Hole in One (12 page)

“What does that mean?” asked Hanna.

“I have no idea,” said Joe. “It could mean he was attacked somewhere else and dragged back to the motel, although I doubt that, because he was waiting for me. Or, it could mean that he knew his attacker, at least well enough to turn his back on him . . .”

“Or her,” said Hanna.

I asked Joe if he knew about the gaggle of band members who had waylaid Peter Duke at lunch. He looked surprised, then thoughtful.

“No, I didn't know about that. I went over to the university right after the business at the motel. Was Chuck Wilson with them?”

“He was. He was the chief spokesman, if you don't mind the pun.”

“Well, then, it's just a publicity thing. Chuck's more or less the leader of the hardcore traditionalist part of the band. He as much as told me that he's going to use any chance he can get out of the fuss that's going on to get his group's point of view across. No doubt they were just insisting on being interviewed, as part of the Peter Duke item.”

“Then that's all right,” said Hanna. “Peter will love it. In the meantime, what do we do next?”

“I don't know what you do next,” I said, “but I'm going to hitch another ride with Joe, unless, Hanna, you'd care to—No?—okay, hitch a ride with Joe back to Bosky Dell and catch about fourteen hours of sleep.”

“Right,” said Hanna. “You want to be in good shape for the Martini Classic.”

“Dear Lord, I'd forgotten all about it.”

I'd forgotten about something else, too. What with the interlude with Amelia, the stirring events of the day, the car crash, and all, I hadn't called Info Globe to do a corporate search.

Saturday, of course, dawned dark and drear, with a wind apparently imported for the occasion from somewhere around Timmins, on the barren ground of northern Ontario. I didn't care. I had been de-creeped. The Martini Classic, in all likelihood, was going to be a disaster; never mind, I would go with the “failed-to-dampen” lead, as in “Steady rain and a biting wind failed to dampen the spirits of those who participated in this year's Martini Classic, etc.” It would be worth a fair amount of personal suffering just to watch the rain smear Tommy Macklin's glasses and drip off his moustache.

I leapt from bed quite early—ten o'clock, at the latest—breakfasted heartily on two eggs over easy on canned corned-beef hash, and then put in a telephone call to the Klovack.

“Up and at 'em Klovack,” I told her. “I've been up for hours, practising my putting.”

“You've been up for about ten minutes,” she responded, “and you'd do better to leave your putting alone and trust to the gods of golf. Why are you sounding so chipper?”

“Why not? What is there not to be chipper about?”

“Well, you don't have a job; somebody tried to kill us yesterday, and may try again; and it looks as if we will shortly be playing a game of hideous golf in the middle of a hurricane.”

“Mere trifles,” I said. “The thing I cling to, Klovack, is that you love me with all the fierce ardour of your Ukrainian ancestors . . .”

“Says who?”

“. . . than whom no one's ardour has ever been fiercer. I face the day warmed by the spiritual long johns of your love.”

“Knock it off, Carlton,” she said, but she chuckled. “Hey, changing the subject . . .”

“Why should we change the subject? I just got going.”

“That's why we should change the subject. You didn't tell me the rest of your information from yesterday, and I got the impression, somehow, that you didn't want to talk about it in front of Joe Herkimer.”

“I didn't.” So I told her about the Far Lake bank robbery, which, I was willing to bet, involved Chuck Wilson and would give him a motive for wanting to knock off Charlie Tinkelpaugh, his former partner in crime.”

“Forty years after the crime?”

“Forty years after the crime, but one year after a story appeared suggesting that the take in that crime had been $70,000 more than, I'll bet, one of the crooks involved thought.”

“Why a year later?”

“I haven't worked that out yet.”

“And why the campaign of terror, as your pal Winifred calls it, against the golf course? If Chuck Wilson wanted to knock off Charlie Tinkelpaugh, he'd just go knock him on the head and stab him, which I presume is your explanation of what happened to Dr. Rose.”

“Sure. Wilson saw him with what I'm sure was a bag from the bank robbery, and figured the jig was up unless he silenced him.”

“That doesn't begin to explain what the golf course is doing in the middle of this mess. And here's another mystery for you. I still haven't been able to get hold of Peter Duke. The hotel says he checked out two days ago. I called the CBC in Toronto, and they said he was in conference, but heck, they say that about people who have been dead and buried for ten years. All it means is that they can't find him.”

“Do we care?”

“Well, he owes us some money, for one thing: at least $200 as a finder's fee for his broadcast. Besides, I'd like to know why he suddenly disappeared.”

