She laughed out of hard-gained wisdom. “My cottage had three varieties of chiropractic mine fields.”
He appeared surprised. “But your house is new. When did you build?”
“A couple of years ago. My uncle left me enough in his will for the basic package, and I added the rest a bit at a time. Did the painting and clean-up myself.” She didn’t confess how she had nearly blown the central vacuum by sucking up drywall dust.
Sullivan cocked an eyebrow. “Very wise. So many people overextend. Try to have everything at once. Not the way my family operated, nor yours, I’ll wager.”
“True enough. My parents waited until their forties for our first bungalow. They constructed a basement, covered it with plywood and tarpaper, and we lived there like blind moles until they could afford to finish. Suburban Toronto was loaded with blocks of flat structures with a doorway sticking up. Kids thought it was the way everybody lived.”
A few glasses of wine later, Belle went inside to use the washroom and was amazed at the transformation of the camp. Neutral curtains and paint, a tasteful brown corduroy sofa and a glass coffee table. One wall was covered with books, mostly music and philosophy at a glance. A stereo system played Brahms symphony which floated outside like a blessing. On other shelves sat a few keepsakes, a Toby jug of Falstaff bearing a droll resemblance to its owner, onyx boxes and a folded wooden shape which attracted her. She opened it tentatively to find a delicate carved triptych.
A throat cleared behind her. “Ready for our repast?”
She felt like a kid caught with its hand in a candy jar. “I’m being nosy, but I couldn’t help marvelling at this. What is it, Charles?”
His face seemed more disappointed than stern, though he softened at her appreciative tone. “You have an eye for antiquities. That’s fourteenth-century beechwood. Wiser to preserve it in a safe deposit box, but I enjoy the medieval presence, a link to a lost world of craftsmanship and faith.” Belle replaced the treasure with careful reverence.
The diminutive perch deserved its reputation, cornmeal-crusty chunks sweet and tender within. Steaming baked potatoes arrived with sour cream, chives and grated Monterey Jack, then a deliciously bitter salad of baby greens with tarragon vinaigrette, and for dessert, a mud pie. “Good old James Beard. Louisiana cuisine travels anywhere,” he said.
“Chocolate may unite the world.” Belle wiped her mouth in slight embarrassment after wolfing the pie. When he brought seconds without asking, she decided that he would make a toothsome addition to the lake.
Later that month, with the hot weather coaxing the loaded fields to sweet fruition, strawberry season began. Joining the hordes who had driven on a Sunday morning to the Valley, a rich glacial till deposit where farms thrived, she was entertained by the babble between rows as she knelt to scoot her canister along. “Old man’s no problem,” a woman in a tattered straw hat said to her nodding friend, their sweating faces as plump and scarlet as the berries. “Park him under a tree with a couple of beers, and he’s happy as a clam for hours.” At the cash, Belle found herself overloaded with quarts. Criminal to waste them. Anni might like some. Their paths hadn’t crossed in weeks.
As she turned later into her neighbour’s driveway, Belle thought that someone was visiting. By the house sat a gigantic General Motors van loaded like a dowager empress. Her nose pressed against the tinted windows. Leather seats. Keyless entry. Power everything. Yet where was the Geo? A firm knock on the back door brought no answer, and she was inhaling the redolent attar from a wild rose bush when she heard a scuffling. The dogs were peering timidly from behind the shed instead of clamouring for attention. Perhaps Anni had given them a two-by-four lesson. They weren’t even decent protectors, not a mean bone in their silly bodies. Anyone could cart off the last stick of furniture by wiggling a slice of bologna. Wouldn’t work with a shepherd, bred for healthy suspicion and territoriality.
She rapped again, then tried the door and found it open. “Hello? It’s Belle.” Not a sound. On a hunch, she paced the grounds in case the woman was puttering somewhere. On a boat ride? Anni’s small outboard often trolled down the lake on a windless morning, but the dogs always sat in the bow. Back at the door again, canine panting loud in the silence, Belle tried to shake off a growing uneasiness.
Best to leave the perishable gift safely inside on the counter. She tiptoed into the kitchen, resorting to the silly phrase, “Are you decent? I have something for you.” At each step she stopped and listened, hearing only the ticking of a clock and the hum of the refrigerator. Placing the berries by the sink, she glanced toward the living room. In the doorway was a foot. A foot in a beaded moccasin, then another, followed by legs, torso, arms and head, the conventional arrangement. On the glowing pine floor, her friend lay on her stomach. Dressed in cotton pants and a man’s striped shirt, she might have been sleeping if not for the dark, matted hair.
Enough, Belle thought as her head spun and she calculated the miles to the couch. Her knees weakening, she sat down heavily on the floor, trying to deny the ugly reality. Perhaps Anni was alive, could be saved, healed, restored to that brave posture. Without really believing the possibility, she averted her eyes and groped down the thin arm for a pulse. So still, and the skin quite cool. Had Anni fallen on the slippery pine boards? Rising shakily to her feet and grasping a chair for support, Belle scanned the room with an economy of movement to minimize dizziness. Several feet away, the oaken walking stick protruded from under an end table. Why wasn’t it in its usual place?
Sweat breaking out on her forehead, stricken as if by a sudden flu, Belle collected the familiar sherry decanter from the credenza and took a large slug, another and another until she fell back onto the couch, mastering with difficulty the urge to retch, hoping that the liquor would work its tranquillizing miracle. After a few minutes of deep breathing, she got up to search for the phone, lifted the receiver with two fingers and dialled the police, reminding herself to shut the door lest the animals seek out what their body language signalled they already knew.
“Is Steve Davis there? Please find him. It’s important,” she said in strangled tones to the switchboard operator.
“What’s up?” Steve asked, several eternities later. “Another restaurant we can case out?”
“A friend of mine is dead. Anni Jacobs. I found the body. Her house is down from mine. 1703.”
His even tone felt like a cool hand on her brow. Steve never wasted words. “I’m on my way. Half an hour tops.”
Steve had been Uncle Harold’s good friend before Belle had arrived in the mining town. With reluctance, he’d left his roots behind on a remote reserve, joined the navy and had risen through the ranks of Sudbury’s finest. A few years younger and overly protective, he often tried to give her unwelcome advice, which she shot back in kind, especially concerning his rocky marriage. Recently he and Janet had bandaged their wounds and adopted a three-year-old girl with serious emotional trauma. The fight to gain her confidence had been difficult.
The Bristol Cream had clouded reality by the time Steve arrived with several officers and a plump blond man in wire-rimmed glasses whom he introduced as Dr. Mitch Graveline. Apparently it was necessary to certify the body one hundred percent unlikely to rise again like Lazarus. Later, one of the town’s part-time coroners would conduct a post-mortem Helen Keller could have deciphered, given the head wound and the nearby stick.
Steve toured the room, pushing back a shock of thick black hair from his face, its coppery complexion highlighting a proud Ojibwa heritage. He glanced back over his shoulder. “We usually send the nearest patrol car to secure the scene. I pulled rank to take the call. Did you touch anything?”
“Did I what? Haven’t you told me a hundred times about people corrupting a crime scene?” She marshalled consonants in the rolling wake of the liquor. All able-bodied vowels could fend for themselves.