cars angled into the bush, collectors of the season’s last blueberries, a local industry. Finally she could tune in the CBC local news. In an effort to comply with the 911 system, nine hundred streets in the region would have to be renamed. There were eleven Pines, eight Maples and eight Firsts, nine Birches, seven Alberts, and so on down. This challenge could take five years with unimaginable costs. Think of the stationery, maps, and street signs. She blew a sigh of relief. Her business was located on Disraeli Court, one of a kind. Punching more buttons, she found a strong signal at 105.3. “Gimme the beat, boys, and free my soul” drummed from the speaker. A good song, but every half an hour? She grabbed an Enya CD and let “Marble Halls” smooth her journey past the airport, where she watched the plume of INCO’s 1250-foot Superstack rise over the distant hills, symbol of industry. West wind as usual, blowing what remained of the scrubbed smelter air to North Bay.
Navigating the busy Kingsway and swivelling around Lloyd Street, she noticed that a large cement wall had been spray-painted with a bulbous, cartoonish “Nix” tag in red and white. It was rather artistic, but she didn’t suppose the owners appreciated the effort. On one of the few residential streets downtown, she pulled into the parking area of a mock-Victorian house which made a convenient business address for Palmer Realty, founded by her late Uncle Harold. When she’d left Toronto behind twenty years before, kissing off a stressful high-school teaching job without a second thought, he’d paid for her realty courses, then made her his partner. The upstairs rented to a quiet and reliable snowbird couple. She gazed up at the mighty cottonwoods, the few large trees spared from the core ecological damage of the last century. The day had warmed up, so she hung her plaid jacket in the van, leaving her in designer jeans and a red silk blouse.
“Life is just a bowl of blueberries,” she said to her only employee, Miriam MacDonald, her elder by ten years and a hundred grey hairs, whose baba’s bunion legacy enjoyed a daily massage from a wooden foot roller beneath her desk. “And to mix a metaphor or two, if my new lead pans out on Lake Ramsey, we’re in the proverbial clover, four leaves every one.”
Miriam munched at a cheese croissant, wiping crumbs from her mouth and pointing at a brown bag. “You mean Bea Malanuk? She dropped in this morning looking for you. Brought a half-dozen of these. Don’t you love their dark rye? It’s more sinful than an Aero bar.”
Belle struggled to maintain a cautious optimism about the dream sale. Cottage properties were her cornerstone, so six per cent of a possible mid-six-figure range nearly made her drool like a St. Bernard, especially when the average price for a home was a piddling $115,000. In a region with forty other realty companies and home sales last year of only 2167, the pie was getting smaller, even if prices were gradually rising. She needed to average four or five closings a month to make a slim profit, buy kibble, and keep Miriam in foot rollers. “What’s she like?”
“Tall, broad shoulders, strong arms. Probably comes with the baking territory, all that kneading. Nice, though. She reminds me of someone from those classic film tapes you give me. Can’t place the name and face. A formidable woman with a great comic talent.”
“Marjorie Main?”
“Ma Kettle? Don’t think so.”
“You have me intrigued.” After grabbing a croissant en route to her nearby desk in the compact office, Belle saw the note with Bea’s number at the bakery.
The busy clatter of a business set a background for the woman’s upbeat, mellifluous voice. “Hélène’s told me so much about you, Belle. I’m surprised we’ve never met.”
“Thanks for thinking of me. Business is slow in the fall.” And winter and spring. Slower than maple syrup poured onto the snow for an instant candy treat. Except for Cynthia Cryderman, the biggest realtor in town, with San Antonio-size hair and a pink stretch limo to accommodate it. Her advertising bill alone doubled Belle’s salary, even if the mindless radio jingle set teeth on edge. Sometimes she woke at midnight hearing its annoying words bouncing off the corners of her mind like billiard balls. But media coverage worked. That was the galling part. Cynthia sold nearly three hundred houses per year.
They set a date for three thirty that afternoon. In the meantime, Belle logged up her morning’s calls and browsed a real estate tabloid. “Listen to this headline. ‘Unshamed quality’. Do they mean ‘unashamed’? And ‘enter the lovely foray’.” Miriam clucked disdain as she stuffed envelopes.
Belle turned to the rough copy of some ads her cohort had composed. “I can always count on you for correct punctuation. Don’t you hate it when you see ‘Five bedroom’s’? Then she froze, making a gasping sound. “What’s this? ‘Affordable lakefront ten minutes north of New Sudbury’? That’s impossible.”
Miriam rose, walked confidently to the regional map on a bulletin board and traced a route with her ever sharp pencil. “Straight to Whitsun Lake.”
“Get serious. You’re pointing to a snowmobile trail.”
The wily ex-bookkeeper, who had once sliced, diced and sauteed accounts for several marginal businesses in the Valley before joining Belle’s company, folded her arms coolly over a beige linen pantsuit with a floral-print blouse. “Not exactly a lie, though.”
“I want to be competitive, but not at the expense of the truth. Let’s compromise at twenty minutes, speeding tickets aside, or you’ll never make partner in the firm.” Realizing that she had overextended herself, she added, “Not that there’s enough room in this pond for more than one lily pad.”
Miriam barked out a laugh and added a dollop of Frenglish. “Hostie. Splitting the profits. Now that would be the day . . . of judgement.”
“Did I say ‘splitting’?” Belle turned with a frown and began balancing the chequebook, a high-wire act.
At lunchtime, she headed for the nearby Tim Hortons. The venerable doughnut chain, now American-owned, had a history of nearly half a century based on the joys of bubbling fat, popping franchises across the country on every strategic street corner, promising a sweet, warm antidote for the never-ending Canadian winter. Iced tea and cappuccino in the summer, but no latte . . . yet. Other chains folded tent, and lately Tim’s had aimed its sights at another border crosser, Krispy Kreme.
Collecting two Meal Deals, which included a sandwich, coffee and doughnut for mere pocket change, she saw Steve Davis coming through the door. As a detective, he wore a light-grey suit and carried a raincoat like any businessman. His six-six frame would look good in a burnoose, but she missed the handsome uniform from his younger days when he’d done off-duty security work for her Uncle Harold.
“I haven’t seen you for weeks,” she said, opening her coffee and pushing Miriam’s towards him as they found a booth. “With those terrible murders, you must be in triple overtime.”
He winced, sipping the brew. Ojibwa with a Scottish grandfather, Steve had been raised on a reserve in remote northwestern Ontario. His coal-black hair, thick and lustrous, shaded to silver at the temples. Her junior by a few years, he nevertheless felt a solemn obligation to play big brother, law vs. justice their favourite debate. “It’s a nightmare. I was called to the second homicide. The mayor’s courting a coronary. We’re not used to this. Mom-and-pop domestics or bar brawls head up the usual list.”
Belle leaned forward to hear his lowered voice. The police were not flavour of the month these days. Every pensioner in town punched in at coffee shops to heap abuse at the boys and girls in blue, usually in comparison with American television dramas where homicides were solved in an hour when dog DNA from a scrap of a cigarette filter of a suspect whose dachshund liked chewing paper turned up at the crime scene. “The methods seem similar, the victims, too. Are we talking serial killer?”
“Getting close.” He frowned, dark clouds gathering in his eyes, as serious as Belle was comedic. “The magic number is three for that definition. You know I can’t tell you much more than the papers. Strangling’s the hardest kind of murder to solve. No blood, no mess, no fuss. If you have the cold determination to kill another human being and the muscles to carry it out, you may beat the odds.”
“I