Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery (13 page)

“She knew what it was likely about, but he didn't, of course, and complained that every time he and Morton got together they'd argue, especially when one or the other was half cut. He told Gloria he had half a mind just to ignore the message, say he never got it, and hope Morton would go away. But he didn't ignore it. He went.

“From then on, it's partly her guesswork, but you gotta figure she knew them both pretty well, William was drunk when he left her in the bar and it was late in the evening so probably Morton had had some, too. She figures that when William arrived, Morton probably just asked the question and then, however the answer went, there was a huge shouting match, maybe even some shoving, and sometime along there Morton collapsed. But meanwhile just his question, the way he'd have put it, drug gang and so on, would have alerted William. He must have been beside himself, certainly not wanting his father to die, but knowing that only a few minutes of consciousness could do a lot of damage to everyone involved if his father decided that way. We just don't know what was in the mind of either of them.

“From the hospital William went to Bonner's place. Gloria was there, but had passed out in a bedroom upstairs. She didn't even know William had been there, until morning. But I think we have to figure that William told Bonner right away, this would be sometime after midnight, that his father knew enough to blow the whistle on them. Then Bonner would get word to Christian—”

“And the balloon goes up,” Ted said. “Goddamn.”

I was remembering the news reports Monday saying that Morton, although conscious for brief intervals, was in critical condition. Doc Zimmer had told me that around noon Bonner called and was told in what would be the Doc's most reassuring tones, thinking it was going to be passed on to William, that even though Morton couldn't speak or write right now in his brief periods of consciousness, he might recover with the kind of care he could get at the stroke facility in Edmonton.

“That must have been when murder first got on the rails as a possibility,” the inspector said softly.

Well, people have been killed for less; and probably with less trouble, come to think of it. Christian must have known exactly where to turn for a hit man. Serious drug guys have that in reserve, just in case. They learned it from the Colombians. God knows there are enough drug-related killings to indicate that anybody in the racket must know where the hired gun types are to be found, at short notice. I don't have to put my collar on backwards to tell a continent brought up on “Miami Vice” that the drug business isn't all nice guys with ponytails and granny glasses listening to their old folkie records. Even though anybody like Christian running drugs from Texas to the Arctic and then back to southern Canada would be fairly small potatoes, well below the enterprise's chief executive officer, he'd have to be able to act when threatened. Still, it had never really seemed likely to me before that in the Mackenzie River Valley it could happen this fast.

Now I did think of the simple logistics of lining up a contract killer familiar with both handguns and snowmobiles, briefing him in a fairly substantial way, and having the job done between one night and the next. Central Casting would have thrown up its hands and said, “You've gotta be kidding.”

It would help if he knew the Norman Wells airport setup, but it wasn't necessary: all the other four knew. And there had been lots of money to offer. Fifty thousand, say, could get many a nasty thing done.

Christian would have known that as long as Morton was in hospital, bumping him off and getting away with it would be just about impossible. But even on Monday noon everybody was being quite open at the hospital about Morton maybe being moved. That would give Christian, if he was calling all the shots, the idea that bumping him off at Norman Wells was possible. But because he wasn't going to be there, he would tell Bonner everything to do; to keep a close check on Morton's condition, when he'd be moved, how, and when to make the phone call to put into effect what Christian already had decided they'd do, maybe even making the arrangements on spec.

I'd been thinking all that to myself. This phone call had been like a conference, with silences. Now I said the obvious. “He must have known somebody to call who could get to Norman Wells Tuesday
before
the first flight that could carry Morton.”

“Then as a safety backup,” Ted said, “he decided he and Batten would get out right away, Monday afternoon, with the money, thinking it would be easy enough to come back if Morton died naturally, or if murdering him took the heat off. It all figures, even the part about leaving William and Bonner behind. Not a bad plan. They'd have no drugs, no large amounts of money, really not a hell of a lot we could hang a charge on. We had to catch them with evidence or there was no goddamn case. We didn't know then about the likelihood of half a million bucks.”

We'd pretty well covered it all, except, as I put in, “The only hitch being that on the flight out they seem to have disappeared out in the bush somewhere, maybe dead for all we know. Or maybe alive, figuring out their next move.”

I still didn't mention my theory that maybe they were waiting for the murderer to show up and then all go together.

A few seconds of silence ensued before he sighed, “Well, I guess that's it, Matteesie, except for finding the bastards. We can hold Bonner on the assault business with Gloria when we catch up to him. But until the search planes can get into the air again, which looks like tomorrow, from the forecast, we're up the creek on Christian and Batten. And what about William?”

The inspector's question was still hanging there when a woman came into the detachment office, shoving back her parka hood. She was young, fit-looking, somehow like one of those women who run, not jog, a few miles a day. When I heard her ask for me, I had an idea she was the dog-team lady. She had a very determined expression.

I answered Ted's question about William. “Having trouble catching up to him, too. Keep you informed.”

“Please do that.”

I also decided not to tell him my dog-team idea right then, but hung up and went over to the counter, smiling my best smile.

She was smiling, too. I soon found that she almost always smiled. It had nothing to do with having a kindly disposition. “I'm Edie McDonald,” she said. “I teach at the Chief Albert Wright School and have a dog team, as I believe you've heard.”

I liked her looks. Good mouth, no makeup, curly brown hair cut short but not too short. A big nose. Once I read that people with big noses are almost invariably forceful and rather prying, which might be the derivation of the derogatory tone one uses when referring to people who stick their noses into things. Until I got to know Edie McDonald I thought that was probably just an old wives' tale, like women being the weaker sex.

I also soon found that most of the time, no matter how tough she was being, she smiled, putting people off guard and leading them to think of her as that nice Edie McDonald. Until they found out differently.

