The Cooperman Variation

FIFTEEN

Sunday

For the rest of the weekend, I was content with my view of Lake Muskoka from the hammock at Norchris Lodge. I finished reading the Dermot Keogh biography, which left me with a clearer notion of the man. It reminded me that if I wanted to know more about him, I could catch his posthumous doings on the Internet. I made a mental note. In the hammock with my toes lined up against the view of pines and birches, that seemed like enough work for one day.

In front of the fireplace in the lodge on Sunday evening, I had been reading up on the history of Muskoka, the Muskoka Lakes, the summer cottages of the Lakes. There was a book about poisonous mushrooms that tempted me. I saw myself becoming the only private investigator in the Niagara Peninsula who could detect mushroom poisoning. Norma invited me to look into the photo albums for pictures of summers gone by. Judging by the smiling faces, I’d been misspending my summers for some decades. Norma told me that Chris, her husband, was on a fishing trip with his brother. When I’d finished with the albums, I returned to the mushrooms. By the time I was ready to go to sleep I could tell an Amanita phalloides from an Amanita verna. It’s a start.

Monday

I heard the city beckoning. I knew that should Vanessa return from Los Angeles early, she would expect to find me on hand to defend her against sudden death in whatever form it took. While thanking the McArthurs and paying for my short stay at Norchris Lodge, I got directions to the hospital in Bracebridge. I headed there after a bite of breakfast in town at a Chinese-Canadian restaurant, where I tried to memorize the creatures of the Chinese zodiac from a paper placemat.

The hospital was small, but busy. Orderlies, nurses and doctors were running through the halls as though they were on film that was being played at the wrong speed. The calm centre in all this was a woman in a crocheted sweater behind a glass marked “Information.”

“Why is everyone running around this morning?” I asked. “Has there been a big accident on the highway?”

“Welcome to the New Ontario,” she said with a mock grin. “We practise no-frills medicine these days. What may I help you with?” I told her and she looked up the room number. “Mr. Patel’s a pet,” she added. “Doesn’t get many visitors since Alma died.”

“His wife?” Then I remembered.

“Alma tried, but Ed could never see anyone after Lilly passed on. Alma ran his office and bought his neckties. Down the hall to your left and then turn right beside the stairs.”

I followed these instructions to the letter and came out in a small cafeteria. Reversing engines, I got back to the main corridor and asked an orderly for the room I wanted. This time I ended up in a new wing that had been attached to the main building as an afterthought. I walked past the nursing station and entered the small room, trying to decide which of the four men in the room was Ed Patel. I decided that the grey-faced skeletal figure by the window was the best candidate. The name, posted in masking tape to the wall behind him, confirmed my diagnosis. He was dozing over a copy of National Geographic balanced on his blue hospital gown. I saw that it was open to a picture of Lawrence of Arabia dressed in his flowing Arab costume. Ed Patel opened one eye and stared at me. Then his other eye opened, and they both examined me for a full thirty seconds. The magazine slipped from his chest to the edge of the bed and then to the floor.

“I haven’t seen you before,” he said. “Which agency sent you? Are you Community Care or Centra? I told them I can’t go home yet. My house’s been sold and the apartment’s still unfurnished.”

“I’m not from any agency, Mr. Patel. I’m just a visitor.”

“What church sent you? I don’t hold with churches nowadays. I’ve tried them all.”

“I’m a friend of Vanessa Moss, whom you probably know as-”

“I know, I know, I know. Is Stella at the cottage?”

“No, she’s in Los Angeles. She asked me to see how you’re getting on,” I lied.

“Well, that won’t take long. They keep telling me that my time here’s run out; they want to move me, but I can’t see how they can do that with all of these tubes running in and out of me.”

I couldn’t argue with that. He didn’t look as though he would ever travel again. His brown skin was as grey as death itself. I didn’t want him to read that in my face, so I stooped and retrieved the magazine. I put it down on the moveable table that straddled the bed.

He glanced at the magazine cover. “I once went to visit his house at Clouds Hill in Devon,” he said.

“Whose house?”

“Lawrence’s, of course. Tiny, nearly windowless place, hardly room to feed visitors. He sat the G.B. Shaws outside and fed them alfresco. Fed all his visitors that way. Okay for Shaw and Charlotte: they could munch on carrots. But what about Churchill? I can’t see him putting up with the muck Lawrence lived on. Lawrence couldn’t stand the smell of cooking. He sustained life on tinned fish, I think. But the Shaws knew better than to expect a banquet. I met the lad-one of the lads-he died trying to save, you know.”

