Read Online Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery by Scott Young - Free Book Online Page B

out safely as long as you stay put. The cold wasn’t as bad as the wind but basically you had to stop loss of body heat. A tent or an aircraft cabin would be shelter enough. Even a candle will heat up an enclosed space.
    At least I knew a little more. And the contact might somehow help later. I finished my tea and told him I was going to Fort Norman and I’d phone him if I learned anything important. He regretted that I didn’t have time to sit and talk. I was regretful, too. I was getting to be so damn efficient, no longer operating on what some people call northern time. Meaning time doesn’t mean anything. Have to watch that.
    â€œNext time,” he said as I was leaving, “stay longer. I’ll always drive you back uptown. You don’t have to have a taxi waiting like a white man.” I accepted the rebuke.
    It was past four, the sun getting low. “Inspector Huff is back,” the receptionist called as I headed upstairs to Ted’s big office on the second floor. He crushed a few small bones in my hand to indicate that he was glad to see me. We went back a long way, all the way to basic training in Regina. We were friends but not like the “Matteesie!” and “Thomasee!” of a short time earlier; the same rank, but in my head I deferred to him because while I had always been as close to a lone wolf as an officer in the Mounties can be, he was officer commanding five dozen good, or mostly good, people. I still thought of myself as plain Matteesie and thought of him as The Inspector. He knew none of this. I didn’t envy him but I think sometimes he envied me.
    Now, while his secretary brought coffee, Ted enthused about his trip to Banks Island. The corporal’s wife had been so pleased at his surprise visit that after the christening he’d taken her out in the Twin Otter to see some of the musk-ox herds he’d seen on the way in only a few minutes from Sachs Harbour. “Never saw so many! Every place you look—musk-ox! It’s old stuff to you and me but when we’d fly over a herd and they’d get scared and get in a circle facing out to protect the young in the middle, it was something new for that young lady. Glad I went.”
    Then he waited for me to open the bidding.
    I didn’t really have to specify what I was there for. He knew that Buster had called me originally about the missing plane. My involvement at the time of the murder, he knew as well. I got right to it.
    â€œI don’t want you to think I’m meddling,” I said.
    He laughed. “Once a cop . . .”
    I filled him in on who I’d talked to, and then: “I’d really like to talk to William Cavendish.” I was hoping he’d know more about William’s whereabouts than I did, and I was right. To a point.
    â€œSo would I. Last night after we got word about the murder we tried all the bars, eating places, people he knew. Everybody said they hadn’t seen him. Of course, some of them must have been lying. He had to be here somewhere. In hindsight, we should have put a man at the airport. He flew out on Nahanni this morning with a ticket for Fort Norman.” Ted looked at me with a grin. “I guess this is all on Northern Affairs business, eh?”
    â€œOh, sure,” I said.
    He didn’t ask any more questions, but I did. A suspicion suddenly began rattling around in my head looking for a way out. It had been born as abruptly as Ted saying where William had been heading that morning by Nahanni Air—the same place where a plane carrying his friends might have gone down without sending out any emergency signals.
    â€œDo you think there’s a connection between what happened to Morton Cavendish and those guys that took off in that Cessna that’s down?”
    â€œSame old Matteesie,” he said. A compliment, I’m almost sure.
    â€œWell?”
    â€œMaybe not directly,” he said. “But William was