Blackflies Are Murder. Lou Allin

it with admiring fingers and shook her head. “This is quality rag paper I used to see on special orders years ago in my old days at Muirhead’s Supply. ‘Vellum,’ they call it, though of course it isn’t. An unusually large size, too. We had a sample book for fine stationery. Ladies liked their personalized writing paper and envelopes.” She sighed as if recalling her wedding night. “A lost art now.”

      This affectation seemed wrong for sensible Anni, but who knew where the envelope might have come from? A gift, perhaps. Might have been sitting in a drawer since Trudeau left office. With no address, it hadn’t been sent through the mail.

      On the way home, Belle pulled into Tim Hortons, the premier chain of doughnut shops, even if it did ignore the apostrophe. Typically Canadian: immaculate and safe, but with an American gluttony of choices, the best of both worlds. Now in addition to at least twenty-five doughnut varieties as well as tea biscuits, pies and cakes, Tim’s offered soup, sandwiches, and even chili.

      As she ordered a coffee, a butterscotch pie caught her attention, a rich and frothy concoction that she’d never bother to make. Hélène might suspect, but she’d be too polite to comment. Delighted to find a discarded Sudbury Star on the table, she was turning to the real estate supplement to check her ads, make sure that “doll house” didn’t turn out “dull house” or that “three batrooms” didn’t appear, when suddenly she locked onto the bottom of the front page. “Teen Held on Lakeside Murder.” An unnamed young offender in Skead had confessed to the brutal killing of Anni Jacobs on Lake Wapiti. There were few details to this late-breaking nugget, just the note that he had a history of petty theft, including a robbery at the Skead Seniors’ Centre, and had spent time recently at Cecil Facer, a youth detention facility. Her face flamed as she crumpled up the paper and tossed it into a waste can. Why hadn’t Steve told her? What was she, chopped moose meat? Quick police work, though. Maybe he was at his desk dunking doughnuts and licking powdered sugar from his fingers.

      The DesRosiers were sitting on her front steps when she arrived home, Ed drawing designs in the gravel with his cane while Rusty, their chocolatey-red mutt, slurped water on the beach. “I told him you said six, but he didn’t believe me. Thinks the world eats on the dot of five like we do. Anyway, here’s some of my jerky. Cajun flavour.” Hélène said, placing a plump plastic bag in Belle’s hands.

      “Sorry, guys. I guess I cut it short. Why didn’t you go right in? You know where the liquor is. But everything’s made. Call me a miracle of time management.” She sniffed the present with delight while Rusty skidded up, exposing a pink belly with a pattern of bug bites. “I’ll have to fight Freya for this.”

      Scotch was poured around, and Belle shoved the combination of chicken, mushroom soup, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, onions and red peppers mixed with rotini into the oven for a complementary gratin in the final browning. Placing the last of Charles’ cheese assortment onto the coffee table with a box of crackers, she flopped onto the couch and looked warmly at her best friends. Ed, a retired plumber, had just hit sixty-five. Chained lovingly to an excellent cook, Ed battled an extra forty pounds which pushed his stomach over his belt. His svelte wife, younger by a few years, was immune to the results of her delicious efforts.

      “I seen in the paper where Anni’s killer confessed,” he said, shifting his sore hip and biffing crackers to the dogs. “Always knew it’d be some dope-crazed kid.”

      “Didn’t say he was on drugs, Ed,” Hélène broke in. “Plain old robbery attempt, most like.”

      Belle scowled into her glass, letting the smoky Highland ether braise her throat. She was glad to have splurged on J&B. “I read about it. And Steve’s going to have to answer. Left me in the dark after all I’d been through. I can still see her body. So small, like a broken toy.”