The Dead of False Creek: Journal Through Time Mysteries, #1

By Sarah M Stephen

He chases crooks. She dusts off maps. With important men vanishing, can one key document prevent death?

 

Vancouver, 1897. Jack Winston refuses to let his bloodline decide his vocation. Keeping his family connections secret as he joins the Constabulary, the rising detective works hard to make a name for himself on his own merit. But when he investigates a missing young lawyer, he's shocked to find his own journal connects him to a woman claiming to be from the future.

 

Vancouver, 2017. Riley Finch adores history. With life pulling friends and family further away, the archivist throws herself into her new position cataloging police files from the nineteenth century. And her excitement with her research bears thrilling results when she finds a way to contact a policeman from the past.

 

Despite his well-founded suspicions, Winston struggles to wring answers out of his list of prime suspects. And as Riley risks her job to unearth useful information, she's inexplicably drawn to Jack's great-grandson but forced to keep both men in the dark.

 

Can the pair forge a partnership across decades and solve an impenetrable crime?

 

The Dead of False Creek is the compelling first book in the Journal Through Time historical mystery series. If you like endearing duos, split narratives, and stunning twists and turns, then you'll love Sarah M Stephen's time-bending tale.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WZE Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781777833008

Sarah M Stephen

Sarah Stephen started writing at an early age, first scribbling pages of notes while pretending to be a journalist before she could actually print. After mastering the alphabet, she moved into poetry and short stories. Following a few successes in grade school (a regional poetry prize) and university (a short story published), she traded her creative tales for corporate ones. A few years ago she rediscovered her love of words and tentatively resumed creative writing. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and son. Contact Sarah: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahmstephenauthor/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahmstephenauthor/

Book preview

Chapter 1: Jack (1897)

DETECTIVE JACK WINSTON stood outside the law offices of Huntington and Shipley. People moved around him, hoofbeats and grating wheels announced a passing carriage, but he fixed his focus on the building’s entrance, willing the missing man to emerge. Deep in his pocket, his fingers found the rock his brother Ellis had given him fifteen years earlier. The cool, smooth surface warmed at his touch and he relaxed. Maybe today would be the day.

*

INSIDE THE TWO-STOREY building that housed the Vancouver Constabu­lary and Courthouse, Winston sifted through the pages of Hunting­ton’s file. Nothing sparked any fresh ideas. From his pocket, he fished out the key for the small drawer on his desk, his fingers glancing the stone. The lock released with a soft click. A rustle of fabric made Winston look up to catch his new constable, Thomas Miller, adjusting a button on his uniform. Miller smoothed the front of his deep blue jacket and cleared his throat.

Sir? Mrs. Huntington is here?

Are you asking or telling me? Winston grimaced at his misplaced frustration. Walter Huntington’s disappearance was hardly the fault of the earnest young officer standing before him, and Winston could not fault Huntington’s mother for her daily visits to the station. He pictured the deepening lines that creased the woman’s face. No, his inability to provide her an update was his own failing.

Winston re-locked the drawer and returned the key to his pocket. Please tell her I am— Winston looked down. I will see her now.

I could tell her you’ve learned nothing new, sir.

No. I am finished here. Winston patted the file on his desk. But you are correct; there is no news today. Still, speaking to family mem­bers and loved ones is part of our job.

Winston rose and took a moment to smooth his moustache. He made his way to the front of the station, where Mrs. Huntington stood holding a long, narrow box. From a distance, her blouse ap­peared to be light blue to complement the deeper blue of her jacket and skirt, though as he drew closer, Winston saw that the colour was the effect of fine stripes. Her hat bore an intricate display of silk flow­ers in the same blue as the jacket.

He stepped past the desk where Constable Miller had begun sort­ing a small pile of papers. Despite being assigned to assist Winston, with only twelve officers on the force, Miller still had to spend time at the desk near the station entrance most days. Mrs. Huntington. Winston stretched out his hand, instantly dropping it to his side when she narrowed her eyes. A flash of hot embarrassment flooded him.

Mr. Winston. By now, after weeks of daily visits, she must have known she should address him as Detective Winston, but he said nothing; correcting her would only cause her mouth and nose to crin­kle more.

I have little news for you, Mrs. Huntington.

She sniffed. I, however, have news for you.

What more could she possibly have to share? And why hadn’t she shared it earlier? Winston exhaled and squared his shoulders. Thank you, madam.

Before he disappeared, my Walter ordered a pair of gloves from Sharp’s. Winston followed her eyes to the duty desk, where Miller busied himself reviewing the paper stack. Mrs. Huntington placed the box on the desk’s raised counter and opened the clasp of the small purse hanging at her wrist. She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed the corner of her dry eye, actions Winston had observed as her dance each time they’d met. Without dropping her gaze, she returned the handkerchief to her purse.

