Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle

by Lou Allin

  He looked at her with such intensity through those intelligent, trained eyes which had shut out the horror and valour in his past that she felt that she had been holding her breath. Suddenly his steady voice brought her back and rekindled her imagination. Light splintered onto the table. “You said that it came from a dead man’s pocket. Are you sure there is not blood on it?” Although they both knew that he spoke figuratively, Belle found herself staring into the tiny drop as if to plumb its heart. From the time man had first glimpsed this hypnotic metal, blood and gold had been quick and greedy partners.

  By Saturday, Belle had stayed quiet enough to receive the Mutt of the Year award. Her enforced retirement had led to washing all the downstairs windows, cleaning the stove and fridge, scrubbing the floor (twice), sucking out the fish tanks, and writing four overdue letters to family friends over eighty, none of whom had an estate of substance. All that remained was to cut Freya’s claws, a mutually squeamish chore; Belle commanded the dog to lie motionless on the kitchen floor while she maneuvered the clippers to avoid hitting a vein. Every snip received a moan of torment, a quiver of fear. “OK, go, girl,” Belle sighed finally in her own relief, and the dog yawned from nervousness and raced away as if given a deathhouse reprieve.

  In search of a newspaper to pass the time, Belle drove to the airport smoke shop for the Toronto Star, passing a familiar green Jimmy in the long-term parking. A peek inside revealed a Shield University parking pass and the blanket she recalled from Freya’s rescue. Another play in Toronto, she wondered? More usual to drive unless time were a critical factor. From the smokeshop, she saw one of her neighbour’s daughters and strolled over, raising her arms like the roaring polar bear image in their logo. “Hi, Patty. How’s life at Polar Bear Air?”

  “A wild ride. With this awful weather, everyone’s hustling to get a final holiday any place south. Recession nothing! You should see the bookings for the Caribbean and Mexico now that the peak time’s over. Wish I could go, too.”

  Belle folded her paper in studied disinterest. “Lucky folks. Say, I saw a friend’s car in the lot. Professor Franz Schilling. Was he heading for the sunny beaches or just off to Toronto?”

  The young girl drummed into her computer without a second thought. “Let’s see. He was routed through to Kingston. Maybe on business. Back on our 10 p.m. Sunday flight.”

  Stranger and stranger, but just over the border to New York. A visit to the troubled sister. Why lie about it, Franz? The stigma of mental illness? He seemed enlightened enough, but one never knew. The paper engaged her for the rest of the afternoon, especially with the dollar in the sub-basement thanks to Canada’s monumental debt load and a resource-based economy.

  An hour later, Belle was still wandering around the house, toe-tapping, checking her watch to distraction. Would it ever be time to leave for the Beave, to coin a poem? And why ever go alone? Entertainment should be shared. She picked up the phone. “Now, I know you’re in bed by dark, Hélène,” she joked after she described the fun, “but make an exception. Going around nine thirty should give us a couple of hours before the witching hour for the raid.”

  “I can jump start the old man,” Hélène said. “Cut off his decaf at supper and watch him hop it on caffeine. We’re having Referendum Soup, so he should be hot enough about that.”

  “Referendum Soup? Are you serious? Sounds too controversial for Canadian Living magazine.”

  “Made it in Thunder Bay visiting my son the night the votes on the last one were counted. See if you recognize anyone: take a big hambone, add plenty of beans and prepare to eat it for the rest of your life. Trouble is, it’s delicious.” A tinkling laugh came over the phone.

  Belle had her own culinary memories. She defrosted a cube of pesto from her summer basil and spinach crop, chuckling as she recalled the day she had made the sauce. The spatula parked on top of the whirring blender had fallen in and in three seconds plastered the oily green sauce over the counter, cupboards, floor, ceiling and her naked self on an unusually torrid afternoon. In consideration of these efforts, she had had no scruples scraping the costly mess into ice cube trays. A thin spaghetti dressed with the ill-fated pesto and a salad of endive grown in some abandoned local mine by a creative entrepreneur went onto the table, showered with freshly-grated Romano.

  A reliable Pinewood Studio film from the late fifties was on Nostalgia, so she settled in. Around nine o’clock, she stepped out onto the deck before deciding how many layers to wear. Luckily it was warmer and surprisingly windless as the darkness deepened, yet a feathery ring wreathed the moon. She hoped it would not be a bad one rising.

