There was an Old Woman

by Howard Engel

  “I may have this all wrong,” she said. “Maybe Moira is on the warpath again. He got wonderful reviews in the New York Times for his last book and a mention in The New Yorker. That sort of thing means a lot to Moira. Still, she has no further claim on him. He’s all mine. When we tie the knot, I mean. She used to be an Olympic fencer. Those people have to be damned dedicated. So, watch out if she comes looking for you.”

  “I’ll keep my back to the wall,” I said. “So, if Moira is happy, who isn’t? Who would think enough about your comings and goings to put an old divorce investigator on your case?” Cath rolled her eyes to the ceiling, but she didn’t say anything. “You thought earlier that it might be Orv Wishart. Why would you think that? If you want to tell me, that is.”

  “Orv thinks he was the making of me. I was the diamond and Grantham was the rough. Orv was the talent scout. He came on like an eager boy scout, but it wasn’t badges he was collecting. You don’t want to hear this, do you? He gave me my start. I owe him everything, but I’m through saying thanks.”

  “There are laws about that kind of thing, you know?”

  “Oh, yeah, tell me about it. Hell, Benny, I don’t want to send him to jail, I just want him not to be there whenever I turn around. How can I say this? He has an abnormal appetite for everything about me. He knows my shoe size, where I buy my clothes, what books I read, everything!”

  “So, you think he could be interested in having you followed?”

  “But he already knows about McStu. What more are you going to be able to tell him?”

  “If not Orv, then who?”

  “I don’t know. I get a lot of funny letters from fans. Maybe one of them. It’s happened before. You know, people seen regularly on television.”

  “Orv’s marriage is shaky, I hear.”

  “Sort of wavering. But Orv will never seriously get on the wrong side of Antonia. She’s got his future in both hands. He lives for that TV station and he can’t keep it if Antonia cuts him off.”

  “A delicate balancing act. How does he manage it?”

  “The Ravenswoods are an old patrician family. Antonia will put up with a lot as long as it stays out of the press. As long as Orv keeps his extra-curricular activities under wraps, and turns up for her parties and remembers opening nights at the Shaw Festival, she’s a reasonably contented woman.”

  “Could it be the old lady checking up?”

  “Gladys Ravenswood? Ben, what are you giving me? Don’t you know who you’re working for?”

  “I’m working for an agent of the person who wants the information. I don’t know who this agent represents.”

  “I see. Someone like a lawyer.”

  “Like a lawyer. That’s right. Back to Gladys.”

  “Gladys is a spoiled, elderly alcoholic. She’s trying to hold her family business together. She’s trying to keep her family, if not together, out of the papers and off the air. Since media is her business, she’s batting a thousand. She can be as bitchy as they come and she can be as nice as pie. But you have to watch her. She knows the power game and has friends in all the right places.”

  “Is Wishart a shoo-in to take all of this over when she retires?”

  “That’s not a word I’d use in her hearing, Ben. Retirement isn’t part of her plan. As for Orv, she keeps him guessing. He never knows where he stands with her unless he’s being attacked from outside. Then she’ll go to bat for him. She doesn’t like what he’s done to Antonia. But if you asked her about it, she’d look you in the eye and ask you what you meant. Canny. That’s the word for Gladys.”

  “Well, I give up! I can’t figure this out. Don’t get me wrong. Of all the people I’ve had under surveillance over the years, you have been a choice subject. But why?”

  “Your glass is empty.” She leaned over with the bottle and gave me the last of its contents. I added ginger ale from the fridge and again we touched glasses.

  “Are you doing any stories on your own for the station?” I asked.

  “Do them all the time. That old maid Robin O’Neil tries to keep me reading his copy. Most of the time that’s fine, but once in a while a story comes along and I think it needs to be covered.”

  “Like what? I mean in the last week or so.”

  “I did the firemen’s gift box for the poor kids. But that was an old idea they do every three or four years. There was an old-fashioned barn raising.”

  “Can’t be that.”

  “I was doing some interviews with people who knew that old woman who starved to death on Brogan Street.”

