Part 5: Escaping Our Past
I stood at the end of the portage trail, on the shores of Serpentine Lake, and scratched. I scratched every part of my body I could reach. I itched all over.
Baker stood by, and looked over the lake. He had a grim expression on his bearded face.
First Lloyd had got away, taking two canoes. Then Cam, Angeline, and Peggy had gone, crowded into a single canoe. Perhaps they were trying to catch Lloyd.
“They left without us,” I said.
Baker looked at me, then rolled his eyes heavenward. “Thank you, Lord,” he said, “for people who need to state the obvious.”
I ignored him, dropped the pack into the canoe, and shoved the front of the canoe into the water. “Maybe they figured we could catch up.”
It was getting on to mid-afternoon. “It’s getting on to mid-afternoon,” I added, getting into the front of the canoe. “Grab a paddle; you’ll need it. You can get into the back. Watch the water; it’s cold.”
We shuffed the rest of Hughie’s canoe into Serpentine Lake and started paddling into the sunlight dancing on the wavetips. It was beautiful.
“Ain’t it lovely out?” Baker asked.
“No,” I said. “My head hurts, the light makes it worse, and I’m paddling after a set of maniacs who are paddling after Aladdin’s magic lamp. If I had any brains, I’d stay on the shore and wait for somebody sensible to show up.”
“Sensible?”
“Someone,” I added, “who is more concerned with the redwing blackbirds along the shore than playing snakes and ladders with people’s lives and numbered bank accounts.”
“You know,” Baker said. “Keep up that attitude, and we’ll be sorry we invited you on this trip. Which way do we go now?”
We were out of the bay, and into a stretch of islands and headlands. “You didn’t happen to throw the map in my pack, I suppose,” I asked.
“Might have,” Baker said, leaning forward to root through the pack. “Yup. Here it is.” He pondered a minute. “Left, past that island.”
We got past a sunken log that looked like the head of an alligator at the base of a rock. “I hope the others didn’t get lost,” I muttered.
“Oh, they went this way, for sure,” Baker said. “Peggy and Lloyd have taken this trip before. Besides,” he added, “isn’t that the canoe they took, floating empty over there?”
I looked. It was. There were two paddles in it, but no sign of Peggy, Cam, or Angeline. It gave me a sinking feeling. This was cold water.
“Over there,” Baker said, after he’d tied the other canoe to the one we were paddling. I turned around he was pointing to the right.
“I squinted into the sunlight, and saw a bit of color on an island.
When we got closer, I could see Peggy waving at us. Cam was sitting on a rock. Then I saw Angeline coming from the woods behind them.
“Are we glad to see you!” Cam said, when we got to the shore. “We stopped on the island to have a break, and the canoe somehow got loose.”
My head hurt worse every moment. I was hungry, thirsty, and tired.
Baker reached into my pack, and came out with five energy bars. We ate as we launched. “Aren’t you glad I made you bring this pack?” Baker asked. “And that I was thoughtful enough to put some food in it?” He looked very smug in the back of the canoe.
I took the canoe into the lake without a word. Peggy, Cam, and Angeline followed in the other canoe.
We got to the end Serpentine Lake late in the afternoon, with no sign of Lloyd.
“How far do you think he’s ahead of us?” I asked at the portage to South Lake.
“Beats me,” Cam said, after a moment. “At least two hours, maybe three.”
“How far to Toronto, from the landing point?”
“Maybe two hours, depending on traffic.”
“I can’t see it,” I said. “Unless he had an escape plan in advance, there’s no way he can get on a plane out of the country or anything like that.”
“Probably right,” Cam said. We continued down the portage to South Lake.
About that time, Peggy turned an ankle on a root and fell. Although she wasn’t badly hurt, it slowed us down somewhat.
By six our two canoes had crossed South Lake and were approaching the landing on the west shore of the lake.
“There’s Lloyd’s canoe,” I noted. We slid over the muddy bay and up onto the muddy shore. The other canoe followed.
The early evening sunlight fell on the water, turning it into diamonds. It sifted through the bare spring trees, and dappled the roofs of three cars parked at the landing. It fell across five very tired people getting out of canoes.