  Down at the DesRosiers’ shoreline, Belle winced as her machine bounced over a snow-covered log that had drifted in before freeze-up. “We’re just about ready. Have a coffee,” Hélène said as Belle leafed through the Sudbury Star to find Ann Landers. A hockey game blared on the giant TV. Belle could hardly believe her benighted eyes. Near the eastern windows sat, seedlings? An optical illusion? Would spring ever arrive,or would this be the first nuclear winter?

  “What have you got, you fox?” she asked. “Aren’t you jumping the gun?”

  Hélène beamed and pinched off a tiny leaf which she waved under Belle’s nose, releasing a precious scent of peppery oregano. “Can’t keep us Frenchmen down. Ed promised me a small greenhouse as soon as the ground thaws. So I’ll be able to keep these tomatoes, herbs, broccoli, cukes right nice under glass until the last frost.”

  Belle warmed up with the coffee, nosing the smallest dollop of rye. “Last frost. Right about mid-July before the first frost the day after.”

  “Oh, fais dodo, as my Great Aunt Jacinthe used to say. Get to bed with you. Shut it.” Hélène watered her babies with perfect confidence. “We’ll have a dinner of this, and I’ll remind you about your lack of faith.”

  Judging from the communal roar of machines from all directions, Saturday night at the lodge had started. Twenty people passed the trio as if they were moonwalking. Some thought travel was safer at night because of the lights, but so many speeders overran their beams that it made little difference. The lake assumed a surreal perspective by starlight, a silvery rink dotted with shore twinklings. Across at the Reserve, the lights which greeted Belle every morning before dawn were still flickering. Nearing Brooks’ island, they could hear booming bass thumps, gradually developing into a passable imitation of Alabama. A large birch fire snapped in front of the lodge, a cheery spot for hardier souls who wanted less music and more privacy. For a moment Belle imagined that she smelled a smoke too sweet for wood as she glanced at a young couple toasting marshmallows and snuggling in the fire’s glimmer.

  Pushing through the main door, they carried their helmets into a wave of music and laughter, standing stupefied for a moment in the sudden heat, until Ed commandeered a wooden booth in a side room. Belle’s watch said ten o’clock. Their pitcher of draft arrived with a bowl of popcorn, packed with palm oil, Belle bet, knowing that virtuous canola could not have hit the sticks this fast. Shoving their jackets under the table with their helmets and kicking off their boots, they relaxed in their overalls like the rest of the crowd. As a cheap alternative to live music, the karaoke setup gave volunteers their standard five minutes of local fame. A balding porker in red underwear beneath Farmer John’s began warbling “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” lurching offstage to polite applause, followed by two young lovers who rivalled Kenny and Dolly in “Islands in the Stream”.

  “In the steam,” Belle said as she excused herself for the bathroom, ducking a second later as she saw Nick. Luckily he was occupied with what looked like the stripper from the Paramount. At least he wasn’t a cradle robber. Belle chose the door with a winking doe instead of the rampant buck. So this was the fabled septic system. Well, let’s give it a go, she muttered under her breath, and checked out a stall, glad to find a lock which worked. A hand-printed sign in block letters admonished users NOT to flush paper. Miriam’s brother had left his tank unpumped for seventeen years
and, thanks to two fastidious teenagers and a wife, ended up with an 800 gallon tank of papier mâché and a clogged field bed redug at the cost of the St. Lawrence Seaway. Belle merrily waved goodbye to an ox-choking wad of tissue to serve Brooks right.

  When she returned to the table, the pitcher was gone and so were the DesRosiers. It appeared that they were dancing to the unforgettable “Hello, Darlin’”, Belle’s favourite. “Just for old time’s sake,” Ed sang with a rise to each word, dipping Hélène dangerously as he might have done to the sounds of Don Messer and the Islanders back when he and his only sweetheart had been dancing at their Senior Prom.

  Belle’s concept of raids came from scenes where a bumbling array of Keystone cops stampeded into a speakeasy and rousted everyone into a paddy wagon, careering off into the distance as “The End” hit the screen. On an island, logistics might be easier. True, someone could vanish into the night, but not if the cordon were tight, if Steve had brought enough officers. It wasn’t the common variety toker with a bit of hash in his pocket wanted here, though the odd minnow might stick in the net meant for a grandfather walleye. Belle finished off the popcorn while the DesRosiers fanned themselves from the exertion, Ed making a hula hoop motion with his bad hip. “Feels good tonight. Must be a high coming in,” he noted.

