by Ted Wood
I thought back to my few meetings with Prudhomme. We had never been close, I'd spent maybe three evenings in his company, back in my married days. My impression was of a quiet man with restless eyes, as if the sights of suburbia weren't enough to hold him. He would have preferred to be off in the wilderness, putting up with the flies and the discomfort for the sake of the peace and the chance of making a big strike that would earn him glory in his company and perhaps get him a vice-president's corner office in Montreal. And now he was dead. The bush he had loved so well had turned on him, as if he was just as ignorant of its ways as the rest of us who live in houses most of the time, instead of in tents away from the city. Except that his bear, if it had really been a bear, had cleaned up after itself.
Which left the question of why Misquadis had said nothing about that in his statement. Maybe he was right and Gallagher had been too forceful, putting down what he thought Misquadis had said and pushing it in front of him for a signature. Misquadis was an Indian and a bush Indian at that. As far as he was concerned the whole procedure was meaningless. A white man had been killed and other white men were filling up pieces of paper to make the body disappear. It didn't matter very much what was put on that piece of paper. If nobody had asked him about bear tracks, he wouldn't have volunteered the information. And when the bear horror story grew and the town put a bounty on the animal, he would have kept quiet out of good sense. He wouldn't need more than a day or two in the bush to come back with a bear carcass in his canoe. He'd have his winter's meat, a skin to sell to Sallinon, and a five-hundred-dollar bonus, big money for a trapper. Most of them make less than five grand a year—if he was lucky he might make ten. That was all.
I guess I should have gone hotfooting back to Chief Gallagher with my suspicions, but I didn't want to wear out my welcome too early. So I headed for friendly turf, back to the motel.
Sam was getting bored with the car so I let him out for a scamper before going into the front office. The same woman was on duty, working away at a painting below the level of the counter. She pushed it out of sight automatically, then recognized me and smiled. It was a nice smile and I was glad I'd opted for talking to her rather than the chief. "Good morning, how's the insurance business?" she asked me.
I stuck out one hand and did the comme-ci, comme-ҫa gesture. "Tell me about the art business and I'll sing you the whole sad song," I promised.
Surprisingly, she responded. She drew out her unfinished watercolor and waved it at me, half embarrassed. I could see it was a landscape and it had a good feel to it; the washed sky reminded me of a thousand overcast mornings in the bush. "Hadn't you better keep painting?" I suggested. "I thought watercolors had to be finished in a rush."
"They should," she said, nodding firmly. "But an artist in a place like this is considered a bit of a freak so I can't work the way I'd like to."
I found myself hanging on her words. She was frankly pretty in daylight, wearing a soft blue wool sweater with big open stitches and a pair of designer jeans. She was getting to me.
"Consider your painting invisible while I'm around," I said, and she smiled and reached for her paints.
"Okay, you're on, as long as you don't give advice."
"Not a chance. I'm looking for some from you." That made her glance up as she dipped her brush in the water jar. "About what?"
"Well, I'm here to look into the death of Jim Prudhomme, the guy who was killed by the bear last month," I said carefully. It didn't clash with the insurance story I'd given her and I needed her help. She looked at me and nodded slowly, then looked down and went on painting while I continued. "I've been talking to some of the people involved—the Indian who found him and the police chief. Now I was going to ask you a favor."
"I'll help if I can," she said, mixing up green and black in her palette.
"Well, I understood that Prudhomme left most of his gear at the motel here when he went into the bush."
She worked at trees, not looking up, not missing a stroke as she answered. "Yes, most of our guests do, geologists and pilots and so on. But his widow collected everything when she came up for the inquest."
"Yes, I imagined she would have. But I wondered if you saw the pile of stuff at any time." I waited and she thought for a moment, working more slowly.
At last she looked up again, almost frowning with concentration. "I'm trying to remember. Seems to me he had two suitcases—well, one case and one suit bag, you know, the folding type. And there were a couple of wrapped parcels."
