“Have a nice weekend?” Lucky asked.
“Nice enough. I’m worried about the roof. We lost more tiles last week in that sudden wind. Something’s going to have to be done, and I don’t know where we’ll find the money. Donations are down sharply with the recession, expenses are up. And then there’s the furnace, surviving on a wish and a prayer.”
As if summoned, the wheezing old furnace rattled to life.
“We’ll think of something,” Lucky said. “We always do.”
“Someday, I fear we won’t. Then what?”
Lucky rested her hand against her friend’s thin back. “Let’s worry about that when the day comes, okay?”
Bev gave her a weak smile. “Okay.”
They said no more. Both of them, Lucky knew, were thinking the same thing. The center did such important work, giving babies a good start in life. What could be more vital? Yet they had to beg for funding, scrounge every cent, debate whether to fix the furnace or eliminate one of their outreach programs. When military jets were fully paid for, and prisons being built at the same time the crime rate was falling, and fat business executives dined in expensive restaurants getting a tax deduction on hundred dollar bottles of wine and thick marbled steaks.
No point in getting angry about it, Lucky reminded herself. Such was the way of the world, and she’d find herself in an early grave if she allowed herself to let all the injustices gnaw at her insides.
In which case she would be of no help to anybody.
The door flew open and two young women burst in, stomping snow from boots, pulling off gloves and scarves. Round bellies strained against coats too small to fasten at the front.
“Sorry we’re late,” the taller one said. “The bus slid off the road on George Street, and we had to walk the rest of the way.”
“You’re not late,” Lucky said, “I haven’t started yet.”
She watched them head for the back, sheading snow and outdoor gear as they walked. High school girls, the both of them.
Lucky Smith wasn’t here to judge anyone. She’d do the best she could to give their babies a good start in life by trying to ensure they were well fed.
When she arrived in the kitchen, four young women were sitting around the table. The other two were mothers now, babies in arms or snoozing in strollers. Heather’s baby was feeding at the breast with gusto. Heather was one of the few married women who came to Lucky’s classes. She was only seventeen, and Lucky figured Heather would be better off without the husband, a sneering nineteen year old with baggy pants and a whole lot of attitude. Lucky suspected child abuse lurked in Heather’s background. The girl was smart and well-read. Lucky was trying to encourage her to finish high school, get into college. Lucky suspected the arrogant husband didn’t want a wife better educated than he.
Poor girl, trading an abusive parent for a husband not much better.
Again, not her place to judge.
“She was my English teacher last year,” Marilee, one of the expectant mothers, was saying to Heather as Lucky came in.
“Really, what was she like?”
Marilee shrugged. “All right, I guess. Just a teacher.”
“Are you talking about Cathy Lindsay?” Lucky asked.
“Yeah. You heard what happened to her?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Weird. Isn’t your daughter a cop? Who do they think did it?”
“Moonlight and I don’t discuss police business.” Not that Lucky didn’t constantly try to squeeze information out of her daughter.
“Probably the husband.” Heather shifted her infant to the other breast. “It’s always the husband.” She kept her head down, her face covered by a waterfall of dark hair, and Lucky was unable to see her expression.
“Maybe he found out she was screwing Mr. Hamilton,” Marilee said.
“She wasn’t!”
“Where have you been, Brenda? Everyone knows she just about drools when he walks by.”
“Well, pardon me, I didn’t know.”
“Who’s Mr. Hamilton?” Lucky asked, unable to restrain her curiosity.
“The new math teacher. Mark Hamilton. He started at our school in September. He’s dreamy, for an older guy. Super athlete type. Mrs. Lindsay’s been all over him. Fluttering her eyelashes and simpering. At her age. It’s embarrassing. Ronnie Desmond caught them once.”
“Caught them screwing!”
“Well, not quite,” Merilee admitted reluctantly. “Ronnie says Mrs. Lindsay was leaning in real close, like for a kiss. Her hand was on his chest, like she was undoing buttons. They jumped out of their skin when they realized Ronnie had come in.”
Lucky wondered if she should tell the girls to go to the police with this information. So far it sounded like nothing more than gossip and innuendo. Teenagers loved gossip, especially anything to do with sex.
Heck, everyone loved gossip to do with sex.
“The husband did it because she dissed him by falling for another guy. Guaranteed,” Heather said, her voice flat and unemotional. Lucky wondered what on earth had happened to this girl to make her so cynical.
“Liam should be ready to begin trying solid foods soon, Heather,” Lucky said, reaching more comfortable ground. “What do you think?”
***
John Winters learned nothing at the autopsy. He’d expected to learn nothing, but these things had to be done.
