by Lou Allin
Mindful of the drive home, Belle ordered a Blue Light and sat back to explore the menu, her tastebuds gearing up. Hungarian night. Sauerkraut soup to start, a julienned carrot salad, then goulash with dumplings, and cherry torte for dessert—$22.95 shrunken Canadian dollars. More than reasonable. The ingredients would be fresh and the students in top form, their grades depending on pleasing the customers.
Still thirsty from her hike, she finished the beer quickly, then glanced at her watch. She’d been early, but now it was nearly seven-fifteen. Had Miriam and Melibee been involved in a fender-bender on those slippery streets? She hailed the waitress for a refill and forced herself to think about business instead of wasting time. A couple from Ottawa wanted a place in Boreal Heights, a premier development. Hadn’t she seen something in the cross-listings? Never carrying a purse, she took a pad from her coat and scribbled a note.
Eight o’clock. Belle was tapping her foot, rearranging the salt and pepper. When did the restaurant close? Other diners were finishing their coffee and dessert, calling for the bill. With a sudden urge, realizing that she needed a bathroom, she avoided the questioning eyes of the waitress.
Minutes later, she emerged from the washroom momentarily relieved, only to see her server gesturing. “Belle Palmer? There’s an urgent phone call for you.”
In the shiny chrome and walnut-veneer bar area, a phone sat near the mint dish. When she answered, a shaky voice spoke in halting tones. “I’m at Mel’s. He’s gone, and I don’t know what to do.” Scarcely could Belle respond than the phone went dead. An outage, or had Miriam hung up?
After leaving twelve dollars on the table, she returned to the van, seething while she attacked the frosted windshield, breaking the cheap plastic scraper with her fury. Gusts whipped tiny tornados around the parking lot. What was wrong with Miriam? If the man had stood her up, why panic? Couldn’t she have come to enjoy the meal in spite of his rudeness? Perhaps he wasn’t the paragon he’d been painted. Belle felt her stomach rumble and buckled her seatbelt over the bloat of two beers without food.
Leaving New Sudbury and heading across town, she proceeded to Balmoral Drive on Lake Ramsey, where Melibee’s condo crowned a huge, pseudo-modern Italianate horror very near the spot where a tiny cabin had sheltered Franklin W. Dixon, aka Leslie McFarlane, creator of the Hardy Boys series. Had the town fathers thought about erecting a plaque for tourists? If she ever needed a second job, she had a few promotional ideas. She trudged through ankle-high drifts and skidded along the path to the lobby. With a chilled finger, she ran over the addresses, noting the penthouse. Then she rang the bell, turned as the bevelled glass door snicked open and headed for the elevator.
With her realtor’s eye and a thinly disguised sneer, she paused to assess the decor. Bauhaus whorehouse, black marbleized floors, red padded leather walls and baroque chandeliers in the lobby. Muzak warbled from the plush speakers in the elevator, but she couldn’t decipher it. 999 strings?
After a dizzying fifteen-storey lift, the doors opened to reveal an anteroom with dark Jacobean wainscotting, clay jugs with pampas grass from warmer places and striped Colonial style wallpaper. Using an imp’s head, she knocked at the double, brass-fitted doors. When no one answered, she pushed gently, ready to read Miriam the riot act.
Inside, all was still except for the ticking of a giant Seth Thomas grandfather clock. She shuffled her boots onto a rubber mat, testing the depths of the taupe carpet on her frozen toes. Ahead was an interminable shadowed passage. “Miriam,” she called. “Where are you?”
A spectral figure moved into the hall, then leaned with despair against the wall, where a dim plaster sconce cast a sickly light. Miriam wore a striking new dress, soft folds of apricot silk with golden threads and a cowl. Normally scorning makeup except for a dab of powder, she must have gone to a professional. Matching eye shadow, liner, shadows to minimize her Roman nose and perfectly lined lips. But her face was contorted in pain. “He’s gone, Belle.”
“So you said. But why stand me up?”
Miriam pulled away to stumble down the hall, punctuating her movements with choking sobs. Following her into a living room, Belle glanced over the turquoise suede sofas, the granite fireplace, the massive windows with lights from Lake Ramsey’s million-dollar mortgages sparkling in the distance. Patio doors led to a deck large enough to feast the Supreme Court. At her elbow was a gigantic Victorian sideboard redolent with lemon oil, a silver urn with an open bottle of Moët et Chandon swimming in water. Two glasses. Someone had been having a party. So where was Melibee? Off on a sudden business trip?
