Why the Rock Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  She was scrolling backward through archived garage footage two hours later, looking for anyone doing anything near Orrin’s old green Rover, when there was a rap at the door. She leaned over and turned the knob. Andy stood there, fanning herself with a hand, small curls sweat-stuck around her forehead. She stepped inside.

  “It’s lovely in here. I didn’t realize how much I’d overheated sitting on the terrace waiting for news. Had to get out of that house, but it would be impolitic to go far when we might hear something any minute. Not even down to the gym for a workout, although I could really use the stress-busting.” She perched on the arm of the only other chair. “Any sign of reporters yet?”

  Lacey pointed to the front-gate camera. “None. That truck is a Search and Rescue vehicle for people who are walking the cutlines across Highway 40.”

  “Thank the Crone for that mercy.”

  “You were expecting trouble?”

  Andy watched the monitor flick past a few more images from various gates. “Just, um, cautious. I had some bad experiences with them during my fifteen minutes of celebrity. Let me know if you see any, okay? So I can avoid them.” She stood up. “Anyway, I really came to ask if you’re hungry yet? Supper’s in the main house.”

  “I expected to eat with the staff.”

  “You’re welcome at Jake’s table, so you’re welcome at Orrin’s. Don’t worry, we’re all going casual tonight. Let’s take your stuff to my place now, so you’ll know your way. Then we’ll eat. All guys except us. Sloane’s hiding in her suite, and only Cheryl’s allowed in. Try not to let the stink of testosterone spoil your appetite.”

  In the typical understatement of oil-baron families, Andy’s so-called cabin was half again the size of Dee’s estate home at Bragg Creek. In the clearing before it, a lone green Mercedes convertible occupied a brick parking pad big enough for four vehicles. Indoors was an open-plan main floor with bookshelves, computer table, and a huge TV screen tilted for viewing from a collection of soft sofas and big easy chairs. A wide oak staircase curved up to the top floor. Andy showed Lacey to a corner bedroom, pointed out the shared bathroom, and left her to unpack.

  As she emptied her hastily packed bag, Lacey checked out the surroundings. One window overlooked the wide, golden valley, and from the other, a swimming pool was partially visible through the trees. “Earl’s,” Andy had said as they walked the breezeless forest path. “We don’t use it unless specifically invited. And we won’t be now that his wife and kids went back to Denver.”

  Lacey’d made a mental note to find out exactly when they left. She hadn’t seen anyone near the Rover in the days she’d scanned so far, which suggested that tampering, if it occurred, hadn’t coincided with Orrin’s urgent assignment for Wayne. However, someone might have tampered with it while everyone was around for the annual vacation, knowing Orrin would drive off eventually. That type of motive would take more digging.

  When her few clothes and toiletries were stowed, Lacey went downstairs.

  Andy was sprawled on a sofa, scrolling through her phone. She looked up. “Unpacked already? I’ve barely opened Twitter. Main meals are usually at the big house, but that might not suit your schedule. Eat down here whenever it suits you. I’ll show you where.”

  In a pantry off the white, cottage-style kitchen, Andy showed her an iPad attached to the wall. “Eat whatever you like that’s around, but list your specific food and drink wishes on this program, and the housekeeping staff will stock them for you.” She glanced sideways. “Any chance you go for vegetarian cuisine?”

  “I don’t mind some. Why?”

  “Ben. The staff ’s been ordered not to take his requests. We have to sneak what he likes into the menu when he’s staying with us.”

  Lacey’s mind jumped back to Ben holding doors for her during their tour, then putting his hand into his pocket last thing and saying he’d forgotten to bring a fob. Did he even have one, or had Orrin ordered that privilege, too, removed?

  “What’s he done to deserve that?”

  Andy tapped her short blue fingernails against the iPad. “Ben’s a hardcore environmentalist, chains himself to trees or sabotages logging equipment to protect an old-growth stand. The family’s fixers had lawyers on speed-dial from here to L.A. when he was in school. Then he led the opposition to the Black Rock Bowl resort expansion that Orrin was backing. They fought the whole time about how much habitat was being damaged by the new lift platform. Ben refuses to ski there or even visit. He says the sewage from that little shopping mall at the bottom gets into the Ghost River to damage the ecosystem.”

