turned out that Geoff was not only a retired professor, but also a Jesuit priest. She could hear him leafing pages. “Ah, the patron saint of the insane. Gheel, the Netherlands. This is getting very murky, Belle.”
“A saint for the insane? This is exotic for a lapsed Anglican like me.”
“Hmmm. Let’s see. There are hordes, one for every human woe. St. Peregrine for cancer, St. Apollonia for toothaches, St. Fiacre for haemorrhoids . . .”
“Stop the rogue’s gallery! I’m quite suggestible.” Belle protested. She promised Geoff the latest L. R. Wright mystery, a Canadian favourite set on the Sunshine Coast in B.C.
Although Belle had a gift for fishing for red herrings and clutching at hypothetical straws, and although she still found Brooks a truly odious man, dog lover or not, she could no longer consider him a serious suspect. He was home on heavy bond, minding his manners, a candidate for several years in prison after his trial. At least his daughter Brenda might get a second chance, maybe even bring those Puddingstone kids to life. Although he wouldn’t admit to the break-in, he had agreed to talk to Belle in hopes of gaining judicial brownie points. And the meeting might fill in some gaps in the picture.
She reached the Beaverdam shortly after nine. Brooks sat slumped in front of his father’s fieldstone fireplace, oblivious to her entrance. His head sagged, giving him a bizarre chinless look. A beer sat beside him, and ashes flicked onto the handsome slate floor.
Belle smiled at his red checked shirt; trust a man to prize an old friend too much to toss it out even if it told dangerous tales. “I’ve been looking for a spot to fit this little piece of evidence,” she said, matching the swatch to his sleeve, watching him recoil as if she’d been a snapping turtle.
“Big deal. I’m already goin’ down far enough. Sorry about the dog, though. That was an accident. I wanted to tell you that.” He stroked an old raggedy collie who gazed up at him with warm, liquid eyes. “Just went over to teach you a lesson, smelling around in the business. Make it look like the place had been robbed.”
Her savage glare backed him off with a whine. “Hey, now, missus, nothing bad. Just throw a few papers around for show. When I opened the door, and you know, you should lock your doors . . .” He cowered as Belle slammed her fist on the table and stood up to leave. “Your dog ran out and laid into me something fierce. And he’s big. Was going right for my throat when I saw the shovel. Just hit him once. Not hard. Then I heard a car and got out fast.”
“Self-defence, no doubt. And the dog’s a she.”
“Why, sure. That’s exactly what it was.”
Jim’s accident had surprised him as much as anybody, and though he admitted to using small lakes north of Wapiti for transfers, the warmer weather had ended that. One plane had come close to getting stuck. “How about Cott Lake?” she asked.
“Cott? Up by Bonanza? No need to go all that way.” He paused and poked at the fire reflectively, his voice almost avuncular. “Jim was a nice kid. Never had a boy of my own. He used to do some scut work here when he was in high school, baiting and gassing up for the tourists. One thing I can tell you, his death didn’t have nothin’ to do with drugs. I’m no killer.”
She gave him a sideways stare, like a wary gunslinger. “No? Then why did you come back and plug up my chimney?”
“Huh. I heard about that. Not my style. The whole week I was over in Thunder Bay selling two machines.” He drew on his cigarette and coughed. “Hey, your dog is OK, right?”
Belle drove home, frustrated at not learning more, but admitting to herself that Brooks was telling the truth. Pacing from room to room, unable to concentrate, she remembered the appointment with Ms. Bly. She called Miriam, who agreed to take the woman to Capreol, glad to get out of the office on a slow Friday. Even the coffee tasted bitter and metallic, and when she thought about lunch, she felt no hunger, just the slight nausea which came from too much caffeine.
Maybe she was suffering from cabin fever, SAD or Seasonal Affective Disorder. A change of place might recharge the brain cells, a trip to Toronto, a cruise of the mall outlets. Sure, run away and shop yourself into oblivion, Belle. That wasn’t the problem anyway. She had failed Jim, failed Ben, Meg and Melanie. Buffaloed, outfoxed, decoyed with this conundrum, riddle, enigma shrouded in a . . . in a wallow of clichés. With a self-accusing sigh, she picked up her mother’s copy of The Diviners, thumbing through it absently, when a line from Catharine Parr Traill caught her attention, something irksomely didactic about getting up and doing when all seemed lost. An Englishwoman’s view of the wilds of Peterborough, well, wild enough in the nineteenth century.
The temperature stood at -10°, but spring days warmed up fast. In her father’s old-fashioned terminology, a “constitutional”, forerunner of power walking, might help charge the batteries. The last time she had gone into the bush on foot had been New Year’s Day. The dog seemed to read her mind, hyperventilating and nipping her elbow in an annoying dominance move. Belle wapped her toque at the dog’s ample rump. “Yes, I get the point, Freya. Just give me a minute. I wasn’t born with a fur coat.” As an afterthought, she tucked a plastic bag with Hélène’s jerky into her zippered forearm pocket. A snack would taste welcome in the cold. As she walked out onto the deck, the tall cedars, faithful monitors of wind, stood quiet. Good, then. She would march down the road for half an hour, and perhaps spot the gigantic redheaded Woody, insistent in his poundings, or hear the gentle thrummings of hairy and downy relatives.
Once on the road, Belle felt the wind chew at her back, an ominous sign. Maybe at the corner it would subside. Wind was worse than cold. Her eyelashes were icing, plastered to her face; her glasses had fogged, though she was careful to blow straight out. But Freya enjoyed collecting her P-mail, delivered since the plow’s last trip, and making her own deposits. “Not there, Freya! Of all places!” Belle yelled as the dog picked the one open driveway in half a mile; Richard Earhart must have spent a heavy two hours snowblowing with an underpowered city style machine. Back and forth eternally with that narrow twenty-four inch swath. He didn’t need this extra ignominy. Belle searched for a broken branch in order to perform her dip and flip manoeuvre, resolving to buy a cheap hockey stick next trip to Canadian Tire. Then ticking off the cottages in her mind as she passed, she was glad to see the unmarked, protective expanses of deep snow. It was unlikely anyone would haul off anything substantial, but absentee owners feared vandalism far more than the loss of an odd television or VCR. Insurance companies insisted someone check a vacant house regularly. A number of restaurant gift certificates had come Belle’s way in recompense. Caroline’s place looked safe and tight, only a fox track down the driveway. Her generous retired neighbour had pressed upon Belle the remains of her liquor supply, her satellite decoder and a stylish but impractical fox fur hat. The blessed woman was probably driving over that golden bridge across Tampa Bay in quest of a plate of crispy grouper!
A sudden rush, and Carlo sailed by in a roar with yet another Mustang, a ’65 original, grey primer paint, no bumpers, its rear windows tinted; he was leaning towards her and blowing kisses. Belle had to laugh at his cheek. At the top of the second hill, she spied snowshoe tracks rambling invitingly into the bush. Anni Jacobs’ web of paths. All four seasons the old widow led her dogs on daily forages, a boneheaded golden lab and a hyperactive beagle, who made Belle smug about the superiority of shepherds. Some paths had originated from logging roads fifty years earlier, an illegal horse-drawn operation of Ed’s Uncle Louis. Lazy, hazy days when an entrepreneur could rob the bush unhindered by laws.
After a hundred feet, another trail appeared, perhaps looping back onto the major route or leading to the top of the bluff. Freya was already energized by her neighbours’ traces. Belle tested the surface with her cumbersome boots and found the middle of the doublewide
