Read Online In the Shadow of the Glacier by Vicki Delany - Free Book Online Page B

looking out the window at the lights twinkling on the mountainside. For weeks she’d resisted Smith’s advice to take a restraining order out on Charlie, convinced that she only had to be firm and he’d go away. Tonight, she’d listen if Molly talked, but her attention wouldn’t be on what the murder of Reg Montgomery could mean to her friend’s career.
    “I gotta go.” Smith drained her tea. “If he comes back tonight, call the station straight away. And then me. Got that?”
    Christa nodded.
    “I’ll give you a buzz soon as I’m free. I hope they give me the job of serving the restraining order. I might accidentally bring my truncheon down across the back of his head and knee him in the nuts.”
    “I don’t want that to happen,” Christa said. “Maybe I shouldn’t make an official complaint. He likes me, that’s all. But it’s getting to be such a bother.”
    “I was kidding, Chris. But get one thing straight. He doesn’t like you. He wants to own you. There’s a difference.”
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Shirley Lee called while Winters was flipping bacon. It was seven a.m. Eliza had to catch a flight out of Castlegar, going to Toronto to shoot a magazine ad for a hybrid car. Something designed to appeal to the “middle-aged, upper-middle-class, environmentally aware woman.”
    “Aging bags with piles of dough and a guilty conscience,” Winters had said when she told him of the assignment.
    “Watch who you’re calling an aging bag, old man,” she’d replied. “And better a hybrid than jail bait and a Camaro.”
    “Yo, doc,” Winters said into the phone, reaching across the counter to press the lever down on the toaster. The twenty-fifth anniversary hadn’t been a total washout, and he was in a good mood.
    “Good morning, John,” Dr. Lee said. “I’m doing the autopsy on Montgomery at noon. It was a quiet night, so I can give him my full attention.”
    “Glad to hear it.”
    She hung up without bothering to say goodbye.
    “Who was that?” Eliza came into the kitchen, fitting a gold hoop into her ear. “Business?” The weather report was calling for another day of record-breaking heat, and she’d dressed casually for the trip in black capris, white T-shirt, and sandals that emphasized what the Victorians would have called her well-turned ankles.
    “Natch. Bacon?”
    She shuddered, and reached into the fridge for yoghurt and a jar of blackcurrant jam. She snatched at a slice of toast as it flew out of the toaster and tossed it onto a plate.
“I’ve got time to take you to the airport, and get back to pick up my apprentice,” Winters said, cracking eggs into the hot fat.
“You’re driving?”
“Can you believe it, she doesn’t own a car. And she calls herself a cop? What is the world coming to?”
    “Don’t start your relationship with this constable with such cynicism, John. Give her some trust. Paul wouldn’t have hired her if she was no good.”
“She’s too green. Too naïve. She looks like Barbie, all dressed up to play cop.”
“I wonder who’s being naïve. She can’t help what she looks like, but you can help judging her on her looks.”
A car horn sounded from the driveway.
    “That’s my ride. So you have time to consider your prejudice against this young woman before picking her up.” Eliza tweaked his earlobe and kissed him firmly on the lips. Her bag was waiting by the kitchen door. She tossed her handbag over her shoulder, balanced her plate of toast in one hand, yoghurt and spoon in another, and somehow still managed to drag the wheeled suitcase out the door.
    Winters served himself bacon and eggs and the remaining toast and sat down at the kitchen table. Women, he thought, always sticking up for each other.
    “You might be interested in this.” Eliza opened the door and threw the newspaper at him.
    □□□
     
    “Have you seen the day’s paper?” Lucky Smith said into the phone. She sat at her desk in the small office behind Mid-Kootenay Adventure