by Lou Allin
Even a stone wall would crumble under those sad old basset eyes. Could she trust that the nun hadn’t been there herself? “No, but I detest the hypocrisy of the Church taking care of its own, even if every profession has its secret police. Perhaps it deserves the expensive litigation it faces. Now, these cloistered facilities you mention. Are they only for punishment?”
“Oh my, no. Some choose to spend their lives in quiet meditation and prayer far from the secular world. Such a commitment is as true a vocation as nursing, teaching or any valuable community work.”
Belle blew out a puff of contempt. “Hardly a prison, then. Food, shelter, books, probably satellite Christian TV channel, no doubt.”
“Have you noticed how often you use humour to cloud the issue? Being forbidden to speak is torment for someone who loves the rewards of human conversation, or of power, for that matter.” She considered Belle with a cautious assessment. “I’m still unsure how this matter concerns you at present.”
“To be blunt, I want to know if Euphemia is alive.”
“Still no answer, but I will indulge you.” The nun reached for a Rolodex on her desk. “Our numbers have been dwindling as the old ones die and are not replaced. The priesthood as well. The next Pope will have to deal with reality and perhaps revoke the stubborn insistence on celibacy. There is one facility left. Le Coeur de Repos up in the Gaspé. Anticosti Island. Do you know it?”
“The Quiet Heart,” she whispered in recollection. A trip to Montreal, Quebec City, and up the North Shore had introduced that breathtaking but little travelled coastline of Canada. “It’s remote all right. A ferry from the mainland. Too expensive for me.”
“Very few visitors, unlike in modern prisons, if I may borrow your comparison. The Church can wield an iron hand when it chooses. However, residents on a voluntary basis relish the privacy and concentration.” She flipped through the cards, squinted at the information with a nod. “My old novitiate friend Sister Margaret bides there in perfect contentment. We exchange Christmas cards.”
Belle wondered if Sister Veronica would flinch at a grateful embrace. “Can you contact her?”
“Family calls are allowed once a week. I’ll do my best. But I spoke of the here and now, and you have skillfully avoided the implications. What is your role? Are you an avenger?”
“Now you’re making jokes.” She rotated the cup, wishing that it contained tea leaves. Her grandmother had been famous for divining the future through that companionable art. “My neighbour we discussed, the older woman who was murdered? She lived at Osprey Inlet when Euphemia did. After all these weeks, there’s no sign of an arrest. My last hope.”
“Could she have been Euphemia? The ages seem to match.” A suspicious crease marred her smooth forehead, eyes shrinking into pinpoints as she drew Celtic crosses on a pad. “Perhaps she found some way to leave the cloister. Through an escape, or more likely through her eloquence and guile. The Church sets great store by repentance, the lost sheep rejoining the fold. Suppose that she returned to the mainland and after all those years was brought down by the hand of one she had abused?”
Belle fought back laughter. “Let’s see. She sewed herself into a shroud like the man in the iron mask? Swam to shore? That really is a baroque plot, Sister, but they couldn’t have been the same person. Anni was a dental assistant.” She looked at the pig with the Sherlock Holmes greatcoat, pipe and hat and thought for a moment. “Do you know Euphemia’s family name?”
The nun shook her head. “Oh, my dear. Taking a saint’s name is like assuming a new identity. She might have been a Betty Jones pleased with something more exotic. Perhaps Margaret can give us a start.”
Great, Belle thought. Long distance sleuthing on the cheap. Yet what better network than the Church itself? Canada’s first intensive history had been the two-hundred-year chronicle of the Jesuit Relations. Unfortunate connotations for an innocent word.
That night Gilbert and Sullivan rang in the air. Fuelled by fresh possibilities of new paths, her appetite had returned with a passion. A grilled pork tenderloin marinated in Manitoulin honey, accompanied by flower-fragrant basmati rice mated well with spinach, green beans and broccoli from the garden. Two dollars’ credit against the nine-hundred-dollar soil bill. A Talus zinfandel kept pace with the spices as she mused over her favourite line: “Skim milk masquerades as cream.” No cynic when it came to friends, she took them at face value. Charles and Anni had been crème de la crème. Now both were dead. One murdered; the other? Pulled in two directions, she surrendered to one.
