And We Shall Have Snow Page 6

  “Did you now. Well, we didn’t see much of her. We keep ourselves to ourselves around here.” John Andreychuk sat back and folded his arms.

  “She wasn’t a farmer, like her uncles. They kept cattle like you, didn’t they? Did it bother you that she let the farm go? Didn’t even rent out her pasture?”

  “Nope. Bought her uncles’ stock. Got them for a good price. Suited me fine.”

  Brad and his mother were listening to every word but avoiding looking directly at her or Izzy.

  “Would you have liked to buy the land?” Roxanne continued.

  “Got plenty of our own, Miss. Ain’t we, Bradley.”

  “But StarFest caused problems for you.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Nothing new about that, is there? It’s been going on for years now. We learned to live with it.” He blew a puff of smoke up towards the ceiling.

  “Your other son, Jeremy, he worked there last summer?”

  “And the one before. Might as well make a buck out of it.” He grinned at her. A look passed between Brad and his mother. They both appeared more alert. The question about Jeremy had caught their attention.

  “Does he live in the city?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But he was here over Christmas? When, exactly, did he go back?”

  “What’s this to do with our Jeremy?” The mother interrupted her.

  “Just checking, Mrs. Andreychuk. No one mentioned him when the police were here previously.” Roxanne kept her voice low. Nonconfrontational. “When did you say he went back to Winnipeg?”

  “We didn’t. Right after New Year it was, though.” Andreychuk answered, stubbing out his cigarette. He peered at her through a smoky haze.

  “Did anything unusual happen here around January 19?

  “Can’t remember. We got asked this already.”

  “I’d like to hear it for myself.”

  “That was Friday. We went to Winnipeg,” said Maggie emphatically.

  “Any special reason?”

  “No. The usual. Needed to buy some stuff.”

  “You could show us some receipts to prove you were there?”

  “Look here, what are you doing, checking us out? We’ve done nothing wrong. If someone had it in for her, it wasn’t us. Who’s been telling you lies, putting the blame on me and my boys?” Andreychuk got to his feet. His son clambered out of his chair too.

  “And you, Bradley, where were you on that day?” Roxanne turned her head but stayed seated.

  “Out fishing.” It was his turn to grin. He looked a lot like his dad when he did. “The guys will tell you. Got there in the morning, stayed all afternoon. And that night I was in the bar, in Fiskar Bay. Plenty of guys’ll tell you about that too, if you ask.” Both men loomed over Roxanne. She noticed Izzy’s eyebrows rise.

  “We’ll check for sure,” she said, and stood up. They both took their time stepping back. “We’ll be going for now. Thanks for your help.”

  “That’s it?” Andreychuk said.

  “If there’s anything else we’ll be in touch.” She turned to go. Brad’s voice stopped her.

  “Hey, missus,” he drawled, leaning against the doorframe opposite, his hands in his pockets. “Tell you who you should be talking to instead of us. Erik Axelsson.”

  “Erik?” said Izzy, stopping in the middle of pulling on her mitts. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “You don’t know nothin’, Izzy McBain.” He zipped up his jacket. “He’s been hanging around the Magnusson place a lot lately. I’ve seen his truck parked there, often. Sometimes he’s there at night, for hours. Why don’t you go and bug him about where he was that Friday?” He turned towards his father. “Reckon I can go now.” He slunk off into the kitchen. His father showed Roxanne and Izzy to the door. Maggie remained, huge and still, on her seat.

  As they drove away, Roxanne noticed a red glow in the wood beside the barn. Smoke belched up above the treetops.

  “Slow down, Izzy.” She looked towards a small, metal, domed structure, red light glowing out of the cracks around a small door. Cordwood was stacked beside it.

  “An outdoor furnace,” said Izzy. “They’re using it to heat the barn.”

  “Don’t those things get hot enough to incinerate bone? If Brad and his father had needed to dispose of body parts, wouldn’t they have used that, instead of sending them to the dump?”

  “Guess so. You can’t tell with Brad, though. He’s a head case. Always has been.”

