Dying for Murder

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  The room erupted. I watched in fascination as all my suspects reacted to the reality of murder in their midst. Everyone seemed surprised by the news in my quick glance around the hall. At least, no one was tipping their hand.

  Rosemary said, “If Stacey was murdered, then who murdered her?”

  The room went quiet. Sam stood up quickly and looked around the room. “Someone in this room must have done it.”

  The words had such a final feel to them, as if answering the last curtain call before everyone’s life changed. No one said a word but I’d have given a lot to know what they were all thinking. Time for damage control.

  “We can’t know who did it and, as you know, there are many others on this island who might have done it.”

  “But no one as easily as any of us,” said Jayne. “Let’s not sugar coat this. We have a murderer in our midst on an island that has been evacuated. We’re on our own.” She turned and stared at me. “I’m still not clear on why you’re the one standing up there telling us all this.”

  Darcy finally came to my rescue. “You said yourself she’s solved some Canadian murders. We need her expertise.”

  “We need a director to handle this, not an assistant and certainly not a newcomer.”

  “The director’s dead, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  She glared at him but ignored what he had said. Instead she said, “So you took it upon yourself to carry out the duties of the director without conferring with anyone but this stranger?” And she inclined her head at me.

  “There is no clear line of command,” said Darcy.

  “Oh, but there is and I’m it.” She looked around at all the people in the room. “I am the only one here who has been the director of this station in the past.”

  “I understand you were fired. I’m not sure you are the right choice,” said David.

  “I was let go. There’s a difference, you know.”

  “Not from what I heard.” Jayne and David had locked eyes and I wished I could hear the unspoken words between them.

  “I think Cordi is an excellent choice.” I was surprised to hear David siding with me. I guess I thought he should have been too distraught over his sister to care about much else.

  He continued. “She’s a qualified outsider so she can be objective about all the infighting that goes on around here.”

  It was unanimous except for Jayne, who nonetheless seemed resigned to the situation. I was to deal with the police and everything to do with Stacey’s death and everyone was to co-operate with me.

  Now what? I thought as everyone wandered away, taking their secret thoughts with them. Even Darcy had left me standing there, wondering where to begin.

  “You’ve got to call the police, Cordi,” said Martha. I smiled. She had an uncanny ability to read my mind sometimes. She handed me her cellphone, but there was no reception, which wasn’t surprising given the state of the weather and where we were.

  “So who did it?” Straight as an arrow is Martha. I thought about it for a minute and realized I’d been thinking about it for a lot longer than a minute.

  “Did anyone act weird when I told them it was murder?”

  Martha squished up her face and said, “Melanie started to sneeze, Wyatt coughed or maybe choked, Jayne looked angry, and David looked sick. Don’t know about everybody else because Jayne got up and spilled her guts.”

  I tried to remember, tried to recreate the scene but it was strangely elusive. “We have to secure the crime scene.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we find some tape or something and maybe a lock for the door?”

  Martha looked out the window but the thunderous rain had blotted out the view. “Do you think we really need to? Who’s going to go snooping around a crime scene in weather like this?”

  “We are.”

  “But shouldn’t we wait for Duncan?”

  “I haven’t been able to alert him yet, supposing he’s fool enough to still be on the island.” Which meant I was probably going to have to brave the weather to get him. We had to get Stacey up to the refrigerator and that meant getting Duncan to oversee the technicalities of her death.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Martha. “Give the weather time to calm down a bit. Let’s just go find Darcy and get that padlock.”

  She had a point, so I didn’t argue. We eventually found Darcy in the lounge with David. They were standing over by the window, hunched over in conversation. They started when we came in as if we’d caught them with their hands in the cookie jar. I called out to Darcy and he left David standing there without a word, which seemed rather rude. After I explained to him what we wanted he led us down into the bowels of the research station to a poky windowless little room that smelled of oil and sawdust. Along one wall was a workbench full of tools tossed there by the last user, and the wall was lined with more. There was a portable table saw and a drill press and a few other assorted portable power tools. It was obviously a communal room that everyone used, and no one particularly cared about because everything seemed out of place. Which is a polite way of saying it was a mess. Darcy zeroed in on a four drawer see-through plastic cabinet and began pulling out the drawers. Martha and I began rifling through a number of toolboxes stored on the floor. As I pulled out a miniature combo lock, with a little tag giving the combo — someone wasn’t so disorganized — I looked over at Darcy and said, “What happened with the evacuation alert?”

  He looked over his shoulder at me. “What do you mean?”

  “I would have thought Stacey would have taken the alert, not you.”

  “She did. But she asked me to get everyone organized for a 4:00 pickup.”

  “What time was that?”

  “3:00 in the morning, I think.” He had gone back to rifling through the drawers.

  “And when did you last see her alive?”

  He turned around, a honking big clasp in his hand, and said, “Must have been around 9:30 at night. I was up getting a snack and she was having a tête-à-tête with her brother. They were arguing about some famous baseball player. Anyway, I didn’t stick around. They seemed like they wouldn’t be happy if I had interrupted them. So I went back to my cabin, and yes I was alone until the alert came in.”