  Lacey nodded. “I wondered why they needed a shopping mall at all, but there’s no doubt it’s a lively place in ski season.”

  “Uh-huh. So much traffic, and for what? Shit they could buy in Calgary or Banff any freakin’ day.” Andy opened a cupboard door and showed her a jar. “Add Bart’s granola, would you? Anyway, the final straw was this spring. Orrin found out Ben was working on the Ghost Wilderness’s latest land-use survey, estimating the damage done by off-road vehicles and oil-and-gas exploration. Just where Orrin was expanding his leases, in other words.”

  “Leases? Oh, leased land where he wants to drill for oil?”

  Andy nodded. “Yeah. Sloane’s birthday supper was when it came crashing down. Orrin all but disowned Ben on the spot. I thought he was going to shove him off the bluff, but he heaved a deck chair over instead. He couldn’t outright forbid Ben to come to our house, but he makes it as unpleasant as possible. Not having a fob forces Ben to park outside the main gate and walk in. And he can’t get into buildings or take a dirt bike out or anything without one of us opening doors for him. Nor get food that he likes. Petty shit.”

  “Sounds grim.”

  “Yeah, and so unfair. But you may have gathered Orrin doesn’t play fair.” Andy opened another cupboard door.

  Ben’s motives for getting his father out of the way were mounting by the minute, but would he risk his little brother?

  After a glance at the pantry’s collection of tea and staples, Lacey checked off food items on the iPad’s menu — eggs, flatbreads, orange juice, canned tuna, cold meat — and added items as Andy suggested them for Ben. After that, they headed back up to the big house. The forest path was still breathless; when they reached the terrace, the westerly sun hit them like molten lava.

  As she opened the dining room’s French doors, Earl leaped to his feet, yelling.

  “If he hasn’t disinherited you yet, I’ll force you out the instant I’m in charge.”

  Ben, nose to nose with him, snarled back. “You can kiss my ass. Or better yet, kiss Sloane’s. Because if Ty’s alive, he’ll get everything. And he loves his mom at least as much as you love yours.”

  Lacey stepped up to intervene before remembering she wasn’t paid to break up brawls now. The boot was on the other foot, actually: as a civilian, she could face charges if either man got hurt during her intervention. Her impulsive movement had broken up the confrontation, anyway. Earl, very red in the face, glared around the room and stomped out. Ben’s shoulders settled back slightly as the footsteps receded.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “He gets up my nose on a good day, and today sure as hell isn’t one.”

  Andy patted his forearm. “I know. You want to be out doing something, and they won’t let you join a search team.”

  “I’m just as at home in the back country as any of them,” he grumbled. “More familiar with this area, too.”

  Bart, who’d been standing by a buffet table with a half-filled plate in his hand, dug a serving spoon into a bowl. “We should have certified for SAR when we talked about it last spring. Then they’d have to let us help.”

  Ah. They’d been sent home by the search manager. Or by Constable Markov, in his capacity as official RCMP liaison. As Lacey served herself from the long table filled with cold cuts, salads, rolls, and drinks, the twins argued about whether to ride the whole ranch again or wait until morning. Andy eventually a
ppealed to Lacey, who didn’t hesitate to shut them down.

  “Stay off the trails. Every disturbance you make muddies the signs for the trained searchers.”

  “But we’re the ones who—” Ben began.

  “No.” It was harsh, but it had to be said. “You’ll be far less help than you think. The certified searchers all know each other and drill together every week. They know to maintain their distance, sightlines, and so on. They can tell if a person has passed that way, but not who. The more you muck about, the worse the odds get for them to find signs of your little brother.” After a moment, when neither twin offered any new arguments, she changed the subject. “Is it possible Orrin took Ty away to keep him from Sloane? Is that marriage on the rocks?”

