Murder At The Regency E-Book

Kenna McKinnon

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

In the third book in Kenna Mckinnon's 'Annie Hansen Mysteries', Annie and her partner, Mark Snow, investigate the murder of Mark's aunt Clarise, after she's found dead in the lobby of their apartment building.

Several people have seen Clarise before her death, but none of them seem to have a motive. A contract killer, a charity scam and a shady boyfriend all seem to be connected to the case. But who wanted to kill Clarise, and why?

Annie's schizophrenic episodes are both alarming and charming, and Mark is there to support her all the way. Sleuthing their way through the mystery with intelligence and wit, the duo is determined to find out the truth and bring Clarise's killer to justice.

Leseprobe

MURDER AT THE REGENCY

ANNIE HANSEN MYSTERIES BOOK 3

KENNA MCKINNON

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Next in the Series

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2022 Kenna McKinnon

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Edited by Megan Gaudino

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

1

I’m in your arms, Annie Hansen, my heart sings me away. I’m off this island, to a land of locusts and mead on the B.C. mainland and past that, far inland on the prairies, to a city of oilsands workers and towers where my boyhood spent itself in silly robot tales and backyard shenanigans. Then on past there to my crazy single mother and my nurturing aunt to my girlfriend, Suzanne, long gone to a husband and children, then a short career at Dairyland with the wonderful workers there who befriended me. What were their names, Annie? And then to a degree in criminology at the University of Alberta and then to a life of law enforcement in Vancouver and Victoria then to Serendipity Island. Where we were stuck.

Why am I in your arms, Annie Hansen? What confluence of stars led to our meeting in the small Canadian town of Serendipity in the Discovery Islands off the coast of Vancouver? I, Mark Wesley Snow, could have been a big wheel in the Vancouver RCMP detachment like my father before me, as my mother Mary related, my freewheeling, crazy, star-crossed, selfish mother who in the beginning you so resembled. No more, Annie, you are not quite sane, but you are mine. Not dead, not gone by your own hand like my mother, almost forgotten except for the single note she penned—I’m sorry for living, my boy, get on with it. I love you. This is on me. Perhaps the sanest thing she’d ever said to me.

There came a day when I regretted not speaking to her. That day was her funeral. I mourned her still, mostly with guilt and a huge dollop of unresolved love.

* * *

Annie Hansen and Mark Snow moved to Edmonton, Alberta on a Monday in the summer of 2019. With their golden retriever, Chuckles, they disembarked from Serendipity, the island they had called home together for seven years, since he first arrived, handsome and blond, to help Annie with a serial murder case that had the small Canadian island town stunned and stumped.

Since then, he’d stayed by her side through another brutal series of murders in Serendipity in 2016 and her estranged father’s involvement in the drug scene that led to the massacres. The island was no longer a refuge for Annie, who battled the voices and visions of schizophrenia as she solved crimes with her lover. Three years after the murders in Serendipity, Mark, with feet that never stayed long on one patch of earth, accepted a promotion as a Staff Sergeant with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Far from the international bustling city of Vancouver and the quaint capital city of Victoria, far from the cozy island, Mark accepted the move to Alberta as he deemed it was best for Annie. He felt Annie would settle nicely in Alberta, away from the memories she harbored of her time on the streets in Vancouver and the horrific massacres on Serendipity Island.

Edmonton, Alberta would be a fresh start for Annie and a hometown full of memories for Mark. He went where the Mounties sent him and was glad of it. His office in Sherwood Park was within a half hour drive of their Edmonton apartment. The Mounties took care of their move, though they had few belongings. They planned to replace the old green and blue patterned sofa when they got to their new home, but not his beloved green recliner. The monstera deliciosa plant came with them, a glass kitchen table and sturdy black leather swivel chairs, their new queen bed with the velvet headboard, their motorbikes and garden tools. And a plethora of boxes!

They arrived on June 3, 2019, with smoke stinging their eyes, swirled on easterly winds from wildfires in British Columbia. There was intermittent sun and later, rain. Like at home.

