Death in Smoke Read online

  ALSO BY BARBARA ELLE

  Death in Vermilion

  The Cape Mysteries Book 1

  READERS ARE SAYING…

  “Gripping, suspenseful, and full of twists, Barbara Elle has hit a home run with her debut novel.”

  “A little humor mixed with an addictive mystery plot twist and an unexpected ending. Can’t wait until the second book comes out!”

  “I found some parts of the book delightfully sinister… there is some clever humor too in this twisty murder mystery.”

  “I finished this mystery in two days, and cannot wait for the sequel.”

  Buy Death in Vermilion

  Copyright@ 2019 by Barbara Elle

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual person living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales are entirely incidental.

  “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, written by Jim Steinman, released 1983

  “Yellow”, written by ColdPlay, released 2000

  “Voices Carry” written by Aimee Mann, released 2009

  Cover design by Nick Castle

  Visit the author’s website and on Facebook:

  https://www.barbaraelle.com

  https://www.facebook.com/barbaraelleauthor/

  PREFACE

  “Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors—the dreams of our old men; given them in the solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit, and the visions of our sachems—and is written in the hearts of our people.

  Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass through the portals of the tombs and wander their way beyond the stars. They are forgotten and never return.”

  Chief Seattle

  Squamish (1786-1866)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Readers Are Saying…

  Copyright

  Preface

  Prologue

  1: The Priests

  2: Not a Walk in the Woods

  3: The Sob Sisters

  4: Core Temperatures

  5: Unfortunate Habit of Observation

  6: Anatomy Lesson

  7: The Tell

  8: A Minnow in a Pond

  9: Bullets and Butterflies

  10: The Great Divide

  11: Tiger Woods

  12: It’s Our Own Past We Bury

  13: “We have a situation here.”

  14: The Criminal Element

  15: A Quiet Voice in Her Head

  16: We Are Who We Are

  17: Same Place, Different Town

  18 Suspension of Disbelief

  19: A Tale of Turtle Island

  20: Reservation Groupie

  21: The Circling of the Hawk

  22: You Get Lucky Sometimes

  23: The Second Bite

  24: The Artist’s Model

  25: Dead Reckoning

  26: Best Day Ever

  27: The Vanishing Point

  Sneak Peek of DEATH IN VERMILION

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Revenge Is for Fools

  Revenge, they say, is for fools. They who say it must be fools.

  Sand Creek rings in my ears. The massacre of innocents, I curse the names of those who would strike a child's head against a rock, or carve a woman's privies out as she begs for mercy, to wear as a badge of deranged honor from a soldier's cap, or cruel ornament on a musket that had shot her near dead. But they had destroyed their own names and souls by the acts committed against those who raised a hand in a gesture of surrender.

  For it is the near dead that haunt us. A murder of greed and false gain and gold that drives white men wild, turning them into hunters o' those who, who be defenseless in the swath o' death that sweeps the plains, killing in the name most despised. Chivington.

  Oh how I've come to hate this name, John Chivington, U.S. Army Colonel. Methodist preacher say you? Opponent of slavery say you? Can any of this be true of the man who leads the charge against an encampment of women, babes and old men under the American flag, desecrating sacred land with the blood of innocents?

  He who ordered to take no prisoners.

  The record of their chiefs testifies to these atrocities, of bodies cut to pieces, a witness spoke: “Worse mutilated than I ever saw before, the women cut to pieces with knives, children two or three months old; all lying there from suckling infants to warriors...By whom were they mutilated, by the US troops.”

  The day, November 29, 1864, having drunk to insensate in anticipation of victory, the 700 marched on the campsite of the defenseless, and commenced firing, but not satisfied, commenced with deeds memory would choose to forget. Except those of us who can only remember. The solace of forgetting not to be grasped.

  Did not Kit Carson say in true testimony, “Jis to think of that dog Chivington and his dirty hounds up thar at Sand Creek...you calls sich soldiers Christians do ye? And Indians savages? What yer 'spose our Heavenly Father, who made them both, thinks of such things?”

  Friends and brothers, how can I explain this to you? Disgrace, it was, as was the cowardly killing of a man by the woman called wife, who was not a wife, and the lover who cracked open his head as if to dash it on the rocks of evil. No mercy. Rivers of blood ran red, but not enough. The blunt instrument met its match, and he, sleeping as a child in his bed, had no defense.

  Chivington was not made to pay. Not stripped of his uniform nor his church, never tried in a court of law, not imprisoned. Could he claim it was insanity gripped his men? What could make men commit such acts?

  This is the question I return to over all these years. I turn it over in my hand like a rough stone, feeling its sharp edges honed by my thoughts and actions. My thoughts be a weapon of revenge.

  When I strike, it will be a clean kill.

  CHAPTER 1

  The Priests

  It was easier to kill us, then to let us live. It makes the heart sick to remember the good words and broken promises.

  Cape Cod

  Leila inhaled deeply and exhaled for the pleasure of watching her breath float in the air like a smoke signal.

  But there was no one to see it.

