“It’s all right,” I said. “I understand.”
“What are you doing on this island, anyway?” asked Jason. “You know it’s off limits.”
“Oh, I know, all right,” I said. When I looked back at Gerald, he slunk off behind a bush to change his pants.
“Hey!” cried Liz. “Orcas!” We all watched the huge, majestic creatures roll through the waves as they swam between Bone Island and the shore of Vancouver Island. Liz was spellbound. Her hair blew around her face as she watched the pod pass. I had never seen a sight more beautiful than Liz watching the orcas.
“I really do miss this,” said Sara. “Being out here. With you.”
Sara turned to me, but my focus was on Liz. Sara held up her cell phone in front of me. “I’ve been getting those calls, too,” she said.
That got my attention. “What did the guy say?”
“He threatened me,” Sara said. “He said he knows about you and me.”
“You and me?” I led Sara away, so Liz, Jason, and the others couldn’t hear. “Listen,” I said. “Is there any chance the caller, the stalker, might be your husband? You said he was jealous of our trips together, of you and me.”
“Dave?” Sara laughed. “I wish he cared enough to do something like this. Hell, he doesn’t even buy me flowers on our anniversary.”
“I’m sorry I suggested it,” I said. “I just wish to hell I knew who this guy was.”
“It’s pretty clear he’s trying to scare you away from these sacred sites. For your own safety, I would listen if I were you. Why not just run the day trips around the bay with me? You can sleep at home every night.”
“No. I’m getting the cops involved. I’m not going to let this stalker ruin my business.”
As if on cue, my cell phone rang. I opened my phone as I scanned the bush along shore and the cliff above us. Was the stalker that close, I wondered, that he could hear our conversation?
“Mike?” The caller was a man, but he wasn’t the stalker. At least his voice wasn’t bent out of shape by voice-changing software.
“This is Dave,” the caller said. “Sara’s husband. Have you seen Sara? She told me she was staying overnight at her sister’s place. I tried to reach her on her cell phone early this morning. When she didn’t answer, I phoned her sister. Jenny told me Sara hadn’t stayed there last night. I tried phoning you earlier, too, but I couldn’t reach you.”
Suddenly everything fell into place. Sam had hit the nail on the head yesterday: men always underestimate what women can do. I felt like the guy in the movie Fatal Attraction, stalked by a sick woman. And that woman was Sara. The stalker had to be her. She knew not only my cell phone number and Liz’s, but my clients’ as well. She knew our tour route, where we were going.
Sara must have shot those holes in the kayaks to keep us here on Bone Island and then kayaked home. She was a strong kayaker, nearly as strong as me. She could have weathered the storm, no problem. Then she would be nowhere near Bone Island in the morning. No one would suspect that she was the stalker. After all, she met Jason at the launch site so they could come out here. The one thing she hadn’t counted on was her husband’s phone calls. First to her sister, and then to me.
I looked right at Sara as I answered Dave. “Sara’s here, on Bone Island, with Jason and Liz and me.”
Sara stared back at me for a moment. She knew her husband was on the phone. She knew she had been caught. She knew I had figured out that she was the stalker.
Sara walked away from me, back to my motorboat. I started to follow, with my phone still at my ear. I wouldn’t let her take off with my boat, leaving us stranded on this island.
“Bone Island?” said Dave. “What the hell is she doing out there? For that matter, what are you doing there? I thought no one was allowed on Bone Island.”
Sara climbed into the boat. But then she jumped right back out again, carrying her backpack. There was something odd about the way Sara marched towards Liz and the others, who all stood around the camp stove. She was too determined. Her head was down, like a bull’s when it’s ready to charge.
“Let me talk to her, will you?” said Dave.
“I’ll have her phone you back,” I said.
“Tell her she has me really worried.”
Me too, I thought, as I closed my phone.
“What’s up?” Jason asked Sara when she reached them.
“This,” said Sara. She pulled a handgun from her backpack and pointed it straight at Liz’s head. Liz looked up from the omelette she was cooking, more surprised than frightened. But Sam screamed.
“Sara, put the gun down,” I said. But Sara stepped forward and pressed the gun against Liz’s forehead. Liz slowly placed the omelette pan on the ground beside her and held her hands in the air.
“Wait,” I said to Sara. “I understand. You shot those holes in the kayaks to scare me, so I wouldn’t bring clients out here again. So I wouldn’t come out with Liz again. I get it. You don’t have to shoot Liz to get her out of the picture. I doubt that she wants to work for me after this.”
