by Lou Allin
She tried to sit forward in reply, but surrendered to gravity, adjusting herself around a new broken spring in the massive leather easy chair, yards of duct tape rendering the colour more grey than chestnut brown. “Swings both . . . well, he sure—”
“Not like that. I’m talking corruption. Couple of years ago, he took a questionable transfer from Toronto. You know the rumours about that force. The union’s stronger than the US marines. Must have been a super bad boy.” His dark brow contracted. “You could file a complaint, but frankly—”
“Right. No witnesses. No fingerprints. No DNA.” Belle’s spine felt an icy spear thrust. Dangerous animals should be left alone, and usually preferred it. Unlike the bears in her territory, though, Brian wasn’t spending the winter in a den. Steve had always been her Superman, but he wasn’t a bodyguard. Was she asking too much? “You don’t have to accuse him directly, just let on that you’ve heard about my problems.”
“I can see that you’re scared, and that’s a first for you.” He rose slowly and put a hand on her shoulder, calming her heart. “Is ‘lean on him’ the right phrase?”
She breathed a sigh of relief, ashamed that she’d worried about seeking help. Big brother, younger or not, would come through. “That’s all I ask. Forgive my barging in. You have a job to do, and here I am bother—”
“You sound humble for a change. Work on that.” His eyes crinkled, a glimmer of amusement passing his stoic copper-coloured face, then seriousness. “You must be upset because I haven’t heard a word about Miriam. You’re not planning anything questionable, are you? She has counsel, and you don’t want to spoil the case.”
“Business as usual.” Still winding down from her distress, she wiped the corner of her eye, a traitor to her casual posture as she stood.
She left with the feeling that Brian would get the message, lick his emotional wounds or do whatever men did, and find another target. Maybe the next woman would be smarter, practiced in the art of fending off the affections of a testosterone factory without angering the foreman. Too much to hope that he’d be leaving town soon, or that she wouldn’t see him again. Under the constrictions of winter, Sudbury was small enough that you couldn’t even park without notice, let alone hide.
Meanwhile, she had an appointment with a Lady of the Club Carol had mentioned. Hilda Maenpaa lived in an apartment at the Finlandia Hoivakoti Nursing Home Complex in the Minnow Lake area. On the large grounds, a half-scale Scandinavian style church, its neat white clapboard pushing up a steeple, stood proudly, lending an old world flavour, as if Pastor Max Von Sydow were about to summon parishioners in medieval cini-Europe. She rang the buzzer at the ground floor apartment. In a spotless dirndl apron, Hilda greeted her, a trace of flour dusting her pointed chin. “Just in time. Pulla is fresh hot from the oven.”
Only too happy to cooperate as she set out plates and cups, the wiry woman said that she’d belonged to the club more for social reasons than financial gain. As she sat in a maple rocker, leaving Belle a comfortable loveseat, she explained that her husband had died after their savings had vanished into expensive medical treatments. “Arne was a welder in a small garage. No prescription coverage. And he wasn’t sixty-five, you see, to qualify for Medicare. He needed treatments with Remicaid for rheumatoid arthritis. Six thousand dollars an infusion, ten times in all, made his last year bearable, but left me only a small widow’s pension.”
Belle shook her head in sympathy, complimenting Hilda on the pulla, a tender yeast bread flavoured with aromatic cardamom. Following the old woman’s lead, she had dunked it into the cup of potent coffee. “And Melibee Elphinstone? So you didn’t—”
“His investments sounded too good to be true. But we got to talking after he made his presentation at Mabel’s.”
“Mabel’s? Could you give me her phone number?” Belle was linking connections like a paper chain.
“Pneumonia took her last winter,” she said. “Anyway, as I was saying, he helped me get this apartment.”
“Helped you?” Belle cocked her head. Did the wheeler-dealer have a soft side? She suspected that he’d paid off Carol to avoid suspicion. “I don’t understand.”
“Thanks to him, I got seven thousand dollars for the down payment on this apartment. It’s all I need.” She rose and went to a china cabinet where she retrieved a silver plate. “Uncle Eino’s legacy. He owned vaudeville houses in Montreal. Parties like you wouldn’t believe. All the big stars came through. Burns and Allen. Jack Benny. Even Bob Hope.”