"That was one of the things I was interested in. He's supposed to have bought a stuffed animal from Keepsakes in town. I wondered if it was among his belongings."
I waited and she slowly dipped her brush again and went back to creating trees. "If he had, it would have been bulky, wrapped up for protection, maybe in a box," she said. Another tree shook itself out of the brush and she dipped more paint and looked up. "There wasn't a box. One of the two parcels was fairly heavy, tied with thick cord. The other was small, maybe a pair of boots or something like that."
"Could the big one have been anything from a taxidermy shop?"
Now she set the brush down and looked at me. "As a matter of fact, it could. One corner of the paper was torn—I think somebody else's gear was stacked alongside it in the storeroom and one of the geology instrument cases had caught the paper and opened up a tear. There was fur inside, black fur. Looked like a bearskin."
"I see." I didn't question how she knew it was a bearskin. Women in the north may not know fur coats very well, but they know pelts. Their fathers and husbands all shoot and they see the animals themselves sometimes, in the bush. She went on painting while I stood and wondered why Sallinon had lied about the item he'd sold Prudhomme. Just being ornery, I supposed.
But I've been a policeman for a long time. If Prudhomme had bought a bearskin, no matter whether it came from Sallinon or not, the person who had killed him could have cut the head and claws off it and used them on him. Which meant this other person knew him well enough to be at the motel with him, maybe only socially, for a beer, but maybe they'd been seen together.
"Tell me, can you remember if Prudhomme was alone when he left to go on that last trip?"
"Yes." She nodded instantly. "I was in the office when he came in and asked me to store his gear. Then he drove off past the office window. He was alone then."
"Did he always work on his own?"
She put down her brush for a moment, flexing her arms at the elbows. "I've no idea what his pattern was. But when he was found they said he was alone on the island."
I looked at her, musing, and she looked down and picked up her paintbrush. "Are there many transients around? Guys he might have picked up on the highway?"
She glanced up. "This place is lousy with transients. Ever since the gold strike was made. Most days I turn away twenty or thirty men, unemployed guys from Toronto or the Soo or Thunder Bay, looking to wash dishes, wait tables, anything."
I nodded and said "I see" again. It jibed with what I'd seen in the coffee shop and her diner, earlier, and in the crowded campsite. I guessed too that Gallagher kept transients moving. Olympia wasn't big enough to support a bunch of welfare cases. The paper business had suffered during the recession in '82 and '83. Any charity the town could provide was spoken for at home.
She went back to her painting. "Did you have some work for somebody?"
"Not right now, but I might, you know how it is." Not exactly true, but on an investigation you often find yourself dealing in fractions of the truth. The whole thing is too rare for use outside a courtroom.
I stood and looked down at the curls on the top of her head, thinking more about her than about my investigation. As far as the world was concerned, that was a closed book. Anything I found was going to be an embarrassment.
She glanced up and caught my gaze. "You're looking thoughtful. Run out of questions?"
"Not quite." As I started to speak I felt the same awkwardness that always fills me
at times like this. I'm thirty-five years old, divorced. I'm six-one and rangy and women have been good to me over the years but I don't have the assurance that some men seem to bring with them from their cradles. I don't feel irresistible. I usually start out with women from a one-down position, like always playing chess with the black men. "This is going to sound like a thousand salesmen you've heard while you've been in this place. I mean, I don't even know your name, but I'm unattached and harmless and I was wondering if you would see your way clear to having dinner with me."
She laughed out loud. "My," she said, "That's totally new, I promise you. It's mostly the salesmen who ask me out. Their idea of couth is saying anything other than, 'Hey kid, let's me and you boogie.' "
I laughed with her, feeling redder necked than usual, and she said, "Sure. I'd like to have dinner with somebody in Olympia who can recognize burnt umber. And just to set the record straight, my name is Alice Graham." She put her paintbrush down and reached over. We shook hands, grinning.