  It was a cold, crisp morning, too cold to be tramping around a frozen pond. She had layered up in long johns, a grey sweater as shaggy as a wooly mammoth, and a parka so old she couldn’t give it away. In spite of the fact that the temperature dipped below freezing in the early morning hours, she was toasty warm. The surface of the hard frost cracked under her furry, fleece sheepskin boots, breaking through to the deeper, powdery snow buried below.

  Walking alone was good for thinking. She hadn’t been doing much of that since she arrived the day before at the Teddy Roosevelt Inn and Fishing Club on Cuttyhunk Island in the middle of winter for a five-day workshop, advertised as a creative retreat. Whatever that meant. She had slipped out of the inn before anyone else showed signs of life. She longed for peace and quiet.

  To walk. To escape.

  The only soul awake when Leila crept down the back stairs was Beverly, dressed like a Geisha, wearing a flowing, flowered silk housecoat, with a crown of pink curlers and a curl of cigarette smoke circulating over her head. She ran the place with her milquetoast of a husband, Bob. She was laying flaccid ovals of dough on cookie sheets for the guests’ breakfast. Leila disliked staying at inns, it felt like an intrusion, though what kind of person didn’t like inns?

  She intended to slip out the back door unnoticed, but Beverly turned around, confronting her. “So, where you headed?” the woman asked, squelching a cigarette in a water glass and waving a towel to disperse the evidence.

  Leila hated cigarette smoke. It made her wheeze.

  Not sure why she had to explain, Leila simply said, “For a walk.”

  “Awfully cold out there.” Beverly stared at Leila with a certain indefinable coldness. This woman was ill suited to a service industry. “Colder than you shore people think. Shore people always underestimate how cold it is on the island.”

  “I’ll be okay.” Shore people, what did that mean? Did she detect the remnants of a Scandinavian accent?

  Beverly opened an industrial oven, allowing a blast of heat to escape. “The first batch of scones will be ready in a jiffy. Relax. Sit down. I’ll get you some coffee.”

  Leila considered the offer briefly. Coffee sounded good, but she really wanted to clear her head. And be alone. “No, really, that’s okay.”

  Beverly shoved the tray into the yawning mouth of the oven, slamming the door shut with a hefty, black orthopedic shoe. “Well, if you must, though I don’t know why anyone takes a walk on a morning like this. Be sure you follow the priests.”

  Follow the priests. What did that mean? Leila wondered if there was a procession of frocked priests, draped in ceremonial robes, swinging brass vessels spewing streams of smoke from burning incense, and chanting in Latin. She wasn’t much of a Catholic, mostly lapsed, just enough of one to imagine the Pope, sporting a peaked hat and flowing garments in the lead. Was this some sort of island ritual?

  “Priests?”

  Beverly raised a plucked eyebrow. “Yaw, there’s the rock piles in the woods that mark the trails—we call them priests. You can’t miss them, though they may be mostly buried after this storm, but once you find one, and then you look for the next one. That way you can’t get lost.” Leila hadn’t planned on getting lost. “And stay clear of the pond.”

  “Why?”

&nbs
p; “Not safe this time of year.” Beverly lit a cigarette and turned back to her stove.

  It was a relief to step out into the crisp morning air and escape the hot kitchen, and Beverly, and her smokes.

  The sky hung low overhead. The virgin white snow was unblemished by human intervention in all directions. The early morning sun reflected like facets of diamonds on the crusty snow as Leila’s boots sank into its depths.

  Snow shouldn’t have much of a smell, but Leila was sure it did today. Didn’t the Norwegians or the Intuits have hundreds of words for snow? Maybe they even had words for the smell of snow. The stronger notes of wood-burning smoke from the chimneys scattered about the remote island mingled with the smell of sap.

  Leila strode across the deep, fresh snowfall, crossing the field behind the inn into the woods.

  “Helluw hellow,” she called out. The resounding silence was satisfying.

  An owl hooted. A big dog woofed a few times in the distance. The island was only about a mile and half long and a mile wide, so it would be hard to get lost. It hadn’t been Leila’s decision to come to Cuttyhunk Island in the middle of the dead of winter.

  It was Philomena's fault. She’d ambushed Leila in her studio at the Red Barn Cooperative. Leila was struggling with a new painting: a homely cup and a pair of old scissors tossed carelessly on a table.

  Which direction was the light coming from? Should the far edge of the table be moved further into the frame? A painting could begin with inspiration and come to life easily. But sometimes, the process got bogged down in decisions. Philomena had interrupted her at a moment of indecision.

  “Come with us,” Leila’s best friend and fellow Red Barn artist insisted. “We’ll have fun, Lie,”

  “I don’t know, Phil. I don’t like staying in inns. I like my privacy, and I don't much like enforced conviviality. It's always... I don't know, uncomfortable,” Leila said, brushing an unruly curl out of grey eyes the color of graphite with the back of her hand; she wasn’t very neat. Not that she considered that to be a problem.

