by Vicki Delany
Caldwell had come on the motorcycle, so the LeBlanc family was stuffed into the back of Smith’s car.
She walked around to the driver’s door.
“I hope you’ll finally put an end to this.” The neighbor in the red robe stepped in front of her, blocking her way. “We live next door.” He pointed—the big old house had been broken into a duplex. “My wife and I haven’t had a moment’s peace since we moved here.”
Smith looked at the circle of faces watching her. Dressed in an assortment of nightwear, the street lights casting heavy shadows on their faces, the neighbors stood silently behind him.
“If you’ll excuse me, sir.”
He stepped out of the way. Inside the car Felicia was speaking to Jake in soothing tones, telling him that she’d sort everything out. Jake was making choking sounds. Smith prayed that he wouldn’t vomit until they got to the station.
She moved to get into the car, but a spark caught her eye. Lorraine stood under a huge old walnut tree. Her shirt barely touched the bottom of her breasts and her jeans barely covered her pubic bones. The fake gem through her navel threw off light from the street lamp above her. Her eyes were wet. Seeing Smith watching her, Lorraine turned away and melted into the darkness.
Chapter Nineteen
Winters avoided long boozy evenings with police officers: he’d struggled too hard to get out of that trap. For the same reason he wasn’t too keen on department social functions, such as Barb was forcing him into. But at affairs to do with Eliza’s business, or her associates from the fashion world, he was never in danger of over-consuming. He was having too much of a miserable time to be able to forget how much he was drinking.
He clutched a glass of beer—some sort of expensive imported European thing that was, he’d admit, pretty good—and watched the party. They were at the M&C Developments’ Mid-Kootenay office. The night was clear and warm. The mountains a black bulk against a pale blue sky. Teak patio furniture had been laid out around the grounds; a bar and tables holding canapés stood in the shelter of the couple of trees that hadn’t been felled in the clearing of the construction site. In place of a view of what had once been heavy forest, posters with the logo of M&C marked the perimeter of the party area. Small groups of guests were escorted by rented staff, all young, pretty, thin, and female, down a chipped wood pathway to view the model suite. Winters followed, because he could think of nothing better to do.
What had once been an old barn had been given a fresh coat of red paint and new window frames and shingles. Inside, the barn had been fitted with dark wood, good carpet, and ceramic tile. Light fixtures sparkled, and wide windows looked over the dark, brooding forest. The kitchen might have served a four star restaurant. The master bedroom, filled with candlelight, coyly hinted at illicit passion in an enormous four poster bed and décor in shades of deep red and silver. Potted plants surrounded the Jacuzzi in the bathroom, and sliding doors led out onto a deck, larger than some people’s houses, where a hot tub sat, dark and cold. It was all for show: he suspected that the plumbing didn’t even work.
Guests made appropriate noises of approval. John Winters headed back to the party. He’d like to have gone for a walk in the woods, but beyond the party, the old barn, and the path leading up to it, there was no lighting. It would be somewhat embarrassing to get lost.
Back at the party, Winters stood off to one side, watching Eliza. She wore a simple skirt of pale blue cotton shot with silver threads that swirled around her shapely calves, blue sandals with flat heels and thin straps, and a white blouse with turquoise and silver jewelry he’d bought her on a vacation in Arizona. She was laughing and smiling at everyone, nibbling on a smoked salmon canapé, sipping at her Veuve Clicquot. ‘Work the room’ was the phrase. Eliza had made a success of the highly competitive world of modeling as much because she could play the game as for her looks. She would rather have spent the evening at home, on the deck with a good book, watching the sun set. But to watch her, which all the men were, anyone would have thought the M&C party was the most fun she’d had all year.
“Impressed?” Steve Blacklock appeared at Winters’ side.
For a moment, Winters thought the man was talking about Eliza. “The suite was very nice.”
“Frank needs help, now that Reg has left the building.” Winters thought that was rather a harsh description of a man’s death. But, to be charitable, perhaps Blacklock had never met the late Reginald Montgomery. “I’d been thinking about investing in this place for some time. Property in the lower mainland’s gone through the ceiling. Nice for those of us who own some of it, but the smart money needs to find property still undervalued. Right?”
