by Lou Allin
With Hélène’s back turned, Ed added another splash of rye to his coffee, touching a finger to his lips. “That was no accident. How well do you know this guy? Has he made any enemies?”
Picturing Elmo and his rifle with that expensive scope, Belle gave a non-committal answer. Surely Jack’s prowling for information that put the man in a good light wasn’t reason for attack. Or were he and Debby involved in something they didn’t want Belle to find? Was she Melibee’s silent partner? Had she killed him? How could they have known he was going to drive his snowmobile to her house? Too baroque for belief. Brian was the logical choice, watching and waiting. In a rising spiral of violence, sweeping Steve out of the way, now he’d ratcheted the stakes into attempted murder. Suddenly she realized that Miriam didn’t know what had happened. “Ed, I need to use your phone.”
No one answered, so she left a message. Clutching Hélène’s brown bag of roast beef sandwiches, she collected the van and headed for town, narrowly missing a collision with a mammoth heating oil delivery truck taking a lion’s share of the road. Crossing through Garson, taking the Kingsway to Paris Street, she drove to the St. Joseph’s Health Centre, the only emergency room for all three local sites thanks to ruthless provincial cutbacks. As usual, parking lots were crammed, so she left the van at the far end, wondering if the hike gave heart patients needed exercise or merely trimmed their ranks.
At the admitting desk in Emerg, she gave her name and asked for Jack. “I’ve called his . . . wife,” she said and was told that she’d be notified as soon as the doctors finished.
“The police will be contacted as well,” the nurse added in an curt tone. “Gunshot wounds must be reported.”
Executing a who-cares eyeroll, Belle parked on a hard plastic chair, noting with approval that the annoying television, which usually blared from the ceiling, had been turned off. Half of the thirty seats were occupied. She could have used Steve’s strong shoulder, lectures aside. Damned if she’d call Janet at her parents’ home in Thunder Bay. She couldn’t remember the harpy’s maiden name anyway. Taking a deep breath, she turned her whirling brain to the logistics of the shooting. According to her topographical maps, the Chimbly Rock overlook was the highest point in the area, ten miles clear in all directions. But the vantage worked both ways. Jolly target practice from any other hill.
Her concentration broke as a scream came from the entry door. A dark-haired, olive-skinned woman with the features of a Madonna was carrying a three-year-old, who was bawling her head off. “Mira, Mira. Quiet,” she said as she took off their coats, put the girl on a chair, then pointed to a toddler playing with blocks. “See, the other children are not such a baby.” With an apologetic look, she explained to Belle that the girl had climbed up a set of drawers and hurt her arm. After taking a number, she returned to her seat, trying to engage her daughter in a few tattered children’s books, then singing a Greek lullaby. Her tiny mottled face washed with tears, the child fell asleep on her lap, thumb planted in her mouth.
Bored and worried, Belle went several times to the lobby to stretch her legs, noting the latest fundraising campaign. Sudbury had been long in getting an MRI machine. And the waits were outrageous. For nine hundred dollars, Freya could have an instant scan with a Toronto vet months before her hapless human could schedule an appointment. With the directory at the pay phone, she used all her quarters calling every full-timer on the last two miles of her road. No one had seen anything out of the ordinary, but many homes were shielded by a coniferous greenbelt. By nine she had finished the sandwiches and sucked the water cooler dry. Every dog-eared magazine with mind-numbing variations of germs had been read, and she’d been desperate enough to buy a National Post, right wing but with interesting columnists.
“Belle!” Gasping for breath, Miriam rushed into the waiting room, taking the last chair, which Belle had reserved with her coat. “I went to Silver City to see a film. Is Jack . . .” Tear runnels flowed down her pale cheeks.
“They’ll tell us when they know anything.” Babbling in high gear, she described the incident, adding her doubts about a stray shot.
Miriam was quick to pick up on a fact which had escaped Belle. “He got a royal beating the other night before Mel’s mass, remember? Could it be connected?”
Saturday night was living up to its wild reputation, featuring head wounds from bottles, boots and baseball bats. Belle moved her boots aside as a leathered biker with a bloody arm wrapped in a skull and crossbones bandanna was escorted up the aisle by a buddy, who called him a “friggin’ pussy.”