  Silence fell, punctuated by puzzled looks between the family members. Finally Ben said, “Um, probably not. If anything, Sloane would try to hide him from Orrin, as leverage for a settlement.”

  “Honestly,” Andy added, “she hasn’t got enough spirit to dump his ass, or she’d have done it long ago.”

  “Orrin might take off for some perfectly legit reason,” said Bart, “and just not tell us. I’ll get his secretary to check his credit cards online tonight. We might find out they’ve gone to a ball game in Texas, and Ty left his phone in the truck at the airport.”

  Andy put her head in her hands. “God, that would be just like Orrin. And here we’ve all been rushing around, short on sleep and brain cells, not asking that obvious question.”

  It wasn’t likely to be that easy, but if it let them all sleep better tonight …

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Quietly skeptical of the others’ hopes for Orrin’s credit cards, Lacey went back to the office after supper and examined every moment the Rover was visible on the garage camera during the previous week. Nobody had gone near it except in passing. Every half hour, she’d looked away from the archived images to check the real-time cameras, but nothing moved around the upper buildings except a server having a smoke near the kitchen and, later, Cheryl carrying a tray along an upstairs hallway. Down below the bluff, a couple of quads came back to the machine shed with the sunset, and at full dusk Andy, Bart, and Ben could be seen trudging along the lower footpath toward the climbing gym. Andy was getting her stress-busting workout at last. Lacey could stand a workout herself. Was staff permitted to use the gym equipment? She made a note to ask Andy later and went back to her garage footage while the skylights in the climbing gym glowed beneath her windows.

  An hour later, her neck and shoulders stiff from staring at screens, she checked outside again. The lights were still lit, which could mean someone was there or simply that a timer hadn’t cut off since the people left. If she could realign those cameras tonight, she’d start the morning a bit ahead of herself. She slung her tool belt around her hips, locked the office door behind her, and headed out. The garage lights clicked on as she reached the landing, gleaming on vehicles and accentuating the creepy silence. She might as well be at a deserted industrial park instead of a foothills ranch an hour from Calgary. She took the stairs down and paused in the propped-open door to the climbing room, checking for occupants. Spotlights in the rafters lit up the deserted climbing routes from various angles, sharpening the nuances of each handhold. The natural rock at the back sparkled subtly, calling out “come and climb me.” It must have been irresistible to the small boys growing up on the ranch.

  Someone laughed. She leaned farther in. There was no sign of Bart, but Ben was looking up. He let out slack in a rope harnessed to his waist as Andy’s legs appeared past a built outcrop in the nearest climbing wall. When she reached bottom, he lifted her off the last hold by her hips. She leaned back, her hair against his cheek, looking surprisingly comfortable as his hands slid around her waist.

  Lacey’s tool belt scraped the door frame. “Sorry,” she said, stepping into the echoing room as Andy separated herself from Ben. “I didn’t realize anyone was still here.”

  “We were just finishing up,” said Andy, walking coolly toward her. “Is there any news?”

  “Nothing, sorry.”

  “Oh.” For a moment the younger woman seemed at a loss. Then she pushed the dark tendrils of hair off her sweaty forehead. “I’m off to the treadmill, then. See you back at the house.” As she pushed open the door to the workout room, Ben coiled up her belay rope and hung it neatly on a peg among several others. He hung up the harnesses on another hook and sorted a plastic tub of short gear pieces with carabiners at one or both ends.

  “So,” he said after a long moment, “I’m just going to work around here a bit, unless you need something?”

  That was the end of Lacey’s plan to fix cameras tonight. The one facing the machine-shed door was way up the wall, anyway. She’d need a stepladder.

  “I was just wondering if the workout room is for family only, or if I could use it too? Tomorrow.”

  Ben shrugged. “Technically, if you’re staying at Bart’s you’re a guest, anyway. So go for it. You’re stuck here until Orrin’s found?”

  “Yup. Are you really not concerned about your father being missing more than twenty-four hours?”