She felt a tug at her arm and looked down at a man’s body, his head bruising an exquisite Persian rug.
Three
Mel.” Miriam slumped into a cushioned chair so deep that her legs stuck out like a rag doll’s, shaking hands covering her face.
“Was it a heart attack? Have you tried . . .” Wondering if she recalled any CPR other than the dog variety where one blew into the nose, Belle leaned forward when she heard Miriam gasp. Her friend had risen to turn on a tole lamp. Blood trickled from the man’s ear, pooling into a grotesque halo. Instinctively, Belle knelt and reached for his throat, the skin slightly scratchy with a final five o’clock shadow. He seemed neither warm nor cold, but at ambient temperature.
“I see.” Or did she? Fell and hit his head? Curious as she was, from that angle it was hard to judge the overall impression of the man. He wore an indigo blue silk dressing gown and shiny black leather slippers. A tiny moustache marked one side of his slack face, the thinning, unnaturally dark brown hair mussed by the fall. At his throat, a small gold chain winked. One well-manicured hand with buffed nails held a fire iron. And unless she was wrong, he couldn’t have been more than five-foot-two. A little powerhouse with a Napoleon complex? While Miriam hyperventilated in hoarse breaths, Belle rose and walked around the circular sofa arrangement. Near the wall of windows lay a large, awkward object. She stooped and reached out a tentative hand.
“Don’t touch it! I did, and now what will—”
“What are you talking about?” Belle pulled the silken cord of an ornate cut-glass chandelier, and a light halo fell around her feet. “My God. He was hit with a piece of Inuit sculpture?” Carved from green soapstone, easily measurable from her wood-buyer’s eye, this sixteen-inch walrus, from demure flippers to its flat-faced, whiskered muzzle, reclined on its side. A few years ago, a disturbed man had slipped past the Mounties into 66 Sussex Drive, made his way to the second floor bedrooms and threatened the Prime Minister, who had grabbed a similar piece to defend himself. His wife, calm as a psychiatric nurse, had talked the man into surrendering a penknife.
Noting the bloody smears on the artifact, she backed away and stood next to Miriam as the silence expanded. The metronomic ticking echoing down the hall reminded her of a childhood song: “And it stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died.”
“Let’s just leave. Someone else can find him. Elena, his cleaning lady tomorrow morning. No one needs to know. We can wipe off the—”
Belle shook her head, attempting to quell a rising panic about her friend’s behaviour. Miriam had been gutsy enough to bark down a mugger in Toronto who had tried to steal her purse on the way back to her hotel after a performance of Mamma Mia. Why was she acting so illogically? Possibly because her beloved was cooling under the laws of forensic science, and she had already incriminated herself. How long had he been dead before Miriam arrived?
“Then you may be eliminating the murderer’s prints, too. And Melibee may have told someone about the dinner, jotted the date in a planner. Steve’s mentioned details like that more than once. If you tell the truth, why would anyone suspect you? What’s the motive?” Her eyes glazing over, without even a blink, Miriam clutched a tufted pillow like a lifesaver, growing oddly quiet.
Belle used her cellphone to dial Steve’s number, speaking briefly about the discovery. Then, like a sensible Scot, she went to the kitchen and located a box of
Earl Grey tea. Brewing up a pot in a china version of an English cottage, aromatic bergamot steam puffing from the chimney, she ladled pure buckwheat honey into their cups, stirring slowly. Melibee had a tempting pantry, bearnaise sauce, asparagus soup, canned truffles and goose liver pâté. What might his fridge hold? Then she chastened herself for letting a magpie mind run on in the stark face of tragedy. He was a victim, after all, deserving of respect. As far as she knew.
Miriam sat mute, removed to another world, while Belle, whose attempts at conversation fell like leaden shots, browsed through Architectural Digest, Harper’s, and Antique Journal, American magazines too rich for her blood. She moved into a small den, where paintings clustered one wall, mostly nudes in a variety of styles. Rousseau’s recliner in “The Dream,” Cezanne’s crouching “A Modern Olympia,” even a disturbing Klimt’s “Danaë,” a huge thigh dominating the picture. She backed away from a crotch close-up entitled “Origin of the World” by Corbet but had to admire the wit and technique. Some of the waif-like anorexic Picassos, a hole in one torso, were amusing, and the Degas ballerinas confirmed a taste for much younger women.
