Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle

by Lou Allin

  “No such thing as a bad dog,” she said as the movie finished. Then before taking Freya for a walk, she checked her answering machine. Zack had left a message about a memorial dinner for Anni, so she headed down the road. As she approached, she could hear the whap-whap of the weed cutter over the ear-splitting burp of its motor. “Watch those feet,” she yelled as he mowed down a patch of tenacious ragweed. “Friend of mine ripped his toe off.”

  He tapped one steel-toed boot in answer. The dogs roiled around the corner in a mass of fur, arousing Freya’s herding instincts. Zack motioned her inside to the living room, where he disappeared for a moment and returned to pour from a dusty bottle. “Uncle Cece’s wine cellar. Says white burgundy. Thought it was all red.” He passed her a glass, then pointed to the wall. “I returned the picture.”

  Belle felt that the wine deserved a slight chill, but she glanced up in satisfaction at the scene. “It belongs there.”

  “I’m not a crook,” he said, giving the Nixon salute. “Just short on cash. Anyway, I know you like wildflowers, and I thought you might enjoy having Aunt Anni’s Peterson guide.” He reached into the bookcase and presented her with the memento, almost too eager to please.

  “Thanks. I’ll take good care of it. Anyway, about that memorial service. I’m not surprised that Anni wasn’t formal about religion. She wasn’t one of those who drove faithfully to church each Sunday.”

  “Think she’d gotten a bellyful of it somewhere. She read the Bible, but more as literature. Stories with lessons. Those . . .” He scratched his head, searching for words.

  “Parables?”

  “Sounds like it. Anyway, she said the woods were her cathedral. Sort of paganistic. A stuffy funeral would be the last thing she’d have wanted. Probably come back to haunt me.”

  Belle squelched the urge to correct his terminology, then laughed. “My mother never wanted a service either, only ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ on my trumpet. She died down in Florida where my parents retired. Later I played it on the deck, listening to it echo across the lake.”

  “Well,” he said, looking more serious and confident, “there won’t be a minister. Just a friendly meal. I reserved a banquet room at the Caswell, asked a few of the neighbours she mentioned, some woman at the Canadian Blood Services. Uncle Henry’s coming in from Montreal, poor old guy.” He showed her a small list. “Anyone else you can think of? That man you brought over? Charles?”

  “Charles Sullivan. I’ll give you his number. She might have had other friends in town, too. Were you using her address book?”

  He scratched his head, leaving a grass stain on his temple. “Don’t know where it’s gone. Always was by the phone. Little gold heart-shaped clasp. Mom gave it to her.”

  “Could the police have it?” she wondered. “You know, Zack, nothing in the present makes sense about her death. Maybe we should look to the past. Did she have a career?”

  “Quite a long one. Didn’t marry until her late forties. Back then she was a dental assistant. Gave Uncle Cece a cleaning and he came back for more.” He winked.

  “In Manitoba?”

  “Winnipeg. But before that she spent a year in western Ontario helping a dentist. Pretty rough conditions. She used to tease me about it whenever I complained about the weather. You’d think she had lived in a sod hut.”

  Travelling to the wilderness for a job was a familiar story in Canada. Belle’s mother had gone straight from normal school, the old-fashioned term for teachers’ college, to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, boarding with a Ukrainian family and carrying mashed potato sandwiches in her lunches. The limitless vistas of the prairies had made her so uncomfortable in a mountain setting that even one night on her honeymoon in Banff left her breathless.

  Belle tucked the book under her arm, whistled for the dog and headed home. How odd that one conspicuous item had disappeared from the house. An item with names and places. Had Anni misplaced it in her recent forgetfulness? Such problems weren’t the exclusive terrain of the elderly. Once Belle had stored a container of fishing worms on the pantry shelf. Not for long, though.

  Going home, she met Ed on his all-terrain quad, tooling around in hopes of borrowing a screw gun for drywall installation. “Hey,” he said, tapping his cane to coax Freya to jump. “See you lost that flashlight.”

  Belle gave a comical smile and tapped her head in an absent-minded gesture. She hadn’t thought about it since she had returned from her Seek and Destroy mission. Probably fell out of her jacket when she took it off. “Did you find it on the trail to Surprise Lake?”

