A Deadly Snow Fall Read online

  A Deadly Snow Fall

  A Cape Cod Cozy Mystery

  Cynthia Gallant-Simpson

  Published by Cozy Cat Press at Smashwords

  ISBN: 978-1-4581-3897-2

  Copyright 2011 by Cynthia Gallant-Simpson

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Ken

  Who can give law to lovers? Love is a greater law to itself.

  Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae

  Chapter One

  “No one in Provincetown liked Edwin Snow III. Well, no one but his faithful and devoted pit bull, Patton.”

  That was the voice of Daphne Crowninshield, my new best friend and also a British expatriate, on that snowy April morning when the village mystery began to unfold. On that chilly spring morning, as I stood with Daphne and the other villagers, prevented from getting any closer to the dead body lying in the snow than the yellow police tape allowed, my world shifted on its axis. But, this is not principally a story about me. No, it is about a village and its people, old grudges, misunderstandings, love, hate and the perpetual determiner of the mood of New Englanders--the quixotic weather. I am but a participant. Edwin Snow III is the star. Albeit, a fallen star.

  Spring is not coming this year---April Fool! Every year, as residents reached their limit for tolerating icy North Atlantic wind, long, gray days, snow, sleet and freezing rain, invariably there would be two or three days of pure delight. All it took for a collective sense of hope to rise was that welcome, sudden change in the weather. The promise of spring. Warming breezes, lots of sunshine and little green shoots daring to peek out of the earth all contributed to something akin to a healing tonic that swept through the village. However, “April on Cape Cod is” as Daphne said in her sardonically descriptive way, “as quixotic as a wily fox on steroids.”

  The year of the mysterious death of Edwin Snow III was no exception. As southern New England held its collective breath waiting for menopausal Mother Nature to decide whether to bring forth spring or to cling to winter for a while yet, there were a few tantalizing spring-like days. Like hermit crabs the villagers crawled out of their winter-imposed isolation and began outdoor projects like raking yards, washing windows, painting storefronts and gazing longingly at the flats of pansies in front of Daisy Buchanan’s (a pseudonym for Annie Buckley who was a devoted fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books) Narrow Lands Nursery.

  Then, to the dismay of everyone, it snowed.

  It snowed and snowed and snowed, burying the fledgling daffodils and crocuses as well as the prematurely heightened spirits of the villagers. That year, the town meeting had voted to eliminate from the budget the snow removal at the Pilgrim Monument due to financial concerns. So Bill Windship, the self-appointed keeper of the Pilgrim Monument and Museum, had bought a new snow shovel at the Land’s End Hardware Store. The town had let down his precious Monument but he would not.

  Bill Windship was also the owner of the Army-Navy Supply Store on Commercial Street and a dedicated and learned historian of everything concerning the Pilgrims. He acted like they had stayed and settled in and been the life’s blood of Provincetown when, actually, they had split for greener pastures at the end of their first winter here. But for Bill, the only really worthwhile tourist site in the entire village was his beloved Monument.

  Bill had opened the Army-Navy Surplus Store when he was just a young man and he had grown wealthy over the years selling WWII Navy pea jackets, canteens, disabled howitzers and other surplus he had bought by the truckload at the inception and still had not depleted. Exotic seashells from the tropics--by way of the Jersey shore, cheap Indian cotton clothing, old fishing nets hand-made by the early Portuguese fishermen and a thousand other things that tourists loved to pick through in search of treasures, kept the store full all summer long.

  He closed the store the day after Labor Day each year and re-opened for Memorial Day because his wares held little appeal for the year-round population. Of course, he did re-open briefly at Halloween for locals looking for something to wear to costume parties. Every fall, Bill, who was a wealthy man in his own right, considered selling his “gold mine” business and retiring to warmer climes. But every spring, his interest was revitalized. Now, in his mid-eighties, the self-appointed advocate of the Pilgrim Monument had accepted that he’d die in Provincetown. He and Edwin Snow had been schoolmates.

