by Lou Allin
The next picture showed a huge hump of aged granite surfacing from the forest floor like a leviathan sounding. “Moby!” she said, clapping her hands.
“Whale Rock. This was done in Rapidograph pens.” Then in a charcoal drawing, a golden birch twenty feet high struggled to plant roots in a shallow cleft no deeper than a suitcase.
“That’s by the creek. Old Yeller.”
“I call her Golden Girl.”
“Do you ever work in pastels or watercolours?”
“No,” he said. “I prefer the subtleties of black and white. More of a challenge with texture and light.”
“True enough. Films are my passion. Even the silents fascinate me. I’ll take the starkness of Nosferatu or The Blue Angel to the washed out messes from the Fifties and early Sixties. The actors have turned pink and brown.”
As she turned to leave, Nick razored out the page with Raven Cliff, inking in the name, and offered it to her in a gesture humble yet proud. “I can always make another. Every hour of the day brings changes to the landscape if you have a sharp eye.”
Belle studied the fine work with clear pleasure and then met his shy expression while she pointed to the sketchbook. “You could sell these, you know. If you ever want to, try Sudbury Paint and Custom Framing on Elgin. They promote local talent.”
She rallied the dog and left Nick beaming over her just praise. Now she knew how he spent his spare time. No stolen stereos, no dope lab, no pornography studio, no canvas bags with stencilled bank names. Just the evidence of a soul. Maybe he laboured out of town in winter to afford this solitude. Maybe he got help from his family. From the numerous pill bottles, there might be serious health problems not evident at first glance. Who could know?
Feeling disloyal if not downright ungrateful as she placed the drawing in a folder where it would be safe until framing, she called Steve. “I have that number. British Columbia. 851 RTM,” she said, fulfilling her promise with little enthusiasm.
“Great,” he said. “I’ll get on it.”
She drummed her fingers on the table in a restive tap dance, steering the conversation in another direction. “I’m getting strange ideas about Anni.”
“Like what? Shemale intuition?”
“Stop that, Mr. Chauvinist. One week she’s broke, the next she buys an expensive van with cold cash. And she said some weird things in the weeks before she died.” To test his reaction to her efforts, Belle related her conversations with the car salesman. Should she tell Steve about the paint scratch . . . or the letter . . . or Patsy? She couldn’t run to him with every fragmented suspicion.
His sharp tone convinced her to keep quiet. “What in hell are you up to now? Stay out of my case.”
“You said to stay out of the woods. What’s wrong with a few questions?”
That flip approach was a mistake. From the heated tones on the line, she could imagine steam seeping from his ears. “Keeping your eyes open is one thing. Making the rounds like some vigilante is another. I’ll handle police work. That’s what I’m paid for. You, however, have another source of income, or are you so rich that you’re retired now at, what, fifty?” The added years scored a mean jab. She narrowed her eyes like a frustrated cobra and hung up none too gently. Sometimes Steve needed a lesson in manners even if a date with Celebrex was around the corner. Maybe indigestion was getting to him. Rarely did his day go by without an apple fritter from Tim’s.
On his way shopping the next morning, Charles dropped Belle off to pick up her vehicle. “Call me the Pied Piper, or maybe Porker,” he said, humming along with a tape of Gregorian chants. “I collected two chop fiends. That little spotted one didn’t want to leave me. Licked my hand all the way to the shelter and gave me the most sorrowful look.”
“Sounds like Dog Day Afternoon,” she added. “Anyway, you’re on the right track now. Don’t weaken.”
No charge, her Finn pal at Imperial Autobody said, a case of comprehensive damage. Feeling suddenly rich, escaping retribution from the five-hundred-dollar deductible option she’d used to tether down ballooning insurance costs, Belle spent the afternoon with a cheery face even for paperwork. By the time she left the office, it was obscenely late to cook, so she hit Pizza Hut for the all-you-can-eat. An hour later, smug about having tiptoed past the dessert bar, she was burping home in a light rain, just enough to grease the pavement. It was an easy trip once past Garson, skirting slurry monsters pulling out of the Falconbridge Mine, giant linked vats on wheels, throwing up stones to chip windshields. A few miles from her corner, she cruised twenty klicks over the limit on a deserted stretch, with one turnoff to a helicopter business and another to a thriving gravel pit operation. The hills of scrub made a bleak landscape, yet in the Fifties a sizable forest had flourished there, as black stumps a metre in diameter bore witness. A lightning fire had wiped out hundreds of acres, contained at a swamp which had sheltered her road like an asbestos blanket.
