by Vicki Delany
“Do whatever you can to keep media attention away. We haven’t had a murder here in more than twelve months. If this turns out to be a domestic, it won’t look as bad as a political.”
“I hear you.” Winters hung up. Small-town politics. Not much different than the big city, after all. Maybe a bit worse—after all, the stakes were so much smaller. He made a quick call to the voice mail of a friend from his days on the Vancouver PD to request a peek into the state of Montgomery’s business, finished his orange juice, and went to join his wife in bed. Perhaps she’d not be too deeply asleep and he could still salvage something out of their twenty-fifth anniversary.
□□□
Smith pulled off her uniform and put on jeans and a T-shirt. She’d love to take her Glock, go around to Charlie’s place and blast a few holes in his knees. That would keep him away from Christa, all right. Unfortunately, the Trafalgar City Police frowned on independent thinking of that sort.
She picked up the photograph sitting on her bedside table. Graham smiled at her, trapped forever in an organized scatter of colored dots. It had been taken on the beach at Tofino. The sky was dark—a storm moving in, fast. There was no color in the ocean. A wave reared up behind him. His smile was wide, his teeth white, his body young and full of life. They’d danced in the waves, laughed at the storm, held their arms out to the wind, and their mouths to the rain. They’d run back to the B&B and made love while the storm crashed all around them. When both weather and lovers were sated, they’d gone in search of crab chowder, whole wheat bread, good beer.
She blinked back a tear, returned the picture to its place, and ran downstairs. The light over the chair in the living room was switched off, the kitchen deserted.
She grabbed the keys to her mom’s car off the hook by the kitchen door.
Smith drove Lucky’s beaten-up old Pontiac Firefly. down the highway and crossed the long black bridge into town. Trafalgar was an old town; old for western Canada. Streetlights shone through the thick leaves of large walnut trees. The pavements were uneven, most of the houses were originals, many in ill repair. So many transients passed through town, and there wasn’t much in the way of apartments, that many of the historic houses at the foot of the mountain had been broken into flats. She pulled up in front of Christa’s building. A black cat sat on the steps of the house next door, its eyes yellow pools against the dark fur.
Smith knocked lightly, knowing that the neighbors could be nasty if disturbed. Her hand was still raised when the door opened, Christa peeking out from behind it.
The two women climbed a narrow staircase and made a sharp right into Christa’s flat.
Christa threw herself onto one of the two bean bags that, along with three milk crates, made up her living room furniture.
“You okay?” Smith asked.
“Why doesn’t he stop this? He has to know that he’s only making me mad at him. Even if I’d ever considered going out with him, I sure wouldn’t now.”
“He doesn’t know anything of the sort. He thinks he’s reminding you of his devotion. And that you’ll eventually come around to seeing things his way.”
Christa started to cry. Her face was so red and blotchy, it was obvious this wasn’t the night’s first crying jag. She shifted her right hip to pull an almost worn-through tissue from the pocket of her shorts.
“I’ll make tea,” Smith said. “Come sit at the table.” She held out her hand.
Christa took it and Smith pulled her friend to her feet. She wrapped the other woman in a fierce hug. When they separated Smith said, “My mom believes that tea holds the secret to the solution of all life’s problems. And you know my mom’s a wise woman.”
Christa cracked a smile. “I do. How are your folks anyway? I’ve been so busy I haven’t been over for a visit in a long time.”
“Not good, I fear.” Smith knew her way around this kitchen as well as her mother’s. She lit the gas on the stove and placed the kettle on the element. “I’m trying not to notice it, but they’re hardly talking to each other. Mom is so into this peace garden, it’s consuming her.”
“Lucky’s always been like that. You remember when the province removed funding from women’s second stage housing? I was surprised she didn’t have us all manning the barricades. Like in Les Misérables. And when that politician told her it was a financial decision? He was lucky to leave with his head on his shoulders.” Christa laughed. “There’s a loaf of bread from Alphonse’s in the cupboard, and cheese in the fridge. I can’t normally afford anything from there—four bucks for a loaf of bread, whew, but I needed a treat.”
Not the time, Smith thought, to remember Alphonse’s Bakery and the alley behind it. “It’s not just Mom rushing to the barricades, to use your analogy, and Dad supporting her. They’re on opposite sides on this one. He thinks the park’s a bad idea.”
“Are they fighting a lot?”
“No. And that isn’t good. They’ve always fought—they’re both so passionate about things—but now they’re hardly speaking. It’s creepy. Kinda like a horror movie when everything goes quiet and you know the monster’s about to crash through the walls.”
“Bummer.” Christa was an only child; her mother had died when she was in primary school, her father devastated by the death. She’d been unofficially raised by the Smith family.
Smith put the loaf onto the table, along with margarine and a pie-shaped wedge of brie. The kettle whistled, and she poured hot water into the brown tea pot with the broken handle. “It’s two a.m. and I’m not here to talk about my mom and dad. Spill, kid.”
Christa explained about taking the phone off the hook, the knocking on the door, the neighbor screaming at her.
Smith munched on bread and cheese. “If you just wanna talk, go ahead. But if you want my advice, you already have it.”
Christa stirred milk into her mug. “I have to get some work done or I’ll fail this course.”
Smith watched a fly trying to find its way out the window over the sink.
“Okay, I’ll make a complaint.”
Smith knew how hard this decision was for her: no matter how harshly life treated her, Christa always believed the best of people. “Charlie Bassing might look like a tough guy, but he’s a weasly no-account nerd beneath all that steroid-enhanced muscle. No point in calling right now, you’ll get night dispatch. Go down to the station tomorrow, that’ll be best. You want me to come with you?”
Christa nodded.
“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. No
t 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.