When the Flood Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  More footsteps, a clutter of them, came too soon for the voice-activated recorder to shut itself off. Chair legs scraped, barely audible above the setters’ outraged howls. That would be Jarrad moving the chair, when he inadvertently unplugged the motion-sensor cord. This action made sense to Lacey at last: he’d shifted Mick out of sight of the dogs, in hopes they’d stop barking. And, after another half minute or so, they did.

  “That better?” Jarrad asked.

  “Yeah.” Mick Hardy’s voice, breathless and strained, recorded with perfect clarity. He’d have been almost directly under the recorder at that moment. “Just need to sit.”

  “You’re sure?” After a pause, “Was that Mr. Wyman leaving?”

  “Probably. He’s got Dee Phillips in his sights.”

  “Better him than me. You doing okay?”

  “Just need a rest after that uphill.”

  “I’ll go get my car and drive you down.”

  “No, wait, Jarrad … about this idea of yours. Why do you have to do it right now?”

  “I just want it finished, behind me.”

  Lacey could picture the sulky young hockey player, his stubborn mouth and inner tension. This was mere hours before he died. What had he wanted to finish?

  Jarrad said, “You know I love you, Mick. You and Camille are my family. I’d never want to pull a dance on you. But I need to figure out —”

  “Is that young Fiske’s voice?”

  Lacey pushed the stop button. Jake stood in the doorway, staring at the slim little recorder. She reached for the call button pinned to Dee’s bed.

  “No need for that, little lady. I’m not here to hurt anybody. I was trying to put a pillow under her head when she screamed and they all came running.” One gnarled hand waved in the direction of the nursing station, reminding Lacey of his effortless power over those reporters. Did he have that power here, too? Was he a real threat to Dee? He didn’t look it, standing with his hat in his hand, the very picture of an old-time cowboy respectfully addressing the schoolmarm, a refugee from Gunsmoke. “I’m only here to see if Dee-Dee’s ready to accept my apology.”

  “Don’t call me Dee-Dee.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “I haven’t decided if I can afford to forgive you. Tell Lacey about it; then we’ll talk.”

  “Can I sit down first? These old bones …”

  Dee flapped her hand. He sat. Lacey kept her finger at the call button. If he tried anything, she’d both push it and yell for the security guard. Then she’d clock him a good one.

  “Tell me what?”

  “I put that recorder on her office window.”

  “I gathered as much.”

  “Started a few months back.” Jake’s shoulders and jaw firmed up, like Lacey had seen in witnesses about to reluctantly tell an unpleasant truth. “It wasn’t set loud enough at first, only went on when the dogs barked. I can listen to a dog bark any day, but I needed to hear her voice when she was on the phone. So I kept sneaking over to check it and adjust the volume. I went at night most times because that little Jannie, she’s up there in her sunroom watching over the neighbourhood all day. I never thought about Dee hearing me and being scared. That’s the honest truth, Miss McCrae.”

  “You admit you placed that device to record confidential telephone calls between Dee and her clients? Have you ever heard of unlawful intercepts, Mr. Wyman?”

  Jake turned his battered hat carefully in his hands. “I know it was wrong. But I don’t need her real estate tips. That’s not why I did it. She knows that.” Lacey looked at Dee, who nodded, her head-gauze rustling over the pillow.

  “Go on.”

  “It isn’t enough that I told you, honey? Do I have to tell her, too?”

  “Everything.” Dee looked half dead lying bandaged in that bed, her face yellow from aging bruises, but hers was the voice of a woman who could take a five iron to a windshield. “Or kiss your ass goodbye.”

  “Honey …”

  “Tell her or tell the Law Society.”

  He half-smiled at Lacey. “Never piss off a lawyer. They’re about as forgiving as a rattlesnake in a corner.” He set the hat down on the bed and opened his hands. “I meant no harm to anyone. I bugged Dee’s office window hoping to hear her talking to my ex-wife. That woman would never forgive me if I put detectives on her trail, so I was being sneaky. When I found her, I could say I overheard Dee on the phone to her. That wouldn’t have been a lie.”

