Murder Sees the Light

by Howard Engel

  “That’s a nice bit of crumpet for somebody,” said Maggie.

  “For somebody with his pockets full,” said Lloyd. “Did you see the car she drives?” He shook his fingers like he’d burned them. A well-simonized Lamborghini could be dimly seen sinking up to its expensive hubcaps in the parking lot muck. Next to my rusting Olds, the yellow sports car looked pretty good.

  “Her name’s Aline Barbour. Arrived the same day Benny did,” added Maggie. “If you ask me, she’s just broken it off with her boyfriend. I can sense these things.”

  We watched the car retreating back until it was swallowed up in the shadows shortly before we heard the sound of her cabin door. “Not much of a mixer, is she?”

  “Has she been here before?” I asked.

  “One …” began Aeneas, but he stopped short.

  “Not to my knowledge. Oh, you mean my knowing her name. Benny, there isn’t much that goes on around here that I don’t know about. I know, just for example, that you saved Mr. Edgar’s life yesterday.”

  “He what?” asked Cissy, and Maggie gave a brief account of my heroism. From the look of the assembled faces it came as news. But you can never be sure about a thing like that.

  “Poor Benny,” said Cissy.

  “To say nothing of the lucky Mr. Edgar. Well, now, good night.” The group began to break up. “Good night, Cissy. Good night, Aeneas. Good night.” Maggie headed north towards the lumber road that ran through the lodge grounds; the rest of us moved in the other direction.

  “Good night, Maggie.”

  “Good night, Mrs. McCord.”

  “Good night. God bless. Call me Maggie, remember. Everybody does. Come over for tea tomorrow if you like. Good night.”

  FIVE

  Early the following morning, when the chattering of the birds had made it impossible to sleep, I boiled four brown eggs, chopped them in a bowl, added mayonnaise, and made a couple of sandwiches. These did nothing to supplant the United Cigar Store in Grantham as my idea of dependable eating, but they didn’t turn out badly considering the primitive conditions. Through the window the lake looked calm, the white birches framing my view of the dock made the whole panorama look like an ad for hooks, lines, and sinkers. I heard kids squealing down by the dock. This was accompanied by splashing and laughter. From my front door I heard Joan start up the Delco. She didn’t usually start it this early, so I took advantage of having the power to put on the cassette I’d brought back from the island. While I listened, I wrapped the sandwiches in the plastic the bread came in.

  “… Norrie, you can’t afford …”

  “This is somebody I practically grew up with. Haven’t I ever mentioned Aeneas DuFond?”

  “I’m talking security, Norrie.”

  “Take it easy, Ozzie. He doesn’t know who I am. I’ll bet he doesn’t see a dozen papers a year. I knew him before I met Van. Stop sweating, Ozzie. He’s an Indian guide. He never leaves the park. Thinks Hatchway’s the Big City.”

  “It’s enough that that haberdasher comes here …”

  “Benny? Have a heart, I’m learning to beat the pants off him.”

  “I could watch that yo-yo fishin’ all day.” That was a new voice. I pegged it as the body I’d been calling Mr. Clean. He looked like a bodyguard and now he talked like one, ending in a moronic laugh. But I might be considered prejudiced.

  “Shut up, Wilf, we’re busy.” So, Mr. Clean is Wilf. Glad to know you. “Funny thing about Aeneas, though,” Patten continued, “he looked me up for a purpose. He showed me this.” I could hear Lorca taking in her breath as something hard hit the wood of a table.

  “Son of a bitch!” Another voice. The one I’d been calling Shorty, I thought.

  “Crudely put, Spence, but I agree with you there, fella.”

  “You haven’t got time to get mixed up with some Indian guide.”

  “Don’t crowd me, Ozzie. All souls are equally precious.”

  “Where do you think he got it, Norrie?” Lorca asked. From the sound of her voice, it must have been something to look at. I tried to imagine diamonds, sapphires, emeralds.

  “You see, DuFond remembers when Van was trying to get me interested in minerals. You know he was a practicing geologist before he became the junior senator froth Vermont. He took both of us into the bush and tapped away at rocks with his hammer.”

