by Lou Allin
Three OPP cars and a van unloaded a contingent of officers. Belle and Miriam gave their statements to Kevin Dokis, the detective in charge. A taciturn man with a closely shaved head, he took notes as they walked the scene.
Belle zipped up the police parka she had exchanged for Dorothy’s coat while they watched the defiant woman escorted away in handcuffs. “I wish Steve Davis, my friend with the Sudbury division, could see this. He’s been on the case.”
Kevin sounded what passed for a laugh. “Fun and games at the station this morning. Just came in on the radio. This Dumontelle guy they were hunting is trapped in a ventilation shaft. Buck naked. Never left the building.”
After arranging transportation, it was nearly night by the time all three arrived at Belle’s lake, courtesy of the OPP. Jack had kept the home fires burning and served chicken paprikash, bringing blankets and pillows to the sofa and loveseat, trying to shove a thermometer into their mouths.
“Should have had me along,” he said as he brushed Strudel’s matted ears. “I would have clipped the old witch a shot that sent her into next week. This poodle could have died.”
Toasting her stockinged feet by the woodstove, Miriam smiled. “Thank God I won’t have to test Celeste’s courtroom abilities.”
“Very scary.” Belle rose to look out the windows at a sight she’d imagined she might never again see. Long bodies of conifers groped dark purple shadows across the ice as the sun fell behind, its fire through the trees spilling pools of blood. “You paid dearly enough with those weeks at the San.”
“That ugly letter she sent me. Jealous of my feelings for Mel and trying to stir the pot. Perhaps that started the argument at the condo.” Miriam’s expression softened as she looked at Belle. “But you nearly froze to death. And that faithful van. Knowing you, it’ll arrive back here by flatbed for burial.”
Belle touched her reddened cheeks and nose, slathered with Vasoline. With a slice of Jack’s homemade whole wheat bread, she mopped the last gravy from the bowl, then sat back, pointing to a policy on the glass coffee table. “By some weird grandfather clause, I’m entitled to replacement value. Instead of a few thousand, Cambrian Insurance pays the whole shot. Next week I’ll be inking a deal at Mid North Motors.”
Heading to the basement arm in arm with Jack, Miriam called, “Can the poodle sleep with you? We have some catching up to do.”
Never had the wawa bed felt so delicious. Exhaustion had sucked Belle’s resources, melted a couple of pounds if her flattened stomach told the truth. She sank into the undulating folds with only one cigarette and a slug of scotch, her eyes shutting over Minette Walters’ The Shape of Snakes, a dark treatise on the depths of human depravity. As for local reptiles, Ontario’s diminutive Massasauga rattler couldn’t match fangs with Dorothy. Strudel curled at her feet, and Freya snored below on the sheepskin. A warm wind was bringing a major thaw. Drips tick-tocked from the roof. But remnants of the snow would lurk in sheltered crevices in the shady woods until Victoria Day.
Epilogue
Our Dorothy has engaged Celeste for her defense? Is she completely insane?” As a strong late March sun flooded her living room windows, the ever-present woodstove ash dusting the glass tabletops, Belle sat forward on the sofa and shook with laughter. “Melibee’s revenge.”
Steve spread out his hands as he raised a dark eyebrow. “Think about it. Who knows the case better? Pleading self-defence, she might get only a few years for Elphinstone. Hardly premeditated, using that statue. But she also faces kidnapping and assault charges for Miriam.”
Belle spoke with frustration. “That’s a slimy compromise. She wasn’t taking Miriam to a sugaring-off party or giving her skiing lessons trussed up like that.”
“She told the truth about her biathlon skills. Even at her age, she was an ace skier and an excellent shot. In and out of that overlook like a knife through butter. The house in North Carolina and the career with the school system were total fabrications, though. Husband left her with no life insurance or pension.” He added that the phone call about Rosanne had been made by Bev Martin, the woman who had recited poetry at the San. When she used the ticket on the return trip, police had arrested her upon arrival in Sudbury. Dorothy had enlisted her help by claiming that she was playing a practical joke, offering the innocent woman money to visit her daughter in Detroit.
“So what got all this started? She was Melibee’s partner, right?”
