Murderous Roots

by Virginia Winters

  Murderous Roots

  Dangerous Journeys, vol. 1

  Virginia Winters

  From The River Publishing

  Murderous Roots

  by

  Virginia Winters

  copyright 2009 by Virginia Winters

  Cover art by Karen Phillips, 2017

  Publishers Note: This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Author or Publisher, excepting brief quotes to be used in reviews.

  ISBN: Print: 978-0-9959208-0-4

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  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About the Author

  The Facepainter Murders

  34. Chapter 1

  Also by Virginia Winters

  Chapter One

  The phone she held beat an erratic tattoo on her thigh. She steadied it and breathed. Blood thickened where it oozed from the body's nose and out onto the carpet. The pale blue eyes stared into the spreading pool. A long navy skirt covered the body's legs to just above a pair of black flats. Anne knelt, pushing back her own jacket to keep it out of the blood. The hand was cold, and the only pulse she could feel was her own.

  The skull was crushed above the right ear. She ran her fingers over the sharp indentation. How she hated trauma. Nausea threatened to overwhelm her, and she sat for a moment, before making the call. The receiver of a telephone dangled from the desk. Best not to touch that, she thought.

  Outside, she pushed 911 on her cell.

  "Operator, please send the police to the Culver's Mills Public Library. A death."

  She went back inside and sat on one of those pale oak chairs that are supplied to libraries. The large clock on the wall ticked on--five minutes, fifteen, twenty. Perhaps she hadn't reached the right operator. Perhaps the police came from Burlington. She put the phone in her purse and leaned back against the wall and breathed and thought about why she came.

  Three days before, she slammed the trunk of her new Honda and took a last look round her house. Eloise, her nearest neighbor on the lake and a dear friend, promised to drop in and talk to Albert, her Siamese, as well as to feed him. The young woman who came to take over her practice fitted in with her staff (not an easy task) and was interested in the kind of patients she had. She called this retirement to the world, but she wasn't sure how long she would last without the daily rewards of medical practice.

  She was tired. Michael, her husband died two years before. They had no children, and she hoped to carry on in the routine of life would help with her grief. It didn't. Looking after so many children with behavioral and emotional problems took more than she had to give. She realized that she was crawling through her days.

  So she was through. Photography, painting, writing, and most recently, genealogy were interests she turned to. Her own doctor encouraged her to take a long leave, try a different lifestyle. She had no money worries. She and her husband both inherited wealth, in her case quite unexpectedly from a heretofore-unknown great aunt. That discovery sparked her interest in genealogy and brought her to sit on this chair, staring at a body. How long had it been? She checked her watch—twenty minutes.

  Enough, she thought, as she stood up and walked to the door intending to call again. A police car parked at the curb and a young man ran up the steps of the library, pushed open the main door, and stopped as he reached her at the entrance to the adult section.

  "Hello," she said.

  "Who are you?"

  "Doctor. Anne McPhail."

  "Could I see some identification, please?"

  Anne handed him her passport and Canadian driver's license.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "Genealogy research," she said, knowing that he likely didn't understand.

  "What?"

  "I am looking for my roots, Constable."

  "Deputy Graham, ma'am.”

  "Deputy."

  "Could you stay here?"

  He walked to the corpse without waiting for an answer.

  "Was this exactly as she was? You didn't touch anything?" he asked.

  "Nothing."

  "I'll have to see your purse and search your car, ma'am."

  "That's fine."

  He could search her car and her purse all he wanted, she thought, as long as he didn't want to search her. Her dark blue jeans and a casual yellow shirt didn't leave room to conceal any sort of weapon. She hoped he wouldn't insist that she be searched. At least, he wouldn't do that himself. Or so she hoped. The deputy found only the usual assortment her purse contained: car keys, old MasterCard receipts, too many coins, and a lipstick.

  More waiting and then came the arrival of several more men, some wearing Sheriff's Office jackets. Crime scene crew, she supposed. A stocky man, dressed in wrinkled khaki pants and a red plaid jacket hurried in. A medical bag proclaimed his profession.

  "Hello, Adam. What do you have for me?" the doctor said to one of the men in plain clothes.

  Adam moved aside and showed the medical examiner the body on the carpet. The examination was brief but thorough. The real work would be done at the autopsy. The ME turned the head gently to reveal the deep depression in the skull. Odd, Anne thought, no real breaks in the skin. She shuddered again, imagining the blood and macerated brain that must lie below the skin and broken bone.

  "What do you think the weapon was, doc?" the detective asked.

  "Heavy and smooth, other than that, I'll tell you after the autopsy. Didn't you say a doctor found the body? Where is he?"

