There was an Old Woman (11 page)

McStu and I avoided further confrontations. He didn't spot me parked outside either of the houses where he left his hat. And I have to confess that after reading all of his books, I sort of liked the guy. Mind you, he was no Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. He didn't come near Ross Macdonald either. But, he was a good read, if you know what I mean. He played fair with the reader and his hero, Dud Dickens, wasn't the smart-ass private eye who is always ordering wines I can't pronounce or picking out the murderer by the pipe mixture he's been using. Except for the beatings he took from the thugs,
Dud Dickens was my kind of private eye. I could identify with him and envy him his coach house across from the old Hamilton Jail on Barton Street.

When I wasn't out in my car, I was in the library doing some homework on as many of the names I'd recently heard as I could. I read all I could find about Thurleigh Ramsden. He had, according to one recent article about him, been elected alderman in 1985 and had been returned two years later. After that, in 1990, came an unsuccessful bid at the mayor's chain of linked gold S's. His late wife, Dora, had been born a Rudloe near Welland, Ontario. Ramsden himself had been born in Toronto's east end. So much for all his talk about “freeborn Englishmen.”

While Ramsden was on my mind, I put in a call to his office from a pay-phone across from the library's snack concession. He didn't keep a secretary so I left a message on his tape. I said I wanted to see him about business relating to the late Elizabeth Oldridge. I thought I might say something about the unpleasantness of our last meeting, but decided that I'd better wait until I was in the same room with him. I get intimidated by answering machines; they make me turn the simplest of messages into a scrambled mess. I left my office number and waited for him to try ignoring me to death.

A guilty thought kept pulling at my pantleg, like an insistent poodle: what was I doing to earn Newby's money lately? The nightly drive to Papertown after the evening news wasn't getting me anywhere. Maybe I'd better get
in touch with Stan Mendlesham and talk things over with him. I invested a quarter in this notion and got an invitation to meet Stan for coffee. When he asked me to suggest somewhere, I could only think of one place. It's not that big a town, after all.

He was sitting in one of the booths in the middle of the Di. “I got no time for lunch, Benny; just coffee and a roll. Then I gotta meet Mr. Newby at the office for a lunch meeting.”

“Too early for my lunch too,” I lied. I was thinking that his firm only bought one lunch per customer as I settled down opposite him, looking up at the clock above the swinging double doors to the kitchen.

“What have you got to report?” He was resting both of his pudgy hands on the table top. There were dark stains under his arms. Newby keeps his juniors on the run, it seemed. There was a lot of glitter about Stan: gold chains, expensive watch and three big rings.

“I don't know exactly what I've got, to be frank with you, Stan. I've been following the subject and I know one or two things about her, but I don't know what's important or not, since I've not been let into that part of the bargain. I know she's living in an on-and-off way with McKenzie Stewart. But that can hardly be news to anybody. I know where she does her shopping and gets her hair fixed. You want to know about that, Stan?”

“You better give me your full report.”

“Interim, you mean, or are you telling me I'm finished?”

“Sure: interim. Whatever you've got. I've no instructions to cut you loose.”

As succinctly as possible, but without leaving out anything significant, I went over Cath Bracken's daily grind. He made a few jottings on an envelope and nodded to show that he was still plugged in. I ended up telling him that there was some indication that Cath was getting some unwelcome harassment from her boss at CXAN, Orv Wishart. I told him that I was going to look into that and he didn't tell me not to.

Mendlesham puzzled me. He didn't seem interested in anything I'd found out about McStu. In fact he seemed cool on the girl-friend as well. Maybe it was just a job to him: his not to reason why; just carry the news home to Newby and send me off to gather more of the same. Were they looking for a break in the pattern? Did they expect both of them to book flights south or to France or something? I was still in the dark about that when Stan reluctantly took the check up to the cashier at the front of the restaurant.

“Any additional instructions?” I asked, hoping for some clue about the direction all of this was coming from. But there weren't.