  “You went to all this trouble, broke who knows how many laws, and drove Dee to the brink of a nervous breakdown to track down a woman who left you?” Domestic violence: the most fatal time for a woman is in the year after she leaves her abuser. Jake didn’t look like a batterer, but then, so many of them didn’t. He was used to having unchallenged power, and psychological abuse didn’t leave visible signs. A lot of money had vanished in his divorce; that had to be a factor, too. Would he get it back if his ex-wife died? All questions that would bear further investigation if he didn’t have satisfactory answers. Lacey stood up. “What were you going to do when you found her?”

  “No harm, I said, and that’s what I meant. I never laid a mean hand on that woman. She was a nice little thing, easy to have around. I was comfortable with her.” He set his hands on his knees. “I’m getting old, Miss McCrae. I don’t like change as much as I used to. If she’d told me she wasn’t happy, we could have arranged something. But she up and went one day, and left all the talking to the lawyers. I just wanted to hear her voice. I guess I let myself get carried away. There’s no fool like an old fool.”

  The man who had everything was too ashamed to hire private detectives to find his errant wife? Dee clearly believed his story, but then Dee didn’t know about the missing keys or those missing few minutes downstairs at the gala. And yet … all those years of being lied to on the job had left Lacey with a pretty good bullshit detector, and this story, improbable as it was, didn’t set off the alarms. He believed what he was saying, and he was, to say the very least, deeply ashamed he had to admit his motive at all.

  Dee was whiter than the sheets, tears trailing from beneath her closed eyelids, but her voice was calm. “Thank you, Jake. You go now and leave me to talk to Lacey.”

  “Yes’m. Can I come back tomorrow? I’ve got some ideas about your house.”

  “I’ll let you know in the morning.”

  “Wait,” said Lacey. “Mr. Wyman, when you went downstairs during the gala, just before Dee’s speech, did you see anyone else down there? Or hear anyone?”

  “Not that I recall. I went to the men’s room and then looked for Dee.”

  “Neither of you saw Rob downstairs during that time?”

  Dee’s bandages slid as her head waved from side to side. “He was backstage when I went up. Both times.”

  Jake said, “Never saw him down there. You don’t suspect young Rob, do you? He’s a nice fella.”

  “Just crossing him off.”

  Jake left. Lacey watched him until he got into the elevator, then she came back and sat on Dee’s bed, careful not to jostle her casted leg.

  “That story sounds fantastic, and I don’t mean great. Not the bugging part, but the reason for it.”

  “Not if you knew him. He’s an utter sap over women. He convinced himself that if he played the right cards, Miss Hockey Chippy — who was well known for entertaining the visiting players behind his back — would come home and cuddle up to him like she used to. He can’t accept that she stayed exactly three days past the five-year mark that turned her miniscule pre-nup into a generous life annuity. He was a job and she held on long enough for the retirement package. Barely. But he’d hate for any other man to know that. Especially in Calgary, where his name makes ruthless tycoons tremble. So, no private investigators. He just wouldn’t.”

  “Why are you managing her property if you dislike her
so much?”

  “No lawyer can afford to take only the clients they like. I needed the extra income to get my second —” she made several tries at mortgage before settling for loan “— to buy Neil out. In hindsight, selling up would have been simpler, but I didn’t want to move the dogs back to the city. God, what a mess.”

  “You’re tired. You sleep. I’ll come back later.” After she had made a start on the camera wiring, so she had something to report to Wayne tomorrow. She’d have to find out more about Jake, too, and about his dealings with Jarrad. Whatever Dee believed about his motives for the bugging, he was still the most viable suspect in Jarrad’s death. “Meanwhile, don’t talk to the police if they come. They can’t haul you down to the station from your hospital bed.”

