Panda and Annie’s house was shrouded in ice. The peaked roof had collapsed. The centre was a blackened maw, the sides jagged but standing. Water from the fire hoses had frozen in cascading icicles, some thin and fragile, others thick and dense, layers of them, glossy rivulets that formed arches and caverns with translucent blue green pools at the bottom. More ice piled in creamy, opaque mounds at the foot of walls and around what had once been furniture.
“It looks like something out of an old fairy tale,” said Izzy.
“Yeah. There were plenty of witches in those.” Matt was morose, his hands pushed deep into his pockets, his collar pulled up to his ears. “They got burned up too, didn’t they?”
“I wasn’t thinking of that.” Izzy flicked him and Roxanne a sideways glance.
“It is pretty spectacular—an ice castle,” said Roxanne, trying to sound supportive. The place really looked bleak. She remembered the letter Panda had written to Matt before she died.
Dear Matt,
I’m sorry I’m leaving you with this mess. I’ve checked the house insurance and suicide is covered. Don’t let them tell you otherwise. You can rebuild, if you want. It’s all yours. Annie left everything to me, and she died first. And I have left everything to you. The safety deposit box key is in the glove box of the truck. Number 362, Credit Union in Fiskar Bay. All the papers are there. I hope I haven’t wrecked your life with the RCMP. Sorry again. But there’ll be enough cash for a fresh start, if you need it. Hope not. You’re a good cop.
This whole thing was so stupid. Stella never should have died. I didn’t mean to hurt her. But one death led to the next. First her, then Angus. And Margo Wishart? Left lying out there in the ditch to die? That wasn’t right. She was a friend. That didn’t sit well with me. When we got home, Annie couldn’t wait to get upstairs and start drawing her. I couldn’t stand it anymore. It had all gone too far and it was time for it to stop. So I got the gun and went up there and stood behind her. I shot her through the head. She never knew a thing about it, she was so busy drawing.
I’ve got the pictures she did. Evidence, that’s what you guys need, right? They kind of tell the story. I’ll put them in the truck and then I’ll drive it down the road and leave it where it’ll be safe from the fire. Where you’ll find it. And then I’ll walk back here and I’ll set up the gun. I’ll get the jerry can of gasoline that we keep for the snowblower and start a fire and hopefully I’ll have enough time to shoot myself.
When Stella was lying in a coma and Annie smothered her, she said it was because she couldn’t live without me. And I can’t live without her either. So that’s how it’s all going to end. We’ll go up in smoke together, Annie and me. We won’t need a funeral. This will be it.
You, my boy, are the only person left that will miss me. Don’t be sad.
Love, Panda.
Matt’s a good guy, Roxanne thought. He doesn’t deserve this. How can he not be sad?
The Ident team had left but yellow tape still festooned the place. The insurance agent had taken photographs, shaken his head and gone.
“We have to stick to the edges,” Izzy told Roxanne, but her eyes were following Matt, who had walked off towards the back of the ruined house. The site was unstable. Dangerous. They picked their way over broken pieces of burned timber frozen into patches of ice.
“There’s nothing left worth saving.” Matt kicked aside the burned frame of a chair. “The fire department wants it torn down by nightfall.”
A small, blackened body had been retrieved from the centre of the house. Annie had fallen from the studio upstairs when the floor collapsed. Her oil paints and canvasses had fed the flames. And there had been a much larger body, not quite so badly burned but still beyond recognition, lying just beyond the heart of the fire. The heads of both bodies had been blown half off.
A car drove slowly by, stopped, then drove on again. Gawkers.
Roxanne walked past the garage, which had been doused to save it from the blaze and now formed an icy box. Annie’s car was still inside it. A hole had been hacked into the wall of the adjacent workshop, where Panda had refinished furniture. The RCMP had retrieved a laptop from a cupboard, and a cellphone. They were checking to see if they belonged to Stella Magnusson. And they had found fibres that led them to believe that Stella’s body had been stored there after she had been killed.
Matt was peering inside a freezer that had survived the fire. Izzy stepped next to Roxanne.
“We’ll be all right, you know, me and Matt,” she said with grim determination. “I just hope he doesn’t get transferred out after this.”
