Winter of Secrets (20 page)
He needed to have another chat with Gary LeBlanc.
He’d tried the LeBlanc house after leaving Mrs. James, but no one came to the door and there hadn’t been a car in the driveway. When he’d visited yesterday with Molly, Gary had been in the house, but there’d been no sign of a vehicle. If Gary was just out of jail he might not have a license or a car. Winters punched a search into the van’s computer as he drove toward town. He then called Jim Denton on the dispatch desk and requested that officers keep an eye on 484 Aspen Street and let him know if they saw Gary.
Back in his office, he checked the computer. He needed to find someone, anyone, who’d seen Ewan Williams after he left his friends around 5:30 on Sunday—Christmas Eve Eve, Mrs. James’ grandchildren called it. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Ewan had met a girl on the ski hill that day, no one his friends recognized, and ate lunch with her. He’d driven back to town in the yellow SUV with everyone and had gone out, almost immediately. His friends assumed he’d gone to meet the girl. Winters had absolutely no idea of who the ski-girl was. The newspaper story he’d planted with Meredith wouldn’t be out at least until tomorrow, and with Monday being New Year’s Eve, anyone who could tell him anything might not even read the paper.
An idea came to him. He turned to his computer, looked up a number and picked up the phone.
Molly Smith hadn’t liked the gleam in her mother’s eyes when Lucky dropped her off. But as she couldn’t decipher the gleam, and probably didn’t want to, she let it go.
She climbed the stairs to her apartment and let herself in. She’d only been gone for a few hours, but the place seemed cold and empty. When ski season was over and she got some time perhaps she’d start looking for a way to personalize this place.
She sliced a bagel and popped it into the toaster. While it browned, she went to the front window. The street was quiet, the ski tourists all out for the day. She curled up in the single armchair in her living room.
***
A very angry bee was trying very hard to get out of a glass bottle.
Smith blinked. Not a bee, but her phone.
She fumbled in her pocket and dragged it out.
“Sleeping, Molly?” Sergeant Winters.
Oh, no. She’d fallen asleep and missed showing up for her shift. In a panic she pulled at her sleeve and checked her watch. One o’clock: she wasn’t due in until three.
“Just resting. What’s up?”
“I know you’re on afternoons, but I need you to do something for me earlier. I’ve run it past the acting Sergeant and he agrees with the overtime. Before you come in for your shift, go up to Blue Sky. Wear your uniform, this is official.”
***
Heads turned as Molly Smith walked into the main lounge of the Blue Sky Ski Resort. Too bad, she thought, it was not because of her style or her beauty but because she was dressed in full uniform. As out of place in this room packed with skiers as if she’d been wearing a sarong and had a hibiscus tucked behind one ear.
She tried not to grin with embarrassment and made her way to the security office.
“Hey, Constable Molly. What’s up? You look quite formal.”
“I’m here on business, Fred.”
The Chief of Security’s face darkened. “Trouble?”
“Long over. I need to ask your people about something that happened a week ago. I’m not a detective, but I guess they sent me ‘cause I’m known around here. Can I talk to the staff? It’s the lodge staff I’m most interested in, not the people outside.”
“Sure, Molly. Whatever you need. Want to start with me?”
She pulled Ewan Williams’ picture out of her pocket and handed it across the desk. “This guy was here several times before Christmas. I’m particularly interested in December twenty-third. That was a Sunday. I’m looking for a woman he had lunch with. She’s dark haired, early twenties, attractive, quite short. She was wearing a white ski suit. That’s all I know.”
Fred Stockdale leaned back in his chair. He caressed his beer-belly with one hand, reminding Smith of a pregnant woman in deep contemplation, while the other held the photograph. “Means nothing to me,” he said at last. “We get so many of these types in here every day, they’re all a blur to me.” He stood up and gave back the picture. “Let’s go talk to the staff. If you’re lucky someone will remember serving him. A girl might; he’s a good looking guy.”
She was lucky. The lunch rush was over and the kitchen staff had time to give the picture a good look. “Oh, yes,” the young woman who tossed salads said with a happy sigh. “I remember him, all right. Such a doll. With a smile that would melt my grandmother’s frozen heart. And she’s been dead for ten years.” The two women angling to get a look at the picture laughed.
“Not local,” one of the boys said, in a tone that explained it all. “Tourist.” He wiped his hands on his once-white apron. “What’s he done?”
Reports of Ewan and Jason’s deaths had been in the local paper, but no pictures of the dead men.
Smith told the serving line staff she needed to find the woman he might have had lunch with one day. They looked at each other. “I remember him,” the salad girl said, “’cause he wasn’t the only cute one. His friend was quite the dish as well. But I didn’t see him with a girl.”
