Dark Tiger

by William G. Tapply

  Calhoun nodded. “Lately I’ve been trying to guide only people whose company I think I’ll enjoy.”

  “You won’t have that luxury at Loon Lake.”

  He shrugged. “I’m only here for a month. Six weeks at the most. I’ll do what I have to do.”

  Franklin nodded. “It was odd, about Bud.”

  “Bud,” said Calhoun. “The guide whose place I’m taking?”

  “Yes. One day he’s out guiding, the next morning he’s in the Cessna and Curtis is flying him home. No warning, nothing. He didn’t even say good-bye to anybody.”

  “I heard he had a sick child at home,” said Calhoun, although he knew the whole thing had been orchestrated by Mr. Brescia to create the opportunity for Calhoun to come up here and figure out what McNulty had been up to.

  Franklin nodded. “That’s what they told us. A sick child. It just seemed kind of fishy to me.”

  “What else could it be?”

  “I don’t know. It was almost as if they wanted to get rid of him.” Franklin shrugged. “Bud was lazier than most guides. Maybe that was it. Though if that was the case, I don’t know why they didn’t just fire him.”

  “He’ll be back,” said Calhoun, “and when he comes back, I’ll be gone. Doesn’t sound like somebody they’re trying to get rid of.”

  “Peculiar,” said Franklin. “That’s how it seemed to me. Something’s not right.”

  “This all happened right after McNulty got killed, didn’t it?”

  Franklin snapped his head around and looked hard at Calhoun. “What’s your interest in McNulty?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “Nothing. I just heard about this guy named McNulty who was a guest here and ended up getting killed.”

  “No connection to Bud Smith at all,” said Franklin, “and if you want my advice, you won’t mention anything about McNulty and that girl getting shot. It’s a sore subject.”

  “Embarrassing, huh?” said Calhoun. “Bad for business.”

  “I’m serious,” said Franklin. “Forget about McNulty.”

  I don’t see how I can, Calhoun thought. Finding out about McNulty is why I’m here.

  “Okay,” he said. “I get it. Thanks for the advice.”

  Franklin stood up. “Dinner’s in an hour. I’m headed back to my cabin, get cleaned up. See you there.”

  Calhoun nodded. He stood up and held out his hand. “Thanks for everything. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

  “Me, too,” said Franklin Redbird. Then he walked out of the cabin.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dinner was thick slices of pork tenderloin with homemade applesauce, boiled red potatoes drenched in butter and sprinkled with chives and parsley, fresh peas, tossed green salad, and hot biscuits, all served family style on platters and in bowls, with big slabs of warm apple pie for dessert. Calhoun couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten such a delicious meal.

  The food was delivered by a young woman who Calhoun guessed was a college student. Her name was Robin. She wore a green T-shirt with the Loon Lake Lodge logo over her left breast and snug-fitting blue jeans and sneakers. She had short blond hair and long legs and a pretty smile. When she saw Ralph lying beside Calhoun’s chair, she went down onto her knees and bent her head close to his and patted him and talked to him for a minute. Then she went back to the kitchen. When she returned, she had a bowl of dog food for Ralph.

  She put it on the floor near him. He scrambled to his feet and attacked the food bowl.

  “Thanks,” said Calhoun. “On behalf of my dog, whose manners could stand some improvement.”

  “Does he like breakfast, too?”

  Calhoun nodded. “He’ll eat anytime, all the time. He’s a dog. I generally feed him in the morning and evening.”

  Robin smiled. “We’ll take care of feeding him when you’re here, if you want. Just bring him with you. He’s a sweetie.”

  The guides’ dining room was right off the kitchen. It was a pleasant wood-paneled space with a wall-sized window on one end overlooking the lake. A mounted brook trout that might’ve weighed eight pounds and a salmon that must’ve gone close to six, plus several antlered deer heads and a bearskin, hung on the walls.

  The other guides all introduced themselves. Calhoun hoped he’d be able to remember their names.

