Murder Among the Pines Read online

  As she lowered the blanket, Max noticed that the silver chain from which the diamond ring hand hung was no longer around the woman’s neck.

  Do we have a robbery here? she wondered. Did this woman fight so hard to keep the chain and diamond ring that it cost her life?

  Max would think about that later.

  For now, all she could think about was her former husband. Where had he been when this woman was killed? And where was he now?

  “Did you get something from anyone?” she asked Henry.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “What were they all doing here?”

  “They said they were passing by and saw the old couple staring at the body and pointing. They stopped and looked. That’s all. Got some names, but…” At the sound of tires on gravel, he turned to look behind him. “Here’s the coroner.”

  • • •

  Maxine liked Frank Gunn as much as anyone could like a man who spent his life looking at dead people. She said hello as he arrived. Then she stood back and let him go to work.

  “Pretty clear she was drowned,” Gunn said a few moments later. He stood and peeled off his rubber gloves. “Beaten first. I’ll get a report to you and the other guys later.”

  The other guys, Max knew, were the Ontario Provincial Police, who had arrived just behind Gunn. When Gunn nodded at one of them, the officer walked past without speaking. He knelt near the body and began turning the pockets of Lana’s jeans inside out. Max and Henry could only watch. The rules said that Max and her team were to stand aside while the OPP dealt with serious crimes. Like murder.

  When Lana’s body was being wheeled to the corner’s van, a male voice behind Max and Henry said, “The victim carried no ID.”

  She turned to see an OPP officer writing in a notebook. The name on his badge said Stanton.

  “I assume,” he said without looking at her, “that you did not find any ID on the victim.” He looked up at her. “Is that correct?”

  “Is Stanton your first or last name?” Max said. She disliked the way OPP officers had treated her in the past. This one was treating her the same way, and she would not defer to him.

  “Sergeant Gregory Stanton,” he said, looking back at his notes. “I know you are Chief Maxine Benson, and you resent my taking over this case. Doesn’t matter. It will happen anyway.” He looked at Max. There was no smile on his face or in his voice. “I understand you knew the victim.”

  “I met her once,” Max said. “Yesterday. For a moment.”

  “She live in this town?”

  “She was staying at the Ainslie Inn. With her current boyfriend.”

  “Who is he?”

  Max wanted to say, My ex-husband. Instead she said, “His name is James Herbert Benson. He is a former police officer. From Toronto. He and the victim were guests at the resort.” She nodded toward the inn. “I assume he is in there now.”

  “Benson?” Stanton raised his eyebrows. “As in your last name?”

  “Both of us were Toronto police officers.” Max began walking to the resort. She stopped to look back at Stanton. “We’ll need to speak to him, won’t we?”

  “It will be up to me to do that,” he said. He seemed to be thinking about Max’s words as he walked toward her. “Benson? Can I presume you two were married?”

  “Might as well,” Max said. She turned and resumed walking. “I did.”

  • • •

  The desk clerk told them Jim Benson had not checked out of room 511. Stanton ordered the clerk not to call the room and then walked to the elevator. Max followed him. She had not been invited, but she was going anyway. Neither of them spoke on the way to the fifth floor.

  When they reached room 511 Stanton knocked three times loudly on the door before it opened a little. Jim Benson looked through the opening at Max and smiled. His eyes, heavy with sleep, opened wider when he saw Stanton. It was not his eyes that Max and Stanton were staring at. It was the long row of red scratches down his neck.

  Stanton pushed the door open, forcing Jim back into the room. “Are you alone?” Stanton barked. He stepped into the room, followed by Max.

  “Yes, I am,” Jim said. He wore a red T-shirt and boxer underwear. He looked at Max. “What’s going on?”

  “Where is…” Stanton looked down at his notebook. “Lana Parker?”

  “I don’t know.” Jim sat on the edge of the unmade bed, his hands on his knees.

  “When did you see her last?”

