by Lou Allin
His brow furrowed, a blue vein pulsing on his temple. “Anni. That was the name of the woman he kept talking about that night. I didn’t get it.”
TWENTY-SIX
Belle softened her voice to ease the tension. The worst part was coming. She would have to walk Craig through a painful process. “Anni was the dentist’s assistant in Osprey Inlet. Do you remember her?”
He nodded, brightening for the first time in his sad odyssey. “Couple times I went, she was so nice. Like she could sense something wrong. Not the fillings, what was happening to me at the school. But there was always someone along. Usually Father Jim.”
“So you didn’t meet her here. Did you read about her murder?”
“I don’t read too good, Belle. It was him I saw.” He opened another coffee and his mouth tightened. “That beard didn’t fool me for a second. Not with those eyes.”
How different were perceptions. Charles’ eyes hadn’t been his signal feature, but she remembered them as sensitive and kind. And he’d been a sucker for dogs. Wrong again. “Where was that?”
“At the Catholic church downtown. In the basement, they give out sandwiches and blankets to street people. He was leaving Mass, passed right by me. I froze like a scared animal. The next Sunday he was back. From an alley, I watched where he parked his car. One rear door wasn’t locked. On the seat was a phone bill with his address. He’d changed his name. Didn’t surprise me.”
“So you learned where he lived. And you went out there one night.”
He spread out one powerful hand in a poignant gesture of uselessness. “I don’t know what I expected. It brought everything back, but I guess I needed that. I walked in from the turnaround, had a smoke by the fence to get up nerve. When he went to the sauna alone, I followed. Took a chance there was no one in the house.”
If only there had been, she thought. A vision flashed through her mind, one she’d tried to push into oblivion. Charles’ alabaster body luminescent in the moted beams filtering through the small window. “Then what happened?”
His voice quavered in an effort to continue. “It was a dressing room. He looked like God himself in that fancy white robe. Guess he’d found a good job, though he wasn’t a priest anymore. All I saw was a bully. ‘I’m Craig,’ I said. ‘Remember me?’ ” He stared at Belle in clear wonderment. “And he did. He was shaking all over, couldn’t catch his breath. Touching at his chest. Then he asked if this here Anni had sent me, something about an avenger. ‘Who’s she?’ I asked.”
Belle interrupted him. “I know it’s hard, but go slowly. What exactly did he say about Anni? You have the missing pieces to the jigsaw, Craig.” For a moment she felt ashamed. Why probe so deeply? For selfish satisfaction?
“Jigsaw?”
“Anni was my friend. I think that Father Jim killed her, but I don’t know why. Was it blackmail?”
“He was babbling. Sounded crazy. Something like ‘I tried to ato . . . ato . . .’ ” Craig bunched up his fists in confusion, his empty coffee cup dropping to the floor.
“Atone?”
“That was the word. ‘I gave her what she asked.’ he said. ‘Then she changed her mind.’ ”
Vintage Anni. Playing judge and jury as she did with Patsy and the bear-baiters, meting out punishment without a care for her own neck. But she underestimated the desperation protecting years of quiet security. “What was she going to do? Turn him in?”
“I’m not sure. They argued and then something happened.” He spit out the words in contempt. “Always was a coward. That’s when I lost it. Gave him one good shot for me and her both. But I’m no murderer, Belle. I left him sitting there in that damn robe. He was crying like I did every night in my bed in the dormitory.”
She had to believe him, imagine Charles’ relief as his victim stormed out. He’d gone into the sauna, retreated from his aggressor. Then terror pushed an overburdened heart toward its last stand, the robe flung off in the sudden, sharp pain, followed by dark peace, the only real atonement. Had he admitted his sins, sought forgiveness in the final seconds? A higher court would decide. “And then you learned that he had died.”
“I got pretty drunk. Took me a day or two to sober up and get back to work.” His voice took on an ironic tone. “Fran had started reading the obits aloud, hoping that her husband’s name would be there. He left her with HIV, and now he’s dying of AIDS.”
