Cozy Mystery Box Set: Murder Mysteries in the Mountains Page 6
Constable Keeney gulped, and put a finger to his collar. “I assure you, Karen, we just want to ask you a few questions. Just a formality.”
Chapter 16
But it wasn’t a formality. All in all, Victoria was very glad in the end that they had called the Turner brothers down to the station. Jager, in a very bad mood, rather rudely told Victoria he wanted to question Karen alone. When Victoria insisted on having a lawyer present, his bad mood worsened.
“I’m on your side,” He said, heatedly. “I think it’d do you well to remember that.”
“My side is by my sister,” Victoria said. “I think it’d do you well to remember that. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re staying out of the interrogation room, one way or the other,” Jager said. “The lawyers can come, though I assure you, at this stage, it’s not necessary.”
Victoria would never tell anyone then, or later, how horrifying it was, to hear him casually say the words “at this stage.”
Karen spent three hours being questioned before she was released. On her way home, she was stiff and silent.
“What did he say to you?” Victoria asked.
“Just asked me about where I was that night,” Karen said. “I had no alibi, not really. I closed the door on Dad about an hour before you came, so he slept through that night. Then, you and the kids arrived, we ate together, and everyone fell asleep.”
“Sounds like a perfectly good alibi to me,” Victoria said.
“The thing is, Jager kept looking doubtful,” Karen said. “Like… he kept asking me about the layout of the house, he even made me draw where everyone was sleeping.”
Their house was a large three-story, which had the curious look of a bunch of blocks oddly stacked together by a child. It had started out a hundred years ago when their great-grandfather had created a small wooden cottage. Over the years, as the family grew, the house had grown too, with an addition here and an addition there, until it became what it was. At its peak, the house had been occupied by twenty people at once. Though they must have been very cramped, in all the pictures Victoria had seen of the family from back then, they also looked very happy. The World Wars had come, and some branches of the family had been cut off, but the house remained.
After Victoria had left and her mother had passed away three years ago, Karen had made significant changes to the house.
On the ground floor the kitchen, dining room, and living room, were all relatively unchanged. The first floor, where Karen now lived, was a suite of rooms, all interconnected, with a study, Karen’s bedroom, and an indoor gym.
The second floor, which had been where their parents used to live, remained empty for a long time after their mother passed. Their father had refused to live in it, and instead, made himself a new home in the attic area. Two years ago, Karen had gotten irritated at how it sat unused, and tore it all up with plans to add rooms that they could rent out. Instead, she had ended up converting the second floor into a studio for a new small business that she had ventured into, glass-blown jewelry. She could only practice after being done with work, but being an efficient and well-organized woman, Karen found herself producing jewelry fairly regularly. It had surprised and pleased her when the tourists began picking it up and much to Karen’s pride, her jewelry was now displayed in the front window of many a town store.
The attic, where their father now lived, had always been his favorite place in the house. It was a quiet, cozy area with sloped roofs, and cupboards full of equipment that had been around for a century. He had only cleared enough space to add a small bed and a mini-fridge. He had been very happy to live surrounded by his books and his radio.
The final addition had been Karen’s inspiration when their father had begun to find it difficult to climb the stairs each day. She had spoken with some of her friends who worked in construction in Calgary, and in three months, a splendid exterior lift stood attached to the house. It looked like an odd rectangular addition that had been stuck to the side of the house, but after a while, it fit right in.
“Jager focused on this lift a lot,” Karen said. “He seemed to imply that I could easily move in and out of the house using the lift since it opens on the outside and no one would notice.”
Victoria’s heart sank. What Jager was saying was true. It could be done. That didn’t mean Karen had done it.
“I swear to you, Victoria, I’m not capable of this,” Karen said. “I’ve done a lot of things in my life but murdering someone is beyond me.”
“I know,” Victoria said, smiling. “Remember when we were young, and we found a badly injured rabbit in the woods? We bought it back home, and Papa said it was in too much pain, that it had to be put out of its misery. You cried for about three days after.”
“Papa was very brutal,” Karen said sadly, “It was such a sweet little thing.”
“Papa grew up hunting foxes and rabbits, and selling their skins,” Victoria smiled. “He didn’t have the same sentimental attitude our generation did.”
“I suppose,” Karen said, “But if there was one thing Papa was sentimental about, it was our mother. Victoria, he loved her with all his heart. I’ve never seen a bond like theirs. How could she do this to him? He’s going to be devastated when he finds out.”
Chapter 17
Byron greeted them at the door, with Annie standing behind him.
“Mom. Aunt Karen. We heard what happened. We were worried when you didn’t come back.”
There were dark patches under his eyes, and from the swollen red look of Annie’s eyes, Victoria could tell she had been crying. A large spike of guilt went through her, as did an overwhelming love. Her poor children. It had been hard for Victoria, no doubt, to come back and have one bombshell after another fall on her. What with Boyd’s death, her father’s weakened condition, and now the reading of the will. But it had been hard for her children too. In the last week, they’d met a man who’d later been murdered, entered a new school, met their aunt and grandfather for the first time and somehow managed to help their mother without a single word of complaint.
