Dark Tiger

by William G. Tapply

  “What’d they die of?” said Calhoun. He wondered if the St. Cecelia police had been told about the botulism.

  The cop shrugged. “All I know is, it wasn’t gunshot wounds.”

  “Where were they found?”

  Sergeant Currier pointed down the street in the direction of the church and the cemetery. “An old logging road in the woods south of town. Their Range Rover was pulled up under the branches of a big hemlock tree, and the two of them were deader’n doornails in the front. Bullet holes in their heads, weapon in the man’s hand.”

  “So who in the world would shoot them if they were already dead?” said Calhoun.

  “Everybody figured it was Harry Saulnier. He had a thing with the girl. Folks figured he was mad that she was cheating on him.”

  “This was the boyfriend?”

  “If you want to call him that, a thirty-six-year-old good-for-nothin’ drunk and a crazy sixteen-year-old girl.” The cop waved the back of his hand in the air. “Anyway, it wasn’t Harry. He was out of town when it happened. Not that it matters, since shooting people who are already dead isn’t much of a crime.”

  “How did McNulty and the girl know each other?” said Calhoun.

  Currier frowned. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

  “I’m interested,” said Calhoun.

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Me?” Calhoun shrugged. “Nothing. But you probably heard, they found one of the guides up to Loon Lake murdered yesterday. Maybe there’s some connection.”

  Sergeant Currier nodded. “I did hear about that, and that occurred to me, too. I guess the sheriff’s got himself a suspect.”

  “They arrested one of the other guides, but he didn’t do it.”

  “No?”

  “No,” said Calhoun. “So how come this McNulty and the Gautier girl were together? You must’ve looked into that.”

  “Oh, sure. We don’t know much about them. We do know they were at Tiny’s the day before they died.”

  “What’s Tiny’s?”

  “It’s a roadhouse. Strippers and booze. Food’s not so bad, actually. If you drove down from Loon Lake, you had to’ve passed it. It would’ve been on your left, the other side of the road from the big potato field.”

  “I remember the field,” Calhoun said.

  “A couple witnesses said they saw McNulty and the girl in there in the afternoon. I questioned Tiny myself. He said the man was there first, nursed a beer at the bar, and she come in a little later and joined him.”

  “She picked him up?”

  Currier shook his head. “That’s not how Tiny saw it.”

  “Like they already knew each other, you mean?” said Calhoun.

  “That’s right,” said Currier. “Like they had planned to meet there at Tiny’s.”

  “Did they eat there?” Calhoun said. He was thinking they might’ve gotten botulism poisoning from something they ate at Tiny’s.

  Currier nodded. “The two of them sat at the bar, had lunch, watched the TV. After they ate they left together.”

  “This was the day before they were found dead?”

  Currier nodded.

  “Any idea where they were before they went into Tiny’s?”

  He shook his head. “He probably came from out of town. From your place on Loon Lake, I’d guess. As for her, who knows?”

  “Or how they met in the first place?”

  “Nobody seems to know.”

  “Did anybody see them after they left Tiny’s?”

  “No witnesses in St. Cece turned up who’d seen them. The truth is, once the coroner said those bullets were shot into them after they were already dead, which might not even amount to a crime, we didn’t work very hard at finding witnesses.”

  “Weren’t you interested in what they did die of?”

  He shrugged. “I guess so, but that’s up to the medical examiner.”

  “And you haven’t had any more mysterious deaths like those two in your town here?”

  Sergeant Currier shook his head. “Nope. No deaths at all in the past couple weeks.” He straightened up and slapped the roof of the Range Rover. “I gotta get going.”

  Calhoun nodded. “Take it easy.”

  Currier nodded. “You, too.” He bent down and peered into the car. “See you, pooch,” he said to Ralph. He straightened up. “I hope you’re not planning to go snooping around in our town here, Mr. Calhoun.”

  “Snooping? Why would I do that?”

  Sergeant Currier shrugged. “You seem like a snoopy guy.”