She squinted at shadows fading into the dusk while drizzle smeared bugs under the wipers’ swish. Groggy but satisfied from the carbo blast, she slipped in a tape and listened to Lucille Ball croak out “Wildcat.” Couldn’t carry a tune in a carton of the Pall Malls she hawked on her television show, but she conquered Broadway through sheer guts. Born the same year as Belle’s mother, who painted on Lucy’s shapely candy apple lips and made fun of Loretta Young’s “hen’s patootie face.” Miss See-the-USA-in-Your-Chevrolet had passed on recently, joining Clark Gable, the father of her “adopted” child, according to revelations from the middle-aged daughter. MGM must have sweated bullets to protect its virginal goddess after the King-before-Elvis had issued The Call of the Wild.
Then a dark shape moved up at warp speed in the mirror, and her pupils widened. A drunk driver? Not the first time she had seen someone weaving along in an area police never bothered to monitor. Did the idiot want to pass? She edged to the right, but the huge hood only drew nearer, so close that she braced for a bump. Adrenalin pumped in, sharpening her senses like razors. From the height, she guessed that it was a truck, but what action to take? Her blocky van wasn’t a sports car, loaded with power and dime-slicing control. Around corners and up and down the hills, they tangoed like estranged lovers. Luckily no rock cuts loomed ahead although there was a particularly wicked drop-off at the next sharp curve, flanked by a row of posts and steel cables. Something quirky about the banking angle, though. Last month, several rotten posts had been knocked over and never replaced. At the bottom of the hill, a small pile of rocks topped by a white wooden cross and a wreath of plastic flowers had appeared, a “descanso” tradition born in the American Southwest.
The truck had the advantage. Whatever testosterone game he was playing would leave her the underdog, and one wrong move might flip her. Primed with Dirty Harry movies, she half-expected gun blasts to echo and the rear window to shatter, showering her with broken glass. Lucy belted out encouragement: “Who is the cat with more pounce to the ounce?” as the bass thumped. Belle switched off the stereo to concentrate. Through the wiper sweeps the red reflectors of posts winked. Sloping into the turn, inches over the centre line, out of desperation she tried a high school trick for tailgaters, flicking her lights in an illusion of braking. Then she tromped hard on the gas. A screech sounded, and in the mirror she watched the truck skid on the slick asphalt and barrel down the hill, jerking a line of cable behind like a cracking whip.
Belle eased onto the berm as a distant horn blared a killer migraine. Her legs were shaking spastically from the rush, knees bumping the dash. Good old fight or flight, the primitive protective response that had kept Palmer primates paddling in the gene pool. The spasms passed after a couple of deep breaths, and she dialled 911 on the cell phone. Then armed with a tire iron and a brush-trimming machete from the trunk, she got out and walked back to the accident site. To her horror and satisfaction, the truck lay upside down in a peat bog dotted with grassy hummocks. A crazy logic borne of fear made her wonder if the driver might wrench open the door and
charge out like an indestructible alien. She eased down the embankment, sliding on the slag, then walked on cat feet across the mushy terrain. Ooze soaked between her toes and rain began spilling down her glasses, blurring her vision.
The vehicle fit Ed’s description, dark blue late model Dodge. License MTN CT. No cougars around here, except for the two-footed variety. And as for the cap, their power painter must have jammed. At a cautious distance, she sat down on a stump. The horn had finally stopped, the engine silent, so a fire seemed improbable. Call her a bad Samaritan, but she wasn’t getting any closer. Though the dark was pressing in, she could see two figures flailing inside amid guttural moans and lively curses. Unless service cutbacks were more grievous than expected, the police and ambulance should arrive within ten minutes. “Help is on the way,” she called in a sarcastic tone, “even though you don’t deserve it.” A rank smell of liquor and vomit floating into the rainy night made her gag. Didn’t excuse their murderous behaviour, even if the recent “Drunken Defense” had acquitted a sixty-five-year-old man accused of raping a woman in a wheelchair.
“You say this vehicle was trying to run you off the road? Was there damage to your van?” asked a young officer shortly after, pencil moustache twitching as he wrote up the report under the cab light in his patrol car. He’d cast an amused eye at her arsenal.