A city of nearly a million people, capital of the prairie province of Alberta, in a bigger city way Edmonton mirrored the snugness of the little island town they had called home. Not so much like metropolitan Vancouver, which Mark loved, but for Annie their new apartment at Regency Towers, the green spaces, and the surrounding area, were nurturing and comfortable.

Mark told himself that he’d made the move for Annie, but also for his itchy feet and dreams which led him back to his childhood home, which was not strange to him as it was to his partner, Annie. He remembered the 1980s. Raised by a bipolar mother, left alone as a child with a lonely and disturbed woman and an absent father, Mark grew like an oak and spread his branches over all he came across. His memories were kind, his heart beat full of love for the estranged, the outcast. His mother and the blue house in Calder, Suzanne, the married lover, Annie, the wild crazy girl—Mark the oak in a forest of bewitching deformed enchanted willows. Haunted by the ghosts of his youth lingering in memory, hurtful, sad, yet full of care, by 2019 Mark forgave. He lost touch with the loneliness and the joy, his small nuclear family, and the childhood friends he left behind. When they first arrived at Regency Towers in Edmonton, his mother’s sister, Clarise Williams, was as warm and loving as his mother had been distant and cold. She took them under her maternal feathers. The move was good for both him and Annie, he was sure.

He thanked his superiors for the new posting and the promotion. A well-deserved promotion, they assured him and they hoped he didn’t mind a desk job. He had outdone himself as an RCMP officer solving two heinous serial crimes on the small British Columbia island. Mark gave full credit to Annie as well. His partner in crime and in love.

* * *

Three weeks later, Annie Hansen hunkered beside an Avon rep on the blue and green sofa in their new Regency Towers apartment. Annie applied a dollop of pink lipstick to her cupid’s bow lips. Her golden retriever, Chuckles, who had moved with them from Serendipity Island, woofed gently. The dog laid its silky head on golden paws and gazed at Annie with adoring eyes. She reached down and scratched him behind his long ears. Chuckles woofed and nudged her hand. Her lipstick smeared. She smiled as though at an errant child, rose, and let the dog into the kitchen where he lapped the remains of his gravy and steak from a big silver bowl. Still smiling, Annie closed the door.

“My friend, Tess, in Serendipity sold me my first pink lipstick as a young woman,” she said on returning to the rep, whose name was Rowena Young. “Thanks for coming over on short notice, Rowena. I don’t know a lot of people in Edmonton. It wasn’t my idea to settle here. My partner’s superiors sent him here after ten years in B.C., and he’s over the moon about it. He was born and raised in Edmonton. He’s kept touch with only one friend in St. Paul, and his darling aunt. That gives me an inside edge on friends. Our neighbors couldn’t be nicer. One of them brought over a chicken casserole yesterday. But I miss my island.” She finished applying the color with a flourish then pursed her lips. Chuckles whined inside the kitchen.

“Please thank Tess for giving you my name.” Rowena’s deep brown eyes sparkled with golden glints. Setting her suitcase of wonders on the coffee table in front of them, she adjusted her black framed eyeglasses and ignored the kitchen sounds. “It was no trouble. After all, I live just around the corner from your building, I have a pupper, too. A black and white Sheltie-cross named Sugar.”

“Bring her around some time,” Annie replied. “Chuckles would love company. It would keep him busy while we talk.” She laughed. A thump from the kitchen indicated an attempt to breach the door. Annie called out a command and the noise stopped.

“Love to,” Rowena said. “And you—do you have plans for the rest of the weekend?”

“The first thing I want to do—” Annie declared, eyeing with delight the blushes that adorned the inside of the case— “Is look for a new car. Our old motorbikes won’t be practical here in the wintertime. Also, to find work now that we have all the furniture and most of the boxes sorted. I don’t know what sort of job I could find here,” she confessed, dabbing a sample of ‘Be Blushed’ onto her cheeks as she gazed in the small mirror Rowena held. “When we lived on Serendipity Island, I helped out the local police solve cases that needed a quirky tie to the streets. The last case was complicated, Rowena.”

“Why is that?” The rep nodded with approval at the spots of color on Annie’s cheeks and the vibrant lipstick.

