Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle

by H. Mel Malton

  “Voting record?” I said.

  “Yes. The record of who voted yes or no to the Kountry Pantree development in the first place, back in May. It was a secret ballot.”

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “Well, if there’s an issue which the council has to vote on, but they don’t want their votes on the public record, they have a secret ballot. The clerk oversees it, so it’s all legal, but it lets the councillors vote on a motion without letting the people attending the meeting know who voted for what.”

  “It sounds South American,” I said.

  “Nope. Pure North,” Brent said. “So the motion on the table last May 12 was whether or not to approve the initial Kountry Pantree proposal for the Superstore. Of course, it was really early on, before the Ministry of Natural Resources got involved, and not a lot of people knew about it. We’d had planning meetings and so on, and this was like the first big go-ahead. There were plenty of people present who knew enough about it to care who supported it.”

  “Like who?” I said.

  “Like David Kane, for example. And Duke Pitblado. Archie Watson was there, as well. He’d heard about it, I guess, through his brother Vic. He was a real pain at that meeting, shouting and saying the store would ruin him. The mayor threatened to have him removed a couple of times.”

  “So it was a secret ballot, but you knew who voted for what?” I said.

  “Well, nobody was supposed to know, of course. But the idea was that Vic Watson would vote against it and everybody else would vote for it. So it wouldn’t matter. Four to one, right, because the mayor only votes if there’s a tie and there are five councillors.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The vote came out officially, when Mrs. Berry read the ballots aloud, with two in favour of the development, two against and one abstention. So the mayor had to publicly vote in favour of it, which decided the motion. She wanted to remain impartial. She was livid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry. You see, it was all set up so that there would only be one vote against. Everybody would know that the against vote was Watson’s, and it wouldn’t make any difference, except in principle.”

  “So what’s the big deal? Two of the councillors, apart from Watson, thought the development wasn’t a good idea. So what?”

  “Well, it wasn’t just two of the councillors. It was three of them. I saw the ballots afterwards. The council went into private session after the vote, and there was so much shouting the paint practically peeled off the walls. The ballot box was sitting right there and everybody had gone, so I just, you know, took a look at them.”

  “And what? It wasn’t a tie?”

  “There was only one vote in favour of the development, three against, and one person wrote ‘I abstain’. Even with the mayor’s vote it would have been defeated. Mrs. Berry deliberately lied in open council. I was flabbergasted.”

  “Holy cow.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s what I thought,” Brent said. He had become agitated while telling his story. His cheeks were flushed and his dark hair was all over the place, from his having run a frantic hand through it. He was really a very theatrical raconteur.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “The only thing I could do,” Brent said. “I gathered up those ballots and took them home with me. I had to think.”

  “Do you still have them?” I said.

  “Of course I do,” he said. “And when they told me I was being let go yesterday, I could tell that they knew I had them, because Mrs. Berry was flexing her nails and looking bullets at me.”

  “What are you planning to do with them?”

  “Well, I suppose council would deny that they were genuine, if it came to an inquiry, but you never know. Handwriting experts, and all that. But for me, that was reason enough to be comfortable about handing over those other documents about the MNR to Ms. Kennedy. I was working for a bunch of crooks, and I wanted out.”

  “What I want to know is who voted for what, and how come nobody complained at the meeting when the votes were read out wrong?” Rico said.

  “Well, let’s say that the three of us were going to do a secret ballot,” Brent said. “I vote no, and you two vote yes, okay?”

  “Okay,” Rico said.

  “So, I personally know who voted no, but neither of you two do. You’d suspect each other, right? Or me.”

  “Right,” I said. This was too much like math, but I was with him so far.

  “Okay, so now say there are five of us,” Brent said. “We all know that one of us is definitely going to vote no, right?”

  “Right. Vic Watson. He’ll vote no.”

  “And the rest of us are planning to vote yes, okay?”

  “Okay.” Rico grabbed a sheet of paper, ripped it quickly into five pieces, and put one in front of me, one for Brent, one for himself, one for Oscar and one for the teapot.

