Under Cold Stone: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Novels)

by Delany, Vicki

  She waited, heart pounding, itching to get out of the car, to go to Paul, but, knowing that this time, for once, she had to do as she’d been told. It was only a matter of moments until she heard a siren, another, and the street was washed in white, blue, and red lights. Lucky told the 911 operator the police had arrived, and snapped her phone shut. She stuffed it into her jacket pocket and jumped out of the car. She flagged down the first vehicle. “Over there,” she shouted to the officer, a woman not much older than Lucky’s own daughter. “Chief Constable Keller’s waiting for you.”

  Paul shouted and waved, and two officers ran to join him in the vestibule. Another took a post outside the door. Lights began coming on in the neighboring houses and apartments, faces appeared at windows, and a few people ventured outside to stand on their front steps and watch the excitement.

  When Lucky looked back at the apartment building, the two Mounties and Paul were gone. Someone must have buzzed them in.

  More cars, white with the logo of colored stripes and horseman with a lance, arrived, followed by an ambulance. A crowd began to gather, coats thrown hastily over pajamas, bare feet stuffed into shoes, laces untied. Uniformed officers ordered people to keep back and spoke into radios at their shoulders. Yellow tape was being unrolled and tied around the spruce trees fronting the property.

  No shots rang out; no one screamed in terror or cried out in pain. Lucky took a deep breath, summoning her courage, lifted her head, and marched purposefully across the small patch of browning grass toward the door, as if she had reason to be there.

  “Sorry, ma’am.” The Mountie guarding the door stopped her. “I’ll have to ask you to stay behind the tape.”

  “I’m with Chief Constable Keller,” she said, her eyes fixed on his face. She wondered if he was old enough to shave yet. He hesitated. His radio spat out something incomprehensible amongst a burst of static and he turned, waving Lucky through.

  She slipped inside. The inner door had been propped open. A single weak bulb hung over the hallway, and a staircase, dark and narrow, led up. A Mountie was talking to a group of women at the end of the hall, their apartment doorways open. No need to wonder where to go: The voices of the police overhead were loud and footsteps pounded the floorboards. Lucky dashed up the stairs.

  Uniformed men and women stood at the first door on the right, facing into the room. Lucky slipped up behind them, cursing her lack of height. An officer turned and thrust out an arm. “You can’t come in here.”

  “I’m with Chief Constable Keller.”

  The police parted. Paul’s face was pale and lines that hadn’t been there yesterday dragged down the skin. Lucky glanced around him, into the room. She soon wished she hadn’t.

  A man lay on the floor, close to the door. He was on his back, his arms flung out to the sides, looking at, but not seeing, the light overhead and the water-stained ceiling tiles. At first Lucky thought someone had spilled a bucket of red paint onto the dull beige carpet. Her hand came to her mouth as she realized he lay in a pool of blood. Blood covered his throat. Paramedics packed up their equipment. They were in no hurry.

  Lucky gasped, and Paul grabbed her arm. He pulled her into the hallway. “I told you to stay in the car.”

  “Matt?” she asked.

  Paul shook his head. “No sign of him. Damn fool must have run after calling me.”

  Footsteps on the stairs. A man, dressed in jeans and a light windbreaker. Shorter than Paul but powerfully built. Silver and gray hair cut short, gray eyes set in deep folds of skin, a lined face full of gray stubble. “Chief Constable Keller?”

  Paul held out his hand. The men shook.

  “Sergeant Edward Blechta. I’d say it’s a pleasure, but not in these circumstances. My dispatcher told me you called this in. Do you know the victim?”

  “No. My son,” Paul sighed, deeply, looking every one of his fifty-eight years, “phoned me at my hotel. Said he’d come home to find…this.”

  “Your son? Where’s he now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Blechta’s tired gray eyes studied Lucky, and he did not smile. “You are?”

  “Lucy Smith. I’m Chief Keller’s…”

  “Friend,” Paul finished.

  “Friend. People call me Lucky.”

  “Are you?”

  She flushed. “I mean that’s my nickname. Lucky Smith.”

  “Not so lucky today,” Blechta said. “If you have no reason to be here, Ms. Smith, I’d like you to leave. Chief Keller, I’m going to have a look at the scene. Then I have some questions for you.”

  Paul said, “As long as Lucky’s here, she should have another look at the body.”

  “Me?”

  Paul lifted one hand, but he didn’t touch her. For the first time, she noticed drying blood on his tips of his fingers. “You might recognize him, Lucky.”

  “I don’t know anyone in Banff. We only arrived on Thursday.”

  Paul gave her a weak smile. “Take a deep breath. Look at the face and tell us what you see.”

  Blechta nodded. “Might as well get it over with.”

