LITMIR.BIZ

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whose diehard fans ate gruesome realism by the pailful. A few graphic chapters taught Belle to slice a Y incision, pull out assorted organs, weigh them and set aside the stomach contents for analysis. She began to grow queasy and took a large slug of Scotch to disguise the reek of formaldehyde. No more Cornwell before bed. Something refined, Ngaio Marsh maybe. She rattled through assorted prayers for people she hadn’t seen in forty years, then surrendered to a deep sleep, imagining the faithful loons calling in their mating dance. But they wouldn’t be back yet, skating on the ice. Once she and Jim had seen a nest with a loon’s egg clinging perilously on a tiny atoll hardly bigger than their boat. Perhaps the human proximity, quiet as they had tried to be, had disturbed the parents, because a few hours later, the prize had vanished! To a safer place, or the stomach of an otter?

      She woke in shallow awareness as her clock read two a.m., smelling a light, comforting smoke drifting in the window. A few snuffles and snorts sent her back to sleep, only to wake more fitfully with a pounding headache. A change in weather? Sinus problems? In her stupor she debated chugging aspirins, but decided to wait it out.

      Such pleasant time passed while she and Jim hunted for the egg, yet what kept dragging her from the dark and quiet river passages which led past the cherished pictographs? Jim was cozying the canoe against the cliffs, bracing with his paddle so that she could take pictures of the red ochre figures which seemed to be distorting despite her efforts to focus the camera. Slowly she became aware that Freya was coughing and whining and licking at her. And the dog had never, ever, asked to go out during the night. Belle rubbed her eyes, burning with something more pungent than sleep, and forced herself up to hit the light switch. The room seemed to be blurry, foggy.

      Suddenly all too awake, she felt the marrow freeze in her bones, despite the blood temperature of the water bed. Smoke was seeping through the ventilation panel cut to the living room. A fire, with her trapped on the second floor, the worst nightmare! She clawed free from piles of bedding, dropped to the rug and crawled to the patio door to rip into the plastic sheeting taped inside to conserve heat loss and shove the door open. The frigid air cleared her head momentarily. Fearing that the lights might go out at any moment, she retrieved a flashlight from the dresser. The bedside water glass doused a T-shirt, which she wrapped around her face. Freya stayed behind her, sneezing and hacking.

      Yet the door to the downstairs was cool. Fire or no fire? Belle cracked it slowly against the thick smoke which followed the draft, backing down the stairs on her knees, blessing the thick broadloom that had cost her a trip to Curaçao. Why didn’t she have a contingency plan, a rope ladder from her balcony? Ed had always teased her about it. Like a scorched worm, taking a gulp through the soggy shirt, she flashed a teary look at the living room stove. Smoke was billowing out of the keys. Something must have blocked the chimney from above. Holding her breath until her lungs ached, Belle tightened the keys and turned the damper to shut down the blaze.

      As her lungs finally rebelled against her brain and opened wide, she pushed outside with a gasp into the softly dropping snow, oblivious for a moment that she stood only in T-shirt and underpants, standard bedtime attire. Spasms of coughing punished her shoulders and back as she braced against the deck post. “Wow!” Belle yelled, lifting her feet one after the other like a phony fakir on burning coals. Holding her breath again, she reached inside to the hall closet to grab her snowmobile suit, boots and mitts. Could a squirrel have fallen down the pipe? There was no protective mesh at the top, couldn’t be because of creosote build-up. But no roast beast smell filled the air. Shivering more from fear than cold, Freya stopped hyperventilating as Belle hugged her and stroked her fur. “Breathe on your own, girl. I just couldn’t do CPR on that hairy mouth.” Safe now, the air clearing inside with the door open, she debated whether to put out the fire with water, or climb to the roof and stuff down the chimney brush. The smoke damage would be horrendous.

      Breakfast and some creature-comforting noises in mind, Belle walked down to Ed’s, blowing her lungs clear as the sun’s red eye backlit the trees. Sailor take warning? As she trudged, she missed the amenities of socks and long underwear, but blessed the fleece-lined moosehide mitts that did the job at any temperature. Northerners knew what was important.

      She hated to wake her friends, bang into their morning stillness, but what were pals for? “All right, you slackers, everyone out for volleyball,” she called, pummelling loudly at the back door and causing fearful yelps from Rusty, asleep in the mud room.

      Thumps and bumps came closer as lights flashed on in sequence through the house. “What the hell?” Ed said. “Are you crazy? Say, what’s all over your face?“ He sniffed at her as he pulled her inside. “Were you smoking in bed again?” He fastened his robe as Hélène shambled in from the bedroom, her eyes puffy with sleep.

      “It’s safe enough on a waterbed. I got smoked out. My chimney is plugged at the top. There’s no fire. I shut the stove down, but can’t do much more until daylight. Can I get warm here?”

      “Thank God you’re OK, Belle,” said Hélène, giving her a firm hug and passing her a tissue for her face.

      “Thank Freya. She warned me, saved my life. I was too groggy to know what was going on,” Belle added. She availed herself of their bathroom in an unsuccessful attempt to scrub off the smoke.

      “What about your alarm?” Ed asked as they sipped coffee and stuffed themselves with hot blueberry pancakes. Squirts of whipped cream added to the impromptu picnic. Heavy food was appreciated when cold work lay ahead.

      “It kept going off for no reason, well, not exactly no reason. Bugs, I guess, so I jerked it. And naturally I forgot to reconnect it.”

      The DesRosiers drove her back in the truck. While they aired out the house, Belle shovelled hot ashes from the stove into a bucket and used asbestos gloves to carry out the smoking logs. Then she collected the fibreglass cleaning rods and brush and climbed an aluminum ladder next to the house.

      Ed scolded her as he followed. “Why do you leave this up? Thieves could get to your bedroom balcony.”

      “I clean the chimney every three weeks, and I’m not excited about digging out the ladder after every blizzard. Besides, Ed, I have glass patio doors. So do you. We live out here because we want to see the lake, not hole up in a fort with arrow slits. Someone wants in, they get in.”

      Checking for tracks on the roof under several inches of new snow proved fruitless. Ed said, “What a mess around the chimney, all trampled. You won’t get clear prints here.” His probe with the brush revealed a soft mass several feet below the top which he pushed down the chimney. “Have to take the pipes apart in the living room. She’s caught up on the damper.”

      “If the chimney had caught fire, the house might have gone up in flames. Still, it’s deadly enough. Most people in fires die of smoke inhalation,” Belle said, shivering in the brisk wind on the roof as she surveyed the grounds. “What’s that by the big yellow birch? Looks like it was tossed off the roof like a javelin.” It turned out to be six-foot wooden stake for delphiniums, probably from a pile under the deck, except that the end was sticky with black creosote.

      Dismantling the pipe, fanning themselves against the smoking rags and despairing of the falling cinders, they cleared the mess and reassembled the pipes. Belle had goosed the propane furnace, but with the doors still open, it was barely above freezing in the living room. Luckily the computer room and TV room had been closed. The fish would have to hang tough until she got the stove going again.

      “So where did those rags come from, Belle?” Ed asked as he pitchforked the pile onto the snow.

      “Looks like old towels I hung over the propane tank. Used them to wash the van last fall.”

      Hélène looked on the verge of tears. “Please stay with us for awhile, Belle,” she pleaded. “Or Ed can—”

      “You’ve been great. But I’ll be OK. And yes, I will report this.”

      Finally alone with her thoughts, Belle left a detailed message for Steve. If he had been mad in the past, this would send him into overdrive. He’d blame her for going to the Paramount, for snooping at the lodge. Derek had warned her about Brooks’ interest,

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