“He's afraid that lunch bill is going to catch up to him after all. But hey, if you're worried, I'll come to town, do a little checking around, and then maybe we could have lunch at your place.”

There was a long pause.

“Lunch, eh?”

“Just lunch.”

“That's what you said last time.” This was a reference to a romantic idyll that had taken place in pre-creep days.

“Last time, we had the whole afternoon before us.”

“How are you going to get here?”

“Oh,
Marchepas
loves the rain. Sometimes. She'll start first crank.”

She did, too, and about twenty minutes later I was rolling through Silver Falls, on the way to the Dominion House, where I would dutifully ask a couple of futile questions before forgetting about Peter Duke forever. When I pulled into the hotel parking lot, I saw a cab sitting outside the lobby entrance. A Toronto cab, by golly, unless Diamond had just opened a branch office in Silver Falls. In the back seat was a small, intense figure crouched over a notebook.

I splashed over through the puddles—the rain had eased off some, but had left its residue behind—and yanked open the offside door. Teresa rose about six inches off the seat and glowered at me.

“You,” she said.

“Is Peter inside?”

“We're not releasing that information,” said Teresa.

“Hey,” I said, “don't be so graminivorous.”

“Graminivorous? What do you mean?”

“Look it up,” I told her, and slammed the door. Actually, it just means “grass-eating,” but it somehow seemed to suit Teresa, so I left her to chew on it while I went inside and found the cab driver sitting in a chair in the lobby, reading the paper—he was in no hurry, with the meter running—and Peter Duke in earnest conversation with Fred, the weekend desk clerk. He was wearing a very spiffy-looking raincoat and one of those Tilley hats.
Tr
è
s
fashionable. By “he,” I mean Peter Duke, of course; Fred was wearing a t-shirt with red phosphorescent printing that said, “Will you kiss me in the dark, Baby?” Perhaps not quite so fashionable.

“Your Dukeship.” I slapped him on the back. “Where did you get to?”

He whirled around. This was not the same suave character of three days ago; the man had a hunted look. “Ah,” he said, trying to portray bluff camaraderie and missing by a country kilometre, “Clarion, my dear chap . . .”

“Carlton. The name is Carlton.”

“Carlton, I mean to say. How are you?”

“Not bad, for someone who was the object of a murder attempt yesterday,” I said.

“You were? Too bad.”

“Too bad? That's it? Too bad? Don't you want to follow it up? Don't you want to interview me for your story?”

“Ah, as to that. We've dropped that item from the lineup.”

“You've dropped the story? Why?”

“Something much better has come up. Unfortunate; it would have been nice to straighten up this little mess, but that's the way in the news game, as you know, Charles. Too many stories, too little time.”

“Carlton.”

“Yes, of course. How foolish of me.”

“What's the big scoop that shoved two murders, Indian burial grounds, a development battle, and a rich man's dying bequest into the ashcan?”

“Ah. Well, it's a very special item we've been working on for some time now, and the whole thing just came together yesterday, so we're rushing to air.”

“And what are we rushing to air?”

“Actually, it's more of a feature than what might be called a regular investigative piece.”

“That's nice. A feature about what?”

“Um. We've managed to track down a twelve-year-old lad in Toronto who builds the most amazing replicas of Second World War aircraft. Quite astounding.”

“This is what you're rushing to air with? A kid who builds model planes?”

“Not just model planes, Chester. Amazing replicas of warplanes.”

“Carlton.”

“Carlton. Really amazing.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here this morning? Shouldn't you be back in the studio, cutting tape or doing voiceovers or whatever it is you do?”

“I lost something. You see we . . . uh . . . had to check out in rather a hurry the other day, and I left something in the suite, and this man,” he indicated the desk clerk with an angry gesture, “refuses to relinquish it, although I have a distinct recollection—”

“Fred,” I interrupted, “give the man his property.”

“Not without he identifies it,” said Fred.

“What do you mean, identifies it?”

“I mean, identifies it. The man says he left something in the suite. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the housekeeping staff found something in the suite. Maybe it belongs to this man; maybe to somebody else. All he's gotta do is tell me what it was, and everything's hotsy-totsy. Otherwise, no deal.”

“Seems reasonable. What is it, Peter?”

“Personal property. My personal property. Look here,” he extracted his wallet, plucked out a twenty, and laid it on the counter. “Perhaps this will serve as identification enough.”

“No,” said Fred, and actually shoved the twenty back across the counter.

I grabbed it before the Great Man could trouser it.

“Give him his toupee, Fred,” I said.

