Читать книгу Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle - Lou Allin - Страница 19

A message from a Geoff Garson, aka the Saint, flashed on the screen when Belle selected “new mail” the next day. A retired librarian from Notre Dame in Indiana, he was delighted, even flattered to accept the “Mission: Impossible.” Choose a librarian, she thought, for patient, meticulous work; they thrived on rooting up uncommon facts, the more obscure and useless the better. His information later that week showed that he was indeed an ace researcher, but it also brought some troublesome questions. Belle’s fax machine slowly churned out a picture and fact sheet. “Forest Glen Wellness Center, formerly Forest Glen Sanatorium. Founded in 1878 as a TB facility. During the 1950s converted by Dr. Brian Whitewell to a premier psychiatric hospital. Fees $75,000 U.S. yearly, excluding special treatment plans. Patients approximately 30. Single suites only. Two hundred wooded acres in the Adirondacks. A small stable of horses, tennis courts, jogging track, exercise rooms, indoor and outdoor pools. Specializes in schizophrenia, false memory, personality disorders, emotional trauma recovery. World reputation brings clientele from Europe, South America and the Far East.” Belle inspected the building with a magnifying glass. Stately Georgian brick, tastefully modernized through several eras. Two wings flanked an impressive portico over a stretch limo. She polished the lens and looked again. Manicured cedar hedges, classical topiary (a brontosaurus?), layered flower beds and lawns to kingdom come, probably rolled to within an inch of their lives by a gardener imported from King’s College, Cambridge.

In an impulsive mood, buoyed by her sudden success, Belle got the phone number from the operator, surprised that it was listed. “Forest Glen,” answered a plummy voice bearing the cachet of the Received Standard English pronunciation as only Miss Moneypenny could deliver. “How may I help you?”

Belle gulped and modulated her tone to quiet confidence. “I’d like to speak to Miss Schilling.”

The voice turned chilly and tense. “You don’t sound familiar, Madam. I’m afraid Miss Schilling has a specific list of callers.”

“Sorry,” said Belle and hung up. A foolish trick. Would the woman inform the family? So Eva was there. But how could Franz afford the fees on his university salary? And as an overtaxed, under-serviced Ontarian, she knew damn well OHIP wouldn’t foot the bill. A private medical plan? Doubtful. Few Canadians had that animal. More to the point, why was she there and what was the prognosis? She typed another message to Geoff: “Excellent work, Saint. Loved the picture, too. Any prayer of more personal data on a patient, Eva Schilling? Do you have contacts who work there or know someone who does?”

Belle spent the afternoon taking a very demanding primary school teacher (was there any other kind?) on a tour of Valley East bungalows under $120,000. Ms. Bly, a cod-faced woman of fifty, who might have been Don Knotts in drag, had precise objections to all six places. One was too near the fire station, too noisy. Another had the old siding, sashless windows, too drafty. One used oil heat, too smelly. Another had a barking husky next door. One had poplar trees, “common and filthy pests”. And the last, an older custom-built home with quality touches which Belle hoped her client would appreciate, got the loudest sniff.

“What fool wants hardwood floors? My mother used to spend all Saturday on her hands and knees rubbing that sticky beeswax around. Polishing, always polishing. She was a regular slave to it,” the woman said, writing in a small notebook. “I don’t fancy ceramic tile either. Much too cold on the feet.”

Belle hummed an evil internal melody and nodded with a slight sincerity since she agreed about the floors. Northern Ontario wasn’t Santa Fe, and it wasn’t Back Bay. Having a dog had put the last nail in the notion of oak parquet when she had built her house. Claws on floors reminded her of the odd cringe she felt whenever she ate raisins.

After arranging another tour the following week by planting in the woman’s head the concept of living a wee bit farther north in Capreol (“So many wonderful bargains since the sad closing of the Canadian National Railroad facility”), Belle stopped for gas at the last station before home. As she waited for her charge slip, she glanced at a four-by-four Chev pickup with supercab and eight-foot box across from her. What a boat. Probably mortgaging his soul to feed those twin tanks, Belle thought, smirking at the $90.00 on his meter. Then again, if you can afford a giant in the first place, you don’t worry about the cost of his keep. The license plate read 1BIGMF. How did he slip that past the Ontario censors? Suddenly she did a double-take. With Brooks at the wheel, Nick rode in the passenger seat, flashing her a toothy smile and showing no hard feelings. The lodge owner glared her way, whispered to Nick, and arced his cigarette onto the asphalt as they drove off. Belle braced for an explosion, but it snuffed out in the slush. Nothing like upping the ante. Now Brooks would know that she was pursuing the drug connection. Steve would have her head if anything sabotaged the raid.

