Hole in One

by Walter Stewart

  “Warriors,” Joe explained. He beckoned one of them over, and there was a whispered conference. Then Joe and the young warrior slipped inside, where the meeting was already under way. Joe emerged again in under a minute.

  “The big guy’s a complete stranger,” Joe explained to us. “Never been seen around here before. He was driving the car when it arrived.” That was something, anyway. “The warriors think he’s a cop, maybe, because he’s so big and ugly. That’s him. You can just see the side of his head through the window, over there to the right.”

  We looked, and saw a massive head, which was not familiar to either of us.

  “A cop? I doubt it very much,” said Hanna. “But why don’t we just go in and find out?”

  So we did; we walked right in as if we owned the place, turned to the right, and sat in the same row as the massive stranger and Amelia Jowett. She was wearing a filmy blouse and, once more, a red kerchief. She looked across as we sat down, gave me a smile and a wave, and leaned over to whisper something to the man mountain beside her.

  “Stop goggling,” Hanna hissed, driving her elbow into my breadbasket.

  “I just thought of something,” I said.

  “Later,” said Joe Herkimer. “Get out your notebook. We’re getting to the good stuff now.”

  Up at the podium, which was decorated with an eagle feather and a ceremonial pipe, an old boy in half-rimmed glasses was rolling through the syllables, apparently summing up the discussion that had been going on while we were otherwise engaged and elsewhere.

  “The chief,” Joe explained.

  There were those who felt, the old boy said, that the band ought to present a petition to the federal government, asking that the lands on and around the fifth fairway of the golf course at Bosky Dell be turned over to the band council, because of certain documentary evidence that pointed to this as the former site of a band burial ground. It had to be noted, the chief went on, that there were also those who felt that the documents were either mistaken, or had been misinterpreted, because the elders who had visited the site last night had been unable to discover any signs of its use as a burial ground, and neither had the anthropologist, Dr. George Rose, before his death. This group felt that it would be better to set aside the issue of the burial ground, and press ahead, instead, with the band’s original claim for a more just financial settlement in connection with the lands surrendered to the white man, based on the Proclamation of 1763, and the statements then made by Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Indians, on behalf of King George III.

  Then there were those, the old boy finished, who felt that the band ought to press ahead on both counts, demanding the surrender of the burial-ground site, in case it turned out to be such, and demanding the return of all the lands thereabouts, along with a large cash settlement.

  The old boy then sat down.

  “That’s it?” I said. “Isn’t he going to tell us where he comes down in the debate?”

  “No,” Joe explained. “That’s not his role. He is the leader of all the band. His role is to set out the arguments. What happens after that is up to the band as a whole.”

  “I see. Now there’s a vote?”

  “No, no vote.”

  “Then how do you arrive at a conclusion?”

  “By consensus.”

  “What the heck does that mean?”

  “It means that, sooner or later, we will all be agreed on what course of action to take, and then we’ll take it.”

  “Oh.” I had a feeling I was never going to understand native politics. “What happens now?”

  “Nothing,” said Joe. “We just go home.”

  In that, however, he was wrong. People started to move out of their seats, all right, but suddenly there was a buzz and stir at the front of the hall, and about half a dozen men came dashing into the room, led by an older man, who turned out to be none other than Two Deers, a.k.a. Chuck Wilson. Or, if you prefer, Cecil Charles Watson.

  He was dressed in street clothes, but he had a couple of black lines painted down his cheeks, and he was carrying a short, sharp-looking spear. He ran up to where the chief was standing, shook his fist in his face, and, turning to the audience, shouted a phrase in what I presume was Algonkian.

  “What did he say?” I asked Joe.

  He grimaced. “Death to the Desecrators!”

  “Interesting choice of words,” said Hanna, and she unlimbered her camera and moved towards the front of the hall.

  We followed, and Wilson, as soon as he saw her, shook his fist again, so she could get a good picture. He didn’t do any more shouting, though.

  “Go interview him, Carlton,” said Hanna, but when I walked up to Wilson, said, “Howdy, Two Deers,” and put out my hand, he spat at it and turned away.

  “I wonder if you’d mind spelling that,” I asked him.

  “Blew it again,” said Hanna, at my side.

  “Hey, look, the man didn’t want to be interviewed.”

  “I wasn’t referring to him, and I wasn’t referring to you. I meant Us, and Them.”

  “Which us would that be?” put in Joe. “And which them?”

  “The three of us, and our seatmates, Beauty and the Beast.”

  “Omigosh!” I whirled around, and, sure enough, there was no sign of Amelia and her economy-sized boyfriend. They had vanished, leaving not a wrack behind.

  “Let’s get after them,” said Hanna, and she turned towards the door.

  “To do what? Play another game of ‘Who’s Up the Telephone Pole?’”

  “I think Carlton’s right,” said Joe. “You’ll see them again, soon enough.”

  “I’m not sure I want to,” I said. “I think it’s time we called the cops.”

  “Why? What have you got?” Hanna’s voice had an accusing ring to it. “This is something you thought of before, isn’t it, Carlton, and decided to clam up about?”

