Corkscrew (15 page)

The crowd parted, letting me back out through the pack and down the road apiece, where I turned and drove back to the bridge and over to the side where the beverage room is located. And I noticed that there were half a dozen motorcycles outside. From the look of them they belonged to my bikers. I imagined the bar owner had already called the station, asking for some policeman to come and protect him, and I wondered if any had. I should have been there, with Sam by my side. It was what this town expected of me and I felt guilty as I drove by. I'd been suspended from my job, but not from my conscience.

There was a Mercedes coupe outside the station. I recognized it as the Corbetts' car. Stan Corbett's, anyway. His wife has a beat-up old station wagon.

Corbett was sitting on the pew out in front of the counter. He was wearing a neat gray pin-striped suit. I guessed he had come right from one of the hotels or bars he owns. He was smoking a cigar that smelled expensive and he looked angry.

"What's happening, Chief? What's this OPP officer doing here?" he asked me. He's tall and tough-looking, as if he had personally built all those hotels himself.

"They've taken over, Mr. Corbett. I'm under suspension."

"What the hell for?" He glared at the OPP man. "Whose idea was this?"

"It's not important, just a formality. But before I was taken off the case, I was investigating the death of a boy and I had occasion to visit your cottage."

Corbett frowned. "My cottage? A dead boy? Just a minute, Chief, can you take this a little slower? What's happening here?"

"The victim, a boy, had a picture of your dock. He was a camera buff and he had a lot of pictures of boats, but I recognized your dock and from the angle of the shot it looked as if it had been taken from your balcony. So I went there."

Now Corbett interrupted me. His eyes had narrowed and he asked his question carefully as if he figured the answer might get him into trouble.

"You say it was a boy, a photographer?"

"Yes, Kennie Spenser. Do you know him?"

He nodded. "Twelve, something like that, sandy-haired?"

"That's him. Have you met him?"

"Yes, lots of times, he's a friend of my grandson."

My mind took a leap forward. "Is your grandson Reggie Waters?"

He looked at me, the same kind of look he might have given some extra-sharp salesman who knew too much about his business. "How did you know that?" he asked.

"Kennie had a photograph of a young fellow and his mother told me the name."

Corbett put his cigar back in his mouth. It had gone out and he relit it carefully. "This is terrible news. What happened to him?"

"He was found in the water, out by Indian Island. A fisherman snagged him."

He shook his head sadly. "Poor little guy. A nice boy, quiet, well-behaved. This is terrible. Angela will be heartbroken."

Angela was his wife, she was softer than him, always ready to volunteer for fund-raising for the community or to pitch in with work on projects over at the Indian reserve. She would probably cry, then set to and find some way of helping Mrs. Spenser.

In the meantime, I had to add to their problems. "I'm sorry to tell you that's just part of the bad news."

"Oh?" he growled, frowning and puffing out cigar smoke.

"Yes, I have reason to believe that it was your cruiser that was used to dump the boy's body. The wires have been torn out of it and my dog tracked the boy to the deck."

"Goddamn." He took his cigar out of his mouth and looked around for an ashtray, then let it fall to the old linoleum. "I should have immobilized that boat, taken the rotor arm out of the ignition."

"I wish you had." I waited while he ground the cigar out under his foot. "And one last thing, Major, I'm afraid. Your house has been vandalized."

"Vandalized?" He pivoted on the foot he was using to crush his cigar butt, turning away from me angrily, then back. "Vandalized? What the Sam Hill is going on?"

"Vandalized!" He said it again, disbelievingly, rigid with rage, ducking from the waist and jerking his arms in tight little convulsions, a disgusted, helpless man. "That makes me vomit." He turned away from me, raising his voice as if he were addressing a meeting. "Do you know what I'm going through, right now, for the people of this town?"

The OPP man stood listening, trying to look respectful, although I could see he was amused at the show. He hadn't seen Corbett's house.

"I've sunk a million dollars of my money into the Bay Marina project." Corbett said. "Mortgaged every goddamn thing I own." His eyes focused on the OPP man and he jabbed at him with his finger. "A million dollars. To create jobs and prosperity for my fucking neighbors in Murphy's Harbour."

