by Ted Wood
"I've sunk a million dollars of my money into the Bay Marina project." Corbett said. "Mortgaged every goddamn thing I own." His eyes focused on the OPP man and he jabbed at him with his finger. "A million dollars. To create jobs and prosperity for my fucking neighbors in Murphy's Harbour."
Now he turned to me, still furious, white foam forming in the corners of his mouth. "My own money. The Arabs and the bloody Hong Kong Chinese won't touch anything outside of Toronto. The banks won't. I've been on my knees, almost, to a bunch of church credit unions down in Quebec." He laughed out loud. "Yeah, promising the bunch of pious bastards I won't use the money to promote anything sinful." He laughed again. "Yeah. Kissing their black-suited asses for money for this town. And now this."
He stopped and I let him collect himself for a moment. When he stayed silent, I gave him the rest of the news.
"I don't think it was anybody from this town. I think it was a bunch of bikers. There's the prints of a biker's boot in the mess on the floor, and there's a gang of them in town."
He pinched his lips tightly together, bottling up his anger while he breathed in and out a couple of times, flaring his nostrils. At last he said, "Were these OPP clowns in charge when all this happened?"
"I found the damage today, around six p.m. It looked recent. But a couple of things. The door hadn't been forced. It was open and unlocked. Did you leave the key somewhere around?"
"Angie left a key somewhere, for the neighbor. He would come in and switch the heat on if we were coming up in fall. For some reason he didn't keep it, it was left hidden up at the house."
"And when were you there last?"
"Last Sunday night," he said immediately. "Angie was there until Tuesday, then she went to the airport in Toronto and flew out to Vancouver to see her sister, but I left Sunday night to be back in my office on Monday."
"So the damage was done between Tuesday last and now. Do you have any idea who might have wrecked your place, Mr. Corbett, is anybody mad at you?"
"No." He shook his head, then stopped and thought, then shook his head again. "No. Oh, I won't say I don't have people in business who don't wish me well, but nothing like this. This must be kids. Have you checked the local kids?"
"I'm going to," I promised. "In the meantime, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to stay away from the house until I can get through and fingerprint it, and your boat. I'm wondering if the people who wrecked your house might not have been involved with the boy's killing as well."
He shrank, his shoulders slumping. "I can stay with friends, I guess. I'll call you in the morning."
"Okay. If I'm not here, one of the OPP constables will take the message and get back to you when you can go home."
"Then I'll say good night," he said and turned away.
"Oh, before you do that, could I show you a couple of photos, please, see if you recognize them?"
He straightened his back, like a man who has done a hard day's work. "Sure, why not."
The file folder containing the evidence I had assembled on the case was lying on the countertop. I opened it and took out the pictures, giving him the photograph of Reg Waters. Corbett looked at it and nodded. "I don't know why he's signed it 'David,' that's Reg Waters, my grandson."
Behind him the OPP constable was shifting from foot to foot, wishing he had the nerve to tell me I'd been relieved and let him take over the investigation. If he could have helped I would have let him, but he couldn't, he didn't have the background I had and he didn't know Corbett. I took the picture back and got out the other one, making conversation as I did so. "How old is your grandson?"
"Late teens," he said. "Lemme see. His birthday's May Day so that makes him a year older, right, he's just eighteen."
Old, to have a thirteen-year-old friend who idolized him. I got out the other photograph and passed it to Corbett. He studied it and nodded. "Yes, that's our apartment building, in Toronto."
"And do you happen to know who that man is, getting out of the car?"
He bent his head to look at the photograph closely, then shook his head. "No, doesn't look like anybody I know."
"Thank you then, that's all I need for now. I'm sorry about your house."
He stamped over to the door and paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Just be sure and lock up the sonsabitches who did it." Then he left as I was answering.
"I'll try my damnedest." I put the pictures back in the folder and closed it. "Tell the detectives what's happened when they get here," I told the constable.