  “Great,” Brent said. “The Teapot is Vic. So, what we’re expecting is four Yeses to one No. Got that?” We nodded.

  “Now, when it gets down to the moment of voting, three of us have a crisis of conscience. We know we’ve been told to vote yes, but two of us decide to vote no instead, and one of us decides to abstain, so we do it. All right?” Brent marked a big “N” on Vic the Teapot’s ballot, a “N” on Oscar’s, an “A” on Rico’s, a “Y” on his own and an “N” on mine.

  “Hooray for the good guys. Yes, I’m with you,” I said.

  “I abstain,” Rico said, loftily.

  “Now, when Mrs. Berry reads them out loud, she’s honest until the last one,” Brent said and flipped all the ballots over. He took a red marker and marked a big “N” on the Vic the Teapot’s ballot (which had an “N” on the other side), an “N” on Oscar’s (which also had an “N” on the other side), an “A” on Rico’s (which truly had an “A” on the other side), a “Y” on his own ballot (which had a real “Y” on the other side), and then after gasping theatrically and looking right and left like a vaudeville villain, writing a “Y” on mine (which was really marked “N” on the other side).

  “She was on the ball,” Rico said. “She knew, when she got to that last ballot, that it was a deciding vote.”

  “You got it,” Brent said. “So, when the votes are counted aloud, you, as a councillor, hear that there are two no votes. Vic Watson’s, which was expected, and your own. You hear there’s an abstention and it’s either your own or someone else’s, so you feel better, knowing someone else had a change of heart.”

  “Oh, I see,” Rico said. “Because it was secret, you wouldn’t know that three people had changed their minds. You’d think it was just you and one other person.”

  “Exactly! So it wasn’t until they went back into closed session, after the public meeting was over, that they realized that the real, true vote defeated the Kountry Pantree motion. It was only then that they knew Mrs. Berry had lied, when she admitted it, and by then it was too late. They couldn’t go back on it, or they’d bring the whole integrity of council under scrutiny. There would be a scandal.”

  “So who voted no and who abstained?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s the funny part. Although Mrs. Berry and the mayor didn’t think it was very funny,” Brent said. “After I grabbed the ballots, I listened on the other side of the door where they were meeting.”

  “I’ve done that,” I said.

  “All the councillors, with the exception of Vic Watson, swore black and blue they had voted yes. Every one of them. And all but one of them was lying. But there was no way to tell who was telling the truth. It was great! That was when Mrs. Berry screeched that she’d get the ballots and do a handwriting test. There was a lot of yelling. I ran for the exit.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “And now, I guess, they’re all implicated in an unbelievable piece of municipal fraud,” Rico said.

  “Which is why they were so eager to keep the lid on it on Tuesday night,” I said, and told them about the closed session I’d
overheard. Brent thought it was hilarious, especially the part about demoting him to the bylaw department.

  “I would have gone for that in a big way,” he said, turning to Rico. “A uniform, Rico. My very own uniform!”

  “It’s time I was on my way,” I said. “You want me to pass this along to Susan, I guess, Brent?”

  “If you would. Tell her I’ve still got the ballots, if she wants them. I’ll testify, too, if there’s ever an inquest.”

  “I’ll let her know. Thanks for the tea, Rico.”

  “My pleasure, dear. I’ll see you to the door.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, Rico touched my arm. “Polly,” he said, “about the tea table . . .”

  “Rico, if it’s gone tomorrow I won’t say a word about it,” I said. “Sometimes, if it’s a question of ethics, we just have to abstain from voting.”

  Twenty-Six

  There’s nothing like fresh baked goodies for brightening up your day! Right now, at the Kountry Pantree bakery, our master bakers are working to bring you that old-fashioned flavour of home baked bread, cakes, pastries and cookies. Drop in and sample a free cookie, hot from the oven—all day, every day, we’re cookin’ at Kountry Pantree!

