“My eyes aren’t blue, my dear.”
“But they are strikingly pretty, and you know it. So leave the guy alone.”
Leave the guy alone.
Valerie had thought she was doing exactly that, unlike Sedna, who flirted with him.
He stroked his tanned face, which showed signs of strain.
“So you think Sedna left it there?” he asked as he gently set the rattle on the table beside him.
Valerie looked him in the eye and then at her backpack in the corner.
“I know it sounds . . . a little farfetched . . .”
Could she trust him? She needed an ally, and Clem hadn’t disappointed her so far.
She hadn’t told him that she was secretly prejudiced against people who tried their luck in the Far North. Basically, she thought like Alana Reevely. Or like the British nurse who’d given her a tetanus shot in Inuvik because Valerie had gotten too close to the teeth of a dog on the loose. The Englishwoman had casually announced, “There are three reasons why men come to the North: first, money; second, they’re running away from something; or third, they’re looking for something.”
Valerie had laughed—she’d felt like a conspirator.
She took a deep breath and said, “For some reason, Sedna’s retracing my parents’ trip.”
She paused for a few seconds before forging ahead.
“My father was Peter Hurdy-Blaine, and my mother was Mary-Ann Strong.”
Clem leaned forward, his hands on his thighs.
“The hockey player?”
“Yes. Precisely.”
Clem stretched his full body.
“I’ve heard their story. That he had to break off the Dempster Memorial Trek. His wife was killed in an accident.”
“Is that all you heard?”
“Not exactly. I also heard that he never went back to the Arctic after that.”
He regarded her with curiosity.
“Of course. Your name. Blaine. Never made the connection. It was such a long time ago.”
“Thirty years. I was just a child when it happened.”
“So what’s Sedna got to do with your parents?”
“She wanted to take a helicopter to the place where my parents . . . where they last camped. I found that out in Dawson. She . . . she met my ex before leaving Vancouver and grilled him about me and my family. Or at least tried to.”
She paused because she suddenly heard herself speaking. How odd this information must sound to an outsider.
Clem seemed to be absorbing it all attentively. “Really.”
He leaned back in his chair.
Valerie brushed away some long strands of hair behind her ears with her fingertips, but they fell back in her face. Better to tie it in a ponytail, but her loose hair did keep her head warm.
“Then she called me one night and said somebody was threatening to kill her. As you can imagine, that caused a lot of anxiety—that’s really an understatement. And now she’s in Aklavik claiming she never called me to say that her life was in danger.”
Clem nodded slowly. “I heard something else interesting. She latched onto a gold-mine owner and pumped him for information about mines and how to launder money with gold and pay for goods with it.”
“Did she?”
“Yes, and in Tuktoyaktuk she asked about a man whose name was Siqiniq Anaqiina.”
“What?” Valerie pulled herself up so fast that she almost slipped off the bed. “Siqiniq Anaqiina? That’s the Inuit boy who was with my parents!”
“When?”
“On their last expedition when . . . when my mother died.”
Clem cleared his throat. “How old were you when it happened?”
“Four. My twin brothers, Kosta and James, were about ten.”
“That must have been hard on all of you.” Clem’s voice had a fragile note to it, a sensitivity that surprised her.
She turned his words over in her mind. No, hard wasn’t the right word. Confusing maybe. What was hard was their father’s sudden reticence, his abnormal distance. He became a stranger. Then Bella Wakefield came into their lives, and everything brightened up. Their stepmother never took trips; she was a stay-at-home mom. She was always there when the kids needed her. Their situation was stable. She continued to be an anchor after their father died. Until Bella fell ill—and questions cropped up.
“To this day, I don’t know the precise circumstances around my mother’s death. My father never uttered a word about it.
“I tried some time ago to find out some information from the government. They replied that the documents were classified. They couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me the reason why. I thought that was very peculiar. Kosta . . .”
A large truck stopped in front of the window, its motor left running. She spoke through the racket. “Kosta thinks there’s nothing to be gained by messing around with the past.”
Clem moved his chair nearer, away from the window and the noise.
“Is that your opinion as well?”
“I’m not so sure. I think . . . certain people would probably find it fun to knock a national idol off his pedestal. I used to be a journalist. The media would definitely have a field day.”
“Did you ever mention your parents to Sedna?”
“No, never. And only once did I ever talk about my ex in her presence. That was a mistake.”
She moved forward and sat on the edge of the bed, her feet braced against the other bed.
“I thought we were friends. But we weren’t really. I sensed it last summer when she took off from Inuvik.”
“Val,” Clem began to say, “I . . . there’s something—”
She interrupted him. “Sorry, we’ve just been talking about me, but something awful happened to you. How are you doing? Aren’t you supposed to be lying down and resting?”
He gave a laugh.
“Sure, under ideal conditions. But I wanted to make sure you got rid of that package fast.”
“Why? Who’d send you something like that?”
He shrugged.
She didn’t let go.
“Does it have something to do with Helvin?”