“I’m sorry,” Victoria said, giving him a hug. “Byron, I haven’t been paying attention to you and Annie like I meant to. I haven’t been there for you.”
“Mom, come on.” Byron’s voice was surprisingly mature. “You’re under a lot of stress. So is Aunt Karen. Annie and I will help out any way we can.”
“We made you soup,” Annie said shyly to Aunt Karen. “I made the toast, and Byron made the soup.”
Aunt Karen nodded, mutely. She looked at Byron, and whispered, “Thank you.”
“It’s only minestrone,” He said, looking very embarrassed.
“You’re still our Aunt Karen. We still love you.” Annie said, giving her a hug.
Victoria could see Karen’s lower lip trembling furiously, but she took a deep breath and brought herself under control. “Yes, you are, poppet. I love you too.”
“Your grandfather,” Victoria said. “Has he heard? Where is he?”
“He locked himself in his room,” Byron whispered to her. “We took up some soup and bread for him, but he hasn’t opened the door. I took Annie down and made her watch TV, but I think she’s really worried.”
“So am I.” Victoria sighed, putting a hand to her brow. “This has to be a big blow to your grandfather.”
“It was a neighbor who came to tell us,” Byron said. “An unpleasant old woman named Miss Ethel. She almost seemed pleased about it all. But she began with, “I think you should hear this from someone close before the entire town comes to your door.”
Victoria nodded.
In the end, Byron and Annie settled down with a DVD of Finding Nemo, in the living room.
Victoria and Karen climbed up the stairs, hand in hand. They knocked on their father’s door and called his name.
“Papa. It’s me, Victoria. Please open the door. The kids are really worried, and so are we.”
“I’m alright.” Her father calle
d from inside. “Just sleepy, that’s all. Leave me alone.”
“We know you’re upset, Papa,” Karen said. She hesitated over the last word, her face pale with doubt. “We just want to talk. Or if you like, we can just sit with no talking.”
They heard the heavy clump of his feet, and then the rattle of a key in the lock.
“This door hasn’t been locked in centuries.” Her Papa said as he opened it. “The locks belong on the national heritage list. It’s Johann Hass himself who made them, you know.”
Once again, avoiding the topic, Victoria thought. She played along. “Haas? He was one of the town settlers wasn’t he?”
“He was, yes.” Her father brought down a book from his shelves. “Johan Haas settled this place back in the late 1800s, you know. He was an unusually clever business man. He started the grocery store and began selling cheese and bread to the rich men who came here in winter. Wilhelm, his brother, was an artist who spent all his time drawing the sunset.He was pretty good at it too. Some of his paintings are still on display at the Banff Springs Hotel. But it was the third brother, Friedrich Haas, who created the famed Haas Locks. They sold all across Canada. But the town lost interest in them eventually, and now, only a handful of us enthusiasts know about them. They were beautiful large, heavy cast iron and bronze creations, and I’m proud that every lock in this house is an antique.”
“I was never very happy with them,” Karen said. “When we were renovating, I wanted to rip out all these old, rusty locks and replace them with brand new ones. Papa put his foot down. He never argued with me about ripping up the second floor, or installing the elevator outside, but the locks? I didn’t dare touch them!”
“I’ve studied these all my life.” Their papa smiled. “Some men liked working on cars and bikes. Personally, I loved locks. If your mother’s café hadn’t done so well, I would have liked to become a lock salesman. Of course, back then, we didn’t have the range of careers you young folks do. It was open a store or a restaurant, or be a doctor or a hunter.” He laughed.
Impatient with this digression, Victoria burst in, “Papa, there are some things we need to talk about.”
“There’s nothing we need to talk about.” Her father said.
“I agree,” Karen said. “Not if Papa doesn’t want to.”
“No,” Victoria said. “Maybe that’s how things worked before, but this attitude, this determination never to talk about things, caused us fifteen years of bad blood. I don’t want there to be a second more of strife. Karen is our blood, Papa, and no will reading is going to change that.”
“Well, I have Mom’s blood in me anyhow,” Karen said.
Their father’s face was stony with rage. His lower lip trembled, an eerie imitation of Karen’s, and with one hand he swept off all the books that littered his desk. They crumpled on the floor with a great flap of pages, like birds taking flight.
“We are never going to discuss your mother, or this incident, ever again. Not as long as I’m alive.” He said.
Chapter 18
“We have to talk about her, Papa,” Victoria said. “Everything she was, every way she cast a shadow on us.”
“She was your mother.” He thundered. “She loved you, and she loved me and that’s all there is to it. She wasn’t a saint, she was a short tempered woman with very firm ideas about how we were to live and maybe she made a mistake once. But that’s the past, and it has no bearing on our future.”
“Of course, it does,” Victoria said. “Papa, how can you defend her? Even now? She was downright cruel at times. She loved us yes, but only when we were toeing the line, a line she drew up, with no consideration for anyone but her. She was selfish enough to force you to give up your career to start her café. She was selfish enough to cast me out of her life when she realized I didn’t want to help too. I didn’t deserve that. I didn’t deserve seventeen years of silence from you and Karen.”
