She had to face it: she hadn’t exactly been an emotional rock ever since falling apart on Loreena’s bed on Christmas night. She should probably get some counselling before she stopped functioning for a lot longer than a single afternoon. But then, in Alberta, where public systems were overloaded, she’d have to pay for it out of pocket, and she didn’t have the money to spare. All she could do at the moment was make a mental note to investigate self-help coping for sexual abuse trauma. But finding out what had happened to Sandy and to Eric had to come first, as things would only get worse if she and Dee had to sell this house and move, especially while Loreena was so ill. She set her feet flat on the floor and concentrated on breathing. You’ll get through this, McCrae. You’re tough enough. Suck it up, stand up, move your feet.
“You had a bad shock this morning,” said Dee.
“I saw a few bodies when I was on the Force, but they didn’t hit me like this one. It’s just bad timing. I’m so sorry, Loreena.”
The older woman shook her head. “I’ll be all right. I’ve had since last night to come to terms with the idea that she won’t be coming back. It’s Dennis and his kids I’m worried about.”
“It’ll be hard for them,” Lacey agreed. “But I’m glad you’re coping.”
“I’ll be back,” said Loreena as she crept from the room, her spine bowed with fatigue and grief. Who would look after her now? Who would walk her through those final months of life?
“I’ve really got some digging to do,” Lacey told Dee. “If Arliss is Eric’s killer, and maybe Sandy’s, too, I need to find evidence against her before she learns that she’s under suspicion. Zoe or JP will surely let slip soon that they’re investigating this fraud at TFB, and then she’ll cover her tracks. She set up the accounting system at that company; she’ll know how to manipulate it.”
“You still think she pulled the same scam at that nursing home?”
“Why go after Sandy if she didn’t?” Lacey got to her feet. “If Pat finally sends me the missing emails, this might all be cleared up by suppertime.”
“Pat?” Loreena returned, carrying Lacey’s sweatshirt. “Sandy’s friend Pat?”
Lacey hurried to take the shirt from her. “You know Pat?”
“She goes to the same Dying with Dignity sessions as me. She supported her sister through it.” Loreena settled on Lacey’s vacated cushions and pulled the heated blanket over her own legs. “Someone should tell her Sandy’s been found.”
“We ought to leave that to Dennis,” said Dee.
“Bring me a phone. I’ll do it.”
“Not yet,” said Lacey. “Not until Bull okays it. They have a formal process of identification, and Dennis is the next of kin.”
“It’s been hours,” said Loreena. “Surely they’ve contacted him by now.”
“Not until the body’s back at the Medical Examiner’s in Calgary and ready for viewing.”
Loreena shuddered. “I can’t believe anyone would hit Sandy over the head and shove her body under a bridge. It’s like a horrid old fairy tale.”
Dee frowned. “She shouldn’t have told you that. Sandy could have stumbled and hit her head on a rock.”
Behind Loreena, Lacey shook her head. That was a comforting lie, but the battered flesh and exposed bone told a darker tale. The weapon had been wood, not stone. Dark shards of bark were embedded in the torn skin. That much had been visible by the light of her cellphone flashlight. Likely the autopsy would show an initial blow had stunned Sandy, and a later one killed her. Despite that, she’d been easy to identify, as she’d been perfectly preserved: buried immediately by blowing snow, frozen solid before the scavengers found her.
No good purpose would be served by putting that idea into Loreena’s head, either. It was enough that Lacey would carry Sandy’s shattered face into her own nightmares. Murder victims on the job were one thing, but this was the first one Lacey had been friendly with, shared meals with, watched movies with. This was personal.
“I feel,” she said, and stopped, groping for the words. “If I’d been more aggressive in investigating Eric’s murder, Sandy could still be alive.”
The truth of it rocked her. She’d wasted a week suspecting Calvin and JP. If she’d questioned them directly at the start, the accounting fraud would have come out, and JP would have hired investigators immediately. It could all have been over by Christmas. Sandy would still be alive, planning her New Year’s with her grandkids and worrying about her son’s mortgage.
