“Not a word. Take it easy, eh?”
Helen leaned back to an upright position behind her counter and snorted. “Take it easy? In here? You gotta be kidding. Now, you! Mr. Brown. Get up here.”
Mr. Brown sprang up from the bench and scuttled over to Helen. I could hear her shouting at him all the way down the front steps of the building. Scary lady. She obviously ran the place.
I caught Morrison just as he was getting into his car, a big old sedan, wide as a pool table.
“Morrison! Hey!” I ran over, and he powered down the window.
“Polly. You’ve been avoiding me.”
“Have not,” I said.
“Have so. Just because you’re going out with Becker doesn’t mean you can’t play a game of crib now and then. I’m over at the farm all the time seeing Eddie and your aunt. You never bother to come down and say hi, even.”
“Oh, Earlie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, you know. It’s just, I don’t know. Things have been busy lately, and . . .”
“No sweat. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot or anything. Just thought I’d play on your tender feelings a bit, that’s all.”
“Well, it worked. Now I feel like a total slime ball.”
“Listen, Goat-girl, you’re not a slime ball. Hey, what’sa matter?” To my shock, I found I was getting weepy. This was not like me at all. Normally, I only cry when I’m really angry, but at that moment, there wasn’t anything to be mad about.
“Fer heaven’s sakes, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” Morrison said.
“It’s not that, dammit, Morrison. I’m just feeling a bit fragile, that’s all. Must be coming up to that time of the month.”
“Thanks for sharing that with me,” Morrison said. “You know how I just love the girlie stuff. Now, was there something you wanted me for? Take a message to your fella, maybe? Well, I can’t. I’m off shift and I’m going home.”
“I know you’re off. Helen told me. I wondered if we could talk.”
“What about?”
“The Watson thing. I have some stuff I just found out that you guys need to know.”
“What makes you think I’m still on the Watson thing?” Morrison said.
“You’re . . . what? You’re not on it any more?”
Morrison set his lips in a thin line and stared straight ahead. “Becker went and spoke to the sergeant yesterday. It’s been coming a long time, Polly. Me and him don’t see eye to eye on most things. Me and Becker, I mean.”
“I thought you guys made a great team. Good cop, bad cop. That kind of stuff.”
“And who would you be casting as the good cop?”
“Well, er, you know. The way you guys worked it.”
“We didn’t work it, Polly. I ended up being the ‘bad cop’ just about all the time, because Becker really hates it if people don’t like him. So I got the shit jobs and he got the glory, that’s all.”
“Oh, boy.”
“I’ll say, oh boy. Anyway, like I said, it’s been coming a long time. Becker told the sarge I wasn’t letting him in on the Watson case, which was true, I guess. He was on vacation and I didn’t want to waste my time trying to hunt him down and fill him in. So, next thing I know, the sarge yanks me off the case, puts Becker back in there with Lefevbre, of all people, and sticks me with Rogers.”
“Lefevbre? That’s Becker’s new partner? That girl?”
“Say that to her face and you’d be on the ground holding onto your gut, Polly.”
“She’d what? Slut me to death?”
“Polly Deacon!” He sounded shocked, but there was a grin splitting his face in two.
“I thought you had a little crush on her, anyway. The way she was hanging off the end of the desk like a piece of ripe fruit, waving her chest in your face. You certainly looked smitten on Sunday, big guy.”
“Maybe she was coming on to me a little. But I wasn’t interested.”
“Huh. Does she do this a lot—come on to the people she’s working with?”
“That’s the only reason you can think of for her coming on to me, you mean?” Morrison said, bristling.
“Of course that’s not what I mean.” Except it was. Morrison wasn’t exactly beefcake material. There was plenty that was attractive about him, but I didn’t think the pretty little constable would spot that right away.
“Listen, Polly,” Morrison said, “if you have stuff about the Watson case, you should be telling Becker, not me. I’m now officially working on a rash of cottage break-ins at Black Lake.” He shifted in his seat and turned the ignition key to start his car. I grabbed on to the driver’s door and leaned in a bit to make sure he wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’d rather tell you,” I said. “Anyway, Becker’s still at the hospital with Lefevbre. What’s her first name, by the way? Mary?”
“Marie. You could go out there and find him.”
“Yeah, and have Becker and Miss Marie Lefevbre think I was doing the hysterical girlfriend bit. No thank you.”
“You trust him, don’t you?”
The fact that I didn’t answer right away made me feel hot all over. Didn’t I trust Becker? If not, why the hell had I been contemplating marrying him? What was I doing being involved with him in the first place? I made a mental note to think about that later, when I was alone.
“Of course I trust him,” I said. “But if he’s in the middle of interviewing people or whatever at the hospital, I can’t just barge in there and demand to speak to him. Although I do have a message for him from Bryan, now that I come to think of it.”
“Bryan. He’s out at that camp, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. Kind of parked there, I think.”
“So what’s the message, in case I see Becker first?”
“The kid’s lonely, that’s all. Wants to talk to his dad. At least that’s what your receptionist said. She’s one brutal lady, isn’t she?”
“Helen? You bet. She’s my cousin, eh?”
