Chapter 16

I screamed.

Marya screamed, and when she did, I realized her face appeared a little older and more haggard than I’d ever seen it. But considering she’d just been murdered, how could she be in the closet? Or screaming, for that matter?

I screamed again.

Ken raced up the ladder, and I positioned myself behind him.

“Anechka!” he said.

“Anechka?” I repeated, peeking out from behind him.

“What are you doing here?” Ken approached the closet.

Anechka stumbled out. The resemblance to Marya was still striking, but Ken’s lantern illuminated the differences: a harder jaw, paler skin, and deep fatigue underscoring her eyes. I caught just a glimpse of her hands. Marya’s were always dainty and well manicured. Anechka’s were disfigured and scarred. But a glimpse was all I got. She jammed her hands into the pocket of her boxy sweater.

“Why are you hiding in the closet?” Ken asked.

“You didn’t know?” I asked Ken.

He shook his head but never let his gaze veer from Anechka.

“I was sleeping when you first arrived,” she said. “I could tell it was not Marya down there, but I did not know who it was. Marya told me to stay hidden.”

“You saw Marya?” Ken asked. “How long have you been here?”

“Is hard to say. One day runs into another. But she has not been here in days, and then you come. I did not know what to think.”

“So you haven’t heard what happened,” I said.

“What?” She shifted an uneasy gaze between Ken and me.

“Maybe you’d better come downstairs and sit down,” Ken said, offering her his hand.

*   *   *

A rough night followed. Not only did the storm beat incessantly on the little cabin, but Anechka didn’t take the news of the death of her sister particularly well. She went from wailing to self-recrimination, then back to wailing, then to questioning Ken’s involvement and making awkward suggestions about what I was doing there alone with him so soon after her sister’s death.

Ken used his skills in interrogation to get her to recount her story. She hesitantly related how she had called her sister for help and Marya had sent her a bus ticket, picked her up at the station, and took her straight to the cabin. Anechka couldn’t place the exact day she arrived, but it was long before the snow fell.

“What happens now?” she asked, her face turning even more ashen. “Will you have to tell anyone I’m here?” Her eyes widened and she scanned the room wildly, as if plotting a course to escape.

“Now,” Ken said, “we have breakfast.”

In the middle of our grilled cheese—since we’d finished the pancakes—a snowmobile engine revved outside.

Ken pulled the door open and was met with a wall of white that had packed up against it. He grabbed a shovel and started putting snow into his dishpan, since he had no other place to put it.

But he wasn’t the only one clearing. Soon light appeared through the snow, then a porthole opened, revealing a blue sky on the other side. Moments later my father stuck his head in the hole.

He looked at Ken, then at me, then did a double take at Anechka.

“Ken Young?” he said. “Would you please come with us? I’d like to ask you some questions regarding the death of your wife.”

*   *   *

My trip to the station was on the back of a snowmobile driven by a rookie cop I knew only as Jenkins. At first I clutched the folds of his jacket loosely, but by the time he got up to speed, rocking the snowmobile precariously on the uneven trail and even going airborne over a few dips, I had my arms crossed around his chest, holding on for dear life.

A couple of hours later my adrenaline levels returned to normal as I paced in the office of the chief of police. I wasn’t sure who that title belonged to: my father or the man my father was currently letting sweat it out in the interrogation room.

“You know, the waiting game isn’t going to be very effective on him,” I told my dad. “He’s wise to those tricks.”

“It gives me time to cool down, though.” Dad plopped into his chair and leaned back. “What were you thinking?”

“That Ken was missing, maybe dead, and I got a lead to where he might be. I just followed it.”

“You should have—”

“Let you know? I texted you that I was going to try to find Ken’s hunting lodge.”

“But not where it was, or that you were holed up with him there all night!”

“I tried. What would you have me do, MacGyver a homemade cell tower out of a ladder, three spatulas, aluminum foil, and a roll of duct tape?”

Dad held his tongue for a moment. “You know I just want you safe, right?”

