No Cherubs for Melanie (38 page)

“What's my number,” she asked herself, searching her mind frantically, phone in hand. This is ridiculous, I can't remember my own phone number. “How often do
you call yourself?” she asked out loud, and felt foolish, realizing Stacy was hovering.

“What's the international operator number?” she called.

“Zero,” he replied, moving away a little.

Feeling stupid she dialled and asked for international directory enquiries, then, feeling even more stupid, gave her own name and address as if she were a stranger.

“Hold the line,” said the Canadian operator and suddenly Samantha found herself talking to a familiar voice — an English operator. She gave her name and address again and flicked idly though the notebook hanging on a string by the phone while waiting. The operator was back in a second but Samantha's mind wasn't focussed, it was glued to an entry in the little book and, as the woman slowly recited the digits, she found herself reading the number — her number — in the book.

“Did you get that, Miss?” asked the operator.

Samantha's silence signalled a problem. “Miss? Miss?'

“Oh. Sorry,” she said, her mind on another planet. “I missed that, would you mind giving it again.”

Clearly annoyed, the operator started reciting the number a second time, then paused. “Are you writing this down?” she asked, unwilling to waste more time.

“Yes,” Samantha lied, then traced the numbers in the book with her finger as the operator spoke. Dazed, she put down the phone, omitting to thank the operator, unable to quite comprehend what was happening. Turning toward Stacy with a question poised on her lips she heard a warning bell ring deep inside her. “Thank you,” she muttered as she left the store and walked back to the plane in a dream, her face ghostly white.

“Hurry up,” called the pilot testily.

“Anything?” asked Bryan as she started to climb aboard.

Her zombie-like mind still hadn't really worked it out. “Peter,” she started with a gush, then saw that Jock, the Scotsman, was still close enough to hear, his old ears cocked.

“Are you OK?”

“Hold my hand,” she said, seeking confirmation of reality, and waited until they had taken off to straighten her thoughts.

“What!” he exploded when she told him.

She told him again, repeating exactly what had happened, in a rush, but missing nothing.

Bryan tapped the pilot's arm. “We've got to go back,” he shouted, then turned to Samantha. “There must be some explanation.”

“Don't look at me like that, Peter. I know what I saw.”

“You're just a bit overwrought, that's all.”

“And I imagined it. Is that what you're saying?”

“Mistaken, perhaps. Probably a similar number, that's all.”

“Too stupid to know my own telephone number, is that what you think?” Then she realized with some embarrassment that that was exactly what had happened.

“Not exactly.”

“Exactly!” she screamed. “That's exactly what you are suggesting. You said you believed me. Didn't you?”

“Well, I…”

“Did you say that?” she demanded with a dig.

“I did.”

“Well, believe me then. I am telling you, Dad wrote my phone number in the book at that place. No one else could have.”

Bryan was still fighting for a rational explanation. “What about when you called…?”

“You called. Not me,” she shot back. But maybe there was an explanation. “Did you give Stacy my number?” she queried.

He only gave the question some consideration because he felt he should, but then shook his head. “No — I didn't give him your number. Why would I?”

“Right, that does it then. He was there — they're lying.”

“Excuse me,” shouted the pilot, agitated. “Can you make up your minds before we run out of gas?”

Samantha ignored him in her anger. “I bloody knew it,” she cried in relief. “I knew that address and postcode were right.”

“Where is he then?” called the detective from the front.

“Where is
she
?” added Bryan, still sceptical. “They said they had never heard of her, either.”

“Who is
she
?” asked the detective, making it clear from his tone that he was unaware a woman was involved.

“A woman Dad came to find, a witness to a murder.”

“What's her name?” said the pilot, reaching to flick on his radio to make enquiries.

“Margaret Gordonstone.”

“Oh, God,” said the DS, staying the pilot's hand. “I know where she is.”

“You do?”