“He didn’t hit me, but he came close. You couldn’t have slipped a piece of paper between us.” The officer nodded, grabbed a yellow plastic parka and left to supervise the rescue. Belle sat quietly, the chill disappearing under the dry roar of the heater, but her stomach protesting at the heavy digestion of pizza overload. Attendants were transferring the men on stretchers, their floodlights weaving ghostly slices though the fog. Oblivious to the drama, a white-throated sparrow sang a goodnight, “Old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody,” one note up and four notes down.
It was black by the time she pulled into her yard, triggering the automatic floodlights. Freya bolted out in grateful trust, shaking off the rain. Ten hours was a long time, but the dog had a bladder like a whale’s. Forget watching Bette Davis in Dark Victory. Wiser to knit up the ravelled sleeves of care. She selected an Ofra Harnoy cello recital, resonant and soothing, and poured lemon balm oil into the bathtub. The bubbles concealed her body like the simple facts around Anni’s death. If these were Anni’s killers, why not get out of town? Did they think Belle knew something? And how long had they been trailing her? Easy enough to follow her movements in a small community, driving to work, to Rainbow Country. Steve was not going to be a happy man. Methodically, weighing honesty on one side, prudence on the other, she arranged her scales.
TWELVE
The placid lake reflected no signs of the harrowing night before, shooting up on demand a psychedelic sunrise of red, orange and burgundy streaks. Hardly had Belle trundled herself downstairs than Steve knocked at the door, depositing carrot muffins and slathering them with chunks of butter from the table. “Help you get your strength back. I read the report on those fools,” he said, talking with his mouth full. “Blub, I mean, blood tests are positive for driving under the influence. Broken bottle of rye on the floor. Too bad they didn’t actually bump your van, or we could have laid an attempted murder charge.” Her withering look earned a grin. “But not to worry. A couple of leg casts will put them out of action until the snow flies.”
So he hadn’t guessed her complicity. This would have to be played with delicacy. She spread out one hand to demonstrate the tremor. “Bad joke, Steve. I was shaking all last night, even after I turned into a crêpe, marinating in a tub of hot water. They could have killed me. Who are these bozos?”
He leafed through his notebook. “Go by the names of Jack Birchem and Barry Coil. Good old boys laid off in the uranium mine shutdowns at Elliot Lake. Retraining at Nickel City College, when they bother to show up. Heavy equipment mechanic or something. Probably get turfed out by Christmas. Here’s the best part. Rifles, unregistered, and illegal hollow point bullets in the cap.”
She gave a thumbs-up gesture. “Our hunters?”
“You bet. That gave us cause to search their rathole apartment downtown. Freezer chock-full of fresh moose meat and eight bear paws, assorted sizes. Inside a wrapped up skin, ten galls. Their pictures were recognized by an agent who arranged last month to make a buy from them, except that they didn’t show up.”
“So what do they get? A slap on the wrist?”
“Hardly. With the new laws, they could be facing two years in jail and a fine of $100,000. They named a few names to plea bargain, including some geezer in Chelmsford who calls himself the Godfather of Bear Gallbladders.”
“The God. You must be making that up. So what did they say about attacking me?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders, his expression mimicking their innocent stupidity. “Just arsing around. Wouldn’t pull over to let them pass. Don’t know you from a scroll in the ground.”
Lies or truth, their stories were keeping her escapades a secret. “But we’ve got a match with the mutilation? And a solid link to Anni?”
“Forget it. Those bear carcasses are long gone. Best I could do on that score was bluff and tell them that their truck had been seen. Then they admitted only that they’d scouted that path by the turnaround. The one to Surprise Lake, I think you call it?”
“Scouted. Sure,” she said, recalling that moose hock and the platform. “And the night she was killed?”
“They don’t keep appointment calendars. Once beer six slides down, every place and face is the same. We’re still making the rounds of their watering holes, but it would be hard to make a case we can prove. Tearing down a baiting spot is a weak motive for murder, even for these jerks.”
“Doesn’t seem like you’re trying very hard.” She felt like pouting.
“I saved the best for last. They’re left-handed.”
“And I supposed Graveline concluded that a right-hander dealt the blow.” He nodded quietly.
