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Authors: Vicki Delany

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BOOK: In the Shadow of the Glacier
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“I’m on this special assignment, so I’m busy in the morning. Perhaps we can meet up at the station.” Smith was dying to tell her friend about the investigation and her part in it. But Christa was looking out the window at the lights twinkling on the mountainside. For weeks she’d resisted Smith’s advice to take a restraining order out on Charlie, convinced that she only had to be firm and he’d go away. Tonight, she’d listen if Molly talked, but her attention wouldn’t be on what the murder of Reg Montgomery could mean to her friend’s career.

“I gotta go.” Smith drained her tea. “If he comes back tonight, call the station straight away. And then me. Got that?”

Christa nodded.

“I’ll give you a buzz soon as I’m free. I hope they give me the job of serving the restraining order. I might accidentally bring my truncheon down across the back of his head and knee him in the nuts.”

“I don’t want that to happen,” Christa said. “Maybe I shouldn’t make an official complaint. He likes me, that’s all. But it’s getting to be such a bother.”

“I was kidding, Chris. But get one thing straight. He doesn’t like you. He wants to own you. There’s a difference.”

 

Chapter Seven

 

Shirley Lee called while Winters was flipping bacon. It was seven a.m. Eliza had to catch a flight out of Castlegar, going to Toronto to shoot a magazine ad for a hybrid car. Something designed to appeal to the “middle-aged, upper-middle-class, environmentally aware woman.”

“Aging bags with piles of dough and a guilty conscience,” Winters had said when she told him of the assignment.

“Watch who you’re calling an aging bag, old man,” she’d replied. “And better a hybrid than jail bait and a Camaro.”

“Yo, doc,” Winters said into the phone, reaching across the counter to press the lever down on the toaster. The twenty-fifth anniversary hadn’t been a total washout, and he was in a good mood.

“Good morning, John,” Dr. Lee said. “I’m doing the autopsy on Montgomery at noon. It was a quiet night, so I can give him my full attention.”

“Glad to hear it.”

She hung up without bothering to say goodbye.

“Who was that?” Eliza came into the kitchen, fitting a gold hoop into her ear. “Business?” The weather report was calling for another day of record-breaking heat, and she’d dressed casually for the trip in black capris, white T-shirt, and sandals that emphasized what the Victorians would have called her well-turned ankles.

“Natch. Bacon?”

She shuddered, and reached into the fridge for yoghurt and a jar of blackcurrant jam. She snatched at a slice of toast as it flew out of the toaster and tossed it onto a plate.

“I’ve got time to take you to the airport, and get back to pick up my apprentice,” Winters said, cracking eggs into the hot fat.
“You’re driving?”
“Can you believe it, she doesn’t own a car. And she calls herself a cop? What is the world coming to?”

“Don’t start your relationship with this constable with such cynicism, John. Give her some trust. Paul wouldn’t have hired her if she was no good.”

“She’s too green. Too naïve. She looks like Barbie, all dressed up to play cop.”
“I wonder who’s being naïve. She can’t help what she looks like, but you can help judging her on her looks.”
A car horn sounded from the driveway.

“That’s my ride. So you have time to consider your prejudice against this young woman before picking her up.” Eliza tweaked his earlobe and kissed him firmly on the lips. Her bag was waiting by the kitchen door. She tossed her handbag over her shoulder, balanced her plate of toast in one hand, yoghurt and spoon in another, and somehow still managed to drag the wheeled suitcase out the door.

Winters served himself bacon and eggs and the remaining toast and sat down at the kitchen table. Women, he thought, always sticking up for each other.

“You might be interested in this.” Eliza opened the door and threw the newspaper at him.

□□□

 

“Have you seen the day’s paper?” Lucky Smith said into the phone. She sat at her desk in the small office behind Mid-Kootenay Adventure Vacations.

“Geeze, Lucky. It’s not nine o’clock yet. I haven’t seen my face in the mirror. Although that’s no great pleasure these days.”

