The snow had settled in by the afternoon. It came down thickly, in small white pellets that accumulated in cracks and folds and crannies, then slowly spread to fill the ground in a dense white cover. It was blown by a wind that had risen in the northwest, up on the tundra, and swept, unimpeded, over the flat prairie landscape. The sky was steely, the light filtered to a dim greyness. It was a miserable afternoon that matched the mood of the RCMP investigative team. Roxanne looked around the room. Coffee cups littered the table, along with notebooks, pens and laptops.
They were four in number. Brian Donohue had arrived from the city, with the snow at his back. Now he stood looking glumly out the window at the falling snowflakes. Izzy joined him. Roxanne overheard them talk about booking him into the hotel for the night.
“Guess so,” she heard him say. He turned back to the table and looked in her direction. “We might have company. The Andreychuks’ lawyer will probably be stuck here too.”
Brad and his father had been released and allowed to go home. Maggie lurked, baleful, in a cell, while her lawyer tried to negotiate her release. Right now he was closeted with Sergeant Gilchrist. Roxanne knew how that would go. He’d get her out on a promise to appear in court. Maggie wasn’t a danger to the public. Gilchrist had made it clear he didn’t want her in a cell all weekend. He didn’t have a bed wide enough for her. She said she suffered from sleep apnea. Izzy had had to lug her machine in with her, the one that kept her breathing at night. She hadn’t stopped complaining since she arrived. She couldn’t get comfortable. The food wasn’t fit to eat. Gilchrist was going to be glad to see the back of her.
Outside, the thick snow muffled noise and had brought quiet to the town. People were going home. Downstairs, one constable manned the front desk. The rest were out on the highway, keeping watch as cars crept their way home through snow that was developing into a whiteout. Schools had closed early, yellow buses were ferrying children home and parents were trying to get back in time to meet them.
Izzy wandered back to the table. “Erik Axelsson’s going to be okay?” she asked.
Donohue nodded. A lock of dark hair fell over his forehead. “It looks like he’ll live. He doesn’t remember a thing, what with the amount of booze he’d drunk and the whack on the head. And the surgery. They don’t know how well he’ll recover. He’s still in the ICU.”
Nothing like amnesia, Roxanne thought, to stop a line of questioning in its tracks.
“The Andreychuks are still suspects, though, aren’t they?” Matt looked up from his computer.
“Sure they are. We’ve got two people that were hit on the back of the head. Same method, right?” said Roxanne. “We know that Maggie hit Erik hard enough to do him a real injury.”
“It could have been a lucky swing,” Matt reasoned, “but does it mean she could have done the same to Stella? Would Maggie have smothered Stella after?”
“Maybe it was Jeremy that did it.” Izzy sat opposite Brian. “Maybe he was out here after all and they’re all lying about that. Maybe he went over to Stella’s place to visit her. What if he really liked Stella? Had a big crush on her?” She warmed to her theme. “I’ll bet she led him on. It sounds like she tried it on with all the guys she met. Maybe he made a move on her and she laughed at him and he got so mad that he hit her. Maybe Jeremy’s more like his mom than we think. He could have smothered her. And then his dad and Bradley chopped her up.” She waited for a response. There was none. “We should have got some doughnuts,” she muttered and went to root around in a cupboard. “There should be a bag of Oreos in here.”
“Cut her up so they could incinerate her?” Matt called after her. “In the outdoor furnace behind the barn?”
“And then they changed their minds?” Brian shook his head. That lick of hair swung above his blue eyes. “The bone particles that were found on the saws from Angus Smith’s place were Stella’s. Why would they go to the trouble of taking her over to Angus Smith’s to cut her up? They’ve got a workshop of their own. And plenty of saws.”
Outside the window the snow was still coming down, thick and steady.
“But it could have been Jeremy that dumped the car at the airport. Isn’t he small enough to be the guy on the airport surveillance video?” Roxanne asked.
“Think so. It’s hard to see, it’s so fuzzy because of the snow. Maybe.”
This was getting them nowhere. Izzy had found the packet of cookies. She dumped it on the table.
“The Andreychuk lead is weak,” said Roxanne. “We need to look at what else we’ve got.”
They moved on to talk about Angus Smith. They knew by now that he had been stabbed in his own kitchen, in the early evening of Monday, January 29. It would have been dark when he was taken out to the lake, in his own truck, to his own ice shack, but there had been a moon that night. There would have been enough light to drive by with the truck lights out. It looked like his clothes had been removed in the house, to make it easier to push him through the ice hole. Someone knew that they’d need to do that. Knew what those ice holes were like. And knew where to find Angus’s shack.
“There was a lot of blood,” Brian said. “They might have wanted to get his clothes off so they could wrap him up, so they didn’t get blood all over themselves, or the truck, or the rest of the house.”
“They?” Roxanne asked. She had wondered about that herself.
“Or a strong person,” Brian replied. “Angus wasn’t big but he must have weighed over 145 pounds.”
“It’s got to be someone local.” Matt was listening, twirling a pen between his fingers.
“Why’s that?”
“Well, they didn’t just know about Angus’s ice shack. We’re assuming that Angus was killed because he figured out that someone had used his workshop to cut up Stella’s body, right?” It certainly was likely. “So they also knew how to find the key to the workshop. Knew there was a band saw in there and they also knew that Angus was staying with his daughter in Winnipeg. His wife was in the hospital. They must have known that too.”
“That could be just about all of Cullen Village,” said Izzy.
“Or someone from the city who comes out regularly.”
The door opened. Bill Gilchrist stuck his head around the door. “Maggie Andreychuk’s been sprung. The lawyer guy is taking her home before we all get socked in. The highway’s dodgy. No visibility. It’s coming down out there. I’m pushing off home. You don’t want to stay too long or you might be spending the night right here.” He whistled his way back downstairs.
