Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle

by Lou Allin

  Following the paper trail, she dropped into the nearby Staples, a megalith threatening to eliminate the smaller office supply stores. Such disloyalty it was to deal there, but the prices and selection were unbeatable. Every time she entered with the firm intention of buying a small box of computer disks, she exited with exotic coloured pens, plastic file organizers, and once, an ergonomic chair cancelling a week’s profits.

  A slow learner, she cruised the aisles like a magnet out of control, attracting a battery-operated pencil sharpener for Miriam, then depositing it with chagrin in a paper clip bin. “May I help you?” an older woman asked, permed raven hair unnaturally black but a motherly smile lightening her face.

  Belle produced the envelope. “Do you sell anything like this?”

  The woman smoothed it with admiring fingers and shook her head. “This is quality rag paper I used to see on special orders years ago in my old days at Muirhead’s Supply. ‘Vellum,’ they call it, though of course it isn’t. An unusually large size, too. We had a sample book for fine stationery. Ladies liked their personalized writing paper and envelopes.” She sighed as if recalling her wedding night. “A lost art now.”

  This affectation seemed wrong for sensible Anni, but who knew where the envelope might have come from? A gift, perhaps. Might have been sitting in a drawer since Trudeau left office. With no address, it hadn’t been sent through the mail.

  On the way home, Belle pulled into Tim Hortons, the premier chain of doughnut shops, even if it did ignore the apostrophe. Typically Canadian: immaculate and safe, but with an American gluttony of choices, the best of both worlds. Now in addition to at least twenty-five doughnut varieties as well as tea biscuits, pies and cakes, Tim’s offered soup, sandwiches, and even chili.

  As she ordered a coffee, a butterscotch pie caught her attention, a rich and frothy concoction that she’d never bother to make. Hélène might suspect, but she’d be too polite to comment. Delighted to find a discarded Sudbury Star on the table, she was turning to the real estate supplement to check her ads, make sure that “doll house” didn’t turn out “dull house” or that “three batrooms” didn’t appear, when suddenly she locked onto the bottom of the front page. “Teen Held on Lakeside Murder.” An unnamed young offender in Skead had confessed to the brutal killing of Anni Jacobs on Lake Wapiti. There were few details to this late-breaking nugget, just the note that he had a history of petty theft, including a robbery at the Skead Seniors’ Centre, and had spent time recently at Cecil Facer, a youth detention facility. Her face flamed as she crumpled up the paper and tossed it into a waste can. Why hadn’t Steve told her? What was she, chopped moose meat? Quick police work, though. Maybe he was at his desk dunking doughnuts and licking powdered sugar from his fingers.

  The DesRosiers were sitting on her front steps when she arrived home, Ed drawing designs in the gravel with his cane while Rusty, their chocolatey-red mutt, slurped water on the beach. “I told him you said six, but he didn’t believe me. Thinks the world eats on the dot of five like we do. Anyway, here’s some of my jerky. Cajun flavour.” Hélène said, placing a plump plastic bag in Belle’s hands.

  “Sorry, guys. I guess I cut it short. Why didn’t you go right in? You know where the liquor is. But everything’s made. Call me a miracle of time management.” She sniffed the present with delight while Rusty skidded up, exposing a pink belly with a pattern of bug bites. “I’ll have to fight Freya for this.”

  Scotch was poured around, and Belle shoved the combination of chicken, mushroom soup, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, onions and red peppers mixed with rotini into the oven for a complementary gratin in the final browning. Placing the last of Charles’ cheese assortment onto the coffee table with a box of crackers, she flopped onto the couch and looked warmly at her best friends. Ed, a retired plumber, had just hit sixty-five. Chained lovingly to an excellent cook, Ed battled an extra forty pounds which pushed his stomach over his belt. His svelte wife, younger by a few years, was immune to the results of her delicious efforts.

  “I seen in the paper where Anni’s killer confessed,” he said, shifting his sore hip and biffing crackers to the dogs. “Always knew it’d be some dope-crazed kid.”

  “Didn’t say he was on drugs, Ed,” Hélène broke in. “Plain old robbery attempt, most like.”

