Murder Among the Pines

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “They want to ask him questions,” Max said. “I doubt they’ll be laying charges.”

  “They’re tearing that room apart up there,” she said. She meant room 511. “We had to move guests off the floor. The officers are giving orders to everybody they see. I think they’re acting like jerks.”

  “Some cops like to throw their weight around,” Max said. She stood to leave. “Call me if they cause too much trouble. I might be able to make it easier for you.”

  Leaving Pam Rosart’s office, she walked across the lobby. Two OPP officers watched as she approached.

  “How are you, officers?” Max said as she passed.

  “Just fine, Chief,” one of them said. They were both smiling.

  Max told herself they weren’t being sarcastic. She went back to the station and stayed there the rest of the day.

  • • •

  Geegee had invited Maxine to share a glass of wine and smoked oysters with her that evening. She also, Maxine knew, wanted to hear as much as Max was willing to tell about Lana Parker’s murder. Geegee’s husband, Cliff, was playing guitar at a sunset concert in the park.

  They sat in Geegee’s living room with its view of the sun hanging low over Granite Lake. It was another splendid summer night in Muskoka. The sight reminded her why she had moved there. She might regret some of the decisions she’d made in her life—like marrying Jim Benson—but she would never regret moving to Muskoka.

  Max rarely drank alcohol, even a half glass of something weak like the Pinot Grigio she was sipping now. She never knew when she might be called to deal with trouble somewhere in town. Having alcohol on her breath at a crime site would be a problem. But she made an exception tonight. Maxine needed to share her feelings with someone she could trust, someone other than Margie or Henry. They would judge her if she showed weakness or made any missteps. Geegee would not.

  “So the OPP is talking to your husband…” Geegee said.

  “Ex-husband.”

  “You kept his last name.”

  “I was too lazy to change it. Plus, it’s the name I’ve used all through my police career.” Max saw Geegee’s eyebrows rise halfway up her forehead. “That does not mean I wanted to stay married to him.”

  “Okay,” said Geegee. “So how come you’re worried he may be charged with murder? And don’t say you’re not. It’s all over your face.”

  “He and I have a past,” Max said. “It wasn’t always good, but it’s like…” She looked out at the setting sun for an answer. “Like an old pair of jeans you own that are torn or too tight. You should throw them out, but you can’t. Every time you look at them, you remember how happy you were when you wore them.”

  “That,” Geegee said, “is the worst excuse I’ve heard since the one about the dog eating your homework.”

  “Yeah, well.” Max smiled and then said, “There’s always the risk that he could be found guilty. Police officers know this can happen. We see it both ways. Bad guys go free, good guys get the shaft.”

  Geegee leaned toward Max. “They took him to Cranston just to ask a few things, right?”

  Max knew where this was going. “That’s all. Just get some facts down for the record.” Cliff Gallup’s car pulled into the driveway. She watched him step from the car and walk to the door.

  “So you don’t think they’ll charge him with murder?”

  Max carefully set her glass aside and stood to leave. “No,” she said. “I don’t expect they will. Hi, Cliff.” She thanked Geegee for the wine, gave Cliff a quick kiss on the cheek as he came into the room and walked back to her house.

  • • •

  Max did not believe in psychics. She did believe in instincts, however. When her telephone rang just as she was getting ready for bed two hours later, her instincts told her it would be bad news.

  “It’s me, Jim,” the shaking voice on the phone said. “They’re charging me.”

  “With what?” She didn’t actually need to ask.

  “Murder. First degree. If I confess, they might make it second degree.”

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “I will in the morning. Look, Max, you know I did not do this.”

  “Just a minute.” She reached for her notebook and opened it. “Do you know a man named Zeyer?”

  “Don’t think so. Why?”

  Max almost told him she had taken Zeyer’s name from Lana’s cell phone. Then she remembered that police had been known to listen to phone calls from jail. “Just someone who knows Margie,” she lied. “He asked about you. How are you doing?”

  “Margie? Who’s Margie?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You know they’re locking me up here, right?”

  “That’s what they do with accused murderers, Jim.” Max didn’t get as much enjoyment from saying this as she had hoped.

  “I need you to help me.”

  “I’ll drive down tomorrow.”

  “Max,” he said, “I need more than that.”

  She hung up without saying goodbye.

  It took a very long time for her to fall asleep.

  FIVE

  The next morning Max’s head felt as though it were stuffed with wool. Old, scratchy, itchy wool. Arriving at the station late, she handed Margie the list of names copied from Lana’s phone. “Call Toronto Police and ask for any criminal records on these names. Photos would be good too. Tell them we’re looking into something here in town. Don’t say it’s about the murder.”

  She reached for one of Margie’s oatmeal cookies. It would be her breakfast on the drive to Cranston. “Where’s Henry?”

  “On patrol,” Margie said. She was frowning at the list. “Downtown near the inn. I thought it would look good to have him there. He called to say four or five OPP teams are still there. They won’t tell him a thing except to get lost. Where did you get these names?”

  “Would you believe they’re my old boyfriends?” She headed for the door. “I’m off to Cranston. To see the OPP. Should be back in two, maybe three hours.”

