Murder in a Cold Climate: An Inspector Matteesie Mystery by Scott Young Page A

little.
    â€œAbout the big fight Jules mentioned. Did he give you any idea at all what it was about?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAny ideas?”
    Deep breath again. “Every time William and his father got together they argued.”
    â€œWhat about?”
    She shrugged, opened her mouth, closed it, didn’t answer for a minute, then said, “Morton always wanted to know where William was getting money to live on, stuff like that. They just plain didn’t get along.”
    â€œWas William violent with you when he was drinking?”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œDo you think he and his father ever came to blows. I mean, physical violence?”
    She didn’t answer.
    I said, “Either of you happen to know what doctor was on duty when they brought Morton in?”
    Maxine nodded. “Bob Zimmer. He was quoted on the news.”
    I asked Gloria if she had seen William at all since then.
    She was back to shaking her head.
    It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t seen him at the airport, either, where you might think he’d have gone, despite the fight with his father. He would have known that his father was being flown out.
    â€œNo idea where he went after he was at the hospital?”
    Then it came in a burst, tears brimming in her eyes. “I tried all over, all day Monday. I couldn’t get Jules, even. A couple of other guys who hung out with the two of them a lot flew out that day on that flight that went down—you know, Harold Johns, well, he wasn’t really with them that much but I couldn’t find Albert Christian or Benny Batten either, because it turned out they’d gone with Harold, but of course nobody knew that until yesterday. Albert’s girlfriend, Julie, was the one who told the police who was with Harold on the flight. She was mad as hell.”
    â€œWhat about?” I asked.
    â€œAlbert had taken her car without telling her and just left it out by the Komatik Air office where Harold took off.”
    That was the first I had known that Johns didn’t take off from the airport. But that wasn’t unusual. These bush flying outfits often had riverside locations. That was handy in summer when they were using floats and when they switched to skis they’d do business out of the same locations. Saved money on airport office space, too. The river wasn’t solid ice everywhere right after freeze-up in the fall but now in January it would hold anything, let alone the kind of light planes Komatik Air had. I still figured Gloria knew more than she was telling me but maybe I could get it elsewhere.
    I got up and said to Maxine, “See you later.”
    She reached up soberly and patted my bum. “Take care.”
    It was broad daylight when I left the Caribou. Three weeks ago, the month of dark days when the sun didn’t show at all had ended, and now there was about five hours of daylight. I walked down the street in sunshine and found Dr. Robert Zimmer, MD, in his office not far from the Inuvik General Hospital. In his waiting room were two little old Inuit ladies with wrinkled brown faces and toothless smiles. One was smoking a pipe. Both wore bright gingham shifts over the warm skin clothes beneath. These old ones and some of the younger Inuit, too, made the shifts themselves. They fell to about calf length and had fringed bottoms. I always think they look colorful on the street, neat and individual, dressed-up town Inuit.
    The doctor looked surprised. “Matteesie! Come in.” He spoke a few words in the Inuit tongue to the old ones that meant he’d see them in a minute and they grinned and nodded. He’d been here twenty years and had a twenty-three-foot launch with fish-finding gear that amused the locals. He also hunted caribou and polar bear and had a dog team; everything but a wife, who had left him years earlier to go back to Kitchener, Ontario.
    He closed the door, went behind his desk, gestured to a chair and looked