Chapter Eight
Molly Smith stood in the snow, stamping her feet. She’d told Dave Evans he could go back on patrol. He’d given her his typical supercilious smirk, climbed into the truck, and executed what he no doubt considered to be a spectacular U turn, spraying snow in all directions.
For a while there, she’d felt like part of the detective team. Backing up Adam, following the scent, listening in on the detectives’ conversation. Even participating when she dared.
And then she’d been sent to stand at the top of the road beside the yellow tape, record everyone official who came and left in her log book, and tell bystanders nothing to see here, move along, please.
Never mind that the temperature had to have dropped ten degrees since she left her apartment in the early-morning dark.
As she held her gloved hands to her cheeks and grumbled under her breath, she struggled to recall where she’d seen the dead woman. The face wasn’t particularly memorable, probably didn’t even look much in death as it had in life. Smith saw so many people from one day to the next. Around town, at the police station reporting a minor car accident, waiting in line at Big Eddie’s or Alphonse’s Bakery, standing in the crowd watching an altercation, walking a dog in the no-dog area downtown.
A man approached from the west. Walking fast and looking as though he were not enjoying the outing. A reluctant exerciser, Smith thought.
“I’m sorry sir, but the trail’s closed for the day. You’ll have to turn back.”
“Closed. Why?”
Because I said so, crossed her mind. Instead she said, “A police investigation.”
“I’m looking for someone. My wife. I think…she came this way earlier. She’s…” his voice trailed off “…been gone a long time.”
He was in his early forties, close to the age of the dead woman. Average height, overweight. Except for the padding of fat on his face, he wasn’t bad looking with high cheekbones, a straight nose, wide hazel eyes under thick lashes, brown hair wet with snow. He hadn’t shaved today and black stubble lay thick on his face and neck. He looked, quite simply, terrified.
“If you’ll wait a moment, sir, I’ll ask someone to join us.” She touched the buttons on her radio. “Sergeant Winters.”
“Go ahead.”
She turned slightly, away from the man, not wanting him to overhear her. “There’s a guy here, says he’s looking for his wife. She came this way. Hasn’t come back. Hey! You can’t go there.”
He paid her no attention, but ran down the trail, feet slipping on the snow and ice in overlarge boots.
“He’s gotten past me, coming your way,” she told Winters. “Stop. Please, sir. Wait here. Someone’s coming.”
Should she leave her post? Run after him? And then what? Wrestle him to the ground and snap on handcuffs? She took a step forward. She stopped and looked over her shoulder. No one was approaching who had no reason to be here. Making up her mind, she ran after the man.
Winters rounded the bend. He lifted his hand, and the man slid to a stop. They talked for a moment, and then disappeared down the path.
***
This could not be happening.
Gord Lindsay had assumed Cathy’d run into a friend, gone for coffee and not bothered about him and the kids and breakfast. She could be a self-centered bitch sometimes. At the worst, she might have taken a tumble, twisted her ankle maybe. Been driven to the hospital and not able to get to a phone to call home.
When he saw the policewoman and the yellow crime scene tape, the marked and unmarked cars and vans gathered at the top of Martin Street, his heart began hammering in his chest and he was suddenly drenched in cold sweat.
The cop mumbled something he didn’t hear and turned away from him. Gord ran.
He knew. He knew Cathy was up ahead.
A man approached. Arms outstretched, hands up, he planted himself in the center of the path. “I’m Sergeant Winters,” said a calm voice. “Can I have your name, sir?”
All Gord could see over the man’s shoulder were trees and snow and gray clouds. “Lindsay. Gord Lindsay.”
“Mr. Lindsay, Constable Smith says you’re looking for someone. Your wife. Do you have reason to believe your wife might have come this way?”
The man wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were kind. Snowflakes dotted his mustache and his short gray and black hair was damp with melting snow.
“What?”
“Tell me about your wife, sir. Mrs. Lindsay, is she?”
Gord nodded. He forced himself to calm down. If the police were blocking the path, he reasoned, Cathy would not have come this way.
“Mrs. Lindsay, yes. Cathy. Look, I’ve left my children at home. I don’t want them to worry. I have to be getting back. Maybe Cathy saw the trail’s closed and went around on the street. She and Spot do that sometimes. Thanks, buddy.”
Gord had had a heart attack a year ago. It wasn’t a real heart attack, but it had felt like one. His doctor told him to take the bout of heartburn as a warning and start taking better care of himself. He used to be so fit. He’d played soccer in university. Ran fifty kilometers a week, sailed every chance he got. Man couldn’t get better exercise than a day out on the ocean in his own boat. First came the responsibilities of the job, then the kids, Cathy wanting to have friends over, to visit friends. Too busy, always too busy. Tomorrow he’d go for a run. Start slow, work back up to fifty clicks a week.