"Sure will." I noticed he'd dropped the "Chief." Rank has to be real before policemen take any notice of it. As far as he was concerned I was just another ex-copper.
The door opened again and a young woman came in. She was small and dark, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and an earnest expression that looked as if she put it on with her clothes in the mornings. I recognized her and groaned inside. She was the reporter from the Parry Sound paper. She saw me and brightened. "Chief Bennett, isn't it?"
"Uh-huh," I said, not wanting to either lie or explain.
"Good. Just the man I was looking for. I understand you're suspended. Is it something to do with this drowning that occurred today?" She had her notebook out and poised the way they must have taught her in her journalism class. One of the skills that earned her two hundred bucks a week and all the aggravation she could stir up.
"My suspension has nothing to do with the drowning. Aside from that I have nothing to say, Miss Lafleche." There, me and Jackie Onassis in the same league.
"But what's it all about?" She was flicking her pencil over her book. Lord, she was keen. She was using shorthand, for crying out loud.
"Nothing to say," I repeated. "Now excuse me, please." I hissed to Sam and he followed me, almost tripping her up as she scrambled out after me, following me right to the car, still throwing questions at me like balls at a coconut. I smiled at her, very politely, put Sam in the car and drove off, almost running over her feet as she leaned over the car, book in hand.
I kept my speed down by a conscious effort as I headed back, past the beverage room, noting that there were more motorcycles there now. The hell with it. Let the OPP guys take their turn in the hot seat. I was going home.
The crowd at the Spenser place had grown some more. I parked at the end of the line of cars and left Sam inside while I went around them all and down to the front of the cottage. McKenney was there again, with his helper. Kowalchuk was over with him, and so were a couple of new men, tall and lean, the standard issue Hollywood gumshoes, OPP-style.
I tapped on the Spensers' door and went in. Fred was sitting there with the Wilson woman from next door.
Mrs. Wilson started when I came in, fluttering her hand to her chest. "Oh, Chief, you startled me," she said in a faint voice.
I smiled at her, a tight-faced formality. "I'm sorry, ma'am, it wasn't intended."
Fred stood up and came over to me, reaching for my hand. "I think you should listen to what Mrs. Wilson has been telling me."
"With pleasure." I squeezed her hand and looked at Mrs. Wilson. "What was that, please?"
"My husband is quite angry with me," she said, "but I think we should tell you."
"Appreciate it," I told her, wondering what she had heard that was so significant.
"Well, when we said we heard Mrs. Spenser scream, that wasn't the first sound that disturbed us."
I sat down on the other side of the kitchen table, it's standard procedure, a standing man is menacing, my sitting made it easier for her to overcome her anxiety.
"No," she said. "No, the sound that we heard first was the noise of an engine racing away."
"You mean a car passing?"
She shook her head. "No, it wasn't passing. It started up, from outside their house. And it wasn't a car. It was a motorcycle."
Chapter Twelve
I took her over it again, three or four times, but she didn't have anything more for me. She hadn't seen anything, just heard a bike roar away. She was positive
about that. It hadn't just driven by, it had roared away. I thanked her and left her with Fred while I went back outside to where the OPP detectives were watching the body being loaded into McKenney's hearse.
I waited until the doors were closed; then Kowalchuk noticed me and introduced me to the detectives. I didn't know either of them. One was called Kennedy, the other Werner. They shook hands, the way men shake hands with distant relatives at a funeral.
Kennedy said, "You sure left us with a mess," and Werner chuckled.
"Not my choice," I told him. "If you want me to fill you in, I'm here, but in the meantime, there's something I just heard that may be important."
"Yeah, what's 'at?" Werner was the prankster of the pair, I guessed; one partner usually is. He's the one who gives the long hours their light relief, making most of the wisecracks, setting up the occasional heavy-handed practical jokes cops play on one another.
"The neighbors heard a motorcycle roar away from here just before the car went over the edge."
"That's it?" Werner mocked.
