The Delicate Storm. Giles Blunt

       4

      The northern shore of Lake Nipissing is one of the prettiest places in Ontario, but Lakeshore Drive, which runs along the top of the inlet that gives Algonquin Bay its name, could have been designed for the sole purpose of keeping this fact from the public. It has been a magnet for eyesores for as long as anybody can remember. On the lake side there are fast-food joints, gas stations and quaintly named but charm-free motels; across from these, car dealerships and shopping malls.

      Loon Lodge was at the western edge of this ugliness. It was not actually a lodge but a dozen miniature white cabins with green shutters and country-style curtains, having been built in the fifties before the log-cabin look became the fashion. Many people in Algonquin Bay imagine such businesses are closed in winter, but in fact they have two sources of winter income. One is from ice fishermen, the dentists and insurance salesmen who take a few days off to come up north with their buddies and drink themselves into oblivion. The other is from people who want a dirt-cheap place to live, and nothing is cheaper, off-season, than a cabin on Lakeshore Drive.

      Cardinal had been to Loon Lodge a few times. Every so often one of the winter residents would knock his wife’s teeth out. Or the wife would tire of her husband’s drinking and insert a steak knife neatly into his ribs. Occasionally there were drug dealers. Then in summer it was all sunburnt Americans, families on a tight budget, taking advantage of the reliably frail Canadian dollar.

      Cardinal and Delorme were in the first of Loon Lodge’s white clapboard cabins, the one marked Office. It was four times bigger than the rental units, and the proprietor lived in it with his wife and kids. He was an egg-shaped man named Wallace. His face was puffy, with a wounded expression, as if he suffered from toothache. An equally egg-shaped and disconsolate four-year-old boy was watching cartoons in the next room. Smells of supper hung in the air, and Cardinal suddenly realized he was hungry.

      Wallace pulled out a guest register, found the name and turned the book around on the counter.

      ‘Howard Matlock,’ Delorme read aloud, ‘312 East Ninety-first Street, New York City.’

      ‘I wish I’d never set eyes on the guy, now,’ Wallace said. ‘Was a really slow week last week, so I was glad as hell to see him, even though he only wanted to stay a few days.’

      ‘Ford Escort,’ Delorme read, and copied down the licence number.

      ‘Yeah,’ Wallace said. ‘Bright red one. Not that I’ve seen it for a couple of days.’

      ‘What day did he arrive?’ Cardinal asked.

      ‘Thursday, I think. Yeah, Thursday. I’d just turned away a couple of Indians who wanted to rent a place. Sorry, but I don’t care how many vacancies I’ve got, I won’t rent to those people. I just got tired of cleaning up the blood and the puke. I have a reputation to maintain.’

      ‘You better hope none of them lays a discrimination complaint on you,’ Delorme said.

      ‘People don’t understand about Indians. Put two or three of them together with a bottle of Four Aces and you got a unit that’s unrentable.’

      ‘And what have you got now?’

      ‘You say you took this key ring off a dead body?’ He pointed to the melted mass in the Baggie that Cardinal had put on the counter.

      ‘More or less.’

      ‘Then I guess I got a bill that’s not paid and a tenant that’s not alive.’ Wallace shook his head and cursed under his breath. ‘Do you have any idea how long it takes to build a reputation like Loon Lodge? It doesn’t happen overnight.’

      ‘I’m sure it doesn’t,’ Cardinal said. ‘Did Mr Matlock say why he was in Algonquin Bay?’

      ‘I’m telling you, something like this comes along and all that effort – all those extra little touches that make a motel a special place, the kind of place people want to come back to – all of it comes to nothing. I might as well take down my shingle and declare bankruptcy.’

      Cardinal wondered how anyone as gloomy as Mr Wallace would have had the optimism to open a motel in the first place, but he stuck to his original question. ‘Did Mr Matlock say why he was in Algonquin Bay?’

      ‘Ice fishing’s what he told me.’

      ‘Little early in the year for ice fishing. Even without the warm spell.’

      ‘That’s exactly what I said. I told him no one’s going out on that lake for at least another two weeks, even without the warm snap. He said he was well aware of that fact. Said he was only up here scoping the place out for a bunch of buddies who were planning to come up with him late February.’

      ‘From New York?’ Delorme said. ‘New York seems like a long way to come just to check out the ice fishing.’

      Wallace shrugged. ‘Americans.’

      He plucked a key from the rack behind the counter and they followed him outside past several cabins.

      ‘Never seemed like much of a sport to me,’ Cardinal said to Delorme. ‘The fish are stunned with cold. They’re starving. Where’s the skill? Sitting over a hole in a dingy little shack.’

      ‘You’re leaving out the beer.’

      ‘Oh, don’t leave out the beer,’ Wallace said. ‘You wouldn’t believe the cases these guys haul out there. I keep a toboggan in each unit, supposedly for the kiddies, but do you see any hills around here? They use ’em to haul their two-fours out on the lake.’

      ‘You say Mr Matlock arrived on Thursday. When did you notice the car wasn’t here?’

      ‘I guess that’d be Saturday. Two days ago. Yeah, that’s right. Because I asked him to move it Friday morning. Had it parked in the spot for number four. Not that there was anybody in number four. Anyways, it definitely wasn’t there Saturday morning. Which made me think something was up. Car’s gone, and I haven’t seen any smoke coming from the stovepipe. Knocked on the door this morning, got no answer and figured I’d give him another few hours before I started to worry I’d been stiffed.’

      ‘Did he make any phone calls?’ Cardinal asked. ‘Would you know if he had?’

      ‘Long-distance I’d know about – he didn’t make any of those. I don’t keep track of local.’

      ‘Thanks, Mr Wallace. We’ll take it from here.’

      ‘Fine with me.’ Wallace opened the door for them. ‘If there’s any cash in there, I figure I’m due a hundred and forty.’

      The inside of a Loon Lodge cabin hadn’t changed since the last time Cardinal had seen one. Double bed tucked in an alcove, a floral couch, and a kitchenette in the corner: mini-fridge, hot plate, aluminum sink. A memory assailed Cardinal – a shrieking woman hurling a frying pan at him when he had come to arrest her husband.

      There was a table covered with yellow oilcloth beside one window. A copy of the New York Times lay on it. Dated five days previously, Cardinal noted, and probably acquired on the airplane.

      The bed (slightly tattered chenille cover complete with the same Loon Lodge emblem that was on the key ring) was neatly made. Beside it lay a small wheeled suitcase containing enough clothes for a weekend and a paperback novel by Tom Clancy.