The detective would have said, “I think you had better sit down,” if it had been relevant but, as they were all strapped firmly in their seats, he was left fumbling for an alternative way of verbally presaging disastrous news. In a half-second's silence the already stretched atmosphere reached snapping point; he ran
out of time and had no choice but to blurt out the cold facts. “She was killed on Sunday in the plane crash.”

The plane lurched as Samantha and Bryan both leapt forward at the same time. “That's not the bad news,” added the detective with a note of foreboding.

“It's not?” queried Bryan.

The big man sucked in a long, deep breath that seemed to draw everything and everyone towards him as he physically and mentally steeled himself. “There was a second person in the plane, possibly two others. Badly injured judging by the blood, but they escaped.”

“Badly injured,” echoed Samantha in a dream, or a nightmare.

“Where is he?” demanded Bryan.

“I don't know… I've no idea,” the detective said, lying. He had lots of ideas — drowned or taken by a bear were at the top of the list.

“Hold on,” said Bryan, realizing what thoughts were in the air. “We don't know it was your Dad. Why would he be in a plane with Margaret? We don't even know it was a man, do we?” he asked the detective.

“No, Sir,” replied the sergeant, acknowledging Bryan's rank for the first time. Feeling that things were becoming serious enough to warrant officialdom.

Samantha had already made up her mind. “I knew he was dead. I had a premonition.”

The pilot, quiet for sometime, now piped up. “What the hell do you want me to do?”

“The settlement,” said Bryan “Those people must know something. He was obviously there.”

Although the detective had set his mind on getting home, he felt that the site of the plane crash was the most likely place to find Bliss, and said so.

But the pilot ruled it out immediately. “I can't land there in the dark,” he said, pointing to the rapidly setting
sun. “It's too dangerous; there's no lights and I don't know the waters.”

“It's either the settlement or civilization then,” said the detective, already knowing he would be outvoted and the chief inspector would insist on returning to investigate Samantha's claims.

“Take us back to the settlement,” demanded Samantha, sounding like a hijacker, “We're not going anywhere without him.”

Samantha, relieved at her vindication, found herself staring at the scrawny neck of the pilot in front of her and the hulk of the man in the other seat and wondering, of all things, if the pilot had to keep the controls over to counteract the weight. Would they fly round in circles, she wondered, if he took his feet off the rudder?

In the few minutes it took to return to the settlement Phillips filled in the missing details. They knew the deceased was Margaret because they had found some of her belongings in the plane's cargo compartment, and she had ID in her purse. The plane had crashed, he said, because one of the floats ripped open on landing and flipped it over.

“Accident?” asked Samantha.

The detective nodded. “It must have hit a log or something sharp in the water as it came in to land. It happens.”

“We'll tell them our plane has a malfunction,” said Bryan as they skidded back onto Bear Lake. “That'll give us an excuse to stay.”

The detective sergeant had more direct plans. “I'd rather kick Stacy's butt 'til we get some answers.”

“They must have a good reason for lying,” suggested Bryan, unable to think of one.

Following the plane's departure an assortment of men had come out of the woodwork and the bar was buzzing with excitement as the inhabitants speculated on the foreigners' visit. Nothing this interesting had occurred since a couple of tourists were ripped to shreds by a bear a few years earlier, although Margaret's arrival had certainly caused a stir ten years ago.

A dropped pin would have been deafening on the old plank floor as the detective and the others marched smartly into the store with Jock sheepishly in tow.

“Leave this to me,” the policeman had said confidently as they mounted the wooden steps to the verandah, but Samantha had other ideas. “Where's my father?” she shouted at Stacy in the moment of hiatus following their entry.

Stacy, stunned, shrank away. “I… I don't know.”

“Explain this then,” she screamed, ripping the notebook off its string and forcing it under his nose. “That's my fucking phone number… There.” She stabbed her finger at the book. “How'd that get there?”

Forrest Gump gave the game away. “Maggie said …”

Samantha whipped around. “Who said that?”

