by Lou Allin
“I wish I had. You look like you could use a good meal.” The spark in his eyes had given way to dullness, and his voice lacked energy. The recent cutbacks in the justice system had led to early retirements for the lucky and punishing workloads for those remaining. She hoped that he were in line for a vacation. The new family could use a break.
Flinging herself into a familiar scrofulous armchair more duct tape than leather, she covered herself with a Cecil Facer Youth Centre sweatshirt piled on the corner of his desk. “Before I freeze to death, what about Charles? Anything turn up?”
He pulled out a file and gnawed stubbornly at a shard of crust. “Look, we’re not prime time television here. It’s shoe leather basics plus gut instinct. Autopsy confirms a heart attack. Seventy-five percent blockage of arteries. He should have been a candidate for angioplasty. As for the bruise, it’s slim evidence. Mitch says the time frame is difficult to establish with the sauna heat hastening rigor. At a guess, an hour or two after dinner.”
Belle felt a twinge of nostalgia for that last supper. Knowing Charles’ love of food, it had probably been a fine one. Then she returned to the present. “The tracks?”
“His car, Ed’s quad, ours down the lane. A general mess. Rough gravel like that doesn’t tell clear tales.”
“Our favourite poisoners?”
“No answer at the Rogers’ places, town or camp. Secretary at the business says they drove to New York City yesterday. If they’re motelling it, using cash, we may not be able to contact them until they return.”
“What about his will? He had plenty of money, Steve. How else could he have put up cash for that property? And there was no mortgage.”
“A simple holograph we found in a folder labelled ‘Legal Documents.’ Dated about ten years ago. No cui bono there. Left everything to the Cancer Society. Some sizable investments, mostly mutual funds.”
“Makes sense. His sister died of leukemia.” She drummed her fingers in thought. “What about that auditing job? Did you contact his employer? He must have worked there most of his life.”
He rubbed at his temples with a irritated look, then pulled out his notes. “Look, it was a heart attack, long overdue. I pursued this only because I knew you’d be at me like a blackfly, so listen up and bury it once and for all. Sullivan worked for a paint company, travelled mostly around Ontario and Quebec. Quiet, efficient, but kept to himself.” He stopped and ran his finger over a few lines. “The one funny thing . . .”
“Yes, what?” She shifted in the armchair, artistically rearranging a spring behind her back. “Eureka” wasn’t the magic word for discoveries; “that’s funny” often preceded scientific breakthroughs.
“Life seems to have started at university, when he was well over thirty. Dropped in out of nowhere. He didn’t apply for a social insurance number or any other piece of ID until then.”
“Not out of nowhere. You must have a birthplace.”
“Mille Roche. Doesn’t even exist anymore. One of those little towns flooded by the St. Lawrence Seaway.”
“No one gets an auditing job without credentials. Where did he go to school?”
“Sailed right through Queen’s in two years. Took proficiency exams for a number of courses. A regular genius, or maybe he was home-schooled.”
“I suppose you checked with military records.” Belle turned from contemplation of a furry object in the dim corner, hoping that it didn’t move.
“Come on, Belle. This is getting ridiculous. We don’t have the draft here. Our military is smaller than the Boy Scouts. What’s your point? If you have one.”
“We had an odd conversation once about old Nazi war criminals, you know, those senile, frail old men dragged out of nursing homes to face a trial.”
He spoke in a monotone, sneezed twice, then reached for a tissue to blow his nose. “A summer cold is a different animal. So, what was his take on that?”
“Said that they were as good as dead and should be left alone. It wouldn’t change the past.”
“All of which means nothing. He would have been a kid at the end of the war. Think he had some Nazi uncles?”
Belle laughed in spite of herself, then caught Steve looking at his watch. No doubt that she was wasting his time. “OK. Forget it. Anyway, what happens if you can’t find any relatives? Can there still be a funeral? Just curious.”
“Court-appointed executor takes care of that. I guess with his money he can go in style if anyone wants to help make the arrangements.” Steve shrugged and doodled a tombstone on the pad. “You, maybe.”
