by Vicki Delany
Sylvester ran to the door to greet Lucky, his favorite person. His furry tail wagged and his wet pink tongue hung out of his mouth at the sheer pleasure of seeing her.
Lucky dropped to her knees and put her arms around him. Her whole body shook as she hugged the dog. Happy at first at the attention, Sylvester soon began to squirm and try to pull away. Sam put his hand on his mother’s arm, and guided her to her feet. Her face was streaked with tears, and a few golden dog hairs had attached themselves to her cheek. Sam brushed them away.
“I have to get Norman and go to work,” Adam said to Molly. “You going to be okay?”
“As okay as I can be.” She turned her face up for a kiss.
“You going to stay here for the night?”
“Probably.”
“I’ll come by first thing tomorrow.” He kissed her, very softly, and turned and walked away.
She went into the kitchen.
When the doctor broke the awful news, it had taken her straight back to the day Graham died. They’d said he was in critical condition, but she arrived at the hospital to find that Graham hadn’t had a chance; he’d been dead when he’d been found. Lying in a filthy, garbage-strewn alley, a knife in his stomach. Victim of one of the druggies he’d been trying to help.
Today Adam had been so kind, so caring, she was embarrassed she’d been remembering Graham.
“Moonlight, dear?”
Smith snapped back. Jane Reynolds was speaking to her. The old woman’s eyes shone with tears and kindness. “Tea is ready.”
“Thanks.”
Smith started to hang her jacket on the row of hooks by the door. Her hand froze. Her dad’s hat was there, the one he always wore working in the yard in summer to protect his balding head. She swallowed, and turned away, and dropped the jacket over the back of a chair.
Sam had settled Lucky at the kitchen table. One of her friends had placed a mug of tea and a lemon square and oatmeal cookie in front of her. Her fingers tore the cookies into crumbs.
“Would you like to lie down?” Jane asked in a low, soft voice.
“I’m so very tired all of a sudden. Moonlight,” Lucky said, “will you help me?”
“Sure, Mom.”
They went upstairs, to the large, sunny bedroom at the end of the hall where Lucky and Andy had slept together for more than thirty years. Smith helped her mother take off her shoes and her pants. Lucky lay down and her daughter pulled the cover up. It was a beautiful quilt, which Lucky won in a fund-raising raffle for the Grandmothers in Africa group. It was made of tiny squares in all shades of blue, getting increasingly lighter as the squares moved toward the center.
Lucky closed her eyes. Her chest moved. “Did I ever tell you how your father and I met?”
Many times. Smith stroked her mother’s hand.
“We were in our junior year at the University of Washington. He had his eye on a girl in my Medieval European history class, one of the campus organizers for the SDS. Andy didn’t have the slightest interest in Medieval Europe, but he was trying to look interested in order to impress her.” Lucky chuckled at the memory. “Between his involvement in the SDS and everything else anti-war, and going to classes he wasn’t even taking, it’s no wonder he failed his math courses. He always sat beside me, only because it had a good view of the girl. I thought he was cute, and I wondered how I could get him to start talking to me. He smoked heavily, so many of us did back then. I didn’t really smoke but thought I’d try it to look mature and serious. I pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered him one. Imagine smoking in a lecture hall. I believe that’s a capital offence now.” Lucky’s voice was soft, but steady. “I gave the pack a little jerk to release one, the way I’d seen people do on TV, and the whole lot of them spilled out. All over the floor, between the seats. I was horribly embarrassed. Your dad picked two up, gave me one, put one in his mouth and lit mine first. Since that day, we’ve scarcely ever spent a day apart.” Her eyes closed. Molly sat with her mother for a while, deep in her own thoughts. Mostly of her father, who she’d always adored, but also about Graham. And Adam.
When Lucky’s breathing was steady, Molly gave her a light kiss, whispered, “Sleep well, Mom,” and tiptoed out. She left the door open a crack and went downstairs.
