Hole in One (14 page)

I dashed home, dragged out the portable computer, plugged it into the telephone, and called up the Info Globe number. Computers may be the curse of mankind—no, they
are
the curse of mankind—but they never have any time off. It took me about twenty minutes to connect with Info Globe's data base and then to work my way around the entries. I'm used to searching news files, not financial documents. Then, like magic, my computer screen lit up with the list of the directors of Ontario Corporation 13248994.

“Gotcha!” I shouted.

Mrs. Sylvia Post was listed as president and chief executive officer; Frederick H. Tomkins, the deputy reeve, was listed as secretary; and, under “Other Directors,” appeared the names of Randolph Morrison, R. Gordon Ferguson, and Thomas Lamont, the three village councillors. Under “Purposes of the Corporation,” was a single clause: “To develop certain properties within the village of Bosky Dell.” I copied the file into my computer and called Hanna.

“Can't it wait?” she complained when she finally answered the phone. “I was sound asleep.”

“No, it can't wait.” And I told her what I had found.

“Call me dense, but I don't see how that helps. The councillors okayed the sale of the golf course, as trustees, to a development company. They happen to be directors of the development company; indeed, that's why they did it. They'll probably all wind up rich. I repeat, how does that help solve any murders?”

“I don't know that it does, but it sure as heck helps with stopping the development of the golf course.”

“Do we care?”

“We do.”

Pause. “Okay, we do. You do. Somebody does. How does this stuff about the trustees help with that?”

“Because they can't do it. Even I know that. Or, at least, I think I know that. I'll have to check with a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure it isn't an arm's-length transaction. My guess is that they're open to a charge of
soccage in fief,
or leg before wicket, or conflict of interest, or something. I can't imagine how they thought they could get away with it.”

“I can.”

“How?”

“Well, if you're right, a laughable thought, but one we will entertain for purposes of argument, then the transaction could be set aside, if anybody knew about it. But, my guess is, it could be covered up pretty quickly, and pretty easily.”

“It could? How?”

“Well, all these jokers must own some stock in the company, right?”

“Of course. You have to, to be a director.”

“Okay, try this on. Mrs. Post forms a numbered company for purposes of this development, issues some stock, gives some of it to the council members and the reeve—”

“Deputy reeve.”

“Deputy reeve. They then okay the sale, smashing the trust all to hell. But who, except for the lawyers involved, all of them bound by client privilege, is ever going to know exactly what happened? The original document has been lifted from the county office, and the connection between the trustees and the councillors only came to light by a fluke—”

“I would prefer to call it hard digging and shrewd detective work.”

“Uh-huh, by Mrs. Golden. All you did was make a telephone call and talk to a computer. Where was I?”

“You had just smashed the trust all to hell.”

“Oh, yeah. Mrs. Post then buys back the stock she gave the deputy reeve and the councillors for a nice, fat sum, so their payoff comes in the form of a capital gain on the stock they owned—legal, and lightly taxed, dollars. Then she replaces them with a whole new bunch of directors, and they're out of it. She obviously hadn't got around to this last step, yet, but once she did, there would be no connection between the councillors and the corporation. Even if there was, and they had angry voters to face next time, so what? There isn't much glory in being a village councillor.”

“You could still trace what happened, if you went back in the files.”

“But who would? Why would they? If it hadn't been for the death of poor old Charlie what's-his-name, this would all have been over and done with before anybody even knew what was going on. My guess is that the councillors knew they were doing something pretty dodgy, but not necessarily crooked. They sure as hell weren't going to tell anybody; in fact, they all removed themselves to the Caribbean to wait for the All Clear. And if they didn't rat, who would? Who could?”

“Carlton Lancelot Withers,” I replied. “He could, and will, tell the world.”

“Not in the
Lancer
, he won't.”

“I don't know. Tommy wasn't cut in on this; he might accidentally let me slip it into the paper as a way of getting back at Sylvia Post for leaving him out of the deal. She could hardly fire him for printing the news.”

