Tom watched her. The woman was definitely hot. Young, blond, tall and slim, casually dressed in jeans and a denim jacket. Normally he would have leapt forward, eager to help, but something about her made him wary, the way she looked around before coming inside, the way her eyes moved, checking everything out. She didn’t look like a cop, and that was no police car. But these days, cops might look like anyone, and it wouldn’t be wise to make assumptions. He crossed the room, went behind the counter, and waited to see what the woman wanted.
Chapter Thirty-seven
GLOBAL CAR RENTAL. BANFF, ALBERTA. MONDAY AFTERNOON.
“Help you?” the Asian woman said as Smith walked in.
“I’m looking for Tom Dunning?”
“That’d be me.” Dunning was about Smith’s age and height. Overweight, flabby. He had an unkempt brown goatee beneath round cheeks and small black eyes full of suspicion.
She held out her hand, and he leaned across the counter to take it. “Pleased to meet you. My name’s Molly Smith and I’m a friend of Paul Keller, Matt’s dad.”
Dunning snatched his hand back. “Don’t know anything about Matt. Sorry.”
An older man, dressed in a shirt and tie, probably the boss, was also in the office, pecking at a computer. “What’s this about?”
She turned to him. “I’m helping with the search for Matt.”
“The cops have been here,” Dunning said. “I told them what I know. Which is nothing. I shared an apartment with Matt and Barry, but we weren’t friends. We didn’t hang around, do things together, you know.”
And that, Smith had come to realize, was the problem. None of these people actually seemed to like each other. They shared space, more than lived together, in order to save money. They went their own way, lived their own lives. “Can I ask you a few questions anyway?”
“Tom’s working right now,” the man in the suit interrupted. “We have a large number of vehicles scheduled to be handed in today.”
She tried to get her question in before she was shown the door. “What about Saturday night? The early hours of Sunday morning?”
“I told the cops I wasn’t home,” Tom said. “And I wasn’t.”
“Now, if that will be all. Tom, what’s the status of the Lexus that just arrived? We have customers who’ve booked it this evening for three days. Have you checked it over?”
“Not yet, Mr. Simpson.”
“Then you’d better do so, hadn’t you? Immediately.” He spoke to Tom but was looking pointedly at Smith.
“Thank you for your time,” she said, thoroughly humiliated. She’d gotten used to—too used to perhaps—the power that came with being in uniform.
She stood in the yard, glancing around, wondering what to do next. Late-model cars, in neat rows, sparkled in the sun. Neither Tom Dunning nor his boss had wanted her here, but that didn’t mean they had anything to hide. They were probably sick of answering questions, having their business disrupted.
She headed for her own car and climbed in to be greeted by an enthusiastic Sylvester. Sylvester was always enthusiastic, whether she’d been gone overnight or five minutes.
Her phone rang. Adam.
“Hey, babe. How’s it going?”
“Not well. No sign of the chief’s son. No other suspects.”
“That’s gotta be tough.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too, Molly. I think Norman misses Sylvester. He doesn’t say anything, but mopes around sniffing in corners.”
She smiled at the image.
“I can’t talk for long. I’m about to head out, but I got a call from an old friend I thought you’d be interested in.”
“Shoot.”
“Sergeant Edward Blechta. Eddie to his friends.”
“What about him?”
“This is all internal gossip mind, but it seems that a couple of years ago Eddie was rapidly transferred way up north to some hole-in-the-wall detachment. He’d been working in Red Deer. An officer made a complaint about him. A female officer, brand new shiny young constable straight out of college.”
“Do tell.”
“She claims he propositioned her. She wasn’t interested. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. She wasn’t intimidated as much as he’d thought, and she made a complaint. Of course, he was all, ‘it’s a misunderstanding, just trying to be friendly, overreaction.’”
“I’m surprised he’s the one who had to move.”
“She probably’d have been transferred posthaste, with a note on her record saying she was unstable, if not for the fact that there’d been whispers about Blechta before. Nothing they could charge him with, just rumors, innuendo. You know.”
“Yeah, I know.” It had never happened to Smith; it didn’t happen as much as it used to, but all the women knew there were still male officers who thought women needed to be put in their place. One way or the other.
“Anyway, he was, so my contact says, about to be made a staff sergeant. That never happened and he was sent to the back of beyond. He seems to have learned his lesson, no more talk anyway, so he came to Banff recently. Never did get to staff, though.”
“He probably blames that woman for the loss of the promotion.”
“You watch yourself, eh?”
“Forewarned is forearmed. It shouldn’t matter. I won’t have anything to do with him. He managed to make that perfectly clear.”
They said their good-byes, and Smith ended the call.
Before turning the key in the ignition, she looked back at the office. Tom Dunning stood at the window, watching her. He was not smiling.
Chapter Thirty-eight
TRAFALGAR CITY POLICE STATION. TRAFALGAR, BRITISH COLUMBIA. MONDAY AFTERNOON.
