by Lou Allin
Belle remembered the earthquake. Centred near Chicoutimi, it had struck with evil happenstance the day after her foundation had been laid. “Now I see why you fought the park. Less chance of being observed.”
He bristled as if insulted. “Not at all! Why would I have wanted this land despoiled by such a commercial operation? All of my efforts have been based on a sincere and rational opposition. When Eva comes home soon, I will leave the rest of the metal to heaven where it belongs.”
“Perhaps you should have left the whole situation to heaven. You’ve told me your twisted reasons for killing Jim. But why wait so long? Eva’s been away for over a year.”
“Quite so. After his insensitivity had plunged her into a depression, I let him pursue his common life, allowed him the courtesy of a second chance. Yet he kept intruding like a self-appointed nemesis, bringing me his data on the park, eager as a puppy. And when I got back that day from fishing, there he was, propped here by the stove with a book. Hadn’t wanted to take a chance with the storm and the cold or flu, whatever it was. He’d been bored and looked in my workroom for something to read. Once or twice he’d stopped by and knew I kept some technical works there.”
“Did he recognize the value of the ore?”
“I told him that it was only pyrite samples. Jim was a forester; rocks held no great interest for him. He pretended to believe me, but I couldn’t take the chance that he didn’t. He was honest, if he was anything. Still, it was his fault that I needed it for Eva. Why would I let him destroy our family again?”
“And the drop?”
“Squirrelled it away. I say that proves his intentions. Why else take it?”
“How did you get him to that lake?”
He massaged the bridge between his eyes as if easing a headache. “Not very cleverly, even for me. He stayed for dinner while the storm lifted. And even with a fever, his appetite was sharp enough for my lake trout and a salad.” He paused and turned his eyes to the wall.
“A salad? Out here?” Belle asked in confusion.
“My mother’s herbal studies have many uses. In winter, however, our choices are limited. What would I have on hand at the camp? To shredded carrots and cabbage, I added some sprouts, potato sprouts, chopped up, innocuous in appearance. The deadly nightshade family, and the beauty of it all, with no apparent taste. It’s so common you wonder why children don’t poison themselves.”
A wave of nausea forced bile to her throat, and Belle struggled to control her voice. “My God. And then?”
Franz related the details with the clinical detachment she had come to expect. “After about half an hour, Jim developed a headache, then vomiting, abdominal pain, finally stupor. I don’t think the nightshade would have killed him, a man in such good health, but the question quickly became academic. Around midnight I convinced him to try to reach his parents’ lodge and use their radio phone to call the air ambulance. Except for a bit of wind, the storm was over, and the lodge was only half an hour away.”
“But you didn’t go there.”
“Of course not. I rode behind him on his Ovation, holding him close, barely able to tow my larger sled. I had to stop several times to cool the engine.” Sweat trickled down his forehead as he wiped at his face and coughed thick mucus into a handkerchief. “Jim was barely conscious, unable to notice the route, so it was easy to take a turn to that little swamp lake. I know the territory well; ice is always thin there with a spring running all winter. I stopped at the shore and disconnected my machine. When I got on again, I gunned the throttle and we went out a good distance before breaking through. My flotation suit let me swim back to shore, and minutes later I was at my cabin. I didn’t need to watch him go down. The final act, clumsy though it was, was over at last.”
“And you reversed to cloud the tracks, counting on the blowing snow for cover, in case anyone might have noticed the discrepancy of the wide set over the narrow.”
He nodded. “You were the only one who suspected. And what was there to find? Without that damn drop, you never would have put the whole story together.” The corner of his mouth rose enigmatically. “Dead men do tell tales after all.”
“Melanie never believed in the accident.”
“True, but she didn’t connect me to it either.” He closed his eyes. “She’s so rare. She has Eva’s sensitivity, but an incredible strength. I don’t know how that callow puppy deserved them both.” Then he stood up suddenly, shook himself as if to slough off fatigue, and pulled a length of rope from a hook on the wall. “I tried so many times to distract you, Belle, but you persisted, just like Jim.”
