B T Lord [Lord - Murder on Ice

Copyright Bety Comerford (B.T. Lord)

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

ISBN-13: 978-1540846730

ISBN-10: 1540846733

Cover art by Michelle Motuzas

Cover design by Alison Ouellette

Books in the Twin Ponds Murder Mystery Series:

Murder on Ice

Murder by Misadventure

A Perfect Case of Murder

Murder by Duplicity

To Larry and Mamacita

The dreamers dream

PROLOGUE

Sheriff Cammie Farnsworth slowly approached the corpse.

Jesus Christ, she whispered under her breath.

He was lying on the bed, his hands near his body, looking as though he were asleep. She withdrew a pen from her pocket and gently moved the expensively tailored jacket to one side. The bullet hole near his heart told her what had occurred.

But not everything.

Emotion welled up as a thousand thoughts ran through her head, all of them much too painful to be dealt with at that moment. A momentary panic set in as she struggled to pull back all the strands of memories and feelings and the worst feeling of all the finality of death, while maintaining her professional faade.

With over ten years in law enforcement, shed seen far too many casualties of violence. In a moment of stark clarity, she realized shed foolishly allowed herself the fantasy of believing that shed finally found a place where she wouldnt have to face the horrors of what people were capable of doing to each other. But it had followed her even here. And swallowed up the one person who had almost destroyed her and if she wasnt careful, would do so again.

Even in death.

She shook off the pall of the past and took in the scene with a practiced eye, all the while wondering how this could have happened. Who would want to kill him? He was a hero to this small town. A legend to the world. People practically genuflected when he walked past. All that he had done and hadnt done - to this town was forgiven when hed hit icon status.

Or was it? Had she forgiven him?

It didnt matter. Not right now, anyway. What mattered was that hed brought a darkness back with him. Or, she recognized with a sudden chill, had resurrected one that had lain dormant all these years, patiently waiting for that moment when hed come back.

Well, he had come back. And released the monster that was murder. It was now up to her to deal with the aftermath, a task made doubly difficult by her relationship with the victim.

And with the murderer.

CHAPTER ONE

One Week Before

Cammie nervously bit her lower lip. She stared out the windshield of her Ford Explorer and cursed for the hundredth time her decision to run for County Sheriff. It didnt matter that shed won with ninety percent of the popular vote. Or that shed been able to keep the peace in this remote part of northwestern Maine where, surrounded by wilderness on all sides, the majority of her duties involved drunk drivers and week-end warriors who went out into the forest or the two ponds the town was named after and ended up lost or half drowned.

What mattered right here, right now was her inability to get out of her Explorer and interview the victim.

She shifted in her seat, looking out at the light snowfall starting to build up on the hood of her vehicle, and continued to bite her lower lip.

During her years as a police officer in Seattle, then as a private investigator in Boston, shed faced down the worst society could conjure up. Shed been shot at, punched at, almost run over in the line of duty. Shed twice been awarded the Medal of Honor for risking her life to rescue fellow officers wounded during gang crossfire.

So why was she sitting here, slowly losing feeling in her fingers and toes, because she didnt have the guts to interview an eighty-nine year old woman? Who, standing five feet next to her own height of 5 ft. 8 inches, she towered over? Who was half blind? And weighed all of ninety pounds?

Because no matter how small or scrawny the package, hate is scary. And the victim absolutely, positively hates you.

Weve been sitting here for ten minutes, her deputy Rick Belleveau replied. Ive lost circulation in my toes. My nose is turning white with frostbite. If any other body part gets frostbitten, Im personally suing you.

Im just trying to figure out the right words to say that wont set Cora off.

Not too bad a lie. But one look at Ricks face and she knew he wasnt buying it.

Just hearing hello from you is enough to set her off.

For the past two weeks, tiny Clarke County and its largest town of Twin Ponds, had been subjected to a strange rash of burglaries. Instead of snowmobiles, cars or computers disappearing, the thief was making off with birdfeeders.

Old, paint-chipped, birdshit-encrusted birdfeeders.

If this were happening in an urban setting, the thefts would be shoved to the bottom of the pile, behind murders, rapes and assaults. However, in this small spot of civilization in the midst of dense, majestic wilderness, the burglary of bird feeders was big news. Nestled near the Canadian border, winters in Twin Ponds were long and harsh. It bred self-reliant, independent people with stern exteriors and soft hearts who took their bird feeding very seriously.

Her past law enforcement career notwithstanding, these thefts were turning into the first real test of Cammies abilities as the only female elected sheriff of Clarke County. If she couldnt solve the burglaries of some decrepit birdfeeders, what was going to happen when a real crime took place?

Cora Cameron was the latest victim. In a town that had its fair share of eccentrics, Cora stood out. She lived with ten other elderly couples in a small trailer park ten miles west of Twin Ponds. Their tiny community lay at the foot of Crow Mountain, a craggy outcrop of granite that legend claimed was where the real witches of Salem, Massachusetts fled to escape the witch trials centuries before.

Even if the stories werent true, there was something unnerving about Crow Mountain. The area was dark and forbidding, the black denseness of the forest adding to its notorious reputation. When Cammie was a teenager, she and a group of friends climbed to the top to see if, as the old-timers claimed, the spirits of those witches returned every Halloween to perform a Samhain ritual. She never forgot the strange noises, or the way the trees seemed to whisper and groan all around them, reaching out with their skeletal-like branches to snatch away a careless teenager. Nor could she shake the unmistakable feeling they were being watched. As if they were prey ready to be devoured. It was too much. They all lost their nerve and ran out of the forest as fast as they could. The memory of that night was still enough to make her shudder, and it made her question why anyone in their right mind would want to live in its shadow.

Although she never produced any proof to back up her story, Cora was convinced she was descended from one of the original witches. It wasnt unusual to see her wandering up and down Main Street, uttering incantations and prophesies on the end of the world.

The townspeople considered her harmless, addled perhaps by too many years spent alone in cold, frigid winters that blanketed this northernmost county. Yet that harmlessness could suddenly turn violent whenever she caught a glimpse of Cammie. Just the sight of the sheriff going about her business would produce an explosion of screeched gibberish while lobbing bundles of feathers, pine cones and who knew what else at the hapless officer. Cammie quickly learned to avoid Cora at all costs. Yet here she was, at the crazy womans doorstep, reluctant to climb out of the rapidly freezing SUV.