by Vicki Delany
“No. He showed up after you left. Why are you asking? Is there something wrong?”
“Not at all. It’s only that I need to know all I can about every person involved in this business. Mr. Armstrong’s new to town, and I don’t have a feel for him yet.”
She looked into the depths of her mug. Winters let the silence stretch between them. Jolene came out from the back with a watering jug. She poured water into plant pots and snipped at dead leaves, her body moving all the while to whatever sound was coming out of the iPod in her ears.
“I got the feeling,” Susan said at last, concentrating on the depths of the mug in front of her, “that he was more interested in impressing me with his credentials than discussing how we might work together to help my husband.”
“Did he have anything to offer, being from the methadone clinic, I mean?”
“John, I don’t want to venture too much into conjecture. Do you understand?”
“Of course.” Although he was trying very hard to nudge her into the realm of conjecture. “Impressions matter, I’ve learned. Impressions can be wrong, 180 degrees wrong, but they can be right as well. It’s my job to gather up all the impressions, and sort them out as best I can. And sometimes I make a mighty mess of it all.”
She smiled. “Okay, John. Just between you and me, if I didn’t know better, I’d say that Julian had come on to me. I might sound like a hysterical female, suspecting evil male intentions behind every innocent gesture, but I have been around the block a few times.” She stuck her index finger into her cup, scooping up milk foam. “And I’d say that Julian Armstrong is a predator.”
She put the cup down and in one fluid motion, got to her feet. “Past time I was at the hospital.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “I’ve decided to give Jeff one more chance, although he doesn’t deserve it. But for some strange reason, I love him very, very much.”
She walked out of the coffee shop. Her head high, her back straight.
“Pretty lady,” Eddie said. He picked up the empty cup.
“A strong one, too,” Winters said.
***
The hot milk had helped, and for the rest of the night Smith’s dreams were so sweet she couldn’t remember them, but only knew that she got out of bed feeling warm and happy.
When they met outside of Big Eddie’s, Christa had, at first, been reserved, very much a different person than her former bouncy self, but she’d been through a great deal of trauma. Mental as well as physical. Her face was slightly misshapen, and she spoke with a lisp, largely a result of the smashed-in mouth. Anger against Charlie Fucking Bassing boiled up in Smith’s chest, but she pushed it down and hugged her friend with genuine enthusiasm.
They ate bagels and drank coffee, fussed over by Eddie and Jolene, and talked about family.
“I’ve an appointment at the dentist tomorrow,” Christa said. He’s going to make me beautiful.”
Smith laughed. “More beautiful than you are now? The sun will be hiding its face in shame. Who are you seeing?”
“Tyler.”
Smith stuffed her face into her mug.
“Okay. Something’s wrong with Doctor Tyler. What?”
“As a dentist, there’s nothing wrong at all. He’ll do a good job.”
“But?”
“But, nothing.” Hard to explain that after questioning Doctor Tyler last month regarding the killing of his lover’s husband, Smith wouldn’t allow her long-time family dentist to approach her with a ten foot dental pick.
She changed the subject and told Christa about Miller. Christa laughed. It was a good long deep laugh and it made Molly smile to hear it. “Sounds like what she did with me,” Christa said, “Lucky wants every child to be happy.”
“Yeah, but you were ten years old when Mom took you under her wing. And she was a lot younger then. This baby’s taking her to the edge and she’s too proud, and too stubborn, to admit it. The kid doesn’t know the meaning of the word sleep. Dad’s not being supportive of her at all, and he’s always in a bad mood.”
As usual, Smith had taken the chair that put her back against the wall; over Christa’s shoulder she could see the woman at the table across from theirs not even trying to conceal her interest in their conversation. “Can I help you?”
Christa turned to see who Molly was talking to.
The eavesdropper was thin, her heavy make-up tinged with orange. An untouched slice of cheesecake and a coffee sat in front of her. Silver bangles jangled as she lifted her hand. “I apologize if I appear to have been listening. I couldn’t help but overhear.” She dug in her pocket and pulled out a card. “You must be talking about Mrs. Lucy Smith.”
