Читать книгу Meg Harris Mysteries 7-Book Bundle - R.J. Harlick - Страница 10

The first thing I did when I got inside was light a fire in the living-room fireplace, a massive floor-to-ceiling stone structure. Then I removed my sopping shoes, jeans, socks and the rest of my clothes, fixed the cut on my face and took a hot shower. By the time I’d towelled myself dry and put on a thick terrycloth bathrobe, I’d stopped shivering, but my nerves were still ragged. I sat down in my favourite wing chair next to the stone hearth and tried to blot out the image of the hurtling tree. I still couldn’t believe I’d actually escaped with only a few scratches. Sergei nestled against my legs. I gave him a reassuring pat and felt a bit safer.

Flames were licking the top of the stone firebox. Within seconds, my toes tingled with warmth. It spread upwards through my body until my face glowed. I felt almost human. I finally started to relax. On tomorrow’s trip to Whispers Island, I’d stay close to Eric. Let him deal with the guys in yellow.

I dozed off and slept until the brilliance of the late afternoon sun on my face woke me. The red message light on my phone flashed, no doubt from a call made when I was on the island that morning.

I played the message. “Hello, hello. You there, Missie? Oh, dear. Gotta say somethin’.” The click of the caller’s phone abruptly terminated the monologue.

Having encountered this reaction on previous occasions, I’d come to realize that Marie became flustered when suddenly faced with the challenge of leaving a voice message. Once her courage was mustered, she invariably called back.

“It’s Marie,” began the next message. “I want you to look at something I got. I think it what you want. Mooti give me before she die. Meet me at General Store after work.”

A quick glance at the clock told me it was four thirty, the time Marie usually finished work. If I didn’t leave now, I would miss her, which could be a big mistake. What she was prepared to tell me today might be refused tomorrow.

Very curious to know what she wanted, I drove as fast as I dared along the dirt road to Migiskan Village. Bumps were the problem. Teeth-jarring waves of corduroy bumps, which reduced the life span of my seen-better-days pickup to yesterday.

It took me fifteen minutes to reach the Migiskan Village. Although the twelve hundred band members were scattered over the southern third of the expansive reserve, most lived in or near the Village, which sprawled along the western shore of Lake Migiskan. The store was situated in the centre of town, where any bustling commercial establishment should be.

I turned right on to the main road, which took me past the new cedar strip building of the Band Council Hall and the equally new rec centre, where a group of kids were setting up the boards for their outdoor hockey rink. A little further along I waved to Eric talking to someone outside the Algonquin Cultural Centre, the centre he had established to re-introduce the Algonquin culture and its language to the band’s youth.

Over the years, because of the educational system and other outside influences, English had become the operating language of the reserve. Today only the old spoke Algonquin and remembered the traditional ways. Eric wanted to change that.

Another minute, and I was driving into the parking lot beside the General Store. Located across the street from the church, the clapboard building looked as if it couldn’t make up its mind to be a house or a store. While the back still bore the original bungalow structure, the front with the flat roof, enlarged windows and neon sign proclaimed it to be a going business concern.

The parking lot was packed. The only store for twenty miles around, it was the centre not only for supplies but also news. I felt the charge in the air the moment I opened the door. While one or two people were lined up at the check-out, the rest crowded around the coffee counter that the manager, Hélène Tenasco, had set up at the back of the store when she’d realized customers sometimes just like to sit and talk. They were certainly talking now. They were talking so loudly, it drowned out the country music Hélène blasted from the radio, day and night.

I searched through the crowd for Marie but didn’t see her red scarf. I checked the aisle with the movie mags. If she was waiting anywhere, she was bound to be there, quenching her thirst for famous people’s troubles. But no Marie. The other aisles didn’t produce her either. I was early.

I squeezed my way through the raised voices and firmly planted bodies to where Hélène propped herself on her bar stool behind the counter. A long drink of water, that’s what Aunt Aggie would’ve called her, and she looked like one today, with her tall, slender body clad in stone-washed jeans and a pale blue sweatshirt. The usual cigarette dangled from her thin lips.

Today’s sweatshirt glittered “J’aime Paris” in purple sequins. This shirt wasn’t quite as gaudy as her favourite, “Las Vegas or Bust”, with a holographic design of a female bust that only served to emphasize her own shortcomings. While she seemed to have an unlimited supply of souvenir sweatshirts, I wasn’t sure how she’d acquired them, since as far as I knew, Hélène had never been beyond Somerset, the closest town to the reserve, twenty miles away.

