Where the Ice Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  Dee rolled her eyes.

  Zoe greeted the first rays of sunlight with a cup of coffee in one hand and a pen in the other. An open notepad lay beside her laptop. JP’s face peered at her from the screen. “That’s the full list of essential personnel,” he concluded. “The top five get fifteen percent of their annual gross, the rest ten percent if they stay in their current jobs until the sale’s done or June thirtieth, whichever comes first.”

  “Marcia from Accounts Payable is an essential?”

  “She’s a special case.” He rubbed his ebb-tide hairline and cast the familiar glance over his shoulder to check for his wife.

  “Because she’s acting head of IT, too?” Ignoring Eric’s voice in her head was easier on top of a full night’s sleep, but he wasn’t entirely quiet in there. “Do they really need her when there won’t be any capital projects? Someone else could sign off on the time sheets.” And someone else needed to take over the production accountant position, or that whole income stream would be compromised by Marcia’s incompetence.

  “Accounts Payable won’t change much either, and we’ve got people who know it far better than her. But she’s Phyl’s friend, and if she gets wind of others getting a better bonus, she may make things … unpleasant.”

  She doesn’t know shit about IT. Zoe couldn’t quite keep Eric’s sarcasm out of her tone. “When the time for severance packages arrives, will she be a ‘special case’ then, too? Or does she have an evergreen contract that you’ll be paying out?”

  “She’ll get what everyone else does: one month’s salary per year of work.” Only three months’ salary? That wouldn’t help the acerbic accountant much. This might very well be her last decent job. Middle-aged women weren’t a hot hire in any industry. For all his insistence on Marcia’s retention bonus, JP didn’t seem to realize or care that he would be pulling the rug out from under her right after that. He glanced down at his desk. “Is that everything?”

  “Yeah, I think the rest is pretty straightforward.”

  “The police haven’t released any updates on Eric’s death?”

  “Not to me.” Lacey’s words from the end of the ski trip came to mind, but that wasn’t an official update. If the police made a public statement calling the death suspicious, she would tell him. She’d never before felt the need to keep things from him, but if he was keeping things from her about Eric’s trip to the chalet …

  “Can you keep your ear to the ground today at the funeral? See what people are saying. If they’re blaming me in any way, I need to know. And —”

  “Why would they blame you?”

  “Oh, you know how people talk. I didn’t ask him to come out there. He approached me. And the blizzard wasn’t my fault, either.”

  Typical JP. Just covering his own ass. Zoe straightened up. “Wait a minute, the funeral is today? Nobody told me.”

  “Arliss emailed me. I forwarded it to you, I thought. Or maybe to Marcia. She’ll have circulated it to the staff.” He gave her that old pleading look over his glasses. “If nobody from the company is there, it’ll look like we don’t care. You have to go. Say all the right things for me.”

  “Why me?” Instinct said to get up and run. Or scream at him. Or smash the screen. She could not watch Eric be buried. Not when he was too real, too present, in her thoughts already.

  No, no, no, not ready to die, not ready to be dead.

  Through clenched teeth, she said, “I have other work that needs doing. That’s why I’m not on holidays with my family.”

  “If a couple of hours today will deflect a lawsuit, you need to take those two hours, Zoe. Please. I’m sorry you’re missing out on time with your family, but your shares will tank just like mine if we end up in court. Lawsuits can drag on for years, and I want to push the button on this sale as soon as possible.” He shoved his glasses farther up his nose. “Just go, okay? Once we can hand off to an outside sales management team, I’ll pay for you to have a proper vacation someplace warm.”

  Trust JP to think he could buy her loyalty. Did he even realize how many meals and school outings and weekends with her family she’d missed during all those years she’d worked directly for him? Probably not. He’d counted on her, and she’d always been there. Once the company was sold and her shares paid out, she was done.

  Meanwhile, there was the funeral. She definitely couldn’t tell him her real reason for wanting to avoid it. “Your secretary could represent you,” she suggested.

  “She’s about as warm as a glacier. This needs a personal touch. Arliss won’t do it. She calls it a conflict of interest, but it isn’t one, legally. She’s just protecting her friendship with Eric’s mom.”

