Constable Molly Smith 01 - In the Shadow of the Glacier

to arrive. As long as that Ashcroft guy’s in town. I saw last night’s show. He’s upping the ante. Getting nastier. The war hero’s posthumously born son was a nice touch.”
    “We can’t do anything to stop him?”
    “Not as long as he doesn’t trespass onto private property. You noticed that he didn’t try to come into the store, get the fight in action so to speak.”
    “He was at my house the other night.”
    “Invited by your mother.”
    They had to drive by the park entrance on their way to their meeting. People were lined up on both sides of the street. One group was mostly middle-aged women with grey hair either clipped close to their scalp or cascading down their backs, men with unkempt beards, and youths in T-shirts and sandals. The other was neatly dressed middle-aged or older people, with a few younger ones in ugly shorts for the men and pastel short-sets for the women. A man in the second group waved a small flag in each hand. The Stars and Stripes and the Maple Leaf.
    A TV van with the logo of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was parked further up the street. A woman walked through the crowd, carrying a tape recorder. Smith couldn’t be sure, but with scraggly blond hair and big glasses, she looked a lot like the picture of the
Globe and Mail
’s human-interest columnist.
    A single Trafalgar City Police officer watched over it all.
    “Chief has the Mounties on standby,” Winters said.
    “Hope it doesn’t come to that.”
    ***
    Lucky Smith was still exhilarated when they got back to the store. It was like when she was young, back in the Sixties. When anything and everything was possible. Sometimes she thought that the street battle with the cops outside the Democratic convention in Chicago was, aside from the birth of her children, the most exciting day in her life.
    She looked at Andy, his nose swollen, drops of blood drying down the front of his shirt, and thought that perhaps she shouldn’t have gotten such a rush out of the fight. But, hey, she’d shown that two-bit punk, hadn’t she?
    Nice of Paul Keller to check on them. She’d always liked the Chief Constable, although they’d had their differences over the years. She remembered when he was a newly promoted sergeant, fresh from the big city, full of his own self-importance, trying to face her down over that water-access issue. Paul might be The Man, but Lucky had always thought they respected each other. She’d been secretly pleased that he’d hired Moonlight; she expected that he’d turn the girl down because her mother was a known agitator.
    “I’m going home to change,” Andy said.
    “Okay,” she said. He hadn’t actually moved his things out, as he’d threatened to do yesterday.
    He headed for the door. Duncan watched them from behind the counter.
    “Andy,” she said.
    He turned around. “Yes?”
    She swallowed what she’d meant to say. Poor Andy, as he got older he mellowed and wondered why she didn’t. He was no longer happy with a firebrand for a wife. All he wanted was a peaceful life. But when that foul young man had threatened her, he’d jumped in front of her, quick enough. “Don’t be long,” she said. “Duncan has a trip to take at noon, and Flower isn’t in until two.”
    “I know my staff’s schedule, Lucky.”
    “Just reminding you, dear.”
    Andy may have mellowed, she thought. But the world hadn’t. And until it did, neither could she.
    Duncan had put the table back on its feet and picked books and pamphlets off the floor. But he’d done nothing about the blood on the wide pine flooring. “If you can mop that mess up, Duncan,” she said, “I’ll be in my office.”
    The phone rang before she’d fully settled into her chair.
    “Lucky, what the hell’s going on there?”
    “Hell’s the word, Barry. Where are you?”
    “Home, at last. Marta broke her foot, as it turns out. Badly. Doc said he’d rarely seen such a mess. We got in a few hours ago. I settled her onto the couch, went for some groceries and beer, made lunch, ate lunch.”
    Lucky drew circles on her desk blotter. Barry did sometimes talk in lists.
    “Only then did I access my e-mail. Everyone on the committee has been sending frantic notes back and forth. My nephew in Tennessee wrote to ask what’s going on. Said he’d seen something on TV about Trafalgar.”
    Lucky explained the situation. She could almost feel the steam coming down the phone line as Barry got angrier and angrier.
    “I’m on my