Resting the fishing pole down beside him, Chuck pulled the fishing line taut and began rubbing the line with the damp cloth. The friction of the cloth on the fishing line sent tiny vibrations up the line toward Mr. Harbottle’s home. By the time those vibrations reached the screen in the old man’s kitchen window, they had been amplified a thousand times. The vibrations in the line were transferred to the screen, which caused the screen to rattle violently, setting off a terrible clatter.
Old man Harbottle rushed to the kitchen window to see what was wrong. There was nothing obvious. All he saw was an innocent group of boys standing across the street talking with one another. After looking around for a good while, he returned to washing his dishes and Chuck returned to rubbing the line. The next time the old man actually ran out his front door to confront the person beating on the side of his home. Again, all he saw was an innocent-looking group of boys standing across the street chatting.
The prank went on for several repetitions before Mr. Harbottle noticed the fishing line and found the hook attached to his screen. Following the line across the street, he traced the source of all the clatter to Chuck. All his friends had run away, but Chuck stood his ground, unwilling to leave his dad’s fishing rod behind.
Mr. Harbottle looked Chuck in the eye and Chuck felt his knees begin to shake. Then all at once the old man broke out in peals of laughter. Surprised at first, Chuck readily joined in. His friends poked their heads out of nearby bushes, shocked at what they were hearing. Old man Harbottle was actually laughing.
“Son, that’s the best prank I ever did see,” Mr. Harbottle confessed.
“Thanks,” Chuck replied.
“Would you like to come inside for some lemonade and cookies?”
“Yes, that would be nice.”
Thus began the friendship between Mr. Harbottle and the neighborhood kids. From that day forward Chuck and his friends visited often. Mr. Harbottle shared stories from his youth and taught the kids how to whittle and spit (as they say), taught them to work on bikes, and even gave a few driving lessons when they were old enough.
Old man Harbottle died five years later of heart failure. There weren’t many adults at his funeral, and none shed any tears, but all the kids in the neighborhood were in attendance and the old man was sorely missed.
I sighed happily. That was just the kind of normal thing I had wanted to hear. Maybe other kids had wanted stories about princesses and pirates. I always wanted to hear how regular people lived.
Chapter 6
I pulled off my borrowed wig but didn’t look in the bathroom mirror while I brushed my teeth and swallowed a couple aspirin. It had been a rough couple of days and I didn’t possess the fortitude to face the disaster that was my hair. At least the border crossing had gone well. Going back into Canada, no one had questioned Chuck’s credentials or character as he was a member in good standing on the RCMP, and no one searched the Rover.
By dusk we were back at his apartment, which now looked surprisingly welcoming. I really hate hospitals.
I could smell the lasagna that Chuck was reheating and my appetite returned with a vengeance.
There was lingering nervousness, a few nerves still shrilling and worrying, but that would fade out with the adrenaline. In a few days, everything would be back to normal.
* * *
Brian O’Shay finished his smoke on the balcony of the RCMP headquarters in Winnipeg and indiscriminately flicked the butt out into the parking lot below. It was damp so there was no danger of fire. Not that that would have stopped him from pitching his cigarette anyway.
He was about to go back inside when his cell phone began to chime Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. He stopped to take the call in privacy.
These days he was never sure who might be calling him on his private line. It could be any of his present handlers including several organized crime lords, the RCMP, FBI, or CIA. Hell, for all he knew he was being called by MI5 or the newly reformed KGB. Or possibly one of several young women he’d left his number with at the club the night before. Whichever proved to be the case, he was sure that it would involve a conversation he’d rather others weren’t listening in on—that is, assuming his line wasn’t being tapped.
Brian pulled up a seat and answered by the third measure of the ringtone.
“Speak.”
“This is Eli.”
Alright, so now he knew who was calling. He still needed to remember if he was currently lying to this contact this week or if they were in cahoots. Brian chose to play it straight for the time being and see where things led.
“So speak,” he said again.
“What do you know about this Butterscotch Jones and her boyfriend, Chuck?”
Brian had to think for a moment, but it didn’t take long to find the name in his mental files. Everything about McIntyre’s Gulch had been annoying.
“Yeah, I know Butterscotch Jones alright, but I’m not familiar with her boyfriend. Is he local?”
“Don’t think so.”
Then the second part of the story dawned on him as well.
“Wait a second. You aren’t talking about Inspector Charles Goodhead of the RCMP, are you?” Mr. Stick-up-the-butt.
“Mountie, hey?”
“That’s right. He works on my floor. I think he has an apartment here in Winnipeg.”
The line went dead. Brian put away his cell phone and lit another cigarette. Blowing smoke into the gray, cloud-covered afternoon, he had to smile. Looked like Chuck might be in for a late night surprise.
* * *
Everyone at the table looked up when the door opened and Agent Desoto entered the room. They’d been waiting for the agent in charge to arrive for nearly half an hour. During his absence, they’d exchanged small talk, but felt, rightfully, that they couldn’t discuss anything important until he was present. Desoto walked across the room, exuding his natural authority, and took his seat at the head of the table.
“Thank you for showing up on time,” he said. “I’m sorry for being late myself.”
