by Lou Allin
“For your world famous chocolate zucchini cake,” Belle said, placing the monster on the table as she looked out the window. “Ed still gone?”
“Been about ten minutes,” Hélène said, her face expressing concern while she put down a half-peeled potato and turned off the country music station in the middle of “Little Skidoo, it’s up to you.” “Could anything really be wrong with the fellow? We had him to dinner a while ago and were swapping medical stories like a bunch of old women. Ed’s hip, my gallbladder operation. Right to home, but a bit of a hypochondriac, truth be told.”
“Isn’t that the ultimate insult, calling a man an old woman? Why doesn’t it work the other way?” Belle laughed halfheartedly, tuning her ears for the sound of a motor. “He does have high blood pres . . .”
Suddenly the four-wheeler screeched back into the driveway, followed by a dust cloud. “The crazy fool,” Hélène said as they ran outside. “Not even enough insurance to make me a rich widow.”
Ed clumped to the porch in marathon time, cane flailing wildly, his face white as he collapsed into a creaking chair. “You don’t want to know. No, siree, you don’t. He was just sitting there.”
Hélène gave him a sharp look. “Sitting where? You’re not making sense, Ed. Calm down. I’ll get some cold water.”
“Bring me a beer!” he bellowed until she returned to slam a can into his trembling hand. He popped the tab and spilled foam over his shirt, shivering like a huge child as Belle knelt at his side.
“Has something happened to Charles? An accident?”
“Yes, or no. See, I didn’t look that carefully. All’s I can tell you is that he’s dead as a beached lake trout.”
“Didn’t you feel for a pulse? Where is he?”
“In the sauna. Listen, I know a dead man when I see one. Open eyes, get it?” He waved his hand in front of his face. “Nobody home?” After he noticed Charles’ car in the yard, he had hunted through the house, garage, boathouse, and finally the sauna. What he saw sent him hopping back to the quad, though he stalled the motor three times in panic.
Belle pulled him to his feet. “Call the police, Hélène. Ask for Steve Davis if he’s there. Ed and I’ll go back and wait.”
A few minutes later, they stood in front of the small cedar building looking at each other anxiously. “Sure you want to go in? Something sure was funny about his face.”
“An injury?”
“Pretty damn dark in there. Could have been a shadow, or it could have been a bruise. But I’m no doctor.”
“Let’s look around. You take the outbuildings. We’ve got half an hour minimum before the troops arrive. Just don’t tell Steve.”
“What should we look for?” he asked in bewilderment.
She rolled her eyes and shook his arm. “Anything suspicious. Remember those mushrooms? Maybe Mabel Joy’s gone off the deep end.”
Inside the change room, all looked deceptively serene. Charles had hung framed prints on the panelling, Turner studies of sea and fog. Belle placed a cautious hand on the wooden handle to the steam bath, feeling like a voyeuse, opening the door an inch at a time. Bathed in the light from a small window, in the Mannerism style of Michelangelo, Charles Sullivan sat on a bench, head tilted back and eyes glassy and staring, on the chin a distinct bruise. With a mixture of curiosity and dread, she touched his neck and found it cool.
From some bizarre propriety, knowing that he would have been embarrassed, she turned to scan the room, avoiding his body. A thick white terrycloth robe lay in a heap on the floor. The shiny red enamel stove was protected by a wooden fence, but the fire had gone out long ago. The room was clammy, the sprucy smell antiseptic and sinister. The voiding of the bowel being an unscientific cliché, he had been spared that final humiliation.
Closing the door upon the wooden tomb, she tried the house, heading for the bedroom, the one intimate place she hadn’t seen. An antique spool bed, narrow and prim, was tucked tight enough to bounce a penny off the patchwork quilt. On the wall was a painting of Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp.” Nothing more than sox and underwear in the drawers, tailored suits and casual pants hanging in the closet. Sheepskin slippers and wingtip shoes sat beside a comfortable pair of trainers. The desk looked like a more fruitful site. Suddenly noises from the yard made her twitch, the crunch of tires on gravel, the slamming of doors. Steve and his cohorts or Dr. Graveline. No more time. Only a truly dishonest and deceitful person would have made Hélène delay the call. Why hadn’t she thought of that?