One corner of his expressive mouth lifted as he tossed Mr. Chile for Freya. Then he aimed a finger at her. “Will you ever learn?”
“My nose just finished peeling from frostbite. Indulge me.”
“You have the general idea. A case of thieves getting greedy with each other. Dorothy was fudging figures on the silver she brokered in New York. Elphinstone planned a private score with those paintings. Crystal Wilson might have been bang on when she said he was taking her to the islands.”
Or perhaps he had planned to treat Miriam. Let her believe that. Belle had no pleasure in dashing dreams. “And Dorothy and Melibee came to blows while Miriam was asleep in the bedroom. So she drank the champagne, not Miriam. Wiped off her own prints, but left his to confuse the issue. Cleaned off the sculpture, too. But why didn’t anyone ever see her around the apartment?”
“When we searched her house, we found a card for the underground parking lot and a key to the condo. Elphinstone wanted her to come and go quietly. Anyway, he had the connections. If he’d sold the paintings, he could have set himself up quite nicely out of the country after his investment company went belly up. The Art Gallery of Ontario sent up a professional last week. We could be talking fifty thousand each for the board work, up to a couple of hundred thousand for the canvasses. As for your theory about Barbara Bagshaw’s affair with A.Y.—”
“Let the academics feast on that one.” The ungovernable heat from the stove was making her sweat, not to mention having to wear clothes. She rose to open the patio door and gulped in disbelief as a snowmobiler hit the pressure crack, did a barrel roll, and came down right side up. Some people had all the luck. “But am I chump change? The shots. Then her attack at the bridge. What about those charges?”
He exhaled slowly, the soul of patience. “The techies nailed down the trajectory from one hill to the other. Too much snow for now, though. We’ll get a metal detector out there in another month, and if we find anything, try to match it to that 30.06 rifle of her grandfather’s. We did discover that she’d rented a white car for a week, but since no one saw her near your house, that’s a dead end. As for your wilderness adventure, she swears she never left the camp. Said you must have run off the road.”
“Maybe she can start another career in jail as a fiction writer. So what about Melibee’s investments? Has Miriam lost everything?”
He flipped through his notebook and whistled softly. “Oddly enough, one of the stocks turned out to be a gold mine. A crazy Canuck software company called Castorcom. Our accountants estimate that his clients will receive as much as seventy cents on the dollar. And there might be a finder’s fee for you about the paintings. Your turn for lunch.”
After he left, Miriam pulled into the yard in a pink Volkswagen Jetta with a Palmer Realty decal. Her arms loaded with plastic bags, she walked up the steps, Strudel running to grab Freya’s wagging tail. “Hors d’oeuvre, Greek salad, steaks, truffle cake. I’m a movable feast.”
On the dining room table, set with Belle’s best linen and sterling, two unlabelled wine bottles waited. Glowering from the wall was Jesse’s terra cotta Oak Lord mask. Now that they belonged to each other, the wide open mouth roared protection. While Miriam gave it a quizzical look, she explained his role.
“Trust you to have a fearsome guardian angel.” Miriam smeared pâté on a cracker. “Speaking of mine, Jack drove back to Timmins yesterday just before the trails started to melt. I’ll miss the old cuss.”
“He left me a fat check for that loan. And it didn’t bounce. Thinking of getting back together?” S
he searched her partner’s honest face for a shred of evidence.
“Neither of us wants a long distance relationship, and we need our jobs. Later, who knows?”
Reaching behind her back, Belle presented a gaily wrapped package. “Your jacket and socks saved my life. Here’s a little thank you.”
Inside was a set of Oster electric clippers with three blades, perfect for trimming a bush poodle.
PETS DE SOEURS SHAWINIGAN STYLE
Set oven to 375°F. Grease a 9 × 13 inch pan, sprinkling ¾ cup brown sugar over the bottom. Pour ⅓ cup water over the sugar.
2 ¼ cups flour
¼ tsp salt
2 ½ tsp baking powder
1 T cinnamon
2 T sugar
½ cup milk
½ cup melted butter
¾ cup marmalade
Combine the dry ingredients. Combine the wet ingredients. Then mix well. On a floured board, roll a layer of dough ¼ inches thick. Spread evenly with marmalade, then roll. Seal the edges and slice into ½ inch pieces. Put each into the sugared pan. Bake for 25 minutes.