“You were at fault too,” Karen said. “You were so rude to her that day, and you never apologized for it.”
“I was rude to the woman who called my husband a rotten cradle snatcher,” Victoria said. “I wanted an apology from her.”
“Stop it.” Her father said.
“No. I will not. Papa, she… she demanded our loyalty, she demanded that we obey every single law she put down and in return, what did she give? Nothing. Boyd...”
“Stop it.” Her father whispered.
“No, I will not!” Victoria shouted. All the anger at her mother, that had laid dormant in her for decades, now escaped in a volcanic rush. “I wish … I wish she were here. I wish I had a chance once more to shout at her. But I don’t.”
“Mom was complicated,” Karen said. “But Victoria, she did love you. Don’t you remember? On your twelfth birthday, she spent all day at the café, then came back home and spent all night decorating the house from top to bottom and baking a huge feast. It was all ready for you when you woke up. There was the time when you broke your arm after you fell from a swing. She ran all the way to the hospital with you in her arms. Don’t you remember that?”
Victoria did remember. It felt like the seeds of hate in her heart, drawn from the many moments that her mother had been unreasonable, had drowned out the other times. It had been times like this when their mother had been so caring. When she drowned you with her love and affection, that had made her so loved. Even in town, stories of her generosity were near legend. She had once secretly gone hungry for a week, surviving on one potato a day, all because she was saving up the money to help pay for an ailing family’s needs. She had donated her blood. She had spent hours voluntarily helping old ladies who needed it, and she had never once accepted a thank you.
“Mother was complicated,” Karen said. “But… she wasn’t evil. She deserved every bit of our love and loyalty.”
“But she cheated on the one man who was so faithful to her all these years,” Victoria said. “Daddy stopped speaking to me out of loyalty to her and...”
“Stop it!” Her father shouted, very agitated now. “Not one more word. Not one more word. I’m begging you.”
Victoria stopped, tears coming to her eyes. She would be selfish to say a single word more, she knew. Perhaps she’d never get the closure she’d hoped for. Perhaps, as long as it gave her father some semblance of peace to pretend that everything had been normal, that was alright.
“I was telling you about the Haas Locks,” He said. “Karen always loved them, as a child, didn’t you Karen?”
“I remember you used to take ours out occasionally and clean out the rust and dirt, and oil them,” Karen said. “I used to love watching you. You had this leather satchel filled with strange metal tools to do it and a special polish for the bronze bits.”
The conversation flowed on, haltingly, but surely. Karen and her father chattering away as if it were just another morning. It was as if the debacle from hours ago had never even happened. Karen was like a little child again, clutching a doll in one hand, and admiringly looking up at their father while he told them about his day.
Victoria smiled.
As the picture of Karen, sitting there as a small child entered her brain, something else jogged in her brain.
The dolls.
Jager had mentioned the dolls once and told Victoria how they mysteriously appeared in various places.
Victoria had dismissed these tales as superstitious nonsense that small towns sometimes fancied. But what if it were tied in somehow, to Boyd’s death? There was no doubt that it was true, at least five different town shop owners had found a mysterious doll inside their house or shop, long after it had been locked down. She remembered again, the look on Boyd’s face the last time she had seen him when he had been lying to her about how there was no crime in town.
Had Boyd been one of the shop owners to find a doll in his house? Was it, somehow, related to his murders? Victoria didn’t believe it was supernatural, but what if there was a psycho in town? What if this was his modus operandi?
Chapter 19
The first person Victoria talked to was Adam Denner. He owned a local boutique that specialized in vintage clothes. Additionally, he was one of Karen’s patrons. He’d been among the first to buy her glass jewelry when she’d started making them, and now they had pride of place in his front display.
He smiled at Victoria as she came into his empty shop. “Hello, Victoria. Come to take your father’s locks? Here.” He handed her a paper bag.
“You know about Papa’s fascinations with locks?”
“He’s a member of the town historical committee just like I am,” Adam smiled. “We meet every Tuesday at 9:00 p.m. for dinner and a talk. If you’re interested, you could join us too.”
“History’s not my cup of tea.” Victoria shook her head. “I just came to talk.”
“Talk away. This time of the year, business is always slow.” He said. “I’m expecting a big crowd next week when Banff National Park has its festival.”
“Karen said the same thing,” Victoria smiled. “Papa said that there’s a lot of work to be done if the town wants to survive.”
“I agree completely,” Adam said. “Men like your father, and Hanson, they understand the reality of doing business. Boyd, for all his success, always had his head in the clouds. At some level, the man was a sentimental artist, not a businessman. He was too idealistic. Hanson’s too dishonest for me, though I’d never say that to his face. But Boyd was far too honest to function well as a Mayor. To tell the truth, the man I’d have liked most as Mayor was your father; he had a solid head on him with great ideas to develop the town. Unfortunately, of course, he had his illness. So we voted in idealistic Boyd.”
“Idealistic or not, he did manage to create one of the most successful stores in town.” Victoria pointed out.
“Now it belongs to your sister,” Adam smiled. “Well. She must be glad you came back when you did; now someone can manage the café for her.”