The Corpse with the Garnet Face Read online

  Praise for the Cait Morgan Mysteries

  “In the finest tradition of Agatha Christie…Ace brings us the closed-room drama, with a dollop of romantic suspense and historical intrigue.” —Library Journal

  “Touches of Christie or Marsh but with a bouquet of Kinsey Millhone.” —Globe and Mail

  “A sparkling, well-plotted, and quite devious mystery in the cozy tradition.” —Hamilton Spectator

  “Perfect comfort reading. You could call it Agatha Christie set in the modern world, with great dollops of lovingly described food and drink.” —CrimeFictionLover.com

  “A delight for fans of the classic mystery…Cait Morgan…and her husband, make a pair of believable and very real sleuths.” —Vicky Delany, national bestselling author of the Lighthouse Library mystery series

  The Corpse

  with the

  Garnet Face

  CATHY ACE

  For the man who put a ring on my finger in Amsterdam

  Woman on a Telephone

  I WAS HAPPILY NIBBLING ON the lemon and poppy seed muffin that had become my usual weekend breakfast treat when the phone rang. I didn’t need to look at the number displayed on the handset to know it would be Bud’s mom, Ebba Anderson. As mothers-in-law go, I’m sure she’s better than most. Recently married at the age of forty-eight and a half, I have to admit I don’t have much mother-in-law experience, and her early Saturday morning phone calls have become as much of a staple as muffins. This time, she sounded distraught when I answered; it’s not a state with which she’s unfamiliar.

  In her gently swooping Swedish accent, she wailed, “He’s dead! Jonas is dead!”

  I knew better than to respond with more than, “Oh dear, that’s terrible news, Ebba. I’m so sorry to hear it. Hang on, let me get Bud for you.” I turned to my husband and said, “It’s your mom, Bud. She’s upset.”

  Bud didn’t look surprised.

  “Just a moment, Ebba,” I said, and handed the phone to Bud, hissing, “Sounds serious. Good luck.”

  Bud listened for a moment, then said, “Who on earth is Uncle Jonas, Mom?” He shrugged his shoulders in a dramatic fashion and rolled his eyes. I knew only too well how telephone calls with his mother could run on, so I poured myself another coffee to help wash down the muffin. As I took my mug out onto the back deck, I heard him say, “But you’re an only child, Mom. At least, that’s what you always said. So he’s who, exactly?”

  The warmth of the late-July morning’s sunlight won out over my curiosity, which is saying a lot. Usually I can’t help but want to know exactly what’s going on, in every detail, but I was feeling a bit shell-shocked after a particularly brutal month at the University of Vancouver, where reorganization at the school of criminology had led to professors merrily stabbing each other in the back. To my horror, I’d discovered quite a few of the metaphorical knives had been out for me. A vision had been set out for the school with a significant shift in priorities, and my future seemed to hold the challenge of more teaching hours, exponentially more grading, and much less time for research. I needed more than a muffin to make that prospect seem sunny, so I closed my eyes, and allowed our loving black Lab Marty to lick my ankle. Eventually he nudged me into offering him a crumb or two.

  “Well, what do you think about that?” asked Bud as he marched out onto the deck, coffee sloshing about in his mug. Marty seemed to think the question was directed at him, and his vigorously wagging tail told us he thought it was splendid, whatever it might be.

  “What news, Husband?”

  Bud plopped onto a chair beside me and wiped the bottom of his mug with his sleeve. I didn’t comment. “Mom’s got a brother. Well, she had one. He died a couple of months ago. And she never, ever, mentioned him. I mean—how can a person do that? Not mention a sibling.”

  He slurped at his coffee, handed Marty a bit of his muffin, and was off again. “Apparently, her older brother Jonas disappeared from the family home in Malmö in 1946, and nobody heard from him after that. Mom says she always thought he was dead. She says her parents forbade any mention of Jonas after he left because he stole what little the family had of value and snuck off in the night like the thief he was. They figured he had probably come to a sticky end.”

