Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery (17 page)

I walked the few hundred yards to where she lived. She was hard at work. She knew I was there but chaining six rambunctious dogs takes concentration. She didn't look at me until she had all six securely tethered far enough apart that they couldn't eat one another in the night.

“Have any trouble getting back?” I asked, for openers.

“Obviously not,” she said.

“I want to thank you for your help. It didn't work out the way I thought it might, but—”

“Never mind,” she snapped. “Better pick up your stuff.” She stomped into her house and firmly closed the door.

I picked up the tent and survival gear. It was what they call a lazy man's load, no second trips, I thought, as I staggered back to the detachment. No Legs was parked outside, on his sled. The office had no ramp for the disabled and rather steep steps. The bulb over the door didn't throw much light but at least we could see one another.

“What's Edie mad at?” I enquired.

He looked at me with his lips pressed together the way a person might do if recalling some action that he was beginning to regret.

“She thought we oughta make camp and come back here in the mornin'. I said I thought we could get back in all right, with that fresh trail for the dogs to follow. She said of course we could get back all right, that wasn' the point.” He allowed himself a small smile. “So we came in. She didn' talk on the way.”

I had an idea he wasn't telling me everything, but then he might not wish to give it in detail. I don't imagine the detail included any consideration that the news would have swept through the town like wildfire if it were known that he and Edie stayed out all night in a seven-foot tent when they didn't really have to. Neither of them, it seemed to me, would have done other than what they felt like doing at the time, if they'd happened to agree on it. Obviously, they hadn't.

“Maybe you missed your big chance,” I said.

“I thought of that, don' think I didn', but”—ruefully—“I figured I should come back and get my sister and maybe have William over for dinner, so we can talk. I mean, the poor guy . . .” He stopped.

“Is that what's going to happen?” I was pretty sure from his expression that it wasn't.

“Well, Cecilia is at the Pennycook's with quite a few other people but what is goin' on there is mainly drinkin', right now. Which ain't my favorite pastime anymore.”

“Do you think the main trouble with William is the business about his father, or something else?”

He didn't answer directly. He was choosing his words carefully. “He didn' have to go as far out as he did, wherever that was, just to be alone for a while.” His eyes were troubled. “I just can't figure what happened to Smokey.”

That bothered me, too. Maybe there was an answer. I couldn't think what it would be, but tried a few on No Legs. “Of course, the dog could have got hurt, or lost, or chased a caribou, say, and never came back, and William figured he'd make his way home somehow in time, a smart dog like that.”

No Legs just looked at me.

When he left, poling off slowly toward his own place, I had an idea of the questions he was beginning to face. The one about missing a camp-out with Edie would be the least of them.

I went back into the detachment office. Nicky Jerome had come out of his room at the back and was sweeping up, tidying desks. He looked up with a grin. “When you were out just now the corp'ral phoned and says he still has some of that rum and that Bertha has thawed some more caribou, steaks this time. They're expecting you.”

That was the best news I'd heard lately. I stood there, considering things I might do first. Meaning, before the rum.

I thought of calling Buster but decided against it. If I called anybody it should be headquarters in Yellowknife, but if anything big had happened they'd have let this detachment in on it for sure.

I thought of calling Lois, but I decided against that, too. Her unusually friendly attitude the other night had been unsettling. It was so much like the times of long ago, when I'd been studying to be a white man and giving her more breaks as a woman and a wife. If that kind of thing went on, I might find myself rethinking other matters that I didn't have time in my head for, right now.

I called Maxine. She was just home. She said that Jules Bonner was around town, had been questioned and released, apparently unscathed, but had stayed away from Gloria totally.

“But he's not a worry to her for a while, anyway,” she said.

“Why not? He become a born-again nice guy?”

She laughed. “What I mean is Gloria left on the afternoon Canadian for Yellowknife. They're having a service there for Morton, you know.”

“No, I didn't know. When?”

