by Howard Engel
“Vanessa says there are other NTC people, you know, television people, up here on this part of the lake.” Then I remembered something. “There was a block of property. I forget the name, but the estate sold cottages on this lake to NTC people.”
“You’re talkin’ about the trust Ernie Bradings set up. Aye, Ernie let in the TV people with a vengeance. We got all sorts. Most of them bought their places. Others have long leases. Some don’t know the sharp end of a boat from the round end. Some do. Fellow named Trebitsch has three boats and he keeps them in good condition. Has cellphones in ’em. He tells me he’s an important man in Toronto. Says he’s a newsman. I guess he is; I see his picture in the paper. But I don’t hold much stock in getting your picture in the paper. I think if you set your mind to it, it can’t be too difficult. Think Mr. Trebitsch learned about watercraft from Dermot Keogh, the cellist. Dermot’s boats were always well kept. Bob Foley knows his engines. But those friends of his, like that Mr. Devlin and Mr. Rankin, they’re worse than both the Faulkner boys put together.”
“How did Devlin get a Bradings Trust property? He’s a lawyer, not a TV person.”
“His father bought a place not too far from here after the war. No connection with Bradings, except when they went fishing together. Should be a law who can run a boat. The way I see it, the lake’s the same as the highway. You obey the rules or the Provincial Police’ll run you in. That’s funny about Mr. Devlin too, because I heard from Dermot that he’s a keen sailor. Has a yacht down in the city. I wouldn’t have guessed it. For a time there, Mr. Devlin was ruining a motor every time he came up to visit Dermot. But then—that Dermot Keogh was a smart feller—he cut Mr. Devlin off. Wouldn’t have him at his place any more. Didn’t much like Rankin either there for a time.”
“When would that have been, Mr. Evans? Dermot Keogh died a year ago last April. When did Devlin and Rankin become scarce around the lake?”
“Well, let me see …” Ifor pulled at his chin a minute to see if he could get his dates and tourists straight. “It would have been in the late spring of the year before last. Around June, I’d say. Didn’t see Mr. Devlin or Mr. Rankin on the lake after that.” He thought a minute as though checking on his facts a second time. Then he shook his head: “Mr. Devlin never did know how to dress up here. I think he’s the only man been up here wearing a three-piece suit since Mr. Eaton died.” Ifor Evans was not given to laughing at his betters, but he came close as that vision flashed through his head.
After that, he seemed to tire of giving away so much information. He leaned into me with a few questions, which I tried to answer as honestly as I could. He knew about the murder of Renata Sartori, and seemed to accept the theory that Renata had been killed by mistake, that Vanessa had been the intended target. “She was a very nice woman, that Renata Sartori. She loved it on the lake when Dermot drove her up for a weekend. Mr. Keogh told me he might just marry that girl. That’s what he told me sitting right where you’re sitting. ‘I could do worse,’ he said. ‘I could do a great deal worse.’ Pity about that woman. She wasn’t very old, was she?”
A few minutes of this went by, with the professional questioner answering all of the questions, and the amateur resting his hands at the back of his head. At last, I placed my empty pop can in the barrel designated for bottles and cans and took my leave, jiggling the keys to Ed Patel’s place in my pocket as I headed up the trail a piece.
THIRTEEN
The road I followed from the parking lot was less than a road but more than a path. You could call it a lane. The trees arching down around me from above were very lane-like, and the twin ruts that made their parallel way through the bush were rather road-like, but the bumps, roots and outcroppings of rocky Precambrian Shield made it hard to imagine anything not on tank tracks making its way up and down this stretch of whatever it was. The birds didn’t seem to mind it. Animals kept me company, just beyond my actually seeing them. I could hear them all right, off in the bracken or among the trees, and the sounds were scaled small enough so that only once or twice did I think I might be in trouble from a man-eating chipmunk or a rogue rabbit.
The trail led through a grove of dense white pine. It must have been second growth, but it looked substantial, even commercial. My path ended, to my complete surprise, at the back end of a beautiful, dark blue, antique Bentley. I nearly fell down and worshipped. It was sheltered under a rustic lean-to with a covering that was half canvas and half blue plastic. I would have been less surprised to have found a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. But, on reflection, I thought I am less than a few hundred metres, as the trout swims, from Millionaires’ Row. I shouldn’t be surprised at anything seen in these latitudes.
