by Lou Allin
“You don’t know the half of it.” Belle took the chance of telling her about Micro’s swim.
“Kids!” Miriam said with a wave of exasperation from one long in the trenches. “I’ve been telling you for years why my hair went grey at thirty-five, thanks to Rosanne and her shenanigans, not to mention my ex-husband. Jack never did grow up. Calice. That’s part of his charm.”
Swinging over to do a routine appraisal for an apartment building on Westmount, a lucrative assignment, Belle worked through lunch, made more calls and was free by three to talk to Jean McBride, Bea’s hearing-impaired neighbour. Not totally deaf, she assumed, hoping she wouldn’t need an interpreter from the Sign Language Program at Nickel City College. Len had told her that the woman never answered her phone and rarely went out, getting groceries delivered.
Jean’s keyhole property, likely one of the original summer camps on Lake Ramsey, lay on the other side of a thick hedge bordering Bea’s secret garden. The property to the left was a three-storey apartment building which loomed over the cottage like a colossus, another zoning fiasco or perhaps money greasing palms. Belle walked up the neat pebble path to a Seven Dwarves cottage, lacking only a thatched roof, and darkened by two massive blue spruce. Bird feeders and driftwood sculptures dotted the tiny yard in the midst of variegated hostas, Clintonia blue beads, rose twisted stalk, and lilies of the valley, wisely chosen shade-loving plants. The rounded front door, newly varnished, had a medieval grill covering an octagonal window. She knocked with the little brass lion head . . . and knocked . . . and knocked. Perhaps Jean was outside. Belle followed a narrow walkway which led behind the house.
In the minuscule backyard fringed with reddening sumac bushes and their soft purple cones, she saw a tiny person kneeling, dressed in an oversized man’s shirt and jeans, digging compost into a vegetable bed, sparing a corner chive patch with its clovery mauve blooms. Belle hallooed as she approached, wary of startling the elderly woman.
“Miss McBride,” she said three times, then yelling above the curly silver hair pinked with scalp.
The woman turned, peering up at her with bright eyes set like blueberries in a muffin face. Slowly she rose, bracing herself on the hand trowel. With her knee pads, she resembled a superannuated hockey player. “What’s all the noise about? State your business. And no, I don’t want to sell. Damn realtors hound you to your grave. That one with the Dolly Parton hair pesters me every May. Who needs a calendar?”
Swallowing a grin about Cynthia Cryderman’s perseverance, Belle took a seat on a stump and explained her mission.
Jean’s prickliness eased, now relaxed in a wicker chair, knobby hands folded in her lap. “A nice boy, young Michael. Bea sent him over every Friday with a pie. Not much left of that family now. And Dr. Bustamante always made house calls when I had the pneumonia. Dave was too busy to even chat over the hedge. I saw the whole thing happen.”
Belle shifted on her perch, working around a splinter. “What whole thing?”
Jean rose, her legs stiff with arthritis, coughing into her hand. “The old pump needs a bit of priming. I’ll be back in a jiffy with a pot of tea strong enough to trot a mouse.”
Gallop was more like it. Ten minutes later, Belle poured on the cream and waited for the woman to continue. Old folk living alone traded information for entertainment, and she didn’t begrudge them fair exchange.
“Now where was I? Cobwebs, be gone. Oh, the accident. There they were on a fine summer morning, sitting peaceful in the canoe, little Molly with a fishing line and Michael helping her put on the bait. She was squeamish like kids are, girls especially. Then out of nowhere, that stupid speedboat.” Sorrow creased her pale face, papery as a hydrangea.
Even sixty-four-square-mile Lake Wapiti could be crossed in minutes by a behemoth with GMC engines throbbing under the deck in a hundred-thousand-dollar orgasm. How many times had Belle’s canoe nearly been swamped when returning from a peaceful voyage to Flowergull Island?
“Gave the damn fool ten years for manslaughter and other reckless charges. Hear he got out this spring. These parole boards are criminal in their leniency. And what’s more, a friend of mine who knows his family says he blamed the poor folk he killed for robbing him of his prime.” She barked a laugh of outrage.
While Belle filed another suspect away in her memory bank, she coaxed Jean back to the present with a few gentle verbal prods. The old woman related what she’d heard or seen the day of Bea’s death, namely nothing. She’d been in bed with a perishing cold, watching a mind-numbing cycle of talk shows. “Oprah’s the only one worth a hill of beans. Yanks had any sense, they’d run her for VP alongside Hillary.”
