by Eric Wright
Pickett said, “Mrs. Dakin, I’m not breaking any police confidences. I’m here because of something Eliza Pollock said. Marlow used to hang around the rehearsals, she said, until you dropped out. It’s a natural conclusion that it was you he was interested in—he didn’t make a pass at Eliza—and she said she thought she remembered you chatting to him a couple of times. So I thought you might be able to help me.”
She came down to earth. “You mean you didn’t know about my affair?”
“I mean that I heard about you from Eliza, who might have been gossiping from her own conclusions.” Pickett was sweating slightly. He had not discussed the problem with Wilkie, but the sergeant would be very pissed off if he thought Pickett was giving the impression that he was in Wilkie’s confidence. He would assume that Pickett knew enough to put aside anything Wilkie had told him about the people he had interviewed. Now that he was working for Mrs. Siggurdson he was entitled to know nothing.
Pickett believed he might have got away with this one. Thank God for Eliza.
Pat Dakin snorted. “And here I am giving you a full account, anyway. So now you know. What did you want?”
“Gossip. I want to know about Marlow’s life. Here and outside Larch River. I’m looking for enemies, and I can’t find them.”
“All I know is that he managed the bakery.”
If you believed he managed the bakery, then you are more gullible than Linda McCourt, Pickett thought. “Weren’t you curious about him? He didn’t grow up around here. Did he ever talk about where he came from, his plans or dreams? Any schemes he had?”
“He was restless. And ambitious. I’ll tell you something rather silly. I think he wanted me because I wasn’t part of his world. He admired my class, he said.” She smoothed her skirt.
“That makes sense,” Pickett said, and waited.
“But I can’t think of a single thing he said which would suggest he had a world outside Larch River. He went into Toronto occasionally, but he had no friends there.”
“He didn’t want to move there?”
“I don’t think he could move far away from the bakery.”
Now they were getting nowhere. Pickett racked his brain for last questions. “Did he like his sister? Did they get on?”
“What a strange question. I think so. She doted on him.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“But when I was around them both, if I went into the bakery, for example, he seemed embarrassed, as if he was ashamed of her. Perhaps that was my fault.” She thought about it. “Perhaps he was ashamed of me?”
“Did you give him any money.”
“He wasn’t a gigolo, if that’s what you mean. I did lend him a little from time to time. Between paydays.”
“Did he owe you when he died?”
“A few dollars. He was going to pay me back that weekend.”
“Did you ever get together except in your cabin?”
“Not in the way you mean, no. One afternoon we went for a ride in my boat. Timmy tried to teach me how to fish. We only went out for an hour because I was afraid of being seen. He didn’t care much, but he didn’t have to. Now there’s something I’ve just remembered. When we didn’t catch anything I made fun of him, said he didn’t know anything about fishing, and he got angry and said he was a professional. So I said why didn’t he try for a job with the Black River Lodge, because he was always saying how he preferred to be outside. He said he’d taken a look at the lodge but it wasn’t his kind of place. A two-bit operation, he said.”
Pickett said, “One last question …”
“Were we ever caught? By my husband? No. He knows nothing about all this.”
“Nothing?”
She colored slightly. “He knows I had a lover. I told him.”
“When?”
“On Saturday morning, when I told him I was leaving him.”
When Marlow was already dead.
Pickett rented a fishing boat from the marina, got some directions, and went for a ride upstream.
The name of the Black River Lodge was nailed to an upright at the end of the dock on the northern end of Duck Lake. The lodge itself lay back from the lake, almost obscured by trees. Three boats were tied to the T-shaped dock: a launch with two sixty-horse motors, another, smaller boat with one fifty-horse motor, and an aluminum fishing boat with a twenty-five. Pickett stepped onto the dock and tied his boat to a ring. When he turned round, the owner was already walking down the dock, his hand extended in greeting. Pickett concluded that business was probably slow, the season having really finished by Labor Day.
