Murder Among the Pines

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  Copyright © 2018 John Lawrence Reynolds

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Reynolds, John Lawrence, author

  Murder among the pines / John Lawrence Reynolds.

  (Rapid reads)

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1819-4 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1820-0 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1821-7 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

  PS8585.E94M83 2018 C813'.54 C2017-904546-6

  C2017-904547-4

  First published in the United States, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949721

  Summary: Maxine Benson, police chief in a small town, sets out to solve the murder of her ex-husband’s new girlfriend in this work of crime fiction.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on Forest Stewardship Council® certified paper.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover photo by Creative Market/PhotoCosma

  Design by Gerilee McBride

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  21 20 19 18 • 4 3 2 1

  Other books in the Maxine Benson series:

  A Murder for Max

  Murder Below Zero

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multiuser, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read. For more information, please contact digital@orcabook.com.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  AN EXCERPT FROM A MURDER FOR MAX

  ONE

  ONE

  Henry Wojak turned over the top card in the deck and said, “Is this it?”

  Margie glanced at the ten of clubs and said, “No, it’s not.” She went back to filling out the weekly arrest report for the files. It would not take long, since there had been only five arrests since Monday. Margie wanted to keep busy with it anyway. She was not impressed with Henry’s card tricks.

  “Is this the one?” Henry said. He took the five of spades from the deck.

  Margie swung her eyes to the card. “No, that’s not it either.”

  “Then,” Henry said, “your card must be here.” He reached to the back of Margie’s computer screen and withdrew the jack of hearts.

  “Yes, Henry,” Margie said with a sigh. “You’re right. That’s the card I chose. You are brilliant.” She did not pretend to mean it.

  “You notice the new touch I added there?” Henry said. “How I took the card from behind your computer, not out of the deck? They call that sleight of hand.” He stroked his mustache and smiled.

  “Really,” Margie said.

  “See, a good card trick needs to be sold,” Henry said. “That takes acting skill. I used to be an actor. I was in a play once called Harvey. Do you know it?”

  “Yes,” Margie said. “I have heard of it.”

  “It’s about a six-foot rabbit that you can’t see.”

  “Let me guess,” Margie said. “You played the rabbit.”

  “Very funny.” Henry began to shuffle the deck.

  Margie stood and walked to the coffeemaker. She had never wanted to work with a police force in the big city, where bad things happened hour by hour. And she did not want to leave Port Ainslie. What she wanted was to have more to do than watch Constable Henry Wojak show off his card tricks.

  The sound of Chief Maxine Benson’s car pulling into the parking lot gave her hope that something better was about to happen. Until she saw the look on Max’s face.

  “Hey, Chief,” Henry called when Max entered the police station. “You gotta see this new trick.”

  “No, I don’t.” Max walked into her office without a glance at Henry or Margie. When she spoke again, her voice had an edge as sharp as a razor blade. “But you need to go out on patrol,” she said. “Now.” She slammed her office door.

  Henry put his playing cards away and left without a word. After his car pulled away, Margie poured a black coffee for Max. She carried it to the door of Max’s office and went in without knocking. “Such a nice summer’s day out there,” Margie said.

  “So I hear.” Max did not lift her eyes from the papers on her desk.

  “You look like you could bite off the back end of a horse.” Margie set the coffee on Max’s desk.

  “That’s how I feel.”

  “What’s up?” Margie sat in the chair facing Max.

  “My ex-husband.”

  “What about him?”

  “You asked what’s up. He is. Up from Toronto. Right here in Port Ainslie.”

  “How does he look?”

  “What does that matter?”

  Margie was about to say it seemed to matter to Max.

  Before she could speak, Max frowned and said, “He looked smug.”

  Margie blinked. “Looked what?”

  “Smug. Happy. Pleased with himself. Just plain stupid. Take your pick.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  Max told her.

  She had been cruising downtown, waving at townspeople and giving directions to tourists. Stopping her car at the crosswalk in front of the new Ainslie Inn, she smiled at people walking in front of her. Her smile faded at the sight of a man walking hand in hand with a much younger woman.

  “It was him,” Max said. “James Herbert Benson. The guy I wasted twelve years of my life on.”

  “That’s a bit harsh,” Margie said.

  “No, it’s not. I stayed because I thought I could change him. I might as well have tried to change the color of the sky. He cheated on me every year we were married.”

  “Anything good to say about him?”

  “He was charming. And good-looking.” Max folded her arms. “Still is, damn it.”

  Margie nodded and said, “Ah.”

  “What does ah mean?”

  “Why not tell me what happened?”

  “In my marriage?”

