Winter of Secrets (3 page)

“Per’aps ‘e and Ewan caught up,” Sophie said in her strong Quebec accent, rubbing her fingers through the fabric of her gift as if she were already imagining the feel of it against her body. And the feel of it being taken off. “And ‘e ‘ad to go wherever Evan’s been.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Sophie,” Mrs. C said. “That’s a perfectly sensible explanation. Good heavens look at the time. Kathy, help me do up the dishes. What time would you like breakfast in the morning?”

“Breakfast,” Rob shouted, throwing up his arms in mock surrender. “Perish the thought. I can’t think of breakfast.”

“Well you have to if we’re going to be on the slopes early,” Alan said.

The seven of them—Jason, his sister, and five of his friends—had come to B.C. for two weeks’ skiing. They were all university students. Jason, Ewan, and Alan had grown up together in Oakville, allowing, sometimes, Wendy, the kid sister, to tag along. Alan had gone to McGill, the University in Montreal, where he’d met Sophie, the
Québécois
.

Rob had been Jason’s roommate first year and they’d stayed friends. Wendy didn’t quite know where Jeremy fit in.

For as long as Wendy could remember Jason and Ewan had been best friends. Ewan-Jason, Jason-Ewan. So close they might as well have hyphenated their names. She’d grown up tagging along after Jason and his friends, and she’d always had a bit of a crush on Ewan. Who never paid the slightest bit of attention to her. He’d disappeared only a few days into their two-week vacation, but no one even considered worrying about him.
Typical Ewan
, they all thought. As he’d been temporarily between girlfriends, he’d started looking for something to lay before they’d even gotten off the plane at tiny Castlegar airport.

This vacation was Jason’s idea, formulated after last year’s incredibly dull New Years Eve at a house party. He’d found the B&B on the Internet and had been early enough to book the entire place. The group had gathered at Toronto airport. Flown to Calgary and then to Castlegar. Jason had arranged the rental of a seven-seater SUV with a ski compartment on the roof. Bags, friends, skis, presents were loaded aboard, and they’d headed for Trafalgar and their Christmas vacation.

They were gathering their gifts, leaving the cleaning up and dishes to Mrs. C. and Kathy—they were paying guests, after all, no matter how homey Mrs. C. made the place—when the doorbell rang.

Lorraine ran to the door like a greyhound out of the starting gate. Wendy followed, prepared to give her brother a piece of her mind. She’d only come on this stupid trip because he’d asked her. She had plenty of other things she could have done with her vacation.

“
Alain
,” Sophie said, “I am going to
bed
. You can come with me or stay to ‘ave a drink with your
ami
, Jason. Not both.”

Alan’s feet hit the stairs, hard.

“As for me,” Jeremy said, “I’ll have another drink. Tell Jas and Ewan to get in here. I hope to hell they brought more booze.”

Lorraine threw open the door. Wendy and Mrs. C. crowded behind.

It wasn’t Jason.

The woman was young, probably not much older than Wendy herself. Very pretty with an oval face, sharp, high cheekbones, pert nose, and large blue eyes. Cheeks and plump lips were reddened with cold. She was tall and, much as one could tell with the way she was bundled up, in good shape. Snowflakes fell on the shoulders of her blue coat and blue-trimmed hat.

For a brief moment Wendy dared hope this was a strip-o-gram, bringing a raunchy holiday greeting from friends back in Ontario. But the police uniform was too perfect. And the woman was not smiling.

The cop shifted her feet and took off her hat, revealing short hair the color of ripening corn.

“Lorraine?” she said, blinking in surprise. Behind her, reflected in the street lights, snow fell steadily.

“Are you following me, Molly? You can’t come in here. I know my rights. I haven’t done anything. Mrs. Carmine.” Lorraine darted to safety behind the landlady’s chubby form. “Tell her to go away. Tell her to stop bothering me.”

