LITMIR.BIZ

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that Steve hadn’t caught the case, but not surprised, since the department had over a dozen ranking operatives, she and the Nortons gave their statements to Detective Milt Burns. A bean pole with a shock of taffy hair, in his late thirties, thorough and professional, he seemed especially interested in the time frame. As they were leaving, a coppertone SUV pulled into the yard, and in her mirror she saw an athletic man jump out and sprint towards the house. Probably Dave Malanuk. What would it be like to return from a trip to find your wife dead from a violent attack, perhaps including a rape?

      On the solemn procession back to the office, Dan’s chain-smoking led Belle to hit the climate-control feature. The lump in her throat didn’t prevent her from remembering her primary mission when they pulled into the lot. “Long Lake isn’t far from the Four Corners. I have a colonial listed on—” she began as they climbed into their Mercedes, but they shut their solid German doors decisively. Even with this fiasco, she hoped they hadn’t changed their minds about relocating. Thirty per cent of the population had no general practitioner, and specialists were rare as a January thaw.

      When she entered the office, Miriam leaped up in congratulations, then did a double take at her stony face and drooping shoulders. “You’re a real sunshine pump. What happened? They seemed perfect.”

      Belle sank into a chair as Freya came up for a pat, stretching and yawning. “I found Bea dead.” The details arrived with no holds barred. Miriam was a tough bird.

      Her friend took off her bifocals and rubbed the bridge of her Roman nose. “How are you going to tell Hélène and Ed?”

      No phone call could substitute for human contact when bad news was concerned. Perhaps Dave had already relayed the news. Even so, she owed her best friends an appearance. On the way home, Belle thought of everything but her sad duty. She passed through the small suburb of Garson, ordering a large coffee to go at the Tim’s drive-through, then casting an eye down a side street to the windows of Rainbow Country Nursing Home, where her father lived. The way the day had gone, she half-expected an ambulance to be pulling away, carrying him to his last game show. Tomorrow was Tuesday, their lunch date, and while she often made extra stops to deliver an ice cream sundae or walk him down the hall, this wasn’t the time.

      As she drove towards Radar Road, she passed the steaming exhaust blower which ventilated one of countless shafts reaching deep into the bedrock. Occasional dynamite blasts reminded civilians that if all the drifts which honeycombed the region were laid in a straight line, a person could drive from Sudbury to Vancouver. Cutting-edge technology continued to extract more and more ore from the generous meteor that had formed the enormous seventeen-by-thirty-seven-mile elliptical basin nearly two billion years ago.

      Half an hour later, as the sun weakened in the western sky, casting glints through the poplars, maples and birch overhanging her road, the first pure crimson leaf in the canopy of green struck her like a gunshot. This blow signalled the beginning of autumn, which normally she greeted with expectation. September, free of bugs and full of show, was the most beautiful month of the year. Now it was a metaphor for Bea’s death, and the difference was that the cherished mother and wife would not return like Persephone in the spring. She parked at the DesRosiers’, leaving Freya in the van. A reluctant messenger, she needed to steel herself. As minutes passed, all the vacuous phrases chattered in her mind like parrots. “Sorry for your loss.” “Gone to a better place.” Even “only the good die young.” She didn’t envy Steve his former job ringing doorbells after gruesome traffic accidents.

      “Knock, knock,” she called, then opened the door in their casual fashion. Hélène was ensconced in a leather recliner, snug in the Norwegian sweater Belle had given her for Christmas. In the open-concept kitchen, Ed wore an Old-Fart-On-Duty apron over his sweatpants and was peeking into the oven. Savory tomato aromas filled the house. She felt strangely hungry for the first time all day, perhaps a response to the survival instinct . . . or the absence of breakfast and lunch. That coffee was churning acid in her nether regions. So Dave hadn’t paved the way. She could hardly blame him. Micro would be his first concern.

      Hélène put down a magazine and snickered. “Ladies’ night off. It’s only been forty years. I’m finally breaking Ed in. He cannot ruin M&M cabbage rolls. Posilutely not, as my grandson says.”

      They’d never ask her why she had arrived unannounced shortly before dinner time. With the camaraderie on the road, it might be to borrow dog kibble or ask for a battery boost.

      Ed winked and mimed a beer at Belle, who nodded. Opening the fridge, he retrieved a bottle of light beer, twisted the cap, and handed it to her as she took off her jacket.

      Hélène cleared her throat. “No glass, Ed? This isn’t an ice hut.”

      Sitting on the sofa, Belle took a deep swallow, wondering if they could hear the drum beating in her chest. “It’s fine. I’m a minimalist.”

      As Ed headed back to the kitchen, Hélène grinned at Belle. “You always said that ‘Kept a sparkling house’ wasn’t what you wanted on your tombstone and that at your place, dog hair was a condiment.” She rocked back with laughter, then touched Belle’s knee. “You are staying, then? I have some rye from the breadmaker.”

      Liquid rye would have been her choice. Belle finished her beer in three nervous gulps and leaned forward, her stomach lurching. How she dreaded casting pain and sorrow across her friend’s relaxed and innocent brow. She stared out their wall of windows to the lake, where a sailboat headed for harbour, its white sides lashed with spray as it parted the bruised waves. She bit her lip until it hurt, then turned to Hélène and opened her mouth, but no words came. Suddenly she had the urge to burp and took off for the bathroom, closing the door and turning on the taps before she knelt at the toilet like a college freshman after a binge, its chemically-charged bowl green and deep. Normally she enjoyed the apple pie aroma of the three-wick dish candle on the shelf, but now it increased her nausea.

      When she returned, Hélène gave her a curious look but was too polite to comment. She passed Belle a Chatelaine. “Take this home. Great article about snowshoeing. You could have written it. Now there’s easy money.”

      Belle held out her hand, but Hélène lowered the magazine. “You’re shaking. What’s wrong? Low blood sugar? Did you skip lunch?”

      Get the words out. Like the headline of an ad. Details to come. “I have bad news. It’s about Bea.”

      Hélène’s mouth pursed in disappointment as she picked up a glass of red wine from the side table. “Darn. She decided not to sell? I knew she wouldn’t leave that wonderful old house. And that reminds me. It’s her birthday Saturday, and I haven’t—”

      Belle took a deep breath and plunged on. Swift strokes were kinder than a death of a thousand cuts. “Bea’s dead. I found her upstairs when I took clients over.”

      Hélène’s glass shattered, its contents pooling like rubies on the creamy tilework Ed had laid on the woodstove platform. “My God. Was it her heart? I gave her that low-cholesterol cookbook last Christmas . . . oh, why didn’t she—”

      “It was murder.” She sat back on the couch, felt its cushions enfold her. “Like the others, it seems. She didn’t live alone. Who would have thought?”

      Hélène buried her head in her hands. Belle gently touched her shuddering back. A competent and resourceful woman, suddenly her friend seemed older and more vulnerable.

      “Ed,” she called, “Hélène needs you.”

      “What’s the matter, girl?” he asked as he came over, searching Belle’s face for answers. Then Hélène stood and embraced her husband.

      Belle related the news in the briefest possible fashion, omitting the graphic particulars. “Thank God Micro wasn’t there,” Hélène said, calming as the minutes passed, and the steel in her backbone stiffened. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she turned to the task at hand with no hesitation. “I’m calling Dave first, then everyone else. The shock of it all. He has no other family but us. His parents died years ago, and he was an only child. Like Bea.”

      While

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