Valley of the Lost Read Free

interested.
    “Don’t make assumptions, Molly. Your mother found a dead woman, and now she’s minding a baby. She seems calm about all of this.”
    “I figured she was busy with the baby.”
    “Has anyone contacted your father?”
    “Not me. Should I?”
    “I think your mother needs some care, Molly. She found a body in the woods and she’s showing as much emotion as if it had been an abandoned shoe.”
    Smith pulled out her cell phone.
    “Take Dave’s place on the street, and tell him to come inside and join Mrs. Smith and me.”
    “I’d rather…”
    “Get Dave.” He walked away without looking back.
    Lucky Smith sat in a big armchair in the main room. The fiery red head, heavily streaked with gray, bent over the child in her arms. A strand had come loose from the clip at the back of her head and caressed the baby’s cheek. At five foot two, Lucky was much shorter, and pudgier, than her tall, thin daughter. You wouldn’t think they were related, at first, until you saw the firm set of the chin, the high cheekbones, the shape of the eyes—Lucky’s green, Molly’s blue.
    The Trafalgar Women’s Support Center was located in a heritage house. Still arranged like a home, it had a large living room with comfortable sofa and thread-bare chairs, a kitchen, last remodeled in the 1960s, dining room featuring a scarred wooden table with seating for ten or more, and stairs leading to the second floor. The house was old, wallpaper fading, paint chipping, floorboards lifting and carpet edges curling. A cork board, covered with information from government and social service agencies, filled one wall of the kitchen. Beneath a framed print of sky, lake, and flowers in the high alpine, Lucky cooed softly to the bundle in her arms.
    Winters took a seat in the couch opposite her. The springs were none too good and they sagged beneath his weight.
    “That’s a cute baby, Lucky. Whose is it?”

Chapter Two
    “I can’t believe you missed the whole thing, Meredith. What on Planet Earth were you up to?”
    Meredith Morgenstern shifted in the hard-backed chair. She endured the stream of abuse and tried to settle her breathing into her chest. One breath after another. One breath.
    He’d told her to cover August’s Fourth Thursday. The fourth Thursday of every month in spring and summer, the stores along Front Street put on a street festival. Musicians, wandering buskers, street-side food stalls. Her cell phone had conked out somewhere between interviewing a clown on stilts, and a lady selling homemade jam and chutney. She hadn’t heard the order to get to Cottonwood Street and check out the police activity converging on the area.
    Only once she’d gotten home and plugged her phone into the charger, did she get the message. By the time she arrived at Cottonwood Street only Constable Dave Evans, as handsome as ever, was there. He’d told her to go home.
    She gave him her card, as if he didn’t know who she was, and suggested they have a coffee some time when he was off duty. He’d put the card into his pocket and said he’d think about it. Arrogant prick.
    Meredith knew better than to relate all that to Joe Gessling, her editor. A newspaper legend in his own mind, Joe held firm to the belief that he could do no wrong. So she cranked out a smile and said “They kept it under the radar, Joe. You know how it is sometimes.”
    “Sure do,” he said.
    Meredith doubted that he had any idea at all of how it was. His grandfather had started the paper; his father kept it going, year after year, without making the slightest change. A few months ago, Gessling Père collapsed onto his desk while pouring over copy, victim of a massive heart attack. He survived, but barely, and Joe had been brought back from a paper in Picton, Ontario. Wherever that might be. Joe talked long and loud about his ideas to bring the Gazette into the 21 st century. Whatever that meant. He’d already tried to introduce more color and a lifestyle section.