Hole in One (16 page)

When we drove back to Bosky Dell, there was no sign of Amelia, or the large gent with her, in or around the Jowett place. Up at the main house, a maid told me she had “gone out,” which was not a whole lot of help, and that she would be back “sometime,” which was ditto. I left a note for Amelia, asking her to call me at home as soon as possible, and then the three of us went over to the Third Street abode, where, among other things, we watched a baseball game—the Blue Jays lost. What else is new?—listened to Joe Herkimer on the subject of nineteenth-century English poets, and ate dinner.

Joe didn't stay for dinner; he said it was obvious Amelia wasn't going to turn up, and he had papers to mark, so he left, with orders to call him if anything developed. When Hanna and I had done the dishes, feeling very domestic, we turned on the TV again and caught the tail end of Peter Duke's
You Asked for It
. We missed the item about the kid who makes model warplanes, darn it all, but did catch Duke doing a three-minute commentary on The Simple Life. He also managed to work into this monologue a cautionary note to journalists who go around disturbing the even tenor of the simple life out in the boondocks by thrusting themselves in where they aren't wanted.

“You've got to admire the man,” I told Hanna. “He has turned his ignoble flight into an act of virtue.”

“You admire him,” said Hanna. “As far as I'm concerned, he's a lubberwort. He should have paid us a finder's fee for the golf-course story, and we lose out because he chickened out.”

I was about to console her with the words of that famous philosopher, Doris Day, namely,
que sera, sera,
when the phone rang. It was Amelia.

When I told her I wanted to talk to her, she murmured, “You just come right on over, honey, you hear? I'm up in my apartment?”

I covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “She wants me to come over right away,” I told Hanna.

“Say yes.”

“I'll be right there,” I told Amelia.

“I'll be waiting?”

“I'll give you ten minutes,” Hanna said as I headed out the door. “After which, I'm coming in with an axe.”

As it turned out, my interview with Amelia didn't take ten minutes. When I came clumping up the stairs to the boathouse apartment, she was waiting at the top, clad in a filmy negligee which, with the light behind her, made me miss the top step and lose my footing. I careered across the landing, clutched at Amelia, missed, and stumbled through the doorway, landing on my knees on the rug. But as soon as we were settled—“Sit here, honey, beside me on the couch?”—I let her have the full force of a trained journalist's accusatory question.

“Amelia, you were driving the car that damn near killed us, weren't you?”

“Of course, honey. Coffee?”

There was a pot of coffee on a small table in front of us.

“‘Of course? Coffee?' That's all you have to say?”

She nodded. “It was an accident,” she said, calmly pouring a cup of coffee. “My accelerator jammed, and the car just went shooting forward?”

“But my God, we could have been killed! You didn't even stop!”

“Honey,” she said, “I was already late for an appointment?”

She looked up and smiled.

I jumped to my feet. “Well, I'm going to the cops. This is really serious.”

“You don't want to do that, hon? You haven't got any witnesses, and I would have to tell the police that you have been making a fool of yourself chasing me for days now? You came here tonight and begged me to let you make love to me, and when I refused, you said you were going to spread stories about me? That's what,” she finished, with an entrancing smile, “I would be forced to say, if you went to the police?”

“Why should they believe you, rather than me?”

“Because I've got a witness?”

“A witness to what?”

“To the fact that you made indecent suggestions to me, before he forced you to leave?”

And then, while I goggled at her, trying to decide which of us was demented, she put two fingers into her mouth and gave a short, sharp whistle. There was a thumping sound, as of two large feet hitting the floor, and out of the bedroom stalked a large, fierce-looking man of about my own age.

To wit, her escort of the afternoon. He had only one eyebrow, a thick band of hair that served as a sort of shelf over two narrow-set eyes beneath lowering brows. Except for his size—he was well over six feet, and I understand our ancient ancestors were squirts—he looked like an illustration from “Early Man, Chapter Four: The Descent from the Trees.”