Cathy’d be home by now. It was well past noon; she’d be angry at missing the day on the slopes. She’d blame the delay on Gord.
It was always Gord’s fault.
Yes, he’d better be getting home. He turned around. The policewoman was watching him, her cheeks red with cold and her eyes bright with interest.
“Spot?” the man said. “Who’s Spot?”
“Our dog. Well, Cathy and Jocelyn’s dog. I can’t stand the yappy bitch myself. I mean, Spot’s the bitch. Not Cathy.”
“What breed of dog is Spot?”
“Bichon Frise. Not a purebred. Just a spoiled mutt.”
“Why don’t you come with me, sir?” Gord noticed the police officers exchange a look. A look that might have been tinged with sadness.
Chapter Nine
Cathy Lindsay had been a teacher. Schools were close-knit places, a community tucked inside the larger community. Winters needed to talk to her co-workers, but most of them were very likely out of town. Spending the school break with distant family, skiing in Whistler, sunning themselves on a Caribbean beach. They might even be at home, ignoring the ringing phone in case it was some parent or student calling with a complaint.
If Cathy Lindsay had not been the intended target of the shooter this investigation would be a nightmare.
But, for now, Winters had to assume someone wanted the woman dead. That she had an enemy. A bad one.
Or her husband had enemies so vengeful they killed his wife to make their point.
Detective Ray Lopez was working on a search warrant to get into the couple’s bank records. Enemies usually meant money. Large amounts of money coming into (or going out of) accounts. He’d have to try to get access to the husband’s business account as well. That might not be so easy. The man owned an Internet development firm. He had an office and employees in Trafalgar and more employees in Victoria. Winters only knew that because a friend of Lopez’s wife had used Lindsay’s company to set up a web page to promote her home jewelry business.
Winters had been living in Trafalgar for three years now. He still didn’t have his finger in a fraction of the complex web of relatives, friends, acquaintances, and simple gossip that Molly Smith and Ray Lopez did. It could be damn frustrating sometimes.
He needed boots on the ground. He needed officers walking the hiking path, knocking on doors of houses that backed onto the ridge or lined the road to the church. He needed people talking to the Lindsay neighbors, Cathy’s co-workers. They were a small police service, one of the few municipal forces remaining in the B.C. Interior, dependent on the RCMP to give
them what officers could be spared. Not much, but it would have to be enough.
The autopsy was scheduled for Monday. He scarcely needed a pathologist to tell him the woman had died after being shot in the back with a single hit from a shotgun. But, it had to be done. Not everything important was immediately apparent. The body had to be forced to give up its secrets.
***
Molly Smith was relieved not to see the Chief Constable’s car parked in her mother’s driveway. He was coming around altogether too much for her liking.
Not, of course, that Molly thought her mom should spend the rest of her life alone after the death of Molly’s dad, Andy. Lucky was nothing if not gregarious. She had the widest circle of friends of anyone in the Mid-Kootenays. She was involved in just about any environmental or political issue Molly could name.
And sometimes ones she couldn’t.
It wasn’t as if Lucky had to worry about being alone in life.
Sure, she probably enjoyed the attentions of a man. Someone to cook for, someone to dress up for, to go out for a quiet evening with.
To, shudder, have sex with.
But did it have to be the Chief Constable of Trafalgar? Molly Smith’s boss.
Paul Keller, overweight, out of shape, who smoked constantly and drank can after can of Coke when he couldn’t get his nicotine fix. He was well-groomed, always neatly dressed, but he smelled like he’d just stepped back from the line at a forest fire.
Molly wondered how her mother could stand it.
She’d said something to that effect to Adam one night. While they were lying entwined in front of the fireplace in his house in the woods and Norman snored in his sleep and all his legs moved as if dreaming he were chasing a bank robber.
“You know, Molly,” Adam said, his finger drawing circles on her flat stomach. “Lucky doesn’t want to think you’re having sex either. I’ll bet she pretends you and I are just good friends.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She taught me all about birth control and sexually-transmitted diseases when I was in grade seven. She knows.”
“You think she and the Chief are any different than us?”
“It’s just that…they’re old.”
“They’re still human, Molly.”
“Not my mom.”
He’d laughed and gotten up to throw another log on the fire and that was the end of that painful conversation.
“I heard the news,” Lucky said, giving her daughter a kiss on the cheek.
“What news might that be?”
“Would you like a drink? There’s some wine left over from last night.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Smith shrugged off her coat. She hung it on the hook by the door beside her dad’s cap. No one had had the strength to throw away Andy’s favorite hat.
She’d spent her shift up at the hiking trail, guarding the scene and logging visitors. Whenever anything seemed to be happening—forensic vans coming or leaving, the coroner, more officers—a crowd could gather out of nowhere.