“Possibly. There’s only speculation for now, though. But the Mafia is known to send nuggets to people as a warning not to mess with their business.”
“Why would the Mafia target you of all people?” Valerie asked incredulously.
“I suspect they aren’t targeting me; it could be more about Helvin.”
“Have they tracked him down? Have you heard anything about him?”
He rubbed his palms together.
“Toria sent me a text message that he’d sent her an e-mail announcing his glorious return. Seems like there’s a lot of that going around.” His tone had become sarcastic.
“What do you mean?”
“People disappearing without a trace, then suddenly turning up again. First Sedna, then Helvin.”
“Do you think . . .”
She gave him an inquiring look.
“That they’ve met? I’ll bet you the most expensive snowmobile money can buy that the cops aren’t counting that out.”
“And Gisèle? Who—”
A knock at the door interrupted her.
Faye. Valerie stepped out of the room to talk, closing the door behind her.
“Everything cleared up?” Faye asked.
“You look like you’ve just showered, not me, so no,” Valerie said.
Faye made a face.
“He won’t let you?”
“Where are the others?”
“Still in the bar.”
“I’ll be right there. Thanks for keeping an eye on them.”
Faye turned to go to her room.
Before Valerie closed the door behind her, she heard Faye say, “They’re all adults, you know. You don’t need to worry about them so much. They’re doing OK.”
Back inside the room, Clem was standing at the window, his broad back toward her. He turned around and asked, “Can I
have a quick shower here before I beat it? There’s no shower where I’m staying.”
“Of course. I’m just going to check on my group in the bar.”
She didn’t dare ask where he was sleeping. She’d heard that the hotel was booked up, and there was no way she could invite him to spend the night in her room. She clutched her laptop under her arm as she walked out.
“I’ll be back in an hour.”
To her surprise, she found Paula in the bar sitting next to a roughneck, some tarot cards laid out on the table before them.
“So I don’t get out of practice,” she explained in reaction to Valerie’s amused look.
The guy beside her laughed, showing some gaps in his teeth.
“The lady knows I only want to hear good news. Otherwise, she’ll get a slap on her rear end.”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Paula warned.
Valerie couldn’t find Anika anywhere. Carol and Trish were sitting at the bar with Glenn and Jordan, talking to the woman serving drinks. Three men sat around a table drinking beer. One of them looked like the telecommunications worker who’d helped to haul the dark SUV out of the snowdrift.
Valerie treated herself to a sherry. A stuffed moose head on the wall watched her drink it. Afterward, she took her laptop out to the lobby, where the Internet connection was best, and ran through her e-mails. A message from Kosta made her heart skip a beat.
“I heard your friend Sedna has resurfaced. If you two meet up, please don’t say anything to her about our family, and nothing about your plans. Even better, stay as far away from her as possible. Call me from Inuvik, I’ll explain it all then. Hope all’s going well.”
Valerie read the message over and over again. How did Kosta know that Sedna had resurfaced and called the police? Did he have an in with the Inuvik RCMP? And why the warning? She’d only written him briefly about Sedna’s interest in their parents. Did he know something she’d missed?
And why didn’t he simply tell her everything in the e-mail instead of torturing her by making her wait?
She clicked in frustration on another e-mail she hadn’t expected. From Ken Gries, the museum director in Whitehorse.
“I discovered something about your mother. Mary-Ann Strong was apparently a person of interest to the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service, CSIS. An old colleague told me that he was quizzed about her by a man he met at an academic conference. He found out later by chance that the man worked for CSIS. When I conveyed that to another former colleague, it turned out that the same agent had pestered her about your mother. I honestly cannot imagine why Mary-Ann Strong could have attracted the attention of CSIS back then. Perhaps you have some idea? You can reach me anytime; I have some more old pictures of your parents.”
Valerie’s head suddenly felt hot; her thoughts were spinning like a merry-go-round. She forwarded the e-mail to Kosta, asking him to look into it. Then she closed her laptop; that was all she could manage for one day. She slowly walked back to her hotel room, knocked softly, and, when she didn’t get a response, opened the door.
In the light of the night table lamp, she saw Clem lying on the second bed. He was completely dressed and dead to the world.
She hesitated. Should she wake him up?
He must be exhausted. The violent attack. Helvin’s disappearance. Gisèle’s death. The Ice Road. And—she now realized—his concern for her and her tour group. Why else would he have hitched a ride on a truck to Eagle Plains?
She watched him sleeping there with a slight feeling of guilt, as if it were forbidden. As if she were crossing a line. With his rugged facial features, dark hair, and tanned skin, he looked dashing even in his sleep. A man of the North.
She quietly put away her computer, fished clean clothes out of her backpack, and made for Faye’s room.
To her astonishment, Anika opened the door.
“I’ve just given Faye a reflexology foot massage. You can have one, too, but not tonight. Time for me to go to bed. Good night.”
She was barely out the door before Valerie announced the reason for her visit.
“Can I spend the night here with you? Clem is in my room, sleeping like a baby.”