Where have the gloves been all these weeks?

I sent my maid to Sharp’s yesterday to determine whether I want to look at a delivery of silks—I do not—and Mr. Sharp sent a message asking if I wanted him to sell the gloves to someone else.

And your decision?

Mrs. Huntington pointed at the box. I collected them myself yes­terday afternoon. My son will want them when he returns.

On an earlier visit to the station, the woman had declared Hun­tington had slipped away on a boat travelling north, though she ex­pected the police to continue searching for him in the city, just in case. Winston understood a man’s desire to seek adventure—or at least dis­tance from his difficult mother—though if he had ordered the gloves to arrive after he left, it suggested his sudden departure was not planned.

May I see the gloves, Mrs. Huntington? Winston asked out of courtesy rather than necessity.

I brought them to show you.

Winston pulled the box closer and eased the lid off to reveal a layer of crisp white cotton. He resisted the urge to run his finger along the embroidered pattern stitched into the top of the gloves. Who were these for?

Mr. Sharp didn’t say. She extended her arm and wiggled her fin­gers. I doubt they are for me; they are too large for my hands. Winston frowned a warning at Miller, who masked his snort with a cough and covered his smile with his hand. Confidence was admira­ble, but hers was misplaced. She had wealth and status, but not the small hands she claimed to possess.

Indeed. Winston stifled the smile that tweaked his own lips. Was he—

As I’ve told you before, Walter was not stepping out with anyone, Mr. Winston. She closed her eyes a moment and he waited for her to continue. I rather think he fancied the daughter of a gentleman who works for the railway.

The Huntington household staff likely knew more about this re­lationship and whether the daughter was indeed the intended recipi­ent of the gloves. Winston pulled a small notebook from his breast pocket and made a note. Walter Huntington wouldn’t be the first young man to pursue a woman his mother thought unsuitable. I will speak with Mr. Sharp, Mrs. Huntington. Thank you for coming to share this information. He escorted the missing man’s mother to the main entrance, nodding again at Miller as he returned to his desk.

Why had she waited so long to tell him about her son’s romantic interest? Had she only just learned of it, like the gloves?

Men keep secrets when they want to chart their own course. Like Ellis. What private diversions had he kept from their parents in the months leading to his disappearance? Winston pulled the rock from his pocket and set it on his desk. The afternoon on the shore of Lake Ontario came back to him, a family picnic on one of the small islands near Toronto’s waterfront during Jack’s school break. Though time had faded the memory, sensations and fragments were still fresh—the colour of his mother’s dress, a blue that seemed to have been pulled from the cloudless sky; the sharp chill of the water lapping around his feet, making him squeal; Ellis, beside him, skipping stones.

He had a vague memory of George, his youngest brother, being there too, at first. But he’d gone off somewhere with a cluster of boys his age.

Jack had persevered and, with Ellis’s help, had managed to get two skips out of a stone. Ellis whooped and gave him an encouraging clap on his shoulder. The warmth of the memory brought a smile. He’d spent the rest of the afternoon searching for the perfect stone to give to Ellis. Finally, he found it and ran to the family’s spot under a tree to present it to his brother. Ellis had turned it over, grinning his approval, then placed it back in Jack’s palm, wrapping his small fingers around it. Keep it for next time.

Ellis disappeared the following week.

Winston rubbed at his temples, summoning focus. He returned the rock to his pocket and unlocked the desk drawer, removing his journal to capture a few thoughts from the conversation.

May 10 ’97

I expected Mrs. Huntington for her daily visit, and she didn’t disappoint. She remains optimistic her son will re­turn. Such faith is admirable. Would that I prove her correct, though the gloves she had with her are a stronger signal his departure was unplanned. As more time passes since Huntington’s disappearance, the less confident I am I will find him.

Chapter 2: Riley Finch (2017)

RILEY FINCH STOOD ALONE in a windowless room, surrounded by long-neglected files. Dust and cool air tickled the back of her throat as she swept her gaze down rows of stacked boxes. She knew the papers wait­ing within them were a mess. But Riley was undaunted by the task of organizing and scanning the pages. Instead, she relished the energy she felt as the Vancouver History Museum’s newest archivist. She had the opportunity to give forgotten tales another life.

She moved deeper into the rows, running her finger through thick­ening layers of dust as she walked, stopping before a pile of boxes lean­ing against the back wall. She sighed; the bottom box had crumpled from the weight of the others in the stack. Rescuing these documents was a good place to start the day.

Riley’s gloved fingers tingled in anticipation as she reached for the top box on the pile. Many found the work tedious, but these were her first weeks as a full-time researcher. She was lowest in the pecking or­der and expected the less popular tasks. She didn’t mind them, espe­cially when they allowed her to explore old documents.

