by Vicki Delany
“Surprised you’re still here.” Adam planted a kiss on Smith’s cheek, and slipped his arm around her. He had spent the day at a friend’s place, helping to put up a new fence, and was casually dressed in jeans, a brown sweater, and work boots.
He glanced at Nicky, and Smith saw a smile cross his face. “This is Nicky Nowak. We were great friends in school. Nicky this is Adam. My boyfriend.” She put her arm around his back.
Adam reached out a hand and Nicky took it. Her delicate fingers almost disappeared in his big paw. She fixed her expressive brown eyes on his face. “Nice to meet you, Adam. I hope you’re joining us.”
“We’re going for dinner,” Smith said. “I guess you’ve eaten, eh?”
“Maureen made cornbread and a big pot of chili so I figured I had to stay. I’ll have a beer while you eat.”
“Wonderful,” Nicky said.
Smith slid off her barstool. “I have to go to the washroom. I’ll be right back.”
“So,” she heard Nicky purr, “what line of work are you in, Adam?”
Chapter Seventeen
The Nowak case wasn’t exactly urgent, and nothing else of major interest was on his desk, so John Winters allowed himself to enjoy a few days off.
Eliza had gone into town to work at her gallery, and he decided to pop in and invite her to lunch. She looked up when the chime over the door announced his arrival, and he was pleased to see a smile touch her lips.
Pleased. He realized with a jolt that he was more than pleased, he was thrilled. She was the center of his life, and he’d been terrified she would leave him because of his own crass stupidity and bungling. But this morning’s smile was the old, familiar one that she’d given him for the twenty-six years of their marriage. His heart turned over in his chest. “Hi,” he said, “how about lunch?”
“Do you have something in your throat?”
“No.” He coughed. “No. Lunch?”
“Bit early, isn’t it?”
“I’m hungry. And I missed you.”
She laughed. She had a beautiful laugh. “I’ve only been gone for two hours, John. We’ve been separated for a lot longer than that over the years.” Which was certainly true. Her modeling career had taken her all over the world, sometimes for extended periods. Her mother spent the winters in Florida, and Eliza usually went down to visit and help out for a couple of weeks. Maybe he was just getting old. He liked that the gallery business kept her in Trafalgar, Vancouver at the furthest. He had an image of them as an old couple, sitting on the front porch in matching rocking chairs with blankets across their knees, and it made him smile.
“What are you looking so pleased about?”
“Nothing. Lunch?”
She slid off her stool. “I am supposed to be running a business here. But as it’s my own business and we’re not busy, I guess I can take a break. Just a quick one, mind.”
It was raining heavily, no doubt part of the reason there weren’t any customers, and Eliza grabbed her umbrella from behind the counter. She popped it open as they left the gallery, and they walked the half-block to George’s. Late for breakfast, early for lunch, the usually crowded restaurant was empty and they got a nice table by the window. A plastic daffodil was stuck into a bud vase.
Winters ordered off the breakfast menu and Eliza requested a spinach salad. “Any particular reason you’ve come into town?” she said, handing the menu to the heavily-tattooed young waiter with a smile.
“Just wanted to see you.” Her hand was on the table, the nails trimmed short, the polish light pink. He reached out and touched it. “And tell you I love you.”
She said nothing, but folded her fingers into his.
They separated to let the waiter pour coffee.
“I’ve decided to offer a private show to Kyle Nowak. Next year in Vancouver.” Eliza’s green eyes narrowed. “Is your investigation going to interfere with that?”
“I don’t see why.” He looked around the empty room, and dropped his voice. “I’ll take the case seriously and do everything I can to find out what happened to his father, but fifteen years have passed. People move away, they forget, overlooked evidence is destroyed or lost. If he was murdered, and I have no evidence to that effect, the person responsible has had a lot of time to cover his tracks. So, unless something new comes to light, not much is likely to happen.”
“Will the… uh, remains, be able to tell you anything?”
“Possible. They’re at a lab now. Certainly if they find a bullet imbedded in the skull or a knife slice along a rib that’ll be meaningful, but bones have a way of keeping their secrets. In this case, they haven’t found much of the skull or ribs anyway. Animals and time can carry them a long way.”
“Regardless of what happened all those years ago, the consequences were tragic. Kyle’s an insecure, bitter young man. The family had no money and he wasn’t able to go to art college, which had been his ambition. He felt he had to stay in Trafalgar to look after his mother.”
“You’re not giving him a show because you feel sorry for him are you?”
“My galleries are a business. I intend to make them profitable in the long run. I do not take charity cases.”
He felt as though his hand had been slapped out of the cookie jar. Eliza balanced the two sides of her life well. At home, to her family and friends and community, she was a generous, loving woman, but when it came to work and money she was all business. It was good part of why she’d survived in the sewer that was the modeling world. Not only survived but thrived.
“He hates the memory of his father, still carries all that hate around. It’s got to be destroying him. The tragedy of his father and the feelings he holds toward the man are likely the reason Kyle creates great art. I suspect if their lives had continued as normal he’d be painting the sort of pretty little mountain scenes he’s so contemptuous of now.”
“He hates his father? Why?”
