On Her Trail

by Marcelle Dubé

  What kind of questions? What the hell did he think they were asking? “Does Laura have any enemies? Would anyone have any reason to want her dead? What story was she working on? You know.” He was very careful to keep his tone respectful.

  Too many disrespectful people had disappeared around Johnny Tucker lately. It was a new development. Adam had never known Johnny to resort to violence before. Maybe he wasn’t very good at it, judging by the car bomb.

  “Hmm.” Johnny finally pushed his plate away. In the past few years, he’d developed a little paunch. He was forty-nine, but he looked closer to sixty-three.

  Must be the stress of the job, thought Adam.

  “Where is she?” asked Johnny quietly.

  Careful, Adam warned himself. He looked at Johnny. “I don’t know. She refused to tell me.”

  A waiter stopped at their table and swept up Johnny’s plate and cutlery and, at Adam’s nod, his untouched food. As soon as he was out of earshot, Johnny leaned forward.

  “You need to find her, Adam.”

  Adam felt himself flushing hot. The words tumbled out of him before he could hold them back. “Why? So you can finish the job you started?”

  Johnny’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You like this girl?”

  Adam struggled for composure, clamping his damp hands on his knees beneath the table. “Yes, I like her, Johnny. I’ve worked with her for a lot of years.”

  Johnny sat back in his chair and studied Adam. Finally he raised his glass and drank the last of the beer before setting it down.

  “All right, Adam. Because of our long friendship, I’ll give you a chance to save her.” He leaned forward and set his elbows on the tablecloth. “You find her. Talk to her. Get her to come back here so I can talk to her. If you can both convince me she’ll keep her mouth shut, she’ll be safe.” He took a deep breath. “But if she won’t, I may have to do something you’ll both regret.”

  The blood drained from Adam’s face, leaving him suddenly cold—whether with fear, or anger, he couldn’t tell. “Are you threatening me, Johnny?”

  Johnny Tucker looked genuinely hurt. “I don’t have to threaten you, Adam. You’re smart enough to realize that if I go down, you go down. You have to keep her quiet, for both our sakes. Find her, Adam. We’re running out of time.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The rig came to a stop in a series of gasps and exhales. Laura shook herself awake, momentarily disoriented.

  “This is where I turn off,” said Bert. His eyes crinkled in sympathy as he watched her. He waited patiently, his big hands resting on the steering wheel. A picture of his wife and ten-year-old daughter was clipped to the visor, where he could see it every time he glanced up.

  Laura blinked hard, willing herself to alertness. The Skagway turnoff. She looked around. There was the gas station with its attached diner. It had a new paint job. A few pickup trucks were parked in front of it. It was too early for the lunch crowd, too late for the morning rush. A car passed them, heading south on the Alaska Highway. Tourist season is over, thought Laura, or there’d be a lot more traffic.

  “Thanks, Bert. I appreciate the ride.” She tugged on the door handle with one hand and hooked her suitcase strap with the other. “You’re a prince among men.”

  The truck driver rolled his eyes and grinned, waving her off.

  Laura meant it. Five rides in long-haul rigs and she was now a fan of truckers. Toronto to Winnipeg, then Edmonton, Fort St. John, Watson Lake and finally Whitehorse. In spite of the distance and the uncertainty of her next ride, it had taken less than five days to drive the almost 3,500 miles to her childhood home.

  If she got out of this mess alive, she would write a story about truck drivers.

  Laura slid down to the step just below the passenger door, then hopped down, holding the suitcase away from her so it wouldn’t bang against her or trip her on landing. She swung the door closed and waved as Bert pulled away from the shoulder, the rig rumbling as he shifted gears. He turned onto the secondary highway toward Skagway and finally disappeared over the rise.

  She turned back to the Alaska Highway, bag in hand, and stared down its lonely length. Exhaustion caught at her throat, threatening release as a sob, but she couldn’t afford to go to pieces yet. She was still six miles from her mother’s house, six miles she would have to cover on foot.

  With a groan she hauled the straps over her shoulders and shrugged the backpack into place. She no longer loved it. It was a poor suitcase and a worse backpack.