I tried to show some interest. As he talked, he was rubbing his blanket between his thumb and forefinger. Perhaps there was a lurking memory of real blanket fuzz. He wouldn’t find any in these blankets. Ed Patel continued with his story: “There were two of them, on bikes, riding abreast even though they were told not to. Lawrence came on them as he reached the top of a hill and ran his Brough off the road to avoid hitting them. Saved their lives at the cost of his own. He lingered for nearly a week, never regained consciousness. That’s the way to go, eh?”

“I guess it is,” I said lamely.

“Not like this with all these pipes and tubes showing what’s not working inside.”

“Is there anything I can get you?”

“I don’t suppose you have a copy of The Seven Pillars with you? Or even Revolt in the Desert, I reckon. Oh, well. What about a Perry Mason mystery? There aren’t many of them I haven’t read. But now my memory’s so poor, I can read them all over again. What did you really come for? I won’t remember your name, most likely, but you might tell me just to humour me.”

I did that, and he nodded while trying to boot his memory to receive and store the information.

“Is Stella in trouble? What can I do?”

“She thinks that there might be somebody trying to kill her,” I said.

“And she’s made a heap of enemies at that city job of hers.”

“You don’t miss much.”

“I’ve got the mentality of a small-town lawyer because that’s what I am. In other words, I’m a snoop. But I’m getting behind. I used to enjoy being in the thick of things. I once had four federal cabinet ministers at my dining-room table. Bet you don’t believe that. It wasn’t planned, it just turned out that way. My cottage was always like that, especially when Lilly was alive. Everybody loved Lilly.” He seemed to drift into a reverie, thinking of the absent Lilly, and I let him.

“Stella’s dad and I were fishing buddies. Saved my life at least twice. Both times in fast water.”

“What do you know about Dermot Keogh?” I asked. He blinked at the change of subject.

“Fine gentleman. A bit wild, maybe, but solid, if you know what I mean. He could separate the serious from the frivolous when he had to.”

“What was he to you?”

“He was a neighbour. For two years I didn’t know he was famous. He’d never tell me.”

“He shared your interest in old motorcycles, I believe?”

“He was a collector. Had a fine Brough. And a Crocker. They’re getting scarce.”

“Would you know all the Brough collectors?” He nodded, quickly. There can’t have been that many. “Does the name Bob Foley ring a bell?”

“Foley? Foley? Yes-s-s. He used to drive Dermot around. Only man Dermot would allow behind a wheel. Stella had no use for him. She’d wince when his name came up. Scared of him, I think. He had an appetite for bikes, though, but he didn’t own any. He was just hungry. Collecting bikes is not a poor man’s game. Not any more.”

“What happened to Dermot’s collection?”

“He left ’em to a British collector name of Horwood. Sir Harry Horwood. Very fine collection. It’s all spelled out in the will.”

“How did you meet Dermot Keogh? You said he was a neighbour?”

“Neighbour, friend, fellow music-lover. Fellow at the marina introduced him to me. He invited me to dinner that same day. We exchanged books and drank a lot of Scotch together. Also Irish, bourbon, rye and a few other things. Once we canoed down the Indian River singing ‘I Am the Walrus’ at the tops of our voices. Damned silly that he should be dead, I’ll tell you. It’s a great loss. I liked the man, Mr.- See, I told you I’d forget.”

“Cooperman,” I prompted. “Did you do any legal work for him?”

“Not much. That city fellow, Raymond Whatshisname, did all the fancy stuff. I wouldn’t know where to begin on those complicated recording and film contracts. No, I stick to the simple staples of a small-town attorney’s practice: conveyancing of real property, wills, torts and a little domestic work. It’s provided me with a good living for over forty years. I can’t complain. I’ve enjoyed the work. Setting something going that would get out of bed and turn itself on in the morning. Know what I mean? Like that palliative care unit I set up. It’ll still be doing good deeds when I’m gone too. Once set up a puppy farm too. Manitoulin Island. Wonder how it’s getting on.”

“When did you give Vanessa the keys to your place?”

“She’s got my keys, and I have a set of hers. We look after one another up here, young fellow. Evans at the marina, he’s got keys too. He sees to our roofs in winter; gets ’em cleared if the snow’s heavy. Alma had keys too, just in case.”