“How are you today, chief?” the man said. “I’m Earl Ramsey.” He looked at the boat Pickett had hired. “Did the marina send you up? You looking for a place to stay? I’m kinda booked up until the end of the week, but when did you want to come?”
Pickett jumped in quickly. “I came by to ask you about a man named Siggy Siggurdson.”
Ramsey switched off the greeting. “I hear he’s in jail for killing his buddy,” he said. “What do you want from me? I used him a few times for fishermen. Sometimes I get a little bit of a rush on. Mostly me and the boy can handle all the business, but sometimes I’d ask Siggy to help out. He was generally free.”
“Would you give him a character reference?”
“Who are you, mister?”
Pickett explained.
“I know about you. You’re the retired cop who’s building a cabin. How come you’re mixed up with people like Siggy?”
“I’m not mixed up with him. I think he needs someone on his side, that’s all.”
“That’ll be a change for him. Well, I can testify that Siggy did his work well, and never stole anything from here. How’s that? Privately I can tell you that Siggy never stole anything because I never let him out of my sight when he came ashore, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it? I didn’t trust him an inch, but he knew where the fish were, if there were any. Fact is, don’t tell my American guests, but this whole area is pretty well fished out.
“I’m not surprised that Siggy’s accused of killing Marlow, though I would have been less surprised if it had been the other way round, Siggy not being possessed of much in the way of balls for stuff like that. I don’t think of him being connected with guns.”
“Did you think of Marlow that way?”
“I’ll tell you what I thought about him. Siggy brought him up one time when my boy was in Toronto, because I had a couple of Americans who wanted to come back in the spring and hunt bears. Usually I’d recommend them to talk to Lucas Fast, about ten kilometers from here, who’s about the best bear-hunting guide in the county, but Lucas wasn’t available so Siggy suggested Marlow. He seemed like a blowhard to me so I asked him if he’d ever taken people hunting before. He mentioned this camp then, a place called Bailey’s on the Lake of the Woods. I happen to know Bailey, he runs a pretty classy fishing and hunting lodge, so I called him and he remembered Marlow. He’d worked for him a long time before, and Bailey remembered that he’d fired him because he beat up an Indian kid from the reservation. Bailey kicked him off the camp before a war started. And he said, as far as he remembered, Marlow had never guided hunters, just fishermen.”
“So you never used him?”
“That’s right.”
CHAPTER 19
Now Pickett had a thread to pull, but before he looked any further, he had to check something else. He drove back to leave Willis at the cabin, and found Wilkie sitting in his car with Copps on the road outside. “Just stopped to see if you were home,” the OPP man said. “I hear you’ve been talking to Mrs. Dakin.”
When Pickett said nothing, he continued. “That’s allowed, I guess. She says you told her I didn’t send you. What else have you been doing today? One of my boys saw you on the river.”“Looking for driftwood, bodies, stuff like that.”
“Uh-huh. Well, my other message should interest you. Siggy just pleaded guilty. Freely. A full and frank confession. We didn’t put a
ny pressure on him. Come and see him yourself. Not a mark on him.”
“In the presence of his lawyer, I would imagine.”
“Oh, yeah.” Then, in a different tone, “I don’t like his lawyer, either, Mel, but I just came up here to tell you that you’re wasting your time. It’s all over. We know what happened.”
“Does Mrs. Siggurdson agree?”
Wilkie looked irritated. “What’s she got to do with it?”
“She’s my client.”
“You’ll be making an asshole of yourself, you know that?”
“Somebody will.” Pickett returned to his car.
“Mel,” Wilkie called sharply. “For your own sake, leave it alone.”
“That’d be unethical, Abraham. What’ll I do about my client?”
Wilkie and Copps watched him turn into the gate to his cabin. Wilkie said, “I’ve been fair, don’t you think? I’ve tried. I hate to see him make a goddamn fool of himself, running around like this.”
“Why? Let him fuck up. Be interesting to see if he comes up with anyone.”
