by Lou Allin
With Jesse in charge of the office that week, resurrecting old friends to review their realty needs, Belle called the hospital and was assured that Miriam could see visitors. On the following Monday morning, she turned left at the double snowflake complex of Science North, passing the new mega-hospital, now seventeen million dollars over budget, then the gleaming metallic buildings of Shield University, all gathered on the shores of Lake Ramsey. Upper level professionals cantilevered their designer homes along the beaches and rocky cliffs, absorbing five-figure tax bills. Very few unimproved lots remained in what once was cottage country, but at one hundred thousand dollars per fifty feet, they were money in the bank for the owners.
Though on her first visit she had merely dropped off the small suitcase, now she had time to survey the old brick sanatorium, its name a relic of the former tuberculosis institution on site. Renamed as the Northeast Mental Health Centre, the hospital sat surrounded by groves of pure white birch, peaceful and still, except for the occasional muffle of an early snowmobile on the newly frozen lake. A C-shaped set of bungalows housed a special First Nations treatment area. In front of the main doors was a weatherproof gazebo with a picnic table where smokers gathered, oblivious to the frigid temperatures.
Across from a small tuck shop called the Dandelion Café, she checked in with a blue-haired, pink-smocked volunteer at reception. Given Miriam’s name, the woman consulted a short list and then asked for identification. “Is Dr. Parr here today?” Belle asked, flashing her driver’s license.
“Take the elevator to the right to the third floor. He’s often in the lounge at this time. Can’t miss him.”
Belle followed her directions, and shortly after, entered a large room with huge windows, homey furniture, and a kitchenette. A fifty-inch television was partitioned off with soundproof panels and several armchairs. In front of a huge aquarium, a Hobbity figure traced a finger along the glass, attracting the wide-eyed attentions of a blue and yellow discus. Except for the white lab coat with a plastic pocket protector, he might have been a seventh grader.
“I used to have fish,” she said by way of introduction. “When they got too big for the tank, I donated them to Science North.”
“Ted Parr,” he said, shaking her hand warmly. “You’re here to visit a patient, I gather.”
Belle nodded, following the trail of a prehistoric plecostemos scouring the glass like a diligent janitor. “Miriam MacDonald.”
He flopped onto a sectional sofa and patted the seat, fixing her with a broad smile. “You’re Belle. Miriam has told me so much about you.”
Joining him in embarrassment, she made the obligatory sounds of humility. On cursory examination, Parr seemed barely thirty, with smooth baby skin, short brown hair, and one discreet gold earring. Yet the wisdom of his jade green eyes creased with laugh lines added years. His voice strong but sensitive, he betrayed no clinical confidences, merely assured her that Miriam would be glad to see her. “Keep the conversation upbeat,” he advised, picking up a clipboard as he looked at his Mickey Mouse watch. “She’s fragile, despite her bravado.”
A door at the end of the lounge opened, and Belle blinked. Miriam seemed to have shrunk, or was it the loose outfit? Institutional food could be a turnoff. She should have hit Tim’s for . . . then hot tears ran down her face as they embraced.
Belle looked into Miriam’s eyes, shadowed but unwavering. “Frail” could never describe her friend, but ten lost pounds had done a number. She shuffled for words, feared that she might stutter. “How are the meals? I’m sorry I haven’t sent . . . didn’t bring . . .”
Miriam passed her a tissue from a handy box on the end table. “Wouldn’t you think of food before anything else? Let’s sit down. I haven’t been walking much.”
They chose two armchairs with a view of the lake. From wall speakers, a Brahms string quartet played softly. “At least the music is decent,” Belle said, proceeding one baby step at a time. Should she even mention Melibee?
“Ted’s idea. The classics are relaxing, at least to my age group. His sessions have helped a lot.” Her voice seemed vaguely slurred but under tight control. She wore cotton pants and a cardigan over a Shield University T-shirt with a toothy beaver brandishing a hockey stick. Miriam’s sense of humour hadn’t vanished, or was she merely prisoner of the random choices Belle had made when packing that suitcase?
“Do you need anything else from the apartment?”
“You did fine. Thanks for the clothes and quilting book. And those movie tapes.”