After another fill-up at the liquor store, she reached home in time to throw the ball for Freya and use the leftover taco mix for a tomato soup and macaroni casserole. A can of precious hominy bought in Buffalo added a southern touch. To her surprise and delight, Melanie called to report that she was dropping her roommate off at the airport around noon the next day and wondered if she could visit.

“It’d be great to see you. Bring a Toronto Star. We don’t get delivery out here” was Belle’s answer.

What was on the Nostalgia channel, she wondered, spooning into the food? W. C. Fields in The Dentist. A Slim Jim in this early talkie, with his bulbous nose in training, he grabbed the giant block of ice from the delivery boy and set it absentmindedly on . . . the stove! When he returned, it was an ice cube, which he shrugged off as perfectly natural, scissoring it up with the tongs, and depositing the tiny piece back in the ice box. Of course, the film was a minefield of ethical blunders. He treated his daughter like a slave, locked her in her room, threw tantrums on the golf course, thrashed caddies and gyrated ham-handedly over helpless women in his dental chair while he pumped the pedals with abandon.

Still chuckling, Belle cranked open her bedroom window, amused to find another ladybug. Warm weather in September had sent hundreds clustering around her patio doors in an unusual infestation less bothersome than mosquitos or biting flies. She inspected the creature to see whether it had two spots, nine or none, then dropped the bright little memory of summer onto the thick branches of an aloe plant on the sill. “Flying home is out of the question, ladybug. You’ll have to stick it out until spring. Now find an aphid and behave.” The oblique reference to fire led her downstairs to check on the woodstove. It never hurt to be too careful. She assured herself that the damper was up, stood in front of the stove, gripping the wood-tipped handles, and said, “Check, double check, triple check” chanting as far as “octupal” in an effort to make sure that the round spinning “keys” were adjusted properly. Obsessive-compulsive, or just plain cautious? Just the other day a family in Chelmsford had gone to town while the stove roared, worked itself into a chimney fire and turned the house into ashes. She recalled her father balancing back and forth in front of the gas range when she was a child, looking, leaving, looking, leaving, never trusting his eyes. But then again, his aunt had died in a gas leak.

Finally she climbed into bed, prepared for a shudderfest over the latest Cornwell novel. The sleuth was a pathologist whose diehard fans ate gruesome realism by the pailful. A few graphic chapters taught Belle to slice a Y incision, pull out assorted organs, weigh them and set aside the stomach contents for analysis. She began to grow queasy and took a large slug of Scotch to disguise the reek of formaldehyde. No more Cornwell before bed. Something refined, Ngaio Marsh maybe. She rattled through assorted prayers for people she hadn’t seen in forty years, then surrendered to a deep sleep, imagining the faithful loons calling in their mating dance. But they wouldn’t be back yet, skating on the ice. Once she and Jim had seen a nest with a loon’s egg clinging perilously on a tiny atoll hardly bigger than their boat. Perhaps the human proximity, quiet as they had tried to be, had disturbed the parents, because a few hours later, the prize had vanished! To a safer place, or the stomach of an otter?

She woke in shallow awareness as her clock read two a.m., smelling a light, comforting smoke drifting in the window. A few snuffles and snorts sent her back to sleep, only to wake more fitfully with a pounding headache. A change in weather? Sinus problems? In her stupor she debated chugging aspirins, but decided to wait it out.

Such pleasant time passed while she and Jim hunted for the egg, yet what kept dragging her from the dark and quiet river passages which led past the cherished pictographs? Jim was cozying the canoe against the cliffs, bracing with his paddle so that she could take pictures of the red ochre figures which seemed to be distorting despite her efforts to focus the camera. Slowly she became aware that Freya was coughing and whining and licking at her. And the dog had never, ever, asked to go out during the night. Belle rubbed her eyes, burning with something more pungent than sleep, and forced herself up to hit the light switch. The room seemed to be blurry, foggy.

