Winter of Secrets (12 page)

Smith said nothing.

“And she was certainly of age.” He barked out a laugh.

Smith still said nothing.

“We had a pleasant…uh…time.” Once again he looked to one side. “And then she left.”

“What day was that?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Sorry, Constable Smith, but I’m on vacation, right. One day just runs into another.”

“Yeah, I know how it is. I’ve done it myself. Days on the slopes. Nights in the bar around a big roaring fireplace. Big glasses full of red wine. Someone throws another log on.”

He nodded.

“Two friends dead in the frozen river. Happens to us all. Right, Jeremy?”

“Fuck you, cop lady.”

“Enough chat. Let’s go back inside.”

“Okay, okay. It was a couple of days before Christmas when I met this girl. Friday, maybe. I didn’t even remember her name until I saw her upstairs just now. We were drinking in this low-life bar. Jason and Ewan and me. Alan’s so pussy-whipped he wouldn’t dare step foot into a joint like that one. And Rob spends most of his time checking the Internet to see how his stock portfolio’s doing.

“And that was it. Stuff happens right? She went her way and I went mine. It matters to me, you know, that Jason and Ewan died.”

“Bring me up to today.”

“She was sitting with a group of girls. I thought they were her girlfriends, right? So I sat down with my lunch and said hi. She seemed happy to see me, giving me the smile and tossing the hair. I hadn’t even had a bite of my food when that guy, the boyfriend, came out of nowhere and started yelling and laying into me. My mistake, she didn’t know the girls she was sitting with, but was waiting for him to get back with her tofu surprise.”

No doubt the woman in question was the screaming girl. Loving being the center of attention and having two guys fight over her.

Smith flashed back to the previous night and the trouble at Flavours. Gary’s rage at Jason Wyatt-Yarmouth, the late Jason Wyatt-Yarmouth, for seducing Lorraine. What had he said to the boys at the table? Something about rich guys coming to town and flashing their money and taking the local girls.

An old story. Plenty of young people came to Trafalgar on vacation; it was not a destination for the blue-rinse, name-badge wearing, bus-tour type. Tourists came here for the hiking and kayaking in summer, skiing and snowmobiling in winter. Some of her friends in high-school had had brief romances with guys in Trafalgar on vacation. Usually the guys left with promises to write, to keep in touch. Never to be heard from again.

She pushed the door open and gestured to Jeremy Wozenack to go back inside.

The old guy was putting down the phone. “Your ride’s here, Constable.”

***

John Winters needed a drink. Toward the end of his career with Vancouver City Police that would have meant a quick visit to a bar, but these days Big Eddie would have what he needed. He’d been in a meeting with the Chief Constable, and Keller was getting pressure from the politically connected Dr. Wyatt-Yarmouth. Like a kettle, when the pressure got too much Keller believed in spreading the steam around the room so he didn’t explode.

Molly Smith was standing by the dispatch desk, dressed in the blue standard-issue police winter jacket over shiny white ski pants and clumsy white ski boots. She wore a red helmet with large goggles pushed on top.

“Bad enough that I’ve spent half my day off here, and now you’re telling me I can’t get a ride for my car and my stuff?”

“Everyone’s out, Molly,” Denton told her. “I can’t call them in to take you to Blue Sky. You’re just going to have to cool your heels. Go home and get your car tomorrow, why don’t you?”

“Suppose I can’t get a ride up tomorrow? In the meantime my car, with my purse stuffed under the front seat, I might add, is sitting all night in the parking lot. And my skis; I didn’t even stop to lock them into the rack.” She threw her hands up in the air and half turned.

Color flooded into her cheeks as she saw him standing there.

“Sergeant,” she said.

“This is convenient. I was about to give you a call. What’s with the uniform? Some sort of undercover operation on the mountainside?”

Denton chuckled. “They’ve invented a strain of marijuana that grows all through a Kootenay winter. Thrives on deep snow and heavy cloud cover. We’re looking for the green tops sticking their heads out from the snow.” He stopped chuckling as he answered the phone.

“You remember I told you we get free skiing if we agree to help out with security?” Smith said. “Sometimes it isn’t worth saving the fifty bucks.” Her eyes narrowed and some of the color drained from her face. “Why’d you want me?”