“I agree. Women need their own chance to ruin the country.”
Jean clucked her tongue and rapped Belle’s knee. “Oh, you.”
As Belle thanked her and turned to go, Jean cocked her head and placed a finger on her blunt nose, Columbo-style. “There is one odd thing. Putting away my garden for the winter, I found a bone last week smack dab in my peony bed.”
“A bone? Human?” Belle felt a warning frisson. Bones and the bush, yes, often a hundred years old, lost hunters, injured prospectors, First Nations casualties. Bones and the city, no moss there.
“ ’Course not. Father was a chiropractor, and he made us recognize all 206 parts of the skeleton. We start out with plenty more, but the little guys fuse.” She pointed to her knee. “What’s this?”
Belle played along. “Patella.”
“And this?” She touched her thicker, shorter arm bone.
Belle ceded the game though the answer was obvious. “I give up.”
“Radius. Now you’ve learned something.” She ambled to a garbage can, opened it and retrieved a giant bovine knucklebone. “My clever little foxes must have scavenged it up from that Buffalo’s dog house. Dirty bugger. Got loose and pooped on my pachysandra.” She pointed to the edge of the Malanuk property.
Belle examined it. Whistle clean. But there were gnawed abrasions. Small incisors and large canines. As the sun dipped, she rotated it for better light. One tooth mark was chipped. Didn’t Buffalo have a broken incisor? “May I take it?”
“If you’re desperate for soup, be my guest. I’ll get a bag.” The twinkle in Jean’s faded hazel eyes revealed a dry sense of humour.
Driving home, Belle wondered if the bone had been heavy with meat, according to her original theory. Would it have been possible to soak it with something to put the dog to sleep for a short time? Was there enough residue for a test? She called Steve on her cell, but voice mail said that he was away for the week. Damn. Another bone to pick. And what about that recently released killer, full of anger and possible revenge? She hadn’t even gotten his name. Some sleuth.
When Belle arrived home a bit later than usual, she saw the wires back up and Micro’s bike by her deck, endearing symbol of a soul. People too crass to mind their own business always asked why she’d never married, never had children, though the two weren’t inseparable. An angled eyebrow usually squelched the questions. Genes and upbringing had worked a tight combination. Her mother had taken eight years to produce her. Not the warm, sitcom type, but a dedicated career woman, she never cooed at babies, never asked Belle “when”. Her father would have enjoyed spoiling ten, but it wasn’t up to him. Belle also recalled the personal hells her friends had suffered with their little replications: credit card theft, drugs, stints at Cecil Facer Youth Centre, the spectre of pregnancy, even HIV/AIDS. His one indiscretion aside, Micro was a sweet miracle, but how many young princes walked the earth? Then she thought again. “Indiscretion” was hardly the word for vandalism. How easy to rationalize when you cared for someone. Breaking out of her reverie, she noticed thick black smoke pouring from the chimney instead of the light grey trace of a low fire. Had he been fooling with the stove?
Up the stairs she went two at a time, banged through the door, tripping over Freya, rushing on with an aching wrist. In the living room, a soft womp-woof was issuing from t
he cherry red pipe. The stove keys were wide open, and all of her cardboard, charred history. The cast-iron pot of water on top for humidity had boiled dry. Quickly she twirled the keys shut and waited, her hands shaking as she monitored the burn, eying the extinguisher in the corner. How many years since she’d had it recharged? Without air, the fire soon died. She inspected the twelve-foot pipe for damage, tapping it with a poker and listening like a piano tuner. Safe enough. Then she turned with narrowed eyes. That pot had cost fifty dollars. If it cracked . . .
She found him in the computer room, immersed in Lara Croft, Tomb Raider 2. Jungle tom-toms duelled with the rising blood pressure beating in her ear drums. As Micro mowed down a trio of trolls, she punched off the speakers. He looked up, laughing. “Hey, Belle. Sorry about the sound. I’ll turn it down. How about this chain gun? See what—”
“Come, please,” she said, and he followed, his face confused at her clipped tones.
