Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle

by Lou Allin

  As if in response, a snuffling sounded somewhere above. So close to town, no large predators roamed these hills, but she wouldn’t rule out coyotes, or brush wolves as they were called. They had begun moving toward inhabited areas in quest of garbage or small livestock. Ed had chased away one rifling Rusty’s empty dog food cans. Still, a loud bluff would handle Wily E. Wasn’t the same as a black bear or the cougar in B.C. that had killed a woman defending her children.

  When no slavering snout poked over the edge of the pit, Belle sat back, depressed by fresh worries. What would happen to her father? She was his life, a fragile connection to happier memories. If he could save her now, he would, like when her kite had stuck in rotten high tension wires. Childish tugging had brought them crackling and sparking across the quiet, dead-end Toronto street. At her wails, out he’d come on the run, giving her hands a quick glance, then directing traffic and steering onlookers away until the Hydro truck arrived. Barely five-ten, he’d seemed a giant. Huddled on the curb, the tiny cause of furious adult activity, she’d felt her stomach tighten, imagined a painful punishment. But he’d popped her onto his shoulders, trotting up the stairs, both of them laughing. Too bad he hadn’t been able to have another ten kids for insurance to see him through old age, especially when the first one had proved a certifiable idiot.

  The prospect of splitting the mutual funds with siblings usually dispelled that wish. She wouldn’t be tuned to the CBC news tomorrow to see if the TSE hit a new high. That precious bond fund was about to go off like a rocket with the interest rate drop. With eyes closed, she imagined the recovering Canadian dollar high-kicking across the screen. Then she coughed, rubbing her arms. How cold would it get? Maybe seven to ten degrees centigrade, forties Fahrenheit? Nothing to die from tonight, especially surrounded by black rock which held the warmth. Yet it was the third week of August, when a sudden frost could snap the air like an Arctic bullwhip. Belle pressed her cheek to the moss. Soft, velvety, slightly metallic. Nature in sympathy with man. Then she was seven again, swinging up and up. “Higher, Father, higher,” she begged, dangling long red braids, dizzy at the flash of blue sky. Somehow her grip weakened and she let go at the arc’s high point, falling into vertigo, then plucked out of the air by strong arms. No fancy weight rooms, but what natural muscles, just like hers when they clowned together comparing biceps. He hugged her to his rough tweed jacket, redolent of the cherry blend pipe tobacco Mother forbade in the house, despite her own cigarettes. “OK, honey?” Yes, I’m OK, she whispered, tears bathing her face. But I wonder if I’ll ever see you again.

  At last, moonrise brightened the scene to reveal the dimensions of the prison. Ten feet by ten, eight feet down, good drainage, no septic, no neighbours, and a damn poor view. Her leg didn’t hurt anymore, a dumb and separate thing. In fact she couldn’t feel it at all. Suppose it were paralyzed? How many houses or apartments were wheelchair accessible? She might be lucky to find out. Scuttlings of nocturnal animals wakened the night, industrious shrews, skunks, raccoons, squirrels and chippies on the move. Overhead a slender ballerina with legs outstretched crossed the moon, a great blue heron from the nearby wetland, perhaps Surprise Lake. “Why, then, oh why can’t I?” she moaned. Suddenly a roar startled her. Too late for Air Ontario, the local carrier. A military flight? The con trail puffed a luminous exclamation point against the sky between incoming clouds, dotted by the faithful evening star of Venus.

  Belle napped fitfully, nursing the happy delusion that she was in her wawa bed. Would she ever snore softly in its warm and undulating folds again? Perhaps she should keep awake in case she heard someone, or worse yet, some thing. Her bladder was aching, another humiliation, and why not a moment’s surrender for one less pain?

  So sleepy. I could have saved a fortune on liquor and cigarettes, she thought in unexpected wisdom. Exhaustion had always been the key for a hyperactive Gemini. She looked at her watch, blessing the decision to splurge on a glow model. One o’clock. Now that the rock was cooling, the shivers began. Hypothermia wasn’t a bad exit, second cousin to freezing to death. Drowning, bleeding, choking, now that was scary. Forget the dramatics. She wore a jacket and pants, and she was dry.