“So the cocaine was planted.”
“Purchased on one of my trips to New York. Then a flight from one of the tourist outfits. I paid extra to set down on Cott.”
“And my chimney?”
“Whoever engineered the initial break-in, Brooks if you were right, made a helpful suspect. How could I know you would turn off your smoke alarm? I thought merely to divert you until you tired of your investigation.” He bent over. “Put your arms behind your back, please, and don’t make this painful for yourself. I would rather not act violently.” Breathing heavily through his mouth and giving an occasional sniff, he pressed the gun to her temple with one hand while the other looped the rope around her wrists and then her ankles. “The arrangements are simple. You are going to have a serious accident in the deep shaft I no longer use. You go down, and your machine follows. There is plenty of rubble for camouflage. I doubt if you will ever be found unless by an anthropologist of the 22nd century. A predicted wet snow will cover the new trail, long before anyone will start searching.”
As the realities of his plans unfolded themselves, Belle suppressed an urge to scream. “Jesus, you’re going to throw me down a mineshaft! And you call yourself non-violent?”
He looked offended. “I am no friend to pain or the indignities of force. Carbon monoxide from my engine can be hosed into the sauna. A quiet and relatively quick door from the world that some people actually choose. Out of caution, I don’t want to inflict obvious damage.”
“Another murder, Franz? Where will it take you?”
“Let me give you a familiar and telling philosophy: ‘I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ To put it in the simplest terms, my obligation to my family outweighs my feelings for you.”
Out of some Saturday night sitcom formula, Belle tried to keep him talking, as if the DesRosiers, Steve and the entire Musical Ride of Mounties might soon crash through the door with a flourish of trumpets to rescue her. “Congratulations on your Shakespeare. Is this where you tell me that it’s nothing personal?”
“But it isn’t, you know. My compliments to your successful investigation, despite its cost to us both. I wish I could have been a better Ritter.” He tugged on the bonds to secure them and brushed her face with a gentle hand. Then he opened the door and called. “Blondi. Hier.” Some scrabbling from the porch and the dog padded inside, responding to his signals by resting at Belle’s feet. He took off the sunglasses. “Don’t worry about Freya. I shall call at your business and express loud concern about a broken lunch engagement. Your machine and riding clothes will be gone from your home; any of fifty stretches of open water could have claimed you. The way the melt is coming, searchers will have to wait until your body surfaces, which it won’t. It is ironic that you will be perceived as a victim of your most sensible gene pool theory.” He lifted a pair of snowshoes from the wall and swung the door open. A minute later, a motor faded into the distance.
TWENTY-ONE
Belle’s temples began to pound like pumped-up bass speakers on a cheap stereo. Her breath puffed out little clouds, but despite the chill, rivulets of sweat poured down her back; Blondi sat alertly, trusting to her master’s commands, docile so far, but if alarmed? Belle raked, combed and curried her German vocabulary, doubting that the dog was bilingual. Franz and his mother kept their language alive at home. T
hen she felt like giving her head a smart rap, had her hands been free. So what if the dog were friendly. Would Blondi untie her bonds?
Belle shifted uncomfortably with her aching hands lashed behind her and her feet rapidly becoming numb blocks. She eyed the painted sides of the venerable old chair. As cottagers well knew, wicker grew brittle over the years, especially in unheated storage. She manipulated and pulled methodically until a twig loosened and her wrist mobility improved. Yet though she tested the hold and ground her teeth until they screamed, no way could she free her hands from the rope or the rope from the wicker. Even if she fell over, could she inchworm out the door and home twenty miles? But concentrate on the improbable, use some of Franz’s famous ingenuity. What does it have in its pockets? Paperclip? Nailfile? Lighter? Five-pound Swiss army knife? She’d dropped the screwdriver at the door. Not one tool, nothing but the jerky, still zipped into her arm pocket.
