by Vicki Delany
“I wonder what your interest in all this is, Ms. Hastings,” Erikson turned to Joanna. Reynolds had already escaped and was hurrying down the path, the very picture of a man in agony. He had accepted a posting back to Hope River, where he grew up, happy to spend the few years before retirement in his hometown. He had known Maude all his life.
“The girl is only fourteen,” Joanna reminded the inspector. “I think sometimes we forget that they are still just children, don’t you?”
“I never forget what a fourteen year old can do.” The twinkle was gone and the blue eyes had turned slate gray, as gray as the snow-filled clouds filling the sky outside Maude’s carefully kept home.
Joanna left immediately after the police. Tiffany marched off to her room with a loud slam of the door. Maude sat stunned and mute in her chair. She looked very old. Unable to help, the huge malamute whimpered at her feet.
Work abandoned, Joanna wrestled most of the day with her own better judgement. It was folly to get involved in Tiffany’s life. Clearly she had not endeared herself to Inspector Erikson. She must remember that she found Luke’s body on her property. That alone must put her high on the suspect list, although she had no motive.
Motive, she thought as she paced the small living room. Who would have a motive to kill Luke? Maybe there was no motive, just a random killing, something to do on a Friday night for kicks. She threw another log into the stove. That was a truly terrifying thought for a woman living alone in a cabin in the woods. Much preferable to concentrate on trying to find a motive.
The dwindling stack of firewood reminded her forcefully of Luke and the very few times they spent together. She remembered that he spoke of people, of music and parties, in the woods at night. Teenagers, he had said. Tiffany Jordan among them. He had confronted them and chased them away. She sat at her desk the remainder of the day, too deep in thought to do much work.
Chapter 15
A few days later, Joanna stood at the open fridge, warily eyeing the sparse contents. Dinner tonight was a choice between a leftover pasta dish, which was completely tasteless to begin with, a boring salad, or the ubiquitous peanut butter sandwich. As she was contemplating which was the lesser of all evils a horn sounded in the driveway, announcing a visitor.
She slammed the fridge door shut with a groan. Another busybody with nothing more interesting to do than nose around the murder site.
“Yoo-hoo, anybody home?” Nancy Miller’s piercing voice sounded from the front porch. Joanna wondered why she didn’t simply knock.
Nancy stood at the door looking uncharacteristically shy and insecure. She held a casserole dish out in front of herself like an Inca Priest at the sacrificial offering. “I brought you a little something,” she said shyly. “Everyone is talking about Luke’s body being found here and all. So I thought you might not want to come into town for shopping and all.” She thrust the offering at Joanna.
Joanna accepted it. She had no choice. And it did smell quite wonderful. “Thank you, thank you very much. Won’t you come in.” The words escaped before she could stop them.
Nancy visibly relaxed and smiled as she stepped through the doorway.
“It must have been quite awful for you, Joanna,” Nancy said. “But even worse for poor old Luke. Do the police have any idea who did it?”
Joanna kept her thoughts to herself. “No, I don’t think they do.”
“I heard they brought in a hotshot detective from Toronto,” Nancy went on. “A woman. Can you imagine that?”
“Well actually, I can,” Joanna replied. “There are lots of women in the police now, you know. I had better put this in the kitchen.” She nodded at the casserole dish. “Have a seat, please, and I’ll be right back.”
“It must be quite wonderful,” Nancy chattered as she followed Joanna into the kitchen, “to be a policeman, or woman I guess I should say. I wonder sometimes what I could have done, if Mamma hadn’t died when she did so that I had to come home to Hope River to look after my daddy and the family.”
There was nothing Joanna could say to that. She filled the kettle with water and put it on to boil.
“Maybe I could even have been a writer like you. You could write about this, you know. About the murder I mean. You could write a detective story about Hope River.”
“Well, I’m not a fiction writer. I think I told you that. It’s very different.”
“People are saying that it’s Tiffany Jordan.”
“What’s Tiffany?” Joanna demanded, although she knew the answer already.
“The murderer. They’re saying that Tiffany, or one of her no account friends did it. Tiffany’s jacket, or one just like it, was found with the body, I hear.”
Joanna bristled. She was about to terminate this conversation when Nancy sighed and continued.
“People don’t have enough to do sometimes. I know that Tiffany is into a bad crowd, but that doesn’t make her a murderer, does it? Sometimes I think that teenagers get accused of everything these days. But they’re no different than when we were girls, are they, Joanna?”
In fact Joanna thought that they were much different, but she nodded in agreement.
“I remember Tom Krozenski that I was in school with. He set fire to the principal’s office once.” Nancy laughed at the memory. “He didn’t mean to burn up the whole office. Just thought he would start a little fire in the wastepaper basket, make a lot of smoke and have everyone running around. Instead, the fire got away from him and pretty near burnt down the whole school. All us kids knew it was Tom, of course, but no one let on to the police. Tom’s a professor at some big city university now, I hear. Did all right for himself, just had a lot of steam to let off when he was young, is all.” Nancy accepted a cup of tea, added a splash of milk and three spoonfuls of sugar, and they carried their cups back into the living room.
