Balsam Sirens

by Keith Weaver

  We set about doing the things we had planned, and the day passed surprisingly quickly. Instead of cooking for ourselves that evening, we decided to have dinner at Kelvin Place, and we sat out afterwards on the patio being soothed by the gentle lapping presence of Balsam Lake. That night, Andrea slept deeply.

  The next day, Saturday, passed as well.

  At the end of that next day, Andrea and I put out the word that we would be spending the evening at Kelvin Place, and that anyone who felt in the mood should drop by. And drop by they did.

  Over the course of the evening, almost a hundred people turned up. They came singly, in couples, and in groups, and we sat around over finger food, soft drinks, bottles of beer, and a few carafes of wine. Not many questions were put to us. Instead the residents of Largs simply closed ranks, and in their quiet country way they talked about the everyday things that filled their lives. It was all so practical, so normal, and so full of the importance of day-to-day life that it made the recent violence we had known seem like just an unwelcome irrelevance. This, I realized, was how the wisdom of the country was brought to bear in dealing with life’s curve balls. To my shame and embarrassment it was only now, for the first time, that I really appreciated it.

  A good-natured argument broke out, a couple of tables away, about the timing and the best methods for pruning apple and pear trees. Once the gardening theme was broached, there was no stopping it. Evidently it was shaping up to be a good year for onions and carrots in the gardens in Largs, and the sandy soil at the eastern end of the village was promising a bumper crop of potatoes. Harvey Wilder’s complaint that his pea plants were faring particularly badly for reasons he couldn’t understand unleashed a flood of lawyer jokes. There was talk of roof shingling, insulation, water pipe repairs, and other solid practicalities of life that denied any houseroom to the violence of late that the village had known. Andrea and I both smiled at the sheer healthy practicality of the evening.

  Andrea’s face, in particular, signalled her feeling of inclusion. Although raised a city girl, she had had enough experience living in Largs to understand what was going on without anyone having to explain it. The walk home from Kelvin Place, under the stars and hearing Balsam Lake murmuring sweet somethings just to our right, felt almost normal. As we entered the house, Andrea yawned and said she was off to bed, while I mumbled something about doing some reading. In fact, I spent the time in the den, first of all thinking for half an hour, then jotting down a few things in my good ideas notebook. Although the trauma and violence of the recent past had now faded to an endurable if sinister whisper, there were a couple of loose ends that flapped noisily in my mind. I wanted very much to believe that the entire episode had been put finally to bed, but … At eleven thirty I turned in, joining Andrea, who clocked a night of sound sleep in our house in Largs, her second night of good sleep since all this had begun. I woke several times during the night, the last time at about four o’clock, nagged by the realization that something important was wrong or missing or unfinished. And I had the strong sense that the feeling wasn’t about to go away.

  The next day, Jimmy and I finished the repairs around the pool, and Andrea gave the house a thorough cleaning. Just after noon Mike appeared unexpectedly at Largs. Andrea and I were sharing a western sandwich for lunch at our breakfast table.

  “Salve, fellow warriors!”

  Mike had jettisoned the sling, and although he was favouring his left arm slightly, he had full mobility and evidently was able to drive.

  “Coffee, Mike?” Andrea asked, rising to get it even before a reply was in play.

  “You couldn’t charge it up with a dash of elixir, could you?”

  “Sure, Mike”, she replied, “but the only milk we have is whole milk.”

  It was one of the few times I have ever seen Mike lost for words.

  “Look at him!” I said, in response to Andrea’s impish smile. “He’s vapour-locked!” I rose and headed to the living room. “I’ve got some octane here that should do the trick.”

  A good chug of Talisker caused a smile slowly to replace Mike’s expression of a man who had just been bushwhacked.

  “Guess I need to watch myself”, he said. “She’s picking up a lot from you, Mark.”

  “More like the other way round, Mike.”

  “I’ll leave you two now”, Andrea said, collecting our plates and heading for the sink.

  “Ah, no!” Mike wailed in mock disappointment, having recovered his repartee balance. “It was just becoming interesting!”

  “Later”, Andrea sang over her shoulder as she moved off toward the stairs.

  Mike and I drank our coffees for a moment. I knew that Mike had not come here just as an excuse for a spin in the country.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Well, a couple of things. Cromarty wants to speak to you.”

  “Cromarty? He has my number. What’s he …?”

  “He asked me when you might be back in town. It was pretty clear that he wants to do it face-to-face, whatever “it” is. I really don’t know what he has in mind”, Mike said.

  I pondered this for a moment.

  “But you didn’t drive up here just to tell me that, Mike.”

  “No”, Mike said, then just looked straight at me for a moment. “Fact is, I just can’t shake the feeling that we’ve missed something.”

  This comment by Mike was far from welcome. It had reawakened my own similar concern, something I had almost succeeded in suppressing, and it had cut off at the knees the beginnings of a buoyant mood that had begun to replace it. But I maintained a calm exterior.

  “Missed something”, I said, only half in question. “Such as?”

  Mike shook his head in frustration.

