Balsam Sirens Page 4

  Jimmy is our handyman. He’s been around for years, and I agreed to let him live in the cottage that had been my home in Largs in pre-Andrea days, while I was in university and still had the large house rented. He gets the place rent-free in exchange for being available as needed to do any odd jobs that crop up. He also does larger jobs, but I insist on paying him for them even though he feels all his needs are met if he can see a couple hundred dollars a week. These needs became even more modest once he had the rent-free cottage.

  When I first floated the idea of a pool, Jimmy was mystified. He looked at me, he looked at the lake, then he looked at me again, clearly thinking I had gone barking mad. But when I showed him where I wanted the pool, that I wanted it heated, and that I wanted it to have access and sightlines only from the house, he became more interested. We dug out the space where the pool would be located, and then Jimmy put in the basic structure, the lining, and the large tiles surrounding the pool on three sides. Jimmy had had no idea what an “infinity” pool was, but when I described it, he shrugged, made a couple of vague hand gestures that said clearly enough “Okay, if that’s what you want”, and did the work. But it was his plan for heating that really surprised me.

  The picture Jimmy drew for me was of a length of hose fastened in a back-and-forth switchback pattern to a lightweight steel frame. I made a few changes to it, and Jimmy took the whole thing from there. He bought four hundred feet of garden hose, put together the rectangular frame out of lengths of tubing, had a local welder fabricate a strong base and support, bought the small pump, connectors, electrical fittings, temperature measurement, and flow control gear, and assembled it all. When he had finished, we had a solar heating array aimed at a specifically chosen point in the sky and a system that drew two streams of water from the lake. One of these streams was heated and one wasn’t, and when they were combined using flows determined by the temperature control scheme, the resulting warm water was fed into the pool. An equal flow of water slipped over the infinity edge as a film sliding down the angled exterior pool wall that faced the lake, passed through a small filtration and treatment device, and then was returned to the lake. Jimmy’s solar heater was hidden from view behind an eight-foot hedge. Andrea had been skeptical of the whole venture, but became increasingly interested as it took shape, and ultimately became by far the most frequent user of the pool.

  My thoughts by this time had shifted fully to Largs, and I spent half an hour pondering which of the ten projects I had outlined for Andrea we should start first. She would have her own ideas, but would expect me to offer my suggestions. Reflecting on all this, eyes closed, smiling stupidly at the sky, not bringing to bear any real mental discipline, meant that I was subject to some wandering. And even though I had said to myself that my earlier telephone calls would be the end of work for the day, that I would spend no more time thinking about work, my mental wandering soon led me back to George’s brother’s “accident”.

  The facts of the case were very skimpy indeed, and a single page, obtained from Cromarty, was more than adequate to contain them all. Harold Barbour’s body had been found wedged among rocks in a small inlet on the east side of Indian Point. The body was clad in bathing trunks and one diving fin. Apart from the deep wounds across the back, evidently caused by a boat propeller, there were numerous marks elsewhere on the body, presumed by the police to have been the result of waves bringing it repeatedly into contact with rocks on the shore where it had been found. This presumption struck me as being too quick, too easy. No consideration appeared to have been given to the possibility that there could have been other much less innocent causes for more than one of those marks. Because of the body having been immersed in water, time of death had to be determined based on measures of decomposition, and from this it was estimated that the body had been in the water two to three days.

  That was it. No physical evidence of anything. No witnesses. No suspect boats. No reports from anyone. Time to become proactive, I thought, as I pulled out my phone once more.

  “Hi, Kate? Yes, it’s me, Mark. Yes, fine, thanks. Both fine. We’ll be at Balsam Lake tomorrow afternoon. Any chance of getting together? Yes, The Repose would be fine. We can be there by late afternoon, let’s say about five thirty. Excellent! See you then.”

  We chatted a bit more.

  “Yes, there is something else, Kate. Somewhere out on Balsam Lake, a canoe has gone missing. Could you keep a look out for it? No idea. No, I don’t know what kind or what colour, but it might be somewhere along the shore of Indian Point. No. Not sure. What? Oh, yes, you can start looking whenever you like, the sooner the better actually. No. Sorry. I can’t be any more specific than that.”

  Kate had a few more questions.

  “I know, it does seem like a very odd request, but I’d rather fill you in when I see you at The Repose. Yes. Looking forward to it. And I know Andrea is as well.”

  Seven

  The remainder of the day loped past. I dozed on my reclining chair, moving every half-hour or so either to be in or out of the direct sun. At two o’clock, I fished out the window-washing gear and cleaned the terrace windows. There was no real need, but it made me feel better. Andrea keeps a Mediterranean schedule, so she wouldn’t be home before seven thirty or eight. Responding to a vague unease at just flopping all day, I strolled past my shelves of books, but decided that my energy levels had dropped too low to start into anything more demanding than Dick and Jane, the stress of relaxing being what it is. I watch very little television, and in any case the tube’s normal mindless content would have plummeted even further to its midafternoon amoebic level.

