by Lou Allin
With a hundred properties lining the shore, several were bound to change hands each summer. Usually Belle got the first call, but a quick swap between friends might have sneaked by. “Drummond doesn’t sound familiar. It might be a visiting relative, some coffee klatsch gossiping over the new bachelor,” she answered with a hint of humour feathering her mouth. It was a fun to play turnabout, after the teasing she had experienced as a single woman on the road.
Blithely innocent to the game, he unwrapped a red-flowered cloth to reveal a dozen delicate yellow-orange mushrooms, distinctive funnel-shapes. A delighted smile warmed his face, as if Christmas had arrived early. “Chanterelles, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve had them in Ottawa restaurants, very dear indeed,” he announced. “She’s a generous lady to share her wealth. They’ll be scrumptious in a scramble with a sprinkling of fresh chives. Sure you can’t join me?”
Belle fingered the bright material, a high quality linen, then shook her head with reluctance. “Work calls, you lucky retiree. Rain check.” At his insistence, she poked one into her sweatshirt pouch.
Something mumbled in a distant corner of her mind all the way home, a cynical little imp, or was it a caution from Anni’s lessons? Why shouldn’t some kind woman have thought of Charles? Garden produce often got passed around, especially the scandalously fecund zucchini, scourge of August. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to check her fungi book.
At the shelf in the computer room, she leafed through several pages. Then her hands started shaking. Across from the picture of the succulent prize sprouted a tempting double. “Jack O’Lantern. Very close to the edible chanterelle, but oranger and poisonous. No pleasant apricot smell.” Reading the next heart-stopping line with widening eyes, she pushed into the storage closet, elbowing aside her huge down coat like a truculent mammoth and pulling the folding doors behind her. In the dark, this mushroom emitted an eerie green glow, just as the text warned. In an instant she was on the phone, only to find a busy signal. Was that a good sign? Could he be eating and talking at the same time?
Her van rounded the corner at Rogers’ place, narrowly missing a strolling spruce grouse. Down Charles’ lane she screeched, dodging a lawn tractor and nudging three potted fruit trees. Without knocking, she charged into the kitchen to the marshalling beats of the “William Tell Overture” on his stereo. He looked mildly astonished, as if she had suffered a fatal lack of manners but poured her a coffee without blinking.
“Just cream, isn’t it?”
“Sorry, Charles. No time for niceties. Your line was busy. You haven’t tasted that gift yet, have you?”
He pointed to a sizzling pan, the air rich with butter. “Why? What’s wrong? I was calling the weather line, or as they call it, da wedderline. That dialect tickles my ear.”
She flopped into a chair, her breathing returning to normal, noting the chopped mushrooms still on the counter. “Oh, nothing. Just gastric upset possibly leading to convulsions. Probably survivable, healthy man like you. Jack O’Lanterns aren’t as deadly as the infamous amanitas or the corts.”
“Jack . . . my God.” He sat down heavily, mopping his brow with his apron, colour bleached from his face. “The poor soul must have made a dreadful blunder. Do you suppose she gave them to anyone else? We should call her immediately.”
Belle picked up a phone book and traced a few columns, snapping it shut with an irritated frown. “There’s no Ben Drummond listed. Let’s see that note again.”
He gestured outside at the smoking sauna pipe. “I burned it starting the stove. A test run.”
“And the basket?”
His expression showed a momentary sign of relief. “That, I saved. It seemed handy for collecting my raspberries. Looks like a bumper crop’s coming.” Out of a closet he lifted a typical two-quart cardboard basket with a wooden handle.
Examining purple stains on the bottom, Belle sighed hopelessly. “Ubiquitous. A million of them every blueberry season. The note might have told us more.”
He rubbed at his hands, shrinking for the first time into the pose of an old man. “I’m not sure I follow. What are you implying?”
Belle sipped the coffee, unable to avoid noticing that his machine was the purest white, instead of all-concealing black plastic like hers. The tablecloth looked freshly ironed, and infinite pasta varieties sat in clear graduated canisters on the shelves. What a wonderful wife Charles would have made. “How’s the dog situation?”
“What? Oh, I see, but that’s unthinkable. People don’t poison neighbours over dogs,” he said, his face a mirror of righteous indignation betrayed by a tic which rustled one eye. “Or do they? Should we call the police?”