“That man with no legs came over to the school a little while ago and said you were interested in borrowing my dog team for some important police business,” she said.

“That's No Legs Manicoche,” I said, figuring she should know his name. Did I say I liked her smile? Nice big white teeth. She seemed very much the co-operative type. Might even think I was cute.

“No Legs. Very descriptive,” she said, smiling at me winningly. “Imaginative, even. I used to know a man with only one leg, but they called him Stumpy, which I thought was not very precise.”

I like chatty women. Actually, I know a lot of them,

“Anyway,” she said. “About my dog team, the answer is, no bloody way.”

I'm afraid I stared. I also spluttered. It is somewhat of a tradition in the north that people pull together, help one another, trust the police not to ask favors unless they are important. A stranger appears out of the blizzard and you share what you have to eat and drink.

Edie McDonald was not like that at all.

“This probably surprises you,” she said.

“Yes, it does,” I said. It was no trouble to look hurt. I
felt
hurt. “I'm here on a murder investigation. There's a man I have to question who has gone off into the bush south of here on a snowmobile. I don't know where he was heading so I don't know where to go to look for him. But I know that a good dog team has a lot of advantages in a search like that.”

“They're a hell of a lot quieter than a snowmobile,” she said.

“Right.”

“And they tend to go where someone else has been. I mean, left to their own instincts they like to follow a trail if there is one, which there won't be much of after all this wind and snow.”

I agreed with that, too. So I knew that any pitches I could make she already knew and didn't have to be told.

“A good man has been killed,” I said, and even that seemed to come out lamely. “His son has disappeared and might be in trouble himself. I just thought you might like to help.”

Talk about lame. I could catch out of the corner of my eye that Pengelly was trying to hide a smile. Nicky Jerome wasn't even trying to hide his. They must have run into Edie McDonald before.

“Let me tell you,” she said, never ceasing to smile. “When I first came north, I didn't know my ass from third base. I also got bored to death. I almost even took up knitting so I'd have something to do besides drink and deal with guys making passes at me. I mean, I could have stayed in Calgary and done all that.”

I thought of remarking that I imagined she would be very good at it and no doubt, with her looks, would have lots of practice.

I might have said that to some women. But it would not be smart, I felt, to say it to this one.

Just as well. “That was four years ago,” she said. “Then I decided, screw this. I'd always had dogs at home. Show dogs. Show dogs were no use here, some bloody husky would eat them, and then I read an ad in News North. Six-dog team for sale. Easy terms to responsible person. I went to have a look. They were skin and bones, they always cost a lot to feed, but at least the guy who owned them had done the best he could until he realized he really couldn't afford them, what with his wife having to stop work when she had a baby.”

There she smiled brilliantly. “‘It's an ill wind' . . . anyway I bought them, along with some harness and a broken-down komatik.”

“And you got them in shape,” I said winningly. Any compliment in a storm. “What did you feed them?”

“Frozen fish. You can get them in Inuvik at a dollar per fish. Then I bought a good pickup in Edmonton and drove it to Inuvik over the Dempster Highway and fitted it up so that I had six dog cages in the bed of the truck. The fixed-up komatik rode on top of the cages. Took me months to get the whole outfit operative, dogs healthy and all. Then every winter weekend and sometimes in between I'd go out with the few other people in Inuvik who had dogs, and I had fun. But I got tired of Inuvik. Too civilized, too many civil servants. Guys I'd rejected before were making passes the second time around. So when the job in the school here came up I applied for it and got it. Last summer I put the whole outfit on a barge, pickup, dogs, dog feed and all, and came down here where there's more places to go that aren't full of people.”

It was a long speech but apparently she had enjoyed making it.

“After all that,” she said, “you can understand my dogs aren't for loan or hire. I drive them myself; nobody else does. But I thought instead of just saying no, I should explain why, and that's why.”

There are some people you can argue with and maybe convince, I had just about decided on the evidence that she wasn't one of them. Which meant, almost, that that was that. But then I had one final crazy idea. What the hell—I really didn't like the idea of going after William on a snowmobile. With him long gone by now, God knows where, I didn't think I'd have a chance.

“So what you're saying is that nobody but you drives your dogs, but you like getting out and around and doing interesting things.”

She smiled. “You're a quick learner.”

“Okay,” I said, “how about we provide all the dog food and guarantee in writing return of your dog team and equipment in exactly the condition everything is in now, you to be the judge of that, and you come along and drive.”

She looked at me piercingly. For the first time she wasn't smiling. I had an idea I was being summed up mainly from the standpoint of, could she stand my company?

“You know something about dogs?” she asked, and then the smile returned. “That's probably a dumb question.”

I nodded. Twice, to cover both the question and the related opinion.

“You got a deal,” she said.

Pengelly and Nicky broke up in the background.

“Right now,” she said, looking at a big gadget-filled wrist watch she wore with the face of it on the inside of her left wrist, “I'm due back in school for one o'clock. We could get the outfit ready after school tonight and go tomorrow.”

She was scarcely out of the door when the phone rang again.

“It's for you, I can tell,” Pengelly said. “What you need is a bloody social secretary.”

Gloria now had her voice well under control. “I remembered something,” she said. “Last summer there was a big guy here. I remember him because he said he was from Nashville, but had never been to the Grand Old Opry, couldn't stand country music, liked hard rock better, like Black Sabbath. He was a friend of Batten's, they'd known one another in the States, and Christian seemed to know him, too. The three of them were drinking at the Inuvik Inn. When William and I got there and we were introduced the guy said that where he came from any woman who wasn't white would screw anything that moved, and is it the same with you, sweetie? William jumped up and there would have been a fight but Batten held them apart, and then we left.