The waiter appeared at the table, and Winters cut himself off. Too easy, sometimes, to get talking about a case and forget that people could be listening. “Hold that thought,” he said to his wife, “I’d like to hear more, but not right now.” He dug into his pile of huevos rancheros and asked her if she’d given any thought to a winter vacation this year.
They were finishing their meal and Winters was refusing a coffee refill when two familiar people walked by the window, sharing an umbrella. Lucky Smith and Paul Keller. Lucky threw her head back and laughed and Keller grinned at her. They stopped at the restaurant door, and Lucky shook raindrops off while Paul furled the umbrella.
They saw Winters and Eliza immediately. Winters wondered if a flash of guilt passed over his boss’ face. Keller’s eyes darted around the room, perhaps looking for a table tucked away somewhere, but Lucky lifted her hand in greeting, said something to Paul, and they came over.
“John, Eliza. Nice to see you. Do you folks know Lucky Smith?”
Winters got to his feet. “I know Lucky well,” he said. “Lucky, I’d like you to meet my wife, Eliza.”
“The famous Lucky Smith,” Eliza said. “I’m pleased to meet you at last.”
Lucky laughed. She was short and dumpy with a mop of uncontrollable red hair, now mostly gray, and she emitted energy like a light bulb. “Good heavens, is that what I am?” She turned her smile to Paul Keller. “You might not want to be seen with me, Paul.”
Keller returned the smile.
Eliza slid her chair back and got to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I have to be getting back to my shop. I’ve lingered over lunch far too long as it is. We’re almost neighbors now, Lucky. I’m sure you know I’ve opened an art gallery where Mildred’s Fashions used to be. Let’s have lunch one day and you can give me some business tips.”
“I’d like that.”
John and Eliza left as Paul and L
ucky were being shown to a table in the back.
“From what you’ve told me about Lucky Smith,” Eliza said, opening her umbrella, “I wouldn’t have imagined her and Paul as friends.”
They began to walk. “No.”
“That’s a no that says a great deal.”
“Paul told me Karen’s gone to Calgary for a friend’s daughter’s wedding. He couldn’t get away, he said, because of work, so she went alone. I can’t think of anything so pressing he couldn’t take a long weekend.”
“John.” Eliza sounded quite shocked. “Don’t tell me you’re reduced to spreading gossip.”
“Just thinking out loud.”
She shook her umbrella, folded it, and then unlocked the door and flipped the closed sign.
“If you have a minute,” he said, “can you tell me what you meant earlier about Kyle hating his father? The guy disappeared, almost certainly against his will.”
“Why must it have been against his will?”
“People can disappear, get new identities, start new lives. But they have to know what they’re doing. We’re ruled by numbers and everything is electronic. Transfer more than ten thousand dollars into a bank account and that triggers a money laundering flag. Can’t get a job without a social insurance number, at least not a legal job. Can’t go to the hospital or see a doctor without a health card. Can’t even drive to the States without a passport or catch a local flight without photo ID any more. Most people, respectable law-abiding people, would have no idea where to go to get false ID. Not the sort of thing kids use to sneak into a bar, but good enough to fool government officials. It can be done, living under the radar completely, but not a guy like Nowak.”
“Why not?”
“Because from everything I’ve read in Paul’s notes the guy had no secret life. He wasn’t in the witness protection program, he had never been a CSIS agent, never been in the military or police, he wasn’t related to anyone in the mob. He was a middle-class Canadian guy who’d lived in Trafalgar for twenty years and worked at an insurance company. He wouldn’t have lasted more than a week before doing something to trigger a record. Run out of cash and need to use an ATM, slap down a credit card thinking it would be okay just this once.
“Fifteen years ago it would have been easier to get across the border, but he would have had to have some sort of ID, driver’s license most likely.”
“Perhaps someone helped him get those things.”
He shrugged. “Sure, anything’s possible. Say you had to disappear, Eliza. Who would you go to? Who would you trust enough to lay your life in their hands?”
He could see her mind racing. “I have absolutely no idea,” she said at last.
“And you, more than most people, have international contacts. Nowak could have left town without planning to be gone for long, or planned to disappear but never got far enough to need ID. But he didn’t take his car, and no one came forward to say they’d given him a lift. I don’t buy it.”
She let out a breath. “Kyle was sixteen years old, don’t forget. He’s unlikely to have gone through the thought processes you have. He thinks his father abandoned the family, probably ran off with another woman. Apparently Mr. Nowak was quite the lady’s man.”
“How do you know that?”
“Kyle told me. His parents’ marriage wasn’t a good one, and his father was always having affairs with women in their social group. Mothers of his daughter’s teammates, women from church. That sort of thing.”
Kyle had mentioned something about his father being friendly with a woman from their church. Keller had spoken to her at the time, but she claimed to know nothing about Nowak’s disappearance.
Was Kyle on the right track, but had the wrong woman?
Surely if a woman had run off at the same time Nowak disappeared that would have been mighty obvious. She could have been from out of town, but that didn’t answer the question as to how he left and where he went and why he ended up with his bones scattered across a mountainside.
“You have your cop face back on,” Eliza said.
“I have a cop face?”
