Cornwall and Redfern Mysteries 2-Book Bundle (11 page)

The class was performing the Tree Pose, and two of the fifteen participants had already fallen over onto their yoga mats. This pose promotes balance but is not one of the more simple yoga moves. Staring at a spot directly in front helps and, to maintain my own equilibrium, I was concentrating on the sweating nose of the thirty-something woman who had positioned herself in the middle of the front row. She was doing pretty well, although yoga consists of slow movements and if you sweat you're probably trying too hard.

The perspiring woman crashed to the floor, followed by several others. My line of sight was now cleared to the back row where I noticed that one of the few still standing was a male. As the woman on either side of him fell over in unison, I saw he was wearing black bicycle shorts and matching muscle shirt. This was not a good look for …

Chesley Belcourt. Now he was standing like a lone sapling in a fire-ravaged forest. We both stood firmly, one foot high on the inside of the opposite thigh, arms reaching ceilingward with palms pressed together. Our eyes locked.

Chesley held onto that pose like he could do it forever, but I drew a bead on his eyes. I always won the blinking contest against Blyth and Dougal, and I knew how to stare without blinking. Chesley's eyes moved away slightly and I followed them. When he moved them back, I was there too. Within seconds, it was over. His concentration broken, Chesley's left foot fell off his right thigh and impacted the floor. That was good enough for me.

“Okay, everybody. Good session. Now lie flat on your mats for the Corpse Pose. Eyes closed and let your hands and feet open naturally.”

After five minutes, I dismissed the class with a bow over pressed palms.
“Namaste,”
I said, and they repeated the salutation.

Usually I hit the shower facilities before leaving the centre, but I didn't want to take a chance on losing Chesley. I retrieved my clothes from the women's locker room and dressed in the hall, replacing my yoga pants with a pair of jeans and shoving sockless feet into my boots. I was relieved no one saw my tattered French cuts.

Holding my small gym bag, I took up a position in front of the men's locker room door. I figured it would take Chesley a few minutes to wiggle out of the tight bicycle shorts, an image I didn't dwell on.

Garnet Maybe came by and handed me a twenty she took out of her pocket. Then she drifted back to her office, not even curious as to why I was loitering outside the men's locker room.

The country club set attended exercise classes at their exclusive club house, leaving everyone else to drop in at Garnet's Golden Goddess Spa, so I wasn't concerned the Weasel's influence would get me fired here. Still, I had no qualifications as a yoga instructor and I knew that when Garnet found an instructor who did, I was out on my keister. Until that day arrived, however, I just tried not to cause anyone permanent physical harm.

Just when I was ready to storm the locker room and drag Chesley out by his lips, the door opened. His head eased out and, when it swivelled far enough to catch sight of me, he jumped back and tried to close the door again. I put my weight against it, which, admittedly, didn't do much, but just the gesture seemed enough to show Chesley how silly he was acting.

Holding his canvas carryall to his chest, he stammered, “Oh, hello, Miss Cornwall. Very nice class.” He didn't move from the threshold.

“Call me Bliss. And may I call you Chesley?” I put on the fake realtor's smile and captured his elbow, propelling him into the hall and away from the safety of the smelly locker room. “Are you and your mother planning to stay long in Lockport? If so, I'm sure Elaine Simms can show you more suitable properties than the Barrister house.”

Chesley trembled in my grasp. “Well, Mum and I are just trying to get a feel for the area first. And we haven't totally discounted the property you showed us, Miss Cornwall, ah, Bliss.”

I'll bet. “You have my card if you want to reach me, Chesley. I'd like to stay and chat a bit longer, but I have an errand to run.”

I released his arm, but, just as he tasted freedom, I asked, “Oh, I do hope you were able to get the pieces of skunk and the smell off your lovely leather seats.”

He made an involuntary gagging sound, then caught himself and swallowed.

“Well, not quite. I'm still working on it. The clerk at Canadian Tire sold me a bottle of solution he guarantees will make the leather smell and look as good as new.”

“Hope that works for you. Personally, Chesley, I had to throw out my leather jacket and my cousin needs to buy a new couch.”

