The reporter rocked on her fashionable ankle boots. ”What do you think? Who killed Hank Miller and the children, and why has Fran Miller disappeared?”
Tessa kept her rising anger under control. The reporter was only doing what her boss had told her to do. And the media was important in the search for Fran. “Please help us find Fran Miller,” she appealed to the young woman. “We have no idea where she might be. Please ask your readers to report to the police anything relevant they might have noticed. Every little observation might help us find Fran.”
“We will certainly do that,” said the reporter. “Maybe you could also be helpful . . . to us, then everybody would be helping each other.”
So young and already so smart, Tessa thought. She couldn’t really be mad at her because she recognized herself in the reporter’s ambition. She spit out: “Fran was apparently seen on Monday in Whatou Lake.” She saw how her father shuddered and spilled coffee on his pants.
The reporter’s face lit up. “Where was she seen?”
“I have no idea. I didn’t have time to really look into it. Maybe you could pursue the matter?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Tessa saw Ron Halprin exiting the morgue with the forensic doctor and the male nurse. “Maybe the chief investigator from Vancouver could also tell you something.”
The reporter moved right over to Halprin. Tessa was sure she wasn’t going to find out anything from the sergeant. She grabbed her father by the arm and pulled him toward the doorway.
When they got to the parking lot, he handed over his car keys to her. He only broke his silence when they had left Whatou Lake behind. “Why did you tell the reporter that? This is news to me.”
“So Fran hadn’t told you about Monday?”
“No, no. She . . . What did actually happen?” Exhausted, he collapsed on the passenger seat and groaned like a wounded animal.
She stopped the car, leaned over, and put her head on his chest. With her arms, she embraced his shoulders. “Poor Dad,” she said over and over. “Poor Dad.” And then she also began to cry, but they were tears of anger, anger at whoever did this. The perpetrator had brought so much unhappiness to their family. Actually, two families.
She waited until her father’s body stopped shaking. He sobbed one more time into the Kleenex she gave him. Then she put the Pathfinder back into gear. It began to drizzle. Thin ribbons of clouds were drawn across the gray sky like furrows on a forehead.
“I am sorry, Dad. I didn’t want to overwhelm you with this news. We have to find Fran. And for that, we need all the help we can get.”
Her father didn’t answer.
Discouraged, she went on: “Although I don’t know if it really helps much. You know the people here better than anyone. They won’t go to the police if they know something. They just don’t want to get involved. They would rather gossip about it afterward. They don’t stand up and tell the truth. They’re afraid of retaliation.”
When they reached the highway that ran through the valley, Tessa sped up. The road behind her was empty, which she was glad to see. Nobody was following her. The reporter from the Whatou Lake News was certainly just the beginning. It was only a matter of time before the national media got interested in this story. Suddenly she heard her father’s voice, coarse but now under control.
“Tessa, my dear, we’ve got to pull ourselves together. We have to have a talk before we are home. We have to think about what we’re going to say to your mom.”
She let him keep talking. He had to decide how far he wanted to go. He started with the victims.
“They recognized the guy who did this,” he said. “It was somebody they knew, otherwise they wouldn’t have let this guy get so close to them.”
She thought about it. “Or Hank didn’t consider him to be a threat. Where was Hank found?”
“Tsaytis Chelin said that Hank’s body was outside in the meadow in front of the house.”
“And Breena was lying on the bed in her clothes?”
“Yes. Clyde was in the bathroom. Tsaytis didn’t want to talk about Kayley. He . . . simply refused. The only thing he would say was: ‘She was by the basket.’ After that, I couldn’t get anything more out of him.”
She blinked over and over because the tears were starting to come again.
“Maybe he meant the laundry basket in the parents’ bedroom.” The two little ones often played there so that Breena could have some peace and quiet in the other room.
The conversation they were having sounded so surreal after everything they had just seen. Since yesterday, the rules of the normal world no longer applied.