  Family, and friends, and dogs aside, it was maddening to leave the solution to someone else. Without Craig, the truth would never be unravelled. Steve might wonder what in hell she had been doing near blueberry fields without even a pan or plastic bag, but with the autopsy report blaming exposure, he’d never connect her death with Charles’, never search that toolshed. Tearing down the place in 2050, a new owner would probably toss the box into the trash. It was all so fragmented, so kaleidoscopic without her configurations. Could she scratch a clue, maybe a triangle with key initials, just, just, just in case she was found too late? Her fingers probed the rough granite. And her last lipstick was desiccating into a historical artifact in the bottom of a drawer. She tried her foot again, screaming at the pain, biting her lips to inure herself to the throbbing which would begin anew. Her mind was fading in and out of consciousness, begging her to relax into a torpor, husband all resources, hibernate like a snake deprived of warmth. Live naturally. Wait for the sun. Tomorrow is another day, Scarlett. Then as she passed out, a light rain began to fall.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The damn kitten was mewling again, but Belle ignored the cries because she had figured out who the creature was. Still, the little fool persisted, fur wet and matted, calling her name, which made even less sense. It was still dark. Or maybe she had gone blind. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Freya would make a perfect guide dog. She clamped gritty eyelids until stars and comets danced wild ballets. Get back to sleep. Think pleasant thoughts.

  “Belle!”

  “Shut up. I know you. You’re me. Go away.”

  “Belle!” Crazy white beams criss-crossed her face, like a Hollywood opening at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. A tumble of small stones dropped onto her shoulder. At the edge of the hole, a bright yellow plastic poncho flashed. “Up here.”

  “Craig?” Her voice came from another planet, the tones ragged and plaintive as her lips licked the rain greedily, soothing her throat.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d fallen.”

  She spoke quietly, marshalling pride against the urge to sob. “I thought you had gone. Left for Toronto.”

  “Not a chance. I’ll get you out.” Bracing the flashlight to illuminate the hole, he scrambled down and reached for her arms.

  “No, wait. My leg is trapped. And my glasses are gone.” Why did she say that? It sounded so pathetic. Little old crippled myopic woman. Miss Piggy in Lord of the Blackflies.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. Tell me if it hurts too much.”

  Craig was as gentle as he was strong. It took agonizing minutes, and more than one undisciplined shriek, but slowly he eased her out of the cleft, shifting a massive chunk of rock with masculine effortlessness. Meanwhile she chewed her cheek and blinked back tears, as much from self-pity as pain. The glasses hung unscathed on a nearby branch. She stretched for them with a wince, then smeared the lenses pointlessly with a wet sleeve. Craig raised one pant leg to inspect her ankle, bulging with fluid, dark where the thin sock had frayed.

  “That looks bad,” he said. “If we prop you up here . . .” he perched her rump on a thick cedar root clinging to the rock wall, “I’ll be able to pull you from above.” Hunched like a helpless ornament, she watched him scale the wall in two quick movements. Then he plucked her from the pit of death, back to the world, clasping her to his chest. Belle felt his heartbeat, strong and fast, a breath quick in her ear.

  As he released her, the wind blew against the chill of her sodden clothes as a reminder that she was no animal in harmony with surroundings, not in this unforgiving climate. “First things first. I have to go to the bathroom.” He moved away discreetly, and she clambered like a wounded turtle, fumbling with her pants. Wouldn’t be the first time I peed on my shoes in the dark on a camp-out, she thought.

  “Why
I waited, I don’t know. I’m already half-drowned. For God’s sake, give me one of those,” she asked a minute later, as he took out a pack of cigarettes. Sometimes there was power in a jolt of nicotine.

  By the flare of the lighter, she watched him light two at once, Paul Henreid come to life. Sucking back warm smoke, she searched his face in the muted pearl of dawn. “What made you come back?”