  As Bill told the story to the Chief of Police, and I later heard it after I made the fortuitous acquaintance of Officer Finneran, the Chief’s right hand man, the day had started out well but quickly descended into the realm of horror for poor Bill. On that snowy, late spring day when Edwin Snow III’s crumpled body was found at the foot of the Monument, Bill had disobeyed his doctor’s orders.

  Bill had walked the six blocks from his house to the Monument huffing and puffing. Two heart attacks had weakened the once strong man. “Light exercise,” as the cardiac specialist had advised, hardly meant a long walk followed by shoveling snow. As it happened, only two weeks earlier, Bill’s younger brother had forced him to get a cell phone. “Time to move into the twenty-first century. What if you fall and can’t call for help? No one will hear you from the deserted area of the Monument.” Bill had countered, “So what. That’s where I prefer to die, anyway.” But he had acquiesced, and on that snowy morning, gazing down at bloody snow, Bill had used the cell phone to call in the death of his long-time enemy, Edwin Snow III.

  Fortunately, the snow was light and fluffy. Bill had been working slowly. He had all day. Not that anyone visited his precious, historical site in winter. But, Bill’s pride and love of his Monument drove him to clear the walk. He was making pretty good progress, he told Chief Henderson, when the shovel hit something solid. Leaning down to inspect the shock of red snow just under the light top covering caused him to totter and stumble. The shovel stopped him from falling and he braced himself against it until he could catch his breath. Remembering the phone in his jacket pocket, he called the police station.

  Chief Chet Henderson and Officer James Finneran were there within minutes. Yellow police tape went up and Doc Hooper, the medical examiner for the lower-Cape had been summoned and was on his way from Orleans within eleven minutes of Bill’s call. Before I arrived, Officer Finneran was called to an early morning domestic dispute and so, our paths did not cross on that particular day. That would come later.

  The crowd quickly gathered only because Emily Sunshine, out for her regular early morning walk, happened to take a route that passed by the Monument. Seeing the police car, as she told me later, she quickly ducked behind a huge oak tree from where she could see the bloodied, old and tattered tweed coat that she knew belonged to none other than Edwin Snow III.

  Like Paul Revere but minus his trusty steed, Emily immediately headed back into town to spread the alarm. Had anyone heard Emily’s little singsong however as she peered around the tree at the death scene, they’d have been either confused or … greatly disturbed.

  “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.”

  Had I not decided to morph into an amateur sleuth, inspired by my love of cozy mysteries, probably foolishly believing I could help, things might have turned out very differently. As Officer Finneran pointed out once we became friends, my actions just might have ended in my being dead as the proverbial door nail, as well. C’est la vie!

  However, not one to
turn my back on a chance to dig into old mysteries, and in keeping with my former career, I became privy to assorted, fascinating village secrets. One of those being, as Emily Sunshine eventually shared with me, why she’d intoned the old nursery rhyme at the scene of Edwin Snow III’s death.

  Within minutes of Emily’s arrival back in the heart of the village, nearly every resident of Provincetown was at the death scene. If it hadn’t been for the snow covering, it might have been summer and the line of arriving people a queue waiting to climb the Monument. By that time, Chief Henderson’s hope that he could keep the terrible incident under wraps until the autopsy report was completed had exploded. Much later, back at the police station, he berated Emily Sunshine to Officer James Finneran. “Damn that nosy woman. Ran all over Provincetown like the town crier calling it murder. She had no right. The man was miserable and he took his own life. End of story.”

  Thus, two camps quickly formed. The suicide camp and the murder camp. Neighbor pitted against neighbor over the question. Friends argued their positions on the street, in the stores, at the bars and in the privacy of their homes. The town buzzed like a frenzied bee hive. Chief Henderson was furious about how the whole incident had gotten completely out of hand. Then, on top of that, someone called the Boston papers with an anonymous tip that it might have been murder.