“It was in the papers after the suspects were apprehended and tried.” Annie frowned. “Drug runners that stemmed all the way from the Caribbean. We suspected my father as well. It was pretty messy. Drug cartels from the Vancouver mainland blew away a local man who was involved in the cocaine trade and there were ties to Miami, Mexico, and Colombia as well as Curaçao. If it weren’t for the help we got from the Vancouver Police Department and the RCMP we’d probably still be sitting in a pot of pig’s snouts now.”

“Pig’s snouts?” Rowena dusted color from a brush.

“Yes. A long story,” Annie replied. “A pig farmer was involved, and a pot with a boar’s head in it. You’d have to know the old Norse myths and know our story to understand.”

Rowena smiled and gathered up her wares. “May I sell you the lipstick and the pot of blush?” she asked. “Anything else?”

“Thanks, Rowena, I’ll take the lipstick and blush. Nothing else at the moment. We’re keeping tabs on our budget until I find some work.”

Just visible from the 11th floor, the noon sun hovered behind clouds in the southeastern sky. Chuckles scratched at the kitchen door. The other woman nodded and moved a yellow cushion behind her back. “Your husband has a good job with the Mounties, doesn’t he? Surely you don’t have to work.”

“We’re saving to buy our own house,” Annie said and proffered her plastic card. “Yes, I’ll take the lipstick and blush but no, I don’t have to work. I want to. And he’s my boyfriend, unless you count a few years of living together. Hush, Chuck,” she finished, as whines emanated from behind the closed kitchen door.

“That counts,” said Rowena, grasping her suitcase and rising. Plump and inviting, the yellow cushion fell away. “With the housing market the way it is, it’s a good time to buy. But I don’t blame you for taking on a second income. What would you do? The Edmonton City Police are hiring, I believe, and they’re looking for minorities and women.”

Annie rose, too, and walked Rowena to the door. “Mmmm. I don’t know if I want to continue a career in law enforcement. I don’t really have the credentials, just a GED and no post-secondary education. I was grandfathered in with the Serendipity force after a few years of helping them out unofficially. That wouldn’t count here. I’d have to start over.”

Rowena hesitated in the hallway as Annie held open the hall door for her. “You want a new start in a new city.” She hoisted her suitcase and with the other hand shook Annie’s hand. “It was nice to meet you, Annie. I hope we can be friends. I’m sure Sugar and Chuckles will be great friends next time I bring her over.”

Annie wiped at her suddenly moist eyes. “That would be nice, Rowena,” she said. “I don’t know anyone here except Mark’s aunt, and I don’t have the history with her that he does. Our dog is very social, you’re right, he’d like another pupper to play with. Let’s make a date. You have my number.”

“You said your neighbor brought a casserole.” Rowena took a few steps toward the elevator. “That’s a good beginning. You might have a ton of friends and neighbors here in no time, Annie. I hope so.”

Annie glanced down the long hallway of closed white doors with the silver crown above their numbers. “The Regency seems like a friendly place,” she acknowledged. “It’s dog and kid friendly, too. I think I’m going to like it here.”

“At least until you get your dream house.”

The elevator bell chimed, and the rep ducked inside the sliding doors. “’Bye. See you soon. Oh, here’s my card in case you decide to order something else before I call again.”

“Thanks,” Annie said, reaching out to take it. “I have your booklet here. I’ll look through it tonight. Thanks again, Rowena. It was great to meet you. Now I’m expecting a visitor. The elevator’s slow. Don’t get stuck.”

The elevator door slid shut and the light at the top flicked off. An apartment door opened at the end of the hall then closed with a click as Annie turned to see who it was. Odd. She hadn’t pegged her neighbors as nosy. Primarily the building was filled with younger people who worked during the day or went to school. Their pets sometimes howled alone in an empty suite. Perhaps a nosy parker was checking on her. Annie shrugged, checked the time, and went back into her apartment, sliding shut the deadbolt as she did.

When she opened the kitchen door her dog bounded over his food dish, gravy on his chops, and stuck his cold nose into her outstretched hand.

“Chuck,” she said, patting his soft head. “You’re going back to obedience school.” Chuckles woofed and followed her into the living room. The dog made a great show of turning around three times and settling onto the brown shag rug. He sighed hugely and laid its golden head on its outstretched paws.

