Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle

by Lou Allin

  Rubbing her neck where a tight muscle throbbed, Belle added another chore to her growing list. Bills needed to be paid, but even close friends didn’t share PIN numbers. Perhaps she could fetch Miriam’s chequebook from the apartment. How helpless she must feel under sheltered care. One letter caught her eye. No return address, the front lettered in clumsy block fashion. A card? Miriam’s birthday was in early January, a stubborn Capricorn battling Belle’s frantic Gemini. Curious, she turned it over. Blank, and either the glue had loosened, or the envelope had been opened. Out of perverse curiosity, she drew out a plain piece of copier paper with a computer-typed message.

  Dec. 24

  You might be interested to no that Elfinstone is no angel. Do not give him any mony. He’s hurt a lot of people. He has a bad past history.

  Sincerely, a friend.

  Belle winced. The classic “a friend” letter, full of grammatical errors, too. Some jealous low-life lover of Melibee’s? Motive à la mode for an argument, if not more. The envelope was postmarked the day before the dinner that never was. She began fine-tuning computations. If Miriam had read it, either she was the world’s greatest actress, or she had received it upon arriving home from work late that afternoon. Had she confronted him and started a fatal fight? Why hadn’t she mentioned it? Paranoia set in, baroque twists and turns. Celeste marched into her mental sights, chewing her cud, suspicions confirmed. Duty called, “Show this to Steve.” Friendship whispered, “Burn this and burn it now.” How could Miriam explain such a disaster?

  The door let in a blast of cold air as Jesse returned, mukluks iced, her creased face chapped with wind. “SADD is setting in. What I’d give for a palm tree. It’s either a tanning salon or a set of those miracle lights.”

  Packing her attaché case, Belle said, “I’m off to the showing on Lake Penage. Wish me luck.” She’d keep quiet about the letter until she could talk to Miriam. That was only fair. Then she saw Jesse’s list of friends on the bulletin board, one lone tick next to a Melibee connection. “I never did contact Carol Snodgrass. I see by her phone number that she lives in Lively, on the way to my appointment.”

  Jesse’s lilac eyes sparkled through her oversized, tortoise shell glasses. “We used to go to Bingo One together. She could play two dozen cards. Never peel her from that farm until her cold, dead fingers stop milking. Bless her heart. I’ll tell her you’re coming.”

  Stopping to fill up at Petro Canada, Belle found the floor lever to the gas door rusted and immobile. She reached for a tire iron and gently pried it free. Much as she loved the vehicle, its idiosyncrasies were piling up. Despite the popular songs about white wonderlands and dancing snowmen, winter stretched people and machines to their limits.

  She took Route 17 west past the Copper Cliff INCO complex. A lucky meteorite, predecessor to Lake Wapiti’s, had spread its largesse millions of years ago, the riches discovered by railroad surveyors linking Canada in the 1880s. Without that giant metal gift package, Sudbury would be merely a northern extension of cottage country for souls hardy against blackflies and indifferent to the five-hour drive from Toronto.

  On Chilton Road in the Beaver Lake area, Carol Snodgrass owned a quaint century farmhouse with a glassed-in porch and a shiny red tin roof. Cheerful woodsmoke rose from the chimney. Overlooking acres of rolling farmland gone to pasture, the remains of a barn poked through the snow, hard-won stone foundation gleaned rock by rock from the rugged landscape when families numbered fifteen and counting. A trampled path littered with straw led to a shed the size of a garage. Wearing a sweater over patched denim overalls, Carol answered the door and presented Belle with a mug of hot chocolate.

  Ensconced in the generous kitchen, four times the size of hers, Belle savoured the cocoa. Carol was a chunky woman with long, white braids bound around her head like Heidi grown old. She displayed her hands, gnarled and reddened like turnip roots. “Seventy years of milking.”

  “You run a dairy here? I didn’t see any cattle.”

  Carol’s chin, downy with hair, bobbed as she chuckled. “Goats, my dear. We anticipated the value of their wholesome milk back in the Sixties. My parents sold to folks down south whose babies had allergies. Hardly a gold mine, but a nice living. Later teamed up with a New Liskeard firm to make cheese for the health food stores, fudge for tourists. Still keep three animals, more for company. One billy. Smelly devil, disposition of an asp, but does his job.”

