When the cars left, Pickett said, “What’s the problem with your buddy?”
“He’s restless, you know? Wants to arrest somebody”Pickett laughed. “The guy he wants left town two days ago, tell him. There’s no hurry. I’ll get us a beer.”
“Not for me, Mel. I have to interview the citizens.”
“More coffee, then?”
Wilkie nodded. He picked up a book on bird-watching and leafed through it, grinning. “You into this now?” he asked.
Pickett decided not to favor him with the truth. When he began building his cabin, it had not occurred to him that he might seem eccentric—he just wanted to build a cabin—but it soon became clear that he had better have a cover story, so he bought three books on birds and a pair of binoculars, and Larch River accepted him as an old widower who wanted a place to watch birds in peace. Odd, of course, but just comprehensible. Pickett did learn to identify three or four of the more obvious birds, but apart from cardinals and blue jays, he found them uninteresting. Now, to Wilkie, he said, “A whole new world has opened up to me, Wilkie, old son. Saw a yellow-bellied nit-picker this morning. They’re very rare in these parts.”
Wilkie, though, smelled a rat, and protected himself from being sucked in. “It’s the red-assed curry-bird that you want to watch out for,” he said. “Really make your name, seeing one of them would.”
While Pickett made coffee, Wilkie walked around the cabin, surveying the grounds. When he returned he asked, “What do you use the trailer for? Guests?”
“I had to have somewhere to stay while I got this place up. I tried the bed-and-breakfast route. Once was enough.”
“What was the problem? No croissants for breakfast? We’re not used to your big-city ways in these parts.”
“Matter of fact there were croissants. One, anyway. And grapes, and an apple all cut up in artistic slices. Pretty dishes and napkins, too. The croissant, though, was still frozen in the middle. Afterward I went into town for something to eat. I decided that if I was going to spend any time here I’d better make some serious arrangements for eating and sleeping, so I bought the trailer.”
“You really like it here?”
“I haven’t had time to find out; I’ve been too busy building. I never planned to live here. I just wanted to see if I could build a log cabin like they used to.”
“And that’s what you did. Just like that. A real pioneer.”
“Nearly. They didn’t have chain saws, though.”
“How long has it taken you?”
“Two years, more or less. I didn’t know a thing about it, and now I know, I wouldn’t do it again.”
“That’s true of anything I’ve ever built. Now …”
“To start with I had no idea that it would be hard to find trees, you know. The pioneers had first-growth cedar to work with, but that’s all gone. Nobody in Toronto told me. But I found a guy who owned a tree plantation and he had what I wanted. I did cut it myself, and he arranged to have it hauled here. Then I peeled the logs, ready for the next spring.”
“Were they dry enough to use then?”
“I never got a chance to find out. Some bastard with a chain saw and a truck stole the lot in the winter.” Wilkie would hear the story eventually. Might as well hear it from Pickett now.
Wilkie threw back his head, roaring with glee. “Then what’dyoudo?”
“There was a bright side. People around here all heard about it, and when they stopped laughing they felt sorry for me, offered to help out, some of them. Nobody actually said he’d help me cut down some more trees but they would probably have joined in at a barnraising kind of thing. Anyway, one of them heard of a guy who knew of another guy near Bancroft who owned a gas station and had to take down an old log cabin to expand his business. So I made him an offer and he numbered all the logs as he dismantled the cabin. I got a trucker to bring them up here. Then one of my new friends came up with a cousin with an A-frame on the back of a one-ton truck, and between me, him, his cousin, and the A-frame we got it up in three days.”
“It was kind of a kit, then?”
Pickett understood that Wilkie wasn’t jeering, just trying to get a fix on how much he should admire Pickett’s achievement. It sounded like jeering, though. Pickett was very proud of his cabin, but he tried not to be a bore about the building of it. Wilkie, though, would have to be told. “I didn’t start with a broadax and a stand of virgin cedar, no,” he said. “But I learned a lot, even so. Let me show you how this place was put together.”
Wilkie started to say something, looking at his watch, but Pickett ignored him. He cleared his throat. “For example, this cabin is twenty-five feet by fifteen. Know why?”
