Murder Below Zero

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  Copyright © 2017 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 below zero : a Maxine Benson mystery / John Lawrence Reynolds.

  (Rapid reads)

  Issued also in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1459-2 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1460-8 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1461-5 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads

  PS8585.E94M85 2017 C813'.54 C2017-900837-4

  C2017-900838-2

  First published in the United States, 2017

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017933367

  Summary: Maxine Benson, police chief in a small town, sets out to solve a murder in this work of crime fiction. (RL 3.8)

  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 design by Jenn Playford

  Cover photography by Getty Images

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  20 19 18 17 • 4 3 2 1

  For Jill and Ian

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  PREVIEW OF MURDER AMONG THE PINES, THE NEXT MAXINE BENSON MYSTERY

  ONE

  “You wouldn’t be upset if this were January,” Margie Burns said.

  “I wouldn’t be upset if this were Baffin Island either,” Maxine Benson said. “But it’s not. It’s June in Muskoka, and I have to wear a sweater, which is wrong. All wrong.”

  It was early on a Monday morning, just past seven.

  “I hear we might get more frost tonight,” Henry Wojak said. He wrapped his hands around his mug of coffee, cradling the warmth.

  Winter had been mild and almost free of snow. Everyone looked forward to a soft spring and a hot summer. That’s the way it works around here, they said. Shiver in January, swelter in June.

  March was sunny and mild, April was soft and showery, and May was as fine as a May could be. June, people believed, would kick off a warm and sunny summer.

  This was good news for Port Ainslie. Its economy depended on tourists, who came to swim, sail, golf and water-ski. Warm summer days brought crowds who dined and shopped, taking memories and leaving money behind. Lots of money. One spell of bad weather in spring could cancel their plans to visit the “Home of Muskoka Magic,” as the town called itself.

  But there was no magic to frosted windows in June.

  Summer was staying away, and so were the tourists. On the second morning in June, snow fell on top of Granite Mountain and lawns shone with frost. It’s just a cold snap, people said. It’ll be gone soon. But now it was the middle of June, and the cold remained. People began saying to each other, Tell me again about global warming… I could use a laugh.

  “These things happen,” Margie said. “The weather has its own mind, you know. We just have to give it time.”

  “I’d like to give it hell,” Henry said. He had finished his coffee and was blowing into his cupped hands.

  “Well, you must admit,” Margie said, “people behave themselves in this weather. Makes our job easier. If things get slower around here, we’ll all have to retire.” She was making her weekly report to town council on crime in Port Ainslie. There was never much to tell, but this week there was even less than usual. Margie looked over the list again.

  Bruce Olivier Pratt Chadwick, known as Bop, had spent Tuesday night in a jail cell for being drunk in a public place. The truth was, he had been sober. It would have been too cold for Bop to sleep in the park that night, so he had asked Margie to let him sleep in the corner cell, his favorite. Margie said she couldn’t do it unless she booked him for a crime. Bop swore he was drunk, so Margie said okay and asked how he would like his eggs in the morning.

  There had been a break-in at a cottage down the lake, but the owners said nothing was taken. A power generator had been stolen from a home on Creek Road. Max had to tell a teenage rock band to close the garage door when they were playing. Even with the door closed they were loud, but no one seemed to care. A dog had run through the town without a leash. Everyone knew the dog’s owner was old Dale Carter, so Max had called and told him where to find his dog. Take it home and keep it tied up, she said. Carter felt so guilty that he sent Max a box of chocolates for her trouble. And early in the week a woman had called to report her husband missing. He had been gone two days. His name, she said, was Robert Morton. Max had passed this on to the Ontario Provincial Police, who handled serious crimes. A missing person was serious, but Max knew that most missing people turned up within a few days. She and Henry and Margie dealt with small matters. Like unleashed dogs, petty theft and loud bands.

  “Less trouble than normal this week, thanks to the cold weather,” Margie said. She closed the report book. “I swear they have more crime over at the St. Mark’s bridge club.”

  Max and Henry stood looking out the window. They had finished their morning chat. Now there was not much to do but watch people pass by on Main Street. Most wore winter jackets, scarves, hats and gloves.

  “Geegee offered to help me paint my kitchen cupboards,” Max said. Geegee was Gillian Gallup, Max’s next-door neighbor at Willow Cove, west of town. Gillian’s husband, Cliff, ran a music store and gave guitar lessons to boys who dreamed of being the next Eric Clapton. “I thought I’d wait until the fall to do it. Maybe this would be a good day to start.”

  “What color?” Henry asked.

  Henry liked to know details about everything.

  “Color?” Max said. She turned to frown at Henry.

  “Your kitchen cupboards,” Henry said. He stared at her like a man waiting to hear if his lottery ticket had the winning number.

  “I was thinking…,” Max began.

