The Corpse with the Crystal Skull

by Cathy Ace

  I know I’m going to the scene of an unexpected death, and I can feel the excitement and anticipation in my tummy. I’m also quite pleased to have the chance to explore Freddie’s private domain.

  It’s dark inside because all the shutters are closed and I give myself a moment to let my eyes adjust, shoving my sunglasses onto the top of my head. The furniture in the room suggests this is a workroom: there’s a rudimentary kitchen area with a counter; there are three blenders and a chopping board on it; there’s also a worktable; a stone sink, beneath which there’s a collection of buckets and bowls heaped on the floor; and there’s a pile of wood. It looks as though it’s ready to make a fire in the stone fireplace. A fire? In Jamaica, in May? Is that normal? Beside the sink there’s an old dark green brocade curtain that hangs from the wooden ceiling rafters to the flagstone floor. It’s hooked half open – I see a bathroom. Freddie didn’t need fancy fittings, it seems.

  I hear Bud entering the large, square, ground-floor room behind me. I know the others will soon follow. I set off up the stone staircase which curves around inside the tower in a languorous semi-circle, my sandals slapping as I walk, my hand running along the roughhewn rocks of the outer wall that has been lime-mortared – probably many, many times over the centuries. There’s no handrail; Freddie was surprisingly good on his feet, nimble even, despite his age, so this isn’t a surprise. Tiny, slit-like windows have been pierced into the outer wall of the tower allowing some light to illuminate the climb, but it’s not the safest footing on the stones which have been worn to a slight shine.

  The staircase opens into a light-filled room that’s obviously furnished for lounging, and for eating. A somewhat worn mahogany table and one chair sit in front of a vast opening in the wall that looks toward the sea, a view partially blocked by waving palm trees. There’s a good breeze. I see similar openings set into the curve of the wall opposite the sea – all the dark-wood jalousie shutters thrown wide. There’s an armchair, its upholstery worn, but I can tell it would once have been jewel-toned. The place has a hint of cigar tobacco about it. There are ashtrays on the hardwood floor, with stubs in them. There’s a collection of drinks in decanters atop a long, low mahogany sideboard obviously built to hug the curve of that specific wall. It looks ancient, but well cared for, clean.

  On the table there’s a large glass standing in an earthenware bowl that’s half-filled with water. The glass has an inch or so of orangey sludge in it. My tummy clenches. Yuk.

  I mount the next staircase, which again curves around the wall of the turret. The walls are angled inwards. I know before I get there that the room on the next level will be smaller than the one I have just left. It is.

  There’s an intricately carved, mahogany four-poster bed set up so that it gives a view out through another vast opening over the tops of the palm trees, toward the sea and the horizon, visible once the sleeper sits up. Wardrobes, curved to fit against the walls, sit between more windows around the rest of the room. There’s a little stool beside the bed with an oil lamp on it, but there are no tables, just a curved antique dresser beside the next set of steps.

  I ponder the architecture of the tower as Bud joins me. Wouldn’t it have been better to design it with rooms that took up each entire floor, then connect them with internal wooden stairs, rather than using a crescent of the entire floorplan to make the stone steps?

  I see Bud mount the next set of steps ahead of me, I can hear Jack and Sheila chatting to John. I want to get to the top before them, so follow Bud.

  As I look down the stairs behind me, with Bud peering through the keyhole of the door, I see three upturned faces. John is closest to me, I can smell his aftershave, or cologne. It’s a beachy smell, and fits with our location perfectly. He’s glistening with sweat. Is it really that hot? I can feel a slight breeze pushing through the slits in the wall. It’s a good feeling.

  Jack is one step lower than John, and Sheila’s behind him. Each one of them has a look of anticipation on their face, but each differs a little: John looks worried but focused; Sheila’s eyes are glowing with…what is it? Is that anger I see? Why?; Jack’s chewing his bottom lip, his eyes fixed on Bud’s kneeling figure.

  Knowing what I do now about the men’s mission, their expressions make sense. Sheila’s doesn’t. I recall that when Amelia broke the news of Freddie’s death, Sheila seemed annoyed, not shocked. “Damn it!” she had said. That doesn’t seem right.

