Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle

by Lou Allin

  “I heard you saved my kids,” she whispered hoarsely as she brushed her long, red hair, using her right hand, Belle noted with interest. “I was stupid to leave them, but they were cranky in the heat. Cartoons usually settle them down. The video store in Garson wasn’t far.” Her voiced trailed off uncertainly, then revived as she frowned at a memory. “Damn that slurry truck that cut me off. Ever get out of here, I’ll sue his ass to kingdom come.”

  Belle gave her a disgusted stare. Since there didn’t seem to be much wrong with the woman, she aimed both barrels. “You’re beyond lectures, so I won’t bother. If you owe me one, tell me about Anni.”

  In Belle’s mother’s words, the woman didn’t bat an eyelash. “Should have minded her own business. Made some snarky comments to me at the mailboxes. Who did she think she was, Queen of the Road? Probably went right home and called the Aid. Lucky I was there when they came. Bunch of jerks couldn’t prove dick.”

  “Sounds like you hated her.”

  “No secret I felt like killing her, but kids got to have someone.” She turned her blotchy face to the wall.

  “Proof is the operative word here. A simple denial won’t cut it. Where were you the night she died?”

  A dry laugh exploded into a such a bone-jarring convulsion that Belle scrambled for a glass of water. Patsy took a few noisy gulps. “No sweat. Ever have kids? I was in my favourite chair in Emerg from dinner until dawn with Lisa and her earache. Saw in the paper the next day someone nailed the bitch.”

  A slap might have been worth the assault charge. But at that moment, a white-wimpled face peeked into the room, and Patsy waved her over in familiarity. Sister Veronica, as she introduced herself to Belle, placed a gaily blooming violet on the night table. “It’s one of my loaners,” she said. “For some cheer.” Patsy nodded, then closed her eyes.

  With a gentle nudge, the nun pantomimed their exit. “I’m so glad you came. Not one other visitor,” she said, shaking her head in the busy hall. “The doctors say she should recover completely. Your prayers must have been answered.”

  Belle frowned at the irony. “Not exactly, Sister. She’s a neighbour. When my father was brought in yesterday, I recognized her. He’s the one I was praying about, and luckily, he’s fine.”

  “I see.” The nun kept discreetly quiet, her gimlet eye inspecting a gold watch pinned to her habit. “Would you care to take peppermint tea with me? My office is around the corner. It has a lovely view of Lake Ramsey.”

  Seating Belle in a padded wicker armchair, she heated an electric kettle in a cozy nook decorated with pigs in arcane poses, sitting at a poker game, or playing croquet. “I find them comical in a world which could use a smile,” she explained.

  Belle found herself staring at the woman, not so much at the hump (The “What hump?” scene from Young Frankenstein kept flashing through her mind) as at the pristine white habit, the wimple with a curious European flair. “I’m intrigued about your outfit, I mean your habit.” She sipped the tea, refreshing and calming at the same time. “I hope I’m not being rude. Most nuns these days wear street clothes.”

  Sister Veronica smoothed back a silvery rogue hair escaping from one wispy eyebrow. “I guess I’m a happy anachronism. Though I’m here in semi-retirement at St. Joseph’s, my order, the Cecilianists, wore white. A little bit vain, this difference. Perhaps an element of mystique. Another advantage is that the traditional garb seems to reassure people, mixes medicine and faith, a useful combination even in modern times.” She placed her palms together, the knobby fingers joining in a fluid motion. “You, for example, crossed yourself in such an unusual fashion in the chapel that I knew you weren’t Catholic. But your distress needed something more powerful than the sterility of science.”

  Feeling naked at the calm perspicacity, Belle shifted conversation to the nun’s duties, learning that her job as crisis liaison officer involved circulating around the hospital to facilitate arrangements for patients and relatives, especially in intensive care. She could arrange for telephone calls, child care, pastoral consultations, cots for all-night vigils and occasionally sneak in a special treat from the kitchen. “Mrs. Sommers owes you a considerable debt. If I recognize your name and description, you are responsible for rescuing her children.”

