Dark Tiger (16 page)

“Elaine, you mean?”

She nodded. “She didn't show up for breakfast. Then her clients were waiting for her down on the dock, all set to go fishing, and she wasn't there. That's not like Elaine at all. So Mr. Dunlap asked me if I'd run down to her cabin and tell her that her sports were ready to go. So I—”

“Robert or Marty?” said Calhoun.

“Robert.” Robin frowned at him. “Does it matter?”

Calhoun smiled. “No, I guess not.”

She blew out a quick breath. “So anyway,” she said, “I knocked on her cabin door and called in to her, but there was no answer. It was totally quiet in there. I knocked again, a little louder. Still no answer. So I pushed open the door and poked my head in. I saw that Elaine was still in bed. It looked like she was sleeping. I spoke to her, asked her if she was feeling okay, but she didn't answer me. Then I got worried that she'd taken drugs or something and was unconscious, so I—”

“Did Elaine do drugs?”

“Huh?” Robin frowned. “Oh. Well, no, I don't think so. I mean, I'm sure she didn't. That was just the thought I had. That maybe she'd OD'd or passed out or something.” She shrugged. “So anyway, I went over to her bed. I was going to shake her and speak to he and see if anything was wrong. Then I saw the blood. A big patch of dried blood on the sheet where it covered her chest. Elaine was lying there with her eyes staring up at the ceiling, and she was all gray and . . . and dead. So then I—”

“The blood was dry?” said Calhoun.

Robin nodded. “It was dark and dried. Not shiny like—like fresh blood.”

“So she'd been dead for a while.”

Robin shrugged. “I guess so. I don't know much about that stuff.”

“Okay,” said Calhoun. “Then what happened?”

“Then,” she said, “I completely lost it. I guess I just sat down on the floor and started screaming, because after a while some people came, and they took me back to my room, and I remember that June stayed with me for a while. I cried a lot. I guess I might've been in shock or something. After a while I went to sleep, and when I woke up, I was okay.” Robin looked at Calhoun and gave him a little smile. “Well, obviously not really okay, but I'm a lot better now. Anyway, that's what happened. It was pretty traumatic. I never saw a dead person before, never mind a friend.”

“You and Elaine were friends, huh?”

“She was like ten years older than me,” she said, “but we were best friends.”

“You shared secrets?”

Robin nodded.

“Intimate, personal things?”

“Sure. That's what best friends do.”

“What secrets did Elaine share with you?”

Robin shook her head. “I don't think I should say. I mean, they're secrets, you know?”

“Elaine's dead,” said Calhoun. “Maybe whoever shot her did it because of one of those secrets.”

“I thought of that.”

“Did you say anything to the sheriff about Elaine's secrets?”

“Not really. I guess I should have, and he did ask me pretty directly if I knew anything about her, about why somebody might want to—to kill her, but . . . well, I didn't quite trust him.
He didn't seem like the kind of man I should tell Elaine's secrets to. Even if he was trying to catch the murderer. I mean, I was thinking, Elaine told me some things in private. She trusted me with her personal stuff because she knew I'd never tell anybody. So I wasn't going to tell this stranger, even if he was the sheriff and even if Elaine was . . . even if she was dead. I just couldn't do that.”

“So you
do
think whoever killed her might've done it because of one of her secrets?”

Robin shrugged. “I guess so.”

“Robin,” said Calhoun, “you've got to tell me.”

She frowned. “Why? I mean, why you? I like you and trust you and everything, but, well, no offense, but you're just a fishing guide.”

Calhoun looked at her. “Why did you come here tonight?”

She frowned. “Huh?”

“Tell me why you came into my cabin.”

“I did. I told you. I needed somebody to talk to. I didn't know who else I could trust.”

“You thought you could trust me, though, huh?”

She shrugged. “You're new here. Like I said. You couldn't be involved in . . . in the things that have been happening here.”

Calhoun nodded. “Okay.”

“Don't you believe me?”