  Belle snickered and waved some of the fragrant air toward them. “The high has arrived.”

  Hélène grinned in mischief as her nostrils flickered. “Well now, Dad. So this that happy grass they been talking about since those Beatniks. Maybe I should try it before I hit seventy. Never too late, they say.”

  Ed slapped his hand down in mock anger. “Better not, lady. You want that high, a good Alberta rye’ll do you just fine.”

  The signature song that had put the town on the country music map, Stompin’ Tom Connors’ “Sudbury Saturday Night,” sent an explosion of cheers across the room, inspiring one man to snare a Canadian flag from the wall and parade around, joined by a bearded giant brandishing the Fleur de Lys. Here was one place in Canada that French and English were having a royally good time; separatists, take note. The crowd started clapping, and Belle found herself singing along, sorry that her low profile kept her from serenading the crowd with something by Reba.

  Just after “The girls are out to bingo, and the men are getting stinko, we think no more of Inco,” the noise suddenly stopped as if the electrical plug had been yanked. All eyes moved to the door as several officers walked forward, spreading out in an unsmiling phalanx. From the kitchen came a yell and a tinkle of glass, chairs started scraping and a young girl cried out. Steve stood before his men and spoke calmly into a bullhorn. “Please relax, folks. You won’t be delayed long. We have reason to believe that some illegal substances are changing hands here.” A male voice bellowed the most frequently occurring word in Pulp Fiction, but Steve ignored it and motioned toward the wall. “Just line up, please. Men over here. A female officer will search the women in the side room. Once you’re cleared, you can leave. Your tax dollars at work.” When boos erupted from the back, he smiled and made a “That’s the breaks” gesture.

  Though Belle passed through the cordon quickly, she became separated from Ed and Hélène. The lodge cleared rapidly to the sound of snowmobile motors roaring into the black silence. At the ramp to the lodge sat a police van which had travelled the ice road, and three men, handcuffed behind their backs, were being guided into seats, their heads ducked for them as they entered. One might have been Brooks, but shadows could be misleading. Belle rubbed her hands by the embers of the campfire until Steve strutted up, unable to conceal his satisfaction.

  “Got the bugger,” he said proudly, smacking his fist into his glove. “Two of his dealers will plea bargain their snow pants off when we get them to the station. Five more were carrying small amounts, scared enough to tell us anything. And here’s the cream! In the housing for the electric guts of that fancy septic system, we found his main supply wrapped snug in layers of plastic. Guess he didn’t think anyone would be poking around in there. Five kilos of coke. A small bale of pot. And some of these babies.” He held out what looked like a perfume sample vial, tiny and jewel-like.

  “So what’s that, swami?” Belle asked.

  “Meet the newest nephew of Sudbury’s drug family. Big city crack cocaine. One teeny rock to a person, please.”

  Belle shuddered. “Anyone on that stuff wouldn’t have the sense to come in out of the cold. Any stolen snowmobiles turn up?”

  He gave her a comical look as if wondering where she had learned about that. “Just one, but it’s enough. Rumour says he managed to get rid of everything but a Mach Z, saving it for someone who could afford the price and use the machine out where registration wouldn’t be checked. Anyway, we’re tracing it to a theft in Sturgeon Falls. I’ll bet that if we cut him some slack, he’ll admit to the two incidents at your house, Belle. This may be his first charge, but the judges have developed pretty tough skins for dealers lately. He could draw a mandatory fifteen-year sentence without parole.” He left her to return to the final details of the evidence collection. No use going to all this trouble and blowing the fine points.

  Belle found the DesRosiers having coffee with one of the cooks in the kitchen. “Damn cold out there, girl. Where the hell have you been? Didn’t want to leave you.”

