Winter of Secrets

by Vicki Delany

  They arrived at the Kootenay-Boundary Regional Hospital in silence.

  Before he got out of the car, Winters pulled a tube of Vaseline out of his pocket and dipped his finger in. He handed it to Smith and she also applied a touch of the gel to the inside of each nostril. Otherwise the smell of death would stay with them for days.

  “Okay, Doc,” Winters said, at the first sight of Doctor Lee standing inside the swinging doors leading to the morgue. “You’ve got my attention. You know Constable Smith.”

  Lee nodded. She wore a regulation white lab coat over a cream blouse and blue skirt cut perfectly to the middle of her knees. Her stockings were sheer and her shoes leather. Her heels were so high that the doctor, who probably had to stretch to reach five feet in her bare feet, didn’t appear to be all that much shorter than Constable Smith. Her black hair was tied into a stiff knot at the back of her neck.

  “I have no doubt about it,” Lee said, turning and heading down the hall, her heels sounding as out of place as a marching band on the industrial-white floor. “Mr. Williams was dead at least twenty-four hours, perhaps more, before his body was retrieved from the water.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  She launched into a description of the degrees of rigor mortise and the stages of decomposition of various body parts.

  “You didn’t notice right away?” Smith said. “Wouldn’t that have been kinda obvious?”

  The doctor stopped walking. She turned. Her perfectly made-up black eyes threw chips of ice at the young Constable.

  “I mean,” Smith said, digging herself further into a hole of her own making, “Bodies start decaying right away, right?”

  “When I need to be interrupted in my observations, I will call on you, Constable,” Lee said. “Provided you’re still in the room and paying attention.”

  That was a dig. The first time Smith had been present at one of Lee’s autopsies she’d run from the room before the business even began. The second time she lasted it out, only by looking at everything but the table, and thinking, for all Winters knew, of England.

  Lee might be catty, but she was a non-sexist cat. She’d dripped scorn all over Ray Lopez, when, for all the detective’s years of experience, he’d vomited when Lee ripped the toupee off a heart-attack victim they initially suspected might have been done in by the ex-wife. Lopez had thought Lee’d scalped the man.

  “Condition of the body would indicate,” Lee continued walking down the hall, heels tapping, a chastised Smith tiptoeing after her, “that it was kept in a cold setting post-mortem. Of course any place outdoors in the last week would provide cold conditions. Locating that place, is, fortunately for me, not my concern, now is it, Sergeant Winters?”

  “I’ll take it from there, Doc.”

  “One other thing that might be of interest,” she said. “He was fully dressed, in outdoor clothing, but his gloves were in his pocket. His fly was unzipped and his penis was partially out.”

  She threw the double doors open, and the group walked into the autopsy room. Lee’s assistant, Russ, was waiting.

  A man lay on the table, on his back, naked, lit up as if for his Broadway debut. He was white, about five foot eight, slender and lean. Fingernails trimmed, clean. Brown hair, well cut, with an artificially streaked blond bit falling over the forehead.

  Face as pale as, well, as death.

  It was not hard to notice that, shriveled in cold and death though the man might be, Ewan William’s penis was enormous.

  “You do something to that?” Winters asked, pointing.

  Behind him, he heard Smith suck in air.

  “Is that some sort of joke, John? If so, it is not in good taste. I do not do anything.” Unlike other pathologists he’d met, Doctor Lee did not indulge in black humor. Nor did she allow her staff to do so. Which meant that they indulged out of her hearing.

  “At first, I assumed the trauma to the back of the head had occurred during the accident. A foolish presumption on my part.” She paused to allow him to agree.

  He did so.

  “As soon as we removed his clothing we could see that Mr. Williams’ blood had settled along his side. It had achieved complete lividity. When the heart stops pumping, blood stops circulating and begins to settle. In the same way that if you pour colored liquid into a glass of water and stir, it will move through the water. Once the stirring ceases, the colored liquid will settle on the bottom of the glass.”

  “I’m aware of that, doc.”

