Cornwall and Redfern Mysteries 2-Book Bundle. Gloria Ferris

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!”

      Chapter

       THIRTEEN

      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.