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by Nadine Doolittle

  And then this morning, over her usual breakfast of boiled egg and dark rye toast, scraped with a minute smear of butter, Veronica said: “I hope you remember you have a future to consider before you take up with some high school girl who is only interested in you for your money.”

  Solly remembered how his hand had tightened on his fork, how he’d kept his eyes on his plate. “Pearl Hansen doesn’t know I have money,” he said lightly. “I don’t know I have money. Besides, her father is Hansen Hardware. She has money of her own.”

  His mother didn’t respond, only carried on eating her breakfast in a sinister fashion that gave Solly a stomach ache.

  If he wanted to pursue this story—and he did—he’d have to keep Pearl Hansen at arm’s length, preferably out of sight altogether. If his mother caught wind of them traipsing the county together in pursuit of clues, she’d put a stop to it. Veronica Wakefield-Brice had a way of terminating anything she didn’t like.

  Pearl had returned to her desk and was staring off into space when he came in carrying two mugs of coffee.

  “I don’t know how you like it,” he said, setting it down on her desk.

  “Black is fine.”

  “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve killed a man.”

  “Not funny. I have killed a man—or I will if my father finds out about the murder club. He’s had two heart attacks already.”

  “Why would the murder club give him a heart attack?”

  She gazed at him pityingly. “Seriously? He’s protective where I’m concerned. I think all fathers are protective of their daughters.”

  “Jenny Blake’s father wasn’t.” Solly booted up his computer. “I’m going to call the police station and ask if I can see the case file. I need you to cover for me with Brigg’s.”

  “No way, I’m going! This was my idea, my story! I’m not going to cover the boring stuff while you get all the exciting stuff.”

  “You just said it would kill your father if he found out. Do you want to kill your father, Hansen?”

  Her face went bright pink. What did his mother call that? High colour. Veronica would consider it a mark against Pearl that she couldn’t conceal her emotions like an ice queen.

  “No, of course not,” she said. “I want to be a journalist. I have to get used to risk and danger, but my father can’t know about it, okay?” She lifted her grey eyes to his. “Do you see what I’m saying? I need you to keep quiet and not talk up the murder club to everyone you meet. It’ll get back to my dad and he’ll make me quit. We shouldn’t say anything anyway. I mean, we don’t want to alert the killer that we’re doing this, right?”

  Solly let out a long slow breath. “No, we sure as hell don’t. No worries. I can keep a secret. Is that all you were worried about? Toughen up, Pearl. Screw your courage to the sticking place. Murder’s afoot.”

  “When do you want to go to the station?” she asked, pointedly ignoring his clever literary references.

  “After lunch. Briggs usually takes a nap in his office. He pretends he’s working but he’s sound asleep. If we break the story, we’ll tell him about it then.”

  She chewed on a pencil. “Do you actually think there’s a killer living in St. Ives?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said solemnly. The file he was looking for popped on the computer screen. “Here’s the original story. Read it. Tell me what you notice.”

  Pearl bent over his shoulder to read. “Jenny Blake, 17, was found dead at St. Ives Abbey on Friday, August 15,” she read aloud. “Blake, a student at St. Ives High School was last seen by her boyfriend earlier that evening. The girl was apparently taking a well-known shortcut home through the Abbey grounds after leaving a party, and it was here police believe she met her assailant. Cause of death is still unknown, though foul play is indicated. Her body was discovered that evening by a youth who was known to the victim. He told police he was out walking when he found his friend. The boy was questioned and released. There are no suspects in custody at this time.

  “St. Ives Police Department is asking anyone with information regarding this case to contact them at the numbers below. All calls will be kept confidential.”

  “It’s light on detail,” Pearl said, straightening. “They don’t say how she died. I suppose that’s protocol in a homicide. Is there a follow-up story?”

  Solomon scrolled through the archives, quickly scanning headlines. “Here’s one two weeks later—‘the manhunt continues.’ A week later it’s more of the same ... no new leads ... a month later, the trail’s gone cold and the public has moved on. Suspects were interviewed but as everyone was a juvenile, their names weren’t published.”