  She ignored him. “Mr. Williams was placed on his back while awaiting the autopsy. The admission report also indicated that there had been a minor degree of rigor mortise when he was brought in. Rigor begins to settle in about three hours after death, and achieves maximum at around twelve hours. That is assuming ideal conditions. Regardless of the conditions, Mr. Williams should not have been in any stage of rigor less than an hour after his death, nor should his blood have settled along his right side. I can only assume such sloppy observation on the part of the night clerk was due to the pressures of the holiday season.”

  Meaning, Winters interpreted, that someone’s head was going to roll down the morgue corridor.

  “Once I realized that the time of death pre-dated the accident, I stopped work and phoned you.”

  “So you did.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it since, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Doctor Lee was an exceptionally competent pathologist. But, like many highly intelligent people, she got more than a mite prickly at times. Winters considered it one of the qualifications of his job to be able to massage her gently to get her to spit out the damned point.

  “I believe he was kept outside after death. The temperature over the twenty-four to forty-eight hours prior to the vehicle going into the river did move a few degrees on either side of the freezing point. Further investigation will no doubt reveal more.” Lee pulled on her latex gloves, and reached overhead to switch on the microphone and recorder. Russ handed her a hacksaw.

  Smith swallowed, audibly.

  Chapter Seven

  They arrived back in Trafalgar shortly after noon. Cause of death determined by Doctor Lee: hypothermia aggravated by a single blow to the head. She found minute traces of wood and charcoal in the wound, and some ash. She might have been reciting her shopping list, but it was enough to get Winters’ heart pumping.

  What contained wood, charcoal, and ash, but the instruments used by a common household fireplace?

  He said nothing until they’d thanked Doctor Lee. She promised to have her report ready in a day or two, and told them she’d go over Wyatt-Yarmouth one more time, to make sure she hadn’t missed anything the first time. “As unlikely,” she’d sniffed, “as that might be.”

  Smith hadn’t thrown up, run from the room, or broken into hysterical laughter. She’d stood somberly out of the way, pressed up against the wall, but when on the one or two occasions Winters glanced up, his attention drawn by something Russ was doing, Smith had been watching the procedure.

  “Getting easier, Molly?” he asked, as she turned the key in the van’s ignition.

  “Can I throw up now?”

  He laughed and grabbed the radio. “Jim, remind me of where Williams and Wyatt-Yarmouth were staying.”

  “Glacier Chalet. It’s a B&B at 1894 Victoria Street.”

  “Who’s the officer who informed the sister and friends of the deaths?”

  “Give me a sec,” Denton said.

  “Me,” said a small voice from his left.

  “What?”

  “Me. I was the one who told Wyatt-Yarmouth’s sister.”

  “Never mind, Jim. I’ll get back to you.” He put the radio down. “You informed the family?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the Glacier Chalet B&B?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you go inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right inside the house I mean, not just stand in the doorway?”

/>   “Yes,” she said, daring a sideways glance away from the icy, steeply sloped, curving road. “Wyatt-Yarmouth’s sister, Wendy, guessed why I was there and pretty much ran until her back was up against the wall. I followed her in. I don’t think Ellie Carmine liked my boots tromping on her clean floors. Why?”

  “Did you see a fireplace?”

  “Let me think. Yeah, I’m sure of it. We went into the living room, nice Christmas tree and party stuff, and I remember thinking that it had been so cold outside and now I was too hot standing by the fire.”

  Winters picked up the radio again. “Jim, contact Ray Gavin, tell him I want a full forensic team at the Glacier Chalet B&B ASAP. Call me back with their ETA. I also need a patrol car and two,” he glanced at Smith, “make that one, uniform to be on site when I get there. Which will be in about forty-five minutes.”

  “Got it,” Denton said.

  “The Glacier Chalet B&B, Molly.”

  Due to the road conditions, Smith was driving a touch under the speed limit. She pressed her foot to the gas.

  “You know the saying ‘better ten minutes late than forty years early’?”

  “No.”

  “It means don’t speed. Did you hear what Doctor Lee found in the wound in Williams’ skull?”

  He waited to hear her answer. She’d been chastised before for pretending to have heard something she hadn’t.