  “Bingo! That’s it!”

  “But the story’s still in pieces. It hasn’t been edited. It’s all over the place, really. Nobody’s even seen it.”

  “Nevertheless. The people you talked to know you have been working on it. Who did you talk to?”

  “Rupe McLay, the head of Community Services, the bank manager and a couple of others.”

  “You talked to Temperley? You know what’s happened to him?”

  “Yes, for just a few minutes. But I couldn’t get hold of some of the people I wanted.”

  “Thurleigh Ramsden didn’t return your calls?”

  “Oh, he returned them, all right, but he wouldn’t say a word about Miss Oldridge. Said he was too busy.”

  “I’m sure. I nearly got into a fight with him a few days ago trying to get some information.”

  “Maybe you got him to change his tune, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He called me at the station this afternoon. He says he’ll be glad to see me tomorrow morning at 8:30. He’s had a complete change of heart.”

  “So, at 8:30 you and a TV crew are going to tape him in his house?”

  “No. He just wants to talk to me first. I’ll take a tape recorder in case he changes his mind. He could say plenty if he would. I’m a little nervous seeing him on his own. He’s a terrible man from what I’ve heard, but a story is a story.”

  “I hope you get more than he told the inquest. He was as vague as a fifth carbon copy when I was there.”

  “Benny, what’s your interest in Ramsden and the Oldridge case?”

  “Just a favour I’m doing for a friend. It’s not a job, really. I …” At this point Ma came into the room and saw us standing together talking away with some intensity.

  “I see you’re getting on well!” she said, coming through into the middle of the room. She had leaned slightly on the door jamb as she came in. “I think your father has a bottle of rye in here that he’s been hiding on me.” She began to rummage about the cupboards until she found the brother of the VO we’d just finished. When I opened it for her and poured a drink into her glass, I noticed that she was giving Cath a thorough examination. She did everything but ask her to say “ah.” Women can get away with looking at one another. If a man tries it, he’s ticked off for being rude.

  “You do the news on television, don’t you?” She was using the serious voice she used for serious conversations. I had a premonition about where it was leading. Cath answered and Ma assessed it while forming her next question. “Benny’s friend Anna Abraham, up at Secord University, does some TV work. She comments on American politics. Maybe you know her? She’s the daughter of Jonah Abraham.”

  “I may have met her. I honestly don’t remember.”

  What Ma couldn’t do to me by forgetting her purse and having a fight in public at a supermarket, what oranges rolling all over the parking lot couldn’t accomplish, she finally managed with this gratuitous information about Anna. I was angry now, maybe even a little guilty, not wanting to be caught out so soon in getting to know Cath Bracken. Did Ma think I was putting the moves on Cath right in Ma’s own kitchen? And was I? I wasn’t sure of anything except that Ma was suddenly too much mother for me. She had played the innocent once too often.

  “How do you come to know my Benny?” she asked with ironclad naïvety.

  “Oh, we just keep running into each other,” Cath said. “You kn
ow what it’s like in a small town.” I could see by her eyes that Ma wasn’t buying any of this. As her dreams of being welcomed into the mansion of Jonah Abraham as the mother of the groom were threatened, I wondered whether she was going to tell how I wet my bed until I was six and how I still brux my teeth while sleeping.

  “We met through business, Ma. Cath and I were just trying to figure out how that came about. We’ve covered the ground and we can’t find a reason.”

  Ma looked from me to Cath and back again. “It’s so hard to find a reason?” She took a sip of her drink and shook her head. “Maybe it’s like in Sherlock Holmes,” she said. “If you can’t find a reason, that’s the reason.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, remember the story about the Red-Headed League?”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “Look it up. I’ve got guests. I’m like Liz Taylor getting the guests, in … what was the name of that movie?” She got up and returned to the living-room.

  Cath was looking at her watch when I looked at her. When Ma gets the guests, they stay got. Cath was the first of the merry crowd to say goodnight. Pa walked her to her BMW, leaving a room full of supermarket personnel standing between me and bruxing the rest of the night away.

