Читать книгу Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle - Lou Allin - Страница 14

Belle should have had enough sleep since she’d had fallen into bed directly after three whopping drinks and a can of tasty, never-fail Chef Boy-ar-Dee ravioli, her comfort food since the age of six. But when the phone rang, she answered with a tempered testiness.

“It’s Steve. I got your message. Against my better judgment, I trumped up some reasons to question Brooks. Seems he has an alibi, a poor one, but his wife and one of his sleazy friends will testify that he was home preparing his tax returns the night of Jim’s death. Feeble, but you can’t fight it.”

“Taxes, right. What a concept. Why don’t you take him in and grill him?” Belle rubbed at her eyes, gritty from sleep.

“You’ve been watching too many old movies. Anyway, we’ve had our eyes on him in our ongoing drug investigations, so leave him to us. Go sell some houses; I could use another lunch.”

“So he could have had a henchman.”

He snorted. “At least bring your crime slang up to speed. And in less than polite terms, Madame, butt out. Monroe’s autopsy showed nothing surprising. Jim got off the trail in the storm, went through the ice, and that’s all she wrote.”

“Now you’re talking country songs.” Belle snapped down her ace in the hole card. “What about my dog, then?”

“Freya? What about her?”

“Oh, no big deal. I just got home last night to find her whacked over the head. She’s at Shana’s. Should be all right.”

“You should have called me! Did you see anyone? What about the tracks? Was there a break-in?”

Belle nearly dropped the receiver. “I had to get to the vet! Sorry that I didn’t have time to check my entire acre with a magnifying glass after dark when I finally got home. And that was after I bottomed out in the swamp. No, Steve, nothing in the house was touched. I doubt that they even got in. As soon as they opened the door, out ran the dog and they clobbered her with a shovel. Looks like they heard the car and took off just before I turned down the driveway. I didn’t see them, so they probably came by snow machine. As for tracks, forget it with the new snow.”

His voice relaxed. “Hmmm. Sounds like a simple break and enter. It wouldn’t be the first time on your road. Dubois had two chain saws taken in February, and Landry lost his snowmobile last week. That’s the thirtieth one this month in the region. The insurance companies are crying.”

Keeping her probes about Brooks to herself, Belle hung up after agreeing to meet soon at a new Indian restaurant, the Bengali. It sounded a bit vegetarian, but anything magma hot was welcome.

Belle sliced a blueberry bagel and popped it into her beloved coolwall oversize toaster. With all the charitable largesse from Hélène’s breadmaker, English muffins and other large pastries, she needed an appliance that could toast anything. Bypassing Meg’s jam with a flash of guilt, she lathered on cream cheese and added a dot of marmalade, remembering her mother’s corny joke about a baby chicken talking about the orange that “marma laid.” The juicy blueberries reminded her of that four-week phenomenon, summer. How long before she and Freya would again revel in the hot sun, picking and eating those cobalt jewels? The dog loved to strip the branches, nose out the berries, cool and tart in the shade of pines and birch, honey sweet and hot in the sun.

The sun through the windows was so bright, and the sky so achingly blue, the firs and cedars frozen in a picture of benign beauty, that she forgot how fierce the storm had been the night before. Time to clear all paths again, especially to the woodpile. Knowing that she would be working up a sweat, she threw on a medium weight jacket and went out to assemble an arsenal of shovels. If they knew anything about winter, Canadians knew its implements. First there was the broom for light attacks, especially on cars, then the snow scraper, good for the deck, several sizes of shovels for lifting deep snow, and the famous snow scoop, which floated massive chunks downhill. A growl, a scraping in the driveway and a few backfires sent her over to greet Ed. He leaned out of the cab of the plow truck, a 1957 Ford model with the bed rusted off and no windows. His dog sat beside him as supervisor, nosing a dab on the windshield. “Hi, pal. You must have come and fetched the truck last night,” she said, wondering if the presence of even a handicapped vehicle might have dissuaded the thieves.

“Yup, she needed an oil change and more anti-freeze, so I took her back to my garage when I heard the storm was on the way. Figgered we’d need the old gal in tip-top shape today.” He listened with interest as she told about the attempted break-in and the rescue. “Freya’s OK, though, eh?” he wanted to know. “I’ll have Hélène run you out some cabbage rolls. Look like you could use them. Oh, and you’ll have to show me where you got stuck in the swamp. Maybe I’ll put up a plaque.” With a wink, he turned the country station up to “deafen” and began his artful rearrangement of the snow in her large parking area.