“Alma?”

“Alma Orchard. My secretary. Runs-I should say ran-my offices for me. She met with a tragic accident this spring. And I couldn’t even get out of here to go to Croft’s Funeral Home, and it’s just across the street from here. Big house on the corner. Lots of big houses end up as funeral homes in a town like this. Dying’s a thriving business. That and used cars.”

“When would that have been, Mr. Patel?”

“Call me Ed. Everybody does now, now that Alma’s gone. Could never get her to ease off on formality. You’d think that formality was the only thing that kept that woman hooked together. She died second Monday in May. They didn’t find her until Wednesday. Poor Alma. All those years of filing and writing the numbers of cases in a ledger.”

“Does the name ‘Bowmaker’ mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing. Unusual name, though,” he said, trying to lift himself higher on the bed. I helped him. He weighed nothing at all.

“What about Renata Sartori?”

“Ah, the murder victim! Yes, I knew Renata. Dermot was very close to her. She would have been good for Dermot. Now they’re both gone. And I linger on, temporarily.”

I could see that I was beginning to tire him. That note of sentimentality wouldn’t have crept in normally, I suspected. I made leaving noises, scraping my feet and making the chair squeak on the linoleum. I promised that I would send him a few Erle Stanley Gardners when I next found myself in a bookstore. He waved me off with a forced smile. I navigated my way through the confusing corridors and found my car where I’d left it.

As I swung the Olds out into traffic, such as it was, the first thing I saw was the sign on the front lawn of the corner house: “Croft’s Funeral Home Since 1913.”

On a whim, I pulled into the lot connected to the chapel and parked next to the only other car. I got out and went through the glass doors that had been added to the side of the big white clapboard house. The quiet inside hit me. It was just the quiet of an empty house, but there was an extra hollowness underlying the silence. Then a man in a grey cardigan came through from a room at the back.

“Mr. Egan? I’m Henry Croft. We spoke earlier on the phone.” The welcome that began as friendly as you please wilted as he came to realize that I wasn’t Mr. Egan at all. I quickly explained who I was, that I had just been to see Ed Patel across the street and that he had told me about poor Alma Orchard. The sound of those names warmed him up again. “Oh yes, Alma. She was quite a character around town. Everybody liked Alma once they got on to her little eccentricities. Did you know her, Mr. Cooperman?”

“I didn’t, but Ed Patel was just talking about her and feeling sort of powerless because he couldn’t come to the service you held for her.”

“Yes, indeed. He was missed. But, under the circumstances … It was very well attended. The service, I mean. Alma was local, you understand, and there weren’t many in these parts she didn’t know. My grandmother and hers were great chums when they were young. She’d been keeping Ed’s practice going after Ed took sick. Couldn’t take on new work, but kept up to date on what was there.”

“Was she an elderly woman?”

“Coming up to her retirement. Was worried what she’d do once she shut down the last of Ed’s offices. One here in town, I mean. It was a great shame about Alma. She was a healthy woman and a careful one. Not like her to take a radio into the bathroom with her.”

“Nasty way to go,” I offered.

“Closed casket, of course. They didn’t find her, you know, for some days after it happened. I told her time and time again about living alone in that big old house. It just goes to show you. Naturally, it tested our professional skills out back. But I think we made the best of it. Got her all dressed up in her Sunday best. Mrs. Croft is a licensed female embalmer, you understand.”

“Of course.”

“Yes, she’d just taken off a clean outfit for a bubble bath with the radio perched on the corner of the tub. That’s what Sergeant Hoffmeister told me. The Provincial Police took an interest for a few days. There were things that puzzled them. Things puzzled a few of us.”

“Like what, Mr. Croft?”

“Well, I never speak ill of the dead, Mr. Cooperman. They’re my bread and butter, so to speak. But Alma was never all that fastidious about herself. And I wondered what she was doing all dolled up in clean clothes before she took her bath. Most times you find discarded dirty clothes and linen in the bath or bedroom, but not in this case. She was all dressed up to go out to the church bake sale that Monday when she stopped to take a bath. How do you like that?”

It was nearly noon when I hit the highway back to Toronto. It was a perfect day for travelling in an air-conditioned car. Unfortunately, none of the former owners of the Olds had thought of installing air-conditioning. The present owner hadn’t the initiative either. So he fried, even with the back windows open. Through the windshield, which had by now acquired an impressive collection of dead insects, I could see Canadian Shield granite following me back to town. It quit only as I neared Orillia, where I missed the overpass to Webers hamburger stand. Feeling that lapse keenly in the pit of my stomach, I pulled into the city of Orillia at the first suggestion from the highway signs.