  Reporters descended on Provincetown like lemmings on holiday. Weather notwithstanding, gawkers arrived from everywhere to view what the Boston Globe called, tongue in cheek, “a monumental death.” Either someone had overheard the Chief call it that or, it was so obvious a tag that originality was a toss-up. Bill Windship was naturally, totally appalled.

  The only good to come of it all was that the tourist season got an early start. It seemed sad to me that poor, old Edwin Snow’s death had only brought smiles to the villagers and no one but probably his faithful pet Patton missed him. Only much later, after I took on the persona of amateur sleuth, having fashioned myself on an amalgam of my favorite feisty, female, undercover investigators, did I discover one person saddened by his passing.

  Chapter Two

  I knew the old man, Edwin Snow III, lying bloodied at the foot of Pilgrim Monument only by sight. Actually, he had once bestowed on me a look of complete disdain and disapproval with never a word uttered between us. But that will come later. As you can imagine, it came as a seven on my Richter scale when the village’s least liked, most miserly and nastiest curmudgeon reached out from the grave to influence my life. To change its course, I might say.

  On the morning of the death of Edwin Snow III, Provincetown Chief of Police, kindly Chet Henderson, stood looking down at the newly fallen snow (no pun intended) as if it might contain a vital clue. As if it might reveal how octogenarian Edwin Snow III had managed to climb the locked up tight, two hundred and twenty-five foot tall granite tower, the iconic Pilgrim Monument, and jumped. Chief Henderson removed his cap and scratched his head. What he saw challenged his imagination as well as his logical policeman’s mind. His gout was also troubling him standing there in the cold air.

  Back at the station, the Chief repeated his sentiments for Officer Finneran who later shared them with me. Standing in the un-spring-like snow, the Chief had recalled his beloved, deceased wife Trudy’s quoting of T. S. Eliot each and every year at that time. “April is the cruelest month.” That particular April certainly was for the dead man.

  As an especially grueling winter had turned to spring on Cape Cod, everyone held their breath. It was not unusual for winter to hang on tenaciously even into May. My Scottish grandmother had a saying that seemed appropriate. Granny MacLaughlin referred to anything slow in arriving as being “as reluctant as sheep to the shears.” That sluggish spring, two questions hung over the seaside village like precarious icicles waiting to fall. Until that morning, foremost had been the perennial New England quixotic weather question. The second question being more of a mystery wrapped in an enigma and presenting all with a challenging puzzle had to do with Snow’s mysterious death. Not at all mysterious for some, but for others, a call to arms. Suicide or murder?

  Even there, at the scene of Edwin Snow’s demise, the villagers began to pin irreverent labels onto the scene before them. “The abominable snow-man.” “Fallen Snow.” “Curmudgeon on ice.” Please don’t misunderstand. These were not unkind people. Far from it. They were good citizens and good neighbors. A mixed bag of long-time year-rounders comprised of fishermen, shopkeepers, restaurant owners, innkeepers and the usual variety of trades people necessary to keeping a small village humming along. As a newcomer, I had felt welcomed almost from the first. No, they were not unkind people; however, Edwin Snow III had tested their patience for decades. Everyone had a story about Edwin’s mean and miserable ways.

  In Provincetown, where tourism is king and summer fills the coffers of businesses catering to every tourist need and whim, there is an annual downside. Winter. However, even the downside had its upside. Winter was the time for seeing friends one had no time for during the busy season. Time for catching up on projects and getting ready for the next tourist season. A welcome respite. In winter, Provincetown reverted back to its small, New England, seaside village persona. Warts and all.

  Standing with Daphne in the snow as the ambulance pulled up and the EMT’s prepared to take the body away, I heard one old timer remark on the death of the dead man: “One bad apple can sour the entire batch of cider. Frankly, I say, good riddance to our bad apple.”

