pretty, I knew that from the first time that I saw her. I invited her in, but she got skittish and ran off."



"Could you describe her to me? She's apparently been pulling the mermaid stunt elsewhere in the area, and I'm a little concerned that she may be dangerous to herself or others."



"I can do even better than that," he said, springing out of his chair and heading to the console. "I have a surveillance system for the house, and it gets pictures of everyone who comes in and out."



He came back with an intellipage of her, photographs on the top - front, side, and back, and a full motion video of her talking quietly with Hal. She was pretty, in a way that reminded me a great deal of Kira, even though this girl was blonde to Kira's dark brunette and a decade younger. They both had the same big dark, seal-like eyes, though, the same gracefulness of movement, though in the girl there was something else - a slight bobbing motion in the way that she walked that made her seem more like she was swimming than walking.



"Any idea who she is," I said, after looking at the pictures.



"Not a clue. Strange girl. We talked a little bit, she said that she had lost her clothes sack while swimming and was afraid her father would be upset if he found out. I'd be more concerned about identity theft, but I immediately switched over cards and put a watch on the ones that were taken, and there was no activity on them - they'd be useless to her anyway, as they're bio-activated. She apparently did just need the clothes."



I looked at him, and could sense that there was something that he wasn't quite telling me. "What did her tail look like?"



He sat back in the chair, and thought about that for a bit. "It was expensive, whatever it was. It blended into her skin, and there were no obvious seams from where I saw. The tail fin itself was semi-rigid, fluted, and a little ragged along the edges. Very organic looking. My first thought was that it was a film crew from Vancouver shooting for a movie and she'd become separated from them, though there were none registered or in the news. Still might be a crew of indies with daddy's money financing them."



"So you don't think that she was really a mermaid?" I asked.



"Don't be ridiculous ... mermaids aren't real. In this day and age, you'd even have to ask that?" he asked with a smile. "Naw, I was the victim of a harmless prank, one of life's little wonders."



He stopped, still charming, but with this sudden sense that the interview was over. I've learned to be very sensitive to such queues ... he wouldn't tell me anything else.



"Well, thank you for your time, and I'm glad you were able to get your things back. I should get going before the skies open up again."



He walked me out, though I noticed as we passed the exquisite pottery that most of the newest ones, the ones that hadn't yet been fired, had a sensuousness to them that the others lacked, sinuous curves that reminded me of sirens tumbling one over the other. I thanked Hal again and headed into the rain, though not before seeing him in the rear camera view standing there, looking troubled and, if I had to point a word to it, haunted.



[Chapter 8]