Sam sat at the kitchen table with Jane Reynolds. Another of Lucky’s friends stood at the sink, washing dishes.
“How is she?” Jane asked.
“Sleeping.”
“That’s good.”
“I’ve called Judy,” Sam said. “She and the kids will be here tomorrow. I spoke to Aunt Helen and she’ll break the news to Grandma and Aunt Mary-Ann. She’ll call us when they’ve made their flight arrangements.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
“We need to contact…” his voice broke, and he turned away. When he recovered he looked at his sister. “The funeral home.”
“Mom’ll want to be there.”
“Let your mother sleep,” Jane said. “I’ll phone the home and let them know you’ll be by first thing in the morning to begin the discussion.”
“Thanks,” Sam and Molly said.
Sam got up. “I’m going for a walk, won’t be long. Want to come Moon?”
“No. I’ve got something I have to do. Will you be here until Sam gets back, Jane?”
“Of course.”
Her ruined car was at the police lock up. She reached for her dad’s keys from the hook by the door and felt a wave of sadness wash over her. Then she grabbed the keys and left.
***
Lucky Smith felt her daughter’s soft lips on her cheek, heard the whispered, “Sleep well, Mom,” and the sound of the door moving but not quite closing. When she was sure Moonlight was gone, she opened her eyes. The curtains were drawn, but the room was still bright. She lay on her back with her eyes open.
Andy.
They’d been married for thirty years. They’d had good times and bad, and had been through a patch so rough a year ago that it looked as if the marriage might not survive. But it had held, and got better, and then, to her surprise, they found themselves falling in love all over again.
Andy. Andrew Smith Junior, who liked his eggs so over easy they were disgustingly raw and couldn’t abide cooked tomatoes or red peppers in any form and tried very hard to diet but did love junk food. He left the toilet seat up and drank beer straight from the bottle and liked to cook steaks on the barbeque, medium rare. He thought he was a great handyman, but it took him hours to mend the fence or fix the plumbing and Lucky usually had to call in a contractor to repair whatever ‘fix’ Andy had done. He didn’t read much, any more, loved the Vancouver Canucks, hated the Blue Jays, supported the Seattle Mariners. All the University level calculus and algebra he’d studied had been lost long ago, and somehow it had fallen on Lucky to balance the business’ books and household accounts. He cursed and swore over the Globe and Mail on a Sunday morning and said the country was going to hell in a hand basket. He bragged about his son, the lawyer, fully expected that his grandson, still only five years old, would make the NHL one day, and almost burst his buttons when he told people what his daughter did for a living. Not that he would ever tell her. He phoned his mom, now drifting in and out of lucidity in a nursing home, every Sunday without fail, and mourned his father, who had died without having reconciled with the son he regarded as a traitor, to his family as well as his country.
He was a normal man, of his age, his place, his time.
She loved him to the depths of her soul.
At last she slept.
***
Charles Bassing, bursting with righteous indignation, was charged with the criminal harassment of Constable M. L. Smith. He protested that he’d passed Smith in town a few times: it was hard not to as it was her job to walk up and down the street. He claimed to know nothing about any rat nailed to the door or the destruction of her car. Ron Gavin had taken a break from his other work, including the Steiner murder, to go over the car very, very carefully. He foun
d no evidence of Bassing’s fingerprints, which didn’t surprise Winters. Without a witness, not even Smith had actually seen him, it wasn’t nearly enough to hold him. Threatening gestures were always open to interpretation.
But it was enough to let Bassing know the police would be watching him and to arrange a day in court. “Your parole officer will be made aware of this,” Winters said. “If you don’t want to go back to jail, stay away from Molly Smith, her home, her property, her family.”
Bassing sneered. He smelled of garden soil and sweat and naked aggression. “Fuckin’ bitch. Go near her and my balls are likely to fall off. Like yours have done, I’d guess.”
“Feel free to insult me all you want, Bassing. It’s all part of the record.”