  She glanced longingly at the gas station behind her. It would be so easy to walk over, plop a quarter in the pay phone and call home. “Come get me,” she would say, as if she were a teenager at a party. “I’m tired.”

  She wished she could call Jason, but he was working in Vancouver for one of the daily newspapers. Maybe his dad would come. Mr. Howell had always been fond of her.

  But she couldn’t call anyone. Somebody at the gas station might recognize her. As long as she remained another hitchhiker seen from a distance, no one would pay attention to her. And it wasn’t fair to involve Mr. Howell if she wasn’t willing to give his paper the story.

  She sighed.

  One mile later, she turned off the highway onto Wild Rose Lane. Almost five miles to go—four on the dirt road before she finally reached her mother’s long driveway.

  At the top of the lane, she paused. She had grown up on Wild Rose Lane, which wasn’t a lane, really. It was a well-graded, hard-packed road with a dozen smaller roads branching off it. Each one led to one or more homes sitting on a parcel of forty acres of land. If she stayed on the Lane, a neighbor was bound to drive by.

  With another sigh she climbed into and out of the dry ditch and entered the sparse woods.

  ***

  Fay stopped the car in front of the house and switched off the engine. Hefting a grocery bag in each arm, she pushed the car door shut with her hip and walked around to the back of the house. She left the groceries and her purse on the back porch, then headed for the garden.

  The fenced garden crowned the cliff where it began to slope upward. Some romaine lettuce had survived the first frosts and the cauliflower and broccoli were thriving. Another week and the brussels sprouts would be ready for harvesting.

  As always, the garden worked its soothing magic on her. She wandered through the herb beds, taking deep breaths, allowing the accumulated pain of other women to slip away from her. No misery was allowed in this garden. No ghosts, either.

  The river flowed a hundred feet below the garden, though she couldn’t see it from her vantage point. Across the ravine, the forest picked up where it had left off, trees marching in green and yellow splendor, ridge upon ridge, until the colors faded into the purple distance.

  She glanced up at the cloudless sky. Frost tonight, no doubt. She would bring in the last of the garden flowers. They might as well grace her table for a few days before dying.

  She had already harvested the carrots and the potatoes, which were safely stored in the cold room. Judging by the size of the broccoli, however, it would be the vegetable of choice for dinner tonight. Fresh broccoli, steamed and tossed in hot olive oil and garlic. Yum. Her stomach growled in anticipation.

  As she strolled between the beds, she gradually became aware that she was being watched. Her smile faded. James or Sawyer? Or both? Reluctantly she turned toward the house.

  Laura stood on the back porch, tall and pale, and Fay’s heart lurched.

  “Hi, Fay,” said Laura.

  Relief settled in the pit of her stomach. Not dead, then. Not a ghost.

  “Laura,” she finally managed to say. “What’s the matter? Why aren’t you in Paris?”

  Her daughter’s expression closed down.

  There, I’ve done it again, thought Fay.

  “I’m glad to see you, too, Fay,” said Laura.

  The smile she gave her mother was half rueful, half bitter, and Fay wanted to call a time out. Let’s try again, she wanted to say. I can do
better.

  Instead she sighed. “Come inside. You must be hungry.”

  ***

  “But can’t you go to the police here?” asked Fay. She stood on the other side of the work island from Laura, her hands poised over the salad bowl. A piece of torn romaine lettuce drooped from one hand.

  Laura continued arranging garden flowers in a shallow vase. She concentrated on stripping excess leaves from the marigolds before tucking them in among the others. Fay watched her expectantly.

  Finally Laura shrugged. “I could go to the police, but even if they’re all made of sterling stuff, someone will get careless. A report will land on the wrong desk. A phone conversation will be overheard. That’s how I get a lot of my information. But once the magazine comes out, I’ll be safe, no matter who’s on Mr. T.’s payroll.”

  Above the sink the ruffled yellow curtains billowed out. In the growing darkness beyond the open window, the trees swaying in the wind were visible only as shadowy movements. A single lamp glowed in the living room below the kitchen railing, an island of light in a pool of night. She had forgotten how quickly night fell in the North at this time of year.

  “Is he really that dangerous?” asked Fay.

