And We Shall Have Snow Read online

  Sometimes it didn’t hurt to do someone a favour. If she hadn’t given Roberta her phone number, last night’s assault could have ended very differently. They wouldn’t have got there in time and someone would have been hurt. Badly. Being nice to Mo Penner wouldn’t hurt.

  The sergeant lumbered off back downstairs. Now she could chase up a new lead on the Magnusson case.

  “We’ve been coming at this from the wrong angle,” she said to Matt and Izzy. “We’ve been focussed on looking for Stella’s killer. And that gives us too many options.” She sipped her coffee. “Stella’s life was complicated. Some people loved her, like Erik Axelsson, or admired her, like the Smedleys. Other people couldn’t stand her. There are plenty of them. We keep bouncing from one lead to another and so far they’ve all led us nowhere. But if we concentrate on Angus Smith’s killer instead, it’s all much simpler.” She noticed that she had their attention. They were listening closely. “It came to me when we were interviewing Erik. He can’t be Stella’s killer because he didn’t kill Angus. He knew nothing about Angus. Whoever killed Angus knew where he lived, knew the setup of the workshop.”

  Matt sat bolt upright. “Knew where to find the key. And that he was away around the time Stella was killed.”

  “Knew that he was an ice fisherman,” added Roxanne.

  “And knew which shack was his,” said Matt.

  “There’s a lot of people at Cullen that knew all that.” Izzy sounded dubious.

  “Yes,” Roxanne continued. “But how many of the guys who did woodwork with Angus and who fished also knew Stella?”

  “That takes us back to Bradley Andreychuk,” said Matt.

  “Maybe he didn’t know about the workshop.” Izzy looked at him across the table.

  “He might. He and Angus drank in the same bars.”

  “But he wouldn’t know where to find the key.”

  “Unless someone told him. We can check it out.” Roxanne ended the discussion. She was on the right track. She knew now where she needed to start looking.

  24

  The table at Margo’s house was set for lunch. Panda had made moussaka and Annie had stir-fried chicken and vegetables. Sasha had shredded carrots and beets into a red and orange slaw. Phyllis had baked a lemon mousse cake and Margo had bought a crusty French loaf.

  “See,” Sasha crowed, “It always works.” They never planned who would bring what to a potluck lunch but they always ended up with an acceptable mix of food. “Did you hear on the radio? Erik Axelsson went after them with a gun.”

  “He was going to shoot Roberta?” Phyllis asked.

  “Sounds like it. They interviewed Lizzie, Roberta’s daughter. She said that the woman cop stopped him just in time. They’ll have to lock him up now, won’t they?”

  “When’s Roberta coming?” Margo had asked them to come early so they would all be there to welcome Roberta. It also gave them a chance to catch up on new developments before she arrived.

  “One. Not long now. Lizzie is dropping her off.”

  “She can’t drive herself?”

  “Erik hit her in the eye.”

  “She can’t take him back after this. He’s dangerous.” Sasha flopped into her favourite seat, with her back to the window.

  “Who knows,” said Panda. “We didn’t think she’d bring him back home last time.”

  “Yes.” Annie put a bowl on the table. “But he’s never threatened her before. It’s too bad. He’s stayed off the drink for years. He needs to get sober again.”

  “Do you think so? He got Stella pregnant years ago and did nothing about it. Then he got together with her again while he was married to Roberta. And then he gets drunk and tries to kill her? If I was her I’d run for my life,” said Sasha. Margo agreed with her.

  “You’re not Roberta,” said Annie. A knock at the door interrupted them. Roberta herself was standing on the doorstep. Her daughter was driving away.

  “Lizzie doesn’t want to stay for lunch?” Margo asked, being polite, but they did want to have Roberta to themselves.

  “She’s gone grocery shopping. She’ll pick me up later. And I need a break already.” Roberta was pulling off a hat and coat as she spoke. A wad of gauze and a plastic eye shield covered her eye. “She is so bossy! I could have driven here myself. My other eye’s just fine.”

  “That one’s turning purple already,” said Sasha. “He must have hit you real hard.”