"There's a gang of bikers in town. It could have been one of them who set Spenser up and rolled him off the edge of that rock."
"Maybe," Kennedy said. "But hell, that's nothing to go on."
"It's all you've got so far," I said. My suspension was hanging around me like a sour smell, embarrassing all of us. They wanted me gone almost as much as I wanted to be away from there.
"Yeah, well, we'll talk to her, I guess," Kennedy said. He turned away, concentrating on Kowalchuk. "See if you can break up the happy band of sightseers. Jack'll talk to this neighbor. I'll go down the funeral parlor and check on the stiff."
They all moved away, and I stood there angrily. "What about the bikers?" I asked.
Werner turned back. "We got enough on our plates without getting mixed up with a hairy bunch of troublemakers. Why'nt you go on home? We'll drop by later when we're done at the funeral parlor."
"Okay, if that's what you want. But can you round up somebody to take care of the widow? A friend of mine is with her right now."
"We'll try," Kennedy said. And that was that.
I stood watching them, knowing how they felt. To them this wasn't the murder of a little boy. This was another chunk of duty added to a day that had gone on too long already. They were taking it the way I would have done, I reasoned with myself. What was past was past. They would enter the investigation at their point of contact, at the death of Spenser senior. If it led them back to the boy's death, they would pick up the threads of the investigation there; otherwise, they were as objective about this case as they would have been about any other. They would do the job their way. Examine the dead, question the living. That was the pattern.
After a moment I walked over to the cottage, Sam at my heels like a patient shadow. We went in. Werner was in the kitchen talking to Mrs. Wilson. I could see the weariness in his stoop-shouldered stance, but his tone was as bright as ever. I motioned to Fred with my head, and she came over.
"Has anybody lined up a replacement for you here?"
"Nobody's said a word so far, but somebody's got to stay here, and the neighbor doesn't want to," she whispered.
"Talk to Werner when he's through with Mrs. Wilson. I have a call to make, and then I'll be back, maybe half an hour. That okay with you?"
"Sure," she said, with no trace of annoyance. Maybe actors are more patient than the rest of us. They can wait two hours to deliver their line, then melt back behind the scenery so the show can go on. Maybe. I knew Fred pretty well from the months we'd spent together. We had become close then, had been close since, and now this spontaneous arrival of hers made me hope she wanted it to happen again.
I winked at her, and she winked back and turned her face up to me. I kissed her and left, Sam half a step behind me.
Kowalchuk was doing good work at the roadside. Most of the crowd had dispersed, heading up or down the road in knots, gossiping. The cars were filling up as well, and I had to wait for a chance to back up into a driveway and turn around before heading back to town.
I stopped outside the beer parlor. It's the Murphy's Arms Hotel, different from the real hotel, the Lakeside Tavern. It's the local watering hole, with a cocktail bar, frequented by the wealthier locals, and a beverage room, a beer hall, where most of the people in town do any serious drinking they have in mind.
The bikes were still parked outside. I left my car behind them and went in through the delivery door. It's big, covered with sheet iron to discourage shopbreaking. There hasn't been much crime since I took over here, but nobody was going to change a door for that reason.
I came in past the store area, with its mesh fence surrounding dozens of cases of beer, waiting to be whisked into the big cooler behind the bar, and walked down the short corridor.
Nick, the barkeep, was filling glasses, fitting them under the never-ending beer tap without pausing to turn it off. He looked at me and grinned and made to offer me a glass, but I shook my head, and he went on loading the aluminum tray in front of him.
I looked over his shoulder. The bar was a lot emptier than it is most summer Saturday nights. The music was as loud as ever, mindless rock from the local station interspersed with commercials for used cars and swell dinners at some hotel in Parry Sound. In one corner of the room the bikers were sitting at three tables they had pulled together and filled with glasses. I counted the men quickly. There were eleven, and no empty seats.
"Any problem with the bikers?" I asked Nick.
