“Sounds like a great guy.”
“Yes, I miss him. Made it to eighty on three packs of unfiltered Camels a day. Now I run the place myself with one other woman.”
“Jim told me about your house. You must be doing well on your own.”
Belle laughed. “If you saw my bank balance, you wouldn’t think so. And speaking of balances, I’ve got a mammoth account payable coming at the garage. Can you give me a lift?”
Melanie drove Belle to collect her van, which was thankfully ready to go, for a mere $200.00 to cover oil and filter and plug change and the extortionary tow from Bruno. “Coulda done it yourself, lady, and saved yerself big bucks,” the mechanic said.
“Oh, just chip the oil out of the pan at twenty below. With a blowtorch?”
Belle tooled out of the garage in a pique; her new gold card Visa bill would have to be sent parcel post. Tuning in the news, she was just in time for the obituaries. A thirty-oneyear-old had died when his Corvette had hit a rock cut on Highway 144 to Timmins, a deadly combination. She tugged her seat belt to double-check. A person spent the first four decades going to weddings and the next four going to funerals. And everyone wanted to die young as late as possible.
Brushing her teeth before retiring, she checked the mirror: the elder elf look, red peppery gray hair, but good skin and clear eyes. What was the use of make-up and fifty-dollar designer haircuts if you had to smash and smear them with toques, face masks and scarves? Living in a city was one thing; living in the bush was another; living in Sudbury fell somewhere in the middle, and maintaining a civilized veneer through a six-month winter of waterline-bursting temperatures or daily avalanches was a fool’s labour.
Belle climbed gingerly into her water bed and lined up five cigarettes and the latest Robert B. Parker. She tucked a cigarette into her Adolphe Menjou holder, a delicate filigreed gem from the MGM Studios Memorabilia Shop at Disney World in Orlando. Her father had bought it for her when they had made the rounds of the theme parks after her mother’s death. Had he been the oldest person to take the “Back to the Future” virtual reality ride? She could still remember taking his hand, cool and gnarly, as the Delorean rocketed them in dizzying speed toward the mouth of a tyrannosaurus. “Close your eyes,” she had said.
SIX
Steve Davis had been a family friend since Uncle Harold had used the young officer for apartment security work back when a few extra dollars were welcome. Though he and Belle sat on different sides of the law vs. justice scales, they met over a meal from time to time when his wife used an argument as an excuse to flounce off to her parents in Thunder Bay. The marriage had been one long, stormy snowshoe uphill, he complained. Why did he keep making the effort?
No police presence had been evident at Halverson’s during the viewing. She wondered what countermeasures the department had undertaken to control the drug trade and whether the lake landings had been investigated, so Belle called Steve to set up lunch. The Cedar Hut had opened a Mexican room, a nine-day wonder for the mining town, and Belle wanted to awaken her taste buds after years of drought. From a Christmas in Mexico City, she remembered the drum tortilla makers that sizzled on every corner, jolly mamacitas slap-slapping dough onto griddles with the rhythm of a mariachi band.
Knowing Steve would likely be late, she made her selection, eyebrows herniating at the prices. Belle ladled hot sauce on her combination platter of chicken enchilada and beef burrito and lined up a chilled Dos Equis in readiness to quench the anticipated fires.
Just as her pupils were beginning to return to normal after the first bites, Steve trudged in, shaking the snow from his parka, and Belle flagged the waitress for a margarita. He manoeuvered his six-six frame into the booth, flashed his handsome black eyes at her, a legacy from his Ojibwa grandmother who had captured the heart of young Rod Davis, a surveyor for the E.B. Eddy Lumber Company. “Olé!” he said after a quick sip of the margarita. “What is this salty stuff, anyway? It’s not bad. Sorry to be late, Belle. A couple of drunks at the Paramount tried to settle an argument about the merits of the Habs against the Leafs. At ten in the morning? What an end to my shift. Say, does Mexican food keep you awake?”
“Not with a supply of Zantac,” Belle said. “But count yourself lucky. At least it wasn’t a gunfight.”
“That’s one advantage the police have up north, along with following footprints in the snow. Even the convenience store robberies usually involve knives or bats. Fine with me. They don’t go off accidentally.” He browsed through the menu and followed her suggestion of tamales with a guacamole salad.
Belle watched him dig into his meal, wary of the green gunk at first, but clearly relishing the flavours. “Well, I can’t exactly identify it, not that I’d want to,” he said, “but it tastes good. And at least it’s food. Remember that Japanese place I tried in Ottawa?”
“Where you ate the potpourri?”
“Yes, problem was, it tasted better than the meal.”
They both laughed. Steve seemed in a good mood, so Belle pressed her case. “I need to talk to you about Jim. Has anything else turned up?”
His smile faded as he tightened his lips and let out a long breath. “There’s no point in pursuing this, Belle. I knew him, too. Jim’s the last one I ever figured would make a mistake like that, but he did. Stop torturing yourself. It’s over now.” He toyed with the candle lantern, then dipped a tortilla chip into the salsa, crunching noisily as if to drown out her inquiries.
“Humour me for one more chip, Steve, and I’ll get the cheque. There is one trail we didn’t follow. I wasn’t even thinking about it in the rush of the accident. On some of his trips through the bush, Jim mentioned suspicious landings on small lakes. Lakes where nobody had reason to be. No ice fishing, no camps, no roads.” She looked at his expressionless face, waiting for some nuance of change.
Steve shrugged and dug into his tamales as soon as they arrived. “Dum da dum dum. Let me guess. You’re clueing me in about drugs? Why, the traffic has tripled up here in the last few years. Did I say tripled? More than that. What can you expect when the economy has diversified so fast? Like the cartoon strip goes, “for better or for worse”, now that we’re the regional centre in the North for health care, education, shopping and government, why not for mind-altering substances as well?”
“In other words, location, location, location.”
“You’re a fast learner. We’re not sure exactly where it’s coming from, but east and south, the U.S., port of Montreal. Last week in Newfoundland a bust landed five million dollars of cocaine. The week after that two women were stopped at Mirabel Airport with over half a million. Nice retirement package. Next time Prince Edward Island, home of Anne of Green Gables, for Christ’s sake. Now Toronto’s getting shipments of khat.”
“Whaaaat?”
“Khat, an evergreen leaf grown in Kenya and Ethiopia. It has to be chewed fresh one to three hours before the high is reached.”
“Come on! What an ordeal! Who would bother?”
“It’s a social event in many cultures, brought over by our increasing refugee population, but its side effects lead to physical violence.”
“Much too energy-intensive for the North.” She signalled for coffee. “So if the traffic is increasing, as you say, why choose the bush?”
“Belle, you can’t make illicit transactions at our small airport very well, you know, not big deals. Records