by Eric Wright
“Has he been charged?”
“Not yet. They took him back to Sweetwater to get a search warrant.”
“To look for the gun.”
Caxton nodded. “I doubt if we’ll find it. Siggy’s too cute for that.”
“Let me know what happens.”
When Wilkie returned with a warrant and searched Siggurdson’s house, he cleared up another of the local mysteries. In the middle of the woodpile, buried deep enough so that his mother could deny knowledge of its existence, they found much of the stuff that had lately been reported stolen from the cottages. And under Siggurdson’s mattress, there were two more fifty-dollar bills. So they charged him with theft and waited for him to confess. They didn’t find the gun or any more money.
Siggy tried for a better reason for being on the trail than the one he had offered before.
Caxton continued the story. “Now we had the stuff from his woodpile, he said that that’s what he was after. After the cottagers were all gone he figured he’d take a little look around, see what there was to be picked up. He knew he wouldn’t bump into me, he said, because he’d seen me working in my office, through the window. When Siggy tells us what really happened on that trail, we’ll start all over again.”
And that was how it happened. Wilkie sent all of Siggy’s clothes to the forensic laboratory, explaining to Siggy that if there was a single trace from Marlow on his clothes the lab would find it. One of Marlow’s hairs would make it very easy. Then Siggy told them what had happened.
This time Wilkie told the story. “He claims he found Marlow dead on the trail on Friday night. He’d gone up there, like he said, to see if there was anything left worth picking up, and stumbled over Marlow’s body. He practically fell over Timmy in the dark, he said.”
“Was he long dead?” Pickett asked.
“Siggy said he wasn’t stiff. Said he tried to see if there was any sign of life, but he couldn’t find any. Said he’d been shot in the face, but we knew that.”
“So he robbed him.”
“He said the wallet was on the ground nearby. Yeah, he took the money and left him there. That fits. Siggy figured that would make it look like some casual killer shot Marlow for his money.”
“Then he rolled Marlow into the gully?”
“He says not. Says he just took off. Someone else did that, he says. He’d be bound to, of course. He’s trying to give off this picture of an impulsive act he’s sorry for. Dumping his old friend in the gully is pretty coldblooded.”
Pickett said, “It’s not bad, is it? I mean, he confesses to a bunch of robberies, and to robbing a body, but it’s going to be hard to shake him into anything more. Does he have a reputation as a roughhouser?”
“He’s a jerk-off. A slimy bag of pus. You ever see a movie called Beau Geste? The old one? There’s a guy in that who plays a kind of suck to the Foreign Legion sergeant. That’s Siggurdson. Caxton says he’s capable of anything that doesn’t involve pain to himself. If you found him with a gun you could be pretty sure he’d stolen it and was looking to sell it. Caxton says there’s no way he’d go up against Marlow with or without a gun. I don’t know what the hell happened up on that trail, but if he did kill Marlow, then it was an accident, and he panicked. He couldn’t get drunk enough to find the guts to set it up. I told Brendan to keep suggesting to Siggy that it was an accident. Manslaughter.”
Pickett said, “How did he know it was Marlow in the dark? From the wallet?”
Wilkie looked startled at the idea, then relaxed. “Siggy knew who it was, all right.” He paused to think. “See, Marlow hadn’t been mauled yet. The animals hadn’t got to him. Siggy knew the guy well, see. Oh yeah.” There was satisfaction in Wilkie’s voice. He was not reassuring himself, but putting every comma into place.
“Charge him yet?”
“Siggy’s changed his story so many times I’m waiting for the confession. Or maybe we’ll sweat it out of him. In the meantime we’ve got him on seven counts of robbery and one of desecrating a body. We’re turning over his place again, see if we can find the gun.” Wilkie was thinking of something as he spoke. “Siggy gave us someone else to talk to, though. Kind of while we’re waiting for him to break down.” Wilkie laughed. “You remember that Marlow used to shack up with Linda McCourt, in the school-teacher’s cottage round the point? Someone interrupted them one afternoon. Siggy says that he knows who interrupted them. Pat Dakin, the schoolteacher’s wife.”