  “Nothing jumps out at me. Why, what did you notice?” she asked.

  Solomon met Pearl’s eyes. “How did Elliot Marks know Jenny Blake was strangled?”

  Chapter Five

  AVERY PROWLED the grounds with Elliot, trying to get a feel for the place but St. Ives Day Spa had been renovated to within an inch of its life. There was no hint in the manicured lawns, the groomed hedges or the flower beds that a murder had ever taken place here. Elliot roamed to a ruin in a corner of the property. It was off to one side of the Abbey where it was neglected by the landscapers. Golden grasses choked the grey-white stones. It was difficult to determine what it originally was.

  “An outdoor sanctuary is my guess,” Elliot said, poking at the tall grass with his walking stick. “A retreat for the nuns to meditate on nature. See the stone bench? And over here is what’s left of a gothic window looking out to the forest. This slab of stone could be taken for an altar with its carvings, but it’s only a table.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Elliot’s expression became unreadable. “My mother converted to Catholicism after my father left. I was quite young at the time. I’m not a practitioner, but I’m familiar with its symbols and rituals.”

  Avery nodded and gestured. “Do you think this could’ve been a religious murder? Kids taking the occult too far and between drugs and hormones, someone gets killed?”

  His brown leather shoes were wet with dew and his trouser hems were damp. He was wearing a tie of all things. Blue shirt, wool vest and woollen trousers—he reminded Avery of the quintessential absent-minded professor, circa 1920. The walking stick was unnecessary. He could walk perfectly well without it.

  Marks pursed his lips and stared off into space. “This doesn’t have the earmarks of a ritual killing, but I agree we should be considering motive. Why was Jenny Blake killed and that comes down to what sort of person she was. Discovering a motive will help us to find her killer.”

  “We should walk the rest of the grounds and see if we can get a sense of the atmosphere as it was back then.”

  Elliot was moving slowly between the stone bench and table with a frown on his face. His hands drifted over the gothic window—a musician’s hands, long white fingers, graceful, unused to labour. “Hum? No, that won’t be necessary. She was killed here.” He waded through the tall grass to a wrought iron fence that separated the gardens from the service entrance to the spa. The iron fence acted as a barrier to the public and hid the recycling bins and garbage containers from view. At the far end, was a tall wooden fence attached to the Abbey on one side and joined at a right angle to another fence on the other. This fence ran along the edge of the wood, enclosing the service area. “I wasn’t sure at first, but now that I’ve seen it....” Elliot stared off into space. “Yes, this is the place. She was killed in that small ruin.”

  Avery got chills. Elliot Marks was quite possibly psychic. That would account for his strange, almost ethereal manner. He ducked around the wrought iron fence and cut across the service area with long strides that Avery had to scramble to keep up with. She thought he was going to break into the Abbey, but he marched up to the fence to examine it. It looked like an ordinary privacy fence to her. Very old, not in good shape, an opening had been cut into it at one time. It was sealed up now. Elliot stared at it for a long moment.
<
br />   “It could be possible,” he murmured. “If so ... it changes everything.”

  Avery peered at him closely. “Elliot Marks, I get the feeling you know more about this crime then you’re letting on.”

  He turned on her a piercing blue gaze. “How so?”

  “Like how did you know Jenny Blake was strangled?”

  ✽✽✽

  DENNIS LED the way down the rocky embankment to settlement constructed of blue tarp strung between trees in the scrub that grew alongside the tracks. Plant life had been beaten down to bald earth, making a packed smooth surface. Dennis must’ve glanced at this mess of human detritus about a thousand times on this run.

  Hector came up behind him. “This it?”

  “Yeah. I don’t see anyone around though.”

  “Maybe they take off when civilians show up.”

  “The railway has been trying to evict this village for years. I imagine they’re a little gun shy.” A fire was smoking in a pit. “He’s here—somewhere.”