  “No, downtown. Today.”

  “He knew it was me driving the cruiser. So he walked up to my window, dragging this…this woman with him.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s fifteen years younger than him. Maybe more. Long dark hair, big brown eyes, a figure like…” Max shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “Your classic ex-wife’s nightmare,” Margie said.

  Max acted like she hadn’t heard. “He said he wanted me to meet whatever her name is. Traffic was behind me, so I pulled
into the parking lot of the inn. I got out of the car and watched her wiggle over.” Max made a face like she smelled something bad. “She wiggled, he strutted.”

  Both her former husband and his girlfriend wore tight jeans and tighter T-shirts, Max said. The girl also wore jewelry. Lots of it. Long earrings, a charm bracelet on one arm, bangles on the other arm and a diamond ring on a silver chain around her neck. The words Sex Goddess were printed on her T-shirt. Her dark hair shone in the sun. Max was wearing her summer police tunic, as shapeless as a potato sack. And she was having a bad-hair day.

  “He introduced us,” Max said. “Told me her names. All of them. I held my hand out for her to shake. She didn’t take it. She just looked at Jim and said, You were married to her? and giggled.”

  “Not very nice,” Margie said. “What did your husband say to that?”

  “I think he was embarrassed.”

  “Good. Then what?”

  “I went back to the cruiser. He called out to me, but I got in and drove away.”

  “Now you’re here and angry at him.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “Angry at myself. For giving a damn.”

  “That makes sense.” Margie stood to go back to her desk. At the door she stopped, looked at Max and said, “You didn’t say her name. The young woman, I mean.”

  “Names. She has more than one.”

  “Can you remember them?”

  “They’re burned into my jealous brain. Lana Jewel Laverne Parker.”

  “Lana Jewel Laverne?” Margie said. “Oh dear.”

  • • •

  “If you can tell something about a person from her name, that one says a bunch.” Geegee Gallup looked over the edge of her teacup at Max. “It sounds like her job involves taking off her clothes on a stage.”

  “She looks like it does too.” Max sat back in her chair and stared out the window at Granite Lake. The sun was behind the hills on the far shore. The water was glass, the sky was a blue bowl over the world, and the air was calm. She loved that view. She loved her home by the lake. She loved having Geegee as a neighbor. She loved much of her life in Port Ainslie. She hated that the sight of her ex-husband and his girlfriend had spoiled her joy.

  “He was trying to make you jealous,” Geegee said.

  “I know.”

  “So he still cares for you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Men do dumb things where ex-wives are concerned. I know one guy who…” Geegee stopped at the sound of a car approaching. She stood to look out the window at the road. “Do you know anybody who drives a red sports car?”

  Max was still staring at the lake. “No.”

  “How about a guy maybe six feet tall with thick dark hair and a cleft in his chin?”

  Max stood and looked through the same window. “What is he doing here?” she said.

  “I’ll go home now,” Geegee said.

  Max told Geegee to wait. She walked outside and stood with her arms folded. “Why are you here?” she asked Jim Benson as he stepped from the sports car. He had changed into a blazer and white linen shirt. Standing in the low light, he looked, Max thought, even better than he had earlier.

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he began. “About what happened. When you saw us, Lana and me, today.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I asked an officer downtown, funny guy with a mustache.” He meant Henry.

  “He had no right to give you my address. Please leave.”

  “I explained that I was your husband.”

  “Yes. Was. The past tense.”

  Jim didn’t answer. He stood looking past her at the view of the lake from her patio. “This is very nice,” he said.

  “It’s nicer without you,” Max said. “Go back to that…that child you brought with you. Is she your next wife?”

  “She’s not so bad when you get to know her,” he said. “A little…” He shrugged. “Immature. We’re staying at the Ainslie Inn for the weekend. Why don’t you come and have a drink with us?”

  “I would rather stick needles in my eyes,” Max said. She turned toward her door. “Go away, or I’ll lay a trespass charge on you.”

  “I still care,” Jim said. “For you, I mean. I really do.”

  Max answered by slamming the door behind her.

  “Now there,” Geegee said as she watched Jim Benson walk back to his sports car, “is a man in love with you.”

  “So you heard him.” Max sat in the chair facing the lake.

  “Didn’t have to. Saw it in his face.”

  “He was always a good liar,” Max said.

  • • •

  Just after 5:00 AM, Maxine rolled across her bed to answer the telephone on the first ring. Gray predawn light seeped through her bedroom window. All calls made to the police station were routed to her phone line after hours. She knew this could only be bad news.