“You were at an incident last night at Flavours Restaurant.”

She snorted. “I certainly was.”

“Doctor Wyatt-Yarmouth phoned the CC with a complaint first thing this morning. Paul was in meetings until now so I’ve just heard about it.”

The remaining blood fled from her face, leaving it almost as white as her pants.

“Not a complaint about you,” he said. She let out a long breath. His displeasure over the fireplace incident had her spooked.

Good.

“It was to the effect that in our failure to release the bodies promptly we’re setting the family up for ridicule.”

“No one needs to set that guy up for ridicule. He manages it all by himself.”

“The CC suggested that I might want to hear what happened, so I’m asking you.”

“The story continues. I have more than even the Chief knows. I’ve just arrested Jeremy Wozenack, a friend of Jason and Ewan, who was also at Flavours last night.”

“What’s this about your car?”

“I came back to town with my prisoners in the patrol car. Didn’t think it through carefully enough.” Her face changed color again. “Well, that is, sure I thought it through, I just, well, I figured…”

“In your eagerness to complete the arrest you left your own vehicle at the scene. And now you can’t get a ride back and it’s almost dark. Let’s take the van, and you can tell me both stories on the way. But first, Molly, we need to stop at Eddies and get me a coffee.”

Smith talked most of the way to the ski resort. It was getting late and a steady stream of traffic passed them, heading down the mountain toward town. Yellow headlights broke through the dusk and high snow banks and snow-laden black trees closed in around them. He’d heard from Dave Evans that Ewan Williams had been in a brawl on Saturday night, the night before he disappeared. This morning he’d interviewed the other participant in the fight, and the guy insisted that he’d gone home after the police broke it up and never thought about it again. He’d had more than a few beers on board, he told Winters with an easy laugh, and doubted he’d recognize the other guy if he saw him again. The object of the fight in question had been at the apartment, stretching and preening. She hadn’t bothered to put a robe on over her lacy red teddy (with food stains down the front, and a tear at the left hip) in the presence of company. Winters’ opinion of Ewan Williams’ taste went down a considerable amount, and he wondered if the guy was just out to cause trouble.

The woman also insisted that she hadn’t seen Williams since that night. She looked honest enough when she said it, slightly bored at the conversation, but a bit titillated at being involved, however peripherally, in a police investigation.

The skin around her right eye was the color of a tropical sunset. Almost a perfect match for an injury sustained oh, approximately a week ago. About the night she’d dared to flirt with some other guy.

Winters had thanked them for their time and left. He’d started a check on the boyfriend’s record, but nothing had come up so far.

And now, according to Smith, it would appear that not only had Ewan Williams been causing trouble over local girls, but Jeremy Wozenack and Jason Wyatt-Yarmouth were playing the game as well.

Fun for some.

Never for the police.

“Tell me about Gary LeBlanc,” he asked Smith. “Every town’s blessed with a family like that, it seems.”

“I knew him in school. He was a trouble maker back then, but never anything serious. He’s been away, a guest, as they say, of the government of Canada, for several years. He had a nice little grow-op on Crown land outside of town. Nothing much, from what I’ve heard. Less than a hundred plants.”

“He got several years for that?” Surprising that he got any jail time at all.

“Unfortunately, that wasn’t the whole story. The horsemen came across it by accident, looking for a ten-year-old boy who’d gone missing from the family campsite. Gary was watering his garden. A Mountie caught the working end of a spade in the face and needed a heck of a lot of stitches. People in town said it was an accident, the officer tripped and fell into the edge of the spade Gary was holding.”

“Is that what happened?”

“I wasn’t with the police then, John. I was away at University. I remembered my mom talking about it, so I pulled the file the other day, just out of interest. Gary was put away for assault P.O.”

“What about the kid?”

“Kid?”

“The child they were searching for?”

“Found eating chocolate while dipping his toes in a creek and enjoying his great adventure.”

“At least part of the story has a happy ending.”

“This is one situation in which everyone would have been better off if justice had not been served.”

Winters turned his head. “Go on.”

“Gary looked after Lorraine, best as he could. My mom knows them. When Gary was around, Mom took a personal interest in the both of them. You know my mom.”

