by Lou Allin
“And what made Melibee come here?” Belle asked.
“He tried to get back with me more than once. Promised me that things would be different. Then I guess he settled down with his new scams. The pickings were so rich that he couldn’t resist.”
“And you never divorced? How strange,” Belle observed with a crooked smile.
“I got some Mexican special. Ever been in Ciudad Juarez? That means city in Spanish. But it didn’t take in Canada, so I learned from the cops. Guess Mel never knew. Joke’s on him that with no will, I’ll get the goods. Joke’s on me that there aren’t any.”
“So who do you think killed him?”
She stubbed out the cigarette and ground it to bits in a saucer. “I could have, if I held a grudge. Running from the police took ten years off my life. Truth to tell, I was glad to be rid of Harry Peebles. That was his real name.”
Harry Peebles? Jack was flashing Debby approving glances, as if a date might be in order later. Then from the back of the trailer came a thump, a guttural glug of a toilet. The dogs barked in tandem, and a bearlike man with a dark ponytail padded down the hall in a brown terrycloth robe, grunting as he scratched his rump. He nodded a sleepy acknowledgement, grabbed a carton of orange juice from the fridge and finished it without breathing. Then he sat quietly in a rocking chair in the living room, pulling a disassembled rifle from under the sofa and oiling a cloth. The scope was large and expensive, made to cross Bambi’s eyes at two hundred yards.
“Pesky squirrels rob my feeder.” Debby grinned Cheshire style. “Meet my brother Elmo. He’s with the army.”
Elmo’s hamhock hands could have delivered the blow to Melibee like swatting a gnat. Belle gave Jack a surreptitious kick under the table and cleared her throat. “The army, eh? On leave? I thought the base closed.”
Debby snicked her lighter into action. “The Salvation Army.”
The McDonald’s in Sturgeon was a handy stop before heading back. Belle chose a Big Mac combo with milk, and Jack doubled her order, attacking his food like a wolverine. “Strike out there, I guess. Can’t beat the Sally Ann. Bet that guy pounds a mean drum.”
Belle licked a drop of special sauce from her finger. Mayo, relish, catsup? “It’s not a total loss. Sometimes the police find someone and make the facts fit. We’re eliminating suspects one by one. Much more scientific.”
“That’s the idea?” The door opened, sending a blast of cold air to their table. Looking up, Jack choked on his sandwich and grabbed his milk carton, slurping loudly. Belle gave him a sidelong glance, then crunched the last fry, a limp imitation of Burger King’s.
Suddenly a shadow blocked sun from their view. “Jack, you old bugger. Back down south so soon?”
“Uh.” Coughing and gasping, his flailing arm spilling his drink, Jack turned plum purple. Belle tossed down her serviette and rapped his heaving back. “Should I get some water? Are you all right?”
Finally, Jack swallowed air and quieted, wiping tears from his eyes and rescuing the remains of his meal. The man gave Belle his hand, squeezing it warmly. “I’m Michel Lajeunesse, Miss. Jacky boy never mentioned you. I can see why.” A skinny man about her height, he wore a Maple Leafs jersey over work pants. His head was bald except for a steel grey Friar Tuck fringe of hair around pink oyster-shell ears.
After the confusion, Belle recalled Michel’s greeting. She turned to Jack with a vengeance, her penetrating blue-green eyes dissecting him like a worm. “So soon? You said you hadn’t been down in months!”
Michel wriggled a finger in his capacious ear and inspected the impressive result with clinical consideration, finally wiping it on his sleeve. “Met at the Boxing Day sale at Yolles over in Sudbury. Did they ship up that fifty-inch Sony OK?” Then he put an arm around a red-faced, grumbling Jack. “Guess I shoved romance off the rails.”
On the return trip, Belle maintained a studied silence. Investigating was hard enough without people having the nerve to lie, especially friends. As they passed small farms sprinkled between rock outcroppings and evergreens, transports barrelled by, spewing up clouds of salty residue. When she hit the washer, no fluid emerged. Damn. Frozen again. She thumped the steering column with disgust.