I put my arm around him and gave him a hug. “I was safe. Ken’s not a killer. That rookie Jenkins on the other hand …”

“What did he do?”

“Gave me quite a wild ride on the way back. I think he was doing it on purpose.”

Dad’s jaw took on a serious grimace. “Sorry about that. I should have figured something like that would happen.”

“What’s his beef with me?”

“You gotta remember, he joined the force under Ken’s administration, and it’s natural that his loyalty is to him. He’s pretty sure his boss isn’t a killer.”

“But why take it out on me?”

Dad just sent me a painful smile.

“Because he thinks I might have killed Marya.” That revelation nearly knocked the wind out of me.

“You make a convenient scapegoat. And not only that, I’m also a threat, trying to usurp his boss’s authority. It’s been tense around here.” Dad scratched the back of his head and exhaled a lungful of frustration. “To be honest,” he said in a measured tone tinged with sheepishness, “I didn’t see your first message until late last night. Between the murder investigation and the stress in the department, I didn’t know you were gone until Cathy started calling every five minutes.” He leaned his elbows on his desk and buried his face in his hands. “Do you know how many men, how many man-hours, how much special equipment, it took to find you in that little love shack of his?”

“Love shack?” I folded my arms, perhaps a little petulantly. “Well, sorry for the inconvenience. I guess it doesn’t matter that I found the man your whole department was looking for?” I jabbed a finger at him. “And Anechka!” I looked around. “Where did she go, anyway?”

“We sent her straight to the hospital to get checked out.”

“She must have been hidden in that loft, without much food or water, for days.”

He threw his hands up. “And now there’s immigration to deal with. What a mess.”

“Sounds like someone wouldn’t mind getting out of the cop business and back into the toy business.”

“There’s a big difference between chasing a few leads and allocating the resources of the whole department. I’d forgotten what a headache it could be.” He looked around to make sure nobody was listening in. “Not to mention every man that came on board under Ken’s administration thinks I’m out to railroad their boss and steal his job.”

I hugged him. “You’re doing a good job, but maybe you see now why I didn’t want you involved so much?”

He finished the hug with a hearty clap to my back and pushed away. “Do you see now why I didn’t want you chasing down leads on your own? Your involvement in this case doesn’t exactly earn me any respect in the department. And you. You were stuck in that cabin all night with a suspect.”

“With Ken. He’s a friend. At least he was once.”

He winced. “And you also might want to check in with Mark Baker.”

“Mark?”

“He was here when we started the search. In fact, he was the one who found the deed to that property tucked away in the couple’s financial records.”

“So he knows …”

Dad treated me to a particularly awful toothy grin. “Just that you were off looking for Ken Young, and that you were gone all night.”

“Swell,” I said. I’d plugged my phone in to recharge when I reached the station, and I picked it up now to find multiple texts from Mark, Dad, and Cathy. “Apparently my social life just blew up in my face.”

Dad placed his hand on my upper arm. “Welcome to law enforcement.”

*   *   *

Cathy, of course, was relieved to hear from me and assured me she had the store covered if I needed to get some sleep. I texted Mark, then sent another text explaining the first text, then stared at my phone hoping it would buzz. When it still hadn’t ten minutes later, I broke down and called him, but it went to voice mail, so I left a message that sounded confusing even to me. And I knew the whole story.

On zero sleep and a boatload of caffeine, I finally left the police station and walked, no, marched between the walls of plowed snow directly to the pharmacy. One, I needed pain relievers for a headache that threatened to burst my skull apart, and two, if Lionel Kelley was going to continue being cagey, I was going straight to the horse’s mouth.

I waved at the clerk again at the front counter then made my way through the sparsely populated aisles to the back of the store. Charles Barr was with a customer, so I sat in the small waiting area and tried out the automatic blood pressure machine. I think I broke it.

I paced. Took a seat. Paced again. Tried a different seat. Flipped through a magazine without seeing any of the pages, and then, when I didn’t think I could stand it any longer, the customer left with her little white bag, and I went up to the counter.

