Cornwall and Redfern Mysteries 2-Book Bundle (48 page)

Kelly Quantz's body
lay crumpled on the muddy shoulder of Sideroad 15. The cold rain fell into his wide-open eyes and had washed clean the small hole in his forehead. Poor, stupid bastard.

The passenger-side tires of an old Dodge truck settled into the mud forty metres in front of the body. Someone was running the plates, but Neil recalled seeing the truck in the manse driveway when he interviewed Quantz. Dwayne Rundell and Margo Philmore searched the steep bank leading down to the edge of an adjacent swamp. All he could see were their heads and hear an occasional obscenity when one of them got a soaker from the icy, stagnant water.

He had already sent two officers to St. Paul's manse to secure the premises and conduct a search. Something in the house might suggest a reason for Quantz's presence on this county back road.

He sniffed. “God, that reeks. What is that?” He'd come across a week-old corpse once in a derelict rooming house, and this was similar. But Quantz hadn't been lying by the side of the road for more than a few hours, or one of the Davidsons would have spotted him before now. According to Lester Davidson, who had found the body, Dogtown residents used Sideroad 15 regularly to access the highway.

Thea pulled her mask down long enough to reply, “Stagnant water, rotting vegetation, maybe a dead animal or two — just your usual swamp stink.”

Tony balanced precariously against the side of the 4 X 4 while donning shoe coverings. “Guess we're just a couple of city boys, dude.”

“You're late again,” Neil said. “My SOCOs are almost finished here.”

“The party ain't over 'til I say it's over.” Tony pulled his hood up. “I don't see any other tire tracks along here. Think he offed himself?”

“He's been despondent since his wife's death, and drinking heavily. But from here I can see the bullet hole in his forehead and no gun in the vicinity. So, I'd say it's another homicide.”

“Agreed.” Tony trudged over to the body and squatted to speak to Ed Reiner, who was on his knees in the mud.

Ed had beat Neil to the scene and had scarcely looked up from the body. He turned the head to one side and looked under the sodden clothing. The hands were bagged to preserve any evidence of defensive wounds or material under the nails. Now, Tony helped him roll the body over onto a piece of heavy plastic to avoid contaminating the front of the body by contact with the gravel. The coroner parted the hair and fingered the scalp of the dead man.

The text tone on Neil's phone sounded. Cornwall.

WH DD? BRN WNT SY

It took him a minute. He hesitated before replying:
LATER

Good for Bernie, but it was only a matter of time before somebody called Cornwall or Rae with the news that would be all over town soon.

He called Bernie. “Sorry I can't send anyone to relieve you for a while yet. Are you okay with some overtime?” Bernie was always okay with overtime, especially if he didn't have to stand around in the cold. Or heat, or when Detroit was playing Edmonton, or when it was a fine day for golfing.

“No problem.” Bernie's voice lowered to a whisper. “Although Bliss keeps threatening to leave the house claiming unlawful confinement, individual rights, and we can just kiss her ass, you know…”

“Tell her to stay put, or you will, on my instructions, place her in protective custody — in a cell. She can pick which one. Keep her in your sight at all times, Bernie. Someone tried to kill her once, and we have to assume he'll try again.”

“I'll do my best.”

Thea waved a small plastic bag in front of him. “Cartridge casing. Looks like a .32 calibre, same as the one from the church, and the one we found on Bliss's front lawn earlier.”

“Let's see if the perp was careless and left us a print this time,” Neil said. The rain stung his face and the temperature was plummeting. In a few hours, this crime scene could be knee deep in snow.

“Any footprints?”

“Nope. The shooter must have stood on the pavement.” Thea stowed the casing in her evidence bag. “All we got is a body and a casing. I printed the inside of the truck and I'll look for hair and fibres, but unless the perp sat inside with Quantz, I doubt we'll find anything useful.”

Ed tossed a tarp over the body and plodded over to Neil. “Why can't we have one of those portable tents to cover the scene like they have on crime shows? So I could examine the body without freezing my balls off.”