Eleven more identical plates from Tiffany and Company had been her pride. Belle admired the artful ten-inch beauty in the Chrysanthemum pattern. Melibee had given her a descriptive receipt, kept them for a month, then brought her the cash “fair and square.” Clearly Hilda cast no aspersions on the man. “I kept this as a memento. That’s what he suggested, seeing that parting from them all would have broken my heart.”
“Beautiful workmanship,” Belle said, tracing a finger along the delicate pattern, nearly warm to the touch. “I have a love-hate relationship with the Royal Doulton figurines my mother left me. White elephants. When I finally sold Paisley Shawl to a client, I started to miss her like a real person.”
“I have a feeling that antiques were his true love, much more interesting than finance. He ran an ad in the Sudbury Star looking for choice pieces. Told me he got lots of calls.”
Belle perked up at another possibility. “Do you remember anything specific?”
Hilda paused, wrinkling her brow and searching her memory. “I do believe that he mentioned visiting an old hunting lodge up near Cartier. That’s where he was heading when he dropped off my cheque.”
Finally, someone who wouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Had Melibee given her a fair price? What were these striking pieces worth, and where had he sold them? Belle could tap the Internet. As for the lodge, she made a mental note to ask Jessie. Her memory of properties went back decades. Any bit of information about his activities, no matter how small, could reap benefits. The big picture lay in the details.
Knowing that she would be late, Belle called Ed to let the dogs out around six. When she got home two hours later, remembering in the last slippery mile that a third night of hamburger macaroni casserole awaited her, she found a note taped to her door. “Pooches at our house for porketta. And so are you.” Hélène DesRosiers—born to feed the world.
Despite the snack, Belle’s stomach was churning from coffee overload. Maybe she could borrow a Tagamet from their burgeoning medicine cabinet. After shovelling off her garbage box for the morning collection, she hiked a half-mile to their home, scanning the stars to unwind the patterns of life below. Orion and his belt (a ruder dangling part, according to Ed) winked directly overhead and a gleaming gibbous moon reflected on the whitened landscape to usher her past the many snowed-in summer cottages. Recent retirees, Ed, the owner of a plumbing business and Hélène his manager, they were a friendly sounding board, a security system and a general store in an ad hoc community where everyone was handy with something.
The outside lights illuminated the backyard, Hélène’s small oak tree loaded with homemade plastic juice jar bird feeders. Their chocolatey-red mutt Rusty skidded down the drive, splaying upside down for a belly rub. Freya and Strudel were duelling over a ring of birch bark, the poodle stopping to “kack kack” a noxious pool of debris. Belle gave her an evil stare and turned to Hélène, laughing from the porch. “Is this normal?”
“Dead give-away you never had kids. They eat everything not nailed down, including dust bunnies.”
“Excellent lifestyle decision on my part. Rug cleaning’s not on my resumé.”
Ed stoked a cozy fire in the woodstove, then joined them at the table next to an industrial-sized jar of Christmas cookies. His belly hadn’t suffered during the holidays, pushing against the jingle bell suspenders like a twenty-five-pound bag of rice. When Hélène occupied herself with the oven, he sneaked pieces of shortbread.
“Sorry we didn’t wai
t. Ever since we retired, Ed’s got us eating earlier and earlier every day. Soon it’ll be dinner at dawn.” Hélène passed a steaming plate of Italian marinated pork shoulder, along with baby carrots and scalloped potatoes brimming with Swiss cheese. From the relish plate, Belle selected a piece of pickled eggplant, creepily fleshlike to the teeth but addictive.
Hélène poured from an unlabelled wine bottle. “Try this zinfandel.”
Belle took a sip and managed a compliment, despite the tannic edge. “Frisky. Make it yourself?”
“My grape-stomping days are over. The knock-three-times place in the Donovan. Someday I’ll take you there. That green door doesn’t open to anyone but an Italian.” Her mother’s name had been Amalfi.
When she caught them up on the news, a fifteen-minute soap opera, Hélène’s pleasantly creased face registered concern. “Poor Miriam. I recall that lovely quilt she made you. But surely it won’t go to trial? Does she have a lawyer yet?”
Belle shrugged. “ ‘I hope not’ to the first question. ‘Maybe yes, maybe no’ to the second. Our Ottawa wondergirl isn’t impressing me. Without getting myself in trouble with Steve, I’m looking for information to help clear her name.”
