Constable Molly Smith 01 - In the Shadow of the Glacier

scrubbed pine kitchen table, exchanging nervous glances. “Perhaps it’s because Barry isn’t here,” she said.
    “Barry’s not coming?” Jane Reynolds said. “What’s happened?”
    “He called me just before you got here. Marta was seeing him to the door, and she tripped over a dog toy and fell down the stairs. She might have sprained her ankle, so they’ve gone to the hospital.”
    “Is it a problem? That Barry isn’t here?” Norma McGrath asked.
    Several voices murmured. They were ten, and Lucky’s kitchen table was large enough to accommodate all of them with room to spare.
    Lucky said nothing. It was Barry who’d left an arm in Vietnam. Barry who gave their group the gravitas it needed in the face of the media. Jane had a half-century of activity in the peace movement, but age was quickly overtaking her, and she looked and sounded too much like someone’s dotty grandmother. Joe had escaped the draft, but he was so tongue-tied that the press didn’t bother with him. Michael never talked about his past, and Lucky didn’t quite know why he was here. She hadn’t told Andy the press were coming to interview the group—he would have just told her to let it go. Tonight, it was up to Lucky Smith to make their case. Vehicle lights washed across the driveway. She swallowed a glass of wine in one quick gulp.
    ***
    It was long after midnight when Winters dropped Smith off. They’d spent the night moving between the alley south of Front Street and Eagle Point Bluffs, looking for someone who’d seen either a disturbance behind the bakery or Dr. Tyler brooding alone in his car.
    No one they spoke to had been in the alley at the time in question. The restaurant staff was kept under such tight control, by a chef so tempestuous that he’d been fired from Food TV that they didn’t dare so much as to take a breathing break. The dog walkers had all been either early or late yesterday. On Thursday night, the alley behind Alphonse’s Bakery might well have been on the far side of the moon as far as the good citizens of Trafalgar were concerned.
    At the park overlooking the lights of the town far below and the black shapes of the mountains all around, courting couples had been busy with their own interests—watching the stars twinkle overhead, apparently.
    All in all, it had been a fruitless night. But Smith did allow herself to get her hopes up, just a smidgen, that she was making some headway with Sergeant Winters, proving to be a good detective. Or, at least, a competent detective’s assistant.
    Her mom was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in the loose tank top and cotton shorts she wore as pajamas. Her head was cradled in her hands, and her shoulders shook.
    Smith fell to her knees and grabbed Lucky’s hands. They were as cold as the snow on Koola Glacier. “Dad,” Smith said, “where’s Dad?”
    “The hell I know.” Lucky lifted her head. Tears ran down her face. “Did you see it?”
    “See what?”
    “The program.”
    “Help me here, Mom. I don’t know what program you’re talking about. I was working, not watching TV.”
    “He set us up, Moonlight. Like lambs to the slaughter. And Meredith Morgenstern sprinkled bread crumbs to show him the way.”
    “Mom, please. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who set who up, and what does Meredith have to do with anything?”
    Lucky pointed to the door leading out of the kitchen. “Go watch. I taped it. It’s bad, Moonlight. I’ve been a fool.”
    Smith scrambled for the small TV in the family room that was older than she. A tape was in the VCR player. She rewound it for a few seconds and pressed play. “Good night from Rich Ashcroft, in Trafalgar, Canada.” A commercial for a North American car began—the car, and the ad, indistinguishable from every other. Smith rewound the tape for about fifteen minutes’ worth.
    She watched in increasing horror. The last portion of
Fifth Column with Rich Ashcroft
featured the town of Trafalgar.
    Which, the viewer was told, was the scene of a brutal murder. A still shot of Montgomery throwing a fishing line into a river appeared on the screen as the narrator talked about Montgomery’s love for the Mid-Kootenays. The camera pulled back to reveal Ellie Montgomery holding her husband’s photograph. She was beautifully made up, her blouse a match to the solid black of her perfectly arranged hair. “My husband,” she said, wiping away a tear, “said it wasn’t right that a small group of