Constable Molly Smith 01 - In the Shadow of the Glacier

forgot her. Graham would have told me what was right.” She ground her knuckles into her eyes until fireworks exploded behind her lids.
    “Well, Graham isn’t here,” Lucky said, sounding as firm as she could. “And you’re on your own, Moonlight. Molly. But think of this…if you’d been working as a clerk in your brother’s law firm, or helping out at the store, or teaching at the university, would you have found Christa today?”
    “No, but….”
    “Lucky, get in here!” Andy bellowed from the family room.
    Mother and daughter looked at each other. Had his favorite baseball team scored?
    “Now, Lucky!”
    They ran.
    “Not him again.”
    Rich Ashcroft was interviewing Frank Clemmins. Lucky caught the tail end of the interview as Clemmins, trying to hide a tear at the corner of his eye, talked about his business partner, so cruelly cut down. He hoped, he said, with a deep sigh, to be able to continue the project that was Reg’s vision. He said something about families enjoying the wilderness. Then he was gone and Ashcroft pontificated for a few seconds. An ad for a luxury SUV came on. Somehow the advertisers had been able to associate their product with saving the environment.
    “That wasn’t much,” Moonlight said. “Forget him. He’s had his fifteen minutes of fame.”
    “Sit down, both of you,” Andy snapped. “He isn’t finished. The whole first segment of the show, he said at the beginning, is about Trafalgar. And didn’t I see him this afternoon, in front of our store?”
    The family sat in silence waiting for the program to resume. Lucky picked a copy of the
Utne Reader
off the coffee table and fanned her face. A hot flash was coming on.
    A group of people wearing animal masks appeared on the screen, and for a hopeful moment she thought the program had gone to an early Halloween segment.
    “That sounds like Robyn Goodhaugh.” Moonlight was sitting on the arm of her father’s chair. She touched his shoulder, and for a moment Lucky had a flush of hope that they could be a loving family again. Or was it just another hot flash? She fanned harder. Damned house—they should have gotten air conditioning years ago.
    On TV, the wolf head said something about kill or be killed, and they broke for a commercial.
    Lucky groaned. Robyn had joined the Commemorative Peace Garden committee and worked like a demon organizing petitions and letter-writing campaigns. At first Lucky thought they were fortunate to have her. But Robyn’s rhetoric quickly turned to threats of violence if she didn’t get her way, and Lucky and Barry decided that she had to go.
    The parting had not been easy. Robyn was now quick to disparage the park committee at every opportunity.
    “Didn’t you have that fool of a woman here, in our house, Lucky?” Andy said. “I’d have expected you to have better sense.”
    “Stop bickering.” Moonlight threw herself onto the floor in front of the TV. If not for the dark blue uniform and the shoulder patches with the town crest and the words
Since 1895; Trafalgar City Police,
Moonlight might have been a kid, pleased to be allowed up late to watch a special program.
    Ashcroft interviewed a young man next. He’d been born after his dad died, he told Rich, in Vietnam, only a month short of the end of the war. He spoke about growing up without a father, full of pride of the man he’d never known. The skin at the corner of his left eye twitched. And now this garden, he said, this monument to cowardice, made him wonder if his life had been a lie and he should be ashamed of his father’s sacrifice.
    “Never,” Rich said, struggling to keep his voice under control. “Never.” He gripped the boy’s shoulder.
    Another ad.
    “He was in the store yesterday,” Andy said.
    “Ashcroft? He’s everywhere, like the smell from clogged drains.”
    “Not Ashcroft. The young guy, Harris.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t remember him buying anything. Browsed around, not really looking at the merchandise. He doesn’t look much like the outdoors type, so I kept an eye on him.”
    “Shush,” Lucky said, “they’re back.”
    Meredith Morgenstern sauntered down Front Street as cars flashed in front of her and the summer crowds flowed around her like a river coming to a slow-moving branch. Mrs. Alexander from the United Church Women greeted her.
    And Lucky knew that this was going to be bad. Very bad. She wanted to run from the room. But she was trapped in her chair as if she were wearing leg