  She hesitated before speaking. “Damage?”

  “Damage indeed. Caused by being struck by the proverbial blunt instrument. She also found a few visible wood fragments, perhaps singed, and a fine gray powder that might have been ash. She’ll examine the particles under a microscope to be sure, but Shirley never guesses unless she’s practically positive. Can’t imagine what it would be like playing poker with her. All of which suggests he was hit by a fireplace poker, and fell into either the fireplace itself, a pile of wood, or perhaps even tipped over the ash bucket. What makes it more interesting is that he lived long enough to go outside and let the cold get him. Or to be taken outside.”

  Smith turned and gave him a bright smile. “So he was attacked in the B&B?”

  “Plenty of fires in town, Molly, and outside of it.” Many of the houses dotting the hillsides and bottoms of mountains in the Kootenays were heated by wood stoves, and many that weren’t, such as his own home, used fireplaces for atmosphere. He remembered Christmas Eve. Eliza, arranging candles, nibbling on canapés with her small white teeth, opening their presents, the light from the fire turning her green eyes the color of dragon fire. Sipping Veuve Cliquot. Later, around the time Santa could be expected to be tossing his big bag down the chimney, rubbing her back as she vomited into the toilet.

  “However, as I can’t drag Ray and his truck around to every fireplace in the valley, we’ll concentrate on one. So, yes, I need to find out if the Glacier Chalet B&B is missing a fireplace poker, check it out if it’s not, and see what we can find by sifting through the ashes. Most people keep a bucket for cold ashes and only throw it out when it’s full. More time has passed since Williams’ death than I’d like, but I’m sometimes astounded at what Ray can pull out of what looks like a pile of nothing.” The Trafalgar City Police was small, boasting twenty sworn officers. When needed, they called on the closest RCMP detachment to do the forensics. He swung the car’s computer around and began typing.

  “Don’t we need a warrant?” Smith asked. “It is a private home.”

  “I’m starting the ITO”—information to obtain a warrant—“now. It won’t come though in time, but if I have to I can claim exigent circumstances. We have to get into that fireplace before evidence can be destroyed, even accidentally.” He’d ask the B&B owner if he could have a look at her fireplace. He and about ten of his best friends. And that would get him started. According to Smith, the fireplace was in the common room. A semi-public place in which no one should have any expectation of privacy. If he needed to look further, particularly into Williams’ room, he’d need that warrant.

  A police car was sitting outside the Glacier Chalet B&B when they arrived. Dawn Solway got out. Winters and Smith joined her. From the homes surrounding, he could see faces pressed up against windows. He glanced at the house. A sign, topped with a foot of snow, hung out front with all the stamps and official notices indicating that this was a top of the line establishment. It was a big Victorian, as proud and stately as the old Queen herself, in a street of recent tear-downs and glass and steel and concrete gentrifications. The house was painted cream with dove gray veranda pillars, window and door frames, and gingerbread trimmings. The front yard was large; several feet of snow covered a carefully tended lawn trimmed with perennial beds, sleeping until the first kiss of spring. A porch, clear of snow, outfitted with a black iron table and chairs, filled the front of the house and ran around each side.

  “Molly,” he said, looking at the imposing front of the magnificent old house, “you’re with me. Dawn, keep busybodies away, and that includes anyone we flush out of the house.”

  As they’d passed into the Trafalgar town limits, Denton called to say that Ray Gavin and his scene-of-the-crime van would be on site in ten minutes. Winters and Gavin went back a long way. He’d known he could count on the Mountie. In the absence of a warrant, the home owner could turn him away on the spot, but he hoped that the proprietor of a Bed and Breakfast, of all respectable places, would allow the police access to the public rooms.

  Winters walked up to the front door. The path was neatly shoveled, lined with walls of snow level to his knees. The door opened before he reached the first step. A woman in her late fifties, stout and gray haired, peered out. She spoke before he had a chance to open his mouth.

  “I can’t imagine what you lot think you’re doing parked outside my door as if you’re raiding a house of ill repute.”

  He blinked. He wasn’t about to accuse her of operating a cathouse.

