Cornwall and Redfern Mysteries 2-Book Bundle (9 page)

“Have it your way. If it isn't Melanie's skirt, you must be a secret cross-dresser. I found a bra in there, too, right beside your pile of Speedo bathing trunks.”

By this time, I had removed a foil-covered casserole dish from his fridge as well as a large chunk of chocolate cake. I got a plastic grocery bag from under the sink and piled the food inside, adding half a flaxseed loaf from the bread box.

“I forgot to mention, Bliss,” Dougal said, in a tone that suggested he wasn't going to talk further about Melanie or bras. “You'll need to go to Glory's twice tomorrow and from now on until we pollinate. I'll need pictures and first-hand reports.”

“Come on, Dougal, when am I supposed to find time to do that? I'll go right after work, like today. Isn't that good enough?”

“We're getting close now. You'll have to stand by and be ready to pick up the pollen at Glory's as soon as her Titan blossoms. There's only a small window where the pollen is viable, so you'll have to drop whatever you're doing as soon as I call you. Meanwhile, get me pictures before and after work.”

“Swell. Pollinating two freaks of nature is taking up more time than I expected. I better get that money.”

“Stay on track and it will happen, darling Bliss. Insulting such beautiful specimens is beneath you. Now, are you ready to leave? Can you fit any more food in there or should I get you another bag?”

He tried to propel me out of the kitchen, but I stood firm and said, “Listen, I need to tell you something else that happened last night after I dropped you off.” I related the incident with Rae and the tall goon who had pushed me roughly to the ground.

“So, can I stay here tonight? Just until things get back to normal at the trailer park?” Prostitution and whatever Quigley was up to, maybe running a meth lab, were normal at Hemp Hollow, but the guy with the snake's head belt buckle, and Rae's attacker, were not.

“No, you can't. Sorry. I'm having company any minute, none of your business who. And you need to get out of that trailer, Bliss. It's dangerous. Too bad you don't have any friends you can stay with.”

“Wait,” I struggled to free my arm. “My laundry. I put it in the washer this morning.”

“And I put it in the dryer for you myself. That's the kind of cousin I am. You can pick it up tomorrow, but I'm afraid those sheets have had it. They're full of holes and your underwear is a disgrace. You better get some new ones, Bliss, or the next time you bend over you're going to moon somebody.”

He looked at me accusingly. “Mrs. Boudreau had to put my laundry through twice, it smelled so skunky. And she helped me haul the couch out to the garage. She says there's nothing that will take the odour out, so now I have to buy a new one. Do you know how much that will cost?”

In the hall, I nearly stumbled over Simon who was lurching from side to side like a drunken sailor, probably stoned again. He hummed something that sounded like “Dancing Queen.”

“He likes Abba,” Dougal said fondly, as the parrot looked up Melanie's skirt and whistled.

“You're both certifiable,” I said to Dougal, and slammed the door.

I was tempted to hang around outside and catch Melanie in the act, but I was anxious to get home and barricade myself in before dark. Before leaving Dougal's doorstep, I tucked the skirt as tightly around my legs as I could. I likely wasn't doing the road rash any good, but at highway speeds, it wouldn't do for the skirt to blow up over my face.

Passing the Super 8 Motel, I saw the silver Beetle still parked in front. The top was down and Chesley was barely visible bobbing between the seats, still cleaning the red leather. I wanted to stop and ask what he and his mother were up to, but I wasn't dressed for the occasion and sunset was imminent. I felt like a freaking reverse-vampire.

On the ground behind my trailer, I found the bag of food I had brought from Dougal's last night. The pears were squishy and the pasta salad would be toxic after lying out in the sun all day. I smelled the leather jacket still draped on a bush, and immediately removed my nose. No way was that scent dissipating anytime soon. If I left it any longer, it might attract another skunk. I dropped the jacket and the bag of food into the metal trash container between my trailer and Rae's. At least I had a replacement for the jacket.