  "She."

  Adam turned towards Anne who stood up and put out a hand to the medical examiner.

  "Anne McPhail, Doctor."

  "Donald Roase."

  He shook her hand.

  "Any thoughts?"

  "None whatever. I’m a pediatrician. I don't do much trauma, day to day."

  The doctor nodded as the stretcher arrived for the body.

  "I'll let you know."

  The man called Adam spoke to her. "Doctor McPhail, I'm Lieutenant Davidson."

  Medium height, tanned, thin, dark eyes, dark hair, straight nose and attractive, but with an edge to it, she thought.

  "Hello. Could you tell me, Lieutenant, how much longer you might need me here? I told the deputy what I saw."

  As usual, Anne's nervousness made her sound curt and a little abrasive. Knowing her face was flushing a brilliant scarlet didn't help either.

  "Could you tell me?"

  "Sure."

  With a sigh, she went over it again.

  "Did you come here by chance?"

  "No. I wrote to the librarian here, a woman called Nancy Webb. She told me that her a
ssistant was very good at archival research and would be available today. The lady's name was Jennifer Smith. She is not by any chance—”

  "Yes, she is. You've never been here before or written to the deceased?"

  "Yes, that's right."

  Anne could hear the anxiety in her own voice. He was asking another question.

  "How did you find out about the library and Culver's Mills and the records?"

  "From the internet. The library is listed as one of the premier sources for early French and aboriginal research in the Northeast. Ms. Webb's name is on the site. My fifth great-grandmother was possibly aboriginal, married to a French-Canadian. My third cousin in Elliott Lake found evidence that he spent time in this area."

  She stopped talking as a familiar glazed look came into the policeman's eyes. Not everyone shared her enthusiasm for the minutiae of family relationships.

  "Yes, yes," Adam said.

  Irritated by his tone, she stood up.

  "Lieutenant, I've had it. I'm tired, and I've been sitting on this hard chair for long enough, and I'm leaving."

  She had also had it with hard-eyed policemen.

  "Where are you going?

  "I'm going to Catherine's Bed and Breakfast where a very kind lady is waiting for me. I told her I'd be there before noon. So, if you will excuse me?"

  "Dr. McPhail, don't leave town."

  Hard to believe but he said it.

  "I still have my research to do, Lieutenant."

  Deliberately she made it left-tenant and got the look of disbelief that she expected.

  The yellow tape, familiar from too many cop shows and too many newscasts, surrounded the building entrance. Her Honda was parked in the library parking lot, across from the fire station. She drove off, aware of the stares of the few onlookers.

  A five-minute drive brought her to a grey clapboard house, set back in a flower-filled front yard surrounded by low privet hedges.

  A youngish woman, mid-thirties, with tied-back brown hair and intelligent dark eyes answered her knock. Somewhere inside a dog barked an exuberant warning.

  "Maggie, be quiet," the lady called back over her shoulder.

  "Hello," she said, opening the screened front door, and taking Anne's suitcase.

  She took one look at Anne's face and trembling hands and walked her into her large sunny kitchen and prescribed strong tea with sugar.

  "I'm Catherine LaPlante," she introduced herself as she put a cup of fragrant hot tea into Anne's shaking hand. "You're Anne McPhail?"

  Catherine had the kind of thinness that comes from long hours of hard work, but her smile was sunny and her dark eyes welcoming.

  "Yes. Thank you for the tea. I got the shakes on the way over here."

  "You're welcome. What on earth happened?"

  "I found a body at the library. I'm so cold. Usually, death doesn't affect me this way."

  "I am sure the deaths you usually see aren't violent ones."

  She poured more tea into Anne's cup.

  "Who died?”

  "A woman called Jennifer Smith. Someone has murdered her, I think. Did you know her?"

  "Oh yes, of course."

  Catherine was too shocked to go on.

  "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have been so abrupt in telling you."

  "No, what else could you do? You're still shaking," Catherine said, as she got up and put a throw around Anne's shoulders.

  "How well did you know her?" Anne asked.

  Her gaze moved around the room from the yellow walls and cheerful botanical prints to the dog who watched her intently from her corner under the window.

  "Casually, at the library. I haven't had anything to do with Jennifer socially. Do you want to talk about it?"

  "Not much. That policeman, Davidson? Is he an intelligent guy? I think he thinks I had something to do with it."

  Anne shuddered again.

  "Don't worry about his intelligence. He's a bright guy and really fair."

  "I hope so."

  Anne's voice slurred a little, and her eyelids drooped. Reaction, she supposed.

  "Perhaps a nap?"