“If it was only a bar fight, how could someone have known he was coming to my place and set up the attack so methodically? It doesn’t make sense,” Belle said.
“So it was an accident, then?”
“I’m the one in season. Remember our reluctant buyer Brian Dumontelle? I didn’t tell you the conclusion of our business relationship because things finally quieted down, and you had your own problems.” After recounting the stalking and vandalism, she clasped her hands in an informal prayer. “Next time, he won’t miss. If I had any money, sense or a rich aunt in Vancouver, I’d leave town.”
Hours ticked by in the warm, humid prison of human suffering, damp wool and the occasional moan. While Miriam sat with her head back and her eyes closed, Belle imagined every medical scenario in her encyclopedic film memory: Lionel Barrymore as Dr. Kildare wheelchairing into view, one finger stabbing at a chart, his wrinkled face reassuring as he barked instructions. Then more ominous pictures appeared. Luminous lilac-eyed starlet Liz Taylor succumbing to lung disease in Jane Eyre. Steel magnolia Olivia de Havilland passing fainthearted Ashley to Scarlett’s spiderwoman care in Gone With the Wind. She began dozing, face buried in Jesse’s pillowy alpaca scarf, as Bette Davis leaned across the table in Dark Victory, her acid tones etching lines into haplessly sincere George Brent. “I’ll have a large order of prognosis negative.”
“No!” Belle cried, or did she dream?
Miriam was shaking her, ashen circles under her weary eyes, but her pupils sparkling with joy. Belle fought the sudden glare and saw the relentless clock reading 5:27. Morning or evening? She was groggy and disoriented, eyes crusted with sleep. Her shoulder ached, and a muscle in her back screamed daggers. The waiting room was nearly empty except for a black woman pacing back and forth, a blood pressure cuff on her arm and a small machine strapped to her side.
“Jack is going to be OK. We can go in for a few minutes. Dr. Gupta did the surgery. He’s one of the best,” Miriam said, straightening her clothes.
“I’ve got to wash up,” Belle explained, shambling towards a small bathroom across from the interview cubicles. The face which greeted her was continents away from a Vogue shot, hair greasy from a missed bath, eyes puffy and bloodshot. She splashed cold water in abandon, felt it drip down her sweatshirt. Jack was going to make it.
The women were directed to a large recovery room near the surgical area. Miriam walked slowly towards Jack, who was sleeping quietly. She bent over and took his hand, resting her cheek against it. Still in a green scrub suit, mask dangling from his neck, Dr. Gupta, a diminutive man with large round eyes and a shiny bald brown head, jotted notes onto the chart. Respecting the emotional scene at the stark white bed, he motioned Belle aside. “We had a tricky time stopping the bleeding. He’ll have a pucker where he lost some flesh,” he said. “And the gentleman is AB RH negative, in poor supply.” He kissed a hand at a nearby nurse, tapping an intravenous line. “One of ours donated a pint.”
“We were hiking in the bush. The shot came out of nowhere,” Belle said, curious at the forensics. “Did the bullet—”
“High calibre, whatever it was. It must have passed through. And the police will have bothersome questions for you, I fear.”
“How long will Jack have to stay here?”
“The stock market could use such a bull. If he takes care, recovery will be quick, barring infections. Three days at most.”
With Jack unlikely
to be coherent for hours, Belle and Miriam went home for a needed rest, but Belle returned late that afternoon, loaded with magazines, doughnuts and Tim’s brew as well as a jumbo pack of Cajun jerky.
“Coffee? Over here!” he called as she located him in a ward of four on the top floor. A barely touched food tray with five varieties of mush sat beside him on a swivelling table. “I need a brew more than blood. The stuff they bring is regular cat p—”
“Jack, behave. Nuns don’t run this place any more, but there may be a few around, comforting the sick.” Belle primed him with the triple-triple blend and watched happily as he inhaled several jelly doughnuts, his face smeared with red jam. “Sure you’re allowed?”
“It’s a flesh wound, not a gut shot. Man needs his strength.”
Trying to tune out the sobbing in the adjacent, curtained bed, where a woman’s tremulous voice repeated, “There, there” like a mantra, Belle waited until he gave a huge burp. “Safe and sound, partner. But we have to talk.”