As she dropped some dried shrimp into the tank for the discus, Belle’s heart skipped several beats with horror. The goldfish were still in the van, forgotten in the rush of the night. “My apologies, little friends,” she muttered as she retrieved the colourful chunk and set it to thaw in a soup plate. “It was you or me.”

Belle wasn’t surprised to find no telephone listing for Franz on the island. Would he be offended if she dropped off some thank-you gifts? Perhaps she could pretend that she was “driving by” anyway since his property overlooked the North River entrance to the trails. A trip to town took her to the newest chichi chocolaterie, Lady G, for a pound of butter-smooth hazelnut truffles, an experience which the clerk assured her left sex far behind, and, even at $30.00, was a better investment. At the liquor store, she added a bottle of an old favourite, German May wine with woodruff. Roses would be a classic European gift, but how could she carry them on the snowmobile?

Belle returned home to gas up the machine. The sliders could wait. Although Franz’s Jimmy navigated the ice road from the marina along with other trucks headed for the fishing hut villages, the van’s shallow clearance was not suited to deep slush. As she took the cover off her snowmobile and broomed away the drifted snow, she noticed a small piece of torn red checkered wool under the track. Brooks wore a shirt like that, but so did every other male in Northern Ontario and half of the females, including herself. DNA tests for dead skin flakes? OJ overdose. Steve would laugh in her face.

After tucking the shred into her pocket and stashing the gifts, she started across to the island, which jutted like an upturned egg from the lake bed. Belle was intrigued to be visiting Franz’s home. In the summer, training her binoculars on it while pickerel fishing at the North River, she had made out a paradise of pink and purple phlox dripping from rock gardens, while bronze or slender blue irises waved in the soft wind over silver mounds of artemisia. As she drew near, all was blanketed by snow. The main building, a two-storey log cabin, had three wings, melded so well it was hard to determine the history of the additions. Over the island loomed a large wind generator, its wings patiently humming.

She neared the docking area where the Jimmy was packed with garbage bags likely destined for the dump. Two tarped snowmobiles sat alongside. When a black and tan female shepherd trotted down the steps warily, Belle did a double-take at its Flash Gordon headgear. The animal gave warning barks but responded to a deep voice from the cabin door. “Blondi, hör auf mit dem Bellen! Das ist eine Freundin.” A wagging tail propelled the dog toward Belle, head low in deference while Franz came down the stairs to remove the dog’s strange headgear. Blondi’s eyes seemed full and dark, but Franz’s were sad and thoughtful as he rubbed the dog’s ears. “It’s Panus, an auto-immune disorder. She sees well enough to get around. Can’t be cured, but maybe slowed long enough so she can live out her life with normal activity.” He presented the glasses to Belle. “What do you think? I worked on these all fall. Sun hurts her desperately, though she lives to be outside.”

Squinting through the glasses and fingering the triple straps cleverly arranged to retrofit the apparatus to an animal, Belle said, “It works! So how come your side lost the war?” She stroked Blondi’s massive head, so much like Freya’s. “Dogs don’t need perfect vision. Smell and hearing are their greatest powers.”

“Are you on your way to the north trails? It’s good fortune to see you again so soon. You must come in.”

With a low bow, Belle offered her booty. “I come bearing gifts to my true knight of the road.” As she looked up, a shadow passed one of the windows.

Trying to suppress a shiver since he had left his coat behind, Franz acknowledged her tribute with a snap of his boot heels. “Knight? Ein Ritter! But of course, Fräulein. We have few visitors, but we haven’t forgotten our hospitality. I think Mother has a fresh apple strudel.”

As they climbed, Belle admired the sets of tiered stairs snaking upwards like an Escher perspective, glad that Franz had a firm grip on her arm. “The turns are more practical than you might think. Fewer stairs would be needed to go straight up, but the grade would be too steep. Still, it’s a task to keep them all clear,” he explained. Salt was forbidden because of the run-off to the flower beds and into the lake. Up close, the cabin complex which capped the rocky island blended early Canadian with classic Black Forest. Carved shutters decorated every window, empty flower boxes begged spring’s return, and cedar bird feeders on long poles poked through the snow, spilling brown seeds below, which attracted noisy chickadees tossing their food in delight. Opening the door, Franz called out loudly, “Mutti, we have a visitor.”

