No Return (A Lee Smith Mystery Book 2)

by Jay Forman

  “With the deer and moose they usually want the head mounted. We’ll cook up some steaks from the animals for them, but the rest of the meat is shared in the community.”

  “And the bears?”

  “This is the first time we’ve done a bear hunt. They’ve already said they want to have rugs made so if they bag one we’ll send it down to Thunder Bay, too.”

  “What about the meat?”

  “Bear meat tastes like shit. I’m not sure what we’ll do with it. Some of the elders like it, so I’ll see if they want it.”

  “What a waste of a life. I can almost accept hunting the deer and moose; I’ve seen the prices in your grocery store. But why kill a bear if you don’t need to?”

  “We can make a lot of things out of their fur. And we can sell it, too. Bear skin catches a good price on the market.”

  The fur trading business was still alive and well in Canada? Who knew? I guess it made sense. People still bought fur coats.

  “It’s getting cold and the fire’s dying. We should turn in.”

  We? As in Joshua and me? Turn in together? I hadn’t thought that one through. Maybe there were two fur blankets in that bundle he’d had me carry?

  I emptied my water bottle over the last few dying embers of the fire while Joshua untied the fur bundle and unrolled it. It was one big blanket that completely covered the balsam fir mattress.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll still respect you in the morning,” he said as I knelt down and crawled under the blanket with him.

  It felt so very wrong to be lying down with a man other than Jack. I was in a comfortable place, but I was extremely uncomfortable. I lay as close to my edge of the balsam fir as I could. “What kind of fur is this?”

  “Beaver.”

  “But beavers have coarse hair.”

  “This is beaver down. We comb out the rough stuff.”

  I’d never felt so gently encased in toasty warmth in my life.

  Joshua rolled over on his side and was soon holding a lit joint. “Want some this time?”

  What the hell. Why not? I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep without it. “Sure.” It had been years since I’d smoked a joint and the smoke scratched its way down into my lungs. I had to fight the urge to cough and only let a little bit of the smoke escape prematurely when I sputtered.

  “You’ve asked me a lot of questions. Tell me about you.”

  “There’s not much to tell. I live in Port Hamlin, three hours north of Toronto, and I travel a lot.” The first wave of a buzz washed over me after my second toke. “I’m just the one Blaze called,” I giggled.

  “Seeing anyone?”

  Please, don’t let him be gearing up to make a play for me. Before the magical night with Jack that silent plea wouldn’t have been necessary, or even wanted. “Yes. He’s asked me to marry him.”

  “You’re not wearing an engagement ring.”

  “Not yet, but I will be soon.” Had I just made a huge decision? It was probably the pot talking. “What about you? Have you got a significant other?”

  “I think so. It’s still pretty new.”

  “Serious?”

  “I hope so. If I’m going to have kids I’d better get on it.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Almost 30.”

  “You’ve got lots of time.”

  “You want kids?”

  Did I? “I may have already missed the biological deadline. My eggs aren’t what they used to be.”

  He nudged me with his elbow. “Don’t be stupid. That doesn’t happen until you get into your mid-30s.”

  “Been there; moved past it. I’m turning 40 in a couple of months.”

  “Whoa! You sure don’t look it.”

  I liked Joshua.

  A lone wolf’s plaintive howl floated through the air from somewhere in the distance.

  I took off my sweater, rolled it up to make a pillow, and put it under my head.

  “What about your family? You already know about mine.”

  “My aunt lives next door to me. I adore her. My uncle’s gone. They’ve been like parents to me since I was 16.” Wow, the pot was strong. I could have sworn I’d just seen a spotlight beam move across the starry sky. There were so, so many stars up there! I could even see the multi-light blur of the Milky Way. Heck, I was getting so high that I thought I could feel the earth rotating.

  “What happened to your real parents?”

  “Mum left when I was 14. That was rough. I dealt with it better than my brother, though. He’s a jerk. We don’t talk much.”

  “Who? You and your mother or you and your brother?”

  “Both.”

