Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle. Lou Allin
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pair of lovingly-varnished snowshoes hung on the wall, along with a tattered rabbit pelt, maybe a childhood trophy. Topo maps were pinned up marked with sites of interest: oak grove, white pine growth, moose pasture, springs and bear dens around the other Burian hunt camps. Of the several record books lining the shelves, one leather log listed hundreds of flowers Jim had noted, starting with spring’s first, the bright yellow marsh marigold (the pickled buds resembled capers, he had told her) and the last to leave, the durable pearly everlasting. From a well-dusted shelf of specimens, Belle picked up a small piece of fungus, chicken of the woods, a savory treat when sautéed with eggs. On their hiking trips Jim had provided a never-ending banquet from the bush for an amazed Belle, who had thought that raspberries and blueberries were the limit. “What do you imagine the natives lived on before the white man traded his flour and sugar?” Jim had asked, with a gentle tease. And over the nights they had camped together on the edge of shimmering Lake Temagami, he had brewed pine tea, plucked pickerelweed from a swamp for a salad, fried up milkweed flowers and shaken off cattail pollen for pancakes.
Small memories of small rituals of the heart. Thank God she had seen him that one last day. These simple belongings impressed on Belle, as the funeral had not, that she would never see her young friend again. And she wept for the loss. Sitting on the hard floor of the cabin, Belle used her sleeves to brush away the hot tears.
The rows of diaries drew her from the pain. She skimmed the contents until she found a large looseleaf binder for the current year. The 30th, the day of his death, contained observations of tree size and number north of Wapiti. “Inspected medium growth birch grove by Marian Lake for evidence of frost cankers and borers.” Other lists counted white or red pines over 24 inches in diameter. Belle pressed the bridge of her nose until it hurt. “Here’s a trick to remember the difference between the two: white pines have five needles for five letters. It’s easy,” she heard him say. The lessons kept rolling back as if two friends were warming their hands together over a quick spruce fire. All of a sudden she narrowed her eyes, shifted the page to compensate for her myopia. “Think I saw Brooks near Damson Lake last night when the moon was so bright, a large duffel bag strapped on his sled. What would he be doing out here?” Then followed only a final few sentences, messier, scribbled in haste. “4:00 p.m. Heading back before storm gets any worse. Mom probably worried. Hope I don’t have the flu.” So Jim had been on his way home, not bushwhacking. How then would he have gotten off the trail when he could have navigated these woods in his sleep? And he had seen Brooks the night before, an important discovery.
Before leaving, Belle made a final sweep, ending at the medicine cabinet. Though the cabin had no bathroom, only an outhouse, a place for supplies was useful. Aspirin, bandages, nail scissors, iodine . . . then a cold pill blister pack, three missing. So Jim had taken medication. Was Monroe right? Could that explain the disorientation?
She left the camp as she had found it, resisting the urge to take even the small token of the chicken of the woods. The memory of their good times would be the best souvenir. Belle thought that she had better tell the Burians about her visit. Though they had said they wouldn’t be out any more, she looped by the lodge anyway.
Lost in thought, she snapped to happy attention at the familiar white smoke trailing from their chimney. The “closed for the season” sign was still tacked on the door, but the Burians were back. She found them in the kitchen, Ben brewing coffee and Meg rolling a pie.
“I didn’t know if I’d find you two here,” Belle said. “I took a chance coming from Jim’s cabin.”
“Fresh sorrow and all, it’s still the most beautiful place in the world to us,” Ben said. “We couldn’t stay in the damn city and rot the rest of the winter, eh, Mom?” He put an arm around her gently and pulled her close. “In a way, Jim will always be with us here. In every flower, every bush, every tree we see. This was his real home.”
Meg’s eyes held a tender hope which made Belle melt. “Did you find anything?”
“Data for his projects. Apparently he had lunch and then left around four, according to his diary. He wanted to get home for supper and save you the worry. And in the last line, he noted that he might have the flu.” She paused as Meg’s shoulders sagged. “Perhaps that explains why he took that wrong turn in the storm.”
“The flu. Well, Ted had it the week before. Do you think that proves the police theory that it was an accident, Belle, that he was confused, feverish maybe?” Ben asked.
“I might agree except for one odd detail. His diary pinpoints Brooks as having been in the area the night before.”
Ben gave the table a sudden pound. “Brooks! Jim worked for him when he was a boy. I never liked that man, but I find it hard to believe he’d turn to murder.”
“If there are drugs involved, nothing is past imagining,” Belle said.
As they sat and talked, Meg poured coffee, rubbing absentmindedly at her chapped hands, hardly listening to their conversation. Finally she cleared her throat and rummaged in her apron. “Belle, there is something. Haven’t even shown it to Dad. Didn’t turn up until the wash. Silly of me, but I had to set his things aright, even if I was going to give them to the Sally Ann. Couldn’t throw away good clothes when folks is out of work. His pants, you see, I found this deep in the pocket as I was ironing them.” She held out a tiny gold tear drop.
“A piece of jewelry?” Belle asked. “I’m no metallurgist, yet it looks like unworked gold. Pure. Natural.” She turned it in her hand, sensing a warm magic.
“Something special he was having made for Melanie?” Meg wondered. “Her birthday was coming up. But he never said nothing to us.”
Belle balanced the puzzling object, lifting it up and down in assessment. “Surely not even an ounce. Hardly enough for an earring. Let me keep it for now and think about it.”
Belle followed a short cut of Ben’s back onto the main trail, her skis slipping in and out of the wider tracks. Surely she deserved better suspension, more comfort and padding now that she was about to join the older set. She paused under a feathery pine, inhaling its sweet balsam perfume. A quirky play was writing itself, a repertory of Jim’s death scene, his sculpted hand in the ice pointing the way to eternity. Painful or not, she knew she would have to force herself to visit the site of Jim’s accident again. Afraid of missing the cutoff, she poked along, searching for the tell-tale pine loop. When saw it, she sighed, removed her helmet and reached for the snowshoes lashed to her carrier. Almost two feet of snow had fallen since Jim’s death; the curious side trail had vanished.
Swinging her feet, brushing back heavy branches, she plunged into the deep forest. It was as remote as she remembered. Such a good place for a murder, she thought.
Just as her sweat was beginning to build, the lake appeared, pristine and innocent, oblivious that a life had disappeared into its depths. Nature, the great director, played no favourites, didn’t care if its performers lived or died. It was completely amoral except for ruthless contempt for stupidity and carelessness. Then it would close the curtain and bid another act begin. How many minutes she stayed at the deserted lakeshore with the wind rising and teasing puffs from the unmarked snow she could not tell, except that at last her chapped face and ears warned her to return to her machine and put her helmet back on.
Jim hadn’t been stupid, not with woodlore, naïve and innocent though he might have been with human relationships. Sitting sidesaddle on her sled, chin on her hands, Belle replayed the scene leading up to Jim’s death. Frame by frame, she tried to recall each detail. On that trip, she’d been slipping in and out of the trail, following that tempting path Ed had discovered. Even with the light snow cover, the grooves had been inches wider than her own, and, she thought with sudden inspiration, larger than the tracks of Jim’s Ovation. There had to have been another sled. But why had there been no sign of its having turned around or any sign of footprints? A murderer didn’t vanish into the air in this country without a skyhook from a helicopter. Another answer, another question.
A pair of ravens, their blue-black feathers dishevelled like a chimney sweep’s coattails, wheeled through the sky, croaking,