  Belle peered at the rich brown froth in her mug, her stomach ready to lurch. “Is this—”

  “Cow’s milk. Doubt if you’d taste the difference though.” She looked at Belle pleasantly, her silence an expectation.

  “Tell me about Melibee. Jesse said you met him.”

  Carol propped her stockinged feet on a pressed-back kitchen chair and lit a corncob pipe, puffing out a cloud of fragrant cherry tobacco. “I didn’t lose a cent. Saw it coming.”

  “I wish everyone had.”

  She had given Melibee three thousand dollars, realizing five hundred in the first two months. Then the roof started leaking. “No problem getting it back. Smooth as silk. Madame this, madame that. Flatterer. I never married,” she said. “And I warned them.”

  “Warned . . .”

  “Ladies of the Club.” She rose heavily, adjusting her hip with a snort and lumbered to a small bookshelf, returning with a copy of the Beardstown Ladies’ Common-Sense Investment Club. “Terribly poor arithmetic, silly cows including monthly investments as profits. But it gave us a start.”

  “Where did you meet?” Belle asked.

  Carol waved her hand. “At each other’s homes. Just a get-together now and then. The word spread. A bit of an entertainment, too. A glass of blueberry wine, potluck. Livens up dark winter nights.”

  “How many women were involved?”

  Carol tapped out the pipe into a glass ashtray as a giant tomcat leaped up and settled in on her lap, kneading its paws on her thick, hand knit sweater. She slapped it gently. “Men need a firm hand. That billy of mine ate . . . well, let’s see. Our group had twelve, never less, never more. Kind of like the apostles, except that the members came and went.”

  Belle laughed. “Apostles of commerce. A modern concept.”

  “I don’t think our Lord forbade making a fair profit. But the ladies got a bit greedy. That’s how Melibee came in.”

  Carol couldn’t remember which woman had brought him. Apparently the club had disbanded well over a year ago after the downturn in the economy. Of the names she recalled, several had died, three had moved out of town, two were in nursing homes, and the rest were no longer listed in the phone book. “Perhaps Hilda has some ideas,” she said, giving her one address.

  Belle wiped a hand across her sweaty face as she left the warm farmhouse and returned to the blast of wind across the fields, wondering if Carol had considered joining the city in its latest initiative to start a wind farm, a ripe concept for the frozen landscape.

  The Lake Penage appointment turned out to be a wasted trip. Expecting a turn-key, year-round operation at a bargain price, ninety thousand for a two-bedroom home with a boathouse, the well-dressed, newly retired couple had not anticipated the need to install a buried, heated waterline. They exchanged nervous glances about the extra expense of upgrading the septic system as well. “A holding tank is fine for summer use,” Belle confessed, aware of the penalties of keeping dark secrets. “A bed will run you close to ten thousand, but it’s a good invest . . .” Having already buttoned his black leather jacket, the man left the kitchen, and marched back to a Lincoln Navigator the size of Manhattan, his wife staring open-mouthed at the peeling cupboards, circa 1940, complete with a tin flour bin and a sifter.

  Back in Sudbury by nightfall, Belle stopped at Black Cat Too, her favourite magazine haunt with the happy addition of a café. Brave folks to stock a cosmopolitan selection to compete with the Chapters-Indigo chain. They filled their walls with local art, this month photographic collages of stately head frames, standing on mine sites in st
range dignity, cathedrals of the North. She ordered a peppery Creole jambalaya and began reading Toronto Life, wondering if she’d ever find time and money to zip down for a cultural infusion of food, films and faces.

  In search of some papers before heading home, she drove to the office, pleased at the wink of recently installed motion sensor lights. Two families with hockey youngsters lived in adjoining houses, but tonight their windows were dark, perhaps because the Sudbury Wolves were playing the Soo Greyhounds at the arena. As she got out of the van, she noticed odd tracks crossing the backyard, half-covered in fresh snow. They led to a far corner near a knobby caragana bush, where a monster 800 CC Yamaha snowmobile was parked. Broken down? Some nerve to be tooling around town, even on back streets. If it wasn’t gone in the morning, she’d call the police.