  "Oh, yes."

  A nap was what she needed. Odd, how exhausting this all was. The horror of it and her own anxiety, she supposed, as she followed Catherine up the stairs to her room.

  She woke from her nap with a startled memory of the woman's body lying still on the library floor. Thoughts of leaving immediately filled her mind. Fleeing across the border. She laughed at herself. She came all this way to do some research and if they let her in the library that is exactly what she was going to do.

  The scent of fresh coffee dragged her from her lovely room to the kitchen where Catherine was baking.

  "Feel better?" she asked. "Would you like some coffee?"

  "Oh, yes thanks. Much better, and I would love some coffee. Just milk, please."

  She asked Catherine about restaurants in town for lunch and dinner and explained that she hoped she could still do her research.

  Catherine directed her to Lil's Diner and suggested that if she liked, she could have dinner with Catherine and her sons.

  They agreed on 6:30 p.m. and Anne left for Lil's and the library. The short walk in the sunshine under the bright blue autumn sky lifted her mood until she saw the steps of the library. Nonetheless, this was why she came here, she told herself. Get on with it.

  The main section was still taped off, but the stairs to the reference section were open. Her first stop was to speak to the librarian at the reference desk. Both the women behind the long counter seemed to be quite calm, in spite of the terrible event downstairs. Quite odd, she thought. She expected the staff to be too upset to work.

  However, one of the ladies directed her back into the stacks to some books on local history. She wanted to learn what had been happening in Culver's Mills at the time her ancestor was supposed to have been living there.

  Her own ancestor, the French-Canadian fifth great-grandfather was a voyager, a fur-trader and a soldier. He commanded a fort near the border and acted as a liaison between the French and the Indians. Anne thought he also spent time in Vermont and married there.

  She knew that census and church records existed but were scanty for the years she was searching. The librarian had directed her to a tiny old book, the diary of a young French woman who had followed her soldier-husband to the area. She struggled with the archaic French, turning pages slowly, looking for proper names that might be a clue to the people living in Culver's Mills, at that time called Bon Chance.

  Many Beauchamp names filled the pages, but in one entry, written in capitals with exclamations was the word scandale. She found the name of a Beauchamp man, Daniel, the word marriage, and what the writer had called a sauvage. The woman must have been baptized because her name was Marie.

  However carefully she went over the tightly written pages, she could find no record of LaRonde. She wondered what happened to the Beauchamps. She closed the little volume and handed it back to the librarian.

  After her lunch at Lil's, she strolled back to Catherine's. She found her down on her knees in front of a long perennial border.

  "Hi, Anne," she said. "I finally had to do something with these. I neglect them, I'm afraid, in favor of the vegetable gardens."

  "Oh, let me help," Anne offered and went upstairs to change.

  When she came downstairs, she found the policeman waiting for her.

  Chapter Two

  Adam Davidson watched her leave. She was a tiny woman, blonde with green eyes above a nose that just missed being too large for her square face. Doctor or not, she was the only person seen at the library this morning as far as he knew.

  Jennifer Smith had been a fixture in the library since he was a kid. She helped him search through college calendars, teaching programs, and university courses and encouraged him to go to liberal arts at State before Police College. She suggested the night school law courses he still attended.

  Why would anyone want to kill her?
What did she know? What had she witnessed? Too many questions. Later he would realize he'd missed the important one. What did he know about her?

  Like your teacher, your nurse, the doctor, you only saw the tiny professional aspect. Who was she? How did she live? Who did she love, hate? His deputy interrupted his thoughts.

  Deputy Graham sat at the computer.

  ""Lieutenant, look at this. Someone's copied files."

  The screen box read download complete.

  "What did they copy?"

  Computers weren't covered well in Adam's personal database.

  "I don't know. We'll get Brad in here. Or maybe Ms. Webb."

  "Have you called her?"

  "Yeah, she's coming down."

  As he spoke an agitated woman burst through the door.

  "Adam, what's going on? How did this happen? Who would want to hurt Jennifer?”

  Nancy Webb, a tall woman who stood too close, used her height to intimidate. When he didn't move as she loomed closer, she backed away.

  "Someone did."

  Adam went to high school with Nancy. Didn't like her then, didn't like her now, he thought.

  "Is there anything in your files anyone would want to steal?"

  "Steal? Our files are book lists, prices, budgets. There is no value in them."

  She moved to touch the computer keys but stopped at his warning hand.

  "What about personal files?"

  She brushed a nervous hand through her cropped, mouse-colored hair.

  "I don't keep personal files here, but Jennifer kept her research files for herself and library clients on the network. She worked both here and from home."