“If I'd known we were going to have a crime wave, Ed, I'd have requisitioned one for you. Notice anything odd from your cursory inspection?”

“The bullet went through his forehead an inch above the left eyebrow. Sound familiar? Except Reverend Quantz fell from the choir loft after she was shot, while her husband merely dropped in his tracks.”

Ed stripped off his gear and threw it into a
plastic
-lined container. “Again, the bullet is still inside the cranium. No stippling around the wound, meaning another distance shot.”

“A good marksman. But that doesn't point to any suspect in particular. They all belong, or belonged, to gun clubs. Except Fang Davidson. And I'm sure he learned to shoot before he started kindergarten.” He was policing a town of “fuck the gun laws” dissidents. Neil asked the obvious question. “Any ideas about time of death?”

“What? You think this is an episode of
CSI
?” Ed looked at his watch. “Lividity is well-established. I can tell you he wasn't moved, or wasn't moved far, after death. Rigor mortis isn't complete. Although a liver temperature is unreliable in this cold weather, I'm guessing Mr. Quantz has been dead between eight and ten hours.”

Neil looked at his watch: 9:47 a.m. “So, somewhere between midnight last night and 2:00 a.m.” Rae Zaborski's 911 call had been logged at 3:02 a.m. It appeared Quantz was killed first, then the perp drove back to town and tried to kill Cornwall. The killer was either getting desperate or cocky.

He said to Ed, “Lester Davidson was the last to return to Dogtown last night. He returned around 11:00 p.m. and closed the compound gate. His route brought him down this side road, but he didn't see a truck or a body.”

“Death occurred no earlier than midnight.” Ed pulled his black toque over his ears and used the end of his scarf to swipe at the steam on his glasses.

“We're done here,” Tony called. “Okay for the EMTs to take the body now?”

Neil looked at Ed, who nodded and remarked, “I hope we don't see any more of these for a while.”

“That makes two of us.” Neil lifted the crime scene tape to allow the EMTs access to the body.

A shout from the ditch turned all heads. Dwayne clambered up the bank, swinging an object from the end of a stick. But his feet failed to find solid ground on the slippery shoulder and he flung his prize at the road before sliding back downhill, disappearing from sight.

The object skipped across the slick surface and stopped within a metre of Neil's boots.

It was a pistol. An old one.

“It's the fucking murder weapon!” Tony grabbed Thea and swung her off her feet. He dropped her when she elbowed him in the neck. “Sorry, babe. Forgot myself.”

“We
hope
it's the murder weapon,” Neil cautioned.

Thea unpacked the Nikon, and Neil took a few photos with his phone. Even the EMTs abandoned Kelly Quantz's body to join the cops and coroner regarding the pistol with satisfaction and something like wonder.

“Can this be it?” Ed queried. “With all the muck and sludge, this is a lucky find.”

“Fuck!” Neil rubbed the back of his neck. “Quantz died around midnight, several hours before Ms. Cornwall was attacked. So, unless the perp killed Quantz, drove to town, tried to shoot Cornwall, then drove back here to drop the gun in the ditch, we have a second gun in play.”

“Yeah, but why?” Tony's initial excitement had waned. “Why not shoot Quantz, then shoot Cornwall — sorry, man,” he looked apologetically at Neil, “— with the same gun, then get rid of it?”

“It doesn't make sense,” Neil agreed. He turned to Thea. “Bag it up, and run prints when you get it out of the rain. And check the gun registry. Chances are slim it's registered, but worth a look. Good job, Dwayne.”

He looked around. Where was Dwayne?

Two filthy, dripping arms appeared over the crest of the ditch. Dwayne's mud-covered head followed. “Yeah, thanks for your help, everybody. Appreciate your concern. I'll need a tetanus shot after that swamp bath.”

Neil said to no one in particular, “Don't let him get into one of our cars without spreading a tarp first.”