  Which is when the phone rang.

  Max hit the phone’s speaker button and said, “Port Ainslie Police Department, Chief Benson here.” Max liked to say her title. She was the only female police chief in Muskoka, and she wanted everyone to know it.

  A woman’s panicky voice sounded from the phone’s speaker. “There’s…,” she began. She started over. “There is a man lying in the ditch on Bridge Road, near Elm Street.”

  Where, Max wondered, was Bop Chadwick? “Is he drunk?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” the woman said. Her voice was lower and more steady now. “I mean, he is naked. And dead. And it looks like he’s frozen stiff.”

  “If this is someone’s idea of a joke about the weather,” Margie said while Max and Henry grabbed their jackets and ran for the door, “they have gone too far.”

  The door slammed and the sirens began as the cruisers pulled away, heading for Bridge Road.

  “Much too far.”

  It was on a lonely stretch of Bridge Road, just before the road curved down to Main Street. The ditch w
as deep, carved by rushing water over the years. A dozen or more cars could have passed since sunup without any of the drivers seeing the body. Someone had covered it with a blanket.

  A group of people stood across the road, whispering among themselves. Max told Henry to set up roadblocks and keep traffic on the far side of Bridge Road. Then she stepped into the ditch and lifted the blanket from the body.

  The man was indeed naked and, she guessed, between thirty-five and forty years of age. His legs were pulled up so that his knees almost reached his chest. Max reached to touch the body with her finger. It felt frozen. She bent to have a close look at his neck. Raw red marks told her he had been choked to death with a rope or cord. There was a half-moon scar under his right eye.

  Stepping out of the ditch, she looked up and down Bridge Road, then back at the body. The man, she was sure, had been dumped from a car into the ditch. The car must have stopped, but there was no way to get a copy of the tire tracks now. They were covered by the footprints of people who had come to look at the body.

  Max called Henry over. “Take the names of everyone here,” she said. Then she walked to her cruiser, called Margie and told her to call the OPP in Cranston. “Tell them we have a murder here,” she said. “Have them send a team to take the body to the morgue.” Then she said, “Tell me about the missing-person call that came in last week.”

  She listened to Margie read from the report.

  “By the sound of things,” Max said when Maggie finished, “he is no longer missing. He’s in a ditch on Bridge Road, dead as a duck and frozen like a Popsicle.”

  TWO

  “You’re sure you didn’t touch a thing?”

  The OPP officer had not bothered to give Max his name. He just nodded as he walked past her and knelt next to the body. Max had time to read the name on his tunic. Boucher. When Max didn’t reply, he turned to look at her with a glare.

  He’s treating me like I’m a suspect, Max thought. “My name is Benson,” she said. “Police Chief Maxine Benson. I head the force here.”

  Boucher threw her a cold smile, and his body jerked with a short laugh. “Chief ?” he said. “Really? And this is your force, right?” He stood and waved a hand toward Henry, who was holding back the crowd. A white van marked Coroner was arriving. “You and him are the whole force, I’ll bet.”

  Max was about to say, “And Margie,” but the OPP cop wanted to talk.

  “You know, this town,” he said, nodding toward Main Street, “this town should do what all the towns around here do. It should leave things to us. You shouldn’t even have answered the call about this body. So don’t try to play detective, okay? You’ll just get in the way.”

  Max told herself to stay calm. “The body has not been moved or touched,” she said. “The blanket came from the woman who found the body.”

  “Where is she?” Boucher looked around, his hands on his hips.

  Max turned and pointed. “She’s in the black coat over by…”

  “You need to get her name, address, details…”

  “I have them.” Max showed him the notebook in her hand. “I’ll have it typed and sent to you.” She turned at the sound of a car behind her. A second OPP cruiser pulled to a stop. Two more OPP men stepped out and walked to the body. They stood looking around as though the killer might be standing on the road or in the woods beyond it.

  “Bert, talk to that woman over there in the black coat,” Boucher said to one of the men. “She found the body.” To the other officer he said, “Do a walk around. Make sure the scene is secure, then set up a tent to hide the remains.” He turned to Max. “Ma’am,” he said, “would you mind stepping aside to make room for Dr. Yates?”

  A white-haired man smiled as he stepped past her to reach the body. Boucher pulled a notebook from his tunic and began writing in it.

  “I may have a name for the victim,” Max said.

  Boucher kept writing, acting like he hadn’t heard her.

  “He matches a person reported to us as missing,” Max said.

  Boucher was still writing. The coroner moved one of the dead man’s arms.

  “I can give you the details,” Max said.

  Boucher did not look up from his notes. “If you have already informed us, as you should have,” he said, “we will have it on hand in Cranston. Now could you move away, please? I need a clear view down this road.” He nodded toward Henry. “You could go and help your partner over there handle traffic.”

