Practical Sins for Cold Climates

by Shelley Costa

  Val pushed the metal boxes back into place next to Trey’s basket of collected presents, which was when it struck her. The whole Selkirk family had a box or a basket—except for Leslie. Val crouched closer to the floor and saw, next to Caroline’s rectangular metal box, an empty space in exactly the same dimensions, where the dust had been disturbed. Leslie Selkirk had a metal box too. And not all that long ago, it had disappeared. In the stifling space upstairs at the boathouse, Val felt a chill.

  Had it been the killer who found what he was looking for after all? With the room torn apart in the fight, with Leslie hurled through the glass window to the rocks below, did the killer then take his time, his very sweet time, and go through the things on her desk the way Val herself had done—finding, finally, two years later, just what he sought in an old green metal storage container that looked like it had been picked up for a song at an Army surplus store?

  What was inside the box that must have been labeled Leslie?

  Where was it now?

  And who had such easy access to the murder scene to keep hunting for whatever it contained?

  Had Caroline simply not noticed the box’s disappearance?

  At that moment, Val heard an unmistakable sound: below her, the door to the boathouse had been opened and someone stepped inside. Val sat utterly still, her heart thudding, wondering how in hell she’d account for herself if the newcomer headed upstairs. It couldn’t be Caroline or Kay—too far off in town, too many errands. Luke? She wouldn’t have thought the slender guy she had met in the camp office would be so heavy-footed. But maybe. Dixon, looking for her? If the eastern window hadn’t been boarded up, she could stretch herself up just enough to see whether the barge had slipped back into camp.

  Directly below her feet moved around, what sounded like boots rasping against the floor, then Val heard metal banging against metal. With any luck at all, whoever was moving around downstairs was looking for something among all the cast-off bedsprings—or adding something to the junk pile. The boots then moved back toward the door—Val sucked in a breath, willing him to go out, go out—and then came a footfall on the lowest step heading up to the second floor.

  In that moment, two things became clear: there was no place to hide and Val, confronted, was going to tell the truth, because it was more excusable than any lie she could possibly concoct that would get exposed for exactly what it was in less time than it would take Dixon Foote’s barge to move two feet away from the dock.

  Discovered in Leslie Decker’s off-limits space, Val figured anybody would understand that, as his publisher, she was looking around for evidence that either cleared or condemned Charles Cable of Leslie’s murder.

  Unless, it struck her suddenly, the man at the bottom of the staircase was Charlie Cable himself.

  The heart-sinking truth of that possibility lasted only a couple of seconds, because then she heard the downstairs door open and the heavy, clomping feet leave the building. Val counted to ten, then counted to ten a few more times until she was sure the visitor wasn’t coming back. And even then she didn’t trust herself. Finally, tucking her briefcase under her arm, she gave Leslie Decker’s upstairs room one last look around, wondering what she was missing, then slipped down the maddeningly creaky old stairs where she peeked out the front window. Not far from where she was hiding she glimpsed a figure disappearing down the path to the camper cabins. Red shirt. Jeans. Had to be Luke Croy, off to fell more intrusive trees.

  Val quickly checked the pile of old bedsprings leaning up against the long wall under the windows. Here it wasn’t so stuffy and still, unlike the upstairs, because people came and went all the time, tracking in wet, decaying leaves or brown, fragrant pine needles or their own sweat.

  Tucked behind the first twin-sized bedspring was what looked like a rusty metal stovetop, missing its burners. Had to be Luke’s new contribution to the pile.

  She briefly wondered why Caroline Selkirk didn’t just hire Dixon Foote to haul away all this unusable trash on his barge. Who was ever going to clean and repair all this worn-out old stuff? And who, then, would ever use it? Val ran her hands along the metal rail of a bedspring that would never again hold a sleeping camper. Something leftover from the days of Trey Selkirk, she was betting, and so, in the absence of Hope and Leslie and good luck and success, Caroline stored the things that had furnished the dying camp in those earlier times. Things that Trey had moved, things that Hope had cooked on, things that Leslie had sailed. Maybe, for Caroline, getting rid of all this trash was no different than tumbling her own personal history into a landfill.

