“Trick memory,” I explained. “I can remember almost anything for about a week, and then it’s gone.”
“I’m still impressed. So, you will find out who is behind Corporation Number 132-and-etcetera, and it will turn out to be Mrs. Sylvia Post. Which we already knew.”
“Mrs. Post and who else? There have to be other directors.”
“I see. Still, it doesn’t tell us about the trustees, does it?”
“We don’t know what it tells us, young Klovack, until we try it.”
“By golly, Carlton,” she said, “you may have something there.” She reached over and patted me on the arm. You know you are doomed when a pat on the arm does as much for you as a croquet lesson.
We were now approaching the last concession road before you get to Bosky Dell, and, at that moment, a car shot out of the intersection on my side, headed right at our middle. Hanna, who has terrific reflexes—I had found this out the day I discovered that she was ticklish in a most unusual place—yanked the wheel and hit the gas. We jackrabbited across the road, skidded, spun around, and headed straight for the telephone pole on the other side.
“Well, dagnabbit,” I said, my habit when vexed. And after that, as they say, everything went black.
There was a kind of hiccoughing sound, mixed up with some fairly solid cursing, and someone was speaking my name. Then I was being tugged. I heard a car door hinge creak, my seat belt popped open, and I was out on the ground, being tugged again, by the arms. My head hurt, and I thought it might be better to sleep through this part. When I came to again, I realized it was raining, which seemed funny, because the last glimpse I had had of the sky, it was as bare as a politician’s promise. No, it wasn’t raining; the hiccoughing sound was Hanna, crying, and tears, genuine, fifty-cent-piece-sized tears were falling on the Withers face. I was lying partly on the ground, partly on the luscious lower limbs of the Klovack, with my head cradled in her arms. I had been lugged, I could see by sneaking a peek out of scarcely opened eyelids, about fifty feet from where Hanna’s Toyota had tried, in vain, to remove one of Ma Bell’s finest spruce poles. The car was quietly smoking to itself, and I guess Hanna had hauled me hither in case it decided to blow up. Had she hauled me far enough? That was the question. I mean, one did appreciate, didn’t one, being rescued from the smouldering wreck, crooned over, cuddled, and wept upon, but the whole effort might be wasted, mightn’t it, if the car went up now, while we were still within its orbit?
I didn’t want to mention this, as it didn’t seem to strike the right note; still, it might be wise to get the party moving again.
I groaned.
“Carlton?” The weeping stopped. “Carlton, darling, are you all right?”
She hugged me to her. I groaned again.
“Oh, Carlton,” she murmured. “You poor darling. Don’t worry, we’ll get you to the hospital right away.”
“No,” I gasped, “not hospital . . .”
“But you’ve been hurt. Your head must have hit the door frame and knocked you out. You need to be looked at by a doctor.”
“Not hospital,” I gasped again. “My place.”
“Well!” Bang, went my head, down on the greensward; up jumped Hanna, the tears turned off at the main. “Of all the sneaky, contemptible . . .”
She had retreated, when I sat up, to about ten feet away, and was standing and glaring at me over crossed arms.
“Too late, Klovack,” I told her. “I heard the murmurings, I felt the tears . . .”
“That’s because I thought you were dead.”
“I thought I was, too.”
“When all the time you were faking it.”
“Not all the time. Just the last minute or two.”
I got up, swayed, and went down again. Hanna crossed the ten feet between us in about one-tenth of a second, and grabbed me just before I hit the ground.
“Boy, Carlton,” she said in a shaky voice, “you’re such a phony, you don’t even know when you’re faking it.”
“Don’t say anything,” I said. “Just hold on.”
We sat there on the grass, with our arms around each other, for about a minute, and I was thinking this would be a nice way to spend the rest of my life, when I heard a car drive up.
“It’s Joe,” said Hanna, disentangling herself and jumping up.
Sure enough, Joe Herkimer’s station wagon was pulling onto the shoulder, and Joe was out of it almost before it had come to a stop.