  Two were women. One was a soft-spoken redhead named Elaine. She had pale skin and chocolate brown eyes, and she looked delicate until you noticed her big knuckly hands and the ropy muscles of her wrists and forearms. Calhoun caught Elaine looking at him a couple of times during dinner. She seemed to have a little smile for him, as if they shared some intimate secret. When Calhoun caught her eye, he returned her smile, and she quickly looked away.

  The other female guide was a big sloppy gal with a loud bawdy laugh named Kim. There were two young guys—late twenties, Calhoun guessed—named Peter and Ben who didn’t say much of anything beyond “Please pass the potatoes” during dinner. Ben was the tall, skinny one—he must’ve stood at least six-six. Peter was built like a fullback, with a thick chest and bulky shoulders. There was a heavyset guy with a salt-and-pepper beard who they called Mush and a sinewy bald guy named Leon who seemed to be the elder statesman of the group. Calhoun guessed Leon was close to seventy.

  Franklin Redbird and Stoney Calhoun completed the roster of Loon Lake guides. Eight of them in all. Curtis Swenson ate at the guides’ table, too. He was wearing a different Hawaiian shirt from the one he’d had on that afternoon. This one featured parrots. A paperback book was propped up against his water glass, and he ignored the conversation that floated around him.

  Calhoun didn’t mention McNulty during dinner, and neither did anybody else. Both Swenson and Franklin Redbird had warned him not to raise the subject of McNulty lest he offend people. Well, he didn’t see how he was going to do his job up here if he didn’t ruffle some feathers, and Mr. Brescia had made it clear that he had better get the job done. Calhoun had no desire to see how that merciless man would respond to failure.

  The sooner he got a handle on the situation, the better. He was pretty eager to get back to Portland.

  He figured he’d have to keep asking about McNulty, see how the others reacted. He assumed nobody knew that McNulty and Millie Gautier had died of botulism poisoning. When he’d brought the subject up to Curtis Swenson and Franklin Redbird, both of them had mentioned that McNulty had been shot.

  He guessed that somebody up here had something to hide, and he aimed to make it uncomfortable for anybody with a secret. Sooner or later they’d do something that would give themselves away.

  The trick would be to avoid blowing his cover in the process.

  They were finishing up their pie and coffee when Robert Dunlap came into the guide’s dining room. He had changed out of his khaki pants and green flannel shirt into a sports jacket and necktie. “How was dinner?” he said, and all the guides murmured their approval.

  “Stoney,” he said, “if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to introduce you to our guests. You and Ralph.”

  So Calhoun, with Ralph at heel, followed Marty Dunlap’s son to the big living room on the other side of the building. This room featured a cathedral ceiling and a solid wall of glass overlooking the lake. The sun was just setting behind the hills, bathing the lake in pink and orange. There were a dozen or so people there—four or five attractive women wearing dresses or tailored pants and blouses, the rest middle-aged and older men in sports jackets or blazers and neckties. They were all holding brandy snifters or highball glasses, and several of them were puffing cigars or cigarettes. Some classical music was playing from hidden speakers up in the rafters of the spacious room. It was all quite grand, Calhoun thought.

  Robert cleared his throat and said, “Can I have your attention for a minute?”

  The guests all turned and looked at him.

  “I want to introduce our newest guide to you,” he said. He put his arm around Calhoun’s shoulders. “This is Stoney Calhoun. Stoney’s one of the be
st guides in the state of Maine. He works out of a fly shop in Portland and specializes in landlocked salmon and striped bass. He’s a great fly tier, too. And this”—Robert reached down and gave Ralph a pat—“this is Ralph, Stoney’s bird dog.”

  The Loon Lake guests held up their glasses and snifters in a toast to Calhoun and Ralph.

  “Ralph and I are looking forward to fishing with you,” said Calhoun.

  “Can you teach my wife how to cast a fly rod?” said one guy.

  The others laughed.

  “I can teach any of you how to cast,” Calhoun said. “Women pick it up faster, in my experience.”

  “You haven’t tried to teach my wife,” the guy said.