  And why was protecting a friendship a bad choice for a woman who was no longer involved directly with the company? What he was really complaining about was that his ex-wife dared to put her friendships ahead of his business interests. Centre of his own galaxy, he was.

  Zoe sat back in her chair and looked out the window at the white lawn, the bumps that were bushes and the mounds that were flowerbeds. So much had been buried. She shivered. He was right: her shares would take a hit if the company had a lawsuit hanging over it, or, heaven forbid, if someone connected to it was directly involved in Eric’s death. Could she afford to kiss off that value after she’d sacrificed years of family time to earn it? A buyout represented Lizi’s university tuition, paying down their line of credit, and maybe even topping up her neglected RRSP. And since he’d suggested it, she would make JP pay for this bit of blatant coercion to feel Eric’s pain for two hours as he watched himself being eulogized and buried.

  “All right, I’ll go. But I’ll expect two weeks at an all-inclusive resort in the Caribbean in February, and I want a bonus for my work over the holidays.” She looked him in the eyes, daring him to tell her he didn’t need her. Nobody knew the insides of that company the way she did.

  He looked over his shoulder again as a door shut in some distant room. “Oh, shit. She’s back. Okay, you go to the service and the reception, and I’ll give you whatever resort you choose plus an equivalent cash bonus. But … damn it —” He vanished without even saying goodbye.

  Zoe’s heartbeat drummed in her ears. She could not have felt more wrung out if she had just completed a triathlon — and it was only nine in the morning. The majority of the day’s emotional obstacle course still lay ahead.

  Toomie came into the room and meowed sadly. “Lizi’s not here,” she said, reaching down a hand for the snub nose to rub against. He leaped onto her lap and head-butted her chin. She wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his soft, silky fur. “Oh, kitty, I wish my life was as uncomplicated as yours.”

  Lacey tramped through a light dusting of fresh snow to the front door and rang the bell. Zoe’s place was a smallish, older house — not what she’d expected for well-connected oil industry employees. Vinyl siding, two storeys, barely room enough in the driveway for two vehicles.

  Zoe answered on the first ring, opening the door so fast the wind tossed her hair across her face. “Good morning, Lacey. Here’s the master fob and the alarm code for the house.”

  “Should we drop them back here when we’re done?”

  Zoe’s voice was brittle. “I’ll be at Eric Anders’s funeral and then at the family reception. Bring it there if you’re done in time.”

  “They hardly know me,” said Lacey.

  Zoe’s lip curled. “Call it professional courtesy from JP’s realtor, then. Come for lunch. There’ll be tons of food. The address is on the back of the alarm code.” She shut the door abruptly. Lacey stared at it for a moment, then walked back to the Lexus.

  “I should have sent you to the door,” she told Dee, “you two being confidantes now.”

  Dee took the square of paper. “Let’s get this over with in time to eat before my appointment.”

  “We’re invited for lunch at the funeral reception. I didn’t say we’d go.”

  “If it’s free food, I vote for goi
ng.”

  Lacey shrugged, and they drove off. If they did go, she could see for herself how the family was coping, and maybe Calvin would reveal whatever paranoid imaginings he believed were official secrets. The afternoon wouldn’t be wasted if she could help rule a couple of suspects in or out.

  Twenty minutes later, they pulled up in front of a wrought-iron gate in Mount Royal. The fob got them inside. Following Dee’s directions, Lacey drove around back, where the fob also let her into the multi-vehicle garage. Ignoring the luxurious BMWs and Mercedes already parked, she stopped as close as possible to the door that led into the house. It was locked. The keypad bore a label from Wayne’s security company. Could he be another source of information about JP and his company? She keyed in the code Zoe had given her, and the steel door opened onto a small foyer. One door led into another section of basement, a second opened on a stairwell, and between them stood a small elevator. She crowded into it with Dee and the camera equipment.