  He fiddled with a strap. “I guess I think the old guy is indestructible. He’s always been a force of nature. Tyrone’s just a kid. Even if they’re eating hot dogs in some ballpark, he’s stuck with Orrin, who is, well, ‘unpredictable’ is the nice way to say it. There’s no buffer between him and Ty if he flies off the handle.”

  “Surely Tyrone is the star in Orrin’s sky,” said Lacey. “At least, that’s the impression I got last week.”

  “He was an ass down at the Wyman place, right? And that’s his company behaviour. Our mom only put up with it for a few years.” He ran a length of rope through his hands. “The divorce was better for us, anyway. We weren’t trapped in this macho environment continually, the way Earl was.”

  “You don’t seem lacking in machismo yourself. All outdoorsy and muscular.” Oops! That sounded like she’d noticed his muscles particularly. She had been kind of admiring them, but not in a personally interested way.

  He blushed faintly. “I can’t help being more muscular than Bart. He’s an hour younger and a desk jockey. Although he’s pretty tough in his own way.”

  “As twins, did you do everything together? Same school, same hobbies, same friends?”

  “Not everything. He was more chess club and art class, I was soccer and tennis. We divided our school holidays between our mom’s place out on Vancouver Island and wherever Orrin wanted us. Usually someplace that would toughen us up more. There’s no room for pansies in Orrin’s world. Direct quote.”

  “I’ve heard his thoughts on that.” Lacey moved past him to peer through the workout room’s skinny window. The camera in there was mounted high above the treadmill, where Andy was running hard, and pointed straight at the front wall. The exterior door in that corner was most likely completely out of its lower frame. She’d need a ladder for that fix, too. “Did none of your brothers ever stand up to him?”

  “Not Earl, for sure. His mother wouldn’t let him, in case Orrin demoted him from Heir-Apparent to Also-Ran. Giselle never got over feeling stiffed because our mom made way more money off us than she did having Earl.”

  Oh yeah, the million-bucks-a-son deal. And wasn’t a girl mentioned, too, at Jake’s horrible dinner party? “Earl’s sister, Orrin’s only daughter … she’s not coming to hold vigil with the rest of you?”

  “Not her. As soon as she was appropriately married off, she became the property of her husband’s family. Orrin has no use for daughters. Earl only having girls is a constant thorn in his side. That’s the main reason he married our mom, and then Sloane: to have more sons, more male options to maintain his business empire. Earl was into some stupid teenage shit at school, and Orrin decided he wasn’t worthy. So he dumped Giselle, who didn’t want more kids by then, and took up with our mother. I’m not surprised Earl hates us. He’s been told every day of our lives that we were born on
purpose to supplant him.”

  Their anger at supper had been mutual. Nothing Ben said about Earl could be taken at face value, or vice versa, but about other relationships — things she could verify elsewhere — he was worth another question or two.

  “So Giselle keeps Earl in line, but your mother doesn’t?”

  Ben clicked another couple of carabiners onto their spike. “Our mom doesn’t give a shit about money or position. She left when we were eight, moved out to Cumberland to start her pottery studio. It’s a hippie town on Vancouver Island, full of artists and musicians and fire dancers. We loved it there. No haircuts, no bedtimes, no routines. Orrin had us for vacations. When we were twelve, he sent us to the same uptight academy Earl had attended. We stuck it for a while, but it wasn’t our bag at all. See me in a school uniform?” He frowned. “Bart was bullied constantly, and I punched out a few guys to stop it. Back then I figured Earl got his old school pals to turn their kid brothers against us, but maybe we were just too different. Free spirits instead of lockstep rich boys. When I got expelled for fighting, I told Mom Bart couldn’t stay there without me. She moved us to a boarding school near her, and we got to go home on weekends, bum around the beach, learn to surf. Best thing for us. We’re much more human than Earl is.”

  He seemed like he could go on dissing his brother all night, but it wasn’t revealing possible motives for sabotaging Orrin.