by J. S. Marlo
That the culprit had grown bolder worried her, but she refused to let fear rule her life, not after it ruined her childhood. “You’re really taking the threats against me seriously?”
A gleam of hurt flickered in his eyes, rekindling the hope that someone cared. “Yes. Would there be a safe place where you and your son could stay until I get to the bottom of it?”
“This is my home.” Once Freddy learned about the fox, he was bound to insist she came to live with him, but he had a life and a high-maintenance girlfriend. She and Rory weren’t his responsibility. “I’ll be fine.”
Besides, she knew how to defend herself and wouldn’t hesitate to do so.
***
Alone at the detachment, Lee stared in disgust at the bottle of beer discarded in the garbage can. This is going to the lab for analysis. He picked it up and placed it in an evidence bag.
Sharing the same rank as Stone was an insult. The demoted constable belonged in the drunk tank, not in a uniform. The pathetic loser didn’t possess any more honor or discipline than Abbott. Lee would enjoy watching Stone fall prey to Hannah and lose his last flake of integrity.
How dare she turn me down like I’m not good enough for her?
After her husband’s disappearance in the fall, Terri had approached him. Abbott had cheated on her, and she’d enlisted Lee’s help to find and destroy the proof of his betrayal. Lee had found an envelope taped under the second drawer of Abbott’s desk. The content of the letter hadn’t shocked him as much as it’d angered him.
Lee unlocked his top drawer. Palm up, he slipped his hand inside, grazing the upper panel. Tingling pleasure rushed to the tips of his fingers. The envelope with the negative results tucked inside was still there, taped underneath his desktop. He should have burned the evidence like he’d promised Terri, but Parker needed to be taught a lesson. The letter gave him the perfect leverage to bring her down to her knees. In due time, Parker would beg him not to reveal her false accusations and blacken her tarnished reputation.
How stupid of her for not anticipating that Abbott would demand a DNA test before acknowledging the bastard. Then again, she wasn’t the crispiest cookie in the oven.
Lucky for her, Lee would tame her—one way or another.
Chapter Ten
A fox and a Foxy. Both dead. This is starting to resemble a bad joke.
Unsure what to make of the coincidence, Avery entered the basement of Pike’s clinic. “Hello, Doc.”
“Constable.” Dr. Fred looked too jovial for someone cutting his clients apart. “I was wondering when I’d see you again.”
“Call me Stone.” It rang better than constable.
The stripper lying naked on the stainless steel table had been dead over twelve hours. Her body should have revealed some answers by now, and Avery was eager to hear them.
“Did you finish the postmortem?”
“She died of a stab wound to the neck, but I’m afraid your murder weapon melted.”
Avery sighed, showing his frustration. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
The medical examiner slipped on a pair of latex gloves and rolled the cadaver sideways. “Point of entry is here.” He pointed a finger at a hole surrounded by bluish skin. “The angle is consistent with an icicle dropping from the roof as she tilted her head forward to light up a cigarette.”
“You’re telling me she was at the wrong place at the wrong time?” Cigarette butts had littered the snow around the body, but the timing of her demise was still too convenient.
Fred repositioned Foxy on her back then covered her with a white sheet. “No bruises, no scratches, no sign of struggle or sexual activity in the hours preceding her death.”
“Is it possible someone sneaked up from behind and stabbed her?”
“Anything is possible, Stone, but from a medical point of view, I found nothing to support murder.”
But nothing to rule it out either. “Tox screen?”
“I sent it to the lab. I’ll know in about a week, but I wouldn’t pin any hope on the results. Even if she tests positive, the drugs are unlikely to have caused her death. If anything, the presence of illegal substances may have dulled her reflexes, preventing her from quickly stepping aside when or if she heard the icicle breaking from the ledge.”
Great. Another dead end. “The other day you mentioned Hannah Parker finding Abbott’s body. What do you know about her?”
In a town of less than five thousand souls, people were bound to know each other.