"Nah." He shook his head and went on filling glasses. "They're sure putting the beer away, but they ain't said a word outa line."
"Have they been here long?"
The waiter answered for me as he scooped up his tray and turned to leave. "About eight beers each, Chief. You figurin' to bust 'em for impaired driving?"
"Me and whose army?" I asked, and we all three smiled. If either one of them had heard I was suspended, they didn't comment. I'd cleaned up a few fights here that could have cost them money, or teeth. They liked me.
"Did they all come at the same time?" I asked Nick as he paused for a drag on the cigarette he had resting on the edge of the counter.
"That four at this end came in last," he said, nodding at the nearest table. "Oh, yeah, an' that guy with the red hair, he came in last of all, maybe half an hour ago."
I waited a minute longer, making sure I would be able to recognize the redheaded man later, wondering if it had been his motorcycle that had left the Spenser place earlier. When I'd made a mental picture of his appearance, including his bone structure in case he decided to shave off his beard, I nodded to Nick and left.
I stood outside for a few seconds, listening to the night sounds. Noisy music drifted out of the screened window of the bar, but under it I could hear the crickets and the repetitions of a whippoorwill and under that again the growly croaking of the bullfrogs in the reeds along the water's edge. A typical peaceful night except for the two unexplained deaths I had to solve. I corrected that one—the two deaths that had happened. Courtesy of that friend of Jas, I was off the job. Nothing to solve except a way of getting Freda back to my place. Only I couldn't content myself with doing nothing.
I got into the car and drove north, toward my house, then past it, up the side of the water to a spot about two hundred yards below the town dump. I parked on the side of the road and took out my flashlight from the glove compartment, then called Sam out with a hiss. After that I shut the door quietly and walked on up toward the dump.
Sam shadowed me, and I kept to the road for most of the way, then moved off into the sparse bush that crowds the roadside. I had a plan, and I wanted to put it into action, silently if possible.
It took me five careful minutes to make the last hundred yards to the back of the dump; then I worked around it to the back of the field where the bikers were camping. I pointed my finger at Sam, and he sank into a sit, still as a statue in the faint moonlight.
I crouched and looked at the
tents in the field. There were three of them, two big ones, the kind Boy Scouts set up as mess tents, and one small one. I guessed they had established a dormitory in one of the big ones, perhaps their mess arrangements in the second. The third was a private tent for the leader of the pack. I thought back over the faces I had seen in the beverage room. No, he hadn't been there. He was probably back here with the woman from the van he had been driving when he came into town. I thought about it for a moment, then sank to my belly and began the crawl to the tents, about forty yards away.
It took me a couple of minutes, moving more and more carefully as I got closer to the tents and to the fire that still glowed, burned down now from its earlier blaze. Mosquitoes swarmed on my face and bare hands, and I let them bite, not wanting to risk the noise that moving them would make. Blinking kept them out of my eyes, and I moved my face muscles constantly, trying to shed them, the way a horse might flick its skin.
I was five yards from the nearest tent when I heard the voice and froze. The words didn't register as quickly as the tone. It was playful. "Hey, c'm'ere." The kind of voice a relaxed man might use to his girlfriend on an intimate evening.
There was an answer, high and light, pitched too soft for me to understand. Then the original voice growled again, gurgling over its playful laughter. "Aw, c'mon."
I inched closer, against the side of one of the big tents. And this time I heard the second voice clearly. It was coming from in front of the same tent, close to the fire. "You're terrible, you know that?" it said brightly, and my hair prickled on my neck. It wasn't the voice of a woman. It was a young man's voice.
The other man was still amused, but the words were sterner. "Now don' go playin' hard'a'get or I'm gonna have to wail the tar outa ya."
"Not again," the boy's voice said mockingly, and then the man laughed, and I saw a shadow grow on the tent wall in front of me as the boy by the fire stood up and moved away to my right, toward the small tent. I could make out his blond hair.