Valley of the Lost

by Vicki Delany

  Silence stretched between them. The window air conditioner continued to wheeze and emit lukewarm air. A phone rang in the outer office, to be answered before the first ring died away.

  “I’d like to ask, if you don’t mind,” Blacklock said, “what’s your interest in the girl? Accidental death, the paper said. Tragic, of course, for one so young, but not the business of the police. Don’t tell me there’s more to the story than was in the papers?” His laugh was tight.

  The second time the door flew open, Winters rose from the chair, but didn’t reach for his gun.

  Nancy Blacklock stood there, smiling cheerfully. “What a pleasure, John,” she said. The heavy black liner around her eyes had run as she sweated, giving her the appearance of a raccoon. Or an old-time movie bandit. She slipped a tiny pink cell phone into a pocket of her cavernous bag. “I’ve just heard the news. I’m so dreadfully thrilled.” She rushed forward and enveloped him in an enormous hug. The force of her perfume was almost enough to bring water to his eyes. “Everything is working out perfectly. You’re ahead of me; we don’t have the contract printed yet.”

  Blacklock lumbered to his feet. “You remember, dear, that Sergeant Winters is with the Trafalgar City Police.”

  Nancy put her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, dear. I quite forgot. Have I said something I shouldn’t have?” She tipped her head to one side and batted her black-rimmed eyes between her husband and their guest like a junior high girl trying to decide between the captain of the football team or the student council president. The expression did not suit her.

  “Nancy, we’re conducting a business meeting here.” Steve Blacklock’s voice was deep and firm, as suited a man of business not pleased at the indiscretion of a fluffy-brained wife. But he couldn’t quite carry it off, and Winters knew the man was pleased at the break in conversation. “Anyway,” Blacklock said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Nancy giggled. “Oops. My bad. I’ll be on my way. Sorry to interrupt. I got a call from Frank. Mrs. Winters has kindly accepted our offer, Steve. This is all so exciting. Toodles.” She waved her fingers, the nails long and red, at them both, and backed out of the crowded office, reaching into her bag for her phone as she went.

  Toodles?

  “That was somewhat off topic,” Blacklock said. “But welcome news nonetheless. My wife has excellent taste, and I’m pleased she’s pleased your wife’s going to work with us. Why, that pretty much makes us partners, John.” He beamed.

  “I have no involvement in my wife’s business affairs.” Winters pulled his card out of his pocket and passed it to the developer. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Blacklock. If you remember anything about Ashley, no matter how insignificant it seems, please give me a call.”

  Blacklock accepted the card. With his other hand, he picked up the photograph and attempted to pass it over.

  “Keep it,” Winters said. “It might help you remember.”

  The developer put the picture down. “Okay.”

  In the outer office Nancy Blacklock was pacing up and down, phone clamped to her ear. Bernice rolled her eyes at Winters. He said his good-byes and Nancy wiggled her fingers in his direction without pausing to take a breath in her conversation. “A coup, my dear, this is quite the coup. They said she’d retired and wouldn’t be interested in our little project for what we could offer. But let me tell you, I know…”

  Small towns.In Vancouver he’d be taken off a case that had a personal involvement as intense as this one. But in Trafalgar? If the city tried to employ only officers who didn’t know anyone who might be related to someone who was involved in an investigation, or who played golf once a week with a potential witness, or who had once upon a time asked the suspected perp to replace the water pump, they’d be hiring new officers every week.

  The arrival of Nancy Blacklock had pretty much put a halt to any confession Steve Blacklock might have been about to make to Sergeant Winters. Not that a confession had seemed to be imminent. Unless he arrested Blacklock, upon no grounds, there was nothing more he could learn here, today, about the secretive Ashley Doe.

  Blacklock wasn’t going to say why the girl had thought he’d help her. It had been suggested earlier that Ashley might have been involved in prostitution, but nothing had come up. Not even a whisper of a suggestion that the girl had been hooking. It was possible that she’d specialized in exclusive relationships, or even had a secret lover, but so far Winters had no reason to believe that.

