free. Garage. Half-hour drive from town. Jostle any brain cells?”
Belle rubbed the bridge of her nose in concentration. “What about the distress sale on Kalmo Lake? That’s a bargain. 40K below value.”
“I wondered about that. Somebody die?”
“What a grisly attitude. It was a case, in my cautious new neighbour’s words, of overextension. The Marches bought a large wooded property. Too large. The access road broke them. All that backfilling over boulders sucked up pit-run gravel like quicksand. In a week they blew twenty thousand. Then his salary was frozen at the hospital. To top it off, the wife got pregnant.”
“Perfect for Mr. and Mrs. T-O. Silver lining to every cloud, isn’t there?”
Even where murder was concerned, Belle wondered? What was Zack’s alibi?
As she passed the airport on the way home, she glanced at the kettle lakes, one of many geological curiosities which brought international scientists to Sudbury. Over a sandy delta deposited in Pleistocene times, a glacial re-advance had scoured the area and left blocks of grounded ice to melt, forming conical potholes later filled by cool springs favoured by brook trout. The largest she had named “Philosopher’s Pond,” where she had spent afternoons floating on a makeshift raft and dangling an optimistic hook over hundreds of pairs of globular eyes. Well-fed by minnows, the fish had been a wary challenge for anglers since the turn of the century, if an art deco brown medicine bottle she had found were any proof. Charles didn’t have a boat yet. Would he like to try his luck here?
Later that evening, after turning up their noses again at dry chow, Captain and Sam barked at a noise outside. “Quiet!” Belle scolded with a maddening lack of effect. A yellow Firefly pulled into the yard as she opened the door. “Come on up, Zack. Your babies are waiting.”
He took the steps two at a time like a prom date, bearing a bunch of carnations instead of a corsage. “A simple offering,” he said, “but I’m grateful you looked after the guys.” As the beasts probed his groin, wagging their tails, he thumped them in hearty masculine fashion. “If you have time to talk, maybe you can tell me more about my aunt. The police asked about my trip to Detroit, but they didn’t say much about how she . . . how she . . .” The words seemed to come hard for him.
Belle brought out coffees, and they sat on the deck as the lake fanned out its majesty. On cue, a white triangle of sail cut the waves. “What a view,” he said, a longing in his eyes common to visitors. “It’s like a fairy tale. Aunt Anni’s place is so sheltered in the bay.”
Belle laughed at the urban perspective. “Yes, but being on a point puts me at the mercy of the wind. At ice-out it’s touch and go for the boathouse and satellite dish, even with the rock wall. Watching the floes shelf up, I pray like hell for a combination of hot sun and windless days. When he got back from Florida this year, my neighbour’s waterslide sat on his lawn, and his dock was a pile of pick-up sticks.”
Dressed in a University of Toronto sweatshirt and jeans, his dark brown hair fresh from a summer buzz, Zack sipped in silence for a moment, his mug gripped in both hands. He set it down shakily. Feeling sisterly or more likely motherly, Belle took the initiative. “You wanted to talk about Anni?”
He braced his shoulders and exhaled slowly in a effort to marshall his resources. “I’m glad I wasn’t the one to find her.”
“She didn’t suffer. It was sudden and . . . final.” Not going well, she thought. Stale words. Trite. Abrupt. Hardly comforting.
His voice grew bitter and self-accusing. “Yes, so final. No more chances. The last time I saw her, what was I doing? Telling her how much I loved her? I don’t ever remember saying those words.”
“Depends on how you’re raised. Some families aren’t very vocal or demonstrative with hugs and kisses. It’s actions that count. And you tried—”
He pounded a fist on his knee as if passing sentence on his failures. “Tried to borrow more money, you mean. But ‘borrow’ is a joke. When could I ever hope to pay her back?”
“No, I meant that you tried to help. With the house. With the yard. She loved you, Zack. She was going to leave you everything.” Belle blurted out the fact, nearly slapping her mouth.
If she had expected naked greed at this bombshell, she was mistaken. For a tremulous minute he looked as if he were going to cry. Then he massaged his temples, leaving white marks on the tanned skin. Belle switched gears. Grief counselling was not her forte. “I remember when we first met. I was shambling along the road like a whipped puppy. My uncle had been diagnosed with lung cancer, and he was handling it better than I was.” He nodded in sympathy as she continued. “Then a magical voice emerged from a birch grove. ‘I know where the wild clematis grows,’ it whispered as if confiding a precious secret.”
He sniffed and then pulled out a handkerchief, twisting it instead of blowing his nose. “Aunt Anni was a great one for wildflowers. I was going to give her a new Peterson’s guide for Christmas, hers got so ragged. It was her Bible.”
Her eyes closed, her heart remembering the drone of the forest that day. “This woman dressed in denim strolled out, holding a fragile pink flower like the holy grail. Took me back for tea and got my mind off myself by talking about her trails and their wonders. Later I found out that she’d lost Cece the year before, so she knew what I was feeling.” The roar of duelling jet-skis woke her from the reverie, and to her surprise, Zack had folded his hands in resignation, calm once again as he took comfort in the vitality of Anni’s life.
“She had that knack. When Mother died, she came to my apartment and packed my suitcase. Insisted I stay here for a few days. Know what we did together by the fire that night? Read Hans Christian Andersen. Just like when I was a kid. Aunt Anni was Danish, you know. Her maiden name was Blixen.”
Finally Belle told him about the baiting. “We’ll have to wait until the investigation moves along. My friend Steve is touching bases with the MNR. There’s a bizarre possibility that someone took offense to her actions, and it escalated.”
“Are you sure? She didn’t mention anything, even when I called her from Detroit.” He paused as an idea crossed his face. “We always played a game. I tried to disguise my voice. Like phone sales, something to throw her off. She was so sharp, though. Never missed a trick. Said her ears were better than her eyes.”
“Aunts don’t brief nephews about commando raids. Exactly when did you talk to her, anyway? It will help fix the time of death.”
“I left here at dawn to beat the traffic. Got there around two, so that’s when I called. Took all my spare change. Brutal trip in my tin can car. Wish I had borrowed the van.”
That sounded selfish to Belle, but he was like a kid to Anni, and kids did take advantage. How sound was his alibi? He had given no more specifics. “We’ve been wondering about the van.
He whistled, and a faint smile played on his lips as he swatted at a mosquito. “The Queen Mary, you mean. Rides like a living room sofa. We went to Science North the weekend she got it. Saw a bear movie at the IMAX, then over to the Farmer’s Market for fresh bread, smoked trout from Manitoulin. That vehicle must cost a mint. Air, CD, cruise control. She was so careful with money. Maybe she had a nest egg.” He stopped short at her expression. “I mean, why not? She deserved to go first class.”
Belle’s momentary good will was flagging. Was he genuinely moved by the death or merely acting? The comments about money seemed ungracious.