“I’m sorry,” the officer said. “Lorraine, I didn’t know you were here. Honest.” She sounded hesitant, unsure of herself. It was none of Wendy’s business, but she never minded seeing pretty young women slapped into place. Interesting, that this representative of the law and Jason’s holiday amusement were on a first name basis.

“You didn’t?” Lorraine squeaked.

“No, I didn’t. Sorry if I frightened you, Lorraine. I’m looking for Ms. Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth and I’ve been told she’s staying here.”

Wendy looked around in confusion. Attracted by the voices, Kathy had stuck her head out of the kitchen, and Jeremy and Rob were in the doorway to the common room.

“You’d better come in, Moonlight,” Mrs. Carmine said.
What the hell did the light of the moon have to do with any of this?
Wendy thought. “Or you’ll catch your death. Dreadful night, isn’t it? We’re cleaning up. Such a lovely party we had. I’ll make up a plate for you. Kathy, put the kettle back on and lay out the remainder of the shortbread. See if there’s enough cheese left. How dreadful you have to work tonight, dear. Lucky can’t be at all happy about that, now can she. Come in, please.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Carmine. But I need to speak to Ms. Wyatt-Yarmouth. Is she here?” The woman’s voice was recovering some of its confidence.

Wendy stepped backward. Pushing Jeremy and Rob aside, into the common room, where the tree was almost devoid of presents. Someone had switched the lights off on the side tables and the beautiful Christmas scenes had gone dark. Only the fireplace still cast a soft yellow glow. The room looked like the set of a play, coming to the end. Wendy’s heart was in her stomach and, for some strange reason, she was aware of a vein throbbing in her neck. She considered making a run for it, but she didn’t know where the back door was.

The police officer walked into the room. She hadn’t bothered to remove her boots and coat, as any well mannered visitor would do.

“You must be Ms. Wyatt-Yarmouth. I’m Constable Smith, Trafalgar City Police. I’d like a few minutes of your time, please.” Her big black boots spread sand and snowmelt across the floor.

Wendy looked around. Jeremy was holding his beer bottle behind his back, and staring at the place where the woman’s jacket was pulled up, revealing the black gun at her hip. Mrs. Carmine was ringing her hands, finally understanding that this was not a social call of the sort that necessitated tea and shortbread. Kathy and the boys just stared. Lorraine had disappeared. Upstairs, in Alan and Sophie’s room, a floorboard creaked and a toilet flushed.

The heat of the gas fireplace was hot against the back of Wendy’s legs. “It wasn’t my fault. Go away.”

“I’d appreciate it if you and your guests could give us some privacy, Mrs. Carmine,” the cop said.

Mrs. C waved her hands as if she were gathering chickens into the hen house. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Let’s go into the kitchen, shall we. My late husband was rather fond of his Cognac, nothing but the best would do, and there’s something in the back of the cupboard. Why don’t I fetch you one, Wendy. I’m sure Moonlight would enjoy a sip as well. Kathy,” Mrs. C snapped. “I said, come into the kitchen.”

They fled. Leaving Wendy alone with Barbie-plays-cop.

“I’m very sorry, Ms. Wyatt-Yarmouth, but I have to inform you that…”

Chapter Four

Smith stepped into the night. Snow was still falling and the wind was still blowing. The street was deserted, everyone at home with their loved ones.

She pulled her collar up around her neck and dug in her pockets looking for her gloves. Light from the streetlamps was dim in the falling snow. It was only two blocks to her apartment, and she walked through deserted streets, enjoying the sound of snow crunching under her feet.

The wind was a problem, but all this snow promised great skiing. She had to work tomorrow, Christmas day, much to her mother’s dismay, then she had four whole days off. The hills would be packed with tourists, but it would still be quite wonderful. Even at the height of the tourist rush, there wasn’t too much of a crowd at the double black diamonds, where Molly Smith went to ski.