  SIXTEEN

  I found a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on the shelf near my bed. It was an old copy with the name Robert A.B. Otto in it written in ink that was turning brown. “The Red-Headed League” began on page 29. I read it all the way through, still not understanding the point Ma had been making. Then, of course, it hit me all at once and with a terrific, almost physical, blow. Of course! I had been hired by Julian Newby to follow Cath Bracken not because he was interested in the movements of Miss Bracken, but because he was interested in my movements! He was indifferent to where Cath Bracken went—or at least, it wasn’t of great importance. What he cared about was keeping me off the scent I had apparently been sniffing when I ran into Stan Mendlesham at the new courthouse. Newby wanted to keep me away from Lizzy Oldridge, her estate and her involvement with Thurleigh Ramsden.

  Conan Doyle’s Jabez Wilson got four pounds a week for writing out the Encyclopaedia Britannica; I was earning more money, but I was at least as stupid as Doyle’s red-headed pawnbroker. I should have seen through it. I should have been reminded of my promise to Kogan every time I climbed the stairs to my office, serenaded by Kogan’s unique water music.

  To be fair to myself, I hadn’t neglected Kogan’s business entirely. I had seen Lizzy’s house on Brogan Street, found out that Steve Morella was putting together a gold-mine of real estate just behind St. Andrew Street, and had nearly been pinched when I went to hear how Ramsden operated within the Bede Bunch. Kogan may not have had a full and just pound of flesh from me, but he had had a few good ounces. Then I remembered the ribbing I’d got from Pete Staziak. It was a pound, damn it!

  As I turned out the light, I thought that Ma, in a manner of speaking, had recalled me to duty. I had to hand it to her for that. But, clever woman that she is, at the same time, she was getting me away from Cath Bracken. She knew that I would recognize that I’d been paddling about in red-herring-infested waters when I should have been paying attention to Anna Abraham, in her eyes the catch of the century. Ma loved doing a good turn almost as much as she enjoyed mischief. Putting me back on what she thought was my true course was a good deed, getting me away from Cath brought out her warped sense of my destiny.

  Maybe Cath’s interviews would be interesting to hear; they might shed some light on what’s been going on, but the most important thing for me in the next few days was to try to find out what was vulnerable about the Morella property deals. There had to have been an unsavoury side to them or Newby wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to sidetrack me. All I had to do was figure out where the smelly bits were hidden.

  Newby was a crafty fellow to throw Cath at me. I should be more suspicious when the senior partner in any firm takes me to lunch. I guess Newby thought he could read me the way Ma can read a teacup. Clever Newby. Poor Cooperman.

  Well, the truth is I didn’t sleep much that night. There was too much going on in my head. It was like a battle scene in a movie running backwards. The booze didn’t help either. I tried reading one of my McStu books, but he kept grinning at me out of the pages with that gap between his front teeth looking like it was leading the way into the Channel Tunnel. I heaved the book across the room and punched the pillow. When that didn’t work, I took a shower. Eventually, towards dawn, I slipped into a cross-grained sleep that was laced with bad dreams and bad thoughts. I was glad when the clock-radio came on at eight o’clock and set me up for a brand new day. New day. New problems. New disappointments.

  After a shave and instant coffee, I went out to the Di for a cup of the real stuff. On St. Andrew Street there were Christmas shoppers and Christmas carols on tapes. The big day was only a week away, and I had not even made out a shopping list. Outside, the sky was the colour of gun metal; inside, the management had turned on the lights. “Frosty the Snowman,” coming through a loud speaker, was making thought difficult.

  I was trying to figure out how to get back on the main highway of the investigation, since, unfortunately, Cath Bracken had been turned into a detour. Where were the ramps to help me drive back into the action? Ramsden, of course! I could try to find him in a better mood. Maybe the finding of his friend Temperley would make him more agreeable. All I wanted was a short chat with him.

