Winter of Secrets

by Vicki Delany

  “Any luck in contacting the other boy’s parents?” Barney asked.

  “No, but the neighbors who’re minding the house say the Williamses are due back from their sailing trip on January third. They’ll be met at the airport and given the news.”

  “Hard.” Barney helped herself to more bacon.

  “No matter how they hear about it,” Eliza said, nibbling at the edges of a slice of unbuttered toast.

  He pushed himself away from the table. Breakfast had been great. Regardless of whether or not she could cook, Eliza’s idea of a proper morning meal was blueberries and yogurt with a sprinkling of granola, or toast without butter and a scraping of low-sugar preserves.

  Ugh.

  “Nine o’clock,” Eliza said. “The reservation is for nine.”

  “Yes, dear, I know. You should probably call the snow plow guy and make sure he’ll be here before you have to leave for the airport.”

  Barney got to her feet and held out her arms. Winters gave her a big hug. “Good trip.”

  “Keep safe,” she said.

  Ten minutes later, John Winters was trudging back to his house though snow up to his calves. The front of his SUV was half buried in a drift and the big winter tires had dug deep furrows in the driveway.

  “Call the snow plow guy,” he shouted into the kitchen. “Tell him I’ll pay double if he’s here within half an hour. If you dare laugh, you’re out of my will.” He slammed the door and went to the garage for a shovel.

  ***

  Lucky Smith didn’t normally go into the Trafalgar Women’s Support Center on a Monday. Monday was the busiest day of the week in the office, with all the weekend activity to sort out.

  But Moonlight had called last night, just as Lucky and Andy sat down to dinner. “If you hear from Lorraine or Gary LeBlanc, Mom, you might want to talk to them.”

  Now that she’d been given an opening to interfere, Lucky felt she could tell her daughter what Lorraine had told her: the trouble Ewan had apparently caused between Alan and Sophie.

  The CBC news was starting when the phone rang again. Gary LeBlanc, asking if Lucky’d mind talking to Lorraine in the morning.

  Lucky had returned to the news, not paying much attention to what Peter Mansbridge had to say about the state of the world. It was always depressing anyway.

  “What brings you here this morning, sweetie?” Bev Price opened the door with her usual welcoming smile. Bev was even shorter than the five-foot-nothing Lucky Smith, although a heck of a lot thinner. A bundle of positive energy, Bev was the personification of the support center she’d founded and kept afloat by little more than her own heart and soul and skill at begging for funding. Lucky knew, although not many did, that Bev’s only daughter, at age seventeen, had died many years ago on the streets of Halifax, her baby at her side. Dead of malnutrition, both of them, because the mother didn’t know how to access what government services were available. Bev, not much over thirty at the time, had been in jail, the result of a knife fight arising from a drug deal gone wrong and a vengeful pimp. Once she’d been released from prison, instead of wallowing in despair over the death of her daughter and granddaughter, Bev had thrown all of her formidable energy first of all into getting herself clean, and then into making sure that women down on their luck were able to find the support they needed. Now in her late fifties, she’d arrived in Trafalgar ten years ago and immediately set about coercing the good citizens into funding and staffing the support center.

  “I’m meeting someone,” Lucky said. “We need a place to talk in private.”

  “The nutrition-in-pregnancy group’s here at nine-thirty. Some of the girls like to get here early.” And they were girls, probably not one of them over eighteen. Women with careers, money, supportive families, employed partners, didn’t have need of the services of the Trafalgar Women’s Support Center.

  “We can sit in the living room,” Bev said. “So you can close the kitchen door. That okay?”

  “Thanks. It’s Lorraine LeBlanc. Do you know her?”

  Bev’s bushy gray eyebrows rose. “Lorraine’s never been too keen, shall we say, to come here. Something’s happened to change that?”

  “Quite a lot.” Lucky stopped talking as a burst of laughter announced the arrival of the first class of the day.

  Gary accompanied his sister to the meeting. He looked most uncomfortable walking through the living room, full of young women blossoming in all the stages of pregnancy. But Lucky didn’t particularly care about Gary’s comfort level.