  I make my silly quip about Bud having impacted the integrity of the scene. I look down and see those faces again. John’s bemused, Jack too. Sheila’s…relieved. Why?

  Sheila stares at Bud for a few more seconds, then turns, then she, Jack, and John walk down the steps.

  Now I’m slipping past Bud to have a look into the room myself. I kneel on the cold, hard stone, and push my right eye against the massive keyhole; there’s a large round hole and a widening gash descending from it – just the way a child might draw a keyhole. I let my eye take in the whole scene. There’s Freddie, his mouth closed, eyes wide open. His chin is touching the floor, the right side of his face obscured. His arms, hands, and fingers are extended, his legs at odd angles. The keyhole is at about waist height, so I am kneeling up, and the hole is so big I can bob my head about to get a slightly different view of the room from different angles.

  Right in front of me there’s Freddie’s body. Can I see anything else about it, or on it, that might help me deduce if he killed himself? No. As Bud had noted, there’s no visible gunshot wound, but there is blood. The blood isn’t on the floor in the area nearest his head, it’s near his midsection, but the angle of his body means I cannot see his torso. There’s a fair bit of blood, and it’s pooling on the uneven surface of the wooden floor. Maybe more has found its way into the floorboards, and between them.

  There’s a gun. It’s on the floor beside the body. Its barrel is facing me, and it’s at an angle that means I can’t make out what type of gun it is; I reason that, even if I could see it more clearly, I wouldn’t be able to identify the model or type in any case.

  I make a mental note to ask Bud about the gun; he knows guns.

  I also make a mental note to ask everyone if they heard a gunshot; I haven’t done that yet, and I cannot at this moment imagine why not.

  I take some time to recollect everything else I saw of the room. There’s a desk between the body and the window, beside which are the doors to the walkway. I can see that both the window shutters and the doors are open. The desk seems to be covered with items, but they are difficult to make out because of my viewing angle. I see something tallish, that seems to be made of brass; a cylinder of some sort? Maybe a telescope. I see some papers in a bundle. They look old – the edges are well worn – but it’s not a book, it’s definitely a bundle. There’s something on top of them – probably a paperweight – but all I can see is that it’s made of clear glass…the sun is reflecting off it. There’s a pot full of pens and pencils…but that’s all I can identify, other than something that looks like a large roll of sheets of paper, tied with a blue ribbon; the sheets look as though they are very big, because the scroll looks quite long.

  I move my head and see shelves set against the wall. It’s a bookcase, curved like the furniture in the sitting room below, but it’s not only being used for books. I can’t see it all, but can see enough of it to make out that this is the room where Freddie has chosen to house his knick-knacks, which include a large butterfly, displayed behind glass, in a frame. There’s a big ball that looks to be made of knobbly, old iron – maybe an ancient cannon ball? There are lots of books; they look old, and they’re all lying down, heaped higgledy-piggledy. There’s a bunch of feathers, stuffed into what looks like an antique ink well.

  I stretch my neck, which is aching. I can’t see anything else. Bud helps me up, and we take our leave, talking quietly as we descend, then we pause in the sitting room, and I recall again how absolutely certain I was at the time that the man we’d dined with
the previous evening wasn’t in the frame of mind to end his own life.

  I open my eyes, and I still believe that to be the case.

  “Couldn’t you get to sleep?” Bud sounded barely half awake when he sat up in bed.

  “No, but maybe I’ll be able to now.”

  “Good. It’s late.”

  After a trip to the bathroom I joined Bud in bed. He hadn’t started to snore. “Do you know what sort of gun it was? In the tower.” I asked him.

  “What?” Bud sounded puzzled, groggy.

  “The gun on the floor beside Freddie’s body. Could you identify it?” I tried to not sound impatient.

  Bud gave me a muffled, “No idea. Couldn’t see it properly,” he sighed, then added, “please try to sleep, Wife. We’ve got to get up in a few hours.”

  “Night, night, Husband.”

  No reply.