  On the main floor, an expanse of grey marble gleamed in the light that streamed through a two-and-a-half-storey wall of windows. Classical-looking statuary gazed out at them from niches around the curving stairwell. Every word and footstep echoed. Lacey gaped. “I had no idea Cowtown ran to marble palaces. How big is this place?”

  “You’ll see.” Dee flung her coat onto a bench. She took wide-angle shots of a few of the rooms and close-ups of some of the architectural details, such as the acanthus-leaf half columns that bracketed the dining room fireplace. Not a cushion was out of place anywhere. The only room at all personalized was a small study tucked away behind the immense living room. There, the mahogany shelves held worn books and framed photos of children in various stages of life. The newest showed them as teens and young adults. Some included Aidan, Clemmie, and Eric Anders, the last recognizable from the missing-person poster in Cochrane detachment. Dee selected a few pictures to prop on the mahogany desk. “For the homey touch,” she said, snapping photos.

  As they rode up to the second floor, Lacey said, “Judging by the character of this house, one of the residents is an icicle.”

  “That would be Phyl,” said Dee. “The second Mrs. Thompson. She takes British reserve to Arctic proportions. JP is a typical businessman, not exactly nurturing, but next to her he’s Mr. Personality.”

  They worked their way through the six bedrooms, each with an ensuite bathroom and walk-in closet, then headed down to the basement, where a home theatre to one side of a giant games room was balanced by a workout room with a swimming machine on the other side. A guest suite lurked down there, too. Back in the garage, Lacey loaded the camera gear into the Lexus and took a moment, while Dee dictated a final note to herself to text Wayne a query about JP Thompson.

  “Lunch at the funeral?” Lacey asked as she backed up the car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  This isn’t me. The thought whirled for the hundredth time through Zoe’s mind. The auditorium-like chapel was quiet but for the shuffling of feet and rustle of clothing. The heavy odour of stargazer lilies drifted from a dozen bouquets. I hate lilies. As the coffin was rolled toward the open double doors and the waiting hearse, she backpedalled down the side aisle. Sixty-five minutes of Eric’s dismay, his shocked recognition of friends and relations, his mounting anger at the unfairness of being dead — it was as much as she could stand today. She’d waved the company flag, but no matter what JP wanted of her, she was done.

  In the front foyer, Arliss Thompson took her arm and pulled her aside. “You snuck in at the last minute.”

  “I only heard about it this morning from JP.”

  “I assumed JP would tell you. Should have known better.” Arliss’s face hardened. “Couldn’t tear himself away from his happy English Christmas, of course. I suppose it’s enough that my son was allowed to fly home for the funeral of his oldest friend.”

  “TJ’s here?” Zoe looked past her for the boy — now young man — and couldn’t quite separate Eric’s flood of pleasure from her own giddy realization that the burden of representing the company wasn’t on her shoulders alone. Terrance John Thompson, young though he was, made a more than adequate representative for TFB Energy.

  “Landed this morning and called me from the airport.” Arliss tugged a toque on over her loose brown curls and fished a key ring from her pocket. “I delegated him to keep Calvin under control. I’m driving them to the cemetery now. Can you head straight to the house and let the caterers in?”

  “Me? No, I’m not — I’ve got work waiting.”

  “Don’t argue today, of all days. I need you there until I can take over.” Arliss slapped a set of house keys into Zoe’s palm. “Park behind my place to keep the road clear.”

  I can go home!

  Zoe looked at the keys and felt herself turning away, thrilled to get to that house before anyone else showed up.

  My room. My stuff. My life.

  Beyond the churning in her stomach, a corner of her was happy for Eric’s joy. Another hour wouldn’t kill her, and it might help Eric finally say goodbye.

  She forced herself to turn back to Arliss. “Any special instructions?”

  “Food goes in the dining room. I got the boys to take out the chairs and push the table against the wall last night. Make sure they put the bar in the living room, near where people are coming in. A drink in hand will ease everybody’s tension.”

  A drink would ease Zoe’s, too, but it might weaken her tongue’s fragile defences against Eric’s thoughts, fears, and memories. There was too much already that she absolutely could not reveal in front of his devastated family. If she left right away, though, she could be halfway there before the funeral procession started, with lots of time for Eric to look around and do his remembering in relative privacy.

