Eliza liked Margo. She was a reliable employee, good with the customers, enthusiastic about the art and jewelry they sold.
Although sometimes the woman’s constant chatter was almost enough to send Eliza screaming into the street.
Margo leaned over the counter. Instinctively Eliza leaned closer as well. “They say it was a military-style sniper’s rifle. Very hard to get hold of, for anyone who doesn’t have the right connections.”
Eliza blinked and jerked back. “I wouldn’t pay much attention to what they say.”
Margo winked. “Right. You’re in the know. My lips are sealed.”
Eliza groaned.
Chimes tinkled and the door swung open, saving her from having to make further conversation. Margo hurried to serve customers.
Eliza intended to spend the morning in the gallery, working on the accounts, planning a substantial one-man show scheduled for late spring. If the store got busy she’d stay, help Margo. Otherwise go home.
They were busy. Not many buyers, browsers mostly, people who didn’t ski but had come on vacation with those who did.
Margo sold one of the largest and most expensive paintings. Seven thousand dollars for an intricately detailed oil of Trafalgar’s Front Street bathed in moonlight on a snowy night. Margo chatted happily with the buyers, an older female couple from Spokane, and made arrangements for shipping the painting.
As Margo was occupied, Eliza rose to greet a new customer. A man, neat and casually dressed in jeans and a leather jacket. “Good morning. Welcome. If there’s anything I can help you with, please let me know.”
“I noticed that sketch in the window when I was passing the other day. I didn’t come in, but it’s been on my mind ever since.” He was referring to a charcoal drawing of skis piled on racks outside the lodge at Blue Sky. “The simplicity appeals to me. Do you have anything else by that artist?”
“We do. Over here. His name’s Alan Khan and he lives in Crescent Valley.”
“A skier, I bet.”
“Most likely.”
She showed him the display of Khan’s drawings. Simplicity was his trademark. With a few quick strokes of pencil, pen, or charcoal he could bring an entire vista to life.
They stood together for a few moments, admiring the work. The couple from Spokane left. Mozart played on the sound system.
“Nice. I’m William, by the way. William Westfield.” He held out his hand. He was no taller than she, excessively thin. Sunken cheeks in a pale face, deep shadows outlining sharp bones. His piercing blue eyes, the color of lake ice, were dragged down by folds of skin, but his smile was friendly.
She shook. “Eliza Winters. Welcome.”
“I was pleased to see the gallery opening. It’s a nice addition to the main street. I’m going to be moving soon, to a much smaller place, and I’d like something simple for the room.”
“Let me know if I can help you with anything.” Eliza left him to admire the sketches. Turning, she almost collided with Margo. Margo’s own lovely blue eyes were wide and her mouth half open. She lifted one hand to her throat.
Sensing her behind him, Westfield half turned. “Hello.”
Margo said nothing. She just stared.
Eliza touched her arm. “Show me the paperwork for that last sale, will you?”
“What?”
“I said, I want to see the paperwork. Did you remember to fill out the customs forms?”
She didn’t have to ask. Margo knew her job perfectly well. But the way she was looking at Westfield was obviously making the man highly uncomfortable. He shifted from one foot to another. He glanced back at the art, and then at Margo who continued to stare.
“Margo!” Eliza snapped.
The woman almost shook herself. When she looked at Eliza her eyes were out of focus, swimming with tears. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“I want to review the paperwork.”
“Right.” She bustled across the floor to the counter.
“I’ll give it some thought. Maybe come back later.” William Westfield sprinted out of the gallery.
Margo watched him go. A smile lit up her face and a single tear dropped from her right eye.
“Do you know that man?” Eliza asked.
“Oh, yes. I’d recognize him anywhere. He’s my son, Jackson.”
***
They gathered around the table in the conference room early Sunday morning, coffee and bagels resting by elbows and notebooks. “Let’s review what we found at the scene yesterday,” John Winters said.
“Fuck all, if I may be so blunt,” Alison Townshend said.
“Remarkably little,” Ron Gavin added. “Boot prints in the snow, indicating the shooter stood in place for some time. A shell casing, a cigarette butt. A clear trail leading away and getting lost in a busy parking lot. A dead woman. The remains of two shotgun shells. One that went through the body, one that missed and buried itself in a tree, almost certainly because the first one dropped her. I’ve sent them to ballistics along with the casing.”
“Two shots, but only one casing?” Townshend asked.
“That type of shotgun keeps the last casing in the bore. It can be removed by hand, or is ejected when the next shot’s fired.”
“What did you learn about the dead woman’s history?” Winters turned to Detective Lopez, who’d worked long into the night on the computer. Fortunately Lopez, father of school-aged children, hadn’t planned on taking any vacation time. “Catherine Marie Lindsay, nee Podwarsky. Age forty-one. No record of any sort. Not even a speeding ticket. Born and raised in Fernie. Got a B.A. from University of Victoria. Taught high school at a couple of public schools on the Island. Moved to Trafalgar with her family ten years ago. Teaches English at Trafalgar District High. Married, two children, Bradley, sixteeen, and Jocelyn, ten.”