Belle knew Miriam loved mysteries, and in haste that night, without a thought about her criminal situation, had selected more than one tale of vicious murder.
Miriam held out one hand, straight except for a tiny quaver of the little finger. “Damn meds, a necessary poison, they claim. They give you something that makes you feel good when you have no right to. But every time I think about . . .” She swallowed and gazed toward the lake, where in the distance a cross-country skier forged along with a leaping black Lab. “My God! Where’s Strudel?” She choked back a sob. “What a mess I am.”
Belle passed her the tissue box. “Your poodle is at my place. Eating like a stoat, or is it shoat? Probably both.” She neglected to add that Freya had shown the pup the miracles of birch bark toys, and that the little dog had added the bulk to her diet. “I’ll keep her for as . . . until your cranky alter ego surfaces, Madame Hostie. Now here’s the good news. Jesse’s back in harness. No sub for you, of course.”
Miriam’s pale cheeks flushed, and she stared at the floor. “I’m ashamed to confess that I haven’t given the office a thought. What miracle brought her back from Israel?”
Belle made the sign of the cross, then switched to a complicated star of David. “Loaves and fishes to follow after the news at five. She’s already logged two old dolls who want to dump the monster houses now that they’re widows.” Untrue, but it coaxed a smile from Miriam.
Her eyes slightly pink at the corners but penetrating, Miriam took her hand in a rare gesture. “I didn’t do it. I couldn’t.”
“Of course. You’re all bark and no bite.” She squeezed back, tallying the evidence that Miriam had been deeply disturbed. Forgetting the job Belle could understand. Sometimes she’d like to do the same. But the poodle? Were there hidden depths to her friend that she didn’t want to probe? Who had killed Melibee?
At a nearby card table, where three people sat, a spoon clinked on a glass. A chubby woman in a sweater set with a string of pearls rose with a book in her hand. Lipstick had been clumsily applied in a clownish fashion.
“Poor lady. She does this every day at the same time.” Miriam whispered as she cocked a surreptitious thumb at the audience, one snoring Afro-Canadian man, a spaced-out teenager, and a thin woman playing solitaire, her mouth working like a hungry bloodsucker.
“Archibald Lampman’s ‘The City of the End of Things,’ 1895, a prophesy of environmental disaster. ‘Beware!’ ” the woman announced, clearing her throat. “ ‘All its grim grandeur, tower and hall,/ Shall be abandoned utterly.’ ” She paused and gestured toward a wall of grainy black and white photos of 1900 Sudbury, miners leaning on shovels by a slag pit, wooden hovels in the background and the rising smoke of open pit fires forming a hellish background. “ ‘Nor ever living thing shall grow, /Nor trunk of tree, nor blade of grass.’ ”
Belle observed quietly, “The Chamber of Commerce wouldn’t like this performance after the regreening campaign. Who is this woman?”
Miriam hid her mouth with her hand. “Bev Martin. High school English teacher. On stress leave in her thirty-fifth year on the job. Frankly, I think it’s going to be permanent.”
With the final post-apocalyptic image of the poem in her head, the abandoned town guarded by a “grim idiot at the gate,” Belle found herself applauding, along with a few appreciative patients.
Relieved for the moment at Miriam’s recovery, she returned to the office to find a banquet: chopped chicken livers, matzo crac
kers, pepper salad, and bananas from Costa Rica. “Union grown, of course. And here’s The Sudbury Star,” Jesse said, handing her the page with their ads. “I caught a typo. Something of interest on the front page, too.” Her wrinkled mouth twitched as she brought a steaming cup of herbal tea from an assortment of boxes by the abandoned coffee maker. Then she logged onto the computer, shoving Miriam’s foot roller aside with an annoyed look.
