by Vicki Delany
The room was filled with white light, like someone’s idea of heaven’s waiting room. However, unlike what Smith might hope to find in the heavenly vestibule, a slab of meat that had once been a human being lay on the table in the center of the room. He was naked, and in the indignity of death and the lights of the morgue his skin was the pale blue of skim milk. His mouth gaped open. His belly was flabby, the muscles of his arms and legs shrunken to pinpricks, genitals withered to insignificance. The table he lay on wasn’t like any table Smith had ever seen. A gutter ran all around it. She tried not to think of what might be the purpose of the gutter.
A young man stood against the wall, beside an array of instruments that would have done a medieval torture chamber proud. He was almost as pale as Montgomery, and a scattering of whiskers on his chin struggled to make a goatee. He nodded greetings.
“Russ,” Winters said. Smith dared not say anything.
Dr. Lee walked to Montgomery’s head. She pulled an elastic band out of the pocket of her lab coat and, with one twist, bound her hair. Then she held out her hand, and Russ handed her a saw. “I’ve made a visual examination of the exterior of the body, and am now going to penetrate the skull.” The doctor held the instrument over Montgomery’s head. “If you think you are going to be sick, Constable Smith,” she said, “leave immediately.” The saw roared to life. “It messes up the chain of evidence if I have to pick an observer’s vomit out of the cadaver’s brains.”
Smith put both hands to her mouth and fled.
□□□
“That wasn’t nice, Doctor,” Winters said, once Lee had finished her task and they’d left Russ to clean up.
“Constable Smith?” the doctor said. “Next time, she’ll be better prepared. She’ll last a good five minutes before running out the door. And before you know it, she’ll be as cool as a cucumber, just like you.”
“There’s something to be said, Shirley, for people who vomit at the sight of violent death.”
“Not in our professions, John.”
“Probably not. Tell me what you think, before I fetch our embarrassed constable.”
“Killed by a series of blows to the back of the head. No doubt by the proverbial blunt instrument. I don’t see any traces of the instrument itself in the wound, which almost certainly rules out wood. Something metal, probably, and clean. Death was instantaneous or as good as. There are no wounds, other than to the head, that I can see. No defensive wounds, no sign of restraint—bruising around the wrists or ankles, for example. His last meal had been steak and potatoes and Caesar salad. Why men of your age persist in believing that a few leaves of lettuce, if they’re coated with high-fat dressing, sprinkled with chunks of bacon and deep-fried bread cubes, is at all healthy, I hesitate to guess. He’d eaten less than an hour before death.” Lee shrugged thin shoulders. “My report will be ready before the end of the day.”
“Thanks, doc.” What the hell did she mean by men of your age? First Tyler suggested that Winters should try the delights of Viagra and now Shirley Lee was lumping him in with the overweight Reginald Montgomery.
“Time of death?” he asked.
“Less than an hour before I got there. He was very fresh.”
Lee walked away without another word. Back to her strange world of the dead.
Winters went in search of his constable.
She was sitting on a bench by the front doors of the hospital. The smokers, some of them in wheelchairs, or taking in liquids through IVs, watched her from the corner of their eyes.
“Ready to go?”
Her eyes were dry, but tinged with red. She held her hat in her hands. Strands of pale hair had escaped from the braid and caressed her face. Despite the blue uniform, the badge and gun belt, she looked like a high school cheerleader who’d just found out that her boyfriend, the captain of the football team, had been making merry behind the stands with another girl.
An ambulance sped past, under full lights and sirens.
“We have work to do back in Trafalgar,” Winters said. “Let’s go.”
A woman edged toward them; her ears might well have been flapping. The details of her face were concealed in a camouflage of cigarette smoke.
“Can I help you, madam?” he asked.
“Just bein’ friendly,” she chuckled. Some of the smoke cleared, to reveal a face that was a hundred and twenty if it was a day.
Winters walked away, heading for the van. Smith would follow or not. And if not, he would be well enough rid of her.
Heavy boots fell into step behind him. “I thought I’d be ready for it. But I wasn’t. I’ll get used to it, soon.”
