Practical Sins for Cold Climates

by Shelley Costa

  Her ribs hurt.

  Her heart hurt.

  Cling! The hare-brained advice for a new millennium.

  Val picked it up. Not the hardcover first edition. The ARC. What was it doing at the Hathaway cottage? She remembered the publication of Cling! was timed early in the new year—new approaches, new ways of looking at life, great for self-help sales—so the ARC must have been released early in the fall, probably October. A slip of paper fluttered to her lap. The receipt for gas at a Husky station about an hour south of Lake Wendaban, dated October 6, two years earlier, 8:03 a.m. A Visa charge, lots of asterisks, ending with the four digits 7942. Hathaway’s card—she had used it when he had her pick up sushi at Haru on West 43rd just a little over a week ago. No time to hand-roll our own, he had told her.

  And then Val had to hold onto the kitchen table to keep herself from shaking violently in the surge of truth that swept over her. Two years ago, Peter Hathaway had come to the lake on the morning Leslie Decker had died. She stood up stiffly from the table. Then, with no more information than she had, and no more information than she needed, she walked slowly in the dark to the bedroom, where she calmly told Wade Decker just who had murdered his wife.

  28

  When morning was nothing more than a lessening gloom across the horizon, Val got Decker to the municipal landing in the boat. It was a rough ride in a cool drizzle and she was as glad as she was going to be on that particular day that she had helped him into a black rain jacket. The hood obscured his face, but even another shot of the Tylenol with codeine hadn’t helped with the wind-whipped waves. At the landing, Dixon Foote was waiting for them next to a white Honda pickup truck he had pulled close to the water. When she had gotten Decker’s boat as close to the dock as she could without banging it up or splintering the wood, Dixon grabbed the line and pulled them close.

  Val heard a low, exhausted rumble in the distance, the kind of thunder that seems to be rolling through on its way to somewhere else. “Thanks, Dix,” said Decker as the slowest barge operator on the lake helped him out of the boat. How long would it take him to get Wade Decker to the hospital half an hour east in a town called Catawba?

  “If it’s any consolation, Wade,” he said, “you look like hell.”

  “You sure know how to sweet talk a guy.”

  Val spoke up. “Camp Sajo?” she asked quietly.

  Dixon Foote sniffed. “Fire boat got there fifteen minutes after you called it in. So did half the lake. Quite a sight,” he reminisced, “all those fire pumps. About half an hour later, the MNR flew over and water bombed it.”

  “And—?” She just couldn’t handle any more bad news.

  “Boathouse is gone.” That she already knew. As he reported, Dixon Foote spread his strong legs and crossed his arms. “About a half-acre of forest. Camper cabin closest to the docks was hit bad.”

  Decker squinted at him. “What about the lodge?”

  Dixon Foote nodded. “Lodge was spared,” he said expansively, and Val felt a rush of joy that Caroline’s office and all the framed camper pictures throughout the decades were unaffected. It felt like a place of goodness, despite the brawl, a place where the deathless smiling faces of campers who’d come to Chez Trey were saying something about youth and joy. Caroline Selkirk would be needing that. For that matter, they’d all be needing that.

  The two men started over to the pickup, then Dixon Foote stopped short. “Oh,” he said to them both, “Martin Kelleher showed up with his fire pump.” He lifted his chin. “We turned him away.”

  Val opened the door on the passenger side.

  Decker stood leaning against the door. In a low voice, he said, “Valjean, what are you going to do?”

  And she knew he meant about Peter Hathaway. “I’m going to keep him from leaving town.” That’s why they had set out from Lightning Bay at dawn. And that’s why she had enlisted help from the slowest barge operator on the lake.

  He gave her a long look. “You’re going to go to the cops.”

  A small smile. “That too.”

  “First,” he said with some spirit.

  “I won’t be stupid.” She gave his sleeve a pat. “There’s no more stupid left for me to be.” Unconvinced, Decker eased himself gingerly into the Honda and gave her a grim look. “Besides,” Val added, “I’ve got my weapon.”

  “The rifle.”

