it,” she said.
“My parents have a cottage near Bracebridge, so I’ve been through the drill. It’s a Canadian ritual. Don’t leave home without it.” He took a squirt, rubbed his hands together and patted his face as if applying aftershave.
“I’ll take the risk for now,” she said, tucking it away in her pocket.
On the scrubby trees that lined the road, miniature leaves were emerging. Mutt admired a bush with a delicate set of red seed keys dangling like a necklace.
“Swamp maple,” Belle said. “One of five species in the area.” She pointed out a birch conk, then a yellow shelf fungus. “Chicken of the woods. Supposed to be quite choice.”
“Reminds me of shiitake. Have you ever tried it?”
“Some of my Italian friends comb the woods for mushrooms. Familiar though I am with many types, I don’t have the nerve to risk a wrong choice.” Sounded like much of her life.
Streaks of golden and green moss were making inroads on the old highway. They stopped to tune their ears to the location of a hairy woodpecker tapping for dinner. “So how long will you be here, Mutt?” she asked, feeling his odd name growing more familiar.
“The whole summer. I’m a writer, if Gary hasn’t told you. Been having a bit of a block with the third book. It’s common enough. A change of scene seemed perfect for a kick-start.” With his clean-shaven baby face, he looked barely twenty, though she’d never ask. A gentle tracery around his hazel eyes bumped her estimate to thirty-plus. Gary wasn’t a cradle robber, but she preferred companions her age. Who wanted a blank stare after mentioning a favourite musical group or pivotal historical event? Then again, with her classic film addiction, she should date octogenarians who remembered Joan Crawford as a jazz baby, not Baby Jane’s sister.
Freya bounded ahead, flushing a grouse from the grassy borders. The bird’s nearby mate followed to the safety of a stunted oak. Scrabbling on the asphalt trimmed the dog’s nails, a chore saved. Then they rounded a corner. “Watch the glass!” Mutt yelled.
Belle grabbed the dog’s chain collar and steered her around a shattered windowpane. At the side of the road was a huge, fresh mound of construction material. Someone had been renovating and was too lazy and cheap to visit the town dump, even for a nominal fee. As Mutt watched, her keen eye tallied the totals. One truckload. Ripped up carpet, ten paint cans, guts of an old washing machine, scrap wood panelling, leftover pink fibreglass insulation floating on the breeze, and on top, a carton for a fifty-inch TV. For good measure, six bald tires lay in a ziggurat framed by an army of soft drink bottles. Green packing peanuts littered the landscape like toxic snow. The man who whispered “plastics” in Dustin Hoffman’s ear in The Graduate was a seer. The world was drowning in its own garbage. An island miles long had formed in the ocean. “Damn. This has me seeing red. Why do people have to foul their own nest?” she asked, pounding her fist into her palm.
“It’s disgusting, but what can you do about it? Check for tire treads?” He put his hands on his hips and bent over, Sherlock-style.
She waded into the field of scratchy blueberry bushes and leathery Labrador tea. “The smell’s not bad. Let me peek into those nice black garbage bags.”
He shuddered. “Be careful. There could be nails, or even needles.”
“Medical waste? This isn’t downtown Vancouver.”
With delicate hands, she opened the bag and began sorting the trash, while Mutt watched her with a grimace on his face. At last she found a grocery store receipt from Garson. “A-ha. Last week. That’s why it’s so fresh.”
Mutt looked at the list. “Likes turkey, chocolate milk, Cheetos?”
Belle waved a debit card receipt. “Pure gold. I’m going to call this in to CrimeStoppers. Maybe they can trace the number.”
As they headed for the van, she added, “This hasn’t given you a very good impression. When the heat starts up in late June, the bugs will level off. Then I’ll show both of you some great places.” Mutt laughed as she dug a blackfly out of her ear, wiping the red smear on one sleeve.
“Down south we take visitors to restaurants, art museums, plays. I suspect here it’s a favourite swamp.”
“You got it, city boy. I have one for every occasion.” She was beginning to like him. Her road needed its batteries recharged with new faces.
Near morning, Belle was dreaming of her last date with Gary. He had arrived in a white tux, wearing a carnation dyed to match her lace-and-satin Alice-blue dress with a strapless bodice and a hem just above the knees. An expert seamstress, her mother Terry had kept the extra cloth pressed in a drawer until the day she’d died. Gary presented the customary orchid corsage and pinned it to her with surprising dexterity, almost as if he had been practising. As he bent closer, she could smell the citrus of his 4711 aftershave. They walked down the stairs to his father’s black Reliant, where another couple waited, laughing in the back seat. Then a phone rang. And rang. Why didn’t someone answer their cell? She began to paw through the layers of sleep, remembering that even the car phone hadn’t been common then. Sitting up in a fog, Belle craned her neck to peer at the green digital display. 4:35. She growled an answer into the receiver. A wrong number, or a crisis with her father?
“It’s Mutt. I didn’t know . . . who else to call. Gary’s dead.”
FOUR
Belle brushed the corners of her eyes, still groggy and barely coherent, preferring childhood memories to an ugly reality. “What are you talking about? An auto accident?”
His voice fell to a whisper, and she turned up the volume on the handset. “No. The OPP called here.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t an accident.” The Ontario Provincial Police had jurisdiction over traffic outside of the Region of Greater Sudbury.
He cleared his throat, then resumed, strain apparent in the deliberate way he marshalled information. “It happened yesterday afternoon, probably about the same time we were talking. An air-ambulance helicopter was taking a kid to Toronto, flying over Bump Lake. Gary had an informal base camp there. A cooler. A little tent. Sleeping bag if he needed to stay over. They saw his canoe floating free and dropped for a closer look, then called it in. Thank God the boat was red, or it might have been hidden in the reeds. His . . . body wasn’t far away. The OPP found his wallet and university information. It took a while to track down his chairman. He gave them the new number, and they called to see if anyone else was at the address.”
These procedural details didn’t interest her. “I’m not clear on what happened. His canoe was adrift in a quiet lake? How did he drown?”
A bitter bark of a laugh surprised her. “It’s a cliché, isn’t it? Guy stands up in a boat to take a leak, overbalances, hits his head and farewell. Gary was a hell of a good swimmer, for all that mattered. We used to hit the pool at the gym every week. Olympic size. He could do laps until the place closed.”
“Was he wearing a life jacket?” she asked, knowing the answer. Few canoeists bothered with the bulky creatures unless they were travelling in white water or with children.
“Are you kidding? He told me that Bump Lake’s about as dangerous as a bathtub.”
So fast
