Constable Molly Smith 01 - In the Shadow of the Glacier

have much staff, so Andy led the trips himself. When she was in high school, Smith helped her dad on weeklong trips and led day or one-night tours herself. Now Andy ran the front of the store and organized the expeditions, staff led the trips, and Lucky did the books and managed the help. It had always been a good partnership. Smith feared that the business would suffer because of the strain in the relationship, thus adding more strain to her parents’ marriage.
    She threw an additional spoon of coffee into the pot, to make it extra strong, fixed two pieces of dry toast for breakfast, and ate curled in the cushioned alcove at the wide bay window in the front of the house, waiting for Winters. Ducks swam in the river and birds pecked in the long grasses along the shoreline. The house Molly Smith had grown up in was tucked into a small bay off the river, with a deep sandy beach and a great view over the river to the mountains. Soft, round green and brown mountains crowned the town, but in the background, even in high summer, snow touched the sharp-toothed peak of Koola Glacier.
    Many years ago Andy built a dock for Moonlight and Samwise to swim off. They’d owned a boat, for a while. Then the children grew up, headed off to university. The boat’s engine died, never to be replaced, and the dock had been allowed to decay until it wasn’t much more than a stack of broken logs.
    It was time she moved out of her parents’ house, bought herself a car. She’d seen the look in Winters’ face when she confessed that she didn’t own a car. There were some things you simply had to have, if you were to be accepted as a functioning adult in most of North America.
    An engine sounded, coming up from the road, the vehicle hidden by the sharp curves in the driveway and the jumble of forest surrounding the property. Smith swallowed the dregs of her coffee, snapped on her gun belt, and placed her hat on her head. She’d already forced her feet into the hated boots. She headed out the door. A black SUV was parked in their driveway, and Winters was getting out of the car.
    “Morning,” she said.
    “Morning, Molly. Nice view you have here.”
    “I like it.”
    “You can drive.” He tossed her the keys and walked around the car to the passenger side.
    Smith swallowed, and got in. She rested sweaty hands on the cool steering wheel. The slightest whisper of good perfume lingered in the soft leather of the seats. “Where to?” She put on her sunglasses and adjusted the mirrors.
    “We’ll pick up the van from the station, and then pay a visit to the Grizzly Resort site. I want to speak to the staff there as soon as possible. If we have time, we can visit this Dr. Tyler. The autopsy’s scheduled for twelve o’clock. The Chief Constable’s taking Mrs. Montgomery to make the identification at ten. I don’t need to be there: it’s not as if a highly skilled detective is required to study the widow’s face for emotional clues. I hope that when I die my wife will shed a single tear, at least. Henry the dog was more upset at Montgomery’s death than his wife was. Do you know where the resort offices are, Molly?”
    “Of course,” she said, waiting for an immaculately maintained ’60s-era pickup truck to pass before pulling onto the highway.
    She headed south along the banks of the wide Upper Kootenay River. They crossed the river and drove through the town of Trafalgar, stopping at the police station to pick up an unmarked van. They they headed to Number 3 Highway, where she turned left, toward Nelson. The road hugged the main branch of the Kootenay River. Before long, she saw a prominent sign announcing
Grizzly Resort,
upon which a red circle with a slash through it had been spray-painted.
    The van bucked down the washboard gravel road like a wild horse being ridden for the first time. The development offices were nothing more than a trailer in the center of an acre or so of trampled bushes and raw stumps. A giant billboard, featuring a sketch of the property layout on one half and an architect’s drawing of the proposed main building on the other loomed over the trailer.
    A middle-aged woman was sitting behind a desk by the door. She looked up as Winters and Smith entered. Her eyes and nose were red, mascara ran down her cheeks like a river of coal, and she clutched a tattered tissue to her face. The morning’s
Trafalgar Daily Gazette
was spread out on her desk.
    The woman turned her ruined face toward them. “I’m