Faye shook her head.
“I don’t think it’s a great idea. I snore like crazy, and I’m feeling a little stuffed up, which always makes it worse. I’d keep you awake all night.”
“But—”
“Don’t you trust him? He seems like a perfect gentleman to me, Val. I don’t think you need to worry; he won’t lay a finger on you. He’ll probably never even know you’re there, if he’s that tired.”
“You can talk, you—”
“Am I going to sleep in a room with him? Am I?”
Valerie sighed.
“Can I at least shower here?”
Faye laughed.
“Sure, go ahead. I’ll go to the bar for a while.”
Valerie didn’t move. Faye still owed her an answer.
“Will you finally please tell me now, who were those two men in the SUV today?”
“Not two men, a man and a woman. They wanted to take pictures of the caribou herd and asked me if we’d seen it.”
“And who told you that Sedna had turned up?”
“The two cops. We chatted for a bit outside after I parked the bus. Can I go now?”
And off she went.
Valerie was in the shower inside of a minute, washing away the tension and stress of the day with the pleasantly warm water.
There was one question she couldn’t shake off: If those two in the SUV were as harmless as Faye said, why all the secrecy? Why couldn’t she have said that right away?
“I’ll give that smart-ass a talking-to sometime soon,” she muttered to herself.
CHAPTER 22
“So this is where it’s buried.”
Her remark sounded borderline cheerful. Maybe she should dampen her enthusiasm a bit, make it more appropriate for the situation. After all, she didn’t want to jinx things now.
Her qualms evaporated when he responded in the same tone of voice. “Yes, it’s a good place to hide something.”
He looked around, scanning their surroundings with a keen eye before unlocking the door of the little shed. She followed his gaze across the empty, snow-covered plain stretching before them. The Arctic Ocean began somewhere around here, but for somebody unfamiliar with the area, it was impossible to tell where the land ended and the ocean began. Water and earth blended into a single icy wasteland, a frozen landscape, its borders obscured by the milky, dim light of a cold day.
She was glad he’d been as careful as she was to keep their intentions a secret. She didn’t want her mission to be thwarted at the last minute. By anybody.
This was the perfect day. The whole village was celebrating a wedding in the community hall. Everybody was invited. The opulent feast and the gifts had been the prime topic of conversation for days.
“I’ve always wanted to come here,” she said as she looked through the open door into a cramped square area. Trampled snow surrounded a wooden hatch.
“Anybody coming here must have seen this.”
He didn’t answer; he was busy unrolling a stiff, coiled rope in the corner.
Normally, she wasn’t such a talker, but she was so excited that the words just kept coming.
“How can something stay hidden here when people are always using this shack?”
He smiled.
“Nobody would think of looking here, precisely because it’s such a popular spot.”
She looked at him quizzically.
“There’s a labyrinth down there,” he explained patiently, “and not all the chambers are accessible to everybody.”
He heaved the hatch lid up and let it rest against the wooden wall. Inside, she could see the upper part of a narrow shaft, its sides covered with a thick layer of shimmering ice crystals. She took a step closer to the dark, yawning hole and saw the iced-over ladder leading downward.
For the first time, she felt
something like tightness in her chest.
“So that’s what it looks like,” she said. “Pretty steep. And deep. Good God!”
She was momentarily blinded by a beam of light; he’d put on a headlamp. The ice on the rungs flashed.
“And as smooth as glass,” she added.
“This rope here will secure you,” he explained. “I’ll tie it to the post over there and hold it tight so nothing can happen to you.”
She nodded but just stood there.
“Should I take off my gloves? They’re too thick for me to grip the rungs.”
“Better not. It’s cold as ice down there.”
“I can just toss them in and put them on again down there.”
He wasn’t persuaded.
“The rungs are frozen.”
She relented. “I’ll try it out with my thinner driving gloves.” She took a pair of full-fingered gloves out of her jacket pocket.
He helped her slide the rope around her upper body and shoulders as if she were a sled dog. Then he tied the other end with a triple knot around the post. She turned her back to the hole and prepared to start down the ladder, her hiking boot groping for footing in the abyss, her hands on the rungs.
“Just a little lower and you’ll feel the first rung,” he coached her. “That’s it.”
She felt the rung beneath her foot, then moved her other one down.
“Now it’s just one step after the other,” he said encouragingly.
She carefully climbed down, glad to have the rope under her armpits.
The descent felt like it was taking forever. Somebody had told her it was thirty-three feet. She had no idea how far she’d gone and didn’t want to look down. The light from his headlamp blinded her.
“Damn! I left my flashlight in my backpack,” she shouted. “It’s in the pickup.”
His voice echoed down to her.
“No problem. I’ll go get it.”
“My camera is in there, too.”
How could she be so careless? Perhaps it was because she’d been so excited.
“OK.”
“How much farther?”
“Just a few more steps.”
Suddenly, she sensed a larger gap between the rungs and grabbed the ladder firmly.
The Stranger on the Ice Page 14