“Sleep, Chuckles. I’m too tired to play with you. You’re too big for this place. We’re sorry. You need a backyard, Chuck. We’ll get you one. My sweetie is saving our funds for our very own house for the first time, no renting, and we’ll have a yard just for you.”

The golden sighed, woofed, and closed his loving brown eyes under blond lashes. “You’re beautiful,” Annie said. “And crazy dog-lover, I’m talking to a dog, aren’t I?” She shrugged; laughed.

Her phone chimed the Star Wars theme. Chuckles barked and got up. Annie nudged him to sit down again as she answered the phone. It was Rowena, just minutes ago descended in the elevator.

Her face blanched. Bad, bad news for sure, screamed The Screamer in her head. You can’t handle this, Annie. You’re stupid and dumb and Mark’s going to leave you because you can’t handle it. You thought you were safe here. Stupid cow.

Annie gasped. Her voices grew overwhelming, a disparate cacophony in her head that threatened her slim grasp of sanity. Mark surely loved her in spite of her schizophrenia and the cavernous symptoms. She knew that. But her self worth was tied to a narrow band of love at times like these. Through eons of time, her peers had experienced veneration as seers or healers, torture, and death as witches or demons, been shunned by family and society as bad and mentally weak, and now, in a more enlightened time, perhaps drawing on reserves of strength that were more related to modern medicines and understanding than Annie often felt she deserved. Her voices chittered and were still. She drew a deep breath and rushed to the elevators to comfort her new friend.

* * *

Minutes before Rowena’s terrified phone call, the elevator doors had slid open on the ground floor to a grotesque scenario in the lobby. Rowena screamed. On the shiny tiles at her feet a walker flung askew and an elderly woman sprawled on her back with a long blue and yellow hairpin protruding from her forehead. Blood bubbled from her open lips and pooled behind her head. The woman’s eyes stared sightlessly at Rowena. A siren wailed and came to a stop in front of Regency Towers. The blue suitcase clattered to the floor as Rowena screamed twice more, then fainted.

Moments later, Rowena’s eyes flickered open. She got to her feet. Wearing a badge proclaiming him the resident manager, a man leaned over the twisted corpse. A team of paramedics bent over the woman’s body, too late for the hapless senior on the floor. The gaudy hairpin had pierced the brain, Rowena was sure, and in a vital spot. Although she had read that a bullet could pass through the brain and not kill, this well dressed figure on the lobby floor was certainly dead and the hairpin the murder weapon.

“She’s dead,” pronounced a medic. “We’ll have to leave her here until the EPS arrive. You,” she said to Rowena. “Are you all right? What did you see?”

“I’m okay,” mumbled the rep, confounded. “I just got here and found her.”

“Yet you and the manager are the only witnesses,” said the paramedic. “I think you should stay until the police get here. You fainted. Please sit down and we’ll check you over.”

“I’m not a suspect, am I?” asked Rowena.

A couple of blue uniformed officers strode through the door, hands on their guns. Handcuffs dangled from their belts. They reached for a pulse on the old woman’s throat. “Dead,” said one. “No, you’re not under arrest, Miss, but this is a crime scene. The blood hasn’t even congealed.”

The paramedic checked Rowena’s vital signs, then nodded at the policeman. “The manager declared she was at the scene. He heard her scream and came around the corner from his office. She seems to be okay. Fainted at the scene.”

The policeman nodded. “We’ll have to ask you a few questions. But first, are you okay?”

The resident manager, ashen-faced, helped Rowena steady herself. “We’ll take you down to the station, too, sir,” continued the officer. “If you’ll come with us, please.”

“I’ve never been able to stand the sight of blood,” Rowena mumbled. “I’m going to faint again dead away.” Her head swirled and the world went dark for the second time in a few minutes.

“Good choice of words.” The first cop caught her. “You should sit down. In the meantime,” he continued to the paramedics, “We’ll need a doctor to pronounce this woman dead. Put the body on the stretcher and get to the Emergency Room as fast as you can. An officer will accompany you. We’ll take care of the crime scene and the witnesses here.”

