Belle Palmer Mysteries 5-Book Bundle. Lou Allin
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doubts about the value of the purchase, perhaps reassurance would help. “It is excellent property. You’ll have over 750 feet in lakefront with three acres across the road. A sandy beach and plenty of room for septic. There’s a dug well, but for my money you’d be better off pumping out of the lake. Less iron.”
“I remember the day you took me there, when we drove over the hill and saw the trees and the lake beyond spread out like the promised land. I closed my eyes and saw my vision come to life. So many good people to help. Isn’t God wonderful, Emily?” Her sister sat mutely tearing a tissue into bits, a thin smile in answer.
“I’m a bit confused, Mrs. Kraav. What do you mean by ‘so many people’? These are just cottage lots,” Belle said, suddenly aware that she was clicking her retractable ball-point pen like a set of worry beads.
Julia shuffled a pile of letters across the coffee table, passing Belle envelopes with hand-written addresses, the crabbed alphabet of the barely literate. “Look at the responses to my ad.”
Julia’s too-merry laugh, just a tone below hysterical, raised the tension. “Oh, you don’t understand. It’s Tomas, my husband, as I told you. He came all this way as a boy from Estonia without a penny in his pocket. Didn’t know a word of English either. What a story. I’m writing a book about our life, and I’m up to 1955 with the first three chapters. It’ll be a bestseller, you watch. Even a movie eventually. Anyway, this whole development is for him, something really special to keep his name alive long after I’m gone.” She picked up another sheet. “Here’s the notice I placed across the country in the major newspapers,” she said.
It read: “All Estonians are welcome to relocate to Northern Ontario to live at the Tomas Kraav Memorial Apartments. Moving expenses paid, free rent, a lakefront for recreation and nursing care for the elderly. Apply Box 23432 Sudbury, Ontario.” Belle passed from Julia’s radiant face to Emily’s pale terror, struggling for words which she feared would destroy this illusion.
“But the land isn’t zoned for multiple dwellings.”
“Oh, you.” She tapped Belle’s knee with her fingers, drew out the words coyly, as if being teased. “My builder told me, ‘No problem, no problem at all.’ The whole east side will be developed along with that new park. Maybe a mall for shopping and a theatre. Won’t that be a miracle for those poor souls? Many of them have never had a decent meal or a warm bed.” As Julia clapped her hands, Belle saw through a shift in her gown a deep burgundy scar traversing her thin breastbone, which rose and fell with her quick breathing as if nourishing itself upon impossible dreams. The sight reminded Belle of a baby robin, blind, featherless, heart beating in a fierce rhythm to keep warm.
Belle scribbled a few meaningless notes to buy time, not knowing how to continue. “Do you think I could have a glass of water?”
“Oh, certainly. Hostess with the leastest, aren’t I, Emily? Just excited. Would you prefer coffee?” When Belle shook her head, Julia floated her gown out of the room, leaving a faint trace of Estée Lauder.
The sister spoke quickly. “You’re an honest woman, I can see. This scheme will break her, take every penny. She can buy the land and put up the buildings, but what then? There’ll be nothing left for the support she promised them, or for her own expenses. It’ll be a nightmare.”
Belle sighed. “Of course. And she’d need an act of Parliament to change the zoning. That’s single residence only. How do you want to handle this? She looks pretty fragile.”
“Yes, she’s been mixing Tomas’s drugs with whatever garbage she could scrounge from her doctor. We’re preparing to get a court order by Friday to lock up her finances until she can manage on her own again. Maybe you saw some of the toys she’s been using to attract her friends and relatives. She wants to buy the world for anyone who loves her. Thank God she didn’t hurt anyone with the Cherokee. But it’s Tomas’s death, you see. That’s the centre of it all. I’m trying to get her into grief therapy.”
Having invented some plausible stall technique which involved another meeting with the owner, Belle crossed town and logged in at the office. Uncle Harold had converted the downstairs of a splendid Victorian house in an older section of town lined with elegant cottonwoods. The upstairs rented to a retired couple who wintered in Florida but needed a Canadian address to maintain their medical coverage. Belle’s realty company was no giant, but she had a long term, loyal clientele. In the earlier property boom, many wannabes had jumped on the bandwagon to make a fortune by selling real estate “part-time”. These opportunists had long departed, and a $2,000 licensing fee kept the field lean and mean. Belle ran the business with an answering machine, a cellular phone and Miriam MacDonald.
Her first lieutenant had signed off a lifetime of bookkeeping to join Palmer Realty five years earlier. “There is nothing creative about accounting,” she insisted, “unless you’re working for an American savings and loan or the Parti Québécois during a referendum.” She balanced her work for Belle with a passion for quilting. Her pieces had won awards, but she accepted commissions more for personal satisfaction: “That Log Cabin one for Alderman Winder cost me a month’s labour, design and sewing. The $500.00 wasn’t worth it.” To Belle’s embarrassment, Miriam had presented her with a stunning king-size quilt in the classic Whig Rose pattern for her birthday.
“How goes the battle?” Belle called as she pushed open the door.
Gray hair in a frizzy afro, her stockinged feet working a therapeutic wooden roller under her desk, Miriam grimaced, mouth tsking as her pencil checked a list. Gulping at intervals from her mug, she pummelled the computer keyboard and seemed annoyed at what she read on the screen. “Sacrifice. Hostie.” French Canadian minced oaths always made Belle laugh. How many other languages centred their curses around the church and its trappings?
“Stop swearing about communion wafers. You’re a Scot, or so you claim. Problems?” She sidled to the coffee machine and poured a generous cup, grateful for the practicality of black appliances. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to afford an office cleaner?
Miriam puffed an errant silver curl from her forehead. “I’ve got such a chain of conditional sales that I’m a screaming mimi. Even if we’re not the first realty on half of them, we’ll make out like our former Prime Minister. But there’s a fly in the proverbial ointment. Mr. Proulx on Norman Lake wants—get this—” she snarled, stabbing at a blurry black and white picture pinned onto the corkboard, “319K for his cottage. With only 65 feet frontage? It’s a fishing shack with an outhouse at a 45 degree lean. Everyone else in line is being quite reasonable.”
Belle smiled. “So it goes. He’ll come around if he really wants to sell.”
“If he really wanted to sell, he wouldn’t ask the moon. And the whole house of cards may collapse by then.” She muttered to herself, “Câlice.”
“Chalice. There you go again. But doesn’t this beat toting up a balance sheet in that cockroach race? Remember when you worked all night in an unheated shed to cook books for that sheet metal firm just before Revenue Canada hit town?”
Miriam stiffened. “Please don’t use terms like that. You know I have never done anything actually illegal. But you’re right. I don’t relish dancing to anyone’s tune. Thirty years of penal servitude was enough. And I’m not going to stew over this. Once I finish with Mr. P., he’s toast, as my daughter says, at least this week.” Her daughter Rosanne was twenty-three, a graduate from Shield University, now attending teacher’s college in North Bay. “I warned her,” Miriam said. “She’ll have her hands full. Has she forgotten what a rotten teenager she was? I needed an exorcist.” Then Miriam skidded to a stop between words and gave Belle a puzzled look. “You don’t seem yourself today, and I’ve been babbling. Thinking about Jim?”
“Oh, I had a call from his girlfriend. Every time I close my eyes, I imagine his body trapped in that swamp lake, turning in the tea-coloured water while the ice freezes over him like a glass ceiling. It haunts me like that Atwood poem: ‘The photograph was taken the day after I drowned. I am in the lake, in the center of the picture, just under