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  His eyes glazed over. Bulged. His feet stopped kicking. His hands dropped to his sides, limp, giving up their doomed struggle to save his life.

  There was one final sharp pain. And then cold. Only cold.

  As life left Fitz Fitzpatrick, he smelled of rum and marijuana.

  She stood on the bridge, staring at the tree, looking down at the footprints for some time. The acrobatics were obvious, and there seemed to be a clear trajectory to that ugly stub of a branch. A one in a million unlucky twist of fate. She’d seen accidents almost as strange. That’s what accidents were, mostly. Unusual, and unanticipated, until they happened. But was it just an accident? Had someone helped Fitzpatrick to his fate? A push at the right moment, if not to kill, to harm? She ought to report her suspicions to detachment. It was becoming quite a habit not to. She wanted to report the murder, if it was a murder, when it was solved. Or clearly establish it as an accident, if that’s what it was, before she made an official report.

  In the absence of forensics, it was Murdo who dragged Fitz out of the creek. Jamieson watched, but didn’t offer to help as Murdo rolled Fitz onto a trailer hooked up to a snowmobile. They took him to Big Bay Harbour, where there was an old ice house still in use. Forensics would send someone to pick him up – eventually.

  When Jamieson returned, the whole village had been there. The scene of a death – escalating to a possible murder as the story went the rounds of the community – was much more exciting than a new cottage going up.

  Jamieson had put her yellow police tape on only one side of the culvert – and there were at least a half-dozen ways through the woods that she didn’t know about, snowmobile trails that approached it from the other side.

  Everyone wanted to see where the man had hung. Hung himself? It gave the woods a new fascination. The villagers came, one after the other, on snowmobiles or foot, and stood there, right on the culvert, right on the evidence, staring at the tree, its jagged branch slicing upward. They speculated about how it had happened, and agreed that the tree looked malevolent. Lester Joudry had phoned Hy to ask her to pose beneath the tree for him.

  Lester’s call was the last straw for Hy. She’d been keeping at a distance from the case, because she didn’t want Jamieson accusing her of interfering again, like she had the last time. It had ended with them on good terms, and Hy didn’t want to break that fragile link. Part of her liked Jamieson, admired her even. Now that she knew something about her past, it helped explain that cold exterior, those glimmerings of a warmer heart inside.

  But Hyacinth McAllister was like a cat – curious and unable to stop sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. Besides, she told herself, she didn’t see Jamieson getting close to finding out what had happened.

  Hy thought she might have a better chance through her friendship with Rose and Jamie. She’d see what she could dig up from Jamie at the rehearsal this afternoon, visit Rose in the evening, and collar Jamieson first thing tomorrow morning, to squeeze out of her whatever it was possible to squeeze out of her about clues at the scene. That there were footprints, and plenty of them, she had observed. If she were smart, she might manage to turn Jamieson’s interrogation of her – it was bound to come – into an interrogation of Jamieson.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “You were the last one to see him alive.”

  Ian knew that the last one to see a person alive was often a murder suspect. But was this even murder? And surely Jamieson didn’t suspect him.

  “The last one you know of.”

  “All right,” Jamieson conceded. “The last one we know of to have seen him alive.”

  “Well, you surely don’t think – ”

  “I have to think of every possibility. Please, give me all the details.”

  “Well, after he threw up in my vehicle – I could’ve killed him for that – ” Ian smiled. Jamieson frowned.

  “ – after he threw up on my dashboard, Annabelle, bless her, cleaned him up, and I drove him home.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Not quite. Can you describe how he got out of the car, when you pulled out, your last sight of him – ”

  “Stumbling through the snow. He fell a couple of times.”

  “Where was he headed?”

  “For the door, as far as I could tell.”

  “And Annabelle?”

  “Annabelle?”

  “Where was she?”

  “She was at my house that night. She witnessed the accident. You know all about that night. She was here all night.”

  “All night?”

  The bachelor and the married woman. Jamieson raised her eyebrows and asked again.

  “All night?”

  Ian flushed. “No, of course not. Until Ben came.”

  “Nothing more?”

  Jesus, she was persistent.

  “She had something to ask me.”

  “What?”

  “I’d rather not go into that right now, unless I have to.”

  “Not right now, but you may have to. I’ll be speaking with Annabelle, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d rather not say, if I don’t have to. It’s between Ian and me. We don’t want the whole community to know.”

  Good Lord, thought Jamieson. What had she stumbled on? Nothing that was any of her business, though she had thought…it seemed that once or twice…Ian had been looking at her a certain way. He’d called her Jane, and she hadn’t objected. She’d felt warm when he did, but there was Hy. Was she just a friend – or more? And now this Annabelle? She hadn’t pictured Ian as the village Lothario.

  Jamieson shook her head clear of the unprofessional thoughts and returned to her line of questioning.

  “Who was there on the road that night?”

  “Myself, Ian, Lili, Nathan, and, of course, Fitzpatrick, and, for a while, Jamie.”

  “For a while?”

  “Well, he disappeared.”

