Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle

by Lou Allin

  On the turn, she met Ed with his quad, cane strapped on the back, Hélène and Rusty in tandem, about to forge up the trail to Surprise Lake. “Do me a favour, guys. Take the dog with you. I’m in a big hurry, but I’ll explain later.”

  “No problem. Come over later and have supper with us,” Hélène said with a motherly grin. “Big pan of cabbage rolls we got at the Garlic Festival. They beat the world record for braided garlic, over two hundred and—”

  Belle called over her shoulder, “I may be late, but thanks.”

  The office was empty at a few minutes to nine. It was Miriam’s day off. A slow Friday. But five new listings and two open houses next week. Prime the coffee maker and sprinkle vanilla on the oven racks. Homey fakery. Maybe the life of a private investigator would offer more scope. But in Sudbury? Probably end up staking out gum machine robberies or peeking into motel windows with a camera to catch adulterers, not that it mattered anymore with no-fault divorce. Surely Steve would be at work now. So many details kept to herself. Sister Veronica. Osprey Inlet. And that headlamp. If only he’d taken her seriously, been willing to admit that there might have been another person involved. “He and the family went up north of the Sault to camp out on Superior,” a clerk said. “Be back on Monday.”

  A couple of days, she thought. Maybe there’s something else I can do about these loose ends. Who was Charles Sullivan? At lunch time she cruised the Internet for items on the Seaway. A web page for Ontario parks led her to information about the nine “villages perdus,” lost villages flooded in 1958. Mille Roche, named for its thousand rocky rapids, next door to the major city of Cornwall, now existed only as a series of park islands reached by a causeway. Everything had been relocated at great expense to the government. Houses, schools, public buildings and businesses had been picked up and deposited inland at an equally tiny place called Long Sault. If a Charles Sullivan had been born in Mille Roche, why were there no later records? She closed the file with a click, rummaging through a hundred movie plots. Perhaps he had never left.

  At the Cornwall Chamber of Commerce number, she was greeted by a pleasant woman with the broad Ottawa Valley accent of Scots-English remnants of the United Empire Loyalists, those who had fled America during the Revolution. “I’m trying to locate relatives from Mille Roche for a genealogical chart. We’ve been out of touch for decades. The cemeteries seemed a good place to start,” Belle said, sensing the irony.

  “Everyone at Mille Roche was moved to other grounds, some out of the community, but most to Maple Grove. That’s your best bet. Try . . .”

  “We’re pretty well-indexed here,” a man identifying himself as the Human Resource Manager said on her next call. “The government insisted on strict records when the graves were opened. Serious stuff, relocating bodies. What is the name?”

  “Sullivan.” Her request was met by an odd silence. “Sullivan,” she prompted, wondering if they had been cut off.

  His voice sounded subdued. “Yes. My grandmother used to tell me their story when she caught me playing with matches.”

  “Story?”

  A sigh issued over the lines. “Some sixty years ago. The entire family was killed in a tragic house fire during one of our worst winters. So many heated with wood. The place went up like tinder.”

  “No survivors?”

  “I’ll get the file.” There was a long pause, people talking in the background. Her theory had been right. One more piece. Not definitive, blue sky maybe, but who knew what corporeal substance might join it?

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. The parents were Percy and Vivian. And two young children. Charles, the baby and his sister Rachel, five. Enough to make you weep. Gran still takes flowers to the grave. Proud to say that the whole town chipped in for a nice marble monument. Top quality. Couple of little angels on top. It’s under our most beautiful red maple with a spectacular view of the Seaway.”

  Belle rang off with bitter satisfaction. Charles had lived in Ottawa with easy access to the small towns of the valley. A cinch to comb newspaper morgues for someone born the same year as he but who had died as a child. Died along with the whole family in a town now underwater. No wonder Steve’s records jumped from birth to university. Little Charles Sullivan lay in a grave by the St. Lawrence, stone angels guarding his rest.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Back at the office, Belle’s emotions ricocheted from disappointment to fury to pity and back again, calmed only by the production and consumption of coffee. She bit into a tomato sandwich lathered with mayo, and munched pensively on the carrot from Charles’ forlorn garden. The entire middle of the puzzle was missing, as if macular degeneration had struck. Charles as a priest, serving in unholy alliance with Euphemia in Osprey Inlet, maybe even someplace else before that, pray God not after. Yet unlike his accomplice, he had not been secreted away in a monastery the equivalent of Le Coeur de Repos. Had he left the church of his own will or been forced out? What did it matter? With a creative new identity, he had retrained in an innocuous profession and spent the next decades in Ottawa, Canada’s immaculate, if boring home of civil servants. Punishment enough, a cynic would say.

