by Eric Wright
Also by Eric Wright
DEATH BY DEGREES
A FINE ITALIAN HAND
FINAL CUT
A SENSITIVE CASE
A QUESTION OF MURDER
A BODY SURROUNDED BY WATER
THE MAN WHO CHANGED HIS NAME
DEATH IN THE OLD COUNTRY
SMOKE DETECTOR
THE NIGHT THE GODS SMILED
MOODIE’S TALE
SCRIBNER
Rockefeller Center
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www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1995 by Eric Wright
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole of in part in any form.
SCRIBNR and design are trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
Designed by Erich Hobbing
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data
Wright, Eric, 1929-
Buried in stone: a Mel Pickett mystery/Eric Wright.
p. cm.
I. Title
PR919.3W66B8 1996
813′.54-dc20 95-34.97 CIP
ISBN: 0-7432-0514-6
eISBN: 978-1-439-10645-7
www.simonspeter.com
for Jack Batten
Part One
CHAPTER 1
Eleven-thirty. Mel Pickett opened the door of his tiny refrigerator to see what he had left to eat. It was too soon for lunch, but he had done a good morning’s work, and he was entitled to see what he might look forward to. He counted half a barbecued chicken, some liverwurst, a bit of potato salad, and a slab of Canadian Gouda. A container on top of the refrigerator yielded two rolls of Italian bread and four butter tarts. And he still had three bottles of Upper Canada Point Nine (dealcoholized) Ale, his latest attempt to find something to drink at noon that would taste like beer but would not leave him sluggish all afternoon. Pickett was sixty-five, and the older he got the less booze it took to send him into a light doze. The problem was just as serious as Alzheimer’s, impotence, angina, crumbling bones, receding gums, and all the other ills old flesh is heir to.
Satisfied with his inventory, he closed the door of the fridge and heated a cup of old tea in the microwave, deciding he could manage another hour’s work before he ate. Pickett was a retired Toronto policeman, a widower with no responsibilities. He was spending the weekend, and perhaps the rest of the week, with Willis, his tiny, foolish-looking dog, in a cabin that he had built on a piece of land just outside Larch River, a town 150 miles north of Toronto. The lot he had bought had nothing much to recommend it. It lay between the town and the river, too far from the town to be useful to a villager and too far from the river to be attractive to an outsider wanting to build a summer cottage; in fact, useless for anything except what Pickett wanted it for, to build a cabin just to see if he could do it, and it had been for sale for a long time before he found it. The land did rise slightly in the center of the lot, where he had built the cabin, so that sitting on his porch he had—not exactly a view but a sense of space. And near the edge of the lot a swamp gave way to a pond big enough to support two otters. Otherwise it was simply five acres of undeveloped bush, with large patches of rock showing through the thin covering of earth.
After a lifetime of careful saving, waiting for the Great Depression of his childhood to return, Pickett had arrived at his present age with a comfortable pension, seventy-five thousand dollars in Canada Savings Bonds, a few stocks, about fifty thousand in cash, and a small mortgage-free house in Toronto. When his wife died, he converted the house into two apartments, and the rent from the second floor more than covered the upkeep on the house. His only toy was a new Volvo station wagon. Thus Pickett, by Micawber’s definition, was a very rich man, certainly rich enough to indulge the whim of building his own log cabin.
His desire to build a cabin began with the discovery of a photograph of his great-grandfather, a short, bald, grinning, rascally looking character with three or four teeth, standing beside the cabin he had built, holding his ax. Pickett was not trying to rediscover his roots by imitating him. Nor was he drawn to the project in any spirit of historical romanticism, such as prompts people to sail across the Atlantic in a replica of the Mayflower. He just wanted to solve the construction problems involved. He was a good carpenter—he had done all the renovations on his own house—and the idea of building a cabin had come along just at a time when he needed a project. Although he went to Florida for a few weeks every winter when he had had enough snow, he had no desire to live there, to join the hordes of old Canadians creaking in the sun. He still needed work to do.
He had chosen to build in the cottage country of central Ontario because there was still plenty of cheap undeveloped land there. Pickett had grown up in southwest Ontario, in country that had been developed for a hundred years, and he was surprised at first at what he found when he went north looking for a site. Very few of the towns of cottage country are pretty; they have grown by serving the needs of the summer trade, and even at the height of the season they have a temporary feel, as if they are waiting to dismantle themselves for the winter, like circuses. Larch River looked more permanent than most. The town had been there before the district became vacation land, and though part of it was strung out along the highway in the form of fast-food outlets and live bait shops to attract the passing trade, there was an older part that lay east, off the highway, eight or ten streets of houses mixed with small businesses. On the west side, a small road led past a sawmill to the town beach, but hardly any of the thousands of people who drove the highway every weekend knew of it because there was no signpost.
