In the Shadow of the Glacier (6 page)

Winters laughed. Once a player for the Ottawa Rough Riders in the Canadian Football League, these days Ron’s imposing size was due more to fast food than exercise.

“Nothing else?”

“Oh, sorry. I almost forgot to mention that we found a message scrawled in blood across the alley.
John W. did it
, was all I could make out.” Gavin laughed heartily.

Winters didn’t bother to smile. “You’ll have a report for me tomorrow?”

“Initial impressions. Details take longer.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

The Mountie returned to his work.

“Let’s head back to the station,” Winters said to Smith. “I want to write up some notes, and start sending out feelers on Montgomery.”

Smith pulled into Elm Street and turned on Front. Light and laughter spilled from the bars and restaurants. She braked hard to avoid two staggering young women crossing the street, arms wrapped around each other, oblivious to everything around them. She stopped at a red light at Oak Street. A group of drifters in tattered jeans, middle-aged tourists in Bermuda shorts, and two elderly couples in suit and tie, dress and pumps, crossed at the intersection. A young woman stepped off the sidewalk with a cocker spaniel on a lead. She caught sight of the police vehicle, yanked on the leash, and scurried back the way she’d come, dragging a confused dog. Winters had more important things on his mind than enforcing one of the town’s more unusual bylaws. No dogs were allowed in the downtown area. At every intersection, the sidewalk was painted with a picture of a dog, in a red circle with a stroke through it. Residents complained, lustily; tourists assumed there’d been some mistake. But the bylaw remained. It was also illegal to play hackisack on the streets of Trafalgar. Winters hadn’t figured that one out yet.

The light changed to green, and Smith drove on.

“Give me your home number,” he said. “I’ll call you soon as Dr. Lee’s arranged a time for the autopsy. With luck, it’ll be early. Pick me up at home—dispatch has the address. Then we’ll collect an unmarked.”

“I don’t have a car.”

“You don’t have a car?” She might as well have said she didn’t have a head.

“Nope.”

“How do you get around?”

“I bike.”

“I had a bike in my youth. Got rid of it when Eliza said that if I wanted to marry her, the bike had to go. She didn’t trust motorcycles.”

“A bicycle, John. I ride a bicycle.”

“You do?”

“If I need to go shopping, or somewhere far away, I use my parents’ car. I could ask Mom if she needs the car tomorrow.” Smith pulled into the parking lot beside the police station.

“We’ll take mine.” Winters passed her the pen and paper he’d taken out to write down her phone number. “Address and directions.”

Smith wrote.

“If they’re not ready for us at the hospital in the morning, we’ll pay a visit to Mrs. Montgomery’s friend. She was insistent that we visit him at his office. As her extramarital affairs were apparently of no concern to her husband, I have to guess that her friend is in a marriage not quite so open. Plus we should have a preliminary report from Ron Gavin to work on.”

“Do you have any ideas?”

“Early days yet, Molly, early days. I don’t see Mrs. M. bludgeoning her husband with sufficient force to kill him. Arsenic in the coffee maybe, but nothing that would make a mess.”

“You could have eaten off the floor in her kitchen,” Smith said. “Provided you wanted to.”

“Perhaps someone will come in to confess. That would be nice. If not, we’ll start looking for a motive tomorrow.”

“Suspects,” she said. “That’ll be about half of town.”

Winters got out of the car and they walked through the front doors into the police station.

□□□

Smith completed her shift report, signed off duty, said good bye to Ingrid, the night dispatcher, and let herself out the back door. All evening she’d kept her excitement dampened down. Now that she was on her own, she punched one fist in the air and pulled her arm back. “Yes!” She was assisting a detective sergeant in a murder investigation. She was on her way. She’d make detective in no time.

It took a moment for her to realize that she was not, in the literal sense, on her way anywhere. The bike rack at the back of the police station was empty. Her chain lock lay on the ground. Was this a practical joke? Had Evans hidden her bike in pique over her being chosen to work with Winters rather than him? She wouldn’t put it past him. Evans had a nasty streak.