He turned and headed for his Cherokee. “My presence is requested at a Police Services Board meeting this evening.” He smiled at Tony without humour. “And so is yours, pal.”

The battle of the board game raged on the coffee table. Maybe “raged” was an overstatement. Bernie was
the
slowest Scrabble player on planet Earth, but if I didn't get some good tiles soon, he would win his third straight game. To accommodate Scrabble novice Rae, we had agreed to bend the rules and allow proper nouns. But it was Bernie who had just spelled out
Zamboni
and happily taken the 50-point bonus.

While Rae pondered her rack intently, a text came in from Dougal.

ARE YOU OK?

Like he ever cared before.

FNE. SHKN & FW CTS

Unlike Redfern, Dougal understood my texts perfectly.

GOOD. THEN GET YOUR ASS OVER TO MY HOUSE

I tossed my phone on the couch. Telling Dougal to fuck off would be a waste of time. He considered it a term of endearment.

Rae nibbled her lip and scrunched up her nose. She had overrun her sixty-second time limit, but Bernie seemed in no hurry to point this out to her, so I headed for the kitchen. It was noon; time for some refreshment. The cheese puffs were long gone, as were the potato chips, and blue tortilla chips. If I was going to be held hostage much longer, somebody was going to have to bring in provisions.

I came back with a can of ginger ale, two wine glasses, and a bottle of red. I tossed a bag of baby carrots at Rae so she could stop chewing her own lip. Bernie eyed the wine with his big, sad eyes, but I handed him the pop. I didn't want his aim thrown off by alcohol if another attempt was made on my life. I could probably shoot straighter than him, but he had the gun and was paid to protect me.

My phone beeped. Another text from Dougal:

WHAT ABOUT RAE? I NEED SOMEBODY!!!

I called him. “What is your problem?”

“I need either you or Rae to come to my house.”

“Why?”

His voice was so low I could barely make out his words. “It's complicated.”

“I'm going to hang up.”

“No, don't! Okay. It's Glory. She came over with Pan and is telling me personal things about her and Pinato.”

“Really? You mean, like really personal? As in what they do in bed?”

Bernie and Rae stopped contemplating the board and stared at me. I walked over to the window. The broken part was covered with cardboard and a cold wind rattled through the cracks.

Dougal breathed heavily into his phone. “No, that I could stand. Barely. She wants to talk about
feelings
. Apparently it's my fault she couldn't open up during our marriage, and she wants me to understand how different things are with the Italian stallion. He's making a new woman of her.”

“What's wrong with that? You were a crashing failure of a husband, everyone knows that. Why's she bringing all that up now?”

“I'm not interested in her reasons. I have a deadline coming up and can't listen to her yammer any more. One of you needs to get over here and take her away.”

“Glory speaks fluent French, doesn't she? Maybe she can come up with phrases for your new novel. No. Wait, I know. Write a sex scene and ask her to transcribe it into French. That should keep her mind off her feelings.”

There was silence for a few seconds, and I took the opportunity to pour myself another glass of wine. Then, he found his voice. “Does that mean you're not coming over? What about Rae?”

I hung up on him. If I parted with Rae, I'd have to feed Bernie. That would mean cooking. I glanced out the unbroken section of the window. Bernie looked up from the board and drawled, “Step away from the window.”

“There's a truck in the driveway. Moffitt Glass.”

A knock on the door threw Bernie into guard-dog mode. Gun in hand, he peered through the peephole. Satisfied last night's gunman hadn't returned to finish me off, he let in two young men. According to the name tags on their coats, one was Brad, and the other was Ivan.

With dubious glances at Bernie's gun and dishevelled uniform, and the food scraps from our long morning's Scrabble games, Brad and Ivan set to work measuring the broken panes.

While they busied themselves, I set my glass aside, and closed my eyes. I must have dozed off. When I opened them again, the front window was intact, Brad and Ivan were gone, and Thea sat in Bernie's place. I smelled cheese.