Exiting by the front door by the lake, Belle was shielded from the driveway, so she approached as if she had been waiting by the dock. Ed was shrugging his shoulders in a “nothing” gesture. Steve was walking toward her, and she didn’t like the look in his eye, nor his speed. “Called in on my day off. A few more friends like you, and I’ll be running the department all by myself. Who is it, Belle?” he asked.
Hearing her response, he sent two officers around the property and directed Ed and Belle to wait for a more thorough questioning after he had made a tour. Graveline polished his glasses with a wry expression. “A dangerous place, this road. Well, let’s see what we have. In the steam bath, is he? Could be a heart attack or stroke. Bad for the blood pressure. Damn fool should have kept out of there in this hot spell. Winter’s the best time. My Norwegian granddad used to toss me into the snow on my bare bum.” From his nostalgic tone, he seemed to find this icy recollection pleasant. Then off he went humming “Give me two pina coladas.” What would he make of the bruise, she wondered?
Finally Steve settled into his questioning, all of them facing off in lawn chairs as if at a grim garden party. Yes, Charles had been alive the night before, had agreed to leave at eight for fishing. And he had just moved in, retired from a job in Ottawa. Relatives? No one close. His stomach growling, wearing an XXL natural fleece sweatshirt, Ed resembled a hungry sheep. “OK if I go home for lunch? Wife’s waiting.”
Steve waved him off and cast a suspicious look at Belle, but she ignored the hint and sat quietly, staring across the lake, hands folded in her lap. She closed her eyes to freeze the view she had sold Charles. What a short-lived paradise.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Mitch Graveline said as he reappeared, tucking away instruments the use of which she didn’t like to imagine. “If there is such a thing as a nice spot to die.” He cleared his throat. “At first glance, I’d say he was the perfect age for a heart attack. Cyanosis is evident. We’ll know more at the autopsy. But there’s a—”
Belle jumped in. “A bruise on his chin? Ed mentioned that.”
“Curious,” he said, snapping the lock on the black bag. “An obvious contusion. Still, I guess he could have slipped and fallen forward, grazed his face on the wooden guardrail around the stove. Or maybe it happened earlier that day.”
“The boards were slimy from the humidity,” Steve said. “People often fall in saunas. Couple of drinks. It’s been known to happen.”
“Alcohol couldn’t have been a factor. With his high blood pressure, he took all precautions. And that robe in a pile in the sauna itself. That didn’t look right. I don’t want to get melodramatic, but is it possible someone else was involved?” asked Belle.
“A party? Somebody clipped him one? And then just left? One punch? He has a heart attack over that?”
“It’s too coincidental after Anni . . .” Then she stopped and frowned to herself. Was it paranoia, or was she seeing threads everywhere? “Only connect,” the poet said. “What about his house?” She hadn’t had much time. Perhaps Steve had noticed something.
“In that place, it’d be easy to spot something out of whack. He was a neat one, obsessive even. Washed up after every glass of water. Even the coffee maker looked like he took cotton swabs to it. Mine is a germ bank.” He paused as they all nodded in recognition. “No pictures either. A lonely man. Think he’d at least have a friend somewhere.”
One of the officers, fresh shave on his pink cheeks, rushed over, breathin
g heavily. “Excuse me, sir. I found this by the gate. Behind a bunch of trees.” Onto the table went a plastic bag with a cigarette filter.
Steve examined it with a pair of tweezers borrowed from the doctor. “Field-stripped. See the paper still attached? DuMaurier. Fresh. No sign of weathering on the letters.” He turned to Belle with a question on his face. “Did he smoke? There weren’t any ashtrays.”
“Don’t think so. And I’ve never smoked here. Ed chews on a cigar when he’s out of Hélène’s sight.” She sat back and spoke more to herself than to them. “Like someone was watching, waiting. But for what? And why would a thief take chances when the car is in plain sight?”
“Or it could mean nothing. Just a cottager out for a walk. This place is past the turnaround. Dead end, it says, but I’ll bet cars come down anyway. Natural curiosity.” Steve sighed. “So I don’t have to do this later, I’m going to ask you the same questions as I did about Anni Jacobs. Have you ever been in the house? Is there anything of value? Did he keep money around?”