“Just keep up the good work and give me a call in a couple of days, okay? Eventually, Mr. Newby will want to see all of this in writing, Benny.”

“What's it like working for a man like Newby, Stan?”

“What do you mean? Julian's the best there is, Benny. We're the busiest firm in town. Julian's very well organized.
He's got a team of specialists working for him. He also helps bring along the next generation. He's got his son on the payroll and Steve Morella's girl. He keeps us on our toes. That means we all work like hell when we're working, but he makes sure we all get time to enjoy the better things of life too. He's got his three antique Morgans he likes to putter with and I've got my golf. This is a high-class outfit, Benny. Not like the shop your cousin Melvyn runs. Not by a long shot.”

“I'll remember that. You ever need any titles searched, Stan, you come to me. I still do a little of that on the side, when I'm not too busy.”

“Sure, Benny. Sure. You take care now.” And he was off down St. Andrew Street, rocking from side to side like a plump pigeon.

I had learned nothing from Mendlesham about what I was supposed to be looking for Did they think that Cath Bracken was secretly flying to New York overnight to do the morning news on NBC? Was she suspected of—? And then it came to me. Of course! It had to be McStu's gadabout wife who was raising the fuss! Who else would give a damn about what Cath Bracken was doing in her spare time?

Further thought about this was stifled by the sweet smell of a Player's coming over my shoulder. It was Bill Palmer just coming into the Di. He looked shaggy and in need of a shower under his ancient raincoat, but his cigarette smelled like heaven itself. I came closer as he caught his breath. I greeted him with the stale formula that
passes for a friendly hello, and he dragged me back to a booth not far from where I'd been sitting.

“Oh, Benny! It's been like the old days around here!”

“What do you mean?”

“Takes me back to my time with the
Star.
They've pulled out all the stops on this murder. We haven't had a week like this since Red Hill went over the falls in a barrel.”

“What makes this so special?”

“Temperley? Hell, he was a prince of a financial institution, a cardinal of the counting house, a …” He ground to a stop. “I'm all written out. You finish it.” When the coffee came, he didn't so much drink it as absorb it directly. A wink and it was gone.

“I've read all about it. Great stuff, but you do look done in, Bill. Have you been working double shifts?”

“I've been up to my knees in that Victoria Lawn gumbo, Benny. And it's cold out there! Those yellow plastic ribbons the cops put around the scene of the crime don't keep the cold out. This is my second pair of boots I've dragged through the muck. Ruined my dress shoes the first night. Damn it all!”

“Are there any leads? Do they have a clue who did it?”

“If they have, they're wary of spilling it to the media. I can't get Chris Savas to answer his phone. And him owing me from last Monday's poker game!”

“Was Temperley dead when he went into the grave or was he killed in the cemetery, Bill? Did the coroner say anything about lividity?”

“Hell, he wouldn't tell me anything. He just grinned at me with those phoney new teeth of his.”

“Bill, remember when you were telling me about McKenzie Stewart the other day?” Bill nodded suspiciously. “Well, do you remember telling me whether he was married or not?”

“McStu's an estranged man, Benny. His happy home is no more.”

“So, a divorce is in the wind?”

“That's what I hear. But hell, Benny, I don't hear all that often from that quarter. They could both be back together again for all I know. But remember to be careful of that wife of his. She can be a dangerous woman.”

“Good! That's just what I wanted to hear.” I got up and found my way out into the weather again.

I sympathized with Bill and the working press. At least he was working on a big story. My talents were totally absorbed in another direction. Mendlesham couldn't have been clearer: nothing fancy is wanted from Mrs. Cooperman's younger son, just the facts, please. If McStu's wife wanted to share in the riches to be had from writing crime fiction, that was her business. My job was to furnish the information. That was what I was good at, after all. That's what I did in the divorce trade. Why did I now start feeling like a hired gun, a mercenary? I used to be proud of what I did. Suddenly I felt like a heel. Maybe I was getting senile, taking on a bad case of that disease I can never remember the name of.

