“But by now they must admit how successful you are, right?” Lori objected.
“Yes, nobody utters a peep about it. Money talks.”
Hope’s laugh had a hard edge to it. They sipped their coffee in silence until Hope reopened the subject.
“I want to be straight with you. I heard that one of the Whalens took you to his place during the storm.”
“I imagine you even know what we had for dinner,” Lori said drily.
“Noah Whalen. Does it bother you that people know that?”
The muffin crumbled between Lori’s fingers.
“I find it disturbing that these matters are broadcast far and wide. It’s—”
“You need to understand it’s not just gossip. It’s important to be informed and to know the person next to you and what he’s doing.”
“But where’s the privacy in all this?”
“Security takes precedence. People here don’t die anonymously in their homes like they do in big cities, where somebody only discovers them weeks later.”
“No, here they’re killed, and the body’s found months later in a peculiar grave.”
Hope said nothing at first but started rubbing her right arm rhythmically.
“There was a rumor making the rounds that it was one of the Whalens, but I don’t know for sure who or from which family. Lots of Whalens around.”
This was supposed to be a pleasant chat, Lori thought to herself. If only she hadn’t brought up the subject of Jacinta. But now there was no going back.
“Are you trying to warn me about something, Hope?”
“I talked to Lloyd Weston about all that business. His team is coming back this summer because they discovered another prehistoric grave. ‘Lloyd,’ I said, ‘it will open up old wounds if you start digging up there.’”
“And what did he say?”
“Maybe that’s a good thing, because then they’ll talk about Jacinta again, and maybe somebody will come clean.”
“How well do you know him?”
“He and his team were staying at my father’s lodge when it happened.”
She looked at her watch and jumped up.
“I’ve got to see to dinner. Making butternut squash soup and chicken fricassee with orange sauce.”
She charged off, her steps echoing on the wooden floor.
Lori looked out on the frozen lake and noticed dark cracks in the ice. Was that because of the storm or was spring finally on the way?
She mulled over Hope’s words. What was that all about, the rumors about it being one of the Whalens? The name Whalen was as common around here as Smith and Lee in Vancouver. If she meant Noah, why didn’t she just come out with it? Lori couldn’t fathom Hope’s motives. This capable and resolute woman didn’t seem inclined to gossip. Lori decided to bring it up with her again.
But for the moment, she felt like getting some fresh air after those long, stormy days trapped inside. A little while later, as she was tramping along a snowmobile trail through the woods, the silence and motionlessness of the surroundings covered her like a blanket. She noticed how calm she felt—even her coffee palpitations faded away—and there was nothing beyond pushing her body harder, the crunch of her steps in the snow, and her dripping nose. She marched ahead as if in a trance. No living creature, no movement disrupted her concentration.
She had to confess that it was sometimes good just to give yourself over to the elements. To something so powerful that was impervious to you. Lori understood intuitively, for the first time, that serenity and equilibrium could be achieved in this way. She suddenly experienced a lightness of being, as if her soul were vibrating like a shimmering dragonfly.
The path snaking its way through the bush was navigable only because snow-covered treetops marked it. The underbrush was buried in snow. Lori kept sinking into it, and exhausted, she decided to turn back.
But the way back seemed much longer—had she really gone that far? Her blood sugar sank, and she scolded herself for not putting a chocolate bar in her backpack. Soon she was thirsty but resisted the temptation to eat snow. Hadn’t she read somewhere that thirst was one of the biggest problems for those first white Arctic explorers when their fuel was exhausted and they couldn’t melt snow? If they’d swallowed snow and ice, their body temperature would have dropped dangerously low, and they could have rapidly frozen to death.
She came to a fork in the trail she didn’t remember. Which way had she turned? She looked around for some clue, but everything appeared uniform and nondescript. The trail, she said to herself, must end in a loop back to the lodge where guests would go for snowmobile rides. She took the path that led straight ahead, but a deep feeling of insecurity set in.
After twenty minutes, tired and numb, Lori heard the roar of a snowmobile. When it came through the trees, she didn’t recognize Hope at first. But she’d happily have hitched a ride with a complete stranger; that’s how desperate she was.
“You should have let somebody know where you were going,” Hope said through her open helmet. “You can get lost fast in this place.”
Lori clambered up on the rear seat. Back at the lodge, she learned that one of the kitchen staff had happened to see Lori leave and told her boss. When she wasn’t back after two hours, Hope went looking.
“My dear girl, girl, girl,” Hope said in the warm lounge, but she didn’t sound unfriendly. Lori felt like a naughty child nonetheless.
She had two cups of bakeapple tea and half a chocolate bar, then retired to her room to lie down. She woke up to a knock at the door and somebody calling, “Dinner’s ready!”
She was so sweaty that she showered and put on a fluffy wool sweater. Entering the empty dining room, she heard a loud medley of voices coming from the lounge. The table had one place setting. Hope brought her a heaping plate of food.