  Blacklock might, quite genuinely, not have a clue about anything Ashley had told Mike Jergens. They might have been arguing about the resort, as Blacklock said, and Ashley wanted to make it all sound much more dramatic as a reward to Mike for buying her a coffee.

  A teenager trying to sound dramatic, to make herself important—what a concept.

  Everything Winters had heard from Mike, of Mike’s Movie Mansion, was third hand.

  In a web of lies and half-lies, wishes and dreams, made up names and unclaimed babies, who could tell what was the truth?

  There was, Winters reminded himself as he turned the key in the ignition, one incontestable truth: Ashley Doe was dead and someone had killed her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Wearing the tiniest of bikinis, Eliza Winters let her body soak up the hot Hawaiian sun. She sipped a coconut-flavored drink with an umbrella in it and watched her grandmother swimming in the sea. An airplane flew overhead, low, much too low, the noise of its engines as irritating as a swarm of mosquitoes. Then Eliza remembered that not only could she no longer wear an almost-nonexistent bikini, but her beloved grandmother had died many years ago. And it wasn’t a plane: it was the damned phone.

  The light from the clock on the night table said two.

  “Winters,” John said into the phone. “Go ahead, Dave.” He sat up.

  Eliza rolled over, suppressing a groan.

  “That’s okay,” she heard John say. “What have you got?”

  It wasn’t okay with her. But she’d never say so. Her husband was a cop, middle of the night phone calls were part of the job.

  When she met John, more than twenty-five years ago, she was seriously involved with a fashion photographer. When she broke it off, because she’d fallen in love with the handsome, serious Constable John Winters, the fashion photographer, Rudy, short for Rudolph, Steiner, had taken it badly. When the news got around that she was engaged, Rudy took her out for a drink and warned her against marrying someone with that job. It would never work, Rudy, and all her friends, said. But it had worked. A great deal better than it would have with Rudolph, no longer called Rudy, whom Eliza still heard about now and again. He was at the top of his profession, and on his fourth—or was it fifth?—wife. Eliza doubted things would have been any different if he’d married her: every wife had been a good deal younger than her predecessor. The current one was even younger than Eliza had been when she and Rudy had been an item.

  Tonight, wrapped in a light summer duvet, buried deep in the big bed in their house on the side of the mountain, Eliza tried to control her breathing. There was no point in getting mad at her husband.

  “Stay there. Tell the woman… What’s her name?”

  Yup, he was going out.

  “If she looks to be ready to leave, ask her to wait. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  John slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom. When he came back, she asked, “Trouble?”

  “Just someone who needs me. Go back to sleep.”

  “I need you.”

  He leaned over and snapped the spaghetti strap of her summer pajama top. “As long as you still need me when I get back.” He touched her sleep-tussled head and went to the closet.

  She rolled over and pretended to be asleep when he left the room.

  As the sound of his car disappeared into the night, she got out of bed and went downstairs.

  In all the years of their marriage, she had never slept well when he was called out at night. She had never told him so. What
would be the point; he wasn’t going to say he couldn’t go to work because his wife worried. And it was an irrational worry anyway. He could be hurt on the job during the day, or when he had a regular night shift. It was just the middle of the night phone calls that upset her so much.

  She poured a small Drambuie and curled up on the living room couch with a magazine.

  At least it was better in Trafalgar than in Vancouver, where some weeks she didn’t get much sleep at all. Eliza loved Vancouver, loved living in the heart of the city. But the job had been killing her man. For the last couple of years the strain of the things he saw one person do to another had started getting to him, and she’d had more to worry about than an incident on the job. He was drinking so much that she worried whenever he was out late.

  It all came to a head with the Blakely murder. John had seriously considered ending his career, consumed with guilt over what he saw as an error in judgment, exasperated, she suspected, by the quantities of booze he was consuming. He heard about an opening in tiny Trafalgar, and he’d brought the suggestion of moving to her. She told him to try for it, and before she could blink, here they were. Six months out of the big city, and his drinking was way down. No more going out with the boys (and girls) after work. No more stopping in bars for a solitary one, which always lead to many more, before heading home.