  An elderly lady standing in her bathrobe and rubber boots spoke in a whisper to her neighbor, but I heard her: “Don’t blame the old curmudgeon. Might do it myself if no one liked me.” Her younger neighbor put an arm around her elderly friend reassuring her that she’d never have that problem.

  “Daph, won’t anyone mourn the poor man?” I asked.

  “Doubt it. I told you, nobody liked the old coot. In fact, there were two attempts on his life not so long ago. Just before you came to town. One came from the air and one was a land assault. Edwin was walking by the Canterbury Leather Shop one evening at just about dusk when a cement block just missed his head. It took out the post box and cracked the sidewalk. Imagine what it would have done to the old coot’s head. The second attempt came in broad daylight on Commercial Street when a fist-sized rock was lobbed across the street, missing his nose by a hair. But here’s the fun part. It crashed through the front window of Spiritus Pizza and landed smack in the middle of a pepperoni pizza that Maggie and Eric Lund were just about to dive into. Rock pizza.”

  “My goodness, that sounds pretty scary. Was the culprit ever apprehended?’ I asked wondering if in fact, my peaceful and safe-seeming adopted home village was safe after all.

  “Nope.”

  Looking across the snow at the man who’d found the body, talking to a man I would come to know as the kindly, grandfatherly Chief Henderson, I realized that I’d had an uncomfortable encounter with the former just the week previous. “Daph, who’s the man leaning on the shovel?”

  “Oh, that’s Bill Windship. Owns the Army-Navy store.”

  “He stopped me in the library just last week to correct me when I asked if they had any books on the local Indian tribes. Gad, you’d think I’d touched the Queen!”

  “Not surprised. He’s always correcting people who are politically incorrect.”

  “Don’t give me that raised eyebrow look. I’m British. We still call them ‘Indians.’”

  Ignoring me as if she’d been born in Dubuque, Daphne continued, “But he’s just a harmless history fanatic. He takes care of the Monument. Found the body this morning while clearing the snow.”

  I happened to be on the scene only because Daphne had phoned and dragged me out of a lovely sleep-in so that I wouldn’t miss the village’s latest excitement. “Get down here pronto, Liz. It’s like a movie scene. When they do make it I want to be portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones.”

  I turned my gaze upward. Way, way up to the top of the Pilgrim Monument. Just the thought
of jumping from such a height and flying through the air without the confidence of a reliable parachute made me shiver. Looking back down at the hump of bloodied and snowy tweed covering the old man’s twisted body, I thought about my favorite childhood rag doll. Even if no one liked the old man, that was a horrible way to go.

  I took a couple of gulps of the fresh, if frosty, air and attempted to release my mind from the scene before us. “Don’t quote me but I can only say, Daphne, looks like it’s a monumental death.”

  “Too late, Shakespeare. Chief Henderson beat you to that proclamation. Good, though. I’ll give you both that. Great minds think alike. Do you know the Chief, by the way?”

  “No. Is he single, handsome and sexy?” I asked.

  “Single, scruffy, but good looking for a guy close onto seventy. He’s also a whiz bang at Scrabble and appreciates good scotch. Nice guy if you need a father figure.” Daph smiled her wily smile. “That’s him in the dark green parka, over there.” She pointed at the chief who looked like Santa Claus with less hair.

  “Right up your alley, I’d say Daph. Didn’t you tell me your father is the template against which you measure your men and none so far have measured up? And, think of the hours you could spend playing Scrabble all winter to pass the time while sipping on a twelve year old blend.”

  This type of repartee had become an intrinsic and most enjoyable aspect of my friendship with the charming, if now and then caustic, Daphne Crowninshield. Although, I hoped her habit of trying to sound American did not rub off on me. Her version of the “lingo of the rebellious colonists” as she put it, resulted in a hash of bad, nineteen forties movies and Hollywood mafia impersonations. But, I loved her and depended on her to keep me from being all too serious. We were a good mix.