“I’d kill for a two-shot double-caramel made with soy milk.”
“Want a dollop of cheer in that? I’ve got a bottle in my drawer. Gift from my team.”
“Sounds like heaven.” Zoe headed to her office as the elevator doors whooshed shut, carrying Marcia away.
Lacey grabbed her travel mug off the Tims counter and screwed the lid back on. She already knew where Calvin was sitting, having spotted him through the window on her way in. She dropped her portfolio onto the table and slid into the chair opposite.
“Hi, Calvin. Why did you want to meet instead of just emailing?”
Calvin looked around the restaurant and out to the parking lot. He leaned forward. “You asked me to hack into an airline booking system. Do you think I’m going to put a response to that on the record where someone could find it later?”
“I wondered about that when I asked.”
“Well, send another message telling me you realize you shouldn’t have.”
“You’re not going to do it?”
“It’s already done, but nobody needs to know that.” He slid a folded sheet across the table. “That’s everything on the nursing home malware incident. As for the other question, TJ landed at eight forty-three a.m. on December twenty-seventh. Do you want the flight number, too? CCTV from the airport caught his mother’s vehicle picking him up in the loading zone at nine fifty a.m. They were at the funeral home when we arrived at ten forty for the service, which started at eleven.”
He picked up his glass of soda, and Lacey noticed the absence of any tremor. Last time she’d seen him pick up a glass, he’d been shaky and had avoided her eyes. Now he looked at her directly. His speech was calm and measured, although he was a bit annoyed. This was a Calvin she could see working for a security services agency.
“Thanks for this. Of course I’ll send you that email if you think it’s necessary.”
“I do.”
“If you don’t mind me saying, you seem a lot more, well, calm than the last time we spoke.”
He nodded. “I was pretty messed up when Eric was missing. My doctor prescribed a lot of medications to help me cope. Now that the funeral’s over, I’m a lot less stressed. I’ve started tapering off, getting ready for university next week. I have a bunch of work to make up from last semester.”
“Oh,” Lacey said. “I was under the impression that you’d been medicated for some time.”
“Let me guess: TJ’s mom. She’s a nice lady, but when she looks at me, she sees an Asian, a foreigner, someone she doesn’t have a read on. The pills I got after Eric went missing are another sign of my strangeness. TJ’s whole family is convinced that some fresh air and exercise will get you through anything.”
“Does Eric’s mom not feel the same?”
“Eric’s mom wanted whatever he wanted. If he breathed funny, she was right there asking if he was getting a cold. My mother is equally obsessed with me. One of the reasons I lobbied so hard to stay in Canada for school.” He turned his glass in his hands, showing the first sign of nerves since Lacey walked in. “I’ve covered my tracks, but you can’t ever tell anyone I did this for you. I can’t be caught hacking while I’m being vetted for a federal agency.”
“You got it.” Lacey popped the spout on her travel mug. Steam seeped out, scalding her lip. She closed it up again. It would be drinkable on the drive back to Bragg Creek. “I don’t suppose you have Arliss Thompson’s landline number?”
He took out his phone. His fingers flickered quickly over the screen. A second later, her own phone pinged.
“Did you just look up her number online?”
He rolled his eyes. “She gave us all her numbers before the ski trip in case we needed anything. I just texted it to you. I also emailed you a contact sheet from my old TFB file. It’s current up to November first.” He turned his glass around again, staring into its depths. “Do you think finding that malware script had something to do with Eric’s death?”
Lacey looked him over. Could this Calvin cope with the truth? More importantly, could he keep silent about it? “It might,” she said. “I wish we had Eric’s printouts, but they weren’t in his car, and the police haven’t found his backpack. If the killer didn’t destroy it, it’ll be buried in a snowbank somewhere.”
“Will Mr. Thompson investigate properly this time?”
“He’s already got someone looking into it. They have to go back and recheck all the records to figure out the same things that Eric had documented.”
“Why don’t they use his backup? It has everything on it.” As Lacey gaped, he continued, “Oh, crap, I guess nobody knew where it was. It’s on a USB stick. It should be in his room.”
