The Cardinal Divide (23 page)

Peggy and Cole slid into a booth. Cole was tired. He didn't know how he would stay awake. He slumped and Peggy sat upright across from him.

A man approached their table. “Evening, Peggy.”

“Hi Andy.”

“What'll you have?”

“Big Rock.”

“And you?”

“Jameson, rocks.”

“Coming up,” said Andy.

Cole was silent.

“I know what you're thinking,” Peggy said.

“I don't think so, Peggy.”

“You're thinking this was a really big mistake. You're thinking, I told you so.”

“
OK
, so you
do
know what I'm thinking.” Cole almost smiled.

“You're also thinking you'd better quit while you're ahead.”

Their drinks arrived. The whiskey warmed him immediately and he relaxed. “Had occurred to me,” he said.

“Dale said he didn't do it.”

“Well, then, we're off the hook. When do they release him?” “Come on, Cole.”

He took another drink. “He didn't do it? That's great. Can he prove it?”

“Dale says that he was at home all last night.”

“Got a witness?”

“He lives alone.”

“He doesn't have a leg to stand on.”

“The police say they've identified his truck at the mine. But there are dozens of beat-up old Chevy
S
10s and Ford Rangers in Oracle. That's not evidence.”

“Peggy, he has said publicly that he would do anything to stop the mine. The cops have a clear motive. And they have his truck at the scene.”

“They don't have anything, Cole.”

“Then why is Dale behind bars?”

“Guess.”

Cole sipped his Irish whiskey. “My money is still on guilty. But he's behind bars right now because of pressure from the mine, the town, the Chamber of Commerce, and from the family.”

“Small town politics, Cole. And there's something else. People have been calling Dale's place with death threats. Someone drove by his farm and threw a brick at the house.”

Cole finished his drink.

“You can't leave now, Cole.”

He raised his eyebrow. “Can't?”

“Cole, we need you now more than ever.”

“It's nice to be needed, Peggy, but a man is dead. One of your group members is in jail. I spent the morning in the hospital getting stitched back together and the afternoon in the cop shop getting interrogated by a surly sergeant. In twenty years of activism, I have never, ever had a bad day like this one. And I've had my share of bad days.”

“If you quit now, Cole, we'll lose.”

“You've already lost!” Cole shouted. “You can't save Cardinal Divide now. You'll be lucky to avoid a charge of collusion or conspiracy, or whatever they call it. Dale van Stempvort kills the mine manager, and your whole group is fingered as a bunch of murderous thugs bent on any level of violence to protect bears and butterflies. I don't see a way out of this for you,
ESC
o
G
, or Cardinal Divide.”

Peggy looked at her hands.

“We're not going to quit,” she said finally.

“Well I am,” said Cole.

“Don't run away from us, Cole. Don't run from yourself.” Cole signalled Andy for another drink. “Don't get all psychological on me, Peggy. You don't know anything about me.”

“I know enough, Cole. Stay and help us save Cardinal Divide.”

“This is mission impossible,” scowled Cole. “And I am not Tom Cruise.”

“That's for sure,” grinned Peggy.

“Nice,” he said. “Look, to save Cardinal Divide, you will first have to save Dale van Stempvort. I hope you've got a good lawyer.”

Andy brought Cole another whiskey. Cole took a sip.

“Someone from Legal Aid will come from Red Deer in the morning,” Peggy said when Andy left.

“Legal Aid? Good Lord, Peggy.”

“Dale has no money. I have no money for a lawyer. If this goes to court, he'll likely have to sell the farm, literally.”

Cole shook his head and finished his whiskey.

“Help us clear Dale's name.”

“He looks guilty to me. Why in the he – ” He caught himself. “Why should I help clear his name?” he said more quietly.

“Dale is a loudmouth and a bit of a firebrand, but he's not violent.”

Cole remembered his conversation with Dale the day before when Dale had professed his innocence. Still, he wasn't sure. “What about the wells?”

“What about them? Destroying technology is different than murder.”