Let’s see what we can do with you, she said as she set the box on a trolley. A wheel protested as she navigated crowded aisles toward a work counter near the front of the archive room. Here she would scan and catalogue the documents. Whose stories are you waiting to tell? Riley patted the box.

Her boss, Claire Cale, had asked Riley to look out for interesting records to include in the upcoming exhibit on policing in the city’s early years. Perhaps the box’s contents contained information about someone like the con man Claire had mentioned: he’d harnessed late nineteenth-century citizens’ eagerness to develop new neighbour­hoods by selling the same properties—which he did not own—to multiple buyers.

Riley removed the lid, shivering as she set it down. She stood still, letting the spirits of the people named within the files and books settle with the dust. The box was among several discovered during prepara­tions to move the police force into a larger building. She tutted at the thought of the new apartment tower—sold by a modern-day con man—that would soon replace the old headquarters.

Pages and folders fluttered against Riley’s fingertips as she ran her gloved hand inside the box. She paused at the spine of the first book, tugging at its corner to stand it in place. The inventory, created by someone long ago, listed two books for this box, yet it contained three. She sighed. Maybe the inventory wouldn’t be as reliable as she’d hoped.

Riley eased the books from the box. The smooth, blank cover of the one that caught her eye shone beside the dull, cracked leather of the others. She flipped the book over, inspecting the spine, finding it free of the cracks she liked to trace with her finger, as though mapping a book’s journey to her. She brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply, setting it down to do the same with another book. She picked up the first book and sniffed again.

Different eras.

Forgotten by the person who moved them to the museum? The nameplate on the first page identified the book as belonging to Jack M. Winston, 1897. Heart rate quickening, she closed the book, reopened it. The script looked consistent with the period. Was some­one playing a prank on the new archivist? Her colleagues could mimic the detail with little effort.

As she thumbed through the first pages of what appeared to be a journal, the spidery script reminded her of the first handwriting from another era that she had seen as a girl. While playing in the basement, she had searched through an old suitcase near the dress-up trunk to see if it held any more of her grandmother’s old hats. It didn’t. But tucked within it were postcards her great-grandfather had sent home during the First World War. The delicately embroidered floral designs on the front of the cards and the faded script on the back begged to be displayed. After a week, Riley’s mother had finally agreed to let her arrange the cards. That first experience with caring for old documents fuelled her passion for connecting to history.

Riley returned her focus to the book in front of her, rubbing the corner of a page between her thumb and index finger. The gloves dulled her fingertips; she checked she was alone and removed one. She closed her eyes and rubbed the corner again, then replaced the glove. The paper within the book was new, not brittle with age.

Whoever had played this prank spent considerable time preparing it, but why? Riley looked at her watch. With two hours before she and Claire were to meet, she could spare a few minutes before returning to cataloguing. She pulled a high stool from behind the counter and sat, resting the journal on her lap.

April 3 ’97

Without doubt, today was the most frustrating one in several weeks. A man has vanished. Each question I ask yields two more. He is from a prominent local family, so I am under pressure to find him, not the least from his mother, who misses her son. And yet I am working with no one to help me as I search for him, and for answers.

She skimmed several pages of observations about this case and other crimes in the city—mostly thefts and fights—stopping at the short, final entry.

Continued from May 10 ’97

The chief has agreed to give me a constable to aid in my efforts to find H.

Hadn’t there been a station logbook in a box she’d already sorted? Riley opened the database she’d been building to document her work. There, in box eighteen. Constabulary Logbook 1897.

She retrieved the box from the shelf and set it on the floor. As she pulled out the logbook, she welcomed its dusty scent, stronger because of its contrast to the journal she’d just found. The logbook’s yellowing pages contained rows of entries detailing each request for police ser­vices the station received. She found two entries for the first of April—a report of pickpockets operating on Water Street, a few blocks from the police station, and a reference to Mrs. Huntington, of Vancouver’s West End, reporting her son’s disappearance.

Riley moved down the page. Mrs. Huntington—update appeared on several lines, each time with Winston’s name in the assigned col­umn. Riley glanced behind her, though she knew she was alone. How long had her pranksters spent on this? How had they left the dust un­disturbed when they’d added the journal to the box?

Back at the work desk, she set the journal in front of her, running her hand down the unblemished spine. If the journal wasn’t a prank, the personal writings of one of the force’s early detectives could add personality to Claire’s exhibit. She removed her gloves, dug out a pen­cil from beneath her ponytail elastic, and reached for a small notepad. She paused, then pushed it away again; though she preferred taking notes by hand, Claire had been clear about wanting everything logged in the computer system. Riley slid the pencil back into her hair.