  I smiled as he handed Martha the clasp, some serious-looking Robertson screws, a portable drill, a Robertson bit, and a roll of bright orange marking tape.

  “I’d help,” he said, “but I’m all thumbs when it comes to tools.” And with that he left.

  “Convenient excuse,” said Martha uncharitably. I wondered about that. He had given me, without hesitation, exactly what I needed. I extricated the clasp from her hand and held up the little lock to see if it was big enough to go through the hasp. Just.

  “That lock won’t stop a no-see-um,” said Martha when she caught sight of it.

  “Got a better idea?”

  Martha shook her head.

  As we left I noticed a box of latex gloves and swiped two, as well as a pair of safety goggles. We headed back up the stairs to the dining room. Melanie was sitting at one of the tables picking away at some food. Sam was sitting at another table with his back to her. I wondered what had happened to split them apart like that.

  I hauled my hood up over my head, put the tools and the clasp and lock in my voluminous pockets, and headed out the door, Martha on my tail. It didn’t seem to be as windy or as rainy as before, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. We navigated down the slippery stairs, walked across the clearing, and joined the trail leading to Stacey’s cabin. It didn’t look as ominous in the grey light of day, just kind of derelict, with one of its wooden shutters hanging loose — until I remembered what was inside. Without even conferring we decided to do the lock and tape first. I don’t think either of us wanted to go into that cabin. It didn’t take too long to get it done with two people, but it was pretty wet and the rain had trickled down my wrists and in under my jacket sleeves and soaked my arm
s as I drilled the holes and then screwed in the screws. It was pretty clammy.

  When we were done I quickly opened the door and stepped inside before I had a change of heart. It was dim but I could make her out lying there on the floor. The room leapt to life as Martha switched on the light, its harshness spilling over onto Stacey as she lay there where we had left her, the duct tape still partially stuck to her face like some grotesque growth. Martha was rummaging around in her rainsuit looking for something, which was very distracting because I was trying to go through all the things that the police would do that I might be able to do — which was basically stand and stare — take everything in. I jerked as a light flashed and took a deep breath when I realized it was just Martha taking more pictures. We’d made quite a mess of the place while trying to save someone who had been probably long past saving. I took out the gloves and put them on.

  I tried to ignore Stacey and her gaping mouth and started scanning the room for anything unusual. I began with Stacey herself and, apart from the duct tape and the raw wrists, there was nothing until I saw the hand of the wrist Darcy had untied. It was clutching a necklace. As I took a closer look, pushing the fingers out of the way with a pencil, I saw that it was a MedicAlert necklace for diabetes. Had she managed to jerk it off her attacker without them noticing? I had a vague sensation that something was missing but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I turned and looked at her bed, which took up almost half the room even though it was pushed up against two walls. One wall was dedicated to a statue of Christ on the cross. So she was devout, I thought, and wondered how she reconciled the logic of a scientific mind with the fantasy of religion. She had a desk that ran the length of the other wall and a tall-backed leather swirly chair. It was impossible to tell what was our mess and what was Stacey’s.

  The floor was bare, uneven, rough wood but it was covered in a cascade of pens, all cheap BIC pens, except one sleek green Parker and an old-fashioned fountain pen. An old and battered Campbell’s soup tin lay beside them. Maybe she had reached out to defend herself and had knocked the can and all the pens to the floor. But then again it could have been me and Darcy struggling to get her to the floor.

  I sniffed the air. Something was sticking out from under her bed and I moved closer to take a look. It was white cheesecloth folded over many times to make a wad. I got down on my hands and knees and took a sniff. Definitely the source of the sweet, cloying smell I had smelled earlier. Chloroform. While I was on the floor I looked under the bed. There were a slew of medical texts, their spines all facing me, and a stack of what looked like research papers, although I couldn’t tell what they were about. I stood up and brushed some dead flies and what looked like a squished cricket from my pants, a testament to her cleaning abilities, or lack thereof.

  Martha was taking photographs of Stacey and I watched as she snapped pictures of the chair where Stacey had been sitting. I looked more carefully, sure that something was missing but I couldn’t put my finger on what. When Martha had finished there wasn’t much left for us to do. We locked up and strung some tape across the door to make it look official. The rain had lightened a bit and I decided to go for Duncan before things got worse. The fact that Martha didn’t even offer to come with me made me realize that even though the rain had slackened it was still a wildly wicked day out there. It wasn’t the kind of day one would choose to venture out in. But venture I did. I had a hard time getting the bike started and had to stop and wipe the rain from my eyes several times before I remembered the safety goggles. There was a lot of puddling on the road from the rain and quite a few branches had fallen across the track. Some of them I moved but I had to bushwhack around others. Duncan had said he was off the main road — which was pretty simple because there was only one main road running north and south with driveways running off it. I already knew how to get to Hunter’s so I figured it would be a breeze to find the first road past it going left. But of course it wasn’t simple. There seemed to be quite a few roads or driveways and I had to stop and get off the bike to read some of the signs. I finally found it. A tiny little sign half hidden in the palmetto. “Macpherson.” I drove down the untamed driveway and broke out into a clearing. At first I couldn’t see the house because it was so well hidden by the trees. And when I did see it I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. I walked closer, my heart beginning to race when I realized that I couldn’t see the house because an enormous live oak had some crashing down upon it, splitting the roof in two. I began to run.