“I did,” another woman said. She was a good bit older than the others, almost as round as she was tall with hair more gray than blond. Her apron was streaked with grease. “There was this girl from Quebec. She gave me lip because she didn’t think the fries had been cooked long enough. Take it or leave it, I said. The lineup was almost to the door and here she was telling me to prepare her fries just so. He,” she gestured to the photograph of Ewan, “told her to go back to Quebec if she wasn’t happy with B.C. cuisine. She left her tray right there on the counter and stormed off in a huff. She acted like a bitch, but he wasn’t any better, I thought. He’d really goaded her.”
The salad woman said, “One day, I can’t remember exactly when, he bought a ton of food. We’d just started setting up for lunch and were busy with prep, so I didn’t have time to watch what he did with it. Looked like he was feeding an army.”
All of which was of no help. There was no doubt Ewan and his friends had spent time at the Blue Sky resort. The group made an impression everywhere they went. Not always for the good.
Unfortunately the serving staff couldn’t remember Ewan eating lunch with anyone in particular.
Stockdale accompanied her into the kitchen. Pots boiled and frying pans sizzled. She remembered the salmon burger she’d never had the chance to eat the last time she’d been here. The kitchen staff obediently looked at her picture, but no one recognized Ewan. Not a surprise—he would have been unlikely to venture into the kitchen.
“Lift operators?” Stockdale asked.
“I guess.” She wasn’t optimistic. All day long, the lift operators saw nothing but the shape of bodies and if they did look at faces, they were likely to see nothing much more than goggles and helmets.
But she asked anyway, and got the answers she expected.
“The glamorous life of a detective,” Stockdale said as they walked back to the lodge.
“Let’s check ski patrol before I give up,” she said. “Someone might have been having lunch at the time in question and seen something.”
Stockdale’s radio squawked. “Be right there,” he said. He turned to Molly. “Someone’s remembered something.”
The woman who cooked the fries met them as they came through the doors. A young woman in slim white jeans and a white sweater with the Blue Sky logo over the right pocket stood beside her. She was much shorter than Molly and as thin as a ski pole. Her long hair, black highlighted with streaks of copper, swung in a ponytail that reached halfway down her back. Her skin was golden, with high flat cheekbones, and she was exceptionally pretty.
“Show the picture to Marilyn,” the woman said.
Smith held it out and the girl took it.
“That’s him,” she said, almost immediately. “Positive.”
“Marilyn’s my daughter,” the woman explained. “She’s a cashier. She was on her break when you came by. I told her about the guy you’re looking for and she asked to have a look. Right, dear?”
“I can talk, you know, Mom,” Marilyn said.
“You remember seeing this man?” Smith asked.
“Yes, I do.” Marilyn glanced at her mother out of the corner of her eyes.
Smith said, “Thank you very much, Mrs.…”
“Monroe. I’m Janice Monroe.”
That would make her daughter’s name…Marilyn Monroe? Marilyn read Smith’s face. She was probably used to the expression. “I’m Marilyn Chow. When my parents divorced my mother went back to her maiden name. I chose not to change.”
No need to wonder why.
“Thank you for your help, Ms. Monroe. I don’t want to keep you any longer,” Smith said. A small lineup was forming at the serving counter. Although no one seemed in much of a hurry to be served: they were all watching the police officer question the women.
“You can go back to work now, Janice.” Stockdale said, not as politely as Smith had done.
Janice Monroe tilted her chin and returned to her station. Marilyn sighed audibly.
“I’m not actually looking for this man,” Smith said. “He…uh…isn’t missing. But we would like to speak to a woman he met here, at the resort, on December twenty-third. She was dressed in a white ski suit. They had lunch together. If you can give me any information about the woman, I’d appreciate it.”
“Why?” she said. Her dark eyes studied Smith.
“As part of an ongoing police investigation.”
“Which doesn’t answer my question, but never mind.” Marilyn took a step backward and held out her arms. “Not exactly ski clothes. But this might be white enough for you. I had lunch with the guy in the photo that day.”
A man was leaning off the edge of his chair, so obviously trying to hear better he was about to drop onto the floor. Smith glanced at Stockdale.
“My office,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Marilyn Chow had met Ewan Williams on December twenty-second when he paid for his lunch. He’d smiled and flirted and she hissed at him that he’d get her fired if he didn’t move on. He paid twenty dollars too much for his food. She put the money in the tip jar to share with the rest of the staff.
