“A joy killing then?”
“I’ve considered that. Was Cathy a random target? The wrong place at the wrong time? In this town? I just can’t see it. Maybe I don’t want to see it, but my gut says no. For what that’s worth. My gut isn’t telling me anything at all about this one.”
“They get any DNA off the cigarette butt found?”
“We’re waiting for the results from the lab. A DNA sample’s totally useless if there’s nothing to compare it with.” He finished his beer, set the bottle down on the table.
“Get you another?”
“Better not. I’m driving and I’ve got a long day ahead of me tomorrow.”
“One other thing, while you’re here. I had a call from the mayor last week. Someone’s bought the Grizzly Resort site.”
“Who?”
“Fellow by the name of Fernhaugh representing some sort of consortium. The bad news is they plan to go head and develop it.”
Winters leaned back in his seat with a groan. That piece of mountain wilderness had been slated for development a few years ago. The deal had died, the partners withdrew and put the land up for sale. The Trafalgar City Police breathed a collective sigh of relief. Not that the TCP had any objection to development, but the project had been a flashpoint for environmentalists before the first shovel so much as hit the ground.
“I’ve a preliminary meeting with the mayor and this Fernhaugh on Wednesday. Not looking forward to it. We do not need that issue rearing its ugly head.”
“You can say that again.”
“I no doubt will.”
“Have you spoken to Lucky about it?”
“Fernhaugh’s been keeping a low profile. I don’t think she’s heard. Yet. I wouldn’t want to be in the same room when she does.”
Chapter Sixteen
By the time Molly Smith got to Feuilles de Menthe, the drunk had been dragged away by his embarrassed wife. He’d had some objection to the degree to which his steak had been cooked. The kitchen would have prepared him another, if he’d asked, the waiter told Smith. But he ate the whole thing without complaint, while consuming two bottles of an excellent Australian Shiraz, and then decided it wasn’t good enough and he wasn’t going to pay.
Smith asked for a description—middle-aged, average height, average weight, brown hair, black leather coat. The waiter shrugged. “Average guy.”
“I’m afraid he’s going to get behind the wheel,” she said. “I don’t suppose you saw which direction they went?”
“As it happens, I did. I wanted to make sure he didn’t decide to come back. They turned left and crossed Monroe Street. You’ll be pleased to hear I saw the wife take the keys out of her purse. And keep them in her hand.”
“Good. Thanks. If he comes back…”
“I’ll let you know.”
She left, stomach rumbling. What with stopping in at the store for new gloves, and then waiting for Winters to arrive and hear Lucky’s story, Smith hadn’t eaten since lunch at the lodge. She was starving, and it didn’t help standing on the street outside Trafalgar Thai while the scent of spices and aromatic herbs drifted out the door every time it opened. Or being here while waiters passed bearing plates piled with braised ribs or grilled salmon.
Anyplace she might be able to grab something quick that she could eat standing up—the bakery, the coffee shops—was closed at this time on a Monday night.
Wasn’t there a snack bar at the rec center? Indeed, she thought with an inner smile, there was.
The nightlife district of Trafalgar was a small one. The rec center wasn’t far from the east end of Front Street, next to the tourist info place. Peterson had warned her not to be spending her time investigating murders she wasn’t assigned, or qualified, to investigate. He couldn’t object to her getting something to eat, could he?
Better than her fainting on the street from hunger.
That sort of thing reduced the citizenry’s confidence in the professionalism of their police service.
Happy with her logic, she set off down the street. She’d arrive about quarter to eight. In time to catch Mrs. Grady, her old teacher, before her game.
The parking lot of the rec center was almost full. Lights spilled from doors and windows. Little kids followed parents lugging enormous hockey bags; women with coats tossed over fashionable yoga pants headed for their cars, while women in shorts and carrying athletic shoes walked into the building.
The industrial-strength carpeting in the entrance was wet and dirty with rapidly-melting snow, the building filled with the acrid scent of generations of sweat-soaked shirts, damp socks, overly-stewed coffee, and stale popcorn. The floors reverberated with the tread of cleats and skate protectors. Children’s laughter and parents’ cheers bounced off the walls and the glass shield surrounding the ice rink. Smith knew her way around this place, and she headed for the gym. At the snack bar, pink hot dogs turned slowly on the grill and popcorn bounced in the machine. Business first and then a couple of those hot dogs. She hadn’t had a proper hot dog, drenched in mustard and relish, in years.
In the gym, women were leaning against walls stretching, standing in small groups chatting, or kicking soccer balls back and forth. A few glanced over at the arriving policewoman, but most carried on with their warm-up.