  “Maxine?”

  Max stopped at the door and turned.

  Margie’s voice had changed. “Don’t take any crap from those guys.”

  • • •

  “This is a courtesy,” Sergeant Gregory Stanton said. He was leading Max down a hall toward the holding cells in the regional OPP building. “I’m very busy dealing with this case. I could easily send you back where you came from. You know that.”

  “I also know,” Max said, looking straight ahead, “that the crime occurred in my jurisdiction. So I have a right to hear basic facts. And he is allowed visits. Whether by another law officer or an ex-wife, it does not matter.”

  “We can withdraw that right at any time,” Stanton said. He did not look at her. “For any reason.”

  “You do that,” Max said, smiling, “and I’ll have six judges come down on you like a ton of bricks.”

  “I have been assigned control over this case,” Stanton said. “I don’t think I need to remind you that it concerns a murder.”

  “Which took place in my area of command.”

  “You will have access to reports. Nothing else.”

  “I am here to be updated.”

  Stanton said, “I don’t need to remind you that you are required to share with us any facts you might come up with.” Neither had looked at the other since they began walking.

  Max wanted to say, Then don’t bother reminding me, but she kept quiet.

  “We, on the other hand, don’t have to share certain facts with you,” Stanton said to her. “Unless we choose to.” He pushed on a heavy door. It opened into a room with three large glass panels. In front of each panel were a stool and a telephone.

  Jim Benson sat on the other side of the middle panel, his hands folded in front of him. At the sight of Max a small smile appeared on his face. He picked up the telephone when Max sat down. Max reached for the phone on her side of the panel and sat staring at Stanton until he left the room.


  “Thanks,” Jim said.

  He began to say more, but Max cut him off. “Have you met your lawyer?”

  “She just left.”

  “Is she cute?”

  Jim frowned. “What?”

  “Is she cute? That’s how you judge women. Do they have a nice butt? Have they got big—”

  “Max!” He spoke so loud, she didn’t need the telephone to hear him. “I’m facing a charge of murder here. How can you—”

  She cut him off again. “Relax. I don’t believe you did it. I just can’t quite forgive you for all the things you did in our marriage.”

  “What does that have to do with my being charged with murder?”

  “Nothing. It just seemed a good time to say it. Are you still telling them that Lana left after taking a phone call in your room?”

  He nodded. “Of course I am.”

  “On what phone? Hers or the inn’s?”

  “The inn’s, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “I was distracted. We were…” He bit his lip and started over. “She’d been teasing me all day and…anyway, when she got the call and said she was leaving, I guess I lost it. Okay?” His words seemed to make him stronger and a bit defiant. “Okay?”

  Maxine sat thinking for a moment. Then she said, “When I saw both of you downtown, she wore a chain around her neck with a ring on it. A diamond ring.”

  “What about it?”

  Max was about to tell him it was gone from Lana’s body. The police will be listening to us, she reminded herself. So she said, “It looked like a nice ring.”

  She watched Jim’s expression change. He nodded in understanding, and his voice became more formal. “It was a very nice ring,” he said. He was almost too careful with his words. “Big stone. Said it was two carats. Mounted in platinum. From Bentley’s.”

  “Bentley’s? Is that the new store trying to outdo Tiffany’s?”

  “So I hear.”

  “Must have cost a fortune.”

  “So I hear,” Jim repeated in the same tone.

  “Where’d she get it?”

  “A friend. That’s all she told me. I didn’t care. She made a big deal of showing it to me and saying a friend had bought it for her.”

  “Must have been a special friend.”

  Jim grunted.

  “She might have been killed for a ring like that,” Maxine said.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Robbery’s a good motive.”

  “I may point that out to my lawyer.”

  “You might also tell her…” Max heard a door open behind her. On the other side of the glass, Jim looked past her and scowled.

  “This visit is over.” Max turned to see Sergeant Stanton reaching for the telephone in her hand. On the other side of the glass an officer was pulling Jim to his feet.

  “This,” Max said standing up, “is not right.”

  Stanton took the telephone from her. “Neither is passing info to a suspect.”

  “I was not passing anything to him.”

  “You did when you suggested something was missing from the victim’s body.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “You had no right to be listening.”

  “So launch a complaint.”

  “I’ll get a court order.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Stanton turned off the light and held the door open. “Tell you what. On your way to see the judge, step into room five down the hall. I’ll bring you a coffee, if you like. How do you take it?”

  “Black,” Max said as she walked past him. “No hemlock.”

  • • •

  Room five was small and gray, furnished with a table and two chairs. A video screen hung from the wall above the table. Stanton had brought two paper cups of coffee and some sheets of paper into the room. He set one coffee cup on the table in front of Maxine and slid a sheet of paper across to her. “Read this,” he said. “It’s a record of the telephone calls coming into the Ainslie Inn on Saturday night. From six in the evening until two in the morning.” He tapped the papers with a finger. “No call was made to room 511.”

