Linwood Barclay - Lone Wolf

“Thing is,” he said to me quietly while Leonard went back into his cabin for another water bottle to tuck into his backpack, “he’s not that bad a guy, once you get past his extremely annoying personality.”

“I saw the mayor last night,” I said to Leonard when he came back out with a couple of bottles of Evian in his hands. “She doesn’t seem all that fired up about your resort proposal. She seems to think it’s a bit over the top.”

Leonard was either in denial, or knew something I didn’t, because he had a broad grin on his face. “Oh, she’ll come around. And she’s still just one vote on council. If the others go for it, there won’t be any way she can stop it. This town hasn’t even got a community center. Now suppose someone was willing to pay for one in return for getting approval for his project, what do you think might happen then? Especially when everyone in town finds out they could get a center for nothing?”

Bob shook his head. “Leonard, I really think you need to reconsider some of this. You know, take into account the character of the area, the beauty of it, and just how your place might impact on-”

Leonard slapped Bob on the back. “Come on, let’s go. You think I don’t love nature? I love nature! In fact, why don’t we drive down the highway and we’ll hike into the woods where I’m gonna build my dream. You’ll come around, I know you will, when I show you what I’m actually going to do.”

Bob looked at me and rolled his eyes. “We’ll take my truck,” he said, and off they went.

Lana Gantry’s car, which I’d failed to notice the other morning when I’d walked in and embarrassed myself and everyone else, was parked behind Dad’s cabin, so I rapped lightly on the door before opening it.

“Just me,” I said softly, but loud enough that I could be heard in Dad’s bedroom.

The bathroom door opened and Lana walked out, clothes and makeup and hair all in place. She strode over and gave me a peck on the cheek. “Hi, sweetie,” she said. “Your dad’s still in bed. I’d love to make you breakfast, but you’ll have to come down to the cafe to get it. I got to head straight in. One of my girls is off today.”

It’s difficult to get used to the notion that your father is sleeping with a woman who’s not your mother, even when your mother has been gone for several years. I peeked in on Dad, who was snoring, and went back to the fridge, getting out some orange juice and cream for coffee. Lana was looking in her purse for her car keys.

“So who was that you were having coffee with yesterday?” she asked. “And wasn’t that Timmy Wickens you were talking to on the sidewalk?”

“Hmm?” I said.

“Yesterday. At the cafe.”

“That was his daughter, May.”

“She lives up there at the house with the rest of them?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well, if I were you,” she said, “I wouldn’t be getting involved with some woman from a family like that.”

“Lana,” I said, “we were just having a coffee.”

“Oh, listen, I know you and Sarah are okay, your dad’s told me that. I’m just saying, don’t get mixed up trying to help anybody from a family like the Wickenses. You’ll get your ass shot off for the trouble.” She discovered her keys, gave them a shake, and smiled on the way out.

A few minutes later, I glanced out the window over the sink and saw two vehicles swoop down over the hill and brake abruptly, tires slipping in gravel. One was Orville’s cruiser, and the second, a blue pickup I didn’t recognize. Orville jumped out of his car and two men hopped out of the pickup.

They were all carrying rifles.

I peaked in on Dad again. “Hey,” I said. “Cavalry’s here.”

Dad opened one eye. “What?”

“Orville. And others. All armed. Come to hunt bear.”

“Jesus.” He opened his other eye, threw back the covers. “Where’s Lana?”

“She left. Not before dispensing a little advice.” I looked at the mess of bed covers, the indentation in the pillow next to Dad’s. “Good to see that bad ankle hasn’t curtailed all your activities.”

Dad sat up in bed. “Where the hell were you last night? Did you really go see the mayor?”

“Yeah. Nice lady. Why don’t you get dressed while I go say hello to our rescuers?”

I walked outside, hands in pockets, and strolled over to Orville Thorne, who was talking to the two other men, both dressed in hunting jackets and caps, looking like maybe, after they got our bear, they were off to audition for Deliverance 2 .

“Morning,” I said.

Orville glanced my way. “Your father here?”

“Just getting up.”

“You can tell him we’re here. To get the bear. We see it, we’re going to kill it.”

“Super,” I said. “Knock yourself out.”

“What do you mean, knock ourselves out?” asked one of the hunters. He turned to his buddy. “He wants us to make ourselves unconscious?”

Orville approached, coming up almost nose to nose with me. “I know you’ve got your own crazy ideas about how Morton Dewart died, but I have a responsibility to protect this community, and if there’s a chance he was killed by a bear, I have to go looking for it.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But I think you may have bigger things to worry about.”

“Like what?”

“You know the mayor’s getting death threats?”

Orville’s eyeballs danced for a second. “She may have mentioned something about that to me. How do you know about that?”

“I went to see her last night. Her husband greets visitors with a baseball bat. They’re on edge.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“And how’s your investigation of Tiff’s murder coming along?” I asked.

“We’re making inquiries,” he said, trying to sound confident. “His wife, she might have had a boyfriend who did it.”

“Really?” I said. “So he’s a suspect?”

“Well, not exactly. We don’t know yet whether Tiff’s wife actually had, or has, a boyfriend, but once we find that out, and if she did, then of course, he’d be of interest to our investigation.”

“Especially if this boyfriend, if there is one,” I said, “ever said to Tiff, ‘I’m going to stab you one day,’ and if he doesn’t have an alibi for the time in question, and if you go to his house and find him holding a bloody knife that matches Tiff’s DNA,” I said. “Sounds like you’ve practically got the whole thing wrapped up.”

“I don’t owe you any explanation of how I conduct my job,” Chief Thorne said.

“I think those threats the mayor’s getting might be more than just crank calls,” I said. “Some people are getting pretty agitated about this parade on Saturday. This Charles Henry, who owns the grocery? He’s been stirring up a lot of shit with his petition.”

“And so’s that guy who wants to be in the parade. Maybe he should do everyone a favor and take a hike.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “You want to know what I think?”

Orville said nothing, breathed through his nostrils.

“I think you’re a good guy, but I think you’d rather chase a bear, a real one or an imaginary one, than confront some of the people in this town. You’re running off into the woods to avoid problems, not deal with them.”

Orville shook his head. “Gee, thanks, Dr. Phil.”

The two hunting buddies snickered. “Let’s go, guys,” he said to them, and they marched off together into the forest.

Dad opened the cabin door halfway and asked me, “Do they want some coffee first?”

After breakfast I went about my camp chores, collecting garbage, burying fish guts, cutting some grass. Around eleven I went inside to check Dad’s computer, see whether Sarah had gotten back to me after I’d e-mailed her the picture of Orville Thorne. She hadn’t. I surfed a bit, read The Metropolitan ’s website to see what was happening back in the city, then checked some of my favorite sci-fi sites, learned that some new kits from the old Lost in Space TV show were being issued. I still hadn’t gotten around to replacing my model of the Jupiter II , the saucerlike ship the Robinson family used to travel around the galaxy, that had been smashed to pieces a couple of years ago.