Winter of Secrets (21 page)
Low clouds covered the tops of the mountains and mist rose from the river running through the valley. The trees, thickly covered with fresh white snow, seemed almost to float in the gray air, neither anchored to earth nor reaching to the sky.
Someone might have stolen all the colors from God’s crayon box, leaving only black and white, and a stub of brown, to work with. John Winters stood at his kitchen window, drinking strong dark coffee.
“More snow?” Eliza wrapped her arms around him from behind and laid her warm cheek against his back.
“What day is it?”
“December thirty-first, as you know full well. Why do you ask?”
“This much snow I thought it’d be February at least.”
He felt her smile. “Let’s buy a home in the mountains, I believe I heard you say. Fresh air, great views.”
“You could have reminded me that it has been known to snow at higher elevations.”
She chuckled, and he felt her move away.
They’d house hunted in November, when the snow was a dusting high on the mountains, and moved into their new home in the middle of March, after two weeks of spring sunshine had gone a long way toward reducing the size of the snow pack.
Winters was from Vancouver. He’d lived most of his life in that coastal city where winter meant thick gray clouds and lots of rain. When the snow did fall, the city ground to a halt for a day or two, then the temperatures rose and it all melted.
“You might have to get the snowblower out,” Eliza said.
“The SUV can handle it. That’s why we bought it. The plow guy will be here soon.” He turned away from the window. “Any chance of a working man getting breakfast around here?”
“I might be able to rummage up an egg or two.” Eliza opened the fridge. “You haven’t forgotten we’re going out tonight, have you, John?”
“New Year’s Eve. I haven’t forgotten.”
Eliza preferred to spend Christmas Eve and Day enjoying a quiet celebration at home, but tonight was a night to party. They always went to one of the best restaurants in Vancouver or to a fashion-industry party. Always, that is, once he’d moved up the police ladder enough to be allowed the night off. This would be their first celebration in Trafalgar, and he’d made a reservation at Flavours.
A thump on the stairs, another thump, then the sound of a body being dragged across the floor. Barney came into the kitchen, having deposited her wheeled suitcase, which was the approximate size of a steamer trunk, at the door. “It doesn’t look too promising for my flight.”
“In the mountains the weather can change on a dime.” Winters desperately hoped such would be the case today. Barney was due to take the one o’clock flight out of Castlegar to Vancouver. If it was cancelled, there was another at three-forty-five. If that one didn’t go, she’d be coming with them to Flavours. He liked Barney well enough, but, like fish, after three days her time was up.
Eliza pulled the cast-iron frying pan out of the cupboard. Barney pushed her aside and made bacon (crispy) and eggs (not tough) and toast (unburned) for the hungry working man.
“Did you speak to Patricia yesterday?” Winters asked around a mouthful of bacon as he ran a sliver of toast through the smear of yellow egg yolk on his plate.
“Briefly. She’s not doing too well, John.”
“I get the feeling,” Barney said from the stove, “that her marriage has been a train-wreck for a long time. Instead of bringing them together, this horrible business has driven her and her husband even further apart.”
“He’s a right prick.” Eliza rarely, if ever, used bad language. “Why an educated, wealthy woman, a doctor for heaven’s sake, would put up with that sort of emotional detachment, I can’t imagine.”
Winters said nothing, although he wondered if emotional detachment was a family trait. According to Molly, the police had to notify Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth of her brother’s death although her parents knew about it, and Patricia appeared to be so wrapped up in her own grief that she wasn’t much concerned about her daughter’s precarious mental state.
“And now she’s still sitting around that cheerless hotel,” Eliza said.
“I expect to order the release of the bodies today. The Wyatt-Yarmouths have a funeral home ready to accept them and arrange transport to Toronto. Everything will be shut down tomorrow for the holiday, and I don’t see any reason to keep them any longer. You’re not to say a word, either of you. If something changes, I don’t want Patricia’s hopes to be up.”
Barney and Eliza smiled at him with as much innocence as two puppies in the window of a pet shop.
“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 nothing 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.”