  “Not exactly. When I saw Amelia in there, I remembered that, just before the crash, I saw, or thought I saw, a flash of something red.”

  “The bimbo’s red kerchief,” said Hanna triumphantly.

  “I don’t think I’d put too much stock in that,” said Joe. “You can hardly call the cops because you saw a flash of red just before somebody ran you off the road.”

  “There’s more to it than that.” So I told them about the telephone call to Amelia, to tell her about Chuck Wilson’s real identity.

  “You did what?” shrieked Hanna. “Dammit, Carlton, have you no sense at all?”

  I bridled. “So far as I knew, this was just a friendly, young . . .”

  “Friendly, hah!”

  “. . . woman who wanted to know something that I was able to find out. So I called to tell her about it. What is so consarned wrong with that?”

  “I give up,” said Hanna. “Well, there’s only one thing to do.”

  “I know. I’ll call the cops.”

  “They’ll laugh at you. What can you give them to go on? Evidence, I mean. Not theories, but evidence. You’re going to make a call, all right, but not to the cops. And not on the telephone. In person. You’re going to call on Amelia Jowett, just as fast as it can be arranged.”

  “What for?”

  “In the journalism trade, we call it conducting an interview for the purposes of obtaining information.”

  “But the woman may be dangerous.”

  “Not to worry. Joe and I will be sitting in my car, right outside, at all times.”

  “I really hate this idea.”

  “Have you got a better one?”

  “No, but I really hate this one.”

  Chapter 25

  When we drove back to Bosky Dell, there was no sign of Amelia, or the large gent with her, in or around the Jowett place. Up at the main house, a maid told me she had “gone out,” which was not a whole lot o
f help, and that she would be back “sometime,” which was ditto. I left a note for Amelia, asking her to call me at home as soon as possible, and then the three of us went over to the Third Street abode, where, among other things, we watched a baseball game—the Blue Jays lost. What else is new?—listened to Joe Herkimer on the subject of nineteenth-century English poets, and ate dinner.

  Joe didn’t stay for dinner; he said it was obvious Amelia wasn’t going to turn up, and he had papers to mark, so he left, with orders to call him if anything developed. When Hanna and I had done the dishes, feeling very domestic, we turned on the TV again and caught the tail end of Peter Duke’s You Asked for It. We missed the item about the kid who makes model warplanes, darn it all, but did catch Duke doing a three-minute commentary on The Simple Life. He also managed to work into this monologue a cautionary note to journalists who go around disturbing the even tenor of the simple life out in the boondocks by thrusting themselves in where they aren’t wanted.

  “You’ve got to admire the man,” I told Hanna. “He has turned his ignoble flight into an act of virtue.”

  “You admire him,” said Hanna. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s a lubberwort. He should have paid us a finder’s fee for the golf-course story, and we lose out because he chickened out.”

  I was about to console her with the words of that famous philosopher, Doris Day, namely, que sera, sera, when the phone rang. It was Amelia.

  When I told her I wanted to talk to her, she murmured, “You just come right on over, honey, you hear? I’m up in my apartment?”

  I covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “She wants me to come over right away,” I told Hanna.

  “Say yes.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I told Amelia.

  “I’ll be waiting?”

  “I’ll give you ten minutes,” Hanna said as I headed out the door. “After which, I’m coming in with an axe.”

  As it turned out, my interview with Amelia didn’t take ten minutes. When I came clumping up the stairs to the boathouse apartment, she was waiting at the top, clad in a filmy negligee which, with the light behind her, made me miss the top step and lose my footing. I careered across the landing, clutched at Amelia, missed, and stumbled through the doorway, landing on my knees on the rug. But as soon as we were settled—“Sit here, honey, beside me on the couch?”—I let her have the full force of a trained journalist’s accusatory question.

  “Amelia, you were driving the car that damn near killed us, weren’t you?”

  “Of course, honey. Coffee?”

  There was a pot of coffee on a small table in front of us.

  “‘Of course? Coffee?’ That’s all you have to say?”

  She nodded. “It was an accident,” she said, calmly pouring a cup of coffee. “My accelerator jammed, and the car just went shooting forward?”

  “But my God, we could have been killed! You didn’t even stop!”

  “Honey,” she said, “I was already late for an appointment?”

  She looked up and smiled.

  I jumped to my feet. “Well, I’m going to the cops. This is really serious.”

  “You don’t want to do that, hon? You haven’t got any witnesses, and I would have to tell the police that you have been making a fool of yourself chasing me for days now? You came here tonight and begged me to let you make love to me, and when I refused, you said you were going to spread stories about me? That’s what,” she finished, with an entrancing smile, “I would be forced to say, if you went to the police?”

  “Why should they believe you, rather than me?”

  “Because I’ve got a witness?”

  “A witness to what?”

  “To the fact that you made indecent suggestions to me, before he forced you to leave?”

  And then, while I goggled at her, trying to decide which of us was demented, she put two fingers into her mouth and gave a short, sharp whistle. There was a thumping sound, as of two large feet hitting the floor, and out of the bedroom stalked a large, fierce-looking man of about my own age.

