LITMIR.BIZ

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And to think that Yoyo never mentioned any of this. She had a new respect for the woman.

      “It gets worse. He hadn’t changed his will or insurance. Just careless. The family turned its back on her. She was left without a cent.”

      “What about the baby?”

      “Yoyo is a proud girl. She never told them.”

      Belle nodded her head, a small door opening in her heart. “Sounds ruthless, all right. I don’t blame her for writing them off.”

      “She is doing the job, isn’t she? Results are what count.”

      “To be honest, she’s got talent. I think she’s unloaded the Adams camp.”

      Miriam gave a low whistle of admiration. “That is a miracle. I’m starting to worry that you’ll replace me.”

      “No fear. Every other firm in town would give you a raise.” She paused. “Something else has happened.” She told Miriam about Gary.

      “God, I saw the story in the Timmins Daily Press. Friend of mine’s dad died the same way. Sometimes I’m glad we have to stoop to pee, even if we do hit our shoes.” A silence fell. “Sorry. I’m not exactly commiserating. But you never mentioned him. And it’s unlike you to carry a torch and not tell.”

      “The torch never caught fire. I got my wish. Went to the grad dance with the valedictorian, and I have the pictures to prove it.”

      “Really? Love to see them sometime.”

      As the CrimeStoppers agent suggested, she drove to Station Road and revisited the ugly place. While she snapped Polaroid shots of the soggy carpeting and panelling, her reoffended sensibilities gave her another idea for faster action. She headed down the road into Skead. At the turn of the century, it had been a lumbering town, thousands of tons of sawdust at the bottom of Kolari Bay still burbling at the site of the old sawmill. Now it was a peaceful enclave on the lake where a few hundred people lived in a permanent vacation half an hour from Sudbury.

      Inside a clear plastic cover, she tacked three pictures to the wooden bulletin board the local seniors had constructed at the mailbox kiosk, then added a handprinted sign: Know anyone renovating with this decor? To be on the safe side, she gave only her cell phone number. Skead was a very small community, and word would travel fast. She had confidence that public sentiment was on her side. People would welcome the opportunity to police their streets for the greater good. Spotting a collection of business cards on the side, she added hers.

      As noon approached, she was late for lunch with her father. After calling in the order, she decamped from the office and hurried over to Garson.

      At the Big Nickel, a small restaurant that changed hands every other year, in competition with taverns and pizza delivery, their meals were ready. Her milk and a tuna sandwich on rye, his chopped chicken, mashies, peas and gravy. Cherry pie to follow. Since a near-fatal choking incident, he was on the gummer’s special, but he never complained.

      Balancing the clamshell boxes, she made her way up the wheelchair-accessible ramp of Rainbow Country, the two-storey building run by the Finnish community as a stopgap before finishing their Minnow Lake complex for the aging. Shabby around the edges, but whistle-clean, it was cosier than the generic high rises that warehoused the elderly. She’d been lucky to whisk him back from Florida with minimal immigration problems, a bit of fact-fudging aside. At American nursing home prices, his mutual funds would have evaporated like the Jays’ chances at a pennant, and the logistics of travelling across a continent to check on him made her shiver.

      She picked up silverware and linens in the kitchen, then passed the nurses’ station. Cherie was on guard, a curly blonde sparkplug who never missed flagging the slightest change in her charges. “George’s skin is getting worse. Our doctor hasn’t a clue. I know you took him to Vonnie, the skin specialist, only last month.”

      Belle paused, nuances of worry on her forehead. “He said it was bullous dermatitis. Nothing serious.”

      The nurse snorted in contempt. “Another kind of bull. That’s Latin for blisters. A description, not a diagnosis.”

      “Ouch. Guess I shouldn’t have taken Spanish.” Belle nodded, appreciating the woman’s sharp eye. “Even my father said the man was senile. Vonnie must be in his eighties.”

      “We need every specialist we have up here, but sometime I wonder.” She turned as a frail man in a walker lurched by, his bum crack exposed by pants that hung on him like a scarecrow. “Here, Jim. Let me tuck you in, my man.”

      In the bright, private room with easy-care linoleum, Belle found her father in his gerry chair, the jailer designed to keep him from falling but also from walking, since he wouldn’t cooperate with physio attempts. She doubted whether the trade-off was worth it, but he enjoyed his television, magazines and newspapers, and especially his food. Every meal her mother had placed before him had been the “best”. He wore a clean blue sweatsuit and Labatt’s slippers on his feet, an ironic touch. He was a teetotalling Methodist, but Belle and her mother had made up for that with their mutual predilection for scotch straight up.

      He brushed a shaky hand through his thick mane of white hair, cheeks pink with a fresh shave. Staff knew when the family would be visiting and made the extra effort. He tapped his watch as if to coax the hours to pass more quickly. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune defined his evenings. “Late. I thought you weren’t coming.”

      She arranged the bib and food. “Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor earthquakes nor tsunamis can stop me.”

      As he dug in with a will, she winced at the large black blisters branding his mottled hands. Suppressing an urge to roll up his pant leg to check further, she turned instead to her sandwich, making sure he stopped now and then to drink water.

      When he had finished ten minutes later, she let him attack the pie, carefully mashed. “Remember Gary Myers?”

      “Of course. Of course. One of those blond German lads you favoured. Were you trying to recruit your own Wehrmacht?”

      She smiled at the quirkiness of his memory. Sometimes sharp, recalling Dunkirk with his Churchill imitation, dull some mornings when he forgot having breakfast and wanted another. Who had been her troopers? Wertman. Gall. Erhart. Stretching from Grade One to university. Was she a Teutonic magnet or vice versa? Then she explained what had happened.

      “We never know when the grim reaper is going to come calling. Only the good die young, your sainted mother aside. Gary, now. I could see you wondered about that boy. Why he never came around again.” He tapped his temple. “But parents know.”

      She cocked an eyebrow. “You never mentioned it.”

      “None of my business. My cousin Ab’s daughter, Tracy the vet, she lives in Lethbridge with a female dentist.” He waved his hand. “Asked Ab about it. That’s what he said. None of his beeswax.”

      Belle sat back in wonderment at a curiously twenty-first-century attitude for a man alive during the Twenties. “Tracy? I guess that wasn’t a topic for discussion while I was growing up.”

      He gave a low whistle. “As a kid, you sure were confused about The Children’s Hour. Your mother was at Massey Hall the night it showed at the screening, so you had to come.” He had been a booker for Odeon Pictures in Toronto, and they’d seen four new releases every week together once she reached Grade One. “You cried because Shirley MacLaine was so sad.”

      The large clock on the wall was sending her a message. She turned with reluctance to a more alarming subject. “Cherie says your blisters are getting worse. Let’s see.” She rolled up his pants and nearly gasped in horror. Huge, watery black sacs covered his lower legs.

      “They don’t hurt. Not one bit.”

      “A saving grace.” She tried not to shudder. Was he merely being brave, or was some more pernicious condition festering, like diabetes?

      Making a note to tell the nurse to

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