Twenty-five minutes later, buzzed up from below, Steve remarked to Belle at the door: “I actually finished my dinner this time.”
With a shrug, she pointed down the hall. As they entered the living room, he turned on more lights, pulled out a notebook and parked at one end of the sofa, frowning at the tea display. “I know this isn’t easy, Miriam, but you were first on the scene. Here’s the routine. While I take notes, go over everything you noticed, then start again, and I’ll ask questions. Slow as you want.”
The woman forced her mouth around one word at a time. “I came. About seven. He was there. Like that.” She pointed to the body, squeezed her eyes shut and refused to continue, though he prompted her several times.
“Shock,” Belle mouthed. “That’s why I made—”
A muscle on his temple twitched, and his voice mixed patience with frustration. “If it were anyone else, I’d ask you to come to the station right now, Miriam. But under the circumstances, it can wait until Monday.” He took sets of their fingerprints with a small kit, providing Handiwipes for cleanup. Oblivious to the movements, Miriam was less responsive than a zombie, her hands falling limply after Belle cleaned each finger.
Minutes later, clatter filled the hall, voices, boots sucked off. White coats and paper overalls of the crime scene analysts. The roll of a gurney. Miriam remained silent, her eyes vacant. Then she began to rock back and forth.
“That’s the coroner come to certify the death. Take her home before she . . .” Steve said, cocking a thumb at the body. “When this settles down, we’ll need to know all about Mr. Elphinstone.”
Forcing Miriam into her coat was like dressing a large, pliable child, but luckily the boots had zippers. Belle was surprised at the fox jacket, not that Miriam was anti-fur, but it seemed rich for her bank account. Recent investment profits perhaps. Casting a last look at Melibee, her friend began weeping uncontrollably. Belle found the Neon’s keys in her purse on a hall table and drove her home, steadying her as they moved across the icy lot to the lobby of her two-bedroom apartment near Junction Creek in New Sudbury.
“Do you want me to call Rosanne?” Belle asked as she opened the door.
Miriam hung up her coat with a devastated look, smoothing the fur like stroking a sleeping baby. Then she answered in a toneless voice, “I’ll be fine. I’m sorry I—just go home, please.”
Like the lone character on stage as the curtain fell, Belle called for a taxi and stared out the window until it arrived fifteen minutes later. Vague sounds issued from the bathroom, taps, clinks, drawers, so she assumed that Miriam had settled in. After collecting her van at the condo, Belle wondered if she shouldn’t have insisted that her friend stay with her for the weekend. Big trouble lay ahead. Melibee hadn’t clunked himself with a ten-pound carving and dropped it fifteen feet away. Who could have wanted the man dead? She was beginning to have suspicions about those all-too-lucrative stock opportunities.
On Monday morning, with Miriam silent, either a good or very bad sign, Belle pushed into a dark office with no signature aroma of freshly perked coffee to meet her frozen nose. Miriam rarely missed a day. Feverish with the flu, she’d had to be beaten from the door more than once. Fingers on the faltering pulse of Palmer Realty, the woman was an absolute necessity. After shucking off her coat, Belle made the coffee with studied nonchalance, which dissipated after the third cup as she began watching the clock. After such an ordeal, had Miriam slept in?
Finally, she succumbed to worry and called, listening to twenty unanswered rings. Then the door opened, and Steve walked in, a deadly serious look in his dark eyes, a memory of his Ojibwa heritage and Scottish grandfather in Western Ontario. “Sit down. I have some bad news,” he said as her blood pressure hit Zone Red.
Protocol over, he explained the events of the weekend, official activity behind closed doors. “I’m on my way to Miriam’s for another interview. As a favour, I’m asking you to come—”
“Are you going to arrest her? That fast? Can’t you see that she couldn’t harm a blackfly if her life depended on it?” Her flailing arm spilled the coffee across the desk, soaking a sheaf of papers. Blindly, she blotted them with a pile of tissues.