This was the familiar argument that supported eco-sabotage. He shook his head.

“We don't know how to play the game at this level, Cole. You do. Please don't leave now.”

“Peggy, I'm a strategist, not a private investigator. I don't know the first thing about clearing a man's name of murder.”

“The lawyer will know.”

“Then let him do it!”

“He can use your help. He can use your expertise on the issues.”

They sat across from each other. She finished her beer. His drink was done.

“Sleep on it,” she said finally. “Things won't look so bad in the morning.”

“I seriously doubt that, Peggy.”

He drove Peggy to her car and took himself back to his hotel, aware that he'd consumed two beers and two whiskeys in the last few hours. He really didn't need a
DUI
on top of everything else. Every part of him, including his ego, ached.

The hotel parking lot was nearly full. The reporters were staying here, he guessed. Cole sat in his truck for a moment.

In the morning he would put Oracle in the rearview mirror en route to Vancouver. He could cobble together a stopgap strategy for Peggy long distance to help her save her reputation, maybe her organization. But Cardinal Divide was lost. Dale van Stempvort was lost. And he, Cole Blackwater, had now lost his only paying client. He put his head between his hands on the steering wheel and dozed off.

He woke with a start to hear a familiar voice. On the second floor catwalk Nancy Webber, her black hair illuminated by the glow of the light above her room's door, called goodnight to someone he could not see. So, things
could
get worse: she was staying in the same hotel as he was.

Now he knew he had to leave.

Cole's eyes opened. He waited for the phone to ring or the other shoe to drop, expecting further news of murder or mayhem. When none came he looked out the window through the half-open curtains. The morning was lovely, a blue bird day as they called it in Alberta, and over the parking lot and the tops of the houses that lined the road he could see the sculpted forms of foothills beyond. Each hill was carpeted in a thick pattern of dark and light green, the morning sun igniting the tip of each tree with a golden fire. It was so beautiful, thought Cole, that it would be hard to leave. Hard, but not impossible.

Sleep slowly trickled from his soggy mind. But one thing was for certain: he was outta here. He rolled onto his side and pushed himself up with his good hand. He stretched gingerly, felt his whole body tighten.

When he fought, he could wake in the morning too stiff to move. It often took twenty minutes for the kinks to work out of his body. The combination of ranch work, riding, and getting his ears boxed somehow disagreed with his body. His doctor said he had loose ligaments, that his tendons were subject to higher than average buildup of lactic acid. His trainer encouraged more stretching, even yoga. But Cole Blackwater would have nothing to do with that. If his friends at school found out he was doing a downward-facing dog, he would never hear the end of it.

So he stiffened up. The stiffness slowed him down and likely ended his career as an amateur boxer. Lack of flexibility was only one of the things that contributed to his final defeat inside the ring, and out. Lao Tzu said that “that which does not bend breaks.” Pretty clever for a guy who had been dead for a couple of millennia.

He sat on the edge of the bed, dropped his head, and bowed forward to loosen his spine. From that vantage point he got a bird's eye view of his spare tire. At least he could still see his own dong when he looked down. This morning's stiffness was come by pretty honestly, he had to admit, but his overall lack of fitness was his own fault. If his brother saw him today he'd shake his head, speechless.

He held his forehead in his hands and let his neck release slowly. Walter was as fit and trim at forty as he was at twenty. That's what clean living did for you. Thoughts of Walter brought
up the memory of the last time they'd been together. Three years ago. He saw himself and Walter standing together in the barn, looking at the boxing ring with its sagging hemp ropes, and the now red-stained canvas floor. The four overhead lights still hung over the ring.

Neither brother spoke a word or shed a tear.

Cole asked himself why he did not keep in touch with Walter. None of it was his brother's fault. There was nothing Walter could have done. He was a boy then too, only a few years older than Cole. Quieter, steadier, more level-headed for certain, but just a boy.