  Belle scowled into her glass, letting the smoky Highland ether braise her throat. She was glad to have splurged on J&B. “I read about it. And Steve’s going to have to answer. Left me in the dark after all I’d been through. I can still see her body. So small, like a broken toy.”

  Hélène gave her a look which could signal “womanly support” from across a hockey rink. “I wish I had known her better, but Anni kept to herself.” She glanced pointedly at her husband. “Wish some others would. I can’t tell you how many men, married men, make my kitchen a doughnut shop. And you encourage them, Ed.” She poked his ample paunch.

  “I’m still confused about that splashy van,” Belle added, finishing her drink. “How in the world could she have afforded it?”

  “Some change,” Ed said with an affable snort. “She either scored on the trifecta at Sudbury Downs, or . . .” He paused as their eyes grew sceptical. “She was growing wacky tobaccy in that garden, or . . . she was blackmailing someone.” Tension-breaking laughs followed over the Peyton Place nature of the road where everyone knew everything and nothing. The pie fulfilled its mandate, and, to Belle’s mixed feelings, the casserole vanished without the benison of leftovers for the chef.

  “Forgot to tell you. We’re getting a pontoon boat next week. Ed woke up long enough to put in a new bathroom and kitchen over at St. Bernadine’s,” Hélène said as Ed nodded proudly. “You’ll have to come for a ride.”

  “One of those . . .” Belle caught the pleased look on Hélène’s face and changed “monsters” to “party barges.” The image of a Cleopatran majesty with all its riotous implications seemed far from her friends’ needs. And yet, perhaps not. With grown sons and grandchildren expected hourly, they weren’t out for a fast time, just a leisurely one.

  When the DesRosiers left promptly at nine, Belle pounded Steve’s number with a vengeance. She could hardly keep froth from her lips. With no answer, she slunk to bed, shrinking her anger into a tiny black walnut by surrendering to routine. Into her Adolphe Menjou filigreed holder from the MGM Studios gift shop went one of five nightly cigarettes. On their last trip to the Florida theme parks after her mother died, her father had snapped his Visa card like a roué to buy a bit of nostalgia.

  Freya scrabbled after chipmunks in her sleep. Lucky animal didn’t need tranquillizers, but she didn’t have bills, deadlines and a murdered neighbour. Belle poured a Scotch and hunted for a book. Usually she bucked the seasons, James Lee Burke’s steamy New Orleans jambalaya in January and cold fare in July. The night was unusually warm for northern Canadian summers where a light duvet was often necessary. She gazed at the framed silhouette of her mother, caught in time at what must have been Belle’s present age. Now the daughter grew older than the image she addressed each night. “The old man’s about the same. You should have talked me into becoming a nurse . . . I mean a doctor.” She sighed. “But high school chemistry axed that idea. Give me moles over mols.” Turning to her book, she dipped her feet into the frigid Arctic waters of Dana Stabenow’s Alaska adventure.

  SEVEN

  Still no answer at Steve’s house the next morning. Why didn’t he invest in a machine like the rest of the uncivilized world? Belle would read him the riot act soon enough. Meanwhile, a picnic at Surprise Lake sounded like a peaceful plan for a hot Saturday. With the aquarium, she had hiked there to trap minnows for her live eaters. But the pampered beasts had grown too fast, so she had donated the big boys to Science North, where they would enjoy a giant tank, and given the rest to Popeye’s Pet Store. The delicate little discus had been the last to go. How she missed their luminous blue stripes and dainty acrobatics at feeding time.

  At the schoolbus turnaround wher
e the path began, she noticed Nick Delvecchio’s old Ford truck. Half an hour later, Surprise Lake spread out like a painting from Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven gang, whose daring interpretations had galvanized Canadian art. Shimmering aquamarine water and spiky black spruce were framed by light green poplars and birch. At the far end, a huge beaver dam held water from the bubbly creek and allowed enough depth for a lodge. Her fast clip had outpaced the bugs; now the blackflies dived for the tender space behind her ears while a mosquito inserted a tiny syringe into her sweaty arm. “Whose blood, I wonder? And no side order of the West Nile virus, please,” she said as she mashed the insect. A plastic bag held a hooded bug shirt saturated with dope. After the first few heady moments when the chemicals hit her nose, the loose mesh shirt allowed freedom from the discomfort of heavy clothes. Noticing that Freya was shaking her head and nipping her flanks, she rubbed a few drops of repellent into the exposed flesh on her ears and pink groin, prime insect real estate.