“Stop panicking. Of course we don’t make arrests that quickly. Why waste the time of the courts until a case is locked and loaded? But even you must admit that things aren’t looking good. That statue was identified as the murder weapon, and the only prints are hers.”
An orderly world shuddered and broke apart like the off-kilter merry-go-round in Strangers on a Train. Until that moment, Belle hadn’t imagined the possibilities of Miriam killing anyone, but beneath the sensible, sang-froid exterior lay passionate depths. Miriam had an abiding contempt for child molesters, had watched her former husband slug the family uncle when he’d tried to continue his historic abuse with Rosanne. Even so, what could have caused her anger? The merry trio had been off to dinner. “That’s absurd! She was in love with him.” At Steve’s calculating look, she stopped short. Giving him information was one thing, providing ammunition that might hurt Miriam was another. Passion was one of the world’s paramount murder motives. “Each man kills the thing he loves,” according to Oscar.
He poured himself a cup of black coffee, warming his hands on Miriam’s “Are We Having Fun Yet?” mug. “Not a very discriminating choice for our mutual friend. Elphinstone is linked with phony investment schemes in Vancouver and Calgary going back twenty years. He slithered out of the major charges, but spent a year in Club Fed on the coast. Guess he didn’t like the ocean view or the tennis courts because we haven’t any recent records.”
“Invest . . . but she was doing fine. Last time we talked . . .” she said. Suddenly cold at possibilities, she recalled her friend’s unguarded trust and infatuation. Or was she trivializing Miriam’s feelings, smug in her solitary, risk-free world of tramping forest paths with Freya? Suddenly she felt mean-spirited.
Steve’s eyes narrowed with interest. “So she did invest with him. How much?” But Belle merely shook her head. “Apparently he was quite the ladies’ man, a lucrative avenue. Cozied up with wealthy widows,” he added, giving her a sidelong glance. “A bit older than you, I’d say.”
The drive across town in the unmarked Crown Vic took only minutes. Except for the manager chipping ice from the sidewalk with a wicked pick, all was quiet at Miriam’s six-suite apartment building. Her Neon sat out back, blanketed with the weekend’s snowfall, which made Belle increasingly uneasy. As they got out of the vehicle, she said, “I hope she’s OK. She hasn’t answered the phone. Why did I leave her like a sick dog licking her wounds?”
After climbing the stairs, they stood before the door to 3B and knocked to a hollow response. With a shrug, Steve tried the knob, which turned easily. Belle held her breath, knowing that townies never left homes unlocked. The door opened into the living room, a scene
of chaos. Newspapers were scattered on the floor amid islands of tissues and crumpled mail. Vinyl records had been sailed against the wall, some broken, others scratched or bent. Miriam’s tastes appeared to run to Johnnie Mathis and late Sinatra. Belle placed a battered LP onto the table. “The Twelfth of Never” was the featured song.
Then with a nod from Steve, she went down the hall. In the bathroom, towels smeared with make-up littered the floor, along with tatters of the lovely apricot dress, as if Miriam had rent her garments in classical fashion. Signs of illness appeared on the toilet bowl rim. An empty pill bottle had rolled into a corner, a tap dripped. Suddenly Belle was reminded of the shower scene in Psycho. Shivering, she opened a connecting door into Rosanne’s old room, posters of Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in pectoral poses. Pink was the dominant colour scheme, the quilt a pastiche of teddy bears.
A small groan led her to the larger bedroom, where Miriam lay face down, her head half-covered with a pillow. “Are you asleep?” Belle asked foolishly, touching her naked, freckled shoulder like a timid lover. There was no response, just a sour reek of gin, that telltale juniper from the innocent woods. Gently, Belle turned her friend onto her back. The curly grey hair lay in damp mats, and Miriam’s skin, creased from pressure, looked sallow as beeswax. When her lids fluttered open for a second, her eyes were dull coins, as if she were in another painless country. Belle spoke her name twice, three times, getting no response.
“Is she here or not? What’s taking you so long?” Steve appeared in the doorway, suddenly alert. “Christ, a suicide attempt? Better let me handle this.”
As he shoved her out of the way, Belle moved to the other side of the bed, her foot connecting with something which clinked against the frame. “Call a doctor, Steve, or we’ll have another corpse on our hands.”