What a miserable business that had been. Many officers said that informing people of the death of a loved one was the worst part of the job. Tonight had been Smith’s first time. Evans was senior to her, he should have done it. Sergeant Caldwell should have done it.

Anyone but her.

As she tried, gently as possible, to inform Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth of the death of her brother and his friend, she couldn’t help but be aware of the piles of cast-off gift wrap littering the floor, the glasses stained with reside of eggnog and wine, half-eaten cookies and crackers and smears of cheese and pâté on paper plates decorated with a cheerful assortment of holiday motifs.

And, under the huge, perfectly shaped and decorated Christmas tree, one heartbreakingly small pile of gifts, waiting to be opened.

Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth had crumpled to the floor like a rag doll left out in the spring rains, while Smith shifted her feet and stuffed her hands into her pockets. Obviously Mrs. Carmine and the whole crew had been listening at the door; they’d come running into the sitting room at Wendy’s moan.

Assured that Wendy would be taken good care of, Smith left. Feeling like absolute crap.

Mrs. Carmine walked Smith to the door. She looked like Mrs. Santa Claus, all steel grey hair and red clothes and white apron. “They forget, these young ones, so proud of themselves, so sure of their invulnerability, protected by money and arrogance, they forget what weather can do.”

She touched Smith’s arm. “Say Merry Christmas to your parents, will you? Tell Lucky she left her plate here after our pot luck the other night.”

“Sure, Mrs. Carmine. Sure.” Smith had stuffed her hat onto her head, faced the wind and headed back to the patrol car.

It might be time to start looking for a job in a big city, Vancouver, say, or Calgary. Even Toronto. Toronto was advertising for experienced police officers, but Smith was, she admitted to herself, afraid to venture too far away. She’d never been further east than Calgary; Ontario was as foreign and exotic as the Orient. Although the advantage of Toronto was that she could be pretty much guaranteed that the citizenry would not tell her to say hi to her parents or know that her given name was Moonlight. Moonlight Legolas Smith. Legolas being a character in
The
Lord of the Rings
, of which her parents, hippies, draft-dodgers, idealists, had been exceptionally fond.
What a name for a cop.

Smith’s mother, Lucy, whom everyone called Lucky, was no less idealistic now than she’d been back in the day. Which also didn’t make it easy to be an Officer of the Law in this opinionated, left-leaning, artistic, independently-inclined town nestled in the mountains and forests deep inside British Columbia.

That it was also beautiful, creative, invigorating, and a place of independent minds, was, well, something she’d rather not think about as she pondered whether she’d have to move to the big city. If she wanted her career to go anywhere, she probably did. Trafalgar was generally a peaceful town. No gun battles in the streets, no gangs, no organized crime or street prostitution. Not much in the way of hard drugs, although there were almost as many grow-ops as citizens, and marijuana was, despite being illegal, the area’s most famous, and most profitable, crop. Murder was rare, and when it did happen, was usually solved quickly.

Trafalgar wasn’t a place to get good policing experience.

But it was her home. And she didn’t want to imagine living anyplace else.

She made her way up the back stairs to her apartment. She particularly enjoyed her new place when she got off duty at six a.m. to be welcomed by the scent of fresh bread and croissants, straight out of the ovens of the bakery below, wafting up the stairs. Tonight, a brown bag full of left-over baking sat on the landing in front of her door. She scooped it up, peeked at the contents, and let herself in.

She’d moved out of her parents’ house in the fall, realizing that it was time to become a real adult. She’d never lived alone before, and was afraid she wouldn’t like it. She’d moved out of the parental home into res at university—all giggling girls, parties, booze and drugs, and serious study—then an apartment with Graham, her fiancé. When Graham was knifed and left to die beside a garbage container in Vancouver she returned to her parents’ house by the river.

She loved living on her own. She could play her choice of music, watch what she wanted on TV, cook what she wanted to eat, leave the bed unmade for days, and the dishes unwashed, and the floor unswept, if she felt like it.