Belle was somewhere else, rewinding the film. Charles and Anni in that great reckoning in a little room with burnished floors, the old woman wielding her stick like a shillelagh. No script for that scene, no stage directions. The wall clock ticked as she shook off the inertia. Nearly eight a.m. Bad psychology to keep reminding people how long they’d been waiting. “Steve’s got to be the first to hear about this,” she said. “Monday he’ll be back from a camping trip. Just don’t—”
“Belle?” Freed from the paralyzing defenses that had shackled him, he looked as if he might weep.
“Yes?”
“How do you think he’ll take it? You know my brother better than I do. Will he hate me?”
“Oh, Craig, no. Never,” she said, circling aching arms around him as number forty-five finally came up on Canada’s health care bingo.
X-rayed and wrapped in an elastic bandage, Belle’s ankle needed no more than a week’s rest. Fortunately it had been her left foot, so she could still drive. The aspirins scrounged from the nurse were wearing off as she arrived at the DesRosiers’ about noon, her mind nuzzling blunt edges of exhaustion. Freya nearly bowled her over, but she pressed into the soft and familiar fur, accepting a few slurps for good measure. “What lips these lips have kissed.”
“Back off, mutt,” Hélène said. “Mom’s had a heckuva night, and all you did was snore.” She helped Belle up the stairs, placed her at the kitchen table in front of a steaming cup of coffee. More brew was the last thing Belle wanted, but her sore hands cradled the warmth.
“Cooking takes my mind off things,” Hélène confessed, standing beside a buffet to amaze Martha Stewart. Sausages, back bacon, cornmeal pancakes, blueberry muffins, fluffy eggs dotted with fresh basil, oceans of maple syrup, jams, jellies and juice.
“Popovers!” Belle stuffed a golden globe full of red pepper jelly into her mouth. Between knives and forks and bites and sips, she told them how the past had conjoined to align three disparate people into a fatal triangle.
“If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a hypocrite,” Hélène said with a moue of disgust. “Those poor kids. You read about the brutal details at those schools, but it all seems so far away from us.”
“Wouldn’t have figured Chuck for that stuff,” Ed said, heaping his place a third time, stifling a belch. “Manners of a bishop. Couldn’t beat a swear word out of the guy with a crowbar. Say, though, no offense about Anni.”
Belle made a concerted effort to slow down. Dyspepsia was not in her plans, though she could raid their well-stocked medicine cabinet if necessary. “You know, in another world and time, he might have become one.”
After a quick call to Rainbow Country to assure herself that her father was eating like a longshoreman, the rest of the afternoon she spent on the couch, gloating over the bond fund, moping over the drooping science and technology quotes, and wondering if the Nikkei had finally hit bottom. With Circadian rhythm out of sync, she might be up half the night if she grabbed an hour now.
At scarcely an eyelash past supper time, she struggled to the kitchen in a fog, puzzled at a licking sound. Freya worrying a flea again? Where was that noxious aerosol bomb? Apparently the shepherd was making love to her empty food bowl, scouring the sides for residual flavours, petulant that dinner was late.
“A blackmailer in my own house. And I know Hélène gave you plenty of handouts. An extra cup, and that’s it.”
Along with a bowl of tomato soup, that old creature comfort, she nibbled a few crackers, still full as a boa from brunch. Playing for time, she hauled a bag of garbage to the road. As the top of the woo
den box banged, a movement up the hill startled her. A bear, likely a lone male come on rounds, perhaps the prowler which had scrunched by the basement windows one night. He didn’t seem disturbed by her presence, resting his rump on a log and questioning her with silence like an old philosopher in a thick and lustrous ebony coat. “Not my garbage!” she yelled, waving her arms wildly. Entire bags of trash often disappeared into the woods, Visa bills, liquor bottles, invitations for a Revenue Canada check. “Get back where you belong.” His response was a yawn, or was it a laugh? Some primitive sound mixing both. With a crooked muzzle upturned, he seemed amused at her antics, but she kept her distance. Black bears defending cubs or rummaging for food stored in a tent were no Winnie the Poohs. Then the chug of a pickup echoed, and Shovelnose ambled back into the forest, stumpy tail wiggling farewell.