  Out of the backpack came lunch, an eight-foot sausage lasso, banana and soda water. The meat label alarmed her. Best before 2006? What comprised this petrified stuff from Chicago, hog butcher of the world? Pork, beef, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper. So far so good, but then sodium ascorbate, sodium bicarbonate, followed by more sodium, this time in tandem with nitrite and nitrate. Cheaper than day rates but worrisome. “A little knowledge . . .” she corrected herself, “a little learning is a dangerous thing.” Still, she champed down half and gave the attendant dog the rest.

  While Freya splashed after frogs and chased chippies up trees, Belle parked under a sheltering white pine, relishing the sudden breeze which dispersed the mosquitos. The air was redolent with the spicy fragrance of Labrador tea leaves. At hand was a patch of delicate pink lady slippers, their tumescent bulbs streaked with crimson. A few unfurled fiddleheads poked up, delicious fried in butter, but dangerous to confuse with the feathery bracken which invited digestive problems. Along the edge of the swamp swooped a great blue heron, wings a graceful metronome. Perhaps it nested high in the Jack pines where she spied a dark mass. Though usually this largest of birds shied away from people, in the mists of an early morning, one had posed on her rock wall like an exiled prince. Throughout the woods, the distinctive calls of white-throated sparrows played a lively symphony, males beckoning females or staking out their territory.

  Is Anni missing this, she wondered? Or forging new paths in the undiscovered land from which no traveller returns? For a moment she wished that she had brought her friend here, repaid a fraction of the wisdom and reverence for nature passed on by the mage who knew where the wild clematis grew. Belle felt at home in the bush, far safer than glancing over her shoulder on the midnight streets of Toronto, but the recent violence pressed upon her Eden like a nameless evil. Why was she so nervous? The killer had been caught. She jumped as a noisy whiskey-jack claimed its territory. Too many lurking horror movies. Soon she’d be seeing the Creature from the Black Lagoon waving scaly hands among the lily pads, ooze seeping from its gaping mouth.

  Belle shuffled lunch debris into the backpack and whistled for the dog, sorry at the result. Freya had paddled into slime and needed a bath in clean water. Before heading back, she followed old blazes marking an overgrown trail to the lake, fringed with purple stalks of pickerelweed. Kneeling, she leaned cautiously and drew a plant forward to plumb its secrets. Another week to blossom. She ran gentle fingers over a hummingbird’s nest in the crook of an alder, the clever weavings of twigs, birch bark and soft feathers sheltering a clutch of pea-sized eggs.

  Gazing down the shore following the skimming takeoff of a merganser duck, she noticed something alien disturbing the natural splendour with the abruptness of a fast food billboard. Leaning against a tall pine tree was a crude homemade wooden ladder leading to a platform ten feet above, just enough space for one person to play lord of the lake. Looped at the top was a birch bark cone any Northerner would recognize as a homemade moose caller. Belle pounded the scaly trunk with her fist, absorbing the painful abrasions as a sickening feeling crawled over her. Now the hunters had invaded her home. Maybe they were from the bear-baiting site, stocking more game for their freezers.

  “I hear you, Anni,” she said in a low voice full of contempt. “Tomorrow this place is coming down.”

  With the blistering pace back, Freya lagged behind with wayward sniffs. At a juncture, Belle nearly crashed into a hiker. “Sorry,” she said without looking, irked at another intruder. It was Nick Delvecchio. His great-uncle Sal had run traplines on the far end of Surprise Lake. Every April when the trail cleared, Nick’s battered truck with a British Columbia plate parked at the turnaround. He stayed in the old camp until the first flurries of late October, ruling out the possibility that he was a student, though his fresh face placed him under twenty-five. Shy and reclusive, he rarely spoke to anyone, but meeting Belle in the ambience of the woods seemed to relax his guard. Usually he carried an expensive backpack, sported two-hundred-dollar hiking boots, and wore a Rolex, she had noted with envy. Once settled in, he made few trips to town. Sharp eyes on the lake had led to speculation about his isolation. “On the lam from authorities,” Ed had decided one beery night, wiggling his bushy eyebrows to reinforce his theory.