  “I don’t know”, he said. “I’ve gone through everything we know about this. The police have enough evidence, or will get enough, to bang up Dickson for a good stretch. Anyroad, I doubt that Dickson will last long in the slammer. And Cromarty will get enough out of Dickson and his two lackeys, I hope, to be able to trace back at least some distance and uncover more of the details behind how this caper fits into his own cases. We know that Blondie and his crew were just local villains, reasonably successful to be sure, but really just small fry. Ditto for Diver Dan and his mates, but that’s where things become murky. I have no idea how Dan and the boys got into this game.”

  I had risen in the middle of Mike’s speech, waving to Mike to continue, while I fetched my good ideas notebook. As I returned to the table and regained my seat, Mike continued.

  “The problem here, Mark, and I’ve come across it more than once, is that the police solve specific crimes. Once they have a suspect and find enough evidence to convict, they’re done. But this is all driven just by specific crimes. There’s almost always a web of other threads that might well be worth pursuing, but an investigation always has a scope and the smaller that scope the better.”

  “That’s nothing new”, I said.

  “I agree entirely. But my feeling, and I can’t shake it, is that there’s still something out there, something that could be important for us, for you.”

  “You realize”, I began, clutching at straws, “that this could be just a free-floating worry, not connected to anything, that there might be nothing at all out there.”

  “Yes, but you also know, Mark, that in this business it’s almost always a serious mistake to ignore strong intuitions.”

  We sat pondering those two marker posts.

  I rose to refill my coffee. Mike sat in silence a while longer.

  “Surely you don’t think that we’ve got to the heart of the matter?” Mike said, rather plaintively.

  I shook my head, mostly in confusion, just wanting the whole business to be over, but realizing that Mike had put words to my own subconscious unrest.

  “What have you got in your Book of Secrets there?” Mike asked at length.

  I sat looking at my notes and said nothing for a few minutes.

&nbs
p; “When were you planning to go back to Toronto, Mike?”

  “Ahh! I see that my welcome has already worn down to the cord”, but then Mike held up his hands as I was about to object.

  “I need to be back for tomorrow morning”, Mike said. “Why?”

  There was a long delay before I spoke.

  “I did some doodling last night, Mike, but came to no resolution. I was unsure about something. You’ve just made me realize that the situation is not wrapped up, despite the fact that Dickson has been hauled away in chains.”

  Another delay.

  “There’s a big dark horse here, Mike.”

  An inquiring tilt of Mike’s head.

  “Harold”, I said. “George’s brother.”

  “Harold?” Mike replied, in surprise. “He dayd.”

  “Yes, but he’s a very odd outlier in this whole mess. How did he get involved? If we find out that, I suspect we’ll know how Dan and the boys got involved.”

  There was a short silence at the end of which I pulled out a sheet of paper that I had folded and stuck in my notebook.

  “Take a look at this. It’s Harold’s will”, and I passed the paper over to Mike.

  Mike unfolded it and scanned it quickly.

  “Looks pretty straightforward”, he said and began folding it again. Then he stopped and spread it out once more.

  “Wait a minute! There’s something not right here”, and he placed the sheet down on the table where we could both read it.

  Last Will and Testament of Harold Manley Barbour

  I, Harold Manley Barbour, being sound of mind, here record my last will:

  On my death, all my possessions are to go to my dear and faithful brother George.

  May George be able to avoid the persecution I have endured.

  I looked at Mike.

  “That day, in the lawyer’s office with George, I looked this will over very quickly. I was in a hurry to get back to our condo and head off to Largs, so I didn’t notice the bizarre last sentence.”

  Mike looked at the document again.

  “What do you think it means?” he asked.

  “I think we would have a better shot at knowing if we had Harold’s computer.”

  “So you think there’s somebody else involved.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why didn’t Harold just name him? This will was entirely secure once Harold had passed it over to his lawyer.”

  “I suspect that Harold didn’t name him because Harold didn’t know who ‘he’ was.”

  Thirty-five

  Andrea was somewhat surprised when I checked with her about me going to Toronto with Mike for the afternoon. Once I explained why she just nodded and said to go ahead, that she was going to repair some curtains and spend a few hours on some work she wanted to send off to the office later in the day.

  “You’re sure? I should be back late this afternoon in time to make us something nice for dinner.”

  She was sitting at her sewing table, and she rose, came over to me, and we had a little clench.

  “Go!” she said and pulled one of my ears.

  Mike and I walked out to the carport.

  “Where you going?” Mike asked, as I peeled off toward my car.

  “What’s it look like? If I go with you, I’ll have no way back.”

  “Hmmm. Guess my welcome was worn down a lot further than I expected. Now I’m persona non effing grata.”

  I stood there clueless for a second too long.

  “I’m coming back this afternoon. With you, Mark. Back to Largs. Chop, chop, laddie!”

  “I thought you had to be in town for something tomorrow morning.”

  “Rescheduled. Come on. Get in. Winter’s coming.”

  The trip to town seemed to last no time at all, as Mike and I exchanged that relaxed banter that always, for us, carries a large freight of subliminal knowledge.

  As we blew down the Don Valley Parkway, Mike piped up again.