“I don't believe you've met my husband, Harrison Jowett? He just arrived from Baltimore today?” Amelia fluted, while I blenched and tottered. “Harrison, dear, this is Carlton Withers? Carlton, Harrison?”

“How do you do?” said Harrison in a light and civil voice. It was like hearing one of the great apes recite poetry.

“Carlton was just leaving, darling, but I didn't want him to go without meeting you?”

I was being given the bum's rush.

“You haven't heard the last of this, Amelia,” I said.

“Why, honey, what were you planning to do?”

“You forget the power of the press,” I shot back. “You may be interested to know that Hanna and I have prepared a major exposé on everything that's been going on around here. Watch for it in your favourite newspaper.”

Ten seconds later, I was rocketting back to Third Street to tell Hanna how I had managed to tear through all Amelia's denials and force from her the confession that she had, indeed, been the driver of the car that forced us off the road.

Of course, when I got there, Hanna was nowhere to be found. I guess the tension of wondering whether I had been murdered or not proved too much for her. I tried across the street, and there she was, eating butter tarts and drinking tea with Emma Golden, laughing up a storm and no doubt scandalizing my name.

I sat down and scoffed a tart, which of course allowed the Klovack to get going before I could get a word in edgewise.

“You missed it, Carlton,” she said. “But then, you always do.”

“Missed what?”

“There was an item on the radio,” Emma explained, “all about what's going on here, and what the police found out on the golf course.”

“And what did the police find out on the golf course? Not more bodies?”

“No, no,” said Hanna. “The same bodies.”

“Then, what's the big deal?”

“If you'll just shut up a minute, I'll explain. I made notes,” she said.

“Imagine that,” I said. She glowered, and read from her notes. “The police have identified one of the bodies from the golf course . . .”

“Yes, yes.” I knew that.

“. . . and they are now convinced—this is what they said—that there was foul play involved.”

“Gosh, and I thought they were suicides.”

She glowered again, and went back to her notes. “The police reported two puzzling objects found at the scene. One was a leather pouch, such as those used for carrying heavy metal objects . . .”

“Or money,” I said. “By golly, then there were two money bags. I wonder if that means there were two bank robberies?”

“. . . or money. It was found under one of the bodies. The bag was empty.”

“Why didn't Harry tell me about this?” I wondered.

“Harry? Our Harry, from the Silver Falls police?” Emma scoffed. “He probably didn't know about it. The OPP are handling the case.”

“You said ‘two puzzling objects.' What was the other one?”

“It was a pink slip of paper, with writing on it. The police found it in the wallet of the man they were able to identify. It had one corner torn off, but they were able to read some letters and numbers.”

“Which were?”

“They weren't sure. The writing was very faded. But it looked like . . .” Hanna bent over her notes again, “SU 2000 JO 15 03.”

“And what in the Sam Hill is that supposed to mean?”

“They don't know,” said Emma. “I imagine that's why they released the information. In case somebody else can work it out.”

“Dear Lord,” I moaned, “it just gets more confusing.”

Hanna said, “Which reminds me, since you seem to be covered with confusion every time you see the woman, what did Amelia have to say?”

So, I was able to tell them my tale, at last, and Hanna took it big. “Who was the husband? Harrison Jowett? Isn't her name Jowett? I mean, hasn't it always been? How can he be her husband?”

“Husband and cousin,” said Emma. She knows everything.

“No? First cousin? That's why they both have the same last name? Boy, that must save money; you don't have to change the initials on the towels when you get married.”

“Sure. They're a very inbred bunch, the Jowetts; probably that's why they're all crazy.”

“They're all crazy? Conrad doesn't strike me as crazy.”

“Well, not Conrad, no. But what price Uncle Willie?”

“Uncle Willie? As in, Amelia's grandfather, Uncle Willie?”

“Crazy as a coot,” said Emma. “Wound up his days, from what I'm told, in Bellevue Sanatorium, convinced that he was the last of the Romanovs. I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it.”

