fall last night?”
“It’s just a stupid headache. Carbon monoxide, maybe, or my sinuses overreacting. It’ll go away with time and a few pounds of aspirins.”
“Let me try something.” Melanie moved next to her and cradled her head with a touch that was curiously cool and warm at once. “I’ve been taking a healing course, reiki, it’s called. One of the techniques might help.”
Belle made no protests, and after a blissful ten minutes, she sat up with a stunned grin. “You’re a miracle! What did you do, and can I hire you?”
Mel seemed pleased at the praise. “I’m not discounting conventional medicine, it’s my job, but I’m sure therapeutic touch can help any patient, especially where stress is involved. It’s more than just massage.”
“I’m impressed. Anything else to it?”
“I’m glad to talk to someone who takes me seriously. At the hospital I have to walk a narrow line so that I don’t sound like a crackpot. But I’ve been experimenting with sending healing messages from afar, in one case to a nephew who had been in a coma from an auto accident. I surrounded him in white light, tried to rejuvenate him with an aura.” She blushed. “Do I sound like Shirley MacLaine?”
“Hey, I’m not laughing. Flo Nightingale lived before her time, too. And your nephew?”
“He’s in rehab in Toronto. Should make a complete recovery. Prayer, natural energy, modern medicine, luck, who knows? I like to visualize a bright white fluffy cloud around me wherever I go.”
The girl’s too good to be true, Belle thought. Protected by a cloud. Why not? They used to call them vibes; now it was auras. Melanie spoke also of cleansing the mind of grudges, bitter failures resupped from an old menu. For this she recommended buying a candle for each harmful person or experience. Forgive the trespass, and watch the burdens of the past burn away harmlessly. Ageless witchery mixed with common sense psychology. Every day in every way, getting better and better. Murders, however, needed resolution, and sometimes, though “Mordre will out,” according to Chaucer, it needed a helping hand.
SEVENTEEN
A few days later, Belle pulled up in front of Shirmaz Jewellers and Gifts, a tiny shop in the older Donovan area, long bypassed by commercial concerns defecting to the malls. Small, square, compact homes, living relics of Sudbury’s frugal past, showed the blue collar priorities of keeping warm while avoiding a crushing mortgage. A wiser time, perhaps, she thought, waving at a sturdy grandmother shovelling snow, woollen babushka on her head. Omer Shirmaz ran his eccentric store more for hobby than profit. He and his wife Thema lived upstairs in the frame building, a shaky, enclosed staircase running up the side.
A bell jangled as she entered. “Omer, hello,” Belle said to Sharif’s double. What elixir did these men sip, growing handsomer by the years, refining their manners and elegance? Any woman transformed into a queen under their shadowy gaze; the smart ones they complimented for their beauty, the beautiful ones for their brains. Immaculately combed, his dark pewter hair bearing a touch of pomade, a hint of frankincense or myrrh in the air, Omer wore a warm vest with a gold watch chain peeking from the pocket. The fine timepiece along with a stamp collection had been his only baggage arriving from Leningrad at the end of World War Two. An envelope of rare Czarist stamps had bought him his shop, he had told her. “My Russian grandfather was the village postmaster, a very important position. I had the complete 1866 issue, one to twenty kopeks. Not a blemish,” he had said as his voice turned to velvet. “My dearest black and lilac, I miss like an old lover.”
He bowed to give her hand a zephyr’s brush of a kiss. “A delight to see you, my young friend.” Belle could swear that he winked. “You are looking so well. Don’t tell me you are going to offer me your mother’s Doulton ladies at last? Or have you come to check my price list?” Discontinued figures appreciated substantially in value and might make a newspaper ad in Toronto worthwhile.
“This is another matter. Your expert opinion is required.”
The deepening lines around his kohl-dark eyes crinkled in curiosity. “Come into the back room and let us be more comfortable. I will hear the bell if she rings.”
At a heavy oak table in a cubbyhole heaped with boxes and newspapers, they sat close together, an ancient brass chandelier casting its flambeaux of crystal in an effect eerie and intimate. Omer found a dusty bottle of Slivovitz and poured them both a small glass.
“I always think of you when I eat plums,” Belle said, raising a toast.
“Every morning an inch, and you will never have a cold. I guarantee it. Fabled Turco-Cossack remedy.”
“An inch! Best not tell the breathalyzer.” She licked her lips as delicately as she could, then placed the gold drop in Omer’s palm. “Here’s a mystery for you.”
He examined it with his loupe with no change of expression. “Pure, very pure. I can test it if you like, but see how soft? Never for jewelry. Where did you get it?”
“From a dead man’s pocket. Where did he get it?”
Not a blink. “Alchemy was a romantic but false science. There are only two directions. Fine gold from rings, plate and even teeth, can be melted down in a crucible. That is my domain. Or from the richest vein, dripped straight from the ore by intense heat. I have heard that it is possible. You would have to ask a geologist.”
Belle tossed the drop lightly in her hand, embroidering the moment with a wry smile and a final sip of brandy warming her throat. “It’s part of a very maddening puzzle. I just can’t make the pieces fit. What would it be worth, just hypothetically?”
He fished in his vest and put a dime into her other hand. “A bit heavier than your drop. 2.4 grams, not quite a tenth of an ounce at the current $280.00 U.S. quote. Negligible.”
“For larger amounts of this raw gold, Omer, a constant supply . . . out of the proper channels, would there be a buyer?”
“There is always a buyer for everything, and a price for anything. The war taught me that. Northern Ontario has more prospectors than doctors, but this is a small town. Many noisy tongues. In Toronto? Montreal? Without question, though at a considerable discount.”
He looked at her with such intensity through those intelligent, trained eyes which had shut out the horror and valour in his past that she felt that she had been holding her breath. Suddenly his steady voice brought her back and rekindled her imagination. Light splintered onto the table. “You said that it came from a dead man’s pocket. Are you sure there is not blood on it?” Although they both knew that he spoke figuratively, Belle found herself staring into the tiny drop as if to plumb its heart. From the time man had first glimpsed this hypnotic metal, blood and gold had been quick and greedy partners.
By Saturday, Belle had stayed quiet enough to receive the Mutt of the Year award. Her enforced retirement had led to washing all the downstairs windows, cleaning the stove and fridge, scrubbing the floor (twice), sucking out the fish tanks, and writing four overdue letters to family friends over eighty, none of whom had an estate of substance. All that remained was to cut Freya’s claws, a mutually squeamish chore; Belle commanded the dog to lie motionless on the kitchen floor while she maneuvered the clippers to avoid hitting a vein. Every snip received a moan of torment, a quiver of fear. “OK, go, girl,” Belle sighed finally in her own relief, and the dog yawned from nervousness and raced away as if given a deathhouse reprieve.
In