  “Don’t have no time for picnics. Hélène’s on my butt to finish the basement. A young guy knocked at the door with a yellow model with a nick like yours. Thought you’d dropped it on the road. I gave him your name and house number. Didn’t he stop by?”

  An icy dagger tickled its point down her spine, despite the warm night. “You told him my name? Jesus, Ed.”

  “What’s up?” He looked sheepish.

  “I tore down a moose stand the other morning. Must have dropped the light.”

  “How come? Moose hunting’s legal in the fall. Maybe someone’s getting ready.”

  “These are people’s backyards. Let the hunters go up to Bisco or Shining Tree. May not be against the law to build a perch on Crown land, but no one can stop me from wrecking it.”

  “Sorry, Belle. He seemed OK. Guess I didn’t think straight about a woman living alone. Should have knowed better after what happened to Anni.” Adjusting his cap, he squirmed in the distractive method that dogs used to disguise guilt or embarrassment.

  “At least tell me what he looked like.” She glared at his demeanour, honest and helpful, but when it came to women, a few solar panels installed on the north side.

  “Well, it was only a minute. About our boys’ age. Thirties. Couldn’t see much hair because of the hat bill. Just regular clothes. Nothing special. Dark pants, red sweatshirt like I . . .”

  “Right. Like we all wear. Did you happen to notice what he was driving in case another body turns up, namely mine?”

  He brightened into a grin. “Help you there. It was a dark blue Dodge truck. Late model. But one thing, Belle.” He looked up hopefully at her sceptical face. “The truck cap was ugly as sin. Some homemade paint job. Red with white trim. Bugger looked like a Yank flag.”

  An ugly truck cap. Every other person in Sudbury owned a truck. The Big Three automakers were balancing their budgets on the sales. Belle went to bed with an uneasy feeling, despite the hairy guardian angel snoring by the bed. In her sanctuary she didn’t even lock her doors. No sirens pierced the night, no screams or screeches of burning rubber on pavement, just an occasional boat ferrying home a load of pickerel. She was more likely kept awake by the treble trills of the loons, or a scrabbling raccoon trying to finger the top from the garbage barrel on the deck. Except for a dull carving knife, her only weapon was a twelve-gauge shotgun in the downstairs closet, shells in an underwear drawer. Now she regretted not telling Steve about the perch. Suppose that . . . She rolled over, punching the pillow. Surely she was blowing everything out of proportion. Now if only an apple-cheeked young boy scout chewing Juicy Fruit gum would rap on her door with that flashlight, she’d offer him a cold root beer. Maybe he had decided to keep it. Damn thing cost forty bucks.

  TEN

  Belle groaned as her slippers encountered a pool of water. Either the dishwasher was leaking under the fridge, or vice versa. She tossed a mound of towels on the mess to mop up the spill. Impossible to have a bad hair day with her elder elf cut, but this wasn’t a pleasant start. The plans included desultory banking chores, namely depositing the commission from the Balboni sale into her thirsty account and a peek-in at the Canadian Blood Services. Anni had gone there once a week for years.

  Outside, the cedar deck was festooned with tiny footprints crisscrossing the dew. Raccoons again. They scooped seed from the bird feeder, tossing it around in festive abandonment, and grabbed the hummer feeder to c
hew off the little flowers and suck sugar water from the holes. A mousetrap would pinch their larcenous feet, or would that be too cruel? Belle took her portable coffee cup to the van, contemplating the cost of seed.

  Suddenly her eyes grew wide with disgust as she traced an ugly scar weaving down the passenger side, the old key trick, senseless and deliberate vandalism. Or was it? Someone, no casual urban barbarian, had skulked down her driveway, leaving a wicked calling card. The flashlight man? From where she stood, she could see two zucchinis uprooted in the garden, given their fecundity, more favour than crime. She hunched her shoulders, imagining eyes amid the thick leaf cover. No wonder stalker victims got paranoid. Several properties down, Christakos had installed motion sensor devices to detect quivers within two hundred feet. Problem was, his siren blasted away at squirrels, birds and even hapless walkers. Had Edgewater Road come to this? A microcosmic collapse of society, the rich sipping chilled Bombay martinis, barricaded behind broken-glass-topped compound walls? Freya was still the best protection. No barking house in the area had been robbed. Then she calmed down, rationalized to restore a sense of security. When was the last time she’d looked at that door? It could have been damaged in a parking lot. And coons might have disturbed the garden.