Inside, Heidi’s chalet had been reborn. Instead of drywall, tongue and groove boards lined the walls. And the woodwork continued in copious pine and oak cupboards, carved stairs with newel posts, and an ornate Victorian sideboard sprinkled with porcelain figures. Three doors led from the great room to bedrooms or a den, perhaps. Over an easy chair spread with what Belle’s Aunt Marian called an antimacassar, stood a large and unfamiliar tree. “How unusual, Franz. What is it?” she asked, touching its tender leaves with care.

“From the homeland. A linden, dwarfed to keep inside, safe from your Canadian winters. A German version of bonsai. You have heard of our famous street, Unter den Linden?”

“I’ve seen it in pictures.” Belle admired the delicate hues of a table of violets, artfully arranged to graduate from white to pink to dark purple. “And what heavy blooms in the middle of winter. Your mother must have a true green thumb. Violets are too tricky for me. My pathetic plants either dry up or rot.”

A spicy smell of baking met Belle’s nose as a Dresden statue of a woman glided in, blonde hair turned to silver. In her youth, perhaps, the Teutonic ideal of Leni Riefenstahl’s films, a terribly innocent beauty. There was a paleness to her skin, a translucency which suggested vulnerability under strength.

The woman extended her hand and held Belle’s warmly, as if welcoming feminine contact. Her gentle, reassuring voice made Belle instantly regret the tactless stereotype. “A visitor. We are honoured. Please call me Marta.” She smoothed the creases of a spotless dirndl apron, and a small, dry cough punctuated her conversation.

“This is Belle Palmer, Mutti, from the other side of our lake. I told you about the attack on her dog.”

Marta shook her head and gestured toward the wall at several black and white pictures of German shepherds. “We love our dogs as our family. I was so glad that Franz could help you.” As she spoke, her light accent gave a rich European charm to the room.

“Look what Belle has brought us,” Franz said, unwrapping the gifts.

Marta clapped her hands in a gesture touching in its total spontaneity. “Schokolade und Wein. Danke.” She examined the bottle. “Woodruff. A delicate white flower. I have tried to grow it in my herb garden.”

Belle said, “I have a chive patch which thrives on neglect. That’s it. What are your specialties?”

“Natural medicines are my hobby,” she explained, a glow brightening her face. “You have probably seen the bitters, the essences at the health food store. My mother taught me the healing properties of common plants, but she taught me even better the deadly properties. Pokeweed, for example, the tender fresh shoots in the spring have a tonic effect, but any leaf, root or berry from older growth can cause death. Our ancestors learned to be very careful.”

Belle waved her arm at the violets. “And your flowers are so cheerful in the winter. I thought of bringing roses, but I didn’t think they’d weather the trip.”

“The roses are my greatest challenge. Of them all, it is the Maria Stern variety that pleases me the most. Her colour is like a ripe peach. And very hardy in winter. Sadly, some of the most lovely varieties I knew in the old country will not thrive.” For a moment her eyes glistened. “But you must have some coffee and strudel. Franz, bitte, hilf mir.”

He followed her through a wide doorway into the kitchen, where shiny copper pots hung over a mammoth wood cookstove. Belle strolled around the room, conscious of the Old World flavour in the paintings: King Ludwig’s castle and some dark nineteenth-century Flemish works, their varnish spiderwebbed with age. In the only modern note, a Böse stereo system and radio. No television. Despite the dry winter air, a croton spread riotously in a large pot by the picture window, its leaves a rich tapestry of burgundy, green, and yellow. She moved over to the mantel above the massive stone fireplace. A picture of Franz, compelling even as a youngster. Who was that actor in The Blue Max? George Peppard? Several others depicted a balding man displaying fish catches. The father? But a photo of a young girl on a diving dock puzzled her. Who could that be?

Over the coffee, as they sat in front of crackling birch logs behind a brass fire screen, Belle petted Blondi and praised her obedience. With a flicker at the corner of her mouth, Marta slipped the dog a morsel of cake. “Mit Blondi hier, I fear nothing. We don’t have many guests, but the snow machines, what a nuisance.”