Lucky had lain awake all night, while Andy slept stiff and flat, as far to his side of the bed as he could without falling off. She’d debated whom to call first with the news, all the while knowing that the decision shouldn’t be a hard one. Barry Stevens had lost an arm in Vietnam. When he was released from hospital, he could have gone home to Tennessee. But he brought his cousin, who’d just received his draft notice, to Canada. The cousin accepted amnesty and returned to the States long ago, but Barry stayed behind. He married a Trafalgar girl, had three kids, and built one of the first computer businesses in the B.C. interior. He never spoke of the war, of his trauma, the father he hadn’t spoken to in more than thirty years, or the mother who told her husband she was going to quilting conventions and snuck across the border to visit her grandchildren. He played no part in local politics; Lucky knew him only from mutual friends. Then Larry O’Reilly died, bequeathing his property to the town for the Commemorative Peace Garden, and Barry Stevens came down from the mountains determined to see the park a reality.

“Something tragic has happened,” Lucky said, trying to sound somber. “I read about it in the morning paper. Reginald Montgomery died last night.”

“You don’t say. Goddamn, shoulda bought a lottery ticket.” After thirty years in British Columbia, Barry’s Tennessee accent was as thick as the day he’d left. “Does the paper say how it happened?”

Lucky didn’t know—she hadn’t read it yet. But the headline did say something about “tragically.” “I’m going to call a meeting of the committee, say seven? My house?”

“I’ll be there. After I’ve bought that lottery ticket.” Barry hung up.

Lucky turned her swivel chair to look out the window and propped her feet on the windowsill. It wasn’t much of a view, just the alley behind the shop. But the sky was blue, and the vegetable garden of the house on the other side of the alley was dressed in more shades of green than one could name.

She called Michael Rockwell last. He was at his desk in the realtor’s office, about to go out, he explained, to show a riverside property to a retired couple from Toronto. He told her the asking price, a million and a half. Not for the first time she wondered what had attracted a prosperous businessman such as Michael to their controversial project.

“Of course I’ll be there,” he said. “My calendar’s empty tonight, so I don’t have to make any excuses. You won’t have time to fix dinner. Why don’t I pick up a few things?”

“That’d be nice. I’ll get something for dessert.”
“It’ll be like a party.”
“A man has died, Michael. It’s not a celebration.”
“I only meant party, as in a gathering of good friends around a meal.”

“See you at seven then.” Lucky hung up. She alternately read the newspaper article and watched the woman on the other side of the alley moving through her garden, selecting tiny red tomatoes and plump peas.

“No work today, Lucky?”

She started and dropped her feet to the floor. She spun her chair around. Her husband stood in the doorway, a mug of coffee in hand. It saved twenty-five cents at the coffee shop if you brought your own cup. He put the mug down and picked up the paper. “Nasty,” he said.

“Very.”
“Murder in Trafalgar.”
“It doesn’t say anything about murder.”
“Read between the lines, Lucky.”
“I try to take everything at face value.”
“And I take it that your committee will be taking over our kitchen yet again. No supper tonight, eh?”
“Michael offered to bring supper.”
“Michael has, has he? How kind of him. Will it be enough for everyone, Lucky, or just for two?”
“What does that mean?”

“It means that the council is reconsidering having unofficially given their permission to allow the peace garden to go ahead now that Tom Maas is dead. Some of the councilors want to bring the matter to vote immediately.”

“I know that, Andy. They want to kill the park before the organizing committee gets itself back into shape, now that we don’t have Tom’s support.”

“So this town can get on with things.”

“So this town can get on with the business of making money, you mean.”

“Money. Nasty word, money. This business pays for your house, Lucky, for your car, last year’s vacation in Hawaii. Money put your children through university and helps your mother live out the rest of her years in some degree of independence.”

She got to her feet. “Don’t you dare throw our support to my mother in my face.”

“Christ, Lucky. I’m not throwing anything in your face. I’m telling you that if this garden’s allowed to be built, family businesses along Front Street like ours, like Rosemary’s Campfire Kitchen, like Alphonse’s Bakery, will be forced to close down. When the American tourists stop coming, all that’ll be left will be the Wal-Mart in Nelson, and a few shops that provide goods for the handful of locals that haven’t been driven away.”

