Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle

by Lou Allin

  A set of creaky stairs led to the second floor, and she walked down the dark hallway, a fifteen-watt bulb shadowing the peeling wallpaper. Wrestling posters were glued to the wall as if to disguise the cracks and discolorations. Sounds of raucous music vibrated the floor from below. For a moment, she imagined the speckled black linoleum tiles shifting like dominoes. Maybe she should have offered to let Jack stay at her place, but then how would he get to town? She knocked three times.

  Showered, shaved to within an inch of his life, barbered into a razor cut, and dressed in clean jeans, turtleneck, boots and a parka from Mark’s Work Warehouse, Jack resembled an older brother of Rosanne’s. He gave a self-appraising whistle as he patted Calvin Klein’s Infiniti onto his smooth olive cheeks, his chin complete with a Cary Grant dimple. Rough trade or not, he was nowhere near Miriam’s fifty-five. “How old are you, anyway?”

  “What’s your guess, darlin’?”

  “Don’t flirt.”

  After Belle gave a withering glance to his first choice, a Molson Canadian from a six-pack keeping cold on the window sill, he popped a Pepsi. “Let’s see. I flunked out of high school, lied my way into a job at the Levack Mine at sixteen, only a gofer at first—”

  “Short version, puh-lease. I’m not your biographer.”

  His eyes grew hazy and fond. “Nineteen when I married Mimsy. Just old enough to drink. She must have been thirty-five, no, four. We met at the movies. One of the Rockys.” He lifted his arms in a gesture of triumph.

  Images flooded Belle’s mind. From Jack to Melibee was a quantum leap. But Jack represented stability, a link to the past. “You’re here to perk her up, give her a strong shoulder. Tell her you’ll talk to Rosanne. But keep it light.”

  He pointed to a phone card on the dresser. “Already did that. We’re a united front. Mimsy brought her up real good.” He stuck out his bottom lip and crushed the pop can between his hands. “I was a loser as a husband.”

  “Just be a friend.”

  “I never stopped.” His voice was deep as a mine shaft, resonant and steady. Clapping her on the shoulder, he grabbed his coat. “Now let’s roll, partner.”

  Jack made her stop at Helvi’s nearby for a dozen red roses, then insisted that they drive to Huckleberry’s on Regent St. for chocolates. “Lots of those. Then them pink ones. Rosanne said they’re Mimsy’s favourites,” he said at the counter, bending and dodging as he pointed. Next he turned to Belle with an ingenuous grin and peeled another fifty from his wad. “You pick out some, too, for being a pal.”

  She resisted for two seconds, then choose amaretto and hazelnut truffles from the Belgian delicacies. If she didn’t demolish them, Jesse would enjoy the rest.

  After dropping Jack off at the San, assured that he could manage the busses, she returned to work.

  “Shall I send out cheques for these bills?” Jesse asked, popping a proffered candy into her mouth.

  Belle did quick, despairing calculations on her mental cash register, running short with property taxes coming up. She sighed in resignation, ashamed to enter the land of the insolvent. “Let them slide for now. There will be a late charge, but maybe in a couple of weeks . . .”

  As she went to her van an hour later, she stopped cold, her eyes widening at the shattered windshield. Instinctively, she looked up, but saw no broken cottonwood branches. The circular spiderweb suggested that someone had smashed a large rock against the driver’s side. Snow on a pile of patio stones from the property next door seemed disturbed by rummaging. What next for protection? Fake cameras under the eaves?

  Seething, she stomped back inside and leafed through the Yellow Pages. “My windshield’s broken. Vandalism. I’ll head over to Apple Autoglass. Then will you lend me the Bonneville? It shouldn’t take more than a day. I’ll pay your taxi fares.”

  “Things haven’t changed. Damn hooligans,” Jesse growled. “Still, it’s better than suicide bombers.”

  Counting the free ride back to the office against the two hundred deductible, Belle wondered if it hadn’t been bad strategy to keep her business downtown. Tel Aviv it wasn’t, nor did shopkeepers roll down metal awnings, but there were warnings that times were no longer as innocent as when The Globe and Mail newspaper boxes used an honour system. Panhandlers as young as fifteen sat on street corners. The Royal Bank piped Mozart symphonies onto the sidewalk to discourage them. Perhaps the new YMCA would upgrade the neighbourhood, despite the nearby pawn shops and cheque-cashing outlets on Brewster.