  “You’ve known him long?”

  “Since junior high. He was mean, even then. Used to walk the hallways with his two buddies, Mitch and Billy, like they owned the place. They still hang out together. If that’s who’s giving him an alibi, ma’am, don’t believe a word of it.”

  “And who is Erik Axelsson?”

  “He lives on a farm near Fiskar Bay. Near my parents. His wife’s called Roberta. She’s his second wife. They’re a great couple. They do organic farming, kind of.” They were already pulling into Stella Magnusson’s driveway. “She’s a bit artsy. Erik used to fix cars. Still does sometimes to make ends meet. He’s a pretty laid-back kind of guy. I can’t see him killing anybody.”

  Roxanne looked at Stella’s house. She saw a restored farmhouse with a peaked roof and a wraparound veranda painted a vibrant teal blue with purple trim. A rectangular building at one side had a sign on the front. The Stargazer Music Festival, Artistic Director: Stella Magnusson. The paint was fresh, the windows appeared new.

  “Erik used to sing at StarFest,” said Izzy. “But not for years. Him and his pal Mike Little still do a set in the bars sometimes. They’re not bad.”

  “Why did they stop singing here?”

  “Dunno. You can ask him. Roberta Axelsson’s going to have a fit if he’s been messing around with Stella, but I think Brad’s just trying to put you off the scent.” She got out the car. “Hey, Corporal, I’ve seen inside the house. How about you go have a look and I’ll go for a walk around. Can I have the garage keys? I’ll open up the office building for you.”

  Roxanne unlocked the front door to the house. There were two deadbolts. The shiny silver doorknocker had a star etched into it. Starry wind chimes tinkled softly from the corner of the veranda. She handed the keys to Izzy and watched her head towards the double garage.

  Inside, Stella Magnusson’s house looked new. Hardwood floors gleamed with polish. Large windows shone. They let in light from the west, facing across the field to woodlands beyond. Walls had been knocked out to open up the space. A black grand piano dominated one corner. The wood stove was a contemporary Norwegian one, tall and tubular with brass fire irons on the hearthstone including a poker, all clean as a whistle, she knew. She’d read the report.

  The kitchen had been rebuilt. It was immaculate. Dishes and glasses were neatly stacked in cupboards behind glass doors. The stove and fridge were high-quality stainless steel, as was the dishwasher. The countertops were granite. An espresso maker sat near the sink, the wine rack was well stocked. Stella had hired a cleaning service. They had come in the Saturday after she was supposed to have left on her trip and done a good job. Any evidence of possible wrongdoing was gone, but the cleaners said that they had seen nothing unusual.

  Roxanne walked through the bedroom, the bathroom, a home office. Why had Stella kept an office in the house when her business was literally on her doorstep? The star theme was reflected in sparkly light fitments. A dark blue bedcover had a moon at its centre. There were framed pictures on the walls of galaxies and constellations. Books on shelves were about music, travel, biographies of famous singers. A filing cabinet was full of music sheets, systematically filed, alphabetically and by genre. On the walls were signed shots of musicians who had appeared at StarFest. Several were of Stella, one of the earliest a black and white shot of her fronting a band. She looked str
ikingly beautiful, with a mass of fair hair, big eyes, smiling for the crowd, ridiculously young.

  Roxanne went to the window. She could see Izzy crossing the field behind the house towards the woodlands on the far side. She’d found a pair of snowshoes and was lifting her knees as she walked on the surface of the snow, going further afield than Roxanne had expected.

  The house had been thoroughly searched by the Ident team. Computers and a personal safe had been taken into Winnipeg. They had obtained warrants to access Stella’s email and banking. It must have cost a lot to renovate this house. Where had the money come from? If Stella had a will, it had not turned up yet. Who stood to inherit this place and all the land that went with it?

  There were more photographs on the walls throughout the house, most from StarFest. Roxanne could see no family photographs, no shots taken with friends out for dinner, having a good time, on holiday. Had Stella always travelled alone? Everything here related to Stella’s professional life. Nothing at all spoke of relationships other than work. The house was beautiful, perfect and silent, unnervingly impersonal.

