Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  “All in all, the Kountry Pantree project will benefit the community in dozens of ways,” Kane said. “Jobs, the economy, the tourist industry, the whole bit, as well as increasing your tax base. Anyone who tells you otherwise is still thinking inside the box—the box that keeps Laingford from becoming the hub of the Kuskawa wheel. Whoever tells you that Kountry Pantree will harm the community is the kind of person who thought computers were just a fad.” Here, the audience laughed warmly and looked at each other to make sure that everybody knew that they, at least, thought computers were just wonderful.

  “What an asshole,” I said. Becker poked me. “Well, he is. See ya.” I started working my way back to my seat at the front.

  The music swelled to a heart warming climax and the final picture on the screen showed a family gathered around a loaded grocery cart, Daddy, Mommy, boy, girl and baby, all holding up items that they’d found at Kountry Pantree, all grinning as if they’d just seen God. Then the screen went blank and the lights came back on. “Any questions?” Kane asked.

  “Yeah, when do you open?” somebody called from the back.

  “In exactly one month,” Kane said. “Saturday, September the first. We’re gonna have a parade, a community barbecue and fun fair, the whole bit. Completely free, of course.”

  “Where can I pick up a job application?” somebody else asked.

  “Hey, Bob, you wanna be a lifeguard, dontcha? Hang out with the babes on the beach?” another voice called out. Laughter.

  “Well, I have some with me,” Kane said, over the general hilarity. “Come see me after the meeting, or you can pick them up at the Gazette office in town here, if you’d rather.” I glanced at Calvin and saw a tiny frown appear on his face. Surely the Gazette was supposed to be an objective organ, so to speak? Just how involved was the publisher of the newspaper, anyway?

  Andrew Jackson stood up to shake David Kane’s hand.

  “Thanks for your report, Mr. Kane,” he said. “I’m sure we’re all eagerly awaiting the opening of your superstore, and all the commercial benefit it will bring to Laingford.” Kane resumed his seat to a round of applause.

  “Now, for the next item . . .” Jackson said, picking up his agenda and reading from it as if, in all the excitement, he’d forgotten what came next. “The League for Socialist—er, Social, I mean, Justice. Miss Kennedy? You have the floor.”

  Susan stood up and turned to face the audience.

  “Thank you, Deputy Mayor,” she said. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry I don’t have any audio-visual accompaniment to our presentation. If I did, I’d be trying to show you another side to the glowing picture that Mr. Kane has entertained us with. I wish I could show you a photo of the main street of Beswick, two years after the Beswick Magic Mart opened its doors. You would see closed and ‘For Sale’ signs on a disturbing number of the old, established community businesses. You would also see, if I could show you a graph, that the unemployment rate in that community went down because a lot of people had to move away, having lost their livelihood. I might also tell you that the new arena in Beswick was made possible by a government grant that was announced three years before the Magic Mart appeared on the scene. However, the League for Social Justice is not here to argue about the so-called benefits of the Kountry Pantree Superstore, but rather to raise one or two questions about procedure.”

  Susan held up a piece of paper. “I have here a photocopy of the last will and testament of Silas Gootch, whom many of you will know was one of the founding fathers of Laingford. He died in 1942. In his will, he bequeathed a parcel of waterfront property, Lot 4, concession 6, to the Town to be held in perpetuity as community parkland. The will also states that if the Town, for any reason, decides it does not want to retain title to the property, it automatically reverts back to the Gootch family, or its descendants. This town holding was sold to the proponents of the Kountry Pantree in February, 2000. What I would like to know, for the public record, is who sold the Gootch property, where the Kountry Pantree is now being built, to Mr. Kane and his friends? And for how much?”

  This caused more than a mild sensation in the audience. Calvin Grigsby was writing so hard his pen was a blur. Andrew Jackson conferred with Richard Wayman, the treasurer, for a moment and then spoke without standing up.

  “A fair question, Ms. Kennedy, although hardly relevant to a Town Council meeting. If you paid attention to the newspaper, you would have seen back in January of last year in the classified section that the Town gave up the deed to that property, er, . . .” he bent his head to Wayman, who whispered to him “. . . for tax purposes and it reverted back to the Gootch descendent in question, an individual whose identity we are not at liberty to say.”