“Somebody took his laptop. If they knew there was a backup, wouldn’t they have taken any USB sticks that were there, too?”
He shrugged. “Who’d look for storage in a Battlestar Galactica model sitting beside a bunch of other spaceship models?” When she raised an eyebrow, he grinned. “It’s a thumb drive disguised as a spaceship. Super-secret, unless you’re a BSG fan who saw it on ThinkGeek back when they had them in stock.”
Lacey hadn’t paid much attention to the spaceships on Eric’s shelf. At the funeral, her attention had been on the laptop, and on keeping Zoe from falling apart too much in front of Clemmie. “Can we go get it now?”
“I’m not staying there anymore, but I can text Aidan.”
“I’ll do it.” Lacey stood up and held out her hand. “Thank you, Calvin. You were a good friend to Eric, and you’ve helped me with this investigation. Good luck with CSIS.”
She walked out to the Lexus with a new spring in her step. Eric’s records could confirm that existence of September’s fraudulent cheques, even if someone had tampered with the accounts afterward. The cheques must have been deposited somewhere. If she could find Arliss’s bank account and compare deposits and dates … but how? She looked back at Calvin, sitting over his empty glass. He could find out for her. Was it fair to ask him to do something even more illegal than hacking into airline manifests? If she found either of Arliss’s phone numbers in Sandy’s records, she wouldn’t need to ask him. She’d have proven a clear lie, and the official investigation could unfold from there. The RCMP would be able to get a warrant for the information.
She got behind the wheel, but instead of starting the engine, she opened her portfolio. With Arliss’s contact information displayed on her phone, she took out the list of cellphone calls Sandy’s son had given to her and scanned the column of numbers. Nothing. She flipped to the printout of calls made from Dee’s landline. Neither of Arliss’s numbers appeared there, either. She propped the phone up in the dashboard holder and started again at the first sheet, using her finger to make sure she didn’t skip a single number. Then she sat back, frowning. Neither Arliss’s landline nor cellphone number showed up in Sandy’s or Dee’s phone records.
Could the arrangements all have been made by email? How illegal would it be to ask Calvin to hack into a Gmail account or two? She looked back at the Tims, but his chair by the window was vacant. Just as well. Evidence acquired by hacking wouldn’t be admissible in a trial, anyway. There had to be another angle. Maybe Eric’s backup would give her a fresh lead.
Fifteen minutes later, she stood staring at the bookshelf in Eric’s bedroom. “You’re sure it’s not one of these?”
Aidan ran his hand along the shelf again. “Enterprise is a USB webcam, but all the rest are plain model spaceships. Galactica isn’t here. You’re sure Cal said it was that one? Maybe Clemmie took it. She’s a BSG fan, too.”
“I thought she was off skiing in Marmot Basin.”
“Uh-huh. Let me text her.”
“Will she answer right away?”
“Not likely. It’s only urgent if the phone rings. I’ll give her a call.” He got his sister’s voice mail and left a message. Then he keyed in another number. “I’m looking for Clemmie, Mrs. Thompson. Is she there?” He put the phone on speaker.
“S
he’s halfway down the mountain right now, going like stink,” said the older woman. “Is it urgent?”
“I’ve called and texted her, but I hope you can tell her to get back to me ASAP.”
“When she reaches the bottom, I’ll tell her. No more bad news, I hope. She’s coping okay about Eric’s car, but I don’t want to upset her again.”
Aidan told Arliss about the thumb drive. As Lacey waved frantically at him for silence, he blurted out that Eric had been looking into a malware script at TFB. Shit! Why hadn’t she warned him to keep quiet? Arliss could learn of the drive’s location from Clemmie and be back here to destroy it by midnight if they didn’t find it first.
Arliss’s voice rattled from the tiny speaker. “JP told us the malware issue was a false alarm. Marcia caught it before it did any damage.”
She admitted to knowing about the malware? That didn’t add up in any way with Lacey’s theory. She leaned toward the phone. “When did he tell you that?”
“At the shareholder meeting, when he first floated the idea of selling the company. Last week of October, I think.”