Belle gulped at the “beadrooms” in one listing, then unfolded page one. “LOCAL INVESTMENT COUNSELLOR’S EMPIRE COLLAPSES,” it read. “Less like a house of cards than a mountain of matchsticks.” Melibee Elphinstone, found bludgeoned to death (three words always used together), had been operating a variation on a Ponzi scheme, placating older suckers with largesse from new fish, the article explained. Aside from a few flyers in risky software companies reduced to penny stocks thanks to the tech implosion, the tempting portfolios he had amassed were entirely fictitious. Over one hundred people, mostly pensioners, had entrusted sums reaching over three million dollars. Marilyn Rice, seventy-five, said, “He was the son I never had. I mortgaged my home and gave him everything.” As for the penthouse, it had been rented, along with his powder blue Lexus, and even the furniture and art. Belle bit her lip until it hurt. Her friend’s savings were gone. One hope remained. A brief examination of his records led investigators to believe that some assets might lie in offshore bank accounts in Turks and Caicos, sunny, impoverished islands which a few years ago had asked to be annexed to Canada, a consummation devoutly to be wished as far as many were concerned.
She picked up the phone to call Steve for details and then decided to let him alone, declining to face another scornful refusal. Miriam would be released soon. What then? Between mouthfuls of the peppery pâté, full of minced onion and hardboiled egg, she summed up the situation to Jesse. “I know a few local lawyers,” she said, “but their focus is on civil cases, real estate lawsuits, not violent crime.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Jesse said, finishing a cracker with a burp and patting her mouth, leaving large cerise lipstick blossoms on the serviette. “My great-niece Celeste in Ottawa . . .”
Seven
En route to Rainbow Country Nursing Home, Belle stopped at the former Granny’s Kitchen, now Our Place, a local restaurant in Garson, which changed hands, but luckily not menus, every few years. The new owner, an eager young woman with energy and optimism, had readied her father’s special order: minced chicken, gravy and mashed potatoes, cherry pie to follow.
Juggling the styrofoam boxes, Belle navigated the well salted path to the two-storey residence, formerly a series of bachelor apartments. Unlike the impersonal high rises that warehoused Sudbury’s increasing elderly, Rainbow was frayed at the edges like an old carpet, but offered maximum personal care. Recently the Finnish community had bought in and begun renovating, adding a state-of-the-art tub room with mechanized hoists. Eventually all tenants would be relocated in the final expansion of their Minnow Lake retirement complex in town.
“Rumour has it you’re an honourary Finn now,” she said to her father, spruce in a Blue Jays shirt and practical navy washpants.
“Scot, Finn, same thick blood. Who else could stand the cold?” George Palmer answered, his handsome lips in a pout. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
“I left word at the desk that Tuesday, Tuesday had been moved to Thursday, Thursday,” she said, wondering in the recent miasma if she actually had. Due to periods of confusion from small strokes known as TIA’s, followed by bills listing calls to Malaysia, Cape Verde and Tasmania (to congratulate Errol Flynn on his marriage to Lupe Velez, the Mexican Spitfire), he was no longer allowed a telephone. She tucked a handy bib under his chin, moving to the small bathroom to fill his mug with cold water. The cup portrayed him with arm around his zaftig Italian girlfriend in happier days in Florida. Mary LaGrotta wrote regularly with news of their Life Goes On social club, but it saddened Belle to think that they wouldn’t meet again. “I do pretty well, blizzards aside,” answered Belle.
“Are you going to starve your old man?” he demanded, his thick white hair freshly cut and a tiny nick on his baby smooth chin, revealing a timely shave. Her regular visits moved him to the front of the crowded care line which stretched the vigilant staff, harsh logistics of an aging region and a health care system ravaged by conservative bean counters in the legislature at Queen’s Park in Toronto. Residents were allotted mere minutes per day with a qualified nurse.
“Hold your horses, Gary Cooper! It’s barely high noon,” Belle said, opening the boxes and settling into a plastic scoop chair as he tucked in, filling the room with the fragrant aroma of gravy.
His ever-present TV was blasting out a news show, so she lowered the sound to normal. Munching a bun filled with tender slabs of back bacon slathered with honey mustard, she noticed fresh paint and new tile in his room. Through the door ambled a plump bichon frisé, black nose testing the air. “Puffball. Hungry lad,” her father said, holding out one gnarly hand for a lick. “Nothing for you from this. We miss our shrimp.” After a recent, near-fatal choking incident, the legendary seafood delight had passed into history, but to him food was food, the more the better. Every meal her mother had ever placed on the table had been his favourite.
“You probably fed him half your toast at breakfast,” she observed. The recreation director’s dog performed pet therapy duties and added casual cheer to the place, dancing to guard its feet from the shuffles of unsteady residents.
