by Keith Weaver
“By all means, George”, Andrea said. “If you want to retire, please do. And thank you for your company.”
I rose, placed a hand on George’s shoulder, and said that I would see him back to his room. He nodded, smiled faintly, said “Good night” to the company in general, and then turned toward the house.
After I had rejoined the two women, Kate asked a few questions about George, and I filled in some details without really getting into the case. There was a short lull that was broken by Andrea.
“Tomorrow I want to look at Number 6 White Pine Lane. Part of the floor needs replacing, and I think it’s the simplest job of all the possibilities”, she said.
“Ah!” I said brightly. “I forgot about that one. Good! Count me in!” I knew that the first task would be to come up with a list of what needed doing, what materials, tools, and supplies would be required, and then ordering them and having them delivered.
Andrea was aware of the need to look at the canoe Kate had spotted. “We can do that right after breakfast”, I said.
“I don’t do breakfast”, Kate stated bluntly. “Waste of time. Besides, I have four jobs on tomorrow.”
“Oh! Do you want to reschedule the hop over to look at the canoe?”
“No”, Kate said, waving her hand dismissively. “It’s less than five minutes flying time to the canoe. The whole trip should take less than a half-hour. What time? Seven thirty?”
“Can we make it seven, Kate? Then I can be back here well before eight, and Andrea and I can get stuck into the White Pine Lane job.”
“Suits me.”
The bugs were now beginning to become a nuisance, so we collected the dinner things and the wine and wine glasses, carried them all inside, and settled down for one last good glug of wine.
I finished first, and rose to start washing plates and cutlery.
“Let me help”, Kate said, rising to come to the sink.
“No. My job. Ask Andrea. You two shove off to bed.”
Several unspoken messages flashed back and forth between Kate and Andrea, they said goodnight, and left me chained to my sink.
The plane coughed to life the next morning at five minutes past seven, after Kate had untied the moorings, and completed a few checks, and after I had pushed the plane around until it was parallel to Maurice’s dock. I climbed in, then we chugged out into the lake as quietly as possible, which really wasn’t all that quiet. But it was a hell of a lot quieter than it became when we were a quarter mile offshore and Kate opened it up. I made to speak to Kate, but she pointed to the headset, I put it on, and the noise level dropped by a factor of ten.
“Noisy little bugger”, Kate said over the intercom.
This needed no reply, so I just nodded.
In a surprisingly short time, we lifted off from the lake surface, and I was doubly surprised at how quickly we climbed, even after Kate had throttled back a bit. We levelled off at about eight hundred feet, and headed toward the north end of Grand Island.
“Can you fly me over these four points?” I asked Kate, handing her a single sheet of paper showing the coordinates. She gave me an inquiring look.
“Sure”, she said at length, leaving an unspoken “why” in the air.
“I’ll explain later”, I said.
“You want to do that first?”
“Yes. Then go and look at the canoe.”
The lake was still very calm, and if there was anything to see at these four locations, I wanted to have the best chance of seeing it, which meant the least waves and surface disturbance. I pulled out a notebook and pen.
Kate had evidently decided to cover the four points in a counter-clockwise pattern, starting at the most distant one. I looked down. Shapes drifted past below, patterns on the bottom of the lake, and I was surprised at how clear things were, or how shallow the water appeared, or maybe both. Occasionally, I could see well-defined rock formations below the surface. I thought I knew the lake well, but here were features I hadn’t guessed at. But then I had never been able to drive my canoe over the surface at seventy miles an hour nor get this kind of perspective.
“The first spot is coming up”, Kate said. “And it’s directly below right – now”, and as she said this Kate took the little plane into a tight turn to make one complete circuit of the location. Below us, a line of rocks was very clear against an undifferentiated featureless background. The depth to these rocks couldn’t have been more than about two metres. Apart from two strange, faint, straight lines, there was nothing below me that was recognizable as anything other than rocks.
“No”, I said. “Nothing of interest. Next location.”