  Jim looked at Max. He wanted her to ask the questions, not Stanton. When she said nothing, he said, “Last night. Around midnight.” His face changed. He had, after all, been a cop. He knew where this was going. He turned to Max and said, “What’s this about?”

  “She’s dead, Jim,” Max said. “They found her floating in the lake.” She nodded in the direction of the balcony doors. “Near the pine grove.”

  Jim stared at her for a moment. He said, “I don’t believe it,” and looked from Max to Gregory Stanton, shaking his head.

  “Get dressed and we’ll talk about it,” Stanton said. He turned to Max. “I think you should leave. You have no role to play here. With the relationship between the two of you, there’s a conflict of interest.”

  Max knew he was right. “He is not charged yet,” she said, “and as a member of—” She meant to say the local police force.

  Stanton cut her off. “All right,” he said. “Sit there and listen. Just don’t speak.”

  Fat chance, Max said to herself.

  THREE

  “I last saw her…”

  Jim Benson slumped in a chair facing the balcony. He had put on a golf shirt and a pair of shorts. Five stories below, guests were splashing in the lake, playing tennis and volleyball, and eating breakfast. Others were walking along the shore to the pine grove, fenced with yellow tape. They wanted to see for themselves where a young woman had been found dead.

  When Jim started over, his voice was flat. “I last saw her around midnight. We were…” He turned his eyes to Max and then away again. “We were getting ready for bed.” He looked at a chair in the corner. Max followed his eyes and saw a black nightgown thrown across it. A short, black, sexy nightgown.

  The phone had rung, Jim said, just as Lana was about to put on the nightgown. Lana practically ran to answer it. She spoke to the caller in short words—Yes. Sure. Fine. Where? Okay. Then she hung up, tossed the nightgown aside and told Jim she had to leave. She would be back in an hour. Maybe.

  “I couldn’t believe it,” Jim said. “One minute we were getting ready for bed. The next minute she’s back in her jeans and out the door.”

  “You didn’t try to stop her?” Stanton said.

  “Yes, I did. I wanted to know who had called and where she was going. When she wouldn’t tell me, I grabbed her arm. And…” He searched for a word. “We fought a little.”

  “Is that how you got those scratches on your neck?”

  Jim touched them and nodded. “She kicked me too. And punched me. Then she ran straight out the door. No coat, no purse, no looking back.”

  Max said, “Did you strike her?”

  Jim looked surprised. “I would never hit a woman.”

  “So she got away from you and ran off,” Stanton said.

  Jim nodded.

  “What time?”

  “Maybe ten after twelve.”

  “We can check with the hotel,” Max said. “They’ll have a record of guests leaving their rooms. And there’ll be security cameras.”

  Stanton ignored her. “You stayed here after she left?” he asked.

  “I waited maybe an hour,” Jim said. “Then I went to look for her.”

  “Where?”

  “In and around the hotel. First the lobby and then out at the pool and the patio. I called her name. Must have called it a dozen times. If she heard me, she didn’t answer.”

  “Did you go down the shore of the lake?”

  Jim shook his head. “It was too dark. There was nobody around. I ca
me back here to wait. I waited until after three. Then I fell asleep.”

  “What did you think happened to her?”

  “I didn’t know. It was weird. By the time I went to sleep, I didn’t care. If she didn’t come back by morning, I was going to check out and leave without her.”

  “And you wouldn’t report her missing?”

  Jim looked at the OPP officer. “I was a cop for fifteen years,” he said. “A girl runs out in the middle of the night, doesn’t come back right away? You guys wouldn’t lift a finger to make a missing-person report on that for a week. So why bother?”

  Stanton said nothing. Then, “We need to ask more questions. Get your things and come to Cranston with me.” He looked at Max. “We don’t need your permission, do we, Chief Benson?”

  Max ignored him. She knew he was being sarcastic. “How did you two meet?” she asked her former husband.

  “She liked my car,” he said.

  “Your car?” Stanton asked.

  “It’s a red Porsche,” Max said. She turned back to her former husband. “You must be doing well.”