Blinded by the grime, she pulled onto a side road. Jack jumped out, grabbed a handful of fresh-fallen snow and scrubbed the windshield with his bare hands like an inspired squeegee kid. Then he got back in and gave her the sorrowful look of a basset hound who’d peed on the broadloom. “Come on, pal. Talk to me. Want to hear about when I met Shania Twain? All us guys from the mine—”
In mute response, she juiced the volume on a tape of old musicals, letting Roz Russell’s “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” burn his ears. “Your roses and candy don’t mean a damn. Everything’s coming up suspects, and you’re leading my list.”
He blew on his reddened hands, then cracked the window and lit a cigarette. “Wish they could pin it on me. My life’s nothing special. I’d do time for Mimsy any day. Trouble is, I didn’t kill the sucker.” His words floated away in the gusts.
That night, Ronald Colman’s moustache frosted over in Lost Horizon as his benighted group left the hidden paradise of Shangri-La for the icy mountains of Tibet. An icon of cinematic trust, he’d rarely played a villain, once in a hammy Othello pastiche, A Double Life, for which he was awarded an overdue but undeserved Oscar. Didn’t that duplicity fit every man in this ugly play? Melibee, Phil, now Jack. A fierce north wind howled, shaking the roof. Minus twenty-five degree temperatures were sucking warmth from the lake as fast as smoke up the chimney. More wood to be loaded soon. Would that tiny bird’s nest still be fastened to her precious maple out front when dawn arrived? It seemed to have a faith and permanence beyond man’s technology. On the rug, the poodle lay spoon-fashion with Freya.
She was finishing the last morsel of a fiery chili made with jalapeños and canned hominy between sips of Rickard’s Red ale when the phone rang. Celeste sounded subdued. “A neighbour of Melibee’s got back from Costa Rica and heard about the murder.”
“I could use a dose of the rain forest. Good for him, her, whoever. So what?”
“He saw Miriam enter the building at four, not seven. We’re in deep caca.”
Fourteen
Due for release from the hospital next week. There’s no way we can avoid an arraignment now. What a blow,” Celeste said, “Time to think about our strategies for the bail application.”
“It’s not guaranteed?” Belle couldn’t imagine the horrors of Miriam’s reaction to hard-core imprisonment. Would they let her continue out-patient therapy at the San?
“Chances are on our side. The onus is on the Crown to show why the accused should be detained. Heavy drug trafficking, a public danger, illegal alien, that sort of thing.”
“No problem there. So how will they charge her?”
A chewing sound crossed the lines as if an agitated beaver had taken a conference call. Celeste’s blunt fingers tapped Morse code on the phone. “It’s a crap shoot. Let’s go worst case scenario. First degree murder. If she had a million bucks, she might never see a day behind bars. Poor, maybe life, though that’s twenty years. Middle class could go either way.”
Whatever the dice roll, Miriam needed to be free. Belle pondered the bleak financial considerations. She’d have to cash in mutual funds, maybe liquidate the shattered Science and Technology investments, declare a capital loss for a humiliating change.
“Are you still there, or have you gone to sleep?” Celeste’s annoying voice broke into her thoughts.
For once, she didn’t want to get off the phone until she got better answers. “How reliable is this witness? Can we account for bad vision, senility, booze, drugs, anything which might have caused a mistake?”
“Get real. The man’s a fifty-year-old optometrist. One step down from the late Mother Teresa.” Celeste uttered a string of words in apparent Yiddish, which Belle caught only phonetically. Zane, zane, zane something. “After all my hard work. Her deceptio
n from the start. Of course, that does make the case more challenging. I’ll get back to you. I have a massage early in the morning if this town ever wakes up. Probably some dimwit high school dropout with a plastic vibrator.”
Belle stared at the empty receiver, then strangled it with its cord as the bearer of bad news. Instead of mere shock, was that why Miriam had been so stricken? If she’d been there all afternoon, she had to have witnessed the crime. Protecting someone? That made no sense. Hollywood scandals like Lana Turner’s daughter stabbing her mother’s lover to death didn’t happen here. Accident, self-defense or murder, Miriam would have owned up to the deed. But added to the poison pen letter which burned like a coal, this development spelled pure disaster. Why couldn’t she have trusted her best friend with the truth? Hurt and angry, Belle tossed until an alarm relieved her from fitful dreams.
