Read Online The Poisoned Pawn by Peggy Blair - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peggy Blair
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full week of praying, divining the future with shells, and animal sacrifices.
The most devout believers dressed in white for three months while they dedicated themselves to a particular orisha . They acted like antennas whenever their god wished to communicate with mortals. A shaved head was supposed to provide better reception.
Before it merged with Catholicism to become Santería, the Yoruba religion had hundreds of gods. Only a few dozen remained. Even most baptized Cubans wore bead bracelets or necklaces reflecting which one they followed.
Ramirez glanced again at the old lady reflected in his side mirror. She wore three strands of beads around her neck—red, black, and white. Eshu’s colours, thought Ramirez. She was brave. Few wore them, for fear of accidentally invoking him. If you stamped your feet three times, it was said he would come. But given Eshu’s role as the intermediary between the living and the dead, this could have unpredictable results.
It made Ramirez wonder if the angry old woman had stamped her feet once too often.
FOURTEEN
As she walked back to her office, Celia Jones thought about Hillary Ellis’s sudden death. June Kelly was right about one thing: Mike and his wife had some serious marital problems.
Jones had read all the psychiatric and medical reports in Mike’s file. She’d relied on one of them to prove his innocence in Cuba: a fertility test that established his blood type.
Mike had been on disability leave from the Rideau Regional Police for months. In June 2006, when he was still in Patrol, he and his partner, Steve Sloan, were dispatched to a “trouble with man” call in a Lowertown walk-up. The two constables were standing at the top of the stairs when the suspect opened his door and slashed Mike in the face. In the scuffle, Sloan’s gun discharged, wounding Sloan. He bled to death before the ambulance got there. Despite his serious injuries, Mike shot and killed the suspect. The first policeman on the scene found Mike crying in a pool of blood, cradling Sloan’s head in his lap.
Mike was cleared to return to work in November by the departmental shrink, Richard Mann. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the psychiatrist said. No way of knowing if Mike would ever fully recover, but diazepam was supposed to control his panic attacks.
O’Malley promoted Mike to detective and put him in a section where he wasn’t likely to deal with armed men. Into a desk job, essentially, in the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Unit. He’d just started there when he and Hillary decided they needed a vacation.
There were passages in Dr. Mann’s report that worried Jones the more she thought about them.
For one thing, Mike was infertile. And yet the Cuban police had found a package of birth control pills in their search of the Havana hotel room where the couple stayed. But according to Dr. Mann’s notes, Hillary Ellis had just found out she was pregnant when Mike was wounded. She miscarried the following week.
Whoever got Hillary pregnant, then, it wasn’t Mike. That was motive.
There was another red flag, too. A week before they left for Havana, Mike asked Jones to witness their signatures on an amendment to his departmental insurance policy. In addition to the standard million-dollar life insurance coverage, they added a million more. Each was named as the other’s primary beneficiary, with Hillary’s parents the residuary beneficiaries. Meaning if one of them died, the other got it all.
A little less than three weeks later, Hillary was dead.
Sherlock Holmes once stated that the most repellent man he’d ever known had given money to charity, but the most fetching woman he’d ever met had poisoned three small children for their insurance proceeds.
Mike Ellis was hardly fetching anymore. Not since the “accident,” as O’Malley always referred to it. An accident that left Sloan dead and Mike almost unrecognizable. But Mike stood to gain two million dollars in insurance benefits from
The most devout believers dressed in white for three months while they dedicated themselves to a particular orisha . They acted like antennas whenever their god wished to communicate with mortals. A shaved head was supposed to provide better reception.
Before it merged with Catholicism to become Santería, the Yoruba religion had hundreds of gods. Only a few dozen remained. Even most baptized Cubans wore bead bracelets or necklaces reflecting which one they followed.
Ramirez glanced again at the old lady reflected in his side mirror. She wore three strands of beads around her neck—red, black, and white. Eshu’s colours, thought Ramirez. She was brave. Few wore them, for fear of accidentally invoking him. If you stamped your feet three times, it was said he would come. But given Eshu’s role as the intermediary between the living and the dead, this could have unpredictable results.
It made Ramirez wonder if the angry old woman had stamped her feet once too often.
FOURTEEN
As she walked back to her office, Celia Jones thought about Hillary Ellis’s sudden death. June Kelly was right about one thing: Mike and his wife had some serious marital problems.
Jones had read all the psychiatric and medical reports in Mike’s file. She’d relied on one of them to prove his innocence in Cuba: a fertility test that established his blood type.
Mike had been on disability leave from the Rideau Regional Police for months. In June 2006, when he was still in Patrol, he and his partner, Steve Sloan, were dispatched to a “trouble with man” call in a Lowertown walk-up. The two constables were standing at the top of the stairs when the suspect opened his door and slashed Mike in the face. In the scuffle, Sloan’s gun discharged, wounding Sloan. He bled to death before the ambulance got there. Despite his serious injuries, Mike shot and killed the suspect. The first policeman on the scene found Mike crying in a pool of blood, cradling Sloan’s head in his lap.
Mike was cleared to return to work in November by the departmental shrink, Richard Mann. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the psychiatrist said. No way of knowing if Mike would ever fully recover, but diazepam was supposed to control his panic attacks.
O’Malley promoted Mike to detective and put him in a section where he wasn’t likely to deal with armed men. Into a desk job, essentially, in the Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Unit. He’d just started there when he and Hillary decided they needed a vacation.
There were passages in Dr. Mann’s report that worried Jones the more she thought about them.
For one thing, Mike was infertile. And yet the Cuban police had found a package of birth control pills in their search of the Havana hotel room where the couple stayed. But according to Dr. Mann’s notes, Hillary Ellis had just found out she was pregnant when Mike was wounded. She miscarried the following week.
Whoever got Hillary pregnant, then, it wasn’t Mike. That was motive.
There was another red flag, too. A week before they left for Havana, Mike asked Jones to witness their signatures on an amendment to his departmental insurance policy. In addition to the standard million-dollar life insurance coverage, they added a million more. Each was named as the other’s primary beneficiary, with Hillary’s parents the residuary beneficiaries. Meaning if one of them died, the other got it all.
A little less than three weeks later, Hillary was dead.
Sherlock Holmes once stated that the most repellent man he’d ever known had given money to charity, but the most fetching woman he’d ever met had poisoned three small children for their insurance proceeds.
Mike Ellis was hardly fetching anymore. Not since the “accident,” as O’Malley always referred to it. An accident that left Sloan dead and Mike almost unrecognizable. But Mike stood to gain two million dollars in insurance benefits from
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