Before the stove, a silent witness, he stood quietly, his face milk-mild except for a nervous twitch in one eye. “Didn’t I load it right? I watched you. And I got rid of all that—”
“Micro.” She blew out a deep sigh, rolled her head to relax, a weight-room cliché. The temperature was nearly 33°C, Phoenix in Northern Ontario. “You started a chimney fire. The room could have ignited at those temperatures.” She pointed to the honey-pine cathedral ceiling, the black pipe joining the shiny insulated chimney that went through the roof. “You and Freya would have escaped, but my house would have been a pile of ashes.”
He lowered his head, Freya’s gesture when caught eating birch bark or a rotten mushroom. “I’m sorry. We weren’t here last night, and there was no fire. I wanted to make it warm for you when you got home. You didn’t tell me not to. Is it okay now? Are you going to tell Aunt Hélène?”
“Probably. I’m thinking about it.” Only one sentence lingered from his apology. You didn’t tell me not to. Now there was a concept worthy of a marble inscription. She willed her heart to drop from bass to snare. Surely she’d come out of this a better person, if she lived.
He turned away and said so quietly that she bent to hear, “I brought you something I made in art class.”
On the kitchen table sat a brown ceramic bear about two inches high, in credible detail, glazed carefully, its black button eyes glistening.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, picking it up. He nodded and shuffled to the computer room, where she heard the machine shut off. Belle took another spin on the emotional roller coaster of child care. Now she felt guilty. He’d only been trying to help.
Their dinner of meatless chili and cornbread was punctuated by periods of silence. Hoping to show a positive side of the other night’s theme, she played Edge of Darkness with Errol Flynn fighting Nazis in Norway. Belle had been fond of the mustachioed Tasmanian devil and his derring-do, even if he porked up at the end and started dating a jail-bait blonde, Beverly Aadland. Who else would title his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways? Micro kept quiet, but his body language showed that he followed the action with interest. His small fists gripped the chair arms during the tense chase scenes.
The next morning she waved him off to the bus. “Your aunt and uncle will be home by noon. They can come back for your duffle. The door’s always open.” She wanted him to assume both meanings.
“Thanks, Belle. I’m sorry about . . . everything.” Did one handsome little lip tremble as he turned to trot off at the bus lady’s annoyed toot? That a small boy would be so universally sorry this early in his life left her sure that discipline was a necessary but ever-evolving torture. As the bus pulled away, she remembered that she had forgotten to mention the ceramic bear.
At the office, she called Len about the bone. “I’ve got it in a paper bag,” she said, explaining the details. Steve had told her about the perils of plastic for evidence preservation.
“Good show,” he said. “We need to test for residue.”
“Surely we should let the police do that.”
He roared out a stream of guffaws like a disapproving seal. “You’ve already contaminated it by removing it from the scene, my dear. Even if something turned up, they wouldn’t be able to use the evidence in court. Not to worry. I know a discreet professor of Forensic Chemistry at Shield University. Used her in my last case. She’ll do a complete scan for suspicious substances.”
“But if the police don’t—”
“Have you heard of a parallel investigation? That’s what we’re doing here. If there’s a toxic substance, we can trace the source, for example, find a paper trail. Dave’s counting on us.”
He came by the office to collect the bone around four, engaging Miriam in conversation for fifteen minutes while Belle finished a phone call.
“Speaking of bones, where did you dig up this rascal?” Miriam asked, wiping tears of laughter from her face as Len perched his ample rump on her desk. He wore a rumpled tweed suit which made him a double for Mr. Toad, especially the umbrella under his arm. “His life sounds like a movie script.”
Len apparently took the comment as a compliment as he inspected the bone like a piece of fine china, careful not to add his own prints. “Heavy little guy. Perfect murder weapon.”
An avid mystery reader, Miriam said with a smirk, “The fatal leg of lamb. Roald Dahl’s classic. The perfect crime.” She peered over her bifocals at Len. “You’re the expert. Is there such an animal?”
He pursed his fleshy lips in an all-knowing smile. “Definitely. But you never find out about it, so there’s the rub, as Hamlet says.”
“It’s a beef bone.” Refusing to join the silliness, Belle crossed her legs at her desk. “Any other developments, Len?” She needed to ask about that killer boat driver, but why not let him set the groundwork?