Now he turned to me, still furious, white foam forming in the corners of his mouth. "My own money. The Arabs and the bloody Hong Kong Chinese won't touch anything outside of Toronto. The banks won't. I've been on my knees, almost, to a bunch of church credit unions down in Quebec." He laughed out loud. "Yeah, promising the bunch of pious bastards I won't use the money to promote anything sinful." He laughed again. "Yeah. Kissing their black-suited asses for money for this town. And now this."

He stopped and I let him collect himself for a moment. When he stayed silent, I gave him the rest of the news.

"I don't think it was anybody from this town. I think it was a bunch of bikers. There's the prints of a biker's boot in the mess on the floor, and there's a gang of them in town."

He pinched his lips tightly together, bottling up his anger while he breathed in and out a couple of times, flaring his nostrils. At last he said, "Were these OPP clowns in charge when all this happened?"

"I found the damage today, around six p.m. It looked recent. But a couple of things. The door hadn't been forced. It was open and unlocked. Did you leave the key somewhere around?"

"Angie left a key somewhere, for the neighbor. He would come in and switch the heat on if we were coming up in fall. For some reason he didn't keep it, it was left hidden up at the house."

"And when were you there last?"

"Last Sunday night," he said immediately. "Angie was there until Tuesday, then she went to the airport in Toronto and flew out to Vancouver to see her sister, but I left Sunday night to be back in my office on Monday."

"So the damage was done between Tuesday last and now. Do you have any idea who might have wrecked your place, Mr. Corbett, is anybody mad at you?"

"No." He shook his head, then stopped and thought, then shook his head again. "No. Oh, I won't say I don't have people in business who don't wish me well, but nothing like this. This must be kids. Have you checked the local kids?"

"I'm going to," I promised. "In the meantime, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to stay away from the house until I can get through and fingerprint it, and your boat. I'm wondering if the people who wrecked your house might not have been involved with the boy's killing as well."

He shrank, his shoulders slumping. "I can stay with friends, I guess. I'll call you in the morning."

"Okay. If I'm not here, one of the OPP constables will take the message and get back to you when you can go home."

"Then I'll say good night," he said and turned away.

"Oh, before you do that, could I show you a couple of photos, please, see if you recognize them?"

He straightened his back, like a man who has done a hard day's work. "Sure, why not."

The file folder containing the evidence I had assembled on the case was lying on the countertop. I opened it and took out the pictures, giving him the photograph of Reg Waters. Corbett looked at it and nodded. "I don't know why he's signed it 'David,' that's Reg Waters, my grandson."

Behind him the OPP constable was shifting from foot to foot, wishing he had the nerve to tell me I'd been relieved and let him take over the investigation. If he could have helped I would have let him, but he couldn't, he didn't have the background I had and he didn't know Corbett. I took the picture back and got out the other one, making conversation as I did so. "How old is your grandson?"

"Late teens," he said. "Lemme see. His birthday's May Day so that makes him a year older, right, he's just eighteen."

Old, to have a thirteen-year-old friend who idolized him. I got out the other photograph and passed it to Corbett. He studied it and nodded. "Yes, that's our apartment building, in Toronto."

"And do you happen to know who that man is, getting out of the car?"

He bent his head to look at the photograph closely, then shook his head. "No, doesn't look like anybody I know."

"Thank you then, that's all I need for now. I'm sorry about your house."

He stamped over to the door and paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Just be sure and lock up the sonsabitches who did it." Then he left as I was answering.

"I'll try my damnedest." I put the pictures back in the folder and closed it. "Tell the detectives what's happened when they get here," I told the constable.

"Sure will." I noticed he'd dropped the "Chief." Rank has to be real before policemen take any notice of it. As far as he was concerned I was just another ex-copper.

The door opened again and a young woman came in. She was small and dark, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and an earnest expression that looked as if she put it on with her clothes in the mornings. I recognized her and groaned inside. She was the reporter from the Parry Sound paper. She saw me and brightened. "Chief Bennett, isn't it?"