  Dee put out her hand. “Thanks for everything. If you hadn’t been here when all this fell on me, I don’t know what I’d have done.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  When Jan could no longer tolerate staring at raw video on her laptop screen, she rolled off the couch, stretched, and headed out to the deck to look at birds instead. The only alibi times she could confirm were Dee and Jake’s departures from their respective boxes, and those were essentially non-alibis, putting each of them downstairs very close to when Jarrad had been taken to the vault. Jarrad’s ex-boyfriend, whose photo she had found online as soon as Rob had coughed up his last name, had stayed in Jake’s box throughout and left with the crowd at the end. Who knew what the cluttered footage from the third roving camera would bring to light? Examining it would require more mental and visual focus than she could summon right now.

  The magic of the June day wasn’t clearing her head, either. She was restless, even outdoors, jumping at sudden noises, twitchy fingers jerking her zoom lens past any nest or blossom she tried to focus on. She knew why: too much living like a normal person. Too many visitors, too much conversation, too much rowdy playing with the lonely dogs, plus the mental exertion of working out alibis. Every one of those activities was interesting and welcome on its own, but cumulatively they destabilized her delicate balance between making energy and using it up. She would need to be firm with herself after today, stay home and stay quiet until at least next Wednesday.

  She was zooming in on that grosbeak’s nest near Dee’s house when an odd gleam struck her lens. A vehicle was parked halfway up the driveway, invisible in the trees except where a trace of sunlight touched it. If that was a legitimate visitor, why didn’t they drive up to the house?

  She focused in her camera and moved it slowly over the porch and windows. Everything looked normal, but intermittent barks floated in on the fluky southeast breeze. The dogs were stirred up. Had the laptop thief returned, or was it merely walkers on the woodland trail? Boney and Beau didn’t take kindly to other dogs trotting past while they were stuck in their pen. They preferred to spend their weekend days on the deck, where they could amble out to the trail to greet their pals or warn pushy new dogs off their territory. She moved the viewfinder on down the hill, looking for dogs or people, but the trail disappeared behind the next house without a sign of movement except for tree branches shifting in the wind.

  Farther downhill, Camille’s Bimmer sat in her driveway with its top folded away. Serve the woman right to have her car fill up with water if those wisps of cloud creeping past the mountain peaks boiled up into a violent summer storm. Or would it? Camille might be weeping in private, but more likely the heartless slut had moved on from Jarrad’s death without a second thought and was touching up her nails while her husband did the grieving. How much was Camille acting a role, and how much was she really not upset? She had not, after all, been groping Jarrad in the week before his death. She’d thrown him over for the actor. Did it all come down to a lovers’ tiff?

  The phone rang. Jan abandoned the tripod, hurried indoors, and with the phone in her hand, realized that answering it was another sign she was way too far from her resting mode. Normally she would save her steps and let the answering machine get it, only pick up if the message sounded urgent. But she was here now. She pushed the talk button.

  “Hi there, Jannie. You see any sign of my surveyors down at Dee-Dee’s? They were supposed to quote me for the outside ramps yesterday.” Ah, that explained the vehicle. Only Jake could command surveyors to work on a beautiful June Sunday. Naturally they wouldn’t park by the house, where they’d need to be measuring.

  “I think they’re down there now.”

  “Good. I didn’t get a chance to ask Dee-Dee about the plans, but she was almost back to her old self this morning. Feisty. I’ll spring the ramps on her before we talk elevators. Don’t you spoil my surprise if she phones you.”

  “You’re a good friend to her.”

  “I owe her. If you see those surveyors leaving before I get there, try to flag them down. I’m feeding poor Mick lunch up at my place. He’s some cut up about the boy. Needs taking out of himself, and that wife of his won’t be any help.”

  “You’re a good friend to him, too, in spite of Camille.”

  “Hell, Jannie, we all make mistakes over women. Can’t hold that against my friends, or I wouldn’t have any. Bye, honey.”

  While she had the phone in her hand, Jan called Lacey to report her morning’s footage review. She got voice mail and summarized her few findings while wandering aimlessly about the living room. Out of nowhere, lethargy sloshed over her, oozing her toward the soft couch and her comfy afghan. She resisted, heading out to cover the camera in case of later thunderstorms, and stared vaguely downhill at Dee’s drive, where Mick’s Buick was just backing out. Mick’s car … why would that be important? Something she had been thinking about Camille before the phone rang … but her brain wouldn’t make the connection. She watched the sedan go uphill with one person in it. Camille was not, it appeared, invited to lunch.

