The House

By Dawn Natelle

Chapter 36 – Love and Murder (part two)

Dan and Cindy drove to Belleville in the morning. Dan had arranged for Tanya to go to visit his seniors to allow him the chance to hang around Belleville, if he was needed.

Cindy lamented that she would be back to boring cold case reviews again, after such an exciting day yesterday. But when she came in, she found Inspector Riley near the door. “Can you join me, Cindy?” he asked. “Since you did such a good job yesterday I thought you would like to be involved in interviewing the perp.”

“Taking notes?” Cindy asked.

“Heavens no, we will have a steno doing that. I thought we might do a ‘good cop, pregnant cop’ routine.” He looked up at Dan, who had never been in the building before.

“Oh, this is my husband Dan,” Cindy said. “Dan, please meet Inspector Riley. Dan has been driving me to work since it is a bit hard for me to get behind the wheel.”

“I remember seeing you at the crime scene yesterday,” the inspector said.

“Nice to meet you,” Dan said, shaking the officer’s hand. “I was wondering if there is anyone looking after the animals at the farm.”

“We have an officer out there now,” the inspector said. “VanErp is a city boy though. I don’t know that he would have any experience with animals. We’ll have to get someone else out there … unless you are offering.”

“My morning is free,” Dan said. “I’d be glad to help out.”

“Eliz? Send a message to VanErp telling him this gentleman is coming out to help with the animals.”

Dan headed out to the farm, where he found a young and bored looking officer sitting in his cruiser to prevent curiosity-seekers from coming into the property, in case further investigation was needed.

The constable moved his car aside and then followed Dan in. He helped Dan as they freshened the water in the trough, and put out more hay. The bales Sun had put out were gone, so the two men spread out six more, although they had to carry them one at a time. After they finished, Dan was about to head back to Belleville when a BMW drove up the lane.

“Excuse me sir,” the constable said. “This is a crime scene. You will have to leave.”

“Give me a break, officer,” the man said. “I just got out of the Tweed morgue from identifying my father, and then making funeral arrangements. I lived in this house for over 20 years and I think I have the right to be here.”

“I’s so sorry for your loss,” Dan said, putting a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder. “I lost my father a few years ago, although not in such awful conditions.”

The man almost immediately changed from angry to friendly and smiled at Dan.

“Winthrope Carter,” he said holding out his hand to shake. “My Dad was 84. My sister and I were trying to get him to move into a home since Mom died five years ago. He said he would move ‘when he got old’. So his passing wasn’t unexpected, although the method was.”

“So what will you do with the farm?” Dan asked.

“I don’t know. Are you local? I have a law practice in Toronto but I am a bit young to retire. My sister probably won’t want to move here either. Will the place sell?”

“I doubt it would sell as a working farm,” Dan said. “The house is in good shape, but very old. How many acres of land?”

“Dad had 300,” Carter said. “There was only 120 when I was a boy. God, I hated farming. I went into Law mainly to avoid having to throw bales of hay around. I will do anything to avoid it.”

“I doubt you would get good money selling it as a going operation,” Dan said. “There aren’t enough cattle for an efficient operation. It was enough for your Dad to top up his pension, but anyone buying it would need to expand to at least 10 or 20 times as many head. That makes the barn too small for wintering. Your best bet might be to rent. You could get a few hundred a month for the house, and you could share-crop the land with a neighboring farmer. Share crop would allow another farmer to get more land without the cost of buying it and you would make some money each fall.”

“So I would have to sell the cattle,” Carter realized. “I still wind up herding cattle, and I have to finish up by Monday, because I have a court case in Toronto then that I must be at.”

“I think the livestock barn in Ottawa is the closest for stock sales,” Dan said. “They won’t have cow-calf sales until Wednesday, though. And this is not a great time to be selling … very few operations are looking to build stock this late in the year. And your herd is just too big for one trip in that old truck.”

“I wonder,” Carter said. “Would you be interested in looking after things for me. Look after the animals until the sale, then take them to Ottawa and sell them. It’ll take two weeks, I guess. Would you do it for $200?”

“No, but that gives me an idea,” Dan said. “Let me make a call.”

Dan called back to the House, and got John on the phone. After a brief conversation he put his phone back into his pocket.

“Here’s an idea,” Dan said. “I have a few people coming out to look at the place. We have some land down the road, and might be able to take the stock and continue to raise it. In the fall, when the calves are ready to sell, we would provide you with one, completely butchered to fill your freezer. And we would share the revenues from any sales in Ottawa. We would be taking one or two cows each year for our own use as well.”

“Hmm,” Carter mused. “It would be better if we got our meat in spring, for summer barbequing. Could you deliver in May?”

“Not easily,” Dan explained. “The calves are too small then. You want a full summer to get them up to weight. But a full cow will more than fill your freezer through the winter and into the next summer. We’d need all the equipment in the barn. Heck, we’d like the barn as well. You don’t need it for the tenants of the house. We would tear it down and sell the wood. You get half the proceeds, and none of the work.”

“Would you be our agent up here?” Carter asked. “Collect the rent on the house and look after leasing out the land?”