“Hannah?” A smile crinkled Fred’s face. “She’s my sister. Why? What did she do this time?”
“Sister?” The two siblings shared no physical resemblance, and in their last conversation, the medical examiner hadn’t given any hints that he and Hannah were related.
Fred tossed the gloves in the garbage can by the freezer. “Foster sister, not blood sister, though I suppose it’s not impossible that we share the same father.”
How could they not know if they share the same father? It appeared their family ties were as muddled as the case. One thing was certain in Avery’s mind; dumping a dead fox on Hannah’s doorstep hadn’t been an accident. Someone was sending her a message, and he suspected the fox to be linked to the anonymous notes she’d received. Hannah might not know why she was targeted, but he hoped a glimpse into her past might shed some light over her current predicament.
“I’m slightly confused here.” Avery leaned against the counter where a microscope sat beside slides of different colors. “Why don’t you enlighten me about your sister’s life?”
“Why? You’re not smitten by Hannah, are you?”
The light teasing struck a tender chord. Something in Hannah—something he couldn’t describe or pinpoint—reminded him of Rowan. He hadn’t seen her since the trial ended in the fall. At the time she’d been six months pregnant, and the last he’d heard, she’d given birth to a baby girl. If not for the urgency of this assignment, he would have taken a few days off and gone to PEI for a surprise visit.
“Your sister is an interesting character.” Getting too personal was not a good idea, but Avery couldn’t deny his fascination.
“Hannah and I grew up together in a shabby apartment in Moncton. Her mother and mine were roomies. When we were young, they used to lock us inside a small bedroom for hours with growling stomachs and dirty clothes while men came and went. I guess you could say business was booming.” His jaw hardened, betraying the efforts he made to keep his voice even. “I was a couple years older than Hannah, so I read her stories to muffle the sounds coming from the next room. Then one day, Hannah’s mother died of a drug overdose. She was seven years old. My mother kept her. It was her twisted way to get more child support money from the government, not that she spent any of that money on Hannah or me.
“Some months later, my grandfather found us. He wanted my mother to come home and start over, but she refused. That was the last time I saw her. I don’t know if she’s alive or not, and frankly, I don’t care. Gramp took Hannah and me with him.” A faraway look crossed Fred’s eyes. “She wasn’t his granddaughter, but he couldn’t leave her behind. He raised us together in the cabin and made sure we received a proper education. Without him, I’d probably be selling drugs and Hannah would be turning tricks. Instead, I became a doctor and she became a social worker, but it wasn’t easy for her. She completely lost her hearing over the span of a few months. Science wasn’t able to explain or reverse the damage anymore than it could provide her with an alternative solution. Hearing aids were useless. To succeed, she had to work twice as hard as anyone else.”
“She’s a social worker?” Maybe she’d taken a child in protective custody and some deadbeat parents held a grudge against her. Threats and violence plagued her profession. He made a mental note of looking into her caseload.
“She’s the strongest advocate for children you’ll ever find, Stone.” His voice carried his admiration. “She may not be able to hear, but she knows how to listen. I wish she�
�d stayed in Halifax, but when Gramp got sick, she moved back to take care of him.”
The grandfather would have been proud of both children for rising above the unfortunate circumstances surrounding their births. That Hannah had returned to be with him spoke of her compassion and gratitude. “Does your grandfather still live in the area?”
“He died five years ago, killed by two teenagers high on drugs. Hannah was the one who found his body in the woods.” The doctor shook his head. “Then she gave birth to Rory and stayed in Mooseland.”
In this forsaken corner of the province, the demand for social workers exceeded the availability. The residents in town needed all the professional help they could get. “Is she working for the agency in town?”
“She mostly works from home, reviewing cases and giving recommendations.”
Nowhere in the story had Fred mentioned a boyfriend, and Avery couldn’t rule out the possibility of a former lover seeking revenge. “May I ask who’s the father of her son?”
“I have no idea, Stone.” The man met Avery’s gaze. “She never told me.”