  I sipped, working at being patient while I waited for him to continue.

  “What I can’t understand is why she’s so upset. I had to talk to Dad in the end—she couldn’t stop crying. I…um…I said we’d pop over sometime later today. That’s okay with you, right? We didn’t have any plans for this afternoon, did we?” Bud’s expression spoke volumes. I allowed him to play through the entire gambit. “We could pick up a take-away curry on our way home. Or fish and chips. How about it? Then we wouldn’t have to cook at all. We’d probably end up eating at much the same time as usual, and we could open a bottle of wine.”

  His eyes appealed to me over his mug.

  “Of course we can visit your parents,” I said, smiling. “It’ll be a nice drive over to New Westminster on a day like this, and a pleasure to be out and about with you in the truck. Maybe I’ll have time to run around on the mower before we go,” I added pointedly, aiming to remind Bud of the list we’d made the night before of all the garden chores we were facing. “If not, there’s always tomorrow, I suppose. Unless I have to do some work. You know, emailing and stuff.”

  Bud put his big, comforting hand on my knee. “Still worrying about school?” he asked gently.

  I responded with a wan smile.

  “It might not turn out as bad as you think.” He was using his reassuring voice, but it wasn’t working. Changing the subject, he added lightly, “Look, we could get to their place by about four, then we’d be away in good time to have a long evening together. Before we go, I can do the weed-whacking while you mow. I know we’re both a bit overwhelmed at having taken on five acres, but we can do it. You enjoy your time racing about on the mower.” Standing up to peer inside to see the clock on the kitchen wall, Bud was positively jovial when he announced, “It’s not even ten yet—we’ve got almost a whole day ahead of us. We could be done in no time at all.”

  Since moving into our new house just before Christmas, we’d managed to get most of the interior redecorating done. Bud’s retirement from law enforcement allowed him to work on various projects through the day, and we’d thoroughly enjoyed transforming the place. New floors had been laid—a job best left to the professionals—then we’d spent most of our weekends happily painting. We’d even selected and installed some major pieces of furniture and artwork. To be fair, we’d done pretty well, and the house was more than livable; it was beginning to feel like our home.

  Now it was time to tackle the work needing to be done outside. We’d clambered the steep learning curve that accompanies buying a property that gets its water from a shallow well rather than a pipeline, and the challenges of revitalizing a septic system that had seen better days. Those basics addressed, Bud and I had decided we’d wait to see what plants sprang into life about the place—we understood the previous owners of the home had been avid gardeners, once upon a time, but they’d let things slide a bit. It was going to be an interesting year because, having bought the house in November, we had no idea what plants were where. Indeed, we’d been wondering what most of the skeletal shrubs, leafless trees, and stick-like plant remnants would turn out to be.

  The spring had brought bulbs of all sorts popping up in unexpected places; forsythia had delighted us, hostas had been an abundant and pleasant surprise, and the rhododendrons had blossomed their hearts out, despite looking rather bedraggled. With this being my first real
garden, it wouldn’t be long before I discovered whether my thumb was green—or the brown I’d always suspected it to be.

  Marty had also learned a new skill since we’d moved in—digging for moles in the moist soil of the septic field. He’d quickly discovered how to sniff them out, dig them up, and catch them before they managed to burrow down again. Then he’d toss them by their little paws so they flew for quite some way. Me? I’d learned how to rescue a wriggling mole from the maw of an excited Labrador retriever without hurting either creature.

  Sitting on the deck, which we’d spent weeks extending, I was in no doubt about why visitors to our province called it beautiful British Columbia; looking around me I saw birch and alder trees waving against a periwinkle sky, distant mountains with profiles softened by a blur of evergreens, and a mass of dandelions in our so-called “lawn.”

  “Right,” I said with determination, “if we’re going to do this, let’s do it now. I’ll finish my coffee, then haul out the mower and get going. I should be finished in a couple of hours.”

  “You love riding around on that thing, don’t you?” grinned Bud. “I think it’s replaced your little red Miata in your affections.”