Just when Eric was assembling evidence of the very real damage being done by the malware script. As the wheels began to turn in Lacey’s head, Aidan said, “Eric had proof it was real. That’s what he was taking to the chalet that weekend.”
“It was real? Does JP know this? Is he looking into it?”
Aidan looked questioningly at Lacey. She puffed out her cheeks, thinking hard. Once again, Arliss was not reacting like someone with a guilty conscience. Maybe, if she raced home to cover her tracks, Lacey could dog her every step until her own actions convicted her. If she was innocent, she’d stay where she was.
“Yes, JP knows,” she said. “If we had Eric’s thumb drive, we could save Zoe a lot of work.”
Arliss gave a disgusted huff. “Of course, he’d make it Zoe’s job, and on New Year’s Day, too. She should be up here skiing with us. He should have made Marcia work the holiday, since she’s the one who missed it the first time. Spotting accounting malware is supposedly her area of expertise. She even carries a souvenir one on her keychain. She brags about how she caught it at the nursing home.”
Nursing home? The truth hit Lacey like a bolt of lightning. “Did Marcia work at the nursing home where your mother-in-law lived?”
“Sure. That’s how she and Phyl got to be friends. She’d take Phyl out shopping to alleviate her unutterable boredom while JP was visiting with his mother. After his mom died, Phyl insisted Marcia be given a job here in Calgary. When JP sells the company, I don’t know what she’ll do. The new owners won’t keep somebody around who doesn’t know the oil business.”
How Lacey got off the phone and out to her vehicle so fast, she couldn’t quite be sure. She sat there clutching the steering wheel, staring straight ahead while her carefully constructed theory fragmented and reassembled itself, replacing Arliss with Marcia:
Marcia had worked at that nursing home when the hacker loaded the malware, and when old Mrs. Thompson died after not getting her flu shot.
Marcia was a friend of the new Mrs. Thompson, who wanted to live in England.
Marcia and Arliss were both stocky brown-haired women over fifty. They’d both worked the Backcountry Safety Association’s booth at the Cochrane Christmas market.
Marcia carried around the nursing home malware script on a USB drive, which she could easily have stuck into the cheque-writing printer any time she wished.
Lacey angled the sheet of paper Calvin had given her to the light at her side window. Three paragraphs of small print provided information about the nursing home malware incident, including the name of the hacker — nobody she recognized — his Queen’s University student email address, and, farther down, the name of the accountant who had uncovered the malware: Marcia.
After that, it was easy to look up Marcia’s office, cell, and home numbers in the TFB staff directory and compare them against Sandy’s phone record. One call from Sandy’s cell to Marcia’s office number, another to Marcia’s cell, and the last one after five p.m. on Boxing Day from Marcia’s cell to Sandy’s. Lacey’s memory flashed the brown SUV with its loaded ski racks pulled over near the Bragg Creek Arts Centre while Marcia talked on the phone. Her stomach turned over. Had Marcia been luring Sandy to her death at that very moment?
If Marcia learned her fraud was being investigated again, she’d immediately try to cover her tracks at TFB Energy. Zoe was working today. She must be warned before she ran into Marcia in the office. If she let slip what she was working on, or if Marcia guessed, she’d be in immediate danger. With two murders on her hands so far — she’d probably indirectly caused JP’s mother’s death, as well — Marcia would have no compunction about disposing of Zoe, too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Lacey texted Zoe before starting up the SUV. There was no response by the time she got out of the neighbourhood, so she made a split-second decision to check Zoe’s house first. It was much closer than the office. If Zoe was safe at home, there was no need for panic. But every minute she was in the office, she’d be at risk. While Lacey waited to turn onto Macleod Trail, she told her phone to dial Zoe’s. The call went to voice mail. Calling the landline sent her to voice mail, too. She pulled in to Zoe’s driveway, left the Lexus’s door open, and ran to pound on the front door. No answer. She peered through the tiny garage window. No minivan. The downtown office, then. Before she left the driveway, she checked Calvin’s staff directory. But Zoe had no office number listed. Damn! She hadn’t started working there until after the first of November. The main company number was listed, but there’d be no receptionist on New Year’s Day to route a call to Zoe. It looked like Lacey’s only option was going there in person.