  “Is it true he tried to shoot you?” asked Phyllis.

  “No. Who said he did?” Roberta planted herself in a large chair at the end of the table. “Lizzie threatened him with the shotgun but she was just trying to scare him off. It wasn’t loaded. Hey, the cops have got him locked up and I’m done with him. What’s for lunch?”

  They took the hint and found their places around the table.

  “So,” said Sasha. “You met the kid? What’s she like?”

  “Stella gone Goth.” Roberta grinned at them. The patch made her look like a pirate, even if it was white, not black. “Studs, black gear, spiked hair. Calls herself Mo. I suppose she’ll get Stella’s place.”

  “Is she artsy? She could keep StarFest going. Just a different kind of music, right? Really loud. The Andreychuks next door would really love that.” Panda laughed. “Pass me that coleslaw, would you?”

  Phyllis looked up from buttering a slice of bread. “There’s money too, though, isn’t there? Don’t the police think Stella was stealing money from StarFest? That’s why they were after George. They thought he’d found out about it and was blackmailing her.”

  “You knew she was altering the accounts, too, didn’t you, Panda?” said Margo.

  Panda stared at her, a fork of food halfway to her mouth. “Not really,” she replied. “And I wasn’t blackmailing her, either.”

  Margo was surprised at the edge to her voice. For a second, no one spoke. That wasn’t funny.

  “Nobody here knew that Stella had a baby?” Annie’s voice broke the silence. She was sitting beside Panda, as usual. Sometimes Panda polished off everything on her plate and then finished Annie’s as well.

  “No. It had to be years ago.” Sasha reached across the table for another spoonful of stir-fry.

  “Almost thirty,” said Roberta. She was eating like she hadn’t seen food in months.

  “Mo was born in Brandon. Stella must have had her right after high school. She was still just a kid.”

  “Why Brandon?” Sasha continued. “This stuff is really great, Annie. Hey, you grew up in Virden, right? That’s near Brandon. You must know the place?”

  “No. Not much.” Annie wore a blank expression. There was another moment’s silence, broken this time by Panda.

  “She had to stay home and make wontons. Right, Annie?”

  Annie brightened up. “That’s right. Me and my mom hardly ever got to go. My dad did the shopping trips by himself.”

  Panda looked around the table. “What are you going to do now, Roberta?” They were all dying to know.

  “I’m staying put for now.”

  “Can you manage out there by yourself?” Margo stood and picked up the empty teapot.

  “A guy who keeps sheep called me this morning. He’s maybe going to buy the flock. I can manage the chickens and goats for a while and I make some egg money. That’ll give me enough cash to get me by for now. Do you know what that jerk, Erik, did? He went to the bank and cleaned out our account. He didn’t even leave me half. So I guess he really doesn’t care one bit about what happens to me. Lizzie says I’ll get half the value of the farm. It’ll have to be sold.”

  “Will you move back to the city?”

  “Dunno. Don’t want to. Lizzie is dying to put me into a 55-plus high-rise near where she lives. She just wants an unpaid babysitter, if you ask me.” She stared out the window, at the vast expanse of the lake. “I can’t
buy Erik out or keep the farm going by myself. But can you see me living in an apartment in Winnipeg? After living out here?”

  Phyllis got up. “Time for cake!” she said cheerfully. She fetched it and began to cut it up.

  Roxanne pulled in beside Archie Huminski’s shack at the dump. There was no sign of Archie, but smoke rose straight up from the shack’s tall, metal chimney and a dirty old truck was coming down the hill towards her, belching ice fog from its exhaust. More smoke puffed above the area where wood and lumber were stored. Archie must be burning it off. Another vehicle was parked where old electronic equipment was stashed. The truck stopped, a window was rolled down, a short conversation ensued, then Archie cruised towards her. She got out of her car. Archie climbed out of the truck to meet her.

  “Ah, milady. Get yourself in out of this cold.” Inside the shack, the wood stove burned. Archie indicated a chair at the worn, wooden table. The kettle sat on top of the stove. He took two mugs from a shelf and a bowl of sugar.