And at forty he was a park warden. He rode the trails in the summer, helped lost tourists find the washrooms, and brought little children down off the rocky mountainsides. In June he herded cattle into the high country, and brought them out in October, keeping alive his family's grazing permit. Walter was not married but he lived with a woman. Beth? Betty? Cole was sad that he didn't remember her name.

He groaned as he stood up, padded naked to the bathroom, and turned on the shower. While the water found its way through the pipes to his room, he turned on Newsworld, a morning show from Toronto. At least there was no news about the murder of Mike Barnes. He entered the shower, let the water warm him and loosen him and wash the stiffness and pain from his body. It took a full ten minutes.

Peggy gave him no argument.

He expected to have to defend his decision. While meditating in the shower, he had worked out all of his rebuttals. He'd even practiced the lines under his breath: “I signed on to stop a mine, not stop a man from being sent to jail.” And, “Solving a murder mystery isn't in my contract.” And, his favourite, “I'm a strategist, not a
PI
.” To Cole Blackwater it sounded like Bones protesting to Captain Kirk, “I'm a doctor, Jim, not an iguana.”

But when he told her that morning that he had to leave, Peggy simply said, “I'm so sorry for how this has turned out, Cole.”

He listened to her cry on the other end of the line. Not because he was leaving but because everything she had believed in was in peril, and his departure hammered that home.

“I'm sorry for the inconvenience to you, Cole,” she said. “We pulled you away from important work, and from your family, and this is the last thing that you need right now.”

He was dumbstruck. What kind of goodness was required to allow
her
to apologize to
him
? The Cardinal Divide was almost certainly lost and one of her colleagues likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars for killing a man responsible for the destruction of the wilderness she loved so dearly – to apologize to him?

“I'll do what I can from Vancouver to salvage something.” Cole wanted to encourage Peggy, at least. “Try to use this turn of events to our advantage. Maybe we can get a few feature stories on the Cardinal Divide out, the back story to the murder. I'll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Cole,” said Peggy McSorlie.

He hung up.

Considerably lighter now that he had decided to head back across the Continental Divide, he dressed in jeans and a colourful shirt reserved for festive occasions. He stuffed the rest of his clothes into his backpack and jammed his computer and accessories into his briefcase.

He scanned the room to make sure he hadn't left anything behind and checked in the bathroom and under the bed. Satisfied, he shouldered the pack, with some discomfort, and opened the motel door. He checked that Nancy Webber wouldn't see him slinking off, then walked to the Toyota, tossed his bag in the back, and headed to the Rim Rock office to settle up his bill.

Deborah Cody appeared at the sound of bells ringing. “Need anything Cole?”

“I'm checking out, Deborah.”

“I have you down for two weeks, Cole.” She smiled at him.

“Yeah,” he sighed, “things have changed.”

“I guess so.” She smiled again, offering him a check-out slip to sign. “But we hardly got to know each other.”

He looked up from his signature. Her eyes searched his, then held his gaze. “Don't you think that's a shame?” She touched his pen hand lightly.

A terrible shame, thought Cole.

“How is your face?” she asked, suddenly very concerned. “George told me what happened.”

Cole thought of George Cody and his baseball bat. What might the man do to Cole if he caught his wife flirting with him?

“It looks painful.” Deborah Cody reached out to touch his face and Cole pulled back involuntarily.

“It's pretty sore to the touch,” he said, and managed a half smile.

Deborah smiled too. Her dark blonde hair was loose and fell to her shoulders. Her eyes were bright and very sympathetic. She wore a
T
-shirt and her arms were well-muscled and brown. She was firm in all the right places and soft in the others. No wonder Mike Barnes had decided to seek some solace there.

He dropped his gaze from his paperwork and let his eyes trail down the long, shapely arms to the hand that rested near his on the counter. What was that on her right hand? Her knuckles were bruised, swollen, a little red.

“What happened to your hand?” he asked.

She looked at it as if she had only now noticed the bruise. “Oh, that? A window I was cleaning fell right on my knuckles.”