Howard Engel - The Cooperman Variation

I was awakened from this suddenly by the sound of a steam whistle. Was a ship caught in the ice? Was a boat crossing the frozen lake? Then I saw my white toes at the end of the hammock. I looked up to see several people along the waterfront watching a long, narrow steamship moving at a steady pace through The Cut. Built low to the water, without being wide in the beam, white-hulled, she cut across the background of trees. As Cary Grant used to say, she was yare: nimble, lively, trim and gorgeous; everything a steam yacht ought to be, with lots of dark wood and brasswork gleaming even from where I was lying. She let out another whoop as she began her turn into the mouth of the river.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” Norma McArthur was shielding her eyes from the sun to get a better look. “During the season, she puts in here, and you can go for a ride. She’s chartered now. Private charter.”

“What’s her name?”

“Wanda III . She was built for Lady Eaton. You know, the department-store family.”

“They still run her?”

“Oh, no. There were three Wandas . I’m not sure about their history. If you want accuracy, there’s a book inside. Let me see, the first was sold after she failed to get a kid to hospital in time to save his life. Very dramatic story. Wanda I raced from Port Carling to Bracebridge at twenty knots, but it wasn’t fast enough for a burst appendix. The second Wanda burned in a fire at the time of World War I.”

“Who owns number three?”

“The Muskoka Steamship and Historical Society. Local. But she’s chartered right now to Hampton Fisher, the TV and newspaper tycoon, and his movie-star wife, Peggy O’Toole.”

“Peggy O’Toole? I’d heard that she was up here somewhere.”

“You’re a fan, then?”

“Isn’t everybody?”

“I’ve seen a few of her pictures. She was terrific in Deadly Intent II . Did you see that?” I told her I agreed, but didn’t add that a few years ago, when she was still a young actress, I’d met her on location in Niagara Falls. She used to call me “Pistachio” for some reason. But that was many summers ago.

“Well, you just missed seeing her in the flesh. They say she loves running about in Wanda.” Norma had the blonde good looks of her kids. When they stood together, which wasn’t often, they looked like a set of pan pipes with a thatch of blond hair on top. Their skins already had the beginnings of a deep summer tan. Their mother quizzed me about my knowledge of Bracebridge. She recognized near complete ignorance when she tripped over it and proceeded to fill me in on where to buy everything from gas to worms. I knew that if the assignment up here threw me a curve, I could depend on Norma to help me out.

The opportunity for this came sooner than she might have guessed. I got her to go over the map with me, to fit Vanessa’s instructions into the real estate and lakes at hand. I watched while she charted my course from the main road that passed by the lodge to Milford Bay. From here, she abandoned my map and found one of her own, which showed the shoreline in greater detail. “The place you’re looking for, Benny, is not really that far away either by water or by car. Are you renting a boat or keeping your feet on terra firma?”

“I’ll take the car this time. How long a drive is it?”

“Not more than half an hour. Forty minutes at the outside. The road is fairly good. It’ll take you to the turnoff to Millionaires’ Row. The road after that isn’t much. I hope you’re carrying a spare tire.”

“Bad as that, is it? I’ll watch myself. What’s Millionaires’ Row?”

“That’s where the first families from the south, both Americans and Canadians, built their rather glorious summer homes. Mowed lawns down to the docks, whitepainted rocks, big verandahs and probably antique tickertapes under bell jars in the studies. Lots of them were top executives of big corporations. They’d come by train to Gravenhurst and be met by their private launches.”

“Like Wanda III?”

“Like Wanda I, II and III.”

“Interesting piece of local history. Thanks. Sorry I interrupted your instructions. After I pass the turnoff to Millionaires’ Row?”

“You’re looking for Evans’s Marina on this bay where the fold crosses. You see the red square? That’s Ifor Evans’s little goldmine. He spells Ivor with an f , for some reason. He services most of the boats on the row and winters the boats that don’t have their own boathouses. The ice up here after Christmas is murder on anything built on the water, Benny. Most of the people on the row lift their boats out of their slips with a vertical hoist, then lower them to rest on beams placed across the slips.”

“Like placing a casket above an open grave, with tapes laid out for the lowering.”

“Huh? Why, yes. Yes. I hadn’t thought of it like that. Have you been up on Lake Muskoka before this, Benny?” She was naturally and warmly curious about people; I didn’t get the impression that Norma had taken a course in public relations, even when she was trying hard not to look directly at my black eye.

Thirty-five minutes after the maps had been re-creased and returned to a plastic waterproof pouch, which she lent me, I was parking my car at the marina in Segwin Bay, looking across at the long promontory known as Moosehead Point. Ifor Evans, if that was he, was sorting out a package of stale worms with a large ruddy-faced man in a red plaid shirt and khaki shorts.

“Well, I’ll talk to them, Mr. Prendergast. I will. They’re sold to me as fresh, and if they ain’t fresh, that’s a fraud plain and simple. Here, let me get you your money back. No sense paying-”

“You hang on to the money, Ifor. You know I’ve got no complaint against you. I’ve known you for over twenty years.”

“That’s right. I remember your father and mother very well, Mr. Prendergast. Often think of ’em, yes, I do.”

“Dad was like a hound in rut every spring, Ifor. Couldn’t talk straight about anything else. ‘Is the ice out of Segwin Bay yet, Ollie?’ ‘Do you think the old roof held up through that bad patch of heavy snow in late February? Maybe I should call Ifor just to be sure.’ Oh, he loved these rocks up here something terrible.” Mr. Evans was eyeing me over the ample scarlet back of Ollie Prendergast. He was a tall, skinny man with wet grey hair plastered over a bare dome and large, almost pointed ears. His narrow chest looked as though it needed a smaller T-shirt. Both the cap on the counter and the shirt broadcast the name of a Texas oil company.

When Prendergast had stepped back into his mahogany open launch and puffed a few billows of yellow smoke towards me, Mr. Evans waved a bony hand, then looked at me. “What can I do for you?” he said.

“You know Vanessa Moss?” I asked. Abruptly, Evans shifted from my side of the counter to the business side.

“Oh, there’s a lot of people come in and out of here, mister.”

“I’ll bet. Norma McArthur says you’ve got a good thing going here.”

“Norma McArthur’s not starving either. You can tell her that from me. She doesn’t have an empty cabin from July to October and that’s a fact.” He hadn’t moved during this sudden, viper-like attack, but continued to study my face like it was a chart of a dangerous passage.

“About Vanessa Moss,” I said, trying to look relaxed. “I work for her, and I’d like to rent a canoe to get over to her place.”

“She give you keys?”

“I know where she keeps ’em.” He was still sizing me up and not worrying much about being subtle. My knowing about the keys was a mark in my favour. He didn’t show that I’d passed a test, but he wasn’t watching me so closely after that. “You have a canoe for rent, Mr. Evans? I won’t need it for more than a couple of hours.”