Charles was such a baby. She resisted an urge to laugh at his naïveté. “Remember my van? I didn’t tell you that the damage might have been done in my yard. Didn’t want you to worry. Somebody comes down this road at night, they can get away with . . . anything. First, let’s be sure about this Mrs. Drummond. I’ll check Ed’s list of property owners.”
“The plowman?”
“Ed’s President of the Road Association, a dubious distinction. Just an ad hoc group we formed to keep government on its toes. Bring in those Neighbourhood Watch signs, make sure the garbage collection is regular, dump asphalt into the potholes before they swallow smaller children. Anyway, this could be a very vicious prank, so as they say in gangster films, watch your back. And since you’re a regular at the pound, you might think of adopting a nice junkyard dog. The old ‘can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ rule.” As she rose to leave, he shook his head soberly, dumped out the mushrooms and began scouring the pan with religious fervour.
The roar of a chainsaw greeted her as Belle pulled into Ed’s drive. He was slicing birch while Hélène held the log on the battered sawhorse. Looking up, his wife ran her finger over her throat so that he cut the throttle and turned around. “God in heaven,” Hélène said, removing her ear protection. “I can’t hear, and the sawdust is killing my eyes. The old man’s half-deaf anyway.”
“Time for a break,” Ed said, hauling them to the kitchen table.
Belle refused the offer of more coffee, looking in consternation at her watch. Would she never get to town? “I need to check your list of property owners.”
“What’s up? Are you ambulance chasing? Didn’t hear of no one dying lately.”
She bristled at his jibe but decided to dismiss it in good humour. “Very funny. And if you mean Whitman’s place last year, his daughter called me. It might interest you to know that Charles Sullivan was given a basket of poison mushrooms.”
Ed plumped out his apple cheeks. “No kidding! The new guy? Is he from Toronto or something? We don’t eat no funny fungi don’t come from the supermarket,” he said, stuffing a piece of banana bread in his mouth and walking his fingers toward the butter.
Hélène tapped his arm in mid-motion, and he drew back like a chastened kid. “We love Cousin Berthe’s mushroom stew, Ed, but she has her patches on the farm.”
Belle narrowed her eyes. “Maybe a mistake, maybe not. There was a note saying that they were from a Mrs. Drummond. Charles has been having trouble with the Rogers’ dogs. I wouldn’t put this stunt past Mabel Joy.”
“Mabel Joy?” said Hélène. “This is starting to make sense. Her grandmother, bless her soul passed on now, was a famous one for wild mushrooms. Mabel Joy used to carry her pails. Snotty kid she was, too full of herself for our boys.”
Ed came back with the list, scratching his stomach where his Expos shirt hiked up. “No Drummond. Didn’t ring a bell, and we’ve been here forty years.”
“Listen,” Belle said. “I’ll take care of Mabel Joy. As for Charles, he needs a friend. You like fishing, and so does he. He doesn’t have a boat and might appreciate knowing about a place where he could fish from the bank. Why not take him to that kettle lake by the Airport Road?”
FOURTEEN
Miriam pasted on a stamp, licked and sealed the envelope and placed it on a small pile of mail. She rubbed her t
humb and index finger together and shot a mischievous grin across the room. “With six sales this month, you can afford to give me a raise.”
A mental close-up over the balance sheet made Belle grimace. A bonus was a kiss, a raise a commitment. “Listen, Madame What-Have-You-Done-For-Me-Lately, we had to share the commissions on three. And even if this is the peak season, you know our ups and downs. A strike at INCO or Falconbridge is always around the corner.” She selected the cream-filled morsels from a box of Timbits. Who said something couldn’t come from nothing? The enterprising doughnut chain fried the scrap holes into moneymakers. Maybe Zack should get into recycling. All those tires dumped in the bush to avoid disposal fees could be sliced up and woven into blasting site mats. She munched for a moment, then got up and went to the window, sighing mournfully.
“Where did I put the address of that food bank?” Miriam plucked the last chocolate rounds from the box, then watched Belle pace. “For heaven’s sake, what’s wrong with you? Settle down. You’re making me nervous.”