  “When I found out you knew about Father Jim . . .”

  “Father . . . ?” Of course. James Morris. The name on the passport. “I knew him as Charles Sullivan.”

  What she said didn’t seem to register. Craig wanted to talk, and nothing was stopping him. “I was pretty confused. All I could think of was running.” He sighed and brushed rain from his eyes. “My life had been back on track for such a short time. Then it was falling apart.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Fred picked me up like always. Just went home.” He choked back a bitter laugh. “Home, that’s a new word. How I wanted to dive into that forty-ouncer of rye. Stared at me like a lying lover. But I saw the faces of the guys at the restaurant and kids like Jedi. Your words kept pounding in my head. I knew you wanted to help.”

  “So you did hear me. And then?”

  “Must have been around midnight. When I figured I had to stick it out, I called your number. Some machine. I can’t hack those things. So I woke Fred and got the car to drive to your house.” He shook his head. “He wasn’t any too pleased until I explained. But he always comes through.”

  She touched her ankle gingerly. “And I wasn’t there.”

  “I knew something was wrong big time. This was the last place you’d been, so . . .”

  “You found the van.”

  “That’s when I panicked. For the last two hours, I’ve been looking for you. Guess I got turned around. Everything is the same in the dark.”

  Belle finished the cigarette, field-stripping the paper like a good citizen despite the rain and pocketing the debris. “DuMaurier. You left one of these at . . .” A spasm of shaking stopped her words.

  With a small nod, he pulled off his plastic poncho and wrapped her in it. “Let’s go. You need a doctor.”

  “Not the Emergency Room again!” Belle threw up her arms in submission, then groaned at the pain. “Still, heavenly after this. Hey, I’m starving. Stop for doughnuts first.”

  Opting for a three-legged race instead of a fireman’s carry, they stumbled back to the car as the landscape lightened. She started laughing so hard at one rest stop that Craig gave her a worried look, as if she were delirious.

  The old Camaro had a powerful heater. Those gas-guzzling eight cylinders pumped it out. By the time they got to Tim Hortons, their clothes were drying. Belle called the DesRosiers and found Hélène half-furious, half-crying from worry, so she briefed her and promised to stop for a late breakfast unless the tottering Canadian medical system had landed on life-support.

  The admitting nurse took Belle’s temperature and blood pressure, then logged her condition on the Alpha Centauri end of triage, number forty-five. Translation: six hours. Balancing on borrowed crutches in front of the bathroom mirror, she washed up in contortionist fashion and surveyed the damage. Scratches and scrapes, nothing fatal. Her hair was matted with dirt and the errant scrap of moss. A piece of rock tripe decorated one tooth. Joining Craig beside a mammoth doughnut box, she sat in an isolated corner across from a collection of glum folks pulled from their beds for medical oddities. The selection included a wailing baby, a trembling grandmother in babushka accompanied by a knitting daughter and miscellaneous beings with white wrappings in conventional places. No apparent gunshot wounds, though. God bless Canada. Belle passed Craig a coffee and grabbed a maple cream doughnut. “We’ve got all night, or what’s left of it. Start at the beginning. You’re going to have to tell Steve soon enough.”

  “Steve? How do you . . .” He looked bewildered.

  “He’s a good friend of mine. When you came to Sudbury, he told me that he’d tried to help. Somehow he suspected that something terrible had led to your isolation from the family. He was hurt that you wouldn’t confide in him. I never told him about our meeting, but I hoped somehow you’d find each other.” She ferreted out a chocolate sour cream pastry. “But time and chance took over.”

  His deep voice trembled as he took her hand in a familiarity which gladdened. “I’ve wanted to talk to someone for so many years, back to when I was a kid at one of those residential schools. In Osprey Inlet. Bet you’ve never heard of it.”

  “Yes, I have,” she said, wishing for forty words for sorrow. “And that’s too long to carry such a secret.”

