“Is possible to make an incendiary device with kitchen chemicals,” Sasha assured Horace as they inched their way through the snow. “Also many sheds have useful supplies. I will show you.”
“Thanks. I’ve read about making home defense explosives but have never actually tried it.” Horace couldn’t bring himself to ask the large man beside him how he knew so much about explosives. He was also wondering how he had come to have the name of Jones when he was clearly Russian.
“We have large heap of trash gathered for bonfire. We will have one tonight. Only perhaps we will not mention it to my wife,” Sasha added. “Not until we are done with testing the little bombs.”
“Or my son. Brave lad—won’t say a word against him. But he sometimes gets a bit officious when he is working. Forgets that I’m the father and tries to wrap me in swaddling cloth.”
“Is good to have son who cares,” Sasha said. “If I have son I hope he will be like brave and loyal Mountie Chuck Goodhead.”
Horace felt a wave of pride.
“So what are your thoughts about this zoologist?” Horace asked. “Think he’s here to try a cover-up?”
“Bah! Is not zoologist. He is spy. Well, perhaps zoologist spy. Is possible,” Sasha conceded as he coaxed the truck forward.
Horace blinked, wondering if his new friend was actually a loony. But then he thought about it for a minute.
“What other kind of a spy would he be?” he finally asked, willing to be fair-minded.
“Hmph. It is hard saying because the dead man was a bad, disloyal person. He was a whore to everyone with money.”
“You knew the dead man?”
Sasha shook his head.
“But your son says he is a bad whoreson man and I believe your son.”
“Chuck says he is a bad man, does he? Maybe it’s good that a bear killed him then.”
Sasha shook his giant head again.
“Woman was eaten by bear,” he corrected. “The man was shot. And poisoned. By the woman. Probably.”
Horace realized that there was actually quite a lot going on in the Gulch that Chuck had failed to mention to him.
“Tell me your theory,” Horace invited.
“I do not need theory. Mountie Chuck Goodhead will discover the truth and then we will make a plan.” Sasha sounded complaisant.
“Are you sure?” Such faith in his son baffled Horace who never really thought of him as a leader of men. It was almost as strange as the idea that Chuck had anything to do with undercover agents of any ilk.
“Always before he finds the truth about spies.”
Horace was feeling disoriented.
“Spies have been here before? But why?” He couldn’t imagine that there was anything in the Gulch that would be of interest to anyone.
“The first time it was our fault. Anatoli and I were with Russian mercenaries hired by mafia. We served with an evil colonel who came to the Gulch looking for a plane that had crashed in snow. He took prisoners and held them at the Lonesome Moose saying he would hurt them if Butterscotch did not bring the money from the plane to him.”
“Holy hell.”
“Da. But your son and Butterscotch rescued everyone before he killed them. They said that we could stay if we did not want to go back to mafia. We are not stupids. We stayed and married with the Flowers.”
Horace was speechless.
“After that the government sent spies twice, looking for the money and something else that was on the plane.”
“Did they find it?”
“No. Always they went away again after a while. The Mountie has kept the secret so we can stay in Canada and not return to Russia to be killed by mafiosos.”
“That’s good,” Horace said, completely caught up in the drama and the idea that his son would place personal loyalty ahead of his job. “Was it a lot of money on the plane?”
“Yes,” Sasha said simply. “And jewels. It is why I could marry with the Flowers.”
Horace shook his head in wonder.
“You said there was something else on the plane?”
“Da. But we do not know what. It made an explosion in the lake. We thought then that the spies would never come again.”
* * *
Chuck allowed himself to pace the floor of the cabin. Probably he should go find Butterscotch and Max and take the wolf for a walk—a short one. In town. And then it would be time for the town meeting. He was rather looking forward to this ritual.
And he needed to come up with a good excuse for not being at work tomorrow. Because he wouldn’t be. Even if he had a brain wave and solved every problem he still couldn’t make it back to Winnipeg in time for the morning shift.
And, as if Brian and Janet were not sufficient ills, there was the matter of the zoologist. Chuck was pretty sure that he was Brian’s minder, and probably pretty pissed that he’d been given the slip. But there was no proof of this and he could be someone and something more dangerous. The man had to be placated and gotten rid of.
Yes, what he needed was fresh air. And perhaps a snack. He would go to the Lonesome Moose and find Max and Butterscotch and get a good seat for the meeting.
Chuck bundled up, checked the fire, and then stepped outside. He could smell the ozone as the clouds began playing bumper car. He wasn’t surprised when the sky flashed white and the thunder rolled through the mountains. The storm was a way off though so there was still plenty of time for his father and Sasha to get back from Seven Forks.
* * *
I looked up and then smiled as the Mountie came through the pub door. Gone were all traces of the rather stiff officer who had first appeared in the Gulch. Like the best chameleon, he had assumed the local color and blended right in. I knew that he was also making an effort to learn Gaelic but that was progressing slowly since he had no one to practice on back in the city. His accent was also cause for some amusement though no one laughed in his face. Thanks to all the refugees we spoke a rather strange version of the language ourselves.