“Damn straight. It’s all my fault. An officer interviewed me an hour ago. Didn’t tell him squat, though. What’s the point?”
Curious at the odd response, she read the labels on the intravenous bags. No narcotics. Only antibiotics and a drip. “Do you have a fever?”
“I think I know who did this, dammit. That shot could have hit you.”
“What are you talking about? It’s Dumontelle. I thought he’d given up, but he was just making plans. Setting the stage by climbing to Chimbly in those snowshoes. The odd tracks on my trail. And I’ve seen a strange white car several times. Probably unmarked. He’s undercover a lot.”
“No, Belle.” Shaking his head, he dipped into the jerky and chewed thoughtfully. “Remember when I made that bet? To get enough for Mimsy’s bail?”
As he continued, she turned over the neat tapestry of lies and deliberate misconstructions to trace the complex connections on the underside. The beating. His statements about wearing out his welcome. She fixed him with a penetrating stare that could have curdled cream. “Out with it.”
“I borrowed five grand. Foolproof.”
“Isn’t it always.” Her voice was laced with sarcasm.
“Twenty-to-one. A tip from the bartender at the Solid Gold. His brother’s a jockey in Miami where the race was. The fix was on.” He thumped his chest weakly. “Fix on me.”
“But we didn’t need a hundred thousand.”
He rubbed at the stubble on his chin, his eyes struggling for focus as he looked out the window to the skating lanes on Lake Ramsey. “How did I know that you’d arranged everything? That should have been my responsibility. We could have hired a real lawyer. And with any extra money, I could have helped Rosanne with her education. She’s talking about getting a Master’s.”
“So what really happened?” As she tallied his pathetic but well-intentioned plans, she recognized that in many ways, Jack was still a boy.
“That rough stuff was a warning. Couple of gorillas told me to come up with the dough or adios. I could have paid the shot later with the spring bonus. But no dice.”
Return to Plan One for Collapsing Mutual Funds. Do not pass go. Instead of wishing she had a wealthy aunt, now Belle felt like one. She settled in a chair and blew out a breath. “I’ll give it to you. Get these dangerous people off our backs. But I’m charging interest.”
He nodded his sweat-soaked head with weary relief. “Thirty per cent. Guaranteed.”
“Is that so? I’m in the wrong business. Make sure you live that long.”
Despite his momentary bravado, Jack was still groggy from the drugs and couldn’t maintain the conversation. As Belle shoved the trash into a wastebasket, Miriam arrived, placing a vase of red roses on the table. “How’s our boy?” she asked, rubbing his hand. Jack fluttered open his eyes, managing a crooked smile despite the drool.
Leaving them in post-marital bliss, Belle headed home as a light coat of sleet began to coat the roads with black ice, making driving hazardous. She gulped a fast meal of burger and fries at Harvey’s, having to be reminded to collect her change and hardly registering what she ate. That tempting afternoon nap had only disoriented her. Sleep might be a hard-won bargain.
Around eight, a noise set Freya barking. Belle looked outside to see a police car parked in the drive. Brian? Where was that shotgun? But a short, pudgy, uniformed female emerged, plodded up the stairs and knocked on the door. “Sorry to bother you at night, ma’am, but I was down this way on another call. It’s about the shooting. I understand that you were a witness.”
During their interview at the kitchen table, Officer Corinne Morgan was polite, efficient and calm. Belle could see why units were using women to investigate domestic incidents. But her theory about Dumontelle and Jack’s about the mob would sound so far-fetched that she stuck to the bare essentials of an accident. Honest though she seemed, who could say what Corinne’s relationship was with other officers? With the latest run of luck, the woman was dating Brian. Belle was dressing her paranoia in mittens and toque and sending it out to play.
That night she lay in a stupor watching Irene Dunne mug her way through The Awful Truth, ever the lady, deceptively older than her compatriots and her mustachioed co-star Cary Grant. What had film critic James Agee said, that Irene would have kept her tongue in her cheek uttering the Seven Last Words?
As she loaded the coffeemaker for the morning, the phone rang. “Dorothy here. You haven’t gone to bed, I hope? Sometimes I nod off before nine and get up at five.”