Actually, as I was the first to note, it fell across the form of Lloyd, lying in the middle of the landing.
Peggy ran forward, followed closely by Cam.
The rest of us sort of edged forwards.
Peggy stopped shaking Lloyd long enough for Cam to inspect him.
“Dead,” Cam said, looking up at us.
“His heart,” Peggy said, shakily. “”He was on medication for it.”
I turned around. Baker was sitting on a stump, his head in his hands. He was saying words his sainted mother wouldn’t have approved of. Cam was looking stunned. Angeline was trying to comfort Peggy.
This had been a rough trip all around.
You know, I thought suddenly, I don’t go off to the wilderness to rough it; things are rough enough in the city. I go there to smooth it.
I go there to dream again the dreamtime, to do walkabout or canoeabout and say hello to the crazy wonderful Being that first conceived of the idea of madcap monkeys populating the planet.
There are three things you must not being on a canoe trip: electronic devices, pet anacondas, or people who will die on the trip.
Baker whistled, loudly. We turned to watch him walk unsteadily to the canoe he and I had been paddling. He took my pack from the canoe, waited to see that we were watching, and unzipped a side pouch. An object fell out. Baker scooped it from the ground and tossed it to me.
I caught it. It was, of course, Hughie’s Blackberry.
I turned to throw it as far into the lake as I could, but Cam grabbed it from my hand.
I shrugged, and walked to Hughie’s red BMW. I opened the trunk with the key I’d taken from his body in the morning, and picked up the cell phone inside.
It, fortunately, did not need a password to use. I got through to the police, eventually. I explained that we had a dead guy at the South Lake landing and another inland a few miles.
They promised a police car in a half hour or so, and an ambulance in about the same time.
There was still an hour or more of daylight left. I pointed at Baker. “You and I,” I said, “are going for a little walk.”
When Baker started towards me, so did Cam. I waved Cam back.
First, I unlocked my car, then fished out cans of cola, fruit, and a couple of big bags of chips from the trunk. I passed everything around except a couple of cans of cola and a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips.
I held them in my arms as Baker and I started down the muddy road that wound its way back towards civilization.
“You know,” Baker said, “I sure could use a drink. And a handful of chips.”
I kept walking.
“A couple more minutes and I’ll be trying to eat the inner bark of the white pine,” he added. I opened the bag, stuffed a handful of chips into my mouth, and washed it all down with a swig of the cola.
“You know,” I said, “I never really figured I was the one who killed Hughie, at least not until you found that gizmo in my pack.” I had some more chips and drink. “A guy as mean as I am sure isn’t the type to share with a decent guy like you.”
Baker shook his fuzzy face. “You didn’t do it.”
I held the cola out to him. He grabbed it, but I didn’t let go. “Lloyd killed Hughie,” Baker said. I let him have the cola. He took a big drink.
&
nbsp; “It was an accident, more or less,” Baker added. I held out the bag of chips, and he took a handful.
“Lloyd figured he’d push Hughie into the mud,” Baker went on. ”then steal the Blackberry while he was helping Hughie out. Or something like that. If he had to, he could get it and pass it to one of us before Hughie could catch him and break a few of his bones.”
Baker wolfed down a few more chips. I wolfed some too, before they all disappeared down his throat in one lump, like a garter snake swallowing an egg.
“I guess none of us knew how deep that mudhole was, and Lloyd didn’t expect ol’ Hughie to die like that, before he could get out of there.”
“You all knew about this?” I asked, as polite as an undertaker. “All of you?”
“It’s why we wanted Hughie on this trip,” Baker said, examining the empty chip bag. I squashed the bag into the pocket of my jacket. We continued down the road, avoiding the bigger patches of water. “Except Angeline, of course,” Baker added.
“I wondered about that,” I said. It explained a lot. “So why did Peggy go with her back to the World’s Biggest Mudhole?”
“Oh, Angeline asked her to come. And Peggy couldn’t very well tell her the Blackberry wasn’t there. Anyway, it helped to give Lloyd as much of a head start as possible.”
I turned toward him. “Just where did Lloyd think he was going, anyway? He didn’t think he could get away, did he?” I jumped a small creek that ran over the road in spring.
