*Many years ago, Colin had built Bobbie a gazebo so she could sit and enjoy the pond and rock garden in their backyard. At eight o’clock that evening, Bobbie and her mother were in the gazebo, unaccustomedly sharing a bottle of white. The body recovered from the bank of the Boundary River had been identified and the news was all over town. Dean Kavanaugh, just thirty-seven years old, had once been a close buddy of Jesse’s, and Bobbi’s nephew was badly shaken. So was Bobbie.
Dean was a former student, and though not scholastically or athletically gifted, he’d had a goofy nature that made him stand out from the hundreds of children she’d taught during her career. She’d never forget the time he stuck two test tubes up his nose, then flopped around the classroom pretending to be a walrus. Anything for a laugh, usually at his own expense, though not always… Some of the pranks he and Rene LaPierre had pulled on George Linderman had been downright cruel.
Bobbi’s phone rang. She glanced at the display. “It’s Mac again.”
“Oh dear,” her mother said. “More news about Dean I suppose.”
Bobbie put the call on speaker. “Hi Mac. Mom and I are on our second glasses of chardonnay.”
“You’ll be glad of those drinks. The latest news isn’t good. Jesse just heard from one of his buddies at the fire station. The coroner says Dean didn’t die from drowning. He was already dead when he went in the water.”
“What?” Bobbie scrambled to make sense of this. “Did he have a heart attack?” Surely he was too young.
“Blunt force trauma to the head is what happened.”
Bobbie took a moment to process that. “Did he fall on a rock and hit his head?”
“Uh, no. Based on the location and shape of the blow…well, the coroner thinks someone came up from behind Dean and bashed him good and hard with something like a crowbar.”
Bobbie exchanged a dismayed glance with her mother. It was Riko who spoke next. “So poor Dean was…killed?”
“Looks like it. The coroner hasn’t prepared her final report, but the serious crime unit in Kelowna has been notified and the local RCMP are already at the scene gathering evidence.”
Kelowna, the closest major city to Tangle Falls, was almost a three-hour drive from here. So they’d mobilized quickly.
“Do they know where this happened?” Bobbie asked.
“Yeah. Dean’s truck was found at the Canal Flats parking lot. His rod and tackle box were still on the bank, next to a pool of dried blood.”
Bobbie shivered at the mention of blood. Poor Dean. She knew Canal Flats well, it was a local favorite, just a few miles upstream from where Dean’s body had been found. She herself had fished there, both with her father and brother and later with her husband.
Bobbie took a sip of wine and composed herself. “This is awful. Why would anyone…” She let the question dangle, knowing her brother wouldn’t have the answer any more than she or her mother did.
But maybe her nephew? “Does Jesse have any ideas about this?”
“None. But he sure is torn up.”
“Who would want to hurt that nice fellow?” Riko said. “He always made me laugh with his corny jokes when I went to the post office.”
“His poor family. Mac, do you know if Dean was married? And are his folks still alive?”
“Yes, to that last question. They won a fairly big lottery a few years ago and moved to Victoria. As for Dean, he wasn’t married but he’d been living with his girlfriend, Amanda Grayling, for almost a year. Jesse broke the news to Amanda about Dean. She took it hard. She told Jesse that Dean left their house early this morning, just after dawn. He said he was going to Canal Flats to fish for a few hours before his shift at the post office.”
“Did he go alone?”
“Not sure. According to Amanda, Dean was supposed to be meeting someone. She didn’t know who, Dean didn’t say. But when the RCMP checked the parking lot at Canal Flats all they found was Dean’s truck and tackle box. No sign of anyone else.”
“What about Dean’s phone?”
“They found that too, in the river. Smashed and waterlogged, it won’t be of any use to anyone.”
“Maybe the friend Dean intended to meet didn’t show up,” Riko said. “Which is too bad. If someone else had been with Dean, maybe they could have saved his life.”
Bobbie hated the dark thought that rose at her mother’s words. But with the silence on the other end of the call she suspected her brother was thinking the same thing.
Maybe the so-called friend had shown up. Only, instead of saving Dean’s life, he’d been the one to end it.
*
Bobbie supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised when an RCMP officer showed up at her front door the next morning, shortly after she and her mother had breakfast.
“Constable Jake Kowalski,” he said, showing her his badge.
“Nice to meet you, Constable. Are you with the Midway Detachment?”
He shook his head. “Major crimes in Kelowna. We’re investigating the death of Dean Kavanaugh. I understand you made the 911 call yesterday to report a body on the side of the Boundary River?”
“I did.” Dean’s death was the first thing she had thought about that morning, totally eclipsing her anticipation for the upcoming street party. “I gather you have questions?”
“Yes ma’am.”
She gestured for him to sit in one of the wicker chairs on the veranda. Constable Kowalski looked to be in his mid-thirties. He was very tall—even taller than Leif she suspected—but also very thin with a coltish lack of grace in his movements, as if he’d never quite become accustomed to the length of his limbs. After almost tripping over one of her flowerpots, he settled into his chair and fixed her with a kindly, but serious gaze.
“Can you please describe for me what you saw yesterday?”
Carefully Bobbie recounted the moment she’d spotted the unusual flash of color on the river’s edge. She explained about being a birder and having binoculars in her messenger bag.
“That was lucky,” the constable said. “We might not have found the body for days if you hadn’t been able to take a good look.”
“I suppose it was lucky, from the point of view of the investigation.” She herself took no pleasure from having been the one to find the body.
“Did you know Dean Kavanaugh?”
“He was a former student, so yes. Plus, he worked at the local post office, so I saw him there on occasion. But I didn’t know him well. I didn’t know, for instance, he had a live-in girlfriend named Amanda.”
The constable raised his eyebrows. “But you know about Amanda now?”
“My nephew Jesse McArthur is a friend of Dean’s. Jesse’s a volunteer fireman. He was the one who broke the news to Amanda.”
“I see. Back to Dean. Were you aware of any money problems or personal conflicts in his life?”
“No. Our conversations at the post office were short and superficial.” She hesitated. “He was always cheerful and courteous. He didn’t act like someone who had serious issues.”
“I hear he liked practical jokes. Do you think it’s possible he could have offended someone that way?”
“It would have to be some awful prank to lead a person to murder. I can’t imagine Dean doing something so malicious.”
“The damage of a prank can only be measured by the victim.”
Bobbie looked at him thoughtfully. “Yes.”
Especially if a person was repeatedly, relentlessly, the target of those pranks. Like another of her former students, George Linderman.
Kowalski must have seen something in her expression because he pressed the point. “Do you know of anyone who might have been a special target of Dean’s pranks?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
George and his family hadn’t been treated kindly by the people of this town. In the absence of any evidence of his involvement, Bobbie was not about to bring more trouble to George’s doorstep.