  “But he isn’t going to go to the papers?”

  “Relax, Ozzie. Aeneas isn’t going, and neither is the dimwit fisherman who sells the boys his fresh catch.”

  “Oh, my God! Another breach! Norrie, your security is shot front and back. If it’s known you’re not at San Clemente … These guys should be shut up. There’s too much riding on this. What if they blab?”

  “You worry too much. Now, you’d better get going. Don’t forget to speak to Van. Sift him. Test him for leaks. I want to know he’s still with us.”

  “I talked to P.J. before I left. He knows what we want from Van.”

  “And have Ethan take this thing in and get it assayed.”

  “Damn it all, Norrie!”

  “A promise is a promise.” I didn’t know who P.J. was, but I was ready to bet next year’s tan that Ethan was Ozzie’s driver, Surf’s Up. P.J. sounded American, part of the U.S. operation, somewhere between Van and Patten.

  Then they got into a squabble about whether Lorca had been drinking or not. She made a valiant defence and was getting a sermon on the evils of drink when the power faded away stopping the machine. As Patten began to lose his grip on the whole empire, he stuck it to the few of the faithful who were ready to follow their leader into exile.

  With the sandwiches tucked into a knapsack, I went out into the sunlight. The screen door slapped the frame behind me just as the heat gave me a rabbit punch in the solar plexus. The tin fish, as Aeneas DuFond called my aluminum rowboat, was too hot to touch. I had to be careful how I deployed my carcass. I postponed the moment by going back for the equipment.

  Aline Barbour, the owner of the Lamborghini, was lying spread out on an inflatable air mattress at the end of the dock. She was wearing a pink bikini with black piping. There was a lot of tanned skin to be looked at, and Aline Barbour shielded her eyes from the sun and watched me look.

  “You’re up early,” she said in a drawl. I lowered my eyes. I was no good at these staring contests even with the sun on my side. “They told me your name was Cooperman.”

  “Still is. I’m going fishing.” That sounded a little pale coming from a man with one foot in a boat and a fishing rod under his arm. She smiled and tilted her big sunglasses up to her forehead. Her eyes were brown and slightly wild.

  “I’m Aline Barbour. I’m sorry, I keep forgetting that everybody doesn’t know who I am. I spend most of my time in the theatre. I’m a designer and fairly well known. I forget that the theatre isn’t the world.” She took the cap off a tube of white cream and began rubbing it on her shoulders. She did it in a languid way that I don’t always associate with eight o’clock in the morning. “See you later,” she said, flicking her mane of hair like a model in a shampoo commercial, and went back to her rubbing. I pulled myself off the dock and into the scalding rowboat.

  I took a run down the lake past the Woodward place. The car was still there. At least they hadn’t bolted overnight. I picked a worm at random and slipped it along my hook. Over the side with it. Through the water it looked almost white as it slipped out of sight.

  I sat like that for half an hour. Nothing moved. My head was getting hot. I should have worn a hat. That made a pretty picture as I closed my eyes against the magenta light creeping through my eyelids. My normal hat would suit the north woods like a bikini at the opera. Couldn’t get that bikini out of my head. Was it the pink or the black piping? I took off my shirt, removed the undershirt and dipped it into the lake. After wringing it out, I fitted it to my frying brow. For a minute or so, refreshing rivulets of lake water ran down my shoulders and disappeared into the folds where my belly rested on my belt. Up here
in the park, I should take advantage of the opportunity and try to get rid of the flab I’d acquired in the city over the winter. I could hike over to the woodpile and watch Joan chop wood, then hike back for some lunch.

  From where I sat in the boat, I could see a fair piece of the lake. The lodge was hidden in its sheltering bay, and the top of the lake was behind the island north of me. The lake was surrounded by rolling hills which came down gently to the shore. Only on the west side was there an abrupt change from land to lake, and here you would have to stretch things to call it a cliff. It was a big lake to get around in in a rowboat, but not much of a challenge for the Rimmers’ big cruiser.