Orillia was a borderline sort of place. For those driving north, it represented the gateway to vacationland; for those moving back to the city, it represented the first touch of urban civilization. Here you were reintroduced to fire hydrants and sidewalks, curbs and parking meters. You were once more in the iron grip of the city. From the highway, shopping plazas and large, flat areas devoted to parking took the place of outcroppings of rugged granite rock. Names such as IGA and Zehrs and Century 21 led the way into the town on Lake Couchiching. In saying that Orillia was the tunnel through which you re-entered civilization, I don’t mean to bad-mouth all of those towns north of there. Places such as Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Huntsville can all boast of curbstones and parking meters, but they are inside the inescapable context of being north. At least to a southerner like me, they are north. So, for me, driving back to Toronto, Orillia was the gateway to the south.

Orillia was squeezed between the eight-lane highway and the south and west shores of Lake Couchiching. Part of the town spilled south of the lake, filling the gap between it and Lake Simcoe, which hooked up with the smaller lake at The Narrows. Like the great city of Rome, Orillia seemed to be built on seven hills as well, with streets climbing away from you towards the highway or sloping away from you towards the docks of the port. A large information booth that was set up here for tourists was having a busy day. Men and women in shorts or cutoff jeans were filing in and out carrying maps and brochures back to their cars as though they spelled the way to ease from earthly pain. I spotted a restaurant between two stone buildings that must have gone back to the early years of the community.

The meal at the Town and Country wasn’t exactly gourmet fare, but while I scanned the menu, I was watching a living diorama of busy Orillians taking their ease.

“I’ve had that car on blocks for two years, Lyal, and I don’t dare fill them tires without a damned good reason.” Lyal was wearing a grey T-shirt, blue pants, a heavy brass bracelet and yellow work boots. His pal wore a peaked blue cap, a light-blue shirt and running shoes. He’d hung a blue-on-blue windbreaker on the back of his chair.

“You got no call to talk like that, Bert. I only asked if she ran, is all.”

“You know as much about cars as you do about livestock.”

“The hell I do!”

“You couldn’t breed rabbits, Lyal. You know that!” said Bert with finality.

The restaurant was furnished in reproduced captain’s chairs, with captain’s stools next to the bar, where a Molson’s Export sign winked at the thirsty. A big Coke cooler filled the part of one wall that wasn’t occupied by the kitchen hatchway.

“What can I get youse?” This last was a red-headed waitress with a blue butterfly tattooed on her bare arm. She wasn’t chewing gum nor was there a pencil stuck in her hair, but her apron and salmon-pink uniform were starched and pressed as though they came from a roller mill.

“What’s the soup today?”

“Too hot for soup,” she announced flatly. I moved my finger further down the menu. I placed my order and tried to move my ears away from the discussion.

At another table, what looked like a small-town lawyer was eating a piece of apple pie, his chin nearly touching the plate. He was wearing a worn brown tweed jacket. Pens and pencils filled his shirt pocket beside a greasy necktie. Next to him, his briefcase threatened to explode, sending tattered pieces of writs and processes around the room. When my chopped-egg sandwich on white bread came, I tried to think of what awaited me in Toronto when I got back. Vanessa was probably still in L.A. and might be there for another day or so. That would leave me free to continue my digging. I would mend my fences with Sykes and Boyd by giving them the shotgun and shells. If that didn’t work, I’d try something else. I didn’t know what that might be, but I knew that I always thought of something.

Back on the street, I found a second-hand bookstore, where I saw a clutch of Perry Masons. For five dollars, the clerk agreed to send them on for me. Before I’d quite got back to the street, I returned to change the instructions I’d given: I’d written Ed Patel’s address as “care of Croft’s Funeral Home.”

Next, I headed for the newspaper office on Colborne Street and found it in the block between Peter and West. This was a busy block, containing the fire hall, the police station and a Tim Hortons restaurant.

The office of the Orillia Packet amp; Times was busy that noon hour. A man in an old-fashioned straw hat, carrying a tuba in a case, was filling in a subscription form. A woman in pink shorts and a sweatshirt reading “It’s not ale if it isn’t Charles Wells” was waiting for him to finish. Was Charles Wells beer and ale taking over the Canadian market, I wondered, or were two sightings of advertisements on clothing just a coincidence? I’d have to be on the lookout for another appearance.