“Siggy get all this on video? He sounds like a real slimebag. I wouldn’t trust a word he says.”
“He claims he saw her. He says he saw her approach the cabin, then back off. Her own cabin. Must have been confusing for her, Siggy says, because Siggy knew that in his spare time Marlow was humping Pat Dakin, too. On the weekends.”
“She used the cottage on weekends to write. So Marlow probably did her a good turn, fixed the generator or something. Siggy’s mind did the rest. A lot of people must have known that Marlow was after her. Even Eliza knew. He used to go to their play practice when the Dakin woman was still in the play.” Pickett held no brief for Marlow’s morals, and he disliked what he knew of Pat Dakin, but the two of them seemed like fine, upstanding citizens compared with what he had already heard about Siggurdson.
Wilkie thought about this and shook his head. “Siggy didn’t make it up. He watched them through the window.”
“Why’s he talking about it?”
“He’s offering her up to us. Maybe she did it, he says. He doesn’t know why she would but we have to ask. The thing is, if she was up to the cottage during the week and surprised her boyfriend diddling someone else, in her cottage yet, might she have gotten unhappy enough to shoot him?”
“You think so?”
“No, but we have to try every possibility. Until Siggy gives in.”
“Seems to me another possibility is that Siggurdson was trying to blackmail Marlow. Sounds to me like Siggurdson spent time watching people, you know, a voyeur. We used to call them Peeping Toms.”
Wilkie shook his head. “You think Marlow would have cared? The idea of someone like John Dakin coming after him wouldn’t bother him. He’d laugh at him. He might not like the idea of Siggurdson watching him, though, but I would guess his reaction to that would have been to kick Siggurdson’s teeth in, not pay him bribe money.”
“How about Linda McCourt?”
“That would have worried Marlow a bit, I would think. Old McCourt looks like a rough bugger. I’ll talk to Caxton about it.”
CHAPTER 15
As the police continued to hold Siggurdson, and the town learned something of the evidence against him, they accepted what they heard, and agreed that he was the person most likely to have done it.
Charlotte said, “Nobody liked Timmy Marlow, and they aren’t that sorry he’s dead, though they don’t say so, out of respect for Betty. In the beginning, everyone was saying that Timmy had come up against a husband finally, and they hoped the husband would get away with it. Some people said maybe it was the woman herself, and they’ve been trying to think of a woman around here who knows about guns. I don’t know of any. This isn’t Texas, or even Alberta.”But when it was learned that the police were questioning Pat Dakin, all other theories were abandoned in her favor. From the Larch River point of view, she was a good choice as suspect because she, too, was not much liked because of her perceived snobbishness, and the fact that she bought all her groceries in Sweetwater instead of at the Larch River IGA. Opinion had it that she deserved what she got. It was irritating to realize that she had not snubbed Marlow as she had almost everybody else in town, but there was some satisfaction in the knowledge that it had ended badly for the pair of them. As for Siggy, someone suggested that he had probably seen Marlow going up the trail, knew that Pat Dakin was at home, and followed Marlow to watch.
Wilkie took Caxton with him to Toronto to question Pat Dakin. “Just listen for any little discrepancies,” he said. “Don’t get into the act.”
&nb
sp; They found her in a small house on Atlas Avenue, on the edge of the old Italian district. She explained, as she let them in, holding the door against a large orange-colored dog, “I’m dog-sitting. I needed somewhere to live and these people have gone to Europe for a month, so they’ve let me have the house rather than put Honey in a kennel. He’s still only a puppy. Down, Honey. Down. Down. Down. Sit, for Christ’s sake! Sit! Sit! Sit! Sit! Sit!”
Caxton leaned over the dog, said, “Sit,” and touched his hindquarters. Honey quivered and sat. Caxton said, “Stay,” and the dog lay down.