Before moving to the front of the trailer, I stopped and sniffed. A faint odour seemed to be coming from the woodland, and it was disturbingly familiar. Like wet dog and dead groundhog combined. The skin on the back of my neck tightened. Clutching the fresh food from Dougal's and the two bags from The Second Hand Rose, I hurried around to the front.

I wondered if I should knock on Rae's door. From the little I saw of her condition last night, she would be in no shape to service customers. After a moment's hesitation, I walked over and rapped lightly. There was no response and I heard nothing when I placed my ear against the door. She could still be at the Quigleys' — and I sure wasn't going over there.

Inside my trailer, I wedged the chair under the doorknob again, though a fat lot of good that would do if someone wanted in, as proven by how easily Quigley and the other guy had broken Rae's door down. I hung up my new outfit and leather jacket, arranged my canned goods in the cupboard, and stacked the blue towels on the miniscule bathroom counter. Then I made the bed up with the pink sheets. My chores done, I heated a portion of the chicken and noodle casserole and sat down at my tiny table with the
Sentinel
. Better to eat the fresh food now and save the canned stuff for the times when Dougal closed his kitchen to me. Reluctantly, I decided against the wine. It looked as though the sunrise and I were going to be BFFs for the next few days at least, and a hangover would make an unwelcome third wheel.

I opened the paper, hoping that reading the classifieds for places to rent might help keep me awake long enough to get undressed. Sitting with the skirt tucked into my underpants on my bad side and forking up the food, I unfolded the newspaper.

Before I could turn to the classifieds, an article on the front page caught my eye. It was about the mayor of Lockport's political future. So the word was officially out that the Weasel was on his way to Parliament Hill.

I continued to read until I came to a paragraph halfway down that made me forget my exhaustion and the plate of cooling food on the table.

“What the hell!”

Pushing the plate aside, I read the article again. It seemed Mr. and Mrs. Weasel were donating fifty acres of wetland, a haven for the endangered spotted turtle, to the province. The exact location was to remain private until legal arrangements with the Ministry of Natural Resources were complete, but it was believed to be somewhere along Bird River.

I thought about that for a minute, then read the article a third time. Apparently, this environmental philanthropy was to be the platform from which Mike Bains would be launched into political celebrity.

Questions flooded into my tired brain. Did Mike have another fifty acres of land somewhere near mine? He didn't have while we were married. Was a wetland the same as a swamp?

I didn't have a dictionary in the trailer, or a computer, so I called Dougal, forgetting he was getting some after-hours therapy from Melanie.

“What?” he snapped into the phone. “This better be good, Bliss.”

“Listen, I just need to know the difference between a swamp and a wetland.”

A moment's silence followed. I peered out through a tiny gap in the curtain, but nothing stirred in the darkness. Across the dusty compound, a shadow moved inside the Quigley trailer, but the window covering hid any details of size or gender. I couldn't tell if it was Rae or one of the Quigleys. Or someone else.

“You better not be drinking, Bliss. Remember, you need to get up bright and early. But if it will get you off the phone, the terms swamp and wetland are used interchangeably these days. Theoretically, a wetland has more mature trees growing on it, trees that can withstand a lot of moisture. An authentic swamp is usually under water, so the roots of most trees will drown. If you see an area with lots of dead tree stumps, that would be a swamp. Both swamps and wetlands are home to many varieties of plant and wildlife. Now if there's nothing else, can I get back to what I was doing before you called?”

“Say hello to Melanie for me,” I said, and we both disconnected together.

I recalled the thick canopy of deciduous trees that covered the property, all thriving and seemingly happy in their marshy soil. So, I was the owner of fifty acres of wetland. Funny that Mike was too.

Once in bed cuddling my baseball bat, I found that, tired as I was, I could not relax enough to sleep. I kept listening for footsteps outside my tiny bedroom window. I wished I had a dog, a big dog. Maybe I would stop by the animal shelter and see if they had anything available in a German shepherd or Rottweiler model. But, then I'd have to buy it food and walk it, and a dog that big would poop a lot.