Suddenly all too awake, she felt the marrow freeze in her bones, despite the blood temperature of the water bed. Smoke was seeping through the ventilation panel cut to the living room. A fire, with her trapped on the second floor, the worst nightmare! She clawed free from piles of bedding, dropped to the rug and crawled to the patio door to rip into the plastic sheeting taped inside to conserve heat loss and shove the door open. The frigid air cleared her head momentarily. Fearing that the lights might go out at any moment, she retrieved a flashlight from the dresser. The bedside water glass doused a T-shirt, which she wrapped around her face. Freya stayed behind her, sneezing and hacking.

Yet the door to the downstairs was cool. Fire or no fire? Belle cracked it slowly against the thick smoke which followed the draft, backing down the stairs on her knees, blessing the thick broadloom that had cost her a trip to Curaçao. Why didn’t she have a contingency plan, a rope ladder from her balcony? Ed had always teased her about it. Like a scorched worm, taking a gulp through the soggy shirt, she flashed a teary look at the living room stove. Smoke was billowing out of the keys. Something must have blocked the chimney from above. Holding her breath until her lungs ached, Belle tightened the keys and turned the damper to shut down the blaze.

As her lungs finally rebelled against her brain and opened wide, she pushed outside with a gasp into the softly dropping snow, oblivious for a moment that she stood only in T-shirt and underpants, standard bedtime attire. Spasms of coughing punished her shoulders and back as she braced against the deck post. “Wow!” Belle yelled, lifting her feet one after the other like a phony fakir on burning coals. Holding her breath again, she reached inside to the hall closet to grab her snowmobile suit, boots and mitts. Could a squirrel have fallen down the pipe? There was no protective mesh at the top, couldn’t be because of creosote build-up. But no roast beast smell filled the air. Shivering more from fear than cold, Freya stopped hyperventilating as Belle hugged her and stroked her fur. “Breathe on your own, girl. I just couldn’t do CPR on that hairy mouth.” Safe now, the air clearing inside with the door open, she debated whether to put out the fire with water, or climb to the roof and stuff down the chimney brush. The smoke damage would be horrendous.

Breakfast and some creature-comforting noises in mind, Belle walked down to Ed’s, blowing her lungs clear as the sun’s red eye backlit the trees. Sailor take warning? As she trudged, she missed the amenities of socks and long underwear, but blessed the fleece-lined moosehide mitts that did the job at any temperature. Northerners knew what was important.

She hated to wake her friends, bang into their morning stillness, but what were pals for? “All right, you slackers, everyone out for volleyball,” she called, pummelling loudly at the back door and causing fearful yelps from Rusty, asleep in the mud room.

Thumps and bumps came closer as lights flashed on in sequence through the house. “What the hell?” Ed said. “Are you crazy? Say, what’s all over your face?“ He sniffed at her as he pulled her inside. “Were you smoking in bed again?” He fastened his robe as Hélène shambled in from the bedroom, her eyes puffy with sleep.

“It’s safe enough on a waterbed. I got smoked out. My chimney is plugged at the top. There’s no fire. I shut the stove down, but can’t do much more until daylight. Can I get warm here?”

“Thank God you’re OK, Belle,” said Hélène, giving her a firm hug and passing her a tissue for her face.

“Thank Freya. She warned me, saved my life. I was too groggy to know what was going on,” Belle added. She availed herself of their bathroom in an unsuccessful attempt to scrub off the smoke.

“What about your alarm?” Ed asked as they sipped coffee and stuffed themselves with hot blueberry pancakes. Squirts of whipped cream added to the impromptu picnic. Heavy food was appreciated when cold work lay ahead.

“It kept going off for no reason, well, not exactly no reason. Bugs, I guess, so I jerked it. And naturally I forgot to reconnect it.”

The DesRosiers drove her back in the truck. While they aired out the house, Belle shovelled hot ashes from the stove into a bucket and used asbestos gloves to carry out the smoking logs. Then she collected the fibreglass cleaning rods and brush and climbed an aluminum ladder next to the house.