“Let’s see. My colleagues are just pulling up.”

Sun was driving her old truck, and John and Grey were with her. “Winny, you old coot,” John called out as he approached the two men. “I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age? How are you doing?”

“I’ve been better, John,” Carter said. “I haven’t seen you since your wife got ill and you semi-retired. I’m surprised to see you haven’t come back to your firm after she passed.”

“She didn’t pass,” John said. “She is the doctor in the Tweed hospital. She made a full recovery.”

Sun had made a beeline to the old three-ton truck, while Grey waited for the men to reunite. After Dan introduced everyone, he outlined his idea. There was general agreement over Dan’s ideas, until Sun came back.

“The truck is nearly worthless,” she said. “It’s old, and has been worked hard and put away wet. I doubt you can get $1000 for it. If you can find a sucker.”

“So you don’t want it as part of the deal,” Carter said. “I suppose we could leave it here as scrap.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want it,” Sun said. “It needs a lot of work, but I can probably keep it on the roads for another 10 years.”

“She managed to get that out of a junk pile,” Grey said, pointing to the red GMC truck that they had arrived in.”

“It is gorgeous,” Carter said. “A ‘46?”

“Yep,” Sun said with pride. “I won’t do any bodywork on the three-ton, but I can restore the engine. And Grey can do some work on the back end. Some of the lumber in there is pretty dodgy looking.”

“And you can’t have anything Dodgy on a GMC, can you?” Carter said. Sun got the joke immediately, and the others joined in a second later. Grey wasn’t sure that John had gotten it all.

Soon handshakes were made all around. John had taken copious notes, and went back to the house with Sun and Grey to draft up a contract. Carter headed off to Belleville, following Dan so he could find the police station to make his statement.

At the station, Cindy had entered the interview room with Inspector Riley earlier. A small older woman was clearly the Legal Aide lawyer, while the tall young First Nations’ man sat next to her. The inspector helped Cindy into her seat, then took his own.

“Is this some kind of trick?” the lawyer asked, standing. “Bringing a pregnant woman into an interrogation?”

“No trick. While Ms Smith is due to take a maternity leave soon, she is still an active member of the force,” the inspector said. “In fact, she was the lead officer on the investigation yesterday. It is entirely appropriate for her to be here.”

“Could I get your name, sir?” Cindy asked the prisoner.

“Jeremiah Whiteriver,” he replied, sounding extremely concerned.

“Okay Jerry,” she continued, but the lawyer popped to her feet.

“He said his name was Jeremiah,” she said. “Please use his proper name.”

“It is alright,” the man said to her. “All my friends call me Jerry.”

The lawyer sat in a sulk and Cindy continued.

“Okay Jerry, I have a pretty good idea of what happened yesterday morning. Can you tell me what led you to Mr. Carter’s farm?”

“Don’t answer that,” the lawyer said. “You don’t have to say you were at the farm.”

“Please, madam,” the inspector said. “We have over 220 of his fingerprints at the farm, inside the farmhouse and he was arrested driving a vehicle from the farmhouse. I’m no lawyer, but I think your attention should be in getting a lower charge for the offence, not pretending it didn’t happen. A man is dead, and this man was involved.”

“Yes I was,” Jerry said, soliciting a gasp from his lawyer. The man turned to Cindy.

“I was living on the streets of Toronto … or starving there, I guess. A kind woman dropped a $20 into my tin, so I decided to go to Ottawa. Everyone knows there is a First Nations shelter there that never turns anyone away. I decided to try to get there. My bus ticket only took me to Actinolite and I stopped at the little store there.”

“I know the place,” Cindy said. “Good pie.”

“You should taste it when you haven’t eaten for three days,” Jerry said. “I didn’t have any money, but when I asked about work the nice lady running the place said she could give me an hour’s work cleaning their deep fryer. While the grease was draining from the machine, they fed me a dinner: open face roast sandwich and that blueberry pie.”

“I earned it cleaning the fryer,” he added. “Those things are evil. I could see why none of the women wanted to clean it. All the dried up flour and stuff winds up as a sludge at the bottom of the unit. I had to scoop it all out into a box, and then into a trash bag. It took me the hour, and then they were closing up. They even threw in a couple of stale sandwiches left after the bus had gone.”

“I tried to hitchhike, but got no rides,” Jerry said. “I walked about six miles that night, and stayed in a barn. Then I got up early, before the farmer, and headed back to the road, hoping to get a ride in the light. No luck. A couple of OPP stopped and asked me where I was going, but it is legal to walk along the road so they didn’t do anything. That night I went into the other farm. The place where it happened.”

“I slept fairly snug in the old barn. There was a nest of puppies. All the cattle were outside, but I could hear chickens in the back. I woke up the next morning pretty hungry after a day and a half with no food, so I thought to go back and steal a couple eggs before heading out to the road. It was still a bit dark outside.”

“When I went for the eggs this weird three-legged dog started barking at me and causing a ruckus. He even took a bite out of my leg. And that must have woken the farmer, who came at me with a gun. He got a shot off, and I dropped the eggs. I was standing next to the tool bench, so I grabbed a wrench and threw it at him. I just wanted to make him stop shooting … but I heard it hit him with a sickening sound and he fell. I went over to him and saw the mark on his head, so I ran to the house. I knew it was bad.”