“Pray you don’t get too used to it, Molly. I want to drop in on Mrs. Tyler. Officers have been visiting the businesses backing onto the alley to ask what time they closed up last night, and if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary. I’m hoping that people in Trafalgar will be more accommodating to our enquires than they were in Vancouver.”
“You were involved in the Sanders case, I’ve heard,” she said, her voice and eyes filling with interest.
“The depths to which humans can fall,” he said, shaking off many memories. “Alleged, of course.”
“Of course. Do you want me to drive?”
The color was back in her face, and her shoulders were set and her back straight.
“I do.”
Winters’ phone rang as they settled into the car. He listened briefly, before hanging up with a thanks. “A wallet and cell phone matching the description of Montgomery’s were found in a flowerbed a couple of blocks from the site. There was no cash in the wallet, but lots of credit cards. They’re on the way to the lab for fingerprinting. Too bad, I was hoping our perp would use the cards or make a call.”
“The watch?”
“Still looking. That watch is valuable. Might be that he couldn’t bring himself to toss it. If he tries to sell it we’ll have a good lead—I’ve had the description circulated to pawn shops and second-hand jewelry stores all across the province.”
“Someone else might have picked it up.”
“That would be a complication we don’t need.”
□□□
“Hi, Lucky,” a voice said from the doorway. “I’m glad to find you in. Have you got a minute to chat?”
Lucky Smith glanced at her watch. Past two o’clock, and she’d missed lunch once again. The better the business did, the harder she had to work. She’d thought it would be the other way around. She pushed her glasses down her nose and rubbed her eyes. “Meredith. Hello. What can I do for you?”
Meredith’s face shone with excitement, and her black hair swung as if a strong wind was behind her. “I’d like you to meet my colleague, Rich Ashcroft.”
A man, too handsome by half, crossed the room and extended his hand. Lucky rose from her office chair. He was short, with a large head. Close to Lucky’s age, maybe a bit more, but the lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth were stretched tight, the effects of surgery, perhaps. His hair was thick and black, and his perfectly straight teeth were a shade of white rarely found outside of a fashion magazine. Lucky shook his hand, and her skin shivered at the damp touch of his fingers. She sat back down.
“Rich is here to do a story about the peace garden,” Meredith said. She dragged a chair out of the corner and offered it to Ashcroft.
“A story?” Her interest caught, Lucky settled into her own chair. When the Commemorative Peace Garden had first been proposed, media attention had risen to a fevered pitch, to the surprise of everyone in town. Reporters from the national newspapers, even from the New York Times and Fox News, descended on town. But, as is the nature of media attention, they’d gone away as soon as something else captured their interest. The mayor had made it clear that he intended to approve the Peace Garden, and Lucky’s committee had collapsed with a contented sigh like the master of the house settling into his lounge chair after Christmas dinner.
But it was all in turmoil again. Tom Maas died,
taking his support for the gardens with him, and Reginald Montgomery looked under every rock he could find to locate embers of opposition—of which there were plenty. Linda Patterson, the interim mayor, couldn’t fight her way out of a paper bag. The entire pro-park committee was expecting Lucky to do something. And she was just too darned tired.
She picked an invoice off her desk and waved it in front of her face. Would this damned heat never let up?
“What paper are you with, Mr. Ashcroft?”
“Please, call me Rich. May I call you Lucky? I’d love to know the story behind that name. Is it what your parents christened you?”
“My legal name is Lucy. Many, many years ago, I was in the drama club at the University of Washington.”
“My sister went there. I wasn’t so lucky. Oops, that wasn’t meant to be a pun.” He grinned at her, and she found herself smiling back.