“I guess so.”
“Your wife has some money behind her, I’ve heard.”
Winters said nothing.
Blacklock’s voice dropped. “If you’re looking for a wise investment, this place has it all. I’m talking about partners in the business, understand, not property owners.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You do that. And don’t be put off by a scattered bunch of protesters. Can’t put up a chicken coop these days without them wanting to put their two cents in. We’ve got all the required permits and authorizations, so there’s nothing they can do to stop us. Soon as we start building they’ll find some other poor schmuck to torment. Until then, I’ve got security guards around this property day and, especially, night. Think about it, John, think about it.”
“I will.” He would do nothing of the sort.
Blacklock walked away, tossing greetings to guests left and right.
Winters watched the guests. Meredith Morgenstern was there, lovely in black and gold, fluttering from one guest to another. Her long black hair was secured at the sides by gold pins. She carried a notebook, and didn’t try to hide the microphone in her hand or the tape recorder stuck in the belt of her wide-legged black satin pants. She started to head toward John Winters, recognized him, and spun on her heels. He’d last seen her at the grow-op bust the other day. She’d arrived at the scene mighty fast. Someone had called her as soon as the police began to move in. Which meant that someone had been watching the house. Someone who was keeping an eye on the competition’s operations, probably, and decided to gloat in their downfall over the morning paper. Falling out amongst thieves always made John Winters’ heart happy. He’d suggest that Ray pay close attention to some of the other houses in that block.
A beautiful, exceptionally skinny redhead who didn’t look old enough to drive had attached herself to José. As he chatted to his hosts and their guests, his hand occasionally wandered to plant itself on her bony butt. Winters was pleased to see it—if that was José’s type, the sophisticated, older, Eliza, wouldn’t be.
He’d thought the party was going to be for the partners, the ad agency, and the models, but there must have been two hundred people crowded around the open air buffet. He recognized the deputy mayor of Trafalgar and several prominent citizens from other towns in the area. The MLA was deep in conversation with Frank Clemmins. The only person looking less comfortable than John Winters was Pete, husband of the secretary Bernice. Pete’s collar was too tight, his white shirt marked by sweat stains, and his tie was too colorful and too short. Winters headed toward Pete. But Nancy Blacklock intercepted him, and he settled his smile into something appropriate for mindless social chitchat. She was dressed in a colorful outfit of long green blouse over billowing blue pants. A paisley scarf in purple and yellow draped her shoulders. It was not a pleasant combination. “Enjoying yourself, Mr. Winters?” she asked.
“I am.”
She drank deeply from her glass of champagne. No plastic glasses here. Nothing but flutes of lead crystal. “I always organize my parties down to the last detail, even the weather. Steve wanted to rent a room at a hotel, but I knew it would be perfect outside. I love my husband with a mad passion.” She fluttered her eyelashes and Winters wondered if she was trying to send a message in code. “But he’s a bit of
a stick-in-the-mud sometimes. It doesn’t bother me, of course.” In more than twenty-five years as a police officer, John Winters knew that ‘of course’ usually meant the opposite. “His sister thought an outdoor party was taking too much of a risk. For once I stood my ground. She’s not supposed to have anything to do with the business but never stops interfering. With my ideas mostly. And whatever Jamie says is pure gospel to Steve.” She tossed her head back and the last half glass of the Champagne disappeared.
Her arm flew up, and a waiter appeared at her elbow. She held her glass to one side; he filled it and slipped back into the crowd. Not a word had been exchanged.
Nancy Blacklock took another swallow and then reached out—her fingernails were chewed almost to the quick—and touched Winters’ arm. “If it had rained, they’d be all ‘I told you so’. But as I said, I plan everything perfectly, so screw them, eh?” She cackled. Her laughter did not invite onlookers to join in. “You’re not eating.”
He held up his half-finished glass of beer. “I’m fine with this.”
