Читать книгу Murder, Eh? - Lou Allin - Страница 5

September 1st struck the coup de grâce for Northern gardeners, a dust of frost at -2°C that morning. Carrying a steaming coffee and dressed in her long green terrycloth robe, Belle walked out onto the huge deck which wrapped the front and side of her storey-and-a-half cedar home. She stared down over her garden, site of the old cottage. The carrots and beets were snug and the broccoli impervious, but this was game over for the tomatoes. She’d pulled in several pounds on the vine last night to ripen in the cool of the basement utility room.

Across the eight-miles-by-eight meteor-crater lake, a shallow fog kissed the far shore, rolling down the North River like a phantasmagorical glacier, another sign of fall in this cinemascopic window on the four seasons. Facing north by northwest, her property bore the brunt of the fiercest winds instead of snuggling in a safe bay. Along the boathouse, a cement walkway led to a dock, which connected to a wooden crib with a concrete pad bearing her huge satellite dish, an historical artifact now used as planters by inventive owners. From there, a double telephone-pole bridge led ten feet to the protective rockwall.

Before leaving for work, remembering the trapper and his evil boxes, she logged onto the Ontario Fur Managers’ site. “Managers” of a business governing the heartbeat of a soul. There she learned that in the early 1900s, over sixty thousand marten pelts were sold in Canada, driving the animal to near extinction and entirely out of Prince Edward Island. With a keen sense of smell, martens were easily baited in their ranges from two to three square kilometres. One sickening fact hit home. Trappers often left beaver carcasses near marten grounds in order to provide food and increase the carrying capacity of the habitat. Whether or not he’d been sent after a nuisance animal, he probably had availed himself of this trick after he’d stripped the pelt. It reminded her of the witch fattening Hansel. She’d have to return soon and find his site.

On the way to her all-wheel-drive Toyota Sienna van, Belle peered at squiggly bike tracks in the yard. Too cheap to subscribe, she got no paper delivery, knowing that Miriam usually brought hers to work to check their ads. Had someone selling school candy come by? Then she saw a paper slipped under the wiper, which was bent at an awkward angle. From a scratch pad, it bore the official logo of CRIME STOPPERS. A crabbed, childish scrawl read: “Your place in the woods has been puled down. Don’t try it again.” What the hell? Belle hadn’t as much as set a nail in the bush, used it only to stroll and admire the sights. Was this about the bear and moose stands? She’d knocked a few boards from them herself out of sheer spite. On Crown land, the stands weren’t illegal, so what was Crime Stoppers griping about? After crumpling the note, she tore a cuticle trying to straighten the blade.

Fifteen minutes later, leaving Edgewater Road to turn right onto the airport highway, she passed a dozen cars angled into the bush, collectors of the season’s last blueberries, a local industry. Finally she could tune in the CBC local news. In an effort to comply with the 911 system, nine hundred streets in the region would have to be renamed. There were eleven Pines, eight Maples and eight Firsts, nine Birches, seven Alberts, and so on down. This challenge could take five years with unimaginable costs. Think of the stationery, maps, and street signs. She blew a sigh of relief. Her business was located on Disraeli Court, one of a kind. Punching more buttons, she found a strong signal at 105.3. “Gimme the beat, boys, and free my soul” drummed from the speaker. A good song, but every half an hour? She grabbed an Enya CD and let “Marble Halls” smooth her journey past the airport, where she watched the plume of INCO’s 1250-foot Superstack rise over the distant hills, symbol of industry. West wind as usual, blowing what remained of the scrubbed smelter air to North Bay.

Navigating the busy Kingsway and swivelling around Lloyd Street, she noticed that a large cement wall had been spray-painted with a bulbous, cartoonish “Nix” tag in red and white. It was rather artistic, but she didn’t suppose the owners appreciated the effort. On one of the few residential streets downtown, she pulled into the parking area of a mock-Victorian house which made a convenient business address for Palmer Realty, founded by her late Uncle Harold. When she’d left Toronto behind twenty years before, kissing off a stressful high-school teaching job without a second thought, he’d paid for her realty courses, then made her his partner. The upstairs rented to a quiet and reliable snowbird couple. She gazed up at the mighty cottonwoods, the few large trees spared from the core ecological damage of the last century. The day had warmed up, so she hung her plaid jacket in the van, leaving her in designer jeans and a red silk blouse.