A brown Ford stopped, and a smiling face greeted her from the open window.
“Heading out for the winter, Nick?” she asked.
“Oh, not for a month or two. Let the snow chase me away,” he replied with a grin, patting the truck in a proprietorial gesture. “Say, I owe you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your suggestion. That shop downtown. They took my sketches on consignment. Twenty-five percent commission, but I made enough to trade up the old bomber.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Steve sat on the deck, tapping his boot, clearly miffed at her once again. “I can’t believe that you kept important evidence from me. When will you learn?”
“Important evidence, my ear. Ancient history from halfway across the country. How could I have known it was significant? And what was the connection? Anni, Charles and Craig weren’t singing ‘Sweet Adeline’ one short of a barbershop quartet. It was a brilliant deduction on my part, and when I called, you were off playing Boy Scout.” She raced off the last words, folding her arms in defiance.
He straightened his back with a glower, ready to score a few final points despite the defensive tone in his voice. “Well, my original idea was on the money. It wasn’t the hunters. A savvy old woman wouldn’t have opened her door to a stranger. Should have twigged that it was someone around here.” He rapped himself “upside the head” as a reminder.
The honest self-criticism struck a rare chord. Steve was a man of great pride. “Don’t blame yourself. How could you check the backgrounds of every person on the road? And Charles had just moved in. I wouldn’t have suspected him in a million years. Did he fit your profile of a murderer?”
“Who does, Belle? Don’t you read Max Haines’ crime columns?”
“When I can steal a peek at my neighbour’s newspaper. Think how humiliated I feel!” Her eyes narrowed and she mimed a leisurely cast, reeling in an imaginary line. “Charles played me like a lazy, stupid bass. We strolled through Anni’s house looking at jigsaw puzzles. He wined and dined me, went joy-riding in my canoe. What gall.”
One corner of Steve’s mouth rose. “A cool one, but maybe he liked you. It isn’t a crime.”
“It should be, the way I attract bodies.” She shrugged. “Say, did you ever turn up anything on the Morrises? I wondered where he had gotten that money. And why he kept it under his real name.”
“Didn’t want it traced to his new identity, I guess, just let it sit there after he disappeared from the Mission. He and his sister belonged to a wealthy Winnipeg family. Meat packing. Last of the line, though. Strange that they both chose the Church.”
Their eyes met in unspoken agreement about the destructive pair. Then they both looked up at a familiar chorus of squawks. A black vee-shaped necklace was threading its way south, the few stragglers flapping behind while the timekeeper kept the pace. Beginning of September. The geese were off early. Did that mean a bad winter or an easy one? Then she smiled. “The only good part concerns Craig.”
He nodded slowly, his face relaxed and almost cheerful. “The Crown Prosecutor agreed to a plea of no contest to aggravated assault. In view of the facts, it was obvious that Craig hit Morris from a provocation even a saint couldn’t resist, pardon the comparison. We got him a suspended sentence with community service at the shelter.”
“Is he seeing a counsellor?”
“Every week. And you know, just talking it over is helping the healing process.” He paused, let silence grow as he shifted thoughts. “Those lost years. Never saw his home or family. What a price.”
Belle watched a squirrel head for the boathouse with a nut in its mouth, already looking ahead to winter storage. “Any plans? Can he retrain? Work with kids maybe? He’s a natural at that.”
“Sure is. Came for dinner last week. Big celebration. Janet roasted a thirty-pound turkey to make up for all the holidays he’d missed. Now he’s Uncle Craig. Heather’s his best pal. And he’s upgrading math and English at the college. Soon as he nails his level fours, he can enter a post-secondary course. Social Services worker. It’s a two-year program.”
She took his large hand in hers. How like Craig’s it was. “He saved my life, Steve. Something deep inside made him come back. It couldn’t have been easy. That decision was a turning point. I’m sure he’s going to be fine.”
Later that day the phone rang. “It’s Sister Veronica. I have something of interest. It came in the mail from Margaret. If you might drop by . . .”