The cottage, painted a forest green, lay just beyond the lean-to. Like Vanessa’s, it was screened in along three sides, which tended to show the varmints out there who was boss. The key I’d taken from Vanessa’s kitchen turned smoothly in the Yale lock, and I found myself in a brand new way to define what a Muskoka cottage ought to be. There were only four rooms, two of them bedrooms. The kitchen, a dark, gloomy hole, had been added as an afterthought, but it had made up for that in being used to capacity. There were signs of years of cooking at high temperatures. Under the counter I found gadgets for storing pot lids and drying tea-towels. Out a rear door, I found large cooking pans that had been placed outside possibly for the wildlife. I could imagine that a family of raccoons licked many a platter clean of congealed or carbonized fat and grease.
The biggest room was a comfortable one, filled with wicker easy chairs, couches and low rattan tables. The small shelf of books was dedicated to old law reports and to ancient novels of the Book of the Month Club, featuring Forever Amber, Leave Her to Heaven and The Sun Is My Undoing. A couple of philosophical volumes such as Meetings with Remarkable Men, by G.I. Gurdjieff. There were a few others, more modest in size, written in Hindi or Urdu, featuring blue-faced ladies serving platters of sweetmeats to lounging young men wearing robes of office or of pleasure. The focus of the room was a fieldstone fireplace of monumental proportions. The large opening was buttressed by a pair of massive andirons. The ashes from the most recent fire were cold; the remaining scrap of newspaper that I found bore no date. So much for detection, I thought. And what was I doing here anyway? Ed Patel wasn’t a suspect. Did I still hope to find a gas receipt with Vanessa’s signature on it? And why here? Just because Vanessa had keys to the house? Patel’s name had come up too often and from too many directions for me to ignore it without losing sleep. Vanessa knew him. Jesse, the technician, said that Foley knew him. One likes to be thorough, I muttered through clenched teeth.
I stood up and heard the snap of my knees. A familiar voice whispered his familiar refrain in my inner ear all about age and futility. This fireplace was as free of clues as Vanessa’s across the lake. I cursed the fireplace silently as I steadied myself on the rough wooden floor. But then I smiled. My powers were more acute than I realized: above the fireplace hung an old gun. It was a shotgun of some kind. Twelve gauge, I thought. At that point I felt an itch at the back of my knees that has been in the past, if not infallible, at least a fair guide to what was going on. I was suspicious enough to look for something that might not smudge fingerprints if there were any. A plastic shopping bag served the purpose very well. I took the gun off the wall, keeping the plastic between me and the gun. A dog owner would recognize it as a variation on pooping and scooping. I smelled the twin barrels. They smelled like the barrels of a shotgun. I couldn’t tell whether it had just been fired or if it fired the last shot in the First World War. Certainly, it looked old enough to have been fired in that war, if shotguns weren’t banned by international agreement.
Since I needed a bigger plastic bag than the one I’d first hit upon, I looked into a low cupboard to the right of the fireplace. In addition to a big Mountain Co-op bag, I discovered an old cardboard box containing eight live shells for the gun. It had originally held twice that many. I slipped the gun into the larger
bag, and slipped the box of shells into the one I’d been using instead of rubber gloves. As I brandished these trophies, I thought, These might earn me some slack with the Toronto cops. They couldn’t throw me out on my ear if I handed them the murder weapon, now, could they? Of course, maybe Muskoka cottages abound in displayed firearms. I don’t know. I’d have to wait to see whether their eyes lit up when the tests came back from the Forensic Centre.
Beyond the gun, I didn’t find much of interest in Ed Patel’s cottage. I saw where he kept his car keys. I found another set with the name Dermot Keogh on a piece of cardboard attached by a string. What were they doing there? I wondered, as I wandered from one of the bedrooms into the other. Patel was a lawyer before he took sick, wasn’t he? I tried to remember. Offices in three towns to begin with, now dwindled down to one. I decided that I might remember better if I stretched out on one of the beds and closed my eyes for ten minutes. I did that. Then I kept them closed for another twenty minutes, and awakened with a start when a clock in the big room went off, sounding the hour, which was just four o’clock when I checked it with my watch.