  Eliza opened the magazine and tried to concentrate on an article about what one could do with summer’s bounty of tomatoes.

  ***

  Molly Smith had also been dreaming. But her dreams were not as pleasant as those of Eliza Winters.

  She swung her legs out of bed, barely avoiding stepping on the big warm bulk that was Sylvester, curled up, breathing deeply, on the floor of her bedroom.

  She hadn’t said anything to her parents about the trouble she was having sleeping. Lucky would insist on talking it out and Andy would bury his head deeper into the newspaper.

  It was still dark, and the house was quiet. For once, Miller slept. A soft breeze ruffled the lace curtains, cool and welcome after the heat of the day.

  The night-light at the top of the stairs lit her way and Smith didn’t bother to flick on any lights. She went downstairs; Sylvester, who’d pulled himself out of sleep, ran on ahead. Like her mother had done for her when she was a child, bothered by monsters hiding under the bed, she’d heat up a cup of milk to take upstairs. Hopefully she’d soon be able to fall back into sleep. And Miller would stay quiet.

  She flicked the kitchen light on. Lucky was in a chair at the big pine table. Her arms were crossed over a pile of papers, making a pillow for her head. She started, and her head jerked up. Smith threw the light switch off. Too late. “Sorry, Mom. Didn’t know you were here.”

  “Quiet,” Lucky snapped under her breath. “He’s sleeping.” She nodded toward the pram, so old it should be in a museum, by the stove. The baby blanket rose and fell in a gentle rhythmic motion. Sylvester nuzzled at Lucky’s hand.

  “Well pardon me for living. I’m looking for a glass of milk, if that isn’t too much to ask in my own house.”

  Lucky sucked in a breath. She scratched the ridge between Sylvester’s eyes. His favorite place. “Sorry, dear. You caught me napping, that’s all.” Her voice was a whisper. Suited for the hour and the night.

  “Like napping at,” Smith looked at the clock on the wall, “four in the morning is something to be guilty about.”

  Lucky placed her hands on the table and pushed herself up. “It’ll just take a minute.”

  “Sit down, Mom. I can heat a cup of milk. They taught us that in Police College on day one. Right after donut eating class.”

  Lucky seemed not to hear. She took a jug of milk out of the fridge and a packet of chocolate chip cookies from the cupboard.

  Resigned to being waited on, Smith took a seat at the table. She pulled the stack of papers her mother had been sleeping on toward her. A Revenue Canada tax form was on the top. Smith flicked through the papers. Lucky turned on the light over the stove, which provided enough illumination to read the bigger print. Accounts payable, government forms, staff expense sheets, accounts receivable. The books that ran Mid-Kootenay Adventure Vacations, her parents’ business.

  Lucky turned, holding a pottery mug in swirls of blue and gold. The handle was chipped. “Things were simpler when your dad and I started the business. No employees, not much stock.”

  “And,” Smith said. “You were young and enthusiastic. That was before I was born, right?”

  “Samwise was three. Clients thought he was cute, toddling around the unfinished room we called a store. Your dad took the trips, leading city-people into the wilderness. He’d be gone for a day at a time usually, three or four days at the most. I minded the store, while Samwise ran underfoot. Then your dad would come back. To help with Samwise, to help run the business. Our timing was perfect and we caught the demand for adventure vacations, kayaking in the summer, skiing in the winter, hiking all year long, as it all took off. By the time Samwise was in school our business was picking up so much we needed larger accommodation, and even staff.

  “Then you had me.”

  “I carried you to work in a green corduroy satchel across my front. I remember pounding away at that old typewriter while you slept under the desk. We began to stock adventure books, particularly children’s books because your brother dived into everything we got in. From there we branched out, into maps, clothing, camping supplies. And things began to bloom.” Lucky took a cookie out of the bag and bit into it. “Good times,” she said.