  chapter ten

  I called Duncan’s name but the wind just sucked it up before it even had a chance to leave my mouth. When I got closer I could see that the tree had fallen across one end of the building from front to rear, buckling it. A set of stairs wound their way up to the house like miniature switchbacks. I looked at them carefully. They didn’t seem to have tilted or swayed out of true so I cautiously began to climb them, calling Duncan’s name, more out of the need to be useful than for the good it would do.

  For some reason I started counting the number of steps as I climbed them, the rain clouding my goggles and the wind slashing at my face in fits and starts. At one point I heard the tree groan and shift and thought I heard someone cry out. When I finally reached the top the house looked untouched from where I stood, the front door snug in its frame, the windows unharmed. I opened the door and walked in. It smelled like hamburgers and French fries, which made me feel quite desperate, and I called out his name again. His cottage was a bungalow, long and lean, and the tree had taken out the living-room wall and whatever lay beyond it. It had also knocked over a large corner cupboard that was now partially held up by a corner of the sofa. As I moved into his living room I could see the tree, its wet, glistening bark making it look like some monstrous creature, its limbs so incongruous inside the house. I called his name again.

  “Get me the god damned hell out of here.” His gruff, muffled, and angry voice came from somewhere behind the sofa and to me, in that moment, it sounded like a symphony. I moved quickly, rounded the sofa and there he was, sprawled on the floor, both his legs pinned by the weight of the corner cupboard. It had fallen sideways across him and as I came around to help him he said, “You’re going to have to get my car jack down in the garage. You’ll never be able to lift it yourself. It’s solid oak.”

  “Are they broken?”

  “My legs? No, I don’t think so. The sofa broke the fall, not my legs.”

  I left then. On the way back up with the jack I counted more stairs than I had the first time.

  I positioned the jack at the top and middle of the cupboard and started ratcheting it up. I went slowly, afraid I was going to hurt him, but Duncan told me to speed things up, so I did. Once his legs were free he insisted upon extricating himself without my help and plopping down into his sofa with a huge sigh.

  “What took you so long?” he said and smiled.

  “How long?” I said.

  “How long what?” but I knew he knew what I meant.

  “Two hours, give or take, and don’t go telling me I should have evacuated because unless my eyes are deceiving me you haven’t evacuated either.”

  “Lucky for you.” It came out sounding sarcastic but it was anything but. “You could have died here,” I said. “It could have been a week before anyone found you.”

  “Not with friends like you, Cordi.”

  “But I wasn’t around those other times you didn’t evacuate.”

  “And I didn’t get pinned by a tree.”

  “You’re incorrigible, Duncan.” I gave him a hug.

  He started gingerly rubbing the circulation back into his legs. “Nothing broken,” he said, “but they’re going to be awfully sore for a while.” He shifted his weight on the sofa and turned to look at me.

  “Why did you come?” he asked.

  “How well do you know Stacey?”

  “Not well. We say hello when we meet on the beach, but that’s about it. Why?”

  “I found her dead in h
er cabin early this morning.”

  He sighed. “Too bad, but she really didn’t look very well this visit. I suppose that’s why you’re here. You want me to come and tell you how she died since the police won’t be coming out in this weather.”

  “Oh, we already know how she died, Duncan.”

  He raised his hairy eyebrows at me.

  “She was murdered.”

  The eyebrows plummeted into a scowl. “Oh c’mon, Cordi. Not again.”

  I thought about my last murder investigation, onboard an Arctic cruise ship, and how Duncan and Martha hadn’t believed me when I cried murder. This time it was more cut and dried though.

  “It’s the real thing, Duncan. She was suffocated.” I filled him in on all the details of the crime scene as he slowly got to his feet and tried out his legs.

  “So you’re saying someone comes to her cabin and knocks her out with gauze soaked presumably in chloroform. They then tie her arms to the chair and duct tape her mouth and nose shut. Jesus. Why would someone do that?”

  “That’s what we have to find out.”

  “We?”

  “Well, I’ve been appointed the person in charge of the investigation until the police come and we need a TOD before we move her into a refrigerator.”

  “How on earth is she going to fit into a refrigerator?” asked Duncan.

  “It’s a walk-in,” I said, and he grimaced. “Will you come?”

  He looked around at the wreck of his cottage and sighed. “Well, I can’t stay here,” he said, and as if to accent his observation the tree shifted again and his once cozy little cottage shuddered in sympathy.