“Oh, all right,” said Fred. “So long as it's identified.” And, reaching below the counter, he hauled out a blond, full toupee, which he put on the counter and held on to.

The Duke glared at Fred, glared at me, and tried to grab the toupee, but Fred wouldn't let go.

“Gotta be entered in the book,” said Fred, and proceeded to write a description of the object, in laborious longhand, into some journal he had behind the desk.

“How did you know what it was?” snarled the Duke.

“Why else would you be kicking up such a fuss?” I replied. “And since I got it back for you, I think you owe me an explanation.”

“I've already given you an explanation.”

“You've given me a cockamamie story; that's not the same thing.”

“Well, it's all you're going to get.” He grabbed the toupee, which Fred had finished entering in his Domesday Book, signed a form Fred stuck in front of him, and disappeared into the men's room to don the headpiece.

I ran back out to the parking lot. It was worth a try. Teresa was still sitting alone in the cab, looking furious.

“It means grass-eating,” I told her, as I ducked in out of the rain.

“Grass-eating? Why do you think I'm grass-eating?”

“It was just a little joke, Teresa. And I apologize.”

“Oh.” The Teresas of this world don't get apologized to much; it shook her.

“Say, tell me,” I went on, putting it on my best this-doesn't-really-matter-but-just-for-the-heck-of-it tone of voice, “who scared the pants off Peter?”

“Oh, that. Those men.”

“What men?”

“Those Indian fellows, the other day. We had a meeting, back here at the hotel, and they told him they didn't want him poking his nose into their business.”

“They did? I thought they wanted publicity.”

“If they did, they went about it in a very peculiar way. That fellow with the eagle feather told Peter that, if he wasn't out of town in an hour, they'd beat him up so badly he'd never be able to appear on television again, unless it was on World Federation Wrestling, as the Masked Marvel.”

“And Peter said he'd go? Why didn't he call the cops?”

“They told him not to.”

“You mean he let them run him out of town, just like that?”

“Of course.” She looked at me in wonder. “He's a coward.”

“I guess. Tell me something. Is it worth it, working for a man like that?”

“Sure,” she said. “I love him.”

Well, why not? Klovack loved me, say what she would, and that could be no more strange, surely, than that Peter Duke, for all he was an empty tub of offal, should win the love of this wired-up woman.

I bade her a civil good day, and ducked through the rain back to my own car. Peter came running out of the hotel, followed by the cabbie, sauntering, just as I pulled out of the parking lot.

I told Hanna about the “Case of the Lost Toupee,” of course, which was a very foolish move on my part, since it meant that all I got for lunch was lunch.

“Not now, Carlton, for Pete's sake. We have to think this out.”

“What's to think? Chuck Wilson and his boys, either because they killed Dr. Rose or for some other reason, ran Peter Duke out of town.”

“I wonder how he managed to leave the toupee behind? Don't you stick them down with glue?”

“He probably worked up so much sweat during his little chat with Chuck and the Slugs that he had to have a shower, and dressed and fled without due care and attention.”

“Yeah, that could be. But I still don't understand why he was run out of town.”

“Let the cops sort it out.”

“The cops, hah!”

Hanna does not have a high opinion of the cops. She has been off them ever since the Susan Nelles case in Toronto, a few years ago. Nelles was a nurse who was looking after a number of children who died in mysterious circumstances in hospital. She was charged with their murder, but it turned out that the investigating officers didn't have a whole lot more to go on than the fact that she didn't burst into tears when they confronted her and demanded a lawyer before she would answer their questions. The charge was thrown out, along with a number of illusions about the care Canadian police officers bring to important investigations.

Hanna kept worrying at the Peter Duke incident right up until it was time to leave for the Bosky Dell golf course.

“Maybe Joe Herkimer can sort it out,” she muttered, as we went out her apartment door.

It had stopped raining, which worried me, since it might mean that
Marchepas
would die on me again. Sometimes she hated rain; sometimes she loved it. You never knew. Today, she didn't care, and we zipped out to Bosky Dell, just like people with a regular car.

Tommy Macklin and Sylvia Post, dressed to the nines and carrying enough clubs in a golf cart to arm a battalion of golfers, were waiting for us by the first tee, registering impatience, although we were five minutes early. Our 4:10 tee-time put us among the privileged—only the club president's party got in ahead of us—and I guess they were worried someone would nip in and grab our spot. Actually, there was nothing to worry about; I knew they closed the course for the entire afternoon of a tournament like this, and the first few foursomes, at least, would have the course pretty much to themselves.