  It would still be a long way to dinner, but my new roles of provisioner, chef, and kitchen staff were more appealing than anything I had come up with so far today, and I pondered what to make us for dinner. It took barely twenty minutes for an enticing menu to assemble itself in my mind.

  Something tasty but not too overwhelming.

  (But even so, my client’s problem kept raising its head in the background. Harold’s death wasn’t an accident, of that I was almost certain, and I was hoping that finding the canoe might clarify things one way or the other.)

  Artichoke hearts in extra-virgin olive oil, a few crushed capers, a grind of pepper, and a decent sprinkling of coarsely grated Asiago promised to do yeoman service as an appetizer.

  (If it wasn’t an accident, then my best course would be to take whatever evidence I had to the police and let them deal with it, wash my hands of the matter.)

  Then would follow smoked salmon and pasta in a white sauce made using mascarpone and a dash of vodka, completed by strips of red pepper, finely separately broccoli florets, and sugar snap peas, the vegetables all lightly steamed and mixed into the salmon and pasta just before serving.

  (I would still need to help George come to terms with things, since that appeared to be the humane thing to do.)

  And we would drift through dessert on a raft of my own tarte au sucre. There was the right amount of time available to do a good job on this, which meant going out and getting what I needed, allowing the appetizer components (except for the Asiago) to sit and infuse for a couple of hours, and making the tarte far enough in advance that it would be cooled by the time it was needed.

  (But then there had been Cromarty’s reaction – one-track, bull-headed, and evidently fixated on driving through what it seemed to me that his superiors had decided would be the fate of this case. Was I just going to give it my one best shot, then say to hell with it all if Cromarty remained intransigent? I was reminded again of an Andrea comment, raised more than once, that I pursued problems beyond all reasonable limits, then justified myself by saying that’s what my clients expected.)

  After getting the ingredients at the market, I put together the appetizer, prepared the tarte, and got the elements for the main course lined up. By then, it was time to check that the wine glasses still worked, and it seemed that a good rosé would match all the courses well.

 
I bounced back and forth in increasing frustration between cooking and client. At six thirty, I took the tarte au sucre out of the oven, smiled back at it, and went off to check my e-mail.

  To my surprise, there was something from Bent Cromarty. The bare essence of his message, which took a fair bit of boiling down to reach, was that the police had exhausted all leads in the Harold Barbour case, the prospect of further advance was expected to be zero, and the case would be closed in the morning. He also noted in the message that he had sent me an e-mail attaching some notes on the Barbour case. That was the news I’d been waiting for. I called George, and he confirmed that Cromarty, or somebody, had contacted him. Keeping George on the telephone, I opened the attachment to Cromarty’s e-mail and read it quickly.

  They had found Harold’s car near the shore of Balsam Lake, off a rarely used stretch of dirt track on the east side of Indian Point. There were some notes on the site investigation that had been carried out by the police. The police had also learned that he had been staying at a cheap, rundown, and dispiriting holiday cabin outside Fenelon Falls. The police had collected Harold’s things from the cabin and towed his car to a garage in Coboconk. The car and suitcase were there waiting to be claimed. I related some of this to George, told him about Harold’s car, and said that I would look after reclaiming it, but that George had to authorize me to do it. This appeared to pose for him a major conceptual hurdle. I was amazed when he told me that he had an e-mail account. I said I would send him the text of a message that he should then transmit to the police, to the garage, and to me, using e-mail addresses that I would also send him.

  “You should do that today, George, and let me know if you have any problems. Okay?”

  “Yes … okay. But, I … there’s … something else has happened.”

  It took another five minutes to get out of George that he had received a letter from a lawyer saying that he, the lawyer, had Harold’s will and that George should collect it.

  “How did the lawyer find out this quickly that Harold had died?” I asked George. “Did you know that Harold had prepared a will? Do you know what it says?”

  He didn’t, on all counts.

  To my alarm, what I heard next was a wrenching sob.

  “Mr. Whelan, I’m not … I ca- … ca- … Harold was … my brother! I can’t do this … Mr. Whelan!”

  “I’m very sorry for what’s happened, George, and I will help you. Where is this lawyer’s office?”

  George managed to give me the address.

  “Okay, George, here’s what we’ll do. Tomorrow morning, I’ll meet you at your place, and we’ll go together to the lawyer’s office and pick up Harold’s will. Don’t worry, George. I’ll be with you all the way.”

  George sniffled a bit, said thanks six times, and I assured him we would work out a plan to look after everything. I got George to tell me that he was okay, and I told him he had to get himself something to eat.

  “Order in a pizza, George, or some Chinese food. Things will work out. You’ll see.”

  We talked a bit more about inconsequential stuff, and I said he could forget about the e-mails since he and I would make the arrangements needed when I saw him in the morning.

  “You sure you’re okay, George? Get yourself something to eat, and get a good night’s rest.”