“Life is just a bowl of blueberries,” she said to her only employee, Miriam MacDonald, her elder by ten years and a hundred grey hairs, whose baba’s bunion legacy enjoyed a daily massage from a wooden foot roller beneath her desk. “And to mix a metaphor or two, if my new lead pans out on Lake Ramsey, we’re in the proverbial clover, four leaves every one.”

Miriam munched at a cheese croissant, wiping crumbs from her mouth and pointing at a brown bag. “You mean Bea Malanuk? She dropped in this morning looking for you. Brought a half-dozen of these. Don’t you love their dark rye? It’s more sinful than an Aero bar.”

Belle struggled to maintain a cautious optimism about the dream sale. Cottage properties were her cornerstone, so six per cent of a possible mid-six-figure range nearly made her drool like a St. Bernard, especially when the average price for a home was a piddling $115,000. In a region with forty other realty companies and home sales last year of only 2167, the pie was getting smaller, even if prices were gradually rising. She needed to average four or five closings a month to make a slim profit, buy kibble, and keep Miriam in foot rollers. “What’s she like?”

“Tall, broad shoulders, strong arms. Probably comes with the baking territory, all that kneading. Nice, though. She reminds me of someone from those classic film tapes you give me. Can’t place the name and face. A formidable woman with a great comic talent.”

“Marjorie Main?”

“Ma Kettle? Don’t think so.”

“You have me intrigued.” After grabbing a croissant en route to her nearby desk in the compact office, Belle saw the note with Bea’s number at the bakery.

The busy clatter of a business set a background for the woman’s upbeat, mellifluous voice. “Hélène’s told me so much about you, Belle. I’m surprised we’ve never met.”

“Thanks for thinking of me. Business is slow in the fall.” And winter and spring. Slower than maple syrup poured onto the snow for an instant candy treat. Except for Cynthia Cryderman, the biggest realtor in town, with San Antonio-size hair and a pink stretch limo to accommodate it. Her advertising bill alone doubled Belle’s salary, even if the mindless radio jingle set teeth on edge. Sometimes she woke at midnight hearing its annoying words bouncing off the corners of her mind like billiard balls. But media coverage worked. That was the galling part. Cynthia sold nearly three hundred houses per year.

They set a date for three thirty that afternoon. In the meantime, Belle logged up her morning’s calls and browsed a real estate tabloid. “Listen to this headline. ‘Unshamed quality’. Do they mean ‘unashamed’? And ‘enter the lovely foray’.” Miriam clucked disdain as she stuffed envelopes.

Belle turned to the rough copy of some ads her cohort had composed. “I can always count on you for correct punctuation. Don’t you hate it when you see ‘Five bedroom’s’? Then she froze, making a gasping sound. “What’s this? ‘Affordable lakefront ten minutes north of New Sudbury’? That’s impossible.”

Miriam rose, walked confidently to the regional map on a bulletin board and traced a route with her ever sharp pencil. “Straight to Whitsun Lake.”

“Get serious. You’re pointing to a snowmobile trail.”

The wily ex-bookkeeper, who had once sliced, diced and sauteed accounts for several marginal businesses in the Valley before joining Belle’s company, folded her arms coolly over a beige linen pantsuit with a floral-print blouse. “Not exactly a lie, though.”

“I want to be competitive, but not at the expense of the truth. Let’s compromise at twenty minutes, speeding tickets aside, or you’ll never make partner in the firm.” Realizing that she had overextended herself, she added, “Not that there’s enough room in this pond for more than one lily pad.”

Miriam barked out a laugh and added a dollop of Frenglish. “Hostie. Splitting the profits. Now that would be the day . . . of judgement.”

“Did I say ‘splitting’?” Belle turned with a frown and began balancing the chequebook, a high-wire act.