“No thanks. Anni had the right idea. Short and sweet. Ed, Hélène, and I will hoist a few in his honour.” Rising to leave, she noticed a framed black and white snapshot of two young boys. They were grinning at each other, holding a long-nosed pike which weighed as much as they did. Craig and Steve. She’d forgotten to mention the hot sandwich specials at the restaurant. And this wasn’t the time.
Back in the van, a belly level growl drowned out the oldies station she’d located. Just as well. It seemed to play the same ten tunes, especially “Wild Thing” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” She hauled herself to Harvey’s, a hamburger chain recently melded with the American Church’s Fried Chicken, ordering a Crusty Chicken sandwich, a bag of fries, milk to ward off osteo and on a whim, fried okra. Who in Northern Ontario knew the joys of that wagon wheel vegetable, except disguised in chicken gumbo soup? One golden morsel popped indecently into her mouth at the cash register. Sensational!
Searching for a table, she saw Zack finishing a coffee, circling ads in the classified section of The Sudbury Star.
“How’s business, Belle?” he asked pleasantly, motioning her over to his booth.
“In the chips,” she said, waving a catsupy example. “And yours?”
He shrugged and blew out his cheeks. “A used book and CD place downtown folded. Bad location. I had a plan to buy the stock and relocate, but I can’t float it. Looks like I’ll have to take a job as a taxi driver. Only action these days. Easy enough if you can stand the hours.”
“And memorize the pit stops. Listen, I know your aunt’s affairs aren’t finalized, but when they are, you could sell the house for start-up capital. Interest rates are at an all-time low.” She realized how opportunistic this sounded when she saw his wounded expression. “No offense, Zack. Just a thought. The lurking realtor rears her head.”
“I couldn’t let a stranger have Aunt Anni’s place, not with all those memories. When I was a kid, my mom parked me there every summer. If I wasn’t fishing with Uncle Cece, I was building a tree house or hunting frogs with her. Did I ever tell you that she invited me to move in after he died? Nearly took the offer, but guessed that she felt more sorry for me than lonely. Lord knows she kept busy.” He rubbed at his hands, poking at a blister.
“More manual labour?”
He laughed. “The Valley potato fields. Minimum wage, but free spuds. I’ll get used to it. About time, wouldn’t you say?”
Maybe there was some hope, Belle thought. Anni had loved him with an affection beyond gene splicing. An hour later, as she pulled into her driveway and stepped out of the van, she noticed a GM Supercab truck parked in the yard. In the box were bags of what looked like instant concrete mix. The door slammed, and a tall, wiry figure in workpants and a dusty sweater came toward her, blocking her way. With eyes blazing in his brick-red face and fists bunched up in his pockets, he didn’t look like a Jehovah’s Witness. “Yes?” she asked.
“You Palmer?” She nodded, regretting that the dog was inside.
“You’ve been giving my wife a rough time. I want you to lay off.” The voice belied the bluster. It was squeaky, hesitant. At close range, the eyes appeared tearful and hurt. “She’s threatening to go to Santa Fe for good, leaving me, she said.” He pulled out a huge handkerchief and honked his nose while she counted to ten. “Allergies,” he said. It was then that she noticed stencilled letters on the driver’s door: “Earl The Pearl.”
“Your wife is Mabel Joy?” At his blinks, she stepped forward, raising her voice aggressively. “She nearly poisoned a friend of mine with mushrooms. Your neighbour Charles Sullivan.”
“She what? Are you crazy? That old fart who took our poochies to the pound?”
Belle delivered a coup with a satisfying verbal smack that stretched her frame to the max. “The man you’re speaking of is dead, murdered, I suspect.” Earl sank down heavily on the bumper, struggling for breath.
“Jesus, you don’t think that she . . .” Out came a small vial of tablets, and a shaky hand stuffed one under his tongue. He seemed ill, or judging from his florid face, a drinker.
“Haven’t the police contacted you?
He mumbled something about a pileup at Buffalo which had hung them up at the border. “Come on to the deck and sit down,” she said, suddenly aware that she might have to test the ambulance system yet again. “I’ll get some water.” Earl probably would have preferred a beer, but she wasn’t feeling charitable.