Smith wondered if Cathy Lindsay had come here. That might be an avenue to explore. Although she couldn’t imagine the woman had offended someone in aerobics class or Pilates so severely they’d take out a contract on her.
She spotted her quarry alone by the far wall, rhythmically doing squats. Smith made her way across the gym floor, highly overdressed in her winter jacket, uniform, equipment belt, and black boots among these sleek women wearing shorts, T-shirts, and running shoes.
“Hi, Mrs. Grady, how are things?”
“Moonlight, nice to see you. Is there a problem?”
“I remembered you play here on Monday, and I wanted to ask you some questions. It won’t take long.”
Mrs. Grady—Smith didn’t even know her first name—glanced at the round white clock high on the wall. Five to eight. “What’s this about?”
“Cathy Lindsay.”
The teacher’s face settled into dark lines. “Bad, bad business. I don’t know what I can tell you.”
“She taught at TDH I hear. Did you know her?”
“I knew her to see her. To say hi if I ran into her in the grocery store. I never had anything social to do with her, nothing outside of school.”
“The first forty-eight hours are absolutely critical in a police investigation,” Smith said.
“So they say on all the TV shows.”
Smith tried not to grimace. “In this case, Mrs. Lindsay’s place of employment is closed for another week. Sergeant Winters, the detective in charge, wants to speak to people who worked with her, but most of her colleagues are away or can’t be reached. I remembered seeing you here the other day, and said I’d ask.”
“I don’t know how I can help you, Moonlight.”
“It’s come to our attention that rumors about Cathy Lindsay were circulating at the school.”
Mrs. Grady’s eyebrows pulled together and her face tightened. For a moment Molly Smith feared she was going to be chastised for doing a substandard job on her essay on the Brontë sisters. Gosh, that had been so awful. She minded Mrs. Grady’s disapproval far more than she minded the D she got on that paper, or what her mother said when she saw it. Mrs. Grady’s disappointment, as well as the smirk on Meredith Morgenstern’s face when she was asked to come to the front of the class and read from her A+ paper on Wordsworth, rankled for a long time.
Smith pulled her head back to the present. She tried to look like a police officer interviewing a potential witness. It wasn’t easy.
“Watch out,” Mrs. Grady cried, leaping back. An out of control black and white soccer ball bounced off Smith’s right leg.
“Sorry.” A woman chased after the errant ball.
A whistle blew and the women f
ell into order. Mrs. Grady glanced at them.
“Cathy Lindsay?” Smith nudged.
“You’re asking about a rumor?”
“Some students have said she was involved with another teacher.”
“I don’t know about involved.” Mrs. Grady let out a sigh as she gave in. “Yes, Cathy is certainly at the center of the rumor mill lately. I guess I should say she was. Terrible, terrible business, what happened to her. She has…had…a, I scarcely know how to say it, a crush on one of the male teachers.”
“A crush?”
“That seems to be the best word I can use. It was becoming embarrassing. She’d arrive at staff meetings late so she could pull up a chair beside him. She brought cookies and cupcakes she’d baked, saying she had a few extra and she knew a single man—emphasizing single—didn’t get much home cooking. She asked him to give her a hand carrying things to her car or to class. The sort of thing she’d never needed help with before. In short, she mooned around like one of our grade-nine girls with a crush on the football team’s quarterback.”
“This man, how’d he react?”
“He was hideously embarrassed. We were all embarrassed. For the both of them. He leapt to his feet at one of the staff meetings when she came in late, offered her his chair, and ran to the other side of the room to stand against the wall. With his arms crossed so defensively he might as well have hung a no-trespassing sign around his neck.
“It’s difficult sometimes for a male teacher, in such a female-heavy environment. And they have to be so careful about never being in a possibly compromising situation with the teenage girls. I’m sure he didn’t need this complication. To be honest, Moonlight, I felt sorry for him. I was walking with him to our respective classrooms about a month or so ago when he said he’d forgotten something and whirled around and dashed off down a side corridor. Sure enough, who was heading our way but Cathy. She even started dressing better.”
“Better how?”
“Better quality clothes, jewelry, high heels. Just nicer. Thank God, she didn’t try to dress sexy.”
“What’s this man’s name?”
“Moonlight, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t kill her because she was embarrassing him. If anything, I’d suspect she’d be more likely to kill him because he rejected her.”
“Did he reject her? Tell her to piss off, I mean?”
“That I don’t know.”
“His name?”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, Moonlight. My game’s started. We’re short-handed as it is.”
“I know his name, Mrs. Grady. I just want confirmation.”
“You can call me Alice now.”
Never.
Mrs. Grady surrendered with a reluctant sigh. “Mark Hamilton. He teaches math. And he’s a very, very nice man.”
“Thanks.”