At lunchtime, she headed for the nearby Tim Hortons. The venerable doughnut chain, now American-owned, had a history of nearly half a century based on the joys of bubbling fat, popping franchises across the country on every strategic street corner, promising a sweet, warm antidote for the never-ending Canadian winter. Iced tea and cappuccino in the summer, but no latte . . . yet. Other chains folded tent, and lately Tim’s had aimed its sights at another border crosser, Krispy Kreme.

Collecting two Meal Deals, which included a sandwich, coffee and doughnut for mere pocket change, she saw Steve Davis coming through the door. As a detective, he wore a light-grey suit and carried a raincoat like any businessman. His six-six frame would look good in a burnoose, but she missed the handsome uniform from his younger days when he’d done off-duty security work for her Uncle Harold.

“I haven’t seen you for weeks,” she said, opening her coffee and pushing Miriam’s towards him as they found a booth. “With those terrible murders, you must be in triple overtime.”

He winced, sipping the brew. Ojibwa with a Scottish grandfather, Steve had been raised on a reserve in remote northwestern Ontario. His coal-black hair, thick and lustrous, shaded to silver at the temples. Her junior by a few years, he nevertheless felt a solemn obligation to play big brother, law vs. justice their favourite debate. “It’s a nightmare. I was called to the second homicide. The mayor’s courting a coronary. We’re not used to this. Mom-and-pop domestics or bar brawls head up the usual list.”

Belle leaned forward to hear his lowered voice. The police were not flavour of the month these days. Every pensioner in town punched in at coffee shops to heap abuse at the boys and girls in blue, usually in comparison with American television dramas where homicides were solved in an hour when dog DNA from a scrap of a cigarette filter of a suspect whose dachshund liked chewing paper turned up at the crime scene. “The methods seem similar, the victims, too. Are we talking serial killer?”

“Getting close.” He frowned, dark clouds gathering in his eyes, as serious as Belle was comedic. “The magic number is three for that definition. You know I can’t tell you much more than the papers. Strangling’s the hardest kind of murder to solve. No blood, no mess, no fuss. If you have the cold determination to kill another human being and the muscles to carry it out, you may beat the odds.”

“I see what you mean. Up close and personal.” Remembering arcane details from the Kathy Reichs novels she often read before bed, she added, “Hyoid fracture. Thyroid cartilage. Petach . . . petrach . . . Help me out here, expert.”

He rolled a tongue around his cheek in mockery. “A kindergartner knows the drill. Except that sometimes petechial hemorrhages appear for other reasons.”

“No prints, though. Right?”

“Fingerprints can show up on skin with hi-tech fuming devices, but you have to get them fast. With whisper-thin latex gloves, it can be marginally possible to retrieve prints, too.”

“Latex? Then rule out everyone with an allergy.”

“Very funny. You might get hired as our departmental joker.”

She was on a roll. “Trace evidence turned up by your forensics folk in white spacesuits? That theory that you take something and leave something—”

“Actually, the suits are black. You’re talking about Locard’s Principle of Exchange. If it were one hundred per cent true, few murders would go unsolved.”

“I haven’t heard anything about rape. Are you holding that back?”

“No more leaks.” He stroked his jaw, the noon shadow beginning to shade his bronze face. “I should get out of this sorry business, except that I don’t seem to have any other talents. The price of life’s so cheap. A few thousand in portable property.”

“You told me drugs were behind most crimes. Supporting a habit. Look how many times the Dairy Queen gets hit. What about the Hock Shop? Have you—”

They were interrupted by the loud guffaws and table slapping at the next booth, one coneheaded bald man with a pyramid of maple cream doughnuts, the other with a Godzilla hunk of coffee cake. Both wore hearing aids. “Friggin’ idjits. Whatta we pay them for, anyways? Couldn’t find their arsehole with their own thumb. There’s a squad car at every Tim’s.”

Steve winced. “Glad I walked. I’d better hustle back to the station. We have another task force meeting this afternoon. Some hot shot profiler flew up from the Big Smoke.”