A short discussion and an examination of Earl’s crabbedly-composed pocket calendar revealed that on the night of Charles’ death, the Rogers had been at a fund-raising ball for the Nickel City College Special Needs Centre. “Made The Sudbury Star. Picture and all. She was real proud of that.” Earl promised to erect an electronic fence for his dogs. After he pumped her hand, Belle took his card in case she ever needed an interlocking stone driveway or, perish the thought, a new septic tank at cost plus. He wasn’t a bad man, just turned to jelly by his wife. Ed would have used a ruder term involving a pussy cat and a whip.
As she went into the house, the phone was ringing, a distinctive Newfie accent on the other end. “I just learned about Patsy Sommers. Sorry I wasn’t there to give you a hand with those kids. Wouldn’t that be my week off. You did a great job, I heard. Ever thought of being a foster parent? We’re always short.”
“Don’t press your luck, Dottie. Anyway, if you think it was toxic outside the house, you should have been inside. I had a chat with Mom at the hospital. She’s back to consciousness if not conscience. What now? Will charges be laid?”
Dottie sighed. “Sounds open and shut, but the CAS tries to keep families together. Despite the plain stupidity of her actions, it wasn’t deliberate abuse. If there’s a chance in hell she can raise the kids, she’ll get them.”
Belle felt her temper rise at the image of that empty cereal box. The persistence of vision. “They seemed happy, and I suppose they got enough to eat. The laundry was clean. More than one neighbour gets his garbage ransacked by coons or bears. Is that all there is?”
“Miss Peggy Lee had it right. With social services funding stretched to the max, the kids will be out of the foster homes as soon as Patsy’s released. Regular visitations will be arranged for a while, so there will be some controls. There is something I haven’t mentioned, information I received which might soften your attitude.”
“About Patsy? Not unless it softens my head.”
“She’s a patsy of another kind. Those kids belong to her sister in Montreal, post-partum depression. And don’t ask me why she keeps having them. Whatever Patsy’s doing, it’s better than the jeopardy they’d be in down there. Remember the psychiatrist who jumped in front of the subway train with her baby in her arms?”
TWENTY
In the week following, Belle resumed her inquiries into Anni’s past, starting with her favourite nun. At St. Joe’s, she found the woman sitting quietly in the Intensive Care waiting room holding a young woman’s hand while a thin man in a sweat-soaked tanktop paced the floor stoically. Kids having kids, barely eighteen at a glance, though dark shadows framed their bloodshot eyes. The girl twisted one end of her long brown hair into greasy tendrils, then sucked the nipple of a noxious-coloured sports drink bottle. He groaned, reached into her purse on the floor, and set up a small cigarette-making apparatus. As he shook out the tobacco, Sister Veronica tapped his arm, her arch eyebrow more reproving than a slap in the face. “Smoking is allowed out by the front door.”
As they walked to her office, the nun’s face mixed resignation with fear. “Their two-year-old wandered into a neighbour’s pool while she talked on the phone. The child’s conscious, but at that age it’s difficult to determine neurological damage.” She stopped momentarily to touch the arm of a still form on a gurney in the hall outside the Radiation area.
Offering Belle a chair, she pointed out a new addition: a plastic bottle of bubble bath shaped like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. “From a little one we nearly lost from pneumonia. She went home yesterday. Aren’t children amazing?” she asked. “They see but rarely judge. It takes a careful upbringing to establish that signal character fault.”
Belle stayed quiet, amazed at how Disney could remould such a benign and loopy creature from Hugo’s grotesque, or even from Laughton’s more sympathetic rendition. She shook her head at an offer of tea, Sister Veronica regarding her coolness with mild confusion. “Mrs. Sommers’ alibi, as I think it’s called, has been confirmed by records. She arrived at 4:00 p.m. and didn’t leave until twelve hours later. Does that fit your time frame?” she asked with a friendly collusion.
Belle felt prickly at yet another display of the woman’s helpfulness. That white habit had lost its innocence. How naïve was she? Or how clever? “Probably. But there’s another concern.”
Sister Veronica shifted forward, her eyes steady, reflecting a nuance of perplexity. “It must be very serious indeed. What’s wrong? I heard that the children were safe.”