She said CBC news hadn't been able to get a straight answer yet. “The people running it hadn't been able to get in touch with William, last I heard, but when they can find him they want to do it fairly fast. A lot of the big wheels are due in Ottawa for some parliamentary committee or other. They've already had the thing postponed a week. Morton was supposed to go, you know. Lead the delegation.”

I wondered about the kind of shape William was in for an emotional memorial service, which this one sure as hell would be.

Maxine suddenly giggled. “There was a piece on TV about you.” She had a really nice giggle. She could laugh at a guy without sounding mean. It's a gift not everybody has. “The mighty Matteesie Kitologitak, scourge of bad guys from Pangnirtung to Herschel Island. Almost made me proud to know you.”

“Almost, but not quite, eh? Because you know how weak I am in the middle of the night.”

She giggled again. “Oh, I've never thought that.”

“Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm firing blanks these days.”

I told her, without details, that I'd hooked up with William finally, but to hold the applause. This memorial business in Yellowknife was a complication I had to think about.

“You going?” she asked. “Quite a few people from here are.”

“I haven't had time to decide.”

It had some angles, but they didn't include any pluses for me in going to Yellowknife. If William was gone from here for a couple of days he'd at least be within' surveillance distance of the North's greatest concentration of Mounties. If the weather held, and the forecast was okay, that would give me a chance to get back out on the trail to find out where William had been for the last two days. Maybe I could even hunt for a lost dog.

“Where's Gloria staying?” I asked. “She's at the Yellowknife Inn,” she said.

That's where Natives usually stay in Yellowknife. The attached Miners' Mess cafeteria is where all visiting Natives congregate eventually, Inuit at one table, Dene with several tables together, Metis tables here and there. All peoples separate.

Eventually we told each other to take care, and said good-bye. By now the powers that be in Yellowknife must have got to William. Even phone messages to the band council's office would mean he'd know about it by now at Pennycook's. Well, he'd said that he'd talk to me in the morning. I didn't count on learning much but it was always a possibility. Maybe I should have kept on pushing when I had him on the run. I found myself hoping that William wouldn't be too hung over to catch a morning flight. The odds were that he would go as soon as possible, partly to leave me behind. Also, the sympathetic support he was getting in Fort Norman was about the best he could hope for anywhere right now. If he didn't go to a memorial service for his father, a lot of people might start wondering if the presence of the paunchy little Mountie from the Barrenlands who was harassing good old William might make more sense than they'd been willing to admit.

But the main idea I had, which kept growing, was that with William gone to stand bareheaded listening to eulogies for his father from his own people and politicians of all colors and stripes, I might get lucky around here. Or south of here.

I still hadn't made up my mind when I walked down toward No Legs' house to ask No Legs what he knew about the country farther south than we'd traveled today. But passing the Pennycook house I saw his sled at the door. He could move short distances just sliding, using his arms and his leg stumps. Or maybe somebody had carried him in. All lights were on, upstairs and down, but the place seemed fairly subdued. Maybe I'd see No Legs later. Hunger and thirst had taken over. I turned towards Pengelly's, looking forward to food, drink and uncomplicated people.

I was there a couple of hours later when Nicky Jerome relayed two messages. One was that No Legs was home and wanted to talk to me if I had a chance. The other was that Gloria had been trying to get me. I walked back and knocked on the door at No Legs' place.

I heard him call, “Come in,” went through the dark little coats and boots room and opened the inside door to the warm and bright kitchen. No Legs was on the chair where he'd been that first morning I visited him. On the table beside him were a pot of tea, tea bags, mugs, the electric kettle, an extension cord plugged into a wall outlet, his lighter and cigarets. He looked up at me.

“You heard about the memorial service for Morton?” he asked.

“Yeah, just heard.”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said. “There's somethin' strange goin' on. I'd just got back to Paul Pennycook's when somebody got him on the phone from Yellowknife to tell him about the service and ask if he could be there Monday for sure.”