  He shrugged. “It’s leased. Anyway, I parked it with the top down one day. Going to my bank in Toronto. Left the car in front of a beauty salon where she was in having a manicure. When I came out of the bank, she was standing at the curb, looking into the car. She asked if it was mine, and I said yes, all of it. She said it was sexy, and I said…” He stopped and smiled a little. “I looked at her and said if she were a car, she’d be a red Porsche like that one…”

  Max looked away and said, “Oh, please.”

  “When was that?” Stanton asked. He seemed bored with Jim’s story.

  “Two weeks ago,” Jim said.

  “Whose idea was it to come up here?” Max asked.

  Stanton stood up. “I think we can go now,” he said before Jim could speak. “You two can gossip later.”

  “Come on, Jim,” Max said. “Tell me whose idea it was to come to Port Ainslie.”

  “It was mine,” he said. “She wanted to go somewhere for the weekend, and I picked this place. I always liked Muskoka, I heard the new resort was nice—”

  “And you knew I was here,” Max said.

  “That wasn’t a big deal,” Jim said.

  “Yes, it was.” Max raised her voice and her anger. “You brought that piece of fluff up here—”

  “Piece of fluff?”

  “You wanted to show her off to me, didn’t you? You wanted to prove to me that you could seduce some empty-headed sack of silicone. You were a little boy showing off your new toy, weren’t you?”

  “It sure seems to have made you jealous,” Jim said.

  “I wasn’t jealous. You, on the other hand, were pathetic!” Max stood to shout the last word at him.

  “Hey.” Stanton stepped between them. He actually smiled. A little. “In case you two lovebirds forgot, we have a murder to deal with.” He turned to Jim Benson. “You’re a former cop. You know the score. I have questions, and I need you to answer them on video. If you want a lawyer, you can call one from Cranston, but you’re not charged. Yet.”

  Jim said he didn’t need a lawyer. Then, slipping into a light jacket, he said to Max, “Kinda like old times there for a minute, wasn’t it?”

  “I don’t miss the fights, if that’s what you mean,” Max said.

  “Sure you do.” Jim walked to the door. “You miss it all.” He looked back at her and then away.

  “Make yourself useful,” Stanton said to Max. “I’ll send an officer up to block entry to the room. When he gets here, you go off to your office. Forensics is on its way. You know the score—don’t touch a thing.”

  “Wait,” Max said. When they stopped to look back at her, she said to Jim, “Tell me now. Did you kill her?”

  “Come on, Max.”

  “I need to hear it. Did you or didn’t you?”

  Jim shook his head and waved a hand as though pushing her away. Then he and Stanton left, Stanton a step behind him.

  Max closed the door and sat back in the chair. Looking around the room, she noticed a brown leather purse on a night table. She walked across the room for a closer look.

  It was an expensive Roots purse with a long shoulder strap. She opened it and saw a wallet, small cosmetics bag and pink cell phone. The phone was an older model that folded closed. It turned on when Max opened it. Lana Jewel Laverne—Max couldn’t help thinking of her as the woman with three names—had taken a call just before she left. Was it on this phone?

  She looked at the list of calls received. The last had been from Jim, on Friday afternoon. There had been nothing since. Had Jim lied about Lana getting a phone call around midnight? If he had lied about that, what else had he lied about?

  Max felt her heart sink. Though happy to be free of her marriage, she still felt a need to protect her former husband.

  From the list of calls received on the pink phone she went to calls sent. One had been made at 6:03 PM the previous day and had lasted less than a minute. Max wrote the name and the Toronto phone number in her notebook—Martin Zeyer. She scrolled back to write the names of other callers and their numbers from the past two days.

  She knew she should turn the list over to the OPP, but the Forenics team would find the phone anyway. And besides, they wouldn’t even need the phone to track her calls. They could get all they needed from the phone service. She replaced the phone in the purse just as someone knocked on the door. “It’s all yours,” she said when she opened the door to the OPP officer. Then she added as she left, “You know the score. Don’t you dare touch a thing.”