“You've never heard of anyone being fired for printing the news?”

“Um, ah, matter of fact, I have. Well, it's worth a try, anyway. I'm going to call Tommy at home and ask him to come down to the office first thing in the morning.”

“That'll be nice. He'll like that.”

“He'll come, though. Maybe I'll tell him Olga Kratzmyer said she was going to be in the office tomorrow. Are you coming?”

“Am I coming? Wild horses couldn't keep me away. Oh, and Carlton . . .”

“Uh-huh?”

“I think you should call Joe Herkimer, too. We don't know what, if anything, this has to do with the murders, but if there's any connection, we need . . .” She paused.

“. . . somebody smart on hand,” I finished for her.

“I didn't say that.”

“No, but you thought it. Okay, I'll call him. I'll see you at the office at . . . what? Nine o'clock?”

“Yeah, okay. But I can't stay long. I arranged to pick up a rental car about ten-thirty. My own won't be out of the shop for a few days, and I don't want to be dependent on that lump of junk you drive.”

“You arranged to pick up a rental car in Silver Falls on a Sunday morning? How did you manage that?”

“I phoned up the Tilden guy at home and whined at him. See you.”

After due consideration, I decided not to call Tommy right away. It might not put him in a receptive mood. I let it wait until morning, and I arrived at the office just after eight o'clock, let myself in with my own key to the outside door—I always hold on to it during my firings, because of their temporary nature—and copied the file of my notes from my portable computer into the office computer.

Tommy was not pleased to hear my cheery voice a few minutes later, summoning him to work on Sunday. He reminded me, seven times, that I wasn't even on the payroll anymore, so he, for one, didn't know what in the hell I thought I was doing on the premises in the first place. I let him rant.

“You want to be here, Tommy,” I told him. “I've got a big story.”

He registered the view that I wouldn't know a big story if it came wrapped in the entry papers for the Pulitzer Prize. He had a good mind to call the cops and have me arrested for trespassing.

“You do that, Tommy,” I said, “and I'll let them drink the office scotch.”

“I'm coming. I'm coming,” he growled. “I'll be there in about an hour.”

Joe Herkimer wasn't in when I called his place, but Darlene said she'd send him along as soon as he got back. He'd driven over to the Circle Lake council house for some sort of meeting.

While I waited for the cast to assemble in this building drama, I began drafting a story for the
Lancer
. I put into it everything I knew—not much—and everything I guessed, speculated, or imagined, about the golf-course development. I made no reference to the murders, either ancient or recent, since there was nothing to show that they had anything to do with the development story—and because Tommy would have cut them out, anyway.

Just the same, I decided to phone Staff Sergeant Harry Burnett, at home, to see if yesterday's bodies had been identified yet.

He wasn't noticeably braced to be called at home on Sunday morning, either, but told me that, yes, as a matter of fact, they knew who one of them was. A small-time hood named Barney Newsome.

“That was quick. How did they track him down? Wasn't the body pretty well, uh . . .”

“Decomposed. Yeah. But he had a wallet. It had his name in it, on an identification card sealed in plastic. We read it.”

“Isn't science wonderful? And the name rang a bell?”

“The OPP searched their back files, and it turned out Barney Newsome had a record—theft, break-and-enter, that sort of thing. But—and here's the funny thing—there was nothing on him in the current files. In fact, the last thing they had on him was a theft charge, which he beat, back in the early fifties.”

“How about bank robbery?”

“No, not bank robbery. Not that I know. Why?”

“Just wondering. Wasn't there a bank robbery around here someplace a long time ago, and the money and the crooks disappeared? Maybe Barney was one of the crooks . . . Hello?”

I said this because of the long silence.

“You might have something there, Carlton. I would never have suspected it of you, and I have no doubt you're up to something, but I think I'll just put in a phone call to my good friend Sergeant Moffitt over at the OPP, and tell him to check into this.”