Rowena opened her eyes. “Call my friend Annie on the eleventh floor. She’ll tell you I just got on the elevator going down a few minutes ago. I walked to Annie’s building around noon today to show her a line of cosmetics she’s interested in.”

“We believe you, Miss,” the second cop said. “Just sit here in the lobby while someone puts a tape around the crime scene,” he said, pointing to bloody body on the ground. “Put your head between your knees if you feel faint. You don’t have to tell us anything now. We’ll take you down to the station later if you don’t feel well enough to ride. We’ll have to talk to the resident manager first.”

The manager nodded, mouth open like a bottom-feeding fish, trying to control stifled cries. A door snicked open at the end of the hall in 101A. A young female tenant peeked around the corner then slammed the door. More sirens echoed in the street. Rowena staggered to a chair in front of the windows.

“This woman fainted and was slouched on the floor after I heard her scream and came to see what the noise was about,” said the manager. “I saw the walker first then the body. I’ve worked here for five years. Nothing like this ever happened before.”

“You didn’t hear a scuffle?” asked the cop, taking notes. “What about the security cameras?”

“No, I didn’t hear noises. The cameras have been out today with more work being done on this old building. My office door was shut, and I was on the phone. There could have been muffled noises. There must have been.” The manager wrung his hands. “How could this have happened in daylight and here, in a nice building?” His grey uniform had spots of blood on it and was soaked with sweat.

“Did the tenants know the cameras were off?” asked the officer, writing. “Was there a witness that you were in your office?”

“Yes,” replied the manager. “To both questions. We always send a notice around. I was on the phone to my supervisor in Building One. She will tell you I was on the landline and in my office when this thing happened. I’m not a suspect, am I?”

The cop shook his head. “You’re both witnesses. You’ll have to come with us, and this young woman here as well when she’s recovered. “

Rowena fumbled her phone from her bag. She dialed Annie’s number. A few minutes later Annie Hansen stepped from the elevator. She ran tanned fingers through her tousled hair, her green eyes wide. Rowena sank further into the faux leather chair next to the entrance and moaned. Her day couldn’t get any worse, could it?

The manager continued to talk to the police. The paramedics heaved the body onto the stretcher. They waited on their phones for further instructions from their superiors. Annie strode past the paramedics, shouldering them aside. Speechless and staring, tenants gathered and gawked. As the EPS took the details, Rowena realized the day was worse than a suspicious death. She gasped as Annie recognized with an exclamation the woman lying on the stretcher. It was Mark’s aunt, Clarise Williams.

The paramedics carried what remained of Aunt Clarise’s earthly body to the waiting ambulance. Annie’s visitor was on her way to the morgue.

Annie’s first thought was to call Mark. He would know what to do. But first take care of Rowena. She needed Annie.

2

As the youngest Staff Sergeant ever to work there, the K-Division headquarters in Edmonton assigned Mark to the nearby Sherwood Park detachment when he arrived in Alberta. While he wasn’t happy with the desk job, he enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow Mounties passing through daily. The paperwork was tedious.

The morning of his aunt’s murder began with an uneventful litany of misdemeanors and more serious offenses. An accident on Baseline Road led to a DUI charge for the driver, who staggered into the station, was booked, and let go on his own recognizance as it was a first offense. Though the man’s car was wrecked and towed away, the accident involved no injuries, mercifully (and astonishingly, Mark thought). He followed up on a shooting near Range Road 220. He reviewed various misdemeanors and sent out a couple of constables to investigate a family dispute.

The citizen volunteer at the front desk kept busy all morning with more paperwork and nuisance complaints from various area residents. A dentist’s son from a Strathcona County acreage, reported missing a week ago, turned up safe but very hungover at a frat house in Lethbridge. Mark made coffee for Sally, his assistant, and she brought him back a grilled sandwich and chili poutine from Café Foursquare. The twelve o’clock sun slanted through the upper window of his corner office. He scratched his chin.

RCMP Sergeant Francis Midler and his partner, a new Corporal, stopped in to chat with Mark and make his acquaintance.

