Hole in One (18 page)

It was Robinson who answered the door, and he was not, or at least I thought he was not, quite his usual suave self, although there was no way to tell if he grew paler. In fact, he looked a little startled to see me staring through the screen, although he recovered quickly enough and waved us through to the kitchen, where the maids were clearing up the remains of lunch. I began to introduce Joe Herkimer to him, but he smiled and said, “No need, no need. Running Elk and I are well acquainted. He it was who corrected my slice.”

“Your slice? You play golf?”

“Does it seem so strange? Of course, I don't play much, not enough time, and I can't play in the strong sun, but yes, I still put in the odd game.”

“Not as odd as Carlton's,” said Joe, aiming, I guess, to lighten the tension which had now crept out of the woodwork and was beginning to close around our throats.

Robinson allowed the flicker of a smile to appear and disappear. “Now, what can I do for you?”

I hesitated. How much to blurt out?

“Carlton, is this about the matter of the golf-course sale? The investigation you were doing for Mr. Jowett?”

I seized on that, and nodded my head.

“Well, I think it might be best if we waited until he gets back from Toronto. There is quite a lot going on around here right now.” There was, now that he came to mention it; there was a great bustle of activity in the regions beyond the kitchen door. Coming up the drive, we had seen a number of beefy gents in suits wandering about, and inside we could hear people tramping around, voices raised, and the sound of a hammer. “And I feel sure Mr. Jowett will want to hear from you himself. He has been in Toronto, on business, but I know he'll be here for dinner tonight. We're having a number of people in. Why don't we set up a meeting for . . . when shall we say . . . nine o'clock tonight?”

I stood there, gaping.

“Was there something else, Carlton?” This was said quite sharply, and I realized that, if I said, well, yes, now that you mention it, we were just wondering if you happened to have Hanna stashed in a broom closet somewhere, it might not be well received.

“No, no. Nine o'clock sounds fine. We'll see you then.”

He ushered us to the door, and then, just as I was closing the screen behind me, he said, in a very soft voice, “It's all right, Carlton. It will soon be over.”

“Now, what the hell did that mean?” I asked Joe, as we sat in his car in the Jowett driveway.

“I think it must mean that Hanna is here,” said Joe, “but he's going to make sure she comes to no harm.”

“He could do that by calling the cops.”

“Consider his position. He's a functionary here; an important functionary, but a functionary nonetheless. I gather he has worked for Conrad Jowett for years . . .”

“Forever, as far as I know.”

“. . . and there's something between them, a little more than the ordinary boss-hireling relationship. My guess is that he's loyal to Conrad, but there's a limit to what he will sit by and watch happen. Hey, look!”

A large moving van was bearing down on us, filling the driveway, cutting off the sunlight, it was that big. Joe backed up, swung out of its way, then dodged around it again and stopped in the driveway beyond it, so we could see what was happening out the back window. The moving van jerked to a halt in the middle of the Jowett backyard, and the driver got out. He was followed by two other men.

“Check the licence,” said Joe. “State of Maryland.”

“Never mind the licence, check the sign on the side of the van,” I replied.

It read, “Federal Moving and Storage, Baltimore, Maryland.”

“I think that's what he meant when he said it would soon be over,” I said. “I think Amelia and her husband are getting out, or being gotten out—and maybe taking Hanna with them, stuffed in the bottom of a wardrobe—this very day.”

Joe laughed. “You've never moved, have you?”

“Not with a truck and all, no,” I said.

“Then let me tell you, from bitter experience, that a truck that size, picking up all the stuff I guess was being gathered together by the household servants when we were sitting in the kitchen, isn't going anywhere today. It's mid-afternoon already. There will be the smoke-on-arrival, and the coffee break, and the post-coffee-break stretch, and, unless they brought this monster up here to lug home one couch and one table, this truck won't roll out of here until just in time to start charging overtime, tomorrow night.”

“So, what do we do now?”