  “Who brokered the Real Estate deal?” Susan said.

  “I did,” Duke Pitblado said, standing up. “Got a problem with that?” More mutterings and excited murmurings from the audience. It was like a trial in a John Grisham book, without the expensive suits. I was loving it.

  Still, Susan seemed nonplussed. If that was the extent of their “secret weapon”, the LSJ was dead in the water. “No, Mr. Pitblado, I don’t have a problem with it as such, though I would be very interested to find out who the vendor was, and how much he or she got,” she said.

  “I’ll just bet you would, lady,” Pitblado said and sat back down to laughter and a smattering of applause.

  “Go to the land registry office in Sikwan,” someone called from the back of the room. “They’ll tell you if you give them enough money.”

  Susan turned and nodded, grim-faced, at the crowd. “I’ll do that,” she said.

  “You have anything further to add, Ms. Kennedy?” Jackson said. He looked like he’d just swallowed a spoonful of something really sweet.

  “Oh, yes, Councillor Jackson,” Susan said. The room hushed again. “This is about the planning permits that the Town approved in March of last year. The permits for the Kountry Pantree development.”

  “Were you present at those planning meetings, Ms. Kennedy?” said Richard Wayman, unexpectedly.

  “No, Mr. Wayman, I wasn’t. I have the minutes here, though,” she said.

  “Those were very complex meetings,” Wayman said, as if he was telling a small child not to bother trying to understand quantum physics. Susan went just a little pink, and her left eyebrow shot up into her hairline. Uh-oh, I thought. I felt George shift uncomfortably beside me.

  “I have here,” Susan said, waving another piece of paper, “a copy of a memo from the MNR—that’s the Ministry of Natural Resources, for those of you who don’t know. In it, the official in question, a Mr. Henry Blakeny, sends a very strongly worded message. He says the development can’t possibly be permitted at that site, as it’s too close to the shoreline, and involves an important stream, thereby endangering a certified sensitive area of fish habitat. Out of the question, he says.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that, Ms. Kennedy,” Wayman said, a little warily.

  “No, of course, you wouldn’t. But your mayor would, as it’s addressed to her, but she isn’t here, is she, because she’s declared a pecuniary interest in this project. Funny, that.”

  “I don’t see that this has got anything to do with an open session of council,” Bernie LeBlanc said.

  “Oh, but it does,” Susan said. “You see, this other piece of paper is a letter addressed to the clerk, Mrs. Berry, from the same MNR office. In it, Mr. Blakeny thanks her for the Town’s donation to the Save the Kuskawa Pike Fund and refers to a phone call received from our local MPP, Kenneth Rivers, in support of the development proposal. In this letter, Mr. Blakeny waives all MNR rules and restrictions previously cited. Now, Ken Rivers is the Mayor’s brother, isn’t he?”

  “Where did you get those?” Frances Berry roared, erupting up out of her seat.

  “Mrs. Berry, do you mean to deny that you sent a cheque from the Town, using our taxpayers’ money, to the Kuskawa Save the Pike Fund, in order to influence the decision of t
he Provincial environment authority regarding the Kountry Pantree development?”

  “It wasn’t taxpayer’s money, it was a collection taken up in council!” Mrs. Berry shrieked.

  “For twenty-five thousand dollars? That’s a hefty sum on a councillor’s salary, isn’t it?”

  “You bitch! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Mrs. Berry said and launched herself at Susan, all ten crimson nails extended. I jumped up to help, not wanting to see my dear aunt get shredded like the mayor’s papers downstairs, and several other people joined in. I felt a “poof” as the flash on Calvin Grigsby’s camera went off, saw Becker pushing his way down the aisle, and then the Town Hall fire alarm started with a howl that would break your eardrums. The meeting, you might say, was effectively adjourned.

  Twenty-One

  Extra! Extra! Visit our extra-ordinary newsstand in the Kountry Pantree Food Court, for national and international magazines, newspapers and books—the KP newsstand, where you can pick up all the news that’s fit to print!