  Gary was carrying a plastic supermarket bag. Before he even sat down, he pulled out the contents and put them on the table. Ski-goggles. Lucky flicked over the price tag that was still attached to the strap. Mid-Kootenay Adventure Vacations. She lifted one eyebrow toward Gary.

  “Somehow these found their way into our house,” he said. “As did these.” He placed a thin gold necklace, a jar of face cream and a bottle of bath oil on the table. “Let’s leave it at that, okay?”

  Lorraine studied the floor.

  The meeting did not go well. Lorraine was prickly and defensive. At first, she denied she’d had anything to do with the bracelet that found its way, apparently all by itself, to the floor of the Craft Gallery. Then she was blaming Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth, saying that Wendy’d planted the jewelry on Lorraine. Finally Lorraine laid her forehead on the table and cried. Gary and Lucky eyed each other over the girl’s heaving back. His face was tight with anger. Whether at Lorraine, or Wendy, or the whole world, Lucky couldn’t tell. She passed Lorraine a box of tissues.

  Eventually the girl lifted her head from the table. Her face was red and puffy, her cheeks streaked with tears. Wendy and Sophie and that crowd had so much. The best ski clothes and equipment, passes for cat-skiing and heli-skiing, good restaurants and lattes and cappuccinos, money for jewelry, clothes, anything they wanted.

  She touched the gold hoop that ran through her right ear. “See,” she said. “See. He gave me these. He wanted me to have as many good things as his sister had. Why can’t I have them now? It shouldn’t make a difference ‘cause Jason’s dead. He wanted me to have everything. He did.” She fell onto the table again, her body convulsing with sobs. Gary stroked his sister’s back and looked at Lucky as if she would pull her comfortable beige cardigan, the one with roses crawling up the sides of the zipper, aside and reveal a giant S. S for Superwoman, ready to leap into the air and solve the problems of every poor child brought up in an abusive family

  Why indeed? Why did Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth get to go on ski vacations and attend good universities and shop to her heart’s content, while Lorraine LeBlanc screwed strangers in dark alleys in a search for love, and her brother tried to scrape together every cent he could find to get her an education.

  Why wasn’t life fair?

  Lucky Smith had given up worrying about that long ago.

  “It just isn’t,” she said.

  “What isn’t what?” Gary asked, and Lucky realized that she’d spoken that last thought aloud.

  “Never mind.” She forced herself to smile at the LeBlanc siblings. “If it comes to court, and it might not despite what the police say, I’ll be happy to testify on your behalf, Lorraine. I hope you know, dear, that possessions don’t buy happiness. Lorraine, look at me.”

  Obediently the girl lifted her head. Her eyes were red, her face pale.

  “Right now, I can’t imagine a sadder person than Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth and that bunch.”

  Lorraine shrugged.

  “They have money, lots of it. And plenty of stuff that money can buy. Do you think they’re happy, Lorraine?”

  Another shrug.

  Lucky and Gary exchanged glances again.

  “Tell us what you think about this, Lorraine, please,” he said. “Are Jason and Ewan’s friends happy people?”

  Lorraine jumped to her feet. Her chair toppled over and crashed to the floor. “Happy? Are you freaking kidding? Ask me about happy will you? Jason’s dead. There’s nothin
g else that matters.”

  ***

  John Winters visited the Doctors Wyatt-Yarmouth at their hotel, and told them Jason’s body would be released today. Jack mumbled something about the incompetence of the Trafalgar City Police, and Patricia smiled her thanks. She had not looked surprised at the news, and Winters suspected Barney had been on the phone even as he uselessly tossed shovelfuls of snow into the woods while waiting for the plow to rescue him.

  ***

  Molly Smith came on duty at three o’clock. The weather was supposed to be good—nice and cold to keep the snow frozen, but no new stuff expected to fall.

  They had a full complement of officers on duty, ready for anything, and everything, that might happen.