John Winters settled into his desk chair with a cup of coffee in hand.
First, he opened his e-mail and sent a note to Rose Benoit in Vancouver. They’d been partners for a number of years, as well as good friends. Rose was an inspector now, working major fraud cases. He wouldn’t expect her to be working on Thanksgiving Monday, and decided against giving her a call. She’d be relaxing at home with her husband Claude. The finances of the Grizzly Resort could wait.
Then, armed with only a name, he went onto Google.
Several pages of hits popped up. But it wasn’t difficult to find the person he was interested in. He clicked on images, and up she came, Robyn Winfield, the woman he’d seen yesterday. Grainy newspaper photographs, snaps from homemade YouTube videos, press releases.
She was with an organization called Free the Wild. Winfield seemed to make a habit of attending protests at sensitive environmental areas and writing strongly worded letters to newspapers. She kept a blog, which got a substantial number of comments and links, detailing her latest indignation. Of Free the Wild, he couldn’t find much, and nothing without her name attached, so he suspected Winfield was pretty much the whole thing.
Her blog posts were articulate, sensible, and highly literate, illustrated with photographs that concentrated on the beauty of nature, not the ugliness of its destruction. Her passions for the environment and the animals that live there were expressed in every word. He found the beginning of the blog and started to skim. As the afternoon passed, along with the years she’d been doing the blog, her frustration increased, her language got sharper, verging on threatening at times.
The latest posting, dated last week, discussed the situation in Trafalgar. She said she was heading there, intending to help coalesce opposition into an effective movement, and calling for others to join her. The blog ended: “This must stop. This will stop!”
Now that he was sure of her real name, he ran a records search. Not an unusual name, but at least he had a rough idea of her age.
She’d been arrested twice, both times for engaging in civil disobedience, once for a demonstration on Parliament Hill against development of the Alberta tar sands, and again for attempting to close a highway in Alberta taking construction equipment north. The latest occurrence had be
en three months ago. In both cases she got no jail time.
Recently she’d been photographed in the company of a man on whom the RCMP was keeping a close eye—an individual suspected of carrying out a bombing campaign with the intent of intimidating tar sands workers. A couple of minor explosions had occurred. Fortunately, no one was hurt and property damage was minimal. No arrests were made.
John Winters leaned back in his chair and ran his thumb across his watch as he studied the grainy photograph of the man, one Steve McNally.
The man in the photo was clean-shaven, bare-headed, glowering at the camera.
The guy at the demonstration yesterday sported a heavy growth of beard and had been wearing a ball cap. Hard to be sure, but the resemblance was there.
Whether it was the same person or not, Winters reminded himself that just because Robyn Winfield might have been seen in McNally’s company it was a mighty hefty leap to assume she was now involved in eco-terrorism. Similar interests didn’t mean similar tactics.
He thought about the Grizzly Resort. In his mind he saw the remains of tree stumps, the massive holes dug into the ground. If he had his way, he’d prefer the resort not go ahead. It was a stunningly beautiful piece of land. Trees that hadn’t been logged for a long time, steep cliffs overlooking the fast-moving river below, the forest thick enough, wild enough, that bears were known to live there, along with cougars, elk, and coyotes. What would happen, he thought, the first time one of the vacationers came face to face with a bear or a cougar, the animal not inside a cage, the human not confined to a car?
Regardless of who survived the encounter, the call would go up for the animal to be destroyed.
Yes, Winfield and Free the Wild had a point.
Then again, Winters’ own house was located in what had not so long ago been pure wilderness. Trees cut down, birds’ nests destroyed, road put in, house built, grass and shrubs and flowers planted. The original inhabitants driven further and further up the mountain. What would happen, when nowhere remained for them to go?
He had to have someplace to live. He and Eliza owned twenty acres, of which the house and garden occupied a small portion. The remainder of the property was left wild, and they shared it with the animals. He often came across bear or elk tracks in the mud or snow, and some dark cold nights they could hear coyotes calling to each other across the hills.
The Grizzly Resort, on the other hand, with two hundred small buildings, sidewalks joining them all, road access and parking spaces, outbuildings, swimming pools, restaurants, and all the maintenance that went with it, would be far too crowded to live comfortably alongside nature.
A thought niggled uncomfortably at the back of his mind. Should only people such as Eliza and him, because they had sufficient money, be allowed to own a place in the wilderness? They loved living here, so did plenty of people. But what about the people who wanted to escape from the city, to bring their children on vacation, but couldn’t afford the indulgence of twenty exclusive acres.
He shoved his chair back and got to his feet with a grunt. Time for another cup of coffee. Not his job to decide who’d be allowed a place in the wilds and who would not. Thank heavens for that. The Grizzly Resort consortium owned the land, and they had permission to build their vacation homes on it. The Mounties would see that construction was allowed to go ahead and the Trafalgar City Police would see that business in town continued unimpeded.