Blondi bared her teeth during Belle’s grunts and twists, but with luck this expression signalled nervousness rather than ferocity, the dopey canine smile she had seen on Rusty. Dogs had an amazing ability for precise nibbling with those small front teeth, as legions of fleas had learned too late. Freya had even worried a bumblebee, peeling back her lips with instinctive precaution. Blondi might be induced to nibble at the bonds if the jerky made them tasty, and she got encouragement.
After some painful gyrations, Belle unzipped the pocket enough to finger out a piece of the dried meat, turned greasy by body heat. She smeared it clumsily on her bonds, snaking it into the cracks of the old rope. The dog watched intelligently, ears pricked for her master’s familiar motor. Then one paw quivered, and her nose wiggled.
“Here, Blondi.” The dog rose cautiously. Good choice, the same in both languages, Belle recalled. Now to coax her to eat. Thank Teutonic gods that Dr. Scheib had drummed the distinction between “essen” and “fressen” into her callow freshman brain, one for humans and the other for animals. She gave a firm command: “Friss doch!” No response. Then Belle tried a lesson in pet psychology. Would the proper Marta speak rudely to her pet? “Sorry, girl. You’re a person, aren’t you? Let’s see, now.” She searched for a more casual, suppertime syntax for a moment, then commanded: “Guten Appetit, Blondi.” Magic! The dog came to rapt attention in front of her, apparently puzzled at the absence of a dinner bowl.
Belle moved her head and eyes in her only sign language, hoping that Blondi retained enough vision to interpret the vague signals. Working dogs were trained to react to the slightest movements, border collies ushering their mindless flocks through complicated sets of gates at a wave of their master’s hand. Finally Blondi got the idea, circled the chair and smelled the ropes. “Guter Hund!” Belle encouraged her.
Doggy interest was confirmed when copious drool lathered Belle’s hands. Finally the animal made a tentative nibble, as if to test reaction. Belle crooned her approval and minutes snailed by. A strand snapped, another, and finally the rope dropped to the floor. Not a tooth had touched skin. While the dog licked her lips and cocked her head, Belle untied her feet, rubbing her ankles and wrists before standing stiffly. For an electric second she thought she heard a motor and froze. But it was only an airplane, likely the four o’clock flight to Toronto.
“Thanks, girl. You never wanted this.” She scratched Blondi’s ears and rewarded her with the rest of the jerky as a tail switched energetically, knocking pillows from the sofa. She was more of a protector than an aggressor, trained to defend the island, not attack a friend of the family. Belle prowled the room in a controlled panic, grabbing first at the rifle, Franz’s weapon of choice. “Hostie!” Just like a law-abiding Canadian to have locked the ammunition firmly into the cabinet. Her mind stuttered through a low blood sugar fog spiked by adrenalin jolts. A hatchet near the woodpile gave her the notion of smashing the rifle, but Franz still had his pistol and perhaps another long-range weapon on the property. The logistics of her Bravo vs. his Grand Touring racer, the unequivocal equation of speed plus miles, guaranteed that he would catch her well before Wapiti. Suddenly a sharp “awk awk” sounded from the roof. “Raven!” Belle said. “Trickster. Help me. What would you do?” A fluttery shadow passed the window. Not an animal itself, but the idea of an animal. The idea of a gun. A gun in appearance only. She fumbled for a splinter of wood to tamp in unseen. Nothing but kindling, and no time to whittle. Then she remembered the gold buttons in the workroom. Soft, malleable. A match to the propane torch; then she rolled a soft cylinder and jammed it up the barrel with a pencil. From jerky to jamming, finished in under ten minutes, her watch read.
Belle left the cabin on the run, flexing her wrists, the angry red welts tingling in the cold. The Bravo sat untouched, key in the ignition. Luckily the route to Bonanza headed right, not back to Wapiti, or she would be driving toward him. Since Franz had said that he didn’t normally visit the mine in winter, it made sense that he would be tamping down a path with the snowshoes to facilitate the trip with her body on the toboggan. I’m not a body, not yet, she mumbled through clenched teeth. Suddenly an image she had wanted to forget pushed into her mind, the still, gray form borne away in silence, Meg’s scarf for a winding sheet.
