LITMIR.BIZ

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Belle had enjoyed such warmth. Several minutes later, they drove into Cott, skirting the shore carefully. It was a swamp lake, soft and treacherous in spring. A plane landing would be impossible now with the thaw. Franz guided her to a thick spruce growth. “Look at what I found,” he said, rummaging under a bush and pulling out some plastic bags. “Broken open. And they just left it. Why not? One quick gust and gone . . .”

      “With the wind.”

      He tasted the residue with a wet finger. “Cocaine, if the usual mythology is true.”

      Belle took the bag and dipped in, wincing at the bitterness. “Who says television doesn’t have educational merit? Hey, should we rinse our mouths with snow?” she asked. “Anything else?”

      “Just these two bags. Oh, and cigarettes.” He passed her a half-full pack of Luckies, sodden with moisture. “American. I’ve never seen them for sale here. Too expensive.” They scuffed their way to the middle of the lake, noting the landing marks of the skis. Blurry steps packed the ice where a conversation might have occurred, and a snowmobile trail, covered by fresh snow, pointed to the end of the lake.

      Belle punched his shoulder lightly in her excitement. “This could make the connection. At the very least, it proves that Jim’s theory was on the money. Steve should see this, with your permission,” Belle said, and packed the evidence into her pocket after Franz nodded. “A raid on Brooks could come soon, by the way.”

      Some coffee warmed them while Franz tossed pine cones for Blondi to chase. “Come up next winter, and I promise to be a better host and show you around my camp. I have a few fine spearheads from a quartzite dig at Sheguiandah on Manitoulin. 7000-8000 B.C. Much sharper work than the hand axe you admired.”

      “I’ll look forward to it, Franz. Why don’t you come for dinner tonight and tell me how you found them?”

      He sighed reluctantly. “This is unfortunate timing. After my four o’clock class, Mother and I are off to Toronto to see Phantom of the Opera this weekend for her birthday.” Belle suggested an excellent Portuguese place on Bloor West, recommending the octopus. The dog resumed her place in the toboggan, and Franz followed Belle back to the island, lurchingly slow and steady on the old chestnut.

      When Belle collected the van at the marina, it was barely three o’clock, so she stopped at the police building. Originally built as an armoury after World War One, it squatted downtown on its treeless square like an ancient toad. According to Steve, the staff hated the place; not only was it cold, uncomfortable and overcrowded, but security was a joke. Last year several prisoners had escaped, to be caught hours later playing PacMan at the bus depot. A classic tale of felonious stupidity, Steve had told her, like the guy who robbed a convenience store, then left his footprints in the snow right to his house.

      At the main desk, a sergeant doing crossword puzzles pointed her to a sub-basement after asking a five-letter word for “criminal”. Water pipes covered in shredding asbestos led her down a dungeon hall, her steps echoing ahead in the gloom of a single, dangling fifteen-watt bulb. Steve stuck his face out of a door with a look of suspicion. “What brings you to my palace? A social call, I hope.”

      “Where do you chain the man in the iron mask? And I thought asbestos had to be removed,” Belle responded, flopping into a comfortable brown leather chair cracked with age. She adjusted the stuffing to cover a spring and brushed white flakes from her shoulders.

      “We’ve been lobbying for a new building for years. Just don’t do too good a job of it. Need a crime wave to raise our profile. A nice mass murderer or an arsonist. This year the money went to the Seniors’ Complex. So?” He looked at her quizzically.

      “Presents. Franz Schilling and I found some drug traces in the bush today.” She placed the bags and cigarette pack on the desk, shifting a plastic plate with a crust of pizza.

      Steve didn’t even examine it. Her news pressed his irritation button one time too often. “Are you still prowling around?” he yelled. “And disturbing evidence again?”

      “Let me get to my point if you’re in that kind of a mood. We found this up at Cott Lake. It’s a miracle the stuff was still there. A brisk wind would have buried it. Come on, look at it. Don’t make me feel like a fool.”

      “Wow, a cigarette pack! For me? I suppose you want us to check for DNA.”

      “And the bags?”

      After the usual rituals, he settled into serious mode, sighing and tapping a pencil onto a date on his calendar. “Congratulations. Every now and then a blind squirrel finds an acorn. We can’t cover thousands of kilometres of bush in the hopes of catching someone in the act. We have Brooks set up for Saturday night. Saturday, Belle, is that close enough for you?” He drew a stick man on his paper and confined him in a box. “If you want to watch the fun, and I know you will, be at the Beaverdam around eleven for the raid. But stay clear.”

      “Yes, sir!” She offered a snappy salute and backed out of the office. Saturday Night Fever at last.

      Belle arrived home about six o’clock to find the house inhospitably cold and unwelcoming. A rising wind had blown up and sucked the wood to ashes with the draft. Wood was a benevolent dictator to its grateful servant, usually good for ten hours or more before a temperature drop would trigger the propane furnace. She would have to restoke it for the night.

      Belle refilled the stove with soft fat pine for quick coals, then took Freya for a short walk. At last the bitter temperatures were gone, even if most of the snow remained, as it likely would until May. Her boots crunched down the road, as she listened through the silence for sounds which carried miles in the clear air and insulating snow, the long, piercing whistle of a train headed south with lumber, or north with shiny automobiles for those who had cut that wood. She heard the familiar tinkle of Morris’s windchimes, a summer memory. Mo must have come out early to open up. Taking note of the cottages, she pictured their snowbird owners making a last forage to the cheap American supermarkets, or buying a breadmaker or air conditioner to offset costly supplemental health insurance premiums. Yet what were their electric bills when they had to leave the juice on all winter to protect the foundations against frost damage?

      Back inside, Belle heaped maple and yellow birch over the new coals and heated tasty and filling Habitant pea soup as a accompaniment to a toasted cheese sandwich. As a treat for Freya, she opened a can of expensive dog stew, giant hunks of beef swimming in gravy. Then as Shana had suggested, she sprinkled on the Metamucil, dropped in a tablespoon of canola oil, and stirred the mess queasily. Freya materialized out of nowhere at the grind of the can opener, a thread of drool dropping from the corner of her smiling mouth. “Dig in, babe. It’s better than some people get.”

      Tidying up her computer area after dinner, Belle rummaged through documents and notes from the office. But as she sorted them, strange papers caught her eye. Shield University memos addressed to Franz. One concerned a blood drive, and the other warned of a rise in parking rates. How embarrassing. She must have scooped them up that day in his office. No need to return them since the relevant dates had passed. The next sheet made her sit down in shock. It was a receipt for nearly six thousand dollars from the Forest Glen Wellness Center in Harrisville, New York. A private nursing home? Or were they all private in the States? She pulled out her atlas. Just over the border from Cornwall, maybe ten hours’ drive. Probably an old place in the Adirondacks.

      Was it Eva? Was she in treatment for the nervous breakdown Rosanne had suggested? Was this any of Belle’s business? “Oh, here, Franz,” she could say. “Sorry I picked this up by mistake. Who’s the lucky patient?” Still, she was pricked by her usual rude curiosity. Perhaps there was an Internet contact in New York, someone who could do a bit of handy digging. The likely source for snooping came quickly to mind, the Dorothy L. Sayers mystery discussion group, three thousand strong. Though each person had a special nom de plume, she hadn’t chosen one (Miss Marple had been taken and she couldn’t remember Mary Astor’s role in The Maltese Falcon). “[email protected]” she typed. Her message was brief, even enigmatic, but DLrs loved that touch: “I am marooned in Ultima Thule and need an ally to sleuth

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