  The uniformed officers moved aside as, first Blechta, then Lucky and Paul, entered the apartment. Lucky looked everywhere but at the thing on the floor. The furnishings in the living room were old and shabby, with the exception of a huge flat-screen TV against one wall. The TV was on, showing a group of suit-clad men sitting around a table, hockey team logos on the wall behind them. The sound had been switched off. The couch and chairs were a muddy brown—probably as much stain as fabric—and tattered. Once, a cat had been at them. The coffee table was plywood with a smear of veneer and a substantial gouge in the center. Old sheets were tossed over the curtain rods to make drapes, so thin in places they did nothing to keep the glow of the streetlights out, or private activities in. A haphazard assortment of posters advertising music acts hung on the walls. A guitar and microphone stand and what Lucky thought might be amplification equipment were in one corner, a stack of cardboard boxes in another. She could see into the kitchen: nothing but a jumble of beer cases and dirty pots piled high in the sink.

  The scent of food past its expiry date, spilled beer, and unwashed dishes filled the apartment. All of it overlaid by the distinctive smell of coffee mixed with skunk. Pot.

  It was like so many other transient apartments Lucky had been in for her work with the youth center and the women’s support center, although untidier than most. Lucky’s clients were mostly female; they might not be neater than the guys who lived here, but they usually made an attempt to clean up when she was expected.

  “Lucky,” Paul said gently, “have you seen this man before?”

  She swallowed, tried to still her stomach and breathe calmly and steadily, and then she looked down. The face was unmarked by violence, but the glassy eyes and frozen expression could only mean death. A fly, a shiny fat black bluebottle, the sound of its buzzing loud in the quiet of the room, flew past to settle on the man’s face. He made no move to wave it away, so Lucky leaned over to do so. Paul grabbed her arm. “Eyes only, Lucky, please. Don’t touch anything.”

  She nodded, and tried to swallow and not to think about flies crawling across the face, and where they had come from at this time of year.

  To her surprise, she did recognize him. The tall lean body, the unkempt blond hair. The sneer was gone now, replaced by a look of shock. Shock and fear and pain and something she didn’t recognize but thought might be an awareness of death.

  She glanced away, and then she saw a knife lying on the carpet. It looked like an ordinary kitchen knife, the blade about six inches long. Covered in blood.

  Her stomach moved and she put her hand to her mouth. Paul’s arm slipped around her, and he led her out of the apartment into the hallway. Blechta followed. The officers had stopped what they were doing and watched her.

  “Take your time,” Blechta said.

  Lucky swallowed. “It’s him. The man who tried to push in front of me at the coffee shop Fr
iday. I saw him again, yesterday morning, at the restaurant. You saw him too, Paul.”

  “I thought it was him, but I wasn’t sure. I was concentrating on…on Matt at the time.”

  “Matt being your son?” Blechta said.

  “Yes.”

  “Barry’s this man’s name,” Lucky said. “That’s what the waitress called him.”

  “Ms. Smith you can go back to your hotel. I’ll want to talk to you about what you know about this man, but…”

  “I don’t know anything about him, except that he was rude to me, very aggressive. Perhaps I shouldn’t have…”

  “Don’t start making excuses for the punk now he’s dead, Lucky,” Paul said. “He was a bully, plain and simple.”

  “I want to hear more about this bullying,” Blechta said. “But that will have to wait. Chief Keller…”

  “Paul.”

  “Paul. I’m going to have to ask about your son. Does he have a car?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Constable Donohue.”

  “Sir?”

  “Take Ms. Smith to her hotel.”

  “I’d like to stay,” Lucky said.

  “I’m sure you would,” Blechta said. “But you can’t.”

  “Ma’am,” the young officer said, “if you’ll come with me.”

  Paul gave her a weak smile. She reached out and touched his face. Constable Donohue shifted his feet.

  “I’ll need your son’s full name, DOB, and a description,” Blechta said to Paul. A door opened at the end of the hallway, and a tousled head popped out, eyes wide with interest. “Novak, didn’t I tell you to keep those people inside?”

  As Lucky and her escort made their way down the narrow stairs, they squeezed past people heading up, laden with equipment. They nodded to Donohue and ignored Lucky.

  Chapter Sixteen

  BANFF SPRINGS HOTEL. BANFF, ALBERTA. SUNDAY EARLY MORNING.

  If the night doorman at the Banff Springs Hotel was at all surprised to see Lucky Smith delivered to the hotel in a police vehicle, he was far too well-trained to show it. “Good evening, madam,” he said politely, holding the car door while she clambered out.

  At least she hadn’t been stuffed in the back, behind the partition, where the doors didn’t open from the inside.

  It was approaching five o’clock. Lights in the lobby were dim and no one was around except for a single woman behind the registration desk pecking at a computer. The elevator doors slid open the moment Lucky pushed the button, and she made her way down the quiet hallway to their room. The restaurants were closed, but room service delivered snacks twenty-four hours a day. Before so much as taking off her jacket, Lucky picked up the phone and ordered tea and a selection of whatever sandwiches were on hand. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but she had no intention of going back to bed. She had no idea how long Paul was going to be. Whatever time he got back, he’d probably appreciate having food on hand.