“He’ll have to leave this area. He could apply for the Major Crimes Unit.” Roxanne had already thought about that. If he did, he’d still be close enough to Izzy. He could work out of the city, as Roxanne did. “He’d be good at it.” She hesitated before continuing. “It’s not easy,” she warned, “being a couple, with both of you in the Force. There’s always the risk of something going wrong.”
“Like you and that guy you were married to? The one that got shot?”
Roxanne regarded Izzy with surprise. “You knew?”
“Hey, Corporal. Kathy Isfeld and I found the whole story online first day, before you ever got to Fiskar Bay. ’Course we all know.” She started to pick her way over the burned, icy rubble towards Matt, then turned back to Roxanne.
“You know, there’s danger everywhere. Truck drivers die on icy roads. Farm kids fall into grain bins and suffocate. Women get beaten to death. Bad stuff happens. You can’t avoid it. That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
“You know, Izzy,” said Roxanne, “you’d be good in the MCU too. I’d recommend you in a minute.”
“I dunno,” said Izzy. “I want to have a life too. Know what I mean?” She went back to stand beside Matt.
That’s me told, thought Roxanne. This work eats you up. But this case will be wrapped up soon. I’ll get home to my boy, for a while.
“Who would ever want to live where something like this happened? What am I supposed to do with it?” she heard Matt say as she approached. “I still can’t believe that Panda and Annie were the killers. Annie was always different. She was quiet, but I just put that down to her being an artist. I never thought of Panda as dangerous.”
“Your aunt really wasn’t the murderer. It’s because of her that Margo Wishart is still alive.” It was small consolation and Roxanne knew it.
“Yeah. But Panda ended up dead too.” Matt cast her a wry glance, then turned to Izzy. “Want to go with me to the credit union? I should find out what’s in that safety deposit box.”
“Okay,” Izzy said. “You sure you’re done here?”
But Matt had already turned and walked away. He didn’t look back, didn’t lift his eyes off the ground as he walked to the car. Another truckload of sightseers cruised by.
“Creeps,” said Izzy.
As Roxanne turned to open the car door, the sun came out. Crystal light was reflected from the ice-covered house. The icicles resembled the huge, shining teeth of a dark, prehistoric beast. Sooner they bulldoze it the better, Roxanne thought as she started up the engine and drove away.
Visiting hours started at 2:00 pm. At 1:50, Margo heard voices and feet coming down the long, polished corridor. No one stopped them.
“I’m only supposed to have two of you in here at a time,” she said.
“Forget that,” said Sasha. “I’m going to go get another chair.” She left a bunch of wrapped flowers on Margo’s side table.
“We brought lunch and dinner for later so you don’t have to eat hospital food.” Roberta pulled a thermos and plastic containers out of a bag. “One of us will stop by and help you with it until your hands are better.”
Margo had already told them by phone that the hospital staff was good and attentive, but they had made up their minds. “Please don’t open that,” she said, as Roberta began to peel off a lid. “I can’t stand the smell of food right now. And I’ve got concussion, which means I can only have Tylenol for my headache. Can you talk quietly?”
Sasha returned, lugging a chair. “I charged up your iPad. Will you be able to use it?”
“Don’t think so.” Margo waved her wrapped fingers in the air. There was a TV monitor up on the wall. She might be stuck with that for now. The staff would turn it on and off for her. She wished she could hold a book. Sasha was peeling back the paper from the flowers. They were daffodils, with yellow petals just beginning to pop out from green buds.
“Probably shipped all the way from California,” she said, “but smell them.” She held them under Margo’s nose. “Spring, right?”
“I’ll go get a vase.” Phyllis went off to find one.
Roberta inspected the swelling on Margo’s forehead. “Bet you’re going to have two black eyes. You’re going to look worse than me.” She had discarded the eye shield. Her eye was still swollen and was turning into shades of purple and green, edged with bilious yellow. “Is it true Brad Andreychuk found you? ”
Margo rolled her eyes. “Who told you?”
Sasha laughed. “Me. It’s the talk of Cullen Village. Jack Sawatsky says Brad was out fishing all afternoon. He brags all the time about how he knows how not to get caught drinking and driving. Takes the back roads home. So he’s your knight in shining armour. On his trusty Ski-Doo.”
Phyllis had returned. She put the daffodils in water and placed them on the windowsill in the sun.
“I owe him,” Margo said. “Maybe I’ll take him a bottle of rye or something when I get out of here.”