I felt better for the nap and closed up the cottage, taking my pieces of evidence with me through the bush back along the path to the marina parking lot and my car. Ifor Evans wouldn’t hear of my paying him for the use of the canoe, and I left the marina promising to see him again before the summer was over. Driving back to the lodge, I decided on a detour to Bracebridge to buy a bathing suit. I had been moving around this planet without one for several years and I thought it was time to end that situation. The huge shopping malls on the highway going into Bracebridge swelled with promise under the afternoon sun. My greed for camping stoves, jackknives, sleeping bags and tents was tested by the reality that these delightful objects were all too readily at hand. I only hoped the stores contained the solution to my more modest request, a bathing suit in my size.
The parking lots on both sides of the road were nearly full. Business was good for Canadian Tire, the beer and liquor stores and the supermarket. I found a pair of black trunks, paid for them and wandered out on the steaming asphalt grinning to myself. I liked swimming, but I hardly ever made the opportunity.
“Pistachio!”
“Huh?” I looked in the direction of the voice. A pretty woman was walking towards me. Her smile opened out and overwhelmed me. There’s only one person who calls me that.
“Pistachio! Don’t you remember me?” My mind was still churning, trying to fit the memory into the right channel. By now she was stopping in front of me, blonde and, well, beautiful. In a moment, the smile would begin to lose its lustre if I didn’t show signs of recognition. She took off the large sunglasses so I could see her eyes.
“Peggy!” I said, the thing hitting me at the last possible moment. “Peggy O’Toole! How are you?” It was my dear Peggy from the case I’d helped work on in Niagara Falls some years ago. I’d hoped to run into her, but since the great north woods don’t work the way streets in Grantham do, I’d pretty well given up any hope of running into her at the intersection of Beaver Meadow and Muskrat.
“Gosh, Benny, it’s so good to see you! I can’t get over it. You remembered me! I was just a little girl when you saw me last. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about all that time that’s gone. Remember? Niagara Falls and all the trouble we had making Ice Bridge with Mr. Sayre. You remember Jim Sayre, I hope? The director? He, Mr. Sayre, is coming up to see us this summer, Benny. Will he be surprised to see you!”
“I hope I’m still around, but it looks—”
“You’ll just have to be around. You’re family, Benny. Even if we hardly ever see you. Even my mother asks about you. And Mr. Sayre, why he thinks … You look wonderful, Benny!”
“You look wonderful yourself, Peggy.”
“Go on. In this light? I look … well, frankly, I don’t care how I look. Gosh it’s good to see you!”
“You’ve grown up fine, Peggy. I’ve even followed your career. I boasted to my mother that I knew you when.”
“What did she say?”
“She reminded me of when my father sold his original shares of IBM. I guess she thinks I let you get away.”
“You’ll never get away from me, Pistachio. You can tell her that from me. But, what are you doing here? You can’t be working on a case. Not here.”
“You’d be surprised. I’m only here for another—”
“Benny. What are you doing now? Right now?”
“I’m talking to—”
“I don’t mean that. You have to meet Hamp! You’ve never met him, and I’ve been talking to him about you for years. My God! Is it ten years?” It was more than ten, but I wasn’t going to tell her. The years had been good to her. She not only looked as lovely as she is in the movies, but she even looked happy. I was glad of that, because I remembered her as a troubled young woman when we’d first met. But that was before her marriage to Hamp Fisher and all of his eccentricities.
The upshot of the conversation in the parking lot was a short walk from where I’d parked my car, following the white wraparound hem of Peggy’s skirt to where she’d parked her Range Rover. It was like Vanessa all over again. In no time, together with my newly purchased bathing suit, I was sitting beside Peggy as she shifted her gears up and down the highway that ran from Bracebridge to her cottage somewhere beyond the point where I’d earlier turned off the road to Evans’s Marina. Only about half of her gear changes were absolutely necessary, but it was nice to see that she took her driving seriously. There was also a fair amount of Peggy’s tanned legs visible as she managed the gears and adjusted the outside mirrors on both sides of us. Further, there was a kind of paralysis in my breathing when she turned to check the road behind her for rivals to her mastery of the road. The strain on her buttons tweaked my masculinity by its nose, or something. I was feeling guilty about looking, since I’d just been made a member of the family circle, but my hormones are always speaking out of turn. They have no sense of decorum. I sometimes think that my sexuality is like having an idiot brother who follows me around. I make excuses for him, I apologize for him, but there he sits, drooling. I try to ignore him, attempt to engage the female of my acquaintance in elevated chat, but his demented leer gets in the way when she so much as breathes or leans over to improve the position of the Rover’s floor mat. He is so incorrigible at times, I’ve considered sending him away, but most of the time I think with kindness and understanding he can still be managed at home.