  Breakfast and a Bombshell

  Lottie’s idea of breakfast was to put bowls of fruit on the table beside jugs of juice and let us all have at it. Fortunately, John was a man who understood the need for gallons of coffee first thing in the morning, and he kept pots of it coming. It was another thing I’d miss when I left Jamaica – the taste of fresh Blue Mountain coffee; it’s exquisite: rich, yet not bitter. I glugged it down, then peeled a banana as I raised the question of how Sheila, Lottie, and I were to get to the Caro Mio estate to meet Nina Mazzo in a couple of hours’ time.

  “Can’t we just walk?” asked Sheila. “It’s only next door.”

  “That could be quite an undertaking, given we don’t know how large her property is, nor how circuitous the road through it to her house might be,” I replied. “And it’s already hot.” I suspect I sounded grumpy; I love the heat, but only if I don’t have to exert myself…and walking along a dusty Jamaican road in the humidity of May most certainly counts as exertion.

  “I don’t think we should ask Tarone to drive us; we should let him stay with his grandmother. But we could borrow the vehicle,” said Lottie, who was happily slicing into a mango. “I’ll pop over to their bungalow to ask for the keys, if you like.”

  What I thought was, I hate people who are bright and bouncy first thing in the morning, but I replied, “Great idea,” hoping Lottie would shut up so I could come to properly.

  “With you girls going off to meet La Mazzo,” said Bud, “we thought we might go fishing for the day.” He sounded cheerful. I glared at him. So this is the plan they have to be able to disappear?

  Lottie put down her knife. “When did you all decide this?” she asked John. “I thought we could enjoy some time together by the pool when I get back. Or maybe pop over to Montego Bay. We’ve hardly spent any time at all relaxing properly, or sightseeing, and I thought that was why we’d come.”

  I could understand why she sounded annoyed; she had no idea about the mission the men were on, so she must have imagined John was trying to avoid her. Not nice, when you’ve been looking forward to a bit of time with your boyfriend…though I struggled with the concept of John Silver being anyone’s “boyfriend”.

  “Maybe we could do that tomorrow?” replied John. “Jack heard about a chap with a boat who swears he knows the best place for us to catch something we might be able to have for dinner. Fish doesn’t come much fresher than that.”

  Lottie sounded sulky as she stabbed at her defenseless mango. “Does Jack also know someone who’ll clean and prepare said fish, so we don’t have to?”

  “The guy who owns the boat might do it,” volunteered Jack. “We’ll probably walk away with fillets ready for the grill.”

  Sheila smiled. “You’ve got to love their confidence,” she said, winking at Lottie. “Sounds to me as though they’ve as good as caught it already.”

  “If there’s too much for us to cope with, we could pop it into the freezer here,” continued Jack, “or maybe even give some to Amelia and Tarone.”

  “Well, just make sure you catch something,” said Lottie still sounding annoyed. “And not bonefish. I don’t like bonefish.”

  “Okay,” said John. “No bonefish.”

  It sounded as though bonefish had made quite an impression on Lottie when she’d holidayed on Jamaica. I’d finally managed to pour enough coffee into me to remember what I’d wanted to ask everyone. “Did anyone hear a shot yesterday morning…or Freddie singing the national anthem?”

  Five puzzled faces took on an expression of thoughtfulness.

  “Didn’t hear either,” said John.

  “Me neither,” agreed Lottie. They exchanged a glance, nostrils flared, eyes glittering with mischief. Otherwise occupied?

  “You know I’d have mentioned it if I had,” said Bud.

  “Me too,” added Jack.

  “I heard something,” said Sheila.

  We all looked at her. She didn’t add anything.

  “What did you hear?” asked Jack, trying to sound patient.

  Sheila put down the orange she was segmenting and furrowed her brow. “I was going to the bathroom. Don’t know what time it was. It was still dark, I know that much. I heard something that sounded like…oh, I don’t know…like when a big dragonfly gets caught against a windowpane in the summer, and it just flutters and flutters, you know? I was a bit scared for a moment, thinking it might be one of those huge, black witch moths – they call them duppy bats around here, and they’re almost big enough to be bats. Of course, we have a lot of bats flying about at night at home, and they don’t bother me at all. But those moths – they make my skin crawl. So maybe that’s what it was, I don’t know. But I do know that it definitely wasn’t a gunshot, I’d have recognized that.”