She didn’t take her eyes off the road. “This might have been how it played out: First this guy shot and killed Hank outside in the meadow. Without the children noticing. Hank often did shooting practice outside. The kids were used to hearing shots.” She took a deep breath. “Then the perpetrator went into the house. The children didn’t have any reason to be suspicious. Breena was next. Because she was in the children’s bedroom. Clyde, who was in the parents’ bedroom, must have heard the shots. Maybe he went to see what was going on and saw the murderer. He fled into the bathroom. Had somebody kicked in the door there?”
Kenneth Griffins shook his head in desperation. “I don’t know. Tsaytis didn’t say anything about it. And now he won’t talk about it anymore. Not a word.”
She wasn’t surprised. Tsaytis certainly must have known that the family would see him not only as a witness but also as a potential murder suspect.
Kenneth Griffins broke into her thoughts. “Maybe he tried to hide Kayley.”
“Who?”
“Clyde. He always wanted to be Kayley’s protector. The last time he was at our place, he pulled Kayley away from me. ‘It’s my job to protect her,’ he said.”
Tessa wrinkled her face. “But surely not from you, Dad.”
“I think he was a little jealous.” Kenneth Griffins’s voice became soft. Then he abruptly changed the pitch of it: “The monster shot Clyde through the right eye.”
She grabbed hold of his hand and held it, just as he used to do with her. She found it impossible to tell him that she had read about a similar wound; that child had been killed by her own mother as she came home drunk after a fight with her boyfriend. She shot her four children. One of the bullets had also gone through the right eye of one of the victims.
She stopped short, opened the door, and ran out to the embankment where she threw up with terrible cramps.
She heard a car stopping, but when she tried to turn around, she vomited again. She heard voices and footsteps, and then her father grabbed her by the sleeve. He passed a water bottle over to her and looked worried. She rinsed out her mouth.
“I’m okay, it’s getting better,” she said to him.
Then she saw a tall man standing next to a dark pickup. He was wearing a cowboy hat and a checkered flannel shirt but didn’t have the usual jeans on; instead he wore clean cargo pants.
Kenneth Griffins waved to him. “Thanks for stopping by, Telford. I’ll give her a lift back home now.”
The man put his hand on his hip. He hesitated to get back into his pickup. “I . . . I’m so sorry . . . about what happened to your family. Can hardly believe it.”
“Neither can we,” Kenneth Griffins replied, getting into the driver’s seat of the Pathfinder and starting it up.
“Who is that?” Tessa asked when the dark pickup passed them on the road.
“Telford Reed. Eric Reed’s son.”
Eric Reed was someone she knew about. An outfitter who brought clients from all over the world to the Whatou Lake area and guided them on hunting trips through the Watershed Valley and the coastal mountains. One day, the Sitklat’l made him an offer. They would pay him a lot of money each year if he agreed not to use the outfitter license he got from the provincial government. The Sitklat’l, who owned Watershed Lodge, didn’t want trophy hunters killing grizzlies or other animals in the area, because that would sca
re away the tourists who came to the lodge for bear-watching adventures. Every year Eric Reed agreed to this arrangement. A couple of months ago, he’d died of a heart attack, and it was still unclear what would happen with his outfitter license.
Tessa drank some more water and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin.
“Eric has a son?” Tessa asked. “Did you know that?”
“Yes, some years ago I heard that there was a son living with his mother in Kelowna. After her divorce, she moved there.”
“And what does the son do?”
“Well, he’s the legal heir of Eric’s outfitter license.”
“But he doesn’t want to go back to trophy hunting, does he?”
Her voice was still hoarse despite the water.
“Nobody knows. The government . . .” He broke off.
They had turned onto the dirt road and driven up the hill. Tessa saw what had distracted her father. A dark-brown pickup in front of the house.
“That’s Lionel’s.” Kenneth Griffins shut off the motor.
Lionel. Hank’s brother. Tessa’s stomach was in knots. Maybe he had some new information. Maybe they had found Fran.
Both of them jumped out of the Pathfinder and ran into the house.
