Practical Sins for Cold Climates

by Shelley Costa

  She tried concentrating on how pretty her dress was, even in borrowed shoes she’d never heard of, and she tried to figure out where Peter Hathaway had gone, but suddenly she felt swept away by the music as she and Decker reeled their way down the center, and she knew her heart felt, well, happier than when she tucked Charlie Cable’s signed contract into the zippered map case and she zoomed away from him in a motorboat.

  Every time she met Decker in the middle, he switched it up and held her around the waist—now even LeeAnn Foote was whistling—and she realized he had had an arm around her waist ever since she had stepped off the train in town and waited for him impatiently on the municipal dock. It surprised Val to know she had been safe all along. His color was high and his face was creased in the kind of smile she had never seen and by the time they were forming the bridge for the other couples to dance through, they were both laughing.

  When the Reel finished, Decker went out to get a couple of beers, and Peter Hathaway was introducing Daria Flottner to the mayor of Wendaban, Ontario, a rough, nicely dressed fellow with a bolo tie whose eyes glazed over when she spontaneously started reciting a poem called “Tingle, Bingle, Single.” Val motioned to her boss to follow her outside while Daria regaled the town council. He followed. When she turned to face him, damned if her stomach didn’t flop.

  Something to do with his cheekbones, something to do with that sensual mouth that told the unspoken truth to anyone who knew better that the whole ascetic act was very far from the real man. All those late nights with difficult manuscripts and wine in their separate offices. Then there were those few times he knew just how to slip her top off her shoulders using just his thumbs while whispering to her about the early Philip Roth that became the sexiest talk imaginable.

  She waited to see what he had to say.

  “You survived.”

  “I did.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “I learned how to make sesame encrusted ahi tuna rolls.” Not even glancing around for Daria. Despite the terrible phone calls, the indifference, the threats, he was asking her to bed.

  She looked up and found a knot in a pine rafter high overhead. “And I learned to operate a boat.”

  “Motor whisperer.”

  “Not just yet.”

  “It’ll come,” he said, his eyes on her lips.

  Were they speaking in code?

  Her hand slipped into her pocket and felt the folded Fir Na Tine contract. “Did you get my message?”

  “That Charlie signed? Yes.” He found his office voice. “You, Valjean Cameron, held off Julian Onnedonk.”

  She considered it. “No, Peter. I, Val Cameron, held off…you.” She produced the contract, and handed it over to him. He gave her a look of deliberate obtuseness she had seen once or twice in their many business years together: phony bafflement over how he was being treated. He took it like it was suddenly the Black Spot, or something inconsequential—both lies—and he murmured, “Good job.”

  “And you got my two weeks’ notice.”

  At that he looked amused. “No need to apologize,” he said, whacking her playfully with the contract. “I figured you were mad.”

  A waltz started up, one that seemed familiar, but Val didn’t know how it could be, and the caller identified it as “Down in the Willow Garden.” The sound of it squeezed her heart. “I was mad. And then I wasn’t. But I stand by the message,” she said, her voice getting tight as the face-to-face reality of her feelings for this man threatened to capsize her. No neon whistle, bailer, thirty-meter buoyant line, life jacket, or oars could make a difference.

  He could tell. “No, you don’t,” he said softly.

  “We’ll just have to see,” she said, giving him a frank look. If she stayed at Fir Na Tine, she had Peter’s word she could edit The Asteroid Mandate. And Charlie had her word as well. But how could she ever go back to work in that office with Ivy League Ivy and the rest of the suffering staff and Daria trailing her toga and Krishna braid everywhere and—Peter himself. She didn’t know what lay ahead, but she knew for sure what lay behind her. And it seemed profoundly sad that she couldn’t have the career she had carefully built at Schlesinger Publishing in those charming old wainscoted offices for the past twelve years. All because she couldn’t tolerate either more or less of the man she so unreasonably loved. Quitting, she suspected, was the easy part. But at least she had done it.