“Well, to run with the food metaphor, I love a full plate, but not full of worries. Anni, Zack, now more problems. Remember Mr. Sullivan? He was invaded by a pack of dogs.”
“Wild dogs?”
“Of course not. They belonged to the Rogers next door. Anyway, with no cooperation from them, he took a couple to the pound. That’s when he received a warning.”
“Sounds intriguing. What kind of warning? Dead seagull tacked to the door?”
“Oh, a friendly note and eine kleine poisonous mushroom in the innocent Canadian night.” She hummed a snatch of Mozart.
“Do we have a Lucretia Borgia here? Poisoning’s a feminine art. Women have always been the experts in what’s edible and what’s not.” Miriam narrowed lizard eyes in juicy contemplation. “I can see her now. Smooth as chocolate chiffon pie. And speaking of . . .” she poked into the box. “There’s only cinnamon left, and we hate those. Next time ask for our favourites. You’re assertive enough about refusing raises.”
Belle refused to continue sparring. “I have a suspicion Mabel Joy Rogers is the culprit, but he burned the note. A fake name anyway. Just another annoyance to the police. I’ve got to drop a few very strong hints, without just walking in cold. She’s not smart, but she’s shrewd. Much more dangerous.”
“Do they have a place in town? Offer her a free appraisal. Say there’s a buyer interested. It’s a foolproof temptation, especially for a big house.” Miriam winked. “Good time to look around, too. Check out her rings for flip tops.”
“The pellet with the poison’s in the chalice from the palace.” Or was it? Danny Kaye had her head whirling. While Miriam got Mabel Joy on the line, Belle pictured her neighbour. “Chiffon” to the last atom, all fluff and no substance. In their few chance meetings, she had taken an instant dislike to the pretentious puppet. Five minutes of conversation picking roadside berries had dangled the names of the Shield University president, the Mayor, local MPs and MPPs along with barbs about welfare mothers, immigrants, gays and aboriginals, all under the guise of “what was right for society.” That lethal old bromide covered every personal prejudice, as dangerous now as it had been in the Russian pogroms, the McCarthy era, or the Attack on America which had levelled the Trade Towers and galvanized Canada’s best ally into a state of wartime alert.
Her husband Earl ran Rogers Concrete, a blue-collar success his wife never forgave, though she inhaled the profits like Royal Bank stock dividends, the license on her lilac Cadillac reading “MY WAY.” From pointed comments about local bumpkins and cultural drydock, it was also obvious that she hated living in Sudbury. The two kids were in their twenties, both provinces away from Mommie Dearest.
After listening for a long, uninterrupted period, gesturing theatrically at Belle and making encouraging faces, Miriam finally hung up. “Showtime. Oh, she mentioned a condo in New Mexico. Work that angle.”
Earl and Mabel Joy bedded down in fashionable Northern Lights, an upscale development dozed over blasted rockface. No triflers at under 300K, please. The megamonster houses squatted like designer toads on their minuscule lots, dominating the landscape instead of harmonizing, overpriced suburban sprawl from Orlando to Los Angeles to Vancouver to Halifax. 1200 Orion Crescent rose three blocky storeys with a triple garage. Taupe brick, Spanish tile roof, an antebellum portico and English Tudor windows. An architect on Prozac? The salmon lockstone pavement, which clashed with the Caddy, was bordered by mugho pines and spreading junipers along the walkway. Standing like an encyclopedia hawker in front of the double doors, etched glass and shiny brass, Belle pressed the buzzer while chimes clanged “The Sound of Music” and a fierce yapping developed inside, followed by leaping scratches like chalk on a blackboard.
After a well-timed pause, one door opened and Mabel Joy appeared in a silver lamé jumpsuit better for ogling than for exercise. With a theatrical smile, she swept back a honey-blonde mane and executed a leg movement worthy of Margot Fonteyn to shove aside what appeared to be the fattest Lhasa Apso on record. A self-actuating dustmop.
“So soon? I’m impressed. Business must be slow.”
Behind a closed-lip smile, Belle clenched her teeth together before answering, a few dental isometrics to manage a professional tone. “Not at all, Mabel Joy. I was volunteering at the soup kitchen and just ladled out the last of the minestrone.” Some day I should do that, she thought, remembering Fred’s support group.