“I was pleased when you came back to Trafalgar, Moonlight. Pleased to see you became a police officer. We need young women like you, doing well in the traditional men’s jobs.”
Smith shifted her boots. They’d deposited a large wet puddle on the gym floor. “Thanks, Mrs. Grady.”
The teacher ran onto the floor and sent a ball flying into the far wall with a well-placed kick.
It was ten after eight when Smith left the gym. The snack bar was dark, the glass window pulled across the counter, the hot dog cooker switched off, the popcorn machine silent, the coffee pot empty.
Smith groaned.
“I didn’t do it!” A teenage boy shouted, raising his hands in the air. “It wasn’t me. It was him. He did it all.” His companion smacked him on the side of the head as they passed, laughing uproariously at their own joke.
Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday dawned dark and gloomy, threatening more snow or a nasty icy rain, the mountains hidden by thick banks of gray cloud. Not much chance of catching a flight out today.
John Winters wasn’t too disappointed. He’d decided to talk to Gord Lindsay first. No point rushing off to Victoria, possibly wasting an entire day, without ensuring Elizabeth Moorehouse was at home. If he called to set up an interview he’d have to identify the police department he was with, and she’d be on the phone to Gord the minute Winters hung up.
He’d brought his laptop to the breakfast table and read the Globe and Mail online while munching toast and jam and sipping coffee. Eliza had her usual yogurt and berries with a sprinkling of granola as she checked stock market figures on her iPad. She kept a pad of paper at her elbow and alternately chewed the end of her pencil and her yogurt. She made a note, jotting down a string of numbers, chewed her pencil some more.
“Are you going into the gallery today?” he asked.
“Later. I have some work to do on our portfolio this morning. Oil’s up again.”
“Isn’t it always?”
“No, John. Not always. You’re thinking of gasoline.”
Molly Smith had phoned him moments after he’d arrived home the previous evening to report what she’d learned about Cathy Lindsay and Mark Hamilton. He’d gone to his computer to jot down some notes and ideas, and Eliza had been curled up on the couch reading when he finished.
“You were going to tell me about something that happened at the store the other day,” he said now. He tossed the last bit of toast into his mouth and shut the computer lid. “I got preoccupied and forgot to ask.”
“Nothing important, really, but it was a bit worrying. A man came into the store, wanting to look at some sketches I have in. Judging by the look on Margo’s face, you would have thought it was the Second Coming. She stared at the man so long and so hard, he pretty much fled in terror. When I asked her about it, she said he was her son.”
“Her son?”
“Odd, eh? She’s married, has a grown child and a grandchild.”
“Perhaps she had a son who died.”
“That would be sad, but why would she think he was in my gallery wanting to buy a picture?”
“Some people never can accept a sudden death. For years, they continue to think a mistake must have been made. Particularly if the body wasn’t found or it wasn’t in good enough condition for them to be able to see their loved one one last time. I was thinking about that yesterday. Gord Lindsay says he keeps expecting to see Cathy popping around every corner.”
“That’s understandable, isn’t it? In his case. Her things would be everywhere, her scent in the air, a magazine where she’d left it, a corner turned down to mark her place. My grandmother lived with us for a few years when I was young. She broke her hip in a fall and for days after she’d been taken to the hospital, I kept hearing her footstep in the hallway or seeing her out of the corner of my eye. She went into a nursing home after that, where she lived for a good many more years, I’m happy to say. It was different with Margo. This was no glimpse of a shadow. She stared right at him. It was dreadfully awkward.”
“Perhaps she needs some grief counseling.”
“I scarcely know the woman. I can’t suggest something as personal as that.”
“If she didn’t see a body, she might never have accepted the death. You could ask her.”
“No, I’ll leave it. She’s my employee, not my friend. She doesn’t need me interfering in her life. As long as she doesn’t make a habit of chasing away interested shoppers.”
He drained the last of his coffee and pushed back his chair. “I’m off.”
“Meet for lunch?”
“Better not. It’ll be another long, long day.”
“The policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”
He gave her a kiss and went to work.
First stop: Gord Lindsay, philanderer.
***
Work never seemed like work. From the day Gord switched on his first computer, listened to the hum of the fan warming up, the whirl of the hard drive coming to life, saw letters and words appear on the screen, he’d loved computers. He was fortunate, he knew, that he was able to make a living, a good living, doing work he loved.
/> He’d been lucky to hitch up with a guy who had a solid head for business. Over the years, Gord had seen many people with good tech skills, the drive to work hard, the ambition to succeed, falter and lose their way, and eventually their dream, because although they were great at computers, they didn’t know the first thing about how to run a business. How to make money. And, most importantly, keep it.
A Cold White Sun: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Series) Page 12