“What of it?” Molly Smith said.
The woman pushed the card forward. Jody Burke. The logo of the Province of British Columbia. Something to do with children and family.
“I’ve been attempting to persuade Mrs. Smith to give up the child. Perhaps we have a common goal.”
“Perhaps not. If my mother wants to care for the baby, as much as I might not be happy about that, I support her.”
Jody Burke smiled. “That’s good of you, dear. But considering your mother’s age, I’m sure we can find a more suitable foster family for the child, until his parents’ families can be located.”
“I’m sure of no such thing. Foster families are not lying on the ground, you know, waiting to be picked up like lost coins.”
“I assume you’re Moonlight Smith, otherwise known as Constable Molly Smith.”
“That’s hardly a secret.” Christa burst into the conversation. “And Lucky’s a wonderful mother. There’s no one kinder, more generous. I resent you implying that she isn’t.”
“My dear girl.” Burke smiled at her. “I’m only saying that considering Mrs. Smith’s age, and her other responsibilities, the care of an abandoned infant might be too much for her. In which case it obviously isn’t in the child’s interest to be left with her. You yourself, Constable Smith, said it was causing problems in your parents’ marriage.”
Christa leapt to her feet. “How dare you,” she shouted. Jolene and the woman she was serving turned and stared. Eddie’s head popped out of the back room. “You can’t eavesdrop on a private conversation and throw it back at us.
“I’ve finished my coffee, Molly, and I need to get to work. Let’s go.”
Smith stood up. She gave the card back to Jody Burke.
“Keep it,” Burke said, “you may need it.”
“I doubt it.”
“A pleasure meeting you, Constable,” Burke said.
Smith didn’t reply as she followed her friend out the door, tossing the card onto the table. They walked toward Christa’s apartment. The sun was hot on her face and bare arms and shoulders. “That was strange.”
“What a busybody.” Christa was virtually dancing under the force of her indignation. “Imagine. Someone trying to imply that your mom can’t look after a child. I don’t know what would have happened to me, Mol, if your family hadn’t taken me in when my mom died. Dad was hardly up to the task, now was he? Not that my life’s this huge success story, but it would be a lot worse without your mom.”
“Have you told her that?”
“Of course not. Have you told her you owe everything you are to her?”
“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.”
They laughed, and wrapped arms around each other. It felt like old times. B.C. Before Charlie.
They arrived at Christa’s building. A heritage house whose glory years were long past, now divided into upstairs and downstairs apartments.
“Thanks for the coffee, Mol. I needed to get out.”
“It was fun. Well, it was fun until that woman popped up.”
“Catch you later.”
Smith headed back toward town with the feeling that a great weight had been lifted off her chest.
She was walking back to her car—her mother’s car—when her cell phone rang.
Constable Dawn Solway was in a stat
e of high excitement. She needed a big, big favor. Fast. Smith knew that Solway was having an Internet-based relationship with a sailor in the U.S. Navy. They’d met a few months ago at a rock concert in Spokane and spent, what was by Dawn’s account, the most fabulous weekend in the history of instant relationships. The sailor had shipped off to some exotic locale, and Solway returned to Trafalgar. They’d kept in touch by e-mail and hot and heavy phone sex. All of which had been much, much more than Molly Smith wanted to know. But now, as Dawn said over the phone, the sailor had gotten leave unexpectedly and wanted to come to British Columbia TODAY for a couple of days of not-much sightseeing. Unfortunately Solway had one more afternoon to do before getting four days off.
“Please, pretty please, Molly. If you take my shift I promise you my first born daughter.”
It wasn’t as if Smith had anything better to do. “I don’t want your daughter, Dawn. There are enough infants in my life right now. But you can be sure I’ll think of something.”
“You’re the best, Molly. I knew I could count on you. Bye.”