  “It’s weighed me down, you can’t know how much. That bitch.” He coloured and dropped his voice even though a small television clamped to the ceiling was blaring sitcom reruns. “Sorry. Sister Euphemia, I mean. Why can’t I forget the sound of that ugly name?”

  “Her picture in an old magazine got me started, but I can’t imagine so much evil in such a small frame. Nuns should mean guitar strummers, flying do-gooders, Mother Teresa. This one was a devil in drag,” Belle said with contempt.

  Craig turned to her with a look of betrayal. “It wasn’t fair, Belle. My family lived in a little cabin. At the edges of the reserve. Life was our school. Learning our people’s ways. Some might say that we didn’t know much of the world, television, video games, but are those things better than knowing how to run a trapline or fish for your supper?”

  She shook her head, at one with the view, and he continued. “Then the government decided we should get a real education, whatever that means. I was only twelve when they made us go to that place. First time away from home, so far, too. It wasn’t too bad at St. Michael’s at first. We got the crap . . . the stuff we were sent there for, a bed and meals, lessons, something called vocational training. I made a letter holder out of pine.” His sigh touched her heart. “But I never wrote anyone, not even my mother. They read the letters, anyways, corrected the grammar and made sure we didn’t complain.”

  “Then she came. Made me an altar boy, gave me treats, clothes, privileges, told me I was her special friend. Soon I learned what she wanted. That silver whistle. Her signal. I threw up every time I heard it. Still,” he said, his crinkled, smoky eyes seeing a boy again with the comprehension of a man. “I think I could have been all right if she hadn’t pulled him in. He was her brother.”

  One more piece. As Belle watched him shrink at the pain, the quick sugar fix turned to ashes on her tongue. She asked a question she didn’t want answered. “Did he beat you?”

  “Didn’t have to. She used the idea of him to get what she wanted. Once Father Jim took me aside in the hall, just held my arms and stared at me hard. ‘I hear you’ve been disobedient. Sister likes you. Be a good lad,’ he said. He taught us music.” Craig blinked and looked at his fingers, one nail torn by the rocks, the thumb bloody. “I used to like music, you know, wanted to play the guitar. He was a pretty good teacher, even though I hated him.”

  “You were so alone.” Had Euphemia attacked any other children? Could she ask him that? “Where was Steve?”

  “Steve was four years older than me. Sixteen. He’d gotten into the navy before I left. They were beginning to recruit on the reserves, weren’t too fussy about birth dates for a big guy. I was so proud, and I wanted him to be proud of me. How could I tell him? How could I tell anyone?”

  Sister Veronica again. Isolate and devour, a familiar tactic. “And then?”

  “Nearly a year. I counted the days, hoping for some dumb reason that Steve would get a leave or something. Fly down out of the sky like Superman to take me home. Or that those two would just go away. She was smart and careful, but one afternoon I made sure someone saw us. A decent lady who delivered the groceries. It didn’t take long. A plane landed with government officials. Everyone started running around, giving orders. Like a bomb had hit. We were sent away to a big brick school down on the U.S. border in Fort Frances.” He fini
shed the coffee, pulled out his cigarettes and then put them away with an apologetic look to the duty nurse. “The day we got to the city I packed a few clothes and hitched a ride west from a trucker on the TransCanada. Enough school for me.”

  “You were what, thirteen? How in God’s name did you live?”

  “You’ve never been on the road. There are good people and bad. You grow up fast. I could always get a sandwich and piece of pie from any woman home of a morning. Besides, I was a pretty strong kid, like Steve.” He swallowed and rebraced himself against the plastic chair. “Wood cutting, gardening, road work, even fire fighting. No questions asked.”

  “And Sudbury? What brought you here?”

  “One town’s as good as another for a drifter. But in B.C., an uncle put me up. He said that Steve lived here. It was a way to be close to him, even though I pushed him away with the booze.”

  While words were flowing like a wound cleansing itself, Belle tried to steer him back to her purposes. “I’m still not clear how you met Anni and . . . Father Jim.”