The next morning at ten, Belle barely registered the traffic lights and turns to the San. On the corner of Paris Street and Ramsey Lake Road, she lingered so long at the green turn arrow, coiling one idea around another, that a taxi gave her a loud horn and an Italian salute.
In the lounge, Miriam was chatting with a tall, silver-haired woman close to sixty. From the lively conversation and natural gestures, they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Belle squeezed her fists as she approached. No bagels, madame, not one stale Timbit. She wanted absolute honesty, no holds barred.
Wearing casual stretch jeans and a linen blouse, Miriam looked up with a welcoming smile. “I want you to meet Dorothy Grasslin. This is my kind-hearted boss, Belle Palmer.”
For the sake of courtesy, Belle shook the woman’s sun-browned hand, adorned with a sapphire ring. Did they have a tanning room here? She scrutinized the horsy face, blunt page boy cut she’d worn herself at fifteen, and pale lilac wool suit. Not a health care worker. Another patient?
“Dorothy’s a volunteer,” Miriam said. “Comes to chat with the . . . with us.”
The woman moved over as Belle joined her on the sofa. “Miriam’s been telling me about her crafts. I never miss the Quilts on the Rocks show. Last year I bought a lovely wedding ring pattern.”
“So you live in town?” Belle asked, reluctant to haul Miriam off by the scruff of her neck in front of a witness.
A musical laugh spread Dorothy’s generous mouth, just a discreet trace of lipstick, to reveal large, uneven teeth which matched the equine image. “Call me the reverse of a snowbird. Though I have a home in Raleigh, North Carolina, I spend winters at my family’s old camp in the Temagami area. It’s not plush, but the amenities suit. Sounds odd to reverse the seasons, but I prefer shovelling snow to swotting blackflies.”
Miriam folded her hands over her knee, her eyes bright and hopeful. “I’ve told Dorothy about your trails. Once this is over, maybe we can all—”
Belle planted her feet and pushed back one sleeve in an exaggerated gesture to check her watch. Then she said with a steely voice, “Perhaps. I hate to be blunt, but there’s important new business to talk over.”
Clearing her throat, Dorothy rose swiftly on cue, picking up a camel hair coat trimmed with wolf. Six inches taller, she towered over them. “Got to run myself. The library’s holding Atwood’s Oryx and Crake for me. I’ve been waiting for weeks. So nice to have met you.”
Watching her leave, Miriam’s face registered pain and confusion. “How rude, and you might have lost a future client. She was just—”
“I just got the news about Melibee’s neighbour seeing you arrive at the apartment.”
Miriam looked towards the fish tank, where Ted Parr chatted with a nurse, his arms describing a hockey game. “Yes, about sev—”
“About four, you mean. Why the lie?”
Her voice weakening, Miriam bit her lip. “I didn’t lie. Not in the strictest sense.”
“Too late for an exercise in rhetoric. You’re baby steps from a murder trial.” As Belle’s pulse hit the Richter scale, she was so angry that she didn’t even mention the bail situation.
“I found Mel lying there like . . . as I said.” Her grammatical precision with prepositions and conjunctions made her business correspondence a hallmark of perfection.
Belle felt her shoulder muscles tighten into wads of BBs. Attention to detail worked both ways. Uncle Harold had told her that liars can figure, and figures can lie. “But you arrived at four.”
“Yes.” She paused, swallowing twice and touching a gold heart-shaped locket that contained a picture of Rosanne. With a shaky hand, she wiped a light sweat from her forehead. “It’s embarrassing. Mel and I, well . . . we enjoyed ourselves. A bottle of Chablis. Soft music. Frankly, with the bad nights I’d had listening to that poodle, I fell asleep and didn’t wake until seven. I was disoriented at first, so I freshened up. Then in the living room I found . . .” Her palms closed over her face, and she began weeping, searching her pockets for a tissue.
Feeling like a tool of the Inquisition, Belle leaned forward, her voice softening, “So you didn’t . . .”
Ted hurried over, shooting Belle a stern look. He knelt and clasped Miriam’s hand. “Relax. Remember that ups and downs are normal. Stay the course.”