PROLOGUE
The Sudbury Star, August 26, 2006
“Second Murder Rocks City”
A concerned neighbour found the body of Selma Atler, 42, Sunday morning after she failed to answer the door at her home on Bloor Street in the Donovan area. An accountant at the Taxation Centre, Ms. Atler appeared to have been strangled, then placed nude in the bathtub.
June Reymond told police that they always drove to church together. “I just went on in. The door wasn’t locked. That wasn’t like Selma.”
There was no sign of forced entry, but missing were a plasma television, a Sony laptop, and an assortment of jewellery, according to Norm Atler, her son, a lawyer in Lively.
“We’re the Nickel Capital, not the Murder Capital. The person responsible will be found and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. That’s a promise,” said Nan Martin, Police Public Relations Officer, in a press conference Tuesday afternoon. She was referring to a local newscast stating that the latest death had bumped the annual homicide rate to 5.5 per hundred thousand, passing the leaders, Saskatoon and Regina. “With only 165,000 people in the City of Greater Sudbury, small numbers can skew the data. We were only .6 last year. Why doesn’t anyone mention that?”
The shocking killing echoed the death of Jennifer Spark the week before, also found under similar circumstances by her sister, Marge Blake. A divorcee, the 40-year-old Spark lived alone in an apartment on Teele Street in Lockerby. Mrs. Blake noticed the absence of a collection of Georgian silver, a Bose radio, a bottle of Courvoisier and several hundred dollars collected for a cat shelter.
Take Back the Night, a local activist group, will march tomorrow to Tom Davies Square to demand more police patrols. Meanwhile, single women are being advised to lock their doors and report any stranger. Anyone with information is urged to call the TIPS hotline at 705-226-7821.
The tragic deaths have touched many parts of the community. Belinda Jeffries, manager of the City Pound on Douglas Street, reported that most of its larger dogs had been adopted. Dick Derro, manager at Blue Steel Protection, said, “We’ve doubled our rate for installations of home security systems. No one wants to take chances.”
ONE
The stink of gas exhaust announced an unwelcome presence long before Belle Palmer heard the distant, guttural chug of an ATV. Twenty minutes earlier, she’d squinted in suspicion at a rusty white Ford 100 truck parked at the schoolbus turnaround at the end of her remote road along Lake Wapiti. A cleated metal ramp on the tailgate meant that a rider was already on the Bay Trail. Freya, her German shepherd, had given the bottom of the steep hill a thorough sniff, squatting to pee proprietorially in an arbutus bed.
Moose season was over a month away, though that wouldn’t prevent a bold poacher from filling his freezer illegally. She had made a mental note of the Ontario “Yours to Enjoy” license plate: AHCK 245. AW HECK, bring a 2-4 at 5. If she heard shots or saw fresh signs of ad-hoc butchering, reporting the plate would be a pleasure. The Ministry of Natural Resources had the right to search and seize vehicles and even check a residence for contraband meat.
Stopping on the forest path a kilometre later, she spied broken ferns and crushed bracken where the macho machine had left the trail, then looped back. Too lazy to hike into one of the interior swamp lakes and perch in a tree stand? Over the years, hunters had erected three or four in the vicinity. Then around the next blind turn beside a grandfather yellow birch came a rider wearing work pants and a ubiquitous red plaid flannel shirt. The green monster Yamaha Grizzly 660 quad had a large wooden box attached to the rear carrier, and a water bottle dangled from the handlebars.
On a whistle, Freya moved to Belle’s side, and she placed a gentle hand over the chain collar for safekeeping. Shepherds were extremely wary and very territorial. This was their province, Crown land though it was. Belle could have sworn the old dog narrowed her eyes.
“How are you today, madame?” the man asked with a warm smile, cutting the engine. He had no accent, but the last word made him a Francophone, sans doute.
“You tell me,” she said with a cold expression, folding her arms. “What are you after this time of year? Bear, I suppose. Make sure it’s a boar, or don’t you care about orphaned cubs?” Curiously, she saw no gun, just a belt knife with a bone handle.