He offered no explanation for keeping everyone waiting, nor was there any expected. Everyone at the table knew that the agent was busy. And besides, no one wanted to get on his bad side. There were rumors about his bad side that were part fact, a dash of myth, and pure legend throughout the agency.
After opening the folder that had been set before him on the table, the meeting began.
“For those of you who have yet to read the full report, we found one of our contacts this morning in his hospital room, strangled to death. The contact had been admitted to the hospital last night after a hit-and-run incident. His hospital room had been searched, as if somebody was looking for something they wanted badly.
“Agent Reese, perhaps you could explain why you weren’t at your post guarding the contact’s hospital room.”
Agent Reese cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He knew that the conversation would eventually center on his activities at the hospital this morning. He had hoped that the questioning wouldn’t begin so soon or so abruptly.
“I was at my post this morning guarding the hospital room when I observed a man and a woman enter our contact’s room.”
“Did you challenge them?”
“No, I did not.”
“Why not?”
“They didn’t appear to me to fit the profile of assassins sent to murder our patient. In fact, they looked more like friends or family.”
“Very well. Then what happened?”
“The couple left the hospital room soon after entering and I followed.”
“Why?”
“I preceded them to my car downstairs so that I could take pictures of them leaving the hospital and the vehicle they drove away in.”
“And we assume that the assassin entered the hospital room while you were gone from your post.”
Reese made no reply.
“And these are the pictures that you took?” Desoto asked, pulling several enlarged
photographs from his file.
“That’s right, sir.”
“And do we know the identities of either the man or the woman?”
“The nursing staff says the woman identified herself as a niece and the man as a close friend of our contact upon arrival. The admitting nurse couldn’t remember the name she used.”
“And the Manitoba license plate. Have we traced it?”
“Yes, sir. The Range Rover in the pictures belongs to an RCMP inspector named Horace Goodhead. He owns a small condominium in Winnipeg.”
Desoto digested this.
“Anything of interest found in the hospital room?”
“Nothing. All prints found were traced to the patient or hospital staff,” a man in a lab coat replied. “There were no personal effects beyond torn clothing.”
There was silence in the room while Agent Desoto read through the report. Unable to contain himself, one of the other men sitting at the table broke the silence with the question they’d all been wanting to ask.
“So, where do we go from here, sir? Is this the end?”
Desoto looked up from his report and frowned.
“Officially, this part of the investigation is closed. Unofficially, Dawson, I’d like you to book me on a redeye to Winnipeg tonight. Oh, and by the way, you and Reese will be accompanying me.” Unspoken was the message that Reese had messed up so he was going to help clean up. The fact that he hated flying was of no interest to Agent Desoto.
And with that, the meeting was over. Desoto rose and left the room. As he walked the hall back to his office he was haunted by the picture in the newspaper clipping he’d found on their contact’s body the night of the hit and run. Though the hair was different, the woman in the clipping matched the woman who had entered their contact’s room moments before their contact was murdered.
And then there was the peculiar name to consider. Butterscotch Jones.
“Dawson,” he said as his subordinate passed in the hall.
“Sir?”
“Tell me what you found on McIntyre’s Gulch.”
“Well, sir, very little actually,” Dawson lowered his voice. “The main thing about this place seems to be that everyone is either a McIntyre or a Jones.”
This wasn’t the best news, Desoto reflected, but with the woman’s red hair—
“And everyone has red hair.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes. That’s what our Canadian contacts report. All Joneses, McIntyres, and redheads.”
“Jesus! How inbred is this place?”
“Apparently very. Oh, and they have a bear problem. There have been several fatalities.”
Desoto grunted, but he was undeterred by talk of bears and Bigfoot. A wheel had come off Agent Desoto’s investigation because that stink bomb, Marcus Reese, had been trusted to watch the suspect and blew it. Now their reluctant witness was dead, and almost everyone up top wanted to give up on investigating this lead, but not Desoto. There was a reason they called him the Pitbull.
Desoto also knew something that Dawson didn’t. Further digging with classified sources had paid off. It turned out that all kinds of interested parties had been soft-footing it around the little town in Canada for the last few months, some waving maple leaves, some stars and stripes. It was even possible that not everyone holding a flag was who they were pretending to be. To go in officially was to invite all kinds of bad attention, but an unofficial visit was another matter.
He had vacation coming. Desoto figured that if anyone asked he’d tell them that it was time he learned how to fish the great lakes of Canada. He just wouldn’t say for what.
Chapter 7
Though exhausted, I was sleeping in a strange place, with strange noises, and with Chuck—which was nice, but different. In spite of wishing for a few hours of deep and dreamless, I was hovering in the twilight and therefore heard the snap of something I took to be a lock.
Except, I wasn’t really sure what his lock sounded like. And I had already woken Chuck when the ice maker dropped a load of cubes in the plastic tray and when the neighbor in an electric wheelchair bumped the front door. I figured three false alarms might be too many for even Chuck to forgive. I figured that our relationship had a short enough shelf life without these added aggravations.
If only Max was there. He’d tell me if someone was inside. He’d have told me if someone was outside.