Someone dug the simpleton in the ribs to shut him up, but he took it as a cue to keep going. “Maggie said we'd never seen 'im.”

The detective sergeant flew across the room, gripped Stacy round the throat, and flung him against the wooden shelves. “Who's Maggie? Who is she?”

Stacy didn't hesitate. “Maggie said he was an old friend in trouble. Said you might come looking. Said he was on the run.”

“On the run from what?”

“The law… Perverting justice… Murder, she said.”

“When was this?”

“Last Thursday evening. She came over in her boat and said we should keep quiet about him. The money came when she was here. She said I had to send it back; said to say I never heard of him. So I did.”

“And that was the last you saw her?”

“Yeah … Maggie said they were going away for a bit and she'd take care of him. He'll be all right if he's with Maggie, Miss. She'll look after him, she's really good with critters in trouble.”

Samantha looked into his piggy eyes. “You don't know what's happened do you?

“What?” said Stacy.

Bryan told them about the crash and Margaret's death. The expressions on the men's faces caught Samantha by surprise. It was more than just the shock or hurt someone might register on losing a neighbour or co-worker, more like the almost disbelieving dejection displayed by a family member. No one cried, but Old Jock shot off to the toilet pretty quickly.

The pony-tailed Indian stepped forward and peered closely into Samantha's eyes. “I have heard the voices whispering through the trees,” he said with religious overtones and the worst case of halitosis she had ever withered under. “It is Windigo that has taken them.”

“Who the hell is Windigo?” demanded DS Phillips, readying himself to put out an all points bulletin, and giving Samantha an opportunity to slide out from under the Indian's gaze and breath.

“Windigo,” the Indian began, addressing the air with a sing-song voice. “He is the great monster of the north who roams the lands of the Algonquian and feeds upon our people.”

“Crap,” mumbled someone at the back, but most of the store's occupants knew the Indian legends well enough not to mock them.

“We must hold a ‘shaking tent' ritual right away if we are to find your father before Windigo swallows him up,” continued the Indian, addressing Samantha with the positiveness of a surgeon announcing the need for an immediate tracheotomy. “And we must call upon Mishipi-zhius, the god of the lake, to help us.”

Phillips had heard enough and pulled the Indian roughly to once side. “Samantha, don't listen to this garbage. I know where your father is. All we have to do is get back to the crash site in the morning and start a proper search.”

“Windigo must be appeased,” continued the Indian, refusing to be silenced. “Do you have anything belonging to your father?” he pleaded of Samantha. “The Shaman will need something to focus on.”

“C'mon Samantha,” called the sergeant, preparing to leave.

“Wait a minute,” she said, touched by the man's sincerity. “What is a ‘shaking tent' ritual? Who is the Shaman?”

“It is the way we ask the spirits to find lost things or help someone in trouble. The Shaman is our holy man.”

Bryan, sensing Samantha's need to do anything to help her father, interceded. “What do we have to do?”

The remains of the Indian's smoke-stained teeth looked like a row of rusted stanchions as he laughed. “Nothing. You must do nothing. It is the Shaman who will do everything. We will place him in a tent with something of your father's. If the spirits are listening the tent will shake and the Shaman will be told where we should look.”

Samantha was already rummaging in her handbag. “I've got this,” she said, pulling out the door key to her father's apartment..

“You don't believe that, do you…?” started the detective, but Samantha's look shut him up.

“Here, take this,” she said. “It's his door key.”

The Indian, his hands as filthy as his teeth, held the key like an orchid and whispered an incantation over it, then he studied the ceiling and spoke with the absurd seriousness of an amateur actor reciting a line from an equally amateurish play. “My name is Running Moose. I will take this key to the Shaman and as the sun rises over the great lake he will ask the spirits to seek out the spirit of your father.”

“This is getting ridiculous,” the detective sneered.

Running Moose ignored the jibe and charged ahead with his plan. “We must hold the ritual where he was last seen.”