“What the hell happened?” he asked. “You all right, Carlton?”
I nodded my head, which turned out to be a big mistake. “Not bad,” I said, “for someone who has just been forced off the road, knocked against telephone poles, hauled around by the arms, banged into the greensward, and wept upon.”
He seized on the relevant part. “Forced off the road? You sure?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Hanna. “We’re sure. A car came out of the concession road just as we got to the intersection and damn near rammed us amidships.”
“If it hadn’t been for Hanna’s driving,” I added, giving credit where due, “I’d have been turned into a hood ornament.”
“Did you get a good look at the car before it hit?”
“Sure, it was coming right at me.”
“What was it?”
“What do you mean ‘What was it?’ It was a car.”
Hanna asked, “What kind of car, Carlton? I only got a quick glimpse. Could you recognize the make?”
“It was either blue or grey.”
“Blue or grey. Well, it shouldn’t take the cops long to track it down, now we have a detailed description.”
“Sorry, that’s all I can remember. No, wait . . .”
“You remember something else?”
“I thought I did. Something I saw just before the smash. No, it’s gone.”
“Never mind, darling, it’ll come.” Hanna leaned over and kissed me, which caused Joe to roll his eyes and grin. Me, too.
He said, “The important thing right now is to get you to the hospital for a checkup. Let the cops worry about who ran you off the road. I was just on my way out to your place, Carlton, for a little strategy session, but that can wait.”
We drove into the Bellingham County Hospital in Silver Falls, where a brisk and efficient nurse gave me a couple of clucks, a glass of water, two Aspirins, and about three minutes with an intern, who told me that I looked as if I’d live. They insisted on taking an x-ray, and wanted me to stay the night for observation, but I declined with thanks. Outside of a raging headache, I felt better than I had felt in a long time, since, in fact, the words “you creep” had first been launched upon the stricken air.
The cops were neither as efficient nor as sympathetic as the hospital staff. Avoiding the OPP, who did not seem friendly, we took our custom to the Silver Falls bunch, even though the crash was not, strictly, in their jurisdiction. Staff Sergeant Harry Burnett wrote down the particulars, at my insistence, but gave it as his view that Hanna had probably simply been driving too fast and lost control.
“Then why did the other car vamoose?”
“What other car?”
I sighed. “I told you, it was either blue or grey.”
“Uh-huh. Well, we’ll let you know if we turn up anything,” said Harry.
Hanna chivvied him into a promise that an officer would go out to the scene of the accident, “some time before the turn of the century, Harry,” to fill out a report she could send to the insurance people, and then we would get the stricken car towed in for repairs.
That seemed to be about it.
When we came out of the cop-shop, Joe was waiting for us, and we all trooped off to the O.K. Café on Main Street for hamburgers. Neither Hanna nor I had had any lunch, and we piled into the food, even though it had been burned to a crisp by Belinda Huntingdon, the buxom waitress
-cum-chef whose scorched-earth policy was apparently copied from the Russians in the time of Napoleon. But I didn’t mind.
“Tastes a bit like smoked moccasin,” said Joe.
“Better is a dinner of smoked moccasin where love is,” I reminded him, “than stalled ox and hatred therewith.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” said Hanna.
“Proverbs 15,” replied Joe, “slightly edited. And speaking of hatred therewith, what has been going on that would make anybody try to turn you into a hood ornament?”
So we had our delayed strategy session; Hanna and I told him about the command performance in front of Conrad Jowett, and the visit, possibly wasted, to the Land Titles Office. I didn’t say anything about the other connection, which might not be a connection, involving his band-mate, Chuck Wilson, and the Far Lake bank. This was a mistake, as it turned out, but at the time, it seemed the careful course to pursue. At this point, I didn’t know how close Chuck and Joe might be.
“This is all just bits and pieces,” said Joe. “There’s just got to be something we’re missing that will link all this business up to the killings.”