  “Or not,” Hector observed drily, but he followed Dennis into the undergrowth, on alert for Jesse Sutcliffe, a man they only knew by the vague description Josie gave them.

  The undergrowth opened to a stream where a figure was hunched over a stream of water. The person’s long grey hair could mean either man or woman, but Hector saw the soiled plaid jacket and took a chance.

  “Mr Sutcliffe?”

  The man turned, cast a bleary red eye over them both, then shook his head and turned back to the stream. “I got my rights and I’m not going anywhere, so save your breath. Call the cops if you want. They’ll tell you the same thing.”

  “We’re not here to evict you, Mr Sutcliffe,” Dennis said. “We want to ask you some questions about Jenny Blake if we may.”

  He whirled around. A look was etched on his face—a look Hector had seen in other men under different circumstances. Jesse Sutcliffe was bracing himself for battle. “Why do you ask about her? What do you know about that? Who are you?”

  Dennis held up his hands, palms out. “We’re a book club. We read mystery books. We were talking about this case last night and we had an idea we might be able to help. Josephine Gaskell told us where to find you. You know Josie Gaskell?”

  His face relaxed a little. “Yeah, I know Josie. She comes with the others sometimes. The Battleaxe Brigade they call them. That’s not me. I don’t call them that. There’s a group of them that come with food and clothes. Josie brings books.”

  Hector stepped in. “We’re not here to cause trouble. Josie said that you and Jenny were close and we wanted to talk to you about that.”

  Dennis, born out of experience that Hector could only guess at, produced a package of cigarettes and offered one to Jesse. “Smoke?”

  Sutcliffe plucked the cigarette from the pack. Dennis lit it for him and then handed him the pack and the lighter. “I’m trying to quit.”

  Jesse nodded as he accepted the gift or bribe, whatever they wanted to call it, it worked. Dennis and Hector followed Jesse back to his camp where he produced a couple of battered plastic chairs for them to sit on. He stirred up the smouldering embers in the fire pit and took a seat on a tree stump.

  “Jenny,” he began, “was murdered by Duncan Carmichael and if he finds out you two are looking into it, you’ll be whacked too, so watch your backs.”

  “Duncan Carmichael—as in Councillor Carmichael?”

  “Councillor, developer—he’s rich and well-connected.” Jesse sucked on the cigarette. “He’s got eyes everywhere. Why do you think I live here? It’s the one place he can’t get to me.”

  “Why would he want to get to you?”

  “I’m a threat to this whole persona he’s built up for himself. The truth is going to come out sooner or later. I just have to survive long enough and when it does, look out.” His dark eyes shifted over the rustling maple forest. “He tried to make it look like she was just sleeping. If I hadn’t touched her, I wouldn’t have known she was dead. Even then, I wasn’t sure. She was still warm.” His eyes clouded.

  “You found her,” Hector said respectfully.

  Jesse Sutcliffe nodded. His expression softened and a shadow of pain broke over his ravaged features. “I found her. She was curled up on a stone table in the ruins. They’re off to one side of the Abbey. I don’t know what drew me there. I still don’t know after all these years. She called me from the party, upset. I said do you want me to come and get you, and she said no, she’d walk home. I don’t know what made me go looking for her. I waited ten minutes or so but the feeling got so strong, I had to go after her. The Abbey was between her house and the Haggerty house where the party was. I figured she’d take the shortcut, we all did.”

  “Did anyone see you? Did you talk to anyone?”

  He shook his shaggy head. “I stuck my head in at the party first to see if she’d changed her mind but it was crazy in there—a big booze up. I didn’t see Jenny so I left.”

  “Was there anything else? Anything that didn’t seem strange at the time but it does now?”

  He took a deep drag on his cigarette and closed his eyes. “You know, after forty-odd years, you’d think I’d forget. But I remember. I remember everything. A clump of girls were dancing in the middle of the living room to The Hustle. Karen Haggerty’s parents were out of town. Damn near the whole school was at this party. The guys were standing around drinking beer while the girls danced. Jenny wasn’t with them, so I left.”