  “Not me.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Currier said. “Wouldn’t want you to get yourself in trouble.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  After Sergeant Currier went into the police station, Calhoun started up the Range Rover and drove south again, heading out of town, until he’d gone past the cemetery and left St. Cecelia behind. The paved road wound past a potato farm and some blueberry burns, and then it entered a pine forest. Here and there a little dirt road angled into the woods. He wondered if one of these old cartpaths was the one where McNulty stopped his car on the day he and Millie Gautier died.

  When he came to a pretty little brook trickling under an old stone bridge, he pulled into an open area beside the road. He got out and held the door for Ralph.

  While Ralph was watering the bushes and drinking from the brook, Calhoun took out his cell phone. He checked his voice mail to see if perhaps Kate had called while he’d been talking with Sergeant Currier. He figured she probably hadn’t, but Kate was just unpredictable enough that she might’ve.

  She hadn’t.

  He thought about calling the shop again, but he decided that he’d just be humiliating himself. Not that he particularly minded humiliating himself, if it meant he might speak to Kate, but he figured she was no more likely to agree to talk to him now than she had been an hour ago.

  He whistled to Ralph, and then they both got back into the Range Rover. Calhoun followed the road south through the woods, heading out of town. He wanted to get a feeling for the area, to see it the way McNulty had seen it. Maybe he’d have an insight. Sheriff Dickman liked to describe investigating as turning over rocks and kicking bushes and seeing what might crawl out or fly away. Calhoun guessed that’s what he was doing.

  They’d gone eight or ten miles, and nothing had crawled out from any rocks or flown out from under any bushes, and the road didn’t get any better, so he turned around and headed back to St. Cecelia.

  They drove through town and picked up the road heading north to the lodge. After about a mile, they came to the potato field, and sure enough, just as Sergeant Currier had said, there on the other side of the road was a rectangular wooden building with a painted sign hanging from a post out front that read TINY’S CAFÉ—EXOTIC DANCERS. Red and green neon beer logos—Budweiser, Coors Light, Molson’s—glowed in the big front window. Three motorcycles were parked out front, and a few pickup trucks and dinged-up old sedans sat in the side lot.

  Calhoun pulled into the lot and turned off the ignition. “You’re gonna have to stay and guard the vehicle,” he said to Ralph.

  Ralph looked at him, then turned his head away. He understood the word “stay,” and he didn’t like being left behind.

  Calhoun made sure all the windows were cracked open, and then he got out of the Range Rover and went into Tiny’s Café.

  He stopped for a moment inside the doorway and blinked against the gloom. Some kind of canned music was playing softly from hidden speakers. Calhoun recognized the tune. It was the Beatles’ song “Norwegian Wood,” but it was performed by an orchestra heavy on the violins, with an exaggerated upbeat tempo that the Beatles never intended. Elevator music. Or more likely, he guessed, stripper music.

  All of the windows were covered with heavy curtains, so that you couldn’t tell what time of day or night it was. The odor of stale beer and tobacco smoke burned in his nostrils. The half of the big interior to the left of the
entry was washed with dreary fluorescent overhead lights. Here there was a bar, with a few booths along the wall and a scattering of tables. The right side of the room was dark except for a single pale blue floodlight focused on a small stage.

  Eight or ten people—two were women—were sitting at the long bar. Several of them wore black leather jackets and bandannas on their heads. One of the booths was occupied by a middle-aged couple. Nobody was sitting at the tables.

  A burly, barrel-chested man with a full black beard and black hair pulled back in a ponytail and a hoop in his left ear worked behind the bar. A television mounted on brackets over the bar was showing a tennis match with no sound.

  Calhoun went over and sat on a stool at the end of the bar. Two stools over, a young guy wearing overalls and work boots glanced at Calhoun and lifted his chin by way of greeting.

  Calhoun lifted his own chin and looked up at the tennis match. Two women were playing. They had strong bodies, thick, muscular legs. He marveled at their athleticism.

  After a minute or two the bartender came over. “What’ll you have, friend?”

  “Can I get something to eat?”