He took a table close to the checkouts and watched her as he ate his lunch. Meal finished he bought a coffee. Coffee drunk, he went for a slice of blueberry pie. His friends had stopped at his table, and asked why he wasn’t sitting with them. ‘Because I’ve found the spot that has the perfect view’ he’d said, with one eye on Marilyn. His friends had gone off shaking their heads.
Time came for her break and she’d left her checkout. He stood up as she passed his table. “I’m in a relationship,” she said, and ran for the stairs.
He didn’t follow.
The next morning he was in the breakfast line. As he paid for his coffee he pulled a fresh red rose out of the inside pocket of his jacket. “What time do you take lunch?” he asked.
Marilyn was in a relationship, but it was getting wobbly. “Eleven,” she’d said. “Before the rush.”
“I’ll reserve a table.”
At ten to eleven he walked into the lodge. He gathered up his friends’ backpacks and placed them across the seats at a long table in an alcove toward the back, thus reserving the entire area.
He slipped up behind her, as she accepted the money for two hot chocolates, and whispered, “Anything you don’t eat, Madame?”
Charmed, she’d laughed. “I eat anything and everything.”
He soon was back to pay, pushing two trays along the line. Salmon burger with side salad, spinach salad, sweet potato soup, hamburger and fries, curried chicken and rice, Thai noodle salad, scrambled tofu.
“Anything and everything,” he said as she racked up the bill.
Yes, yes. All terribly charming
. Smith steered the conversation to the evening in question.
“He didn’t show,” Marilyn said.
“You were going to meet where?”
“Six o’clock at the Bishop and Nun in Trafalgar. I waited for an hour and left. I don’t hang around in bars waiting for men who can’t be bothered to show up.”
Smith would bet a year’s pay that Marilyn was not accustomed to being stood up.
Marilyn had taken the visitor’s chair in Stockdale’s office. The security chief sat behind his own desk. Molly Smith leaned against the wall. Marilyn was so tiny, so incredibly lovely, that she made Smith, in her heavy boots, uniform and gunbelt, feel like Godzilla.
“And that was the end of that.” The girl shrugged. “I gave him my number. He never called.”
“You don’t seem too upset,” Stockdale said.
“His loss.”
Molly Smith wondered what it must be like to have that much confidence in yourself. “Did you see him again? Or hear from him?”
“Nope. Look, I figured I’d go out with him that night, check him out, right? What the hell, he was good looking, sure knew how to lay it on, and seemed to be rolling in dough. My boyfriend and I were having problems. I agreed to meet Ewan in town after I got off work. It didn’t exactly break my heart when he didn’t show. Tell you the truth, Constable Smith, I went home and phoned my boyfriend. We had a long talk and I think that when he gets back after the holidays we’ll be okay.”
Marilyn fidgeted in her chair. “I need to go back to work now. It’s not fair to May for her to be the only one on cash.”
“We’re done here. Thank you for your time.”
Marilyn stood up. “I’ve seen you before, Constable Smith, skiing. Here’s a tip: try the Shanghai noodle bowl. It is to die for.”
Smith grinned, liking this young woman very much. “Are you trying to bribe an officer, Ms. Chow?”
“Guaranteed.”
Marilyn put her hand on the door.
She turned around. “Hey, I never asked. Why all the questions? I’m guessing Ewan was up to some trouble that night. What happened to him anyway?”
Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth opened her eyes. She’d fallen asleep, fully dressed, draped across the bed. The weak winter sun was slanting through her window, the angle low. She must have slept for hours.
She pushed herself off the bed and went into the tiny bathroom. She stared at herself in the mirror. Hair standing on end, dark circles under her eyes. The necklace she’d bought this morning was draped around her throat. She lifted a hand and fingered it. So beautiful. Blue stones set into silver.
And it hadn’t been all that expensive. Hundred and fifty dollars for a piece of handmade jewelry. You’d pay twice that in Toronto, maybe more.
She’d hesitated at the matching earrings, not sure if her credit card could stretch for another fifty bucks.
Wendy eyed her reflection in the mirror. The blue stones did look great against her white throat, and would look even better with the earrings. What was the worst that could happen? Her card would be rejected: she’d act indignant and huff and puff and vow to sort it out. And leave.
Not a problem.
If Doctor Wyatt-Yarmouth Number Two got wind of how much Wendy’s credit card was carrying, she’d have a fit, but what did it matter. Jason was dead. Which proved what they said: life was short. Live fast; die young. And then her parents could take care of her bills.
Wendy grabbed her leather coat and left the room. She didn’t bother to lock the door behind her. Her suspicions at the room having been broken into were largely forgotten. Besides, what did it matter? She’d tossed her underwear, including the lavender bits, into a trash bin on the street corner and bought more. Who would have thought that in a town the size of Trafalgar one could find an exclusive lingerie shop?