Baker shook his bushy head. “We didn’t think it likely, but we wanted him to have the chance. He had a passport and access to a bit of money.” Baker shrugged. The further ahead he got, the better chance he had. And the longer it took to find him, the better our chances that Cam could get the account number off the Blackberry. And then get that money back for Angeline.”
He looked at me sideways. “As long as everybody thought Lloyd had the Blackberry, they wouldn’t be looking for it.”
I still had a problem with that. “Even if you get the account number for an overseas account, I still think you need an account password.”
“Oh, Lloyd got that from Hughie’s secretary. She’d always figured Hughie was slipping money from the company, and felt sorry for Angeline.” Baker smiled. “A lot of people thought she and Lloyd were having an affair, but they weren’t. But it made a good story in the two months it took to figure out that password.”
“And then all you needed was the account number.”
“Which,” Baker pointed out, “we figured out was on the Blackberry. Hughie always carried with him. Cam’s pretty sure he can get it off there, even without knowing the password.”
It was time to go back. We’d stopped to look over a beaver pond and a beaver slapped its tail with a bang and disappeared underwater.
“Unless,” I said.
“Of course unless.” Baker said.
“If the police seize the Blackberry,” I noted, “Angeline would eventually get it back.”
“By that time, her mother’s company might be bankrupt.”
“You want me to be an accessory to murder,” I said.
Baker said nothing. We walked a long ways back towards the car. The ambulance passed us in the dusk; we stood among some birches.
“If the police start asking questions, Angeline will point out that the Blackberry was found in my packsack,” I noted. I was getting angry.
“You had no motive. I’d admit that I found it and put it there. I’d say I took it from Lloyd’s packsack without him knowing.”
But that wasn’t good enough for me. “I’m not sure I like the position you put me in.”
Baker sighed. “It’s a mess. Nothing went as planned on this whole trip.”
“But you’re still going to blame Lloyd for the murder.”
“Only if you insist it’s a murder. It could still be the accident Lloyd wanted it to be. Sure would be cleaner.”
Behind us, we could hear a vehicle. It was the police. We stepped aside to let it pass. It was getting dark.
While the others gave statements to the police, and the ambulance took Lloyd’s body away, I looked out over the lake. Eventually, the cop came over to take my statement. He said they’d try to get a helicopter in the following day. Then he took my statement.
I gave him most of the facts, as I knew them, leaving out a few details. Like the undone strap on Hughie’s pack, and the disappearance of the Blackberry.
“Why do you think Lloyd went so far ahead?” the cop asked.
I shrugged. “Either he got spooked, or he killed Hughie.”
The cop squinted at me. “The others say he was spooked. Do you have any reason to….” He paused. “I have a feeling this one will never get to court, now that the Lloyd’s dead. Unless you all got together and killed your friend?”
‘No,” I said, “I barely knew the guy.”
The cop just grunted and walked back to his car. “Let me know if you want to add anything to your statement,” he said before he closed the door.
When he was gone, Angeline and Cam and Peggy left for Bancroft for the night, their headlights lighting trees along the road. The next day they’d drive to the start point, fifty miles by car, to get Peggy’s car.
Baker and I stood on the edge of the lake. “What now?” he asked, gripping the keys to my car.
“Most of my gear’s still in the hunter’s cabin.” I pointed out into the growing darkness. “I think I’ll spend the night there. I can help guide the helicopter in the morning.”
“It’s a three-hour trip in the daylight,” he pointed out. “Longer at night. And easy to get lost among the islands. And it’s pretty cold at night.”
I pointed out the rising moon. “I remember the way good enough to get there. I’ll get the spare sweater and jacket from the car.”
“Are you sure you don’t want company?” Baker asked after he’d got me the clothes.
“Oh yes. Very, very sure,” I said. “I think I’ll be in the best company I’ve had for quite a while.” I pushed Hughie’s canoe into the dark waters, leaving Baker behind me. As the sky deepened to indigo, I leaned on the paddle, and moved away, in silence, from the shore towards the golden moon.
***
END
Lenny Everson
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Death on a Foggy Spring Portage Page 5