“Let me guess the result. Male. Loner. Twenty to thirty-five. Hated Mommy Dearest. Works at a min-wage job.” She looked around at the staff, mostly earnest women, but what about the kitchen help? “Maybe twenty feet away operating a deep-fat fryer.”

“Not any more. The doughnuts come pre-cooked.” Finally he smiled, tapping her cheap watch, well-worn with a cracked crystal. “I’ll pass on your theory to the chief. But don’t buy a Rolex on the expectations.”

“One other thing. I had a nasty note from some Junior Crime Stopper. I suppose those in charge will give me some privacy baloney if I complain. Can you ask around and see if they have an overambitious kid on the roster in my area, maybe in Skead? A bike could do it in less than an hour.” She explained the wiper incident.

“Everything is routed through Toronto, but I know our liaison sergeant, Rick Cooper.” He pointed across the street to the Ukrainian Seniors’ Centre next to Ray Hnatyshyn Park. “Crime Stoppers could have used more eyes over there in June. Kids painted swastikas on the back wall near the garden. Makes me sick.”

“That’s low. I saw some graffiti on my way in, but it was rather artistic.”

“Graffiti’s no trivial issue.” He let out a slow breath in mute comment at her naïveté. “There was a dramatic increase over the summer. Over eleven thousand dollars in removal costs around the city. Besides that, it creates an environment that appears unsafe.”

“True enough. Reminds me of L.A. streets in that movie Colors. It’ll taper off soon. Spray paint doesn’t work at -30°C,” she said, coaxing a smile from his classic, chiselled lips.

As they parted company outside, she watched him stop momentarily to eyeball the stragglers in a crossover area between Tim’s and the LCBO. Booze it up and then sober up. This volatile combination with the nearby bus station attracted drifters. He fished in his pocket for loose change and passed it to a tall, thin man who gave a theatrical bow, sweeping his Peter Pan hat to the ground, a rare character in the staid mining town.

Later that afternoon, she pointed the van down Paris and turned left on John Street, high on a hill, overlooking the jewel of Lake Ramsey. On one side was the venerable St. Joseph Health Centre with its helipad, beyond that, the snowflake shapes of Science North, then Laurentian, the new megahospital with parking lots far enough from the entrance to weed out the more fragile heart patients. Then came Shield University with its gleaming towers, where the new medical college was breaking ground. At last the doctor-poor North could train its own.

She didn’t need to double-check the address. Parked in the circular, bricked drive was a brown, black and yellow Ford Focus, customized to resemble a bee. Its rear was striped, a sharpened, centralized exhaust pipe serving as stinger, with trompe l’oeil folded gossamer wings and black legs on the body, protruding from the hood a plastic proboscis and antennae. The bakery logo was stencilled on both doors. Great tax deduction.

Bea’s handsome home was constructed of massive grey stone blocks with cream mortar. A pristine slate roof and seamless eavestroughing bore witness to careful upkeep. It had two chimneys, a large wraparound porch with white Doric columns, a turret room and an attached garage, probably a later addition. One absent pleasure after leaving Toronto was the time travel through its varied neighbourhoods as far back as the Georgian period. Gently she touched the cool stone steps, slightly concave from nearly a century of use. Despite its charms, Cayuga House might be replaced by a blocky, cantilevered monstrosity. She hoped it would put up a stubborn fight against the monster backhoe.

Pulling out a small notebook to jot observations, Belle noticed an array of lilac bushes, skeleton pods of their Victoria Day splendour. The ivory hydrangea masses wore a blush of copper frost. Mature maples and ash offered shade and privacy. Caragana hedges were trimmed to perfection. Anyone with sense would kill for the landscaping.

She twirled the quaint bell chime and heard a muted response inside. “Hello.”

“It’s Belle Palmer.”

“Hello, hello,” replied the voice, oddly modulated, as if affected by a stroke. Did Bea have an older relative living with her? She tried the handle and found it unlocked. Hesitantly, she moved into the foyer, noting the wide plank floors and Aubusson runners.

“Bea? Where are you?” she called.