He related that he had finished interviews at the bakery, including chasing down a Donald Trump wannabe who was eying the choice downtown real estate with an eye to building a luxury condo for seniors. But he was having difficulty locating Sean Broughton, the unionizer Bea had fired. He flipped open a notebook and shook his head as he gave a description of the lowlife. “NFA. That’s ‘no fixed address.’ I tipped a green one to the bartender at the Ledo. He said that Broughton’s living out in Massey, frequents the Old Mill, but my beater’s at Robinson Automotive again. Your road creamed the struts. They’re trying to find me a nearly new set to save a few bucks.”
“I buy struts by the case.” Belle spread her hands in a universal gesture of sympathy. “I was wondering about another tack. Jean McBride mentioned that the man who killed Michael Bustamante and his daughter is free again.”
“Hell of a tragedy that was. So Jason Lewis is out? Wonder if Dave knows?” Len twisted his face in disgust and made a note. “Scumbag. Learning his whereabouts is going to be tough. Parole officers clam up. Bastards like that have too many rights. Maybe I can look around his old neighbourhood, contact relatives short of cash.”
“If we can find out the exact date of the accident, I can check the newspaper morgue for the original stories,” she said with a hopeful smile, wondering if the Sudbury Star had put its back issues onto microfilm.
He caught Miriam’s eye and pointed at Belle. “Morgue. Listen to that jargon. She’s getting to be a pro.”
When he left, Miriam turned to her with a skeptical look. “You’re actually working with this idiot? After my experience with Melibee Elphinstone, I think I can smell a con artist with a clothespin on my nose.” She was referring to her last boyfriend, who had run a Ponzi scheme defrauding Sudbury seniors of millions of dollars.
“The police investigation is at a standstill. What’s it going to hurt? He’s from Montreal, and he knows his business. Think big for a change.” She felt mildly annoyed that Miriam questioned her judgment.
“Pardon me!” Miriam let her fingers on the keyboard do the talking.
Hélène called at five to say that Micro had arrived, along with his gear, and was already back on the computer. “How was everything?
Isn’t that cookbook a godsend? Ready to be a mother? It’s not too late. Women are conceiving at sixty.”
Belle felt a bead of sweat on her forehead. The storm. The tree. The chimney fire, not to mention that confession. He’d have to sort everything out. “Lots of adventures. He’ll tell you. Oh, and thank him again for making me that ceramic bear.”
“How sweet of him.” Hélène’s voice could melt icebergs. “He likes you. You’re in his every other sentence. Belle said this, Belle did that.”
That night, freed of maternal duties, she and Freya slept soundly. The last track on her bedside CD player had been Rachmaninov’s sonorous Isle of the Dead, where a warm radiance soared and sang, its zest for life struggling against the inevitable before breaking waves softened on the water’s surface. Lake Wapiti had returned to perfect stillness in a crisp fall night. The quiet was palpable as a sliver of moon pierced the black velvet canopy. From a deep dream of paddling her canoe through misted waters toward a beckoning island, she crawled back to consciousness to answer the discordant phone, noting by the cool green digital numbers that it was 4:31. Her nose pricked at the perfume of a visiting skunk crossing the groundcover far below in search of a frog. It wouldn’t be the first time that she found the grisly remains.
Hélène’s frightened voice said, “Micro’s gone!”
FOURTEEN
Gulping for breath like an asthmatic, Hélène related the sickening argument earlier that evening. True to his word, Micro had told them about the vandalism at the seniors’ centre, and his stepfather had been called. “I’ve never heard Dave so angry. Usually he’s quiet and soft-spoken. Nothing makes him lose his temper,” Hélène said. With a bonded housekeeper engaged, Dave had insisted that the boy return the next day, and the DesRosiers had agreed.
After listening to his stepfather on the phone, refusing to say much in his defense other than “sorry,” tears streaming down his face, he’d gone to his room with most of a tomato quiche still on his plate. He’d been sleeping soundly at ten when Hélène went to tuck him in. Rusty had barked in her dog house after they’d gone to bed, but since the neighbours were winding down a raucous party and saying goodnight to guests, they had ignored the warning. As for his movements triggering the motion sensor lights in the backyard, their bedroom was on the lake side of the house. Ed’s four o’clock bathroom trip for a nagging prostate had sent him in to check on the boy, and that was when they’d found his room empty and his gear gone. His bike was also missing.