“Why should the development be linked to the killings?” I asked.
“If it isn’t, why did you get run off the road?”
“Maybe the accident was just an accident, and the other driver panicked when he saw what he had done, and took off.”
“What he or she had done.” Hanna is always a stickler for what she calls “inclusive pronouns.”
“Anyway, you two have done a terrific job of research,” said Joe, and we both beamed at him. “In the meantime, I’ve found out a couple of things. The tomahawk that was used on George Rose came from the Circle Lake Band council house.”
“Oh, oh, that’s not so good. Could many people get at it?”
“Only hundreds. The council house is right behind the art gallery”—there is a combination art gallery and shop on the reserve, with some of the finest craftsmanship and some of the dumbest junk you will find anywhere for sale—“and it is band policy that it must be open at all times. Anyone, Indian, non-status Indian, perfect stranger, could walk in, if he knew it was there, and take it.”
“What else? You said there were a couple of things.”
“Yeah. According to the Toronto Star, the autopsy on Dr. Rose shows he was hit on the back of the head before he was tomahawked.”
“What does that mean?” asked Hanna.
“I have no idea,” said Joe. “It could mean he was attacked somewhere else and dragged back to the motel, although I doubt that, because he was waiting for me. Or, it could mean that he knew his attacker, at least well enough to turn his back on him . . .”
“Or her,” said Hanna.
I asked Joe if he knew about the gaggle of band members who had waylaid Peter Duke at lunch. He looked surprised, then thoughtful.
“No, I didn’t know about that. I went over to the university right after the business at the motel. Was Chuck Wilson with them?”
“He was. He was the chief spokesman, if you don’t mind the pun.”
“Well, then, it’s just a publicity thing. Chuck’s more or less the leader of the hardcore traditionalist part of the band. He as much as told me that he’s going to use any chance he can get out of the fuss that’s going on to get his group’s point of view across. No doubt they were just insisting on being interviewed, as part of the Peter Duke item.”
“Then that’s all right,” said Hanna. “Peter will love it. In the meantime, what do we do next?”
“I don’t know what you do next,” I said, “but I’m going to hitch another ride with Joe, unless, Hanna, you’d care to—No?—okay, hitch a ride with Joe back to Bosky Dell and catch about fourteen hours of sleep.”
“Right,” said Hanna. “You want to be in good shape for the Martini Classic.”
“Dear Lord, I’d forgotten all about it.”
I’d forgotten about something else, too. What with the interlude with Amelia, the stirring events of the day, the car crash, and all, I hadn’t called Info Globe to do a corporate search.
Chapter 20
Saturday, of course, dawned dark and drear, with a wind apparently imported for the occasion from somewhere around Timmins, on the barren ground of northern Ontario. I didn’t care. I had been de-creeped. The Martini Classic, in all likelihood, was going to be a disaster; never mind, I would go with the “failed-to-dampen” lead, as in “Steady rain and a biting wind failed to dampen the spirits of those who participated in this year’s Martini Classic, etc.” It would be worth a fair amount of personal suffering just to watch the rain smear Tommy Macklin’s glasses and drip off his moustache.
I leapt from bed quite early—ten o’clock, at the latest—breakfasted heartily on two eggs over easy on canned corned-beef hash, and then put in a telephone call to the Klovack.
“Up and at ’em Klovack,” I told her. “I’ve been up for hours, practising my putting.”
“You’ve been up for about ten minutes,” she responded, “and you’d do better to leave your putting alone and trust to the gods of golf. Why are you sounding so chipper?”
“Why not? What is there not to be chipper about?”
“Well, you don’t have a job; somebody tried to kill us yesterday, and may try again; and it looks as if we will shortly be playing a game of hideous golf in the middle of a hurricane.”
“Mere trifles,” I said. “The thing I cling to, Klovack, is that you love me with all the fierce ardour of your Ukrainian ancestors . . .”