“Hello, hello,” repeated the voice, sharper now, almost petulant. Belle was reminded of seniors at her father’s nursing home who sometimes used double language. Unwilling to maintain the senseless conversation, she decided to look around.

After passing an empty living room, she came to a closed door. From behind it came a piercing shriek. Despite her misgivings, she opened it and found a parrot swinging from a brass stand, its food bowl empty. Beady coal eyes fixed upon her with a strange wisdom, as if it read her thoughts. “Oreo! Oreo!” it croaked, cocking its head and moving back and forth in rhythm. Pinfeathers floated in the air.

A very large woman in her early forties, with a friendly bulldog face, blunt lips, heavy brows and a streak of flour still in her riotous brown hair, slipped up behind her to deposit sunflower seeds into a metal cup. She carried a long, thin marble pastry roller which reminded Belle of the drill cores left in the field in mining operations. Her handshake was supple and strong. The resemblance to an unnamed comedienne which Miriam had flagged bothered her as well, but she couldn’t pin down the identity.

“Meet Mackenzie King. He’s having a time-out for being a bad boy, spilling his water, aren’t you?” She leaned toward him, and he nuzzled her pouted lips. Belle winced. That beak could crack walnuts.

“What kind is he?” Belle would have been surprised to find more than a parakeet in the North, but since the advent of PetSmart, exotic birds selling for as much as two thousand had entered the local market.

“Amazon blue-fronted, which seems strange with that yellow on top. Would you believe he’s over sixty years old?”

“They live quite long, I hear.”

“A lifetime. Father passed him to me. It’s a real commitment.” She gave a hearty laugh and stroked its head as it danced, picking up each foot. “Last summer he got loose and went up into the flowering crab. To lure him down, Dave, that’s my husband, had to go to Smith’s to find the only papaya in five hundred miles. The whole neighbourhood gathered here for the antics.”

“Your house is marvellous. I can’t wait to see the rest.”

Slipping the roller into a capacious apron, Bea clasped her hands together. “All that mahogany wainscotting and the carved staircase with the pineapple newel posts. Plenty of journeymen eager to please for a few dollars a day.”

“Is society heading backward? The only woodworker I know delivers twenty bush cords for my stove.”

Bea led her into a large living room brightened by towering ficus plants, a large Norfolk pine in a ceramic tub, and on a shaded ledge with stained glass windows, a stunning pink and purple orchid on a leaning stalk. Belle touched the waxy flowers in clear wonderment.

“It is real. Seems to like its home,” Bea said with pride.

“Northerners love their Florida rooms, heating bills aside. My grandfather had a greenhouse business on Runnymede Road in Toronto. I guess Canadians thirst for a sign of life over the winter.” She glanced down at the honeyed oak floors polished to a gleam, so much more character than laminate. Thick Persian carpets offered warm islands amid plum velour sofas and deep espresso-brown leather chairs. A fieldstone fireplace seemed to anchor the house to the Cambrian Shield.

On the rosewood grand piano were silver-framed pictures of the Bustamantes: Michael senior, a small and vigorous man, towered over by Bea, then Micro and his older sister in their school portraits. There was a wedding photo of Dave and Bea, something shadowy and strained about Dave’s face, and a diminutive boy beside them looking at the church steps. In stature, Micro must have taken after his father. In one faded colour snapshot, two men posed on a tropical beach. A young Michael and someone close enough in appearance to be a brother. Belle realized that she was staring, but Bea was straightening a needlepoint on the wall.

Belle admired the tapestry of the Apple Queen. “As once I was, so am I now.” The quote came from William Morris’s Pomona, 1891. A buxom young woman in flowing medieval dress bore apples in her skirts. A complex weave of gold and green entangled trees surrounded her.

“Did you do this? The Pre-Raphaelites are favourites of mine, both their poetry and art. I love the details. And the framing’s a great match.”

Bea blushed at the compliment. “I like to keep my hands busy after work. If I’m not doing needlepoint, I’m knitting. Micro and Dave have enough sweaters and scarves to last a hundred years.”