  “And your father?”

  Should I tell him? I’d already talked about my eggs. I’d told him that I was going to get married before I’d even told the man I was going to marry. What a bizarre night. “Dad’s a serial killer.” I felt my shoulders starting to shake and heard my own laughter bubbling out of me.

  I liked Joshua’s pot. I liked it a lot.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Joshua wasn’t laughing.

  “No. Dead serious. He’s serving a life sentence in Millhaven, the maximum security prison just outside of Kingston.” Dad used to like looking at the stars. And he could name so many of them. Could he see the stars from his jail cell? “He got acquitted of one of the murders. I testified for him. He was with me when she was killed. I testified that he was with me when another one happened, too, because he was, but the jury didn’t believe me so he got convicted of it and the other five murders.”

  “Do you think he was guilty of any of them?”

  Could this conversation with a complete stranger get any more ludicrous? Joshua sounded so calm, like he wasn’t shocked in the least. Because this was a normal conversation to have, not! … ‘my dad’s a convicted serial killer’ … ‘no shit? My dad’s in police custody because he may have shot a guy and scalped him’ … ‘dads, huh?’ … ‘yeah, dads’.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know how you feel. It sucks, right?”

  “Totally sucks.” That summed it up nicely.

  The spotlight I’d been imagining was turning green and it wasn’t moving as one single straight beam anymore. It was almost as if it was waving at me. No, it was dancing. And it wasn’t alone. Other beams joined it. They danced together, held hands – even though they didn’t have hands – merged together, spread out into wide sheets … and danced. Waltzed across the sky. They swooped. They morphed into streams of bright green smoke that swirled. Soon they filled the whole sky and it felt as if I was staring up into a never-ending cathedral of dancing beams. I looked over at Joshua. His face was lit up with a green glow.

  “Wawatay.”

  “Wawa-what?” That was a fun word to say.

  “They’re the spirits of our ancestors. They dance in the sky to remind us that we’re always connected, all part of Creation.”

  Wow. That was beautiful. Amitigoshi like me just called them the Northern Lights. “Your ancestors or mine?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Both, I guess.”

  Why did you kill yourself, Uncle Doug? None of the dancing spirits looked like him and my question remained unanswered. “I need tunes. And food!”

  “Jerky or chocolate?”

  “Chocolate, definitely.” I rolled over and patted the ground until I found my cell phone.

  Joshua rolled over and I heard the crinkle of him ripping open the packaging around one of his chocolate bars. He handed me half of the bar as I scrolled through the iTunes on my phone.

  “Any requests?”

  “Got any Midnight Shine in there?”

  “Who?”

  “Didn’t think you’d have them. They’re a Canadian band of four First Nations guys. Adrian Sutherland, the lead singer, is from Attawapiskat. You should check them out.”

  “I will, when I’ve got an internet connection again. Try another request.”

  “How about Frightened Rabbit?
”

  “No way! How do you know about Frightened Rabbit? They’re Scottish.”

  “I live on a reserve, not in a vacuum. Bet you’ve never heard of Kaleo.”

  “You’d be betting wrong. I love their Way Down We Go. I’ve been to the volcano where they shot the video for that song.” I scrolled down until I found my Frightened Rabbit albums. “Did you learn about Kaleo from the photographer from Iceland who came here last summer?”

  He nodded.

  “How about Marius Ziska? Do you know his stuff?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “I guess you didn’t spend much time with the hikers from the Faroe Islands then.”

  “They didn’t stay at the lodge.”

  I found my favourite Frightened Rabbit song. “We’ll stick with the Scots for now. They make great music and they created the world’s most physically perfect man – Ewan McGregor.” I let my stoned tongue roll around more than was necessary on Ewan’s last name and pushed play on Death Dream.

  “Ever met him?”

  “Only in my dreams.”