“You’ve really got me curious.”
“Later”, I said.
Two minutes passed, then we were over the second location. This was a large broad lump of rock beneath the surface, even shallower, perhaps only a metre deep, but I could see nothing below apart from random rock shapes.
The third location was much more interesting. The depth was maybe two metres, and there was definitely something down there. I made a note in my book.
“Last location.”
We were there in under three minutes. A complex set of jagged rocks drifted past below me, and Kate went into her turn. At that point, we were about a hundred metres above the water, and a bit more than a hundred metres from the shore of Indian Point, not quite two kilometres north of the tip. I looked up briefly and was surprised to see the steeple of the Largs church less than a kilometre away and slightly to my right, but I dragged my attention back to the point we were circling below.
“Can you go around once more, Kate?”
We were circling clockwise around the spot and taking twelve o’clock as north I noticed as we rounded nine o’clock that there was a small flash of green below, on the bottom. By the time we reached twelve o’clock, the flash had disappeared.
“One more circuit please, Kate?”
The green flash reappeared at about seven o’clock and disappeared once more at about eleven o’clock.
“Okay. On to the canoe.”
We headed south along the east shore of Indian Point, rounded the tip, and then Kate pulled out somewhat further over the lake as she swung north along the western shore of the point.
“There it is”, she said. “About four hundred metres ahead.”
“Got it!” I responded, my excitement evident.
Kate made several passes along the shore to the north and south of the canoe.
“Rocks. Deadheads. Can’t be too careful. Okay. We’re going in”, she announced. Two minutes later, the floats touched the water as we made a direct approach perpendicular to the shore.
“I’m assuming you want to take a close look.”
“Damned right”, I said.
“Then you’re going to have to get wet. I can’t drive the plane up onto the rocks.”
The little plane chugged slowly across the final few hundred metres of water, then Kate turned the plane’s nose out into the lake when we were twenty metres from shore, stabilized the position, and cut the engine.
I was wearing old pull-on walking shoes, and I slid them off, stripped off my socks and shirt, then tackled the harder task of removing my pants in the cramped space. Finally, I pulled my shoes on again. By this time, Kate wore an interested grin.
“I won’t tell if you don’t”, I offered.
“Hah!” she barked, looking around the cabin. “You might be a contortionist, but I’m not!”
I pulled my cellphone from my pants pocket, opened the door, climbed down onto the starboard float, set the cellphone onto a flat float surface ahead of me, then slipped into the water. It was too deep to touch bottom. Floating on my back, I picked the cellphone from the pontoon, held it clear of the water, and did an awkward three-limbed backstroke toward the shore. Three feet from the shore, the water was about knee deep above a rocky bottom.
The canoe was resting at about a thirty-degree bow-up angle perpendicular to the shore. None o
f the canoe was in water. In fact, the stern was at least three feet up from the water’s edge, and the forward half of the canoe was almost covered by scrub willow and other small shore shrubs. I took about twenty pictures, walking along the water’s edge to get as many angles as possible, but not going ashore in order to avoid any possible future accusations of contaminating a scene. With a little difficulty, I was able to mark the GPS coordinates using my cellphone. I then e-mailed all this material to myself so I could examine it more carefully on my computer back in Largs, but also as assurance. It would have been stupid and embarrassing to turn the whole exercise into a waste if I happened to drop my phone into the lake.
Getting back to the plane was just the reverse exercise, and I was soon standing on the float again, where I could reach the door and toss my phone onto the seat. I stripped off my wet underwear, wrung them out, and tossed them inside on the floor. By this time Kate had restarted the engine. I hurriedly pulled off my shoes, tossed them in on the floor as well, and then climbed buck-naked back into the plane. Irrationally, I put on the headset first. Perhaps a tiny lingering thread of puritanism insisted that I should be wearing something, anything.
“This would make a great publicity photo”, Kate commented wryly. “Might allow me to crack a whole new closed market among the kinky crowd.”