  —An advertisement in the Laingford Gazette

  Nice picture of you in the paper, Polly,” Nick said, plunking a pint of Kuskawa Cream down in front of me. It was Wednesday afternoon, the day after the fiasco at Town Hall. I had just bought the Gazette. I had endured a number of similar comments from everybody who even slightly knew me since the moment I’d left my truck.

  “Hey, Polly. Nice picture!” “Hey, remind me never to piss you off, Polly!” “Look, it’s the Polly-nator!” I had marched straight into the Gazette office to pick up a copy and marshal my defences.

  So far, I’d only looked at the picture and the headline, “Brawl at Town Hall”—a big, 52-point screamer at the top of the page. You could hardly blame Calvin. Usually, this time of year, the only hard news the paper saw was the occasional ugly Sea-Doo accident (“Tragedy on Lake Kimowan”) or a traffic story (“Highway Clogged at Weekend”). The Kountry Pantree kerfuffle was a gift, and I wasn’t surprised that the Gazette had made a meal of it. There was a big front page story and a timeline thing in a boxed side-bar, with a flag saying “for background, see page 17.” I was interested, though, to see how much of the policy stuff the League for Social Justice had disclosed would make the paper, given that the publisher, Hans Whiteside, might be one of the KP silent partners. The picture was a doozy.

  Calvin had captured Frances Berry’s attack on Susan at the very moment before impact. I guess I had seen it coming, because there I was, on the other side of Susan, in what I can only describe as a battle ready pose, crouching, fists raised, with a snarl on my face worthy of Skinny Minnie Miller, my childhood Roller Derby hero. Yikes.

  Susan looked somehow dignified, standing erect with her famous left eyebrow well above resting position, not a hair out of place, holding aloft a piece of paper. To her right, flying out of the frame like a banshee, was Frances Berry. She was actually airborne, her fingernails curled in readiness, her arms in Catfight Position #1. Her face was truly terrible—quite nutso, really, and I’m glad that I hadn’t been looking into her eyes at the time, because I would probably have wet my pants. It was a great picture. I resolved to ask Calvin for a blow-up of it for the Weird Kuskawa Art Show.

  I was supposed to be meeting Yolanda and Dimmy at the Slug and Lettuce for lunch, after which we were planning to scrub the storefront area from top to bottom, in preparation for Saturday’s show. I was early, for once, which gave me some time for a little quiet reading.

  I reached for my Kuskawa Cream and took a swig, but found I could hardly swallow it. My stomach did a triple back flip, and I set the glass down again. Obviously, the tension in my life was taking its toll. Normally, I didn’t have an anti-beer bone in my body. I have had beer for breakfast, often. I picked the glass up and took it to the bar.

  “Nick, honey,” I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t drink this.”

  “What’s the matter? Is it flat? I just started a new keg.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “The glass dirty or something?” He seemed really upset.

  “No, no. I just don’t seem to feel like beer today. You know what I’d really like?”

  “What?”

  “A—milk. A Kahlua and milk.”

  “A brown cow? At noon?” He stared hard at me. I lifted an eyebrow. “One brown cow, coming up,” he said.

  I took my drink back to the booth by the window and gave my attention to Calvin’s coverage of the council meeting. He had obviously done his homework before going to press. There were quotes from the 1942 will of Silas Gootch and from the tiny newspaper announcement of the Town’s giving up the deed to the property. (I guess that was some legal requirement, but nobody at the paper had picked up on it. Nobody actually reads the classifieds, do they?) Cal had got copies of the leaked MNR memos from Susan, as well as some pretty juicy quotes, and as far as I could see, he hadn’t been muzzled by his publisher. Susan was quoted as saying that, based on the evidence, the LSJ had submitted an official request to the Ontario Municipal Board, asking for a stop work order to be placed on the development project, and a request for a full OMB inquiry. However, Calvin’s article did give equal billing to David Kane’s presentation, and to all the happy prognostications the Kountry Pantree Project people had made in terms of economic growth. Basically, he just reported the news, which was, I suppose, his job.