From the island? Belle felt like squeaking like a delirious chipmunk, but she didn’t want to sacrifice dignity to the self-possessed nun. And a change of scene was due. Remove the woman from her element in an effort to crack that damnable superiority. “Let’s have dinner if you’re free tonight. The Landings at Science North. My treat.” She sketched in her discoveries for the nun, who listened with few interruptions, only something which sounded like Latin.
Could this be the keystone, the final piece of information to explain Charles’ motivations, reveal his ultimate guilt or innocence? There she was again, trying to exonerate him in the final credits. Yet perhaps Euphemia, the Spider Woman herself, might speak at last from the grave.
A chill rain was falling, the wind rising as she parked near the front canopy of St. Joe’s. With a welcoming hoot, Zack jumped out of a bright yellow taxi and strolled over, tipping back his Jays cap and grinning self-consciously. “Don’t laugh at an honest man. I’m getting used to this. Working evenings and nights gives me time to enjoy the lake. Say, fat guy down the road says you tried to camp without a tent.”
That blabbermouth Ed. “A little privation’s good for anyone,” she answered with a bent smile.
“Now that we know Aunt Anni’s killer, do you think that address book will show up at his place, sort of a nail in the coffin?” He didn’t seem aware of the unfortunate choice of words.
“If he was smart enough to take it, Zack, to cover the trail back to Osprey Inlet, he was smart enough to destroy it.”
At the wave of an elderly man pushing a wheelchair, he hurried over to help. Meanwhile, a tiny white Doulton figurine under a huge black umbrella knocked at the passenger door. The nun seemed embarrassed to be ferried around, casting a wary eye on the bells and whistles of the van’s cockpit as she settled into the seat. “This high living is not my usual style. We could have had a nourishing meal in the hospital cafeteria.”
Tourist season was winding down at the futuristic complex of Science North. Cars from as far as Texas were returning to check on tumbleweeds, leaving Sudbury to the hardy locals. The waiter gave them a window table where they watched in comfort while a pounding gale lashed Lake Ramsey into froth and foam, sweeping small sailboats toward the marina. With plush carpets and few early diners, the room was quiet and subdued. Belle smiled over a crisp pinot blanc, filling glasses and consulting the menu. “No plain oatmeal or unsalted groats,” she said with a teasing smile.
Not a flicker of reaction. “Grains are much underrated. Have you read Bert Greene? He’d approve of this brown rice cassoulet. Made with wild mushrooms, it says.”
Belle swallowed hard against a sudden queasiness. “Wild, eh? I’ll pass on
that. The salmon sounds tempting.”
As they finished the meal, Belle waiting on tenterhooks, Sister Veronica delved into a black shoulder bag to retrieve a letter. “I shouldn’t be doing this. Margaret had no right to send it on. So impulsive. However, now that she did . . .” The gaze was steady, her mouth firm, or was it a deadpan smile? Hard to decipher from a poker player par excellence.
“Don’t stand on ceremony. The case is closed. What is it?”
The nun sighed elaborately, fingered a silver cross where an emerald winked, and stretched out the moment like Torquemada fine-tuning the rack. “When news of her brother’s death reached the island, Euphemia’s trunk was opened. It contained only clothes and a Bible, to be portioned out to the needy. We Cecilianists pride ourselves on wasting nothing. But Margaret made sure she attended the examination. And she was able to discover this envelope and retrieve it unseen. For her studies, of course.”
With great precision she placed it on the table with a reverence awarded to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the predictions of Nostradamus. Belle’s hand trembled to touch the cream rag paper for a third time. What fine taste Charles had. Part of her missed him. A bad part, she guessed, the one which placed wit over wisdom, conversation over charity. Though the waiter was collecting the dishes, all she heard was a pulse pounding in her ears while she studied the familiar copperplate style:
Euphemia:
I write only because I hear you are dying. Since that nightmare so many years ago, I have had no sister. As my elder and my mentor, you inspired me to follow you into the Church. Only too late did I learn of your devices and desires. I should have read the face of that innocent boy and listened to my heart instead of your false homilies. Though I have tried to start a new and decent life, my soul is a dead thing, and I remain to my continuing shame a craven man with neither the power nor the right to ask forgiveness for either of us.