“What?”
“It belonged to the old man, didn’t it?”
I held up my hand to him as Natalie finally answered the phone. When I told her what had happened, she didn’t say anything.
“You still there?” I said.
“Yes, Alex. I’m here.”
“Are you okay?”
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “Do you still have the hat he left on the floor?”
“Yeah, I’ve got it right here.”
“You have to give it back. You know that.”
“What? How can I-”
“His family,” she said. “They should have the hat.”
“I don’t even know how to get in touch with them.” I looked up at Jackie. He nodded his head at me like he knew exactly what she was saying.
“Take it to the police,” she said. “They’ll give it to the family.”
“I guess I could do that,” I said. Although driving back into town was the last thing I felt like doing.
“That poor man. What a terrible night.”
“Natalie…”
“I’m sorry, Alex. I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later, all right?”
“Okay,” I said. And then she hung up.
“She agrees with me,” Jackie said. “Am I right?”
“What’d you guys do, talk about this beforehand?”
“It’s the only right thing to do.”
That’s how I ended up driving back to the Soo for the second time in two days, with the hat resting on the seat beside me. The sun was finally out, and it made the snow shine so bright it was hard to look at. Not that there was anything to see. The banks were piled five feet high all along the roads, and the plows were still out there trying to catch up.
When I got to the city, I saw a hundred people with snow shovels, trying to reclaim the sidewalks. I drove by the Ojibway Hotel, but I didn’t see the doorman outside. I kept going, taking the right on Ashmun. This is where it happened, I thought. According to the woman at the hotel, this is where they found him.
I slowed down as I crossed the little bridge over the canal. A few yards beyond it I could see where they had dug out most of the snowbank, right in front of the bookstore. There were lots of tire tracks and sand and dirt and God knows what else. An empty paper coffee cup blew across the road.
You could tell that men had been there, working hard at something. But there was no crime scene tape, or anything to suggest that something bad had happened. But then, come to think of it, there had been no crime. It was just an old man who fell into the snow and froze to death.
Simon Grant. That was his name. I looked down at the hat lying on the seat next to me. Simon Grant, whoever the hell he was, is no more.
The City County Building was back on the north side of the bridge, over on Court Street. I knew what I had to do next. But instead I kept going. I wasn’t ready yet. On the spur of the moment, there was one thing I wanted to do first.
Simon Grant. I kept saying the name to myself. Simon Grant.
When I got to Three Mile Road, I hung a left and drove down to the Custom Motor Shop. They had just plowed the parking lot, and there was a mountain of snow to one side you could have used skis on. As I pulled in, I couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. Sure, I had promised I’d stop in to see him the next time I was in town. But how convenient that I just so happened to have this little thing to ask him about.
I might have sat there thinking about it, but at that moment the man himself came out the door. Leon Prudell, my old partner. When a local lawyer talked me into trying out the private eye business, it was Leon who lost his job to me. It was Leon who showed up at the Glasgow Inn and called me out into the parking lot. That’s how much he loved his job, and how much he hated me at that moment. When the whole private eye thing blew up in my face, he was there, and he actually helped me out, and proved that he knew what he was doing. Later, we had an off-and-on partner thing going for a while. When I walked away from it, he was still there to help me, whenever something would drag me back into the game. Now here he was, selling snowmobiles for a living, trying to forget all about those old dreams of being a private investigator.
“Alex!” he said when he saw me. I got out and shook his hand. He looked the same as always, with the wild orange hair and the extra pounds around the middle. In his down coat he looked as big as the Michelin Man.
“How’s business?” I said.
“We had a busy morning,” he said. “Now that the snow finally came.”
I looked into the front window and saw a long line of gleaming snowmobiles. “I do love those machines. I just can’t get enough of that noise.”
“Snowmobilers pay your bills, Alex. What the hell did you do to your hair?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “It’ll wash out in a couple of days.”
“I guess things are going well with Natalie?”
That stopped me. Then I remembered. Leon was the one who ran down her address for me, back when I had this crazy idea I should try to find her. That plus the hair, it was pretty basic detective work.
“Actually, I was with her last night,” I said. “But something kinda strange happened.”
That’s all I had to say. He was already hooked. I could see it in his eyes. So I gave him the rundown, up to and including the old man being found in the snowbank.
“Do you have a name?” he said.
“Yes, the woman at the hotel told me. His name is Simon Grant.”
“Hold on,” he said, taking out a small pad of paper. You could count on Leon to always have a pad of paper.
“Simon Grant,” he said slowly, writing it down. “Any other information on the deceased?” He was slipping right back into private eye mode.
“Leon, I’m just telling you what happened. I don’t expect you to go to work on this.” I hesitated. “I mean, I suppose if you still have the access to your database, whatever that thing was…”
“The P-Search,” he said. “Yes, I still have it. I can do that, no problem.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to do this. Every time I see you, it’s like I want something from you.”
“I’d be mad if you didn’t ask me, Alex. Now what else can you tell me?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I just have a name. And the hat he left in front of our door.”
“You kept the hat?”
“Yeah, I did. I’m not sure why. I just…”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“I figure I’d better give it to the police. Maybe they can give it to the man’s family or something.”
“Do you have it with you right now? Can I see it?”
“Sure,” I said. I opened the passenger’s side door and brought it out for him.
“This looks old,” he said. He examined it as closely as a jeweler appraising a diamond.
“You can see the stains,” I said. “From the ice and snow.”
“You said there was a note, too.”
“Yes.” I pulled it out of my coat pocket and unfolded it.
“I know who you are,” Leon said, looking at the note just as carefully.
“I swear, I never saw this man before in my life.”
“Here, hold these a second,” he said. He handed me the hat and the note, and started writing on his pad again.
“What are you doing now?”
“The lining says Borsalino, Milan and New York,” he said, writing it down. “There’s no year on it. And no size. Although I’d estimate seven, seven and a half.”
Good old Leon, I thought. Who else would stand in a parking lot and take notes on an old hat?
“Let me take some pictures,” he said.
“What?”
“I’ve got my digital camera in the car.”
“What do you have a digital camera for? I thought you were out of the private eye business.”
“Everybody has a digital camera, Alex. It’s no big deal.”
It sounded like something he’d tell his wife Eleanor. No big deal, honey. It’s just for taking pictures of our next vacation.
He went to his car, the little piece of crap Chevy Nova that somehow never got stuck in the snow, and found a black bag. “Here we go,” he said, pulling out the camera. It looked a little too sophisticated for pictures of the kids, but I wasn’t going to give him a hard time about it.