Chesley's eyes popped a bit more. “Your cousin?”

“Yes, my cousin Dougal. He was on the back of my bike when you ran over the skunk. We got the stuff all over us, too.”

“I'm truly sorry you were involved, Miss, er, Bliss.”

“Well, no lasting harm done, Chesley. But why were you following me from that address in Arlington Woods?”

“Following you? I wasn't following you, Bliss. Why would I be following you?”

“I don't know, Chesley, but you pulled out behind me from the wooded area and nearly blinded me with your headlights.”

“Ah, I was just re-setting my GPS. As I said, we're trying to familiarize ourselves with Lockport and I was cruising that section of town to see if any properties are for sale.”

I know a liar when I hear one. But, I still had to drop off pictures at Dougal's, so I let Chesley off the hook for the moment.

“Give your mother my best regards, and tell her I hope we'll meet again before you leave town,” I told him.

Chesley made a dash for the stairs. The rubber soles of his white Nikes squeaked on the wooden steps, and my leather boots clattered close on his heels. At the bottom, he didn't wait for further pleasantries, just ran for the Beetle parked in front of the building. I noticed every window was opened wide on the convertible.

Performing an expert U-turn in front of the police station, Chesley headed north in the direction of the Super 8 Motel.

“Well, good night, Bliss. See you on Thursday,” Garnet called to me as she locked the street-level door to her studio. She sped down the sidewalk, her short blond curls glowing under the streetlights like the head of a marigold on a slender stalk.

It was another mild night and I left my face shield up to allow the silky air to enfold my face as I made the short drive through peaceful streets.

The peace only lasted until I walked through Dougal's front door.

“Where the hell have you been? I've been calling you for hours and you didn't pick up. This is a critical stage and we need to be in constant communication. Well?”

“I left my phone in the bike, I guess. Here you go.” I pushed the camera into his hands and ran to the kitchen. “I'm starving. I don't know when I last ate, so get out of my way. Oh, and I got fired today.”

“If you'd get a phone with a camera feature, you could email me the pictures.” Dougal fiddled with the camera as he followed me.

“If I had a pig with wings, I'd be rich. Then I could buy myself a brand new Smartphone. And I got fired today.”

Dougal was panning through the latest pictures. “Didn't you take any of the interior of the spathe? Oh, here they are. Did you smell anything when you had your head in there?”

“I didn't stick my head in. You said not to touch the plant, so I just aimed the camera inside and hoped for the best. I got fired today.”

I had been pulling out various covered bowls and plastic containers. One looked like mashed potatoes with gravy, so I nuked that first after spooning it into a glass bowl from the cupboard. No sense ingesting all those toxins from the plastic. Figuring I had to be dehydrated too, I poured myself a glass of water from the reverse osmosis tap.

“Everything looks like it's coming along on schedule. Did you see any signs of collapse, either at the top of the spadix or at the spathe level?”

“What you see in the pictures is the status at about six o'clock this evening.” My stomach must have shrunk. After swirling the gravy into the potatoes and eating it with a tablespoon, and downing a second glass of water, I wasn't sure I could manage the chicken breast revolving inside the microwave.

Dougal jumped up as the timer went off. Sticking a fork into the chicken, he handed it to me, and said, “Come with me. I need to see through your eyes.”

He hauled me to the sun room while I nibbled on the chicken.

“Now, look at Thor. Look hard. How does he compare with Sif? Take your time, but, for instance, is he as tall? Does Thor's spathe grow up the spadix as tightly, or does Sif's spathe look a little looser and can you see the red colour inside?”

“Okay. As near as I can tell, they look about the same height, although Sif's spathe looks a little frillier at the top and is starting to curl outward. And, yes, as you can see by the pictures, the inside is a rich burgundy colour. By the way, I got fired from the library today.”

Simon was sitting on the top perch outside his cage and had been mercifully silent. Now he decided to join in the conversation, if you call clucking like a broody hen conversation.

Dougal looked over at Simon and said, fondly, “That's enough, buddy. Maybe if you ask nicely, Bliss will share her chicken with you.”