Come to that, how would she get into the building? Security guards didn’t let random strangers in, especially not during holidays, when the regular staff were away. Wayne’s company handled JP’s home security; maybe he could get her into the office. She told her phone to call his number. Barely pausing to apologize for interrupting his New Year’s Day, she made her request.
“Sure,” he said. “I do the company’s physical security audits every six months. I’ll meet you there with my pass card.”
Twenty minutes later, Lacey sat waiting in the Lexus outside the office building on a deserted Sixth Avenue. She anxiously called Zoe’s cellphone again. When it kicked over to voice mail, she disconnected. There was no point in leaving another message.
She told herself she was overreacting, that Zoe had gone out for a holiday supper and turned off her phone. Maybe she’d changed her mind and gone north to join her family. But Lacey’s old police instincts were twanging, and her gut was churning up that same sick feeling it had had last summer when she’d gone looking for Dee. Something was wrong. Out of desperation, she called Arliss Thompson back.
“Hi,” she said, making a deliberate attempt to control the intensity in her tone. “I was wondering if Zoe’s husband is around, or if you could give me his number.”
Arliss put her hand loosely over the receiver and said, “Go get your father.” Then she came back on the line. “He’s on his way. What do you need?”
Lacey had a flash of sheer panic. Should her fresh interpretation of the facts be wrong, Arliss or TJ would have all the warning they needed to clear their trail. But Marcia as the murderer ticked all the same boxes as Arliss, starting way back in Ontario when she’d denied an old woman her flu shot. Whether that was done at Phyl’s direct request, or in a self-motivated effort to rid Phyl of “that turbulent priest, like Henry II said of Thomas Becket,” old Mrs. Thompson was surely dead before her time. Eric’s murder had been another indirect one — sedate him and let the cold do the work — but Sandy’s death had been a hands-on killing by a strong and determined murderer. Zoe would be blindsided by an attack. Lacey took a deep breath, silently expressed her great hope that Arliss wasn’t involved at all, and spoke from her gut.
“Zoe isn’t an
swering her phone. She might be in the TFB offices working on the malware investigation, and if so, I’m afraid she’s in danger from the person who planted it. I’m really hoping Nik has heard from his wife that she’s someplace else, someplace safe, and she’s just turned off her phone for a while.”
Arliss spoke to someone on her end again. “Get TJ.” To Lacey, she said, “As far as I know, Zoe is at work today. Nik’s boys were giving him a hard time about that. I’ll get TJ to call building security and tell them to give you full co-operation. We can be there in two hours if we fly.”
“Don’t call a pilot just yet. As soon as I’m in the building, I’ll know whether I’m overreacting.”
“Here’s Nik,” said Arliss. Holding the phone away from her mouth, she filled him in with three terse sentences.
Nik came on the line. “Jesus. You think Zoe’s in danger? As far as I know, she was spending today at the office. She used to practically live there. That’s why I was glad when she quit at TFB. If she gets hurt, I’ll sort JP proper.”
“I’ll let you know shortly whether she’s all right. I apologize for disrupting your afternoon for what might turn out to be a false alarm.” Lacey slid out of the Lexus as Wayne approached.
“Still no answer?” he asked, his breath a fog under the streetlamps. She shook her head. He swiped his pass card over the door pad, walked in, and addressed the security guard at the desk. “Hi, Jim. Anybody sign in to TFB today?”
The guard tapped his keyboard. “The owner’s working in one of the little companies up on ten, but nobody from the bigger companies has signed in. If they went straight up from the parkade with a key card, though, I wouldn’t see them.”
“We’re going up to search six and seven,” said Wayne. “If we have to call for backup, let them in and direct them, please.”
Wayne led the charge to the elevator. “The TFB layout covers two floors, each with a ring corridor. Personal offices on the outside, shared spaces in the core. Where is she likely to be?”
Where the Ice Falls Page 28