  That was a dangerous chord. Belle felt herself running on in a passion. “A dog wouldn’t leave its puppies in that danger. And where’s the father? She has three kids. What does it take for the light to go on?” She tapped at her temple.

  The old nun looked back evenly over the imposing panel of her starched habit. “Facts alone don’t construct a life. You are too much a social Darwinist, my dear. Rather unbending. Is all life black and white to you?”

  “Really, Sister, how can you excuse that kind of neglect?”

  Her voice was pleasant and uncritical, suited for a confessional booth. “It’s not for me to excuse. Humans behave as their names imply. She nearly paid the ultimate price . . . and think carefully. Suppose those innocents had perished?” A sparkle entered her eyes. “But perhaps you were fated to be their guardian angel.”

  Belle squirmed at the compliment, disarmed but not surrendering. “I’ll tell you something else. Our road is a little community, often a nosy one. Several of us have been . . . concerned about Patsy for a long time. Somebody, perhaps a woman called Anni Jacobs, called in a complaint to the Children’s Aid.” In the bottom of her cup, leaves which escaped the strainer made patterns. The future? Present? Past? “Not long after, she was murdered. They haven’t found the killer.”

  The voice was smooth, unruffled. “And you imagine Mrs. Sommers had the gumption for such violence?”

  Belle stared out of the window across the sparkling lake to the handsome complex of Shield University. “Gumption might be her middle name. But she says she was at the Emerg that night. Of course . . .”

  The nun read the implication like litmus paper, scribbling a quick note. “She could be lying, you mean. Don’t worry. It’s easy to check. Give me your home number.”

  When Belle left the hospital, she turned down Ramsey Lake Road towards the complex of Shield University. While in the area, she might as well follow the historical leads on Anni’s case. How many tiny churches with that curious steeple could there have been in Northwestern Ontario? Despite the punch-a-button-to-locate an Iraqui-germ-warfare-cake-recipe myth, perpetuated by blockbuster thrillers, computer networks had limitations. Some people thought that anything was possible in cyberspace, but databases were only as comprehensive as the modern monks who converted the written word to disk. Shield’s lofty metal and glass towers had given her quiet afternoons browsing through the latest magazines or the mammoth literature section. From what Edith had said, the true story had been buried, but that didn’t mean the building hadn’t been featured in an article for some other reason. One pictorial source for recent Canadian history was the classic old Beaver, founded by the Hudson Bay Company in 1920.

  In the stacks, she blew the dust off a bound volume and scanned the indices from 1970-75 as a starting point. Too seductive for her magpie mind. Soon she was leafing through unrelated but fascinating articles about the Inuit carving industry, Haida spaghetti made from clover roots, the derring-do of Arctic bush pilots and heart-rending journals from explorers who had starved to death. One account about a residential school in the Northwest Territories didn’t spell cruelty for the white editorial minds of the day, but the subtext was poignant. For a girl and her brother, the plane touched down in Cambridge Bay at sun-up, and they were gone with little more than breakfast and a change of socks. Their first day at the school, they were given coal oil shampoos for lice and baths with a chaser of cold water to close the pores. “How little and lost my three-year-old brother looked,” the girl thought. “How could so many people live in one building?” She tried hard to learn English, bury her own language and customs. It was five years before they were allowed to go home for the summer.

  Belle grew sick at the warped concept o
f assimilation which had wrenched children from their families and educated them to work at menial jobs, all at the extinction of a collective spirit. What a travesty of collusion between the churches and the government. It was an old idea long before Duncan Campbell Scott, Head of Indian Affairs at the turn of the century, had “celebrated” the concept in his lyrical poetry. Haunted by one of his poems, she rambled over to the PT section and hunted up an anthology. Despite his lauded sensitivity and admiration for the “noble savage,” his popular “Onandaga Madonna” contained a sinister line: “And closer in the shawl about her breast, / The latest promise of her nation’s doom, / Paler than she her baby clings and lies, / The primal warrior gleaming from his eyes.” Promise and doom lay in the paler babe, already his blood diluted by his European father’s, his heritage swallowed by a larger and more powerful race.