  While the cigarette butt had been flimsy evidence to arouse much suspicion, the blinking light and the box of indictments made her suspect that a visitor had been there. Someone connected with his past and with Anni, the woman who had perhaps died at his hands. “Perhaps,” a word she couldn’t omit. That brutal concept, so far from the civilized man with whom she had shared table, troubled her so profoundly that she continued rationalizing.

  The old woman, scarcely infirm of purpose, had been feisty enough to have wielded the stick as a weapon. Perhaps Charles had been defending himself in a protective blow regretted the moment struck. And the probable blackmail that bought the van? Why had she changed her mind? Had she asked for more or regretted the gesture, tried to recapture an ethical edge with the sententiousness that had enraged Patsy? The cryptic comments from the salesman and then Murph added force to that theory. Whatever had happened, threatened the quiet life Charles had nurtured. Even the mildest animal backed to a corner could go wild with fear, like a chained dog guaranteed to bite.

  Evening found her returning late from town, irked at the petty details of demanding clients. Belle groaned as the hourly news came on the radio. Eight already. She parked at Fred’s restaurant with hopes of a quick meal and was enjoying a Caesar salad when she saw his car enter the strip mall, nosing up to the window. Without modern running lights, he drove with lamps permanently on, European style. Her fork dropped as the old Camaro shuddered to a stop in a cloud of oily smoke, the left beam winking like the monocled Mr. Planters Peanut Man.

  Fred shambled in bearing two overflowing baskets of blueberries. He grabbed a coffee and parked jovially at her table. She looked out the window at the car, then at the man, barely able to navigate without a lurch. Surely he couldn’t have been involved. “Where’s Craig?”

  He pointed to the baskets. “Second shift again. We’ll get him at nine. There’s enough sun for another hour. You just can’t keep that fellow down. He’s picked twice as much as us. I just hope . . .” His mouth twitched, and he brushed it with his fingers.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You know about his past. Guy’s fought hard, but a couple weeks ago he tied one on. Disappeared for two days. Just a backslide.” He shrugged and forced a smile. “It happens.”

  Belle pushed aside her salad to concentrate. A calendar tacked on the wall caught her attention, little fishes, waxing and waning moons. “About the end of the month? Full moon?”

  Jokes weren’t Fred’s forte, but he tried a howl like the radio advertising hockey games for the Sudbury Wolves. “Don’t tell me you believe in that stuff? Anyway, I think he’ll be moving on soon.”

  “What gives you that idea?” She tried to keep her voice calm, avoid a scare which might stop small bits of information from building to a frightening conclusion.

  “Some hints he’s been dropping
about staying on in Toronto when we drive down to see Garth. Bunk at a hostel for a few nights until he can find a room. Plenty of restaurant jobs in the Big Smoke. ’Course I’d give him a good recommendation. Hate to see him go, though. He’s like family.”

  When she pressed his hand, he nearly jumped. Apparently women had not been part of his life. “I’m going to ask you a question. Please answer truthfully, even if he is your friend. Did you lend your car to him that night he got drunk?”

  He hesitated, the cup shaking. “He’d done a double shift. Wanted to see a show at Silver City. Didn’t suck on the booze until after he got back. Knew my temper better than to pull a stunt like that.”

  “Thanks for your honesty. I’ve got to go and sort out some problems. Where did you leave him?”

  “Over the hill from where we saw you that time. What problems? You got me worried. Is he in trouble?” Belle shot him an OK sign, leaving five dollars on the table as she slammed out the door.

  “Left his school,” Steve had said. “He’s lost.” Anni at the dentist’s side, alert to the subtlest signs of distress. Charles the Enforcer for the depraved Euphemia. And Craig, poor Craig with his broom. All too fast now. As she drove to the fields, foot on the gas pedal jiggling absurdly from nerves, Belle assembled the cast for a tragedy written by an author long dead in a grave on a small island. Whatever the ghastly prologue, nature, nurture, evil incarnate, Act One opened in Osprey Inlet. Act Two, decades later, a chance encounter between Charles and Anni. Act Three, Anni’s murder. Act Four, Charles’ death. And that was where Craig entered from the wings. Had he met Anni, conspired with her? Or had he seen his tormentor on the street and followed him home, hatred for that face etching itself into his mind like a festering sore?