“Yes, I’ve come here for dinner. As for valuables, you saw everything. An eccentric collection of classical music. Books. He has plenty of classical music. Big deal.”
“It’s not a break and enter anyway. No reason to believe anyone else was here.”
Belle watched a cormorant glide through the bay, identical to a loon except to the expert eye. A slight upturn to the bill, and hidden under the water, black instead of white. If it wasn’t a heart attack or a stroke, who could have attacked a wonderful man like Charles? “What are the legal implications? If a heart attack killed him, is it murder? Maybe the assailant doesn’t even realize he’s dead.”
Steve closed his notebook decisively. “Assailant nothing. Stop the fantasy.”
“So show off your education. Answer my question.”
He exchanged glaces with Graveline. “All right. A case of manslaughter maybe. Even simple assault. Depends if the condition was known. People have been charged for literally scaring others to death. Let’s say they want to collect an inheritance a bit prematurely. In the absence of relatives, if that’s the case, what about his friends?”
Belle swallowed, dangerously close to tears. The water bird had brought back those first moments strolling the property with Charles, watching his face light up at unfolding delights. How quickly they had become comfortable. “He’d only been here a couple of months. I sold him the place. To tell you the sad truth, I think I was his only friend. Ed and Hélène just got acquainted. As for his next door neighbours, they’d been fighting over a dog problem.” Her voice hesitated, gauging his response. One by one these little secrets were going to emerge. “I should mention the mushrooms.”
Her story about Mabel Joy brought a scowl of distaste from Steve. “You did what?”
“The note was gone. No proof. I bluffed her, and it worked,” she said, daring him to criticize her actions.
Perhaps with Graveline attending, he kept his temper under control, giving her a “deal with you later” look. “A dirty trick for sure. Or it could have been an innocent error.” She coughed in derision, and he continued. “What makes you fix on the woman? Earl the Pearl is a big name in this town. Plenty of contacts from his union-busting days. Quite the brawler.”
“So it fits, Steve. Mabel Joy opened with the mushroom ploy. Earl added the KO punch. What was next for Charles? A concrete overcoat and a ride on their cabin cruiser?”
Belle walked back to the DesRosiers’, passing at the turnaround a brown Ford pickup, perhaps four years old, but in prime shape. She filed away the information as did the regulars. Who else was using the paths? More hunters or hikers or even lovers? Once or twice on star-watching strolls, she had surprised a few determined parkers miles from the eyes of nosy spouses or parents. Turning in to collect the dog, she heard Hélène call.
“Might as well have some lunch. Plenty for four. Ed counts twice. It’s leftover spaghetti. Fresh sourdough bread, too, popped out of the machine.”
“I don’t have much of an appetite. Thanks anyway.”
“Worm anything out of your police friend?” Ed asked, coming outside nibbling a meatball skewered on his fork.
“The medical examiner seemed to favour a heart attack but can’t decide how he got that bruise. Slipped and fell? Someone punched him? They found a cigarette butt outside his gate.”
“Are we talking murder again? What the hell’s happening on this road? I’m going to start keeping my twelve-gauge in the bedroom. Got more kick than the old wo . . .” He scratched his belly and glanced mischievously in Hélène’s direction. “You don’t suppose Chuck and Anni were goin’ at it, and then an old boyfriend of hers . . .”
His wife’s tone was testy. “Have some respect, you clown. How ridiculous. Anyway, Belle, at least take some of this zucchini cake.” She presented a fragrant chocolaty package along with an envelope with the recipe.
That night while she had a coffee and dessert on the deck and watched a flaming red sky surrender to black, Belle missed her friend. His patrician smile, eclectic conversations, refreshing embarrassment at suggestive subjects. And his cooking. Oh, yes, his cooking. She toasted him with the last morsel of Hélène’s rich, moist chocolate cake. Somehow the lake seemed increasingly lonely now that one less admirer approved it. Two, counting Anni. Then she shivered as the darkness pooled. Too bad they hadn’t struck up a friendship. What an interesting pair they would have made, or perhaps not, with their singlemindedness. The relentless charge of a Seadoo driver skirting the shoreline sent her to bed with evil hopes that a strong wind would whip up waves to keep the motors at bay.