I stopped at the sight of my office door and turned around. I was not in the mood to be serenaded by the sound of running water—not after spending so much time in the library. I didn't want to run into Kogan again. He'd probably want a progress report too. Just like Mendlesham. When I stopped chewing my lower lip and noticed where my feet were taking me, I found that I was heading in the direction of the TV station. I was just passing the park with the cenotaph in it. There were a few bruised wreaths leaning against the white stone, spilling faded ribbon on the steps, left over from November eleventh. Across the street stood another monument, the one to the builder of the canal that still ran along behind St. Andrew Street. Today the canal was a horrible example of what unchecked pollution can produce; back then it was a symbol of trade, commerce and progress. The smile on William Hamilton Merritt's face was fixed in the past.

The receptionist at CXAN didn't quiz me about my business with Orv Wishart. It was enough that I wanted to see him. She said, “Top of the stairs and to your right,” so I did that. The door was standing open.

The room had probably been a bedroom in the original mansion, which went back to the 1860s, when it was built as the home of the man who built the canal. Now the radio station occupied the ground floor of the building and the TV studios were set up in an extension added to the back in the 1950s. All the changes had failed to erase the charm and beauty of this high-ceilinged, white, old
house. Take the long, curving staircase I'd just climbed, for example. You could still see ghostly figures from the last century in dark suits and long dresses sweeping up to the ballroom. I'm sure the original house had a ballroom. It was that sort of place.

Wishart was rapidly coming around his big desk and I stood in the entrance.

“Mr. Cooperman!” he said. I was always flattered when somebody remembered my name after a casual introduction. We'd shaken hands less than a week ago when I'd been pumping Robin O'Neil about Cath Bracken's routine, Of course, I wasn't giving Wishart credit for remembering who saw him briefly in the Kingsway Hall last Tuesday. Once again I had my finger bones rattled, and the rest of me was directed to one of the comfortable-looking chairs that gazed up at the big judge's chair behind his desk. “Since I met you, Mr. Cooperman, I've been hearing your name around town. Funny the way that happens, isn't it?”

Orv Wishart was well built, heavy, athletic-looking. His jacket was well cut, but the necktie had been loosened and pulled to one side, like this was the middle of a dog-day heatwave in August and the air-conditioner was on the blink. His face was large and round. The beard looked like an afterthought and not a good one, Like his other hair, it was brown and curly. From his appearance I could see he looked after himself. Besides a simple digital wrist watch and wedding ring, he wasn't showing any
jewellery. “What's on your mind, Mr. Cooperman? Or is this a social call?”

“I wish it was, Mr. Wishart, but I'm afraid it's simply business. Strictly business.” Wishart relaxed back into his chair, let it tilt towards the window, through which I could see the bronze form of William Hamilton Merritt holding out his hand to the pigeons in his little park across the street. “As you may know,” I went on, trying for routine blandness, “a private investigator is often asked to make credit checks on people. It's just routine; nothing to get excited about. As a matter of fact, I usually do them by phone. A couple of the banks send a little of this work my way and it makes a comfortable filler between assignments.”

“I see. How did I rate a personal visit?”

“Frankly, I was curious to see you again. You're a powerful man in this community, Mr. Wishart. But, if you like, I could go through the Credit Bureau and the Department of Transport.”

“You've been asked to check on somebody who works here, is that right?”

“That's it. Strictly confidential, of course. But I don't have to tell you that. It must happen all the time in your position.”

“It can be a headache. These young announcers are here today and gone tomorrow. If I don't help them get a credit rating, they won't ever put down roots.” He took out a pack of cigarettes and then put it back into his top
drawer without taking one. Another reformed character in the making. “Who is it this time?”

I reached into my inside breast pocket and brought out my electric bill. I pretended to read a name scribbled on the back. “Catherine Bracken,” I said without expression. Orv's chair ratcheted him a notch or two in my direction, but his face didn't change.

“She's been here well over a year. She's steady, dependable, honest, trustworthy—”