  “Ayuh. This here is a café. We got food.” He reached under the bar and handed Calhoun a typed piece of paper sandwiched in transparent plastic. “This is what we got. How about a beer?”

  “Coffee,” said Calhoun.

  “You got it.” He went to the other end of the bar and returned a minute later with a heavy white mug full of coffee. “Milk and sugar?”

  Calhoun shook his head. “Black is good. So are you Tiny?”

  The bartender grinned. His white teeth flashed from the depths of his black beard. “How’d you guess?”

  “Well, you’re anything but tiny.”

  “Tiny Cormier. My parents named me Roland.”

  “I’m Stoney Calhoun.” He held out his hand.

  Tiny shook it. “You’re a stranger hereabouts. Least, I never seen you before. I’d’ve remembered you.”

  Calhoun nodded. “I’m guiding up at Loon Lake. Just started a few days ago. This is my first visit to St. Cecelia.”

  “Well, Mr. Calhoun, you come to the right place if you’re looking for some fun. The girls don’t start performing till evening, but if you want . . .” He arched his eyebrows.

  “No,” said Calhoun. “All I want is some lunch.” He frowned at the menu. “Cheeseburger, I guess. Medium. Slice of onion on top. And some fries.”

  “You got it.” Tiny turned and went down to the other end of the bar.

  The guy sitting beside him said, “You said you was guidin’ at the fishing lodge up there at Loon Lake? That right?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Calhoun.

  “Had a murder up there, huh?”

  “Yup.”

  “I heard they nailed an Indian for it.”

  “They arrested a man, but he’s not the one who did it.”

  “No, huh?”

  “No,” said Calhoun.

  “So who did?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You probably heard about the shooting we had down here few weeks ago. That involved a fella who was staying at your lodge.”

  “I heard about it,” Calhoun said. “That was before I started at Loon Lake. A girl from St. Cecelia was involved, too, I understand.”

  “Yep. That was Millie Gautier. Edwin, her old man, he’s pretty shook up by it.”

  “Hard to blame him,” Calhoun said. “Man loses his daughter? That’s a rough one.”

  “Actually,” said the guy, “it’s hard to tell how Edwin’s feeling about it. Some folks are saying he’s the one who shot those two.”

  “What do you think?” said Calhoun.

  “Shit, I don’t know. It ain’t any of my business. I hardly know Edwin. Run into him at the lumberyard a few times is all. That’s where he works. That little girl was a wild one, though. Everybody knows that. What’s a daddy to do, huh?”

  “You saying her father abused her?”

  “Abused?” The guy shrugged. “I don’t know about abused. He probably took his belt to her a few times. Ask me, she had it coming.”

  “Well,” said Calhoun, “it’s an interesting case, all right.” This man hadn’t indicated that he knew that McNulty and Millie had not died of gunshot wounds. Calhoun guessed it wasn’t up to him to set him straight.

  Tiny had returned with a knife and a fork rolled in a napkin. He put them on the bartop in front of Calhoun. “Ayup,” Tiny said. “Interesting. Them two were in here for lunch the day they got killed. Cops come in, asked me some questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, like what time they got here, what time they left, what’d they have to say when they were here, did they talk to anybody else. I answered ’em as best as I could.”

  “Did they ask what the two of them had to eat?”

  Tiny frowned at Calhoun. “Huh? Eat? What makes the difference, what they had to eat?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “I was just wondering.”

  “The cops didn’t ask that question, no.” Tiny shrugged. “The guy, he had a cheeseburger, like what you ordered except no onion. Fries and a beer. The little gal with him . . .” Tiny looked up at the ceiling for a minute. “Hm. I seem to remember she asked for a BLT. On white toast. Bag of chips and, um, an iced tea. She being too young to drink alcohol.”

  “That’s a good memory,” said Calhoun. He was thinking that it was unlikely that McNulty and Millie Gautier had contracted botulism here at Tiny’s, because they had eaten entirely different things.