Wilkie gave a quick shake of his head, a polite little shake between nods. Already his eyes had started to glaze.
“Because they built them out of fifty-foot trees.”
Wilkie tried to step farther back, to make breaking-off signs.
Pickett said, “They cut the trees in half, see, to get the twenty-five-footers. Then the top half, the other twenty-five-footers, they cut into two pieces, one fifteen, one ten. You follow? Now they used the fifteen-footers along the sides, and the ten-foot pieces they split into rails to line the walls with. See what I mean? Come over here. See?”
“I see, yeah, I see …”
“Now come over here.” Pickett walked to the window. “See the way this window is framed? Two-by-ten-inch lumber attached to the logs with dowelling. See? Take a look, go ahead. There’s one dowel, there’s another.”
“Now,” Pickett continued. “You must have wondered, too, why the roof doesn’t overhang the walls. Right? Well, that’s so it won’t collapse under the weight of snow. They notched the roof right into the walls, see? Tell you something else,” he added as Wilkie opened his mouth. “You ever heard the expression ‘putting on side’?”
Wilkie shook his head.
“Man I hired to do the plastering told me about that. Said some of the wives of the early pioneers used to get their husbands to pretty up the outside of the cabins by putting on siding. Get it? Now …”
“Mel, I have to get back to Sweetwater today …”
“Right you are, old son. There is a lot more to tell, though, if you’re ever interested. You should build one yourself. I’ll show you how.”
Wilkie said, “I did think of it once. I won’t now, though. Are you going to live here?”
“I never planned to, but I’m starting to feel at home here. I’ve still got to civilize it. Put in a shower. Bring it into the twentieth century. I plan to spend weekends in the cabin, probably until the end of January. Then I’ll go to Florida for a couple of weeks, then spend a week or so in Toronto, then another couple of weeks in England, and then, if there’s still no sign of spring, I’ll go back to Florida to wait. What’s your life like?”
Wilkie took a long pull of his coffee and walked to the window. “I miss Toronto,” he said finally, his voice indicating that he was no longer bantering. “I miss the city. Working in Sweetwater is like being in the Mounties. When I was off-duty in Toronto I was really off-duty, but in Sweetwater everyone knows I’m a cop. And they shift us around, too. My wife hates that. If I get posted to northwest Ontario, I think she’ll take off.” He stopped, looking slightly ashamed of his confession. “And yet you’re totally happy up here in Rainbow County.”
“I’m not a cop anymore and I told you, I don’t live here. Besides, this isn’t too rugged. I did a lot of looking before I picked this place. I decided that three hours was the maximum I wanted to drive. More than that, you have to stop for coffee.”
“Who else lives here in the winter?”
“The core population, which is bigger than you’d think. This place doesn’t rely as much on the tourists as some of the others around here. Those boarded-up food places on the highway make it look as if the whole town’s closed up, but it isn’t.”
“What the hell do people here do in the winter?” The question was rhetorical. Wilkie sighed and went back to work. “You know this guy Caxton?”
“He came out to check on me a couple of times when I was first building the place. He found out I was on the force—I hadn’t retired yet—so that made us buddies as far as he was concerned. He’s never been a regular cop, though. He was in the Lands and Forests Department once, some kind of fire ranger or warden, then he owned a marina near Peterborough, which went belly-up, and then he came here. He likes the fishing and the hunting, and I think he had some idea of opening another business, a bait shop or some such. He worked for one or two of the people here for a while, then the town gave him a job. He suits this place. He likes being the police chief, and he puts in a lot of extra time he doesn’t get paid for.”
“Seems like a bit of a Boy Scout,” Wilkie said.
“Conscientious, you mean?” He knew exactly what Wilkie meant, but he was slightly offended by Wilkie’s assumption that Pickett was as much of an outsider as he was. For all Wilkie knew, Pickett and Caxton were buddies.
Wilkie said, “I figured he sees himself kind of like—who was that guy who played small-town cops?—Andy Griffith.”