  “We’ll go out for a lesson,” said one of the women, “just Stoney and me. Then we’ll see how fast I pick things up. I’ve got a feeling Stoney’s an excellent teacher. He certainly is cute.”

  More laughter.

  Calhoun didn’t want to be in the middle of this. He raised his hand in a wave and said, “Thank you. Nice to meet you all. I’ll see you on the water.” Then he patted Robert Dunlap’s shoulder, turned, and left the room.

  When he was outside, he took a deep breath and blew it out. More than once he’d found himself trapped in a boat with a married couple who were more interested in playing out their issues and conflicts for the benefit of a stranger than in catching fish. Wives flirted with him. Husbands told him sexist jokes. Both husbands and wives directed snide comments about each other to him, as if they expected his agreement and support.

  He had yet to devise a comfortable way of extricating himself from these situations. All he could do was ignore them, play dumb, and pretend he didn’t understand what was going on.

  He and Ralph walked down the slope in front of the lodge to the dock. The skies had cleared, the sun had set, and the moon glowed from behind the trees on the horizon. Its light rippled on the lake’s surface. They went out to the end of the dock. Calhoun sat down, took off his shoes and socks, and dangled his legs over the side, letting his feet hang in the cold lake water. Ralph sprawled on the planks beside him.

  Tomorrow he’d go fishing with Franklin Redbird. It would be a quick, down-and-dirty introduction to the Loon Lake watershed. It takes a long time to get to know one lake, never mind seven of them, intimately enough to fish them effectively, but Calhoun figured it would be enough to enable him to find some fish for his sports.

  “Is there room there for me?”

  Calhoun jerked his head around. Elaine, the guide with the strong hands and soft smile, was standing behind him. He hadn’t heard her.

  He patted the dock beside him. “Plenty of room. Have a seat.”

  She sat beside him. He noticed that she had bare feet. She dangled them in the water. “So what do you think so far?”

  “About what?” said Calhoun.

  “Our place here. The people. Marty and Robert and June.” She laughed softly. “Hell, I’m just trying to make conversation.”

  “It seems like a good place,” he said. “The food’s excellent. I haven’t met June yet.”

  “You still got that pleasure to look forward to, huh?”

  “Do I detect some sarcasm in your tone?”

  She chuckled. “June’s a piece of work. You’ll see.”

  “How long’ve you been guiding here?” said Calhoun.

  “Six years.” Elaine smiled. “I can’t honestly imagine a better place to work. You’ll like it. I understand you’re taking Bud Smith’s place. You’re leaving when he comes back?”

  He nodded. “I got my own life down in Portland. I just agreed to help out Marty.”

  “Too bad. I got a feeling that you’re gonna fit right in.”

  “I’ve got to learn the water pretty fast.”

  “Franklin’s going to take you out tomorrow, right?”

  “That’s right. Damned nice of him.”

  Elaine chuckled. “He pulled the short straw.”

  Calhoun smiled and nodded. “I figured it was something like that. Man’s giving up his day off.”

  She gave his biceps a gentle punch. “I was kidding. Franklin’s just a nice man. This water’s not hard to learn. Fish are pretty much where you’d expect them to be. This time of year, along the drop-offs, around the rock piles, in the moving water, anywhere a brook comes into the lake. That’s where you’ll find the smelt spawning. Salmon and trout both love those smelt.” She smiled. “I bet you already know all that.”

  Calhoun nodded. “I suppose I do. Nice to have it confirmed, though.”

  They sat there on the end of the dock in comfortable silence while the moon rose from behind the forest across the lake.

  “Franklin told me you’ve been asking about that McNulty man,” Elaine said.

  “I’m surprised Franklin mentioned it.”

  “He wondered if I knew anything about what happened to him,” Elaine said. “What he might’ve been up to. Why he got shot.”

  “Franklin asked you that?”

  She nodded. “He said you were interested.”

  “I didn’t think he’d say anything,” said Calhoun. “Really, it’s just idle curiosity. Franklin was kind of horrified when I mentioned McNulty.”

  “Well,” she said, “he pulled me aside before dinner.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  She cocked her head and looked at Calhoun. “Nothing. I don’t know anything about McNulty. Franklin didn’t seem to believe me. He got a little upset.”