  “Arlo,” she said, perfectly seriously. Decker grunted, which she knew was about as much of a laugh as he could manage. Dixon Foote slammed himself in behind the wheel, starting up the engine and the windshield wipers as Decker lowered the window. His hand shot out and settled against the side of her head, where the rain had drenched her hair, and he mouthed thanks. “Now go get yourself fixed up,” she said, giving the side of the truck a sporty little slap.

  Val stepped back, surprised when the Honda roared off like a creature let out of its cage, tires squealing, kicking up gravel and dust. In a matter of five seconds, they were out of sight. So the slowest barge operator on the lake saved all of his speed for the roads.

  By nine a.m. Val had taken up her position in Bob’s Bait Shop, having spent two hours at the low, squat building that housed the Ontario Provincial Police. She had left the flash drive, the uncorrected page proof of Cling!, and the Husky receipt with them. She had put them in touch with Ivy League Ivy, who was actually at her desk on time and agog to be asked by foreign cops to lay her hands on Hathaway’s date book from two years ago and to expect a visit from the NYPD shortly, who would have a search warrant.

  In the low, yellow-sided building just up from the Lake Wendaban Community Center, Val was wired, fed a sugary pastry wrapped in plastic, and offered several cups of coffee and a towel to dry her hair. They discussed the obvious, that it had been Hathaway who had overhead her ruse about evidence and set fire to the Camp Sajo boathouse, the site of the murder of Leslie Decker. And what Val couldn’t tell them was that the reason he didn’t follow up the arson with an attempt on Val was a truth that shrank her: with Valjean Cameron, he could brazen it out. She was just that smitten, and just that easy to bring around with pillow talk and plausible explanations for everything—including murder.

  The rain slowed.

  The time did not.

  The bus south would come through at ten, the train half an hour earlier, and Val was sure Peter Hathaway—in the absence of a car rental agency and his pilot, Wade Decker—would opt for the earliest way out of town. She fingered the hidden wire nervously as the dispatcher plopped a yellow slicker rain hat on her head.

  They’d be close, they assured her.

  And on her way back to the municipal dock, all she heard was the sound of her shoes—her borrowed dancing shoes from the gala that seemed a very long time ago—crunching on the wet gravel. Borrowed shoes, borrowed hat, wired for sound, dressed in her pretty new dress ripped in three different places—Val felt like an assortment of parts, too assorted even to be scared. She wasn’t, at the moment she stepped into Bob’s Bait Shop, much of anything at all. Except wet.

  Arlo, who was dumping fresh leeches into the tank, looked up and smiled. Val brought him into the picture in three sentences. Peter Hathaway killed Leslie Decker. When he comes, find a reason to leave the shop. The cops will be close. Arlo met these revelations with barely raised eyebrows and no drama whatsoever. He decided he’d need to go take a piss when Hathaway turned up, and Val said it was as good a reason as any.

  Val spent the next hour paging sightlessly through back issues of Walleye World, and Arlo waited quickly on two wizened customers who ordered two pints of night crawlers. Through the shop window, Val watched intently as a few boats docked, and a few other boats cast off and veered away up the lake. In the misty rain, a couple of workers in rain gear unloaded lumber from a flatbed delivery truck parked close to the water. Just before nine o’clock, she placed a phone call, and set a weapon other than Arlo behind t
he counter.

  At 9:05 Val saw a boat slowly approach the landing, flying off its stern a Canadian flag and…a Jolly Roger. Charlie Cable? And when it sidled up to an available spot at the dock, she saw two heads. Two close-shaved heads. And in a flash she knew how Peter Hathaway had gotten unobserved to Camp Sajo the morning of October 6, two years ago. He had taken the boat Charlie Cable leaves unattended, keys in it, at the municipal dock. The boat Kay Stanley had seen slipping out of sight around Selkirk Peninsula when she discovered the body…

  Daria Flottner first set a small bag on the dock, and then a Hudson Bay shopping bag Val recognized from the Hathaway cottage. So she and Peter must have spent the night there, once he realized Val had decamped. Did he arrive smelling like gasoline? Smoke? Would she even notice? If she did, was it a turn-on? Hatless, Peter Hathaway tied up Charlie Cable’s boat, which was when Val stepped out of the bait shop and half crossed the landing. “Peter!” she called.