They were met with voices—and barking.
Fran’s dogs!
11
Tessa rushed into the kitchen ahead of her father. The husky mix jumped up on her. Martha Griffins held on to the collar of the German shepherd.
“Have you found Fran?” Tessa called, with an almost childlike hope.
At the same moment, she saw Lionel Miller sitting at the table, his face looking like a death mask. His wife, Cindy, sat next to him with the corners of her mouth twitching nervously.
Tessa knew the answer even before Savannah, who was standing at the window, said, “No.”
She felt as if she had been hit in the face.
Her mother bent over the shepherd and buried her face in its coat.
Tessa sat down across from Lionel. “Do we have anything new?” she asked. Lionel looked at her silently. His eyelids sagged over his lifeless eyes.
Martha Griffins straightened her upper body. “How did they look?”
“As if they were sleeping.“ Kenneth Griffins stood behind Tessa’s chair. “They didn’t suffer. Everything must have happened very quickly.”
Tessa stared at the tabletop and avoided looking at the others.
Lionel’s hands turned into fists. “Why wouldn’t they let us into the morgue, Ken? Was this in agreement with the hospital? Or with the RCMP?”
Cindy pressed her lips together. Her makeup was perfect, as always.
“Not now, Lionel.” Savannah’s voice sounded harsh. “This is not the right time for such things.”
Tessa looked at her surprised. Earlier Savannah would never have spoken with such authority. Earlier she had always played the victim. Or the perpetrator. In extreme situations people acted differently than they usually did. As a lawyer, Tessa knew that all too well. Just as Lionel, under overwhelming pain, turned confrontational today. Otherwise she knew him as a sympathetic loyal friend.
He was not avid for revenge like his father Harrison Miller, the mayor. Lionel had always supported the marriage of Fran and Hank—just the opposite of his parents. He was the younger of the brothers, an electrician who had his own firm in Whatou Lake. Soon after he had established it, he was able to hire three people.
Tessa did not really get along well with Lionel’s wife, Cindy. She came from Banff, and just because of that she felt superior to the people in Whatou Lake. Cindy owned a high-class women’s clothing store she named Cindy’s Boutique, but Tessa never shopped there. Sometimes she felt almost sorry for Cindy. Life in monotonous Whatou Lake could not have been easy for her. Even if she had married a very handsome man. Lionel had gotten his good looks from his father.
He had met Cindy at international sporting events. Both of them wanted to make the Olympics in rowing. Lionel had been kicked off the Olympic rowing team because supposedly he had used performance-enhancing drugs, something he vehemently denied even still. His sports career was destroyed by the doping accusations. Cindy’s ambitions didn’t materialize, either. She had never recovered from a bad shoulder injury. Tessa assumed that they both looked for comfort and understanding and found it with each other. In any case there was a time when Lionel had tried to leave Cindy, shortly before their wedding. She had become depressed and bitter. She simply couldn’t deal with her failure. Cindy’s pain reminded Lionel of his own crushed goals, which he loathed. Hank and Fran, who could see the problems coming for this marriage, did not openly take Lionel’s side. But privately, they agreed with him. In the end Cindy gained the upper hand with the active support of Harrison Miller, who thought Cindy was a good catch for his son. Compared to Fran’s problematic background, Cindy’s family looked attractive.
Tessa shifted her eyes from Savannah to Lionel. “When are we going to start searching?”
He wrinkled his brow. For the first time, he looked more like a human than a mummy. “Didn’t the police inform you? You were there today.”
“Inform me about what?”
“Somebody found Fran’s jacket.”
Tessa’s heart started beating wildly. “Found where?”
“In Whitesand Bay.”
She felt all eyes on her. Even her mother looked at her briefly before lowering her gaze.