An hour later, I was aboard Wanda III, taking a short spin around Lake Muskoka. Well, not really a spin. Wanda III doesn’t spin. She’s a lady, and she takes things more calmly than the powerboats and motor launches we could see coming up and down a narrows on our right.
“This is Millionaires’ Row,” Hamp said, pointing at the huge summer homes of the wealthy of another age. I tried to remember what Norma McArthur had told me about Millionaires’ Row back at the lodge. Funny that Hamp should be pointing it out. His cottage was as large and as impressive as any of these hundred-year-old follies. “That’s where Sir John Craig Eaton built his summer house. He kept the lawn in front cut as though he were in the city. Over there, behind the white boathouse, lived Sir Wilfred Chambers. I hear that he had to blast away a small mountain to put in a tennis court back in the 1920s. Next to it, with the green gingerbread, is the house of Ettie Cohen. You know, the Titanic survivor? Ettie went into a lifeboat only when Captain Smith insisted. She wrote a book about it. This place was built for her by an admirer from Seattle. Lumber baron. Now look up on the hill beyond the point. There’s the place where General Fields, the breakfast cereal man, and the heiress of his chief rival built a secret love nest with twenty rooms. They thought nobody up here in Canada would know that they were not—what’s the phrase?—legally united.”
I remembered hearing that Hampton Fisher was a bit of a prude years ago. He was a lot of other things too, including being the closest thing to a genius to enter the boardrooms of newspapers
he controlled. He had always been a paradox: a guy who hated germs and shunned society, but who went swimming under the polar ice cap and climbing in the Himalayas. I remembered that Vanessa had told me he set up the NTC network himself and still owned a controlling share of the voting stock. Years ago in the Falls, I never got a good look at him because he never went out. Once, I was watching Peggy shoot a scene in front of the American Falls. When I turned around and looked up, there was Hamp Fisher watching the same thing from his penthouse balcony. It struck me then as a little eerie, but I could never figure out why.
Fisher had aged well. His hair was too long for a boardroom. Still, the grey temples reminded me of the old “Men of Distinction” ads I’d seen in ancient magazines in people’s summer cottages. His yachting outfit was immaculate too, like another page in the same old magazines, but he brought the effect off with panache. He didn’t look as though he had his drinking water flown in from California any longer. Maybe he never had. At the moment, he and Peggy were sitting together in white wicker chairs, like the one I was sitting in, at the rail of Wanda III. We were shaded from the afternoon sun by a canvas cover of stretched blue duck, through which Wanda’s smoke stack protruded into the air. We were in the open air, too, of course, sipping drinks from a table set up aft of the funnel. Hamp was drinking Perrier, Peggy, coffee from a tall silver Thermos, and I, ginger ale in a crystal tumbler with the name of the ship embossed in the glass. There were others aboard, too, although I had only seen one of them when I came up the gangplank.
After hearing about the rich and famous of Millionaires’ Row, I heard about how they loved Muskoka, how they were thinking of building a cottage when the lease on the one they had expired. Hamp made an attempt or two at asking me about me, but I couldn’t get up enough steam. Peggy kept interrupting me and buttering up my past. She kept quizzing me about the case I was working on. After a while, I sketched it in for them in broad outline. Of course both had heard about the murder, and Hamp knew the people at NTC. Peggy recognized the parallels with the movie Laura, and moving to it was as good a way as any to get away from the more obscure facts of my investigation. Peggy launched into an appreciation of the face structure of Gene Tierney. “It’s her jaw, really. Any good orthodontist could have spoiled all that.”