She’d been lucky to get this place. She’d seen the apartment in the summer when they investigated a murder in the alley behind, and had loved it even while poking around looking for evidence. But the time hadn’t been right for her to move, and when she did inquire, someone else had taken it.

That someone else only stayed for a month and when he left, Alphonse, the landlord, called to ask if she still wanted it. The apartment was on the second floor of an old building on Front Street, Trafalgar’s main thoroughfare. Alphonse’s traditional French bakery took up the ground floor, filling her dreams—and the clothes hanging in her closet—with wonderful smells. She thought she’d miss the dark nights and clear skies and quiet of her family home, but found that she liked living in town. Still, the first thing she’d done was to hang a couple of big heavy blankets over the thin blinds at the bedroom window directly across from a street lamp.

She’d placed a small chair at the door, so she could sit down and take off her boots the minute she stepped inside. She walked into the bedroom, took off her belt and locked her gun in the safe. Back to the kitchen for a closer inspection of the contents of Alphonse’s brown paper bag. A slice of apple tart and a half-sized whole wheat baguette. Did they make whole wheat baguettes in France?—maybe not, but despite advertising his bakery as traditional, if Alphonse wanted to survive in Trafalgar, British Columbia, he had to make what the customers wanted.

And people in Trafalgar wanted organic, natural, local, and healthy.

She tore the loaf into hunks, spread butter on the exposed ends, and took a bite.

She should go to bed, but she was still wound up from the shift. Imagine going off the road and into the river. Imagine sitting there, in your car, and not being able to get the door or windows open. Sitting there while the car filled with water and the air ran out.

Better not go there. Second rule of the job—don’t take it home.

She filled the kettle and poured hot chocolate powder into a mug. When the drink was ready, she carried it and her food into the living room. She was expected to be at her parents’ house first thing in the morning for presents and spend the day with them, suitably cheerful and brimming with holiday spirit. She’d help her mom in the kitchen, go for a walk with her dad and the dog, eat an enormous turkey dinner, and then head home to change and be at work by three. She wouldn’t even be able to have a glass of wine with the meal.

She switched on the TV and DVD player and settled down to watch the end of the boring movie she’d rented yesterday. She should have known better than to choose a film the guys in the lunch room were talking about. She finished her baguette, sipped hot chocolate, and started in on the apple tart. Even better than her mother made. There would be apple pie for dinner tomorrow—later today, that was—and banana cream, her dad’s favorite. Smith liked banana cream pie just fine, but some years ago her mother had gotten it into her head that her daughter’s favorite was apple. And so there was always an apple pie.

She’d rather sleep for eight hours and pop over to the house for a quick exchange of presents and brunch. But, particularly as her brother Sam and his family were not coming this year, her mom was determined to fit the whole Christmas experience into the few hours Molly had off work.

By the time the final credits of the movie ran, she was asleep on the couch.

***

Dead. Jason was dead.

Wendy lay in bed, her eyes wide open. A street lamp burned outside her window, throwing yellow light through the thin curtains.

Mrs. Carmine had been all brisk efficiency. Showing the cop to the door, shooing the onlookers away, telling Rob to use her car to take the sobbing Lorraine home, taking charge of Wendy, who’d been reduced to having as much muscle control as a rag doll. Mrs. C had ordered Jeremy to take Wendy upstairs to her room, which he’d done in sort of a half-carry. Mrs. C followed, ordered Jeremy out, flicked through the wardrobe and found pajamas and a warm blue robe. She unbound Wendy’s hair and stripped her down to bra and panties. Pulling and stuffing, pajamas had gone on. She placed the robe at the end of the bed, in case it was needed in the night, pulled the homemade quilt up to Wendy’s chin, switched off the light, and whispered goodnight.

Jason was dead, and Ewan along with him. Fitting somehow, that they went off the road together.

Or so the cop had said, but the police weren’t perfect. They got things wrong all the time, didn’t they? That officer, the woman, she was young, obviously inexperienced. Embarrassed and awkward, in her big boots, dripping hat, and ill-fitting gun belt. Who knew what mistakes she might make.