  “Upset?”

  “He raised his voice at me, called me a liar. I just walked away. That quiet Indian is a nice person, but he’s got a temper.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Calhoun. “I guess that was my fault.”

  “No,” said Elaine. “That was Franklin Redbird’s fault.”

  “I was the one who raised the subject with Franklin. He was asking on my behalf.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I can handle Franklin Redbird.”

  They sat there in silence for a few minutes, watching the moon come up over the trees across the lake. Then Calhoun said, “Everybody tells me I shouldn’t mention McNulty. Apparently he’s a big embarrassment to this place.”

  “He was a guest here,” Elaine said, “and he got shot, ended up dead in a car with a teenage girl. It raised a lot of questions. That sort of thing isn’t great for a place’s reputation.”

  “I was just wondering about it,” Calhoun said. “It’s no big deal.”

  Elaine turned and looked at him. “No? Really? No big deal?”

  He nodded. “Really.”

  She smiled. “So why do you keep asking about it?”

  “When it happened,” he said, “people were talking about it all the way down to Portland. It was in the news. How this guy who’s staying at the fanciest fishing lodge east of the Rocky Mountains ends up dead in a car in the woods with an under-age girl, both of them shot in the head. Maybe a murder-suicide, maybe not. If not, no known motive, no perpetrator apprehended. It’s interesting, that’s all. Now, here I am, and I bet you knew McNulty. So what am I missing?”

  “I didn’t really know him,” Elaine said. “I never guided him. Not sure I ever exchanged more than three words with him. He was a quiet guy. He was here by himself, had his own room, and when he went fishing, it was just him and his guide in the boat. Like I tried to tell Franklin, I don’t know anything about McNulty.” She shrugged. “I don’t think you should keep asking about him.”

  “Who did guide him?”

  She laughed softly. “You are persistent, aren’t you?”

  “Just curious,” he said. “When people don’t want to talk about something, it make me more curious.”

  “I don’t remember who guided him,” she said with a shrug.

  “Could you find out for me?”

  She hesitated, then said, “I guess I could, if it’s that important to you.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” said Calhoun.

  Elaine was frownin
g at him.

  “What?” said Calhoun.

  “Huh?”

  “You were looking at me funny.”

  She smiled quickly. “I guess I don’t understand your interest in McNulty, that’s all.”

  Calhoun flapped his hand. “You’ve got to admit, it’s an interesting case.”

  She shrugged. “I guess so.”

  They were silent for a few minutes. Then Elaine said, “Talking with you about McNulty makes me curious, too. It is kind of strange how the people up here don’t want his name even mentioned. As if we had something to hide. Which I don’t really get. I mean, it didn’t even happen here.” She put her hand on Calhoun’s shoulder to brace herself as she pushed herself to her feet. “Well, bedtime for me,” she said. “Long day on the water tomorrow.”

  Calhoun stood up, too. He picked up his shoes and socks and snapped his fingers at Ralph. “Me, too,” he said.

  They walked barefoot off the dock and onto the pine-needle-carpeted path that followed the lakeshore past the boathouse to the guides’ cabins. They stopped outside Calhoun’s door.

  “If you need anything,” said Elaine, “I’m just two cabins down from you.” She pointed. “Don’t hesitate. Anytime.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “It looks like I got everything I’ll need, but I appreciate it.”

  She patted his arm. “Well, good night, then, Stoney Calhoun. I’m glad you’re here.” She gave him a nice smile, then turned and headed down the path.

  “Good night, Elaine,” said Calhoun. He watched her go into her cabin.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Breakfast for the guides at Loon Lake Lodge started at six and went until eight thirty in the morning. Calhoun and Ralph got there a little before seven. On the table were pitchers of chilled orange juice and carafes of hot coffee, covered platters of bacon and sausages and ham steaks, bowls holding bananas and oranges, boxes of Cheerios and Wheaties and Raisin Bran, and cloth-covered trays piled with toast and biscuits and bagels and English muffins.