  “But life goes on. Children grow up.”

  “And business gets bigger and bigger and more prosperous than you ever expected. I thought that the more profitable the company got, the easier it would be.”

  “Not so, I guess.”

  The microwave pinged and Lucky took the mug out. She sprinkled cinnamon across the top and handed it to her daughter. The scent whispered soft pillows and sweet dreams. Smith stood up, the mug spreading warmth into her hand, and grabbed a fistful of cookies.

  “You know, Mom, no one can recapture the joy of youth. The world doesn’t work that way. People age. Life goes on.”

  The blanket shivered, and Miller let out a tiny whimper.

  Lucky exhaled, heavily. She dragged her fists across her eyes. Her shoulders slumped and her knees buckled.

  “Thanks for the milk, Mom. I’m off to beddie bye,” Smith didn’t try to cover her enormous yawn. She left the kitchen with her nose to the mug of warm milk.

  All cinnamon, warmth, and mother’s love.

  Chapter Seventeen

  So Julian Armstrong was, as they said, known to the Vancouver police.

  John Winters read the file on the counselor. Inappropriate relations with clients, reports of sexual advances. There had been two complaints made, but no charges laid. The alleged victims failed to back up their complaints.

  Armstrong had had a busy practice in fashionable West Vancouver, working with wealthy women. He gave it up to volunteer at a woman’s center and a methadone clinic in the Mid-Kootenays and live in a shabby basement apartment.

  Ashley Doe had said he was the key to her life.

  It would be tricky to interrogate Armstrong with no evidence other than John Winters’ own gut feelings.

  Last night he’d been called out to a heroin overdose. Jeff Matthews, the novelist, hugely famous for the only piece of work he’d ever produced, would have died had not his wife taken ill at dinner with friends and come home early. The call should have gone to Ray Lopez. But, as Ashley Doe had died of an ‘accidental’ heroin overdose, Winters had ordered that he be kept informed of any similar incidents.

  As he’d been leaving the hospital, he’d seen Julian Armstrong crossing the parking lot.

  He picked up the phone and punched in numbers. It was answered on the first ring.

  “Hope I haven’t disturbed you, Ms. Matthews. It’s John Winters here,” he said into the phone. The wife, a far better woman than Winters tho
ught the novelist deserved, had told him she’d do everything in her power to see her husband’s dealer behind bars.

  “Not at all, Sergeant. I’m sitting at my kitchen table watching the herbs in the garden grow.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  A sigh came down the phone line. “I’m done with excitement for this week. I’m trying to work up the courage to go to the hospital and visit my husband who almost died last night. Does that sound uncaring of me?”

  “It sounds like a woman pushed to the edge.”

  “You’re a sensitive man, Sergeant Winters, if I may say so. To my surprise I find that I’m getting more empathy from the police officer than the supposed drug counselor.”

  This was an opening he hadn’t expected. “Ms. Matthews.”

  “Please, call me Susan. I’ve told you things I can’t tell my own mother.”

  “Susan. Can I buy you a coffee, if you have time before going to the hospital? How about Eddie’s?”

  “The plants may die without my constant supervision, but I’ll risk it. Give me half an hour.”

  ***

  Winters paid for the drinks—a plain coffee for him, a chai latte for her. The breakfast and heading-to-work rush was over and they found a private table in the back corner.

  He got straight to the point. “I’d like to talk to you about Mr. Armstrong, if you don’t mind.”

  “Julian?” Susan Matthews raised one eyebrow. “I thought you asked me out to demand that I leave my husband and run away with you. Or failing that wanted to know more about Jeff.”

  He grinned at her. She was dressed in beige capris and a blue T-shirt. Thin gold earrings looped through her earlobes, but otherwise she wore no jewelry. Smudges of strain lay under her eyes and lines that hadn’t been there last night stretched between her manicured eyebrows.

  “Julian Armstrong. Had you met him before yesterday?”