A cigarette. A dubious bruise. Feeble clues, if clues at all. Yet someone could have parked at the turnaround, walked in quietly to the well-concealed property. Smoked in the dark while watching Charles enter the sauna. Had the police overlooked some small detail as they had at Anni’s, the letter in her Peterson’s, her missing address book? What might she unearth about Charles’ death with more leisure to search the property?
She eyed the forgotten key, whispering temptation from a suction cuphook on the fridge. If only she had a clear objective. Setting aside the lunatic-out-of-nowhere-in-the-night scenario, she reviewed the small evidence of a lonely life. Charles had money, as much as might have accumulated from a solid career and no children, rather none that she knew of. And he’d left all to charity. A dead end. She started at their meeting and took baby steps. The raspberries, the wine, the cottage, the tool shed, her joke about Jason Brown’s treasure.
As she ate mindlessly, a stubborn chunk of broccoli stuck in her throat. She swallowed more wine, bitter with tannin, and her eyes snapped open. Treasure? Brown’s nephew had been casual enough, making light of that legendary hideyhole. Had he left something after all, something worth killing for? Or was it the ravings of a senile old man? She’d never seen him at Rainbow Country, though he might be on the second floor or confined to bed. Perhaps he’d already died. “They either go in the first few months, or they live on for years,” a candid nurse had told her. But Jason was mute. Couldn’t or wouldn’t talk. Had her father met the man, she wondered? The nephew’s number in Sarnia was still in her computer records.
“Sorry to hear about Mr. Sullivan,” he replied as she explained her call. “You said he’d been so pleased with the place.”
“If only for a brief time, he loved it,” Belle said, filling him in about her suspicions. “This may be a wild shot, but what about that secret room? Could someone have been looking for it?”
His raucous laugh made her yank away the receiver. “In the first place, it wasn’t a room. More like a nook. Said he kept a few private things away from his sister, my Aunt Deborah. She acted as his housekeeper until she passed on. Never gave a hint where it was, though, and we kids crawled over every inch of that property. Guess he liked to tease us.”
“No jewels or stolen bars of palladium from INCO, then?” Rare and expensive by-products from the nickel process had proved tempting to many employees.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he added, the least credible words in the world. “It might have been something as simple as a collection of Playboy magazines. Or maybe some screech, that raw rum from the Maritimes. She didn’t mind the wine, old Bible-thumper, but she was fierce about hard stuff.”
“Would you mind if I visited him? My father’s over at Rainbow Country.”
“He’d probably like that. Ashamed to admit we don’t get up there more than twice a year. Ten hours is a long haul. Damn government never going to four-lane 69. It’s still a cowpath from Parry Sound.”
TWENTY-ONE
So that’s why you’re here at the crack of dawn,” her father said as he buttered a sixth piece of toast. “The Brown fellow? Sure, I know him. Gives the nurses some devil of a ride. What do you want with that old geezer? Aren’t I leaving you enough money? Did you flub up my mutual funds? Canuck buck gets any lower you’ll need a wheelbarrow to buy a . . .” His chuckle turned to a cough as he grabbed at his coffee cup.
Belle’s heart thumped like a dicky eng
ine. “Take it easy. Another choking scene will finish the both of us. Anyway, Charles bought Brown’s property. Could be he had a visitor that night he died. I was thinking of a secret place that the old man bragged about for years.”
“Secret, eh? Leave him to me. We’ve had grand chats. Born the same year, you know.”
Belle clasped his shoulder, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “So he can talk!”
“Jason? ’Course he can. Just no one understands him except me. Got to listen, not just hear. Poor guy’s got no one to help him either. Remember my trouble down in Florida?” After one particularly potent TIA, he’d been mute for weeks, but a strong will and the coaching of his girlfriend had restored his speech.
“Gets pretty mad when they can’t catch on. Darned if he didn’t nail Cindy smack on the can with a boiled egg yesterday. Haul me out of this contraption, and we’ll try the card table in the dining room. Can’t play, but he likes to watch. He’s got both oars in the water. Look at his eyes. You’ll see what I mean.”