The sailor was, in fact, a lawyer doing whatever job lawyers in the U.S. Navy did. That she was also a female was not generally known in the department. Smith wondered how some of the old guard would react if Solway ever introduced her lover around.
***
It was time, Winters had decided, to put pressure on Marigold, Ashley’s roommate. None of his other lines of enquiry were going far. Marigold knew something. Something she was keeping secret.
At three o’clock Molly Smith came into the station as Winters was heading out.
“Thought you were off today,” he said.
“I switched with Dawn.”
“Check in and join me in fifteen minutes. I’ll square it with Al.”
She smiled, clearly pleased at being taken off the beat, if only for a while. Peterson grumbled, as expected, but when Winters promised to have Smith back before the evening started to heat up, he reluctantly agreed.
“I’m going to see our pal, Marigold,” Winters said when Smith joined him. “And as you were with me the last time, I thought I’d take you along.”
“Any particular reason?” she asked, as they walked down the steps.
At the bottom of the stairs, she turned right and he turned left.
“She lives this way,” Smith said.
“I had Dave drop into The Bishop earlier and check. She’s working. Marigold’s real name is Joan Jones.”
“I’m not surprised she changed it,” said Moonlight Legolas Smith, who probably knew a thing or two about undesirable names.
“Under the name of Joan Jones, she’s got a record in Vancouver for possession and dealing.”
“Pot?”
“Good old B.C. Bud. No matter what name she’s using, Marigold’s been less, much less, than forthcoming with us, and I’ve decided it’s time to come on like a tough guy. You know how well I play the bad cop, Molly.”
At three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, the bar was empty of customers. The Bishop and Nun had been decorated by someone who had probably never been in a traditional English pub. Heavy red paper, tearing in places, covered the walls, dotted with cheap replicas of paintings of foxhunts, pre-industrial farm life, and gently rolling landscapes. A gas fireplace was set into the back wall, turned off in the heat of a Kootenay summer. A portrait of Queen Victoria hung over the fireplace. The blinds were down and the room was dark and gloomy.
The bartender stood behind the wooden bar running the length of the room, flicking through a skiing magazine. Marigold was reflected in the large, gilt-framed mirror that filled the wall behind the bar, the reflection broken by a crack in the glass. Her back was to the door, and she was examining her nails. Her matted hair hung down her back in thick ropes. The bartender gave Smith a friendly wave. As a beat constable she was in here almost as much as some of the regulars.
“Not you again,” Marigold said, not turning around.
“Me again.” Winters walked down the single step into the room. Smith’s boots hit the floor behind him. “How’s it going, Morris?” she asked.
“Boring,” the bartender said. “And not likely to get much busier. There’s a big act playing at the Potato Famine tonight and tomorrow. They’ll suck our customers away like leeches on a swimmer’s leg.”
“Ugh. That is so gross.” Marigold half-turned toward the police. Her eyes slid over Smith and she looked at her nails. “I can’t talk to you now, Sergeant Winters. I’m working.” She wore a short denim skirt cinched by a wide white belt and a white cotton blouse that left her plump shoulders bare. An order pad was tucked into the back of the belt. White running shoes were on her feet.
“And working very hard indeed, by the looks of it.” Winters took a seat on the stool beside her. Smith hovered at his back. “But I’m sure you can spare me a few moments.”
“You have to order a drink.”
“Happy to. Ice water for me. Constable Smith?”
“Water’d be good.”
“Two ice waters. Heavy on the ice. I’ve been thinking about Ashley, Marigold. And I’m sure you have too.” She turned her head, leaving him looking at the back of her neck. A blue and yellow butterfly spread its wings on either side of her vertebra. “Tell me a bit more about Ashley. She must have talked to you about her family, where’s she’s from. Did you get the impression, for example, that she was new to B.C.? Did she ever mention Vancouver?”
“Maybe. Yeah, I think she’d spent some time in Vancouver. Look, I told you, Mr. Winters, she didn’t want to talk about her family and her past and all that shit.”
“I find it hard to believe that she didn’t say anything. People talk about themselves. Whether they want to or not, they reveal things.”
