Читать книгу Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle - Lou Allin - Страница 9

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 are kept. Mechanics, security guards, waitresses, anyone might take note. The fewer people, the better.” He shrugged. “Then again, these fairy tale landings might mean dick-all. Just fooling around.”

“Maybe so, but Derek is on my list for a chat. He owes me a favour.”

“Derek Santanen! He’d better know zip if he knows what’s good for him. When we finally got our lad last time, he’d have been knitting in Millhaven pen. But no, you felt sorry for his old folks and pulled him early probation with that job at Snopac. Let Mr. Blimp make his own mistakes. The next one will put him on a ten-year diet.”

It seemed prudent to change the subject, so Belle asked about Janet. A few months earlier, Steve had been talking about a trial separation. It wasn’t the despair that was killing him, but the hope. He and his wife were opposite personalities, his brooding seriousness versus her sunny, carefree disposition. One raw nerve had been their childlessness. Maybe Margaret Atwood and her Handmaid’s Tale had been prophetic; sperm motility had dropped 30 percent in the last few decades, according to The Globe and Mail. This time, however, an unusual brightness lit his eyes as he talked of the latest chapter of their marital saga. “It’s a turning point, Belle. Keep your fingers crossed, but we may be able to adopt at last. Our name’s on the list, and we’re supposed to get a call Friday.”

“So soon? For a newborn?”

“You must be joking. We gave up on that a long time ago. Our best bet is a three or four-year-old, possibly mixed race. Janet seems calmer now that we’ve made the decision, and it couldn’t have come soon enough for me. This old man is forty this year. And no, don’t put one of those ‘Lordy, Lordy, look who’s forty’ ads in the paper.”

When the bill came, Belle handed her Visa to the waitress. Steve could use a treat with the toys and clothes and godknows-what kiddie stuff in his future. “My part of the bargain. Least I can do for faithful, underpaid government servants.”

He shook her hand with an over-under-over seventies move she had taught him. “No contest. What about that Clint Black concert next month? Would you like tickets? I’ll get extras for my security duty at the Arena.”

“Why not? Poor Clint coming up here to the back of beyond! Sudbury simply must show the colours.” Belle laughed. After coffee, they returned to the blasts outside, temporarily warmed by chilies never intended to grow north of Chihuahua.

On the pretext of needing parts for her Bravo, Belle visited the local Yamaha shop, Snopac. Derek Santanen was wiping grease from his meatloaf-size hands as he smiled at her across the parts counter. A mammoth bag of Cheetos Paws lay nearby, spilling its goodies in a little golden avalanche. He seemed good at his job, but Belle had known that his snowmobile mechanics were sounder than his eating habits when she had promised his parents that she would speak up for him in court.

Sweating even at twenty below, Derek seemed to put on rather than get into the rusty VW bug that he bumped along their road. No wonder he told her that he had gone through seven sets of tires. Still, he had pushed her up the worst hill during an ice storm, splitting his pants in the process.

“Derek, I need a set of sliders and a couple of plugs for my Bravo,” she said. “And maybe a bit of information.”

His mouth opened and closed like a hyperventilating ox as a drift of ancient Old Spice aftershave mixed with sweat wafted across the counter. “I don’t know nothing, Miss Belle. Been minding my own business.” He rummaged for a handful of Paws and crunched them noisily.

“Don’t Miss Belle me, Derek. Stop tugging your forelock. Anyway, you couldn’t tell the truth unless you thought you were lying.”

He gave a tentative laugh and passed her the bag, which she summoned heroic willpower to refuse. Paws had just the cheesy flavour and toothsome resistance which had contributed generously to her ten pound Christmas bulge. “I been clean as these here sliders I’m getting for you,” he insisted as he plucked a box from the shelves. His huge Barenaked Ladies shirt rode up his back, revealing overlapping folds of fat, pockmarked chicken skin and coarse black hair. Poor guy.

“You may be clean now, and I say may . . .” she said as he gnawed his chapped lips, “but I won’t beat around the bush.” Bad Cop was a difficult role; she nipped a smile as it headed for her mouth. “You had the contacts. Tell me about the drug landings north of the lake.”

“Hey, I’m no pilot. You really wanna know, I made my buys at the Bearden or at Yukon Jack’s. If I’d spent more time at my camp and less in the bars . . .” He paused and chewed thoughtfully. “Lake drops? Maybe. Couple summers ago when we had those big winds for over a week, supplies got short. Bomber, that was my main man, said something about conditions being bad for delivery. I didn’t think much about it. Come to think of it, I didn’t think much period.” He seemed pleased with the symmetry of his explanation and smoothed his greasy hair with a pudgy hand. Brilliantine or graphite, Belle wondered?

“Well, you haven’t been much help, Derek, but maybe that’s a good sign.”

She paid her $45.00 tab with a roll of her eyes. “Are you sure you don’t need me to put them on?” Derek asked helpfully. “Kinda hard in the cold. I mean . . .”

“Never mind, Derek. I think Ed will let me use his garage. And one more thing. You know people who ride the trail system. Anything unusual around the lake?”

He pondered, searched his elephantine brain until she expected a tortured grinding of gears. “Well, I’m probably screwing up my interests, so don’t say nothing about this. Dan Brooks at the Beaverdam had me doing repairs there. Some old Arctic Cats. But guess what! I got curious about four funny shapes under tarps in the corner and took me a look. Wowee. Two new Mach Z’s. First time I saw one up here. They’s the 796cc liquid-cooled Rotax triple, R.A.V.E. and flat-slide TM-38 carbs. Big-o-mundo power revs with those ponies. Like to knock your socks off, especially on lakes. They say it’s whip, blend and liquefy goin’ through them gears.” His eyes were glazing over like small, round hams; powerful machines came a close second behind his passion for food.

“You’re a natural poet, Derek. Is that it?”

“No, ma’am. A Polaris XLT and a Ski-Doo Formula Z. You can run with the big dogs with those beasts. When Dan saw me, he blew up. Then he calmed down, talked about cashing in an old life insurance policy. Said he’d got to be ready to roll when that park opens. Figures he’ll need at least ten to hire out. But that’s nuts. Too good for rentals. ’Course he could be fencing them in a chop shop.”

Belle tossed her sliders into the van and stopped at Poulton’s for hot wings night. She packed up a few pounds, along with a container of potato salad, coleslaw and rolls. The Canada Food Guide had a special provision for Northern Ontarians: total grams of fat per day had to be double a person’s age. If she were going to hell in a handbasket, let it be well-provisioned. The little liquor store in Garson sported a bottle of Wolf Blass cabernet, which cheered her, since usually Gallo tankcar #3333 was its sole concession to foreign wines.

When she got home and had reduced the wings to bones, American Movie Classics was featuring Mutiny on the Bounty. Laughton had been abandoned with his officers, promising to row thousands of miles in order to see justice done (and he did). In a more pleasant fate, Clark Gable leaned his handsome profile toward Morita’s, and the crew of the Bounty was safe on Pitcairn Island, to interbreed and become tour guides by the nineties.

Belle flopped into her waterbed, reminding herself that she had not changed the sheets in about two weeks. Muscling the cumbersome rolling beast was a miasma. Though the process took only six minutes, she hated the chore so passionately that she spent a week on one side and a week on the other. As she drifted off to sleep, she heard the ice making prophetic groans, flexing its great shelf. While the cold still held, it would be interesting to visit the Beave.