  Inside, she thumbed the files, her breath short of frosty. Following routine, Jesse had set the furnace to 12°C to save on heat. Turning out the light to leave, she stopped like a spotlighted deer, her heart beating castanets. From a tiny lounge in the rear, where she and Miriam parked their feet on a slow afternoon, she thought she heard a floorboard squeak, a footstep. Or was it upstairs? She rented a one-bedroom apartment with a separate entrance to absent snowbirds. The Rileys had left for their time-share in Orlando before Christmas. Could they have returned due to health problems? Where was their car?

  Suddenly Belle wished she could rewrite Canada’s gun laws. The older and weaker you are, the bigger the weapon. Virile youths could lob ping pong balls. Issue her an Uzi. When a masculine “oof” followed, she reached for a wicked pair of scissors, then recoiled. Could she really stab someone? All that blood on the carpet? Wouldn’t it be cleaner and safer to bang the intruder on the head? In the confusion she could . . . Logistics flashed through her mind. Fifteen feet to reach the door and run down the block to the police station. No time. Whisper quiet, she eased open the utility closet and grabbed a heavy mop.

  In the doorway, a huge figure reared up. Karloff’s Frankenstein monster, massive shoulders, thick neck (was that a bolt?), trunkish legs inching forward, one dragging. Under an arm, a second head. As she took her last breath, it straightened, gave a salute and announced in a gravelly voice, “Jack MacDonald at your shervish.” Then it fell forward on the floor, avoiding facial reconstructive surgery by landing on the mop.

  Nine

  Jack MacDonald was Miriam’s ex-husband, whom Belle had met years ago at Rosanne’s high school graduation. After losing his job as a heavy equipment operator at Falconbridge, INCO’s little brother mining company, he’d left her with ten-year-old Rosanne and gone north to work in the Kidd Creek mines in Timmins. Jack was an alcoholic, charming one minute, blotto the next, never abusive, but hardly reliable. Miriam admitted that he’d managed regular child support, never missed his ladies’ birthdays and sobered up enough to treat his daughter each summer to the Country Funfest or a trip to the Shania Twain Centre.

  Tossing off her coat and juicing the furnace, Belle brewed a pot of industrial strength coffee. Then she poured cold water onto his face and waited until he struggled to his feet and headed for the bathroom. Returning in a few minutes, he heaped his massive snowmobile suit on the floor along with a Darth Vader helmet, leaving him in a grimy sweatsuit over long red underwear. As they sat, Jack ran fingers though his thick brown hair, then asked permission to smoke.

  Belle passed him an empty spring water bottle for an ashtray. “I gather that’s your Yamaha outside.”

  Jack drained the cup and reached for more from the pot on the end table. “Nice, eh? Does she ever ride smooth. Beat my ass all the way from Timmins this morning with nothing in my stomach but a handful of jerky. Man, I could eat a moose raw.”

  “That’s two hundred miles.”

  “Damn sight longer following the pole line. The OPP don’t like fancy machines on the highways. Easy enough to get to Mimsy’s apartment from the Garson trails, but I had to wait until dark to come here the back way by Junction Creek. Crossing LaSalle was murder. Good thing I know the tricks. Where the hell is she, anyway? Doesn’t answer the door, and her old beater’s buried under a ton of snow.”

  Belle waved her hand to dispel the fumes of cheap rye, spying an empty Canadian Club mickey under the sofa. “You were drinking on the way? Miriam said you lost your license for that.”

  “Naw. Only after I got here.”

  “And while we’re on the subject . . .”

  Standing up and stretching, he cocked a scarred thumb toward the bathroom, and Belle remembered the ancient double-hung window with a latch loose since Prime Minister MacKenzie King held policy seances with his dead mother, his dog, or both. “You need a security system. Except what kind of idjit would break into a realty office? Sounds like a bad movie.”

  As he barked out a laugh, she smiled in spite of herself at the absurd scene. “Are you crazy?”

  “Maybe I am. Mimsy threw me out years ago, after that business with the . . . forget it. But I never stopped loving her. Nobody else—”

  “Could have put up with you.”

  In a boyish gesture, one large toe sticking though his heavy work sock, he pawed the carpet lightly, his bittersweet chocolate eyes, bloodshot from wind, reflected a rare candour. His rough voice softened. “What can I do to help?”