  An hour passed, then another, the mesmerizing curse of libraries. Finally she snapped to attention at an article on Ontario missions. Rainy River, Moosenee, Fort Albany. Browsing through picture after picture, she had nearly given up when a familiar wooden octagon tower caught her eye. “Palm Sunday at St. Michael’s in Osprey Inlet,” the caption said, a small paragraph of a story extolling the virtues of a Sister Euphemia. In the foreground, clearly in charge, stood a tiny creature in a white habit, a very ringabell white habit, stylized wimple and all, in front of a self-conscious group of perhaps sixty children of all ages shepherded by other nuns. Belle searched each little face, bleak and disciplined. Instead of palm crosses, they held what appeared to be dried rushes, snow still covering the ground.

  Osprey Inlet, Zack’s “animal” name. And that habit. If the Cecilianists had been in charge of this mission, Sister Veronica might know what had happened. Yet wasn’t that like asking Al Capone about bootlegging? Could she have been a part of this, Belle wondered, adding up numbers? The good sister could have been anywhere from a hard-time sixty to an easy-ride eighty. She moved to the window, rotating the grainy photograph. No nun seemed to have a hump. Perhaps it was osteoporosis. Wouldn’t generalized bone density loss be more symmetrical? She shut her eyes. Definitely off to one side.

  Five-thirty. Too late to call the hospital. This was a subject for personal confrontation anyway, Belle thought, heading home. Cruising with the windows down, she met Charles a mile from his house, puffing along in Colonel Bogie fashion. “It’s been too hot until today to get in my constitutionals,” he said, retrieving a handkerchief to mop his brow. “Maybe I’ve overdone it a tad.”

  His colour was flushed, and he was breathing hard. Despite his enthusiasm and activity, sometimes she forgot that he was not a young man. “These hills are no fun, Charles. I stopped jogging when I moved here. Get in, and I’ll drop you off.”

  “A capital idea.” He wasted no motions accepting her offer, removing his safari jacket and folding it carefully onto the back seat. It seemed ideal for camping, all those handy pockets and mysterious zippers. “I’m going to have a light supper and try another sauna. The last few days I called you about joining me, but your machine answered so I hung up. Didn’t want to clutter your life with messages.”

  “If you haven’t seen me around, here’s why,” she said, unfolding the episodes with her father and Patsy like a soap opera.

  “Your father’s fine? Thank God. He must be strong. Just like his daughter,” he said, patting her shoulder in a rare tactile gesture. Then he shook his head while his lips set firmly. “And the other story had a happy ending, but call me old-fashioned for observing that a lady alone with children has no business living so far from town.”

  When they reached his property, he pointed to a handsome sign, routed and varnished, complete with brass fittings: Sullivan’s: Paradise Regained. “Just picked it up at the mall. Special order.”

  “The apostrophe’s in the right place, and how about that colon!”

  “Took the liberty of giving them a grammar lesson. The title sounded somewhat ironic after my dog problems, but it’s settled down now. Expect they’ll be gone in the fall anyway,” he said, brightening. “Say, Ed asked me to go fishing for brook trout tomorrow at one of those kettle lakes, he called them.”

  “Bring me a big one,” she said as he waved a cheery farewell. It was good that Charles seemed to be making friends. He’d find the DesRosiers a lively pair.

  The heat had broken at last. Belle enjoyed her first warm meal in days, a chicken breast with rosemary and olive oil on the grill along with roasted vegetables. Red, green and yellow peppers made an attractive medley with sliced leeks and eggplant.

  She stayed up later than usual crawling the web. Now she had a name. Osprey Inlet. Hardly a thriving metropolis, unlikely to have its own page, unless for tourism. Google tossed her around with no hits, so she turned to Yahoo. Delayed by an overload on the server, which pumped twenty-first-century technology through nineteenth-century lines, Belle pulled out an atlas and scanned Ontario, tracing a finger far into the northwest corner. The province was massive, sprawled like a legless, upside down kangaroo, snout nuzzling Vermont, ears tickling Detroit, back stretching nearly to the North Dakota border, and belly cold on Hudson Bay, a country onto itself. Osprey Inlet could be reached only by plane, most likely from Red Lake, the nearest town. And Red Lake was the back of the beyond.