But he would not have taken her bike—he might not like her, but he wouldn’t dare being accused of stealing. Her bike, her twenty-one speed mountain bike, had been stolen. From the back of the police station.

She went back inside.

“Still here, Molly?” Winters came out of the sergeants’ office as Smith was wondering how she should go about placing a complaint of her stolen property. Should she write up the report herself, or phone it in tomorrow? Or forget about it? The chances of the bike being recovered were about nil.

“You offered me a ride, John?”

“Too late to bike? Mountain roads can be treacherous after dark.”

“Just tired.”

“Offer’s still good. The cab’ll be here in a couple of minutes. Spoke too soon. It’s here now, that was quick. Advantage of living in a small town, eh?”

□□□

“Moonlight, is that you? You’re early, and was that a car I heard? Is something the matter?”

“I’m early, Mom, because I’ve been given a special assignment. This is so great, I can’t wait to tell you about it. And that was a car because of something that isn’t so great.”

Her mother struggled to push herself out her favorite reading chair, the one with springs so worn that it was an effort standing up. A book lay open on the table beside her, and her reading glasses were pushed down her nose. Sylvester opened one eye, checked Smith out, and went back to sleep. The house was dark, except for a single lamp over the chair.

At not much over five feet Lucky Smith was considerably shorter than her daughter. Her face was round and soft, with a maze of lines radiating out from the corners of her eyes and mouth; her red hair was heavily streaked with grey and, as always, stuffed into a haphazard bunch at the back of her head. “Sounds like one of those good news, bad news jokes. I’ll put the kettle on and you can tell me the bad news first. So it doesn’t linger in my mind.”

“Why are you still up, Mom? Everything okay?”

“Of course. I’m enjoying this book so much, I wanted to finish it.” Lucky went into the kitchen.

Smith picked up the book her mother’d placed on the side table. The corner of page ten was turned down. The novel was the approximate thickness of the phone book. Lucky would be reading into next month if she wanted to get finished in one sitting. Something was wrong between her parents: she’d suspected it for some time. The ground was shifting under Molly Smith’s feet, fault lines in the earth’s crust preparing to move, and she didn’t like the sensation. She followed her mother into the kitchen. Sylvester padded along behind.

Their kitchen was a room well lived in. Light catchers dangled in the window, reflecting nothing of the darkness beyond. Almost every square on the calendar over the phone (a fund raiser for the seniors center—a montage of naked elderly women, tastefully posed) was full of scribbles. Piles of letters, newspaper clippings, and magazines had been pushed to the back of the big wooden table, scarred with memories of family dinners and political protests. Photos of her brother Sam’s children, fastened in place by magnets, covered the fridge, and colorful school art was pinned to a cork board set up for that purpose. A shelf, full of cookbooks both well-thumbed and never opened, hung from a loose screw. The screw had been loose as long as Smith could remember. A wicker basket on the counter overflowed with red tomatoes, cherry and beefsteak, interspersed with green peas and yellow beans picked from the garden that afternoon. Several loose sheets of paper had fallen from the pile of petitions, flyers, address books, and notes tumbling all over themselves on the phone table. Lucky picked some of them up.

Smith undid her gunbelt and tossed it on the table. The weapon lay amongst the evidence of a comfortable country mountain home like dog poo on the lawns of Buchart Gardens. Lucky turned her face away in silent disgust. There were some things mother and daughter had learned not to discuss.

“Hungry? There’s still some curry.”

Smith’s stomach rolled over, and an image of Reginald Montgomery’s head rose, unbidden, in her mind. “No. I mean, no thanks, Mom. I’m not hungry.”

The kettle switched itself off and Lucky busied herself with cups, tea bags, milk and sugar. “Tell me why you got a ride home, dear.”

“My bike was stolen.”

Lucky stopped, bag of milk in hand. “You park it behind the police station, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

She burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny.”