* * *
Chuck Goodhead sat on a stool at the bar in the Lonesome Moose watching as the townsfolk of McIntyre’s Gulch filed through the doors to find seats of their own. Once through the doors, most of the populace had a tendency to wander and chat rather than organize themselves in preparation for the meeting. Many stopped by to exchange greetings with the Mountie who had long since become and accepted member of the community.
This was the first official meeting of the entire municipality that Chuck had attended. As he’d expected, it didn’t start on time. One hour late, also known as spot-on Gulch time, Big John appeared from a back room to stand behind a crude wooden lectern that he’d banged together out of some old logs out back for just such an occasion. He’d even made a crude gavel which he pounded on the lectern to get everyone’s attention. The pounding had no effect on the milling, raucous crowd. Eventually the head flew off the gavel which at least solicited some laughter.
Though Big John was a big man with an equally big voice, he was surprisingly inept at garnering the attention of his citizenry. Many would say that though he had the voice to command respect, he lacked the words.
“Oy!” Samuel Levine-Jones called. “Oy!”
Samuel was the only known Jewish resident in town. As was frequently the case at town meetings, it was his annoying voice upon which Big John had to depend to get his audience’s attention. Several more boisterous Oys and the still milling group of people began to settle down. Most also wiggled their fingers in their ears in an attempt to stop the ringing in their head which Samuel’s plaintive plea produced as a side effect.
“Thank you, Samuel. Would everyone please find a seat? Is everyone here?” Big John asked.
“No,” a voice called. “I think Denny the Diesel is trapped in the lavvy.”
“Playin’ the skin flute again?” someone wanted to know.
“No, this time he’s ridin’ out the ill effects from orderin’ Big John’s house special last night.”
The roo
m burst into laughter and individual conversations resumed.
“Oy!” Samuel called. “Oy!”
“Okay, okay,” Zeke Jones called back as things began to settle down. “We’ll stop jawin’ if you’ll stop squealin’, Samuel.”
Finally there was relative peace and quiet. Big John jumped in with his introduction before things were once more able to get out of hand.
“Oidche mhath. Thank you for coming,” he began. “As you all know, we have important business to discuss today.”
“Aye, we do,” Harry McIntyre called back. “What are we going to do about people’s livestock let loose to trample my greenhouse?”
“You know I do my best to keep my cows in their paddock,” Billy Jones called back.
“Paddock, is that what you call it? Besides, who would be fool enough to try to start a dairy farm in the Canadian outback?” Harry taunted.
“And who’d be fool enough to try farmin’?” Billy shot back. “Besides, you’ll be thankful for the fresh milk as soon as it starts flowin’.”
“Milk?” Harry barked. “Your cows spend so much energy fightin’ off the cold they have nothing left to produce milk.”
By this time everyone in the room had chimed in on one side of the issue or the other, completely drowning out the two primary combatants. Eventually, each person began shouting their own pet concerns as potential topics of conversation. Big John searched furiously for the head of his gavel on the floor, but once he found it he was unable to reattach it to the handle. Frustrated, he cast the handle aside and began banging on the lectern with the heavy block of wood until a leg fell off the lectern, sending it crashing to the floor.
It was a pistol shot ringing out in such a confined space that finally got everyone’s attention. Pistols and rifles appeared in people’s hands, hammers cocked, before the armed citizenry of the Gulch noticed the Flowers standing in the back of the room holding a still smoking pistol high in the air. Chuck had even gone for his firearm, which he’d forgotten to wear, in response to the surprise discharge. As Big John stood looking up at yet another hole in his ceiling that he would have to patch, Chuck jumped down off his stool and strode before the audience to explain the situation before things deteriorated back into mayhem.
“People, I’m Charles Goodhead, Canadian Mountie,” Chuck announced. “Most of you know me. I have some news that I’d like to share with you.”
“Go ahead, Mountie,” Big John said, still looking up.
No doubt Big John had already devised a mental picture of the perfect board out back with which to cover the new hole in his ceiling.
“We have a dead man in our town, an outsider, who died under suspicious circumstances,” Chuck began. “The Bones has examined him.”
* * *
As Sasha pulled the truck into town, he noticed that the streets were deserted with the exception of a handful of people still trying to file into the Lonesome Moose. Recognizing that the meeting he was instructed to keep Horace Goodhead from attending was still underway, he pulled the truck up short at the outskirts of town.
“What is it? Why are we stopping?” Horace wanted to know.
“Horace, would you have fun with me?” Sasha asked, having devised a plan for killing a little time until the meeting was over.
“What did you have in mind?” Horace asked suspiciously.
“The explosives we talked about.”
“Yes?”
“Would it be a fun time to use some to say hello?”
“I still don’t follow you.”
“Hop out of truck and wait. I will be back with hello presents.”
Still confused by Sasha’s veiled hints, Horace nonetheless hopped out of the truck to await Sasha’s return. Sasha drove to the back of the Lonesome Moose and slipped inside to gather the cardboard box of goodies he kept hidden in the back of the shed. Returning in a matter of minutes, Sasha climbed out of the truck to share his secret stash.
“Here! Gaze in wonderment.”