  There was a silence. One of Jamieson’s famous silences that sometimes more than a question got a witness talking.

  Annabelle leaned forward, shock on her face.

  “You don’t think – ”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “But when I said Jamie disappeared – ”

  “I was silent.”

  Annabelle nodded. Jamieson looked out the window onto the Shore Lane, and was reminded of last Labour Day weekend. That disastrous weekend, when four people had died on Jamieson’s watch, three of them murdered.

  She looked back at Annabelle.

  “I was silent because I was thinking – as you guessed – that Jamie was a possible suspect. Frankly, I wanted to see if it occurred to you, and it did. I’ve learned not to rule anyone out.”

  “But Jamie – ”

  “Jamie what?”

  Hy barged through the door and hugged Annabelle.

  “Annabelle. How is Nathan?”

  Annabelle smiled.

  “Lili’s bringing him home.”

  Hy hugged her harder. “Oh, I’m so glad…”

  Jamieson waited a few respectful moments, but her impatience was visible in the tapping of her pen on her notepad.

  “I’m sorry, but I must continue my questioning.”

  Annabelle nodded and pulled herself together, sitting upright, Hy’s arm around her shoulder.

  “Any idea where the boy might have gone?”

  “Jamie – you surely don’t suspect Jamie,” Hy blurted out.

  Jamieson held up a hand.

  “We’ve been there already. You must realize I have to know everything that happened that night.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Annabelle answered, with reluctance. She didn’t want to implicate the boy.

  “No
. I never saw him leave. I assumed he’d gone home to tell his mother.”

  “Logical,” said Jamieson. But did he?

  Unrelenting, Jamieson circled back to the scene of the road accident.

  “Who else might have seen it?”

  “Estelle Joudry, she sees everything from that front window of hers,” said Hy.

  “And Moira. Moira Toombs. She might have,” said Annabelle. “She’s always spying.”

  Jamieson looked up at the choice of word.

  “Spying?”

  “On Ian and Hy.”

  Jamieson looked at Hy. She flushed.

  So there was something between them.

  “It’ll be Jared. We already know he’s a murderer.” Gus had the tone of conviction that she always used when she made statements that were short on fact. In her world, they were fact. And the fact was, she’d been telling Jamieson that Jared was a murderer.

  “A murderer?”

  Jamieson had just stopped in on her way up from Annabelle’s, not expecting that Gus would have anything to tell her helpful to the case. Half a dozen quilt squares lay on the floor. She was unpicking an error in one of them. She tossed it down.

  “What else would you call it? He’d been drinking and smoking drugs before he got in his truck and hit that old lady just crossin’ the road to get her mail.”

  “When was this?”

  Jamieson didn’t wait for an answer. She hurried out and jumped on her snowmobile and headed for Jared’s, wondering Murdo… where was Murdo?

  Murdo was as comfortable as a cat, sitting in front of April Dewey’s cookstove, breathing in the scent of her double-double chocolate chip cookies. He was preening himself like a cat, too, internally. Everything that Ron Dewey had despised about his home and family – the uber domesticity – was an elixir to Murdo, perhaps because he’d never had it as a child. He’d been raised by just his mother – no father, no brothers and sisters. He had two dreams, growing up. His mother had encouraged him in his first dream to become a police officer. His other dream had been a solid family life. It had evaded him until now.

  He frowned. It was still evading him.

  April was married. And she had six kids. That was part of her appeal.

  Married, but less married than a week ago, he thought, sipping on the hot tea that was a constant in April’s kitchen.

  He’d left. Ron had left her on Friday. He’d told her he wasn’t coming back. She could have the house and the kids, he said. He’d sped out of The Shores to the home of his mistress in Winterside, and hadn’t come back. Murdo had spent every off-duty hour – and some on-duty ones – here at April’s house, happily taking care of her and the kids. That mostly consisted of sitting in the big chair by the stove, sampling April’s cooking and indicating his pleasure.

  But these were early, tentative days, and Murdo knew he’d have to be as careful as a cat on the prowl if he wanted to catch this mouse.

  He’d started by shoveling her driveway and her walkway and presenting himself at her kitchen door, fait accompli.

  She was delightfully dishevelled when she opened the door; the smudge of flour that usually appeared somewhere on her face was on her chin today.

  “Oh, thank you,” she hugged him spontaneously, something she’d never done before. For the first time he felt the pleasure of her plumpness in his arms. As delicious as her baking.

  She invited him in and plied him with squares, which he did not refuse. That hadn’t changed.

  He forgot all about Jamieson.

  That hadn’t changed either.

  A cat jumped on his lap, kneaded his thighs, dumped patches of white hair on his uniform, curled into sleep position, and began to purr.

  If Murdo could have, he would have purred, too.

  “I go down there, regular-like.”

  “In a snowstorm?” Jamieson shook off the wet beads of melting snow clinging to her hair. There was a light snow falling, making The Shores look deceptively like a fairyland. Jamieson was back at Jared’s, sure MacPherson knew more than he had told her. She wasn’t discriminating against him because he was a scumbag. She suspected everyone knew more than they were telling her. She was generally right about that.