  I shook my head. “Nothing can replace Maddie the Miata in my heart, Husband, and don’t you forget it.” With Bud having polished off his muffin, Marty returned his attention to me. “Oh, okay Marty—I love you more than the mower or Maddie, and yes you can have my last morsels. Come on.” I carried our plates from the deck through the open-plan sitting room to the tiled floor in the kitchen, placing them so Marty could lick them until they sparkled. However, instead of drooling behind me in anticipation of crumb-laden plates, he took off down the steps of the deck to a little copse at the back of the house.

  “Marty’s gone squirreling,” called Bud.

  I popped the plates into the dishwasher and cleared around the countertops, wiping down as I went. “I wonder if bouncing about cutting the grass for a couple of hours will work off that muffin,” I called to Bud as I began to make my way to change into gardening clothes.

  “Absolutely!” called Bud encouragingly. “Whoa! Look out, Marty’s back and he’s got a gift for you.”

  I wondered if I was about to be presented with a squirming mole, but, on this occasion, Marty dropped an exceedingly muddy stick onto the sitting room carpet, and wagged his tail so hard his whole body writhed. His black snout was more than a little grubby, and I admonished him with my usual “Outside toy, Marty,” to no avail. He smiled up at me, his pink tongue flopping about, the waves of black fur along the ridge of his back gleaming in the sunlight. My heart—as always—melted. I bent to pick up the stick, and realized it was more likely a root. I rubbed my thumb over it, and, as the mud fell away, I realized I was holding an antler. The bed of it told me it had been naturally shed by one of our local deer, though who knew when; the state it was in suggested Marty had found it buried deep somewhere.

  Having washed it under running water to clean it off properly, I carried the antler out to Bud. “Look what Marty brought me. Isn’t it beautiful?” Bud smiled. “I’m going to put it on display somewhere, then I’m going to change.”

  “Whatever you say, Wife,” called Bud as I gave Marty the tiny amount of encouragement he needed to follow me to the cupboard where the treats were hidden. Finally happy with the spot I’d chosen for the antler—high on a shelf where a doggie nose wouldn’t be tempted to sniff it out and think it was a chew-toy—I made my way to the bedroom where I pulled on a T-shirt emblazoned with the University of Vancouver’s crest, threatened it with a few sweaty hours of work, and mentally told my less-than-charitable fellow professors what I thought of them. I was going to enjoy decapitating dandelions…and would allow myself to see each of them with the face of a colleague.

  The Letter

  WE DIDN’T TAKE MARTY WITH us when we headed off to Bud’s parents’ house. Ebba, Bud’s mother, had never seen a knickknack she didn’t like, making Marty’s tail a lethal weapon in the Anderson house, and he wasn’t a dog who liked to stay put for terribly long. It was shame, really, because Bud’s father, Leo, loved Marty like a grandchild and always brought him a toy when they visited us. The toys usually remained intact for about three minutes, but Leo and Marty were both happy while the fun of destruction lasted, and I pretended I didn’t mind the clearing up.

  Soon we were all settled down with a plentiful supply of coffee and Ebba’s homemade marziners—a concoction of pastry I swear must be ninety percent butter, stuffed with almond filling, and topped with tooth-gratingly sweet icing.

  As I nibbled, I listened with interest as Bud took the direct approach. “I hope you won’t get upset again, Mom,” he said, “but you said you had to tell me about Uncle Jonas, and you had a letter for me. So, while I line my arteries with your wonderful pastry, why don’t you tell me all about it?”

  “Eat,” was all Ebba replied, passing a plate to Bud I knew he’d struggle to empty.

  I sat quietly, studying Ebba as she mentally prepared herself. It was clear she’d been crying throughout the day, and she looked frailer than I’d ever seen her. At eighty years of age she was wearing well; her short, sturdy body hadn’t let her down at all to date. The bluish folds beneath her eyes told of a sleepless night, and I reasoned if she had a letter for Bud she must have received it on Friday, there being no mail delivery on a Saturday.