  The woman’s voice shook. “This is the night clerk at the Ainslie Inn. We have been told there’s…” She began again. “There is a body in the lake. One of our guests saw it.”

  “Where in the lake?” Max was out of bed, one hand holding the phone to her ear.

  “Near the grove of pines down the shore. I’m told it looks like…” She stopped and started over. “It looks like a young woman.”

  • • •

  Racing toward town, Max called Henry and told him to meet her at the inn, near the pine grove. She wondered if the dead woman could be someone she had met the day before. Someone with long hair and killer legs and lots of jewelry. She told herself to stop thinking that way. It could be anyone besides Lana Jewel Laverne Parker.

  Later, she felt guilty about having such a thought.

  With good reason.

  TWO

  Max stepped from the cruiser at 5:37 AM and paused to write the time in her notebook. She had parked on a paved area near the water. Across the inlet the Ainslie Inn rose, seven stories high. The inn rarely had a vacant room on weekends. It had been a success since it opened two years earlier. Picnic tables were set among pine trees that lined a stone path leading to the inlet of the lake. During the day, many guests bought box lunches at the inn and carried them along the shore to the grove of pines, a ten-minute walk.

  The sun rising behind Granite Mountain shone on the far shore of the lake. The inn was still in shadow. In the low light Max saw the body floating a little way from shore. It was easy to see the long dark hair. It was almost as easy to see that the woman was Lana Jewel Laverne Parker.

  Max glanced at the people standing around her. A middle-aged man and woman in tracksuits were arm in arm, the woman’s head on the man’s shoulder. Max was sure they were the ones who had seen the body first and reported it to the desk clerk at the inn. Behind them stood Perry Ahenakew, a First Nations artist who had a small studio down the road. She knew him as a gentle man, a skilled artist. He nodded back at her. Not far behind him was a man named Bucky, who ran a towing service on the highway. Near him, a white-haired man held back his dog on its leash. Behind him, a younger man in a light jacket stood shaking his head as though in sorrow.

  “All of you,” Max called to them. She raised an arm and pointed to the paved area where she had parked her cruiser. “This is a crime scene. Go to the parking area and wait there. Someone will talk to you later.”

  The group shuffled away just as Henry pulled up and parked his cruiser behind hers. “Bring a blanket with you,” she called to him. “Keep these people back, and get the names of whoever called it in. Then contact the provincials in Cranston. Tell them to send the coroner.” She pulled a pair of rubber gloves from her tunic, put them on and waded into the lake. She shivered as the cold water reached her waist.

  The woman was floating face down. She wore a black T-shirt and jeans. When Max turned her over she could see, even in the dim light, that the victim had been beaten. She gently pulled the body toward the shore. In her years as a police officer
in Toronto she had seen several dead bodies. This one did not shock her, but it made her feel guilty and sad. Guilty that she had said unkind things about the woman. Sad that her young life had been taken in such a brutal way.

  She placed the body on the sand and covered it with the blanket Henry brought. She looked at people staring at the body under the blanket. At least a dozen more had joined the first group. She scanned their faces. None was her former husband’s.

  Henry brought a second blanket from his car for Maxine. She wrapped it around her wet legs and stood trembling in the chill of the morning air.

  The sun was high enough now to shine on the gardens around the resort.

  It would be another perfect summer’s day. Which made it all even sadder.

  • • •

  The couple who had discovered the body were staying at the inn for a week. Both sat in the back of Max’s police car. The wife dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as she spoke. Her husband, an arm around her shoulder, stared at the lake, biting his lip.

  They had planned to walk along the shore before breakfast. “We’re early risers,” the woman said with a slight smile. “Up with the sun each day.” Her smile faded. “I saw it…” She looked away and then back again. “I saw her as soon as we rounded the inlet, over there.” She pointed down the shore. “I thought it was a bag of garbage. Look, I said. Someone has tossed garbage into the water. Isn’t that terrible? Then we got closer and saw…” She shook her head.

  “Was anyone else around?” Max asked.

  “Nobody.” She leaned toward her husband. Both looked to be in their sixties. Max saw them as beloved grandparents—mature, gentle, honest—and felt a pang of jealousy. “Dan stayed there while I went back to the inn and told them what…what we saw in the lake.

  Max took their room numbers at the inn. She told them to go back to the resort. She would talk to them later if needed.

  • • •

  Henry had strung yellow tape to keep the growing crowd of people away from the body. Max stepped under the tape and knelt to lift a corner of the blanket. The swelling around the eyes and mouth could not hide Lana Parker’s beauty. Max recalled seeing that face less than twenty-four hours earlier. She had seen the dangling gold earrings as well.