Loreena looked up. “Now, maid. It’s nobody’s fault but the killer’s.”
“That’s right.” Dee hugged her. “It’s barely two weeks since Eric’s body was found, and you learned way more than the police did. You found his car, too. Don’t quit on us now.” She tugged Lacey gently toward the stairs. “Go take a hot shower. Come down when you’re ready to face food. One coconut bar on the way home can’t keep you stable all day.”
Loreena nodded. “I’ll make you grilled ham and cheese the way you like it, with plenty of mustard. That’ll warm you up.”
Lacey took her time in the shower, letting the hot spray course down her skin, washing away the sick, hopeless feeling she’d carried ever since she’d kicked away the layers of icicles hanging from the bridge. The killer had concealed Sandy before the snowstorm, and before abandoning her car a dozen kilometres away as the crow flies, in a location almost guaranteed to cast suspicion on the residents of the Stoney Nakoda Nation. If she’d been carjacked, she’d have been found south or east of the car, and all her belongings would have been gone. Instead, her purse was found near her body with identification, cash, and credit cards still in it, and her suitcase was still in the trunk. That all argued someone familiar with the territory.
Arliss had led ski and horseback treks around there for decades. How had she — if it was Arliss — abandoned the Civic, though? A second vehicle? That required an accomplice. Was TJ back in the country a day earlier than he’d implied at the funeral? Lacey added that question to her mental notebook, beside the reminder that he’d been vague about exactly when he left Black Rock on the weekend Eric died there. He could have lingered with the excuse of waiting for Eric, then lied and said he didn’t arrive at all. But again, Eric’s car had been found near the chalet. TJ, or even Arliss, could have driven the Camry up there, pushed it off the road, and walked back down to the chalet and their own vehicle. No accomplice needed for that one. But why not leave Eric in his car and push him off the cliff, too? Her head was starting to hurt from too much thinking. She rinsed off a final time, crawled out of the shower and into her warmest PJs and robe, and headed down to the kitchen.
After the sandwich, followed by tea and Christmas cookies, she felt a lot stronger. She took a fourth cookie into the office and logged into her email. Time to face down Dan’s lurking missive, then find out if Pat had forwarded Sandy’s emails yet:
You’re down another half month on your share of the household expenses. When will you admit you can’t make it on your own? I’m tracking every dollar you’re short, and if you go ahead with the divorce I’ll break you with legal fees. Then I’ll buy up your debt and sell it to a collection agency. They’ll hound you forever.
Coming on top of the day’s events, the threat of complete financial ruin should have broken Lacey. Yet she couldn’t raise an ounce of stress over Dan’s threat. Any judge seeing this email would immediately toss out a lawsuit so plainly malicious. Dan was a province away, and if he came here to hunt her down, she had nothing left to lose by going public and having him charged with sexual assault and attempted murder. She had no career or reputation left to protect, and only a fragile strand of loyalty left for the RCMP, where male officers backed each other up and female officers fit in, kept quiet, or got out. She took a screenshot before forwarding the email to Dee, along with a short note:
We know I can’t afford your divorce lawyer, but is there a cheaper one you can think of? I’m so fed up with being threatened by this bastard, and I wo
n’t wait twenty years to rebuild my finances like Sandy. She barely got sorted out before she was killed.
With that on its way, Lacey clicked on the next email. More spam. Nothing from Pat. Then she had a thought. She checked the Spam folder and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Three forwarded emails from Pat’s address.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Lacey moved all three emails to her inbox and printed off copies for an evidence file. The one dated December 25, likely the last sent from Pat’s account, started without any lead-in:
I told her I know she did it at the nursing home and now she’s done it again out here. She changed her tune right away and begged for a day to get the money. I’ve got her for sure this time! Stay tuned.
Yes! It didn’t state Arliss’s name, but it confirmed that the nursing home was connected to Sandy’s disappearance.