  Glancing up, he saw her, and she tried to keep a neutral expression on her face. He had to think she was onto him, which she was, and his look was inscrutable. When would his snow job begin? He just might put her off until he could alight on what Leslie Selkirk would have called “a foolproof plan,” and she couldn’t let that happen. She called out, “Martin Kelleher tried to burn down the camp.”

  She motioned to him to meet her in the bait shop. As she started to turn away, she saw his mind working, trying to process this new wrinkle. Then he pointed Daria Flottner, still in her Krishna togs, toward the Lake Wendaban Community Bulletin Board at the far side of the landing. Maybe he was promising her a poetry slam or handcrafted ribbons for her Krishna braid, but she loped off to check out the board, and he followed Val.

  Inside the bait shop, Val took a big breath to steady her nerves, grateful for the cheerful smile Arlo gave her. As Peter Hathaway opened the door, Arlo announced he had to take a leak, and lumbered out. Val stepped behind the counter and turned to face the man she had worked alongside for the past twelve years. If she could reduce it to that—and maybe that’s all it had ever been—she stood a chance of getting through the next few minutes.

  He fixed her with a crooked smile. “Martin, eh?”

  “How could you do it?” Her voice sounded so plain.

  “Do what?” he asked, and she watched his mind settle on the easiest explanation. “Bring Daria? Val, Val,” he smiled at his sandals, “you’ve really got to—”

  “Not Daria. Leslie.”

  His expression changed. “Leslie?”

  “How could you do it?”

  “What are you—”

  It was hard to catch a breath. “How did it feel?”

  “With Leslie?” Peter Hathaway stared. “You’re paranoid. I never had Leslie.”

  Was it truly all he ever thought about? “That’s not what I’m—”

  His cool blue eyes crinkled at her. “You’re such a jealous little thing, aren’t you?”

  “How did it feel, Peter, when she went out the window?”

  He stepped back. “You’re crazy.”

  When he started to walk away, she pulled the rifle out from behind the counter and cocked it. Never did she think she’d find that sound of quick, sliding metal so unmistakable and so reassuring.

  He whirled. “What the hell—”

  Val was pleased to see that her hands were steady. “I found it all, Peter,” she told him. “I found the flash drive she used against you. InCubeOps. It must have killed you to call yourself Anonymous,” she said softly. “Where’s the pleasure in that?”

  A beat. Then he started to sneer. “You don’t—”

  “Oh, I do. Truly I do. You wrote that piece of shit book and passed it off as fact.”

  He snapped. “It won a Pulitzer.”

  She topped him. “But in the wrong category. It was pure fiction. Pure career-grabbing fiction, Peter. And now I’ve got what Leslie so smartly made for herself—” she looked at him right down the sight line, “—a copy of the manuscript. On her flash drive.”

  His jaw worked. “Where is it?”

  Val nearly laughed. “Nowhere you’ll find it.”

  “Put down the goddamn gun.”

  She had to provoke him harder. “How much did she get out of you before you just couldn’t do it anymore? Before you arranged to meet her here, to plead with her. Is that how it went?”

  It worked.

  “The little bitch was bleeding me, Val, you have to understand. There was no end to it. Thirty, forty grand—”

  “You made millions.”

  He shouted, “I earned them! She was a thief who wanted to save that broken-down pile she called a camp. She wanted to unload Selkirk Peninsula, all right, but she damn well wanted to keep the camp.”

  “Why?”

  “How do I know? She was crazy!”

  “Why?”

  His eyes were wild. “To prove to her sister she could save the place. Save the place when Caroline couldn’t. Crazy little bitch had my balls in her fist, Val.”

  “What do you mean?” Say it, say it.

  “Fir Na Tine,” he shouted. “Everything I’d worked for. I pleaded with her. I hit her. I kept hitting her and she still wouldn’t give me the goddamn flash drive. And finally I picked her up and told her it was her last chance.”

  Her heart was racing. “And then what?”