I bade him a cheery goodbye, and thought about shovelling some of this into the golf-course story, but decided, once more, that there was still no provable connection between the Far Lake bank robbery and the recent events. The way things were piling up, though, there had to be a connection, so I typed what I had learned about the bank robbery, Chuck Wilson, Charlie Tinkelpaugh, and Barney Newsome into a note after the “30” at the end of my story, and marked it “Not for printing, background only.” It turned out to be almost as long as the printable file. Then I slugged the main story, “Golf course, new,” and put in a note to Tommy, “Needs outside legal read.” This meant that he would be well advised to run whatever form of the story we finally printed past a lawyer, but not Parker Whitney, the
Lancer
's legal counsel. Actually, most of Parker's work for us consists of trying to beat speeding tickets for Tommy Macklin; we do not stray, much, into territory demanding the services of a libel lawyer.

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself when Tommy blew in, glowered at me, stormed into his office, and grabbed the scotch bottle from the locked drawer in his desk. I handed him his teacup, and he poured about three inches of brown liquid into the bottom, drained it, wiped his foul moustache, and glowered at me some more.

“Nice day to you, too,” I said, and gave him the file I had just printed out, He snatched it from me and gestured to the door. I left, closing it behind me, and gave Tommy a cheerful wave from the hall, through the floor-to-ceiling windows that grace the offices of the
Lancer
.

Hanna turned up while I was in the office kitchen—or library, take your pick—fighting with the coffee machine. I always lose. She took from me the little basket that holds the filters, which I had been trying to jam, totally without success, into its parent place on the machine. For her, of course, it behaved beautifully.

“How can a man who works with computers be defeated by a coffee maker?” she wanted to know.

“Everybody's a specialist these days,” I told her. I passed across the second copy of my file, which she read, bug-eyed, while the coffee brewed. She took the mugful I handed her, gave it a glance, jumped up, said, “Jeez, Carlton!” poured it out, washed the mug, and filled it up again. Needless fuss, in my view.

Tommy came into the kitchen as Hanna sat back down, and gave us the benefit of his views as managing editor and chicken-in-charge.

“Well, we can't run it. You realize that, of course.”

“Why not?”

“It would not reflect well on the publisher.”

I was ready for this one. “We won't name her; we'll just say ‘the developer,' and let the Toronto papers fill in the blanks. Why shouldn't we get a jump on the story for once?”

He was tempted, you could see that. We had not run a really big story in the
Lancer
since the time the town's largest car dealer went belly up—sticking the
Lancer
for about $20,000 in unpaid advertising bills in the process—and the owner turned himself into a populist preacher. “Car Czar Is Convertible,” was the head I put on that one.

“Naw,” said Tommy, after thinking about it for a bit. “Not our kind of story.”

“Let's not be too hasty, Tommy,” I said. “Why don't you edit it, and get it ready for setting, and then ask a lawyer whose name is not Parker Whitney to have a look at it?”

“I said ‘No,'” said Tommy, swelling up, the way he does. “Kill the file.” Testy little devil.

And he slammed out.

“Boy,” said Hanna, “I've got to hand it to you, Carlton. The way you bent that man to your will was something to see.”

“Anyone can be masterful,” I replied testily. “I'm going to be sneaky.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“I'm not going to kill the file in the first place. The boys in the composing room will undoubtedly print it out, and, unless I misunderstand human nature by a very wide margin, there will be pirated copies of the thing all over town by about four o'clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“What good will that do?”

“Well, for one thing, it will cover my ass when I send a copy down to the city desk at the
Toronto
Star
by courier, first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Tommy will know it came from you.”

“It won't. I think we should stick your byline on it. After all, I'm not even an official journalist anymore.”

“Okay,” said Hanna, very quickly—we are all of us hams at heart—“Only we won't send it to the city desk. We'll send it to Norman Schacter, the Insight Editor. He's a friend of mine.”