Jotting notes as they walked, Belle had more second thoughts about the expected demolition when she surveyed the modern kitchen with a Miele range, granite counters, a butcher-block island with copper pans hanging above and legions of German steel knives. She also noted the convenient half bath on the main floor. As they cruised the large dining room with a French Provincial table for ten, Belle stopped to assess a collection of ceramic ladies in a matching china cabinet. If memory served, these were Easter Day, Christmas Morn, and others, all red.

“Royal Doulton,” she said. “My mother left me her collection.”

Bea’s hooded sea-green eyes brightened. “Oh? Which ones?”

“Delphine, Elegance, Vivienne . . . I sold Paisley Shawl.”

“Really? What would you ask for Vivienne? She’s discontinued, and red’s my favourite, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Belle “ka-chinged” a few calculations on her mental cash register. “Two-thirds book value. Three hundred?” Chasing the elusive loonie again. Would her mother haunt her tonight?

Bea pressed Belle in a giant’s embrace, a wisp of lemon, vanilla and cloves in her wake. “It’s a deal. Bring her with the first interested parties. I’ll leave a cheque on the mantel.”

Upstairs were five bedrooms, another full bath and a master suite. One bedroom was a sewing room, another an office for Dave, one appointed with the pink colours, chintz curtains and a flouncy bedspread that young girls would like, yet no toys or personal items. Sadly, Belle recalled the dead child and understood why these poignant vestiges of a short life remained to honour her memory.

The charming turret room had windows of rounded glass and a distinctive green, yellow and black flag hanging from the ceiling. “Keep out! This means you!” read a sign taped to the open door. Bea gestured to the skateboard, Gameboy and Superhero comic books. One wall displayed Lord of the Rings posters and a picture of Bob Marley, Rastafarian dreadlocks flying. A state-of-the-art PC with twenty-inch flat screen sat on an L-shaped desk. On a shelf above was a Harry Potter collection in addition to the book Son of Web Pages That Suck. Mine sure does, Belle said to herself, having constructed it amateur-style using FrontPage Express.

“Don’t they like their privacy? And my son hasn’t even entered his teens.”

“What an unusual flag. I don’t recognize it.”

“Jamaica’s. My late husband Michael wanted Micro to appreciate his heritage.” She picked up a hardcover book, Heroes of Jamaica. “His distant relative was Alexander Bustamante, the island’s first Prime Minister in 1962.”

“I have to confess that I know nothing about that lovely country, except that its climate is heaven next to ours.”

Bea smiled softly. “You’re not alone. Many people think only of gang wars or deportations. Jamaica had a proud history of fighting oppression, British, of course. Many of its people had been brought over as slaves.”

“But there is the reggae music,” Belle added.

“Michael loved the old folk songs. He used to sing Micro to sleep with ‘Clap Hands Til Papa Comes Home’.” She hummed a few bars and swayed with a gentle rhythm.

Belle noted the Snickers wrappers in the wastebasket and the pile of textbooks. “I used to teach high school. Bailed out after a few months. English was not foremost on their minds.”

“Sounds like a sudden decision.”

“Certainly was.” The incident was as fresh in her mind as this morning. “Why you always say I’m acting like a fool?” one tenth-grader had demanded, and she hadn’t been able to resist. “Brian, you don’t have to act like a fool.” “Kiss my ass.” Off to the principal. Parents’ conference. Everyone crying except her. And a Greyhound bus ticket that weekend.

“They don’t miss much.” Bea’s chuckle spread over her face, an invitation to mirth. “Every year is a whole new world with kids. Thirteen’s coming up, and my friends tell me to fasten my seatbelt.”

The master suite was immense, with walk-in closets and a Jacuzzi in the custom-tiled bathroom. The Mexicana furnishings, warm, weathered pine with copper fittings, were a surprise, a king-sized bed, drawer chests and nightstands, a splendid armoire, and in the corner, a box table. As always, in the more intimate parts of a house, she felt strangely voyeuristic. In the corner was a cherrywood antique prie-dieu.