Nine p.m. on December 24:
I was right about that computer virus thing. Over supper last night Lacey told Dee about one just like it at Mr. Thompson’s oil company. That guy they found dead in the woodshed had figured it out. So she did do it again. If she doesn’t want to be exposed, she’ll cough up that last payment she promised four years back.
She’s doing what again? Calvin’s table said it wasn’t Arliss, but a minor who had planted the nursing home malware. If her son was the culprit, had she paid for the cover-up that cost Sandy her job? JP couldn’t have known, or he’d have suspected his son at once when Eric mentioned malware at TFB. Now, though, Arliss was increasingly short of money, judging by her bitter comments at the funeral. This would have been a terribly inconvenient time for Sandy to demand payment. Lacey read on:
She was at the oil company office today after it closed for the holiday. Covering her tracks with nobody around to see, I bet. She can’t pretend it’s nothing, like she did last week. When she came out, I told her I want that ten thousand bucks for my lost job or I’m telling Mr. Thompson all about the nursing home.
What more was there to tell? Arliss must have covered up computer fraud for one of her sons.
All I really have to do is tell Loreena’s daughter. She talks to him online almost every day. Maybe he’ll give me a reward for exposing that cow. Either way, I’ll be able to save Dennis’s house. Merry Christmas to us!
Ten p.m. on December 22 — this was obviously Sandy’s first email to Pat after arriving in Alberta. Several paragraphs detailed Loreena’s reaction to the travel, the delay at the airport because Loreena’s daughter was late, and a description of Dee’s house that included the word huge three separate times. And then:
You’ll never guess who I came face to face with while I was out with Loreena: that bitch from the nursing home. I should have reported the whole thing to head office as soon as she asked me to do it. She made out like she didn’t recognize me at first but later she came up and said hi. I didn’t say anything about the money in front of Loreena, but I saw her on the street in Cochrane today and told her straight up that she owes me for that. If I get any money out of her, I’ll put it toward Dennis’s mortgage.
Everything fit: Loreena and Sandy met a woman in the coffee shop who didn’t talk to Sandy right away. Eddie saw Sandy talking to the woman on the street in Cochrane — surely the same woman who’d paid Sandy to cover up a minor’s theft from the nursing home. But a rich family’s buying their teenager out of a theft charge didn’t seem to be enough motive for murdering two people, three provinces away, four years later. Lacey opened a blank document, dated it, and started typing. If the motive still didn’t make sense after she’d summarized all the evidence, she would at least know what was missing.
Three pages later, she attached Calvin’s table and finished with her list of questions about Arliss’s alibis for both deaths and the possibility that TJ was an accomplice in ditching the Civic. This was enough detail to send to Bull to help him home in on whoever had driven the Civic last.
As she pulled her phone to warn him the email was coming, she glanced up from the screen for the first time in a while. Beyond the window, night had fallen. From the kitchen came sounds of supper preparation: voices and the clatter of dishes. Now that she had shaken off her intense concentration, she smelled spaghetti sauce and … was that garlic bread? If it was suppertime here, Bull would be eating, too, likely at home with his family on New Year’s Eve. Another hour to rethink her conclusions wouldn’t make a difference. She followed the aromas to the kitchen.
Loreena handed her a wineglass. “Did you find the answers you needed, dear?”
“Yes, thanks.” Lacey swirled the tart red, savouring the flavour. “I’m more convinced than ever that it was Arliss Thompson Sandy was meeting. The emails Pat forwarded imply that Arliss got Sandy fired from the nursing home. Did she ever mention to you why she left?”
Loreena shook her head. “I remember she and Pat were both quite attached to some of the residents. Whenever one of their dotty old dears up and died of something preventable, they’d go on forever about slack quarantine practices and how things had been different in their day. Four winters ago was the worst. That was when Sandy was first starting with the home care service and I was in my second round of chemo. She’d say, ‘What is going on over there? Did they get a bad batch of flu vaccine? It’s supposed to be over eighty percent effective this year.’ And then she’d tell me stories about the person who had died. They all had dementia in some form or other, but this one was unfailingly polite and gentle, that one was reliving his altar boy years and could always be calmed by reciting psalms, and Old Mrs. Thompson thought everyone was someone she knew from parties in the 1950s — you only had to say ‘Bing Crosby’ for her to wander off humming ‘White Christmas.’ ”
“Mrs. Thompson? That’s JP Thompson’s mother?”