  Very little did. A few drunks were taken into custody to sleep it off, a couple of marijuana smokers warned to put it out, and several cans of beer poured into the gutter. At about eleven-thirty Dave Evans had been attacked by an amorous female, and Smith had to pull the woman off him. She was in her forties, at a charitable estimate, with the skeletal body of long-time heroin user.

  “Damn it,” Evans said, wiping furiously at his mouth with his glove, as they watched the woman walk backward, still blowing kisses to him. “Who knows what diseases she might have?”

  “Here’s an idea,” Smith said. “You stop with the digs against me, and I won’t tell everyone Fancy Nancy’s got a crush on you. What’d she call you? The sexiest cop in B.C?”

  “I’ve never made a dig against you, Molly.”

  “Or was it all of North America? I forget.”

  “Drop it, Smith.”

  “It’s nice sometimes,” she said with a laugh, “to be a female officer. We don’t have to deal with harassment like that.”

  Evans growled. Smith doubted he got her point, but it had been fun making it anyway.

  They were sitting in the patrol car outside the Potato Famine watching the clock tick toward midnight. The window was rolled down and they could hear pounding music, shouts, and overly-loud laughter coming from inside. The music was cut off in mid-note, and people began to chant. Smith glanced at her watch. “Midnight,” she said. “Happy New Year, Dave.”

  “Same to you, Molly.”

  Cheers and cries of Happy New Year filled the street. A group of young men ran out of the bar, waving brown bottles over their heads and yelling. A bottle hit the brick wall of the pub and shattered. The red light in the bar window advertising a brand of beer glistened off shards of glass. Smith and Evans got out of the car and went back to work.

  Warnings were issued, beer emptied into snow banks, and the broken glass was being picked up, piece by piece, by the miscreants to be deposited into a trash bin when radios crackled. Fight at the Bishop and Nun. Evans took the car and Smith remained behind, to continue walking the beat. “Am I going to hear anything more from you guys tonight?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am. Not a peep.” They swayed slightly and their words were stirred, but they’d sobered up quickly enough at the sight of Evans and Smith approaching and poured out their beer before being told to do so.

  “Make sure of it,” she said. “You can go now.”

  “Happy New Year,” they shouted, as they continued on their way.

  She watched them go for a few moments before turning to take a walk through the pub, to check that everything was under control. The hair on the back of her neck bristled and she looked around. The light over the entrance of the small office building across the street was burnt out. The streetlamp touched the edges of a black shape standing in the doorway. A red glow from the end of a cigarette did nothing to illuminate the face. It was a man. He was very large and was watching her.

  She placed her hand on the butt of her gun. He stepped into the light.

  Charlie F. Bassing.

  He looked at Smith, his expression unreadable in the light hitting his face from above. Or, perhaps, there wasn’t an expression for her to read. He flicked the burning cigarette into the street and walked away with slow, lazy strides.

  Smith took a deep breath and watched until he turned at the corner.

  She felt a blast of hot, sweat-filled air. The bouncer stepped out and joined her on the sidewalk.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “So far. But there’s some serious drinking going on in there. One or two that might be trouble later.” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you okay, Molly?”

  “Sure,” she moved her hand away from her gun and tried to smile. “I’m fine.” She flexed her fingers.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Molly Smith was late getting to the ski slopes. Last night’s shift had been long and tiring, but other than a handful of arrests for drunk and disorderly, uneventful. She hadn’t seen Charlie again, but he played at the back of her mind all night. She could hardly make a complaint against him for standing on the other side of the street and not talking to her. She’d call Christa tomorrow evening and find out if Charlie had been watching her. That Smith could complain about. Christa had promised to contact the police, or Molly, if she saw Charlie, but Christa might decide to ‘not make a fuss’. Not wanting to make a fuss was what had gotten her beaten up in the first place.

  Smith had made it home at four-thirty, had a quick shower, laid out her ski clothes, and gone to bed, planning to get up at seven. When she opened one eye to peer at the clock, the room was light and it was after nine.

  She was on the road before nine-thirty, at the hill by ten. She’d considered paying her money for a lift ticket so she could be sure of spending the day in peace, but New Year’s Day should be quiet. The partiers would be sleeping it off, or too subdued to make trouble. It would be mostly families today and those serious enough about their sport to avoid overindulging the night before.