“Bliss bloody well won't,” I replied and moved a few feet farther away from the perch.

“Aw, come on, darlin', take one for the team,” begged the bird in Dougal's wheedling tones.

Dougal reached over and broke off a piece of chicken and handed the morsel to Simon.

“Does Simon know he's eating poultry, effectively committing cannibalism?” I asked.

“Simon isn't poultry. Now, can you pay attention here?”

“I never knew it could be like this,” Simon said in a female voice. It sounded familiar, probably Melanie again. I glared at Dougal, but since he was such a self-absorbed snot, he didn't notice. At least the parrot wasn't yelling about pot.

I took a closer look at Dougal. “Hey, what happened to you? You look, uh, not bad today.”

Actually, he looked better than I had seen him in over a year. His hair was expertly buzzed, without the dips and rises I left when I used the manual clippers on him. And he had doffed his usual baggy shorts and stretched tee-shirt for pressed trousers and a short-sleeved red shirt. He still wore sandals, but his feet were …

“Did you get a pedicure? Dougal, you've been out!”

“Calm down, will you. I finally found a hairdresser in town who would send someone in to cut my hair. She also gave me a pedicure and manicure.” He stretched out his hands and I could see that someone had filed and buffed the nails.

“That's wonderful. You're really coming along.”

“Yeah, I'm doing great,” he said modestly. “Pretty soon, you won't need to run my errands or pick up my food for me. Although, I'll still need someone to weed my gardens and cut the grass. And take the trash to the curb.”

“You honour me.” It looked like the pittance I earned from Dougal would soon be a half-pittance. Well, things were changing fast and I had better be ready to make the most of the emerging opportunities. I made a mental note to find a nice park and stake out my bench for the winter.

Dougal assumed his lecturing stance, or, as I liked to put it, went into snore mode. “From these latest pictures, I now believe that Thor and Sif will flower within an hour or two of each other, with Sif perhaps slightly ahead. This couldn't be better. The female flowers mature first and about twenty-four hours later the male flowers produce pollen. I'll gather Thor's pollen and Glory will do the same for Sif's.” Dougal put out his hand as though to touch his palm to Thor, but stopped short of making actual contact. “I'm going to be videotaping it all on a time sequence. Are you getting this, Bliss?”

I nodded, although it was beginning to sound more like a porn movie than a botanical experiment.

“Let me recap. The female parts of both plants will flower within a few hours of each other. We wait approximately twenty-four hours for the male flowers to produce pollen. You will stand ready to take Thor's pollen to Sif, where Glory will immediately pollinate Sif's female flowers. You will return here with Sif's pollen, and I will manually pollinate Thor's female flowers. Hopefully, the female flowers of both plants will still be receptive, keeping in mind that they have been ripe for twenty-four hours. Got that, Bliss? Do you understand how crucial it is for you to be on standby and deliver Thor's pollen to Glory, then Sif's here to me?”

“Yeah, crucial. Standby. Got it.” In truth, Dougal lost me way early in his lecture, but my role seemed to be limited to making a few trips between the plants to deliver pollen. And someone would no doubt tell me which way to go first, so there was no need for me to get overly involved in the science.

“Okay, you can leave now. I'm having company, so take your shabby underwear out of my dryer and whatever food you haven't eaten, and go.” Dougal shooed me out of the room.

“Your other plants look ready to pollinate too, Dougal. Don't you have to do something with them, like get them the hell out of the house? I'm telling you, the police are very interested in marijuana these days.”

“It's ready to cut and dry. I'm doing much better now, with the therapy, and a Valium now and then to take the edge off. I think this will be my last harvest.”

“Glad to hear that,” I said, relieved he was coming to his senses. “Why don't you just get rid of it now?”

“What am I supposed to do with it? If I burn it in the backyard, the whole neighbourhood will be high. And I can't exactly put an ad in the paper: Mature Cannabis Plants for Sale. This crop will last me a few years, and by then, who knows, it might be legal to grow your own.”

“I thought you said you weren't going to smoke the stuff anymore.”