  “Got no milk but I’ve got cookies.” He opened his usual tin and put teabags in the mugs, then topped them up with hot water. “So you came to visit after all.”

  “I did.”

  He put down a mug for her and one for himself. “Bad business about that Axelsson guy. Hear you got him real good, though.”

  “Something like that,” she said.

  He peered at her. “So what is it you want to talk about?”

  “I’ve been wondering if you can tell me more about Angus Smith.”

  “Not the Magnusson woman? Just Angus?”

  “For now.”

  “Well, it’s funny you should ask that.” He sat on the other side of the table cradling the warm mug in his hands. “We’ve been talking about him a lot, me and Jack Sawatsky.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. I mean, nobody had it in for Angus. That Stella woman, she got up people’s noses. But not Angus. People liked Angus. And Jack, he feels real bad. He was supposed to be looking after the place while Angus was in Winnipeg, when Stella’s body got cut up in the workshop.”

  “Did Angus figure that out?”

  “Oh, right away. Well, he knew somebody had been using the place. He was on the phone to Jack the day he got back home. Said it was too clean.”

  “Wasn’t Angus pretty tidy?”

  “He was, but there’s tidy and then there’s clean, know what I mean? Jack didn’t know anything. He thought maybe one of the guys had stopped in to work on something, but why wouldn’t they say? And who was fussy enough to clean the whole place up? George Smedley, maybe. He could be a bit of a clean freak. But he said no, it wasn’t him.” He pushed the cookie tin towards her. Ginger snaps.

  “Jack asked George?”

  “Sure. Talked to a few guys. That was the Monday, the day before they found the body. That shook them up. Angus and Jack, they went for a drink after. Angus was sure, right away, that someone must have cut up the body at his place. He had a good setup, a big table, saws, well, you’ve seen it, right?”

  “Archie,” Roxanne interrupted. “They were both interviewed here, the day they found the body. Why didn’t they say anything?”

  “They didn’t really know, for sure. Angus had an idea who might have done it. But he couldn’t say just then. He didn’t want to blame somebody, then find out he was wrong. He wasn’t ready to tell. He kept it to himself. He asked around again. Made sure it was none of the guys who had been in the workshop.”

  “Aren’t there lots of them? Half of Cullen Village knows about Angus’s place, right?”

  “Yeah. But he’d changed where he hid the key in the summer. It was only the guys who came since then who knew where to find it. That meant there was only about ten of them. And then there’s the ones who knew where Archie went fishing as well. Only about six more of them knew that.”

  “Did George Smedley?”

  “No. George never went fishing. Wasn’t his thing. Jack says so, and he would know. He can give you the list of all of the guys who knew, if you ask him.”

  “Couldn’t you have told me this, Archie, after we found Angus’s body?”

  “Hey, lady, don’t blame me. I told you to come talk to me. That very day. And again, the day of the funeral. It’s not my fault that it’s taken you this long to drop by.”

  She remembered him standing, waving to her, when she was leaving the frozen lake late that afternoon, and standing in the Legion hall wearing his suit. She realized why he couldn’t come to her. That would be telling and men like Archie didn’t do that. She had needed to ask, and he had invited her, twice. She hadn’t taken his invitation seriously.

  “Is there more that you know?” she asked

  “Well. Yeah.” He pursed his lips and breathed deeply. “Me and Jack, we sat here one day and Jack says, whoever did it had to know Stella Magnusson as well, right? Because whoever killed her killed Angus.”

  Roxanne nodded her head. “Did you think about the Andreychuks?”

  “Bradley? He was never in Angus’s workshop. Probably didn’t know that he was away in Winnipeg either.”

  “How about his little brother, Jeremy?”

  “No. He was pals with Stella. I don’t think he and Angus knew each other, though. But there’s something else, milady. Something you don’t know about. And it fits much better.”

  “What’s that, Archie?”

  And so he told her. Roxanne sat back and listened, incredulous. Was he right or was what she was hearing just village gossip?

