LITMIR.BIZ

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home to outlive her husband by six years.”

      “What a woman. And the family property?”

      “Gone now, even the baronial castle sold to rich Americans.”

      “Isn’t everything? But God bless our patriotic cousins. They always let us bring our wagon when a war starts.” Joking aside, Belle persisted in her questions. If this affair were serious, apparently the only one since Miriam had divorced a decade ago, would she lose her cohort at Palmer Realty? Who else would work for little more than shelled peanuts, even with rare bonuses? Belle’s business tiptoed on the financial edges that ruled Sudbury’s boom-and-bust Northern Ontario economy, and even diversification and the civil service infusion of the Taxation Data Centre hadn’t slowed the bleed. Ten thousand people were “missing” since the last census, a job plague that had the mayor under constant harassment.

      “So how did this paragon escape the clutches of matrimony?” she asked, her mouth running on like a bad pup’s.

      “He’s a widower. Poor woman passed on from lymphoma years ago. He’s poured himself into his work as a grief response. It took a long time before he was willing to commit to someone, risk getting hurt again.”

      “Sounds like the perfect reason for dinner. On me.” She had to scope out this man, discover his intentions. Calling him “sweetie” and “dear,” Miriam sounded like a schoolgirl. Or was Belle jealous of sharing her friend?

      “On you, Madame Scrooge? Are my ears frostbitten?” Miriam pinched them, then gave an impish look.

      Though cooling off as they stood, Belle felt her face flush. “I’m not cheap, just prudent.” She pondered the choices. Nickel City College’s Versailles Room, run by the Hospitality Program, had theme nights. At a government business, liquor sold at cost. Surely there would be one decent wine.

      Unused to rigorous exercise, checking her watch pointedly, Miriam begged for rescue, so Belle chose a secret loop back to the path, breaking carefully for her friend. They stopped to admire a squared pattern in the snow, trodden stitches that resembled a crazy quilt. Suddenly Freya dashed into the woods. A fat grouse fluttered up, heading for the tall pines. Typical of companionable species, another followed. Picking up a shining tailfeather, variegated stripes of black, brown and burgundy, Belle tucked it carefully into her inside pocket. “They nest under the spruces and cedars, nibble the tender cones. Often snow covers them, except for a breathing hole. Not very smart birdies to advertise a delicious lunch for a roaming fox.”

      Back at the trailhead, Belle shoved the fidgety poodle under her arm for safety as a pickup truck hauling a trailer with two snowmobiles buzzed by soundlessly on hard-packed Edgewater Road. Three feet of snow had fallen in December, yet on weekends, the municipality rarely sent the plow, reasoning that schools were closed and most people didn’t have to get to work. The Sudbury Star pegged the cost for a single scrape at sixty-five thousand dollars. This budget-balancing mentality irked Belle, who often showed houses on those days. Why pay high taxes with no sewer, water or sidewalks? To subsidize pampered townsfolk?

      Ed DesRosiers, Belle’s retired neighbour, was backing his ancient plow truck out of her long driveway as they took off their snowshoes. “Smooth as a baby’s butt for you ladies,” he said, nub of a cigar in his broad mouth, his diesel exhaust puffing clouds of potent fumes as he headed home.

      “I’ll leave Strudel in the car. She’s only ten weeks old. If she whizzed in your living room, I’d be appalled,” Miriam said, opening her battered Neon and wrapping the dog snugly in several comforters.

      Inside the storey-and-a-half cedar house, the women peeled off layers of clothing and wiped their fogging glasses. Belle propped the icy snowshoes by the woodstove, then, from a full wheelbarrow beside the tile platform, added a huge maple chunk, sending up sparks. Miriam planted herself on the blue leather sofa, wiping sweat from her face. “I don’t know how you live out here, though the view is spectacular.” She swept her hand toward the rows of six-foot windows framing the vastness of Lake Wapiti, a meteor crater deep as hell itself. Gelid waves undulated toward the shore, doubling the protective rock wall with layers of ice, but relentless when the wind blew from the northwest and besieged the dock, constructed in the year of Belle’s birth and long overdue for destruction.

      Belle whistled to herself in the compact kitchen as she prepared coffee, adding a vanilla bean for flavour. Then she brought their mugs, Miriam’s triple creamed and sugared. Her friend’s bulldog exterior hid a vulnerable core. What a great prison guard she would have made, except that she’d have cried herself to sleep every night. How odd it seemed to imagine her in a hot romance.

      “What exactly does Melibee do, or is he a man of leisure?” she asked, tongue in cheek.

      Miriam bridled at the insinuation, arching a fuzzy eyebrow, which matched her short, grey, Brillo-pad hair. “He owns a penthouse at San Rudolpho, Balmoral Drive, which as you well know is our most prestigious address.” A cool million way down south in Toronto, but in the newly amalgamated mouthful called the City of Greater (in winter, dubbed Crater) Sudbury, still a solid three hundred thousand.

      “Didn’t you mention once that he was my age? Does that make you a cradle robber?” She toyed with her friend, their banter balm to a healthy relationship.

      Miriam stuck out her lower lip and nodded in a worldly way. Belle hadn’t forgotten that her background included a soupçon of spicy book cooking for shady small businesses before she had joined Palmer Realty as accountant cum everything. “Investments, Belle. With international instability and our third-world, resource-based economy, the only way to ensure a comfortable future.” She flashed a wry look. “Especially with your slave wages and the meagre Canada Pension, which by the time I collect will pay in Canadian Tire money.”

      Mild alarm bells went off as Belle put down her coffee on the glass-topped table. “What kind of investments?”

      “Oh, not like yours in the conservative old bank, though I do understand that you have to be cautious with your father’s money. Even before September 11th, most mutual funds had been hanging at four percent, hardly more than GICs. Mel is tuned to global finance, a man who knows the edges, the big picture as well as the small details.”

      Belle shifted her stocking feet, resisting a poke at the jargon. “You’re not into anything risky, are you? Like emerging nations, Afghani railroads?”

      “Hardly. High-yield bonds. Small caps. Value funds. But he has a free hand. Timing is critical. Most fortunes are made during one percent of the trading opportunities. And don’t give me that skeptical glare. Dividends speak louder than theories.” She wiggled her index finger in a teacherly fashion.

      “How much profit are we talking about?” Belle lapsed into rude mode. Mincing words was no polite option when her friend’s savings were involved.

      Miriam beamed like a student displaying an A plus. “On my forty-eight thousand a month, one thousand since last month. Cash in hand. Twenty-five percent a year if it keeps up.”

      “ ‘If’ indeed. Belle’s nostrils flared with suspicion. Biting her tongue, she rose to close the red-hot keys on the front of the stove, ignoring to her peril the nearby work gloves. “Ouch.” She licked her blistered fingers. “Too-good-to-be-true time. You could be in for trouble.”

      “Don’t be jealous. Join me in early retirement. We’ll toast our toes in the sands of Curaçao. Here’s a card.” From her purse she pulled an engraved rectangle with his name and the title Investment Broker.

      Belle fingered the cream vellum. “No business address?”

      “He has a small place in the Lome Street area, more for record storage. But he prefers visiting people’s homes where they can be comfortable. Many of his older clients can’t travel easily in the winter.”

      With feathery clumps of snow beginning to fall, Miriam climbed quickly into her battered Neon, the poodle pawing mindlessly at the

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