Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery

by Scott Young

  But the main idea I had, which kept growing, was that with William gone to stand bareheaded listening to eulogies for his father from his own people and politicians of all colors and stripes, I might get lucky around here. Or south of here.

  I still hadn’t made up my mind when I walked down toward No Legs’ house to ask No Legs what he knew about the country farther south than we’d traveled today. But passing the Pennycook house I saw his sled at the door. He could move short distances just sliding, using his arms and his leg stumps. Or maybe somebody had carried him in. All lights were on, upstairs and down, but the place seemed fairly subdued. Maybe I’d see No Legs later. Hunger and thirst had taken over. I turned towards Pengelly’s, looking forward to food, drink and uncomplicated people.

  I was there a couple of hours later when Nicky Jerome relayed two messages. One was that No Legs was home and wanted to talk to me if I had a chance. The other was that Gloria had been trying to get me. I walked back and knocked on the door at No Legs’ place.

  I heard him call, “Come in,” went through the dark little coats and boots room and opened the inside door to the warm and bright kitchen. No Legs was on the chair where he’d been that first morning I visited him. On the table beside him were a pot of tea, tea bags, mugs, the electric kettle, an extension cord plugged into a wall outlet, his lighter and cigarets. He looked up at me.

  “You heard about the memorial service for Morton?” he asked.

  “Yeah, just heard.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “There’s somethin’ strange goin’ on. I’d just got back to Paul Pennycook’s when somebody got him on the phone from Yellowknife to tell him about the service and ask if he could be there Monday for sure.”

  He stopped as if not sure whether to say what he had to say.

  “What he done right away was say that he couldn’ go, couldn’ they pos’pone it? Then everybody started tellin’ him William, you have to, but he kept sayin’ he couldn’. Just that he couldn’. He was so upset that it was hard to make out what he was sayin’, except once it sort of come out like somebody cryin’, that he had things to do aroun’ here, no use goin’ when Morton was dead anyways.”

  I waited. He put a tea bag in each mug and poured in boiling water. “I’m goin’,” he said. “So are some others. We’re flyin’ Nahanni.” He took a deep breath. “William is goin’. I think he really knew all along he had to. But he ain’t happy about it. I mean, somethin’ else is sure as hell on his mind. He was talkin’ real wild—”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that he’d get a flight back as soon as the service was over, even if he hadta charter it.”

  “Do you think it’s anything to do with the trip he just got back from?”

  “That crosst my mind.”

  I went back to the detachment. It was starting to look like a long night. I had to make the call to Gloria, and others I had decided upon.

  Nicky came out of his room when I went in. I was just picking up the phone book. “Whose number you want?” he asked. I told him. He had it written down, including her room number.

  “You know Gloria well?” he asked, while he poured me a coffee I hadn’t asked for. Rum and ginger, tea, coffee, I’d be getting up every two hours all night to go to the can.

  “Fairly well,” I said.

  “I used to know her here when she was a kid, before she went to live with Maxine. Nice kid, then. I often wondered how she’s doin’. She in Yellowknife now?”

  “Just for the service for Morton.”

  A message had just come in noting that the service would be at ten a.m. Monday, day after tomorrow. So William would be able to get back here on the noon flight, if he wanted.

  “Gloria okay?” Nicky persisted, as I took a swallow of coffee and dialed.

  “As far as I know. Why?”

  He shrugged. “Sounded as if she’d had a few too many, is all.”

  While I had the phone to my ear, waiting for the hotel switchboard to answer, I wondered what exactly had been in Gloria’s mind in going to Yellowknife so early for this service. It meant she’d have to spend an extra day or two there. Of course, only a few, if any, would know her relationship with Morton. And there’d be enough from Inuvik and other places in the North, people from this committee or that, band chiefs, people Morton had worked with or against, that she wouldn’t be all that noticeable. Unless she made it that way herself. Yet as flaky as she sometimes could be, she wasn’t the type to go getting her name in the tabloids under the heading of Mystery Beauty Throws Self on Coffin, or some such. The fantasy she’d been living out with Morton hadn’t seemed to have much more to it, really, than just an affair between a young woman and an older man. But who knows? Maybe he was nice to her, respectful to her, a gentle lover instead of the string of grunts she’d had before in her life.

