MURDEROUS MORNING: A heart-stopping crime novel with a stunning end.

by Bernadette Calonego

  Tessa took the opportunity and ran into the house. She found the satellite telephone next to the fridge. It worked. She called her parents’ number. It seemed like an eternity until Savannah answered the phone.

  “Hi, Tessa, what’s going on?”

  “Quick, give me Dad!”

  Savannah lost no time. Tessa heard her father´s voice right away. “Dad, I’m in Fran’s house. Cindy is here and Cliff Bight, too. He came with a poker.”

  “Tessa, what are you saying . . . is everything okay? I heard that Kratz Hilder . . .”

  “Dad, I don’t have much time. Tell me, how late is the scrapyard open on Tuesdays?”

  “Until three. It always closes at three. Why . . . ?”

  “I'll explain everything to you later. I’ve got to hang up now. Don’t worry.”

  She once again looked all around the kitchen. When she opened the front door, she heard a motor and honking and yelling from the back side of the house. Cliff’s voice. He sounded alarmed.

  She ran outside, in the direction of the noise.

  And stopped in her tracks.

  Twenty meters away, a grizzly shook its gigantic head back and forth. The animal seemed extremely upset. Its growling and snorting was even louder than the engine of the pickup, where Cliff was sitting behind the wheel. Instinctively she wanted to run back into the house, but an inner voice warned her: Don’t run, don’t run! The grizzly might follow her. The massive animal could run really fast, she knew.

  The pickup was not far enough away from the bear, so she couldn’t save herself by getting in the vehicle. The honking only seemed to make the grizzly angrier. Tessa took out her gun and shot once into the air.

  The grizzly gave a jerk and looked at her with its little eyes. But it didn’t run away.

  She put the gun back quickly and grabbed the side of her backpack where the flare pistol was. She pulled it out, aimed next to the animal, and pulled the trigger. The ball of fire landed pretty close to the grizzly, who jumped to the side and fled. Cliff drove the pickup up toward her and stopped. He got out, his face still in shock. “She’ll come after us,” he whispered, as if the animal could hear him. “She’s not going to give up.”

  “She’s gone,” Tessa said, gasping. They both assumed it was a female. She let the backpack sink to the ground and confronted him: “Cliff, the scrapyard closes at three on Tuesdays. You must have left the cabin around or before noon.”

  He looked at her questioningly before he understood what she meant. His lips began to quiver.

  “You’ve got to tell me the truth, Cliff, for Fran and Hank and the children’s sake.”

  He sucked in his lips, as if he wanted to stop them from talking. His face turned red.

  At that moment a voice thundered between them.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Tessa didn’t have to turn around to know who it was: Harrison Miller. The mayor of Whatou Lake.

  With Cindy in his wake.

  Tessa looked at Cliff. “They didn’t come with you?”

  Cliff shook his head.

  “There was a grizzly over there.” Tessa pointed to the spot where the animal had angrily shaken its head. “I drove her away with some shots.”

  “That bear has been haunting the farm for a long time.” Harrison looked around nervously. “Hank couldn’t get rid of her.”

  Cindy moved toward Tessa and Cliff. With a quick movement, she tore away Tessa’s backpack. In seconds, she had opened it and stuck her hand inside. Harrison looked at her, amazed. Tessa wanted to stop her, but Cindy knocked her to the ground.

  “Where’s the camera? Where’s the camera?” she screamed like a madwoman. Her sunglasses fell down. She threw out the water bottle, the suntan lotion, and Kleenexes. And the blond wig flew out. Cindy’s eyes got bigger. “She has that, too? Harrison, she has that, too!”

  It was obviously getting unpleasant for the mayor. “It doesn’t mean anything. Pull yourself together.”

  Meanwhile Tessa was on her feet again and wanted to get at Cindy. But Harrison came between them and held on to her.

  “Stop it, both of you,” he ordered. “It’s like kindergarten here.”

  “Don’t you see?” Cindy screamed. “She has the pictures from my lounge and also the wig!”