  Jared was feeling better today, recovered from the drink. His eyes could focus on the cop and he liked what he saw.

  She’s a nice piece, Jared thought, even if she is a cop. He wondered what it would be like to do it to a cop.

  “Well – ”

  “Why did you go down there? You said he left here, drunk, to go home. You didn’t say you saw him again. Met him?”

  “Well – ” How could she know? As if in answer, she looked down at his feet. Cowboy boots. The only one in the village who wore them.

  “Your boots. The tracks were there in the snow. I took pictures. Forensics will be able to confirm.”

  Jared squirmed. It was exactly the reaction she’d hoped for. A gesture that was an admission of guilt. Guilt about something. Murder? Probably not.

  “Did you arrange to meet Fitzpatrick?”

  “No – ”

  “If you leave me to imagine what was going on, you might regret it. A murder charge is a lot worse than a drug charge.”

  “You’re not sayin’ I kilt him?”

  “I’m not saying anything. Did you?”

  “Jeez, no.”

  “Then what were you doing there? You said he’d left here. Drunk. You said you didn’t see him after that.”

  There was a long silence. A silence that produced nothing.

  “A drug deal?”

  Jared dropped his head.

  “So it was.”

  “Not eggsackly.”

  “Not exactly. It is or it isn’t.” Black and white were Jamieson’s shades of grey.

  “He had sump’n of mine.”

  “What? Drugs? Cocaine?”

  “Just some grass.” A lie, she thought. It’s never just some grass.

  “I wanted it back.”

  “Bad enough to go out in that night?”

  “I was pissed. That’s why I went out.”

  “Bad enough to kill him?”

  “C’mon. Just a bit of grass…”

  “Did you get it back?”

  Yes…no…yes…no…the words flitted through Jared’s brain. What was safest to say? He’d got the grass all right. And the coke. Would she know? Would she search? Yes…no…yes…no. She wouldn’t find it on the body…he could’ve lost it…

  Yes…no…yes…no…

  “No.”

  Jamieson was disappointed.

  No. What was no? How could it help the investigation? Probably a lie.

  “How did you know where to find him?”

  “I went up to his house. I followed his trail from there.”

  “To the gully?”

  “Yup.”

  “Was Fitzpatrick dead or alive when you got there?”

  Jared smiled.

  “We smoked a joint together, so I guess he was alive.”

  “And he was still drunk?”

  “Yeah, he was tanked. Like I told you before. Pissed.”

  “And you left?”

  Jared nodded. “I don’t like it down there. We was standing on the high ground over the culvert. It made me feel woozy.”

  “And did you give any thought to how your ‘tanked’ friend was feeling? I could have you on criminal negligence as well as dealing. I’ll have to think about it. In the meantime, watch your ass.”

  But it was her ass he was watching as she left the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “The show must go on.” Hy got a kick out of saying the words, but she wasn’t happy about the position she was in. Jamieson had made it clear that, with a death under investigation, she couldn’
t possibly take part in a Christmas skit. Moira was still staying away and keeping Madeline with her. And how could she expect Jamie to take part when his father had just died in such awful circumstances?

  “The show must go on,” she repeated to the buzzing press of villagers who’d come with their children to the Hall, expecting, surely, that this rehearsal would be called off, if not the show. A man was dead, his son playing a key role in the Christmas skit.

  Unnatural, thought Gladys Fraser.

  “I’ll not be part of this.” She tugged on her dusty rose parka. It was quilted, and, when buttoned up, made her look like a small, square, padded armchair.

  “Not this day,” she mumbled as she bent over to yank on her naugahyde boots, stained by salt. Salt wasn’t used at The Shores, but she made Wally put it on their front walk and driveway. She’d have liked to spread it all over the lawn to be rid of it.

  “The show will go on,” repeated Hy. Amidst grumbles, the group dispersed and found seats around the Hall, continuing to mutter their disapproval of the whole thing.

  Most of them hadn’t known Fitz Fitzpatrick. Those who had, hadn’t even liked him. But he was dead now. That made a difference. Certain respect was owed the dead. A respect they might not have had in life. Some dignity graced all who’d passed on, even the ones from away. Even Fitz Fitzpatrick.

  “Of course the show will go on,” piped up Rose Rose, with her high reedy voice. The minister’s wife’s word put an end to the complaining. Although why they were whining, Hy couldn’t understand. In a couple of nights they’d be laughing until they ached, as they did at the show every year.

  It was the last rehearsal before the dress rehearsal and half the cast was missing, including Jamie. He came crashing through the door, just as they were preparing to start without him. He jumped up on the stage with an agility he must have inherited from his father, thought Hy.

  He turned round to face the audience with a big grin.

  That started up the murmurs and mumbles again.

  “Hardly seemly,” Glady Fraser said from onstage. It wasn’t a stage whisper. She could be heard at the back of the hall.

  He’s coping, thought Hy. More than coping. It disturbed her.

  The first scenes went well, with Gladys and Annabelle doing a grand job as the ugly sisters.