Behind all these conscious thoughts, my subconscious must have been working on the wetland puzzle. Flipping on lights, I trotted to the kitchen and pawed through a junk drawer full of twist ties, pencil stubs, takeout menus, and my divorce documents. Ignoring the latter, I threw everything else on the countertop and sorted through the various pieces of paper.

I sank onto the stained bench and spread a small pile of official-looking pages and one unopened envelope out on the table. All were from the town offices demanding payment of property taxes on the swamp. I hadn't paid a dime of it, and each subsequent notice of taxes due simply added that quarterly installment, plus interest, onto the total.

The fact that the taxes hadn't been paid for a year before the Weasel and I divorced infuriated me. How he and his wily bitch managed to transfer ownership with back taxes still owing was a mystery, but I had ignored those demanding letters arriving four times a year like clockwork and hadn't even opened the last. Now I did.

The property tax on fifty acres of soggy land near a river that flowed into a lake was surprisingly low. It appeared the universe was giving me the finger, since the total for three years plus interest was within a few dollars of what I had in the bank. I glanced at the date on the letter. This was Monday and, according to the small print on the bottom of the page, the property would be confiscated by the County of Bruce to be sold to any interested party on — this coming Friday! Three days from tomorrow.

A loud banging on the front door sent me flying back to the bedroom for the baseball bat. Armed and dangerously shit-scared, I crept to the front of the trailer where more fist-hammering was followed by a female voice calling out.

“Yo, Bliss, are you in there? I saw your lights on and figured you were still up. I've brought you some Earl Grey tea.”

Rae. But a Rae I wouldn't have recognized if she had tripped me on the street. Her face was swollen to twice its normal size and a Band-Aid covered one eyebrow. Both eyes were purple and her lower lip was puffed into a shocking pout. I stood aside as she slowly climbed the two steps into the trailer.

“My God, Bliss! What happened to your leg? That looks awful!”

I had forgotten I was wearing only underpants and a tee-shirt. The abrasion had started to scab over and I was hopeful that I would be able to wear pants the next day. I gave my leg another spritz of antiseptic.

“My bike went down. It was Dougal's fault. But what about you? Have you been to the hospital? You look like you can hardly move.”

“I'm doing okay. I'll have a few weeks' vacation, I guess. Not too many men want to have sex with a woman who looks like this. And I'm not my usual nimble self right now, I have to say.”

“If you don't mind me mentioning it, Rae, you seem a bit cavalier about what happened. Don't you think it's time you looked for another career? You could open that spa; maybe start small with nail care and facials.”

“This is an occupational hazard, Bliss. Something similar happened a few years ago, so now I've got a special fund set aside to keep me going until I heal. I'm careful to take a new customer only when he's been recommended by a regular, but sometimes a wing nut slips through no matter how careful I am. Jerry is a friend of Ewan Quigley, and I thought he was okay. Like I said, it's an occupational hazard.”

“But the spa …”

“I'm not quite ready for that yet. I need a few more pesos in the old bank account. But soon.”

Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. We drank our tea and I tried to think of something supportive and upbeat to say, but came up empty. Each of us had our eye on a personal prize. Only time would tell if either of our improbable dreams would materialize.

“So, are you staying with the Quigleys again tonight? I didn't know you were friends with Sarah Quigley, too.” That was a back-handed way of asking if Sarah knew Ewan was boffing Rae.

“Well, they're kind of rough, but they've been good neighbours. And, in case you're wondering, Sarah knows Ewan is a customer. She's cool with that. Saves her from having to do the dirty deed herself, I guess.”

I saw Sarah's point, but
eeewww
.

“We just sat around and ate some cookies last night after Sarah fixed my cuts. That and a shot of Southern Comfort, and I slept like a baby in their spare bed. The only down side is that Sarah doesn't wear clothes in the trailer.”

“She doesn't wear clothes outside the trailer, either. What's with that, anyway?”

“I'm not sure. Sarah has some mental problems, I think. Ewan doesn't pay much attention to her, so maybe it's her way of getting him to notice her.”

As a psychologist, Rae sucked, but I had no better explanation for Sarah's penchant for nudity.