“That I do.”

“Lorraine’s Gary’s half-sister, same mother, and he’s a lot older than her. When Gary was sent away Lorraine was left in the tender care of her parents. Neither of whom has ever met a bottle they didn’t love more than her. My mom tried to help, but she was rebuffed continually so she pretty much stopped coming around.”

“Doesn’t sound like Lucky.”

Smith laughed, without humor. “Doesn’t, does it? But even Mom knows to stop when she’s beating her head against a brick wall. Well, sometimes she does. And Lorraine, at sixteen years old, is now the town sled.”

“The what?”

“Sled. Available for anyone to ride.”

“Isn’t that a bit insensitive, Molly?”

“It’s the way she’s seen, even by some of our officers. I feel for the girl, I really do. But she doesn’t want my help. Not that that’s worth much, but she doesn’t want Mom’s help or anyone else’s. Now Gary’s back, maybe he can do something.”

The lodge came into view. There weren’t many vehicles left in the parking lot. The yellow lights of the lodge and outbuildings looked very small and insignificant against the dark bulk of the surrounding mountains. The moon was lifting above the crest of the mountain to the east. It was waxing, and the light was cold and very white. It made him think of Molly’s proper first name.

“That’s mine, over there.”

A green car was parked close to the building, all alone. He pulled to a halt beside it. “I asked the security guys to keep an eye on my skis,” Smith said. A single pair of skis remained in the racks at the back of the lodge. She climbed out of the car, unzipped her jacket pocket and pulled out her keys.

“Thanks for the ride, John. I appreciate it.” Her blue eyes said a lot more before she slammed the door shut. He watched her walk in that duck-like gait people in ski boots did. She found her skis and equipment and fastened them to the roof, then climbed into the driver’s seat and burrowed into the passenger seat foot-well. She came up with a pair of winter boots and waved them at him. She turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life.

Winters made a wide circle, and set off down the dark mountain road.

He’d been in homicide in Vancouver for many years. Most murders consisted of a victim. Victim was found in a certain place. A few people, family members mostly, were the suspects. But in this case there was nothing he could put his finger on. He didn’t even know if he had a murder.

He had a victim, or did he? Was there one victim, or none, or maybe two? No place of death that he’d yet found. And no suspects to speak of. He’d found nothing in Ewan’s room at the B&B that would necessitate a forensic search, and he’d accepted Ellie Carmine’s word that she hadn’t had any blood spills to mop up. Not that he would necessarily accept her, or anyone else’s, word about anything, but the Glacier Chalet was a crowded, busy place. Even in the middle of the night, he reflected, people seemed to be coming and going. He was pretty sure Ewan hadn’t died there.

Jason and Ewan had been a couple of fun-loving rich boys on vacation. Them and their friend Jeremy, who’d been released with a promise to return tomorrow. Local guys were upset because outsiders, dripping with money and good looks and educated voices, were moving in on their girlfriends.

Plenty of fodder for bar brawls. But for murder? Unlikely, although stranger, much stranger, things had happened over the course of his career.

Gary LeBlanc made an attractive candidate. Except for the fact that he’d been angry at Jason, not Ewan.

And Ewan, Winters had to remember, was the one who’d died first.

Jason had died in a car accident. There was not the slightest doubt about that. It was Ewan’s death that was the strange one.

Nevertheless, Winters knew deep in his cop’s gut that if he could find out why Jason had the dead body of his friend in his car, he’d be a long way toward finding out why Ewan Williams had died.

It wasn’t helping that the Wyatt-Yarmouth family were making phone calls and stamping their feet demanding attention. He could only hope the national media wouldn’t pick this story up.

Williams had last been seen by his friends on Sunday the twenty-third. They spent the day skiing before returning to the B&B. Around five-thirty, Ewan had gone out alone, on foot, and had never been seen again.

Had something happened at the ski hill that day? His friends thought he’d met a girl. But they hadn’t seen her. Did Ewan run into trouble in town? Did he even make it to town?

His headlights picked out the sharp curves and steep banks of the mountain road. This police-issue mini-van was not the ideal vehicle for driving down treacherous mountain roads.