Valley of the Lost

by Vicki Delany

  “What do you mean, don’t move?” Lucky came into the kitchen. She was dressed in her pajamas, her hair wild around her head, blinking at the light.

  Smith jumped out from her hiding spot. She shoved her mother into a chair. “When I say don’t move, I mean don’t the hell move. You got that?”

  “Moonlight?”

  “Sit there, and don’t move.”

  Smith checked the pantry. Empty. The kitchen door was unlocked, which wasn’t at all unusual. Lucky often didn’t bother to lock up at night. Smith threw the dead bolt. No one had passed her in the hallway, and she’d heard the kitchen door close. But she checked the house anyway. Sylvester ran beside her, and she knew he’d sniff out anyone hiding in a closet or under a bed.

  “What’s going on,” Andy said, when she threw the light on in Sam’s room.

  “Downstairs, Dad. Now.”

  Only in her parent’s bedroom did Smith not hit the lights and check the closet. Miller was sleeping and Sylvester didn’t seem too concerned, so she let the baby dream.

  Her parents sat at the kitchen table, sleep-befuddled, confused.

  “Did you leave this door unlocked when you went to bed, Mom?”

  “I don’t remember. What’s the matter?”

  “Might be nothing. I thought I heard someone come in.”

  “Into our house?” Andy said. “I didn’t hear anything. Did you, Lucky?”

  “No.”

  “Must have been the wind. Or a bear trying to get into the garbage bin. Bill next door told me that a black bear tossed his garage the other day, after he’d forgotten to shut it.”

  “A bear,” Smith said. “Perhaps.”

  “Much ado about nothing.” Lucky yawned. “Try to be quieter in the night, will you, dear. Miller sleeps so lightly.” She stood on tip toes to kiss her daughter on the cheek. She smelled of fresh baby power and baby vomit going rancid.

  “You think someone tried to break in?” Andy said, as Lucky’s feet echoed on the staircase.

  “I don’t know, Dad. I thought so. It sounded like someone had come into the house. But I don’t see anything.” There were no muddy footprints on the ceramic floor, no signs of anything in the house being disturbed. She’d taken a look outside, but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. The motion light over the garage was on: something had triggered it. “Maybe it was a bear. I’m sorry to bother you. Go back to bed.”

  He held her close, for just a moment.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s make sure we lock up, eh? I know Mom wants her friends to be able to come and go, but at least at night we should be a bit more careful.”

  ***

  Saturday morning, Winters had Jim Denton call the owners of The Bishop and the Nun and check the staff schedule. Marigold started her shift at four.

  At three thirty he was at her door. He’d also checked the staff schedule at the station, and brought Molly Smith along with him. The young policewoman seemed to rattle Marigold even more than he did. Probably a generation thing—she’d be suspicious of him no matter what he did for a living. But Molly, when not wearing the uniform, looked just like Marigold and her friends.

  Smith rang the bell.

  “Go away,” Marigold said from behind the door. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Nevertheless, I want to talk to you. May we come in?”

  “No.”

  “I can take you down to the station, if you’d rather talk there.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t do. I’m not playing around any more, Marigold.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I have to get ready for work.”

  “The faster we talk, the sooner you’ll get to work.”

  The door of the next apartment opened. A young woman with long straight brown hair, dressed in sleek yoga wear, stuck her head out. A wave of incense surrounded her. Winters couldn’t stand the stuff. “Keep it down, will you. I’m meditating here.” She slammed the door.

  “I don’t want to bother your neighbors, Marigold,” Winters said. “But I will place you under arrest if I have to.”

  The door opened. Only Marigold’s dreadlocked head emerged. “I’m not dressed.”

  “I’ll wait here while you get dressed. Constable Smith will come in in the meantime.”

  “How do I know she’s not gay? Probably is, being a cop.”

  “Marigold, I suggest you start cooperating before my patience runs out.”