“Mr. Barr?” I said, pointing to the name plate.

“How can I help you?” he said with a smile. I had a feeling that smile wouldn’t last very long.

“My name is Liz McCall,” I started. I watched his face for any sign of recognition.

If he knew of me, he didn’t let on. Instead, he went over to a small collection of prescriptions already filled and started looking at the names. “I don’t see anything …”

“No, I’m not here for a prescription,” I said, then ran a hand through what was left of my hair, post Antoine. “This is awkward. Let me try again. I manage Well Played, the toyshop right next to the barber shop.”

His moustache twitched a little as recognition dawned.

“I noticed Lionel Kelley watching the shop, and I know he’s working for you.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No, he was adamant about not revealing his client. I happened to see you come out of his office.” I didn’t mention that I’d practically glued myself to the glass. “I know you don’t have to say anything at all to me, but I’m not sure you understand what’s at stake here. A young woman has been murdered. My boyfriend—I mean my ex-boyfriend—might get arrested for it. Her sister’s in the hospital and may get deported. My boyfriend—I mean, my friend—won’t text me back, and I got this awful haircut.”

To my horror, my voice cracked, and tears started streaming down my cheeks. I needed sleep. Bad.

His moustache twitched again, and he cast a nervous glance toward the front of the store. “Look, don’t cry. I’ll talk to you. But not here. I have a break in twenty minutes.” He pushed a tissue box toward me. “How about I meet you somewhere.”

“The tea shop?” I suggested.

“Fine,” he said softly, and then a little more loudly, probably for the benefit of the counter clerk, “and have a nice day!”

*   *   *

Rather than go home and clean up, which would have been the rational thing to do, I went straight to the tea shop.

I had mixed feelings about this place. I loved sniffing all the small demo canisters of loose tea. I set out to try something a little bit different with every visit, and this time I picked out a lovely blueberry something or other. The words were blurring as I tried to read them. I sure hoped the tea had caffeine.

The only thing I had against the tea shop was that it replaced the cupcake shop that closed last year, and I still mourned the loss of my favorite sugar fix.

Once I’d paid for the tea, I sat at a table and lingered over the steamy aroma so long that my glasses fogged over. Not that I needed to see what was going on around me. More thoughts than I could handle were roiling around in my head.

I’d ticked off an awful lot of people.

Lionel Kelley would be miffed that I’d confronted his client. But at this point, I didn’t care what he thought, and if he raised too big a stink over it, I could always remind him that I was privy to his … passion for ponies.

Dad was ticked at me. I replayed the whole scenario in my head. At first I wasn’t sure what else I could have done. But after the caffeine hit I realized that, yeah, maybe once I’d found Ken’s truck, I could have driven back to the station and dragged someone out there with me. Not that I was in danger, except for maybe that cabin collapsing under the weight of the snow. Or a heart attack when I opened that closet door.

Anechka? I wouldn’t call her ticked at me. She seemed terrified, mostly. Sure, when she’d learned that I had briefly dated her brother-in-law, I got a few dirty looks, but I’d grown used to those. Maybe after she was treated at the hospital she could supply my father with information pertinent to the investigation. I doubted it, though. Even if Dad could ease her fears enough to get a coherent statement, Anechka hadn’t even known that Marya was dead. Still, she might be able to shed some light on her sister’s activities in those last few weeks, the ones that had made Ken so suspicious.

Ken wasn’t ticked at me either. He’d seemed so hopeful of, after a reasonable mourning period, resuming our relationship.

Jenkins and some of Ken’s other loyal officers might more happily see me strung up for killing Marya.

But Mark. I pulled out my phone and turned the volume way up so I wouldn’t miss a text or call, and set it on the table in front of me.

And then there was Ian. As I looked at my phone I realized that my date with him was no longer “tomorrow.” I’d have to get some sleep to deal wisely with that. Still, Ian was a good conversationalist, especially when talking about himself. I figured I could get him going and not have to worry about constructing full sentences out of my sleep-deprived brain.