  Roxanne left the house and waded through knee-high snowdrifts to the office building. She could see Izzy returning across the field, the wide, webbed prints of the snowshoes stamped on the surface of the snow. They would soon be blown over. A wind was getting up. Izzy had wrapped a scarf around her face for protection.

  Roxanne entered the offices, which had been converted from a large outbuilding. There was a small kitchen and a washroom, but otherwise it was given over to work space. The only sign of unusual activity was the occasional gap where a computer had been removed for examination. It wasn’t as tidy or as spotlessly clean as the house, but the Ident technicians had found nothing suspicious. There was a contact list of board members and another of volunteers on a bulletin board. That information would be available to her already, but Roxanne took a photograph anyway. She found a box of old StarFest brochures in a cupboard and helped herself to some. She was flipping through them when she heard banging outside the door. Izzy had removed the snowshoes and was whacking them against the wall to remove the snow.

  “I found something. Come see.” She led the way over to the garage at the other side of the house. Roxanne followed in her footprints. “There’s been a skidoo here. Look, there’s a bit of track.”

  The snow had blown away from the side of the garage. Marks were indented in the snowy ground, largely covered by the recent snowfall but visible in patches where they had blown clear. Izzy pointed to the wood. “See?” she said. “There’s a break in the trees.”

  Roxanne peered across the field. It looked like solid bush on the far side. The sun was sinking towards it, throwing the trees into silhouette, but if she followed the faint line drawn by Izzy’s footprints and squinted against the fading sunlight she could see a spot that was darker than the rest.

  “A trail?”

  “Yup. Probably been there since the days that the old guys lived here, but it’s been maintained. There’s not much new growth, and the trees are thick enough that the snow hasn’t drifted in too much. There are tracks there, Corporal. Someone’s been visiting Stella on a skidoo. And guess where it comes from?”

  “Andreychuk’s farm?”

  “Comes out right behind their barn. I tell you, you can’t trust a word that Bradley says.”

  Roxanne’s cellphone rang. It was Matt, calling from Cullen Village.

  “Hey, Corporal, I’m at Angus Smith’s house. There’s a bunch of old guys running all over the place saying they can’t find Angus Smith. He’s supposed to be here. They can’t find him anywhere. They say he’s gone missing.”

  7

  By the time Roxanne and Izzy reached Angus Smith’s house, Matt had wrangled the men into order. He had them sitting around a table on an enclosed porch while he took down contact information, then sent them on their way, one by one. It was where they smoked when they visited Angus. The large ashtray in the middle of the table filled as they waited. At least four of them had puffed nonstop. There had been eight in all. Worried, they had run all over the house, the barn, the workshop, the yard, looking for Angus. If this was a crime scene, it was hopelessly contaminated.

  Roxanne walked over to a fairly new outbuilding, which housed the workshop. It was large. A work table in the middle had stools around it and workbenches on the side. Angus kept the place tidy. Tools hung on hooks. Boxes of nails and screws were ranged on shelves. There was a table saw and a band saw. She called Sergeant Donohue in Winnipeg. He would send someone from the Forensic Identification Unit out first thing in the morning to examine the saws for any sign of bone. He might try to make it out himself.

  In the house, Angus’s favourite coat hung on a hook by the door, his key ring on another. His winter boots sat side by side at the front door. His truck was parked beside the workshop, an ice auger in the back. Paths had been cleared to the house, to the barn and the workshop. A large snowblower stood alongside the truck.

  One of the men was George Smedley. He was listed as the treasurer for the StarFest board of directors. Roxanne turned to Izzy. “Tell him to send us everything he’s got, would you? Board minutes. Financial statements.” She noticed him looking at them nervously through brown-rimmed glasses before he scurried off to his car. Did he have anything in particular to be nervous about?