Whitesand Bay. A cursed place that still haunted Tessa. Nobody in Whatou Lake would associate the name anymore with a bright, beautiful sandy beach. Or with a pretty bay lying at the edge of the temperate rain forest where, on a hot summer day, you could find yourself sitting in the shade. For the last twenty years, they would think only of Jenny Dole and her tragic death. And after Jenny, they would think about Tessa Griffins and Tsaytis Chelin, who were there on the same day. After that dreadful tragedy, Tessa had never gone back to Whitesand Bay. What in God’s name was Fran doing there?
“Why are you all looking at me like this?” Tessa’s nerves were on edge. “You all seem to know more than I do.”
Savannah blurted out: “Hogan Dole found the jacket. He went out there to see if Jenny’s cross was still standing. That’s where he found Fran’s jacket thrown over the cross.”
Hogan Dole. Jenny’s father. After his daughter’s terrible death, he had erected a white cross in Whitesand Bay. The cross Tessa had seen that morning from the plane. But there was no jacket on it then.
“How does he know it’s Fran’s jacket?” Her father said exactly what she thought.
Lionel jumped in ahead of Savannah this time.
“Hogan found an old library card with her name on it in an inside pocket.”
“Anybody could have put that in there.” Tessa shook her head angrily. “Surely that has been staged.”
Fran would never have gone to Whitesand Bay, and especially not to Jenny’s memorial cross. Tessa continued: “Or somebody dragged her out there against her will. Has anybody searched the place?”
“We’re only allowed to go there once the police have secured it.” Lionel hesitated, then he added: “Hogan is going around saying that he saw blood on the jacket.”
Her father looked at her. “Tessa, tell us what Sergeant Halprin told you.”
Once again all eyes turned on Tessa.
“Fran was seen in Whatou Lake on Monday. The day before the murders.”
Lionel hammered on the tabletop with his fists. “What, and I’m just hearing about it now? How can I organize a search party when nobody bothers telling me things like this?”
Cindy tried to calm him down. “Darling, you shouldn’t think that you have to take on all the responsibilities. Tessa is here now, and she will be a big help.”
“In any case, the search has to be coordinated with the police,” Tessa added.
“Whose blood was on the jacket?” Savannah chipped in.
“Enough of this.” Kenneth Griffins cut off the conversation.
“We’ll discuss that in my office.”
Martha Griffins suddenly raised her head. Her eyes looked glazed. “No, I want to know everything. That’s the last thing I need, for you to keep some information secret from me.”
Savannah pushed back her chair. “Maybe the RCMP should interrogate Hogan Dole. I mean, it’s an amazing coincidence that he’s the one who found Fran’s jacket.”
Tessa tried to ignore her. “Where’s the jacket now?”
Lionel stood up. “At the police station, Hogan says.”
Tessa looked up at him. He was a mountain of a man. Cindy also stood up, almost as tall as Lionel, but her soft voice seemed to belong to a smaller person.
“Tell them what you are planning to do next, dear.”
Lionel put his arm around her shoulder.
“We’ll begin searching at Whitesand Bay, as soon as Sergeant Halprin gives us permission. The police are already going door to door in Whatou Lake. We’ll also check out the area around Whitesand Bay. For instance the path through the woods.”
Tessa frowned. “And you won’t be searching around Fran’s house?”
Lionel patted one of the dogs that was rubbing his legs before he answered. “The RCMP have already started there. And I only want a few experienced people who know their way around in the bush. This is no place for Sunday hikers.”
Tessa knew what he meant. In the wilderness it was very easy to get lost or break a leg.
“Hank was having problems with a grizzly before he . . .” Lionel cleared his throat. “The goddamn bear wanted to get at his chickens, and it wasn’t even scared off by gunshots.”
“That’s what happens when you have hens in grizzly country.” Savannah was standing behind Martha and put her hands on her shoulders.
Tessa felt provoked by this gesture just as much as she was by Savannah’s words. “That’s because they needed the eggs. Is that so hard to grasp?”
Savannah changed the subject abruptly. “By the way I’m warming up some noodle gratin. And goulash. Cindy and Lionel, do you want to eat with us?”
MURDEROUS MORNING: A heart-stopping crime novel with a stunning end. Page 6