  Stepping around Peter Hathaway, Val went back inside, crossed the dance floor, and set down the two beers Wade Decker was holding, one for her. “Dance with me,” she said, “please.”

  “Is this like one of those pity dances, or make-him-jealous dances I remember from high school?”

  She stepped into his arms. “No,” she said, “maybe more like one of those oblivion dances.”

  “Help you to forget, eh?”

  She shot him a grim look. “Maybe it’s better not to.”

  “That’d be my advice. Did he fire you?”

  “No,” she said, almost philosophically. “I sort of quit.”

  “Which means you sort of didn’t.”

  “I handed him the contract.”

  “Which may have been stupid, but you had no alternative.”

  “And I think he asked me to bed.”

  A beat. They kept waltzing. “Quitting, firing,” he said, “truly the high art of seduction.”

  “Only it wasn’t entirely clear.”

  Decker closed his fingers over her hand. “More’s the pity. He needs to explain more fully.” Val fell silent, turning, turning, letting the sweet fiddle seep inside her. The room was crowded, and the smell of burgers and beer floated across the dance floor.

  Over near the quilts stood Martin Kelleher in a clutch of cottagers, where he was no doubt playing his game about needing to fight environmental desecration of all sorts. Speaking of poison, Diane Kelleher had said, poisons. And she could see, even without hearing him, that what Kelleher was telling them wasn’t galvanizing them with an uplifting course of action—it was causing just the kind of sick anxiety that stood out in front of desperate minds that were wondering whether, in their golden years, they really wanted to vacation in a place where tailings from new mines would pollute the lake water, or clearcutting would lay bare formerly beautiful hillsides for two generations they’d never get to see. How long would it take before they started wondering how much they could get for their cottages?

  Just as the music was bleeding to the perfect final note of what seemed to Val all waltzes, she caught sight of Caroline Selkirk, with a ravaged face, still in her stone-washed green shift, head across the floor. Luke Croy stopped halfway across and folded his arms. It was her fight. “Martin,” she said, as the crowd parted and the man who had betrayed her and her family turned slowly toward her. In the silence between songs, she hauled off and slapped him hard across the face. “You bastard.”

  “What the hell are you—”

  “Shut up!” she raged, her fists right up in his shocked face. She made a wide circle, opening her arms to the throng of cottagers. “Do you know this man is behind all the illegal access roads?”

  “Caroline,” he warned.

  “Do you know this man has been working for years to get you to sell your property?”

  A cottager blustered, “That’s not—”

  “What makes you—”

  She whirled on Kelleher. “Your wife—who, by the way, has left you, you fool—”

  He looked suddenly lost. “Diane?” he cried, his voice rising. “Where’s Diane?” Beside him Josie Blanton seemed very small.

  “You fool—you goddamn fool—Diane is halfway to Toronto by now.”

  He tried to push by her. “I don’t believe you—”

  Caroline Selkirk pushed him back. “She gave me so many documents about your shadow company and invoices from contractors, Martin, that you will never
be able to hang onto your own place, let alone get your hands on anyone else’s. Who’s going to fix your docks? Who’s going to bring your propane?” She drove him back. “Who’s going to respond if there’s a lightning strike? Who’s going to keep an eye out for break-ins? Who’s going to replace your roofs? Who’s going to store your boats?”

  When the grumbling started, Martin Kelleher looked wild. “There’s work,” he cried shrilly. “Work for everybody!”

  Dixon Foote stepped away, shaking his head slowly.

  “Is this true, Martin?” said an elderly cottager with a quaver in his voice.

  Kelleher whirled. “It’s not the whole—”

  “But it is, Martin,” shouted Caroline. “It is the whole story. Your betrayal is all you are.”

  His face darkened. “It was good enough for your sister.”

  With a cry, Caroline hauled off and slapped him again. “And now look at her,” she said. At the mention of the dead Leslie, the entire room grew quiet, and the lone fiddler set down his fiddle.