“So when people come into the store and say that Tiffany and her friends killed Luke, just because they don’t like the way they dress or the way they do their hair, or the way they talk, I have to fight really hard not to tell them to mind their own business. I started to argue with John Dietrich this morning, right in the store. John says that Tiffany sassed him once, and he thinks that makes her a murderer. Damned fool. Uncle Jack got real mad at me. Told me to mind my mouth, that the customer is always right. Maybe so, but it makes me real mad. And it’s not as if Uncle Jack isn’t above sassing a customer if they get in his way.” Nancy’s pudding face was set with fierce determination and her eyes flashed with the injustice of it all. She took a deep breath and sipped carefully at the hot tea.
With a pang of reproach, Joanna saw Nancy in a new light. She had been far too stuck up to venture beyond this woman’s country-peasant exterior to even try to guess at the emotional depths of the person beneath.
Nancy finished her tea quickly and rose to her feet. “Anyway, I hope you enjoy the casserole. I have to be getting home now. Bill will be wondering where his dinner is. He gets right annoyed if it isn’t on the table smack dab at six o’clock.”
Nancy bustled off in a flurry of good-byes and furious honking of the overworked car horn. Joanna watched her until the headlights of her car disappeared down the road and the engine faded into the distance. Only then did she push her guilt to the back of her mind and rush back to the kitchen to inspect the casserole pot. She lifted the heavy lid and waves of warm, fragrant steam rose up to greet her. It was a dish of chicken, cooked in a thick mushroom sauce with bright splashes of red and green peppers, resting in a bed of fluffy white rice. She took a deep breath and sighed with contentment.
She popped it into the oven to stay warm and went into the bedroom to check for messages on the answering machine.
The little light was blinking angrily, chastising her for ignoring it all day, but the messages were all hang-ups, except for Fred Blanchard anxiously inquiring how the work was going, and Scott O’Neill asking her to return his call.
Fred could wait. She called Scott.
His
voice was warm and deep, sounding genuinely pleased to hear from her. It wrapped her in a nice comfy feeling, which she decided to ignore, for now.
“We didn’t get much of a chance to talk,” he said, “the day of the search for Luke. I heard that you found the body and all…and I was thinking that must be pretty hard to take…so I was wondering, if you have the time that is, if you would like to go into town for a burger or something? I could come by your place and pick you up.”
She was bone tired. As nice as it would be to go out on a real date she was about to say no, explain that she was too tired to go out and hope that he wouldn’t take it as rejection. But a whiff of Nancy’s chicken and mushroom casserole floated tantalizingly through the cabin. “I have something in the oven right now. There’s plenty for two. Why don’t you come and have dinner here with me?”
“Great,” Scott said with enthusiasm. “Let me know how to get to your place and I’ll be right over.”
Joanna gave him the directions quickly and hung up the phone. She rushed about the little cabin, picking up discarded clothing, tidying her desk, putting away the remains of the breakfast dishes and mopping the floor.
Once the living room and kitchen were moderately tidy she stood at her bedroom closet, staring blankly at the contents. Not a single thing looked suitable. She had one or two business suits, far too severe for a spontaneous dinner at home, or jeans and track suits, too casual. She finally decided on a pair of jeans matched with a crisp white blouse and a denim vest. She dabbed a bit of makeup on her eyes and cheeks and fluffed her short curls. Too late to wash her hair now. She stood in front of the long bathroom mirror. Perfectly dreadful, but it would have to do. At the last minute she added a dab of perfume. A Christmas gift from her former mother-in-law, hardly ever used.
Fortunately there were plenty of fresh vegetables in the fridge. She tossed them together in a large wooden salad bowl to serve as the first course. Nothing for desert. Couldn’t be helped. She placed fresh candles on the table and arranged her favorite CDs in the player.
All too soon she heard the familiar sound of a car pulling into her driveway. She fluffed her curls one last time, straightened her smile and went to open the door.
She watched Scott make his way down the hill. An hour ago she was dead tired, mentally more than physically, but now she was pumped and energized.
Scott passed her a bottle of wine prior to discarding his heavy outdoor clothing. His very presence filled the tiny cabin to overflowing. “Not a very good bottle, I’m afraid,” he said, “but the best I could do at such short notice.”
She smiled. “I have something we can start with.” She produced a bottle that she had opened earlier to decant and poured them each a glass. Scott nodded in appreciation and they settled in the living room before the old wooden stove. A Beethoven sonata clicked into place on the CD player. Perhaps she should have chosen something a little less romantic.
“I heard what happened,” Scott said, stretching his long denim-clad legs out toward the fire. “Of course everyone in this part of Ontario is talking of nothing else. Must have been rough. Finding the body, I mean.”
“Yes, it was. And the police have been nosing around ever since. Along with every busybody in the district.”
“It’s a small community. Hard to get used to at first if you’re from a big city or the suburbs. What brought you up here, anyway?”
They chatted casually for a while, avoiding anything serious, about Scott’s art and Joanna’s attempts to set up her business.
His eye settled on the group of family photographs arranged on the little table. “Are those your children?” he asked. “Nice looking kids. What are they up to now?”