  Jesse hesitated. “The house had this long, deep veranda that was dark at the far end. It was probably my imagination, but I could’ve sworn someone was there. I didn’t stick around to find out. I wasn’t thinking I’d need an alibi at that point.”

  “It’s safe to assume no one at the party saw you,” Hector said meditatively. “But who did you see? Who was there?”

  “I’ll have to give it some thought. The cops never asked me that. I can tell you for certain who wasn’t there. Duncan Carmichael.”

  ✽✽✽

  JOSEPHINE MARCHED into the school like she owned the place. Helen was less bold, but she admired the older woman’s courage. She followed her brisk stride up to the front counter and plastered a huge smile on her face.

  “Hello, Karen!” Josie sang cheerfully. “Bet you didn’t expect to see me so soon. This is my friend, Helen Potter—you remember her. She’s had four children come through St. Ives.”

  “Of course, of course.” Karen Haggerty pushed her glasses up on her nose and came around her desk. “I remember the Potter children. How are they all doing?”

  “Wonderfully well. They’re all in university now. We’re empty nesters at last.”

  “Just wait until the grandchildren come along and then it starts all over again.”

  Her laugh was rueful but Helen got the sense the school secretary was secretly glad to be overrun with small children. She was the sort of woman who would die in the harness, thank you very much. No retirement for her.

  “Karen, we need to ask a favour.” Josie leaned on the counter confidentially. “We’re exploring the feasibility of a high school reunion—and this is just at the hypothetical stage, mind you—but we want to try to bring together as many alumni as we can find. I think it would make a nice farewell for Mr Kinecki. He’s retiring next year, isn’t he?”

  “He is and that sounds like a wonderful idea! We’re going to do something for him, of course, but you know how busy teachers are. They’d appreciate a couple of volunteers doing the heavy lifting.”

  Josie beamed. “That’s what I thought. Would it be okay if we took a peek at the old school records? We thought we’d start with the Seventies first.”

  “The entire decade?” Karen’s bubbly smile faded. “Those files are in storage in the basement, Josie. I can’t leave my desk to locate them. That would take hours.”

  “Oh no, we didn’t expect you could, but would it be all right if we went to the basement and looked for ourselves? We could probably get everything we need fr
om the yearbooks alone.”

  “Yes, oh yes—the annuals—I forgot about those. That would be the best solution. Still, it’s a lot of photos to go through,” she said doubtfully.

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ve got Helen’s camera phone. We’ll photograph each page and look up the names later on the computer. Just about everyone is on social media these days.”

  Karen Haggerty was a pretty elfin-faced blonde in 1975 and the years hadn’t changed her very much. They were deep in the basement of St. Ives High School, digging through stacks of carefully labelled boxes, archived files that went back to 1945. Helen found the yearbook containing Karen’s high school photo as well as Jesse Sutcliffe’s. Seeing Jenny Blake’s name under the colour image of a beautiful young girl was a shock. So this was the victim. Was one of these fresh-faced youngsters her murderer? Or was her death a random, senseless killing that could never be solved?

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Karen had ventured into the basement. Her hand whisked imaginary spider webs from her blonde hair. She was dressed fashionably in a tailored blouse and skirt, having kept her figure as well as her looks.

  “I found your high school photo,” Helen said, showing her. “Were we ever that young?”

  “Look at that skin,” she cried mournfully. “Those were the happiest years of my life.” Karen sighed, gazing at the image. “I was captain of the girl’s lacrosse team, student body president, and I was dating the most popular boy in school.” She pressed her hand to her mouth, giggling. “At the time, I thought ours was a love that would never die. You know what girls are like.”

  Helen chuckled, remembering all too well what girls were like at that age. Boy crazy was a real thing. She’d navigated her own two daughters through the phase and it was brutal. “Tears, heartbreak, moping in the bedroom with the door closed and the stereo blasting Stairway to Heaven.”

  Josie joined in their laughter. “Mine was Yesterday by the Beatles.”