“Well, I hadn't. I guess the family did a pretty good job of hushing it up, but of course they couldn't keep it from the Golden Intelligence Service.”

“Oh, get away with you.”

“When did this happen?”

“Oh, back a ways. Years ago.”

“How many years ago?”

“Thirty or forty. I don't know. Why? Does it matter?”

“It could. It could explain a whole lot of things.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Hanna. “What things?”

“I have no idea. Maybe we can find something in that magazine article Conrad gave you. Where is it?”

Emma touched the back of her hair, the way she does when she's about to spring something.

“I've got a copy,” she said.

“Emma Golden, will you marry me?”

“Oh, get out.” Pause, pause. “There's more tarts.”

Ten minutes later, I was sitting at the kitchen table in Emma Golden's house, munching tarts and flipping through “Conrad Jowett: Do Not Disturb, Genius at Work.” It told us of the great man's meteoric rise from mere grocery-store owner to, it was claimed, billionaire.

Actually, it was pretty vague about how he made the first jump. “Beginning in a small way with just one store on Toronto's Danforth,” it said, “he soon established a chain, which provided the cash flow for his daring raids on the explosive commodity markets of the 1960s and 1970s.” Then he went into the bond markets, always easier to manage with a few million behind you, just in time for those to take off in the 1980s. Not the junk bonds, you understand, where some of the players wound up with numbers across their chests, but the more sedate variety, where a chap had to hustle to clear a meagre fifteen percent compounded annually. This, as he hit the big leagues, and respectability, was enough for our Conrad. Now he was noted along Toronto's Bay Street as a “tough but honest market-maker,” and “a bit of a lone wolf.” Funnily enough, it was the same language they used to use about Ivan Boesky, before they hauled him off to the hoosegow.

The article was studded, as all such articles are, with lumps of flattery disguised as reporting, and written in the peculiar jargon of the business writer. “He runs by himself, with the pack, but not of it. He keeps an eye on what the others are doing, but maintains his distance. He may swoop down on their food, but he will not lie with them. He has always chosen his own way through the financial jungle.” There were reams more of this stuff, including a long passage about the kindlier, gentler Jowett, as seen among the home folks. Take him away from the wicked city, plunk him down among the sheltering pines of The Eagle's Nest, and you found a man “gracious and helpful, soft-spoken and personable, conscientious and hard working, and, despite his rough beginnings, guided always by a sense of fair play and his deep, personal, religious convictions.”

This last certainly came as a bit of a facer. Jowett the roughneck, I recognized, even Jowett the lone wolf, but he was not known locally for any excess of piety. Indeed, one of the first stories I heard about him concerned the time, about twenty years ago, when he told a visiting minister at the local church, after a forty-minute sermon on Our Black Brethren in Africa, “The reason I give money to the Missionary Fund is to keep bores like you out of the country.” Obviously, we were seeing a makeover of the Jowett image. A few more articles like this, and he would be jostling for space on the pedestal with Mother Teresa.

The family were in the article, all right, but merely painted on the backdrop. They didn't sound like anything much. Uncle Willie got exactly one line, “Then there was his younger brother, William, who passed from the scene in the early 1950s.”

I liked “passed from the scene”; it could mean anything.

On a page, captioned Family Album, there was a series of portraits of various Jowetts, and, among these, was a picture of Willie, a large fellow, but with little of Conrad's buck and vim about him. He was standing beside one of the family's presentation wives, about twenty years his junior.

The caption said only, “Conrad's brother, William, and family, in Baltimore, Maryland.” In front of the couple were two youngsters, in their late teens or early twenties, whom I took to be Amelia's father and aunt. Or, maybe, father and mother. They marry young in Baltimore.

“Find anything?” asked Hanna. She and Emma had been sitting quietly, watching the fire, while I read.

“I don't know. I think so. I think there may be something strange about Uncle Willie, Conrad's brother. There's a picture of him in this article, but it wasn't in that bunch of family shots on the stairway at The Eagle's Nest.”