“That’s a waste,” Sasha said. A nurse stuck her head around the door and frowned when she saw the crowd, all seated, coats off. Sasha grinned at her and waved a hand. The nurse departed. “Buy him some beer instead. Did you really drink all that brandy, neat?”
“I didn’t have much choice.”
They all fell silent, thinking of Margo seated at her table, being forced to swallow glass after glass. They had peeled off their coats and pulled the chairs up to the bed. Roberta opened a flask of tea and began pouring.
“It was Panda made you drink it?”
“Yes, but it was Annie’s idea. She was going to kill me with a kitchen knife if I didn’t swallow it.”
“So scary!” said Phyllis
“There was always something a bit off about Annie,” said Roberta.
“Oh, come off it, Roberta,” Sasha protested. “Annie was just different.”
“And intense,” added Margo.
“Well, yeah. That too. But she was a genius. Wasn’t she? Weren’t we all a bit impressed that she was our friend? The famous Annie Chan. Wonder what will happen to her paintings now? Will they tank?”
“Or become collector’s items, for rich people with specialized tastes. If you can put something in that tea to cool it maybe I could drink it though a straw. Corporal Calloway showed me photos on her phone of the drawings Annie did. My car in the ditch on its side and me, lying in it like it was going to be my coffin. That was spooky. There was a painting of Angus going down under the ice. She stabbed him, you know. And she wanted to stab me too. I could tell, the way she handled my boning knife, standing there at the table. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. I wonder why she was so full of hate.”
“Was she?” asked Roberta.
“Yes. You should have seen her. Her eyes glittered with it, from the moment I opened the door and saw them standing there. She was so still and so, well, concentrated. That evening, she loathed me. Or someone like me. Who knows. Annie came with a lot of baggage. She hid it well. We thought we knew her but we didn’t even get close. Wasn’t it all so ingenious? The whole plan to make it look like I had ditched the car and frozen to death out there in the cold? Look at how they tried to hide all the other bodies. Annie thought all that up. That took some imagination.”
“They’re saying Panda and Annie were both burned past recognition,” said Roberta. Again, the room went quiet for a second. “I did like Panda,” she continued. “She wasn’t mean. She just loved Annie too much.”
“We all liked her.” Margo turned her head slowly to look at all of them. “She was fun.”
“Well,” Sasha said, “she might have sent a text to that nephew of hers to tell him where to find you, before she offed herself. She could have made sure you were found in time.”
“I suppose. But I would have definitely been dead if Annie had had her way. Panda persuaded her to make it look like I’d frozen accidentally. That gave me a chance. And I’m sorry she’s gone.”
“So am I.” Roberta leaned forward. “But listen to this. I got a phone call this morning from Mo. She calls herself Magnusson now. She wants to buy out my share of the farm.”
“Really? For her dad?”
“No. She’s going to move in herself. Her and her boyfriend Keenan. She’s going to turn it into an animal shelter.”
“Does she know anything about animals?”
“Sure. She worked in a pet shop. She loves them.”
“Why your place?” asked Sasha. “She’s got Stella’s, right?”
“She’s selling it. To Leo Isbister. He’s got plans to develop the land.”
“Into what?”
“Dunno. She wants to have possession of the farm by the end of April. I’ll maybe have enough to buy a little place of my own out here. Maybe I won’t have to leave after all.”
They all smiled, relieved. Some good news was welcome.
“So there’s just the four of us left. In the book club.” Roberta held out a mug of tea with a straw. “I think this is cool enough for you to drink.”
“Not the same, is it?” Margo sipped. It didn’t taste too bad. She realized she was beginning to feel slightly better. “I’ll be out of here soon. I’m not sure how I feel about going back into my house after what happened there.”
“Tell us when and we’ll come and get you,” said Phyllis.
“We’ll stock up your fridge so you don’t have to cook for a while.” Roberta poured her more tea. “Sleep over if you need company.”
“Bob’ll be glad to go home.” Sasha grinned. “We can do another lunch. Start over. And we still have the book we were going to read. We haven’t talked about that yet.”
“Let’s choose a new one.” Margo said. “We should start fresh.”
The daffodils were opening up on the windowsill. Outside, high up on the eavestrough, was an ice dam, a slab of ice that had built up on the edge of the roof during the long winter months. The February sun was just warm enough for it to begin to thaw. It began to drip, drop by drop by drop.