  “Tiny’s famous for his memory,” said the guy on the bar stool. “You notice he didn’t need to write down your order? He remembers everything. Anyone who ever come in here, he’ll remember the face and the name, too.”

  “You’re Stoney Calhoun,” said Tiny. “You come back in a couple years, I’ll remember, all right. And I’ll bring you coffee and ask if you want a medium cheeseburger with onion and fries.”

  “That’s impressive,” Calhoun said. “So you’re the one who served those two that day, then.”

  Tiny rolled his eyes. “I’m the one who serves everybody all the time in this place.”

  “Do you remember overhearing anything they said to each other while they were sitting here having lunch?”

  “The cops asked me that.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  Tiny cocked his head and peered at Calhoun. “Why you asking all these questions about them two?”

  “Like I said,” Calhoun said, “I think it’s an unusual case.” He shrugged. “I find things like that interesting, that’s all. Plus, well, the man who was arrested for the murder at Loon Lake is a friend of mine. I can’t help thinking the two cases are connected.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Tiny. “It is interesting, and I see what you mean about them being connected. Your lodge, there, being the connection.” He hesitated. “Those two were having themselves a quiet little argument when they were here. Didn’t raise their voices or curse or start throwing things. Nothing like that. A polite disagreement, I guess you’d call it. That’s what I told the cops.”

  “Did you catch what they were arguing about?” Calhoun said.

  “Not much,” Tiny said. “The man, it seemed he was going somewhere, and the gal—she was just a kid, a teenager—she wanted to go with him, and he kept saying no, she couldn’t. She kept at him, and he just kept shaking his head. When they walked out of here, they were still going at it.” He shrugged. “That’s all. The man, he hardly said anything. Just, ‘No, that won’t work, honey. Now leave it be, okay?’ Like that. But she did keep at him.” He grinned. “Women, huh?”

  Calhoun thought of Kate. He smiled and nodded. “Ayuh. Women.”

  Tiny said, “Lemme get your burger for you.” He turned and walked away and was back a minute later with Calhoun’s lunch. “More coffee?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Calhoun watched the tennis match while he a
te. Tiny’s burger was thin and greasy and overcooked, and the fries were limp, but he was hungry, and ketchup made it more than acceptable, and the coffee was pretty good. He saved a hunk of burger for Ralph.

  When he was done, he put a twenty-dollar bill on the bartop. Tiny came over and took the bill, and a minute later he slapped down some change.

  Calhoun left a five for a tip. “Thanks,” he said to Tiny. “That burger hit the spot.”

  “You come back in the evening, Stoney,” said Tiny. “We got some pretty gals dancin’ here. We bring ’em all the way down from Montreal.”

  “Sounds good,” said Calhoun. He slipped off his stool and walked out of the café.

  When he got outside, he had to blink a few times against the brightness of the early afternoon sunshine. Then he headed over to the Range Rover. When he got in, Ralph, who was curled up on the backseat, ignored him. He slipped the dog the hunk of Tiny’s burger. Ralph gobbled it down as if it had been cooked perfectly, then licked the side of Calhoun’s face. With dogs, it was, indeed, all about food.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Less than a mile down the road heading back toward St. Cecelia, Calhoun came to the sawmill where the guy sitting at the bar in Tiny’s had told him that Edwin Gautier, Millie Gautier’s father, worked.

  He parked in the sandy lot beside a small shingled building with the word OFFICE over the door. He told Ralph he’d have to stay in the car and got the expected scowl from the dog. When he slid out of the Range Rover, he saw that there was a steel building the size and shape of an airplane hangar at the foot of the slope out back. Huge piles of pine logs with their limbs lopped off but their bark still on were stacked in a big open area. The smell of fresh-cut sawdust that hung over the place was strong and pleasant.

  He went into the office. A bulky middle-aged woman was sitting behind a messy steel desk peering at a computer monitor. She wore big round glasses and a man’s oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up her forearms. The walls were all covered with cheap pine paneling. Sitting against the walls were a couple of straight-backed wooden chairs and several file cabinets. A doorway behind the woman’s desk led into another part of the building.