  She shrugged, momentarily charmed by the sight of a young man walking a dopey Lab and a young shepherd-cross which reminded her of Freya. “They’re friendly,” he said. “Pet them if you want.” Stooping to stroke their fur, she sensed a trap. “Spare change for some kibble for the dogs, lady?” he asked pleasantly. He wore a warm green canvas Hydro parka, corduroy pants and felt-pack boots, but cheap clothes were plentiful at the Goodwill. She’d bought a nearly-new pair of Buffalo jeans for $5.00.

  “Sure,” she said, hauling out a ten-dollar bill. While she resisted beggars, dogs were a soft spot.

  He swept a royal bow, doffing his Sudbury Wolves hat for good measure. “Mutt and Jeff thank you, and so do I.”

  As he turned to leave, she had a thought. “Pardon me, but have you been walking in this area within the last hour?”

  “Buddy of mine has a basement room on Pearl Street where he lets us warm up. He ain’t home yet, so we been doing laps. Six times at least around the block on and off.”

  “Did you see any kids nearby?”

  “In school now, unless they’re playing hookey like I did. But there was a cop, hanging by the meters.” He scratched his head as he walked away, pulled by the dogs interested in a chittering squirrel. “Funny, ’cause I didn’t see no ticket book.”

  Belle wondered where he would stay tonight. Shelters didn’t take animals. The homeless, several hundred if the papers were right, vanished in Sudbury winters, knowing that minus thirty-five would freeze them without mercy, despite sleeping bags passed out by workers and packing crates stuffed with rags. No cozy heating grates like in Toronto. Perhaps above one of the sleazy stores on Brewster, provided that the landlord turned a blind eye.

  That evening in the boatlike Pontiac, its rear window sticker reading, “A woman is like a tea bag. If you want to know how strong she is, put her in hot water,” she swooped home with aplomb. Jesse’s tape player screamed klezmer music, woowoo violins and snickering clarinets dancing horas to accompany the Northern Lights. With the car gripping Edgewater Road like a lynx, she accelerated on the swamp flats, then rounded a corner, appalled to see a cow moose ambling a hundred feet ahead, followed by last year’s calf the size of a small buffalo. She swerved, hit a patch of black ice and fishtailed wickedly, ending up with her rear wheels dipping into the icy ditch.

  She got out with a disgusted “Sacrifice!” and gave the car a once-over, assuring herself that any minor scratches could be erased with rubbing compound. Then she put on her coat and started breaking small branches with her bare hands. A bad time, seven at night when everyone was warm and safe at home. Without the van, she didn’t have her emergency kit, which every sane Northerner carried. Candles and chocolate had a new meaning when you were trapped in a car waiting for rescue. With a cushion of pesky alder branches for purchase, she skewed back onto the road with surprising ease, remembering that Jesse kept three hundred pounds of sand in bags in the trunk.

  Eleven

  Quiet as a nun tiptoeing to darkling matins, the snow had deposited another foot. Belle’s chimney was clogged again, refusing to draw and leaving the wood smouldering through the keys. A whisper beyond daybreak, she went to the boathouse and grabbed her equipment. Sixty-six dollars a shot was a hard bite as long as she had the muscles and balance to climb a ladder and plunge four interlocking fibreglass poles and a round metal brush through twenty feet of insulated pipe. “Don’t look down” was good advice. Minutes later, the reaming was finished. Giving a steely swipe to the heavily-creo
soted metal cap, she reaffixed it, tossing the cumbersome poles into the yard, where they landed near the old outhouse, which had survived the demolition of the original cottage. Then she turned to make her perilous way down the snowy roof, always the worse trip.

  Suddenly she heard a truck backfire and saw Ed clearing her plowline. She sent Freya from the yard to the safety of the deck, hoping that the poodle would follow that tempting tail. By the time she had descended, he had made his first bumpy pass down the drive and leaned out his window. The pup set up a racket that ear plugs wouldn’t solve, darting at the tires and retreating.

  “My stack’s as stuffed as Hélène’s cabbage rolls. How much you charge?” he asked.

  Chasing the poodle up the stairs to safety with a threatened kick, she laughed. Then a thump made them turn. A grouse had flown into a back window and lay flopping by the mugho pine in the flower bed. “Ring its neck!” called Ed.

  Belle walked forward tentatively, peering at the sad, feathery mess, its plumage subtle rainbows of brown, black, and taupe. “Stunned, maybe. I’ll put it in the ash bucket to keep the dogs away. Perhaps it will recover. Sparrows often do.”