Thea got up and pulled the drapes across the window to close off the darkening afternoon. I picked up my cell to check my phone messages. Twelve messages, two from Dougal, begging for help. Glory had already consumed one full bottle of his best Riesling and was hinting about a second. Pan had made himself coffee and broken out the potato chips. It looked like they were going to make an evening of it. Worse, Glory had stopped referring to him as “the worm” and showed signs of nostalgia, dredging up horrible (according to him) memories of their honeymoon. Pan sat in a chair behind Glory and rolled his eyes at every intimate detail. Would somebody help him?

Not me. The other ten messages were in response to an email blitz I had launched earlier in the day requesting information on the latest shooting victim. They confirmed that Kelly Quantz was the unlucky winner.

And then there were five — me, Chico, Fang, the Weasel, and Mr. Archman. Six if you counted Mrs. Brickle. When my head stopped spinning from the possibilities, I was left with the usual impasse. I didn't for a second consider Mrs. Brickle a suspect. Fang and Chico were out of the question, too. And it couldn't be the Weasel, for all his weasely qualities. I had been married to him for eight years. I would have known if he was capable of homicide. And Mr. Archman? Three hundred pounds of gasping, lumbering sarcasm, waving a gun in one hand and an inhaler in the other, running through the streets, evading police? I couldn't fathom it.

That left me. There was no other possibility. I was the killer.

The hell with it. I vowed to leave the whole investigative mess for Redfern and Tony to figure out. Rae brought in plates of homemade macaroni and cheese, with mushrooms, spinach, and red peppers mixed in. I poured another glass of wine, ignoring Thea's frown of disapproval. What? People in the witness protection program weren't allowed alcohol?

“So, why are you on guard duty?” I asked her. “Weren't you working the crime scene this morning?”

“I was. The evidence is on its way to Toronto, and my report is done. There was nobody else available, and the Chief is worried about you. So, here I am.” She looked exhausted and not thrilled with her present lot in life.

“Did you find a .32 calibre shell casing at the scene?”

“You know I can't tell you anything about that, Moonbeam. You'll find out the same time the details are released to the public.”

“Right you are, Constable. Who's going to be on night duty?” If it was Dwayne, I'd just save everyone a heap of trouble and shoot myself.

“The Chief. After the emergency Police Services Board meeting tonight, he's going to swing by his cabin and pick up some clothes, then bunk in here with you till we find the killer …”

“Uh?”

“… so I suggest you lay off the wine and take a bubble bath. You look like you've been on a three-day bender. Maybe you could brush your hair for a start.”

“Did you say there was a Police Services Board meeting? Tonight? It's Saturday.”

“I said it was an emergency meeting. And don't bother to ask what it's about. I don't know. The mayor called it. Sergeant Pinato is attending, too.”

Oh boy. While I was in confessing mode with Redfern, I should have told him I went to the Weasel's law office yesterday and really pissed him and the missus off. I picked at the Band-Aids on my hands and thought furiously. Was Redfern being called on the carpet? If so, it was my fault. Well, not
totally
my fault. I had been under the influence of outdated cold medication. That was the truth. But it wasn't enough. I was a selfish bitch, and my actions could cost Redfern his job.

I poured more wine into my glass. Thea reached over and took the bottle away. Ha. The joke was on her. The bottle was empty. There was something Glory said, about a contract. Yeah, they couldn't get rid of Redfern until his contract was up. Then, they could choose not to renew it. I wasn't going to let that happen. The solution was obvious. Somehow I had to get rid of the Weasel before he could get rid of Redfern.

Okay then, I had a goal. Now, I just had to formulate a plan to accomplish that goal. Stick with what you know, that was always a good start. I had used blackmail successfully last summer to squeeze my share of our marital assets out of the Weasel. Perfect. Blackmail was on the table.

I smiled at Thea and Rae. “Okay, girlfriends, let's party down. Rae, fetch your nail polish collection. We're going to paint our toes and giggle until it hurts.”