“The husband?” Townshend asked.
“Gordon Roger Lindsay, age forty-one. Born Victoria. BSc in Computer Science from UVic. Worked for various computer companies in Victoria before starting his own business, Lindsay Internet Consulting.”
“How’s the business doing?”
“On the surface it’s doing fine. Nothing big time, but steady income, enough to support a middle-class family comfortably. Beneath the surface? Too early to tell.”
“Any chance he was the shooter?”
“He says he was home with his children all morning,” Winters said. “The son was sleeping but the daughter was up. We haven’t spoken to the children yet.”
“Has he been in the military?” Townshend asked.
“Good question,” Lopez answered. “But the answer’s no. And as far as I can see at this early date there are no significant gaps in his life where he might have been out of the country for anything longer than a vacation.”
“My gut,” Winters said, “tells me it wasn’t him. I was there, with him, when he saw her. Shock first, disbelief, then he broke down. But I’ve been wrong before.”
“Are the kids okay?” Townshend asked.
“He phoned his mom in Victoria and Cathy’s family in Fernie. They’re coming today, and a friend spent the night at the Lindsay house,” Lopez said.
No, Winters thought, the kids were surely not okay. How could they be?
“What do you think, John?” Lopez asked.
“I think this is about as bad a case as we can get. With the holidays we’re going to have trouble locating her co-workers and a lot of her friends. Right now, I’m leaning to mistaken identity.”
“You think the shooter was after someone else?”
“Possible. He stood in one place for a while, might have been waiting for the intended target to come in range. Did he make a mistake? Get the wrong person? People all bundled up in their winter gear—it can be hard to distinguish one from another sometimes. I’ve got officers on the trail this morning, talking to people who go there regularly. Maybe someone who walks that path every morning didn’t show up yesterday. Or was later than expected.”
“W
e know the son,” Lopez said.
“Go ahead.”
“Bradley Lindsay. Low grade troublemaker. He’s been caught more than once drinking beer in the street, at least once sharing a joint with his friends. He’s been drunk and disorderly in the park late at night and driven home by an officer. Remember that arson at the equipment shed at the golf club last month? I’m pretty sure it was him and his pals. Couldn’t prove anything.”
“Minor stuff,” Townshend said.
“That’s the things I know about.”
“Mighty big leap from a juvenile d&d to killing Mom.”
“Just putting it out there.”
“Do any of his friends have the resources or contacts to obtain a weapon of the sort was used?”
“Not that I’m aware of. But who knows what people have hidden in their basements.”
“A shot like that one,” Gavin said, “wouldn’t have been exceptionally difficult, but the shooter had to have some skill with firearms. Two shots. The first a direct hit.”
“When do you expect to hear from ballistics?” Winters asked, rubbing his thumb across the face of his watch.
“It’ll be a week at least. Ten days maybe. Same with getting DNA off the cigarette butt, if there is any.”
“If it was a hit by mistake, it’ll be a tough one,” Winters said. “What do we do on any investigation? We start with the victim. Does she have enemies? Why would someone, anyone, want her dead? Family usually. A friend sometimes. A lover, a person with a grudge. If it was a mistake, if it had nothing to do with Cathy Lindsay? All our normal line of questioning will be a waste.”
“There’s one possibility that’s worse,” Townshend said.
“What’s that?”
“Random. No motive. He popped the first person to walk into his sights. Because he could.”
***
“Excuse me, can I speak to you for a moment?” Molly Smith asked the young couple strolling along the hiking trail above town. They stopped and gave her nervous smiles.
She’d been standing here since six a.m. when it was still dark. Told to talk to anyone who walked by. Find out if they came here regularly, and if they did, get their names and numbers so the detectives could ask them about people who were in the habit of hiking here at this time of day.
So far, there hadn’t been many to ask.
Today was Sunday. Not too cold, the air crisp and fresh, new snow underfoot. The trail should be as busy as it ever got.
But this couple was the first to come by in a long time.
Word, obviously, had spread. People were keeping away from the path, in case someone was still out there. With a rifle scope trained on their backs. Gavin and Townshend had pronounced themselves finished, the body had been removed, the tent dismantled. The clearing where Norman led them remained closed off.
Kids had been sneaking through the woods earlier, teenage boys, searching for blood spatter in the snow. Smith had ordered them to get lost.
“It’s about that shooting yesterday, right?” the woman tittered. “We heard about it at the hotel. They said it’s safe to come up. Is it?”
“You don’t live around here?”
“We’re from Toronto. Here to ski for a week. Great conditions, fabulous snow. Do you ski, Officer?”