  The door opened fully. Marigold was dressed in the short skirt and white blouse she wore to work. The blouse didn’t fit very well, and the space between the buttons gaped in an attempt to contain the fat around her middle. Black socks were crumpled around her ankles and she wasn’t wearing shoes. “You might not have anything better to do, but I do. Come in if you must.”

  “Thank you,” Winters said.

  Smith stood with her back against the door, as he’d instructed her to do, her arms crossed over her chest.

  He walked to the window. Marigold couldn’t keep them both in sight, so she turned to follow Winters.

  “Watson,” he said. “Name mean anything to you?”

  The girl’s eye twitched. “No.”

  “I think it does. Is there a first name to go with it?”

  Marigold threw up her hands. Her silver rings flashed in the light from the window. “Ashley. It was Ashley’s name, okay, as you obviously know. Can you leave now?” She looked at her watch. “If I’m even a minute late, they dock me fifteen minutes pay.”

  “They’ll dock you a lot then,” Smith said. “If you’re spending time in our cells.”

  Marigold turned around. “Are you on a power trip or something, cop lady? They say your mom’s okay. What the hell happened to you? Go away, and take The Man with you. I told you people what you want to know.”

  “Watson, what?” Winters said. “Or rather what Watson?”

  Marigold threw up her hands. “Jennifer. Boring name. Ashley hated it. I don’t blame her. Reminds me of cheerleaders and pom-poms and rah rah and rich bitches blowing football stars behind the bleachers at school.”

  Now that Marigold was letting it out, Winters hoped she might be ready to let a lot of other things out as well.

  “So Jennifer changed her name. Who cares? You wanna make a big deal out of it?”

  “Changing her name? No. Keeping information from the police that’s relevant to their investigation? Yes, that is a big deal.”

  A door slammed in the hallway and a man shouted at someone not to forget the recycling. Outside a child laughed. The apartment was very warm. He could smell the incense next door. But it didn’t cover up the smell of pot, recently enjoyed, inside the apartment.

  Marigold glared at Smith. Smith hooked her thumbs through her gun belt and stared back.

  Winters allowed the silence to fill the apartment. He could wait all day. But, he’d guess, Marigold couldn’t. Smith’s boots creaked as she shifted her feet.

  Marigold paced in front of the couch. Her eyes kept straying to the wooden box containing her stash, and she gnawed at her fingernail.

  “Ashley died,” he said, “under what we call suspicious circumstances. That means that everyone she knew, everyone she had contact with, falls under the scope of our investigation. It’s not fair, sometimes. But you know what, dying wasn’t fair to Ashley.”

  Marigold looked directly at him for the first time. “You got that right.”

  “Did Ashley have a problem with you dealing drugs?”

  “I don’t deal anything.”

  “That’s not what they say on the streets,” Smith said.

  “I don’t care what anyone says.” Another longing look at the box.

  “You’re known to deal in what’s sometimes called soft drugs, Marigold,” Winters said. Blood flooded into her face, and she looked very angry. “But that’s not my concern. I’ll let the drug squad worry about it.” That there was no
drug squad in the Trafalgar City Police, and that, if there were such a thing, Winters and Lopez were it, he didn’t bother to mention. Sometimes people’s impression of police gleaned from U.S. television shows could prove helpful.

  “Did you kill Ashley because she objected to you selling marijuana behind The Bishop and Nun?”

  “No!” Her eyes opened wide with fright, and she suddenly realized that this was not a game. She fell onto the couch. The springs weren’t very good and she wasn’t watching where she was going. She slid onto the floor. “You’re going to pin Ashley’s death on me so you can screw me for helping a pal out and making a few bucks in the bargain.”

  “I’m not going to pin anything on anyone. But I am going to find out what happened to Ashley the day she died. You can count on that.”

  What pictures there were in the apartment looked like calendar art, or postcards, stuck into cheap frames and hung on the walls. But there was one picture of Marigold, looking young, and pretty, and happy. He picked it up. It might have been taken on the East Shore of Kootenay Lake.

  “Put that down,” she said in a soft quiet voice, “please.”

  He put it down.