“Nonsense.” She pulled at his arm and he could only follow. She handed him a plate and began piling it high with jumbo shrimp, smoked salmon, smelly cheese, and assorted things he didn’t recognize.
“There,” she said at last. “A growing boy needs his sustenance.” She touched his chest with a chewed fingernail, giggled, and left him as she spotted the far more important person of the deputy mayor, momentarily standing by herself.
As the guests of honor, Eliza and José had to stay until the bitter end. While Blacklock and Clemmins waved goodbye to the last of their guests, Winters pulled himself out of the uncomfortable chair he’d managed to snag half an hour ago. Eliza’s smile hadn’t faded in the slightest, but his back was about to give out on him.
“That was a great party,” he lied to his hosts, as Eliza slipped off to the bathroom. “Thanks.”
“Don’t be in such a rush, John,” Nancy Blacklock said. She waved a hand over the party detritus all around them. “The caterers will clean up. I’ve made reservations at Flavours. Off we go.” For lack of anything better to do, Winters had watched Nancy’s champagne consumption. She’d had a prodigious amount, and other than a slight slur to the edges of her words, didn’t seem too much affected by it. The sign of a serious drinker.
As if following Winters’ line of thought, Steve Blacklock said, “If you’ve had too much to drink, Sergeant, I’ll consider it my public duty to call the police if you try to drive.” He laughed heartily at his joke. Winters forced out a smile. He’d nursed the one beer all night, and hadn’t even finished it.
“He’s a cop?” José’s date said, to no one in particular.
Winters considered asking to see her ID. But then Eliza was slipping her arm through his. “Did someone mention Flavours? What a delightful suggestion. John and I’ll join you for a quick drink and maybe an appetizer, but then I have to be getting home. I can’t do with too many late nights any more, I’m afraid.” She smiled up at her husband, all warm eyes and white teeth. “You don’t mind, do you dear, if we don’t stay long?”
“If you’d rather not,” replied the caring husband. If he had to sit through another dinner with these people, he’d go into the kitchen, find the sharpest chef’s knife they had and slit his throat.
Eliza settled into the car and slipped her shoes off. “God, what a bore.”
“Present company?”
“Don’t be silly. Nancy Blacklock can out-drink the U.S. Army, but she has to have some real organizational skills behind her to pull that party off so quickly. And where she got all those people with so little notice, I can’t imagine. She and Steve have a rather unorthodox marriage, I’d suggest. Have you seen the way she talks to him? Somewhat like Momma and Baby.”
“That’s rather harsh.”
“He’s a wimp. A moneyed wimp, but a wimp none the less. I do not like it when there’s a power concealed behind the curtain. I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Is dinner going to be Dutch?”
“The company’ll pick it all up. Your tax dollars at work. Although…”
“What?”
“What what?”
“What are you thinking? That was a meaningful although.”
“To get a catering company that good in the height of summer on a week or two’s notice, and all that fabulous food and drink, must have cost a bomb.”
Winters smiled to himself. Trust Eliza to calculate the cost of the whole thing.
“And now dinner for, what, fifteen counting the ad company people, Bernice and her husband, José and his girlfriend, and is she a ditz—tell me I wasn’t that vacant when I was starting out—and not counting us. Dinner at Flavours, the most expensive restaurant in town, with the best wine, and you can be sure everyone’ll order the most costly things on the menu. Two and a half, three thousand bucks, maybe.”
“You make it sound as if that’s a lot to pay for a dinner.”
“I’ll say it’s more than the company can afford. I told Barney I suspect they’re on shaky financial ground, and she’s to make sure I get a good chunk of my fee up front. They’re spending money they don’t have.”
“Come on, it was just a fancy party and now dinner.” The forest crowded the road. The mountains all around them had disappeared in the darkness. The red backlights of José’s BMW convertible were ahead of them, the sturdy while headlights of Bernice and Pete’s Ford Focus station wagon behind.
“It’s not just tonight, John. Didn’t you tell me that the late Mr. Montgomery was in charge of the books?”