“How’s the missus?” asked Midler. Grinning, he rocked back in his boots with the box spurs and hooked his thumbs into the department issued Sam Browne belt. He stuck out his chest. “She happy here with the move, Mark?”

Midler’s partner stood at attention. “We’re happy you’re here, Staff Sergeant Snow. This detachment needed a fresh face.”

Mark nodded and pushed back his laptop. His dark blue shirt looked starched, and his brass insignia twinkled on his collar. “Annie’s good. I’m happy to be back in Alberta,” he answered. “I grew up in Edmonton.”

“Did you?” Midler stroked his soft grey mustache. “How long ago was that?”

“Oh, too many years to admit.” Mark laughed. He put down his sandwich and stretched. “I worked at odd jobs and got a degree, then to Regina for basic training, then headed west. You know what they say. Go west, young man.”

“Yeah, those were the days, right?” asked Midler. His partner nodded. “Go west, young man. Vancouver?”

Mark leaned back in his chair. “For a couple of years, then Victoria.”

“Oh, the island? Nice. Busy there?”

Mark shrugged. “No more than usual. Drugs mostly and a couple of brutal homicides on a nearby Discovery Island. I ended up there for a few years. Met my girl there. Got transferred here.”

The Sergeant planted his boots on the hardwood floor, which creaked beneath his considerable weight. “A promotion, right? Congratulations, Snow.”

“Thanks,” Mark said, nodding. “Yes, my girlfriend likes it here. She misses her old home, though. She has to get settled here first and then find work. She’ll be okay with it.”

“Well,” the Sergeant replied, “You’re here. That’s what counts, right?” He elbowed the Corporal, who agreed. “Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, does it, now? Best to bring her with you.”

“Annie’s a good sort.” Mark fiddled with his poutine and frowned. The door being open, he could see the officers in the general office and Sally at the front desk. All were in dark blue uniforms with a yellow stripe along the leg and black boots. Their dress uniforms, the red serge, were reserved for parades or special occasions. “She’ll be happy anywhere she’s put. She’s unique. One of a kind. I’m a lucky man.”

“Yes, for sure,” said the Corporal. “And we’re lucky to have you here, sir.”

The desk phone chimed. Mark reached for it.

“That’ll be all then,” Midler continued. “Right, Corporal. See you later, Mark.”

They strode out of Mark’s office past Sally drinking coffee near the side door.Lucky stiffs get to go on patrol. As the handsome blond officer picked up his phone, a premonition hit his stomach like a blow to the solar plexus. He knew it was Annie by the call display. She wouldn’t call him at work in the middle of the day unless it was urgent. He heard her sob before he opened his mouth to say ‘Hello, Sunshine.’ He glanced at his watch. It was 1320 hours on Monday, June 24th and they’d been in Edmonton only three weeks. Trouble already?

“Aunt Clarise. She’s on a stretcher, Mark.” Annie’s voice quavered and a sob caught in her throat.

Mark thought quickly. He started work at 0600 h. The shifts were staggered so no one knew what time the officers came and went off shift. He would work twelve hours until 1800 h that night. He glanced at his superior officer in the next room. His aunt’s welfare meant more to him than work. He stood up at his desk, prepared to leave to comfort Annie, who reacted to stress with hallucinations and delusions distressing and harmful to her. Which he would not countenance while he was on this earth.

Mark switched the phone to another hand. Also, his mother’s sister was as dear to him as own mother had been. “My mother’s sister? Our Aunt Clarise?”

“Yes. You know she was coming to see me today.”

He sighed, grabbed a pen from the black and gold ‘California’ cup on his desk, and flipped over a sheet of paper. “Tell me about it, Sunshine. Everything you know. I’ll be right there.”

“No. You have to work. And the Edmonton City Police have it under control, Mark. This isn’t your jurisdiction. I don’t want you to get in trouble. But it looks like murder.”

“My god,” he said, writing. “She’s DOA? The time and place, please, Annie?”

She told him all she knew. “Rowena and the resident manager found her. Rowena had just left my place.”

He continued to write. “Where is Rowena now?”