  “Ashley cared about that baby.” Tears gathered behind Marigold’s eyes and overflowed. She didn’t lift a hand to wipe them away. “Miller. He wasn’t her baby, not physically. I asked her what it had been like, and she told me she wished she’d brought life to Miller, but she hadn’t. She didn’t tell me where he’d come from, and I didn’t care. She loved him, and looked after him. Isn’t that enough?”

  Winters glanced at Smith, still leaning up against the door. She was a dark threat in the equipment laden uniform, but her face was drawn, her blue eyes questioning.

  When Winters looked back at Marigold, her makeup had began to blend with her tears into a black river. A river with nowhere to go.

  “We tack on extra penalties for dealing around children.”

  “I only ever sell behind The Bishop,” she said, her voice so soft he had to lean forward to hear. “I swear. And not much. Just a toke here and there. Ashley didn’t know. When I came home with extra cash, I told her I’d had a big tipper.” Her nose ran, and mingled with her tears. “As if that ever happens. I liked to buy the occasional thing for Miller, when I could. The day Ashley moved in, I knew she’d leave if she found out I dealt. So I didn’t ever tell her.”

  “Thank you, Marigold,” Winters said. “You’ve been helpful. Take this as a warning: stop selling. Stop now. We will be watching you.”

  He nodded to Smith, and she opened the door.

  They left the apartment and walked down the steps to the street.

  Smith let out a deep breath. “You believe her?”

  “I’m not sure.” They walked up the hill, heading toward the police station. The sun was hot on his face. Smith wiped the back of her neck. He didn’t know what he thought. So he sorted out his impressions, using Smith as a sounding board. “I believe Marigold truly cared about Miller. But Ashley? Hard to say. I’ll have someone drop into The Bishop tonight, looking to make a buy, looking for something stronger than B.C. Bud. Ashley was killed by a heroin overdose, not marijuana. Marigold can turn on the tears, fast enough. I don’t quite have a feel for how smart she might be. She confessed, when confronted with it, to selling pot. Was she clever enough to be trying to turn my attention away from her other product? I don’t know. But she makes no bones about needing money, more money than she makes at The Bishop. Maybe more than she even makes selling small quantities of locally grown produce. There’s an avenue I’ve failed to explore. Marigold seems to live simply. No car, cheap apartment. But she puts in long hours at The Bishop and it’s a busy place most nights. What’s she do with the money she earns? And how much does she earn, in all of her occupations?”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “What are we going to take to the pot-luck?” John Winters asked, peering into the depths of the stainless steel refrigerator.

  Eliza looked up from her toast and coffee and yesterday’s paper. “Pot luck?” She shivered at the very mention of pot luck. The most dreadful of all social occasions. Food, prepared hours (days!) ago and trucked to the party in the back of a van with failing air conditioning. Macaroni salad. Chili finished with too heavy a hand on the spices (or not enough). Reheated pasta. Spinach dip in a bowl carved out of bread. Iceberg lettuce browning around the edges, drenched in supermarket-brand bottled dressing.

  “The pot luck at Barb’s place this afternoon. For the whole department. Remember?”

  If he’d told her they had to go to a pot luck, she would have remembered. “John, you haven’t said one word to me about a party.”

  “Sure I did. Didn’t I?”

  “No.” She dragged out the word as if it were polysyllabic.

  He ducked his head and looked sheepish. Toast popped out of the machine and he grabbed it. “Guess I forgot. I can’t get out of it. Barb’s been on my case for weeks, demanding to know what I was going to bring.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I’d sort though the multitude of Winters family favorites and let her know. I need to go, sweetheart. Show the flag, so to speak. It starts at four. I’ll get there around four-thirty and I should be able to escape by six.”

  Police functions. Booze. Shop talk. More booze. And more booze. They’d come to Trafalgar to get away from that.

  It wasn’t hard for John to read her mind. “I swear, on the grounds that you are the most understanding woman in the whole world, that I’ll have one beer and be out of the place by six, five-forty-five, if I can make it. Call my cell at six. Something about an emergency at home. The toilet is overflowing. That’ll do it.”