  Val poked behind a few small, three-legged tables. No missing metal box with Leslie’s name stenciled on. She’d keep her eyes open for it. After all, what would the great activist daughter, whose crusading face hit the newspapers along with Charlie Cable’s, keep in a fireproof box? Val felt a hopeless twinge that the hands that had carried it off from its place upstairs on that day in October had murdered Leslie in pursuit of the box’s secrets. In that respect, she herself had something in common with Leslie Decker’s killer.

  At that moment, as she let herself out of the old boathouse, the chainsaw rumbled nearby, and Val listened to the unmistakable sound of its steady, merciless cutting through wood.

  11

  In the summer sunlight that seemed to be dodging heaps of clouds, there was still a good deal of heat, although also a good deal of loneliness. Voices floated distant, the unhurried shouts of workmen. Val wanted to take a quick nap and then clean up before going with Caroline and Kay to the Kellehers’, but there was no way she was going to let herself drift off in this strange, ponderously quiet ghost camp. And a change of clothes she’d wear back in her professional life was not making any sort of miraculous appearance.

  Alone in the camp kitchen, Val slathered herself a peanut butter sandwich, which she slid on a dingy Melmac plate pulled from the dish rack. Then she made her way along the path, slipped up the step to the porch of her sleep cabin, and let herself inside. She would wait out the return of Caroline and Kay and deal somehow with the uneasiness that never left her in this wilderness place people actually paid to experience.

  At a small unfinished table by the crude window propped open with what looked like a free paint stir from Sherwin Williams, Val set her plate and her briefcase which, she was hugely pleased to note, looked like its fine New York self. While she munched the sandwich with one hand, the other clutched her briefcase to her chest the way she did on the subway, not at all suspiciously.

  Grabbing the stack of photos she had found in Trey Selkirk’s funny old strapped basket, Val spread them out on the table, halfheartedly arranging them in some sort of chronological order according to how old the Selkirk girls looked. She didn’t know what she was looking for. And even if she found something important, how would she know? Aside from a very few faces—Trey, Hope, Caroline, Leslie, Wade, Luke, Kay, Charles Cable, Martin Kelleher, and Dixon Foote—who else would she recognize? To know a clue when it slapped her silly would depend on a familiarity with these lives that she didn’t have. For a few deflated minutes, she sat there, letting her fingertips drum gently against the photo spread.

  Little by little, things jumped out at her.

  Wade Decker in one shot, maybe around eighteen, his arm slung around a Selkirk girl—only it was Caroline tucked in against him, her head thrown back, laughing. Off to the side, crouching, was a teenaged Leslie, loading “provisions” into a basket a lot like Trey’s, her eyes inscrutably on her sister and Decker.

  A snowy shot of Trey Selkirk on skis, smiling and relaxed, captioned Whistler 1991. He had pulled his goggles down for the photo, and Val thought those eyes probably looked best—and saw best—what was either in the far distance or no distance away at all.

  There was a shot of Hope Selkirk and Kay Stanley at a quilt show, dated 1989, arms loosely on each other’s shoulders. Behind them, in front of wooden display ra
cks holding handmade quilts, was the quilter, standing with a tense expression and her arms folded, probably wondering if she had made a sale.

  Then there was the shot of Leslie and Charlie, clearly jazzed by the public attention, on Parliament Hill on what seemed to be the same day as the picture that ran in the paper.

  A scallop-edged black and white photo from the fifties, showing Hope Selkirk in her early twenties, standing proudly with what Val guessed were her parents and an older brother in front of a new ’57 Chevy. No Trey. No Camp Sajo.

  A Polaroid shot of Trey Selkirk and Kay Stanley, his hand clamped on her shoulder. A felt-tip scrawl had labeled it Iqaluit, June 1981. Val spent a moment wondering why they weren’t in Wendaban, Ontario at Camp Sajo during a summer month. More than thirty years younger, Kay’s face was thinner, her features caught in a time before they started to sink into the soft folds of age. Her black bangs were cut thick and straight across her forehead.