  “Hello?” Gloria was in her room, and she did sound as if she’d had a few too many. Anyway, she wasn’t down in the bar having a few more.

  “It’s Matteesie,” I said.

  “Oh! I’m so glad they found you. I had to tell somebody.”

  “Tell somebody what?”

  She laughed. It was slightly out of control but still I thought, that’s good, she’s in good spirits. I couldn’t tell on the phone whether she was really loaded or just in that state where a few drinks and a lot of emotion give that impression. There was a kind of spacey elation in her voice. Then she went on, dropping her voice to a confidential level. I guess she was used to hotels with thin partitions.

  “I visited him today,” she said.

  “Yeah?” I couldn’t imagine what was coming.

  “I sneaked in before the regular visiting hours and they let me see him,” she said. “They had him all laid out in a nice suit and . . .”

  I couldn’t imagine the scene at all. From the last time I’d seen Morton, I couldn’t imagine an open coffin. Sure, the shots had hit the back of his head but his face, as I remembered it, Jesus . . .

  “How the hell did you manage that?” I interrupted.

  “There’s no family, you know, until William gets here. I got a young guy who works in the funeral home and told him I was Morton’s girlfriend and couldn’t stand being there in a crowd during the regular visiting hours, so he let me in by myself, just me and Morton.”

  I waited. She was crying. It sounded like the edge of hysteria but there was sort of a happiness to her, too. I thought maybe she’d gone off her head, at least temporarily. She sure sounded like it.

  “I talked to him,” she said. “He didn’t look the same.”

  I thought, bullets will do that to a guy, but didn’t say it. I just waited, feeling I was in the presence of some kind of madness, whether drug-induced or alcohol-induced—who could say.

  Now she was wailing. “I said to him, ‘What have they done to your nice face, painting you all up like this?’”

  I’ve known people, my own people, who talked to their dead, or thought they did; that much I could cling to, even if with great difficulty. I wasn’t exactly playing along, but I was caught up in it.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “Just like him. He said it was none of my business.” I could hear her sobbing, the crazy girl.

  I talked to her for a while. It didn’t have much effect. I told her to phone Maxine right away, it was important. When I hung up I just stood there a while. Finally I couldn’t help smiling, with a catch in my throat, when the thought occurred to me that anyway, it was nice that Gloria thought Morton had answered her question. Always the gentleman.

  Then I phoned Maxine to tell her to call Gloria. The line was busy. I phoned an old school friend I knew who was an operator for NorthwesTel in Inuvik and asked could she tell me if the call on Maxine’s line was long distance from Yellowknife.

  She came back on in seconds. �
�Yeah, it is, Matteesie,” she said. “How’ve you been, anyway?”

  I said I’d been great, thanks, really great. “See you soon.”

  After I’d hung up I phoned the RCMP in Yellowknife and got the home number of the sergeant who’d done the checking for me on Billy Bob Hicks/Dave Hawkinsville. I could hear a hockey game in the background. I told him I needed a light aircraft or helicopter for tomorrow to follow a lead I had and did he have anything there that could fly up and help out, helicopter preferred.

  He said everything was tied up in air rescue right now, no sign of the goddamn Cessna, probably never find it now, especially if it had somehow got west of the Mackenzie into the mountains, where the grid search would go tomorrow. But anyway . . .

  “What’ve you got in mind?” he asked.

  I just told him I had a hunch on the Morton Cavendish murder, knowing those would be the magic words around Yellowknife right now. I said I needed something that would maybe have to land and take off a time or two, depending.