"Uh-huh," I said, not wanting to either lie or explain.

"Good. Just the man I was looking for. I understand you're suspended. Is it something to do with this drowning that occurred today?" She had her notebook out and poised the way they must have taught her in her journalism class. One of the skills that earned her two hundred bucks a week and all the aggravation she could stir up.

"My suspension has nothing to do with the drowning. Aside from that I have nothing to say, Miss Lafleche." There, me and Jackie Onassis in the same league.

"But what's it all about?" She was flicking her pencil over her book. Lord, she was keen. She was using shorthand, for crying out loud.

"Nothing to say," I repeated. "Now excuse me, please." I hissed to Sam and he followed me, almost tripping her up as she scrambled out after me, following me right to the car, still throwing questions at me like balls at a coconut. I smiled at her, very politely, put Sam in the car and drove off, almost running over her feet as she leaned over the car, book in hand.

I kept my speed down by a conscious effort as I headed back, past the beverage room, noting that there were more motorcycles there now. The hell with it. Let the OPP guys take their turn in the hot seat. I was going home.

The crowd at the Spenser place had grown some more. I parked at the end of the line of cars and left Sam inside while I went around them all and down to the front of the cottage. McKenney was there again, with his helper. Kowalchuk was over with him, and so were a couple of new men, tall and lean, the standard issue Hollywood gumshoes, OPP-style.

I tapped on the Spensers' door and went in. Fred was sitting there with the Wilson woman from next door.

Mrs. Wilson started when I came in, fluttering her hand to her chest. "Oh, Chief, you startled me," she said in a faint voice.

I smiled at her, a tight-faced formality. "I'm sorry, ma'am, it wasn't intended."

Fred stood up and came over to me, reaching for my hand. "I think you should listen to what Mrs. Wilson has been telling me."

"With pleasure." I squeezed her hand and looked at Mrs. Wilson. "What was that, please?"

"My husband is quite angry with me," she said, "but I think we should tell you."

"Appreciate it," I told her, wondering what she had heard that was so significant.

"Well, when we said we heard Mrs. Spenser scream, that wasn't the first sound that disturbed us."

I sat down on the other side of the kitchen table, it's standard procedure, a standing man is menacing, my sitting made it easier for her to overcome her anxiety.

"No," she said. "No, the sound that we heard first was the noise of an engine racing away."

"You mean a car passing?"

She shook her head. "No, it wasn't passing. It started up, from outside their house. And it wasn't a car. It was a motorcycle."

Chapter Twelve

I took her over it again, three or four times, but she didn't have anything more for me. She hadn't seen anything, just heard a bike roar away. She was positive about that. It hadn't just driven by, it had roared away. I thanked her and left her with Fred while I went back outside to where the OPP detectives were watching the body being loaded into McKenney's hearse.

I waited until the doors were closed; then Kowalchuk noticed me and introduced me to the detectives. I didn't know either of them. One was called Kennedy, the other Werner. They shook hands, the way men shake hands with distant relatives at a funeral.

Kennedy said, "You sure left us with a mess," and Werner chuckled.

"Not my choice," I told him. "If you want me to fill you in, I'm here, but in the meantime, there's something I just heard that may be important."

"Yeah, what's 'at?" Werner was the prankster of the pair, I guessed; one partner usually is. He's the one who gives the long hours their light relief, making most of the wisecracks, setting up the occasional heavy-handed practical jokes cops play on one another.

"The neighbors heard a motorcycle roar away from here just before the car went over the edge."

"That's it?" Werner mocked.

"There's a gang of bikers in town. It could have been one of them who set Spenser up and rolled him off the edge of that rock."

"Maybe," Kennedy said. "But hell, that's nothing to go on."

"It's all you've got so far," I said. My suspension was hanging around me like a sour smell, embarrassing all of us. They wanted me gone almost as much as I wanted to be away from there.

"Yeah, well, we'll talk to her, I guess," Kennedy said. He turned away, concentrating on Kowalchuk. "See if you can break up the happy band of sightseers. Jack'll talk to this neighbor. I'll go down the funeral parlor and check on the stiff."