Pat Dakin said, “That’s incredible. He won’t do a thing for me.”
“He’ll be all right.”
Wilkie said, “You probably know we’re here to find out if you know anything that will help us to investigate the death of Tim Marlow.”
Her response was noisy and dramatic. “I know nothing about this Marlow person. He came to the odd rehearsal and his name got linked to mine because he told people he found me … attractive, I suppose. Nothing to do with me.” She waved an arm as if to brush Marlow away.
Wilkie looked through his notebook. “We have a witness who was watching through the window of your cabin three weeks ago, on a Saturday afternoon, about four o’clock. He’s prepared to swear to what he saw. And in your original statement you said you spent this Friday night in your cottage. Our witness said you didn’t.”
The dog jumped up at some misunderstood signal and tried to mount Pat Dakin’s leg.
“He keeps doing this,” she said, dropping her pose. “Stop it. Stop it!” She tried to push him off. Encouraged, Honey humped faster.
Caxton said, “Put your hand around his nose, tight, squeeze it hard, and say, ‘Down.’”
She did as she was told, and Honey quieted immediately and lay at her feet, panting.
Pat Dakin said, “Why does he find me … attractive?”
Caxton said, “He doesn’t. At that age, dogs’ll try and jump Santa Claus. Nothing to do with if you’re attractive.”
All three of them looked at Honey for a few moments before Wilkie returned to his question. The interruption had given Dakin a chance to decide on her response.
“All right. I was having an affair with Tim,” she said, “odd as that may seem.” She stared hard at the dog. “We were to spend the weekend in a tourist lodge in Tralee, about forty miles north of Larch River. I have the registration receipt in my purse. He never turned up and I came back to Larch River on Saturday morning, only to formally leave my husband. That is the extent of my part in this affair.”
“Didn’t you look for him in Larch River?”
“Where? I did look in the bakery. He wasn’t there. I’d been dumped. He’d done it to me before, and I decided he wasn’t going to do it again.”
Wilkie asked her, routinely, if she was aware of any of Marlow’s enemies, but she insisted she knew nothing about him. So for the moment, Wilkie was satisfied to locate her forty miles from the murder, and asked only that if anything occurred to her that might help them, she should get in touch.
Outside, he asked Caxton, “Where’d you learn about dogs?”
“I grew up with them. They’re animals. Unless they’ve got rabies, they behave for a reason.” Caxton looked into the distance. “She wasn’t much help, was she?”
For some time now Pickett had been thinking of outbuildings, not in any grand sense but in the sense that he needed a woodshed and a place to keep the snow off his car, and maybe a toolshed. Nothing elaborate, because he had passed the point where he wanted to lift heavy logs again, to risk a strained back, a hernia, or the broken ankle that comes from stumbling over a log late in the day.
There would have been no difficulty about slapping together a few simple structures made of two-by-fours and plywood; decently clad in cedar siding they would not be eyesores. But Pickett was proud of his cabin and wanted any additions to conform to it in appearance, so he waited until a simple solution to the problem of out-buildings and the energy to carry out such a solution presented themselves.
Then, after the hydro had been connected, he was visited by Stan Nykoruk, a man who serviced outboard motors and small gasoline engines, to see if he wanted to sell the little generator that he had built the cabin with. But building the cabin had induced a pleasure in being self-sufficient in Pickett, and he decided to keep the generator in case of a major storm that would bring down the power lines, when he would be glad to be able to hook up the generator again. He didn’t actually say this to Nykoruk, because the mechanic might have pointed out that a woodstove and a handful of candles were all he needed to get him through most emergencies, and then Pickett might have had to agree that the generator was in fact not a useful piece of backup equipment but an object of sentiment, roughly the equivalent of the ax his great-grandfather used to build his cabin.
What he actually told Nykoruk was that it was spoken for already, but he gave him a beer so his trip wouldn’t be wasted, and took him on a tour of the place.