"How about this place while you're out?" I asked, wondering if we were going to eat in the dining room, with her having to leave the table every few minutes to attend the desk.
"I'll get Willie to mind the store," she said. "No problem."
"Great," I said, then realized I needed an exit line and added, "Who's Willie, anyway?"
She was painting again, using a pinkish-brown now for the face of a rock. She put it on in gobs, then smudged it expertly with the side of her left little finger. It took about a minute before she realized what I'd asked and told me, "Oh, Willie—he's the waiter in the dining room. He's only there on paydays. The rest of the time the girl manages just fine on her own."
"I met him,” I said. "He's a nice kid, but can you leave him in charge?"
She looked up again, putting her paintbrush down into the water jar and stretching her arms luxuriously. "No problem. We're full right up; all he has to do is say no politely." And then her grin widened and she added, "That's what I do, most of the time."
We set a time, kind of early by city standards, seven o'clock, but as she explained, the nearest place other than her own dining room was forty miles up the highway and she didn't want to eat with a patron in her own place.
It suited me. It meant an extra couple of hours in her company so I said sure and went back to my room and picked up the telephone. I got through to Carol Prudhomme's number in Montreal and she answered on the third ring. "Hello, Carol, Reid Bennett. I'm in Olympia."
Carol is a tall, dark, Latin type of woman. She was at Laval University with my ex but had done nothing with her education except marry herself a geologist and keep the home fires burning while he trekked all over faraway terrain trying to make them rich. As a result she is tense and has an underused quality that came across brittle on the phone. "Oh, Reid, this is so good of you, going to all this trouble. I mean, I don't know why Amy insisted. After all, nothing's going to bring Jim back." It sounded rehearsed. I imagined she had been living with the idea of me up here in the bush wasting my time when I could have been writing parking tickets in Murphy's Harbour, and she felt guilty.
"No problem. I just wish I could promise it would do any good." I had already decided to tell her nothing about my suspicions. It was bad enough being widowed—having to add murder by persons unknown as the reason would be too much to handle.
I kept my voice calm and reasonable. "I'm just calling to bring you up to date. I'm sure everything is as you were told, but there are a couple more facts I'd like. First, the man Jim was working for. He's with the Darvon outfit, Amy told me that much, but she didn't have a name. I'd like to talk to him."
Her voice was suddenly breathy. I've heard the same kind of tone from suspects in interrogation rooms. She was very anxious about something. Maybe she was afraid I'd offend some vice-president of the Explorations Division and the company would take back her insurance money. "Is that necessary?"
"It may tell me something I don't know, something that's been overlooked up until now." When she didn't answer I went on, "Don't worry, Carol, I'll be the soul of tact. I understand how you feel."
There was another short silence on the line, and then she spoke in a tearful rush. "I'm sorry, Reid, there you are, working away for me and I'm being negative. I'm sorry. Anyway, the man you want isn't up there, he's here in Montreal. His name is Paul Roger." She pronounced the name the French way, accented on the second syllable.
"Thanks, Carol. I'm not sure I'm going to do anything about it but it's good to have the name. In the meantime, I'd like to say it out loud: I'm sorry to have this investigation to make. But while I'm here, I might as well do it right."
She said something pleasant, and I responded and then asked her the last question on my mental list. "By the way, what was in the parcel that was up here with Jim's stuff?"
The line sighed and whispered as she thought about that one. Then she said, "There was a pair of boots in one package and a skin of some kind in another."
I kept my voice nice and even. "Can you remember, was it a bearskin?"
"I don't know," she said, almost angrily. "When I got home I was so sick about everything that I took one look at it and gave it to Henri."
"Who is Henri?" Nice and polite, but still wondering.
"Henri Laval. He was a good friend of Jim's—his lawyer. He came with me to Olympia and took care of things for me. I saw that this was some kind of skin and I gave it to him."
"Did you notice if it had its head and feet on?"