  He slid another sheet to her. “This is a list of calls to the victim’s cell phone for the same period. No calls there either. Yet your former spouse tells us she took a call just after midnight. He can’t be sure from which phone. She hangs up and they have a quarrel—a fight, really—and she walks out. He tells us she was on her way to meet whoever called her. But no one called her that night, either in the room or on her cell. By the way, we found tissue under her fingernails. It’s being checked for DNA. Guess whose we expect it to be?”

  Max didn’t need to hear more. She began to stand.

  Stanton held up a hand to stop her. “Before you go,” he said, “let’s watch a movie.”

  He pressed a button on the video. When the screen lit up, Max was looking at an overhead view of the Ainslie Inn’s lobby. The date and time appeared—12:18:02 AM Sunday. Most of the people on the screen were walking left to right across the lobby, toward the elevators. After a moment the slim figure of a young woman appeared walking from right to left. Her dark hair swung as she crossed the lobby. She was wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt.

  “This is from the lobby security camera,” Stanton said. “That’s Parker.”

  Max watched Lana pass a bank of telephones on her way to the lakeside exit of the inn.

  The screen went blank. When it lit again the time read 12:53:18 AM. Almost no one was in the lobby. Within a few moments Jim Benson entered on the right of the picture, taking the same route as Lana Parker. He moved slowly, as though unsure where to go. Standing at the windows overlooking the lake, he checked his watch. Then he walked out of the lobby toward the lakeside exit.

  “You know who that is,” Stanton said. “Now watch closely.”

  Again the screen went dark before the same view appeared again. The time was now 1:17:23 AM. No one could be seen in the lobby until Jim Benson walked across the screen from left to right. His walk had changed. He did not look unsure of himself now. Taking long strides, he headed straight for the elevators.

  Stanton turned off the video. “Your spouse lied about a telephone call coming for Parker at midnight,” he said. “There was no call. We think he found her outside, sitting by the lake. When she refused to come back to the room, they fought. He lost his temper and killed her. She died from drowning, by the way. The coroner confirmed it. Beaten around the head and then held under water until she was dead. That’s likely when the chain broke and the ring fell into the water. The one you talked about.” He leaned toward Max. “Held her under until she died. How does that make you feel?”

  Max rose and walked to the door. “Ex,” she said. She opened the door and strode out to the hall.

  “Ex-what?” Stanton called after her.

  “Ex-spouse.”

  She walked out of the building, got into her cruiser and spun the tires as she left. She broke the speed limit all the way to Port Ainslie.

  SIX

  Back in her office, Max sat and thought about her career. And about her ex-husband.

  In some ways, being chief of police in Port Ainslie was all she had hoped it would be. Her work did not make demands on either her time or her training. Most of the job involved being visible to residents and keeping an eye out for trouble. At times she felt more like a high school teacher than a police chief.

  True, she had plenty of time to relax at her home by the lake. But she wanted to do more than relax. She wanted to do other things. Big things, like solving murders. Yet murder was not on her duty list. She had agreed that serious crimes in and around Port Ainslie would be handled by the OPP. But how could she do nothing when someone had been murdered in her own town?

  There was more to it, of course. The arrest of her former husband on a charge of first-degree murder meant she must stand aside. And the OPP had a good record for sol
ving murder cases. She just hated not being part of it.

  Of course, she did not believe Jim Benson was guilty. Even though he had been known to tell lies. Why, if Maxine had a dollar for every lie he had told her when they were married…

  She went back to dealing with the question of his guilt.

  Had Jim lied when he said Lana Jewel Laverne Parker left their room after getting a telephone call? There was no record of a call on her cell phone at that time. And no record of a call to the room. He must have lied. And if he had lied about that, what else had he lied about?

  She recalled the security video of Jim walking through the lobby. He said he had been looking for Lana Parker. He also said he hadn’t found her. But what if he had found her alone near the pine grove? What if the fight in their room had started over again, and he’d killed her? He’d had time to do it. And if she had his DNA under her nails…

  Max reminded herself she no longer loved her former husband. But they still had a past. They would always share that past, and she would always feel some concern for him.

  She asked herself what she would do if the case were hers to solve and Jim Benson were not her former husband. Would she suspect him? She knew the answer. She would believe he was guilty and set out to prove it. She would try to put him in prison for a very long time.

  “You might as well go home.”

  Margie’s soft voice pulled Max away from her thoughts. It was late in the day. She could do some work on the porch of her home, looking over the lake. There was always paperwork to be finished. And things to consider.

  “You could use an hour or two on your own,” Margie said. “I can tell. Nothing is going to happen here. Henry is downtown, keeping a watch on things. And you can start all over again in the morning. Things will work out. They always do.”

  • • •

  Cliff and Geegee talked Max into joining them for dinner that night. Cliff had picked up some steaks for the barbecue. Geegee made a good potato salad, and Max brought a bottle of Merlot to share.

  They ate on the patio with the sun low over the lake. A weak breeze bothered the trees, and a loon called from the far shore. The steaks were perfect, the salad was great, and the Merlot tasted so good that Max agreed to have another glass. She didn’t care this time that she might be called on for police work. Let the OPP do it if they want. This is why I am here, Max told herself, looking around. This is why I wanted this job. This makes it all worthwhile.