Belle sat back on the soft couch. “It’s so comfortable. How old is the original building?”

Franz answered with pride in his voice. “Older than anything in the region. In 1820 a Hudson Bay factor had the first cabin raised in an effort to regulate the fur trade, decades before any mineral exploration or logging. This room would have been the original shelter. Look at the darkened beams above the fireplace. What a desolate and fearful place it must have been in those days, almost like a fort. Of course everything has been redone with each new owner. We are always discovering small evidences of their lives every time we dig the gardens. Bits of crockery, clay pipes, coins and the rare shard of glass.”

“Like living in a fine museum, but with all the conveniences.”

Marta gave her son a wink. “Not as many conveniences as I would like. Wolf and I, Franz’s father, who is gone from us now,” (she crossed herself) “was not only a master carpenter, but an electrician and a plumber. For power, you saw the wind generator.”

Belle nodded. “Enough to run your appliances?”

“It’s the heating devices that drain the batteries. And as you can see, we have the fireplace and a cooking stove. We can store from the wind for only so long until we must start that awful gas generator. So loud that I hate to have Franz pull the cord. But my radio can use batteries.”

“Do you enjoy classical music? It’s frustrating up here,” Belle said, “Only the satellite can pull in those selections.”

Marta reached forward and touched Belle’s arm gently, looking deeply into her eyes. “It doesn’t matter to me, Liebchen. You see, the radio is the voice of freedom. During the war, we were forbidden to listen to the BBC. Mutti would turn it on so very quietly that we would sit with our ears on it. Once a nosey neighbour came and she had to switch it off quickly. Mutti was so frightened, but she laughed as if it had been a mistake. And we children laughed, too.”

No one spoke for a minute, until Franz asked, “How are the Burians, Belle?” He turned to his mother. “I haven’t seen them since the funeral. Sometimes there is smoke at their lodge when I pass, but I don’t want to intrude.” Marta excused herself and went into the kitchen.

“As well as you’d expect. They’re strong people. Probably won’t be at their lodge much anymore, Ben said. How long have you known them?”

“Oh, only to say hello. Jim was a good deal younger, but I got to know him when we organized the rally against the park. As the representative from the Forestry Management program, he was covering the impact to the woodland.”

“I’ll try to be there. None of us wants this development. It’s going to bring chaos to the lake.”

“And besides the destruction, the new access roads bulldozed across the forest will be even more of a problem. There is a First Nations burial ground not one hundred feet from the proposed shower site. And of course the pictographs on the canoe routes. Just imagine what will happen when those become accessible from the main entrance. They cut the timber a hundred years ago, and now they want to rape the land again. We must take a stand or explain our cowardice to the next generation.”

“There was something else I wanted to ask you, Franz. It’s about Jim’s death. I’m still trying to gather information in case he stumbled upon something in the bush. A drug transfer, perhaps. I can’t imagine what else. Melanie said that you had heard small planes recently, just like he had reported.”

“Yes, at my camp near Cott Lake, but I’ve never pinpointed any landings. It’s always dark when the sounds come, which drew my suspicions. One of these days when I finish my projects, I’ll put on my snowshoes and have a good look around.”

Belle nodded her agreement as Marta returned to pass around a plate of strudel. A leather-bound volume of poems on a side table caught Belle’s eye. “May I?” she asked, lifting it with reverence.

“Of course. Not too many people appreciate the old things,” Marta said. “Franz tells me that one day no one reads books anymore. Only computer screens.”

“Now really,” he chided gently, “that is an oversimplification of my ideas.”

Belle ran her finger over the page as they watched in polite amusement. “Fraktur. Can’t read this Gothic very well, although I studied German in university.” She closed her eyes. “Möwen, Möwen, sagst du, wir haben Möwen in dem Haus?”

They both stared at her as if she’d suddenly gone mad.

Belle couldn’t suppress a grin. “Oh, I know. ‘Seagulls, seagulls, do you say that we have seagulls in the house?’ Useless, those silly sentences which we had to memorize. Better if I could order schnitzel.” As they both joined her in laughter, she sipped the last of the coffee. Strong and rich, oddly aromatic, she told Marta.