Cathy Lindsay was a healthy female who had given birth more than once. Her heart and lungs were in good shape for her age, she was not overweight, the pathologist could see no signs of developing tumors or impending illness.
She’d died from a shotgun slug striking her in the back, penetrating her heart before exiting her body.
“She was dead,” Doctor Shirley Lee said, “before she hit the ground.”
Winters rubbed his eyes. He’d been to a lot of autopsies over the years. Far more than he ever wanted to. In some ways, the physical ways, it got easier. He didn’t want to throw up any more, could study mangled flesh and shattered limbs or disembodied organs without feeling faint. Unless the smell was particularly bad it didn’t much bother him. But he never stopped thinking of the dead body in front of him, laid out on the steel table under the harsh white lights, as a person. A person with a life they’d led, for good or bad—often both. With stories that would never be told and laughs that would never be shared.
Wasn’t he turning into a sentimental old fool? He tried to concentrate on the doctor’s voice as she methodically recorded her findings.
Doctor Lee walked him to the morgue doors while her assistant tidied up. They’d release the body tomorrow. No need to hold onto it.
Shirley Lee was an excellent pathologist. She seemed, to John Winters, to have no other personality. She always dressed in an expensive gray or navy blue suit with stern lines and a skirt cut sharply at midknee. The high heels she favored seemed more like weapons as they clattered down the industrial hallway warning everyone to be on their guard, rather than an attempt to appear attractive and feminine. She wore her long black hair in a tight bun scraped back off her face. She didn’t crack jokes or engage in friendly small talk. Winters got the feeling that the morgue assistant, Russ, lived in terror of the diminutive doctor with the penetrating black eyes and thin-lipped mouth.
It was unusual, in fact unprecedented, for her to walk with Winters after she’d torn off her surgical gloves and said she’d have her report ready shortly.
“They say,” she said, drawing the words out, “she was walking her dog.”
“Yup. On the old railroad track above town.”
They passed a janitor rubbing her mop across dirty boot prints and snowmelt.
“Someone shot her.”
“So it would seem.”
“Why?”
They reached the doors to the parking lot. Outside, sun shone on mounds of freshly plowed snow.
“If I knew why, I’d be a lot closer to finding the one who did it.” Winters studied Shirley Lee. S
he never asked why. The why of violent death wasn’t her job. He’d seen her carve up bodies of small children while showing as much emotion as if she were repairing a toaster. Today, something moved behind her eyes. She swallowed.
“Has it come to that? Here?”
“To what? It’s an isolated incident, Doc. We’ll get to the bottom of it. I’m guessing mistaken identity until I know more. Doctor Lee? Shirley?”
She shook her head, like a dog coming out of the water. She blinked several times, rapidly. When she looked at him again her eyes were their normal black chips.
“An isolated incident. Quite right. I’ll send you my report as soon as it’s ready, Sergeant Winters.” She half turned, her white lab coat swirling around her legs. “Oh, have a nice day.” She walked away, head up, heels tapping a furious rhythm. The janitor almost fell over her cleaning bucket in her haste to get out of the pathologist’s way.
Chapter Thirteen
On Monday, Molly Smith switched to night shift.
Which meant she had the whole day free to go skiing.
Before she even got out of bed, she called the snowline at Blue Sky—ten centimeters of fresh powder had fallen in the night. She threw off the duvet and rolled out of bed, shivering in her cotton pajamas. It was still dark outside and she wanted to be on the hill the moment it opened at first light. She dressed in layers of warm clothes and clattered downstairs with her equipment. Lights shone from the back of Alphonse’s and the air was filling with the mouthwatering warmth of rising yeast and baking bread.
She tossed her boots and poles into the back of her aging Ford Focus and strapped the skis to the roof rack. A thin gray light began to spread across the sky to the east as she pulled into the quiet streets.
Everything else in town was closed, but at Big Eddie’s the line snaked out the door accompanied by bright light and lively dance music. People dressed in an assortment of ski clothes, passes hanging from zippers, backpacks bulging with spare gloves and packed lunches, happily chatted about snowfall as the line edged steadily forward. Eddie’s staff poured drinks and served food with the coordination of a ballet.
Smith wore a red wool hat pulled down over her eyebrows, and a scarf pulled up to her chin. People who met her only when she was in uniform often didn’t recognize her in civilian garb. Head down, she shuffled forward, hoping no one would accost her demanding to know what the police were doing about the shooting.
She needn’t have worried. People who voluntarily got out of bed at six on a winter morning didn’t care about much other than their day’s skiing.
She ordered a large mocha and a breakfast sandwich, took the food to her car and munched and sipped as she drove.
The Blue Sky resort wasn’t far out of town, but it lay at a considerably higher elevation. The mounds of snow pushed to the side of the road and the weight of snow on the trees got deeper and higher. The gray haze of early morning began to dissipate and a pale sun appeared in a soft, cloudless blue sky.