But, cookies and a shot of booze? Maybe I should try that to help me relax enough to sleep. There were no cookies here, but I did have that bottle of wine.

I asked Rae, “Who was that big guy who ripped off your door, the one with the snake belt buckle? He was plenty scary, even though he came to your rescue.”

“Oh, that's Snake. He's new around here. I think he helps Ewan with some business.”

“And what business is that?”

Rae looked at me through her swollen eyes. “I think Sarah and Ewan have a little … uh … produce company. Nothing big, but apparently they have a loyal client base in the area.”

“What about Snake?” Seriously, how ridiculous was that name. “What does he do for the Quigleys? Is he an enforcer or a distributor?”

“Don't know and don't want to know. I'm just glad he was around last night.”

“What happened to the guy who assaulted you?”

“Jerry? Hopefully he's folded up in a shallow grave somewhere.”

At my expression, she added quickly, “Not really. I imagine Snake just laid a beating on him and let him go.”

I yawned, feeling more relaxed now that I had company.

“Well, listen, Bliss. I won't keep you up. I just wanted to ask you something. You'll probably say no, but I know how hard up you are right now so maybe you'll consider it.”

I yawned again, almost dislocating my jaw. “What's that, Rae? Anything I can do, you just name it. I could take your laundry and do it with mine at Dougal's. Or I can fit some groceries in the bike.”

“No. Listen, would you take a few of my customers for me while I'm laid up? Just a couple of my better ones? No more than one or two a day. I'd make sure they weren't kinky, and give you some pointers on what they like. You could fit them in between your other jobs. I wouldn't ask you, but I don't want to risk losing good clients.”

After opening and closing my mouth a few times, composing and rejecting several answers, such as, “I'll do your laundry but absolutely will not do your customers” and “Yuck, yuck, a thousand yucks,” I finally replied, “Sorry Rae. I can't do it. It's not my thing, so, sorry.”

My future might include dying of starvation in a ditch, but it was better than turning tricks in Hemp Hollow. The horny pervs would have to go elsewhere for service.

She sighed and stood up. “That's okay, Bliss. I understand.”

I stood on my stoop and watched as Rae painfully climbed the steps to her own trailer. Either Ewan or Snake had repaired Rae's door. I shivered at the thought of either of those two creeps working so close to my place.

After locking myself in, I took a last peek through a slit in the curtains. Across the compound, a figure stood silhouetted against the Quigleys' open door. The man, or woman, handed a large paper grocery bag over to Ewan, who unfolded the top and peered in. He nodded and stepped back, but before he closed the door on his visitor the light widened momentarily and I caught a quick glimpse. Slight build, short, slicked-back hair. I didn't need to see the agate-black eyes.

Pan. What was Glory's manservant doing here, on the wrong side of the tracks?

He had dropped something off. Rae had more or less confirmed that Ewan was dealing marijuana, but Pan wasn't picking up a stash, he was delivering something. Could it be Glory's pot in that bag?

I remembered the cannabis leaf stuck in Julian Barnfeather's greasy hair. Was everybody in town involved with the stuff? Neil Redfern seemed to think so.

I scooped up all the overdue tax papers and shoved them back into the drawer, except for the final notice, which I folded and tucked into my purse along with the newspaper article. I didn't know what I was going to do about the swamp, but I had only a few days to decide.

It seemed unlikely that Mike owned another section of wetland he was donating to the province. Was he waiting until Friday to buy my land back? He could probably get it for little more than taxes owing. But, in that case, wasn't the article in today's paper premature? If someone else bought the property first, Mike would be in big trouble. And with the Liberal nominations coming up fast …

During our conversation in the alley this afternoon, I had offered Andrea the swamp back and she hadn't reacted. Was that legal training or ignorance?

In bed with my face resting against the bat, I felt a faint stirring of hope. Nothing concrete, but the beginnings of a plan. The Weasels were not going to make the giant leap to Parliament Hill by stepping on my neck. Not without a fight.

Maybe the universe wasn't giving me the finger after all. Maybe I had been given a sign.