  The editorial, however, written by Hans Whiteside himself, came down firmly on the side of the developers.

  ON A LEARNING CURVE

  Recent developments in the saga of the Kountry Pantree project may make readers of this newspaper wonder about the honesty of our municipal government. Allegations have been made that any responsible newspaper should follow up, and we will do so. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that this town is on a learning curve, economically speaking. If we are to remain competitive in a modern market, that is to say, in the District of Kuskawa, we must be open to progress. It is the opinion of this newspaper that a development of the magnitude of the Kountry Pantree project can mean nothing but good for this community, both in terms of jobs and tourism.

  While it is regrettable that the Town decided, many months ago, to give up its rights to a piece of land that an honoured citizen had bequeathed to it, it is understandable. Tax revenues are down, and maintaining our vibrant community is costly. However, the decisions of a private citizen (the descendant of the original benefactor) are not public business. Supporting a forward-visioning development is.

  In terms of fish habitat, that matter is a provincial one, and we all know that Lake Kimowan remains a healthy, clean body of water, teeming with fresh water fish of all kinds. (Note the success of last year’s Pike Tournament, where a 25 lb. pike was caught right off the Town docks!) The allegations raised by one interest group should not distract us from the benefits offered by the generosity of the Kountry Pantree proponents. It is to be hoped that the accusations made in this matter do not hinder the upcoming opening of the Kountry Pantree, and the gala parade and community barbecue prepared for the enjoyment of every citizen.

  —Hans Whiteside

  I took a big gulp of my brown cow and felt the cold milk and coffee liqueur slide soothingly down my throat. Aaaaah! Why had I never recognized the qualities of this particular tipple? I resolved to buy a bottle of Kahlua and a litre of homogenized on my way home.

  “Polly, what the hell are you drinking?”

  “Hi, Yolanda. It’s Moo juice. Kahlua and milk, in honour of my pact with the devil—that is to say, David Kane, proponent of the development that will either destroy this town, one small business at a time, or turn us all into millionaires.”

  “Yeah, I read it,” Yolanda said, dropping her massive purse on the floor and sliding into the booth. “Nice picture, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, is David Kane still talking to you? Seeing as you’re like, associated with the Socialists now?”

  “Social Justice, Yolanda, not Socialists. And y
es, he is. We chatted on the phone this morning, and everything’s fine. I told him about my aunt and everything, and he just thinks it’s hilarious, which it isn’t, but I still have the job. They don’t have any choice, really. They want the mascot in three day’s time, for the Bath Tub Bash.”

  “Good. Is it done yet?”

  “Almost. I have Eddie coming up to my place tomorrow to try it on. He’s about the size of the average teenage grocery clerk, which will be the poor kid who has to wear the thing in the store.”

  “Who’s going to wear it for the Bath Tub Bash?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I don’t envy them.”

  “Hey, kids have a higher tolerance for pain than we do, you know. So, really, what’s with the milk drink? You got an ulcer or something?”

  “No. Just off beer, I guess. Oh, good, here’s Dimmy.”

  Dimmy had brought a floor plan she’d made of the show space, and we spent a pleasant hour gorfing down a super-size plate of the Slug and Lettuce’s excellent nachos and arguing about where our pieces would go. After lunch, we moved over to the storefront and started cleaning. It was Dimmy who found the old newspaper, stuck in the back of the display cabinet we’d decided to use as a ticket counter.

  “Hey, look, you guys, the Laingford Gazette, 1942. In perfect condition.” She pulled it out gently, but it wasn’t brittle at all—just a little yellowed. Well, it was only sixty years old, but still. We flipped a coin to see who would get to take it home and read it first. I won and slipped it carefully inside my bag. I love old stuff, especially old newspapers. Reading them makes me feel sort of sneaky, as if I’m looking into lives I’m not supposed to see.

  Later, back at the cabin, I mixed up another brown cow, lit a joint, and settled down to look into the past. The first thing I came across, on the second page, was the obituary of Silas Gootch.