“Go ahead. My rates are reasonable”, but actually I was struggling to drag my pants back on over naked wet lower limbs and abdomen.
We chugged some distance out from the shore, then Kate opened the throttle, and we roared out into the lake, lifted off, and made a graceful climbing turn back toward Rosedale and Maurice’s dock. The specific tasks of the morning now being out of the way, I took the opportunity to gaze over the lake – my mentor, my protector, my muse. God, but it is so beautiful! I’m sure that my face was sporting a huge grin and that Kate noticed it. She climbed to about two thousand feet, put the plane into a shallow starboard turn, and began making a circle, about a kilometre wide, out over the lake.
Kate’s voice crackled over my headset.
“Go ahead. Take a good look. It really is gorgeous.”
Long silence.
“This is what the country really is all about, Mark. Lakes and forests and rivers, and being raised here puts that feeling in one’s blood.”
After a few more minutes of serene silence, I spoke into the microphone again.
“I might need your help again, Kate, and next time it will be a business deal. But there’s background you need to know, and I’d like to fill you in on it over a beer whenever you have time, but as soon as possible.”
“The rest of today and the next two days I’m busy. I’ll e-mail you.”
I sensed that she was pondering the need to keep this little nude aviation caper from Andrea, but I wasn’t worried about that. In fact, I was looking forward to telling Andrea myself because I knew it would have her rolling helplessly on the floor.
Fourteen
It was going to be a hot and cloudless day. I told George what Andrea and I would be doing for a fair part of the day, but George was now much more relaxed compared to yesterday, and said he wanted to lie outside in the shade. The quiet and the medicinal air of Largs were at work. I made sure that he had enough for a decent lunch.
Andrea and I let ourselves into Number 6 White Pine Lane and opened windows to drive out the stuffiness. Although this cottage was generally in good shape, the number of things needing attention was large enough to make it not rentable. We had seen over the previous two years an increased number of rental inquiries, in some cases for the entire summer. Full summer rentals represented a large income opportunity.
Of the twelve cottages we owned, only three were in prime condition. Another four were marginal, and we let them occasionally, but only for a week at a time, and at a very low rate. We definitely didn’t want people starting to grumble about us charging premium rates for slum properties. The remaining five cottages were run down to varying degrees. Jimmy was splitting his time between the marginals and the unusable properties, doing his best to upgrade marginal to prime, and to drag the unusables out of their swamp. Of these five unusables, Number 6 White Pine Lane was the one nearest to being clear of the swamp.
It took us less than an hour to determine what needed to be done to bring the underfloor to the point where a permanent hardwood covering would be a sound investment, and where its feel on bare feet would generate unrestrained summer holiday smiles.
I had produced a spreadsheet where we could list and cost the elements needed, and consulting this spreadsheet, combined with a quick look around the inside and outside of Number 6, indicated that we had a good shot at bringing this cottage to the point where it could be rented next season. We both grinned at the prospect of seeing a clear end in sight for the work on this cottage, and it was more than evident that Andrea was impatient to get on with it.
By eleven o’clock, we had a list of materials, and we headed off to Fenelon Falls to the best local building supplies merchant. We selected what we needed, and then bullied him into delivering it to us by the end of the day before paying.
Back in Largs, I suggested that we take a look at two other properties that were in only slightly worse shape than Number 6 – Number 3 Ash Grove and Number 7 Poplar Street. We finished that by two thirty, and at a first estimate it looked like we might also be able to do the windows at Number 3 in the present year, maybe even during the next two weeks, and that all three cottages could be brought to rental status by the end of the following year. The project was beginning to take shape, especially for Andrea who had slid into her new role effortlessly. It also hinted at the notion of Jimmy dropping any focus on the unusables and putting all his time into one or two marginals. At three thirty, the building supplies dealer called to say his delivery truck was on the way to us, and Andrea suggested that I go check on George, that she could deal with the delivery. I agreed, not because a lot of time needed to be spent with George, but because my new role meant that I had to start getting the evening meal organized. When I got back to our house, I found George stretched out on a lounge chair in the back garden, sleeping in the shade, a dog best left lying.