  Belle looked at Jack. How old was he? Raw-boned, smelly as hell, turning the room into a boxing gym. “We have to get you a place to stay.”

  “Hell, take me to the Ledo. I feel at home there instead of at a fancy hotel. Money’s no problemo.” He pulled out a wallet stuffed with bills, none smaller than fifty. “Number Two shaft’s shut down for three weeks, so I’m on the loose.”

  A loose cannon, Belle thought.

  Over a massive late or early breakfast at Connie’s on the Kingsway, eight slices of bacon, four eggs, home fries and platters of toast, Jack got the details about Miriam’s situation. His eyes wandered to the buxom waitress, whose charms between waist and chin made carrying trays an effort.

  “Did Miriam ever talk about Melibee?” Not that Belle felt close to a man she’d never met, but “Elphinstone” was a mouthful.

  “Mimsy didn’t get personal. Mostly we discussed Rosanne, financial arrangements. As for the guy, I read the papers like everyone else. Geez, last time I was down here, the kid and I were picking blueberries.” He lit a cigarette from an odd red pack with the brand “Smoking.” “So when can I see my old lady?”

  Belle paused at the irony, hoping that Miriam bore her title with humour. “The question is, will she want to see you? We need to break this gently.”

  “Let this son-of-a-gun do his job. Christ on a crutch, I’ll have her in stitches in no time. Did you hear the one about the mucker who brought a bilingual gerbil to work?”

  Ten

  As it turned out the next day, Miriam was not only back to normal, she was ravenous. As a diversion suggested by Dr. Parr, Belle took her to lunch at Pat and Mario’s. Inhaling deep draughts of air, Miriam nearly skipped from the parking lot, saying hello to everyone she met, greeting surprised strangers with a jubilant smile.

  At the restaurant, along with their order, she insisted on a bottle of Beaujolais now that her meds were discontinued. Belle sipped her wine without savour, then picked at a BLT salad, afraid to broach the subject of the letter. She had settled the bill problem by collecting a few signed cheques, heard Miriam’s opinion on the latest fracas with the Leader of the Opposition, been questioned thoroughly about Strudel’s appetite (ate two ladybugs, but no sign of new teeth), and learned the family history of every employee at the San.

  Miriam ate with gusto, drizzling the Sicilian pizza with basil-flavoured olive oil and polishing it off along with a side order of flame-broiled Brie with raspberry compote. “Celeste is confident that this won’t get to court. She’s had several productive conferences with the Crown Prosecutor.”

  When Belle mumbled something non-committal, Miriam balled up her serviette and stared across the table. “What’s the
matter? You never leave anything on a plate. It’s been tough, I know, even with Jesse, but another couple of weeks and business as usual. If it’s me you’re worrying about, don’t. I’m sleeping like a baby.”

  Belle set aside her salad, motioning for the waitress to clear the table. Sleepwalking sounded more apt. This buoyant denial was worse than the catatonia. “I hope so, Miriam. But remember that someone did k—”

  “Why would I have killed the man I loved? Not since Jack . . .” For a moment her eyes brimmed, and she wiped them, regaining her composure.

  Belle pulled out the letter, shoving it across the table. “This is why.”

  Lifting her chin to squint through her bifocals, Miriam scanned the lines and dropped the paper as if it had anthrax spores. “I never read this poison. Pure slander, not to mention the atrocious grammar. It speaks for itself.”

  “The postmark is just before he . . .” And hardly slander, she thought, more like an accurate assessment.

  “Are you going to give this to the police?” Miriam reached for the wine bottle, then pulled her hand away. A positive gesture, even if only an inch remained.

  “Of course not. I’m your friend, not your judge. We’ll hold onto it for a while, say it got buried in your mail. Now listen, how would you feel about a visitor later this afternoon?”

  The Ledo Hotel, with its tough biker bar, sat downtown on a triangular block by the old train station. “Hey, Lady, how’s about you and me . . .” Without breaking stride, her face impassive, Belle charged past a stubby bearded man bracing himself against the brick wall. Seconds before, he’d been facing it, and a large wet stain confirmed his activities. Confidence was the best defense in the urban wilderness. Show any weakness, and the prey drive emerged. Tempted to pick up a cardboard box of empty Labatt’s bottles for the cash return, Belle rounded the corner and opened a metal door marked “rms.”