“Sounds like he got what he deserved. Scumbag, cheating all those poor old folk,” Ed said, slotting his own sixty-six years into a separate category. “Never see us risking our life savings. GICs good enough for a country boy.”
“Your grandpère had a farm, Ed. You grew up in Windsor.” Hélène turned toward Belle. “So what have you found?”
“Phoney investments were only one avenue. Apparently he sold antiques on commission. Same hunting ground. Seventy plus. The one woman I contacted did get a fair price, but she could be an exception.”
After elbowing Ed to clear the table, Hélène placed a pile of swirly pastry on the table. Baked in a tube shape, it had been sliced into rounds. “The North is a place to buy, not sell. I saw a ‘Jack O’Bean’ chair advertised in Northern Life once. Even in Toronto, it’s a small market for expensive pieces.”
“How about that there chandelier of Aunt Marie-Josée’s?” With hands quicker than a magician’s, Ed downloaded several pieces of dessert, marbled with brown sugar.
Hélène’s eyes grew fond. “An oil lamp, Ed. Shiny brass with a thumb-pressed ruby glass dome. It turned her bedroom into a pope’s bordello. A comical sight with the prie-dieu she knelt on every night.”
“Got us down to that TV treasures show in Buffalo and sold it to a fellow from Noo York City. Two thousand dollars. And that’s American bucks, don’t melt in your hand like ours.”
Hélène went to the desk and retrieved a card. “Verity Antiques. Bill Evans, Owner,” it read.
Belle tucked it away and tried the pastry. Butter, of course. Melt in the mouth. “What are these? My mother used to make them with leftover pastry.”
Hélène traded grins with her husband. “An old Quebec recipe. Pets de soeurs. Nun’s Farts Shawinigan Style.”
Later that night, the phone rang as the green digital light on the clock-radio blinked 11:49. Still relegated to the basement, Belle shoved the poodle aside and bounced out of the sofabed, bruising her knee on the dresser as she identified the caller. “Some people have to get up before noon, Jack. Have mercy.”
His voice sounded hurt, but at least the words weren’t slurred. “I thought you’d be pleased. It’s lock and load time at the bars. Guy at the Solid Gold gave me an address on Debby.”
The background noise of raucous music and yee-haws drowned out his voice. From afar she heard a giggling voice calling for Jaaaaaaackie. “Where? In town?”
“Naw. She runs a kennel out by Sturgeon. Some dumbass name. Jaws and Craws, Claws and Paws.”
Thirteen
The next morning they drove busy Highway 17 toward Ottawa. Belle grumbled at the single-lane traffic keeping her speed under ninety klicks. “TransCanada Highway. Can you believe it? Not one four-laner crosses the country. The U.S. has at least seven, and that’s only horizontal.”
Jack shrugged. “Sixteen lanes on the 401 through Toronto. Second class citizens up here. The South takes our resources and wants to pay with garbage.” He was referring to the controversial plan to ship overburdened Toronto’s trash to abandoned open pit mines in Kirkland Lake.
Forty-five minutes later they reached Sturgeon Falls, a French Canadian farming community, where the rushing waters of the River Veuve powered a timber mill. Rows of shiny snowmobiles lined up beside tractors and heavy equipment in sales lots on the main street. Noticing a local meat market, Belle stopped for a pound of cretons, a luscious pork fat pâté which melted in the mouth and latched onto thighs like a lamprey. Two tourtières, savory with herbs, would go into her freezer.
“Mimsy used to make these meat pies. What does that lawyer say? When’s she getting out?” Jack asked.
Belle tossed him a glance. “With your worldly experience, you’ll recall that she needs to be arrested first, God forbid, then arraigned on charges. A bail hearing will follow. I’m worried about that.”
“Ready cash. Know what you mean. Hey, maybe I can rob a bank.” He unrolled his toque to reveal a face mask with four holes. At her groan, he added, “Just kidding.”
“Follow those paw signs,” Jack said as Belle turned onto a side road. From there they travelled another five miles through stands of old maples crossed by frozen streams, passing an érablière advertising hay rides and spring sugar bush tours.