“I should have guessed. Same blunt way of putting things. So, Earlie, what do you say? Can I bend your ear about this Watson stuff? Run it past you, anyway, and you can tell me if it’s worth passing on to Becker?”
Morrison thought for a moment and rubbed a hand over his forehead. Then he let out a big, exasperated sigh. “You’ve never been to my place, have you?” he said.
“I’ve never been invited,” I said, doing a little Marie Lefevbre wiggle on the car door.
“Cut that out. You driving?”
“I’ve got George’s truck,” I said.
“Okay, so follow me out to my place and I’ll give you a beer and you can talk my ear off for one hour. Then I got a baseball game to watch.”
“You’re on. I’ll be right behind you,” I said.
I felt curiously happy driving along behind Morrison’s oversized monster car. It would be great to sit down with him and lay out all the details that had kept me tossing and turning the night before. I remembered the first time we’d done that together—hashed over the “facts in the case”—back in the fall of the previous year, when my best friend Francy Travers had been a suspect in her husband’s murder. I’d hardly known Morrison then, and he was definitely playing the “bad cop” at the time. But when I had come to him with a bunch of stuff I’d written down, stuff that I couldn’t pass on to Becker for some reason that I can’t remember now, Morrison had been wonderful. We’d met at Tim Hortons, had a coffee and just, well, talked it over. He ended up coming with me to find Becker at the local biker bar. It was good having him beside me, then. Morrison was safe, like having a friendly bear as backup.
Morrison’s place was, as they say, in the boonies, on a gravel road that met the highway just past the turn-off for the Oxblood Falls. It was beautiful country. We passed a couple of original homestead farms, just clearings in the bush, really, with timber frame or log houses surrounded by the usual collection of dead cars that served as Kuskawa lawn ornaments. The forest was a mixture of old-growth pine and mature hardwood,
soaring up to the sky and creating a canopy which cast a tender green light below. If you look deeply into those kind of woods, you can see for miles, because the undergrowth is rarely more than knee-high. I wondered how the trees had been allowed to get so big. Most of the old-growth forest in Kuskawa had been mown down by the lumber companies long ago. Still, the Oxblood area was right next to the Kuskawa Provincial Park, so perhaps it was protected.
I was peering off into the forest, thinking I’d seen a deer when I suddenly remembered I was driving. I looked up and almost slammed into the back of Morrison’s car, which had slowed down and was indicating a right turn. I could see Morrison’s eyes in his rearview for a moment. He was laughing.
The driveway was marked by two tall reflectors on steel posts (a common thing on rural roads where there are no streetlights) and a rusted and dented steel mailbox with “W. E. Morrison” painted on the side.
I followed Morrison’s car another kilometre or so through the bush and then caught my breath as we came into a clearing. There was a gorgeous meadow, thick with wildflowers, a large pond with a small rowboat pulled up on its bank, and a half-finished squared-log house beside it. Piled next to the house were dozens of massive logs, some squared off, some on trestles waiting to be worked on. The house, when it was done, would be a big one. Next to it, like a calf next to its mother, was a trailer. Morrison parked beside the trailer and got out.
“You’re supposed to keep your eyes on the road, ma’am,” he called as I pulled in beside him.
“I thought I saw a deer,” I said. “Sorry about that. Earlie, this is beautiful.”
He grinned in a shy kind of way. “It is, isn’t it?” he said. “I grew up here.”
“In the trailer?” I said.
“Naw. That’s temporary. Look over there.” He pointed to a spot beyond the log construction where a few blackened timbers could be seen, silhouetted against the sky. Beyond that was an old barn, small, but sturdy.
“Had a fire here a few years back. Family home burnt to the ground. Nobody was hurt, luckily. My Dad’s in a retirement complex now.”
“Was he living here when the fire happened?” I said.
“Yep. We both were. Mom died back in the eighties. Me and Dad got along fine, but he was getting forgetful, I guess. Let the woodstove get too hot one night while I was out on duty, and the whole place went up like a woodpile.” Morrison paused, and we both stared at the blackened remains. I imagined a dark winter’s night, flames shooting up, the roar of it, and the terror.
“If you have a fire out here, you pretty well have to write everything off,” Morrison said. “A neighbour a couple of clicks away saw the glow and called the fire department, but it was all gone by the time they got here. Dad was sitting in his truck with a bottle of whisky he’d grabbed before getting out, watching it go. First thing he says when I get there is ‘Got any marshmallows, son?’ ”
“Sounds like a funny guy,” I said.
“He is,” Morrison said. “You’d like him. After that, Dad swore it was time for him to go live in a condo, and off he went.”
“So you’re rebuilding. That’s great.”
“Well, it’s slow work. We didn’t have any kind of insurance, and Dad’s at that senior’s apartment place on the river, so that took care of the nest egg, but that’s okay. I’m doing it a little bit at a time.”
“It looks like it’s going to be amazing.”
“Yep. One day. In the meantime, the trailer’s home. Come on in.”
While we had been talking, and indeed from the moment we had stopped in the driveway, a dog had been barking like a mad thing inside the trailer. Morrison turned to me just before he opened the door.