Before selecting what she’d come for, the blue and silver earrings, Wendy wandered through the gallery again. The large spacious room was full of soft winter light, the floor a warm blond wood, the walls aging brick. Items on display, glass and wood, copper and iron, paint on canvas and paper, were arranged with care and without clutter, allowing the beauty of the gallery itself to draw shoppers in. The woman behind the desk wore a hand-painted scarf around her neck and large gold hoops in her ears. She smiled warmly at Wendy in recognition but, with discretion rarely found in sales staff these days, hadn’t rushed forward to ask Wendy what she was looking for.
She was studying the prints on the walls when the bell over the front door tinkled. It was that dreadful Lorraine thing. The one who actually thought Jason cared for her. How pitiable was that. The last thing Wendy wanted was to have to speak to the creature. She ducked behind a rack of postcards.
Lorraine drifted through the shop with that slightly crooked gait she had. The buttons on her big black coat were undone and the coat flopped behind her as she walked. Her scarf hung limply around her neck and her boots dripped on the wide-plank floors. She pulled her gloves off and stuffed them into a pocket.
Wendy saw the sales clerk rise to her feet, watching the new customer. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pinched together and the official smile disappeared.
Lorraine lingered over a group of glass balls hanging from hooks in the ceiling. Light shone onto them and the balls shot sparks of color as if from the wand of a magician. She ran her fingers across the surface of one of the balls. Her nails were plain, chewed to the quick.
The sales clerk rounded the desk watching as Lorraine touched the precious things. “Can I help you with something?” she said. Her voice was not welcoming.
Lorraine didn’t turn around. “No thanks, just browsing.”
“Let me know if you need anything.”
Lorraine made her way toward the jewelry display. Another couple of steps and she’d see Wendy hiding behind the wall.
The phone rang. The clerk picked it up, her eyes still on Lorraine. “Good afternoon. This is the Trafalgar Craft Gallery.” Her salesperson’s voice, as chirpy as a cricket, was turned back on.
“I told you not to call here if it isn’t important.” The clerk’s eyes met Wendy’s and she turned to face the wall. “Tell him I said no. Isn’t your father home yet?”
Lorraine reached the jewelry display. Eyes on the clerk, whose voice was starting to rise, Lorraine grabbed a gold bracelet. It disappeared into the depths of her coat.
The clerk dropped the phone, letting it swing in the air from the cord, and whirled around. “Hey,” she shouted. “I saw that.”
“You saw nothing,” Lorraine said, jumping back. “You think your store’s too good for the likes of me.”
“Put that back, right now, or I’m calling the police.” The woman gathered the phone, and hung up on the person yelling at her from the other end. A large gilt-framed mirror behind the cash register showed Wendy most of the back end of the shop. Obviously, it was not just there for display.
Lorraine headed across the floor. “Nothing to put back. Screw you, you stuck up old Nazi.”
Wendy ran out from the alcove, through the gallery, and jumped in front of Lorraine as the girl reached for the door. “I saw her take it,” Wendy shouted to the sales clerk. “It’s in her coat.”
Lorraine’s eyes widened as she recognized Wendy. “You bitch.”
“Thought you were good enough for my brother did you?” She pitched her voice too low for the sales clerk to hear. “I wonder what he’d think now.”
Lorraine dug into her pocket, and pulled out the bracelet. It wasn’t even a particularly good one, just a thin bit of ten-carat gold. She threw it on the floor. “Here, you can have it.”
“I’ve called the police,” the clerk said.
“Too late to give it back then,” Wendy said, feeling quite smug.
***
Molly Smith was also feeling pleased with herself. As ordered, she’d found the woman Ewan Williams met at the ski resort, and the woman had a lot to tell them about Williams’ activities the day he died.
Perhaps she’d make a detective yet.
She backed the patrol car into its bay and went into the station. She scratched the back of her arm and said hello to Jim Denton, huddling over his computers and consoles.
“What’s up?”
“Shoplifter nabbed in the act. They’re bringing her in.”
“I’ll see if they need a hand.”
She went back downstairs. The patrol car would drive into the garage, doors would close, and the officers would take the prisoner out of the vehicle to be processed in the adjoining room. And put in the cells, if necessary.
Smith punched in the code to bring up the computer as she heard the doors open and the car pull in.
The door to the booking room opened. “Jesus, Molly, you have to help me. It was that sister of Jason’s. She framed me.”
The prisoner was Lorraine LeBlanc.
“You know this young woman, Constable Smith?” Nose worthy asked.
“Yes.”
“It was frame-up. You know she hates me. Let me go and we’ll forget all about it.”