It took Pickett some time to realize the nature of the community he had chosen to buy into. When he thought about it at all, he assumed that beyond the tourists the town serviced the area’s—what? Farmers? He hadn’t actually seen any farms but they were probably around somewhere. As his knowledge grew, so did his curiosity, and he learned that there was only one significant employer in the area, the lumber mill, which in a way kept Larch River true to its origins. There was also a canoe builder, who employed a dozen people, a large chicken farm, and several other assorted enterprises, including a bakery that supplied fresh bread to the whole area, but it was the lumber mill that primed the local pump. A significant fragment of the population was made up of commuters, mainly younger people who had grown up in Larch River and still lived at home but worked in Sweetwater, eight miles to the south, a town big enough to contain government offices and a detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police. And a final fragment of the population was made up of retired people, both locals and people who had come to Larch River as if it were Florida. More and more these outside people could be heard explaining that the charm of places like Larch River to them was that here they could still find the Ontario they grew up in, by which they meant that, so far, the townspeople were all a familiar white.
Gradually Pickett absorbed some idea of the town and its history, which was simple and typical. It had started as a lumbering town; then, after the first-growth timber had been shaved off, it became an agricultural community as the homesteads turned into established farms. Now there were only two working farms left as the farmers sold out to investment bankers looking for a hobby for the present and an investment for the future, and to real estate developers. So far Larch River had managed to postpone becoming a purely tourist town, but inevitably as the pressure of popul
ation increased in Toronto it would be discovered by the people who could not afford the Georgian Bay or Muskoka.
It had been cold in the night, but now it was already too warm for a jacket. Pickett took his tea outside to enjoy the last of the summer sun; he gave Willis a biscuit to help her over her disappointment that the opening of the fridge had not ushered in lunch.
Outside, the landscape announced the coming of fall, a blaze of red and yellow foliage under a clear blue sky. As he sat down, a Volkswagen Golf turned onto his land from the county road, stopping in front of the porch. Willis rushed down the steps to bark at the visitors, and a man in his late twenties got out, established that Willis was harmless, and came to where Pickett was standing on the porch. Pickett could see a woman in the passenger seat of the car, a blonde, staring straight ahead, but he could not see her face because the angle at which the sun met the windshield created a dazzling patch of light. He got ready to give the man directions, wondering how they could have got lost. They had come along the only road that led up from the bridge over the river—and then he saw, before the man reached him, that something was wrong.
“I’m afraid we have rather an emergency on our hands,” the man said.
His speech and posture were unnaturally stylized, as if he was having trouble choosing the right level of discourse for addressing Pickett. He seemed vaguely familiar, but he was obviously not a local man, being curiously dressed for a Sunday morning drive, or walk, or whatever they had been doing. Above a pair of brand-new jeans, he wore a white dress shirt, buttoned to the neck without a tie, and a tweed jacket. His brown dress shoes were edged with mud and fragments of leaves. He looked as if he had put on whatever had come to hand when a fire alarm sounded.
“You lost?” Pickett asked.
“Not exactly. Look, I rather think we’ve met, you and I. You will perhaps remember my …” He turned as if to avoid choosing a term to apply to the woman in the car.
The door of the car opened and the woman got out and came toward them. She walked carefully, as if she couldn’t see very well. Her face was white, and as she got closer, her throat started to convulse. “Mr. Pickett,” she said. “Mel.”
Pickett said, “Eliza?” Then, to the man, “Hold on to her, quick. She’s going to fall.”
The man just managed to get his arm around her shoulders as she turned and vomited into the weeds beside the path. Pickett went into the house for a box of tissues, getting a handful to her as she straightened up. She thanked him without looking up, and turned to the man. “Why didn’t you stop me?” she said in a small voice full of misery. “You didn’t try to stop me.”
“I think you insisted, Eliza, but we can conduct the … we can discuss it later. At this moment …”
“You should’ve stopped me,” she repeated, and turned to be sick again.
Pickett said, “Let’s get her inside.” He picked up the dog and took the woman by the elbow, leading the couple into the house. Inside, he sat her on the couch. “Lie down when you think it’s safe,” he said. The young woman, still waiting with her head bent to see if she had finished throwing up, acknowledged the instruction with a tiny hand gesture, then looked up and gave Pickett a small smile. He smiled back. “Hi,” he said.
The man walked to the door, jamming his hands in his jacket pockets, then immediately took them out, as if looking for the right instinct to guide him.
“Tell him now, Dennis,” the woman said. She looked to either side of her and collected two cushions, which she piled up at one end of the couch. She squeezed off her loafers then, and slowly revolved so that she was sitting sideways with her legs outstretched.
“You want to lie down now?” Pickett asked.
“Not yet.” Again she went very white, but this time her color began to return immediately.
“Tell me in a minute,” Pickett said. He shook the teapot and found enough left, which he heated and mixed with a lot of cream and three spoonfuls of sugar. She took it from him and sipped it, making a face at the sweetness, but finished the cup.
“More?” Pickett asked.
She nodded, holding out the cup.
He plugged in the kettle and put some fresh tea bags into the pot. “You want some?” he asked the man.