Belle unfastened the table of the gerry chair with an urge to weep. How did he stand the confinement? And yet if he fell . . . She took his arm and straightened him to his feet as he marshalled his resources and sweat broke out on his broad forehead. “Geronimo,” he yelled, and they turtled forward. He fumbled at the handrail down the long hall to the dining area. Some residents had returned to their rooms after breakfast while the more interactive ones played cards or joined in a bean bag toss led by the staff.
Jason Brown, a hulk of a man shrunken into a wheelchair, had intelligent, deep-set eyes which seemed to burn with a hatred for his loss of independence. Dressed in a Blueberry Festival T-shirt and mismatched but clean slacks, he followed the deal of the cards, pointing a trembly finger at the occasional move. They’d only met casually at the mailboxes years ago. No chance he’d remember her. Yet if she could interest him in something precious from his past . . .
“Jason, old man.” Her father patted his back before easing into a chair, leaving Belle standing behind. “Daughter of mine here needs your help. Listen up.”
When she bent to his level, at first he seemed confused, glancing from one person to the other. “I won’t keep you from your game, Mr. Brown. There’s a problem. The man who bought your property died under suspicious circumstances. Your nephew said that you had a secret hiding place. Maybe there’s a connection. Did you leave anything valuable there which we might be able to bring you?” The promise didn’t make sense, but it sounded helpful, a necessary conspiracy of young against old which shamed her.
Suddenly Jason exploded in a series of cackles mixed with unintelligible words, disconnected syllables. The man’s breath was no pansy patch, through no fault of his. Dental care was a messy, time-consuming chore placed at the bottom of the list. But he was smiling oddly. Unsure how to proceed, she looked at her father. “He likes you,” he whispered with confidence. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have paid attention.”
She turned from the table and formed silent words with her lips, adding a shrug. “What’s he saying?”
Her father leaned forward. “How’s that again?” His gnarly hand clasped Jason’s. “Go on, pal. Take your time.” A garble followed, a spew of consonants and vowels repeated several times. Belle backed off discreetly from the spittle.
“Medicine, he says.”
“You want your medicine?” She scanned the room for an attendant, speaking softly to her father, “Are you sure? How ‘with it’ is this guy?”
Brown shook his gleaming bald head, mottled with age spots, as he pounded the table, blasting out more guttural grunts. “Nope, that’s what he means all right,” her father said with a frown. “Funny, though. Med time is ten and six. It’s only nine.”
An owly nurse with pointed ears responded to her questioning. “Of course Mr. Brown will receive his medication at the proper hour,” she answered with an annoyed tone as she arranged a tray with rows of tiny paper cups. “We chart everything.”
Belle flashed Brown her broadest smile and shook his hand. The skin was cold, but the grip surprisingly strong, as if he were trying to speak through what small powers remained in his charge. “Thanks for your help, sir. Good luck with the game.”
“You did your best, Father,” she said as they teetered back to his room.
“Med time is ten and six,” he repeated.
“Keep pumping him. You never know.” She helped him into his chair, locking the table with sickening reluctance.
He beamed and gave a v-for-victory sign. “We’ll crack her. Just like Nick and Nora Charles.”
“And Puffball can be Asta,” she added, patting the resident bichon frisé trotting by in search of a handout. Her father winked as he pointed to a box of Peek Freans on the bureau, so she left him a handful. “Just one for the dog, Father. Remember what happened to Lucky.” Treated to butter pecan ice cream and constant cookies, their dachshund had ballooned into a cartoon and died in his sleep on a sunny lanai in Florida.
“Practically a hundred in human years. Hope I go like that,” he shot back.
“Medicine,” Belle thought as she left. What else would the captive elderly be interested in but food and pills, whose arrivals marked lagging hours for all but the most active few? She was glad her father still had a passion for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. Yet there had been something in the old man’s animation. At this point, anything was worth a try.
At the office, she logged a few inquiries. When summer ended, cottagers would be eager to sell, but who would want to buy as the cold winds of September sifted dry leaves? She left at five still mulling over Brown’s desperation. At least she and her father shared their memories.
