Part 10 (1/2)
She threw open the door leading to the familys private area, and sprinted down the hall to her own room.
”Yes?” A woman answered the phone. Her voice thick and drowsy.
”Im looking for Dave Evans.”
”Who wants to know?”
”Tell him its Sergeant Winters of the Trafalgar City Police.”
”Okay, hold on.”
”Sweetie,” she said through a big yawn. ”You wanna take a call?”
A noise in the background.
”That Winters guy,” the woman said. ”Didnt he come around to ask Rosemary about her stolen bike last summer?” She giggled. ”That was when we met.”
”f.u.c.k,” a man said. Static, and then: ”Sarge, what can I do for you?”
”Not leave your cell phone with anyone inclined to blow me off for one thing.”
”Well, yeah, you see...”
Winters pulled on his drug store gla.s.ses, size 1.25, to read the fine print on the computer. He hated those gla.s.ses. Another step and it was a wheelchair and a bladder bag. Hed interviewed Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth, a third-cla.s.s liar if hed ever seen one, and then her p.r.i.c.kly father, and then her friends. The latter had been a quick conversation, as they needed to get ready for a formal dinner with the Wyatt-Yarmouths. Winters didnt much care if the W-Ys dinner plans had to be put back, but the boys didnt have much to say other than echo Wendy. Some of them had gone for dinner on Sunday, some had done other things. No one knew where Ewan Williams had gone, although Rob and Jeremy both said hed told them he was going out on his own for the night. Hed been eying a girl at the ski resort for a couple of days, a short, attractive dark-haired girl wearing a white ski outfit, and had taken a break for an early lunch saying he was going to track her down. Jeremy gave a rough description of the girl, but they had no idea who she was, or if Ewan had made plans to meet up with her later. Ewan had shared a room with Jason, but Winters couldnt ask Jason what he knew about his friends movements that night.
Winters had spent his evening here, at the office. Elizas long time agent, the formidable Barney, who, at age sixty-five, and still an avid skier, was in town combining business with pleasure. Theyd been supposed to meet for dinner to discuss some wonderful plan Barney had for Elizas next job. Which was necessary considering that Elizas last project had fallen to earth in a spectacular flameout. Dinner would be on Barneys tab, which would, of course, be tax-deductible. Hed called Eliza to say he wouldnt be able to make it. After twenty-five years of marriage to a cop, Eliza said shed eat his portion. Winters turned to his computer and tried to dig up the dirt on Jason Wyatt-Yarmouth, Ewan Williams, and the rest of their crowd: Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouth, Jeremy Wozenack, Rob Fitzgerald, Alan Robertson, and Sophie Dion.
Wozenack had a couple of drunk charges in Toronto, brawls outside of bars, but nothing serious enough to have caused injury. Dion had several traffic tickets to her name, and was perilously close to earning enough points to have her license suspended. Wendy Wyatt-Yarmouths file was the interesting one. Juvenile records. Closed. Which told him that there was something to tell him, but they werent going to. Na, Na, Na. I know something you dont. He started the paperwork necessary to try to pry open her juvie file.
”Save it,” Winters said over the phone to Dave Evans. ”I want to ask you about a fight at the Bishop a couple of nights before Christmas. The twenty-second. You were there, tell me what you remember.” While telling him that they didnt know what Ewan Williams had been up to Sunday evening, his friends had mentioned, in that way that people who have something to hide manage to accidentally let you know far more than youd been hoping for, that Williams had gotten himself into a street fight on Sat.u.r.day night. Winters had checked the s.h.i.+ft report for the night before Williams death.
”Same old s.h.i.+t we get all the time,” Evans said. ”By the time we arrived a full scale punch up was going on outside. Two guys taking swings at each other. The sidewalk was icy and they were having trouble staying upright. They looked like a couple of b.l.o.o.d.y fools. Thats probably what kept them from landing any serious blows on the other guy.”
”You recognize either of them?”
”One of them, yes. Dont know his name, but a local guy. The other was probably an outsider, a skier.”
”Why do you think that?”
Evans let out a puff of air, and Winters let him think. ”The outsider was dressed well, clean jeans, thick wool sweater, good boots. He was small, but knew how to throw a punch. Hard to say, Sarge. Just my impression.”
”Impressions count, Dave. You didnt bring them in?”
Evans voice turned hard, as he moved onto the defensive. ”Both guys stepped back, soon as we pulled up. They apologized; said thered be no more trouble. I thought we should bring them in, but...Molly didnt agree. And that was it.”
”Sounds okay with me,” Winters said. He had plenty of doubts about Constable Dave Evans. Always too much on the defensive. Winters had run into the Evans type before. One day Evans would toss someone to the wolves to save his own b.u.t.t. Hopefully at that time he would no longer be in the employ of the Trafalgar City Police.
Evans thought it was his little secret, but Barb knew, and thus everyone else knew, the Chief Constable most of all, that Evans goal in life was to join the RCMP. Counter-terrorism was his aim: not petty crime or no-account deaths in small mountain towns.
Which, today, was of no consequence.
”What was the fight about?”
Evans snorted. ”The same thing it always is. A woman. Mr. Wool Sweater had moved in on Mr. Locals girl while he spent time with his friends and ignored her. This is what I heard outside, Sarge, you follow?”
”I do.”
”Theyd been leaving...”
”Whod been leaving?”
”The girl and the outsider guy.”
”Continue.”
”The girl had, far as I could figure out, been quite happy to be moved in on. But when she got up to leave, the boyfriend noticed and took exception.”
Winters got the picture. Local girl, abandoned in a low-level bar while her boyfriend watched Sport TV with his pals. Soon the boyfriend pulls his head out of the brown bottle and, hey, his woman is making friendly with another guy.
”You and Smith were at the car in the river on Monday. Recognize anyone brought out?”
”No. Neither of them. Outsiders probably.” Even over the phone it was almost possible to see the light dawning behind Evans eyes. ”Hey. Didnt occur to me before, but, now that Im putting them together, one of the guys in the river was the outsider in the fight weve just been talking about. It was him all right.”
Hardly a positive identification. But it didnt matter, Winters only needed clarification on what hed been told earlier.
”Same guy,” Evans said. ”Im sure of it.”
The B&B was dark and quiet by eight. The guests had gone out to dinner with Wendys and Jasons parents. As they trooped out the door, it was easy to see that none of them seemed happy about it, and who could blame them. Whether they talked about it or not, the deaths of Ewan and Jason would lie over the dinner table like a shroud.
Upstairs, a toilet flushed.
Kathy took a deep breath. Her mother had gone to a movie. There were only two people in the Glacier Chalet B&B. Kathy had gone shopping earlier and found a purple blouse, much more daring than anything she owned. Shoulder straps the thickness of a strand of spaghetti and a deeply plunging neckline. Shed left the store without trying it on, and hadnt thought about a bra. Only when she got home did she realize that her bras, white things with thick straps and multiple clips, would make the purple blouse look ridiculous.
Shed have to go without a bra.
The satin felt wicked and delicious against her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Kathy s.h.i.+vered. So this is what rich feels like.
She walked up the stairs breathing heavily-and not from exertion: she must climb these steps twenty times a day. She carried a bottle of cheap bubbly wine, stolen from the stash her mother kept to help guests celebrate anniversaries or weddings, a carton of orange juice shed bought this afternoon, and two crystal flutes.
Her heart was beating so hard, she thought hed hear it before the knock on his door.
”Come on in,” Rob shouted. ”Its open.”
She had to wedge the bottle of champagne under her arm to get a hand free to open the door.