“I’m sorry, Lorraine, but it’s not my call. Constable Nose worthy?”
“Clerk at the Craft Gallery saw her pinch a bracelet. We got there and the bracelet was on the floor. Witness, a shopper, says she saw this woman take the item and drop it when she was accused.” Lorraine’s eyes were round and wild. She was dressed in her winter coat and boots. Noseworthy carried a tattered scarf. He tossed it onto the counter.
“Tell them, Molly,” Lorraine pleaded. “Please tell them.”
“I’ll call Gary,” was all Smith could say as Noseworthy went to the computer.
“Full name?” he said.
Lorraine moaned.
***
Fortunately Gary was home when Smith called. He arrived at the police station red-faced and breathing heavily. He placed his hands on his thighs and gathered his breath for a few moments as Smith explained the situation.
Lorraine was a minor, with a local address, a relative to take care of her, and no prior record. She was released to her brother’s care.
Smith walked with them to the door. The air was sharp but the sky clear in the approach of night. A few stars were popping up in the east. “This isn’t over, Lorraine. You’ll have to appear in court.”
The girl avoided her brother’s eyes. He put an arm around her and gave her a hug, but his fist was closed tight, knuckles white. “We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” Gary said. “You understand, Moon, that this is a vendetta by that Wyatt-Whatever bunch.”
Smith let out a breath. It turned to mist in the cold air.
“Wait for me at the bottom of the stairs,” Gary told his sister.
Lorraine left them. Her head was bent, her coat formed a black shroud around her thin frame.
Gary LeBlanc and Molly Smith watched until Lorraine was standing on the sidewalk, underneath a street lamp. A patrol car pulled out of the station parking lot. Brad Noseworthy glanced at them.
“Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth was in the shop, Gary,” Smith said. “But she only backed up what Mrs. Roberts told Constable Noseworthy. And that was that she saw Lorraine take the bracelet, put it into her coat and head for the door. When she was stopped, at the door, Lorraine dropped the bracelet.”
“When she was stopped by Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth who, as we all know, has a personal animosity toward my sister. Mrs. Roberts didn’t see the bracelet emerge from Lorraine’s coat. She only says that it was there on the floor.”
“I’m not an attorney, Gary. Don’t argue your case in front of me.”
“They won’t be hard on Lorraine, will they, Moon? She’s never been in trouble before, you know that.”
“I’ve no idea what the courts will do. But I can tell you one thing: you don’t want a repeat of this. Talk to her. Get her some help.”
Gary lifted his chin, but his eyes shifted to one side and the slightest touch of color crept into his face. He could afford professional help only if he used the money he was trying to put together for Lorraine’s education.
“Call the Trafalgar Women’s Support Center. Ask to speak to my mom. She’ll know what to do to help.”
“Thanks, Moon.”
An RCMP car drove past. It signaled a turn into the Trafalgar City Police parking area.
Constable Smith stood on the steps of the police station as Gary LeBlanc wrapped his arms around his sister and guided her up the street toward their home.
Molly turned and headed back inside.
Adam Tocek was talking to Jim Denton. They looked up as Smith punched in the code to let her into the station.
Tocek had deep brown eyes and curly black hair and a five-o’clock shadow no matter the time of day, but his face always seemed to light up from inside when he saw Molly Smith. “Hey,” he said. “Haven’t seen you for a while. How’s it going?”
“Problems. Always problems. Where are you from, Adam?”
“From? My grandparents emigrated from Slovakia in 1950. My father was very premature, born on the ship in the middle of the Atlantic. Lucky, so the story goes, to have lived.”
“Sorry, no. I mean where are
you
from? Where did you grow up?”
“Toronto. The Big Smoke.” He glanced at Denton. Denton shrugged. “Why are you asking, Molly?”
“To be honest, Adam, I don’t know.”
“Well, I know that it’s almost four and if my replacement doesn’t get here in the next two minutes, you’ll be short a dispatcher,” Denton muttered to no one who cared. “Not again.” He took a 911 call.
“Do you have time to grab a coffee, Molly?” Tocek said, in deep contemplation of the floor.
She could feel her heart beating in her chest. A coffee. With Adam Tocek, the big, tough Mountie who turned to mush around Molly Smith. Should she have a coffee? Would that be a betrayal of Graham? Graham would want her to be happy.
She took a deep breath and opened her mouth.
“Vehicle out of control,” Denton said. “Corner of Front and Elm. Pedestrian injured. Brad is occupied and can’t take it. Sorry to break up this
tête-à-tête
, Mol, but we have work to do here.”
“See you, Adam.” She ran for the parking lot.