Yup, that was it. The cops had, typically, made a mistake. Jason would be here in the morning, shouting for coffee and breakfast, apologizing for keeping everyone waiting. Charming Mrs. Carmine and yelling that they were going to the hill and he’d leave anyone behind who wasn’t ready in five minutes.

And Ewan?

No one would care what happened to Ewan.

As long as Jason was all right.

Wendy closed her eyes. Something hit the wall. She rolled over, gathering the blankets around her chin. All would be revealed tomorrow. Mom and Dad would be having quite the fit tonight. She almost chuckled at the thought. Why, they’d be so upset at the (incorrectly reported) death of the precious son and heir they might spare a thought for their daughter and give her a call.

But she wouldn’t wait up for that.

The walls in this place might as well have been made of rice paper. Her room was next to Alan and Sophie’s. Their headboard hit the wall—again. And again. A steady rhythm started up.

Wendy studied the ceiling. There was a crack in the right corner.

Everything would be settled tomorrow. She might lay a complaint against Constable Smith for causing her undue worry and stress.

Just for something fun to do in this bumpkin town.

***

John Winters walked into his office as the phone began to ring. It had been one of the best vacations in a long time. He and Eliza had gone nowhere, done nothing. Just relaxed at home, enjoyed long walks in the winter woods, dined out twice, went to a surprisingly pleasant cocktail party at the Chief Constable’s house. He’d even shoveled the driveway a couple of times without waiting for the snowplow service to come and do it. It was their first Christmas in their home in the Kootenays, and they’d wanted simply to enjoy it. And they had.

Winters had taken two weeks off leading up to and over Christmas, and his partner, Detective Ray Lopez, got the days on either side of New Year’s off. A yellow post-it note was stuck to Winters’ monitor. “Do NOT, repeat NOT, attempt to care for my plants. P.S. Happy New Year.”

The office housed GIS—the General Investigative Section—the detectives for the Trafalgar City Police. All two of them. Lopez, by virtue of being here longer, had the desk by the window. Where he carefully and lovingly cultivated a row of small pots of African violets. The first time he went on leave, he’d asked Winters to care for the plants. They’d almost died from neglect and Lopez was now afraid Winters would over-compensate.

No need to worry about that.

Between Christmas and New Years not much was likely to happen. He planned to fill his days reading two weeks’ worth of accumulated e-mail and finishing up overdue paperwork.

He answered the phone. “Sergeant Winters.”

“Merry Christmas, John. Or is it too late to wish one Merry Christmas?”

“Happy New Year is the accepted greeting for now until…I don’t actually know when you stop saying Happy New Year. Sometime in February, I think. Perhaps by Groundhog Day.”

“I probably don’t want to know what Groundhog Day is. But I feel compelled to ask. Do you go shooting these groundhogs and cook them up in some sort of native ritual?”

“Doc, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you. But I will anyway. We stand around a groundhog’s hole and watch it pop its head up to see if it sees its shadow.”

“I shudder to think.”

“It’s more common in the east than out here. What’s up, Doc?”

Childishly he always loved to say that to Doctor Shirley Lee, the pathologist. She never got the joke. Doctor Lee had lived in Canada since she was eight years old but, so sheltered had she been by a rich, insular family, there were plenty of cultural reference she didn’t get. She didn’t even know about Groundhog Day.

She said, “I’ve stopped the autopsy on Mr. Williams.”

Winters sat up. Ewan Williams had gone into the Upper Kootenay River on the early hours of Christmas morning. In the company of Jason Wyatt-Yarmouth and a yellow SUV. Both men had been trapped in their vehicle, in the ice-coated river, for more than thirty minutes before being pulled out. Cause of death should have been easy to determine: drowning and hypothermia. Which was why there’d been no big rush for the autopsy over the holidays.