  The parking area was empty. To save time, she pulled as close as possible to the path, squeezing behind a Science North billboard, sticking the van keys under the mat. The berries were nearly finished, only a few wizenings decorating the dry bushes. Besides, the Jays’ spoiler series with the Yanks was keeping the fans cheering at home or gathering in the sports bars. Belle climbed carefully in the growing shadows, wary of stumbling on uneven ground. Here the Grenville Front, a highly deformed and metamorphosed zone, met the smoother faces of the Southern province. Rockhounds studied its tectonics, chipped for garnets, quartz and feldspar in its wrinkles. Farther on, in the barest spots decimated by the acid rain, lay traps for even the most careful foot.

  There was no one visible across the open stretches. Maybe Craig had given up and hitched a ride to his rooming house, passing her on the way. No problem to thumb a lift in the friendly North. She walked another few hundred yards, scanning the barren hills for movement or sound, dodging miniature oaks and maples sprouting from opportune crevices, natural bonsais older than her father. Several times she tripped, stubbing soft leather loafers on the jutting rocks and scraping skin from her palms. This was getting risky. She was about to turn back, hands aching, when a quiet whistle like a lone piper’s tune broke the silence. “Standing Outside the Fire,” one of Garth’s hits. She squinted at a hunched form far ahead, tinking a metal pot. “Craig!” she called.

  He straightened, his lean body silhouetted against the last orange flickers from the vanishing sun, a chimney sweep on the rooftops of London, and he waved eagerly. Her heart doublebeat like a trapped animal seeking exit. Act Five looked like torture, yet did she really fear the man? Violence did not seem his style, passionate though he had been about the kids he protected. “Fred send you out as a search party?” he asked. “Good timing. I’ve got the last. Nothing else worth bothering about. If you can drive me back, I’ll spring for coffee.”

  That was the longest speech she had ever heard him give. Her better, or perhaps worse half, felt like accepting the offer, then returning to Charles’ to collect his wretched secrets and burn them to ashes scattered by amoral winds. “Not tonight, Craig. I have something to ask you.”

  Leaning against a blackened outcrop, he met her eyes with polite interest, the broad face honest and open, the bearing newly confident. Suppose she never learned the truth? Why not leave this last survivor to heaven? Justice had been served in a clumsy, unofficial way. Craig had taken positive steps to rejoin society, made friends and plans. If he had lashed out at his aggressor, it was small payment for a calculated cruelty that had shackled the prime years of his life. “What is it, Belle?” he asked.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat, measuring syllables like bitter medicine, wondering whether the relentless pursuit of facts wasn’t worse than the happy peace of ignorance. “I saw you on my road the night Charles Sullivan died.”

  At the sound of the name, he looked confused. Then his eyebrows gathered in an oncoming storm, a warning Steve flashed in times of anger, yet the rest of his body language screamed for release. He took a rasping breath and then in the shadows, everything happened so fast, the clink of the falling pot, dark berries merging with the rock. His figure pushed past and rushed off, the contrast hard to follow, flat and one-dimensional. She started after him. “Craig! Tell me what happened. Running away won’t help.”

  Common sense argued that she had as much chance of catching him as overtaking a marathoner, but maybe simple words would reach out, make him reconsider. “You didn’t kill him!” she screamed, hearing only the rasp of footsteps on stone, the skitter of scree down stark hills. “All you’re guilty of is assault.”

  After a few minutes, cross-country racing, yelling and breathing at the same time became impossible. Belle stopped to rest her wheezing lungs. Why was he so afraid? Of living up to the standards of a law-enforcement brother? Losing a late-found grip on life, though it spelled only a rooming house and cleaning job? Yet that tenuous first step meant salvation to an alcoholic. Sister Veronica’s wisdom whispered in her ear. “The victims may feel . . . partially to blame.” No wonder he had never told anyone. Shame and guilt were the most powerful weapons of an abuser, especially one connected with the mighty Church itself.