“I was second string.” She hesitated, but Ashcroft was looking at her with interest, as if he wanted to hear the story, and so she drifted into memories. Of when she was young, and the world was electrified with the possibility of change, and she’d been head-over-heels in love with a math major with radical opinions by the name of Andy Smith. “Just a stand-in. But the lead actor in The Glass Menagerie caught a dreadful cold the day of our opening. She could barely breathe, never mind project. So I took her place. And for some strange reason, I was a hit. So they called me Lucky, and it stuck.” Andy Smith had been in the audience that night, leaping to his feet and cheering when Lucy Casey took her bows. “Lucky Lucy. Lucy Lucky,” her castmates had chanted when the final curtain fell. “Lucky Smith,” Andy said later as they watched the lights of the city twinkling in the distance. Then he’d told her that he’d received his draft notice and was going to Canada. He wanted her to come with him. She had never acted again.
“You’re interested in the Commemorative Peace Garden?” she asked.
“It’s an incredible story. After all these years, you people are still looking for approval.”
A warning bell rang in the back of Lucky’s mind. You people? “The garden isn’t about us. It’s a memorial to everyone who’s stood up to oppose war. Many at great cost to themselves.”
“I have a cameraman due in town soon, and if we act fast I can get this story out tomorrow. Prime time. So why don’t we….”
“Cameraman? You mean a photographer?”
“Yeah, a fellow who takes pictures. He’s good, one of the best. He’ll do your face justice.”
Lucky looked at Meredith. “The local media covered this story in depth. Why the renewed interest?”
“Rich isn’t…” Meredith said.
“I’d like to talk to you at the place where the garden’s going to go. Get some visual background. Seven okay, Lucky?”
“Sorry, but it isn’t. The death of Reginald Montgomery has changed the dynamics a bit, so the committee’s meeting at my house at seven. Tomorrow morning?”
“You’re getting together tonight? That’s a perfect opportunity. How about I bring my photographer around and interview you all at once? The Daily Gazette has your address, right?”
“It’s in the phone book.”
“How about seven thirty, then. Hey, I’ve had a great idea. Let’s make my visit a surprise, Lucky.”
“Why?”
“You know what people are like soon as they think their face’ll be on TV. Or in the papers. They’ll come all dressed up, and look unnatural. I want to get the feel of a real salt-of-the-earth, middle-America planning committee.”
“This is Canada.”
He laughed. Lucky didn’t like his laugh; she couldn’t see much, if any humor in it. “I meant,” he said, “America as in the generic North America sense.”
“You said you’re from B.C. right?”
He stood up. “I’m looking forward to this, Lucky. We can do a great story.”
And he left, Meredith following with such enthusiasm that Lucky wondered why a tail wasn’t wagging on her skinny behind.
She snatched up the first piece of paper that came to hand and fanned herself again. Why was the Daily Gazette treating this as if it were a new story? The whole thing had been hashed out for months. It was so damned hot. How could she think straight when she was so hot?
“Lucky.” Duncan stuck his head into her office. “Someone from the police is here. He wants to talk to you, about when you left work yesterday. It’s not Molly.” His voice was tinged with disappointment, and Lucky hid a smile. Duncan was obviously smitten with Moonlight, and Moonlight blind to anything but her police career. It might be up to Lucky to do something about setting them both straight.
□□□
Ruth Tyler was delighted to receive visitors from the police. Sergeant John Winters had been the subject of gossip ever since he’d moved to town. Involved in the infamous Sanders case, it was said. So handsome, and married to Eliza Winters, the model!
Ruth showed her visitors into the living room. Winters was accompanied by the Smith girl, Moonlight. Such a ridiculous hippie name. But then Lucky Smith had always been a dreamer. And middle age didn’t seem to be mellowing her one bit. Lucky’s daughter was a pretty thing; Ruth would give her that, although the uniform didn’t suit her. Well, it wouldn’t, would it—it had been designed for a male body, and quite right too. Ruth insisted that Sergeant Winters take a seat beside the patio doors, in the best leather chair, with a view over the river.
She’d offered tea, which he politely refused. Moonlight pulled a notebook and pen out of her pockets. The girl’s boots were enormous; Ruth had wanted to ask her to remove them at the door, but somehow that didn’t seem a proper thing to say to the police.
Investigating the death of Mr. Montgomery, John Winters explained. Had she heard about it?