  She couldn’t resist it.

  FOUR

  “What will the OPP tell you about the case?” Margie asked.

  It was almost noon. Max handed her notes to Margie, who would send them to the OPP in Cranston. Her notes did not include the names copied from Lana Parker’s phone.

  “Not much,” Max said. Margie had brought her tea and cookies for lunch. Henry was at the Ainslie Inn, helping to keep onlookers away from the crime scene. “They’re the ones who handle murders. Plus, I have a personal link with Jim. There was no way for me be involved.”

  “Could he do it?” Margie asked. “Murder someone that way?”

  Max sat in silence. Then she said, “No. Yes. Maybe.”

  “That clears things up,” Margie said.

  “The thing is…” Max paused and closed her eyes. She had tried not to think about her former husband being guilty of murder. It wasn’t working. She started again. “This was a crime of passion. But they met just two weeks ago. Even Jim admitted it wasn’t serious. Not that it matters. He had flings all through our marriage. None of them were serious either.”

  “And he still cares for you.”

  Max shrugged. “I think he brought the girl up here to make me jealous. He wrote me letters for months after our divorce, saying he was sorry.”

  “Is he an angry man?”

  “Not angry enough to kill anyone. He used to say he was a lover, not a fighter. Well, he got that right. It’s what ruined our marriage. People used to smile and say, Everybody loves Jim. When I heard that I’d say, Yeah, that’s the trouble.” She shook her head. “I can’t see him getting angry enough to kill anyone.”

  “Men can get weird over the strangest things,” Margie said. “My son Robbie gave his girlfriend a bracelet when he was just out of college. It cost him a month’s salary. A week later she told him she wanted to date other boys. Robbie couldn’t believe it. When he asked for the bracelet back, she told him she was keeping it.”

  Margie heaved a sigh. “I could not believe the way he acted about it. He cried, he shouted, he broke a window, he phoned her over and over.” She shook her head. “He was not my Robbie anymore. Not my sweet, quiet Robbie. I’m not saying your former husband couldn’t do what the officers in Cranston think he did. Just that some men can’t help themselves when a woman changes her mind. Maybe that’s what happened with your ex.” She stood to leav
e.

  “How did things work out with your son?” Max said.

  “Fine,” Margie said. “They made up in a month and got married that fall. Gave me two lovely grandchildren, and there’s another on the way.”

  • • •

  After lunch Max drove to the Ainslie Inn to meet Henry. The area along the shore was still fenced with yellow tape. Two OPP cruisers were parked near the grove of pines. Another was in the resort parking lot. Some people stood in groups, speaking in low tones. Murder in a place like Port Ainslie? they seemed to be saying. Impossible.

  Others acted as though it was just another summer’s day in Muskoka. They swam, they played, they shopped, they laughed, they took selfies. Life, Max told herself, goes on. She sent Henry back to the station and walked through the inn’s lobby to the office of Pamela Rosart, the resort manager. They needed to talk.

  • • •

  “The police have taken over,” Pam Rosart said. She and Max were seated in chairs in Pam’s office. Pam meant the OPP, which seemed to be everywhere on the property. “I know this is a serious crime, but it’s not my inn to run anymore.”

  Max and Pam had met when the Ainslie Inn opened. From Prince Edward Island, Pam used a friendly tone to hide her sometimes stern approach to life and business. Like Max, she felt the need to prove herself as a woman in charge. But she also, like Max, let herself see the humor in life whenever it appeared.

  “It’s going to be a few rough days for you,” Max said.

  “It’s breaking up the routine. But you know what? I was enjoying the routine.”

  “Have any guests checked out because of the body being found?”

  “Maybe just two or three. The suits at head office are upset anyway. They’re afraid news of the murder will stop guests from coming here, but I doubt it.” She leaned toward Max and dropped her voice. “Was that really your ex-husband who was staying here with her?”

  Max nodded, saying nothing.

  Pam sat back. “I heard they took him to Cranston. Why would they do that?”