Bonanza couldn’t be more than fifteen minutes by machine. That might give her a conservative hour, including the time already spent in getting free. Her only prayer was to drive hellbent towards civilization and hope to meet a fishing party. Which trail to take at the major fork, the five lakes or the safe way she had come? She opted for the lakes, risky but faster: Merrill, Damson, Warren, Basil and Marion. That Franz would take the wrong trail would be a foolish assumption. He had too much bush sense not to identify the most recent path.
Belle wondered grimly what lay ahead; in the several hours that had passed, the new slush might well be impassable. Nor could she power across open water with her small engine. But Franz could probably cruise Lake Erie in June, and on ice he could clip a good 120 km/h to her feeble 80. Luckily the five lakes were her familiar friends, winter and summer. A few were connected by narrows; on the others the trail followed short portages through the woods. No time now to admire the sun glinting off the quartzite cliffs at Merrill, the giant icicles dripping like transparent stalactites, slant-frozen with the winds. Now she had to anticipate every curve, every rock, every gleam to spot slush or open water. And she had to fly, fly on her underpowered little baby. She would be camping with Jim in the eternal wilderness if Franz caught her in his sights on the stretches.
Belle pushed the Bravo at top speed until her thumb screamed for mercy, her eyes tearing behind the visor as she scanned the first lake. Merrill was about two miles long, narrow and ringed with massive red pines, one cliffside sliced like an eroded layer cake. A few sticks drooped at angles in the ice, makeshift tip-ups, showing that winter folk knew it was heavy with fish. Merrill led directly into Damson, a charming spot with a nineteenth-century trapper’s cabin burned at the point. Canoeists favoured the clearing, which allowed space for tents and the strong point breeze which blew off the bugs.
Belle exited Damson in minutes and sloped up the portage to Warren. Heedless of the damage to her kidneys, she took the bumps too fast and was thrown off on a wickedly-banked curve with a bad rut. The dead man’s throttle stopped the engine as Belle landed up to her waist in melting snow, floundering like a child in a ball pit. For a moment she couldn’t move in the cumbersome suit and boots. She did an Australian crawl back to the machine, grabbed a dead maple branch, and started digging, hoisting, digging, turning, digging, until she hauled the machine back to the trail after losing precious moments. Last time that had happened, she had wrenched her back muscles so badly that she had had to hibernate in bed for three days. Today her right wrist seemed to have taken the punishment, draining her pain reservoir when she turned the steering or hit a bump on the trail. She hadn’t felt her feet since leaving the camp.
A cruise down a hill of soft brushing white pines brought her in sight of Warren, the halfway point. Stopping
to clear a rotten birch deadfall from the trail, she detected a faint purr from an indistinguishable direction, a deadly kitten prowling behind her? Another flight to Toronto? Not so soon. She caber-tossed the log back across the path. It might slow him, or with luck, might disable the machine. As she streaked down Warren, the sound droned again. She risked a glance back and glimpsed Franz on that beautiful animal, parting the standing water on the ice like Charlton Heston commanding the Red Sea. Luckily she was just entering the landlink into Basil. She ducked a spruce branch and navigated the trail crazily, skirting trees and bumping the occasional rock emerging in the thaw. After Basil, only Marion to go. Five minutes? Ten? Then safety in numbers. Ahead on Wapiti, the lazier folk, bless them, might still be hauling off their huts, while others fished in the open like Ed and Hélène. Her heart did a little dance of hope. Basil was only a mile long, the smallest lake, connecting into Marion by a waist of open water at a perpetual spring, and she was across it in what seemed like seconds.
The Bravo nicked one of the warning signs which routed riders over land at the spring danger spot to Marion, and Belle heard the fibreglass hood crack smartly. She whispered in quiet desperation over the thrum of the motor: “If you get me back, sweetheart, you’ll get the best tune-up, the most expensive oil change, platinum plugs if they have them, those sliders which I never put on, and OK, OK, even a new track. Trust me!” The trail snaked twenty feet off the lake over a small hill worn to bare grass under the hot sun. Belle braked for control on a sharp turn as the machine chewed turf.