  —An ad, spoken with up-tempo fiddle music in the background, on MEGA FM radio

  There are times when you realize, after wasting a great deal of energy fretting, that what you expected would be awful turns out to be wonderful. This never happens when you’re in the middle of the fretting part.

  Dinner at George and Susan’s was lovely. I was expecting Susan to be mad that I went to Rico’s to talk to Brent in her stead. She wasn’t. She was grateful and told me so. I was expecting to be late for dinner and have people pissed off at me. I wasn’t. I was right on time. I was expecting to hate the fish dish that George had made because I was in that kind of mood, and he said he’d never tried making it before. I didn’t. It was delicious. I spent the whole meal being delighted by how pleasant everything was, as if I were wrapped in a cocoon of goodwill, but expecting that at any moment it would all be ripped away, and I’d have my worst suspicions confirmed.

  “Am I cynical?” I asked George, as we were doing the dishes together afterwards. Susan and Eddie were in the living room playing boogie-woogie duets on the piano.

  “Cynical? You mean in the philosophical sense?”

  “What’s the philosophical sense?”

  “Let me see. A cynic is an ancient Greek philosopher who has contempt for pleasure, and does not believe in human sincerity and goodness,” George said.

  “Do you carry a dictionary around in your head, George?”

  “No. But I have studied the philosophers a little. Why do you ask this?”

  I tried to explain my feeling that everything was sort of dusty and worn out and that it felt like just about everybody was lying all the time, including me.

  “I just seem to be expecting the worst these days, and when it doesn’t happen, it surprises the hell out of me,” I said.

  “You don’t sound cynical, Polly. You sound depressed. Have you been eating and sleeping properly?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “I mean, you know. I’ve been feeding myself. Well, when I remember. And I might go to bed late, but at least I’m up bright and early and ready to rock.”

  “And you are not drinking too much or smoking too much of that plant you smoke?”

  “No more than usual,” I said, beginning to feel uncomfortable. Jeez. It was just an idle question.

  “Hmmph. I do not think you are a cynic,” he said. “I think you are working too hard, and you are worried about your future. That is all. It will pass.” He passed me a large platter that wouldn’t fit in the draining board.

  “Thank you, Doctor Hoito,” I said, taking it with a bow.

  “Well, you did ask,” George said.

  Earlier, I’d called Serena Elliot and arranged to meet up with her the next afternoon. Becker hadn’t called her, she said, but she was clearly eager to discuss her theories about who might have bumped off Vic Watson. I would have to be very careful with her, I decided. It would be easy to slip into that gossipmode and let her know more than she needed to. She invited me to join her for a drink at the Mooseview lounge after lunch.

  Susan’s trip to Toronto had been fruitful, but not as exciting as Eddie had made out. She hadn’t been able to meet face-to-face with Ken Rivers, which wasn’t all that surprising. His sister, our mayor, had probably called to warn him. However, she had managed to get a personal interview with a fairly senior official at the Municipal Board and had passed along photocopies of the MNR memos and a verbal synopsis of the Tuesday night council meeting. The official had been very interested, she said.

  “I told him all we really wanted at the moment was a stop work order on the project so that there was a chance for a full inquiry,” she said.

  “If they put a stop work order in place, the Kountry Pantree doesn’t open, right?” I said.

  “Not any time soon,” Susan said.

  “Isn’t it more likely that they’ll just launch an investigation of council procedure and maybe levy a few fines?”

  “Of course, that’s the most likely scenario,” she said, “but you have to aim high with these people, or the whole thing will sink. Ideally, they’d do an investigation, decide the whole thing was rotten from top to bottom, ban the whole scheme and make them take the building down and replace every rock and every blade of grass.”

  “And dismantle the GST while they’re at it?” I said.

  “Yep, and resurrect David Lewis and Tommy Douglas.”

  “Hee, hee. And set up universal day care.” We started dancing around. George joined in.

  “And abolish milk quotas,” he said.