I’d started my second cup of tea by the time Charles Barr slid into the seat opposite me. He didn’t remove his jacket, and he didn’t look like he planned to stay long.

“I called Lionel before I came, and he said I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“That’s probably true,” I said. “I hoped you’d want to.”

“Why would I? The little matter I had Lionel looking into had nothing to do with the death of that woman. And you’re not even with the police.”

“Also true,” I said, “but the police might want to decide for themselves if your ‘little matter’ is relevant when I tell them what I found out. They’d come to your place of work, perhaps, ask you to accompany them, give you a truly lousy cup of coffee, then make you wait forever until they grill you for all the details. If, on the other hand, you tell me what the investigation was all about, I could pass that information along, and if it’s not relevant to the murder investigation, you might not have to have that conversation with them at all. Wouldn’t that be better?”

While he paused to think it over, I said, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

“Earl Grey, hot,” he said, leaving me wondering if that was his preference or if he were a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan.

When I returned with his tea and a refill of mine, he seemed more ready to talk. He’d taken off his checked coat and laid it across the next empty chair. After a glance at his watch, he began.

“Okay, the first thing you need to know is that I’ve only worked at the pharmacy for three months. The last place I worked got swallowed up by a huge conglomerate, and my job went to a perky new grad named Debbie who was happy to work for three-quarters of my salary.” He lifted the tea to his mouth and took his first cautious sip. “Mmm. This is good.”

I nodded.

“I’d used up all my severance by the time I scored the job here. Just the kind of place I was looking for. Not too many independent drugstores left these days. Only, the mom-and-pop shops tend to have moms and pops. The clerk at the desk? She owns the place with her husband. She’s my boss.”

“Which is why you didn’t want to talk there.”

“I don’t want to lose this job too.”

“Yet you’re fearful that you may.”

At this he started into a full-fledged fidget. “You need to understand that I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m careful in my work. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”

I leaned forward. “Like what?”

“Complaints.”

“Look, I know customers can be difficult at times, especially when they’re sick.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve received complaints that I’ve shorted people on their pills. Multiple complaints. I can see maybe making one mistake, not that it’s ever happened before. At least not to my knowledge. I’m usually the one who catches mistakes. Like the time the doctor accidentally prescribed the adult dose of a medication for an infant.” He sat up a little straighter. “I might have saved that child’s life.”

“Nice work,” I said.

“I take pride in my work. Not like certain teenyboppers named Debbie. So the first customer who came in complaining, I apologized profusely. The amount of painkillers is all controlled, so it was a nightmare getting the okay from the doctor and insurance to cover the missing pills, and I had to eat the co-pay myself. But we worked it out, and I thought it was all over.

“Then the next week it happened again. Different customer. I was suspicious, but basically did the same thing. Fortunately it was a different insurance company and different doctor. But two days later … I didn’t know what I was up against. I started counting pills out loud, just to double check.” His eyebrows furrowed. “I’m nearly positive I’m not the problem.”

“So you thought maybe the clients …?”

He leaned forward. “It happens. People strapped for cash have been known to sell their medication. Kids sell their ADHD meds at school to students who find it helps them study, and then they raid their grandparents’ medicine cabinet. There’s always a street market for opiates. I thought that might be happening here. But all of a sudden? I figured there might be some kind of conspiracy. So I gave the names to Kelley and hired him to check them out. See where they might gather together.”

I rested my elbows on the table. “And he found they met together at senior speed dating, and most of them had their hair cut by Marya Young.”

“It probably sounds absurd,” he said. “All these people are older, respected members of the community.”

“There might be a live one or two in there,” I said, thinking of my writer friend.

“Do you think the police will still want to talk with me?”

I paused for a second then nodded.

He slid back into his chair with an exasperated sigh.

“But,” I said, “don’t wait for them to come to you. When you get off for the day, go straight to the station and tell them all this yourself. It’s better if you volunteer it.” I took a sip and found myself smiling as I set my cup down. “Tell them Liz McCall sent you.”