“It sounds pretty flimsy. People can be ambidextrous.” Her desperation was annoying, even to her own ears.
Backed by a logic she couldn’t deny, he shook off the protests. “I never liked the idea of hunters as her assailants from the beginning. Those slippers. The house so neat. You know, Belle, that there’s no way she would have let them in, so stop giving me evil looks.”
“They’re not evil, just discouraged. Anni’s memorial dinner is tonight. Will you have anyone there?”
“Ten plainclothes persons and a hidden videocam in the potpourri. Your tax dollars at work.” He paused conspicuously, as if a thought crossed his mind. “Say, why don’t you act as unofficial liaison? Make the rounds. Tell me what you hear. You’re good at that.”
That was a new one, she thought, Steve enlisting her help. Sounded more patronizing than sincere. At least MTN CT and its teeny brains were plaster casters, no longer cruising for something defenceless to blast, namely a short red pelt fast turning to gray.
The distraction of the evening was welcome, the only problem what to wear. Sorry for once that she had decided to stay retro and foil the fashion industry, she bulldozed her closet, decade by decade. The image of Miss Boggs, her fourth grade teacher, who had worn the same suit September to June, materialized like a pea green ghost, raised appliqué welts on the wide lapels. Teachers had all been “Miss” then, forced to resign if they married. With a wisp of a smile, she selected a light mauve linen pantsuit the colour of wild clematis.
Belle drove in with the DesRosiers. To her disappointment, Charles had said that he had declined Zack’s invitation. “Only met the lady once or twice, my dear. Might appear as if I were cadging a meal.” Parking at the Caswell, they saluted a few more old timers from the road, the Maenpaas, the Cleroux and the Perths. At least the hotel was renowned for the best prime rib in town. She was ravenous.
The banquet room was well-appointed, one end cozy with sofas and easy chairs clustered in front of a fireplace, the other with a table set for scarcely a do
zen. Was that all a life deserved? Yet, better a few sincere mourners than a hall of hypocrites. Cece’s older brother Henry wasn’t hard to spot with his distinctive Montreal tailoring, despite the gravy stain on his tie. A frail man in his eighties, he recalled Anni with the discontinuity of radio static. “Grand gal. Just got in. Rough flight. Air Canada broke again? Cece bagged a winner all right. Remember their wedding. Those noisy prop planes. Briggs and Stratton painted on the wing. They make better lawnmowers. Turbulence the whole damn way. Downtown Winnipeg in a blizzard. Charged together across Portage and Main like a herd of buffalos. Ever seen a buffalo coat, young lady? Keep your knickers warm at fifty below.” After burbling into the whiskey and soda she brought him, he fell into a coughing fit which propelled him into a nearby chair. Anni’s life before marriage was a closed book in that family library.
Seeing room on a sofa, Belle joined a pleasant-looking woman with a pink tint to her hair, applying what looked like homemade lip balm from a doll-sized pot. “It was pure luck that I read the obituary. Happened to be at the library to catch up on the Sudbury news. We went back a long way.”
Belle placed a hand on her arm, her heart jumping. “Edith? From out west?”
The lady gave Belle an uncertain look. “From Muskoka. I’m Lynda Sidney, that’s with an ‘i’. Cece used to work with my husband in the labs at INCO.”
Belle was in no mood to sort out which name contained the “i”. “Sorry to confuse you. I’m Belle Palmer, a neighbour. Zack and I have been trying to contact a woman called Edith, but Anni’s address book disappeared.”
Lynda raised one threadlike eyebrow and shook her head slowly. “That doesn’t sound like Anni. She was so organized.”
“It is odd. Are you the friend she visited earlier this summer?”
The memory must have been warm, for her eyes misted over. “Our place is on a very small lake. No motorboats allowed. It was so quiet that evening. Anni and I took a canoe out to watch the sunset. Had a grand time catching up.” She pulled a handkerchief from her purse and collected a tear which smudged her cheek, papery as a faded blue hydrangea. “Then she told me about how they put out bait for bears and what she had done. Sounded dangerous, I said, but she just patted my hand. Couldn’t tell Anni one mortal thing. She was all for causes. NDP, of course.” The New Democrats perched on the far left in Canadian politics. Though never in power nationally, this “Conscience of the House of Commons” had spearheaded such social welfare programs as universal health care and the Old Age pension.