Ed scolded her as he followed. “Why do you leave this up? Thieves could get to your bedroom balcony.”

“I clean the chimney every three weeks, and I’m not excited about digging out the ladder after every blizzard. Besides, Ed, I have glass patio doors. So do you. We live out here because we want to see the lake, not hole up in a fort with arrow slits. Someone wants in, they get in.”

Checking for tracks on the roof under several inches of new snow proved fruitless. Ed said, “What a mess around the chimney, all trampled. You won’t get clear prints here.” His probe with the brush revealed a soft mass several feet below the top which he pushed down the chimney. “Have to take the pipes apart in the living room. She’s caught up on the damper.”

“If the chimney had caught fire, the house might have gone up in flames. Still, it’s deadly enough. Most people in fires die of smoke inhalation,” Belle said, shivering in the brisk wind on the roof as she surveyed the grounds. “What’s that by the big yellow birch? Looks like it was tossed off the roof like a javelin.” It turned out to be six-foot wooden stake for delphiniums, probably from a pile under the deck, except that the end was sticky with black creosote.

Dismantling the pipe, fanning themselves against the smoking rags and despairing of the falling cinders, they cleared the mess and reassembled the pipes. Belle had goosed the propane furnace, but with the doors still open, it was barely above freezing in the living room. Luckily the computer room and TV room had been closed. The fish would have to hang tough until she got the stove going again.

“So where did those rags come from, Belle?” Ed asked as he pitchforked the pile onto the snow.

“Looks like old towels I hung over the propane tank. Used them to wash the van last fall.”

Hélène looked on the verge of tears. “Please stay with us for awhile, Belle,” she pleaded. “Or Ed can—”

“You’ve been great. But I’ll be OK. And yes, I will report this.”

Finally alone with her thoughts, Belle left a detailed message for Steve. If he had been mad in the past, this would send him into overdrive. He’d blame her for going to the Paramount, for snooping at the lodge. Derek had warned her about Brooks’ interest, and now she’d seen Nick with him. “But what exactly does he think I know?” she wondered aloud as she watched her fish slowly tour their kingdom, blissfully unaware of their near-death experience.

Steve skidded down the driveway after lunch. “They told me you’d been hit again. Look at all the tracks! Grand Central or what! Did you have to trample everything? I got here as fast as I could. Since morning I’ve been north of Parry Sound where a gas transport accident blocked 69 for hours.” In his irritation, he ignored Freya’s barking. Usually he loved to play with the dog.

Belle felt a defensive surge. This was her territory, her violated home. Why did he have to make the situation worse? “It’s been snowing heavily, so any tracks are gone. What do you want to know? Someone stuffed the chimney. From what we found when we pushed down into the stove, it was towels left by my propane tank. I’ve been through a rough night, and I had the funny idea that you were my friend.” She bit her lip and turned away, knowing she was in for a grilling.

He reached into the squad car for his notebook and wasted no time pinpointing the obvious question. “And your smoke detector?”

She sighed deeply. “No contest. I did something stupid. It’s reconnected now in case you feel like jailing me for building code violations.”

Taking a look around, Steve seemed ready to continue the third degree as he scribbled her remarks and his observations, but with a glance at her sitting slumped on the deck stairs, he took a deep breath. “The burglary attempt or whatever that you didn’t even bother to report is one thing. That’s common enough in cottage country in the winter. This looks serious, but I can’t see why they didn’t cut the hydro. Must have had a kind heart or been real amateurs.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Everything should be fine if you mind your own business until Saturday, our big night. Make it look like the scare worked. Lock the doors; look over your shoulder. Maybe have a friend stay with you?” He paused to consider her snort. “No, eh? Well, fine. Freya’s track record is good enough.”

“And I do have a shotgun.”

“Load it with rock salt. You won’t do any real damage.” That got her smiling. “Come on, now. We’ll put Brooks and his sleazy friends away until the Leafs win the Stanley Cup.”

Belle met his eyes and cleared the phlegm from her throat. “I’ll lie doggo. Not a bark.”