The older woman’s face lifted at the praise, her eyes sparkling. “We make it with the bitter chicory, in the continental style. You can buy the essence at the Health Food Store, but I grow and dry the plants myself. It has a lovely blue flower. And the blue flower, now, was a concept of the book you hold by Novalis. It represented the romantic ideal, a symbol of eternal search much like the Holy Grail.”

“Knights, quests, you’re inspiring me. I’m going to have to get out my German grammar books and start from scratch.” Belle said as she stood. “But now I must be going. Thank you so much for your hospitality. I have admired your gardens from afar in the summer.”

Marta took Belle’s hand and broke into a smile more dazzling than Dietrich’s Blue Angel’s. “Then you must surely come back and see them in their glory.” She gathered the dishes and went into the kitchen.

“And thanks again for your heroic efforts, Franz.”

“Der Ritter is at your service.”

Belle stopped at another picture of the young girl, fair-haired, vital and energetic, pointing up in childish delight at a ten-foot sunflower. “An old girlfriend, Franz?” she asked on a whim.

His voice grew soft. “My sister.”

“I didn’t know you had any brothers or sisters.”

“She moved to the States. Lives in Boston. She wanted to get to the big city, never liked the bush.”

“Lucky her,” Belle said, summoning a joke to cover the awkwardness she suddenly felt. “This wretched winter, I feel like driving non-stop to Florida and throwing myself on the mercy of the welfare system just to enjoy the sunshine.”

“Better not,” he advised, his tone lightening. “They don’t pay as well as Ontario.”

Franz showed her to the washroom before she left. A very expensive electrical composting toilet system she had read about in Cottage Life, but what else would work on that rock? A faded embroidery on the wall read, “Ein gutes Gewissen ist ein sanftes Kissen.” A good something is a soft something else? Too rude to ask for a translation of their bathroom art.

Marta stood by the door and pressed a warm, fragrant package into her hand. “Strudel for you to take home. Give a little bit to your dog, too. Soon you come again.”

On the way down, Belle noticed a small grotto of cemented stones surrounding a female statue. “Mary? Aren’t most Germans Lutherans?” she asked. Around the region, in French areas especially, she had seen many similar shrines, some even illuminated. This one was carefully swept with a small bunch of frozen carnations at its feet.

“My father’s family were Junkers, a landowner class, who took part in the Kulturkampf, the nineteenth century struggle between the Roman Catholic church and the German government,” Franz explained. “Mother keeps the traditions. Since we don’t go to church here, she has her own way of worshipping. This isn’t Mary, but Dymphna, an old Belgian saint from where my grandmother lived. I built it to practice stone masoning.” He shrugged. “Me, I’m just a garden variety agnostic like most scientists.”

Blondi had followed them down to sit dutifully at her master’s boots. “From her looks and her comportment, her pedigree must be excellent,” Belle remarked.

“Her parents were Schutzhund Threes. We can trace her lineage to Axel von der Deininghauser Heide, a legendary sire,” Franz recited with clear pride, “but then so can most people who own purebreds. Axel’s there somewhere on the chart. Perhaps Blondi and Freya are related very, very far back, do you think? As for her training, we didn’t see the necessity of putting her through such severe paces since she is a family pet.”

“I know what you mean. She’s a friend first. And please thank your mother again. It was a privilege to meet her. You must love her very much.”

“Her heart is not good, I fear,” he said, tightening his lips in a resigned gesture. “You heard the cough. And of course we run a risk out here on the island, though there is the air rescue.”

“You’re in the right town for heart and cancer specialists, Franz. Anything else and it’s Toronto. I wish her well.”

Belle waved as she headed off across the frozen wasteland. How did they manage to live here all year? Franz must have to stay in town at freeze-up and ice-out. As she throttled up, behind her the island got smaller and smaller. Knowing how disorienting distances could be, she aimed directly across the lake, sighting off a bare hill near her house, watching the landscape enlarge at warp speed. Whether from her canoe or from her Bravo, the sight always thrilled her, the sun gleaming off her windows and the russet siding glowing in sunlight. Xanadu, a golden pleasure dome, even without Alf.

Later that night with the help of her German dictionary, Belle translated the motto from the embroidery in the bathroom: “A good conscience is a soft pillow.” She hoisted her glass with a grin. “ ‘Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.’ And single malt, now that can justify anything.”