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      Napoleon Publishing/RendezVous Press

      Toronto, Ontario, Canada

      10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Allin, Lou, date-

      Murder, eh? / Lou Allin.

      (A Belle Palmer mystery)

      ISBN 1-894917-27-8

      I. Title. II. Series.

      PROLOGUE

       The Sudbury Star, August 26, 2006

       “Second Murder Rocks City”

      A concerned neighbour found the body of Selma Atler, 42, Sunday morning after she failed to answer the door at her home on Bloor Street in the Donovan area. An accountant at the Taxation Centre, Ms. Atler appeared to have been strangled, then placed nude in the bathtub.

       June Reymond told police that they always drove to church together. “I just went on in. The door wasn’t locked. That wasn’t like Selma.”

      There was no sign of forced entry, but missing were a plasma television, a Sony laptop, and an assortment of jewellery, according to Norm Atler, her son, a lawyer in Lively.

       “We’re the Nickel Capital, not the Murder Capital. The person responsible will be found and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. That’s a promise,” said Nan Martin, Police Public Relations Officer, in a press conference Tuesday afternoon. She was referring to a local newscast stating that the latest death had bumped the annual homicide rate to 5.5 per hundred thousand, passing the leaders, Saskatoon and Regina. “With only 165,000 people in the City of Greater Sudbury, small numbers can skew the data. We were only .6 last year. Why doesn’t anyone mention that?”

      The shocking killing echoed the death of Jennifer Spark the week before, also found under similar circumstances by her sister, Marge Blake. A divorcee, the 40-year-old Spark lived alone in an apartment on Teele Street in Lockerby. Mrs. Blake noticed the absence of a collection of Georgian silver, a Bose radio, a bottle of Courvoisier and several hundred dollars collected for a cat shelter.

      Take Back the Night, a local activist group, will march tomorrow to Tom Davies Square to demand more police patrols. Meanwhile, single women are being advised to lock their doors and report any stranger. Anyone with information is urged to call the TIPS hotline at 705-226-7821.

       The tragic deaths have touched many parts of the community. Belinda Jeffries, manager of the City Pound on Douglas Street, reported that most of its larger dogs had been adopted. Dick Derro, manager at Blue Steel Protection, said, “We’ve doubled our rate for installations of home security systems. No one wants to take chances.”

      ONE

      The stink of gas exhaust announced an unwelcome presence long before Belle Palmer heard the distant, guttural chug of an ATV. Twenty minutes earlier, she’d squinted in suspicion at a rusty white Ford 100 truck parked at the schoolbus turnaround at the end of her remote road along Lake Wapiti. A cleated metal ramp on the tailgate meant that a rider was already on the Bay Trail. Freya, her German shepherd, had given the bottom of the steep hill a thorough sniff, squatting to pee proprietorially in an arbutus bed.

      Moose season was over a month away, though that wouldn’t prevent a bold poacher from filling his freezer illegally. She had made a mental note of the Ontario “Yours to Enjoy” license plate: AHCK 245. AW HECK, bring a 2-4 at 5. If she heard shots or saw fresh signs of ad-hoc butchering, reporting the plate would be a pleasure. The Ministry of Natural Resources had the right to search and seize vehicles and even check a residence for contraband meat.

      Stopping on the forest path a kilometre later, she spied broken ferns and crushed bracken where the macho machine had left the trail, then looped back. Too lazy to hike into one of the interior swamp lakes and perch in a tree stand? Over the years, hunters had erected three or four in the vicinity. Then around the next blind turn beside a grandfather yellow birch came a rider wearing work pants and a ubiquitous red plaid flannel shirt. The green monster Yamaha Grizzly 660 quad had a large wooden box attached to the rear carrier, and a water bottle dangled from the handlebars.

      On a whistle, Freya moved to Belle’s side, and she placed a gentle hand over the chain collar for safekeeping. Shepherds were extremely wary and very territorial. This was their province, Crown land though it was. Belle could have sworn the old dog narrowed her eyes.

      “How are you today, madame?” the man asked with a warm smile, cutting the engine. He had no accent, but the last word made him a Francophone, sans doute.

      “You tell me,” she said with a cold expression, folding her arms. “What are you after this time of year? Bear, I suppose. Make sure it’s a boar, or don’t you care about orphaned cubs?” Curiously, she saw no gun, just a belt knife with a bone handle.

      He switched off the engine, his crinkled, butterscotch eyes confused at her hostility. Attractive as Sean Connery in Robin and Marian, he could have been anywhere from fifty up, unshaven, but with a healthy head of salt and pepper hair under a very odd pink knit cap with earflaps.

      “Why so unfriendly? I’m a licensed trapper,” he said with a slight frown and a hurt tone, as if the final word, which would enrage urban PETA members, should be a cachet with bush dwellers. “I have a right to trap here.”

      “Trap what?” she asked, as a whiff of pong met her nose. Not death, but pungent, foul and laced with hormones.

      The man got off the quad and walked to the rear carrier, which he opened to display a large beaver, flat on its back, paws folded over its belly like a medieval bishop atop his marble tomb.

      “Male,” she said. “Wheew. How do you stand that reek?”

      “Don’t hardly take notice of it after my beak goes numb. Not until I get home and the wife gets downwind of me before I hit the shower.”

      Suspecting the source of the ridiculous hat, Belle relaxed for a moment, waving her hand. “I’m not that fond of beavers.” Many waterside poplars and birch had been destroyed by overambitious rodents gnawing down trees too big for their abilities or girdling skyscraper aspens, leaving them to wither. With beaver hats in disfavour since the American Civil War and coats a dangerous fashion statement, the mammals were overbreeding. Obstructive dams often pooled water in the interior, then burst forth into streams, flooding out nearby homeowners.

      “What do you get for a pelt these days?” she asked. Fur might be making a comeback, but times had been lean for decades. He didn’t finance that ten-thousand-dollar machine on this career.

      “Hell, no more than twenty bucks at the North Bay fur auction,” he replied. “This is just a sideline since I retired from Mother INCO.”

      Sudbury’s International

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