“Well, we didn't cover ourselves with glory, did we?” Joe noted, ruefully. “We don't know if the Jowetts grabbed Hanna, or ordered her grabbed, but we don't know that they didn't, either. The more I think of it, I think we ought to make a quick run over to the reserve, to see if we can get a line on Two Deers, or Chuck Wilson, or whatever the hell he's calling himself today. If we can eliminate him from the list of suspects, we can come back here and set up a watch.”

“Maybe we should split up, and you go to the reserve, while I keep a lookout here.”

“I don't think that's such a brilliant idea, Carlton.”

“Because you think I'll start prowling around, looking for Hanna, and get myself grabbed.”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Why does everybody assume I'm an incompetent boob?”

Silence.

So he put the car in gear, and we went over to the reserve. The council chamber was open, but empty, with not a soul in sight. However, Joe didn't seem discouraged, and walked through the yard to the art-gallery-cum-shop located right next door. There was a handful of customers wandering around, looking at the paintings and sculptures—Maxine Noel had a number of her striking portraits on display, and Jacob Joseph, whose gorgeously grotesque sculptures of Indian legends have won him a national reputation, was well represented. Behind the cash register stood a very tall woman, wearing her black hair in a single braid. She had her back to us, and was counting the packages of cigarettes on the shelf.

Joe slipped in behind the counter, slid an arm around her, and began to chant, “Thirty-eight, twenty-six, seventy-one.” Then he kissed her on the cheek.

“Sixty-six. It would take a lot more than a pass from you to throw me off my counting,” the woman said calmly. “Hello, Carlton.”

“Hi, Darlene.”

“We're looking for Two Deers,” Joe told his wife.

“Try the forest,” replied Darlene. “Now get out of here. I've got work to do, even if you haven't.”

“No, not two deers,” I explained. “Two Deers. Chuck Wilson.”

“Chuck Wilson? That creep? Why should he be here? Wouldn't he be at work?”

“Monday is press day,” I explained. “The whole run is usually done by noon, and the back-shop crew gets off early.”

You may think that press day would be the big day around a weekly newspaper. Not so. The heavy workdays are Tuesday to Friday, because the establishment's money is made mostly in job printing, advertising flyers, booklets, pamphlets, and, most lucrative of all, various government printing boondoggles that form part of the rich mosaic of the Canadian system of political patronage. The newspaper is an incidental undertaking, and press day is the softest workday of the week.

“We don't know that Chuck is around here,” Joe said, lamely. “We just thought he might be.”

Darlene tilted her head back, put two fingers in her mouth, and emitted a shrill whistle, on two notes.

I clapped my hands over my ears. “My God,” I said. “Where did you learn to whistle like that? Calling moose?”

“No, calling brothers,” said Darlene. “Ah.”

The “ah” announced the arrival, through the front door, of three of the young warriors who had been lounging around during the meeting on Sunday. “Any of you characters seen Two Deers?” Darlene asked them.

“Sure,” said one of the youths. “He was down at the lake, fishing, but I think he's gone over to his house.”

“Where is that?” I asked.

“He lives alone in a small place on the edge of the reserve. Just a couple of minutes from here,” Joe replied.

We climbed back into Joe's car, and were just pulling away from the council house, when there was a kind of massive Karump! and a ball of fire suddenly appeared through the trees on the far side of the clearing. This was followed, in rapid succession, by a perceptible concussion wave, a crackle of flames, and the odd sound of bits of debris falling just off to our right, into the still lake. Crackle, snap, splash.

“Sweet Jesus!” breathed Joe.

“What the hell was that?” I shouted.

Joe gunned the car towards the flames. “At a guess,” he said, “from the position of it, that was Chuck Wilson's house going up in flames.”

We were the first on the scene. Wilson lived in a small frame house about fifty yards back from the edge of the lake. He had apparently chopped down every tree and bush around his house, which was just as well, because it cut down the amount of material available for burning. His house, which couldn't have contained more than two or three rooms, had been reduced to matchwood by the blast, and now, like matchwood, was blazing merrily. His car, with the Red Power sticker, was off to one side, with a large TV antenna, blown there by the explosion, draped across it.