“Oh boy,” Horace exclaimed. “I haven’t seen this much ordinance all in one place since I was loading bombs onto B-17s during the big war.”
“Nor I since war in Chechnya,” Sasha admitted with a smile. “Those were happy days.”
Horace held up an ugly-looking ball of nails stuck together with pitch and raised a questioning eyebrow toward Sasha.
“Antipersonnel,” Sasha explained.
Horace put the nail bomb back and had to use both hands to lift the largest of the homemade explosives.
“Good Lord, would you look at the size of this one,” he declared.
“Good for clearing forest of trees or leveling buildings,” Sasha explained.
“Boy oh boy, I sure would like to be around when this one goes off,” Horace said, rotating the bomb in his hands while admiring it.
“As you wish,” Sasha replied.
Sasha bent forward and began rummaging through the cardboard box.
“Sasha, you aren’t really planning on setting off this big boy in town, are you?”
“Why not?” Sasha replied in surprise. “Will make firewood of dead trees.”
“For one thing, we’ll have to be at least a hundred yards away to be safe.”
“Is no problem,” Sasha replied, retrieving a homemade fuse from his box.
Sasha held the extremely short segment of fuse up so the two of them could examine it.
“That’s not long enough,” Horace said with a gulp.
“We will run fast,” Sasha replied, flashing a mischievous smile. “But first, vodka.”
Sasha produced a flask. He unscrewed the lid and offered it to Horace. He felt giddy. He smiled back and nodded his head in excitement.
“Slainte!” Horace said, remembering this Gaelic word because Fiddling Thomas had used it several times. He took a large hit and then passed the flask back.
“Slainte,” Sasha agreed. “Now to work.”
The two men paced one hundred yards out of town then bent to plant the blockbuster in the snow. Sasha inserted the short piece of fuse and looked up into Horace’s excited eyes. It was a pleasure to find someone else who liked explosives.
“Ready?” he asked.
“You bet I am!” Horace replied.
Sasha lit the fuse and the two men took off running for the cover of the town hall.
* * *
“The man was found shot, but the Bones assures us that he didn’t die from his gunshot wounds. Instead, he died of some form of poisoning, most likely introduced intravenously,” Chuck continued.
“I heard he was contagious,” someone hollered to murmurs of agreement. “It’s a biological weapon!”
“One of the reasons for having this meeting is to put such rumors to rest,” Chuck added before the conference could break down again. “He is not contagious. There appears to be no danger from being near the body or from anyone who was near the body.”
“What about the other body?” another person chimed in.
“In addition to the man who was shot, we found that hand of a woman who had been consumed by a bear. And wolves,” he added contentiously. “We’d like to have a vote on whether we should have a short funeral to bury the hand.”
“Seems silly to me, having a funeral for a hand,” was the first opinion.
“I have a jewelry box you can use for a casket,” someone else offered. “I just love funerals. When I don’t know the people,” the woman added.
“We could have a wake!”
Chuck knew that wakes were a fun social event in the Gulch.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” was shouted another opinion.
“Everyone in favor of having a funeral for the hand, please raise theirs,” the Mountie ordered.
Most of the hands in the room shot skyward in support of the ownerless hand.
“Good enough,” Chuck said, “it looks like we’ll be having ourselves a funeral.”
“And a wake!”
With this pronouncement the Mountie
lost control of the audience, which broke down into spirited debate over the vote and bickering over local pet peeves. Meanwhile, Big John had succeeded in righting his lectern and propping the broken leg back into place so that it would once more stand upright.
“If there are no objections,” Big John hollered, “then I declare this meeting adjourned. Let’s get to the eatin’.”
Big John brought the head of his gavel down on the lectern to the accompaniment of a massive explosion. Chuck wasn’t positive, but he thought that the entire floor lifted several feet off the ground before dropping back down. Dust and big hunks of filler were blasted from the chinks between the logs of the structure to rain down on the townsfolk. The lectern fell to the floor again and Chuck had to balance himself against the wall to keep from joining the damaged piece of furniture on the floor.
“What was that?” Big John asked, suspiciously examining his gavel as if that had been the source of the blast.
Chuck was the first out the door of the building, followed in quick succession by the others in attendance. He was too late to witness the huge fireball that accompanied the explosion, but in plenty of time to become enveloped by the resulting choking plume of smoke that spread over Main Street.
* * *
Sasha pulled his face out of the snowbank in which he’d landed headfirst to take a mighty inhalation of breath. He’d had all of the wind knocked out of him by the concussive impact of the explosion which had launched him thirty feet through the air. Pushing himself upright, he was able to quickly assess that his body was in good working order. His next concern was for his new friend.
“Horace!” he called, looking all around him for any sign of a body.
He didn’t see a body, but he did see something burning not ten feet away. It wasn’t until he’d approached that he was able to identify the back of Horace’s down jacket blazing away in the snow. Sasha rushed to Horace’s coat and shoveled snow onto it to douse the flames. With the fire out, he was able to discern that there was the body of a man beneath the coat. He reached underneath and flipped the body over in fear for what he might find.
Points West (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 5) Page 5