  The terrain grew brutal, overlapping folds of rolling strata turned on their sides like roasted whales, converging into deep pits. Belle peered into the distance until she imagined a shape making its way. A trick of the eye? One of the ghost trees killed a century ago? Jumping a channel, she misjudged the width and twisted an ankle, sprawling onto the ground. For a moment she sat stupefied and gulped back air. Underneath her jacket, her silk shirt was clinging to her back, her linen pants were ripped, and her hands were sticky from plasma. Damn the man, anyway! Craig could sprint clear to Buffalo for all she cared. There was no help if he wouldn’t take the hand of a friend. Steve would get the whole mess dumped into a doughnut bag when he got back, and he could sort it out.

  Mind travelling faster than body, for a brief moment her eyes left the ground as she wheeled. One foot slipped on a patch of lichens, and she found herself tumbling, knees and elbows bumping like a spastic marionette, her head cracking against rock, finally landing on something mercifully soft. Little Alice down the rabbit hole, she thought, struggling for breath as a black curtain dropped. But I didn’t drink any potions, eat any mushrooms. Definitely not mushrooms. She heard laughter, or was it crying? A kitten was trying to make itself heard. Why was the poor creature out in the middle of nowhere?

  Fighting back to consciousness brought a nausea which made her retch, shot vinegary bile up the back of her throat. Pain was speaking a language she couldn’t decipher, and she squeezed her eyes against its noise. Though everything ached, one particular knife talked with eloquence. The ankle she had wrenched earlier. Better give it a rub. When she tried to move, something stopped her, a contortion of body disconnected from brain. With effort, she raised herself on one elbow. Though a thick bed of moss had broken her fall, one leg was jammed down a deep cleft, narrowing at the bottom. Try as she could, she couldn’t get any purchase. And every time she pulled, agony gripped her like a powerful vise. Had she broken her ankle? Palmers had bones of iron. A sprain could hurt as much. Whatev
er, the leg wasn’t going anywhere, so neither was she.

  Shaking her head to clear the cobwebs, Belle tried a more methodical assessment, flexing arms and hands. Her other leg splayed awkwardly underneath, prickly from a pinched nerve. With a deep breath, she stretched it and applied a tender massage. One small relief. She ran sore fingers over elbows, raw as meat. Abrasions, or was it contusions? Fine distinctions muddled. The back of her head hurt, but she could feel no blood, just an egg-sized lump. Probably banged on the way down. How far, though? She swam up through a murky swimming pool, noticing only then that her glasses were missing.

  Reality was sinking in as fast as the sun had set. Craig was long gone. He had no idea she had fallen, if that might have made a difference in his frantic escape. But panic was a dangerous option. Wouldn’t people come back tomorrow, combing the bushes? She shifted with a moan and snagged her coat on a dried blueberry bush. As she untangled it, the brief optimism blew away like the frail twigs crushed in her hand. Why would anyone return? As Craig had said, the season was over. Even if some hopeful drudge did try for a last pint, this bleak area was over a mile from the edges of the fields. Moonscape, the bare bones of the Nickel City where even a bagpipe would go unheard.

  Surely there was some way out, some problem-solving exercise to brainstorm. What would Errol Flynn do? Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Gentleman Jim. Just not Custer, not They Died with Their Boots On. The pit itself, full of handholds, posed no difficulty except for her uncooperative leg. Stoic Canadian farmers cut off an arm trapped in the combine, knotted a tourniquet with their teeth and crawled miles across the prairie for help. Somehow she felt glad that she hadn’t brought her Swiss army knife. She swallowed with effort, her throat dry. The salty salad was bringing on a fierce thirst. Oh, for a drink of water, a huge bowl.

  Then she remembered Freya. Thank God she was safe with the DesRosiers on that timely walk. Expecting her hours ago, Ed and Hélène would be in a frenzy. In the morning, missing-person rules be damned, the old reliables would call up a search, starting God knows where. Parking behind that huge billboard to save a few yards of walking had been a stupid idea. Maybe a fatal one. Gritting her teeth, she retraced her movements. Once word of her disappearance filtered to the restaurant, Fred would put it together, especially if Craig had left town. Discovering the van, they would comb the fields until they found her. Another day? Three? Five? No water and no food. Desperate for a sensation other than pain, her fingers picked at the papery yellow-green rock tripe, the explorer’s friend. On one of his many ill-conceived searches for the Northwest Passage, Sir John Franklin and his starving crew had boiled it for soup. She nibbled a tasteless shred, remembering too late that uncooked lichens brought on diarrhea. With a groan, she pounded the rock until her fist hurt. What spectral shape would greet them when they finally found her?