  Eliza put down her toast and pushed back her chair. A soft breeze came in the open window and lifted the edges of the newspaper. “Most people bring casseroles, salads and desserts to a pot luck, potato chips if they can’t cook, and forget about appetizers. I’ll get some smoked salmon and cream cheese. Mix that with a bit of chives for color, paprika for kick, roll it all into a tortilla and slice it thin. Voila. We have a tasty, pre-dinner treat.”

  “You’re coming?”

  She put her hands on his shoulders. “In Vancouver I avoided everything to do with your profession, John. That was a mistake. I left you alone to battle your demons.”

  “You didn’t….”

  “Now that we’re here, making a new start, I’d like to meet your colleagues.”

  And she meant it. In Vancouver they lived separate lives, and were content to have it that way. He was a police officer—long hours, crazy job. She was a model with her own long hours, crazy job. She had been in Florida when the crisis she’d been too pre-occupied to notice arrived and John had fallen apart. She’d been helping her parents after her mother fell when an absent-minded rollerblader ran into her and broke her leg, but she might as well have been on the catwalk in Milan. John had needed her. Badly. And she hadn’t been there.

  “The other wives are coming?”

  “And the husbands, yes. Barb told me specifically that I was to bring you. Are you sure? I know you hate those things.”

  “Almost as much as you hate the parties I take you to. Like that awful thing at the Grizzly Resort. Incidentally, I heard that José’s girlfriend had way too much to drink at the restaurant, made a play for one of the ad execs, and José told her to make her own way back to the hotel and be out of town next morning.”

  “I’m so sorry we missed that.” Sarcasm dripped off his tongue as thickly as the marmalade he was spreading on his toast. “You finished with the paper?”

  She handed the Gazette over. He took his reading glasses out of his pocket and popped them on the edge of his nose. He hated the glasses, but she thought they looked good on him. Sophisticated, mature.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “I can’t look at you?”

  “Not like that.” He wiped at his face, trying to remove nonexistent crumbs.

 
; “I’d better decide what I’m going to wear,” she said. “Then I’ll go shopping for the food.”

  ***

  Molly Smith was also thinking about Barb’s party. She checked out the big freezer in the basement. A few packages of summer fruit and vegetables—last summer’s—lay at the bottom. Enough bags of bagels to see them through a nuclear winter. Frozen waffles. Packages of the sausage rolls and small frozen pizzas her father loved.

  Nothing she could take to the department pot luck. Smith had told Lucky about the party a week ago. Whereupon she’d assumed her mother would prepare a casserole that would be the hit of the event.

  Lucky had a recipe she’d cut from Martha Stewart Living.It was expensive, complicated, wordy. And it made a meal that tasted like something served in heaven to angels fluttering their wings on fluffy white clouds. Lucky named it Five Hour Lasagna because of the time involved.

  Smith had sort of hoped that her mom would get up in the night and make Five Hour Lasagna for the City Police’s pot luck.

  Apparently not.

  What was the point of living at home if you couldn’t count on your mom to cook for you?

  She’d signed up to bring lasagna, so she’d have to head over to the supermarket and buy a frozen slab of mass produced product.

  At least none of the older guys would ask if she’d made it herself.

  ***

  She didn’t bother to get a shopping cart. She was here for one thing only. A package of frozen lasagna.

  Smith stood in front of the freezer case and stared. The variety was impressive: seafood lasagna, vegetable lasagna, chicken lasagna, three mushroom lasagna, four cheese lasagna. Nothing called five hour lasagna, unfortunately, so she settled on the package with the simple label of: Lasagna.

  The line at the checkout was long. To pass the time, Smith read the label on the container.

  Defrost overnight.

  Otherwise, three hours to bake from frozen.

  Who knew frozen food was so time-consuming?

  Eventually she was allowed to pass her money over and leave.

  She had to get this thing home. Three hours of cooking and she’d barely make it to Barb’s on time.