“She’s with the EPS downtown,” Annie replied. “The manager went with them. And Aunt Clarise…Mark, she’s—she’s…”

“I know, hunny bun,” he said, pen scratching. “You don’t have to describe the scene if you don’t feel like it. It’s so different when it’s someone you know and love. How did it happen, if you know, or is that all you know?”

“That’s all I know.” Annie’s voice shook. “Mark, we’ve been through so much. The grisly murders on Serendipity Island, the drug wars, then the peaceful move here. I can’t believe it’s happening again.”

“You’re partners with a cop,” he replied. “It’s our job.”

“I don’t want to look at a murder again,” Annie said. “I saw Clarise, Mark. There was a long, sharp, gaudy hairpin stuck right through her forehead.”

“Why would someone do that?” He stopped writing. The room seemed suddenly cold, and he shivered. He shrugged on his jacket with the Sergeant’s stripes on the sleeves. He shivered again. “Who would want my gentle, dear aunt dead?”

“And in such a manner?” asked Annie. Her voice was faint on the other end.

A shaft of sunlight puddled on a desk in the general area outside of his door. The air conditioner hissed. “We’re going to find out,” Mark said firmly. “I have friends in the Edmonton City Police. I’m going to take a break right now. I’ll be right there after I check with the Chief and talk to a couple of the constables who picked up Rowena. We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you.”

“Thanks, Mark,” Annie said. “Hurry home.”

He hesitated. “Why was my aunt seeing you today?”

“I thought you knew. She phoned me to welcome me to the city and invited herself for tea this afternoon. She must have been early. Rowena had just left. It was around one.”

“That’s odd,” he said. “I didn’t know she went out much. She used a walker everywhere she went. You must be special to warrant a visit from Clarise, who doesn’t visit beyond her charities and a few close friends.”

“She came by cab. The manager saw the cab pull up. She had just gotten to the elevators when—it happened.”

Mark tapped the pen on the foolscap paper. “It must have been fast. Efficient. Almost professional. Who wears a hairpin nowadays? Or don’t I know women’s fashion?”

“Many women wear their hair up with a pin,” Annie said. “But a curious murder weapon.”

“A woman did it.” Mark sank deeper into his chair. “Must have been. An older woman with a bun.”

Annie’s voice strengthened over the phone. “Buns are common with Millennials, too. It could have been anyone. Mark, Clarise wore a bun.”

“True,” he answered.

“I …” Annie began then corrected herself. “We have to prove the hairpin was or wasn’t hers or that it belonged to someone close to her. Surely the murderer wouldn’t have been stupid enough to use their own weapon.”

“True,” Mark reiterated. “Aunt Clarise—the old sweetheart. She must have been past sixty-five. She had hip problems. She was younger than my mother, but she outlived both mom and their brother, Oliver’s dad. Who would want her dead?” Carrying a box of cookies and a coffee, his assistant Sally knocked on the door and peeked into the room. “No, thanks,” he said, distracted. “Not now, Sal.”

“Usually it’s money,” Annie answered. “Let’s look at her will, Mark.”

“It will be sealed,” he said. “Unless I can get to it sooner than the authorities. It’ll be with her lawyer.”

“Try,” Annie said. “It would give us a clue. Didn’t she have another nephew?”

“My cousin Oliver? Yes, but he’s in Rocky Mountain House.”

“That we know of. Is there anyone else who would benefit from her death?”

Mark considered. “Yes.” He scratched with his pen on the yellow paper. Sally frowned and left the coffee and cookies on his desk. Absently, Mark took one and a sip of coffee. It was hot and comforting.

“Who?” she asked. “Who else would benefit from your aunt’s death?”

“Me,” he stated. “And you.”

“Not again,” Annie wailed. “We’re suspects again.”

“We can’t ignore the possibility of a paid assassin.” Mark choked on the cookie. He sipped the coffee. Sally closed his door. Good girl. “Clarise was wealthy and very kind. She had a few hangers-on friends and some would benefit from a policy with one of the charities she was involved with. We’ll have to be careful not to interfere with the EPS investigation. But there’s people I can talk to.”

“Didn’t she have a man friend?” asked Annie.

“Yes. He’s a shadowy figure.”