The man said, “Yes. It seems to have helped her. The sugar settles the stomach, no doubt?”
The woman made a gesture as if to quiet him.
“The sugar’s for the shock,” Pickett said. “It looks as if it was considerable.” He wondered what had happened down by the river, what they had seen, and why this character seemed like a refugee from Masterpiece Theatre.
“Ah.”
The woman shivered slightly and Pickett disappeared into the bedroom and came out with a sheepskin jacket, which she pulled around her, although it was only slightly cooler in the cabin than outside, and she seemed adequately dressed in blue jeans and a woollen bush shirt.
No one said anything else until Pickett had poured them all more tea. Willis jumped on to the woman’s lap, causing her to recoil in timidity. Pickett lifted the dog off and tucked it under his arm. He took a chair and gestured toward another, but the man remained standing, leaning against the doorpost. Pickett wondered when, if ever, he was going to express concern or try to comfort the woman.
“We—er—came across a body,” the man said. “My name’s Dennis Corning, by the way. As I say, I think we have met. Eliza you know, of course. Eliza Pollock.” Corning seemed to want to show his self-control, his ability to cope with the discovery of the body, but his attempt at composure was belied by the pale face and the slightly jerky speech, which, Pickett now realized, was what had reminded him of a certain kind of acting.
Pickett nodded. “Where?”
“At the play rehearsals.”
“I know where I met Eliza, and you. I meant this body.”
“Right. Yes. Upon the trail that runs behind the cottages across the river. Do you know these parts?”
“I know that trail,” Pickett said. “I’ve walked along it. With the dog.”
Corning said, “There’s a bit of flat rock about half a mile in. On one side there’s a deep crack about three or four feet wide where the rock split when the original glacier passed by, I imagine. The far side of the crack is a few feet lower, so the flat rock is like a little cliff over a gully about six feet deep. Do you follow? The body was in the gully. It’s not going to go away.”
“Did you just come across it, walking by?”
“We stopped to take a rest and I walked over to take a look in the crevasse.” He seemed momentarily embarrassed.
Pickett wondered how secluded the spot was, how long the body had been there. “More tea?” he asked them both. “We’d better phone Lyman Caxton directly.”
“And who is Lyman Caxton?”
“He’s the chief of police, the town cop. There’s just the one.”
“Ah, yes, I remember my aunt speaking of him. Look, I wonder, could you look after it, perhaps? I’ll give you our address.” The man began searching his pockets.
Eliza interrrupted him. “For God’s sake, of course he can’t, Dennis. You and I will have to report it.”
“You found it, it’s yours until you report it,” Pickett agreed, wondering where Eliza, whom he liked a lot, had found this guy. He recognized the type: the man belonged to that group of the population who when confronted with a serious misery—a traffic accident, say, or a motorist alone with a boiling radiator as the fog rolls over Dartmoor—do not instinctively stop to help; rather they instinctively check their watches, realizing that their own schedule is in danger of being thrown off. The people with bad instincts.
Pickett went into his bedroom to make the phone call and sat on his bed to think. Her name was Eliza Pollock, and she was a freelance book editor, if he remembered the term right, and the director of the local amateur dramatic group, into which, to his pleased surprise, she had co-opted Pickett as the stage carpenter. Dennis Corning was a Toronto university pr
ofessor who worked only two days a week in the winter and not at all in the summer, so they lived in Larch River while he did something else. What else could Pickett remember? Corning had inherited the house from a relative, and he and Eliza lived there most of the time, but he also had a bachelor apartment in Toronto. They weren’t married. What else? Corning was writing a film script, that was it. Something about a historical incident that took place in the area about the time of the great Irish potato famine. Involving someone accused of murder.
Behind him, in the main room, a small, whispered squabble broke out. He made the phone call. When he returned, Corning looked sullen and Eliza looked depressed.
“He’s expecting us in fifteen minutes,” Pickett reported. “Finish your tea and we’ll go up.”
Corning stood. “No need for Eliza to go, is there? Surely I can take care of it?”
Pickett saw that Corning had been made aware, temporarily at least, that it was time to think of others. Or at any rate, to remember his manners.
“She can rest here for now,” he agreed. “Caxton will want a statement later on, but you and I can go up now.”
She smiled at him gratefully and swung her legs to the floor, tried to stand, and then sat down. “Not quite,” she said. “Not quite.” She pulled the jacket close.
CHAPTER 2
Lyman Caxton was Larch River’s chief of police, one of the very few one-man police forces left in Ontario. Caxton had appeared quite early, while the cabin was still in the planning stage. Pickett had told no one in the town of his own background, but when he saw the look of bright discovery on Caxton’s face as the police chief got out of his car in front of Pickett’s cabin one morning, he knew he was about to be claimed as a colleague. One of Pickett’s old buddies in the Bail and Parole unit in Toronto had been inquiring after him to let him know about the funeral of another colleague, had tracked him down to Larch River, and had asked the police chief to relay the message.