“Uh-huh. Sandy told me about her when she heard Dee was selling JP’s chalet. The old lady had lost some of her brain function in her sixties after a medication mix-up, but was strong as a horse, otherwise.” Loreena sighed. “Pat and Sandy were so upset when she died. She’d always gotten the flu shot before, but that winter, when all the others were dying, another nurse told Pat that the family had refused permission for it. Sandy intended to give them a piece of her mind at the funeral, but instead they had her cremated and shipped the ashes out west. While we were waiting to get off the plane in Calgary, Sandy said she was going to find out where the ashes were and go leave a token, for old time’s sake.”
Lacey swirled another mouthful of wine in time with her thoughts. Had Arliss denied her demented old mother-in-law’s flu shot, perhaps in hopes of getting an inheritance before her divorce was final? What a shock, then, to be confronted by a nurse threatening to tell her ex-husband how she’d contributed to his mother’s premature death. That motive would fill the gap nicely. What a good thing that report hadn’t already gone to Bull.
Dee shuffled in with the breadbasket.
Loreena raised her wineglass. “The year is ending on a sad note, but a new one begins tomorrow. Let it be one of joy, in both endings and beginnings.”
Lacey woke on New Year’s Day with a fresh determination to wrap the investigation up as soon as possible. Wayne, her boss, had told her that he would soon be briefing a private investigator about Eric’s death. If Lacey succeeded in solving the murder and the malware case, she would tell him not to bother. Maybe he could submit a bill for her time to JP Thompson instead. She didn’t have a PI license, but the end result was the same. Maybe she should just submit a bill without waiting for Wayne to suggest it. Her time, her work, and her investigative skills had a measurable value, and she could certainly use the money. But first she had to wrap up the loose ends.
Today’s goal: pin down Arliss Thompson in at least one provable lie.
An hour and two cups of coffee later, Lacey was going over her report to Bull for the third time, brainstorming ways to fill the gaps in her knowledge, when her phone vibrated. It was a number she didn’t recognize, but she’d put out a few quer
ies lately. It could be anyone.
“Hi, Lacey, this is Arliss Thompson. Zoe asked me to call you. I would’ve called yesterday, but she said you’d had a bad day and I should leave it until morning. Happy New Year.”
Stifling her surprise, Lacey scribbled down the incoming number to check against Sandy’s phone records. A 580 code would be Arliss’s cellphone. “Yes, Mrs. Thompson. Thanks for calling. We met at Eric Anders’s funeral. I’m not sure what Zoe told you.”
“I hardly remember myself. Something about a missing person.”
In the pause that followed, Lacey yearned for a magic mirror or a Skype connection, some way to evaluate the woman’s body language. When Zoe had set up the callback two days ago, Arliss had barely been on anyone’s radar. Now she was Lacey’s main suspect in two murders. If she realized she was being interrogated, she’d try to cover her tracks. Best to stay neutral and let her think she was leading the conversation.
“The person isn’t missing any longer.”
“Oh, you mean Eric? You must be the PI that JP hired.” Before Lacey could clarify, Arliss charged ahead. “This investigation has dragged on long enough, and the police have gotten nowhere. My son is in the lift lineup already. Should I get him to call you when he comes in?”
“That’s not necessary at this time.”
“Well, he could tell you better than I, because he was around that weekend. Out at the chalet, I mean, until the blizzard warning.”
“He came back in his own vehicle, if I remember correctly?” Lacey poised her pen over one of Dee’s yellow legal pads.
“That’s right. Following his stepmother’s car in case she slid into the ditch. He was quite frustrated by her driving.”
Lacey made a note to check the order of departures and the number of vehicles with someone else. Maybe Bull had the information in his initial case notes. “You weren’t out there with the family?”
Where the Ice Falls Page 26