“Of course; it’s all the talk in town. I’d love to help you with your inquiries, but I’ve never met Mr. or Mrs. Montgomery.”
“Sometimes the smallest of details can help us, Mrs. Tyler,” he said. “Were you home last night, say from seven o’clock on?”
“Thursday’s the regular meeting of the Kootenay Kwilters Klub.” Ruth spelled out the unusual spelling precisely for Moonlight to write in her notebook. “The meeting finished at seven. I stopped to rent a video, and came straight home.”
“Was your husband here?”
“Louis is rarely home for dinner Thursdays. It’s the Dentists Association meeting night.”
“They meet once a week? Seems a lot for a professional group.”
Ruth shrugged. She didn’t care what Louis got up to on Thursdays. It was the one night of the week she looked forward to, when she could toss together a casual dinner, serve herself a glass of wine, or three, and settle in front of the TV to enjoy a movie he scorned as a chick flick. Louis found his Thursday meetings exhausting, and always went straight to bed once he got home.
She looked at Winters. He was a most attractive man. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. “The association does charity work, as well as discussing how to best serve the dental needs of the community.”
“Highly commendable. What time did your husband get home last night?”
Ruth scrunched up her forehead and thought. Something about last night had been different. “That’s odd,” she said.
“Odd? How so?”
“I put on Pride and Prejudice while having my dinner, and, do you know, the movie was almost over before Louis came in.”
“What time would that be, Mrs. Tyler?” he said. Moonlight’s pen scratched against paper.
“Ten? Louis is normally quite punctual, and gets home on Thursday nights around nine. Yes, I’m sure it was ten. I didn’t have to pause the movie to greet Louis and ask him how his day had been. It had just ended when I heard his key in the door. Perhaps it was an exceptionally short movie, although I don’t remember it being so when I saw it in the theatre.”
Ruth looked at her guests. John Winters was sitting straight in his chair, and Moonlight had stopped that a
nnoying scribbling. “What could my movie viewing possibly have to do with Mr. Montgomery’s death? I rented the video from Mike’s Movie Mansion, where I always go.” She stuck the index finger of her right hand into her mouth. “Oh, my god,” she whispered.
Moonlight stepped toward her. “Don’t be too concerned, Mrs. Tyler. We’re only just beginning our inquiries. Isn’t that right, Sergeant Winters?”
“Thank you for your professional opinion, Constable,” he said. “Now, if you’ll return to your corner and continue taking notes.”
“I don’t believe it,” Ruth said. “You think Mike killed Mr. Montgomery. He couldn’t have. I rent movies from Mike at least once a week, sometimes more. He was in his shop when I arrived, and he’s always open until ten. So there. You’ll have to look elsewhere for your killer, Mr. Winters.”
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” Winters got to his feet. Moonlight stuffed her notebook and pen into a pocket in the leg of her baggy pants with the blue stripe running down the leg. Winters headed toward the door, but stopped in the entranceway. “One thing more, Mrs. Tyler. I’d appreciate it if you could keep our conversation to yourself.” He smiled at her while Moonlight fumbled at the doorknob. “It is highly sensitive police business, you understand.”
“Of course.” A shiver passed through Ruth. She would die before betraying John Winters’ confidence. “I won’t tell a soul. Cross my heart.”
Chapter Nine
“You’re back on the beat, Smith. Effective immediately.”
“I only thought….”
“You thought too damned much. That woman appeared to be on the verge of telling us that she suspected her husband of murder and you decided to let her know that it didn’t really matter.”
Smith clenched the steering wheel. Tears gathered behind her eyes, and she blinked as rapidly as windshield wipers in a hurricane, trying to keep them from spilling over. Traffic was heavy as they drove through town. It was a summer’s Friday afternoon; weekenders were pulling into town, and locals leaving work early. Her father stood in front of Mid-Kootenay Adventure Vacations, chatting to passers-by. “Mrs. Tyler didn’t say a word about her husband. She thought we were after the video store owner.” She’d been only trying to help. To be a good cop, and a good citizen.