  Home.

  The caterer’s van was idling out front when she arrived. She led it around to the alley and unlocked the back door. Eric’s excitement throbbed in her veins. The kitchen seemed familiar: tidy and slightly shabby, its dark-veneered cupboards and cream appliances pre-millennium. She passed along Arliss’s instructions to the caterers, then, feeling a bit dizzy, let her feet carry her up the half flight of stairs to the bedrooms. She entered the first small room and knew immediately it had been Eric’s. She felt it.

  The bed was covered in serviceable navy twill, wrinkled where somebody had sat. Books leaned on the shelves amid robots, spaceships, and other geeky gadgets — some recognizable from those sci-fi shows Zoe had never seen. A laptop on the desk was open, but the screen was dark.

  In there. It’s all in there.

  She turned the laptop on. Her fingers settled on the keyboard, but she couldn’t quite figure out what Eric was trying to type. She left it and opened the bottom dresser drawer instead. There, jumbled in with hiking socks and crumpled T-shirts, were tattered stuffed animals: a dog with long, floppy ears and a creature so thoroughly loved its original shape was lost. She pulled them out, squeezed them lovingly, and set them on the pillow. As she stood up, tears in her eyes, the first black limousine pulled up outside.

  Lacey approached the front door and rang the bell. A vaguely familiar young man opened it. She introduced herself. “I’m just here to drop off something for Zoe. Do you know her?”

  “Sure. I’ll find her for you. Come on in, so I can shut the door.”

  He slid away through the crowd, leaving Lacey prey to the enticing scents of fresh bread and spicy meatballs, and other equally appealing aromas. Her stomach gurgled. Zoe soon edged into view from the kitchen. She seemed to have lost weight overnight. She swayed as she walked and put a hand on the wall to steady herself.

  “You look done in,” said Lacey. “Let me take you home.”

  “I can’t leave yet. Can you come in for a bit, be my wingman until I can escape?”

  “Sorry, I’m double-parked. The nearest empty space is too far for Dee to walk.”

  Zoe pointed across the living room. “There’s parking behind the neighbour’s house. I’ll show
you, if you’ll please, please just come in for a bit. You and Dee. Eric’s childhood friends are here and I can’t —” She stopped and hurried Lacey out to the front steps. “I know this sounds crazy, but I can’t take Eric away right now, not when it might be the last time he ever sees the people he cared about. I’m trying to do my best by him, the way that ghost-talker woman told me.”

  Lacey searched the older woman’s drawn face. She might be nuts, but she definitely believed what she was saying. And she was suffering. “If Dee is willing, we’ll come in. Do you need your jacket?”

  “I’m not sure where it is. I’ll run.” At the Lexus, Zoe scrambled into the back seat. She repeated what she’d told Lacey.

  Dee reached back and clasped her hand. “Of course we’ll come in.”

  Leaving the Lexus between Zoe’s van and a grey Volvo wagon with a ski rack on top, the trio slipped in the kitchen door.

  Aidan immediately appeared. “Lacey! Good to see you.” He turned to a young man at his side, the one who had opened the front door earlier. “Teej, this is Lacey, who took us skiing the other day. Lacey, TJ Thompson, our next-door neighbour. Oh, that’s the doorbell. I’ll go.” He hurried off, leaving Lacey to introduce Dee and to eye up TJ. This was Arliss Thompson’s son, who lived part-time in the modest split-level next door and part-time at that marble mansion in Mount Royal. What did he make of the gulf between his mother’s modest life and his father’s wealthy one?

  TJ led them into the dining room. “Let me get you all something to drink. Tea, coffee, wine, whiskey?” Clemmie and three other teenage girls were huddled in a corner of the room. Clemmie’s red eyes and streaky cheeks told their own tale — no reserved wall to hide behind today. She pushed through the buffet line toward them. Lacey introduced Dee as the dogs’ owner, and belatedly realized Dee might hear the whole story of her and Boney’s misadventure under the icefall. That had been only two days ago, but it seemed like weeks.