  After all, creativity happened in the eye of the maelstrom, where color, line, and shadow met on canvas. But an interruption was always welcome. Leila was happy for an excuse to take a break. “Why do I want to spend a week at a boring creativity retreat? I’m creative already, I think.”

  She squinted at her canvas, which seemed to talk back to her and say, well, no, not all that creative.

  “It’s not boring, Lie.” This was the nickname only her closest of friends called her. Sort of ironic, considering they also accused her of telling the truth to the point of being tactless. “That’s what you always say when you don’t want to do something, and then you end up having a good time.”

  In a glance, Philomena could break down any barriers between them with her Judy-blue, periwinkle eyes that saw through her excuses.

  The fading afternoon light filtered through the casement window at the far end of the studio. In that light, Leila couldn’t help but notice the creases deep as lines on a sidewalk etched on Philomena’s weary face, her shoulders sharp as a hanger’s poking up through a worn out blue work shirt, and how her tangled mane of hippie locks had turned grey overnight.

  Leila wondered, was it her imagination, or because of Dové?

  When her friend’s certifiably crazy sister Dové was committed for psychiatric evaluation at Mass General, indefinitely. Attempted murder.

  Philomena took it hard. Overnight free-spirited Philomena was a broken, fragile vessel. And Leila, who had exposed how insane an unhinged Dové was, felt guilty and wanted in the worst way to make amends to her best friend. No question Philomena knew that, and she was playing on Leila’s weakness.

  “Besides, Lie, you’re alone too much these days.” The ordeal of Dové may have aged her, but Philomena’s blue eyes stayed perpetually young. “Get out of your rut. It will be good for you.”

  Philomena didn’t have to spell it out for her. Leila knew what “good for you” was code for. Leila had saved her beloved West End Pier from real estate development, but she hadn’t been able to save her marriage. Maybe Philomena was right. For a few days, she could forget about Joe, soon to be her ex. She could forget about wondering what would come next. That was true. That was a good thing.

  And, so far, the creative retreat on Cuttyhunk hadn’t been so bad.

  She encountered the first of Beverly’s priests, a craggy pile of rocks buried up to its neck in the deep snow, an inanimate sentinel leading the way, but to where?

  Just a few yards ahead, the next priest followed the Pope’s lead. Why set out a trail on such a small island? Perhaps, the residents had marked the woods with their priests, allegedly, so no one could get lost, Leila mused. But clearly the object was to keep visitors on the trail and off their secluded properties. Who could blame them for wanting to keep their privacy on this island stranded off Cape Cod?

  Leila looked for a priest’s head up ahead. The markers were spaced at odd intervals, as if the marching clergy lost sight of each other, but the island was too small for anyone to get lost.

  December had stripped the deciduous trees of their foliage, and it was colder under the blankets of snow on the overhanging branches. Bracing, that’s what people always called this kind of weather.

  A song popped into Leila’s head.

  “Every now and then I get a little bit lonely / and you're never coming round

  / Turnaround…”

  Why that song?

  A large tree root buried by the snow half-tripped Leila up, but she managed to keep her balance. When she pushed a low hanging branch out of her way, it rebounded with a strength that made her jump to get out of its way. The native inhabitants may attempt to tame nature, but nature had a way of reasserting itself.

  She gazed upwards at the crosshatched patterns of branches against the gray sky. If she had a notebook and pencil, she’d have sketched the design. If she had her cellphone, she could take photos for later. But she hadn’t come to draw or take photos. Just to be.

  Like elevator music, the song persisted in her ears.

  “Turnaround / Every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears.

  / Turnaround, bright eyes…”

  Mostly, Leila had wanted to escape. She was taking part in what has been billed as a Winter Solstice Creative Retreat.

  She had imagined a simple sanctuary. She’d sleep on a metal cot, a wooden cross nailed to the wall overhead. Robed monks would walk in silence down the bare halls, ringing bells at the break of dawn to call all communicants to a simple repast of bread and water seated at long communal tables. This would be followed by a day of silence, prayer and penitence. It was sort of like The Nun’s Story—minus the wimple.

  But Leila had yet to experience the ‘creative’ part, or the ‘retreat’ part. Instead she got the Inn at Cuttyhunk Island, which was the inverse of austerity. There was way too much fake pine furniture, too many dusty glass shelves packed with way too many nautical knick-knacks, too much heat, too much starch and sugar at every meal, layer upon layer of musty quilts piled high on lumpy mattresses, and a television blaring CNN too loudly somewhere day in and all night long.

  Instead of taking vows of enforced silence and monks, Leila got same loud, unstable stable of the artists, of course, Philomena, Gretchen, Liz, and poor Steve, with the ‘poor’ being a permanent appendage to Steve, who she saw every day at the Red Barn.

  Their creative retreat leader Crystal Beaumont wore a fixed look of surprise because her eyebrows had been permanently tattooed in oblique question marks that framed her Technicolor eyes. Between the tattooed eyebrows and the violet eyes, Leila found it hard not to stare at the woman.

  Although Crystal spoke in soft, modulated tones, she was bossy and truculent, proclaiming over and over she had the creative mind of a man and the hearty appetites of a sinner.