  From somewhere out of sight, probably one of the bays that marked the west shore, I heard a motor start after three pulls at the cord. It was a big motor, and it sounded out of place at that hour. Before I had really decided from behind which headland the boat would appear, I saw it coming fast around the nearest point and heading straight for me. It looked like a police launch in the movies scaled down a trifle. I kept my eye glued to the huge headlight or searchlight mounted in front and watched the bounce of a light craft skipping over the water being chased by a motor that was going faster than it was. It was George, all right. He was too big for the boat too—a massive chest mounted over a large belly, both visible through the water-spotted windshield as the boat cut its motor and came alongside.

  “Good morning,” I shouted over the noise of the suddenly choppy water. “Nice day.”

  “If it don’t snow. You here again. What’s so special about this part of the lake?” He pulled tobacco and papers from his breast pocket and made a cigarette mostly with one hand. When he lit the end, I was happy to see, it flared and reduced its length by half.

  “Aeneas told me about this place. He said fish the shadows. At this time of day, that’s the west of the first island. Since you ask,” I added to see if it got to him. It didn’t.

  “You should try the far shore in the morning. Unless you’re out for splake.”

  I still didn’t know what splake was, but I could see that George didn’t consider splake-fishing a grown man’s sport. He spat loose tobacco into the water and gunned his motor loudly enough to scare all nearby lake trout out of Big Crummock Lake altogether. He only needed a short burst to land him at the Woodward dock, where he tied up and headed towards the house with a string of fish that looked like they were worth mounting and bronzing or whatever you do to fish you don’t want to eat or throw back. He was out of sight for about five minutes, then he returned to the dock and his boat. Running by me, he made sure I got all the benefit of his wake. My little tin fish was nearly scuttled by the turbulence. George looked back and laughed. A simple sort was George, a man of uncomplicated pleasures. He raced his engine so that he disappeared from view in less than two minutes, the boat getting smaller and smaller until it was a dot heading up towards the top end of the lake.

  I shipped my fishing rod, put the oars in the water, and rowed myself over to the island. With the boat pulled up on an elbow of sand, I hopped out (soaking my foot) and crawled through the bush to the other end of the island, where I could see the Woodward place from a new angle.

  I couldn’t see it as close as from the boat, but at least I could look at it steadily without being called out for staring.

  There was some activity near the car. I’d brought binoculars from the boat and focused on the three-spoked wheel on the hood of the Mercedes. To the right of the car Lorca was talking with Wilf and Spence. The men were wearing shorts and T-shirts, Lorca had a navy blue man’s shirt tied in a knot under her bust. Her long tanned legs were set off by white tennis shorts. For a few minutes it looked like some of them were going to drive to Hatchway leaving Lorca, but in the end they all got into the car, which turned around and headed down the lane that rose to meet the lumber trail. In five minutes they’d be driving through Petawawa Lodge. Patten was alone in the cabin. Time for a chess game, I thought.

  First, I changed the tape on the machine in the plastic garbage bag, escaping the earwigs that now called it home, and had the first of my sandwiches. With nothing to drink, it went down like cardboard. I tried to sort out what I knew about Patten and, on the basis of that, guess what he was going to do next.

  He wasn’t up here to get a tan or to try out his fishing gear. With the future of the Ultimate Church in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, he was waiting out the decision in the nearest neutral corner. If the eight old men and a woman found in his favour, that the church was all he said it was, then he would return to his mammoth rallies and his TV Hours of Destiny until Internal Revenue found another chink in his holy armour. If the decision went against him, that was the end of the line, in the States at least. There would be no sense in returning to face the music. There was no money to pay back so much. It would take him years of pulling himself from one courtroom to another. And in the end he’d have nothing to show for it except that his lawyers would be as angry with him as the tax people. He was smart to have left town before the verdict was announced. But it was unreasonable, in spite of the fact that he was born in these parts, to conclude that this was where he meant to spend his declining years. He was too accustomed to the European hot spots. He was in the park for two reasons. He needed a place to sweat out the decision, and he probably needed to get new papers. It was still possible to get a Canadian passport illegally, and that was probably what he was doing. Passports, like everything else that goes through the mail, take time. I could figure on him being at the Woodward place until the Supreme Court decision and after that, if it went against him, only long enough for the delivery of a passport made out to a brand-new name. Of course, all of this would be yesterday’s paper if somebody on Big Crummock Lake got any better at assassination. The job he did on the motorboat needed just a little more luck to put Patten where he wanted him. But practice makes perfectionists.