  Max walked to her cruiser and drove away, making the tires squeal as she left.

  “Then he told me to help Henry direct traffic,” Max said to Margie. It was half an hour later. Max walked back and forth in front of Margie’s desk while she spoke. Her face was still red with anger.

  “Did you tell him you were the police chief here?” Margie said.

  “Of course I did,” Max said. “He made a joke of it. Said he and the two guys with him outnumbered us. That’s when I came back here.” She took a copy of the missing-person report into her office and closed the door.

  She knew all she needed to know about the OPP officers who had treated her like a child. Now she wanted to know about the frozen victim who, she assumed, was the man reported missing a week ago.

  Robert Ross Morton had been thirty-seven years old and married to Beth Morton, the former Beth Higgs. He had thin dark hair and a small scar under one eye. Max had seen that scar. This was the man in the ditch on Bridge Road.

  The OPP had done a trace on the missing man. Their report had arrived two days ago and said that Morton once worked for a new-car dealership in Toronto. He had lived in Don Mills with a wife and two children. Three years ago he had left his family, filed for divorce and moved to Port Ainslie, where he married Beth Higgs. The widow Higgs’s first husband had drowned in their swimming pool earlier that same year.

  Max thought, She lost two husbands in three years? Is that just bad luck?

  When Bob Morton and Beth Higgs married, he began working for a car dealership in Cranston. He and Beth shared a home on Sunset Hill, one of the richest areas of Port Ainslie. The house had belonged to her first husband, Frank Higgs.

  Beth Morton had called a week ago to report her husband missing. She had not seen him since they argued on Saturday night. That’s when Morton had left the house, telling her he needed time “to think things over” concerning their marriage. He had walked away, leaving their car in the garage. She went to bed, waking in the morning to find he had not returned. When he was not back on Monday morning, she reported him missing.

  The body in the ditch on Bridge Road was Bob Morton. Max had no doubt about it. He had been choked to death with a rope or cord before being folded into a freezer.

  Find the freezer, Max thought, and we find the killer.

  If only things were that easy.

  Margie leaned into Max’s office. “Someone is here to see you,” she said. She lowered her voice and raised her eyebrows. “A good-looking man in a uniform.” She took a step into Max’s office and placed a card on her desk.

  The card read Ronald A. Boucher, Provincial Constable 1st Class, Ontario Provincial Police. Max stepped out of her office and noticed that Constable Ronald A. Boucher had deep-blue eyes. He still had the same cold manner, however.

  “The remains are on their way to Cranston,” he said. No greeting, no handshake. “Based on what we know at the moment, the victim may be the person in the report you sent to us last week. His name was Robert Morton. We will send you the coroner’s report, if you wish.”

  Max’s anger boiled over. “Damn right I wish,” she said. “The body was found here, and he is a citizen of this town. Why would I not be interested?”

  To her surprise, Max’s small tantrum seemed to impress Boucher. “Of course,” he said. “I will see that you get a full report.”

  “How did his wife react to the news?”

  Boucher, who had turned to leave, stopped to look back at her. “Who?”

  “The victim’s wido
w. Her name is Beth. How did she take the news that her husband was found naked and frozen stiff in a ditch?”

  “We don’t know.” Boucher did not look pleased. “A female officer is on her way from Cranston to tell the spouse. It’s best to have a female officer break this kind of news to a…” He looked for the word. “A wife.”

  “Tell her to turn around and go back,” Max said.

  “Who?”

  “The female officer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is my case, and I have twenty years of doing that kind of thing in the big city,” Max said. “Those are two reasons. Do you want a third?”

  Boucher smiled at that. It was a nice smile. Cold but nice. Max might have stayed to enjoy it more, but she brushed past Boucher on her way to Margie’s desk. “Call Henry from Bridge Road,” she said to Margie, “and put him on patrol.” She looked back at Boucher. “You didn’t ask,” she said.

  Boucher blinked. “Ask what?”

  “The third reason. It’s because the wife and I are the same gender.” She walked back to her office.

  “Just break the news to her,” Boucher called to her back. “Tell her she needs to come to Cranston and view the body. Be sure not to ask any key questions or reveal any facts.”

  In your dreams, Max said to herself. She grabbed the keys to the Port Ainslie Police Chief car from her desk.

  She would handle this her way.

  THREE

  Most people who built their dream home in Port Ainslie chose to build it on Sunset Hill. The Hill, as everyone in town called it, gave those who lived there a perfect view of Granite Lake. On summer nights, folks on The Hill could sit on their patios and watch the sun set over the lake. It was a million-dollar view for people with a million dollars to spend on it.

  Beth Morton’s house was near the top of The Hill, with large windows overlooking the lake. Pressing the doorbell, Max turned to admire the view. She was still gazing at it when the door opened and a woman’s voice said, “Yes?”