NINETEEN
Tying up loose ends through a sense of dubious honour, Belle sent the appraisal to Mabel Joy, boosting the value by five per cent for good measure. Off went a check to The Sudbury Star for her father, gathering his life into another three-month package. Long neglected, the garden needed attention, too. What an embarrassment of riches. With a fading heart she counted at least a dozen zucchini sizable enough for a bludgeoning. Next year she would plant four, not eight, no matter how innocent and frail they appeared nestling in their peat pots. If she didn’t get rid of these, she might have to commit vegecide, kill the plants before they murdered her.
She sat on her garbage box at the road with an armful as the parade of working folk stopped to chat. “Hey, my zucchini’s ripe” turned to “Could you use some zucchini?” to “Just got a few left” to “Please take one,” but they were all too wise . . . and too jaded from designing recipes for their own profligate squashes. Into the van went a large selection of bats destined for Rainbow Country. Townies always considered fresh produce a welcome gift. To accommodate the vegetables, Belle moved a few piles of junk fliers in the back of the van. That was when she noticed Charles’ safari jacket. Why send it to the Goodwill? It would be a useful keepsake with all those pockets and zippers and a small memory of a fine friendship.
Scooping up a dish of vanilla ice cream at the restaurant, she trotted largesse to the oohs and ahs of the nursing home staff. All the way down the hall she could hear them discussing dinner plans: zucchini pancakes, casseroles and stews. As an incentive, she had passed around copies of Hélène’s cake recipe.
Her father was dozing over a talk show about adults who found playing baby an erotic treat and got off on giant diapers. Not so funny when it’s for real, she thought, flipping to a TV Ontario nature program as she tapped his shoulder. “Hey, handsome. Remember when you bought me my first ice cream? I put more on my face than in my stomach.”
He blinked and dug into the treat. “Strawberry next time. That’s what I got you.”
Scarcely had she learned from David Suzuki, Canada’s eco-prophet, that eating polar bear liver could be fatal, than her father had licked the spoon clean. The man could inhale ice cream without a whisper of high cholesterol, which boded well for her. Studying his face was like glimpsing the future, except that she’d never look that young. No worries, she guessed, alwa
ys in the hands of a capable woman, her mother, his girlfriend, and now her. “Solve that murder?” he asked, burring the last word like his Scots ancestors.
“Don’t I wish. Now we have another one. Or maybe not. The police think it was an accident.” She explained the details of Charles’ death. “Something else is bothering me. I can link Anni to a scandal years ago at a mission school. The place was run by a Mother Superior named Euphemia.” Storytelling had been one of his other gifts, spinning her tales to put her to sleep, scripted from the Brothers Grimm by way of MGM and Fox.
“An evil nun? Beating the kids? Wouldn’t have been allowed after the code the Hays Office brought in during the Twenties. Catholic Church had a big stick with their banned list, too. Selznick had to fight like a devil to keep that ‘damn’ in Gone with the Wind.” His shaggy eyebrows wiggled like benign woolly bear caterpillars. “But women are the deadlier of the species, your mother said, and she was always right.”
“Or we agreed to tell her that,” she said. She hesitated to mention that sexual abuse might be a factor. Whenever the subject came up, he refused to believe that anyone would do such a thing. His was a gentle world where all children were spoiled as rotten as his daughter and scared only by fictional witches.
“Euphemia, was it? An old-fashioned name. Kind of majestic, though. Someone you wouldn’t want to cross. Bet she was beautiful, too. Leave Her to Heaven. That Gene Tierney was a knockout.” As she left, he yelled, “Cornell Wilde was a sucker for a pretty face. You be careful.”
After checking errant titles downtown at the Land Registry Office, Belle walked into the spanking new towers of the Sudbury Police Department, part of the Tom Davies Square complex. Explaining herself at Reception, she was escorted to the basement. The damp cold in the corridor made her wonder if Steve weren’t a candidate for arthritis as well as food poisoning. She could swear that the same sad triangle of pizza from the last visit festered on a paper plate. He looked up, gave a series of hoarse coughs. “Bring anything to eat?”
