Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle. Lou Allin
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over in a sob, hugging her knees. “The little patch of red down there. That’s the scarf his grandmother knitted him for Christmas. I know it is,” she said, trembling as if she had aged a hundred years.
To the collective chill of the onlookers, the diver wielded an axe to break the surface. Tossing it back on to the shore, he disappeared with a stoic shake of his shoulders into the murky water, bubbles rising in his wake. His face around the mask was exposed, and the pain was evident on the second surfacing. “Can’t see too well. Could be ten feet to the bottom. One arm of the coat is hung up on a branch. Guess that pushed the mitt off.”
No one spoke. Finally, with the help of several officers, he hauled the body to the shore, bulky and sodden in the heavy suit and boots. Ben waved the men aside and unstrapped the helmet. It was Jim, or his pale double, a light slate cast to the features, sandy hair freezing brittle in the wind and jade eyes dulled by a final curtain. Ben knelt as if in prayer, his shoulders shaking, as he gently brushed the boy’s forehead. “What in the name of Christ were you doing out here?” he whispered.
Belle turned away, leaning against the solidity of a huge pine for support as Ben rocked the boy back and forth, and the rest of the group fell silent. “He’s cold. He’s so cold, Meg.”
His wife spoke slowly and deliberately, her voice struggling for control, wiping her tears away with the rough nylon of her suit. “No. No. No.” A litany of pain in a single syllable. “Jim never would have come to a place like this alone.”
Morantz waited a few moments before taking the Burians aside so that the rescue team could prepare the body for transport. The couple held each other, Ben shielding his wife’s face. With some firm and steady pressure on the stiffening limbs, the team arranged the body on the toboggan with dignity. Another man winched the small Ovation to shore, weeds and muck hanging from its handlebars. Attached neatly to the rear carrier with a shock cord was his duffel bag. Like a slate wiped clean, the lake began freezing again, guarding its secrets as tightly as the earth itself. Belle glanced around, any possible evidence trampled to mush by the footprints and machine tracks of the rescue effort.
“What happens now?” she asked Morantz.
Morantz tried to write a note on a small pad, then exchanged the pen for a no-fail pencil. “Just like an auto accident. First we’ll get him back to the hospital for an autopsy. Check for alcohol and drugs. Go through that gear on the sled. Get his medical records and rule out heart attack or seizures.” He paused. “But, Miss, I want to be clear about one point. You did say that his was the only track? No sign of another person?”
She gestured uselessly as if in violent denial of the facts. “One track straight to the lake. No sign of turning around, no other sled. But what in heaven was he doing here in the storm? Could he have been documenting an old trapper’s trail when it hit? Or taken a wrong turn trying to get home?” Belle asked, though experience told her otherwise.
“The storm was a bad one.” Morantz shrugged and closed his notebook. His conclusion was obvious; without other evidence, this tragedy was just another fatal human error, another statistic for the bean counters. The last frame in a shattered film script saw Meg tucking her scarf around Jim’s neck as if saying a loving goodnight, Ben standing stiffly aside, Jim’s helmet dangling from his hand. And then the convoy, a northern funeral procession, headed back to the lodge as a jay screamed through the diamond-chipped air.
Belle gestured to Ed, and they set off in silence. As they parted later in front of his house, he asked, “Come in for a drink? Maybe it might do you good to talk to Hélène. Her car’s back.”
“Talk? Talk about what, Ed? You were there, weren’t you? Jim’s dead. There’s no resurrection.” She saw his face sag, and instantly she regretted her brusqueness. “Sorry to be rude. I just lost a good friend and at my age, I can’t spare any. What just doesn’t make sense is what he was doing there.”
“Well, we took the trail to check it out. Why not him?”
“Maybe, but when? I suppose the time of death might give us a clue. God knows how rigor mortis works in those icy conditions. Anyway, take care of yourself. Hélène, too.” She slapped his arm with her glove and drove off.
Only as she opened her own front door and tripped over her briefcase did she remember that she had an appointment in town.
Evening work was a negative reality of her job, but that night the distraction was welcome. She had scheduled a preliminary visit to a newly divorced woman in Chelmsford who wanted to move home to her parents in Val D’Or.
Belle left the house in a charcoal wool pantsuit and white turtleneck under her parka. Pulled over her ears was an incongruous blue and red Norwegian soft felt hat, which used to prompt cries of “Smurf!” from rude children. Clutching her briefcase, a newspaper and a thermos of Bavarian Dutch Chocolate coffee, she tested the van doors. Frozen again! Third time this week. Belle swore softly and began the usual procedure with her de-icer spray. If that didn’t work, Plan Two involved her hair drier and a series of lively expletives.
She finally broke in, only to find the power antenna had seized. Nothing but static on the radio. Belle grabbed a tape of her favourite musicals and tucked it into her bra with an “eeeek”. Twenty minutes of body heat would thaw it enough to play. Whoever said that women’s liberation began in the seventies hadn’t listened to the grand old babes of the sixties, Lucille Ball in Wildcat, Tammy Grimes in The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Roz Russell in Wonderful Town. Those tough ladies made their own rules, and men loved them for it.
Edgewater Road was a winding, hilly six-mile run, which passed the Santanens’ at the final turn to the main highway. Derek Santanen had served eight months in the Sudbury Jail for drug dealing. His parents’ tiny place clung like a limpet to a narrow strip of land. It was built long before the road arrived, when camps were accessible only by boat or snowmobile. At well over three hundred pounds, Derek often turned to crime for its easy profits. Belle suspected that he favoured the house for its remoteness and for the many hidey holes for his stash. On one occasion, a police search had the cottagers lining the road and passing around pop and chips, while police divers explored his waterline fifty feet off shore to discover prime Acapulco gold in watertight containers. Derek Santanen might make a good starting point for any inquiries about the area drug trade.
Just before eight she arrived in Chelmsford, a quaint, predominantly French town. The glorious church and its spire anchored the village with the infinite grace of bygone centuries, every pink granite stone carted lovingly from the surrounding hills and carved by local masons. It might have stood in the Quebec townships. An ominous growl from the midriff reminded Belle that she hadn’t eaten since lunch. She stopped at a small grill and stationed herself at the counter behind a blonde girl barely eighteen and dressed in the same size. The girl’s eyes widened as Belle lip-read the menu, sucked in her breath and mumbled, “Une moyenne poutine.” A brief pause, then her voice jumped an octave. “Non, une grande poutine, s’il vous plaît!”
“La même chose pour moi,” Belle added quickly. Growing up in Toronto had not been the place to learn colloquial French, and her fledgling vowels amused shopkeepers so much that she was glad when they smelled her accent and switched gears into English without missing a beat. She watched the waitress anoint the mounds of crispy fries with tender chunks of cheese curds swimming in gravy, the lifeblood of the North, especially in winter.
Belle ferried the steaming plate of sin to a table and opened the Northern Life to scout the offerings of her real estate competition. She knew every lake and cottage for sale within one hundred miles, and considering that the Regional Municipality counted over ninety named lakes within its boundaries, that was a feat in itself. Holy moley, another Ramsey Lake cottage lot was on offer, probably one of the last. Central to downtown, the largest city-contained lake in the world, only Ramsey’s most remote sections remained undeveloped. Water and sewer were on their way, which would jack up the lot price by thirty thousand. Might be worth it, though. “Lakefront,” Uncle Harold had growled philosophically, “they ain’t making any more.”
Lights were off at 2334 Brentwood, but Belle