  The wawatay swayed and danced to the music while I floated on the lyrics that touched me so deeply. Listening to Scott Hutchison’s Scottish brogue usually sent me into Ewan McGregor fantasy land, but the words Scott was singing took me to a very different place. The pot smoke had found a crack in the barrier that usually protected me from my memories. My eyelids lowered and I saw Uncle Doug driving ahead of me on the Joe River Bridge. I felt my foot push down harder on the imaginary accelerator pedal as I tried to catch up to him to surprise him. I watched him suddenly turn right and crash through the railing; pieces of metal pinged off my windshield. I saw the back end of his patrol car sinking into the river. I saw myself running into the water, my mouth pulled down just like the face in Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

  Joshua’s snoring pulled me back into the here and now and I forced my eyes to stay open to watch the wawatay until the song finished playing.

  I scrolled through the songs on my iTunes, found some old classic stoner rock, and kept my eyes open for as long as I could. I fell asleep with a piece of chocolate still melting on my tongue, wondering if Uncle Doug was hiding on the dark side of the moon.

  ****

  Something woke me up in the middle of the night. A noise. I was still buzzed. The spirits in the sky were gone. My cell phone had put itself to sleep.

  Slap-slap-slap.

  It happened again.

  Then I recognized what it was. I’d heard the same noise at night on the lake my home was on. It was a beaver, slapping its tail on the water to warn his beaver friends that there was danger in the area.

  I snuggled down further under the beaver blanket. Had the poor little guy seen our blanket? Run, Mr Beaver! Or swim. Whatever works for you.

  A different noise woke me up the next time. Something was scraping against a rock. The sun was up. Joshua wasn’t under the blanket. He was down at the shore. He’d pulled an empty canoe sideways onto the granite slab where Ross’ body had been found and was standing in knee-deep water tilting the engine up.

  “Whose boat is that?” My voice was hoarse, my tongue still sticky from the chocolate.

  “Bernice’s.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I threw the blanket off of me and instantly regretted it. The sun wasn’t giving off even a quarter of the heat it had been the day before. I pulled Auntie Em’s sweater on as fast as I could and was tempted to warm up a bit by squatting beside the fire that Joshua had already lit. My curiosity about Bernice’s boat was stronger than my need for warmth, though.

  I grabbed the gunnel of her boat to hold it steady for Joshua as he flipped the tilt lock on the engine. “Where’s Bernice?” My white flash-frozen breath trailed off in the cold air with the final ‘c’ in her name.

  “Now she’s missing. Really missing.”

  Together, we pulled her boat completely out of the water and looked in it. There was a small white plastic lidded bucket in the bow. I lifted it up and popped off the lid. Bernice had all of the boating supplies required by Transport Canada. I’d bought a bucket very similar to hers, so I recognized the coiled buoyant rope, the waterproof flashlight and the whistle in it. She also had two paddles in the boat. And two lifejackets. There was a small light on the very tip of the bow; green on the starboard side and red on the port, and a white stern light at the top of a silver pole attached to the transom. The wires from each light were lying on the bottom of the boat, their ends a few inches apart and not attached to anything.

  “Did she run the lights off a battery?”

  “A 12-volt marine one.” Joshua looked at the empty space between the wires. “I just dropped a new one off at her place a couple of days ago.”

  “Someone took it?”

  “Or she didn’t put it in. If she was planning on getting back to Webequie before it got dark she may have just left it in the house. Mind if I borrow your camera?”

  Was he going to take pictures for evidence? “Sure.” I walked past the fire again and noticed a metal pot sitting on the hot embers, steam pouring out from around the edges of the dented lid that sat crookedly on top of it.

  I showed Joshua how to use the zoom and watched him slowly turn to scan all the shoreline he could see through the viewfinder. He lowered the camera and put the lens cap back on. “Maybe she’s still up at Eagle Rock?”

  “Then why is her boat here?”

  “If she didn’t pull it up far enough or tie it off well enough it could have come loose and drifted away. The water from there flows in this direction.” He was looking at the rocky rise at the end of the eastern bay. “She wouldn’t have been able to get it over the portage by herself.”

  I leaned into the boat, lifted up the gas can near the engine and gave it a shake. “She’s almost out of gas.” And there’s wasn’t a back-up tank at the bow of her boat.