“He does his job, and they like him well enough, so it’s his for life. I told you, he’s conscientious, and he makes sure he knows what’s happening around town. I like the guy. I know what you mean, sure. He enjoys having his picture taken with his hat on, but he doesn’t think he’s John Wayne and there’s a whole other side to him. He makes me feel like a city boy sometimes. A dumb one.”
Wilkie waited for more.
“He knows about animals, stuff like that. Just a small for instance, he’s the only one who can get Willis to sit still. I don’t know what he does, maybe he’s got some secret signal, but he just says ‘sit’ and Willis sits. Willis won’t do it for me. I’m impressed. Tell you the truth, I sometimes think he’s kind of like a big animal himself, like a bear or something. Other times, okay, I agree, he looks like he’s trying to imitate Andy Hardy. Was that his name?”
“Griffith. Caxton would know the area, then.”
“Oh, sure. And I would think he knows just about everyone around here.”
Wilkie looked at his watch again. “This guy Marlow. Did you know him? He was Caxton’s girlfriend’s brother, right?”
“I knew him to see. Bit of a dude. Sideburns. Little curly beard.”
“He’s clean-shaven now. Caxton and this woman live together? Or just go around for company?”
“You see them around at barbecues, picnics, stuff like that. If you’re asking me if they sleep together, I don’t know, but my assumption would be yes. But they don’t live together.”
“I just want to know if we should keep an eye on him. He could be a lot of help. Being a local, he might have some idea of who would kill Marlow. But if he’s real close to Marlow’s sister, then he might get some idea of avenging his woman, something like that. He could be very useful, but I don’t want him conducting his own investigation on the side, know what I mean?”
“Tell him. Tell him the procedure when one of us has a personal stake in a case. I think he’ll keep his distance. But, like you said, he could be a lot of help to you, too.”
“Did he get along with Marlow okay?”
Pickett had known this was coming, known that Wilkie was making his list already. “You’ll have to ask someone else that. Someone who knows them better. He a suspect?”
Wilkie laughed. “You know how it is, Mel. You’re a suspect. So as far as you know, Caxton and this guy were pals?”
The truth was so far from this that Pickett would have to have been blind and deaf not to get some inkling of it; he saw no point in continuing to dodge. “I don’t know Caxton well, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t like Marlow at all. That’s what I’ve heard. But when he saw whose body it was, I think he might have recognized him and foreseen a lot of misery for himself. He looked to me like he wished he was in Florida right then.”
“That’s helpful. What about Marlow?”
“If I racked my brains I could probably come up with something I’d heard that accounts for the fact that my impression is that he wasn’t very popular. Maybe threw his weight around. Which would mean that Caxton had some problems, but I’m not aware of any confrontations between them. Now you have everything I know.”
“Now we have to ‘search the area,’” Wilkie said. “Christ. You know anything about that part of the bush?”
“I told you, take Caxton with you. What would you hope to find?”
“Nothing. If someone local killed him, the guy’s been sitting at home all weekend, scared to poke his nose out. But just in case he’s holed up in one of the cottages still, we have to look the area over.” Wilkie stood up and put his cup on the table. “Good to talk to you, Mel. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“You’ll come by and pick my brains, you mean?”
Wilkie laughed. “Yeah, pick your brains about the locals, if this doesn’t get cleaned up quick. Maybe just come by for a chat. I’ll tell Dad I ran into you. Bird-watching.”
In Caxton’s office, Brendan Copps said, “I guess we should let his sister know.”
“I’ll do that,” Caxton said. He could not put it off any longer. The news would reach the bakery soon enough, and he should be the one who brought it.
“You know her pretty well?”
“I’ve lived here for ten goddamn years. There’s only one baker in the town.”
Copps looked up, surprised at the violence of Caxton’s tone. “Did I say something wrong?”
Caxton waved the question away and got to his feet.
Copps continued. “Town this size, you must have known her brother pretty good.”
“All I wanted to. I’ll go over there now,” he said. “Your boss will know where to find you. The people you sent for are coming to the office here, right?”
“I imagine.” The policeman slumped back in his chair.
“You want a beer?” Caxton asked.
The OPP man shook his head. “My boss might disapprove.” He pulled himself out of his chair. “I’d better go get him.”