“I’m sure we can find out more. I wonder if any of the charities will turn out to be nefarious?”

“Do we know if anyone was in the cab with her?” he countered.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “We’ll have to find out which taxi company and give them a call to see if they can find out from the driver. If he remembers. A long shot.”

The phone was quiet for a few seconds. Mark cleared his throat and ran his tanned hand over a shock of thick blond hair. He picked up his forage cap. His thumb hovered over the ‘off’ button on the phone. “Let’s find them. Also, I’ll ask if the fraud unit at the EPS can check on the charities and their members. Don’t worry, cupcake. We’ll be all right. You holding out okay?”

Annie was silent. Her voices began their long quavering march of reproaches. In a corner, a pile of lavender snakes struck at a bare wall.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

3

By the day after the macabre murder of his aunt, the EPS was on the case and Annie and Mark felt they could relax that evening at home, mourn the loss, and discuss plans that would take their minds off the present situation. Although it was still June, Annie worried that autumn and then an Alberta winter would be on them sooner than expected. Mark’s daily commute to Sherwood Park where he worked just wouldn’t cut it if he had only a motorcycle to ride.

“You’re right, we’re going to need a car,” Mark said that evening. “Our motorbikes won’t be useful in an Edmonton winter.”

Annie laid her head on his shoulder. They sprawled out on the old sofa, a bottle of wine between them. “Glad you agree,” she said. “I’ve been wanting a car since Moses was a baby. What kind should we get, do you think?” Her schizophrenic voices were silent. Her hallucinations including the pink rhinos and snakes were stilled. Mark had that calming effect on her symptoms. Although she took her medications on time and coped well throughout the years since first being diagnosed as a teen, the hallucinations and voices still ran through her brain intermittently like a freight train that occasionally jumped its jangled tracks.

“Maybe a hybrid.” Mark answered her question. “A guy at the detachment has one. He loves it. It gets fifty-two miles per gallon combined. You can get hybrids that charge themselves. What do you think? Would gives us more freedom and is cost effective. Would you like that?”

“Charge themselves, good.” She sipped on a glass of claret wine. Chuckles attempted to drink from her glass. She shooed him away. Mark stroked the golden’s head as he padded to the door. “If we got a car that’s a year old it would still be on warranty,” she continued. “Let’s take a look, Mark. How exciting! I’d love one of those. For the environment. And gas economy. Think of it, dear.”

“I know. It’d be great,” he said. “Hybrids and electrics are the cars of the future.”

“Crack open your laptop,” she said. “Let’s compare cars and prices. I didn’t think we’d have a car so soon, Mark. Did your promotion mean we can save for a house and buy a vehicle, too?”

“I don’t see why not, if we’re cautious.” He set his glass down on the coffee table, careful to place a coaster under it. The table was scratched and old but gleamed from a recent polish. There were ring marks that had popped up over the years but they took good care of their furniture although some of it was used, and Mark was more careful now that Annie was in his life. In Serendipity Annie had replaced the kitchen table, kitchen chairs and queen-sized bed. When she got a new job, no matter how humble, they would replace the sofa and side tables.

“I’m so used to my scooter,” she said. “But it’ll be impossible in the snow that we get here.”

“Yes, our island life and Vancouver might have been damp but we got away with motorbikes all year long. Life is different here, Annie. It’s time we grew up and got a car.”

“I can’t drive,” she admitted, setting her glass next to his. “Other than my little scooter. I’ll have to take lessons.”

“I’ll teach you. Or we’ll join AMA for lessons.” He hugged her. Chuckles whined at the door. “Oh, oh. Our dog wants to go wee-wee.”

“Yes. You take him, Mark. He’s scared of the elevator, and I can’t control him.”

When Mark returned with Chuckles trotting behind him, Annie’s elbows propped on each side of the laptop, he thought he had never seen such a vision as she. Her white-blonde hair cascaded in loops around her tanned face like a halo. Her cheekbones rivaled Brooks Shields. They could cut paper now that she’d lost weight. Her denim capris and blue chiffon blouse were cute as the buttons on a baby’s bib. His chest swelled with pride.