  Through gritted teeth, Caroline Selkirk stepped right up to Martin Kelleher, and set just two strong fingers on his chest. “This afternoon I made copies of everything Diane gave me, and before coming here tonight I dropped off a set in town at the police station.” With a grim smile she added, “Let’s see what they can do about those access roads.”

  With a pleased shout, the crowd closed in around Caroline, where Kay pulled Caroline in against her, and Martin Kelleher was left impotent outside the circle. He seemed ten years older, suddenly, and his clothes hung a little looser on his stocky frame. Even Josie Blanton had slipped away. He seemed incapable of moving, doubting which direction led to safety. One of the grillers announced more brats ready for hungry lake people—excluding Martin Kelleher, who already had enough. A cheer went up. And the band launched into something the caller Shelley Timms happily announced was “The Kentucky Rag.”

  Val saw an opportunity. Across the crowded dance floor was a long line of newcomers waiting to pay at the ticket table, and the dance floor seemed to be shrinking as people clustered in small groups, balancing burgers on thin paper plates. Four miles west of the community center, Camp Sajo stood empty in the gloom. She might be able to bring the matter of the murder to a head, but she wouldn’t take a chance by herself. Not now. She cast a quick look at Martin Kelleher, standing like a wallflower at the dance, marginalized, here in the corner by one of the open back windows. She saw his eyes come back to life, darting around, his mind working on ways to salvage his reputation.

  Val couldn’t give him the time.

  She tugged lightly at Decker’s sleeve. Scratching his cheek, he leaned in close. “Play along,” she said so quietly she wasn’t sure he heard her. Then she walked across the crowded dance floor, where couples were trying to get the hang of what the caller was telling them to do, and slipped sideways past the throng at the ticket table, Decker right behind her. They made their way around the building on the wraparound deck, past people who were exercising their rights to appropriate feeling up. Nobody she recognized, not even Peter Hathaway and Daria. Toward the back, off the low deck, boozy voices sailed back at them in the shadows of the bushes. Down at the far end of the deck, heat from the busy barbecues rippled off the sizzling grills.

  Val put up a hand to Decker, and positioned herself just outside the open rear window. “I found proof,” she said carefully, just loud enough to be overheard.

  “What kind?” said Decker, feeling his way along. “About the access roads?”

  “About the murder.” When Decker had nothing to say, Val went on. “I came across it in some of Leslie’s old stuff stored in the boathouse.”

  “What is it?”

  She gave him a tight nod, letting him know he was doing just fine. “Her date book for the month she died.”

  “Any familiar names?”

  “One in particular.”

  He murmured. “Tell me.”

  “I can’t take the chance.”

  “So she knew—”

  “I’d say so. And that’s not all,” Val went on, improvising the kind of proof that might provoke some nighttime activity. “There’s a journal—” at that, she was surprised to see Decker wince, “—and a flash drive that will give the cops everything they need.”

  “Are you sure it’s enough?”

  Val spoke very clearly. “His life is ruined.”

  When Decker was at a loss where to take the conversation, she mouthed Where? at him. “Where did you put the proof?” he asked.

  “I left it right there on the first floor, where I found it. What safer place? It’s out of sight.”

  “Have you called the O.P.P.?”

  When she figured he meant the cops, Val said, “Already did. I didn’t give too much away, just said new evidence in the murder of Leslie Decker.” And now for the turn of the screw. “They’re meeting me there tomorrow, first thing.”

  “I want to be there.”

  “Naturally.” Then she circled her hand to show him they could wrap it up.

  “Let’s get a beer,” he said, nodding in the direction of the portable bar. When the bartender pushed two plastic glasses of pale ale over to them with a grin, Val realized she was shaking. And in the sweltering August night, she was cold in her Colorado hippie dress Decker had bought with her in mind. Was it all just gamesmanship? And just how far out of her element had she stepped? Wordlessly, they tapped their plastic glasses together, and as Wade Decker raised his to his lips, he said softly, “Now what?”

  “We give him a head start,” Val said, staring into the pale ale that really had no more answers than anywhere else she looked. Their heads together in a clutch of teenage girls happily wound up over absolutely nothing, LeeAnn Foote and a couple of her friends bumped into Val. Shrieking apologies, they glided off.