Paws and Claws welcomed them with a wooden cartoon dog resembling Pluto. They entered the huge parking area in front of a doublewide trailer with a Bell Express-Vu pizza dish on top, behind it a set of aluminum-sided kennels with long chainlinked runs. At one side, a woman in grey camouflage wear tossed tennis balls for a gigantic white-muzzled collie, its coat immaculately groomed. “Help youse?” she asked, commanding the dog to sit at attention.
Belle found herself stuck for words. “We need to talk to you about Meli—”
“Not that bastard again? The cops gave me a hell of a time. Hey, are you friggin’ reporters?” At her hostile voice, the dog bared yellow teeth, ruffed its back, and advanced slowly with lowered head, wary eyes following their movements. Collies weren’t an attack breed, but Belle could feel fangs crushing bones.
Jack stepped forward, his hands up. “Give us a break, ma’am. We didn’t like the rat any more than you did. Our friend’s in trouble, see?” With a minimum of blunt, one- and two-syllable words, he summed up the situation with discretion. For the first time, Belle witnessed the natural savvy that Miriam had admired before his drinking problem destroyed their marriage.
Debby seemed to soften under Jack’s entreaties. As she walked with a slight limp toward the trailer, chickadees at a bird feeder on the porch scattered like flung popcorn. Inside, Belle and Jack fended off two jumping Pomeranians whose show ribbons, all blue, lined the walls. The living room was dominated by a cheap, plush sofa set covered with dog hair. A set of weights blocked the front door. Brimming ashtrays and copies of Dog Fancy and Dog World magazines littered the coffee table. The smell of stale smoke, the fumy oil furnace and the confined dogs made Belle stifle a wheeze.
As they sat at a sticky breakfast nook beside a monster box of no-name corn puffs, Debby pulled out a kit and rolled cigarettes like a magician, offering one to Jack, who lit up with interest after she removed her jacket to reveal the décolletage of a starlet and a butterfly tattoo on one breast which beckoned the eye toward the equator.
“I’d be in the same mess as your friend, Lord help her, except that my brother knows that I was home that night. We were full up that week. Twenty dogs and twelve cats. Yummy Hour’s at four, Suppies at six, Last Call Pee at eight. Mel hasn’t darkened my kennel, so to speak, in ten years. I wouldn’t recognize him if I fell over the shithead, pardon my French.” She billed a few corn puffs toward the dogs, initiating a free-for-all.
Belle pulled a female empathy face. “Sounds like you’re bitter.”
�
��Damn straight.” Dark shadows under her eyes testified to a hard life that country air would never repair. “I nearly did time in Vancouver, thanks to Mel the Elf’s con game, the lost luggage caper.”
Jack nodded, but at Belle’s confusion, Debby leaned forward like an eager teacher. “Takes three men near a fancy hotel, for starters. One in a cab to forget, ha-ha, the luggage, another who’s struck up a friendly conversation with the mark, a third to happen by. Then when the bag’s open and the dough’s there, it’s ‘Oh, wow!’ ” They rent a room somewheres, discuss options, nervous of course, ’cause they should be turning it in. But greed never fails.”
Belle seconded the emotion, but her brow wrinkled at the complexities. “And so you . . .”
Debby waved a hand, cracked fuchsia polish on the spilt nails. “The magic ingredient. Meet the innocent wife, fresh from some Alberta cow town. ‘Honey, this and that. Shouldn’t we . . .’ Worked like a charm. Real cash’s the trick. Gets a bit tense borrowing it short term from the big guys. Then the mark puts up serious bucks on trust when he ‘gets’ to take the bag to the bank for authentication.”
This world was as new to Belle as a shell game was old. “If the money’s real—”
Debby blew a series of smoke rings of geometric proportions, cocking her shaggy bleached blonde head to admire the art. “Shift the suitcase, silly. Worked twelve times. We had a snazzy apartment, a leased Caddie. ‘Time to move on, Mel. How about Calgary?’ I said. All those oil bucks.’ No go, stubborn bugger. Anyways, unlucky thirteen, a cop was posing as the tourist. I saw his gun when he was in the bathroom. We barely hauled ass out the fire escape and grabbed a cab. Broke my ankle. That was the last straw for this girl. Took the first train back here to my brother’s place and went straight . . . to the dogs.”