a shallow fog kissed the far shore, rolling down the North River like a phantasmagorical glacier, another sign of fall in this cinemascopic window on the four seasons. Facing north by northwest, her property bore the brunt of the fiercest winds instead of snuggling in a safe bay. Along the boathouse, a cement walkway led to a dock, which connected to a wooden crib with a concrete pad bearing her huge satellite dish, an historical artifact now used as planters by inventive owners. From there, a double telephone-pole bridge led ten feet to the protective rockwall.
Before leaving for work, remembering the trapper and his evil boxes, she logged onto the Ontario Fur Managers’ site. “Managers” of a business governing the heartbeat of a soul. There she learned that in the early 1900s, over sixty thousand marten pelts were sold in Canada, driving the animal to near extinction and entirely out of Prince Edward Island. With a keen sense of smell, martens were easily baited in their ranges from two to three square kilometres. One sickening fact hit home. Trappers often left beaver carcasses near marten grounds in order to provide food and increase the carrying capacity of the habitat. Whether or not he’d been sent after a nuisance animal, he probably had availed himself of this trick after he’d stripped the pelt. It reminded her of the witch fattening Hansel. She’d have to return soon and find his site.
On the way to her all-wheel-drive Toyota Sienna van, Belle peered at squiggly bike tracks in the yard. Too cheap to subscribe, she got no paper delivery, knowing that Miriam usually brought hers to work to check their ads. Had someone selling school candy come by? Then she saw a paper slipped under the wiper, which was bent at an awkward angle. From a scratch pad, it bore the official logo of CRIME STOPPERS. A crabbed, childish scrawl read: “Your place in the woods has been puled down. Don’t try it again.” What the hell? Belle hadn’t as much as set a nail in the bush, used it only to stroll and admire the sights. Was this about the bear and moose stands? She’d knocked a few boards from them herself out of sheer spite. On Crown land, the stands weren’t illegal, so what was Crime Stoppers griping about? After crumpling the note, she tore a cuticle trying to straighten the blade.
Fifteen minutes later, leaving Edgewater Road to turn right onto the airport highway, she passed a dozen cars angled into the bush, collectors of the season’s last blueberries, a local industry. Finally she could tune in the CBC local news. In an effort to comply with the 911 system, nine hundred streets in the region would have to be renamed. There were eleven Pines, eight Maples and eight Firsts, nine Birches, seven Alberts, and so on down. This challenge could take five years with unimaginable costs. Think of the stationery, maps, and street signs. She blew a sigh of relief. Her business was located on Disraeli Court, one of a kind. Punching more buttons, she found a strong signal at 105.3. “Gimme the beat, boys, and free my soul” drummed from the speaker. A good song, but every half an hour? She grabbed an Enya CD and let “Marble Halls” smooth her journey past the airport, where she watched the plume of INCO’s 1250-foot Superstack rise over the distant hills, symbol of industry. West wind as usual, blowing what remained of the scrubbed smelter air to North Bay.
Navigating the busy Kingsway and swivelling around Lloyd Street, she noticed that a large cement wall had been spray-painted with a bulbous, cartoonish “Nix” tag in red and white. It was rather artistic, but she didn’t suppose the owners appreciated the effort. On one of the few residential streets downtown, she pulled into the parking area of a mock-Victorian house which made a convenient business address for Palmer Realty, founded by her late Uncle Harold. When she’d left Toronto behind twenty years before, kissing off a stressful high-school teaching job without a second thought, he’d paid for her realty courses, then made her his partner. The upstairs rented to a quiet and reliable snowbird couple. She gazed up at the mighty cottonwoods, the few large trees spared from the core ecological damage of the last century. The day had warmed up, so she hung her plaid jacket in the van, leaving her in designer jeans and a red silk blouse.
“Life is just a bowl of blueberries,” she said to her only employee, Miriam MacDonald, her elder by ten years and a hundred grey hairs, whose baba’s bunion legacy enjoyed a daily massage from a wooden foot roller beneath her desk. “And to mix a metaphor or two, if my new lead pans out on Lake Ramsey, we’re in the proverbial clover, four leaves every one.”
Miriam munched at a cheese croissant, wiping crumbs from her mouth and pointing at a brown bag. “You mean Bea Malanuk? She dropped in this morning looking for you. Brought a half-dozen of these. Don’t you love their dark rye? It’s more sinful than an Aero bar.”
Belle struggled to maintain a cautious optimism about the dream sale. Cottage properties were her cornerstone, so six per cent of a possible mid-six-figure range nearly made her drool like a St. Bernard, especially when the average price for a home was a piddling $115,000. In a region with forty other realty companies and home sales last year of only 2167, the pie was getting smaller, even if prices were gradually rising. She needed to average four or five closings a month to make a slim profit, buy kibble, and keep Miriam in foot rollers. “What’s she like?”
“Tall, broad shoulders, strong arms. Probably comes with the baking territory, all that kneading. Nice, though. She reminds me of someone from those classic film tapes you give me. Can’t place the name and face. A formidable woman with a great comic talent.”
“Marjorie Main?”
“Ma Kettle? Don’t think so.”
“You have me intrigued.” After grabbing a croissant en route to her nearby desk in the compact office, Belle saw the note with Bea’s number at the bakery.
The busy clatter of a business set a background for the woman’s upbeat, mellifluous voice. “Hélène’s told me so much about you, Belle. I’m surprised we’ve never met.”
“Thanks for thinking of me. Business is slow in the fall.” And winter and spring. Slower than maple syrup poured onto the snow for an instant candy treat. Except for Cynthia Cryderman, the biggest realtor in town, with San Antonio-size hair and a pink stretch limo to accommodate it. Her advertising bill alone doubled Belle’s salary, even if the mindless radio jingle set teeth on edge. Sometimes she woke at midnight hearing its annoying words bouncing off the corners of her mind like billiard balls. But media coverage worked. That was the galling part. Cynthia sold nearly three hundred houses per year.
They set a date for three thirty that afternoon. In the meantime, Belle logged up her morning’s calls and browsed a real estate tabloid. “Listen to this headline. ‘Unshamed quality’. Do they mean ‘unashamed’? And ‘enter the lovely foray’.” Miriam clucked disdain as she stuffed envelopes.
Belle turned to the rough copy of some ads her cohort had composed. “I can always count on you for correct punctuation. Don’t you hate it when you see ‘Five bedroom’s’? Then she froze, making a gasping sound. “What’s this? ‘Affordable lakefront ten minutes north of New Sudbury’? That’s impossible.”
Miriam rose, walked confidently to the regional map on a bulletin board and traced a route with her ever sharp pencil. “Straight to Whitsun Lake.”
“Get serious. You’re pointing to a snowmobile trail.”
The wily ex-bookkeeper, who had once sliced, diced and sauteed accounts for several marginal businesses in the Valley before joining Belle’s company, folded her arms coolly over a beige linen pantsuit with a floral-print blouse. “Not exactly a lie, though.”
“I want to be competitive, but not at the expense of the truth. Let’s compromise at twenty minutes, speeding tickets aside, or you’ll never make partner in the firm.” Realizing that she had overextended herself, she added, “Not that there’s enough room in this pond for more than one lily pad.”
Miriam barked out a laugh and added a dollop of Frenglish. “Hostie. Splitting the profits. Now that