  Tessa tried to shake off Harrison. At that point, Cindy was already aiming a pistol at her. “I’m not going to return this backpack to you,” she yelled. Tessa froze.

  Harrison tried to get a hold of the pistol, but Cindy jumped to the side. Worried, he called out: ”What are you doing? Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “She has the wig, Harrison. And the photos. She’s going to rat on us.”

  “Goddammit, shut up.”

  “Smells like smoke.” It was Cliff talking.

  Tessa also smelled it. And then she saw it. The smoke was coming from the house.

  “Something’s burning there,” Cliff shouted but didn’t move from where he was. “It’s burning!”

  At that moment, Harrison launched himself at Cindy and knocked the pistol out of her hand.

  Tessa turned her eyes to the house again. Flames were licking at the living room window.

  “You . . . you’ve set fire to the house!” she yelled in horror.

  A cacophony of voices followed.

  “The house is burning!”

  “Harrison, she will rat on us!”

  “Shut up, damn it!”

  “You’ve set the house on fire!”

  “It’s burning down!”

  Suddenly a loud huffing and snorting came from the edge of the forest.

  For god’s sake, the grizzly.

  Then everything happened very fast. Tessa snatched the backpack from Cindy, ran over to the pickup, and climbed into the driver’s seat. The key was in the ignition. She heard Cliff yelling. With a few large steps, he was at the pickup and jumped in the passenger seat. He could really move quickly for a big man.

  In the chaos, she decided that Cliff was less dangerous than Cindy or the fire or the grizzly. She started up the engine and steered the pickup to the driveway. In the rearview mirror she saw the flames spreading. The windows burst with a loud bang.

  “We’ve got to do something, we’ve got to do something,” she said and stopped the pickup at the end of the driveway.

  “Keep driving,” Cliff roared in panic. “Nobody can do anything in there now. Somebody used a fire accelerant. Get going!”

  She stepped on the gas. “What about a forest fire?”

  “The trees are far enough away.”

  “But if the wind blows, the sparks . . .”

  “I have a satellite phone. We can stop farther down the road. In the undergrowth. Where they won’t see us.”

  “You mean they’re going to follow us?”

  “Cindy has completely lost it. She would have made short shrift of you. My god!”

  She drove the pickup around the deep potholes. “Why are they burning the house down?”

  Cliff didn’t answer that.

  Harrison or Cindy, or both of them, must have made their way into the house when she was talking to Cliff, and set the house on fire.

  She has the wig, Harrison. And the photos. She’s going to rat on us.

  Goddammit, shut up.

  This couldn’t be true.

  “Do you see the big boulders ahead of us?” Cliff said. “Turn in there just before them.”

  Tessa slowed down and spotted a way into the underbrush where the pickup couldn’t be seen from the road.

  Cliff took his satellite phone from the back seat. “Do you want to call the police?”

  She nodded.

  The dispatcher put her through, and an official answered. She briefly described the situation, and also mentioned the grizzly and Cindy’s pistol. And her suspicion that a fire accelerant was involved. She gave her GPS position and mentioned Cliff Bight.

  “Where are you traveling right now?”

  “To Whatou Lake.”


  “Any weapons in the car?”

  “Yes, I have one.”

  “What is it that you’ve got?”

  “A pistol. I have a license for it.”

  “And Cliff Bight?”

  “No weapon.”

  “Good. Give us your position again in a half an hour.”

  “Roger.”

  She gave the phone back to Cliff and looked at him. “You don’t want to talk to the police?”

  He looked down. “Not here, not now.”

  “The quicker you act, the better it’ll be for you. That’s my advice as a lawyer.”

  “I’ve got to tell my wife about it first. What . . . should I expect?”

  “You lied to the police. You told the RCMP that you were in Lionel and Cindy’s cabin the entire day on Tuesday. And that the two of them were also there the whole day. You all provided alibis for each other. Why?”

  “We didn’t want . . .” He stopped.

  “What didn’t you want?”

  “Lionel . . . he likes wild game. And so does Cindy. They always give me some of it.”

  She sighed audibly. Half of Whatou Lake seemed to be poachers. Lionel, too. No wonder that poaching escalated when the ranger was mixed up in drug dealing and didn’t care about it.