  While I was daydreaming, I saw the subject of my days and nights launch a red canoe from the short dock across the lake. He stowed a paddle and got in, sitting a little off centre and slightly towards the rear. He was coming in this direction.

  I tidied away my equipment, throwing in the binoculars, and covered the garbage bag with the groundsheet and the leaves, twigs, and branches that I’d enlisted in the service, and when I could hardly find the place myself, I returned to my boat. My legs were cramped from spying—nature’s way of telling me what a dirty business I was in. Once aboard and cast off from the island, I let myself drift while I rubbed away the stiffness.

  “Hello there, fella!” His paddle wasn’t breaking the water. Although I was expecting him, I didn’t hear him.

  “You should have a horn on that thing to warn people you’re coming. I’m glad I don’t have a weak heart.”

  “It’s a trick I learned from the Indians up here when I was a kid. You’re not fishing.”

  “I just pulled my line in to give it a rest. I’ve got enough fish back in my cabin to feed an army anyway.”

  “I’ve been looking at that wreckage. The boat?”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Well, I found a wire coming out of the motor and attached to the fuel leads.”

  “I know. I saw that too. That’s why I’ve been hanging around. There’s somebody on this lake doesn’t like you, Mr. Edgar. If you looked at the fuel lines you’d find that the crimping around the hose has been loosened. When you primed the motor you leaked fuel all along the fuel leads.”

  “So when I pulled the motor cord …”

  “You set off a spark outside the motor. That ignited the gas, and it’s a miracle the whole tank didn’t go up.”

  “Not much fuel left in it. That’s what saved me. That and you.”

  “Somebody tried to lull you, Mr. Edgar, and they’ll probably try it again. I hope you’re planning not to stay around much longer.”

  “I’m waiting for some news, fella, then I might finish my holiday someplace else. Ever been to Spain?”

>   “No, I’ve never been farther away than Miami. No, I went to Las Vegas once. Lost my shirt. No wonder I stay close to home.”

  “I sometimes think I’d like to live on a yacht in the Mediterranean and call in at all the ports. Ports are where the action is in those places. You really know a city when you arrive by water. When you land at an airport, you don’t know where the hell you are: those airport strips all look the same.” Patten had a wide, flat face above the beard. He had a way of saying something, then smiling to show his good will, when he wanted to. The smile reasked his questions for him. It was a generous toothpaste smile, and he used it a lot on me, especially when I was winning at chess. I didn’t see him wasting samples on Lorca or Spence or the others.

  “What line are you in, Mr. Edgar?” I thought I’d see how well worked-out his story was. It couldn’t hurt. I’d told him I was in ladies’ ready-to-wear. He looked at me, let me have a blast of the smile, then told me he was a writer on religious themes.

  “Sort of journalist, right?”

  “Yes and no. I’ve written several books on religion.”

  “Well they should sell well. They’re the only kind of books you see in some places—greeting cards and religion. But that’s not quite my line of country,” I said.

  “It’s everybody’s line of country. ‘As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.’” He really was a preacher. Funny, I had discounted that part, at least in private. I thought the TV image was just that— the TV image After all you don’t expect comedians to always be cracking wise in private. I tried to nod deeply letting Patten’s homily take hold.

  “I guess I’m just one of those miserable sinners you write about.”

  “Remember, sin destroys all hope of heaven. It’s an abomination.”

  “Sure it is, but the good Lord’d be out of work if we were all like you. Take me, for instance. I’m an ordinary guy, sort of average. Average height, average weight, average interests. If I’m average, how come I can be such a sinner? If I’m average in everything else, I must be average at sinning too. So maybe things won’t be so hard on me in the next world.”