  Margo Wishart knew. She found it hard to believe, but she was sure. She didn’t know how or why it had happened, but she knew who had killed Stella. She half listened as her friends chattered on. Margo found it hard to join in the conversation. She wished everyone would leave. She was relieved when Roberta finally announced that it was time to call her daughter and get picked up. Margo needed time to think.

  Soon, Lizzie showed up with both children. Phyllis took charge of the baby.

  “I can’t think how Stella did it,” she said as she bounced him on her knee. “Gave up her baby and walked away.”

  “She didn’t have much choice.” Sasha sat beside her. The baby was chortling. “If you’d been pregnant at seventeen, what would you have done?”

  “Maybe she knew, back then, how Erik gets when he has a drink in him. Maybe that’s why she wouldn’t marry him,” said Roberta, shrugging her arms into a parka. “And then she came back here all those years after and he was sober. So they got together again.” She pulled up her zipper. “You know what? I’m tired of the whole thing. Don’t want to think about it anymore.” She took the baby from Phyllis and soon left with her brood.

  Phyllis was giving Sasha a ride home. Panda reached into the closet for her coat and Annie’s. All four of them walked down the driveway together. Margo waved goodbye and closed the door. She noticed that Sasha had left a bag behind with an empty dish in it. It lay on the floor beside the closet door. She’d have liked to call her back so she could talk to her about what she was thinking. It might help to say it out loud, but only to Sasha, not with Phyllis hovering. She put the dog outside, into the fenced back yard. There would be no walk tonight for Bob. It was too cold anyway, crisp and clear. It was getting dark. The stars were coming out over the lake.

  She loaded the dishwasher, let the dog back in and pulled a bottle of red wine from the rack. A Shiraz. That would do. She poured some into a glass and sat down at the window to watch the last light fade. She needed to remember exactly what had been said. And what had not been said. The doorbell rang. Sasha, she thought, back to get her dish, probably out walking Lenny in spite of the cold.

  She went to the door, eager to invite Sasha back in, her dog barking beside her. She opened it. It wasn’t Sasha. She stood rigid, appalled. The dog sensed her fear. The fur rose on the back of his neck and he began to growl.

&nb
sp; 25

  By the time Roxanne left Archie’s shack, the sun had gone down. It was dark over Cullen Village but, in the west, pink light glowed on the horizon. The stars were coming out. No moon. It was going to be crisp, dark and cold tonight. Roxanne drove slowly through the village, thinking about what Archie had told her. She was not ready to act on it, not yet. She couldn’t be sure that he was right, but if he was, she wanted backup. She needed to talk it over, but with whom? Brian Donohue was the obvious choice, but he was in Winnipeg and she wasn’t sure where she stood with him after he’d tried to cut her out of the Isbister interview. Izzy, if she could get her alone, but she was probably at Matt’s right now, looking forward to a night off.

  She passed Angus Smith’s house. It was dark, apart from an orange yard light. Tape was still strung across the driveway. Along the lakeshore, the lake gleamed silvery cold. It was never entirely dark out here in wintertime. Even starlight was enough to reflect off snow or ice. Out on the lake was Angus’s shack, where he’d been lowered into the water. Further along she passed the place where they had dug his body out, through all that ice. The pile of blue chunks had been removed and the hole had frozen over, although markers still showed the indentation that had been left, to warn off any passing snowmobiles.

  She was at the north end of the village now. A car was parked beside the road. A woman was outside it, trying to catch a black dog, running loose. Roxanne pulled over and wound down her window.

  “Do you need help?” she asked. The woman came towards her.

  “Freya Halliday, village councillor.” She extended a hand. “Aren’t you the RCMP officer? The one in charge of the murder investigation?”

  “Is that your dog?” asked Roxanne. The black dog was standing some distance off, near a street light, watching, staying out of reach.

  “Not at all. It looks like Margo Wishart’s. Can’t imagine why he’s running loose.

  Roxanne got out the car. What was the dog’s name? She couldn’t remember. “Here, boy.” Roxanne liked dogs. Finn hankered for one, but they couldn’t have one, not with her job. “Come, boy.”