  Tessa drummed her fingers on the dashboard. “When did you drive out to the cabin on Tuesday?”

  “I got there a little after eleven, and then I loaded the scrap metal.”

  “Were Lionel and Cindy already there?”

  He shook his head.

  “When did you drive back to Whatou Lake?”

  “Between twelve and twelve thirty.”

  “You gave both of them a false alibi. That could be seen as an obstruction of justice. Did somebody put some pressure on you?”

  “I don’t want to lose my job. I have to take care of my family. It’s not easy to find work in Whatou Lake. My wife . . . she only works part time as a cashier at the Kmart.”

  “I don’t want to mislead you, Cliff. In the worst case, you could become a murder suspect, if you don’t have a watertight alibi.” He looked at her anxiously, but she didn’t give him a break. “That’s why it’s so important right now to tell the police the truth about what happened. Do you understand that?”

  He shut his eyes for a moment and nodded. After taking a deep breath, he asked: “Can I drive now? I think Cindy and Harrison must have gone to the cabin.”

  Tessa suspected the same. Otherwise they would have already passed them on the road. The cabin was located in the opposite direction.

  Cliff turned the pickup back onto the logging road. For a long time neither of them spoke. It was a depressing silence.

  Cliff was the first to break it. “What was all of that about the wig? What did Cindy mean? Why did you have Cindy’s wig with you? And why did she pull out a gun because of it?”

  It’s not Cindy’s wig, Tessa wanted to say right away; she had sold it to Glenda. But something clicked in her head. Like dominoes that were starting to fall.

  What if it had really been Cindy’s wig? What if Savannah had seen Cindy in Harrison’s pickup near the Friendly Piggy, and not Fran? And not Glenda, either? That would explain Cindy’s violent reaction.

  She’s going to rat on us. Who was we?

  She has the pictures from my lounge.

  A number of scenes appeared in Tessa’s mind. The fight between Harrison and Glenda in the parking lot behind Cindy’s boutique. Furiously Glenda had thrown the wig on the ground. That morning, she must have followed her husband in the car. Just like yesterday, when she had shown up unexpectedly and come across Tessa, who had the key to the back door of the boutique. Glenda, who had demanded she not tell anybody.

  She remembered something else: Harrison, the womanizer. Who was it who had said that? Her father. Yesterday evening. A goddamned womanizer. Cliff braked so suddenly that Tessa was stopped short by the seat belt. They were only a couple of meters away from a dark-gray vehicle they hadn’t seen before because of a sharp curve. It was parked by the side of the road. Another pickup.

  “Fuck,” she heard Cliff swear.

  That’s what she thought, too.

  The pickup belonged to Lionel Miller.

  43

  Cliff turned off the ignition and got out of the pickup. Tessa saw him talking to Lionel through the open window of the driver’s door. She couldn’t understand what they were saying. As if paralyzed, she just sat there, not knowing what to do.

  Tense minutes passed before Cliff came back. He opened the passenger door. “Lionel wants to talk to you.”

  She didn’t want to face that; she looked for an excuse. “I don’t have any time now; I’ve got to get to Whatou Lake.”

  “It’s better that you tell him directly.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That his father and Cindy are at the farm. That they set the house on fire. And that we drove away because a grizzly showed up.”

  “Does he have a weapon in the car?”

  “I saw a hunting rifle on the back seat.”

  “Does he know I have a pistol?”

  “I didn’t tell him about that.”

  “So what happens if I get out and you just drive away? Then I’m trapped.”

  “I’ll give you the ignition key, okay?”

  She thought it over. ”When I go over there, I’m going to seize the hunting rifle and give it to you.”

  He blinked. “And you’ll help me find a lawyer?”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ll help you. I know you’re not the murderer.”

  He handed the key over to her and they both got out. Slowly they approached Lionel’s pickup. The window was down. She looked at his nervous face. “Lionel, I thought you couldn’t drive.”

  “I can with my right foot. Get in, I want to talk to you.”