He glanced back over his shoulder at the computer screen. A photo of Robyn Winfield, standing beneath an enormous tree. A shaft of sunlight broke through the branches and lit her short red hair as if it were on fire. Her arms were lifted in the air and her smile was radiant.
Chapter Thirty-nine
KRAMP’S AUTO REPAIR. BANFF, ALBERTA. MONDAY AFTERNOON.
Lucky Smith shifted on the uncomfortable seat and brushed at the dust on a pile of magazines. Kramp’s Auto Repair shop didn’t waste money on furnishings, nor on cleaning services. The seats had been removed from cars and unceremoniously plunked in the waiting room. Most of the magazines pre-dated the century and were covered with a thick layer of dust. Which, she thought, probably also pre-dated the century.
She’d called Kramp’s as soon as it opened. She was, she said, due to drive back over the mountains tomorrow and was very nervous about taking the trip—alone—in her car. What with the strange sound she heard when she put her foot on the brake. They said if she came right away, they’d try to fit her in.
The waiting room had a dirty glass wall overlooking the shop floor, and she was able to watch the men working. When the fellow behind the counter, a small black-eyed man with skin the color of creamy coffee, took her keys, he explained, again, that it might be a while before they could see to her car. The sudden death of one of their employees had put them seriously behind.
Lucky repeated that she absolutely had to be heading home tomorrow, and he said they’d get to it as soon as they could.
She wasn’t lying, she told herself, she was acting. Not that the part required a whole lot of theatrical chops. A woman who didn’t know anything about cars, worried about a strange noise. She flipped through a fashion magazine wondering if anything in the world was more useless than an out-of-date fashion magazine.
She’d wanted to be an actor once, a long time ago. She studied drama at the University of Washington and performed minor parts in several plays. She hadn’t been all that good, and had known it, deep inside where it mattered.
She had one great success on the stage. It hadn’t led to a stellar career of greasepaint and floodlights, but it had led to her name. She’d been an understudy for The Glass Menagerie. On opening night, the actress playing Amanda Wingfield came down with a severe cold, and young Lucy Casey went on to star. Andy Smith had been in the audience, clapping and cheering enthusiastically. Lucy had, to no one’s surprise more than hers, been a triumph. At the cast party later, the actor playing the Gentleman Caller commented that she’d been very lucky, and others took up the chant. Lucky Lucy, they called her.
Later, as they walked home from the party and stopped to admire the lights of the city, Andy Smith told her he was leaving for Canada. He’d received his draft notice and was not planning to report. Would she, he asked, come with him and be his Lucky Smith?
She’d been Lucky since that day. Lucky, she always reminded herself, in so many ways. They’d had a good life together, Andy and Lucky, and she’d never regretted tying her star to his. Although she did occasionally think, while enjoying a good movie with a strong female lead or watching the Oscars, about what might have been.
She’d wondered, when Moonlight was young, if the girl had some acting talent she should encourage. Instead, Moonlight found her place not on the stage but on lakes and ski trails almost before she could walk.
Lucky was on her third magazine when a man in overalls, wiping greasy hands on an equally greasy rag, came into the room. She’d watched him earlier, taking Paul’s car out onto the road for a test drive. “I can’t find anything wrong, Mrs. Smith,” he said. “I took it for a spin, didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. I checked the brakes over anyway, but don’t see a problem. Your car’s in good shape, I’d say. You might have gotten a rock or a piece of ice trapped in the brakes, and all it needed was to be kicked out or melt.”
“I hope that’s it. Thank you.”
She paid a minimal amount for the mechanic’s time and that was the end of that. Her undercover operation, like her acting career, had come to naught.
Chapter Forty
BEARTRACK TRAIL. BANFF, ALBERTA. MONDAY AFTERNOON.
Tracey spent the day checking her phone and moving house.
She’d gone to Matt’s apartment earlier, mainly because she could think of nothing else to do, but wanted, needed, to be doing something. The police had finished with it and told Alistair and Tom they could move back in. At ten o’clock, only Alistair was home, packing his bags. Black powder smudged the surface of almost everything . A patch of carpet clos
e to the door looked clean. Noticeably clean amongst the ground-in dirt and years of muck covering the rest of the floor. Tracey swallowed, realizing what that meant.
“I’m done,” Alistair said in answer to her question. “Outta here. I can’t stay where a guy, a guy I knew, died.”
“Where will you go?”
“Jamail’s gonna put me up for a while. I’ll decide what I’m gonna do then. I’m thinking of heading to Vancouver. Friend of mine’s talking about putting together a new band.”
“What about the rent on this place?”
“It’s paid up ’til the end of the month. Matt’s name’s on the lease. I guess if he doesn’t come back, they’ll rent it out again.” He shrugged thin shoulders. “Give me a hand will you, Trace? My car’s outside, can you carry that guitar down?”
Under Cold Stone: A Constable Molly Smith Mystery (Constable Molly Smith Novels) Page 17