Aside from the crackle of fire, the clearing was still, and then we heard the sound of a car, moving very quickly along the bush track on the far side of the house. Joe wheeled the station wagon to follow, but was arrested by my agonized screech.

“Hanna!”

Joe slewed the station wagon to a stop, and we both dashed out towards the burning building. Two of the outside walls had been blown flat, a third seemed to have disappeared, and the fourth was lying on an angle, held up by the refrigerator. We began to scrabble at the wreckage, pulling smouldering and blazing pieces of siding away from the fire. Within a minute or so, there seemed to be hundreds of people swarming around, and a bucket brigade formed up, with men, women, and children, making a chain from the lake to the site of the fire. Joe and I joined in. One of the latecomers was a youngster who looked about twelve, and was practically vibrating with excitement.

“Hey, Joe!” he called out from his place in the line. “I damn near got run over! “

Joe dropped his bucket and strode over to the kid. “You did? Where? When?”

“Just a couple of minutes ago. Back down the trail.” He pointed. “Bloody big car came roaring around the corner. Heck, I didn't think you could even navigate that road without a four-wheel drive.”

“Hmm.” I was going to keep it casual, not to panic the kid. “Did you by . . . uh . . . any chance, notice what sort of car it was?”

“Of course.” He registered scorn. “How could you not notice a car that damn near killed you? It was a blue 1989 Chrysler Le Baron. Oh, yeah,” he added. “It had one of those dumb
Lancer
stickers on the bumper.”

It took only a few minutes to get the fire under control. There was no one left inside the building, but an alarmed shout announced that someone had found, about twenty feet clear of the structure, the body of Chuck Wilson. I didn't look at this. Joe did.

“It's him all right,” he said. “Or what's left of him. I guess that blew.”

He pointed to a twisted lump of heavy metal with the words “Superior Propane” visible under the charring on the side.

“You think it blew up by itself?” I asked Joe.

He shook his head. “I think it had outside help. These things are pretty safe, but all you have to do is loosen a nut and strike a match and, in a few seconds, the gas will vaporize and . . . whooey!” He pointed to the debris.

“You think it was that car that nearly ran the kid down?”

He nodded again. “It seems likely.”

“I guess getting killed clears Chuck Wilson?”

“It proves he isn't the only villain. That's all. Let's get out of here and call the cops.”

But Darlene had already done this, from the gallery.

“Which cops?” I asked her.

“The OPP in Bobcaygeon,” she said. “It's the closest detachment.”

I grunted. “I think I'll call the Silver Falls cops. Harry Burnett will be interested to hear this.”

“Holy shit!” said Harry, when I told him that Chuck Wilson had come to an untimely end, with the aid of an exploding propane tank. “We were just about to arrest him in that motel killing. The OPP guys are out now, getting a search warrant.”

“They've got Chuck Wilson on the Rose murder?”

“We got, Carlton. We did most of the work, although the OPP will no doubt take most of the credit.”

“What gave him away?”

“The dumb palooka printed the ‘Death to Desecrators' note on the
Lancer
laser printer,” Harry explained. “He didn't know how to spell ‘Desecrators,' so he asked one of the other boys in the shop, and the guy he asked got in touch with us as soon as he read the story in the paper with that phrase in it.”

“I thought Wilson had an alibi that covered the time of the murder.”

“So did he. He said he was at a band council meeting. But we've got a witness that says he slipped out of the meeting about 9:10 a.m., and Ollie Ostermyer, the guy who runs the motel, says he saw a car with a Red Power sticker on it drive into the motel around 9:45. That would be Wilson's.”

“The
Star
said the autopsy put the killing at between seven and nine.”

“So it did, within two or three hours. You must know, Carlton, there's a hell of a lot of leeway in any guess by the pathologist as to the time of death.”

“Splendid work, Staff,” I told him. “But that doesn't begin to solve the golf-course murders, which—”

“We're working on it,” said Harry.

“Or the murder of Chuck Wilson.”