They kept the body where it fell for most of the day as the forensics people did their thing both under the tent and in the clearing. Forensics might be an interesting career direction, Smith thought sometimes. She’d have to put in a good five to ten years as a patrol officer before being considered for the course and the job.
Not a lot of openings for forensic guys around here. Ron Gavin would probably be retiring in the next few years, longer for Alison Townshend. Competition for their positions would be fierce; jobs in the beautiful B.C. Interior were in high demand.
She’d spent a good part of the boring day considering, once again, her future.
To stay in Trafalgar, which she loved. Near her mother, whom she loved. With Adam, whom she also loved, but wasn’t convinced she wanted to spend her life with. Trafalgar, where she didn’t have much of a chance to make detective or even sergeant, never mind go into forensics.
Or to move to a city, to a larger force, to get big city policing experience.
The body of Cathy Lindsay had been removed shortly before six o’clock, as the sun dipped behind the western mountains. A good sized crowd had shown up for that. They stood respectfully watching the covered stretcher being loaded into the coroner’s van. A couple of men had doffed their hats.
“Cathy Lindsay, I hear,” Lucky said now, pouring the wine.
“Yeah. Did you know her, Mom?”
“No. She didn’t teach at the school when you and Samwise went there. Your father got a quote from her husband to set up the web page for the store a couple of years ago. It was quite expensive so we went with someone else. They have young children, I hear. It’s going to be hard on them.”
“Hard on everyone.”
A small town, a well-known family. Yes, it would be hard. “Have you arrested anyone?” Lucky asked.
“No, and don’t ask any more questions, Mom. I don’t know anything, and I couldn’t tell you if I did. Is that beef stew I smell?”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it, Moonlight. I will find out what’s happening in town.”
“I have absolutely no doubt about that.” Moonlight Legolas Smith was the name on Molly’s birth certificate and passport. What a name for a cop. Her only brother had been christened Samwise. Definitely not a good fit for an oil company lawyer.
Lucky and Andy had been hippies when they met. Passionate idealists when they settled in the Kootenays, opened a wilderness adventure business, started a family.
Lucky wasn’t an idealist any more. But she was still mighty passionate.
Sylvester gave Molly’s arm a shove with his nose, and she obligingly leaned over to give him a hearty scratch behind his ears.
Chapter Ten
The chimes over the door tinkled, and a woman entered the art gallery in a flurry of snow and stamping feet, coffee cup gripped in mittened hands. “Morning,” Margo shouted. “Did you have a nice day off, Eliza?”
“Quiet,” Eliza replied. Deadly quiet in fact. John arrived home late the previous night. He’d touched her face with freezing cold hands and kissed her with icy lips before heading upstairs for long hot shower.
He came back, hair damp, face shaven, dressed in jeans and a fleece Eliza’s mother had given him last year, a souvenir of Venice, Florida.
“Bad one?” she asked him.
“It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. Is there anything for dinner? I didn’t have time for lunch.”
Eliza didn’t mind that John had been called out. That the quiet day together she’d planned had turned into just a quiet day. She’d spent it working on gallery business and managing her portfolio before going for a long walk by herself and then eating a light supper in front of the computer. That was the way it was and the way it had always been. Things might have been different if they’d had children. But they hadn’t and thus their careers had remained important to each of them and they’d learned to accommodate the other.
Eliza had recently opened two art galleries, which she’d named The Mountain in Winter. One in the fashionable Kitsilano district of Vancouver, and this one in Trafalgar. The Kitsilano store specialized in serious art selling for serious prices, and she had an experienced gallery manager in charge. The Trafalgar store primarily featured paintings by a variety of local artists. The sort of work Eliza hoped would appeal as gifts to residents and visitors. Snowy mountain scenes, impressionist-style watercolors of the ski hills. Everything soft and pleasing. She displayed jewelry as well, delicate handmade pieces of intricately carved and twisted metal. It had proved to be a good decision, and the stock had sold well over the winter season when the town filled with skiers. Not good enough to turn a profit, mind, but that wasn’t her concern. Not yet. Give the business another year or two.
The ski hills would be closing in a couple of weeks, and Eliza would feature more traditional art gallery shows until campers and kayakers arrived in the summer.
She managed this store herself. Retail was a new experience for her, and she found she
liked running the gallery. She had one employee, Margo Franklin who had no background in the arts but was looking for something not too onerous to do with her retirement.
“I guess your husband’s involved in that murder, eh?” Margo mumbled from the depths of the closet.
Eliza refrained from saying, he’s not involved, he’s the investigating officer. “He was called out yesterday, yes.”
“Can you imagine? A murder like that, here in Trafalgar. Steve says it must be a gangbanger thing. They mistook her for some drug dealer who’d done them wrong. Or her husband maybe. It was intended as a warning to him. Maybe they got the wrong person. I met her once, I think. Cathy Lindsay. She teaches…taught…at the high school.”
A Cold White Sun: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Series) Page 5