Minutes later, after nearly inhaling the food and draining his cup, he blotted his mouth carefully and met her eyes with mild suspicion. “Cherry pie, like your mother’s?”
“À la mode, Captain Bligh.” She cleared the laptop on the cruel but necessary gerry-chair-jailor that kept him from wandering and falling, shoved the trash into a wastebasket, and set up the dessert, mashing the crust into the ice cream as he drummed knobby fingers.
“So why not Tuesday, Tuesday?” he asked, using the peculiar double language that often signalled increasing senility. Would a time come when they’d no longer be able to talk, much less reminisce about seeing “every film ever made,” his unchallenged boast? On the dresser was a snappy photo of himself and her mother, circa 1945. A tweed suit and briar pipe for him, an ocelot coat with padded shoulders and Andrews Sisters coiffured rolls for her.
“A blip in my scheduling. Murder, for example.”
“Murder most foul?” His shaggy eyebrows ruffled like fussy, albino bees at the prospect. “Do we need to call in Maggie Rutherford to comb for clues?”
She laughed, recalling mutual delight at the beloved elderly English actress who moved like a bag of toys. Until he retired to Florida, his job as a theatre booker, a kid’s dream, had glued them together twice weekly for a sneak preview double feature in the company screening room. “I’m serious. The victim was Melibee Elphinstone. A . . . friend of Miriam’s. She’s my partner at work.”
“At Harold’s business?” For a moment, she thought he might ask about his brother. Often his timeline warped, as he recalled Hitler invading the Sudetenland, but not the current Prime Minister. Still, many school children thought Canada had a president. His downcast eyes spoke more than words. “I forgot. He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Not “passed on” or “gone to his reward.” At eighty-seven, in a speeded-up world where faces came and went, a room heavy with identity one day, vacant briefly the next, the silent but telling witness an empty row on the resident board by the nursing station, her father spoke without artifice. “I miss him, too. But Jesse will get us back on track,” Belle said. “Do you remember her?”
He glowered, pounding the table until his mug spilled. “Ben-Gurion toss that uppity she-male out of Israel? Every time Harold had us over for holiday dinners, she’d start an argument. Civil rights, feminism, health care, American imperialism. Five opinions seven days to Sunday and never let a man get a word in edgewise. Don’t know how my sainted brother stood her.”
“A bit outspoken for your pampered personality,” she observed, a smile flickering the corner of her mouth. Through the seven ages of man, all his needs had been attended to promptly, passed from mother to wife to girlfriend to her. When her mother had died and his abilities had flagged, she’d been lucky to arrange his quick return to Canada.
“So don’t keep me in suspenders. What happened to the guy? Chopped up like Evelyn Dick’s poor husband? Jesus, she could still be on the loose.” Revving up his historical engine, he related for the umpteenth time how the torso of John Dick, railway worker, had been discovered in 1946 in Hamilton, followed by the corpse of a baby boy in their house. Evelyn had been sentenced to hang, but served little more than ten years, released with a new identity in 1958. Rumour said that she went on to enjoy a prosperous career as a businesswoman.
“She’d be as old as you. Any new arrivals?”
He did a double take, then read the humour in her voice and grunted.
After listening to a synopsis about Elphinstone’s murder, none of the gore spared, he furrowed his broad, freckled brow. “And Miriam found the stiff. Saw plenty when I worked at the Toronto Morgue. First job at fifteen. Anyway, seems you need a handle on this Meli . . . whosit. Was he one of those?” He waved his hand theatrically. “Don’t want to say ‘gay,’ like in The Gay Divorcée. Fred and Ginger. Why do people wreck words by changing the meaning?”
“Political correctness, Father. And speaking of words, as you recall, the original title was The Gay Divorce, but the Production Code forced a change.” Despite his refusal to adapt new jargon, he’d been a liberal parent. When she’d introduced Jim Chan, her prom date, he’d asked what church the boy attended, and when told Methodist, patted his brilliantined head.
“Steve Davis, my friend on the force, will keep me up to date.” She doubted that but wanted to sound confident. He liked Miriam, who visited him on the rare occasions Belle left town for more than a weekend.