I shouted above the noise, “Hi, Hélène. Has—”

The talking stopped. A dozen pairs of eyes stared at me from under the multi-coloured brims of baseball caps.

“Marie been in yet?” I finished in a whisper. I tried to tuck my bare red head into my shoulders.

“What’s with you guys? You know Meg, eh? She lives over on Echo Lake,” Hélène offered.

The talking, this time a low murmur, started back up.

“What do you wanta know?” she asked.

“Have you seen Marie?”

Hélène sucked deeply on her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a slow thin stream.

“Got lots of Maries around here. Which one?”

“Whiteduck.”

“Got lots of them, too.”

“Come on, Hélène. You know Marie Whiteduck works for me. Has she been in yet?”

“Nope.” She took another deep draw, chewed on the smoke then let it out. “Not likely to either, not government day, eh?”

After moving to the area last year, it hadn’t taken me long to learn what “government day” meant. It was the day many band members received their government benefits.

“I’ll wait,” I said. “I’ll have a coffee and one of those chocolate doughnuts.”

Hélène slopped the coffee into a Styrofoam cup and slid it along the counter. It left a trail of black liquid, which she erased with the swipe of a wet cloth. I wiped my cup with a napkin, grabbed my doughnut and retreated to an empty chair on the edge of the group.

I wondered what was eating her. Although many people on the reserve still treated me with distrust, Hélène was usually friendly. But then, maybe her sociability had more to do with keeping a good customer.

I looked the crowd over. They were all men, dressed in an assortment of windbreakers, lumberjack shirts and one greasy buckskin jacket. Thankfully, none of them wore bright yellow. I hadn’t quite decided what I’d do if I did come across someone wearing yellow.

The buckskin belonged to one of Hélène’s regulars. Frosty they called him, not because of his white hair, but because he’d lost a couple of fingers to frostbite. We often ruminated on the hit and miss state of the fishing on Echo Lake whenever I dropped in for a cup of coffee and other people’s company. He nodded his head in hello. I nodded back.

I didn’t know the others. Their ages ranged from late teens to early thirties. Under their baseball caps, they sported various hairstyles from braids to brush cuts. A couple of orange and black hockey jackets identified the wearers as members of Eric’s hockey team. They emitted a strong sense of fully charged testosterone.

“Charlie wants the gold mine, that’s for sure,” expounded one young man with the design of an eagle shaved into his brushcut and a bone choker around his neck. “Says it means jobs and money, lots of it.” He pounded his fists on the counter.

Several baseball caps nodded in agreement with loud thumps on the counter and a few hollow stomps on the wooden floor.

I sure didn’t like the sound of this.

“He say how much they gonna pay us?” piped up one skinny guy with a nervous twitch to his top lip.

“Nope, but hell, it’s a gold mine. We can dig our own money,” the guy with the shaved eagle replied.

A few chomped on their doughnuts while they mulled this over.

“Yeah, but what’s this gonna do to Echo Lake?” joined in another with what I could only call sudden insight.

“Charlie says why should we care about a few acres of ruined land? This mine’s not gonna be near the rez. The only people it’ll hurt are the whites on Echo Lake, and what do we care about them, eh?”

The dozen pair of eyes swivelled back in my direction. I concentrated on my coffee cup. This was making me nervous. It meant Eric didn’t have the band completely on side.

“Guys, enough. Meg’s good people,” Frosty interjected. “Look here, Eric says mines use lots of equipment. Whadda we know about equipment? Nothing. Besides, who wants to work miles underground. Not us! It’s not our peoples’ way. We’re the Migiskan Anishinabeg.”

A few nods and thumps in agreement.

“And who knows what it’ll do to our water?” another voice supplied. “Look what happened to the Kiwatin Band at Great Owl Lake. Eric says some kinda mining chemical got into the water. Almost wiped them out. Hell, no way we want that.”

Several “Yeah, no way”, “Not here” responses.

“Cut the crap, eh?” butted in Charlie’s mouthpiece. “You know that’s just talk Eric’s using to get us against the mine.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” chimed in another. “Charlie says watch out for Eric. He gonna do whatever he can to make sure Charlie don’t win, that’s for sure.”

“You sayin’ Eric’s lyin’?” came a challenge from the end of the counter.

“You bet he’s lying,” wheezed a gravelly voice behind me. I jerked around to see a large, heavy-set man striding towards me. He reminded me of a bull moose in rut, with his stomach and low-slung face thrust out in front and his black eyes signalling a challenge. The only missing item was antlers. I shrank into my chair, but he stopped directly in front of me and stared down. I smelt stale smoke with a hint of wintergreen on his breath. A long black and white feather tied to his braid fell to his shoulder.