“Says who?”
“. . . than whom no one’s ardour has ever been fiercer. I face the day warmed by the spiritual long johns of your love.”
“Knock it off, Carlton,” she said, but she chuckled. “Hey, changing the subject . . .”
“Why should we change the subject? I just got going.”
“That’s why we should change the subject. You didn’t tell me the rest of your information from yesterday, and I got the impression, somehow, that you didn’t want to talk about it in front of Joe Herkimer.”
“I didn’t.” So I told her about the Far Lake bank robbery, which, I was willing to bet, involved Chuck Wilson and would give him a motive for wanting to knock off Charlie Tinkelpaugh, his former partner in crime.”
“Forty years after the crime?”
“Forty years after the crime, but one year after a story appeared suggesting that the take in that crime had been $70,000 more than, I’ll bet, one of the crooks involved thought.”
“Why a year later?”
“I haven’t worked that out yet.”
“And why the campaign of terror, as your pal Winifred calls it, against the golf course? If Chuck Wilson wanted to knock off Charlie Tinkelpaugh, he’d just go knock him on the head and stab him, which I presume is your explanation of what happened to Dr. Rose.”
“Sure. Wilson saw him with what I’m sure was a bag from the bank robbery, and figured the jig was up unless he silenced him.”
“That doesn’t begin to explain what the golf course is doing in the middle of this mess. And here’s another mystery for you. I still haven’t been able to get hold of Peter Duke. The hotel says he checked out two days ago. I called the CBC in Toronto, and they said he was in conference, but heck, they say that about people who have been dead and buried for ten years. All it means is that they can’t find him.”
“Do we care?”
“Well, he owes us some money, for one thing: at least $200 as a finder’s fee for his broadcast. Besides, I’d like to know why he suddenly disappeared.”
“He’s afraid that lunch bill is going to catch up to him after all. But hey, if you’re worried, I’ll come to town, do a little checking around, and then maybe we could have lunch at your place.”
There was a long pause.
“Lunch, e
h?”
“Just lunch.”
“That’s what you said last time.” This was a reference to a romantic idyll that had taken place in pre-creep days.
“Last time, we had the whole afternoon before us.”
“How are you going to get here?”
“Oh, Marchepas loves the rain. Sometimes. She’ll start first crank.”
She did, too, and about twenty minutes later I was rolling through Silver Falls, on the way to the Dominion House, where I would dutifully ask a couple of futile questions before forgetting about Peter Duke forever. When I pulled into the hotel parking lot, I saw a cab sitting outside the lobby entrance. A Toronto cab, by golly, unless Diamond had just opened a branch office in Silver Falls. In the back seat was a small, intense figure crouched over a notebook.
I splashed over through the puddles—the rain had eased off some, but had left its residue behind—and yanked open the offside door. Teresa rose about six inches off the seat and glowered at me.
“You,” she said.
“Is Peter inside?”
“We’re not releasing that information,” said Teresa.
“Hey,” I said, “don’t be so graminivorous.”
“Graminivorous? What do you mean?”
“Look it up,” I told her, and slammed the door. Actually, it just means “grass-eating,” but it somehow seemed to suit Teresa, so I left her to chew on it while I went inside and found the cab driver sitting in a chair in the lobby, reading the paper—he was in no hurry, with the meter running—and Peter Duke in earnest conversation with Fred, the weekend desk clerk. He was wearing a very spiffy-looking raincoat and one of those Tilley hats. Très fashionable. By “he,” I mean Peter Duke, of course; Fred was wearing a t-shirt with red phosphorescent printing that said, “Will you kiss me in the dark, Baby?” Perhaps not quite so fashionable.
“Your Dukeship.” I slapped him on the back. “Where did you get to?”
He whirled around. This was not the same suave character of three days ago; the man had a hunted look. “Ah,” he said, trying to portray bluff camaraderie and missing by a country kilometre, “Clarion, my dear chap . . .”
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