  A cheerful yellow sun shone in a pale blue sky. In the meadows, snow sparkled as if ground glass had been sprinkled across the surface.

  The parking lot wasn’t full, but Smith had to park far away from the lodge. She left her skis and poles on the racks outside and went into the basement to let them know she was here and get a radio. The equipment rental area was next to the security office. Crowds of people were stomping their feet into unfamiliar boots, testing the length of poles and checking out bindings and the surface of skis. The wooden floor was wet with melting snow and the enclosed room smelled of damp wool, human sweat, and excitement.

  “Hi, Constable Smith, what are you doing here?” Ellie Carmine’s daughter, Kathy, lifted goggles away from her face. Her smile was broad and her eyes shining. Without her habitual hangdog expression, she looked good. One of the guests from the B&B was beside her, although he was not looking quite as pleased with himself. Smith dug around in her memory banks for his name, but couldn’t find it.

  “Same as you, I’d guess,” Smith said. “Out for a day on the slopes.”

  “Maybe we’ll see you out there,” the girl said. “I’m so excited. I’ve never skied before.” She lifted her poles as evidence. “Can you believe it? I’ve lived in Trafalgar my whole life and I’ve never been here.”

  “Have fun,” Smith said. She always felt uncomfortable when, in her civilian persona, she ran into people she’d met in her professional capacity.

  “Rob’s going to show me the ropes. Aren’t you Rob?” She gave him a big smile.

  The boy shrugged and went back to measuring her poles.

  “That makes one of us.”

  “Pardon?”

  “One of us who’s excited about today’s little adventure.” Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth followed Smith toward the security office. Not that she was really following the police officer. More like drifting along in her wake because she couldn’t think of anything better to do. Her yellow ski suit was formfitting and expensive. “This morning, Mrs. Carmine asked if Kathy could come skiing with us. What a presumption, as if we’re friends or something rather than paying guests. She acts as if we owe her because of that little scuffle at the B&B. I told her my dad would pay for what got bro
ken, but Rob’s all embarrassed about it and trying to make nice. Which suits Kathy, you can be sure. Rob’s too nice by half. He needs to get some backbone and tell Kathy to get lost. Oh, well, not my problem. I’m not going to waste my time holding her hand.”

  It might not be Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth’s problem, but she was enjoying talking about it. “Have a nice day,” Smith said, putting her hand on the security office door.

  “I doubt it. This place is a gigantic bore. You’ll be pleased to hear, Officer, that we’re getting the hell back to civilization tomorrow.”

  Won’t be sorry about that, Smith thought as she said, “Have a safe trip.”

  It had snowed the night before and, as she’d expected, the harder runs were relatively empty and the snow pure and untouched. As the morning drew to a close, heavy clouds moved in, promising more new snow. She hoped it would arrive before closing. She loved skiing through a whiteout. Visibility was reduced to nothing, giving her the feeling of being wrapped in a white blanket, only able to see as far as the tips of her skis. That sense of soaring through clouds was unbeatable and it required all of her skill to just let go and allow the texture of the snow beneath her skis to tell her when to turn.

  The radio was quiet, and she stopped only once, for a late lunch, peeking around corners and tucking her head down at a table in the back of the room in an attempt to avoid any more encounters with the gang from the Glacier Chalet. She saw Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth sitting at a table across the room. Wendy was alone, leaning up against the wall, just staring off into space. A group of several families grabbed the table next to hers. They were too many for the big table, and a young woman spoke to Wendy. The girl waved her arm languidly. The parents didn’t spare her another glance as they tried to organize the pack of children who, cheeks rosy from the cold and exercise, eyes gleaming with exhilaration, alternatively bounced in their seats or ran around in circles. Moms and dads were young, lean, well-scrubbed, with good hair and nice teeth, and the children laughed with sheer pleasure at being free and alive.

  Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth leaned up against the wall and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. She paid the children no attention, but kept her head down and stared into her lap. Her shoulders shook, and Smith knew she was crying.