“Take your time,” she said. “The others are already having coffee and carrot cake, but I’ll save a piece for you.”
Lori smiled in gratitude and dove into the chicken à l’orange. She was still a bit dopey from her nap.
“Would you like some wine with that?” a voice behind her asked.
Lloyd Weston put a bottle and briefcase on the table and took a seat across from her.
“But of course.” Lori held up a glass to him.
“Wonderful to see you here. How are you getting along in the northern wilds?”
“Famously. Some things need getting used to, but I suppose people have to get used to me as well. Nobody’s chased me away yet.”
She tried to strike a comic note, and Weston played along.
“Why should they? A photographer from Vancouver has enormous conversational value. How is the photography going?”
“Really well. I’ve already got many great pictures, and it can only get better when they start fishing.”
“I don’t doubt it. I love this area.”
She asked a cautious question.
“After all that’s happened? You weren’t exactly treated very well last time.”
“Yes, I love to come back here, though many people don’t see why. But look, I’m an archaeologist and I know that people sometimes do strange things to assuage their demons and their fears. Now just as in earlier eras—makes no difference. This innocent girl’s murder triggered a fear they had to keep in check by making accusations of guilt.”
He picked up his glass.
“As you see, I’m drawn back to this place again and again. We’re having the annual meeting of the Archaeological Society here, and I can’t think of a better place than this lodge. Let’s drink to the projects that have landed us in this wild part of the world.”
Their glasses clinked.
As Lori swished the wine back and forth in her mouth, she eyed him discreetly. He looked different somehow than she remembered. Of course: the beard! He was clean shaven and looked younger as a result, less professorial.
“Hope told me,” she said, to revive the conversation, “that you stayed at this lodg
e during the first dig. This must feel a bit like home to you.”
Weston laughed.
“Better than home, because they cook for me, and I don’t have to take out the garbage.”
“Hope’s father really saved us back then,” the archaeologist continued. “We were at another lodge at first, closer to the dig. But then it burned down.”
“Oh, how awful! Was anybody in the building?”
“No, thank goodness. It was just before we quit work. Most important of all, the artifacts we’d found and all our documents were in an office trailer. That was an enormous piece of luck.”
Lori patted her mouth with her napkin before asking: “Was that after . . . I mean . . .”
“After Jacinta disappeared? No, that happened about a week later. I know what you’re driving at. You’re thinking it might have been revenge.”
He shook his head. “No, on that day the world was still in order, if you will, and everybody was sympathetic and glad nobody had been hurt.”
“But some things were lost—clothes, personal ID, and items like that?”
“Of course. Many people lost some personal belongings, but you have to realize—archaeologists would much rather lose their own things than have their research destroyed. It would have been a loss for all of Canada.”
“And the lodge owner?”
“He was lucky as well because he was insured and started up a new business with the money. But I actually wanted to give you this.”
He set his glass down and opened his briefcase.
“These are pictures of our earlier digs, so that you can see how things work. This is the boulder layer after we took away the vegetation on top. Here’s the layer with the walrus tusk and the quartz knives. And here you can see how the skeleton was positioned in the grave.”
He pushed one picture after another across the table.
“Here’s the harpoon point and the whistle made from animal bone. And this is a pendant made of bone or antler, you see the hole at the top—”
“What’s that?” she interrupted him. One of the objects looked familiar.
“That’s a projectile tip, made of bone, but we don’t know from what animal. The prehistoric Indians hunted walrus and seals using this projectile.”
“A bird!” Lori exclaimed.
“It could be a bird bone, but we don’t know.”
“No, it looks like a bird, don’t you see? The wings on both sides, the pointed skull, the beak!”
Weston took a closer look at the photograph and said, cautiously, “Yes, you could look at it that way, a stylized bird. Very stylized. But it most probably is an arrowhead.”
“I found an arrowhead like that at my place in Stormy Cove. Same size, same shape.”
Weston studied her.
“Where did you find it?”
“Between the washer and the dryer. It looks exactly the same. Could be a copy.”
Weston’s face suggested skepticism.
“This arrowhead is the oldest of its kind that we know.”
He put his hands flat on the table and stretched out his arms as if he were holding the table down.
“It vanished the night of the fire. I can’t describe the exact circumstances because the police don’t want them made public—and to be honest, we don’t either because it’s too embarrassing. But I can tell you one thing: it reappeared eight months later.”
Lori looked at his slim fingers, now raised like claws. Weston did not continue. She pieced the puzzle together.
“Was the arrowhead found in Jacinta’s grave?”
Weston continued to look at her without a word.
“Maybe I was wrong,” she stuttered. “I . . . um . . . a lot of objects could look alike. I thought it was more like an amulet really, a pendant. Or a fish with fins above and below. Certainly not . . . not a spear tip or an arrowhead . . . not a projectile.”