I slid out of my chair and stood up, well out of range of the breath. “Hi, I’m Meg Harris. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” I said in my best city manners, not sure what else to do.

“Yeah, figured,” was the response. He brushed past me and continued on to the counter. The men opened a path, then closed behind him. For a second, his fringed jacket looked almost yellow under the bright fluorescent lights, then it faded to the soft gold of new buckskin. Thinking this guy wouldn’t be above pushing a tree onto someone, I checked the colour again, but was forced to admit the yellow I saw on Whispers Island was a brilliant artificial yellow, not this natural colour.

“Hi doll, gimme some of your best.” He punctuated this with a coarse brittle laugh.

“Sure, Charlie,” Hélène replied. “Whatever you want.”

So that was Charlie. Now that I saw him, I liked him even less. I guessed my friend Frosty wasn’t too keen on him either. He tossed Hélène some coins and, with a final nod to me, left the store. A few of the other men, including the hockey players, followed. The rest crowded around Charlie.

I decided to check out Marie’s movie mags. Anything would be better than having to endure the barbs coming from the coffee counter. I’d be glad when people finally accepted my white face.

It was 5:15 pm. I was surprised Marie hadn’t yet arrived, but then maybe I shouldn’t be. If she was working at one of the houses on the other side of Three Deer Point, it could take her almost an hour to walk here. Particularly since Louis was in the bush and couldn’t drive her. I decided to wait another half-hour. If she hadn’t come by then, I’d drive to her place.

The drone continued from the back of the store. Although I couldn’t make out actual words, I was certain the main speaker was Charlie, with his distinctive raspy voice.

After about ten minutes, the group slammed their chairs on the floor and shuffled out of the store, but not before Charlie hissed from the door, “Lady, you and that traitor Eric better not screw up this deal.”

I stood rooted to the floor, staring at his retreating back. As the full force of his threatening tone sunk in, that too familiar shiver of dread washed over me, leaving me with an icy pit in my stomach.

“Hey, Meg, you forgot to pay for your coffee.” Hélène’s voice jolted me back to the present.

What was I doing? Get a hold of yourself. He’s not Gareth. Don’t let him treat you like that.

I raced out of the store after Charlie, with Hélène shouting behind me. He was climbing into an enormous red Yukon that glimmered new in the store lights. I ran towards him. He slammed the door and started the engine. By the time I reached the spot where the truck had been, it was peeling onto the main road. I was left in a cloud of sputtering dust and the memory of Charlie’s moose grin leering at me through the window.

“You owe me two bucks,” Hélène said close behind me. I turned around to find her towering over me. I don’t consider myself short, but whenever I stood next to Hélène I felt like a midget.

“He got you going, eh? Pay him no mind. All bellow, no action,” she continued. “You want me to put it on your tab?”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied and started for my pickup, but stopped when I remembered Marie. I peered through the growing darkness. But without streetlights, it was impossible to tell if she was nearby. The bouncing lights of Charlie’s truck lit up a group of people walking towards the Rec Centre. I could hear voices coming from the church cemetery across the street, but they sounded more male than female.

Determined to wait, I returned to the now empty coffee bar and grabbed a stool by the counter. Hélène positioned herself back on her perch. While the harsh overhead light cast her sequined sweatshirt in a glittering glow, it only emphasized the acne ruin of her face. It was a shame. Otherwise, with her model-like figure, she’d be an attractive woman. Though I didn’t think the scars were the cause of her unmarried state. More likely it was because she had little time to spare for romance. As far as I could tell, she spent every waking hour at the store.

“That’s some nasty cut on your face. What happened?” Hélène asked.

I touched it and shivered. “I fell.” I didn’t want to go into my near-death experience. I did, however, wonder if she could help me find the culprit. “You know most people around here,” I said. “Know anyone who wears a yellow jacket?”

“Yellow jacket? Why you asking?”

I did my best to come up with a quick answer. “Some guy wearing a yellow jacket almost drove me off the road.”

“Yeah, lots of bad drivers around here.” Hélène laughed hoarsely. “I seen some yellow jackets, but can’t offhand remember who was in them.”

“Could you let me know if you remember?”

“Sure.” She swirled coffee into a china mug with the words Harrods printed in red and handed it to me. It looked as if I was back in her good books to be given the special mug.

“Marie won’t show,” she said.