  A door banged open, sending her nerves into overdrive. Only Terry coming into the kitchen for a drink. She listened to his movements, hoping he wouldn’t come to check on her. He’d think her jitters were pill jitters. It was past time to stop pacing around and lie down. She surrendered to the couch and the afghan, closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing. The phone rang again. She forced herself to be still and lay waiting until the phone kicked over to the answering machine.

  “I was just wondering,” said the caller, over the sounds of highway noise.

  “Lacey, I’m here.”

  “You sound out of breath. Are you okay?”

  “Sure, fine,” Jan lied. “Are you calling while driving? You’ll get a ticket. Or be in an accident.”

  “I’ve been taking radio calls while driving for years. It’s ingrained now. And a ticket is worth it if you can help me sort something out.”

  “I’ll try. What were you wondering?”

  “Only whether you could tell from the raw footage where Camille was. I know Rob thought she was still on stage when Dee came up those backstage stairs. Could she have slipped away without anyone noticing?”

  “I can’t tell from the video I’ve seen so far. The chihuahuas were dressed too much alike to for me to be sure she was with them in the wings.”

  “Did Rob have any reason to pay her whereabouts particular attention?”

  “Probably not. She wasn’t a threat to his job until later. You know, I’ve just remembered how he gushed about the Mann monologue. He was probably enraptured by it and not noticing much backstage at all.”

  “Could be. Not that I’m saying Camille’s guilty, just that she’s almost the only one left who might have a motive for wanting Jarrad dead.”

  Through Jan’s tired brain wafted that half-forgotten impression of Lacey thinking much more than she was saying. “Almost?”

  A deep sigh. A long pause. Then, “Just how smart is Jake Wyman about women?”

  “The world’s prize chump. The more he likes a woman, me and Dee apparently excepted, the more likely she i
s to be a traitorous, lying tramp.”

  “Really? So he might do something incredibly stupid because of a woman?”

  “Don’t see why he’d change now. The last two wives were utter disasters, yet he never once said an ill word about either of them. I never met his first one. But if you’re thinking he helped Camille in some nefarious scheme to do away with Jarrad, you’re dead wrong.” His loyalties were firmly with Mick. They’d been pals for decades. Mick got him to buy his first team share. All those jerseys, all the colours and logos and … She realized her mind was drifting and pulled it back. “Camille was his last wife’s best buddy. He might reasonably suspect she helped plan the woman’s midnight flit. You’re either loyal to him and entitled to the same in return, or you’re not.”

  “You’d know better than me. I’d never heard of any of these people two weeks ago. But you can’t rule out Camille’s being downstairs when Jarrad went into the vault?”

  “Not so far. Only one camera left to review, the shoulder-mounted roaming one that was gathering colour and movement at the event. I don’t know if it ever went backstage, much less downstairs. Is it important to know right now?” Please say no. It was hard enough to keep concentrating on this conversation.

  “Not immediately,” said Lacey.

  Jan let out a sigh of relief. “I need a break, but I’ll get back to it later this afternoon, I promise.”

  “Thanks. I didn’t think of asking Dee about Camille, just if she’d seen Jarrad downstairs. Hopefully Camille doesn’t take it into her head to visit Dee in the hospital. Until I know what Jarrad meant by ‘pulling a dance,’ I won’t feel easy about that woman.”

  “Dee would smell a rat if Camille appeared at her bedside bearing flowers. Unless Jake was there to be impressed.”

  “He’s been already today and tired her out. I left her falling sleep.”

  If Lacey was angling for an invitation to hang out for the afternoon, Jan couldn’t give it to her. “I’ll let you know when I’ve anything more on Camille or anyone.” She hung up, found an eye mask in the end table drawer, and let herself fade. Sometime later, she realized people were talking in the kitchen. She called out, “Hello?”