“It’s nothing to do with Patsy. Let’s talk about Osprey Inlet, north of Red Lake.” Belle continued, selecting her words with silver tongs. It was no time to babble. “Have you ever been there?”
“No.” The expression was bland, disciplined, hard to read.
“Twenty-five years ago something went terribly wrong at St. Michael’s residential school. No one in the town wants to talk about it. Not even today. An old magazine carried a picture of the church, the kids, the religious staff.” She narrowed her eyes, tossing the hump an oblique glance. Still off to one side. “A Sister Euphemia was the Mother Superior. Her unusual habit was the same as yours.”
In the palpable silence, one heavy eyebrow rose. Sense of entrapment? Belle had the impression of a wise old badger, back to the wall. Yet the voice was too honest, and voices and body language were hard to disguise. Except for true psychopaths, Belle recalled with a nervous twitch. “Are you interrogating me, my dear? I said I hadn’t been there, and I haven’t. Yet perhaps that was a sin of omission.” She sat back, smoothing her habit as she cleared her throat. “I have no compunction about admitting that those stories are true. It was an evil of such malevolence that I almost lost my faith. St. Michael’s shrouded the proud name of our order under the blackest infamy.”
“Go on.” Belle watched the garnets in the chain of beads wink with the light streaming in the window.
“At the time I was at a hospital in the Peace River area in Alberta. What filtered down to us was quite skeletal, merely that the central figure was a nun, a mother superior.”
Belle jumped in her chair. “A woman molester?”
“That a woman would sexually abuse is quite rare, but never underestimate the permutations of temptation. Sister Euphemia had a special charisma, as all such monsters do. That is why they succeed for so long. As well, there were rumours that she was protected,” she said with a troubled sigh.
“Protected by the Church. Of course.” Belle didn’t try to hide the disgust in her voice, making “church” a four-letter word.
The nun stiffened, as if taking personal umbrage. “Osprey Inlet is hundreds of miles from supervisory boards and thus subject to few inspections. Have you heard of the term ‘éminence grise’? Someone in the shadows who introduces an unspoken element of fear? But at last the travesty was exposed, thanks be to God.”
“Exposed, but apparently never prosecuted. A total cover-up. What about the victims? Crime without punishment. Without
any resolution, how can they put their lives together?”
“Even after the most heinous act, healing can begin. All depends upon the individual.”
Belle folded her hands. “What do you mean? I suppose you’d free Paul Bernardo?” Canada’s handsome serial killer received a life sentence for his murder of at least three young women, including his sister-in-law. Meanwhile, his evil blonde twin, Karla Homolka, was finishing a twelve-year sentence, having plea bargained her guilt by turning Crown evidence against her husband.
“You mock me. I speak of the victims. Every generation has its terminology for a disease of the soul. Early scholars called it simple Christian guilt. Modern psychologists refer to ‘baggage.’ The victims may feel, as do many, that they were the only ones signalled out for abuse, or worse yet, partially to blame. So insidious, isn’t it?”
Belle felt her fists clench. “Sounds like revenge is the best medicine.”
“The Old Testament contrasts with the New on that concept. ‘Justice is mine,’ ‘an eye for an eye,’ instead of turning the other cheek as our Lord beseeches us. Whatever the path, after a spiritual cleansing such as we have seen in the renewed concept of native healing circles, there can be a return to purpose. Work is the salvation.”
Belle shuffled her feet and poured herself a cup of tea as Sister Veronica watched with placid amusement at the small gesture of capitulation.
“Let’s get back to the source of the evil? What happened to Euphemia?” Belle asked, sounding out the beautiful syllables of a deadly identity.
“An internal purging. All patently culpable ones were sent to cloistered facilities, and those who wore moral blinkers were pressured to return to the laity, so we learned through quiet channels. But as for the courts, no charges were laid. In those benighted times, I would have been happily surprised had they been. Witness the recent lawsuits dating back forty years or more. Grandmothers and grandfathers trying to redeem their childhoods.” She searched Belle’s sceptical face. “Don’t judge us all by a few sinners.”