She laughed, high and nervous. "Reid, you ask the craziest questions. No, I didn't notice. I'll ask Henri, next time I see him."
"If you would, please."
We exchanged a couple more politenesses and I hung up and sat back on the bed, thinking. There weren't many more rocks to turn over. It would be interesting to talk to the wonderful lawyer man and see if the head and claws were on the skin, or whether, as I was beginning to think, someone had hacked them off to use in disfiguring Prudhomme's corpse in the bush. This was all a leap in the dark on my part. It's a fact with homicide that most often the murderer is somebody who knows the victim. That meant somebody Prudhomme knew in Olympia, somebody who might have known Prudhomme had bought himself a bearskin that would come in handy in disguising the murder method. I knew it was all thin, but something was out of whack in this case and my guess was as good as the next clairvoyant's.
Aside from that I had nothing to go on, nowhere to look. Roger, the geologist in Montreal, wouldn't know much. He might just be able to explain why Prudhomme wasn't carrying rock samples, but that wouldn't move me much further ahead.
I was still sitting there thinking when the phone rang. I picked it up, expecting to hear Alice's voice with some message about the evening. Instead a woman said, "Hi, Mr. Bennett?" It took me a moment to recognize her—Eleanor, the prostitute from the night before.
"Hi, nice to hear from you. What's on your mind?"
"You," she said, with professional charm. Then she went on, excited. "You know you asked me about that guy who was missing—Prudhomme, wasn't it?"
My own excitement matched hers. "Yes, what about him?"
Like most people who don't get a chance to talk much, she milked her moment. "Well, I was trying to remember, all last night, and then today, just when I woke up, I remembered. He was a trick of mine, just once."
"Are you sure?" I didn't want to throw cold water on her help but there was no doubt she had a lot of customers and probably didn't pay much attention to what most of them looked like.
"Yes, I'm sure. I remember that he was really up, you know, the way a guy gets when he's been through a lot, been in the bush for a while or that. And anyway, I got a photograph of him."
I sat staring at the wall, my mouth open. "A photograph? That's incredible. How did that happen?" I thought it might have been in a bar. Maybe she had an arrangement with the girl who circles with the Polaroid, some fee-splitting arrangement. But she was even smarter than that. "It's kind of a habi
t of mine, in the van. I take a shot of everybody as they come in. They don't know, but, like, it could be useful." Her voice hesitated. "Like I wouldn't want this getting around, eh? I mean, people might get the wrong idea, only a friend of mine put me up to it."
I said nothing. There was only one reason a prostitute would take pictures: for blackmail. It lowered her in my estimation, but what the hell, she had to live, and by the sound of it she had a pimp to support.
When I didn't answer at once she broke into the silence. "Yeah, I know what you're thinkin'. Like I said, I don't want it getting around. I wouldn't tell people normally, but I owe you."
"I appreciate the help, Eleanor. Thank you," I said. Then I framed the important question. Prudhomme's body had been identified on September fifteenth, two weeks and two days previously. "Do you have any idea when it was taken?"
"Yeah," she said, and gave a little girlish giggle. "That's what makes it a gas. This was the last time I was in the Soo, which would have been the eighteenth of the month, a fun-filled Saturday night."
5
I've been a copper too long to accept good news just because it's welcome. I asked the obvious question. Was she sure he had been Jim Prudhomme? She was honest with her answer. No, she didn't remember meeting him before, but this guy was a ringer for the man in the photograph in the Thunder Bay newspaper, allowing for the beard and the fact that he had aged twelve years. That was when I asked the sixty-four-dollar question. How did he sound?
"French," she said without hesitation and then added the clincher. "An' he had like a slush sound in his voice, y'know, an impediment, I guess."
I remembered, as if he was talking in my ear. Jim was born Jacques; Jim was only a nickname. And he had that hissy sound that you hear sometimes and wonder if the person is wearing dentures. There was no doubt about it. She had found Prudhomme for me three days after the body on the island had been identified as his.