  “Sure.” She glanced over at the back seat as she went around the pickup. Quickly she opened the back door, took out the hunting rifle, and gave it to Cliff.

  “What the hell are you doing there?” Lionel yelled.

  “Cindy threatened me today with a pistol. I don’t want to have that happen again.” She opened the passenger door and cautiously left it open a crack.

  “Cliff, give me the rifle,” Lionel shouted. But his employee didn’t respond.

  “Cliff, do you hear me, give me the goddamned gun!” Lionel looked like he was going to get out of the car, but then he remembered that his foot was injured and gave up. “So Cindy is at the house?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Yes, with your father.” She gripped the handgun in her pocket. “Cindy has a pistol with her. What’s going on, Lionel? Why is Cindy running around with a pistol and threatening me with it?”

  “I have no idea.” He avoided looking at her.

  “I found Fran’s camera. There are pictures of the lounge in Cindy’s boutique. Cindy almost went nuts when she heard that. Why?”

  Lionel’s head dropped onto the steering wheel. He mumbled something.

  “What are you saying? I can’t hear you.”

  He slowly pulled himself together. “Because she met up with my dad in the lounge.”

  “Who? Fran?”

  “No, Cindy.”

  “I know he helped her with the bookkeeping.”

  He laughed, but awkwardly. “Yes, maybe that as well. But out there at Bob Barker’s property, he was screwing her.”

  His words hit Tessa like a lightning bolt. It took several seconds for her to be able to talk again. “What are you saying? Are you sure?”

  “Mom saw them. Mom knows everything. She has . . . she has proof, photos. Hank had already told me that before, but back then I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Hank? When did you last talk to him?”

  “On Tuesday.”

  Tessa froze. “You called him?” she asked because she didn't want to give up all hope. Hope that it wasn’t as bad as it sounded.

  “We were there. At the farm. Cindy and me.” Lionel did
n’t look at her.

  “Did you tell that to the police?”

  He shook his head silently. Pressed his lips together.

  She had to force him to talk. “I was in the house, Lionel. It is horrifying. I . . . could picture everything. How it . . . played out. Breena was probably the first. The murderer went into the room as she was reading. I . . . the murderer shot her point-blank in the temple. Like an execution.”

  Lionel held on tightly to the steering wheel. His hand bones stuck out like the ribs of a starving animal. He was having difficulty breathing.

  He has to hear this, Tessa thought. The children’s suffering. Now that the house has burned down, no one will ever see it again as she saw it. “Clyde fled from the killer into the bathroom. Blood was everywhere. On the floor. On the walls. It looked like . . .” Words failed her. After a pause she picked up the thread again. “Like in a slaughterhouse. Kayley got the worst of it. She . . . she hid in the dog basket that was up in the attic. Little Kayley. Just imagine, Lionel. She knew that . . . that her life was in danger. But the murderer found her and shot her. It is . . . I can’t believe that anybody could do that; I simply don’t understand it.”

  Lionel sat there with his eyes closed. She grabbed his arm and shook him. “How should I understand this, Lionel? Tell me, how?”

  He took her hand and pressed it without saying anything. Let it go and collapsed in his seat. As if somebody had squeezed every bit of air out of him.

  He spoke in a scratchy whisper. “Every day I wish it hadn’t happened.”

  Tessa held her breath. Now, now it’s going to come. At first he could only stutter, but then Lionel’s sentences began to flow faster and faster. “We knew . . . that Fran was in Whatou Lake. Lola Dole . . . she saw her at the hospital and told Cindy about it. I absolutely had to talk with Hank. Your mother . . . Martha had told me that my dad . . . wanted to buy the outfitter license for Hank. I had no idea about that; I was furious when I heard. Why should Hank get everything? Without having done anything to deserve it? He had been unsuccessful in all he did. A farm that didn’t bring any money in. A wife who had problems. He wasn’t any good as a logger. Hank was a failure. But for Dad he was always number one. Hank, Hank, Hank. Simply because he was the firstborn. And I . . . my firm could go bankrupt, and Dad wouldn’t lift a finger!” He hit the dashboard with his fist.