Molly Smith was one of the first to arrive and she snagged a prime parking space close to the lodge.
She joined the lift line as soon as it opened for the day.
When she was a young teenager, Smith had dreamt of making the Olympic team. She was nearly good enough. Nearly, but not quite. She gave up competition but still thought skiing was almost the best thing in her life. Adam skied, although not as well as she. He tried the double black diamond nicknamed Hell’s Vestibule once, and declared, half way to the bottom where he lay on his back in a tumble of poles and skis, marveling that nothing was broken, never again.
She didn’t mind. Skiing, to Molly Smith, was a solitary pursuit. Herself, alone with the mountain and the powder.
The lift arrived and she jumped on.
“Gonna be a great day.” Her seat mate was a man, early thirties maybe. Good looking under a winter tan and several days’ worth of stubble.
“Sure is,” she replied.
“Which run are you heading for?”
“Hell’s Vestibule.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “Starting out adventurous.”
“I like to begin as I intend to continue.”
He grinned at her through a mouthful of straight white teeth. “I’m Tony.”
“Molly.” They touched gloved hands.
“Live around here, Molly?”
“Born and raised. You?”
“I’m from the east, been in B.C. for a couple of years. I’m thinking of moving to Trafalgar for the winters. Whistler’s getting mighty crowded. Not to mention expensive.”
“Not a lot of jobs here,” she said.
“I’m a ski instructor in Whistler in the winter. Kayak tour guide in Tofino in the summer.” He grinned. “Part-time waiter when the tourist trade dries up. There should be plenty of jobs like that around here.”
“Some.”
“What do you do?”
“I work for the city.”
“Good job?”
“I like it.”
The lift chair approached the top and they readied themselves to jump off.
“Race you to the bottom, Molly?”
“You’re on, buddy.”
Before taking the first run of the day, Smith liked to stand at the top of the mountain. To feel the silence, the wind in her face, the cold in her bones, the snow beneath her feet.
Today, she launched herself into thin air almost the moment the lift deposited her at the top of the run.
Tony was a good skier.
But she was a better one.
She was waiting for him at the bottom when he arrived in a spray of snow and a well-executed hockey stop.
“Glad I didn’t wager my life savings,” he said, pulling up his goggles.
She grinned. “Catch you later, maybe.” She headed back to the lifts, feeling Tony’s eyes on her back.
She was considering going for another run or taking a break for lunch, when she heard her name called. Her friend Christa, waving enthusiastically, heading toward her with two children trailing in her wake.
The women hugged their greetings, and Christa introduced her visiting cousins. The boy, Glenn, was around nine or ten, his sister, Amber, younger. The little girl looked positively edible in her powder blue ski suit, hat with bunny ears, and tiny skis.
“I said I’d watch the kids so their parents could get in some good runs,” Christa said. “Want to join us?” Christa’s look was so plaintive, Smith laughed and agreed. “If there’s a contest for cutest skier, you’ve won,” she said to Amber.
“And if there’s a contest for fastest skier, I’m going to win,” Glenn boasted.
They headed for the bunny hill. Smith usually stuck to the difficult runs largely to get away from the crowds. Today, the bunny hill was packed with locals on school break and vacationers. It was a cheerful crowd, though. Kids learning to ski, grandparents wanting to have fun but wary of a fall, a pack of middle-aged women who’d probably never been on skis in their lives clinging to each other, shrieking, and loving every minute of it.
They skirted a class in progress and joined the line for the rope tow.
“I’m getting hungry,” Christa said later, checking her watch. “How about you? Want to join us?”
“Sure.” Smith had found herself enjoying the children’s company. Their enthusiasm for the sport, for the day, was infectious.
Inside the lodge, they crossed the wooden floor with an awkward gait, waddling in their ski boots, pulling off gloves and unzipping jackets. The cafeteria was packed, but they were able to snag a table in a sunny spot by a window overlooking the lifts when a family got up to leave.
“Do you mind getting the food, Molly?” Christa asked, handing her a couple of twenties. “The kids’ dad gave me money for lunch, so it’ll be his treat. I’ll guard the table.”
“Sure. Glenn can help me carry.” Smith took orders. The open room was thick with the spicy scent of curry mixed with sizzling grease, damp wool warming in the hot air, and sweaty
bodies.
“Hi there. Have a good morning?” Tony, the guy she’d raced first thing, behind her in line for his own lunch.
She gave him a smile. “I had a great morning. How about you?”
“Good. The snow here’s fabulous.”
“Champagne powder.”
“I was hoping to see you up there again.”
A Cold White Sun: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Series) Page 9
