Valley of the Lost Read Online Free PDF

sorry, Mr. Winters, but I really don’t know anything about her. She paid her share of the rent and otherwise kept herself to herself.”
    “You said she went out in the mornings? Where?”
    Marigold shrugged. She glanced toward a small wooden box on the side table, presumably where she kept her supply of marijuana.
    “You didn’t know?” Smith asked.
    Marigold’s eyes were red and moist and her nose ran. She looked directly at Smith for the first time. “That’s quite the face you have there, cop lady. Last time I saw a bruise like that I was leaving home. If your boyfriend’s knocking you around, there are places you can go for help, you know.”
    Smith felt herself blushing. No one would ever assume that a male officer, Dave Evans for example, had been hit by his girlfriend.
    “Constable Smith’s perfectly capable, Marigold,” Winters said, causing Smith to blush even more. “No need for you to worry. Back to matters at hand. Are you telling us you didn’t know where Ashley and Miller spent their days?”
    “Honest, Mr. Winters. She didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask.”
    “She ever go out with you? In the evenings, your days off?”
    “I need the money, so I don’t take many days off. But no, she didn’t. I don’t think I ever saw Ash without Miller. Unless the baby was sleeping and then Ash was watching TV and listening for him to cry.”
    “She take drugs? Be honest with me, Marigold. I’m trying to find out why she died, not bust her for using.”
    “I never saw her take anything, honest, Mr. Winters. Why she wouldn’t… wouldn’t use anything.”
    Smith guessed that Marigold almost said that Ashley wouldn’t even smoke any of her pot. Winters pretended not to notice the slip.
    “What’s going to happen to Miller now?”
    “That’s why we’re trying to find her family. In the meantime, he’s being well looked after. Don’t worry about that.”
    He stood up, and Smith moved away from the wall. “Thank you for your time, Marigold. I appreciate it.” He handed the girl his card. “If you can think of anything, anything at all. Who her friends were, maybe something she mentioned about her past, call me at that number.”
    She blew her nose again, and tossed the card on the coffee table. The table appeared to be of good quality, solid wood, careful workmanship. Someone had carved an obscenity, deeply, into the table top.
    Smith and Winters clattered down the rickety stairs to the street. Winters’ phone rang, and he dug it out of his shirt pocket. He said a single word and snapped it shut. “I have to get back to the station for a meet with Ray. But I could use a coffee first.” Winters led the way to Big Eddie’s Coffee Emporium and Smith followed, unsure as to whether she’d been invited to tag along or not.
    She didn’t know what her relationship to the sergeant was. They’d worked together just once, a few weeks ago, and she’d begun to get the feeling that he, if not actually liking her, at least thought she might make a competent cop one day.
    He’d joined the Trafalgar City Police recently. A step down the ladder from a high-profile career in Vancouver homicide. Among the rank-and-file officers, only Smith knew something about the near-disaster of a case that had caused him to abandon the big city and seek sanctuary in the small mountain town of Trafalgar. She’d never told him she knew.
    He ordered a large coffee, strong, for himself and a hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles for Smith, without asking her what she wanted. Hot chocolate was what she’d ordered the last time they’d been here. It was a mite warm for hot chocolate today, but as she wasn’t paying she wasn’t going to object.
    “You ever see her, Marigold or whatever ridiculous name she’s taken on, around town, Molly?” he asked once they were back on the street.
    “She works at The Bishop, that was true. She’s there almost every night. She hangs around with an after-hours