  The scratch could line up behind other duties. She headed into town and parked on Elgin Street, fishing out a loonie for the hungry meter. Giving blood always seemed like a good idea, and certainly she had signed the organ donor form on her driver’s license. Why hadn’t she ever rolled up that sleeve? Perhaps the idea appealed more than the reality. She might faint or be unable to drive home. Maybe this would be a milestone in her life, the conquering of an unreasonable and selfish fear.

  The office on Cedar Street was nearly deserted as she walked in, measuring her steps like consequences. An enthusiastic young man in a T-shirt with a giant red drop (“Give blood. Starve a mosquito.”) nearly snatched her up bodily and completed the screening process. At one of the curtained cubicles, a strawberry-blonde nurse stood, folding a blanket. Belle’s blood pressure dropped several points at the familiar and appealing young face. “Melanie, what a surprise. So you graduated from Shield?”

  The woman nodded, pulling up a metal footstool for Belle. “Sure did, but you know the hospital cutbacks. No jobs. Half our class went to Texas or California. Just call me a sucker for the North. I’m volunteering to keep busy, make some contacts. Extendicare might have an opening by the winter.”

  “I remember you were specializing in geriatrics. And how’s that therapeutic touch coming?”

  “Great! Holistic medicine, massage, relaxation techniques, aromatherapy, all these alternatives have finally become respectable. If I can’t get hired, I might start my own business. Hard to get loans, though.”

  Belle climbed onto the padded table and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t, absotively, posilutely would not, watch the blood fill the container. The mind was powerful, but it could be tricked. Ignorance was bliss. “Did you ever meet Anni Jacobs? She used to help out here.”

  “I just started last week. But tell you who’d know. Maureen Murphy.” She set up a Secretariat-sized needle, while Belle calmed herself by thinking of the stalwart Queen, her usual procedure for injections and punitive dentistry, and when that failed, an old song of her mother’s. Pass the blood to me, Bud. Shoot the juice to me, Bruce. What were the other verses? Crimson? Jimson? Suddenly she became aware that she was humming frantically.

  “For heaven’s sake, relax. You’re impeding your energy channels.” Melanie was laughing, adjusting a tube for the bubbling blood, no doubt.

  Belle’s right arm began stinging, then the left one joined in sympathy. “So is Maureen around today?” Her voice sounded unnatural, disassociated, coming from some distant place where she would prefer to be. Papeete, the Virgin Islands, Hamilton.

  “No, only Tuesdays and Thursdays. Who’s Anni, anyway?”

  “My neighbour.” Belle inhaled slowly, held her breath to a count of ten, then exhaled slowly. Sensing a sudden pressure on her arm, the stick of a bandage, she opened her eyes tentatively. “She was killed.”

  Melanie’s smile vanished, a tiny frown crossing her brow. “Oh, my. That’s who they were talking about. Sorry to be so dense.” With a few efficient disconnections, she bounced out with the bag of corpuscles as Belle sat up like a zombie, testing her balance, expecting the scene to swirl into a dark vortex as Dracula’s pal Renfield murmured, “The blood is the life. The blood is the life.” When nothing dire happened after a minute, she kicked her feet gently against the table, coltish and relieved.

  Melanie returned bearing a small glass. “Here’s your apple juice. Compliments of the house.”

  “Juice,” Belle said, pooching out her lip. “Where’s the rum?”

  The girl grinned. “That was a long time ago. An old British military custom. Health fanatics caught up to us. Drink up. You need to restore those fluids.”

  Like a sailor returning to land, Belle made her way to the van, settling into the seat and blinking. Feeling a bit weak on a minute-by-minute appraisal, she stopped on Notre Dame, calculating that two Big Macs might compensate for the trauma, fries and chocolate shake added for gluttonous good measure. Donating regularly might be useful to curb the pounds. Her generation found it hard to shake off the “no fat chicks” mentality. 130 for blood pressure and weight seemed reasonable at a scratch under five feet four inches. Fit counted more than fat. A few more visits, and her name would be in the paper as a Gallon Club member.

  On her way home, the first miles of her road skirted a swamp, a desolate stretch, though a paradise for water lilies. Once she had been stuck with a zapped alternator for two hours waiting for someone to pass. So when she saw a slender figure leaning against a green Escort with one door patched with duct tape, hood up, the radiator steaming, she had to stop.