After Steve had to make three tries up the slippery drive, somewhat to Belle’s satisfaction, she called a painting firm listed in the Northern Life. With business slow, they promised to come the next day with the colours she wanted. The job could be done quickly if she didn’t mind the smell. Then a small Golf drove down the driveway. Melanie got out, and Freya capered around her, friendly as ever with females, even strangers. Size? Conformation? Pheromones? Voice? Who knew what lurked in the genetic memory of a canine?

The young woman presented the newspaper and widened her eyes at the sight of the lake. “What a paradise, Belle, but it’s colder here than in town. Natural refrigeration. Your sign’s sure easy to find. Neat owls.” Her chirpy tone changed as she noticed the smudges on Belle’s face. “My God, what happened?”

“Just a smokeout. Somebody stuffed my chimney. And I didn’t even have a ham in the rafters.”

“Are you OK? How did you get out?” They walked inside as Belle made coffee and told her story once more. Each time it became more exciting and elaborate, and each time she realized her dumb luck.

“Hope you don’t mind smoky coffee. Maybe it’ll be exotic. I’ve had the place airing, but as you can see,” she said as she pointed to the dirty stone-white paint in the living room, “there is damage. And I’ll have to wash the pine on the ceilings, too, or negotiate for a cheap steakhouse franchise.” They sat on the leather sofas which Belle had swabbed hastily with soap and water. She looked down tiredly and scuffed the rug with her foot. “Good old commercial stuff. Totally resistant against dog hair and wood debris, but I should call a steam cleaner.” She rubbed her bloodshot eyes.

“Aren’t you afraid, Belle? It looks like someone is out to get you.” Melanie’s warm expression reflected a genuine concern.

“Yes and no. It has to be Brooks. But we’re getting closer. Franz showed me a spot near his bush camp where a cocaine exchange was made. It won’t be long until Brooks is sitting in jail, his friends, too. Maybe one of them will talk about Jim’s death and make the connections we’ve been after. Meanwhile, I’ve got Canada’s best security system.” She snapped her fingers at Freya, who trotted out Mr. Chile and obligingly laid him at a bemused Melanie’s feet. “Guess I’ll cruise on propane for a while to be safe. I know it’s stupid, but that woodstove has me nervous. It’ll probably cost the earth to keep the place at 20°, much less my usual 25°.” She pressed at her temples and gave a small moan.

“What’s wrong? Did you fall last night?”

“It’s just a stupid headache. Carbon monoxide, maybe, or my sinuses overreacting. It’ll go away with time and a few pounds of aspirins.”

“Let me try something.” Melanie moved next to her and cradled her head with a touch that was curiously cool and warm at once. “I’ve been taking a healing course, reiki, it’s called. One of the techniques might help.”

Belle made no protests, and after a blissful ten minutes, she sat up with a stunned grin. “You’re a miracle! What did you do, and can I hire you?”

Mel seemed pleased at the praise. “I’m not discounting conventional medicine, it’s my job, but I’m sure therapeutic touch can help any patient, especially where stress is involved. It’s more than just massage.”

“I’m impressed. Anything else to it?”

“I’m glad to talk to someone who takes me seriously. At the hospital I have to walk a narrow line so that I don’t sound like a crackpot. But I’ve been experimenting with sending healing messages from afar, in one case to a nephew who had been in a coma from an auto accident. I surrounded him in white light, tried to rejuvenate him with an aura.” She blushed. “Do I sound like Shirley MacLaine?”

“Hey, I’m not laughing. Flo Nightingale lived before her time, too. And your nephew?”

“He’s in rehab in Toronto. Should make a complete recovery. Prayer, natural energy, modern medicine, luck, who knows? I like to visualize a bright white fluffy cloud around me wherever I go.”

The girl’s too good to be true, Belle thought. Protected by a cloud. Why not? They used to call them vibes; now it was auras. Melanie spoke also of cleansing the mind of grudges, bitter failures resupped from an old menu. For this she recommended buying a candle for each harmful person or experience. Forgive the trespass, and watch the burdens of the past burn away harmlessly. Ageless witchery mixed with common sense psychology. Every day in every way, getting better and better. Murders, however, needed resolution, and sometimes, though “Mordre will out,” according to Chaucer, it needed a helping hand.