  Not long after, all were home suffering only a popcorn and beer bloat. In a hedonistic papaya bubble bath, Belle warmed up, contemplating her toes, probing the big one into the faucet. When it stuck for a moment, she imagined another humiliating finale worse than choking on vitamins: “Woman starves to death in bathtub. Found by neighbour returning from Florida with Miami Dolphins T-shirt gift. Had been gnawed on by desperate shepherd.” Would Freya do that? Why not? The “doggy dog” way of the world. Dreamily content, relaxing to the sweet perfume, she thought of the gold again, appearing and disappearing in the elusive bubbles. As the surface of the water turned to milky film, a whiter line of surface tension delineating her legs, one half-submerged, the other bent and invisible six inches below the knee, Belle had a vision of her body frozen in the ice.

  EIGHTEEN

  The gray mailboxes at the junction of her road stood an inconvenient six miles from the house. Half the time Belle thought in kilometres, half the time in miles. Another decade and the logic of metric would be second nature. She took two pieces of mail from the box, cheques for her father, the Canada Pension, which everyone paid into, and the Old Age freebie—$400.00 a month just for wrinkles and myopia!

  When she got to Rainbow Country with the shrimp, her father was spruced up in the blue plaid shirt she had bought him for Christmas. Her careful eye noted the clean undershirt, braces and freshly ironed pants. “Good news, Father,” she announced. “Your pension cheques arrived. And, at last count, you’re on the yellow brick road to becoming a millionaire. The stock market is soaring.”

  “Take all the money out of the bank and bring it here, right now, right now.” At his stern face, she nearly stepped back. Then his eyes sparkled, a royal blue which belied his years and waning health. No wonder her mother had fallen in love with the man in the picture on the dresser, serious, wearing a tweed suit and metal-rimmed glasses, holding a meershaum pipe. “Just kidding. Gimme ten bucks, though. I owe the haircut lady.”

  While she was setting up his meal, she encouraged him to talk about old Toronto. “Hogtown, she used to be called. Rough and ready. Small houses, family stores, horses still pulling wagons down Avenue Road. Big night out to go downtown for a Chinese feed at the St. Charles and see a show at the Odeon. Or maybe Sunnyside Park in the summer. Did you know your old man was a great dancer? Some bad times, though. Those riots at the Christie Pits in 1938, damn Nazis beating up the Jews. My brother Fred and I got Abie Schneider out fast on the trolley. Took him right home with us. And Ma gave us all tomato soup and crackers. I remember Abie was crying.”

  “And your years in the film business, all those people you met. Didn’t you tell me that you s
hook Gene Autry’s hand?”

  He held up his knobby fist proudly and offered it to her. “Shake the hand that shook the hand. All the biggest stars came through the office.”

  “Right. And all those glossies of Elvis, was that really his signature: ’To my girlfriend, Belle’?”

  That got him laughing, an unusual sight which cheered her in this quiet room. There would never be another home, another room for him. “Norman, my name was Norman then,” he corrected her. At the nursing home in Florida, they had mistakenly called him by his unused first name. Then his girlfriend (his consort, he had called her) and he had decided that George was more British, more noble. How many people changed their name after 80?

  “Like my haircut?” he asked, and she gave it an appreciative rub.

  “A regular crew cut. You don’t look a minute over fifty.” And he didn’t, thanks to his baby-smooth skin.

  “No shave, though,” he added with a definite pout.

  “Ontario is broke. You’ll probably get one later today.” Belle arranged the lunch she had brought and filled his glass of water from the immaculate bathroom. It always seemed as if Joyce had just cleaned. Lysol was redolent and the porcelain sparkling.

  As her father enjoyed his shrimp, Belle picked at her roast pork sandwich, hardly tasting it, although the bread was homemade, the mustard piquant and the meat tender and lean. With a sigh, she wrapped it for Freya.

  “What’s the matter? Not hungry? That’s not like a Palmer,” her father said, clearly “with it” enough today to notice her lack of appetite while tucking into his favourite meal.

  “I’m OK. Just too many things on my mind.” She folded up the soiled napkins and set out more for the gooey pie and ice cream, sighing in resignation. You couldn’t keep things from him. She hadn’t wanted to tell her father about Jim, thinking that the report of a death might upset him. “A friend of mine was killed going through the ice on a snow machine. No witnesses. Out in the middle of nowhere. Everyone says it’s an accident, but it stinks. He was the last person who would make a dangerous mistake in the bush.” She paused to mush up the pie, chopping away the tough crust so that his last few teeth could handle the assignment. “But on the other hand, there’s no motive. He was a serious and private man, a university student and about as nice a guy as you could find. Why would anyone kill him?”