  “Have you heard a lot of gunshots, then?” Lottie’s tone suggested she thought it unlikely.

  Jack leapt to his wife’s defense. “Sheila was a good cop, she’d know a gunshot. If she says she’s sure it wasn’t one, it wasn’t.”

  I was gobsmacked. I had no idea Sheila had served.

  “When were you in the police?” was out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  Sheila didn’t look at all fazed. “The CBC broadcast the Royal Canadian Mounted Police swearing-in ceremony for the first ever female Mounties when I was a teen. It was September 1974 – I’ll never forget it. They swore in a whole bunch of them all at the exact same time, across the country, so no one would ever have to be ‘the first’. Troop 17. The RCMP college is in Regina, close to where I’m from –” she seemed to be explaining all this to Lottie, but I was also taking it in – “so I guess I also felt some pride that it was in my province. I wanted to join the RCMP more than anything else in the world – and I managed it. I thought I’d made it for life.”

  Sheila sighed, and laced her fingers. “I could tell you so many stories from that time, but I won’t. Let’s just say that while there were women who were ready to join the RCMP, the RCMP wasn’t necessarily ready to cope with female officers. It was difficult.”

  Jack added, “We met when Sheila was transferred to the Burnaby detachment of the RCMP in British Columbia, before I’d even thought of joining the VPD. We married and, shortly afterwards, she fell pregnant with our son. At the time, the RCMP was still grappling with how to deal with officers marrying each other, let alone them being pregnant. Remember all the fuss about your sidearm, love?” Sheila nodded.

  I blurted out, “Pregnant? With your son?” I didn’t know Jack and Sheila had any children. Indeed, I’d always been convinced they were quite happily childless. I noticed Bud squeezing his eyes closed and wondered if I’d put my foot in my mouth, again. At least he didn’t kick me.

  “He was born very prematurely. Too early to survive,” said Sheila quietly. “It happened just a couple of months after my sister had died. It was a terrible time. I left the RCMP soon afterwards, and…well, I never managed a full-term pregnancy after that.”

  I didn’t know what to say, and I wasn’t alone. The silence was broken only by the hum of the ceiling fans, one of which had
developed a definite clicking sound.

  “Dear God, that’s awful,” said Lottie.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  The men didn’t comment.

  The revelations I’d just heard puzzled me even more – why didn’t I know any of this? Why hadn’t Bud told me?

  By the time we’d cleared away the breakfast – which really didn’t take much effort – we all seemed to be as “back to normal” as was possible, given the circumstances. Sheila and Jack seemed to be a bit over-jolly, if anything.

  As the conversation in the kitchen returned to the fishing trip, and our visit to see Nina Mazzo, what amazed me about Sheila – almost as much as the news I’d just heard about her past – was the ease with which she was dealing with the men’s cover story about their “day out”, chattering brightly about the lovely time the men were about to have.

  I kept having to remind myself I had to act as though it were all real, because Bud’s always telling me I’m a terrible liar, and I have to admit he has a point. Under normal circumstances, I think being a poor liar is generally a good thing, but – given our agreement to keep certain parts of our joint activities a secret from Lottie – I realized it might prove problematic. Sheila, on the other hand, seemed to be taking to the situation like a duck to water. So, she can hide her true emotions when she needs to. Interesting.

  Later, while I was choosing what to wear to visit a hermit-like, now-aged Italian starlet, Bud informed me he was off, and that Lottie would meet Sheila and me at the front of the big house in half an hour. I settled on what had been a loose cotton top a few weeks earlier; now all I could say about it was that it pulled across my tummy a bit less than any of my other tops. Big zig-zag patterns in green and turquoise did a pretty good job of hiding that fact, and toned nicely with my aqua-colored capris, I thought. I felt as well put-together as possible when I headed off to meet my co-investigators. Sheila had opted for another inevitable floral frock, and Lottie looked annoyingly good in wide-legged white linen pants and a little vest. The brim of her pink straw hat kept the sun off her face and made her complexion glow. Me? I tried to stop my sunglasses from sliding down my sweaty nose every thirty seconds.