“Reg ran the business side. Frank scoured the world for investors. Maybe he’s come up with a big investor.”
“Maybe.” She exhaled softly. “But big investors want to see their money producing product. Not fancy parties and over-the-top ad campaigns.”
Chapter Twenty
“Good morning, sweetie. It’s going to be a lovely day.”
“It’s going to be a lovely day for sleeping. Bye, Molly.”
“Hold on, Chris. I have something I want to talk to you about. Let’s have breakfast.”
“I don’t want breakfast.”
“How about George’s?”
“George’s?”
“Ten o’clock?”
Christa eyed the bedside clock. It was nine now. That would give her forty-five minutes to snooze and fifteen to get dressed. “Ten fifteen.” Then she could have an hour to snooze.
“See you then.”
Christa gathered her duvet from where it had bunched up around her feet and pulled it to her chest. Her upstairs apartment was too warm for cuddling under the blankets, but she didn’t mind. She needed to feel warm and cozy. Protected. If only by a Wal-mart duvet.
She was still sleeping when Molly Smith pounded on the door.
“Aren’t you going to get that buzzer fixed,” Smith asked, following her friend’s pajama-clad butt up the steep stairs to the second floor apartment.
“I told the landlord.” He’d brought a bunch of white carnations, browning around the edges, to the hospital. The bad-tempered downstairs neighbor, who made Christa’s life a constant misery, had complained about the noise that day, police breaking down the door, paramedics trampling the flowerbeds. The landlord had told her if she wasn’t happy she could move. The neighbor hadn’t moved, but neither had she stuck her head out of her window to yell at Christa since. For about a week, the landlord had been around all the time, asking if there was anything she needed. Then life returned to normal, and he hadn’t fixed the doorbell.
She left Molly looking out the window and went to get dressed. Christa’s bedroom was barely large enough for her double bed and an old dresser with broken drawers piled high with cardboard boxes used for storage. The closet doors didn’t open fully. She reached in and grabbed whatever came to hand. Beige capris with a tomato stain on the lap and a black T-shirt bought at a concert by the popular tribute band from Nelson, BC-DC. She ran her fingers through he
r hair and avoided looking at herself in the mirror over the dresser.
Molly was scratching at a mosquito bite when Christa came out. “Don’t do that. It’ll scar.”
“I’d settle for amputation if the itch would go away.” A droplet of red blood rose on the inside of Molly’s arm, and she pulled a tissue out of her pocket.
Christa turned her head away. They’d taken the clothes she’d been wearing when Charlie attacked her because they were covered with blood. Her blood. She thought she remembered seeing blood spraying out, drenching the walls of the entranceway. But perhaps that was only in her dreams.
“Your pants are dirty,” Molly said.
“So what? You’re not buying me breakfast to congratulate me on my fashion sense. Let’s go.”
Molly looked hurt. As Christa planned. Molly was a cop, wasn’t she? If she’d done her job better she, Christa, wouldn’t have been beaten up, would she?
She scooped her keys off the side table. In the back of her mind she knew it wasn’t her friend’s fault. Molly couldn’t have followed Christa everywhere, gun out and at the ready. And only that would have stopped Charlie. But someone had to be held accountable. She had to blame Molly. Otherwise the only person Christa had to blame was herself.
Yesterday, Christa’d added an extra course to her next term’s load: the psychology of survivor’s guilt.
Lucky’s old Pontiac Firefly was parked at the bottom of the street.
“I love this car,” Christa said, climbing in. It was the first words they’d spoken since leaving the apartment.
“This car? It’s a wreck.”
“It is so your mom. If Lucky was a car, this would be her. Do they laugh at you at the police station when you come to work in it?”
“Tell you the truth,” Molly said, “they do. Dave Evans wants to use it for target practice. Practice stopping a fleeing vehicle. He has images of himself in a car chase a la Bullitt and bringing down the bad guys in a hail of gunfire. Oops. I shouldn’t have told you that. Really, Chris. Don’t repeat it. I could get in real trouble talking about a fellow officer like that. And he’s higher up the food chain than me.”