“Apart from Siggy, you mean?”
Copps nodded, grinning. “Won’t be easy, will it?”
When the two OPP men had gone, Pickett drove into town to the hardware store, where Craig Thompson, Eliza’s future Tony Lumpkin, served behind the counter. So far four fifty-dollar bills had surfaced, leading Pickett to wonder how common the denomination was in Larch River. He rarely handled one himself, and he remembered reading a story that the Bank of Canada itself was frustrated in its attempts to get the citizenry to use more fifties. The chief obstacle was that the new banking machines used the twenty as their basic unit, and something like 40 percent of the cash in circulation passed through the machines. As a result, Canada’s was among the most inefficient currencies in the world, right down there with those of Turkey, Greece, and Ireland.
At the hardware store, Pickett held up three twenties. “I need a fifty-dollar bill,” he said. “Sending it to someone. A christening gift. Looks nicer in one bill.”
“If I have one.” He lifted the cash register tray out and peered underneath. “Sorry, Mr. Pickett. I guess we haven’t taken any in today.”
“Not one? Business slow?”
“We’ve had a pretty good day.” He grinned and dropped into the role of a country rube. “Folks around here don’t trust the orange money. No, sir. We figure you could’ve made it yourself. My granddaddy got a counterfeit bill once and we ain’t never forgot it. Varnished it, he did, and nailed it to the wall.”
“You don’t get many fifties, then?”
The boy resumed his normal persona. “One a week, maybe two. Try the service station. He gets the tourists, the Americans. City folks,” he added with a brief last flash of the yokel.
But Pickett had learned what he wanted to know. He crossed the street to the bank, asking the teller if he could see the manager. She opened the gate and Pickett walked through to where Villiers was sitting behind his door, polishing his shoes with a duster.
“Busy?”
“Birdshit,” Villiers said. “I’ve got a Rotary meeting in Sweetwater tonight straight from the office and a bird just shit on me. What can I do for you, Mel?”
“I was thinking about the money Siggy found on Marlow. Four fifties so far. That sound a little strange to you?”
Villiers spat on one of his toecaps and began a final shine. “You want me to speculate?”
“I thought you already might have.”
“Let’s see. There’s a chance that Betty saved out all the fifties and gave them to Timmy. She doted on him, did you know that?”
“So you all say. And Timmy saved them up in his piggy bank?”
“That’s less likely, I would think.”
“How many would she take in?”
“Maybe one or two a week. From the wholesale customers mainly—the coffee shop, for instance. But if she gave them to Timmy, why wouldn’t he spend them, like you suggest? He wasn’t the saving kind. Didn’t have piss-all in his account here. That’s confidential, you understand.”
“Maybe he stole them?”
“That does seem the most likely, doesn’t it? She wouldn’t turn him in to Caxton. Not for a fifty.”
“Maybe she saved out all the fifties for a couple of weeks and he took them.”
“Could be.”
“Why? Why would she do that?”
“It’s called skimming, Mel. Lot of small businesses do it. Big ones, too, but they call them directors’ fees and executive bonuses. But the little guy does it to get even with the tax man, and as long as they keep to a pattern it’s very hard to catch, especially in a one-person business, a ma-and-pa grocery store, or a little family bakery. Once you have employees, though, it gets harder because to make sure the employees aren’t doing a little skimming of their own you have to put in safeguards, and those safeguards work against the owner, too. But you know all this. What it amounts to is that Betty could have set the fifties aside to have some spending money that the tax man doesn’t know about, and little Timmy Marlow came across them, under the floorboards, and helped himself.”
“That what happened, you think?” Pickett was just beginning to understand Villiers’s style. An explanation like this was reasonable, but he might have others.
Villiers said, “All right, we’ve got there now. That door closed? No, since we’ve got there at last, I’ll tell you what I’ve just found out. I’ve been sitting here wondering what I should do about it. Maybe you can help me.