Miriam rose unsteadily, making an effort to steady her voice. “It’s fine. We—”
“Let’s go to your room for a talk. I’m free now.” He guided her arm, signalling to the nurse, then turning to Belle, his eyes charged with anger. “And as for you, Miss Palmer, I don’t know your personal agenda, but if you upset my patient again, you’re off the visitors’ list. Is that clear?”
The slap of a rapidly arriving cold front hit Belle like a stun gun as she headed for the hospital parking lot. The biting air shed no clarity upon the murder. The truth was revealing itself, hiding and reinventing itself like a virus. Miriam admitted having lied. This new story made some sense, but what next? And Belle had seen a bottle of champagne, not Chablis. Had Miriam confused that detail like she’d forgotten about the poodle?
At a stop at the LaSalle Boulevard post office for stamps, she walked past a line of cars. Suddenly a door slammed, and Brian Dumontelle strutted over, posturing like a modern gunslinger. “Still in business? Surprising, the way you treat clients.” His sneer enveloped her like a pool of warm spit.
“Leave me alone, Brian. Get the message.” She glanced around, alone in the lot, her pulse racing. Having Freya on a short leash might be her next option.
He shoved his face next to hers, squeezed her arm until she winced. Then an elderly man left the building, giving them a cautious stare. Brian backed off, straightening his shoulders, and in a preening motion, smoothing his small beard. “Have you got the message, babe? ’Cause if you haven’t, you will.” Then he eased into a squad car, spinning his wheels to splash her with ice chunks and grit.
Her errand forgotten, Belle sat frozen for several minutes in the van, willing her heart to return to normal while her gulps of breath fogged the windshield. Hadn’t Steve talked to him? Or maybe that direct approach had relit the fuse and doubled her problems. Should she think about swearing out a peace bond, or whatever it was called? She pulled out her cellphone and tried Steve’s number, finding herself connected to a high-pitched female voice. “He’s away all week. Don’t know when he’ll be back. Detective Karl Blake is handling current cases. Do you wish to—”
She punched out with a small cry of irritation and paused to think. On an investigation out of town? Janet complained bitterly about his being gone consecutive nights on special duty, neglecting his family. How naïve she’d been to think that Steve could be her protector. Clearly, Brian was out of control. There had been a witness at the post office, but what about her remote road? After scraping the inside of her windows, sending tiny slivers of ice over the dash, she headed for the army surplus store for a can of pepper spray, and that didn’t mean habañeros.
Armed and dangerous, out over thirty dollars, she turned at last for home, groaning at the forecast. The third night of minus thirty-five degrees Celsius. Time to plug in the bloc
k heater. Crises were hard enough to handle without the added hell of climate.
The next morning, as if to signal the true arrival of winter to tougher Canadians, the super chill plus a deadly calm had finally tamed Lake Wapiti. As if a magic wand had tapped, the surface locked into place, an innocent metamorphosis from the crashing destruction of the massive waves and surf. Though the ice was only an inch or two thick, formed hours ago, Belle heard a roar from far down the lake, and true to form, some idiot was driving at top speed to claim the dubious record for being “first across.” Powerful machines could cross open water Jesus style as long as they didn’t stop. Once the driver had passed, she walked onto the deck to savour the absolute quiet, punctuated by an occasional natal groan of the shifting ice. Shoving her hands into the pockets of her thick sweater, she discovered the card for Verity Antiques. Now there was a forgotten thread.
At nine she dialled New York City. “Bill Evans handles our high-end silver purchases,” a clerk said after she had described the plates. “He’s somewhere between Brussels and Vienna on a buying trip. I’ll take your number.”
Melibee had a sharper eye for antiques than stocks. Belle wondered if Miriam would recover a penny of her investments. Likely she’d have to work until she dropped like a spavined cart horse . . . unless she spent the next ten years in jail. But Celeste never lost, Jesse had assured her. Did the attorney have something up her capacious sleeve? Wild-card evidence about Miriam being assaulted? There hadn’t been a mark on her, but assault could be a threat, a raised hand. Belle didn’t appreciate her ratcheting the tension by refusing to discuss strategy.