“Oh yeah. If you’re looking for…” She snapped herself back to the job at hand. Nothing Molly Smith would rather talk about than skiing. She cleared her throat. “I mean, were you here yesterday?”
“The bus picked us up outside the hotel at eight. We got back after dark. Sorry. This morning we decided to have a bit of a lie-in, room-service breakfast, a hike, and go shopping later.”
“Thanks,” Smith said. “Hope you enjoy Trafalgar. Oh, and the best view on the mountain is at the top of the run called Blond Ambition.”
They thanked her, linked gloved hands, and strolled on. The man said something and the woman laughed. As they rounded the bend, a single woman passed them, warmly dressed with a woolen cap pulled over her forehead and a scarf wrapped around her mouth.
In this weather, you couldn’t tell a hiker from a bank robber.
“Excuse me,” Smith said, “Can I speak to you for a moment?”
“You can speak to me all you want, Molly.” Constable Dawn Solway pushed her hat back.
“Oh, it’s you. What are you doing up here? I thought Francesca was visiting. Did you have a fight or something?”
“No, we did not have a fight. But we might well if our plans for this evening get screwed up. I got called in. I’m undercover.”
“What?”
“I suppose one could get more onerous duties on a pleasant day. I’m walking the trail. Looking for anything or anyone suspicious.”
“Suspicious in what way?”
“Maybe the shooter will come back to admire his handiwork. They do sometimes, you know.”
An icy finger ran up Smith’s spine. She felt very vulnerable, standing at the crest of the hill, exposed.
Solway laughed. “You should see the look on your face.” Her own face turned serious. “Hell of a thing, out for a walk and out of nowhere someone blows you away. I’m not surprised no one much is up here today.”
“Did you know the woman? Lindsay?”
“Not her, but I’ve met her husband. Their son’s a right tearaway. Always has been. Regular little prick. Been picked up a few times. Daddy hurries down to the station to settle it. You must have run into him at some time or another, Bradley Lindsay?”
“Oh, yeah. Now I remember. He was drunk in the park one night, singing at the moon or some such juvenile stupidity. I drove him home and got his mom out of bed. She was not pleased. I knew I’d seen her somewhere. You think he…”
“Na. He’s a kid with no conscience and no impulse control. He might trip his mom at the top of the stairs and cause her to break her neck, think it’s a great joke, but he wouldn’t go to the time and effort to take anyone out. I’d better be on my way, try to blend in. I’m going to take a break in a few minutes and go to Eddie’s. Want anything?”
“A hot mocha’d be good. Heavy on the whipped cream.”
“You got it.” Solway pulled her hat back down and sauntered off.
Smith stamped her feet to restore circulation. She held her gloved hands to her face in an attempt to create some warmth. Snow had fallen all through the night but stopped not long ago and the clouds had cleared. The sun, cold and white, shone in a brilliant blue sky, and on the ground snow sparked as if diamonds were scattered across it. The glare was so strong she wore sunglasses.
A dog barked and she smiled to see him coming out of the trees. Norman, Adam Tocek following. He gave her a grin. “Looking for a hot time, babe?”
“Where’d you come from?” She greeted Norman with a scratch behind the ears.
“Some detective you are. We came in from the other direction. Sniffing around, so to speak. Wondering if anyone returned to the clearing overnight, slipped under the tape. The snow’s deep, all traces of yesterday gone. To my eyes, that is. Norman can still figure out what went on. Sometimes, I know he’s trying to tell me, but I’m too darn stupid to understand.” He gave the dog an affectionate slap on his solid rump.
“Did anyone? Come back, I mean.”
“Don’t think so. Trail’s pretty quiet today.”
“People are spooked. Naturally. Word travels fast, and I’ll bet the story’s growing in the telling.”
“Terrorists in our midst. Serial killers. Slaughter us all in our beds.” He glanced back through the trees. “Still tough, though. Whatever happened. You know Doug O’Malley?”
Smith nodded. O’Malley was a Mountie. An older guy, about to retire.
“He took a creative writing class at the college last year. Cathy Lindsay was the teacher. A killing like this. A local, someone a lot of people knew. They’re going to take it personally.”
They turned at the sound of a car pulling off to the side of the road. Two young women got out, accompanied
by two dogs. The dogs ran in circles, churning fresh snow, peeing on everything in sight.
“Back to work,” Smith said.
“Catch you later.” Norman and Adam slipped back into the woods. One of the new arrivals leapt forward as if to follow only to be brought up short by his leash.
***
John Winters leaned back in his chair and rubbed his stiff neck. Ray Lopez had gone to interview one of Cathy’s friends. Try and find out if the Lindsays were having trouble in their marriage, if they had money problems, if Cathy mentioned that she’d been worried about anything. Winters had arranged to call on Gord Lindsay at two. He had time to grab a coffee before facing the difficult task of asking a man if he’d killed his wife.
A Cold White Sun: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Series) Page 6