“No, I guess not. You paid a lot for that bike. But it does have its funny side—I’m amazed at the gall of someone who’d steal a police officer’s bike from the grounds of the police station itself.”

“This isn’t some Robin Hood, Mom. Stealing from the fascist police to give to the elderly widow who needs a bike to buy food for her starving children.”

“I’m sorry if I made light of it, Moonlight. I’ll get home in time to give you a lift to work tomorrow afternoon.”

Smith unlaced her boots and pulled them off with a satisfied sigh. The heat had been intense today, and some of it still lingered in the night air. Those boots wrapped her feet in their own private sauna. The heavy dark pants weren’t much better, particularly not with all the equipment she wore around her waist. She accepted a cup of tea from her mother. A wrinkled face with prominent nose and bulging blue eyes protruded from the side of the mug—it had been homemade by a family friend and bought at a sale to raise money for the women’s shelter. Sylvester nuzzled at her leg, looking for a scratch.

She obliged. “That brings me to the good news. I’ve been given a special assignment. Detective Lopez is going on vacation, and they need someone to help Sergeant Winters with a murder investigation because he’s only been in town a couple of months. This is my big chance, Mom. I’ll show them what I can do.”

“That sounds nice, dear,” Lucky said, placing a plate of raisin and oatmeal cookies on the table before sitting down with her own tea. “But it doesn’t seem right that you’re so pleased at the murder of some poor soul.”

“Let me tell you who our victim is. You have to promise that you absolutely will not say a word to anyone, even Dad, until you hear about it on the news.”

“I’m unlikely to tell your father much of anything. But I promise.”

“And you can’t let anyone know that I told you. Ever.”

“I don’t gossip, dear.”

“You will when you hear this. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Reginald Montgomery.”

Lucky Smith’s eyes widened, and the slightest of smiles touched the corners her mouth. Then she got herself under control and settled her features into a somber frown. “Is that so? Most unfortunate.”

“For him, but not for the peace garden committee, I’ll bet.”

“Will this be in tomorrow’s news?”

“The press listens into the police radio and so Meredith Morgenstern showed up, PDQ. Photographer in tow.”

“Perhaps I’ll buy a paper on my way into the store. I was supposed to be going to a meeting of the arts council tomorrow evening, but after reading the paper I might call an emergency planning session for the garden committee.”

“You didn’t hear this from me.”

Lucky looked at her daughter. “It’s no secret that I don’t approve of your career choice.”

“No kidding.”

“But I would never do anything to harm it.”

Smith got to her feet and kissed the top of her mother’s head. “I’m going to bed. I have a busy day tomorrow.” She grabbed three cookies and her gunbelt.

“Good night, Moonlight.”

“Night, Mom.”

Moonlight was the name on Constable Molly Smith’s birth certificate. Her parents had been hippies, full of ideas about changing the world and not buying into the establishment. Come to think of it, her mother was still out to change the world, although her father, not so much anymore.

“Have you called Christa?” Lucky called.

Smith stuck her head back into the kitchen. “No, why?”

“She called earlier, said she’d left a message on your cell phone but you hadn’t returned it. She sounded distressed, but wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.”

Smith pulled the cell phone out of her pocket as she ran up the stairs. She’d switched it off at the Montgomerys’ and forgotten to check it. She held the phone to her ear with one hand and listened to Christa’s message as she pulled her uniform shirt out of her pants with the other.

Chapter Six

“This had better be good,” Rich Ashcroft snarled into his bedside phone.

“Oh, I think you’ll like it,” Irene said. “Are you listening?”

“Of course I’m listening.” Rich struggled to a sitting position. The woman beside him groaned and rolled over. Jenny, Joanie…something like that. A generic name for a generic dyed-blonde. “Go ahead.”

“You were interested in that stuff about the memorial to the draft dodgers up in British Columbia, right?”

“Spit it out, Irene.”

“Word just came in of a murder in Trafalgar. At first I didn’t pay it any attention. Killing in small-town Canada, who the hell cares? But I decided to read the whole piece. The dead guy was big in trying to derail the monument.”