  Soon, only Jack Sawatsky remained. He put the keys he had to Angus’s house on the table. He had been looking after the place while Angus was gone—in the city, he said, staying at his daughter’s. Millie, Angus’s wife, was in the hospital. She’d fallen and broken her hip just after Christmas. Angus had only come home last weekend, right before they found Stella Magnusson’s head and foot at the dump. Jack rattled on, like he couldn’t stop talking.

  “Angus wants the doctors to send his wife to Fiskar Bay Hospital ’til she gets better, but her daughter wants her to stay in the city. She really wants Angus to sell up, move into an apartment. Like living in a box, Angus says. He’d sooner be dead.” Jack’s voice petered out as he realized what he had said. Roxanne took the seat opposite him.

  Were there other keys? There were. The spare key to the workshop lay under the garbage can outside the door. Any of the guys could go in and finish working on something if they needed to, any time. There was also a key to the house in a drawer in the workshop, in case they needed to use the washroom. Who would know about this? All of the men in the group would.

  “We trust each other around here, Corporal,” Jack said defensively. “Look, shouldn’t we be out there looking for him? We’re all willing to come and help. Why are you wasting time sitting around here talking?”

  “We need to know where to start looking,” Roxanne replied, “if he really is missing.” But Jack Sawatsky knew very little that would help them.

  “Angus is a great guy,” he said before he left. “Nobody ever has a bad word to say about him.”

  Izzy had called the hospital. Mr. Smith had visited his wife the day before, Sunday, in the early afternoon. They hadn’t seen him since.

  At 10:00 the following morning, Margo Wishart went skating. The Cullen Village skating trail was new. It ran across the surface of the frozen lake from a point north of the village to Cullen Point, at the south end. Two and a half kilometres of pristine ice, a ribbon of aqua blue, gleamed in the winter sunlight.

  Sasha had phoned her first thing. She had an unexpected deadline to meet. She’d sold a sculpture. She had to figure out the best way to ship it to Toronto. She sounded too excited to think about anything else. Margo told her to forget about a dog walk, then she looked out at the perfect day and went to find her skates.

  Bob, her big, black dog, loped beside her. He stayed alongside where the lake surface had not been cleared and a thin layer of snow gave him some traction. Margo loved to skate, the easy rhythm, the swing and glide, the sound of her blades swishing as they cut across the hard surfa
ce. It was so clear that she could see right down into the water, through several feet of ice to the rocks on the lake bottom. The occasional fish swam underneath her. The sky was a cool, pale yellow fading to pink, then to a band of azure. The sun lay to her left, a lemon-coloured ball casting blue shadows. Individual ice crystals on the snow sparkled with rainbow light.

  The temperature had risen twenty degrees. Minus ten felt positively balmy after the bitter cold, and she felt warm from the exercise. The shore was to her right. The wooden houses of Cullen Village were painted different colours, tucked among tall green conifers. Look at this, she thought, and we have it all to ourselves right now, me and my dog. That was when she realized Bob was no longer running beside her and glanced back over her shoulder. There he was, way back, standing stock still on the ice. Reluctantly, she dug in her blades and came to a halt.

  “Hey, Bob! Come on!” she called. He didn’t budge. That was not like him. Like many rescue dogs, he was usually eager to please.

  “Bob! Come here, boy!” But he remained still, all four feet planted. He had to have heard her. He pawed at the snowy surface of the ice in front of him. She heard him whine. Slowly, she skated back. He pawed some more, looked straight at her, then lowered his head to the ice once more. He scratched at the surface with both paws like he was trying to dig through. She heard him whimper. She wasn’t worried. He had probably just seen a fish under the ice. She speeded up, drew level with him, then skated slowly over the rougher, ungroomed surface.

  “What is it Bob? What’s up?”

  As she got close he came to meet her with a slow wag of his long tail. She reached the place where he had been. He followed beside her, stopped and looked down, where he had scraped a patch clean. Below, through the ice, she could see what appeared to be a large pink fish lying in the water. The pale, dead face of Angus Smith stared back up at her.