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Napoleon Publishing/RendezVous PressToronto, Ontario, Canadawww.rendezvouspress.com

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      National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

      Allin, Lou, date-

      Blackflies are murder

      A Belle Palmer Mystery

      ISBN 0-929141-92-X

      I. Title. II. Series: Lou Allin, date- . Belle Palmer mystery.

      Dedicated to Freya (1984-1997), waiting at Rainbow Bridge

      with Mr. Chile in her mouth.

      Acknowledgments Merci mille fois to my insightful readers, Sheila, Tim and Nan. To my editor/publisher Sylvia, who faced any foreign language challenge and never balked at a hostie. To Lillian, the best Mac’s manager in Canada. And always to Jan, for whom second best is out of the question.

       PROLOGUE

      The small room was quiet, a glass prism in the window shooting rainbows onto the simple pine floor. On the wall, a picture of a smiling, round-faced man beamed approval. Below him a cot with a rough grey blanket, a young boy hunched beside it. He was worrying a hole in the arm of his sweater, passing his fingers in and out, unravelling the wool. “Don’t do that,” the voice said, well-modulated, comforting at other times, in other places. “Stand straight. What do I teach you?”

      A sniffle, nose swiped with a sleeve. “Never mind. Come closer.” Outside, far away, a bell tolled. “Had we but world enough . . .”

      A small sob. Then a shudder, quickly mastered. A straightening of limbs and clothing, and a sigh. Out of a pocket came a flash of silver. “Do you know what this is?”

      “A whistle?”

      “Clever lad. But a special toy for our new game. When I blow it twice before supper, you are to come here. Immediately.” Steel arrows nailed the boy’s eyes as he backed away. “Do you understand?”

      In the palpable silence, the hole grew larger, more ragged, like a scream for help.

       ONE

      Who cares if they pollinate the blueberries?” Belle Palmer mumbled to herself as she raked at the bloody crusts behind her ears. You could eat only so much pie. Damn blackflies. Would some genius ever invent repellent that wasn’t an oily, sticky solvent for plastic? Cheer up, they’ll be gone in a month, ushering in mosquitos, cluster flies, horse flies, moose flies, deer flies and pernicious no-seeums, which require a tent screen finer than silk. Welcome to Northern Ontario, where bugs are an equal opportunity employer: O positive is as full-bodied as A or B.

      Belle usually avoided the woods until the hotter weather switched off the worst biters, but her German shepherd Freya was eager for a trek. The dog brought up the rear, browsing every ten feet for an educated sniff at her p-mail. Was it like reading a book? Tracing Braille? Red squirrels, the stunted northern variety, chittered teasingly from the cedars; foxes had scheduled night manoeuvers, littering the path with grouse feathers; and under the bracken, a rabbit hopped to safety, newly metamorphosed from white to brown in seasonal camouflage. Under the arms of a massive yellow birch, Belle spied a tiny, freeze-dried wintergreen fruit, popped it into her mouth and enjoyed a teaberry gum moment. She realized that she had stopped singing, a strategic mistake in bruin territory, especially when they were foraging frantically for tender grass, grubs, and roots before the berries arrived.

      Suddenly her third-class human nose wrinkled. What a stink! Yet not cloyingly sweet like carrion. Rancid, sharp, even burnt. The dog had picked it up and veered off past hills of white trilliums and delicate ferns, leading her deep into the bush to a scene from an absurdist movie. Tied into the brushy alders were a dozen doughnuts—grape jelly, under examination—and stale. A lemon pie, ravaged by joyous ants, rested on top of a table rock. Miss Havisham’s wedding feast? Moving toward a glittery hanging object, Belle skidded to her knees, breaking her fall against a rotten log shining in the sun. Soaked with used fry oil, a generous gallon. The glitter came from a cheap plastic timer set with fishing line, Salvador Dali’s surrealistic contribution. No salt lick this, no appleyard for moose or deer, but an ursine smorgasbord. In its big-city wisdom, the Ontario government had cancelled the spring bear hunt. Someone was poaching.

      Belle narrowed her eyes in disgust and rubbed her hands on the grass with dubious success at removing the tacky mess. The hunt itself posed no problem. Ontario had 75,000 of the critters, and rising. If a bowhunter or stalker offered fair odds, let them fill a freezer. Bear meat could be delicious in stews and savory sausages. It was the baiting that bothered her, ticket to the fifth circle of hell if she’d been devising poetic punishments for the afterlife. Rich Americans from Michigan, New York and Ohio tooled Lincoln Town Cars up to the distant lodges north of Sudbury and waved ever-inflating dollars. The scenario was simple. Set out tempting pastries, garbage or even rotten meat, then climb into a tree perch, rough boards or fancy metal frames out of the Cabela outfitter’s catalogue. Despite the morning frost, a pleasant wait with a few sandwiches, munchies, renowned Canuck beer or a mickey of rye, and presto, Bruno with insouciant pie face became an instant rug.

      There was another motive more sinister than trophies—the burgeoning demand for ancient Chinese medicines based on animal parts, especially in Vancouver, where Hong Kong barons were enlarging their power base. Squeaky clean Canada’s shameful cousin to the rhino horn or ivory trade. And now that the loonie dollar coin had a new bimetal big brother (the twoonie, toonie, tunie?) featuring a polar bear, all the more ironic.

      “Let’s get out of this reek. I don’t want to become a statistic.” Bear attacks were very unusual, but recently a female jogger in Quebec had suffered a fatal bite on the neck. Freya was, in sad fact, an insurance policy.

      As Belle returned to the trail, she saw a familiar figure approaching, yelping beagle and loopy golden retriever heralding the procession. It was Anni Jacobs, who had cut and tramped these webs of peaty paths. A slight but vigorous widow nearly seventy, she forged out daily to impress herself softly upon the forests. Her unruly dogs earned no respect from Belle, but Anni’s late husband had prized these two for bird hunting, so she was coddling them into ripe old age. The women shared a reverence for the woods, yet respected each other’s privacy, passing a few words on the road at intervals. Childless, Anni devoted her spare time to volunteering at the Canadian Blood Services. Belle thought that she had better relate her discovery, for though the area was Crown land, Anni’s name was on it, so personal and firm were her footsteps.

      Dressed in L.L. Bean’s prime chinos, a light anorak and a green net that covered her face, she greeted Belle as the