He stopped as if not sure whether to say what he had to say.

“What he done right away was say that he couldn' go, couldn' they pos'pone it? Then everybody started tellin' him William, you have to, but he kept sayin' he couldn'. Just that he couldn'. He was so upset that it was hard to make out what he was sayin', except once it sort of come out like somebody cryin', that he had things to do aroun' here, no use goin' when Morton was dead anyways.”

I waited. He put a tea bag in each mug and poured in boiling water. “I'm goin',” he said. “So are some others. We're flyin' Nahanni.” He took a deep breath. “William is goin'. I think he really knew all along he had to. But he ain't happy about it. I mean, somethin' else is sure as hell on his mind. He was talkin' real wild—”

“Like what?”

“Like that he'd get a flight back as soon as the service was over, even if he hadta charter it.”

“Do you think it's anything to do with the trip he just got back from?”

“That crosst my mind.”

I went back to the detachment. It was starting to look like a long night. I had to make the call to Gloria, and others I had decided upon.

Nicky came out of his room when I went in. I was just picking up the phone book. “Whose number you want?” he asked. I told him. He had it written down, including her room number.

“You know Gloria well?” he asked, while he poured me a coffee I hadn't asked for. Rum and ginger, tea, coffee, I'd be getting up every two hours all night to go to the can.

“Fairly well,” I said.

“I used to know her here when she was a kid, before she went to live with Maxine. Nice kid, then. I often wondered how she's doin'. She in Yellowknife now?”

“Just for the service for Morton.”

A message had just come in noting that the service would be at ten a.m. Monday, day after tomorrow. So William would be able to get back here on the noon flight, if he wanted.

“Gloria okay?” Nicky persisted, as I took a swallow of coffee and dialed.

“As far as I know. Why?”

He shrugged. “Sounded as if she'd had a few too many, is all.”

While I had the phone to my ear, waiting for the hotel switchboard to answer, I wondered what exactly had been in Gloria's mind in going to Yellowknife so early for this service. It meant she'd have to spend an extra day or two there. Of course, only a few, if any, would know her relationship with Morton. And there'd be enough from Inuvik and other places in the North, people from this committee or that, band chiefs, people Morton had worked with or against, that she wouldn't be all that noticeable. Unless she made it that way herself. Yet as flaky as she sometimes could be, she wasn't the type to go getting her name in the tabloids under the heading of
Mystery Beauty Throws Self on Coffin
, or some such. The fantasy she'd been living out with Morton hadn't seemed to have much more to it, really, than just an affair between a young woman and an older man. But who knows? Maybe he was nice to her, respectful to her, a gentle lover instead of the string of grunts she'd had before in her life.

“Hello?” Gloria was in her room, and she did sound as if she'd had a few too many. Anyway, she wasn't down in the bar having a few more.

“It's Matteesie,” I said.

“Oh! I'm so glad they found you. I had to tell somebody.”

“Tell somebody what?”

She laughed. It was slightly out of control but still I thought, that's good, she's in good spirits. I couldn't tell on the phone whether she was really loaded or just in that state where a few drinks and a lot of emotion give that impression. There was a kind of spacey elation in her voice. Then she went on, dropping her voice to a confidential level. I guess she was used to hotels with thin partitions.

“I visited him today,” she said.

“Yeah?” I couldn't imagine what was coming.

“I sneaked in before the regular visiting hours and they let me see him,” she said. “They had him all laid out in a nice suit and . . .”

I couldn't imagine the scene at all. From the last time I'd seen Morton, I couldn't imagine an open coffin. Sure, the shots had hit the back of his head but his face, as I remembered it, Jesus . . .

“How the hell did you manage that?” I interrupted.

“There's no family, you know, until William gets here. I got a young guy who works in the funeral home and told him I was Morton's girlfriend and couldn't stand being there in a crowd during the regular visiting hours, so he let me in by myself, just me and Morton.”