  “I’ll put our spare in there after breakfast. Then we’ll go over to look for her.”

  “Shouldn’t we go now? She might be in trouble.”

  “Half an hour won’t make a difference.” He looked me up and down. “And you’ll be in trouble if we don’t get you warmed up. You’re shaking life a leaf.”

  It was true. My teeth wanted to chatter.

  “Come on, breakfast.” He turned and went back to the campfire.

  “Where did that come from?” I asked him as I sat down close to the fire and pointed at the pot.

  “I went up to the shed to get it when I woke up.” He reached over and lifted up two metal mugs. “Got these, too.” He picked up a stick and used it to hook the ring on the lid of the pot and lift if off.

  The liquid inside the pot was boiling, with a pale green frothy foam bubbling on the surface.

  “What is that?”

  “Cedar tea.” He pulled two palm-sized patches of moss off the edge of the rock slab and used them as oven mitts to lift the pot out of the fire. Then he put the lid partially back on the pot and used it as a strainer as he poured the steaming liquid into the mugs.

  It smelled a bit strange, but it did look like tea – green tea. I cupped my hands around my mug for warmth and took my first tentative sip. It was surprisingly refreshing. But it needed sugar. A lot of sugar. “How did you make this?”

  “It’s easy. Good for you, too. It’s loaded with vitamin C. All you have to do is slide a couple of handfuls of leaves off of a Northern White Cedar, being careful not to get any of the branch because that makes it really bitter, and then you just boil it up until the leaves start looking papery.”

  “Don’t cedars have needles?”

  “Maybe that’s the name for them. They look more like leaves to me on the White Cedar.” He stretched out his legs beside the fire and steam was soon rising off of the soaking wet lower half of his jeans. It was then that I noticed his feet were bare.

  “Aren’t your feet freezing?”

  “They’re okay. I didn’t want to get my socks and shoes soaked. They’d t
ake too long to dry out.” He twisted sideways and then turned around holding the cast-iron frying pan in his hands. “Want some poached whitefish?”

  Four fillets were in the frying pan, barely submerged in water.

  “Sure. When did you have the time to do all of this?”

  “I’ve been up for a while. I noticed the boat coming this way when I was cleaning the fish down at the shore.”

  “Did you get a knife from the shed, too?”

  He shook his head. “Didn’t need to. I always carry one.” He pulled up the lower edge of his sweatshirt to show me the knife sheath that was attached to his belt. A small sharpening stone was sticking out of the front pocket of his jeans.

  The whitefish was delicious and my second mug of cedar tea spread warmth to the tips of all my extremities.

  “Let’s pack up.”

  I sadly rolled up the beaver blanket and tied it into a bundle. The duvet on my bed at home was cosy, but it couldn’t compare to the warm nirvana the beaver blanket had created for me. Joshua doused the fire and cleaned the dishes in the sand at the shore. We carried everything back to the shed and put it all away.

  I watched Joshua put the box of Remington .303 bullets back in the bin and then rest the rifle on the top shelf. His knife sheath was visible when his hoodie lifted as he raised his arms.

  He knew where the guns and the bullets were kept. He always had a sharp knife with him.

  I shook my head to try to knock the thought that was forming out of it. He didn’t have any reason to want Ross dead. Did he? To set Arthur up maybe? Maybe they hadn’t sorted out their differences as well as everyone thought they had?

  “Ready?” Joshua’s voice gave those thoughts the final boot.

  ****

  I did a spectacular quadruple klutz – that would have earned a perfect score if it had been a deliberate quadruple lutz in a skating competition – when I tried to jump from the bow of Bernice’s canoe onto the rock strewn shore near the portage at the end of the eastern bay. I didn’t think I’d actually sprained my ankle when my foot slipped off a wet rock, but I’d definitely banged up my right shoulder when I tried, unsuccessfully, to stay upright. I ended up spinning and then flopping around on the rocks like a fish just pulled out of the water.