  “What do you want to do first?”

  “First”, I said, “we should stop at a decent coffee shop. Then I’d like to go see Cromarty, but I’ll need to do that alone. Then I want to pick up what we’ll need for dinner tonight, and by that time we should be on our way north again. It’ll be into rush hour, but that can’t be helped.”

  Mike pulled in to a Tim Horton’s that wasn’t too busy, and we bought a couple of coffees and retired to a table in the corner. The leather zip-up documents folder that I had brought along contained my good ideas notebook and a blank pad for taking notes during my meeting with Cromarty. I pulled out my notes and Harold’s will.

  Mike stared at the will again and wrinkled his brow.

  “Persecution”, he said in puzzlement.

  “What do you think Harold, Diver Dan and his crew, and Dickson’s crowd have in common?” I asked.

  “Apart from them all being treasure hunters?” Mike offered.

  And then, before I could speak, Mike added, “and all being criminals?”

  “Apart from those two things, probably nothing. Or, at least, let’s lay that out as a hypothesis.”

  “Okay”, Mike said uncertainly.

  “And what would those three groups of people need in order to do what they did?”

  “Is this going to be a game of twenty questions?” Mike asked impatiently.

  “Sorry, Mike. I’m not deliberately trying to be annoying. But a vague theory has suggested itself to me and I want your help in stepping through it carefully. Okay. I’ll lay it out for you as statements rather than questions. Harold, Diver Dan, and Dickson don’t seem to have much in common. And yet it seems that they were all engaged pretty seriously in trying to find something in Balsam Lake. To spend that effort, and to engage in those risks, it seems to me that they needed two things: information and incentive.”

  Mike was paying close attention now.

  “And the incentive was loot?” Mike asked.

  I nodded.

  “Hang on, Mark! Are you saying that there’s some master puppeteer who’s been running this whole show?”

  “I’m not saying anything with certainty, Mike. I have a vague idea, and I’m trying to think my way through a fog.”

  “Okay. Sorry. Yes. It’s possible. And I suppose that noticing Harold’s complaint of persecution is what started you down that road.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And the ‘information’ you referred to, that would be something that led them all to Balsam Lake.”

  “Yes”, I said. “At least that’s what I’m presuming at this point.”

  “And before we go much further in this speculation, we need some information to corroborate one element of this theory, at the very least.”

  “I see that we’re on the same track, Mike.”

  “And the source of the information that our villains needed is what we have to find, and if we find that source, we’ve probably got it all.”

  “You’re my man, Mike! Right on the button!”

  We finished our coffee and headed for the door.

  “You go talk to Cromarty, Mark. I’ll deliver you to his den. In the meantime, I have some research to do.”

  As we crossed the car park to Mike’s Volvo, I raised Cromarty on my cellphone. His invitation for me to come around right away, without a hint of impatience at his day being disrupted, was a good sign.

  Bent Cromarty’s desk was in a corner of an office that housed six or seven people, and the entire space was surprisingly neat and tidy. I learned later that this was because the woman in charge of this unit was an absolute tartar when it came to dealing with paper: completing forms, filing them, getting them off desks. It took only a couple of brutal public tongue-lashings to convince any wayward novice that they didn’t have a better idea after all.

  Cromarty downed tools the instant he saw me. He smiled, rose from his chair, offered a warm handshake, and escorted me to the privacy of an interview room. We dispensed with preliminaries quickly and dived straight int
o business.

  “I want to thank you for giving me a prompt inside track on the Dickson business. It could have been days before that information got through the bureaucracy otherwise.”

  “You’re welcome, Bent. Getting a case like Dickson stitched up quickly is in everyone’s interest.” I’m sure we both recognized also that my balance of personal favours had swung strongly into positive territory. Having debts owing sprinkled about liberally can be an ‘open sesame’ for a PI, both in terms of finding work and enlisting under-the-table help to solve tough cases. We both made affirmative head motions, reminding me of rear-window nodding dogs.

  “I assume you have, or at least the OPP has, enough to put Dickson away”, I said into a lengthening silence.

  “More than enough.” Short pause here. “But I did want to ask how it was that the shootout occurred.”

  I could see where this was coming from. The OPP had taken the position that Mike and I had been borderline irresponsible in letting things get to the state they did, that we ought to have involved them earlier, and that a shootout in a village was an exceptionally dangerous event to have occurred. Bent wanted to make sure that he could put his own stamp on events and claim some credit but at the same time have solid leeward protection from any political squalls that might arise.

  “I presume you have the statement I gave to the OPP? Dickson’s three guys abducted both Andrea and me, we were both lucky enough to get free of that, and as a result, whatever those three wanted me to help them find remained undiscovered. So Dickson made a desperate last-minute attempt to retrieve the situation. He had to get past Mike, but Mike was armed, and that’s when the shooting began. These events all happened very quickly from end to end. There was no relaxing interlude when some Greek chorus was advising us to call the OPP. But I can give you only our side of the story. You’ll have to get the rest from Dickson.”

  “Alas”, Cromarty began, “Dickson is saying very little.” Cromarty tapped the table irritably.