To her surprise, Weston seemed satisfied with this explanation. His eyes stared past her. The voices from the lounge grew louder, and some footsteps approaching the dining room distracted him. He muttered, “I agree—there must be some mistake, but you can send me the arrowhead when you get home. You’ve got my address.”
He smiled.
“Have you tried the carrot cake yet? Divine, I tell you.”
Lori stood up when he did and was glad that he turned to two men and a woman standing in the dining room.
She thought of the arrowhead under the seat of Noah’s snowmobile, just like the one from her laundry room, and her temperature rose. She might be mistaken about one, but not two.
CHAPTER 20
Lori managed to shake off her dark thoughts. All evening she played poker with Weston and two of his female colleagues, who would occasionally share hair-raising stories about their digs in exotic countries. Lori soon realized that she was sitting across from experts who forgave her not only for knowing next to nothing about archaeology but also for being a mediocre poker player.
“We refined our poker skills sitting out in the Pampas, miles from anywhere. We had to kill time for hours on end,” the women explained graciously.
The next day, they took Lori on a snowmobile tour—she was given her own machine—that started on the trail she’d hiked the previous day. She saw now how she had taken the wrong path back. What in the world would have happened if Hope hadn’t come looking for her? The sun was shining now, and the snowscape looked almost colorful beneath the deep blue sky. Lori found the snowmobile easier to steer than she’d expected. She accelerated on flat stretches and savored the weightless feeling. She learned how to shift her weight around a curve and to avoid tree branches and boulders. When their party glided from the woods onto a broad plain, a vast, stunning horizon opened out around them. The expanse and boundlessness made Lori feel she was swimming over huge white waves. All of a sudden, she wished Noah were with her. But she suppressed the desire at once and concentrated on the snowmobiles ahead.
Weston didn’t bring up the subject of the dig planned for that summer, though he sat next to her and chatted all through dinner. She was grateful that he wasn’t pushy in any way. An archaeologist probably learned to be patient, like a wildlife photographer. Or a female photographer in a Newfoundland village.
When the other guests left the next day, melancholy settled in. The rooms felt empty and the sudden quiet disconcerting. Lori no longer felt the need for quiet contemplation or withdrawal. It was time for her to leave too.
She found Hope in her office with the cook, shopping list in hand.
Before Lori could open her mouth, she exclaimed, “You’re leaving us again so soon?”
Lori laughed.
“How’d you guess?”
“Oh, that look in your eye says homesick, eh, Sally? Doesn’t it, eh?”
The cook shrugged, smiled, and left the room.
Lori made a face. “Do you mean homesick for Vancouver?”
“No, no, I don’t mean that. No fishermen waiting for you there.”
“Noah Whalen and I are not an item, if that’s what you mean. He’s just a very nice man.”
“Yeah, of course he is, my dear.”
Hope scribbled something on the list while Lori kept talking.
“Hope, it seemed like you were suggesting that one of the Whalens was suspected of murdering Jacinta. Why did you tell me that rumor? It doesn’t really seem like you.”
Hope looked up. In the harsh office light, Lori could see dark rings under her eyes.
“You’ve got to learn to live with rumors like that if you want to be with Noah. It’s not about to go away.”
“But I told you! Noah and I—”
“I had to learn to live with rumors myself. When Gideon’s lodge burned down, people whispered that my father set it on fire so he would get more customers.”
“But the police ruled that out, right?”
“People trim their truth the way they want it, my love. Word is, you slashed Ginette’s tires out of jealousy.”
/> Lori froze.
“What? You heard that?”
Hope put her hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t get upset. People don’t really believe it. It’s just a good story, fun to pass on, spices up your daily routine. Truth be told, nobody trusts you to handle a knife properly.”
“So why would they say that?”
“It gets their mind off things, that’s all. Simple as that.”
She opened the door to the adjoining room.
“I’ll make up your bill. When are you heading out?”
“After lunch, if that works for you.”
Hope nodded and went back to studying her list.
She brought the bill when Lori was having soup and a sandwich in the dining room by herself.
“Do you remember that German baron from last time you were here? He asked for your name and e-mail address.”
Lori lowered her spoon.
“Why?”
“He wanted to send you something about submarines. In any case, I passed them on. Maybe you’ll hear from him.”
Lori was confused. What made the baron think that she of all people was interested in submarines? She hadn’t said a word about them. But Hope snapped her out of her ruminations; she was going shopping in Corner Brook.
“I’m sure I’ll see you back here soon enough,” she called in a cheery voice before dashing out of the lodge.
Lori looked out on the snow and noticed that the cracks in the ice had grown wider. Drops of water fell from the fir branches even though it wasn’t raining. As she carried her suitcase to the car, she tried to put her finger on a change in the air. Her cell phone rang.
The voice she heard made her heart skip a beat.
“Lori, where are you? Why don’t you ever call me?”
“Danielle! I can’t believe it’s you! Give me just a second and I’ll be all yours.”
She threw her bag into the car and got in.
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