“Let’s get this done soon,” said Brian. He sounded exasperated at being stuck out in Fiskar Bay, unable to make any real progress because of a snow day. Izzy was dunking an Oreo in a mug of lukewarm coffee. “What’s happening with Stella’s body?” she asked.
No one had claimed her. The police had been in touch with the parents, in Victoria, B.C. They were retired. The father had dementia and it sounded like the mother had enough on her plate with that. They hadn’t been in touch with Stella for almost thirty years.
“Wonder what they fell out about?” Matt pondered. “There’s no one else?’
“There was a brother but he died years ago. It sounds like the two old uncles who left her the house were the only family left.” Brian was leaning back in his chair, arms folded. He had muscular arms and hands.
“So the parents are living all alone in B.C.? There’s no other family left? And the mother doesn’t even want to bury her? That is pathetic.” Izzy nibbled on the soggy Oreo.
“We still don’t know enough about her,” said Roxanne. It was true. It was as if they had snapshots, ones that only showed what Stella wanted them to see. What had she been hiding? “Leo Isbister says she slept around with lots of guys. She was only married once as far as he knows, to Freddie Santana, but that was years ago.”
“And there’s still no sign of a will,” said Brian. “At least, not so far. No executor, nothing.”
“Guess it’s hard to write a will when there’s no one to leave anything to.” Izzy reached into the bag for another cookie. She appeared healthy and fit. There wasn’t a scrap of fat on her. Roxanne wondered how she did it.
“So who would want to kill her for her money?” asked Matt.
“What money?” Brian raised an eyebrow at him. “She was only earning $30,000 a year from the festival. She racked up about $10,000 in expenses as well. She did a major trip early each year, officially scouting for the festival, and a lot of visiting and sightseeing while she was at it, but the business covered that.”
“So how did she pay for renovating the house?” Roxanne interjected. “Even with the money for expenses, it doesn’t match her lifestyle. She had the best of everything. She dressed well. Apple computers, the SUV’s almost new. Even her luggage is top quality.”
“Maybe the old uncles had a stash hidden under the bed,” said Izzy. “Or she got a pile when she split up with that Freddie guy.”
“My aunt Panda thinks she was putting money away somewhere.” All eyes turned toward Matt.
“Really? How does she know?” Roxanne asked.
“Panda’s an accountant. She’s audited the books for some arts groups so she knows how they work. She figured out that the money and Stella’s lifestyle didn’t match, but she hasn’t ever worked for Stella so she wasn’t really sure.”
“Was she ever on the StarFest board? Got a look at the books?”
“Not really. She got a quick peek at them once, that’s all.”
“Wonder who audits Stella’s books,” Brian said. “We should check.”
“So it’s possible she’s been siphoning off money, and if so, how and to where? Could she have another bank account?” Roxanne felt more optimistic. This was as good a lead as they had right now. It fit with Stella’s laptop and cellphone being missing. Someone didn’t want them to know something and if it was financial, that might be why. “Who do we think would want to kill her because of the money? If she was embezzling funds, who might find out?”
“Smedley. The creepy little guy that’s the treasurer.” Izzy sounded cheerful again. Brian got up and looked at the whiteboard.
“All right. You need to talk to the board members, soon as this snow clears. George Smedley, Sasha Rosenberg, the Halliday woman. They’re all down at Cullen Village, right? The rest?” There were two more.
“Gone south for the winter,” said Izzy. One was in Arizona, the other in Mexico. Brian turned back to face the room. “Let’s wrap it up and see how bad the roads are out there. We might not be able to get very far tomorrow until everything gets dug out.”
“Your room’s booked at the hotel, Sarge. I sent the confirmation number to your phone.” Izzy was already on her feet, reaching for her boots. “You coming, Matt?”
Brian turned to Roxanne. “Want to leave your car plugged in here? We could go over to the hotel in my SUV.” It made total sense. There was no good reason she should say no, except that she didn’t want to get too close to this very attractive guy. Another cop. Not a good idea.
“Okay,” she said.
They all stomped outside into the storm, with scarves wrapped around their faces to ward off stinging snow pellets. They tried to keep the wind at their backs as they swept snow off their cars and scraped ice off windshields. Izzy waved goodbye out of the window of Matt’s car as they left. Soon Brian and Roxanne were chugging slowly along the single open track that led to the hotel. The wipers swept back and forth, struggling to keep a semicircle of glass clear. Snow was blowing straight down in the light from the headlamps and in the cones of orange light cast by the streetlamps. There was no one else about.
They pulled into the hotel parking lot. Brian found a spot close to the door. Wind gusts blew the snow across the beam from his headlights. A deep drift lay along the side of the building. He stopped the car but kept it running. The inside of the car was warm.
“You’re Jake Calloway’s widow,” he said. The question caught her off guard.
“How did you know about Jake?” Her voice came out flat and unemotional.
“I was there, at the funeral,” he said. “I walked behind his coffin.”
The RCMP had arrived from all over Canada that day. They always did when one of their own died on the job. Jake had stopped a speeding truck on the Trans-Canada Highway, a routine call. But the driver had had drugs, and a gun. Jake had been shot point-blank. Died instantly, they said. It could happen to any one of them, just as it had happened to Jake. So the Force had marched, rank on rank of red serge, their polished boots drumming out a requiem on the tarmac. It had been more than two years ago.
“I remember seeing you,” he said. “You held up well that day.”
“Thanks.” Her mouth was dry.
“Look,” he turned off the engine. “We’re stuck here for the night. We might as well keep each other company over dinner, right?”
“Sure,” she said. Of course they could. They stumbled through the snow into the bright warm lights of the hotel.