  The landscape in the place called Iqaluit was sparse, dotted with a few modular homes indistinguishable from one another. Trey Selkirk was standing companionably next to her, a man used to smiling into the sun that nearly cast them both into whiteness. He had one leg out, the way athletic people do, Val noticed, like he was ready to spring into action. There was a windburned handsomeness to the man, the kind of looks rough use only enhances. Val was just about ready to move onto the next photo when one final detail of the Iqaluit shot flooded her consciousness.

  In June of 1981, Kay Stanley was clearly pregnant.

  Val’s fingers pushed through the photos, pulling out the one marked Xmas 1981, The Gang, and setting it next to the Iqaluit photo. Caroline and Leslie as roughhousing girls, Trey with a Santa hat rakishly on his head, Hope pointing down to her new boots, Kay holding a turkey baster, a balder version of Hope’s brother, Charlie Cable with his head turned, caught mid-yell to someone off camera—all of them standing in front of a tall, full tree decorated in a happy, slapdash fashion. But no infant in sight. Given how pregnant Kay Stanley had looked in June, she should have had a baby in September.

  Val’s fingers nabbed any photo labeled winter and spring of 1982 that had Kay in it. No baby anywhere. Factoring in off-camera naptimes and hours in the company of possible babysitters, babies had a tendency to show up in photos. But not this one. And, jiggling the Selkirk Christmas photo between her fingers, Val suddenly remembered what Caroline had said offhandedly about Kay’s never talking about her family, if she had any. Interesting footnote, thought Val, to her poking into the circumstances of Leslie Decker’s death, but she couldn’t see how Kay’s mysterious pregnancy was relevant.

  The sound of a motorboat closing in on the dock alerted Val. Standing quickly, she craned her neck to see if she could catch a clear view of the waterfront. Not happening. But she could make out Caroline’s musical voice sailing out to someone—Luke? Val had to work fast, before Caroline came hunting for her. One thing for sure, she did not want to be caught thumbing through ill-gotten Selkirk memorabilia. Her hands surprisingly steady, she gently pulled apart the kaleidoscope she had taken from Trey Selkirk’s basket, then lifted out the roll of papers.

  She was right: letters. Every single one of them.

  Short, handwritten letters.

  From Kay Stanley. To Trey Selkirk.

  Val let out a soft whistle, expecting a revelation of smoldering passions or an offer of a peppermint foot bath. But they were grateful and practical and even just a little bit poetic. Dear Trey, began one. Here I am at Great Auntie LeFay’s place just below the Arctic Circle. Thank you for the money and the promise of more if I need it. It’s hard to say if I will. I am cooking for her at home. She’s seventy-two now and tired of kitchen work, she tells me, and I will cook at her restaurant until the baby comes. The doctor just flies in once a month for everybody who needs him and he tells me what I’m feeling is called quickening. The baby is growing big enough for me to feel it. In some way I have to confess it all feels more like deadening than quickening, but I try to stay cheerful and think about your loving goodness, always. She had signed it Yours, K.

  Another, two months later, was more telling. Dear Trey, it began. I am missing my life with you in Wendaban. Everything feels dark and far away, even the moon, and I am rubbed raw like this earth up here. Auntie LeFay, my only living relation, now tells me she has the cancer growing inside her in the same place I have the baby, but she is too busy right now to fly down to Ottawa for it. What will come out first, I wonder, this baby or that tumor? Thank you for helping me to do this my way. I confess I am ashamed, and I could not face Hope and the girls, but in this place where nothing is fake, I can do this. Can you come to visit? Will you have to tell Hope? And again it was signed, Yours, K.