I closed my eyes, but after a couple of minutes lying still and imagining that I heard muffled footsteps and the stealthy sliding of desk drawers, I decided that I just had to get up and check on things.
Moving slowly, I pushed back the covers and crept from the room. I tripped once over Chuck’s shoes and froze, but he kept on with the deep breathing and I sighed with relief. It was dumb, but I didn’t want to get caught checking out another noise. Chuck would think I was an hysteric.
The living room was dark; Chuck had blackout drapes and only the thinnest penciling of light shone through the gap between curtains. Deciding that even this small gap was too much light, I circled the desk and tried to pull the drapes together. One side moved, the other didn’t. It was bowed out around something.
I figured out the something was a man about the same moment as his hands reached for my neck. He was hampered by the heavy fabric and I was able to pull myself loose. In the movies, this is where the victim would scream. I would have been okay with that except I found that I had gasped out all my air and had nothing left for shrieking. Instead I spun and picked up the first heavy object that came to hand. It happened to be Chuck’s portable. It wasn’t one of the newer kind meant to fit in a purse. It was big and heavy, and when swung with panic force, it did an excellent job of cracking the intruder’s head.
Chuck might have missed my tripping over shoes, but apparently breaking his computer was loud enough that it could penetrate even heavy sleep. The bedroom light went on and he appeared almost immediately.
“Watch out for glass.”
Chuck said a bad word that I wouldn’t have guessed he was familiar with. I laughed. It was sublimated hysteria and it took a moment to get it under control.
On a scale of one to ten, one being mild anxiety about having your teeth cleaned and ten being a serial killer hiding in your closet, this was a about a twelve. An armed man in the living room beat a killer still in the closet any day.
Chuck and I looked at the body. It wasn’t bulky but it was muscled. The face was hard, like the skin had been weathered far beyond the man’s years and there was a rough scar at the jawline that hadn’t been properly sutured. There was also a gun in his shoulder holster. I noticed this right away. I could be taking a header off Mount Everest and still notice a man with a gun.
Chuck knelt down and felt for a pulse and then checked the intruder’s pockets.
“No ID.”
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
“That’s good. I guess.” At times, Chuck’s face can be expressionless. This wasn’t one of those times. “This has to be about my father.”
Chuck looked like he was going to argue, maybe suggest that this was a random burglary or more surveillance from his bosses, but decided not to bother with devil’s advocacy. He knew it was about my father.
“How did they find us—oh, the license plates on the Rover. They must have been watching the lot.”
“Damn. I need to call Big John, but first we need to get dressed.” Chuck thought about this as he followed me to the bedroom and began pulling on clothes. He is a bright guy but not at his best when woken from a deep sleep. He failed to come up with an answer by the time his shirt was on and asked why I wanted to call Big John.
“They may have recognized me—especially if my father told them who I was—and sent someone to the Gulch to look for me there.”
“But why—I mean, why follow you at all? You have no money. You’re not important.” I didn’t take him up on this. It wasn’t meant to sound insulting, and he was right. I was nothing to these people. �
��I know loan sharks can be violent, but could your father have enemies that are that vengeful? And stupid?”
Obviously, I thought, but didn’t say it aloud.
Chuck was a student of human nature, but I’ve done postgraduate work with real nasties and my gut said that this guy qualified. Though I was glad I hadn’t killed him and made all kinds of hideous problems for Chuck, I had the sinking feeling that in the long run, I was going to be sorry this man had survived the blow to the head.
“Who knows? Maybe. But I don’t think the guy intended to kill us—at least not right away. He was searching your desk and hid behind the drapes when I came in when he could have just shot me.” I was trying to talk myself into feeling better.
“But why—”
“I don’t know! Because my father told them we had something they want? Maybe something he stole from the wrong person. Something small that would fit in a desk.”
“But.…”
“Chuck, I don’t know what they want. And it doesn’t matter at the moment. We need to leave right now. The rest can wait until we’re safe.” When he didn’t react I added urgently, “There could be more of them on their way up as we speak.”
Chuck wanted to argue. He was a policeman and this invasion of his home offended him. But he reasoned it through. How would he explain me or our trip over the border? They would want to know what an American hoodlum was doing in his home and if he had acquired him on his brief visit to the States.
And what would happen to me if I went off on my own and he stayed to deal with the paperwork? Because this guy had been after me, I was sure, and not Chuck. I’d be safe in the Gulch, but could I get there alone?
There was also something else on his mind, and I knew what it was as sure as if he had spoken aloud. Law enforcement was no longer his flawless idol. Ever since the downed airplane fell on McIntyre’s Gulch, his life had become a kabuki theater with unknown persons in power manipulating the puppets, pulling on his strings, too, making him dance to music he couldn’t hear. Maybe if he knew the reason for it all, he would agree with the tactics used by his employers. But the very fact that the shadow agents didn’t feel they could tell the rational men and women of the department they were puppeteering why they were doing it made him suspect that he wouldn’t agree with their agenda. Though they seemed to have backed off from him in the last few weeks, there was no way to be one hundred percent sure that this intruder didn’t have some kind of relationship with the people he would need to call to investigate the break-in.
Gone South (A Butterscotch Jones Mystery Book 3) Page 4