Mabel Joy’s face didn’t twitch, thanks to Toronto’s premier nip-and-tuck surgeon, or just mighty good practice. “Such a worthy cause. Before I became allergic to cats, I was Vice-President of the Homeless Persian Society.” She checked her watch with thinly disguised impatience. “Let’s get started. Your girl said that you’d do a thorough appraisal, and though I don’t believe for a minute that you have a buyer lined up, Belle, such a stale old ploy, I have been thinking of using the house as collateral for a condo in Santa Fe,” she said. Then she retreated as if on wheels into a marble foyer leading to a spiral staircase perfect for Rhett Butler’s famous climb and Scarlett’s equally famous fall. The air reeked of lemon oil.
Belle followed the brisk tour, jotting notes to match Mabel Joy’s staccato delivery. The classy touches were as expected in newer, high-end homes built during the Nickel Capital’s last boom, distressed oak floors, a gas fireplace in the sitting room and a master suite large enough for beach volleyball. The kitchen rivalled a set for a television cooking show. “I’m very proud of this,” the woman added, flipping open whisper-quiet doors to reveal custom-made spice racks and appliance hutches amid acres of light blue-grained oak shelving. She tapped sequined fingernails on a tiled island framing a Jenn-Air grill. “So convenient in the long winters, if you must spend them here, that is.”
Belle could have blinked back icy tears recalling her stubborn efforts at barbecuing on the deck during blizzards. They cruised by five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a combination library and computer room, and a cedar sauna in the basement. On the recreation room wall, Mabel Joy pulled down a screen which served as a giant television via satellite connection projector. “Saves so much space.” In the exercise room sat every apparatus in the history of body building: weight-lifting centres, stair-stepper, treadmill and a twisty torturer she described as an ab machine, patting her flat stomach with an annoying smirk. Belle sucked in her gut all the way outside.
The back yard butted against a rock outcrop, framed by tall redwood fences. A graceful pool with waterlilies and a bronze cherub spouting water from a questionable place made a peaceful setting for garden furniture of white wrought iron. Scant privacy, though, since from the second floor vantage of any neighbouring house, all properties gave free shows. Belle’s eyes followed several golden shapes swimming in leisure around the pond. “Beautiful koi. I used to have an aquarium. You must need a big tank to keep them through the winter,” she said.
Mabel Joy flicked a pebble into the pond, startling the fish into a frenzy. “They’re cheap enough. Give
them to the cats next door every freeze-up and get new ones in May.”
Stifling an urge to make an anonymous call to the Royal Society for the Protection of Carp, Belle tallied up the juicy additions which would add bucks to the value, making a note to learn what nearby houses had sold for lately to add credibility to her appraisal. Looking at this conspicuous consumption, it was hard to comprehend how mean-spirited, not to mention murderous, Mabel Joy was acting at the cottage. And where were the animals? Other than the obnoxious scratching machine, there was no sign, not a kennel or dog house, and no dark hair floating around the creamy leather sofa and chairs.
Finally the last chandelier had tinkled and the final eat-in closet had been shut, the gas heat extolled along with the low-e windows. Mabel Joy seemed to grit her pearly caps as she offered Belle a cup of tea, banging down a box of Twining’s Earl Grey and boiling water, hauling open drawers for napkins and spoons to complete the token gesture as quickly as possible. Her notebook full, her bag of ideas empty, Belle was ruminating on how to deliver her message without seeming a fool.
Suddenly a red flash in a cabinet caught her eye, and she moved quietly into a chair beside a withered pothos, a plant nearly impossible to kill. “You’re considering a condo in the States?” she asked.
With a bright smile, Mabel Joy skipped the warm-the-pot stage and plunged the stainless steel tea ball into the boiling water like a bathysphere cut loose. “Have you been to the Southwest, Belle? It’s heaven in the winter. Theatre, quaint little art studios, conversation with more than two-syllable words. And the restaurants. I get so tired of our options: steak, spaghetti and chop suey, not to mention the ‘wattleyousehave’ mentality. So lovely and dry there, too. A godsend for those of us tormented by allergies.”
“Florida’s the only southern state I’ve visited. My father reti . . .