  He mumbled something and said thanks a few more times.

  “See you tomorrow, George. Ten o’clock at your place.”

  At least the mumbling now sounded less agitated.

  “Good night, George.”

  Seeing someone in that much distress always disturbs me. Especially when the someone doesn’t know where or how even to begin in coming to terms with it. I keep a case notebook, and I opened it now and jotted a page and a half of items based on our conversation and what looked at the moment to be some of the implications of what I had heard. What had started off looking simple was quickly seeming much less so.

  Acting on one of the notes I had made, I sent a quick text message to Kate, confirming our conversation earlier, and making my request more specific. At that point, I had to put the matter behind me. Andrea would be home soon, and there should be no gloomy moods or downcast expressions. A number of things were beginning, and in the expectation of bringing them to completion, I cued up the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth as a warning to the forces of darkness that I would persevere and victory would be mine. Or something like that. Seven minutes and four seconds later, through the intervention of von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, my personal sky had cleared.

  The rest of the evening flowed smoothly. Andrea arrived home at quarter to eight, I snatched her bulging briefcase from her, steadied her while she kicked off her shoes, and led her to a comfortable chair, in front of which just happened to be some appetizer and a glass of rosé. By this time, all hard edges in the room had been softened by Richard Stoltzman’s liquid relaxation. The meal flowed without a hitch, although Andrea was oddly quiet, and I was pretty sure it had to do with more than just tiredness. A sense, perhaps, that the job of putting food in front of us, an activity she had regarded as essentially hers, had been usurped? But from the first bite of dessert it took less than half an hour for the tarte au sucre to begin tugging Andrea’s eyelids down. She was beat. We climbed the stairs and crashed happily, just like two people ready to escape to the country for a couple of weeks.

  Well, one of us crashed. I lay awake going through the catalogue of things I would be pursuing on George’s behalf, but also totting up a list of events and situations, loosely interconnected, but all associated in some way with Harold Barbour.

  Eight

  Andrea loves her work, and she is tenacious, very committed, and single-minded in her approach to any job. Her work is brilliant, arresting, sublime, and various combinations of these and other things, as the case demands. She spends a lot of time querying, nudging, and offering suggestions to her clients. This is draining, and it often shows in Andrea’s expression at the end of a day.

  I awoke fully refreshed just before six o’clock, and I spent a minute or two looking at Andrea in the bed beside me, very deep in sleep, her face neutral, completely relaxed, and bearing no signs of tension, as her remarkable system recharged those reservoirs of energy and optimism that were among the first things attracting me to her. She would sleep for at least another hour, and during that time I would make some of the preparations in readiness for our trip to Largs later in the morning. It was a working day, Thursday, so there was no point in making an early start and having to fight the rush-hour traffic. We would aim to leave at eleven. That would put us in Largs at about one thirty. We would open the house, get settled for our two-week stay, and go out and buy locally the provisions we would need. I would check with Jimmy, see whether anything needed doing urgently, and he and I would go through the list of things he was working on in the long-term effort to raise gradually to a higher standard the properties Andrea and I owned at Largs. I knew that Andrea would take some work with her, because for her and her two partners the business never really slept, but one of the first things she would do at Largs would be to have a long soak in the pool and gaze out over moody Balsam Lake. I never objected to Andrea taking work to Largs, since I was often caught up by that need myself, and today, in particular, I had to be at George’s place early in order to meet the lawyer at ten.

  At eight o’clock, Andrea was up. I had already had a scratch breakfast, so we shared morning coffee at eight thirty and agreed on a schedule for our departure for Largs. Although it would take me less than twenty minutes to get to George’s place, I set out at just before nine. Not having any idea what George was like in the morning, or how long it would take him to do anything, I erred on the safe side, since I wanted to be ready and waiting for the lawyer at ten, and back home by eleven. My precaution was justified.

  When I arrived at George’s place, he was partly ready, but adrift in a massive cloud of confusion, some of it probably natural and some of it no doubt
due to present circumstances. Somehow we managed to be free of his place by nine thirty, and we were at the lawyer’s office at quarter to ten.

  The lawyer’s name was Hawley, and his operation appeared to be a single-person affair, but judging from the neatness of his office, the amount of space given over to filing, and the fact that he had two assistants who clearly were busy, he had a thriving and efficient practice. He rose to greet us as we were shown into his office, and he said “Mr. Barbour?” as he looked from one to the other of us. I inclined my head toward George, who began stumbling and dithering right away.

  “Mark Whelan”, I said to Hawley, extending my hand and dropping my card on his desk. “I’m assisting George as he tries to come to terms with what’s happened.”

  Hawley took my hand, but the puzzled look on his face told me right away that I had missed something.

  “I’m not sure I understand”, Hawley said, looking again from one to the other of us. “What has happened?”

  “The recent death of George’s brother, Harold. Isn’t that what you wanted to see George about?”