“There are plenty of people, in the States as well as Canada, who’ll be proud and happy to visit Trafalgar, to visit the Commemorative Peace Garden. Not to mention all the people who come here for the wilderness, and do their shopping in this store. People who don’t want to sit in air conditioned suites and swim in chlorinated pools and watch cable T.V. at the Grizzly Resort.”

“Lucky, you can’t….” He turned around. “What the hell do you want?”

Duncan, the company’s tour leader, had tapped the pads of his fingers on the open door to Lucky’s office. He shifted from one foot to the other, and tried not to look at either of his employers. “A lady’s on the phone. She wants to know if we can drop two days off her week’s trip, as she has to get back to Vancouver early.”

“Of course we can’t drop two days. Six other people have paid for a week, are you going to phone them all and tell them they only get five days? Are you, Duncan?”

“Not me, man.”
“Sometimes I don’t know why I bother.” Andy pushed his way out of the office. “I’ll talk to her.”
Duncan raised one eyebrow toward Lucky.

“You did okay to ask Andy to speak to her,” she said. “People like that have to talk to the boss, or they think they’re being shafted. He’ll arrange for you to leave the group for a few hours and bring her back early.” She looked at her computer. The long list of numbers blended into a blur before her tired eyes.

“Lucky?”

“Sorry, Duncan. Not even half past nine and it’s already been a long day.”

“I have a day trip to meet down at the beach, but I before I go I was wondering how Molly’s getting on. I see her sometimes around town. She looks a bit lost, if you don’t mind my saying so, as a cop. The boots and the gun seem too big for her.”

Lucky rubbed her eyes, and looked at the young man standing in the doorway to the cramped, cluttered office. “Lost,” she said, “doesn’t half describe my daughter, Duncan.”

□□□

 

Smith was ready long before Winters arrived to take her to the autopsy. Truth be told, she hadn’t slept at all, excitement building at what the day would bring.

As light broke over the mountains to the east, she took a shower, and waited in her room while her parents moved about downstairs, getting ready for their day. The lack of laughter and friendly chatter spoke volumes about the state of the Smith marriage. They left for work together, as normal.

Lucky and Andy had opened a small camping goods store when their children were small, and, when the eco-tourism industry took off, expanded the size of the store and began running guided trips into the wilderness. In the early days they didn’t have much staff, so Andy led the trips himself. When she was in high school, Smith helped her dad on weeklong trips and led day or one-night tours herself. Now Andy ran the front of the store and organized the expeditions, staff led the trips, and Lucky did the books and managed the help. It had always been a good partnership. Smith feared that the business would suffer because of the strain in the relationship, thus adding more strain to her parents’ marriage.

She threw an additional spoon of coffee into the pot, to make it extra strong, fixed two pieces of dry toast for breakfast, and ate curled in the cushioned alcove at the wide bay window in the front of the house, waiting for Winters. Ducks swam in the river and birds pecked in the long grasses along the shoreline. The house Molly Smith had grown up in was tucked into a small bay off the river, with a deep sandy beach and a great view over the river to the mountains. Soft, round green and brown mountains crowned the town, but in the background, even in high summer, snow touched the sharp-toothed peak of Koola Glacier.

Many years ago Andy built a dock for Moonlight and Samwise to swim off. They’d owned a boat, for a while. Then the children grew up, headed off to university. The boat’s engine died, never to be replaced, and the dock had been allowed to decay until it wasn’t much more than a stack of broken logs.

It was time she moved out of her parents’ house, bought herself a car. She’d seen the look in Winters’ face when she confessed that she didn’t own a car. There were some things you simply had to have, if you were to be accepted as a functioning adult in most of North America.

An engine sounded, coming up from the road, the vehicle hidden by the sharp curves in the driveway and the jumble of forest surrounding the property. Smith swallowed the dregs of her coffee, snapped on her gun belt, and placed her hat on her head. She’d already forced her feet into the hated boots. She headed out the door. A black SUV was parked in their driveway, and Winters was getting out of the car.

BOOK: In the Shadow of the Glacier
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