He was soon swaggering down the steps of the police station. Winters watched him go. Something uncomfortable niggled at the back of his neck. He’d taken a gamble that the arrest and the charges would be enough to curb the man’s behavior.
What if he were wrong?
Chapter Twenty-six
Meredith spent the weekend holed up in her apartment. She’d looked into Josie Steiner’s background, and a very interesting background it turned out to be. One of Meredith’s classmates was working for TV in Montreal and put her onto all sorts of stuff about the business dealings of the Marais family.
Juicy, juicy.
She sent the beginnings of a story about high fashion, aging but still glamorous models, young wives, murder, and the criminal underworld to some of the less reputable papers and leaned back in her chair with a satisfied sigh. Maybe, just maybe, getting fired from the Trafalgar Gazette would turn out to the best thing that could have happened.
Josie Steiner might be connected but she was as dumb as a stack of bricks. Meredith was due to meet her in the hotel bar at six. Ply her with a couple of drinks and hopefully the woman would give up the dirt, thinking she was helping with a piece on herself for some celebrity mag. As if.
Emily Wilson wasn’t any brighter than Josie. The stupid girl had called Meredith earlier, all in tears because Dave Evans dumped her for talking to the reporter. Somehow, in Emily’s mind it was Meredith’s fault. “Here’s an idea,” she told Emily, “don’t tell a reporter if you don’t want to see it in the paper the next day.” She hung up, thinking Evans wasn’t all that bright either.
She started at a knock on her door. It sounded as if someone were hitting it with a hammer.
She opened the door and peeked out. “Yes?”
In Trafalgar plenty of people didn’t lock their doors, and almost no one checked to see who was there before opening up. By the time Meredith realized her mistake, it was too late.
The man pushed her out of the way and came in, kicking the door shut behind him. She reached into her pocket for her cell phone but it wasn’t there. She’d put it on the kitchen table to recharge. The man was short, but stocky, with a neck as thick as his head. His hands were like hairy baseball gloves. Incongruously, he was dressed in an expensive suit, perfectly clean and sharply pressed. She took a step backwards, and prepared to scream.
He grabbed her arm and lifted one finger to his lips. “Not a sound, Madame.” He had a strong Quebec accent, and smelled of men’s cologne, heavily applied. “I am not ‘ere to ‘urt you.”
She swallowed. Her arm throbbed under the pressure of his hand. He squeezed it a bit harder. “Unless I ‘ave to.”
Still holding her, he looked around the room. His eyes rested on the computer, her notebook beside it. “Writing, Madame?” he said.
He waited a moment. “I asked if you are writing?”
Her mouth was so dry, and her tongue so heavy, it was difficult to get the words out. “I’m a journalist. I write…I write for a living.”
“You write about small town things, eh? ‘ockey score. What’s on at the movies. Police corruption.”
She nodded.
“That’s good. A good job. You do not write about people who have lost their ‘usband to a random murder, do you?”
He waited a moment, and then gave her arm another squeeze. “It is not polite to not answer a question. I said, you do not write about these things that are not the business of you or your town.”
“No.”
“That is also good.” He looked around her apartment. It was small, but comfortable, and she’d taken care to decorate it with things important to her.
His other hand shot out and he picked a small china figurine off the table. Shepherdess with a crook. It was old-fashioned and ugly and chipped but it had been cherished by Meredith’s grandmother, the one for whom she had been named. The man looked into Meredith’s eyes as he held it. She heard a crack and the shepherdess fell to the hardwood floor.
“Madame Steiner will not be joining you for dinner. You will make no more telephone calls to Montréal. Understand?”
She nodded.
“I asked if you understand.”
“Yes.” She forced her lips to move but no sound came out.
He let go of her arm. “That is also good. And so I can say Au revoir, Madame.”
He opened the door. She took a deep breath, but it caught in her chest when he turned around suddenly. “You should put the chain on when you do not know who is calling. Some people are not as reasonable as me.”
He shut the door quietly behind him.
Meredith dropped to the floor. Sobbing, she gathered up the pieces of her grandmother’s shepherdess.