“She told me she’d be here, she’ll be here. By the way, who’s Charlie?” I asked.

“Charlie Cardinal.”

“What’s he got against me?”

“Simple. You’re a friend of Eric’s.”

“He doesn’t seem to have much regard for Eric, does he?”

Hélène snorted, took a deep drag on her cigarette and pushed it back out in a cloud. “Can’t say as I blame him.”

“What did Eric do to him?”

“Took his job.” Hélène began leafing through a well-thumbed travel magazine that was lying on the counter.

“As band chief?”

“Yup, by rights it’s Charlie’s. Will you look at this?” She held up a picture of some fabulous looking tropical island.

“Maybe we could dye Echo Lake turquoise,” I suggested, then asked, “Was he running against Eric?”

“Yeah, but that don’t mean nothing. Charlie’s our traditional chief. He’s Bear Clan. They been chiefs going way back, eh? Eric’s clan is fisher. Never been a chief of that clan till Eric come along.”

“I’m sure Eric won the election fair and square.” I didn’t know what else to say. I knew how the government had forced the bands into electing chiefs back in the twenties because it believed inherited chief rights was undemocratic. Whether this was good or bad, I didn’t know, I just wanted to avoid a confrontation with Hélène.

She snorted again. “Yup, Eric made a big fuss over Charlie passing out booze for votes. Don’t know why, we always done that. But Eric made such a stink about running an honest election that the band voted him in.”

“Well, from the newness of his big truck, I’d say Charlie’s not hurting.”

Hélène looked up from her magazine and directly into my eyes. “He got lucky. Went away after the election and made some good contacts.”

She continued leafing through the magazine. She snorted every now and then when she turned to a particularly captivating island picture.

I sipped my coffee and watched the time. I was surprised Marie hadn’t yet arrived. Although I was beginning to wonder if she’d forgotten, I decided to wait until six o’clock.

I thought over the implications of Charlie’s shiny new truck in sharp contrast to the rusted-out wrecks of most band members. “Looks like Charlie has some connection to this mine, if he doesn’t want Eric to screw the deal,” I suggested.

Hélène continued turning the pages of her magazine.

“Any idea what it is?” I asked.

She turned another page, stared at the glossy picture, then looked up. She spewed out some smoke, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Charlie only wants the mine ’cause Eric don’t.”

“Maybe he’s working for this mining company, CanacGold?”

Hélène snorted and almost choked on her smoke. “Charlie work for someone, you gotta be kidding.” She pointed to a photograph of a white sandy beach lined with palms and turquoise waves. “Boy, what I wouldn’t give to go to some place like this. You been to one of these places, eh?”

Realizing I wasn’t going to learn any more about Charlie, I told her about my one and only trip to the Caribbean, a lifetime ago, when Gareth was still the man I married. And then he discovered ambition.

When the clock reached six o’clock, I gave up on Marie and left with Hélène’s “I told you so” ringing in my ears. Annoyed that Marie hadn’t bothered to come, I headed home. If she really had something for me, she could come to my place. I wasn’t going to drive around on these miserable roads in the dark looking for her.

Partway home, I changed my mind. It wasn’t like Marie not to live up to her promise. Maybe something had prevented her, like Louis, who might have returned early from his traplines. I headed to her place on the edge of the reserve. I watched for her along the way, but my truck’s lights only lit up the eyes of a raccoon sneaking into the underbrush.

When I reached the lane to her place, I fully expected to see light filtering through the trees. Instead there was only darkness. However, I still thought she was home, just hadn’t turned on a front light.

I turned in and followed the narrow track through the woods until I almost collided with a pile of firewood that some stupid fool, probably Louis, had dumped smack in the middle. I jumped out, picked my way on foot around the logs and stopped at the sight of her darkened house, with not even a glow of light from the back to say she was home.

“Marie! You there?” I shouted.

Silence.

I called again.

I debated going right up to the door but decided against it. The thought of continuing through the rustling night was more than I could manage. I was afraid of the dark. Had been since I was a child. And with today’s near escape still fresh in my mind, I was even more on edge.

I walked back towards the security of the halo behind the woodpile. So I was being a chicken, but it was obvious Marie wasn’t home. And I didn’t have to worry about Louis. No sign of his truck meant he was still miles away in the bush.

Wondering where Marie could be, I finally remembered that tonight was bingo night, Marie’s addiction and the one thing that could make her forget her meeting with me. I thought of driving to the Rec Centre to ensure she was there, but I was annoyed. I’d go home instead.