“This is our stalker?” Gerald asked.
“You shot those holes in the kayaks?” Sam said. “Whatever were you thinking? We nearly died of exposure in those wretched caves.”
Sara levelled the gun at Sam and then Gerald. “Shut up,” she said. “Both of you, shut up.” Sam and Gerald each took a step back and didn’t say another word. Sara’s hand shook as she turned the gun back to Liz’s forehead.
“She thinks she can just come in here, take over, take you from me,” Sara said to me.
“She couldn’t take me away,” I said. “I thought you and I were good friends. That would never change.”
“We spent five years together out on the water, and you wouldn’t touch me. She works for you for just a few weeks, and there she is, sleeping in that cave with you.”
“You’re married,” I said. “Dave loves you. He wants to be with you. He’s worried about you.”
She aimed the gun at me. She was in tears. “But I love you,” she said.
“Believe me,” Liz said. “This isn’t love.”
Sara swung the gun back to Liz. “Be quiet!” she cried.
I saw the tension ripple through Sara’s forearm and her finger start to squeeze the trigger. I didn’t think, I just reacted. I grabbed the gun from Sara’s hand as she fired. A bullet whizzed past Liz’s ear and nearly hit Sam.
I threw the gun to the ground. Sara stared at it a moment. We all stared at it. Then Sara took off down the beach. I chased after her and grabbed her arm to stop her. She tried to pull away, but I held her from behind as she struggled and cried out. After a time, she gave up. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed in my arms. She leaned her head back against my shoulder.
“I just wanted you to love me,” she said. “The way I love you.”
I looked back at Liz and the others standing around the camp stove, watching us. “Liz is right,” I said. “This isn’t love.”
Chapter Nine
Back home the next morning, I woke to a weird buzzing sound. I thought for a moment that a large, panicked beetle was trying to get out my bedroom window. Then I watched my cell phone vibrate right across my nightstand and fall to the carpet. I had turned the ringer off. I didn’t ever want to hear that thing ring again.
I reached down and grabbed the phone from the floor.
“Hello?” My voice was still thick with sleep.
“Did I wake you?” The caller was Liz.
I turned the alarm clock to face me. “I guess I slept in. But then, it is my day off.”
“I feel stupid now. I just assumed you’d be awake.”
I sat up in bed and rubbed my face. “What’s up?”
“This can wait.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Did you hear any more from the cops about Sara?”
“No, not really. I guess both you and I will have to appear in court sometime.”
“Yeah, sounds like it.
”
“Sara’s husband phoned, though,” I said.
“Aw, hell. I thought he might.”
“He wanted to know if I saw any warning signs in Sara’s behaviour before she flipped out. He asked if Sara and I were having an affair.”
“Were you?” Liz asked.
“No!” I said. “She flirted with me, I guess. But I thought we were just friends. I still can’t believe she was the stalker.”
“Before our divorce, I never would have believed my ex was capable of what he did.”
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
“You didn’t phone to ask about Sara, did you?” I said, finally.
“Not really. But that can wait for another time.”
“Come on.”
She paused. “I wanted to talk about what happened in the cave on Bone Island Saturday night.”
“You were scared. I understand. Forget it ever happened.”
“I’m not sure I want to forget it,” she said.
Now I paused, long enough that Liz asked, “You still there?”
“I do make it a policy not to get involved with my employees,” I said. “Seems like a good rule, after this past weekend.”
“I understand.” She sounded hurt.
I got out of bed. “However, we could come up with a different arrangement. You could run your own catering and guiding business. I could hire your company to cook for my tours and help with guiding. That way, our companies would work together, not you and me personally. Strictly speaking, you wouldn’t be my employee.”
Liz didn’t say anything at first. Through the phone, I heard what I thought were footsteps and then the slam of a truck door. Was she starting up her truck? I went to the kitchen in my T-shirt and jockey shorts to look out my window at her house. Sure enough, she was in her truck.
“Funny you should mention that,” she said. “I’ve decided to start my own business. I quit. Now, are you interested in a contract with Liz’s Catering and Guiding Company? I’m good with a paddle, and I make a mean western omelette.” She did make the best western omelettes. Her secret ingredient was sausage, farmer’s sausage instead of ham.
“I think we can come to some agreement,” I said.