  Past the heads of the crowd inside the community center, clapping in time as the caller sang out, “Allemande Left,” Val only wanted to be where there were bright lights and honest people and tunes she half knew. It was all more comforting than she had ever imagined. Behind her in the woods the crickets rasped in the gathering night, and one of the men cooking was cheerfully asking a Canoe Head whether he wanted grilled onions with that. But somewhere close by was something terrible, something murderous that passed itself off as normal and trustworthy and smiling. It felt deeply unfair that evil had a common face, and that was its greatest disguise. It looked like all the rest of us.

  Maybe for the first time since she had stepped off the train a week ago, she was truly out of her element. Bears might leave her alone. But the man she had just alerted to some pretend evidence only she, Val Cameron, had viewed, might very well not leave her alone. And he might very well not need a second-story window to help him make his point.

  “And until then?” asked Decker quietly, taking a sip.

  Val turned to Wade Decker, who was cast in the kind of shadows reserved for appropriate feeling up, and she looked past him into the brightly lighted community center where the banjo and fiddles were cranking it out. “We might as well dance,” said Val, more bravely than she felt.

  25

  An hour later, after Val spied Caroline sitting at a café table surrounded by Kay and Luke and a few cottagers, she looked around quickly for Martin Kelleher. He was nowhere to be seen. Her heart thudded a little more insistently. After a search of all likely spots, Decker came back and told her that the rest of the camp maintenance crew were accounted for, drinking in a boisterous cluster off the side deck.

  The Finger Pickin’ Pea Pickers were on a break and a ponytailed representative from the Lake Wendaban Youth Alliance announced the results of the silent auction of the donated quilts. Have you ever seen such beautiful handiwork? Can’t you just picture snuggling up with your honey during the long lake winters under one of these beauties? Reliably, Dixon Foote whistled.r />
  Val couldn’t find Peter Hathaway but saw Daria Flottner nibbling on a corn cob, sitting next to the mayor’s wife, a stiff-haired middle-aged gal with braces who looked like she was most definitely up to the Daria challenge. When Val crouched beside Daria and asked where she could find Peter, toga girl turned slowly and smiled beatifically in her face. Val thought she looked stoned. “Respite and nepenthe,” said Daria, floating her arms skyward, brandishing the corn cob like a baton.

  When Val pressed her, Daria Flottner’s fingers moved sensually at the side of her shaved head, as though working through phantom locks. Val then learned that the nice camp lady apparently offered him a bed in the boathouse, and he was just so exhausted what with bringing Daria to multiple bingles well into the previous night, and with flying hither and yon, mostly yon, he was now seeking respite and nepenthe in the bed the nice camp lady had offered him, after arranging for his luscious Gift—Daria means gift, she told Val solemnly—to be brought to him later by water.

  Although his luscious Gift could not quite say where. Or by whom. “Quaff, O quaff!” she sang to Val, offering her a plastic glass of beer held cupped in her two hands like a chalice. Someone, Daria no doubt, had drawn sultry red parted lips alongside her actual, colorless lips. It was against these red cartoon lips that Daria Flottner now held a finger. “Shh!” she uttered, her pupils black and large.

  Disturbed, Val stood, staring down at the woman preferred by Peter Hathaway. But the only thing that mattered was that Peter Hathaway was apparently sound asleep in the darkened boathouse—with a desperate Martin on his way. She wouldn’t even let herself picture the scene. Val stepped quickly back from Daria, then headed at a half-run through the crowd on her way to the entrance. It was her fault. It was all her own damn fault. All of it. Why couldn’t she have just left it alone?

  She dashed by Decker, who was waiting on the steps. “Wade, hurry,” she called back to him as she hurried, nowhere near fast enough. Scrambling across the boats tied up to theirs, thunking softly in the indifferent night, she tried to explain what Daria had said. Moving quickly, Decker untied the boat, and all she could say from a very tight throat was, “Hurry. Please.”