When Pickett explained his next project, Nykoruk said, “You should take that old shed of Harlan’s off his hands. He’s been trying to get the boys down at the Sweetwater firehall to burn it down. You know it? On the concession road up above the river. Harlan owns a farm there, derelict. He’s been waiting for a developer to come along and give him his price.”
“Whereabouts, exactly?”
“I’ll take you. Got a minute?”
They climbed into Nykoruk’s pickup and drove through the town to the bridge over the river, then back two miles south to a concession road. There they turned back in the direction of the town and drove to a place where seven or eight abandoned buildings stood on a piece of land that had reverted to scrub. Pickett had seen the farm before when he first explored the area, but had not remembered the buildings. Now he saw that one of them might provide exactly the material he needed. It was not a barn; it was too small for that. On the other hand it was more than a shed. Probably some kind of storage space for farm implements, harrows and seeders and such. Pickett thought if it really was derelict, then the owner might let him take away some of the ancient silver-gray planking, which would merge perfectly with his cabin. He looked at the building from the fence, making a rough guess that all he needed was the planking from two sides.
“Who’s Harlan?” he asked Nykoruk.
“Percy Harlan. He owns the motel and the gas station and nearly everything else around here.”
Then Pickett remembered the name. Charlotte’s boss. He had long ago heard that he was the town’s leading entrepreneur. As well as the gas station, the motel, and the coffee shop, he owned the grocery store, the marina, the two schoolbuses, and the only taxi license in the town. He lived in one of the units in his own motel, but it was widely known that during the busy summer season he rented out his own unit and slept on a cot in the office.
Pickett said, “If I can get it off him, would you give me a hand to take it down?”
Nykoruk looked doubtful, and Pickett offered a sacrifice. “For the generator?”
“Me and the truck for a day,” Nykoruk offered, after some thought.
“That should do it.”
Nykoruk drove him back to his own car, and Pickett went in search of Harlan, first stopping in at the café to talk to Charlotte.
“He was planning to have them burn it down at the next town picnic,” she confirmed. “It’s become a risk, see. I understand even if someone was trespassing and it fell in on them, he could be sued. Lot of those planks are pretty loose. But if the fire department burned it, he wouldn’t have to pay to have it pulled down.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He’s in and out all the time. I’ll call you when he gets back.”
He drove home and waited. The phone rang within the hour.
When he arrived at the coffee shop, Charlotte pointed to a door at the end of the dining room. “He’s in there.”
Harlan’s “office” was a storage room. Pickett kne
w from Charlotte that local people came to Harlan as to a pawnbroker. He would buy anything, if it was cheap enough, and keep it for years, if necessary, until someone needed it. There was at least twice as much furniture as the room needed: two desks, several office chairs, some filing cabinets, as well as three television sets and a lot of electronic equipment. Harlan worked from a desk covered in papers, and behind him, along the wall, a long row of bulldog grips held more paper. He was at least seventy years old, with the appearance of someone who would be a dandy if he could afford it. His hair was thin, though still black, and parted in the center. He wore a shabby suit, with a neat but slightly greasy bow tie. His nails were manicured, and he had the habit of splaying them often in front of him on the desk, examining them for flaws. If Pickett had not known that he was almost certainly a millionaire, he would have admired the brave way in which an obviously impoverished man was keeping up appearances. Harlan pointed to a chair. “Pull that up to the desk, Mel,” he said. “Charlotte says you want me to give you that shed of mine.” He laughed. “That’s what she said.” He shook his head. “I’ve hung on to that shed for a long time, Mel. A long time. I could have sold it a dozen times, but I don’t want that lumber to be misused. It’s rare. That’s what it is. Rare.”
“I heard you were going to burn it down.”
Harlan jumped, as if from a small electrical shock. “Burn it? Burn it? You know what that lumber is worth in the city? Some of those interior decorators would pay ten dollars a foot.”