After she finished cataloguing and scanning the remaining docu­ments from the box, she placed them in a new one on the trolley, leaving the journal out. She pushed the trolley through the archive’s centre aisle, glancing down each row of cabinets and shelves as she passed. When she reached the final row of mobile shelves, she tugged the crank, confirming that the last person in the archive had locked it. De­spite her many hours spent in archives, mobile shelves still terrified her; she tried to spend as little time as possible between them. She couldn’t set aside the urban legend about a squished archivist.

*

CATALOGUING RECORDS was like a puzzle, only Riley didn’t have a picture on the back of the box to work from. Working to fit pieces from the case notes in order, she looked for a theme to emerge from the records. She finished the next box from the tower, noting a string of thefts re­ported by mining-supply shops in Gastown, one of the city’s earliest neighbourhoods and home to the museum.

With twenty minutes until she had to meet Claire, she let her thoughts return to the journal. Where had it come from? Who had placed it in the box? Giving in to its pull, she reopened it, fanning the pages. On the last page of entries, about midway through the book, the final sentence stood out; had she missed it the first time in the ex­citement of discovery?

My new constable asks many questions. He has little expe­rience but possesses much enthusiasm for investigation, a trait we share, though I can’t tell him how little investiga­tive experience I have. We will work well, I trust.

Riley flipped back a few pages to read some earlier entries, then stared at the notations on the page and the pencil in her gloved hand. When had she removed it from her hair? Her mouth went dry. She dropped the offending pencil and peeled the gloves from her fingers, wiping her palms on her jeans. A quick check of her watch confirmed that too little time remained to erase the marks before seeing Claire.

Sweat dampened Riley’s armpits as her thoughts scrambled: what should she do about the markings in the book? Her meeting was now minutes away. She could just tuck the journal back into the box, but the marks would haunt her. The alternative, confessing to altering documents in her care during her first week working on a project, would ensure her first days were also her last.

Her breath caught in her throat. What about removing the marks? She had done well on a restoration project in university; with time she could restore the journal. Since it wasn’t in the inventory, it was un­likely, if not impossible, anyone would notice the journal was gone. Claire had said that before Riley started, nobody had looked closely at the files since their arrival at the museum. Why would someone look at them today? And how would that someone know a book not listed in the inventory was missing? Her breathing calmed. She would take the journal home, restore the page, and return the book without any­one noticing.

Not a great choice, but given the rules she’d already broken by writ­ing in the journal, taking it home for the night to remove the markings would be safest. As though smuggling a copy of the Magna Carta, Riley slipped the journal into her backpack and slung the bag over her shoulder. She looked back to ensure she had left everything in order. Were anyone else in the archive, they would not have heard her whis­per an apology as she shut the door.

Chapter 3: Jack

THE WINDOWPANE AT SHARP’S Fine Goods and Tailoring rattled when Detective Jack Winston knocked. After a moment, a finger appeared, moving the blind sideways to reveal a bespectacled eye. Winston held his identification toward the eye. Mr. Sharp. The finger disap­peared, and the blind returned to place. We are the police.

Yes?

Mr. Sharp? Winston pushed the door, finding it locked.

We do not open until eleven, sir. I ask you to return during oper­ating hours.

Winston pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket. We have ques­tions about an investigation. Winston offered his identification again. I have with me a uniformed officer who will stand here until you answer my questions. Or you can let us both inside so I can ask them now, and you may open on time.

The door opened, bells jingling overhead. Before Winston could enter, a small man pushed his head through, looked in both directions, and pulled it back inside, leaving the door ajar. Constable Thomas Miller closed the door behind them, setting the bells off again.

Your questions are for me? As the man spoke, Winston looked over his head to the bolts of fine fabric lined along the wall, intended, no doubt, for the wives of railway executives and other businessmen transplanted to the city. Despite the city’s population growth, most men were labourers on the new railway or in the shipyards. Others passed through on their way to mines or forests north of the city. Given the transient populace, Winston wondered at the shop’s suc­cess. Then he spied several rolls of denim and the rugged cotton favoured at the docks and in the mills. Deeper into the store, wrapped packages—the fine goods in the shop’s name—sat neatly on shelves.

One of your customers, Mr. Sharp. Winston handed his hat to Miller, leaving the junior officer stationed at the door. The detective approached Sharp, now standing between a long wooden counter and a wall of drawers. A dark curtain hung against the wall to one side.

One of my customers? Wanted by the police? The tailor stepped backwards.

I want to make sure he’s not in trouble. Sharp stepped farther away from Winston and pushed at the side of his glasses. Winston leaned closer to the shopkeeper and lowered his voice. Are you nerv­ous, sir?

"Nervous? No. I am—as I hope you appreciate—uncomfortable with sharing information

Reviews for The Dead of False Creek

[Elizabeth Ann Speed · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

New author who writes a great story line. Not the typical time travel mystery or novel. It’s even better the way the plot moves along!! The blurb interested me greatly. The actual book has me waiting with anticipation for the second in this series!!