The place was still humming with mourners. New ones on the porch weren’t of the crowd from the cemetery. They were mourners who disliked funerals. They were washing up on the porch as I tried to remember where I’d left my car.
EIGHTEEN
The old man was nowhere in sight when I banged on the Bolduc front door. Inside I could hear the professional tones of a TV host cajoling a husband to tell all about the first time he was alone with his wife. A give-away show. Lots of laughs. I banged on the door again, but either the viewer inside was caught up in the program or the set was running unattended. I tried the door: not only wasn’t it locked, it opened to a little prodding.
“Alex!” I called, and the studio audience laughed. The living-room was empty, but the velvet cushions looked appreciative and reflected the colour of the TV screen. I called for Alex again, and got no more than an echo in reply. I let myself out the front door and wandered around to the back of the house. A spade was standing up in the garden where the old man had abandoned it. The ribs of the abandoned home-made canoe made the yard look bigger and emptier than on my first visit. I followed the garden hose around to the front of the house, and got back in the car.
Alex was the next person I had to talk to. I might as well wait. I lit a cigarette and checked the glove compartment for something to read. I found a murder mystery I’d been working on for the last nine months: nothing special, but it was good to have something on hand when you couldn’t get away to restock on cigarettes, sandwiches and newspapers. In theory I always kept an extra pack of Player’s on hand in case I was pinned in the car. In practice I used them up to prevent them going stale. A book was harder to consume in that way, so I’d often gone hungry and smokeless, but this old dog-eared mystery with the stub of a parking ticket serving as a bookmark went on forever.
One of the things I liked about reading mysteries was the way things happened bang-bang-bang one after the other. Nobody in print ever sits around listening to the shadows growing longer. It’s like in the movies when the scene where the detective is waiting dissolves to the same scene four hours later and there is the hero just as fresh as he was in the last shot. I wish I had a dollar for every hour I’ve wasted in the front seat of my car waiting for the shot to dissolve.
Old man Bolduc was coming up the street with a pack of beer in each hand. He was moving slowly, with the left foot dragging a little. He slid away a piece of green lattice-work and put the cardboard cartons under the porch. As he moved the lattice-work back into place he looked up and down Nelson Street to see if any of the neighbours were watching. He didn’t see me slouched down in my seat.
I gave him five minutes, and then I walked up on the porch and banged again at the screen door. I heard the old man stir and then slowly, maybe even suspiciously, make his way to the front door. “Yes?” he said, keeping the screen closed between us. “You lookin’ for Alex? His shif’ not finish yet. Come back later, mister.”
“Mr. Bolduc,” I said, and he turned back to look at me with his washed-out blue eyes. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”
“I got nothin’ to say about anythin’ around here, mister. Alex says you’re some kind private police. Whatfor you bodder my son? Alex’s a good boy. He no mix up in nothin’ crooked. You understan’?”
“Your son’s in no trouble, Mr. Bolduc.” He looked at my face like I’d just said the opposite.
“I think you go ’way from here now. I don’ want to talk about bad things Alex get mixed up in. Mister, you come back when Alex is here. Hokay?” I went back to the car and slouched in my seat again wondering what the old man was so frightened about.
An hour later, Alex drove up in a blue Dodge that made my ten-year-old Olds look good. The winters had eaten big helpings from his fenders and the bodywork under the doors. A woman in a dark coat over a white uniform got out from the passenger side and went up into the house. Alex drove the Dodge into the garage and closed the door on half-empty paint cans, a rusty bicycle and a collection-of back issues of the Beacon for the past ten years. I hailed him from my open window as he crossed the grass to the porch and he came over.
“Benny! Hello. Glad to see you. Will you come in and meet the wife?” He said the words but he wasn’t putting much into them. They zipped away over his shoulder like deflating balloons.
“Thanks, Alex, but not today. I was just passing. But I do want to talk to you. You must have been spending some time talking to the cops over the weekend, and I guess you’ve got me to blame for it. I got there just as you were leaving.”
“I thought it was you, but I couldn’t be sure. But as far as the cops go, no sweat. I guess it was wrong for me to take off like that. I panicked, that’s all.”
“Sure,” I said, “I’ve done the same thing in my day.” I was beginning to sound like Pete Staziak with a suspect. He can make a suspect feel secure by agreeing with him about everything from poisoning grandpa to burning down City Hall. He’s even tried that line on me a couple of times. “Now who hasn’t wanted to get the jump on the cops from time to time,” he suggested, trying to make it easy for me to spill my guts. But I saw it coming and bit hard on my tongue. Now I was using the same technique.
“They sure do ask a lot of questions, Benny. I even got so I didn’t know whether I was telling the truth myself. Everything sounded made up.”
“Why did you go to Nathan’s?”
“I can’t tell, Benny.”
“I understand. What did you say when they asked about finding anything at the scene of the crime.”
“I just said I didn’t, that’s all.”
“Good. That was the right thing to say. But you could still get into a lot of trouble.”
“Why, nobody saw anything. You weren’t even there yet. So how come you think you know so much, Benny? I was on my way out when I heard your car.”
“When you heard the car, Alex. But you didn’t hear me earlier when I came on foot.”
“Tell me another, Benny. You can stick-handle better than that.”
“Look, Alex, you’re a bright character. You know that the cops have determined the time of death and that puts you in the clear. The coroner has made it easy for both of us. The cops aren’t going to bother with either one of us. I figure you picked something up at the studio. You’ve got incriminating evidence that you lifted from the scene. It’s highly illegal, but you see it all the time on television. The tube shows us what’s right and wrong these days, not the letter of the law. Come on, Alex, I’ve done the same thing in a good cause. Was it to protect a lady’s good name by any chance?” Alex gulped while his Adam’s apple shifted like a wary defenceman near his own net.
“Okay, Benny. I’m not trying to get away with anything. But supposing I did find something?”
“If you keep it to yourself, you’re likely to end up the way Nathan did. We’re both mixed up with people who don’t think twice about killing. Look at poor Nathan. He knew a secret too many, and now look where he is. If you know something, and you want to go on breathing, I’d tell as many people as I could. It’s the only guarantee that your breath won’t be interfered with.” Alex creased his brow as though he imagined that useful thoughts would begin to flow automatically to his brain.
“Suppose I did find something?”
“Then you’re as good as dead right now.”
“Hell, you’re kidding me, Benny. Who’d want to kill me? Why would anybody want to hurt a broken-down hockey player?”
“Somebody’s done in a sculptor and a panhandler in this town. Maybe there’s no connection, but secrets can be deadly company, Alex.” He thought a minute, then went to the porch where he shouted something through the screen door. Returning, he came round to the passenger side and got in.
“Let’s drive around the block, Benny.” We did that. A couple of times, Alex looked over his shoulder to see if we had won a popularity contest. I didn’t see Geoff, Len or Gordon in their car following in the rear-view mirror either.