The capable woman behind the counter had sculptured jet-black hair with a shock of white at the front. She was trying not to nibble the temple of the glasses she was holding near her mouth. She was short and buxom and was grinning at something interesting going on inside her head that had nothing to do with the Orillia Packet amp; Times. A photograph of what I guessed were her grandchildren stood on the desk to which she returned from time to time. When I came to her notice, I explained that I wanted to see copies of the paper going back several weeks, to May, in fact. I was looking for the write-up of a talk given on the evening of the fifteenth of May.

“Aren’t you on-line?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon?” I looked around to see if there was anyone in line who might claim to be ahead of me.

“The information is obtainable on the Internet.” She said this as though explaining quantum theory to a six-year-old.

“Oh!” I stuttered. “I don’t have my laptop in the car.”

“You’d better come around and let me set you up. Clarence won’t be back until after lunch. If I hadn’t packed a lunch this morning, I’d close up this place for an hour. And just let anybody complain.” She lifted a flap in the countertop and showed me into an office that sported a framed poster of an old-fashioned reporter hollering into a telephone: “Make it snappy, sweetheart, and get me Rewrite!” I thought of Vanessa’s description of Ken Trebitsch, the hot-shot head of News at NTC.

I was sorry not to meet Clarence, but I did find the story I was looking for as I flipped from screen to screen.The Junior Chamber of Commerce, meeting jointly with the Orillia Bar Association, was treated last night to the keen wit and interesting comments of Barry Bosco, a lawyer with the Toronto firm of Devlin and Devlin. Meeting in the library of the Leacock Museum on Brewery Bay, and introduced by Cam Millar, the curator of the museum, Mr. Bosco thanked the audience for coming out on a rainy evening. Reading from a prepared text, but illustrating his points with anecdotes, he kept the room with its 24 listeners enthralled for almost an hour. He talked about five of his interesting cases, which had caused a stir in legal quarters in the Ontario capital. Most interesting was his account of the baby deaths at Rose of Sharon Hospital. In thanking him afterwards, and in the act of presenting him with a T-shirt commemorating the incorporation of the town of Orillia as a city, Ernie Moffatt expressed the sentiments of most of those in attendance when he said, “Hopefully, we hope that you’ll come back and see us again before too long.” The deputy mayor, Harry J. Torgov, seconded the motion to adjourn to the next stage of the evening’s entertainment. Tea and cookies were served, with special thanks to Mrs. Halpern and her committee. The speaker informally chatted with his audience afterwards.

When I pulled myself away from the back issues of the Orillia Packet amp; Times, I saw the woman with the shock of white in her black hair explaining to a newcomer that she couldn’t guarantee anyone the size of a photograph that would mark the winning of Sunday’s regatta. “It’s expensive to run a picture more than two or three columns, Carla. Besides, pictures is another department. Talk to Clarence when he’s finished drinking his lunch over at the Rendezvous.” Carla went out in a hurry. My friend behind the counter knew how to get Clarence back to work when she wanted him. Before I left, I asked her if any pictures were taken at the time of the Junior Chamber and Orillia Bar meeting at the museum. She opened a drawer on her side of the counter and came up with a grey manila envelope.

“Clarence took these, but as you know, we didn’t run any of them. These are hard times in the world of print journalism.” She said this last in a sad, breathy voice that showed how much recent economies had hurt her personally. I took four glossy pictures out and looked through them. There was Barry Bosco being introduced, there he was giving his talk, there he was accepting the T-shirt, and there he was posing with some of the others, “informally chatting with his audience.” The only trouble was that Barry Bosco wasn’t Barry Bosco. The man in the photograph was Roger Cavanaugh, the man Raymond Devlin brought with him last Wednesday to sign the contracts for Dermot Keogh Hall. Roger Cavanaugh may not have had the most prepossessing of faces, but here on these glossies, he cut quite a dash. I could almost hear the sound of an exploding alibi as I grinned idiotically at the prints. The first thing I learned when I started in this business was to check everything. This was one of those times when it paid off.

I paid for one of these photographs, collected a receipt and found, on locating the Olds, that my parking meter had expired, but that no parking ticket had yet been placed under my windshield wiper. I was at least half an hour over-parked and within spitting distance of the police station. After that, I won’t say a bad word about Orillia again, ever.