  He didn’t ask any more, which is one reason why we’d been friends ever since I was still a special and he was a young constable based in Tuktoyaktuk nearly twenty years ago.

  “I can authorize a light charter if you can find what you want around there or Norman Wells,” he said. “You get them to phone me about billing,” and then added hastily, “in the morning,” and explained that with, “I’m watching the hockey game.”

  I didn’t know every outfit that flew around there so I looked in the Yellow Pages. There were plenty of display ads for companies large and small with addresses all the way from Edmonton to Tuk. I picked one that read, “Single-Engine Aircraft, Cessna, Beaver, Otter. Wheels, Skis, Floats.” The company name, Pine Tree, was unfamiliar but had a Fort Norman number. The office was closed, the answering machine informed me, but gave an after-hours number.

  Ringing that, I heard the same hockey game in the background as a male voice with a slight accent said, “Stothers here.”

  Then I knew who he was, Ian Stothers, English, a household name in these parts. Had walked away from a few crashes himself. I’d never met him but knew he’d been a pilot in at least a couple of wars, I think the 1948 one in Israel and then in Korea, so he’d be pretty well on in years.

  I thought I’d match his crisp delivery, just to see how it rolled off the tongue. “Matthew Kitologitak here,” I said. “I’m looking for a charter in the morning.”

  “You’re the Inuit cop, of course. What kind of an aircraft?”

  “Something ski-equipped and light, a Beaver would do fine.”

  “What for and how long?”

  I told him I’d need it for at least a few hours, maybe a few days, couldn’t be sure of the details right now.

  “Cash or Visa?” he asked.

  “The Mounties in Yellowknife will authorize it,” I said, and told him my name and who to call about billing. “Call him in the morning,” I specified hastily.

  “Morning suits me. I’m busy watching the hockey game. Wasn’t even intending to answer the phone. What time you want to take off?”

  “Daylight.” I’d have to be able to see William’s trail. “I also have to ask that you don’t mention anything about this, especially tonight.”

  “Mum’s the word,” he said. “Don’t know who the hell I’d see tonight, anyway. They’re all home watching the hockey game.”

  I wondered who was playing but didn’t ask. When dealing with the English it’s important not to sound like an ignoramus. Didn’t want to give Inuit a bad name.

  “Who’s the pilot going to be?” I asked.

  “Me,” he said. “That okay?”

  “It’ll be a pleasure.” I hoped.

  I hung up, thought a minute, then wrote a note to Pengelly and told him what I had in mind and who was flying me, in case he came in before I did in the morning. I asked him to keep it private. On this trip I didn’t want surprise visitors.

  I didn’t have much packing to do. Most of it had been done for the trip with Edie and No Legs. I’d pick it all up in the police van in the morning. Nicky could run me out to the air strip. I tapped on Nicky’s open door. He was watching “Dallas.”

  “Yeah!” he said, swinging his feet to the floor. “Hey, inspector, come in.”

  He puffed on his pipe and kept one eye on the set while I told him I was going out in the morning on a charter, didn’t know for sure how long. Had my own clothing, snowshoes, bedroll, match container and toilet paper but from him I’d need the radio, Thermoses, tea, a kettle, primus stove, fuel, rifle, ammunition, tent. I paused there, figuring. “And food for . . . better make it, ah, food for four days . . .”

  “Four days!” Nicky said, laughing. “Where the hell you goin’, inspector, Calgary?”

  I was on my way out of his room when there was a commercial break. The screen showed a 747 or some other giant airplane filling up at an Esso gas pump. He jumped up convulsively, light dawning, and called after me, “Hey, inspector!”

  I took a few steps back into his room. “Yeah?”

  “Gasoline! The commercial reminded me! You know the message early in the week about if anybody gets some gas stolen on them, they’re to let us know right away?”

  I felt a rush of adrenaline.