Bea ran loving fingers over the fine petit point on the kneeler. “Great-Great-Aunt Mafalda’s. For show rather than usage now. It’s a bit creaky with age.”

“I know the feeling.”

While Bea fixed tea downstairs, Belle relaxed in a sunny breakfast nook, enjoying the antics of chickadees around the feeders. She looked past the deck to the choppy diamond waves of Lake Ramsey, where Bea’s husband and daughter had died. From her Canlit class, she recalled a sinister poem by Margaret Atwood: “This is a Photograph of Me.” The speaker addressed the reader like a friend deciphering a blurred black and white picture, so casual, lulling him into a reverie with “a gentle slope,” “a small house,” “some low hills,” then adding, “The photograph was taken/ the day after I drowned./ I am in the lake. . . . if you look long enough,/ eventually/ you will be able to see me.” What a mistress of understatement Canada’s icon was.

Bea’s pastries proved that her talents ran in the genes. Rum-butter squares. Apricot clusters with pecans. “My grandfather bought Cayuga House in a distress sale during the Depression. The owner had invested heavily in Cobalt silver mines and lost everything. When you’re an only child, it’s hard to sell your family home, but it’s simply too big.” She gave a small sigh. “Has been for years.”

Belle nibbled at a coconut square, piquant with lemon rind, its sweetness opposed to the bitter personal loss left unspoken. “As a realtor, I wear two hats, Bea, one for the buyer and one for the owner. I had imagined that Cayuga House might be demolished. People want modern homes.” She tried to couch the observations in language that wouldn’t insult the woman.

“I suppose so.” Bea’s large mouth sagged at the corners.

As the winey taste of Earl Grey cleared her palate, Belle added, “Now that I’ve seen everything, I’m not at all sure that will happen.”

“The heating bills are plain murder, even though I love the old hot-water system.” She put down her cup and patted a radiator near her shoulder. “A convenient place to dry mittens and toques.”

“It’s a stellar property. I’ll get a lockbox set up for the front door tomorrow and take out a large ad in the paper for the weekend. MLS will reach outside the city. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.” She gave Bea a reassuring smile and opened the attaché case for the paperwork. “Hélène said that you liked the Kingsmount area. ‘Historical’ is the latest catchword for that part of town. I have a classic little place on Roxborough Drive. Mullioned windows. Fretwork. Steep gables. Private gardens out back.” She paused for effect. “And a spanking new gas furnace.”

On a tour of the property, Belle noticed a cozy doghouse in the backyard. A large grey and white sheepdog ambled out and shook itself. “Buffalo. Dave said a kid should always have a dog.”

“I agree,” Belle said, kneeling to embrace the massive shaggy head. “Mine’s a German shepherd. Not as laid-back as this guy.” She noticed that the left incisor was broken. Probably a stone chaser like Freya.

Bea pointed to a caragana hedge at the rear, beyond it a tiny cottage barely visible through the maples. “He can be a noisy one. Kids running through on their way home from school get him barking. Jean McBride over there calls me every now and then when he bites his rope and gets into her yard. Buffy’s only outside a few hours a day in good weather. He sleeps on Micro’s bed.”

They strolled for a few minutes, remnants of the old estate adding charming touches. Bea’s “secret garden” had a verdigrised sundial, a gazebo, and rock terraces to hold the soil against erosion on the steep slope. In the distance, a cigarette boat streaked across Lake Ramsey, two minutes across, then a turnabout, throwing up spray as its engines roared like 747s. A kayak struggled to position itself against swamping waves.

“You don’t want to know my opinion of jet skis. And the snowmobiles are even worse,” said Bea. “Here we are in the middle of town and have to put up with this.”

“Perils of lakefront, I guess. But it adds one heck of a punch to the property values.”

As Belle prepared to leave, Bea stood under a huge sugar maple by the front steps. One hand touched the rugged grey bark. Leading upward was a trail of nailed boards. In a spreading crotch twenty feet up, Belle glimpsed a structure. Bea’s grin lit up her face. “My treehouse. Mother nearly had a heart attack passing up the heavy boards. Micro loves to camp out up there. And don’t I provide the catering.”