He smiled. “Sure. I believe you.” He hesitated. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Robin smiled. “Oh, just what I need. Somebody else telling me their secrets.”

“I'll try not to get shot,” said Calhoun. “Listen. I'd rather you didn't tell anybody, but in my regular life back in Portland I'm a part-time deputy sheriff. I know how all this business works. I know how to deal with evidence, and I know the procedures.
So talking to me wouldn't be like giving away a friend's secrets to another friend. It would be like telling the authorities what they should know.”

“You're a policeman?”

He smiled. “Not really a policeman. I'm a volunteer deputy sheriff. I can't arrest people or anything like that. I'm just a helper. I am pretty good at it, though.”

“You got a badge?”

He nodded.

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.” When he unpacked, he'd dropped the badge in its leather folder, along with his cell phone, in with his socks in the top drawer of the bureau. He opened the drawer, found the badge, and showed it to Robin.

“Cool,” she said.

“Believe me now?”

“I believed you before. I just wanted to see it.”

“I'd just as soon the others didn't know about me being a deputy,” Calhoun said. “Can I trust you with the secret?”

Robin nodded. “I'm good with secrets.”

He put the badge back in the drawer. He wondered if whoever had come into his cabin to steal his .22 pistol had prowled through his other drawers and seen the badge.

He turned to Robin. “So I've got the feeling you have a theory about who killed Elaine and why.”

“Not who,” she said. “I have no idea who might have done it. But why? Yeah, maybe.”

“How about a glass of water, or a Coke or something?”

She nodded. “Water would be good.”

Calhoun got up, went to the sink, and filled a glass with water from the tap. He took it to the table. “Let's sit here and talk,” he said to Robin.

She got up from the bed and sat at the table.

Calhoun sat across from her. “Tell me about Elaine,” he said.

She nodded. “Her secret, you mean.”

“Yes.”

She picked up her glass and took a sip of water. “There was this man staying here. A client. A fisherman. He was by himself, had a single room, went out fishing alone. With just a guide, I mean. A really good-looking man. He was, I don't know, about forty, I guess. Anyway, he and Elaine, they, um, they had a thing going on.”

She meant McNulty, Calhoun assumed. “A thing?” he said.

Robin nodded. “She slept with him.”

“Probably against the rules, huh?” Calhoun remembered that Elaine had told him she barely knew McNulty. He wondered what she'd lied to her friend Robin about.

“Oh, definitely,” said Robin. “Sleeping with one of the clients? If the Dunlaps ever found out, Elaine would've been fired. They were very discreet. He used to sneak down to her cabin after dark. The guides all knew what was going on, I think, but none of them would ever say anything. Elaine told me. I think she was in love with him, though she just said she liked him and they were having some fun.”

“This man,” said Calhoun. “What was his name?”

“McNulty,” she said. “I never heard his first name. Elaine always referred to him by his last name. McNulty. He got killed. He went down to St. Cecelia one day, and they found him dead. In a car. With a woman. A girl, actually. A teenager. They'd both been shot. Needless to say, Elaine was pretty upset.”

“About him being with a girl.”

Robin nodded. “Well, about him being killed, too, of course.”

“Tell me what you can about this McNulty.”

“I thought he was kind of spooky, to tell you the truth,” Robin said. “He was the strong silent type, if you know what I mean. Elaine liked that, but it kind of freaked me out. He always seemed to have a lot going on in his head, but he never had much to say. From what Elaine told me, he didn't like to talk about himself. He didn't tell her where he was from or what he did for a living or anything like that. She used to say she figured he was married, that he came here to get away from his wife. That was all right with her. Elaine was pretty liberal about things like that.” She paused, took a sip of water. “I told Elaine I thought he was dangerous. That he'd get her in trouble.” She looked up at Calhoun and smiled quickly. “I guess I was right about that.”

“Dangerous,” said Calhoun. “Dangerous how?”