The blueberry hills on the road past town were dotted with pickers, the air beckoning spicy-sweet through the window. Hot weather and frequent rains would provide a banner crop. Though her favourite fields lay nearer home at Hidden Valley, a half-mile down abandoned railroad tracks, she remembered that in late March her last freezer bag had been transformed into a succulent cobbler. Wouldn’t a pie taste great? Or just plain berries? Besides, the experience itself provided a welcome relaxation.
In the late summer ritual for “Northrunners,” as people often pronounced it, everyone got into the spirit, young, old, rich and poor. Hélène’s philosophy was that picking revealed character. “There’s the lazy ones, see. Relax with a beer in the shade and gobble pies later. Others pretend to pick but just eat. That’s Ed. Some can’t find a good bush and quit after a few minutes.” She would pause thoughtfully, shaking her finger for effect. “Now, never waste time on a poor spot with only singletons. Bad for the back. But you know where to look, you’ll find as many as the bears.”
Belle pulled off the road behind a line of cars and rummaged for a plastic bag. A few minutes later she was climbing the hills, past “Bob 4ever” spray-painted where the glacier’s icy fingers had raked the stone. “Not even rocks are forever, Bob,” she murmured. Hunkered down in the late afternoon sun, the insistent ticking of grasshoppers in her ears, she missed the panting partnership of the dog. Freya nosed out the berries and roamed around independently until her evil alter ego emerged. Then she plowed into the middle of the best bunches, nudged Belle’s hand with slobber, and more than once had the effrontery to munch from an unwatched bowl.
A trained eye helped, the mind judging in a flash the configuration of the bush, the number of berries, size, colour. Large were prized, since they filled the container quickly, but small were often tastier. Under sheltering trees, the berries were tarter, in the sun hotter and sweeter, a piquant combination. Thick, luxuriant leaves meant a good season but hid the fruit. The picker tried to strip five or six at a time, holding the pan underneath, shuffling horizontally on haunches to avoid a slipped disc. Belle gauged the riches by how long it took to glean enough for a pie. Ten to fifteen minutes was standard.
A short reconnaissance provided dessert, discounting the few morsels that exploded the signature of summer into her mouth. A
s she stood and stretched, familiar complaints broke the stillness. “What are they paying? Only ten bucks a basket? Remember that drought year we got twelve?” Another voice talked about a convoy which had rolled up from Toronto with giant rakes and were nearly lynched by locals protecting their territory. On a flat rock, a wiry man in a straw hat sat and smoked, tapping ashes into a pop can. Smoking was illegal while walking in the bush. A person had to stop and attend to the cigarette, a sensible rule but hard to enforce. Forest fires in the peaty Sudbury area could follow roots underground, lie dormant, then spring up later twenty feet away.
Insulated in the mindless pleasure of gentle industry, wrapped in mental cotton batting, Belle sensed someone talking to her, but couldn’t decipher the words until she looked up and wiped sweat from her eyes. “Hey, I said I haven’t seen you at the restaurant this week.” It was Fred. “We’re trying to make enough for tickets to Garth Brooks at Skydome.”
She laughed and admired the full baskets in the usual social gesture. They might realize their goal. Many patient pensioners earned over two thousand dollars a season, if their knees held out. “So who’s minding the store?”
“Craig’s taking charge with Sis. He’ll be here second shift soon as I leave. Made over six hundred bucks so far at the Farmers’ Market.” He flicked a small green worm into the brush and rubbed his back. “Been tough money, though. Tougher than running a restaurant. These hills get pretty dry without trees. Couple more days we’ll have to find another spot.” Together they walked to the vehicles, where he showed off his pride, a 1967 Camaro. His plan was to restore it as soon as the restaurant got onto its feet. If cars could express feelings, the grill frowned at the dull paint and rusty bumpers.
Belle arrived home in a mood of curious elation, convinced that something lay behind Brown’s wild insistence. Charles’ place was worth a second look, especially after the cursory examination from the police. Washing the berries and dosing them with heavy cream, giving Freya her share, she grated a large zucchini for pancakes, adding dollops of Mcllhenny’s green jalapeno sauce while plotting the next morning’s search. Maybe Charles hadn’t even discovered the hiding place, if in fact it existed, but at least she had a clear goal.