“After we talked about that first fifty, I did a little thinking about it, then a little back checking. I looked at Betty Cullen’s deposits this year—you say a word about this, I’ll wind up outside Union Station with a tin cup—”
“I’m just curious. Like you. When did you do this checking?”
“About an hour ago. I was just about to call someone about it, you or the OPP.”
(Thinking about it later, Pickett realized that Villiers had almost certainly been sitting for a couple of days with what he had found out, looking for someone to relieve him of it, when Pickett walked in and raised the subject.)
Villiers laced up a shoe and walked to the door to make sure no one was listening. “I’ll tell you what I think. She hasn’t held anything back. The same frequency of fifties as ever, just what you would expect. Business a little up on last year.”
“So where did Marlow get the money?”
“Oh, from the bakery, all right. See, just before he was killed, the bakery’s weekend deposit went missing. Should’ve been around two thousand, but it never came in. So I looked at the week before. Same thing. Altogether about four thousand missing.”
“Marlow took it?”
“Who else? Betty didn’t report a robbery, did she?”
“You tell Caxton this?”
“I just found it out, Mel. No, I didn’t. Anyway, Betty knows. Let her tell Caxton. Or not. I reckon Timmy robbed his sister, though, and then got robbed himself.” He looked down at his polished shoes, then inspected the rest of himself for lint. “Now I need a joke. I’m toastmaster tonight. Know any?”
“I heard a good one in England last year, or was it the year before? If I think of it, I’ll call you. But before I go, I can’t do anything with this information. Dumping it on me doesn’t help you. Phone the bank’s lawyers; find out what your duties and responsibilities are.”
“I did. They said I should respond to all police inquiries.”
“So. You haven’t had any.”
“But this may be important. Don’t you think? You were a cop.”
“Screw you, Ernie Villiers. All right. I’ll see what’s best. But if I do nothing, I don’t want you shooting your mouth off to the OPP that you thought I had some official status around here, so you told me, thinking that was your duty done.”
“I wouldn’t land you in it, Mel.”
“I think you already have.”
It took Pickett an hour of brooding but eventually
he found an approach and drove over to Caxton’s office. He found the chief asleep on a couch. Caxton dragged himself upright without an apology and waited for Pickett to speak.
“I’ve been thinking,” Pickett said. “From what you told me about seeing Marlow lift some cash from the till, and with Marlow maybe having to pay someone off, even Siggurdson, could there be any more money around? What I mean is, could Marlow have got hold of a lot more money from Betty’s business without her knowing? Has she checked lately?”
“Wherever he got the money, I’ve been pretty sure from the start that Marlow was meeting someone that night. Remember?”
“Right, Lyman, so you have. Could this be the money that was supposed to change hands?”
“Better ask her yourself,” Caxton said. “She won’t talk to me.” He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.
To his astonishment, when he asked Betty Cullen, she responded immediately, first with violent anger, then with a confession. Pickett drove into Sweetwater immediately. In Wilkie’s office, he said, “She really tore into me. Said that I knew goddamn well, or you did, that they’d found the money, and they—you, that is—were trying to trick her. Said the money you’d found was what she gave to Timmy to buy a new car with. He could get it much cheaper for cash, she said, and if she didn’t report the income she’d save some on taxes. So for once she’d done something illegal and right away she’d got caught.” He paused. “I was trying to get a message through to her, that if Marlow had stolen a lot from her, she shouldn’t try and cover it up. It might help the police to know. I’m glad that’s not true, but what is true is something you should know. There is a lot of money involved.”
“How much?”
“Four thousand, she says.”
“It hasn’t turned up. But we’ll find it somewhere in Siggy’s yard.”
“You still think Siggy did it?”
It took some time for Wilkie’s answer to reach his lips. “Brendan has an idea. Let’s get him in here.” He avoided Pickett’s eye while they waited. When Copps appeared, Wilkie explained quickly the point the conversation had reached.