Chapter Eleven
Reed slammed the report on Avery’s desk. “Suspicious death? Don’t you have any sober brain cells left?”
As much as the insults flew in one ear and out the other without stopping, Avery couldn’t ignore his superior. Since playing deaf wasn’t an option, he chose to play dumb. “Is there a problem, Sergeant?”
The sergeant’s face swelled like a red birthday balloon. “You have no motive, no murder weapon, no witness, no defensive marks, no nothing, Stone. The stripper’s death was accidental.”
“She was killed by an icicle. Doesn’t that enter the suspicious category?” Pressing Reed’s buttons and having fun witnessing his reaction was a perk that Avery hadn’t anticipated.
“Didn’t I tell you not to rock the boat?” Reed gripped the side of Avery’s desk. As he leaned forward, his breath expelled a sample of his lunch menu. “There’s an empty beer bottle in the garbage can. I find your prints on it, Stone, you’re history. You close the stripper case, we can both forget about the trash. There’s enough work to do around here without chasing after imaginary murderers. Got it?”
Not only had sensitivity training skipped Reed, but his suggestion to forget about the trash also bordered on blackmail. Right now, Avery wasn’t inclined to trust either of his colleagues. “Got it. Now, about the dead fox at Hannah—”
“Would you stop and think for a moment?” Reed thundered before pulling away. “Didn’t you say you didn’t find any tracks? The damn fox didn’t just appear out of thin air.” Visibly exasperated, he began pacing in front of the stove, wearing out his shoes and the floor. “Parker is a trapper. She learned it from her old man. Add one plus one, would you, and try to come up with two.”
Someone could have easily ventured around Hannah’s cabin while riding in the tracks she’d made earlier with her own snowmobile. “Is that an order or just advice?”
“Don’t be a smartass like Abbott, and don’t go risking what’s left of your pitiful career for a floozy like Foxy or a liar like Parker.”
How nice of Reed to care about my career. “May I ask what makes you think Hannah Parker is lying?”
“She’s gotten to you, hasn’t she?” Without further explanation, the older Mountie dashed inside his office, only to return a few minutes later with a folder that he slapped on top of Foxy’s accident report. “I did some digging on Parker after she received the first note. You may want to read this before buying everything that exits her pretty mouth.”
***
It always amazed Hannah to see the difference forty-eight hours could make. The fever was gone, and Rory had regained most of his energy and appetite, even though he still favored ice cream over vegetables.
“Ready?”
Big blue eyes sparkled with glee and an ingenuous smile embedded cute dimples on his rosy cheeks. She kissed to top of his nose, then lowered his visor. From the time Rory had been old enough to sit, he’d enjoyed riding in the woods on a snowmobile. By next winter, his legs should be long enough to go snowshoeing with her. She looked forward to those new memories waiting on the horizon. His small mitts gripped the back of her winter coat. If Rory needed something he knew to tug.
She turned on the ignition and headed for the bridge.
In the last two days, the threatening notes and the fox had haunted her every waking moment, even spilling into her dreams. This morning, she’d made a short trip into town to get some food. At the entrance of the grocery store was a huge board where residents pinned ads, selling anything from trucks to baby clothes. She’d read all of them, forty-six handwritten cards, and seen none with the distinctive Bs or Ps, but she wasn’t giving up.
At the arena, there was an even bigger bulletin board affixed to the wall near the dressing rooms, but she had yet to check it out. On her next visit, she would remedy the situation.
With that plan in place, her mind traveled back to the first note she’d received shortly after Brent’s disappearance.
There was no telling how long he’d been dead. Whoever tried to scare her away might not have wanted her to venture near the bridge and stumble prematurely onto his body. If this was the reason behind the notes, then someone had gone through a great length of trouble to keep Brent’s death a secret. The far-fetched scenario invoked cover-up, possibly murder.