Assured that she was relatively awake, Dorothy told her what she’d learned. “That cleaning woman worked at Spic ’N Span, the third place I called. I said that I lived in the condo and had heard good things about their service. Clever, what?” She added a tinkly laugh to a credible English accent.
“Nice going.” Belle was impressed by the speed, forgetting for a moment that several days had passed. The blur of events had compressed time to a tiny kernel of memory.
“Her name was Elena Romero, I learned from a helpful clerk. Flattery’s wonderful leverage, especially with someone prone to gossip. Anyway, after that man’s murder, she disappeared. Apparently she was a Guatemalan illegal with forged papers. Only a few words of English. Fancy coming all the way up here. Don’t they read weather reports? Immigration suspects that she’s hiding with relatives in Toronto. It’s easy to vanish in the big city.”
Belle’s hopes fell, though it was unlikely that Melibee would share privileged information with his employee, especially one who spoke only Spanish. She filled Dorothy in on their excursions to the church and the office, omitting the shooting, which bore no relation. For a moment she wondered if she were putting the earnest woman in danger by allowing her to help the investigation. But what could a few phone calls hurt?
Dorothy responded with a measure of disgust. “Crystal? Probably with a K. Did her mother watch soap operas twenty years ago? What a pig the man must have been. These May-December pairings. Geezers after girls. An article I read claims that such behaviour is connected with the eternal quest to people the gene pool.”
“Isn’t everything?” Belle watched another four-season lady bug crawl across the bed table and wondered when she would be able to soak in the tub.
Dorothy went on. “We can’t leave a turn unstoned, as my late husband said. Jack sounds so resourceful. How wonderful that he came down to help Miriam. Could he find out about Doug Wilson, the brother at Shield University?”
“Uh. He can’t run around now. Laid up for a few days. The flu.”
“It’s terrible this year. I had a perishing case in November.” Then her voice perked up. “Let’s see, now. I belong to the University Women’s Alumni Club. And the Dean of Students is an old friend. Perhaps some discreet inquiries about candidates for a possible scholarship. You did say that you made that anonymous call to the police. They should have been checking his alibi.”
“I doubt they took it seriously. So you went to university here?” Belle felt her
self sounding like an undergraduate. “What was your major?”
“Speech therapy. I worked for the Sudbury Catholic Board. Helping children one-on-one was its own reward. I . . . never had any of my own.”
Twenty-Three
A few days later, with Jack out of the hospital, Belle had arranged a certified cheque for his debt, including a sizable interest balloon which made her wonder if she had chosen the wrong business. They waited at the office for the representative of the “firm” to appear to collect the payment.
“Showtime,” Miriam called to the back room. Surprisingly, she had taken Jack’s gambling in stride, accepting it as a gesture from the heart, stupid or not. Perhaps imagining him near death had softened her judgment.
“Can you give me a . . .” With a grunt, Jack elbowed himself up from the sofa and reached for his crutches.
Belle poked his chest and growled a caution. “I’ll deliver the goods. If you fall and break something, we’ll never get rid of you. Bad enough that you have to bunk at Miriam’s in order to eat regularly.” Whose bunk, though? Rosanne’s room, or had they buried old grudges at last? Husky Jack would never let a mere leg wound cramp his style. God knows she’d never mention his pass . . . or had he intended a palish kiss after all? With the cliché of a cupped chin? She shook her head, unwilling to revisit that scene.
Typing with a certain nonchalance instead of in dervish fashion, Miriam looked strangely calm, her mouth wearing a Mona Lisa smile. It couldn’t be the job, or her peace of mind about the upcoming trial. Getting some satisfaction, according to old Mick?
As she left the building, Belle’s eyes saucered at the sight of a white limo the size of Moby Dick taking up half the street, attracting stares from bundled-up passersby wondering if the Premier had come to town. Approaching, she said, “Hello there. Nice to see you,” as loudly as she could to call attention to her first and last encounter with the mob. As the driver lowered the smoked glass window, she did a double take. Dressed in a grey suit, light blue shirt and navy striped tie, Elmo winked at her. “Big Syl’s inside. You must have some connections.”