Robin shook her head. “I'm not sure I could explain it. It was just the impression I got. It's how he seemed to me. Like he lived out on the edge, took a lot of risks. It's like he was always calculating the odds. When you were in a room with McNulty, you had the feeling he was studying you, like he was looking right into your head. Looking for your weaknesses.” She hesitated. “One of my jobs here, besides serving meals, is to make the guests' beds, put out clean towels, straighten out their rooms. One time I was working in McNulty's room and I saw a gun on his bureau. It was one of those square pistols like policemen on TV use.”

“Confirming your suspicion that he was dangerous.”

“Well,” she said, “that he wasn't just some fisherman on vacation, anyway.”

“You say he got shot,” Calhoun said, as if this were the first he'd heard of it. “Who did it?”

She shrugged. “The rumor was it might've been some jealous boyfriend of the girl he was with, but I don't think they've arrested anybody.”

“I bet you've got a theory.”

She shook her head. “I really don't. If it was somebody from here—from the lodge—I can't imagine who. I know all these people, you know what I mean?”

Calhoun looked up at the ceiling for a minute. Then he said, “So now Elaine has been shot. You don't think that's just a coincidence, do you?”

“No,” she said. “I think it's connected. To what happened to McNulty. It's got to be. I don't think I could stand it if things like that just happened randomly. I can't believe our world is like that.”

Oh, it is,
Calhoun thought.
When you get older, you'll see. It's a world crammed full of randomness
.

“So how do you think Elaine's death is connected to McNulty's?” he said.

“Well,” she said, “he was definitely into something up here, and I figure he said something about it to Elaine. Or maybe he even got her involved in it. Whatever it was got him shot. And now Elaine.”

“Into something,” Calhoun repeated. “Into what?”

Elaine shook her head. “I don't know. He just didn't seem like the kind of man who'd come to a place like this to go fishing.”

“So you're not buying the jealous boyfriend theory, huh?”

“I don't know. I guess not. They would've arrested him by now, if there even is a jealous boyfriend, wouldn't they?” She looked at him. “I certainly don't think it was Franklin Redbird. He's just the sweetest, gentlest man.”

“So did Elaine tell you about what McNulty might've been involved in?”

Robin shook her head. “No. One day, instead of going fishing, he borrowed one of the lodge's cars and went down to
St. Cece. He told Elaine he had some business to transact down there. Two days later he was dead.”

“Business.”

Robin shrugged. “That's what she told me.”

Calhoun was thinking that McNulty, who was really an elite government operative, a superspy, one of Mr. Brescia's highly trained agents—like Calhoun himself—had found whatever it was he was looking for at the Loon Lake Lodge. So he went to St. Cecelia, and probably intended to keep going. The girl, Millie Gautier, joined him, for some reason. Along the way they contracted botulism poisoning, and they died in their car. Then someone came along and shot them.

It still didn't make much sense.

Calhoun leaned back in his chair. “Can you think of anything else?”

Robin yawned. “I can't hardly think at all anymore.” She looked at him. “You won't tell anybody I was here, will you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Or that I told you these things.”

He shook his head. “If you happen to think of anything else . . .”

“Sure,” she said. “I'll tell you.” She covered another yawn with her hand. “So what're you gonna do?”

“A little snooping, I guess,” Calhoun said.

“That's your job as a deputy sheriff, huh?”

He smiled. “That's right.”

“Be careful, okay?”

“Oh, don't worry about me.”

Robin stood up. “I better get back to my room. I have to get up early for breakfast.”

“Ralph and I will walk back with you.”

She shook her head. “You know what? I'm not sure it would
be a good idea to be seen together this time of night. If you have a flashlight I can borrow . . .”

“No,” said Calhoun. “We're going with you. We'll be careful not to be seen together. Okay? I'll feel a lot better knowing you're safe.”

She shrugged. “Well, okay.”

Robin held on to Calhoun's hand, and they walked along the shadowy pathway from Calhoun's cabin, past the boathouse and past the dock, to the big lodge. The moon had risen over the treeline across the lake. It bathed the landscape in its yellow light. From out on the lake came the eerie laughter of the loons.

Ralph scampered ahead of them, leading the way, protecting them against monsters.