Since I needed a bigger plastic bag than the one I’d first hit upon, I looked into a low cupboard to the right of the fireplace. In addition to a big Mountain Co-op bag, I discovered an old cardboard box containing eight live shells for the gun. It had originally held twice that many. I slipped the gun into the larger bag, and slipped the box of shells into the one I’d been using instead of rubber gloves. As I brandished these trophies, I thought, These might earn me some slack with the Toronto cops. They couldn’t throw me out on my ear if I handed them the murder weapon, now, could they? Of course, maybe Muskoka cottages abound in displayed firearms. I don’t know. I’d have to wait to see whether their eyes lit up when the tests came back from the Forensic Centre.
Beyond the gun, I didn’t find much of interest in Ed Patel’s cottage. I saw where he kept his car keys. I found another set with the name Dermot Keogh on a piece of cardboard attached by a string. What were they doing there? I wondered, as I wandered from one of the bedrooms into the other. Patel was a lawyer before he took sick, wasn’t he? I tried to remember. Offices in three towns to begin with, now dwindled down to one. I decided that I might remember better if I stretched out on one of the beds and closed my eyes for ten minutes. I did that. Then I kept them closed for another twenty minutes, and awakened with a start when a clock in the big room went off, sounding the hour, which was just four o’clock when I checked it with my watch.
I felt better for the nap and closed up the cottage, taking my pieces of evidence with me through the bush back along the path to the marina parking lot and my car. Ifor Evans wouldn’t hear of my paying him for the use of the canoe, and I left the marina promising to see him again before the summer was over. Driving back to the lodge, I decided on a detour to Bracebridge to buy a bathing suit. I had been moving around this planet without one for several years and I thought it was time to end that situation. The huge shopping malls on the highway going into Bracebridge swelled with promise under the afternoon sun. My greed for camping stoves, jackknives, sleeping bags and tents was tested by the reality that these delightful objects were all too readily at hand. I only hoped the stores contained the solution to my more modest request, a bathing suit in my size.
The parking lots on both sides of the road were nearly full. Business was good for Canadian Tire, the beer and liquor stores and the supermarket. I found a pair of black trunks, paid for them and wandered out on the steaming asphalt grinning to myself. I liked swimming, but I hardly ever made the opportunity.
“Pistachio!”
“Huh?” I looked in the direction of the voice. A pretty woman was walking towards me. Her smile opened out and overwhelmed me. There’s only one person who calls me that.
“Pistachio! Don’t you remember me?” My mind was still churning, trying to fit the memory into the right channel. By now she was stopping in front of me, blonde and, well, beautiful. In a moment, the smile would begin to lose its lustre if I didn’t show signs of recognition. She took off the large sunglasses so I could see her eyes.
“Peggy!” I said, the thing hitting me at the last possible moment. “Peggy O’Toole! How are you?” It was my dear Peggy from the case I’d helped work on in Niagara Falls some years ago. I’d hoped to run into her, but since the great north woods don’t work the way streets in Grantham do, I’d pretty well given up any hope of running into her at the intersection of Beaver Meadow and Muskrat.
“Gosh, Benny, it’s so good to see you! I can’t get over it. You remembered me! I was just a little girl when you saw me last. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about all that time that’s gone. Remember? Niagara Falls and all the trouble we had making Ice Bridge with Mr. Sayre. You remember Jim Sayre, I hope? The director? He, Mr. Sayre, is coming up to see us this summer, Benny. Will he be surprised to see you!”
“I hope I’m still around, but it looks-”
“You’ll just have to be around. You’re family, Benny. Even if we hardly ever see you. Even my mother asks about you. And Mr. Sayre, why he thinks … You look wonderful, Benny!”
“You look wonderful yourself, Peggy.”
“Go on. In this light? I look … well, frankly, I don’t care how I look. Gosh it’s good to see you!”
“You’ve grown up fine, Peggy. I’ve even followed your career. I boasted to my mother that I knew you when.”
“What did she say?”
“She reminded me of when my father sold his original shares of IBM. I guess she thinks I let you get away.”
“You’ll never get away from me, Pistachio. You can tell her that from me. But, what are you doing here? You can’t be working on a case. Not here.”
“You’d be surprised. I’m only here for another-”
“Benny. What are you doing now? Right now?”
“I’m talking to-”
“I don’t mean that. You have to meet Hamp! You’ve never met him, and I’ve been talking to him about you for years. My God! Is it ten years?” It was more than ten, but I wasn’t going to tell her. The years had been good to her. She not only looked as lovely as she is in the movies, but she even looked happy. I was glad of that, because I remembered her as a troubled young woman when we’d first met. But that was before her marriage to Hamp Fisher and all of his eccentricities.
The upshot of the conversation in the parking lot was a short walk from where I’d parked my car, following the white wraparound hem of Peggy’s skirt to where she’d parked her Range Rover. It was like Vanessa all over again. In no time, together with my newly purchased bathing suit, I was sitting beside Peggy as she shifted her gears up and down the highway that ran from Bracebridge to her cottage somewhere beyond the point where I’d earlier turned off the road to Evans’s Marina. Only about half of her gear changes were absolutely necessary, but it was nice to see that she took her driving seriously. There was also a fair amount of Peggy’s tanned legs visible as she managed the gears and adjusted the outside mirrors on both sides of us. Further, there was a kind of paralysis in my breathing when she turned to check the road behind her for rivals to her mastery of the road. The strain on her buttons tweaked my masculinity by its nose, or something. I was feeling guilty about looking, since I’d just been made a member of the family circle, but my hormones are always speaking out of turn. They have no sense of decorum. I sometimes think that my sexuality is like having an idiot brother who follows me around. I make excuses for him, I apologize for him, but there he sits, drooling. I try to ignore him, attempt to engage the female of my acquaintance in elevated chat, but his demented leer gets in the way when she so much as breathes or leans over to improve the position of the Rover’s floor mat. He is so incorrigible at times, I’ve considered sending him away, but most of the time I think with kindness and understanding he can still be managed at home.