  With a cry, Peter Hathaway overturned the magazine rack. When it clattered to the floor, the magazines slid out, and he kicked the metal rack away from himself in a rage. Val jumped but kept the rifle steady. “She said she’d never give it up—you should have seen her face—and then I sent her flying.”

  “Right through—”

  “The goddamn window,” he screamed. “You’re so right.” Across the counter of Bob’s Bait Shop, the two of them stared at each other, breathing hard. He pushed his shaking hands across his scalp. “Fir Na Tine, Val,” he said, finally, with a small sob. “You know how wonderful it is. You love it too.”

  “Yeah, those little Domino sugar packets in the stock room.”

  “Don’t mock me!” he cried.

  “That I won’t do, Peter. I’ve got just one demand.”

  His eyes narrowed. This he understood. “What is it? Money?”

  “You’re calling the CEO of Schlesinger Publishing and you’re resigning.” She wanted Peter Hathaway gone from Fir Na Tine before the news about the murder and the InCubeOps hoax broke.

  His eyes were huge. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  “No way,” he said coldly, “no fucking—”

  “Do it.”

  “Fuck you,” he said, with terrible energy. Then, liking the sound of it so much, he said it again. “Fuck you.”

  She nearly broke. “Do it!” she shouted.

  “I killed that woman for this goddamn job,” he said reasonably, trying to make her understand. “She was a terrible person.”

  Like he’d performed a public service. “Maybe so,” said Val. “But now all she gets to be is dead.” With the tip of the rifle’s barrel, Val edged the base of Bob’s Bait Shop phone across the counter toward Peter Hathaway. Then she prodded the handset, which had been lying on its side next to the base. “Pick it up, Peter,” she said quietly. “It’s for you.”

  With a dazed look, like he had been invited to insert his hand into a basket of vipers, Peter Hathaway, wunderkind of Fir Na Tine, held the phone to his ear. “Yes?” he said dully.

  Val noticed that Arlo was casually standing guard outside the bait shop and the two workers who had been unloading the shipment of lumber were heading quickly toward Bob’s Bait Shop, stripping off the jackets that had covered their uniforms. She almost cried with relief that they had been close, after all, but she didn’t lower the rifle as Henry Schlesinger fired Peter Hathaway from a thousand
miles away.

  Caroline Selkirk was crouched in the smoldering ashes, sifting through them with blackened hands. By late morning the rain had stopped, and Arlo let Val off on the Camp Sajo dock that hadn’t been damaged. After the cops took Peter Hathaway away, rounding up a bemused Daria Flottner on the way, Go Jays had flipped the sign on the Bob’s Bait Shop to CLOSED and taken Val to Honey Bee Mine for poutine. There she sobbed over her plate loaded with fries, melted cheese, and gravy while he talked about the best bait for catching pickerel. When he said he would give her a ride to Camp Sajo, she went, because she couldn’t think of anything better to do, and he and Kay Stanley moved her bags to one side of the double sleep cabin.

  But Val couldn’t move past the dock. Luke Croy and Dixon Foote were circling the camper cabin that had partially burned, assessing the damage. The maintenance crew were raking what was left of the half acre of brush beyond the destroyed boathouse. The rocks where Leslie Decker had fallen that day were covered in debris. In the middle of the ashes sat Caroline, her shoulders heaving, her fingers picking up little bits of twisted metal wreckage she turned over in her hands.

  Behind her, the camp laundry machines were blackened, melted humps. All that remained of the storage were metal bed springs, poking out from blackened wood debris. And the second-story apartment Leslie Decker had used, where she had fought with Peter Hathaway and lost for good, was air. And the air smelled pungent and charred, which made sense to Val on that particular day.

  Val stepped through the ashes, her footfalls stirring up strange little puffs of smoke, like a battlefield. All that was missing were the dead and dying, but maybe she just didn’t look hard enough. Next to Caroline was a fire-welded mess of metal boxes that Val thought might be the Army surplus memory boxes of Hope and her older daughter. Trey’s basket was gone. Leslie’s box of horrors was still at Decker’s place, and Val knew that when he recovered he would bring it to Camp Sajo to show his sister-in-law and Kay.