Ravelings

... Well." The Inspector stopped, looked down at the table. Her gaze flicked once to Violet, briefly, and then back to Joe. She cleared her throat.

"I regret to inform you, Joe, that your presence here must soon draw to a close."

Joe couldn't decide which more disoriented him -- the bizarre statement, or the gruff official tone in which she'd delivered it. Old Swotsy? This was what she'd become, this parody of a broomstick-spined bureaucratic DI? He looked out the corner of his eyes at Violet but she was sitting, apparently mesmerised by Smith-Jones's sudden transformation.

"I don't understand," he said, pausing as the new round was delivered. He grabbed one of the shots at once and downed it. Let the two women fight it out between themselves who got stuck with the kir. "This town is my town too. I keep trying to tell everyone that---"

Smith-Jones interrupted, rebuking him with her upraised palm. "Stop. It's not the town I'm speaking of. It's McGilligan's. The injunction which Jack swore out against you takes effect in just thirty minutes. He doesn't want you anywhere near his daughter. And if I were you, I'd stay a good 100 yards from young Master James as well."

Why did these people all seem to hate him so? Joe wondered, his mind reeling.

And as that question came to his head, the first glimmer of an answer glimmered at the horizon. The mist in his head started to clear, and he suddenly began to recall the circumstances under which he'd left the last time. What an idiot he'd been not to remember sooner. That utterly ghastly day when

'I hate you ...' the Inspector glanced over her shoulder to check Joe was still busy at the bar. She clasped Violet's hand, pressed it briefly to her lips. She was trembling. 'No, no I don't. I love you Violet, I always have ... I was never looking at him. It was you, always you.'
Violet glanced slowly from Joe to the Inspector. 'What time do you get off?'
'Late.'
'Good.' She reached into the pocket of her trench coat, slipped a key across the table. 'You know where I'll be.'
'Violet, I ...'
'Shh ...' her eyes darkened.
'If anything happens to me ...'
'Don't be silly, why would anything happen to you?'
Joe was walking towards them now.
'Call this number,' the Inspector whispered as she pressed a folded piece of paper into Violet's palm ...

Reversal

about us, isn't he?" Her knee touched the Inspector's, briefly, and she smiled secretively. "My favorite girls' camp ever."

loosened the belt around the trench coat she was wearing. Keeping her eyes locked on Joe's, she shrugged it off her shoulders. His breath caught, a tight ball in his throat and he licked his dry lips as she sashayed across the room like a slinky balanced on a jelly, dragging the coat in her wake. The red dress clung to every curve. She stopped at their table, tossed the coat onto the empty chair and glared at the Inspector.
'Well, well, Swotsy Mondy. Shouldn't you be doing your homework ..?'
The Inspector stared uncomfortably at the table, the colour rising in her cheeks. 'We're not at school any more Violet.'
'Might as well be. Nothing's changed has it? She was crazy about you even then Joe.'
'You never noticed me ...' she said quietly, glancing at Joe. 'All you ever saw was her.'
'I wonder why,' Violet leant on the table, her blonde hair swinging forward in a pale curtain. Joe's head swam as her red lips moved so close to his own.

'Where's the boy?'

'With Dad, he adores him,' Violet brushed her finger across her bottom lip. He was mesmerised, didn't hear the words, lost in his desire to kiss her. 'I said,' she repeated. 'What's a girl got to do to get a drink on her night off?'
'Oh, I'm sorry,' Joe stammered, knocking over his chair as he stood. Violet watched him walk to the bar. She calmly sat down and turned to the Inspector.
'He's going to find out ....

This All Makes Perfect Sense

. . . murder and mayhem?”
“Inspector Smith-Jones, I am painfully aware that this is a most inopportune time to say this, but has anyone ever told you what lovely eyes you have?”
Inspector Smith-Jones turned away, tears suddenly welling up in the corners of her left and right eyes. She removed the tiny rainbow-colored paper umbrella from her glass and took a sip of her gin and tonic.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to . . .” Joe said, reaching out to her. Smith-Jones waved him away.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, and then began to laugh. “Mostly I get comments on the size of my feet.”
“How rude. I hardly noticed them. Your feet, that is. Well perhaps when you tripped down the stairs, but that could happen to anyone. I don’t know why I said that just now about your eyes. I guess it’s all the stress, all the weirdness that’s going down. Lovely music, though.”
“It’s okay, I understand. People say strange things in situations like this. And yes, it is quite lovely. The music, that is. I've always been rather fond of James. Especially the old stuff.”
“Right. What we need to do here is focus. In fact I learned a special technique for focusing back when I was doing Special Ops for the British Army.”
“You were in the army?” she asked, somewhat surprised.“Yes, but it’s not something I like to talk about. Some really bad stuff went down back in ‘96. We were on the Menlung Glacier, hunting Yeti. I assume that you’re familiar with mountaineer Eric Shipton and his 1951 Everest Reconnaissance expedition?”
“I’ve heard the lads talking about it in the pubs now and then.”
“Well, we were doing a follow-up. What I’m now going to tell you might help you understand a little bit of what is going down here. You see Jack, Violet’s father, was my commanding officer. The second week out we came to a small village called Panda Town. That’s not what it was really called, but we named it that. You know how it is in the army. Anyhow, Jack met a lovely little native lass. She swept him off his feet. I think he was going through a mid-life crisis at the time. Anyhow, there was a third member on our team who was also a local boy.”Inspector Smith-Jones drew in a large quantity of air; “You don’t mean . . .”
“Exactly. So you see, in a way, this all makes perfect sense.” Joe raised his St Pauli Girl and drank deeply.