  To wit, her escort of the afternoon. He had only one eyebrow, a thick band of hair that served as a sort of shelf over two narrow-set eyes beneath lowering brows. Except for his size—he was well over six feet, and I understand our ancient ancestors were squirts—he looked like an illustration from “Early Man, Chapter Four: The Descent from the Trees.”

  “I don’t believe you’ve met my husband, Harrison Jowett? He just arrived from Baltimore today?” Amelia fluted, while I blenched and tottered. “Harrison, dear, this is Carlton Withers? Carlton, Harrison?”

  “How do you do?” said Harrison in a light and civil voice. It was like hearing one of the great apes recite poetry.

  “Carlton was just leaving, darling, but I didn’t want him to go without meeting you?”

  I was being given the bum’s rush.

  “You haven’t heard the last of this, Amelia,” I said.

  “Why, honey, what were you planning to do?”

  “You forget the power of the press,” I shot back. “You may be interested to know that Hanna and I have prepared a major exposé on everything that’s been going on around here. Watch for it in your favourite newspaper.”

  Ten seconds later, I was rocketting back to Third Street to tell Hanna how I had managed to tear through all Amelia’s denials and force from her the confession that she had, indeed, been the driver of the car that forced us off the road.

  Of course, when I got there, Hanna was nowhere to be found. I guess the tension of wondering whether I had been murdered or not proved too much for her. I tried across the street, and there she was, eating butter tarts and drinking tea with Emma Golden, laughing up a storm and no doubt scandalizing my name.

  I sat down and scoffed a tart, which of course allowed the Klovack to get going before I could get a word in edgewise.

  “You missed it, Carlton,” she said. “But then, you always do.”

  “Missed what?”

  “There was an item on the radio,” Emma explained, “all about what’s going on here, and what the police found out on the golf course.”

  “And what did the police find out on the golf course? Not more bodies?”

  “No, no,” said Hanna. “The same bodies.”

  “Then, what’s the big deal?”

  “If you’ll just shut up a minute, I’ll explain. I made notes,” she said.

  “Imagine that,” I said. She glowered, and read from her notes. “The police have identified one of the bodies from the golf course . . .”

  “Yes, yes.” I knew that.

  “. . . and they are now convinced—this is what they said—that there was foul play involved.”

  “Gosh, and I thought they were suicides.”

  She glowered again, and went back to her notes. “The police reported two puzzling objects found at the scene. One was a leather pouch, such as those used for carrying heavy metal objects . . .”

  “Or money,” I said. “By golly, then there were two money bags. I wonder if that means there were two bank robberies?”

  “. . . or money. It was found under one of the bodies. The bag was empty.”

  “Why didn’t Harry tell me about this?” I wondered.

  “Harry? Our Harry, from the Silver Falls police?” Emma scoffed. “He probably didn’t know about it. The OPP are handling the case.”

  “You said ‘two puzzling objects.’ What was the other one?”

  “It was a pink slip of paper, with writing on it. The police found it in the wallet of the man they were able to identify. It had one corner torn off, but they were able to read some letters and numbers.”

  “Which were?”

  “They weren’t sure. The writing was very faded. But it looked like . . .” Hanna bent over her notes again, “SU 2000 JO 15 03.”

  “
And what in the Sam Hill is that supposed to mean?”

  “They don’t know,” said Emma. “I imagine that’s why they released the information. In case somebody else can work it out.”

  “Dear Lord,” I moaned, “it just gets more confusing.”

  Hanna said, “Which reminds me, since you seem to be covered with confusion every time you see the woman, what did Amelia have to say?”

  So, I was able to tell them my tale, at last, and Hanna took it big. “Who was the husband? Harrison Jowett? Isn’t her name Jowett? I mean, hasn’t it always been? How can he be her husband?”

  “Husband and cousin,” said Emma. She knows everything.

  “No? First cousin? That’s why they both have the same last name? Boy, that must save money; you don’t have to change the initials on the towels when you get married.”

  “Sure. They’re a very inbred bunch, the Jowetts; probably that’s why they’re all crazy.”

  “They’re all crazy? Conrad doesn’t strike me as crazy.”

  “Well, not Conrad, no. But what price Uncle Willie?”

  “Uncle Willie? As in, Amelia’s grandfather, Uncle Willie?”

  “Crazy as a coot,” said Emma. “Wound up his days, from what I’m told, in Bellevue Sanatorium, convinced that he was the last of the Romanovs. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard of it.”

  “Well, I hadn’t. I guess the family did a pretty good job of hushing it up, but of course they couldn’t keep it from the Golden Intelligence Service.”

  “Oh, get away with you.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Oh, back a ways. Years ago.”

  “How many years ago?”

  “Thirty or forty. I don’t know. Why? Does it matter?”

  “It could. It could explain a whole lot of things.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Hanna. “What things?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe we can find something in that magazine article Conrad gave you. Where is it?”

  Emma touched the back of her hair, the way she does when she’s about to spring something.

  “I’ve got a copy,” she said.

  “Emma Golden, will you marry me?”