  Ebba sighed and looked at Leo, her husband of almost sixty years, then glanced around the room, seeming to take comfort from the myriad items that cluttered every surface. It seemed she was reassuring herself she was safe.

  “Jonas was a bad boy,” she began bluntly. “He was four years older than me, which is a good deal when you are small. He was born at just the wrong time—1929. He grew up through the war years. They were not good years for anyone, and certainly not for Sweden, whatever the outside world might have thought. I remember him as an angry boy. Mother insisted he keep going to school, but he hated the Nazis and wanted to run away to fight in the war. Mother and Father would not allow this. When the war ended he was sixteen, and he disappeared shortly afterwards. I was still not a teenager.” Ebba snorted—it was something she did quite often, for many reasons, and usually with no warning. “No one called people ‘teenagers’ in 1945. There were children, and there were people who worked. That was all. I don’t remember the specifics of his leaving; he certainly didn’t say goodbye to me, or anyone else for that matter. One day, he just wasn’t there anymore. I don’t know exactly what he took from our family because no one told me that, but it must have been something important, because of the way my parents acted. I recall whispers about family jewelry, though it could not have been of any great value because we were never wealthy. My mother cried for weeks, and begged the police to find him. But they were too busy with other matters. Those were difficult days for Sweden. He’d been gone for the whole winter when my father finally told me I was never to speak of Jonas again because he’d broken my mother’s heart.”

  Ebba drank deeply from her coffee cup. “That is all I know. Then this arrived. Yesterday. From Amsterdam.” She held up a large brown envelope. “Inside it were letters for me, and for you, Bud.” She pulled some papers from the envelope, among which was a second, smaller envelope, as yet unopened. “The letter from the lawyer says I must give this to you. Here.”

  As Ebba thrust the unopened envelope at Bud, he placed his coffee cup carefully on the table and reached toward his mother. I noticed that he glanced at his father, who tilted his head almost imperceptibly.

  “What did the letter to you say, Mom?” asked Bud.

  Ebba looked deep into her husband’s eyes as she replied to her son. “It said what it said. It was for me.”

  “Tell him,” said Bud’s father quietly. “Be fair to the boy.”

  I liked the way Leo often referred to Bud, his fifty-five-year-old son, as a boy, and I allowe
d myself a little internal smile. I suspect a bit of it showed on my face because Leo added, “He’ll forever be my boy, Cait, even with all this life behind him.”

  I knew the Andersons had always been tremendously proud of Bud’s career and achievements in law enforcement, and they’d been supportive without being suffocating when his first wife, Jan, had been tragically killed a few years earlier. They were decent, kind people, who’d moved to Canada with Bud as a babe in arms. Leo’s lengthy administrative career in local government, and Ebba’s eventual role as a sales assistant in a dress store, meant they weren’t suffering an uncomfortable retirement. Both in good health, their levels of socializing put Bud and me to shame—they were well known at the Scandinavian Centre in Burnaby, where I understood Ebba’s baking was highly regarded.

  “Jonas died a couple of months ago. He’d been living in Amsterdam all that time. Had a house there. I suppose, under the circumstances, he made a good life for himself.”

  “What do you mean ‘under the circumstances,’ Mom?” pressed Bud.

  Ebba straightened her small shoulders. “The mark on your back?” she asked Bud. He shrugged and I knew she meant the small splodge of a red birthmark at the base of his spine. “I have one on my leg, high up. Jonas had one on his face. It was big. It was all of his face when he was a child, but it seemed to get smaller as he got bigger. At least, that’s how I remember it.” She seemed satisfied she’d provided a full explanation.

  “Was his birthmark a problem for him? Is that what you mean?” said Bud gently.

  Ebba replied thoughtfully. “It made him bad. He had no real friends. I remember that. Boys would call out at him in the street when Mother made him take me places. And girls laughed at him. Yes, it made him bad.”

  We all allowed Ebba’s words to sink in. “Do you have a photograph of him?” asked Bud.