  “Come on. The last place to hide would be the house of a relative,” Belle said. “Do you know the Delvecchios?”

  He shook his head. “Not very well. Old Sal used to trap beaver and fox around World War Two, when my Uncle Louis was logging out that way. Never saw much of him. Camp had been boarded up for years until young Nick showed up.”

  Catching her breath, she pointed to his shotgun. “Hello, Nick,” she said with a hint of anger. “You’re not the one put up that moose perch at the other end of the lake, are you?”

  “That’s been there for about a week. Heard someone hammering. I’m no big gamer, though. Can’t store meat without a fridge.” He mocked a sight into a tree toward a small cooing. “Partridge pie. Makes a break from pasta.”

  “Got to lead the bird, though. Otherwise you’re picking shot out of your teeth.” She gave him a wave and continued down the path. What was Nick’s source of income? Seasonal job? A remittance man? Some went so far as to suspect him of the occasional thefts along the road, but she doubted it. A few fish, some dead-and-down wood for cold fall nights, he took only what he needed from the bush. Maybe she’d hike in a loaf of fresh bread and wangle an invitation. What did the mystery man do on those long evenings with no electricityand scant room in the pack for books or magazines? Perhaps he was a writer, the old-fashioned kind.

  When she had soaped Freya to decency at home, tossing a tennis ball into the lake for her rinsing and hoping that no neighbours would spot the detergent scum, Belle turned to the garden she had planted June 5th, still risky at that late date. The lettuce and spinach, early risers, were greening nicely. Another two weeks to a salad crisper than any supermarket cello-pack. Carrots, beets, peas, beans, broccoli, zucchini and tomatoes would provision her through Labour Day, and she might even summon energy to can the rest. The asparagus patch had been slowed by the short growing season. “Three years and nothing larger than a piece of spaghetti,” she said with a growl. Perhaps she should have baptized it with a chamber pot like an old hippie friend from university who swore by natural nitrogen. Though she shovelled bags of pasteurized moo poo onto her gardens with religious fervour, Belle resisted chemical weed and feed stuff, fearful that residue would leach into the drinking water.

  As she walked under the deck to the basement patio doors, a swooping form made her duck. On one of the high joists sat a nest with barely enough room for a fat red-breasted robin with accusing black eyes. Five other beams held nests in graduated stages of construction. Apparently this dimwit couldn’t determine the original site, so had covered her bets. “Some of us aren’t cut out for motherhood,” Belle said, heading for a beer. Five pages into Canadian Gardening, she heard a crunch on the gravel.

  A dapper figure in a Panama hat s
trolled down the driveway. It was Charles Sullivan, bearing a box of peat pots. “Cherry tomatoes,” he said, depositing his gifts in the shade. “Had a couple extra. Wanted to wish you a happy Canada Day, too.”

  It was July 1st, the national holiday which stole a march on the Yanks’ 4th. She grinned, imagining their luscious globes exploding in her mouth like liquid starshine. “Never too many of those sweethearts. Trade you for a beer?”

  Drinking together, enjoying the quiet afternoon until a speedboat flew by trailing an inner tube with shrieking kids, they caught up on the road news. “I guess you heard about Anni Jacobs,” Belle said.

  “Yes, poor lady.” He shook his head. “Very shocking. I thought that I left violence behind in the city. It seems to have been a break-in. Glad they have the fellow in hand. What’s happened to young people these days?”

  After Belle told him about discovering Anni, he spoke in quiet recollection. “We met once at the mailboxes, cleaning up some flyers littering the ground. Had she any family?”

  “Only a nephew. Seemed decent. Likes dogs, anyway.” That was her character barometer, a tip-off in Undercurrent, where the angelic Robert Taylor had proved the villain instead of cleft-jawed bad boy Robert Mitchum.

  “Never trust anyone who doesn’t,” he agreed, picking up a Mr. Chile toy and inspecting its fiery tongue and bloodshot eyes before he gave it a squeak and sent Freya scrabbling across the deck.