***
Molly Smith phoned Winters as she drove into town. “I should be the one to drop in on Amy,” she said. “We have a rapport, although tenuous, from when we were in school.” First time she’d considered that an advantage. “I spoke to Mike, her brother, about it just the other day.”
“Don’t you think your mother needs you?”
“She’s sleeping. Sam’s with her, and her friends. John, I need to do…something.”
“Let me know what you find out. I’ve charged Bassing with criminal harassment. Had to let him go, but we’ll get him into court this week. I’m hoping this’ll be enough to have his parole revoked.”
“Thanks, John.”
“Just doing my job.”
Mike and Amy lived in the top floor of an old house broken up into apartments. Smith climbed the stairs at the back. They had a spectacular view across the rooftops to town. The sun shone on the sparkling waters of the river, and the buds of the trees in the yard were beginning to swell. Mike waited by the open door, dressed for work in dark pants and a black T-shirt with the logo of the Bishop and Nun. He didn’t look pleased to see her.
“Is this going to take long? I have to eat dinner and get to work. We went around to Rosemary’s earlier and settled up. I haven’t had time to call your mom about some counseling.”
“My mom. She won’t be at the center for a while. Ask for someone else.”
He looked at her, and the defensive tone in his voice faded. “Are you okay, Molly?”
“Yeah, Mike. I’m fine. I’m not here about that business with Rosemary, and I promise I won’t be more than a couple of minutes.”
Amy’s son Robby ran toward them, shrieking. He grabbed Smith’s legs and held on, yelling something indecipherable. His face and hands were sticky with blueberry jam and when Mike pried him away, there were blue stains on her khaki pants.
Amy stirred a pot on the stove. It smelled great, of garlic and tomatoes and herbs. She said, very formally, “How nice of you to call, Moonlight. Will you join us for dinner? We’re having spaghetti. Mike likes spaghetti.”
“Thanks, Amy, but no. I need to ask you a couple of questions about the place you work, is that okay with you?”
“Yes.”
Mike sat down. The table was old, cheap wood, badly chipped, but it, like the rest of the kitchen, was impeccably clean. A trace of the scent of skunk mixed with coffee—pot—lingered in the air. Smith ignored it.
“Mike, if you wouldn’t mind giving Amy and me a few minutes…”
He
looked dubious.
“I have a couple of simple questions about the dog center where Amy works, that’s all.” Smith watched Mike’s face. He didn’t show any signs of being particularly concerned when she mentioned the dog place. That was good. But what did she know, she wasn’t a detective.
She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, and he got to his feet with some reluctance. “I’ll take Robbie and wash his hands.” He scooped up the little boy, tickled him under the chin, and carried him out slung over his shoulder. Robbie waved at Smith, and Mike closed the door behind them.
“You work at Debby’s Dog Centre, right?” Smith asked Amy when man and boy had gone.
“Yes.” Amy continued stirring. “I like it there.”
“I’m glad. Do you get mostly the same dogs every day?”
“Some of them. Some come once in a while, when their owners have an appointment or something.”
“Tell me about the ones who come every day. They don’t actually come every day, would that be right?”
Amy’s face scrunched up. She paused with the spoon held over the pot. Red liquid dripped from it.
A floorboard creaked and Smith knew Mike was listening. She liked Mike a lot, thought he did a good job looking after his sister and her son. She didn’t think he was behind the thefts, but you never knew what people would do when the responsibilities got too big and the bank account got too small.
“No,” Amy said at last. “The regulars don’t come on the weekend.”
“What about when people go away, like on vacation?”
“Then they can’t bring their dogs, can they, Moon?”
“I guess not. Do they tell you when they’re going to be away?”
“Yes. Debby told me it’s important to know when the regulars aren’t coming. So she can manage the cash flow.” Amy grinned. She was obviously reciting the term, and pleased with herself for remembering. “Like I have to manage my cash flow and not buy things when I don’t have money. Mike told me that.”