“You certainly do. I can always tell when my husband leaves me and a police officer takes over. Makes me think of those horror movies where the mild-mannered innocent is possessed by the devil or some such creature.”
“I shudder to know that you think I’m mild-mannered.”
She leaned over and ran the tip of her tongue playfully across his lips. He started to respond, but she pulled back. “Only mild-mannered some of the time. Are you going into work?”
“No. This case has waited fifteen years, it can wait until Monday. I was going to go for a run, but not if it keeps raining. I might just relax with a good book.”
Chapter Eighteen
First thing Monday morning, Winters checked the files for the name of the woman Keller had interviewed regarding Nowak’s disappearance. Irene Sexton. Still living in the same home she’d been in fifteen years ago. Winters headed for the van.
Mrs. Sexton was in her sixties, pink-cheeked and robust, with slate-gray hair cropped short and piercing blue eyes.
“I was wondering when you’d call,” she said before he’d introduced himself. “I read in the paper that Brian’s body’s been found.” She drew a quick cross on her chest. “Poor man. I assume you’re here in pursuit of common gossip that he and I were having a sordid affair and I ran off with him but changed my mind and came back to devote my life to good works as penitence. Oh, well, come in and let’s get this over with.”
She stepped back and held the door open. She lived in an older house nestled into the foot of the mountain. Tall and thin, stairs everywhere. Neat and clean and functional.
A substantially overweight beagle yawned at the newcomer from the living room couch. Mrs. Sexton shooed it down. It sniffed at Winters’ pant leg, without much interest, before waddling into the kitchen. Presumably in search of something to eat.
“I have the kettle on. Won’t be a minute. Take a seat,” Mrs. Sexton said.
Winters eyed the dog-hair-encrusted couch warily, and then chose a chair that didn’t seem to be one of the animal’s favorite places to snooze.
The woman was back in moments, carrying a tray with tea pot, china cups and saucers, matching milk and sugar bowls, and a plate of cupcakes. The little cakes were decorated beautifully, pink icing piled high, topped with a candy rose petal.
“Church lunch tomorrow,” Mrs. Sexton explained, pouring tea.
He took a cake and bit into it. The inside was as white as a cloud and tasted almost as light. The icing wasn’t as sweet as it looked. He devoured the cupcake quickly.
Mrs. Sexton smiled at him. “Have another.”
He took one. “I’m sorry to have to bring all this up again. Yes, I am here because there were rumors at the time you knew Mr. Nowak well.”
“There were no rumors, Sergeant. Just that boy of his causing trouble. My husband died in 1994. Cancer. This is an old house and in the last two years of Ralph’s life he wasn’t able to maintain the house and we couldn’t afford a contractor. After his death, Father O’Malley organized some of the men from church to come around to do what needed to be done, Brian among them. Brian continued to give me a hand when I needed it. Odd jobs mostly, leaky faucet, fence falling over. I paid him by sending baking home with him. That was the total extent of our relationship. I went to visit my sister in Prince Rupert the morning he disappeared. Didn’t know anything about it until I got home three days later and found that the police were searching for me. That,” she added firmly, “was most embarrassing.”
He ate the second cupcake slowly. “Did you have any suspicions as to what happened?”
“Not a one. Some people said he ran off, but I never believed that. He was a good family man. I didn’t like his wife, truth be told, she
was as cold as a wet fish, and his son was a nasty piece of work. Most teenage boys are, I’ve found. But his daughter was a lovely girl, and he adored her. He wouldn’t have abandoned them. He was a good Catholic family man,” she repeated.
“Why do you think his son, Kyle, told people he was having an affair with you?”
“I’d forgotten his name. Yes, Kyle. Who knows what boys that age get up to? Perhaps he was projecting his own frustrated sexual desires onto his father. Living vicariously, so to speak.”
She must have seen something in Winters’ face, and she laughed. “I don’t mean Kyle had a mad passion for me. I’m only saying that I understand boys of that age can be obsessed with sex. Yet not mature enough to understand that everyone else in the world doesn’t think the same way they do.”
Winters chose his words carefully. “Let’s say hypothetically the boy was onto something. Had the wrong woman, perhaps. Were there rumors of Nowak having affairs?”
She shook her head. “I don’t repeat gossip, Sergeant, but I can say I never heard any such rumor. The boy made it up out of whole cloth. Father O’Malley was the priest here then, still is. He knew the family as well as a priest does. Perhaps you can talk to him. He won’t break the confessional, of course, but I’m sure he can put an end to this foolish line of enquiry.” She stood up. “I have more than enough cupcakes for the luncheon. I’ll prepare you a box to take home. I’ve seen your lovely wife around town, and can’t imagine she’s much of a cook.”
Winters knew when he was dismissed.
***
A wave of heat washed over her as Lucky Smith opened the oven door. She peeked in. The lasagna was browning nicely. She’d made her specialty, what she modestly thought of as her world-famous five-hour lasagna. So called because that was the amount of time it took to make.
Andy had loved it.
She closed the door with a sigh. She’d made a lemon cake, another of Andy’s favorites. Perhaps that was a mistake. Andy wouldn’t be sitting down to dinner.