“She’s a little excitable, but harmless. Her name’s Alice.” He opened the door and Alice broke free and started running excited circles around us both, yarping like the fluffy little poodle-thing she was. After performing the usual office that indoor dogs must perform when let out, she ran directly at Morrison, launched herself heroically and landed in his arms.
“I just have that effect on some females,” he said and led the way in.
Twenty-Four
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The interior of Morrison’s trailer was cramped, as you might expect. A tiny kitchenette took up one end, with a small propane stove and fridge, a doll-sized sink and a set of cupboards above and below. Directly opposite the door was a fold-down table surrounded by a padded bench seat. Books and newspapers crowded every flat surface, and a vase on the table was stuffed with pens, pencils and, interestingly, watercolour brushes. Beyond the table was a folding door, which presumably led into the bedroom and bathroom area. It was smaller than my cabin, but not by much. Morrison deposited the little dog onto the bench and reached into the fridge for a couple of beers.
“It’s not exactly the Royal York,” he said, “but it does me fine for now. I’m looking forward to having a little more space, though.” He squeezed into one of the seats at the table and motioned for me to join him. Alice sat on his lap and peered over the table at me.
“Now,” Morrison said, “talk.”
“First, tell me if you’ve had a chance to read the Gazette yet,” I said.
“Only glanced at it, but I heard about Tuesday’s council meeting. It was nice of your aunt not to press charges against that Berry woman. Heard she drew blood.”
“Yes. The town clerk should have her nails registered as dangerous weapons,” I said. “Susan’s got a nice scratch down the side of her face, but otherwise she’s okay. I guess she realized that not filing a complaint against Frances Berry would give her the upper hand.”
“So what was she so upset about?”
“Well, Susan’s group, the League for Social Justice, found out a couple of things and wanted to make them public,” I said. I explained about the irregularities concerning the MNR regulations about fish habitat, and the allegations that the clerk had used taxpayer’s money to pay off the ministry.
“Funny she reacted like that,” Morrison said. “She was just doing what she was told, wasn’t she?”
“You’d have thought so. But there’s more.” I told him about the closed council meeting I’d overheard, and about stumbling across the mayor shredding documents.
“That’s pretty strong stuff, although it’s just your word against hers, you know. You had no right to be there, and she could just have been cleaning out her filing system or something.”
“I know, although it was an odd time to be doing office housekeeping,” I said. “Just before that, in the public meeting, Susan had questioned another procedure thing—when the mayor declared a conflict of interest in the Kountry Pantree issue.”
“That’s interesting. You mean, she’s working for them?”
“She said she is now, on an ‘unrelated matter’, but wasn’t when the deal first came up.”
“Huh.”
“Exactly. I think she was shredding evidence that she was in on it from the beginning.”
“Well, Polly, this is all fascinating, but you know, municipal backroom deal-making happens all the time. It’s not the first and it won’t be the last. And it’s almost impossible to prove. What’s it got to do with Vic Watson?”
I gave him the short version of Herbert’s Gootch/Watson family tree. “So you see, if Vic Watson was the one who owned the Kountry Pantree property after the Town gave it up, then it’s not likely that he was against the project at all, even though he pretended to be. And he was a councillor, so how could he fool the others on council? Wouldn’t they be in on it, too?”
“I guess he
pretended to be against it to keep on the good side with his constituents—sort of being a fake knight in shining armour.”
“But if that’s true, then there’s no reason for Watson and Kane to be the deadly enemies they pretended to be, is there? So how come all the rumours are flying around that Kane was trying to get revenge on Watson?”
“You mean that stuff Becker told me about someone maybe pushing Watson off the cliff at the falls, and trying to push him off the lookout tower?”
“Oh, he told you about that, did he? I wondered if he would.”
“Well, it was after Marie talked to the kid. She thought he was holding something back.”
“I thought so, too. So what happened at the hospital, Morrison? Was Vic ‘helped’ into the next world?”
“I don’t know, Polly. The nurse who called Becker wasn’t all that sure, and it certainly seemed like a simple heart attack. That’s what Becker and Marie are doing at the hospital today, interviewing the staff and so on.”
“Did Becker mention that Serena Elliot was there visiting Vic Watson at the hospital the night he died? Her and a whole bunch of other people, she said.”
“Yeah, he mentioned it. They’ll have to do some more interviews, I guess.”
“I still don’t see why you’re off the case, Earlie. You were in at the beginning, after all.”
Morrison stood up and went to the fridge. “You haven’t touched your beer,” he said.
“I know. Beer’s not agreeing with me, these days,” I said.
“Want something else? I got some rye somewhere.”
“No, thanks. I’m fine,” I said. “So maybe this whole thing isn’t a murder at all. Maybe Vic just died of natural causes, and this is a bunch of fuss over nothing. Except for the weird stuff about the land deal.”
“And that’s municipal politics—stuff we can’t touch without a pretty damn good reason.”
“Nobody’s going to follow up the allegations about the mayor being in conflict and the fish habitat issue?”
“Only if someone can convince the Municipal Board to look into it.”
Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 68