  Ed blew out a contemptuous laugh and swivelled the plow. Half an hour later, Belle returned to a stiffening corpse, its purple pigeony feet pointed skyward. “Stand back and watch an old bushman do the job,” Ed said, getting out of the truck with a cocksure expression, only a trace of a limp revealing his recent hip replacement. “This works great.”

  He grabbed the limp body, placed his boots on the wings, and pulled the feet. The skin slid off in one fell swoop, followed by a neat gut bag. With two fingers he snapped off the neck, biffed it into the brush and handed the results to Belle.

  “Yuck. The feet are still attached.”

  Ed relit the stub of his cigar with a smirk. “Hell, I’m a hunter, not a butcher.”

  After another visit with Miriam, Celeste called an intelligence meeting at Jesse’s late that morning. “The autopsy report’s been released. A skull fracture with that statue caused a massive haemorrhage. He was hit from behind and died in minutes.”

  Belle asked, “Miriam found him at seven. How long had he been dead?”

  Celeste shrugged. “Corneas clear, no rigor, the body still warm. The super saw him get his mail around two. Probably a goner a couple of hours when Miriam arrived. One odd thing.”

  Belle finished the rich eggnog Jesse had whipped, savouring the dribble of rum to ward off colds. “This case has been odd from day one.”

  “The wine glasses left the police curious.” While they exchanged glances, she punched numbers into her Palm Pilot, squinted, then consulted alternate screens.

  Jesse rapped her bony shoulder. “We have work to do, girl. Get to the point.”

  “His prints were on both champagne glasses. Along with some smears on the stem of one.”

  “He drank both himself?” Belle asked.

  Celeste’s plucked eyebrow arched like a bridge over troubled waters. “Obviously you lack the suspicious mind of an investigator. Stick to real estate.”

  “You’re the boss.” So far, she thought, bridling at the affront but reminding herself that the woman hadn’t asked for a retainer. Still, a free bad lawyer wasn’t as helpful as an expensive good one.

  “There’s powerful deception here. Much more devious than wiping the glasses. It is possible to drink from champagne flutes with the tips of your fingers, like this.” She mimed the arch action, holding only the stem. “Then a little smush as the fingers fall away, and presto. No usable prints.”

  A thin line between idiocy and genius. Nodding, Belle changed the subject. “So when you saw Miriam, was she in good spirits?”

  “Actually, she’s a bit upset.”

  “Her release has been delayed?”

  “Dr. Parr is hopeful for next week. There is something else. Apparently she’s getting visits from Elphinstone’s disgruntled clients. They saw her name in the paper, connected the financial dots, and are convinced that she’s holding the numbers to Swiss bank accounts.”

  “That’s absurd!” Belle exchanged glances with an astounded Jesse, her mouth forming a wrinkled O.

  “The staff has been alerted, so she won’t be bothered again. Despite the procedures, a few sneaked by. It’s not a prison, after all.”

  “Any descriptions?” Belle thought about her list.

  “The women were more pathetic than threatening. They’re both over eighty, and one used a walker. But some guy built like a wrestler came up the back stairs. It took several aides to haul him off. They would have pressed charges, but he ran away.”

  “Sounds like Phil Richards,” Belle said. Shy little Millie’s husband.

  With a frown, Celeste stopped chewing, disgorged a gum wad like a cud, pooted it into the wastebasket and popped four more Chiclets. “Now you’re telling me. Who is he?”

  Getting the details, Celeste was sceptical. “It’s pretty bold for a murderer to harass in public, unless that’s a ruse. From what you say, he hardly seems that bright.”

  “So let’s look elsewhere. Steve mentioned an ex-wife.”

  “Frankly, I like women for this kind of explosive attack. Hell hath no fury. Pick up the nearest object and whammo. Still, Miriam says she found Elphinstone dead, and as her attorney I have to believe her.” She scratched a pimple on her nose. “The wife’s name is Debby Wiley. They separated ten years ago. Very strange that they didn’t divorce, though. Could mean she still cared for him. Or that he refused to file the papers.”

  “Any leads? An address?”

  “The police are still looking. Kind of a lowlife. Used to be an exotic dancer.” A snort underlined her scepticism about the profession. “Maybe she’s left the area. It is suspicious. Cui bono as we say in the law.”