I decided quickly enough that for dinner we would have assorted olives and stuffed vine leaves to start, pork tenderloin in port, onions, bacon, and capers for the main course, and watermelon for dessert. It took an hour to find and buy the ingredients, at five o’clock I had a quick shower, and then I began to prepare the tenderloin.
I answered my cellphone. The display told me it was Cromarty.
“Where are you?” he asked without preamble.
“And a good day to you too, Bent.”
“Ah! Sorry. Yes. Hello.”
“Hello, Bent. Nice of you to call. What can I do for you?”
“I’m following up on Harold’s apartment, trying to determine what they were looking for.”
“Not sure I can help you, Bent. If you’ve seen the place, you know as much about it as I do.”
“You didn’t go in? Look around?”
“Come on, Bent! Give me some credit! No, I didn’t go in and look around, and I’m sure Hawley told you that.”
“Yes, but he’s a lawyer.”
“You have a point there, I admit. But really, Bent, there’s no way I can help you. I never met Harold, knew nothing about him. I met George only two days ago, and I know precious little about him.”
“What about the Balsam Lake connection? Surely you won’t deny that.”
I knew that Cromarty was fishing, and it was starting to get on my wick.
“Oh? Do tell, Bent. And just what evidence do you have that links the tossing of Harold’s place to his body being found in Balsam Lake, hmmm? I assume that’s what you’re referring to as the connection.”
“Well, you have to admit that it’s –”
“I don’t have to admit anything, Bent. I have no admission to make. I don’t even have to agree with your presumed connection until I see some convi
ncing evidence.”
There was a silence here.
“Look, Bent. Why don’t you just come out with it and tell me what you’re trying to get at?”
“I’ll get back to you”, he said curtly, and then broke the connection.
Andrea would do her usual thing and work in White Pine Lane until well after six. I expected she would be measuring, cutting planks, getting everything ready to put together. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she also went to Number 3 Ash Grove and started measuring windows. The windows in place there would almost certainly be non-standard, and we would have to rip out the existing frames and build new ones to fit decent standard windows, something else we would be able to start sourcing once we knew more about what was in place. What I was really waiting to see was her mood when she eventually came home. If she was pumped and enthusiastic, then it would be full steam ahead. If she was frustrated and down, then that might be a sign that the whole project of Andrea Clifton, journeyperson carpenter, was in doubt.
But I needed to think more about this after dinner. For the moment, I put it all aside and jumped into the details of preparing dinner, something that immediately sent the mood of Mark Whelan, master chef, toward the stratosphere.
Andrea burst through the door at just after six thirty, flush from a day of activity that changed the physical state of a small part of the universe, and full of plans for the next few days. She trailed a monologue description of her day on the way to the shower, of measuring, cutting, fitting –
But then the bathroom door had closed.
Fifteen
Dinner was a laid-back affair. George was more relaxed but excused himself again for an early night, despite apparently having slept most of the day in the back garden. Andrea and I cleared things away, sat down to look at her measurements from the day, put them into the spreadsheet that I had produced, and set out a list of things to do over the next two days. First thing in the morning, we would look at windows, and hope that the sizes we needed would be available as stock items. Completing the floor at Number 6 White Pine Lane now seemed to be mostly an assembly job, and we could put that on hold for a day or two. Rebuilding the window frames for Number 3 Ash Grove now looked to be the priority, and that would definitely be the case if decent replacement windows were available. So Andrea and I produced some notes and rough drawings for window frames. That meant more lumber, which we could buy when we went in search of windows, and with luck we could have lumber delivered immediately and windows a short time later. I suggested that the inevitable lull tomorrow while we waited for our lumber could be filled by inspecting Number 7 Poplar Street for windows and wiring, both of which needed work, but just how much wasn’t clear. Andrea’s response to this was a metaphorical rubbing together of hands in anticipation.