“Dinner should be ready.” She hurried into the kitchen to pull the casserole out of the oven, hoping it wouldn’t be cold. She had turned the oven off an hour ago, afraid that it would overcook.
It was perfect. Once they finished Joanna’s bottle she opened the one Scott had brought. When the meal was finished and the last of the wine poured, he helped Joanna carry the dishes out into the kitchen and washed up while she tidied the table and put the salad ingredients back into the fridge. She ground beans and put the coffeepot on while Scott went to stand by the big front window looking out over the lake.
“It’s a lovely night out,” he said. “Why don’t we go for a walk and have coffee later?”
“Sounds like a great idea.”
A full moon shone heavy and white in the clear night sky, reflecting enough light off the snow to give the appearance of a ghostly sort of daylight. A scattering of stars twinkled high above, only the brightest able to pierce through the brilliance of the moonlight. There was no wind.
In contented silence they walked down the hill toward the lake. Remembering what she had found there, Joanna turned sharply from the path and they cut through the woods to come out at the water’s edge close to the boundary of her property. They climbed over the rocks at the shoreline and walked out onto the thick layers of ice that now constituted the lake. The howl of a wolf could be heard very faintly in the distance.
“Are you happy up here?” Scott asked, taking her mitten-wrapped hand in his. “This is quite a change from your life in Toronto.”
“That it is,” she said, “but I’m very happy. At least I think I am. After all that’s happened over the last few years, it’s hard for me to tell what’s happy, and what’s just feeling numb.” She briefly considered confiding in him about the darkness in the woods and the scratching at the cabin door, but as with Inspector Erikson, she feared that he would think her weak and frightened, a hysterical woman not able to cope with life on her own. So she said nothing.
They walked on.
“Except for all this horrible business about Luke of course.” Joanna broke the silence. “I really came up here just to be alone. I was sick of the corporate rat race, of spending as much time playing politics as doing my job. I knew that if I set up in business on my own, I couldn’t earn enough to stay in the city, at first anyway, so I wanted to find someplace where I can live really cheap, at least while I see if I can make it on my own or not. So I took this place. And it suited me to come up here. I was also tired of people making demands on me all the time. I’ve always been a bit of a loner, but with three children and a house in the suburbs that’s pretty hard to do. So, now that my children don’t need to be living with me any more I wanted to really experience living alone.” Joanna breathed the night air deeply. It filled her lungs, clear and crisp and cold. But all she could think of was the bulk of the man beside her, of how his beard was filling with crystals of ice, of his tender brown eyes and soft understanding voice.
“We’d better turn back,” he said. “It can be hard to find your way out here in the dark.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you like it up here?”
“Yes, I like it very much. Like you, I need to live someplace cheap and the surroundings are a good deal more pleasant than in some starving artists’ community in the city. I need the quiet to work. A lot of artists can just block everything else out and get on with making art. But not me-I get far too distracted when things are happening around me. I guess I’m a loner, too.”
Scott stopped walking and dug into the snow with the toe of his boot. “Look Joanna,” he mumbled, suddenly a tongue-tied little boy. “I want to apologize again about what happened the other day in North Ridge. I really don’t know what I said to make you so mad at me, but I am sorry that I upset you.”
Joanna mumbled back, “Never mind, it was nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. I want to understand. I got the feeling that we were talking about more than Maude’s granddaughter. Am I right?”
She reached out and took his hand. “It’s not something I talk about, okay? I overreacted, so can we just leave it like that. Please?”
He squeezed her hand through two pairs of thick mittens. “If that’s the way you want it.”
They smiled at each other
and continued walking. All too soon the lights from Joanna’s cabin shone through the bare trees. Scott climbed up onto the rocks and reached down to help Joanna up after him. When she stood beside him again, he did not release her arm. They looked at each other for a long moment. Scott placed one arm behind her back and bent down. He kissed her gently on the lips; she lifted her arms and held him close, returning the kiss. She had never before kissed a man with a beard-it was rough and scratchy against her face. Scratchy, but thoroughly pleasant at the same time.
“Ms. Hastings, are you down there?” Inspector Erikson’s voice cut through the forest silence like a gun shot. Scott and Joanna leapt apart like a couple of naughty teenagers caught saying good night in the back seat of the family car.
A beam of light from a powerful flashlight danced down the hill and came to rest on them. The light remained fixed firmly on their faces as they climbed the slope.
“What could you possibly want at this time of night?” Joanna snapped on reaching the cabin. Inspector Erikson and Staff Sergeant Reynolds stood on the porch waiting for them.
“I have a few more questions, if you don’t mind,” Erikson said, politely. Joanna knew that whether she minded or not amounted to absolutely nothing. Grumbling, she led them all into the cabin.
“I don’t believe we’ve met.” Erikson smiled at Scott and held out her hand. Joanna introduced them. She did not ask the police to sit down.
“I think one detail was overlooked the other morning,” the detective said. “Tiffany Jordan told us that it was after her grandmother went to bed that she got home that night. Do you know what time it actually was, Ms. Hastings?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because I think you might be able to tell us.”