  Later, with the van repaired, Belle met Jack for coffee in the glass-boothed incubator smoking room at the Tim’s on Regent. So far as she could smell, he hadn’t been drinking. He told her that the meeting had gone well, that he had Miriam laughing with his jokes. “I called Rosanne again, like she asked. Mimsy said to keep it upbeat, not even mention the possibility of a trial. I gotta go along with that.”

  “I wonder if we dare tell Miriam about Melibee’s wife,” she said, after she related the latest developments and stirred her coffee with a vengeance. “This could be the break. Spousal murders are common.”

  “Man, you are so right. Guy I know went bananas and pushed his old lady over a railroad trestle on a snowmobile trip. Right in front of a freight train. During the day shift, she’d been drilled by every miner in town.” His mulish laugh drew a grin from a grizzled man eating his way through half a coffee cake. “Got off on a manslaughter charge, though.”

  “We have to find Debby Wiley. She used to be an exotic dancer,” Belle said, as he lit a cigarette with a Ledo matchbook, his pupils dilating in sudden interest. “Since you’re a barroom regular, here’s some fieldwork you’ll enjoy. Just stick to ginger ale.”

  He winked at her, flashing the limp cigarette erectile dysfunction picture from the Smoking pack, a native-produced product eight dollars cheaper per carton. “You got the right man. This case is like a mine full of stope rats. But I never stepped in one yet.”

  She cocked her head at the odd preposition. “In? How do you step in a rat?”

  He choked in the middle of inhaling and fumbled at the coffee cup. Tears washed down his face before he regained control. “Good thing you’re not on my shift. Stope rats are what guys leave when they’re too lazy to hit the can.”

  Later that night, as she pulled into her drive, Belle frowned at the blackness. Only the phosphorescent radiance of the full moon escaping from scudding clouds allowed her to make her way up the icy steps to the deck. Slipping on the slick cedar planking, she fell to her knees. Surely all four floodlights hadn’t burned out. As the dogs pranced out to the yard, an examination with the maglite from the van showed that the bulbs had been smashed, possibly with a shovel used to scatt
er stove ashes on the drive for traction. It lay out of place near the woodpile, where her splitting axe was embedded in a chunk of maple as a more cogent message.

  Belle had little appetite for dinner, settling for comforting tomato soup made with milk. The few Ritz crackers she managed tasted like sand. Adding a sinister atmosphere was Charles Boyer driving Ingrid Bergman to madness in Gaslight, his neat French moustache assuming a threatening look when that worm-like pulse in his forehead throbbed. Things that go bump in the night. The tire, the windshield, now her own sanctuary, closer and closer like a shark smelling blood. Her throat dry and tight, she swallowed a lump the size of P.E.I.

  Wrapped in a garbage bag in the joists of the laundry room was a twelve-gauge shotgun, still unregistered. Like many Canadians, she resented the forty-dollar cash cow fee. Freya was the best insurance, but she couldn’t accompany her mistress around town like a guide dog, nor could Joseph Cotten charge to the rescue. As she refilled the stove, despite the blast of heat, Belle shivered, facing the vulnerability of a woman living alone in the bush, no winter neighbours for a quarter mile. First, she would take precautions. Lock the house, then find out who was doing this. Only one wine connoisseur came to mind.

  Twelve

  A police officer, for God’s sake. First my van, then the house. Can’t you . . .” Belle’s voice broke from frustration, and she shredded her paper Tim’s cup into confetti, ignoring the “Roll-Up-The-Rim” contest and hardly noticing as the impromptu wedding shower fell onto the desk.

  Steve gathered the pieces, palming them into an overflowing wastebasket, leaving one scrap, which he inspected. “Hey, you won a muffin. Now calm down and start from square one.”

  She pocketed the token and tried a deep breath, letting palpable silence order her mind. Listening to her story with charitable frowns and nods, he sat at a familiar battle-scarred command post in the bowels of the new police building in the Tom Davies Square Complex. All of the museum pieces which served as furniture had been faithfully transferred from his former office. Judging from the desiccated shards of lettuce on plates heaped in the corner, he’d tried to upgrade his diet with an occasional veggie combo, but pizza cartons outweighed the Subway wrappers. File cabinets were layered back to the Pleistocene in paperwork, and the wall displayed countless pictures of Heather, but conspicuously, none of wife Janet. Their marriage had as many potholes as post-war Berlin. “Brian the Dipper’s undercover more times than out. Probably swings both ways.”