A "While"

...a good long while." She tousled her young man's hair, mashing the double crown into a single one. "Now then, got your galoshes right? Right. Off you go."

James left the house and Violet watched him go, and a hint of a tear sprang to the corner of one eye. Everything was about to change for the lad. Everything.

Meanwhile, a short distance away, Detective Smith-Jones was staring in shock first at Joe, then at the hideous remains in the snow and back again. "No," she said. "No. I don't believe it. You mean to tell me..."

An Icy Clue

She never got to finish her sentence.

From the front of the house, they heard the door bang open. A man's voice called out, "Inspector! Sorry to interrupt but I think you must come see this!"

Joe shot Smith-Jones a panicky look; in a practiced move she deftly snagged it in mid-air and tucked it into a bulging little evidence rucksack which Joe had not previously noticed on her back.

"That," she said, "that would be my assistant DI, Manders. Suppose I've got to save the rest of the story for later, eh?"

Joe followed her up the hall to the front door, out onto the porch. A portly parkaed figure -- the aforementioned Manders, no doubt -- stood some distance away in the snow at the foot of a utility pole. Something large and dark and at this distance not quite identifiable lay at his feet.

As they approached, Joe continued to stare at the thing on the ground. Now he could see that several power lines had collapsed under the weight of the snow and lay fizzing and popping all around--- No, could it be?

It was the body of a woman, her face hideously made up in some ghastly black-and-green mudpack. She was dressed only in an orange towel and -- how odd -- a purple shower cap. Sparks from the downed electrical lines formed a corona all around her head. Queen of the Dead.

Joe peered more closely at her. Lovely, she was. Something familiar, too. Could she be the woman in the painting...?

My God, he thought, I know this woman---

Manders was speaking. "...and I swear I didn't touch her, Inspector. Learned me lesson, I have, after that last one I mean."

"Thanks, M," said Smith-Jones, and Joe noticed that her feet were not breaking through the crust of the snow at all. Amazing. "But I need to remind you--"

"Inspector Smith-Jones," he interrupted. "There's something you need to know about this woman. You see not only do I know her, but she" -- he paused to emphasize the point -- "she is known to me. This is---"

Meanwhile, some distance away, a cell phone jingled a game show's theme song....

The Will

Inspector Smith-Jones looked down at her feet. She sighed. Size 43 boots. Ever since she was a little girl her feet had been a problem. What had the specialists called it? Supermegapodiatry, that was the loathsome terminiology. The other kids had called her SuperMeg. These monstrous feet had been following her around her entire life, hounding her. No matter where she went, there they were. Another sigh. Well, everybody had their cross to bear.
“I’m sure you’re familiar with those popular films, ‘Lord of the Rings,” she finally said.
“Lord of the Rings? Of course - those fantasy movies with all those weird creatures and what-not.”
“That’s right. You might remember that there were dwarves featured in that film. Well, the director, Peter Jackson, is a real stickler for details. So he hired several real dwarves as consultants, to, you know, add authenticity to the film. Clive was the assistant to the head of the dwarf division.”
“I didn’t know that. I’ve been out of touch for years. I’ve been abroad.”
“Then you also couldn’t know that Gideon Stone, Head Dwarf, befriended Clive; he became his mentor. The two were inseparable, two peas in a pod. It went so far that Gideon re-wrote his will, making Clive the sole inheritor of his rolling estate in Northumberland. As you might imagine, that didn’t sit too well with everybody. What I’m now going to tell you is, at this point, confidential information. I didn’t say it, and you didn’t hear it, is that clear?”
“I’m not so sure I want to hear it. I’ve got a lot on my mind just now,” Joe said. He felt himself sliding further down the hill, closer to an opening abyss.
“Oh, you want to hear this, my friend. Because at the very last moment, the name on Stone’s will was changed. Clive was removed and your mother’s name written in. Yes, your mother had become Gideon Stone’s secret lover.”
“What? No, this can’t be!”
“Yes, and what’s more, two days after the will was changed, Gideon Stone was found murdered, shot fifteen times in the heart with a .44 Magnum.”
“Do you think Clive . . .”
“No, Clive had a solid alibi. And anyway, he loved Stone as his own father. Who shot Gideon Stone? I thought that should be pretty obvious by now. But perhaps even more interesting for you is Clive’s alibi. He couldn’t have killed Stone. Joe, I just lied to you about that horrid painting. I thought I had to. That painting is Clive’s alibi. It’s part of the will. You see, on the night Stone was murdered, Clive was . . .

Noticed the woman standing there

"Pardon me," she said. "I was informed that there was a resident here."

Joe peered at the woman. He did not know her. She must be new in town.

"I am Inspector Smith-Jones. There was an incident in the field behind your house."

"An incident?" Joe said, "I--