  “And abolish NAFTA,” Susan said.

  “And bring back music programs in the schools,” Eddie piped in.

  “And stop taxing books!”

  “And support the arts!”

  “And stop privatizing utilities! Save our health care! Save our trees! Save the children . . .”

  We stopped suddenly and looked at each other. We’d been shouting.

  “But at least they could investigate and issue a reprimand to council,” Susan said quietly.

  “Come on, Eddie,” I said. “You have a cow costume to try on.” We headed on up to the cabin.

  I had finished the head of Kountry Kow and most of the body as well, though I wanted to make sure it was roomy enough to adjust for whoever was wearing, or “animating” it. Mascot costumes are rarely animated by one person exclusively. This is because it’s exhausting work, and you usually can’t last more than an hour or two inside a costume before you’re drenched in sweat and desperate for some fresh air. If the mascot is booked to appear at an all-day function, as they often are, the organizers have to schedule a few animators, working in shifts. Groups and organizations who commission people like me to make mascots, usually need to be warned about this the first time after taking possession of their giant dragon, or bird, or whatever. Some ignore the advice, but they usually only do that once.

  “Oh, Kenny says he’d love to be our Bizzy Bee, and he’s very strong, you know,” they’ll say. And Kenny will suit up and wade into the crowd, and two hours later they’ll be calling 911 because Bizzy Bee has collapsed on top of a three-year-old who was hugging his fuzzy belly just before he passed out.

  To give yourself some idea of what it’s like to be a mascot, (lock your door first), get the heaviest blanket you can find and wrap it around yourself from head to toe. Put a heavy pair of gloves on your hands and socks over your shoes. Now get a sweater and a wicker wastebasket, pull the sweater over the basket and put the whole thing on your head, adjusting it so that you can see out the neck part. Now take some time moving around your home. Dance a little jig or two. If you have small children (who will, by now, have decided that you’ve gone right round the twist), encourage them to attack you, hug you and try to climb up your arms and legs. After onl
y a few minutes, you will have had enough, I guarantee it. If you do try this, drop me a line. I’d love to hear how it went.

  I’d suggested that Eddie might want to change into shorts and a T-shirt for the fitting, so he wouldn’t get too hot. Experienced mascot animators often wear nothing but a bathing suit under their rigs.

  First, there was the cow body, which was made of black and white synthetic fun fur. The cow’s belly was padded extensively so that it stood out a good twelve inches from the body of the person inside it, and (I couldn’t resist) there was a big fuzzy pink udder hanging down between the baggy white legs. I figured that the Kountry Pantree people would take one look at the udder and demand its removal, so it was attached with velcro. Maybe they could save it and bring it out for use at staff parties. I’d hidden the squeaker from one of Lug-nut’s chew toys inside one of the teats, so that if you tried to milk the cow, it let out a mewing shriek, like an injured mouse. The cow’s bum was shaped with foam rubber padding, resembling a rooftop on its side, so that two bumps protruded like the hip bones on your classic cartoon cow. The tail hung down between the bumps and was stiffened with wire so that it had some life to it.

  “This feels like a winter coat,” Eddie said.

  “It’ll even be hotter in the sun,” I said. “I don’t envy the poor person who has to wear it for the Bath Tub Bash on Saturday. It’ll be pure torture.” Eddie just grunted. I made some minor tucks and adjustments with pins, then helped Eddie into the big fuzzy cow gloves. I’d considered making huge, hoof-like things for the hands, but seeing as the animator was expected to operate a motorized Bath Tub while wearing the costume, I’d compromised. The gloves were black, and divided in two so that they were half mitten, half glove, allowing some finger movement. The pinky and ring fingers went into one side, the middle and forefinger into the other. The thumb had its own separate hole. The gloves attached to the cow arms with velcro.

  The feet were sort of like gaiters, fuzzy, black, elasticized things that would fit over a pair of running shoes and give the impression of hooves without completely crippling the animator. Eddie was beginning to perspire already.