  I paid my bill, bought a Toronto paper, read the headlines and the story about Temperley’s murder, scalped from yesterday’s Beacon, and found my way back to the office. I nearly fell over when I saw Kogan sweeping the stairs. He looked at me as though I’d discovered him cavorting in a pink tutu.

  “Morning, Kogan! You’re up early,” I said as I passed him and headed for my door. “And on Saturday too!”

  “There’s going to be a big storm,” he said. “Blizzard!” I’d missed seeing it in the paper, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Kogan’s source wasn’t a newspaper.

  “Where did you disappear to the other night?” he asked. “They wouldn’t let me go until it was getting light out.”

  “So, they didn’t book you into the Venus Art Club?”

  “Nope. You knew that? Right?”

  “If they had a clean case, you wouldn’t be sweeping the steps, Kogan. I’m guessing that the cops had trouble getting a witness to come forward. Happens all the time. Nudity, cases like that. Nobody wants to get his name associated. You understand?”

  “I hear you and Thurleigh had a fight up in the hall!” Kogan was grinning as though he could picture the main event.

  “Who told you?”

  “Oh, I’ve got my contacts same as you. I hear it was a real dust-up.”

  “In that crowd, I must have looked like Muhammad Ali in his prime.”

  “I’ll bet Ramsden was in good form. I figure him for a dirty fighter, Mr. Cooperman.”

  “We collected quite a crowd, Kogan. Then you turned up. We couldn’t compete with your act.” Then I had a thought. “Kogan, have you ever run into the Ravenswood family? Do you know Orv Wishart?” To an outsider this might seem a silly question to ask a former panhandler, but in Grantham stranger things have been known to happen. For instance, I knew that Kogan and a well-known local police magistrate used to play football at Cranmer College years ago. Nowadays Kogan, who has not been above dining on cat food, has spent evenings in the company of this esteemed member of the judiciary drinking everything from fine wines to aftershave, if my sources have it right. So, I wasn’t surprised when he told me that he and Gladys Ravenswood (née Kyrle) used to attend Mrs. Rankin’s dancing class and that Orv Wishart was the maker of prize-winning trout flies. I couldn’t see how I could use this information, but I filed it away in my head just in case.

  There were a couple of things for me to do once I had opened my office door. The first was to contact Julian Newby and tell him that I was no longer
able to keep Cath Bracken under surveillance. I always hated turning off the money-tap, but I try to stay as honest as I can without starving to death. The other thing was to see what I could find out from Ramsden. I put in a call to Newby’s office and was startled to get a live secretary instead of an answering machine. She explained that the office is always open until noon on Saturdays. I detected no trace of bitterness in her voice. I love these fine old firms. I asked her to have Mr. Newby call me when he came in on Monday. I was sure that at least the senior partner in the firm kept bankers’ hours. She assured me that the message would be relayed to Newby.

  The other call I placed was a second attempt to raise Ramsden. I left a message next to my last message on his machine, and leaned back in my chair the way Orv Wishart had. The wonderful thing about the telephone is that it gives you the feeling that you have been working when only your Peter Pointer has. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but I already felt like an efficient executive who had made a few smooth moves. Next to pegging stones into the Old Canal, it was my favourite early-morning pastime.

  That’s when the phone rang. It was that hard-working secretary at Newby’s office. Would I kindly come by to see Mr. Newby in an hour? I said I would and hung up. I was surprised that Newby wanted to see me today. I thought it would keep until Monday. And what about Mendlesham? I thought Newby wanted me to work through him.

  I killed the better part of the hour drinking coffee at the Crystal. I couldn’t quite bring myself to return to the Di, where the seat was still warm from my last visit. Luckily, I was carrying a copy of one of McKenzie Stewart’s novels with me and the time went quickly.

  It was just about fifty-five minutes later that I drove the Olds into Newby’s parking lot along the side of the house on Ontario Street that served as one of the oldest law offices in town. I was congratulating myself on being early, when I saw Newby himself, driving a dark Lincoln, leaving the same lot. Where can a Lincoln take you in five minutes that’s so important, I wanted to know. I wanted to know badly enough to back out of the parking lot myself and follow the big car.