“At first I was going to call an ambulance, but I realized I would be in trouble and didn’t. In the house I found some food, and grabbed it, and went back to the man, to see if he was okay. When I got there he wasn’t breathing, and his skin was getting all clammy feeling and cold. I got his wallet and the keys to his truck and headed to Ottawa. I am so sorry I killed him.”

“I’m sure you are,” the inspector said. “It sounds like you might be able to get the charge down to manslaughter. Murder one would get you 25 years in jail. With a good lawyer, you can get five to seven years, and with good behavior parole after two years.”

“I will handle advising my client,” the snippy lawyer said. “He will fight this.”

“And you will ring up a good portion of fees from Legal Aide no doubt,” Cindy mentioned. “I hope you will advise your client that a plea of guilty might lessen his sentence. There is absolutely no chance he can be released on this charge, and only a botched case will result in anything more than manslaughter.”

“We will use the self-defense in court,” the lawyer said. “He was shot at and only reacted in his own defense.”

“And that is why it is manslaughter instead of second-degree murder,” Cindy retorted. “First degree is not in question: he had no prior intent to kill. But he was illegally on the farmer’s property, and he fled without calling medical help for the man.”

“There is no ‘stand your ground’ law in Canada,” Cindy added. “If the farmer had killed you, it would be him getting charged with manslaughter, not you. And for him it would probably turn into a life sentence. He should have called the police in, not shot at you. But he is beyond the reach of the law now.”

Jerry gasped: “Don’t tell me he might have lived if I had called an ambulance.”

“No,” Cindy said. “The coroner said he died within seconds of the wrench hitting him. You could not have saved him once the wrench was thrown.”

“Thank God. This is bad enough, but if I could have saved him, but didn’t … that would be horrible.”

“We will leave you here to talk with your lawyer,” Inspector Riley said. “When she leaves the officer outside the door will take you back to the cell.”

The inspector and Cindy went to another room.

“That went well, I think,” he told her. “You should be a detective rather than a patrol officer. Do you want to handle the court case?”

“Hello?” said Cindy looking at her belly. “I will be having a baby in the next few weeks, and then it is maternity leave for a year. The trial will be over before then.”

“Not necessarily,” the inspector said. “The wheels of justice turn ever so slow in Canada. A murder trial is not usually held within two years, sometimes longer. You could be done the mat. leave and be ready to come down here to work for me.”

“I’ve already turned down one transfer/promotion,” Cindy said. “Although one down here might be workable. The last offer was to Sergeant up north somewhere. I have my husband and my life up in Actinolite. And soon I will have a baby up there, with lots of support people in my life, including my mother-in-law.”

Cindy then noticed Dan sitting in the waiting room to take her to lunch. He then browsed around Belleville until her shift ended and then drove her back to the House. At lunch he told her of the deal they had made to buy the farm: or it’s stock at least.

Back at the House that evening they found out that as well as buying the cattle herd and the chickens, which had already been moved into Dary’s coop, they discovered that they had bought the barn and all its contents. The neighbor who was interested in sharecropping the land didn’t need a barn, and there would be no value in letting the renters of the house use it. So the men from the house were planning a ‘barn lowering’ to tear it apart. The barn boards could be sold at a high rate to people in Toronto or Kingston who wanted barn boards for renovations.

And once the old barn was down, a new one would have to be built at the house to provide space for the cattle. They would live outside, gazing on the farmyard and into the forest, during the summer. But in the winter the pregnant cows would need a place to keep warm.

As well, a small apartment was planned for the upstairs of the barn. Tanya and Paul were getting close, and Daisy suggested that they might want a place of their own if they ever made a commitment to each other. Paul had practically made the House a second home, only going to his parent’s to sleep, and accompanied Tanya to her apartment each week of the summer, presumably sleeping with the girl. The big block in their relationship would come in September, when Tanya would live full time in Peterborough, and Paul would be in his second year at the university in Kingston.

That evening, when Dary went to the stables to pick out two puppies to take in for the babies to play with, Grey and Billy came with her. Grey told Billy that he was to pick out one of the puppies to be his very own dog. Billy had to sit down and play with all six, under the watchful eye of Tripod and Mamma, the name Dary had given the mother dog. Finally he chose one, and carried it into the house as Dary carried the other two.

“Remember, you will have to help Dary bring him back,” Grey said as the little boy proudly carried his puppy. “His mommy needs to feed him for a couple more weeks. And you will have to feed him after that, so that he knows that you are his master.”

At the house Billy ran to show his puppy to his mother. Meanwhile in the Great Hall Sun decided that two more of the puppies would belong to her babies. Dan then rubbed his wife’s stomach and suggested that one more would go to his child, once born.

“That leaves two,” Grey said. “Should we advertise to get rid of them?”

“I think not,” Daisy said. “I had a dog until he died just a year before you and Sun moved in. I think having two more dogs would suit me.”