  “Did the corporal ever tell you his story about the Icelander, ah, Oscar Frederickson, beatin’ the hell out of his lady friend wit’ this guitar, lives out in a shack other side of Bear Rock near the winter road? Well, he was in a little while ago, on foot. Mad as hell. Was supposed to come in tonight and have a few drinks and watch the hockey game, they haven’ got TV out there, and he and Delphine got on the snowmobile and went about a hunnerd yards and it quit. Outta gas, although he knew he’d filled it day before yesterday, last time he used it. So they walk back to get a coupla gas cans he has in a shed behind his place and they’re gone, too. Jeez, was he mad. Says if he ever catches the sonofabitch he’ll kill him.”

  Chapter Nine

  Oscar Frederickson was six feet two or three, with the kind of hair that from boyhood on is so fair as to be almost white. In contrast, his cheeks looked like shiny red apples, a natural fair-skinned ruddiness with an assist, I guessed, from rye whisky. He was waving a glass of that right now. I figured him at around a hard-living fifty. His belly hung over thick woolen pants held up by suspenders of the kind that firemen and police used to wear, and some still do.

  Blustering was his style. When I wondered aloud if the guy who liberated his fuel supply could have sneaked up to the house in daylight, Oscar fired back at me as if such a stupid idea was beneath contempt. “Y’nuts or somethin’? No guy is gonna come t’my house in broad daylight knowin’ that when he bends over to suck on the hose and get the siphon gain’ the next thing he’s gonna get is a charge of number six shot up the ass.”

  That greatly amused his Delphine.

  “New kinda hemorrhoid operation, eh, Oscar?” she said, smiling broadly for only an instant before she remembered to hide her mouth. The gesture was almost graceful, raising one hand so that the forefinger touched her upper lip lightly and the other fingers hid her ruined teeth. Black hair hung stringily down her back. When I looked at her a sense of sorrow swept through me. I thought she was not old enough to be so used up. It happens more to Natives than to whites.

  We were in their cabin just off the winter road to Norman Wells. Nicky hadn’t known for sure where Oscar had been headed to watch the hockey game when he stopped in to report the gasoline theft, but in Fort Norman two or three phone calls usually will locate someone unless they would prefer not to be located.

  In minutes I was parking the police van at a house brightly painted red and white, one of an identical dozen or so laid out in the flats on either side of where the street dipped downhill toward the river bank. I knew such houses, had lived in them, played cards in them, argued drunk and sober in them. They and brightly
painted others up and down the river and along the Arctic coast came north in sections by barge or on the winter roads, each to be assembled on pilings that had been hammered down to solid permafrost. Not only the colors, shape and size were the same, but so was fuel supply; each had a 200-gallon oil tank on one outside wall. Igloos can be individual. So can teepees, riverbank shacks, hovels, lean-tos. But not buildings that a government provides. When I was walking to the door none of this was going through my head. It was just there in the marrow of my bones.

  The hockey game was just over, as was a bottle of rye. I asked Oscar to come and show me the scene of the crime.

  “Hell, we can tell you what there is to know right here,” Oscar argued, at first. “Don’t have to go home to do that.”

  I said it would help me to see for myself, maybe get an idea of the place and the bush around it, in case there was a place the thief could have hidden while he watched the house until he figured it was safe to come in and steal the gas.

  It was only when I said I’d drive them home right now in the police van, save them the walk, that Oscar got up, drained his drink, and laughed, “Let’s go.”

  He came from Manitoba, he told me while we drove out of town on what led to the winter road. “Delphine here comes from there, too, but farther north, where the government flooded them out.”

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “Power development,” she said, and seemed about to tell me which one, there’s hardly a Native band in the north of the provinces as well as in the Northwest Territories that hasn’t had to fight progress and sometimes lose, except that Oscar cut her off. Icelanders I’ve met are often blunt, direct. He was just plain objectionable. He wouldn’t live in this god-forsaken place at all, he interrupted Delphine, except that his wife, who lived in Winnipeg now, would never think of looking for him here.