  To her surprise, the Chamber of Commerce page appeared, probably a group of one. It named the mayor, Dave Assinewe, as contact. Scrolling through Recreation, she hit a few fly-in hunting and fishing lodges, watching squares fill up with photos. Wolverine Lodge. Click on the fish for a tour. Cabin One’s pixels arranged themselves into a cozy interior, complete with colourful Trapper Point blankets on the beds and stuffed pike on the wall. Before logging off, she copied the number of the mayor.

  As darkness fell, she went outside to inhale the cool air like a tonic. The humidity had been chased by a high front from the Arctic, and a brilliant full moon, a buck moon as the aboriginals called it, brightened a corner of the navy blue stardome. The sound of a car startled her, and she glanced toward the road, not expecting to see anything through the thick leaf cover. Lights did appear, though, one headlamp bumping along with a nervous tic, blinking on and off. Why the view? The vandalizing caterpillars had reached the maple grove at the edge of her property.

  EIGHTEEN

  On Saturday, the scruffy grass was screaming for attention. Belle gassed up the new self-propelled mower, a costly technojump from the push model, but she had too much acreage, too many irregular slopes, and muscles too middle-aged to begrudge its price. At least the beast was not as self-indulgent as the riding monsters commandeered like tiny tanks, dinging rocks and decapitating toads. With optimism, she switched the lever from the tortoise icon to the hare and began at the lakeside, glancing ruefully at her prize maple. During construction she had thrown herself in front of the gobbling backhoe to save the tree from destruction. Now the bottom third of its majesty hung in tatters thanks to the tent caterpillars. Criminal to poison the lake through chemical spraying, though, and suicidal to drink the runoff, so amoral Nature would do its own landscaping.

  On the first coffee break, she called the mayor of Osprey Inlet. It must have been his home number, for he answered the phone himself. Her explanation of twenty-five words or fewer brought a clipped response. “Residential schools are an ugly part of our history. Just leave us alone.”

  When she became more specific, his voice heated up. “A waste of your breath, lady. No one’s talking about it, not then, not now. You’re from the city? Sudbury? Might as well be another country. You don’t understand something. Most of our elders are still devout Catholics. Even after that tragedy, they believe that only God himself has the right to judge his servants.”

  Belle felt anger rising at the limitations of a private citizen. “Listen, whatever happened might have a bearing on a recent murder.”

  “Then it would be a matter for the police, wouldn’t it?”

  She tried her last card, hoping to trigger a gut reaction. “C
an you at least put me in touch with a person called Verna?”

  “White woman,” he said, “you are out of luck.” Then the contemptuous edge turned to sorrow. “Her funeral was last month. Just a great-great-grandmother who ran out of steam at ninety.”

  Suddenly they were cut off, or were they? Could Steve get better results, twist Mr. Assinewe’s arm long distance? His resources didn’t stretch across the country. Most murders in Sudbury were mom-and-pop affairs, drunken brawls or imaginative combinations.

  The coffee was as cold as her leads. Just as a new batch perked, the phone jangled. “It’s Ed. Is Chuck there?”

  “Chuck. Bet he loves that. And no, he’s not here. I don’t entertain this early, and he didn’t stay the night.”

  She felt ashamed at the lame humour as Ed explained himself. “Guy was supposed to pick me up at eight. Going after those grandaddy trout at the big kettle lake.”

  “Philosopher’s Pond?”

  “Huh? You and your funny names. Anyways, he never showed up. I waited, gave him a call or two ’case he was outside or in the john. No answer. Think he changed his mind?”

  A hot, tight feeling spread over her chest like a menopausal blanket. Charles had been so flushed and out of breath the night before. “That’s not like him. Normally he’s the soul of manners. Go down to his place, and I’ll catch up with you. I meant to bring Hélène some zucchini that escaped my eagle eye.

  Out in the garden, she shoved aside a jungle of leaves and grabbed a ballbat squash, arriving with Freya at the DesRosiers’ in a heart-pounding five minutes. While the dog fenced with Rusty over a plastic banana, she let herself in with the perfunctory “knock, knock.”