“Then Sunday was officially my last day,” she said.
“I usually ask for two weeks’ notice before I let an employee quit. In your case, I could overlook that. If you deliver your letter of resignation in person.”
There was another long pause. I watched her drive her truck into my yard, get out, and jog up my path. And there she was, framed in the window of the kitchen door, wearing that tight little pink tank top, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her cell phone was pressed to her ear. “I’ll be right there,” she said, and she closed her phone.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Laurel Boone for her careful edits of this novel. Thanks also to Chris Wood, whose story “On a Misty Sea, a Dark Discovery” appeared in the online publication The Tyee. The real-life event reported in that story inspired the conversation in chapter four about the tourist who drowned. Lastly, thanks to all the many tourists who enjoy the wilderness areas of the BC coast responsibly and leave it as they found it.
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Good Reads Series
If you enjoyed this Good Reads book, you can find more at your local library or bookstore.
2010
The Stalker by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
In From the Cold by Deborah Ellis
Shipwreck by Maureen Jennings
The Picture of Nobody by Rabindranath Maharaj
The Hangman by Louise Penny
Easy Money by Gail Vaz-Oxlade
2011 Authors
Joseph Boyden
Marina Endicott
Joy Fielding
Robert Hough
Anthony Hyde
Frances Itani
For more information on Good Reads, visit www.GoodReadsBooks.com
The Picture of Nobody
by Rabindranath Maharaj
Tommy lives with his family in Ajax, a small town close to Toronto. His parents are Ismaili Muslims who immigrated to Canada before Tommy was born. Tommy, a shy, chubby seventeen-year-old, feels like an outsider.
The arrest of a terrorist group in Toronto turns Tommy’s world upside down. No one noticed him before. Now, he experiences the sting of racism at the local coffee shop where he works part-time. A group of young men who hang out at the coffee shop begin to bully him. In spite, Tommy commits an act of revenge against the group’s ringleader.
Shipwreck
by Maureen Jennings
A retired police detective tells a story from his family’s history. This is his story...
On a cold winter morning in 1873, a crowd gathers on the shore of a Nova Scotia fishing village. A stormy sea has thrown a ship onto the rocks. The villagers work bravely to save the ship’s crew. But many die.
When young Will Murdoch and the local priest examine the bodies, they discover gold and diamonds. They suspect that the shipwreck was not responsible for all of the deaths. With the priest’s help, Will—who grows up to be a famous detective—solves his first mystery.
The Hangman
by Louise Penny
On a cold November morning, a jogger runs through the woods in the peaceful Quebec village of Three Pines. On his run, he finds a dead man hanging from a tree.
The dead man was a guest at the local Inn and Spa. He might have been looking for peace and quiet, but something else found him. Something horrible.
Did the man take his own life? Or was he murdered? Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the crime scene. As Gamache follows the trail of clues, he opens a door into the past. And he learns the true reason why the man came to Three Pines.
In From the Cold
by Deborah Ellis
Rose and her daughter Hazel are on the run in a big city. During the day, Rose and Hazel live in a shack hidden in the bushes. At night, they look for food in garbage bins.
In the summer, living in the shack was like an adventure for Hazel. But now, winter is coming and the nights are cold.
Hazel is starting to miss her friends and her school. Rose is trying to do the right thing for her daughter, but everything is going so wrong. Will Hazel stay loyal to her mother, or will she try to return to her old life?
Easy Money
by Gail Vaz-Oxlade
Wish you could find a money book that doesn’t make your eyes glaze over or your brain hurt? Easy Money is for you.
Gail knows you work hard for your money, so in her usual honest and practical style she will show you how to make your money work for you. Budgeting, saving, and getting your debt paid off have never been so easy to understand or to do. Follow Gail’s plan and take control of your money.
About the Author
Gail Anderson-Dargatz is the author of the bestselling novels A Recipe for Bees and The Cure for Death by Lightning, both finalists for the Giller Prize. She currently teaches fiction in the creative writing program at the University of British Columbia. Gail lives with her husband and children in the Shuswap region of BC, the landscape found in so much of he
r writing.
Also by Gail Anderson-Dargatz:
The Miss Hereford Stories
The Cure for Death by Lightning
A Recipe for Bees
A Rhinestone Button
Turtle Valley
You can visit Gail’s website at www.gailanderson-dargatz.ca
The Stalker Page 4