Eleven months of undercover investigation had taught Hannah nothing was impossible. Lives could be bought, sold, or terminated for a few grams of tainted drugs. The shocking evidence she’d gathered under a false identity had saved dozens of lives, but it pained her to remember she’d almost compromised the case by reporting the sexual assault. As soon as she realized her mistake, Hannah had retracted her accusations, inadvertently damaging her credibility in the volte-face. When she was arrested for prostitution a week later, her reputation had suffered another blow. About to be fired, she’d quit Child Welfare Services to protect her cover and lived in a shelter until they wrapped up the investigation. Gramp’s declining health had given her an excuse to come home and a chance to rebuild her shattered life, but the irony had never washed away.
Rory’s birth had grounded her, given her purpose. Even though she’d been relegated to a clerical position at work, the stains on her record hadn’t dimmed her ability to carry a good investigation. The possible connection between Brent’s death and the threatening notes leapt at her, like a starving wolf stumbling onto an injured fawn. How could I have missed it? But back then, she hadn’t known Brent had been buried not too far from the cabin.
The bridge loomed closer, a series of logs tied together with leather straps that were stronger than the rusty nails securing the remaining handrail. An ominous landmark lost in the wilderness.
She stopped the snowmobile on the bank, freed Rory from his harness, and removed both their helmets. “Want to go for a walk?”
The pom-pom on his tuque bobbed up and down. He hopped in the snow like a jackrabbit.
“Come on, Munchkin.” His hand firmly tucked into hers, she pulled him along, watching closely for signs of fear or apprehension. When Rory didn’t display any negative emotions, she heaved a sigh of relief. The bridge didn’t seem to hold any significance for him. He hadn’t seen the body, and she commended herself for not screaming when she’d dug up Brent.
Reaching the bridge, she stopped near its entrance where a narrow crevasse had opened in the snow. “Let’s wait a second here, okay?”
In her mind she recalled the dreadful discovery. The blurry image of Brent and his snowmobile slowly merged with the winter scenery.
Except for the tip of a ski sticking upward, the snowmobile had been buried under five to six feet of snow. It was logical to assume that Brent had crashed early in the winter, before Mother Nature’s wrath blanketed the woods.
“Let’s go see if the ice is melting. Maybe we’ll see some fish.” Not to frighten or alarm her son, she made it sound like a game w
hen in reality she wanted to have a closer look at the crash site.
Rory took a few steps and sank down to his thighs. Silent laughter shook his snowsuit and rocked his shoulders as he tugged on her arm.
“Are you stuck?”
His lips parted, and for a hopeful second, it looked like he would mouth yes, but they pressed together before he formed any words. Instead, he extended his arms.
“Carry you?” She picked him up, and he wrapped his arms around her neck. “You know you’re getting heavy.” Soft alpaca wool brushed her cheek as he cuddled against her. “Love you too, Munchkin.”
It had snowed since the RCMP had extracted the vehicle but not enough to fill the deep hole or to cover the big chunks of ice dispersed in the snow. The pattern and debris suggested the water had frozen around the snowmobile after it plunged into the creek. The accident would have happened before the cold front that had swept through in December.
Brent took off at the end of November. The window of opportunity was too narrow…
As reality sank in, Hannah hugged her son tighter. Brent had died within weeks, if not days, of his disappearance.
Rory tapped her shoulder then pointed at the woods. The wind had risen and the branches of the evergreens flapped, sending snow swirling to the ground.
Through the white mist, she glimpsed a shadow. A blink later, it was gone.
Chapter Twelve
Ever since Avery had been assigned to the Mooseland detachment, being buried under paperwork had taken a more literal sense. On the left corner of his desk were the cases he’d inherited from Abbott. On the right were the new cases that had landed on his lap since his arrival.
Foxy’s death had been relegated to the bottom of the right pile, buried underneath two acts of vandalism, an accusation of school bullying, a bar fight that spilled into the street, spawning a dozen disturbance calls, eight arrests for public intoxication, and one count of family violence. The belligerent husband was in custody along with the eight obnoxious goons sobering up in the drunk tank. Curses and protests coming from the jail cells floated down the hallway, annoying Avery to no end.