  It was Patsy Sommers and in the car, bawling in a cappella, were three small children. Why a single woman with no apparent job had moved to the remote road had been a mystery. Perhaps the cheap living expenses were a factor, the ancient cabin with only the bare essentials she rented from a snowbird landlord. Now and then she’d disappear for six or seven months, returning with another baby, her learning curve too steep to master.

  Dressed in a pair of Capri pants and a tanktop, jelly sandals on her feet, her concave belly sporting a golden navel ring, the woman raised her hand in a half-hearted gesture which moved Belle to a rare sympathy for one who lived off the public purse. “Need a ride?” Patsy nodded weakly. “Get the kids and hop in.”

  “I’m Belle Palmer. Down the road from you.” She hoped that they were well-diapered. Regular vacuuming for dog hair was bad enough.

  “Patsy Sommers. And these here are Lisa, Joe and baby Susie. Appreciate this.” Into the rear seats with the toddlers flew bags with mega-boxes of cereal, jars of peanut butter and a bulk container of powdered milk. Barely thirty, she wore coral-red hair in a straggly ponytail, her face mottled and pale, perhaps the result of recent slashes to the Ontario safety net. One controversial Minister for Health, “Mr. Tuna Fish,” had suggested that welfare and Mothers’ Allowance recipients comb shelves for dented cans and bargain with shopkeepers to accommodate the ninety-nine-dollar monthly menu printed in The Toronto Star. Spartan fare, it didn’t include margarine, nor sauce for the pasta.

  Belle made small talk about the weather. As the van passed Anni’s, she glanced at her passenger, noticing a black rose tattooed on her white arm. Some sinister motorcycle club? “I guess you heard about the murder,” she said.

  Patsy stiffened, hardening her slitted mouth over clenched teeth and hugging the baby fiercely, its whimpers like an irritating radio alarm with no snooze button. “Can’t say I’m bawling all night over that nosy old bag.” She muttered the last two words like a curse.

  “Old bag. Old bag. Nosy, posy, rosy old bag” came a chorus from the rear.

  Mother was right. Some people aren’t made for kids, namely me, Belle though
t, as they arrived at the shack and Patsy marshalled her brood, the older ones waving good-bye with a smile. Would dinner be cereal? Profuse dog droppings lay in piles ready to be washed into the lake, and garbage accumulated for opportune coons and bears to sort. In a discordant note, two lines of laundry hung in the breeze, perfectly graduated from baby to adult sizes. Patsy opened the creaky wooden gate and closed it behind her. Two Rottweilers pushed blocky faces through a broken screen door, barking fiercely as they scratched at the frame, giving occasional yelps colliding with each other. “Dummies. Wouldn’t hurt a baby,” she said, working her bundles inside. “Come pet ’em if you want. I know you like dogs. Seen your shepherd. She’s a pretty one.”

  “Uh, maybe another time. Got to go now.” Boy, it was ripe, Belle thought, speeding up to clear the air. What was the innuendo about Anni? She lived only a few lots over. Had she reported Patsy to the Children’s Aid? Everyone on the road suspected that the kids were left alone on short trips to town. It must be tough stuck in the bush with three small children, no babysitter in miles even if she could have afforded one. Even getting them up and dressed would take hours. As for security, the dogs would keep anyone from the yard. But there was one fly in the proverbial. What if something happened to her and she couldn’t get home? Calling Dean Koontz.

  Belle took advantage of the hour before dinner to run over her list of chores, choosing the last first for a psychological advantage. In a sub-minimalist cleaning system, vacuuming hovered near bottom, just above windows. But with a longhaired shedding machine, it waited for no man. Whether the central vac was a blessing or a hassle, she still hadn’t decided. Grunting, she hauled the serpentine tubes up and down stairs, nicking paint at the corners as usual. Yelling at Freya, who pounced at the droning power head like it was a small beast, she directed her to the hall. “Saw a show on making sweaters out of dog wool,” she said. The enterprising woman had carded and spun the stuff, touching corners of prehistory where females provided the comforts of warmth and food while males clubbed the meat. Suddenly a paper clip or something more sinister clattered down the tubes into the far reaches of the basement.