  Val figured the photo of Trey and Kay, standing in that sparse, northern place where nothing is fake, came next chronologically. There were two more letters dated that summer of 1981, with more talk about money, characters at Auntie LeFay’s restaurant, and a growing belly. In one, she thanked Trey Selkirk again for his visit, and if he ever wanted to know the plans she has made for the baby, all he has to do is ask. She thinks while she passes children tearing around on their little bikes, dressed in her big, loose dress that sways when she walks, although the baby does not, that love leads to people. But it doesn’t always go the other way, she writes. People don’t always lead to love, and doesn’t it seem a shame? Perfect circles are only for bike wheels.

  The final letter was dated mid-September. Dear Trey, wrote Kay Stanley, tonight I heard the wolves. They are out there in the night, close. Dodie Slocum, who cleans at the restaurant, brought her little dog inside. The wolves are telling me the baby is coming, and I am telling them this baby, this baby will be as invisible to me as the howlers themselves. We have quite a conversation, me and the wolves. When I leave Iqaluit, I want to remember the wolves. And I want to remember the baby. Although it will never remember me. And I cry a little because wolves and babies and tumors and Kay Stanley really ought to make sense—but only the wolves do. Yours, K.

  Val carefully folded the letters and set them back inside the kaleidoscope where Trey Selkirk had kept them. Hidden. She looked out the window and saw Kay Stanley, more than thirty years after she dated that last letter, lumber up the path to the camp kitchen, lugging bags of provisions. Even hard work didn’t keep off the little fat rolls around her elbows. People don’t always lead to love, and isn’t it a shame? Even if—as Val was now wondering—golden man-child Trey Selkirk was the baby’s father, that particular circle had been unclosed. The baby was gone. Interrupted lives were resumed. Secrets were kept from those they would hurt. And Kay Stanley had ended up as far from love as she had been from the Arctic wolves calling in the night.

  Without thinking about them a minute longer, Val rubber-banded the photos and set them and Trey Selkirk’s broken kaleidoscope back inside her briefcase. Somehow, later, she’d figure out how to return them to the murder room in Leslie Decker’s boathouse. Val didn’t like having secrets. She especially didn’t like having other people’s secrets, not when they didn’t entrust her with them in the first place. The truth about Trey Selkirk and Kay Stanley and the baby that became someone else’s was like finding a ten-dollar bill on a sidewalk while you’re on your merry way somewhere the hell else. There’s no way to return it. If you leave it there, it could go to waste. But if you take it, and you do, the lunch it buys is never quite worth ten dollars.

  At dusk Val was standing in a clutch of bemused dinner guests on the Kellehers’ multi-level cedar deck that wrapped around the sprawling cottage. Outdoor electric lighting came on automatically at the same moment someone named Clem Corcoran was extolling solar as the environmentally responsible choice. Some of the guests Val recognized from the brawl at Camp Sajo the night she arrived on the lake.

  For dinner at the Kellehers’, the men had slipped fishing vests over their Canoe Head t-shirts, and the women had cha
nged from pants with thick elastic waistbands to skirts with thick elastic waistbands. Several had dolled up with stonewashed baseball caps with The Wendaban Moment machine-embroidered across the front, the back, or the bill.

  “Ah,” sighed a portly woman, pointing west with her green insulated stein full of lager, “there’s a true Wendaban Moment, if you ask me.” Everyone else spun to face the sun sinking as a great fuzzy pink blot in the sky over the distant mainland. They gasped. Another woman clapped her hands to her heart to keep it from leaping clear out of her chest. The sunset duly noted—“Number Three on The Best Wendaban Moments List!” Clem cried—the others fell into a competition that seemed to have more at stake than Val could understand.

  “Best Wendaban Moment?” claimed a short woman with shocked eyes and a floating raft of gray hair. “Millions of mayflies falling spent into the lake after their single day of life.” With that, she turned to the others with a challenge in her eyes. Top that, if you can. This was followed by murmurs.

  “Good,” cried a tall man in nylon hiking pants and a white mesh hat with its brim snapped up on the sides, “but I go with the great blue heron fishing in the shallows. So elegant, so patient.” Nods of agreement.

  “Skinny dipping when the water’s fifty-seven degrees.”

  “Loon chick riding on the mom’s back.”

  “Foggy dawns.”