  “Sorry,” the woman said, “Didn’t see you there, Moonlight. Are you looking for your mom? We’re having tea. Come on in.” She held the door open. Winters hadn’t even had to produce any I.D., much less a search warrant. They stepped into the B&B.

  The entrance hall was small, but keeping with the Victorian theme, decorated in heavy wallpaper, wooden wainscoting, and a period painting of a brooding old man, military uniform, whiskers, and attitude. The scent of household cleaning products, overlaid by something warm and fresh and touched with cinnamon filled the air.

  “Moonlight?” A gray head, shot through with threads of fiery red, topping a short, solid, plump frame came out of the kitchen. “Thought I heard your name. Hello, dear. John, how nice. Did you have a pleasant Christmas?”

  “I did, Lucky. Nothing special. Just a quiet time at home with Eliza, my wife.” Winters’ back was to his constable. Her sigh could have stirred snow on the mountaintops.

  Chapter Eight

  Try as she might to be accepting of her child’s life choices, and all that garbage, Lucy (Lucky) Casey Smith hated to see her beautiful daughter wearing that hideous uniform, all bulk and intimidation. When Moonlight joined the police, everything changed, even her beautiful name. No longer Moonlight Legloas Smith, a name as soft as butter melting on the tongue, but Constable Molly Smith. Authority and aggression.

  John Winters accompanied Moonlight. Lucky and Sergeant Winters had sparred like medieval swordfighters, but for some strange reason she’d become rather fond of him. She lifted a hand and checked that her hair was tucked into place.

  “Mrs. Eleanor Carmine?” Winters said, the statement sounding like a question.

  “That’s me.” Ellie’s voice quavered.

  “You don’t have to answer their questions,” Lucky said, forgetting about trying to look nice for John Winters and worrying about Moonlight. “Not without legal advice.”

  “What? I don’t need a lawyer. I don’t know what any of this is about.” Ellie’s voice shook. Understandable, Lucky thought. anyone would be frightened when faced with the full force of the l
aw. Particularly after two of her guests had been killed in a tragic car accident.

  “If you wish to consult counsel that is, of course, your right, Mrs. Carmine,” Winters said, in a voice as deep and smooth as blackstrap molasses. “But if you have no reason to do so…”

  Lucky tried to catch Moonlight’s eye, but the girl was looking at everything but her mother.

  “Is there anyone else in the house?” Winters asked.

  Eleanor Carmine glanced toward Lucky Smith.

  “No,” Lucky said.

  “No,” Mrs. Carmine repeated. “My guests have gone out.”

  “Before we continue with this conversation,” Lucky said, “I must insist, Sergeant, you tell me what’s going on here.”

  Moonlight coughed. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Smith, but as far as I can see you have no right to insist upon anything. If you’re acting as counsel for Mrs. Carmine, please identify yourself. Otherwise.” Moonlight coughed again. “This is none of your business, and…well…please be quiet, Mom.”

  Lucky stared. John Winters was regarding Moonlight with an expression like someone gazing upon a garter snake that had turned into a python. Ellie Carmine rubbed her hands together.

  They all turned at the arrival of Ron Gavin and his forensic bag, clomping up the sidewalk. He’d parked his van half into the road, not able to pull to the side because of the snow drifts as high as a man’s chest. An RCMP patrol car joined Solway’s vehicle in washing the street in red and blue lights.

  Curtains moved and doors opened in the neighboring houses. More than a few people came out to their front steps or wandered down to the sidewalk to see what was going on. Solway told them to keep back.

  “What on earth is going on here? You need a warrant to bring those people and their equipment in here, Mr. Winters. Do you have one?”

  “Mrs. Carmine,” Winters said, ignoring Lucky. “I’d like your permission to search the fireplace in your common room. Due to the highly volatile nature of the search area, I don’t have time to get a warrant. I promise you I’m only interested in the fireplace and its immediate surroundings. I won’t examine anything outside that area at this time. You are entitled to refuse us entry. I’ll then have to wait for the warrant to arrive, in which time vital evidence might be destroyed. Your decision.”