LITMIR.BIZ

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I could.”

      “Why don’t you break this other engagement?” With a final “can’t”, Eric was out the door. “This have anything to do with what you won’t talk about?” I shouted as the door closed behind him. Damn him and his new girlfriend. Surely he could see that tonight I needed him.

      I continued sitting in front of the fire as it crackled and sent sparks up the chimney. Night’s blackness had crept into the room, leaving me alone in my island of orange light. Sergei twitched beside me, as if dreaming of chasing squirrels. I sipped my cold tea.

      Forget Eric. If he didn’t want me, then I didn’t want him.

      I cast my thoughts in Yves’s direction and wondered how I could invite him to join me for the evening without appearing too forward. I remembered I did have an excuse to call, although not a pleasant one. Since he’d called me about Chantal, his business associate’s daughter, it seemed only proper that I should let him know of her death.

      But I had as little success reaching Yves as I’d had in convincing Eric to come back. His father, with his usual brusqueness, informed me that Yves was not at home. He hung up before I could ask to speak to Yvette. Not feeling up to taking on the old man, I didn’t bother to call back, but I resolved to visit Yvette the next day. Hopefully, Yves would be there.

      I sat for a few minutes longer in the fire’s cocoon of soothing heat, then figuring dinner might perk me up, I switched on the light and headed to the kitchen. As I passed the chair where Eric had been sitting, I noticed his wallet tucked behind the seat cushion.

      No one answered at the Council Hall. When I phoned his home, a woman’s voice answered. I slammed the phone down.

      It took me several minutes to get my anger under control. The bastard. That’s why he was in such a hurry to leave.

      I was so infuriated, I almost drove into Somerset to the nearest liquor store to buy a bottle of vodka with the money from Eric’s wallet, but I managed to talk myself out of it. Instead, I consoled myself with food. I cooked the bass I’d offered him. Why should I save this rare treat for a man who was no longer my friend?

      Then I ruined it. Instead of eating succulent, melt-in-yourmouth bass, the way Eric would’ve cooked it, I ate overcooked, dried-out cardboard. Fed-up, I retreated to the living room, threw another log onto the fire and flopped down onto the couch next to the only warm body willing to keep me company. Sergei gave me a once-over sniff then dropped his head back down and resumed sleeping. He wasn’t interested in me either.

      I was nodding off when a sudden knock jolted me awake and sent Sergei barking to the front door. Figuring it was Eric come to retrieve his wallet, I debated pretending I wasn’t home, then common sense took over. But instead of Eric, a shivering John-Joe stared back at me through the open door. The right side of his face looked bloody and bruised, and there was a rip in the sleeve of my jacket.

      “Please, can I come in?” he said. One hand still wore the mitt I’d given him. The other hand was bare. And encircling both of them were handcuffs.

      Before I had a chance to answer, my phone rang. I glanced at John-Joe’s frightened eyes, and I left the front door open as I walked back to the living room to answer the phone. This time it was Eric.

      “Meg, John-Joe’s escaped,” he said. I tried to sound surprised. “Oh no, when?”

      “A couple of hours ago. There was an accident when they were bringing him into the Fishing Camp. The snowmobile he was on overshot the edge of a deep ravine. By the time they got down to the site, John-Joe had fled. They couldn’t track him. The bugger had kept to the stream.”

      I turned to where John-Joe stood in the hall and noticed ice covering the bottom of his jeans. He had the look of a terrified stag about to flee. I motioned him to stay.

      “We have no idea where he’s gone,” Eric continued, “but if he happens to come your way, call the police. This will only make things worse for him.”

      I looked at the fear in John-Joe’s eyes. His lips trembled. Blood dribbled from his chin onto his soaked jacket. “It’s hardly likely he’d come here,” I said. “He’d find another isolated hunting camp. You should be checking those out.”

      “The police will first thing in the morning. And once again, sorry about dinner tonight, but maybe we could do it this coming Saturday.”

      With the sound of that other woman’s voice still resounding in my ear, I hung up without giving him an answer, but I’d no sooner placed the phone on the hook than I realized I’d forgotten to mention his wallet. Tough. Let him find out when he needed it.

      thirteen

      Not caring whether I could be charged with aiding a fugitive, I hustled the teeth-chattering John-Joe into the rambling country kitchen that was a homey mélange of old and new, with emphasis more on the old. The most recent items were the fridge and stove that Aunt Aggie must’ve bought sometime in the 1970s. Having little interest in cooking myself, I’d done nothing other than add a microwave oven and an electric coffee maker. Even the kettle I used was a battered copper one that would’ve been shiny new at the turnof-the-century when my Harris ancestors first started coming here for their long summer sojourns.

      Taking the worn captain’s chair kept by the back door, I shoved it next to the hot, wood-burning cookstove and plunked the young man into it. By now, the dog’s initial vocal distrust had settled down to a silent suspicion demonstrated by his refusal to lie down flat. Instead he remained on his haunches, body tense, eyes alert, ready to pounce at the first sign of danger.

      The light from the electrified gaslights revealed the full extent of John-Joe’s ordeal. His normally neat ponytail had vanished into an ice-encrusted mat of hair. Melting snow dripped from his soaking clothes onto the linoleum floor. Scratches and blood defined the gauntness of his face. The police might believe he was a killer, but all I saw was a frightened young man trying desperately to understand why this was happening to him.

      However, before I would remove the handcuffs, I had to satisfy a lingering doubt. Since I didn’t know another way of resolving it, I bluntly asked, “Before we go any further, John Joe, I need to know if you killed Chantal.”

      “I thought you believed me,” he said.

      “I did until I saw that knife.”

      His amber-brown eyes looked directly into mine. They didn’t waver. They didn’t flinch. “I didn’t kill Chantal,” he said. “I couldn’t. And as far as I know, my knife never left the sheath.”

      I believed him. “Okay, let’s get these handcuffs off you.”

      I searched through a drawer and found a skewer.

      “Too thick,” John-Joe said, as I jabbed the pointed end into the keyhole. “You need something thinner, like snare wire.”

      I raised my eyebrows.

      He smiled sheepishly. “Use to practice with an old set of Decontie’s.”

      Yeah, sure, I said to myself as I searched through the drawer for something thinner. He turned down a bobby-pin and picture wire before he accepted a paper clip, which he proceeded to straighten, leaving a slight upturn at one end.

      As I watched him deftly pick the lock, I thanked the gods that at least something had worked out. Obviously the police had been forced to change his handcuffed position from the back to the front so he could hang on to the skidoo. If his hands had still been behind him, I would never have been able to unlock the handcuffs myself.

      Once freed, I marched him to the bathroom, where I watched him wash the blood from his face, then covered the abrasions with ointment. I left him to thaw out in a hot shower while I looked for a change of clothes, which was a challenge. Although my middle-aged spread probably matched his young man’s leanness, he was at least six inches taller. But a never-worn pair of extra large baggy sweats my mother had given me did the trick. Although their pale pink colour didn’t quite conform to his macho image,

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