  She would have liked to have been allowed to stay with Paul. He had to be frantic with worry over Matt. The boy had phoned his father when he needed help. That was good. What had he told Paul? He came home and found his roommate dead on the floor?

  Might that not have been the entire truth? Had Matt been responsible? Was he hoping his dad, the police chief, could get him out of trouble?

  Lucky pushed the thought aside. The boy had panicked. Run into the night. Perhaps he feared the killer was still hanging around. They did that, sometimes, didn’t they?

  Why then, had Matt not come forward when his father arrived, followed by the police?

  Was he being prevented from doing so? It hadn’t looked like there’d been a fight in the apartment, but it was such a mess, and Lucky hadn’t spent time studying the details. Perhaps the killer had come back, or hadn’t left, and forced Matt to go with him. Had Matt been dumped in the wilderness for the bears and the wolves to find? Or had he changed his mind after phoning Paul and gone willingly with the killer?

  Lucky Smith was an optimist, always had been. She generally thought well of people and she wasn’t often disappointed. But now, try as she might, it was impossible to conjure up a positive scenario out of this mess.

  Either Matt was a killer, an accomplice to a killer, or dead.

  All these thoughts, and probably worse, would be running an endless loop through Paul’s head. Was it harder, she wondered, to face what might have happened, or be happening, to your own loved ones when you were a cop and had seen it all before?

  Lucky had seen Paul working as an active police officer in their younger days, before he moved to Calgary. But she’d largely forgotten that side of him, now that he wore a white uniform shirt, starched and ironed, and spent his days behind a desk, attending city council meetings, mixing with the public, essentially doing a bureaucratic job. Paul had switched into cop mode, cool and efficient, before he’d so much as hung up the phone with Matt. The training never left them.

  Lucky could increasingly see it in her own daughter, in Moonlight, and didn’t like it. When they went for a coffee at Big Eddie’s or lunch at George’s, mother and daughter, a chance to catch up on each other’s gossip, Moonlight might be dressed in summer shorts and a bright t-shirt with long tanned legs and sports sandals, or in ski clothes straight from the hills at Blue Sky, but she would sit with her back to the wall, facing into the room, and her eyes never stopped moving, checking everyone out, looking for trouble.

  Moonlight had told her that being a police officer was just her job, a job she happened to love very much. But Lucky was beginning to realize it was more than what she did. It was becoming who her daughter was.

  A light tap at the door dragged Lucky out of her thoughts. She told the waiter to put the tray on the table and gave him a hefty tip. When he’d left, closing the door silently behind him, she poured her tea and took it to a chair by the window.

  Her thoughts drifted to Barry, the dead man. A bully all right, and like most bullies quick to turn and run as soon as someone stood up to him.

  Had someone stood up to him this time and he found himself with nowhere to run?

  Lucky stared outside, her tea getting cold, as dawn began to creep across the mountains and light spread over the world.

  Chapter Seventeen

  TRACEY’S APARTMENT & BEARTRACK TRAIL. BANFF, ALBERTA. SUNDAY MORNING.

  Not accustomed to drinking much—she knew from her own mother where that road led—after two glasses of wine on an empty stomach and then a dinner of burger and fries, Tracey had not had a good night. She lay awake worrying about Matt, worrying about everything. That he’d decide he’d be better off with one of those rich bitches from the bar, that she’d lose one of her jobs, that she’d be kicked out of the apartment if her roommates decided they wanted the sofa back.

  It seemed as if she’d only just fallen asleep when the front door flew open and light flooded into the apartment along with a woman’s giggle and a man’s drunken laughter. Tracey groaned and pulled the blankets over her head.

  “Quiet,” Amanda shouted. “My roomie’s asleep.”

  “Huh?” The man tripped over the rug and stumbled into the low coffee table. A candlestick fell over, rolled onto the floor. Tracey burrowed deeper.

  Amanda and the unknown man staggered through the living room. Fortunately, they had sufficient presence of mind to shut the door to Amanda’s bedroom behind them.

  Tracey flopped onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She had to get out of this place.

  A man’s groan, and Tracey pulled her pillow over her head. Somewhere outside sirens sounded, racing to some tragedy or another. She tried to get back to sleep but sleep didn’t want to return. At last, she gave up, climbed out of bed, and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Thankfully, all was quiet behind Amanda’s door. Crystal had been in the living room watching TV when Tracey came in, but she soon said good night and went to her own tiny bedroom. Tracey sat at the kitchen window with her tea and watched the dark quiet street come to
life while tears ran down her face.

  She arrived at the restaurant as Kevin was flipping the sign on the door to open. “Surprised to see you this morning,” he said.

  That was probably the longest sentence Kevin had directed at her since she’d been hired. “I’ve got a shift, don’t I? Did I make a mistake on the schedule?”