The girl shrugged. “Guess I’m not a good listener.”
“Look, Marigold,” Smith said. “You might not care much about what happened to Ashley, but surely you have some consideration for the baby. Miller’ll spend his childhood in foster care if we can’t find his family. Is that what you want for him?”
Winters bit back a retort to the probationary constable. She wasn’t here to interrupt his interrogation. But it was a good question, and had an interesting effect. Marigold turned around, lifted her chin, and fastened her eyes directly on Smith.
“Precisely my point. Family isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Ashley didn’t want anything to do with her family, and that’s all I know.”
The door opened with a groan and a group of bikers spilled in. Graying hair or balding scalps shook with laughter as they pulled off leather gloves and unzipped unseasonable jackets. Men pulled tables together and women gathered chairs.
“Gotta go,” Marigold said. “But I’ll tell you this. If Ashley didn’t want anyone to find that baby, neither do I.”
Chapter Eighteen
Lucky Smith was making up baby formula when she heard the familiar car turning off the road into their long driveway. She looked out the kitchen window. The tomato plants were heavy with red fruit—if she didn’t get out there soon, they’d be nothing but a rotting mess—and the lettuce beds overflowed. Weeds were moving in on the spinach and chard, like an army that’s discovered the enemy’s sentinels sleeping. Andy’s car rounded the corner and parked in its usual place beside the big red cedar. It was early for him to be home from the store. She was pleased to see that he wasn’t carrying an armload of work for her to do.
Miller was awake, but for once he wasn’t screaming, just watching the sunlight play with the mobile Lucky had strung over his bed. Sylvester was taking his afternoon nap beside the pram. Alone in the Smith family, Sylvester seemed to like having the baby around, and Lucky had moved his bed from its usual place in the master bedroom into the kitchen.
Without even bothering to shut the door Andy gathered Lucky into his arms in a big bear hug. He tired to lift her, as if he was about to swing her off the ground in the way he used to. But he was too fat, and too unfit, to pick her up and Lucky
was too heavy to be picked up. Instead he patted her ample bottom.
“What on earth?” she said with a laugh, “has gotten into you? And what are you doing home in the middle of the day?”
“Molly here?”
“No. She took an extra shift.”
He gripped her by the buttocks and pulled her hips toward him. “I knew that. I saw her in town. She was in uniform and with John Winters. I realized that my luscious wife was at home. Alone.” He nuzzled her neck and lifted one hand to grip her breast.
To Lucky’s considerable surprise she felt a bulge in Andy’s pants. “You dirty old man,” she said with a laugh. It had been a long time since they’d had sex outside of their bedroom after the ten o’clock news. In the early days they lost customers when Andy would put the closed sign on the shop door and join Lucky in the storage closet. But soon they accumulated children, and employees, regular hours and responsibilities.
Lucky loved having her nipples stroked. She pushed her chest forward, as Andy’s fingers tightened their grip. “Do you remember the first time,” she murmured in his ear, “on the side of the hill, the lights of the city.”
“Where you wouldn’t let me do it, because I didn’t have a condom?”
“But you made me happy, anyway. I remember that.”
They had been students at the University of Washington. Young, in love, with each other and with radical anti-war politics.
She kissed him, deeply, full on the lips. He wasn’t exactly the handsome, thin student, with hair as long and pale as that of a fairy princess, whom she’d fallen in love with long ago. But she still loved him, not with a fever, but with maturity.
She reached for his belt buckle, and he groaned. It had been a long, long time since they’d done it on the floor.
Miller cried. He didn’t even bother to warm up, simply let loose with a full throated howl.
What on earth do I think I’m doing? I’m an overweight gray-haired grandmother who gets hot flashes, not a sex kitten. Lucky grabbed Andy’s hand. “You left the door open.”
“So. If someone drops by they’ll get an eyeful.”
She stepped back, out of range of his reaching arms. “The baby’s crying.” She scooped Miller up. “How about later?”