He switched off the engine, his crinkled, butterscotch eyes confused at her hostility. Attractive as Sean Connery in Robin and Marian, he could have been anywhere from fifty up, unshaven, but with a healthy head of salt and pepper hair under a very odd pink knit cap with earflaps.
“Why so unfriendly? I’m a licensed trapper,” he said with a slight frown and a hurt tone, as if the final word, which would enrage urban PETA members, should be a cachet with bush dwellers. “I have a right to trap here.”
“Trap what?” she asked, as a whiff of pong met her nose. Not death, but pungent, foul and laced with hormones.
The man got off the quad and walked to the rear carrier, which he opened to display a large beaver, flat on its back, paws folded over its belly like a medieval bishop atop his marble tomb.
“Male,” she said. “Wheew. How do you stand that reek?”
“Don’t hardly take notice of it after my beak goes numb. Not until I get home and the wife gets downwind of me before I hit the shower.”
Suspecting the source of the ridiculous hat, Belle relaxed for a moment, waving her hand. “I’m not that fond of beavers.” Many waterside poplars and birch had been destroyed by overambitious rodents gnawing down trees too big for their abilities or girdling skyscraper aspens, leaving them to wither. With beaver hats in disfavour since the American Civil War and coats a dangerous fashion statement, the mammals were overbreeding. Obstructive dams often pooled water in the interior, then burst forth into streams, flooding out nearby homeowners.
“What do you get for a pelt these days?” she asked. Fur might be making a comeback, but times had been lean for decades. He didn’t finance that ten-thousand-dollar machine on this career.
“Hell, no more than twenty bucks at the North Bay fur auction,” he replied. “This is just a sideline since I retired from Mother INCO.”
Sudbury’s International Nickel Company together with little brother Falconbridge had employed over twenty thousand people in their Seventies heyday. Now only six thousand remained on the payrolls, but thanks to modern technology, still produced the ore for one-fifth of the world’s metal. Until recently, increasing numbers of retirees barely maintained a shrinking population as the young left for greener urban pastures down south or out west. Since miners often started work at eighteen, the trapper could have retired before fifty, a just reward for half a life underground.
“Word was passed on to me from a survey team on the Nickel Rim South Project about a nuisance pair back there at the swamp lake. They’re putting in a tailings pond, and you know how these watercourses all connect up,” he explaine
d.
The new mine. Flags from surveyors had started showing up everywhere, paths chopped into the forest. How she resented intruders with heavy lug tires despoiling the trails she ambled. Boys and their toys. “So that’s it for you in here, then?” she asked in a brusque tone, still cautious as she remembered the strange deviations into the bracken. Beware of men bearing dead beavers.
He rummaged in a canvas pack, handing her a wooden apparatus the size of a shoe box. “I’m scouting places to put up a few of these.”
“What are they?”
“Marten traps.”
Belle clamped her jaw in recollection of the rare sight of the dry-land counterpart of the familiar mink, a boreal forest inhabitant. Weighing in at only a few pounds, the weasel family members were fond of blueberries, a signal feature in their small scat, usually on a prominent rock in the middle of the trail. Wild animals had a sense of humour. She was unfamiliar with the finer points of trapping, but alarms were ringing. “Where do you put them?”
He pointed down the trail. “You might have seen that fir grove near where I drove off. Martens make their dens in conifers. So I nail these on.”
She peered into the trap, a coffin with a cruel spring vice inside. “What’s the bait?”
He waved his gnarled hand, red with toil. “Hamburger. Porkie strips if I catch one. Martens are fierce little creatures. Take your finger off.”
Belle’s stomach churned in disgust. Martens were rare and shy. She’d seen only a few in her lifetime, these cousins of Herman the Ermine, who lived under her boathouse and kept mice at bay. “And what do you get for their skins?”
“Around sixty bucks. Enough to add a bit of Christmas cheer.”
She flipped back the trap. “Make sure you don’t catch any dogs in the process of accumulating that cheer. My friend’s mini-poodle could crawl into this.” She turned away and stalked back down the trail, calling over her shoulder. “Too much trouble to go to the real wilderness? Why not use the bus and trap downtown in Bell Park?”