  Laura nodded cautiously. Clearly Fay hadn’t heard about the explosion and there was no point in telling her about it. At least, not right away. Fay didn’t have a television and had never felt the need to keep up with the news. By the time she finally did learn about the explosion, Johnny T. would already be in jail.

  The explosion had taught her caution. Johnny Tucker was powerful. That he would try to kill a reporter so publicly meant he was sure of himself and his police contacts. It also meant she couldn’t trust anyone.

  His strength was his anonymity. Few people knew what Johnny Tucker did when he left his Port Customs office at five o’clock every day. As Director, he was aware of all shipped merchandise coming into the Port of Montreal. At first, he’d merely falsified a document here or delayed a shipment there. Now he controlled drug smuggling on the east coast and was expanding to the west coast.

  She had only found him because she knew he must exist. From the day she arrived in Montreal, the rival biker gangs vying for control of drug smuggling on Montreal’s docks had fascinated her. Then she met a business reporter at an economics conference in Vancouver. Over drinks one night the reporter told Laura about the resurgence of Asian gang wars in Vancouver’s port. They both agreed the real money wasn’t at the gang level.

  Something inside Laura had clicked. Montreal police were busy trying to control gang warfare on the docks. And according to the Vancouver reporter, that city’s finest were trying to keep Asian gangs from each other’s throats…which meant the police had few resources left to deal with smuggling.

  Laura had tried to convince Adam there was a story behind the gang warfare, but he turned her down.

  “We did a biker story just two months ago,” he’d said, leaning back in his chair and twirling his pen between his palms. He quirked an eyebrow at her. “What about the flooding in Chambly? I’ve heard complaints that the new drainage system is under-spec. Have you spoken to any city officials yet?”

  In the five years she had known Adam Rhys, she had come to recognize that particular look in his eye, the look that said, This discussion is over.

  So she’d pursued it on her own time. Two months and some serious digging later, she found Johnny Tucker. She had traced Swiss bank accounts, spied on his secret meetings, bribed accountants. The man was worth millions, yet none of her regular contacts knew of his existence. She was willing to bet that if anyone in the biker gangs knew, it was at the higher echelons only.

  But she couldn’t tell Fay any of it. It was bad enough that her mother knew the story existed.

  “And the magazine is due out when?” asked Fay.

  “On Wednesday.” In two days she would be safe.

  Fay stared at her daughter, digesting the information. After a while she turned her attention back to the bowl and resumed tearing the lettuce.

  Laura stole a glance at her mother’s reflection in the balcony door window. There was a lot of silver in Fay’s short, blond hair, but she didn’t look fifty-three. Her eyes were still the startling blue that Laura had always envied. She carried herself well, her back straight, her head high, so that Laura always forgot Fay was four inches shorter than her. Working hard, walking and skiing kept her slim.

  Laura relaxed. Fay wouldn’t press. She hadn’t even asked the obvious—why not leave copies of the story with several people and let it be known that she had done so?

  Laura had considered it, but she worried it would endanger those she involved. It would also multiply the chances of a rival obtaining a copy of her story, robbing her of her scoop. So she had compromised. She’d placed three notarized and sealed copies of the article with three courier companies. Two days after the magazine appeared on the newsstands, the envelopes were to be delivered to the federal Crown Attorney’s office, to RCMP headquarters in Regina and to the business reporter in Vancouver who had unknowingly given her the tip.

  She didn’t tell Adam. Not only had she disobeyed him, she had robbed the magazine of its exclusive rights to her work. She was gambling that once Adam published it—and he would, he had promised—the magazine wouldn’t fire the reporter who had written the story of the decade. It would make her reputation as a reporter and was worth some risk.

  But who else was she willing to risk?

  Laura realized she was crushing the marigolds.

  This was a mistake, she decided abruptly. She should never have come here. No matter how unlikely, there was still a chance she would be found within the next two days. She should never have exposed Fay to danger, especially when Fay didn’t know how serious the danger was.

  “I’ll go in the morning, Fay,” she said, and realized how blunt it sounded as soon as Fay raised her head.

  She knew her mother didn’t like it when Laura called her by her given name. She didn’t know why she kept it up—habit more than anything else. Besides, she’d never been a touchy-feely kind of daughter.

  “What I meant,” Laura added, “is that I should never have exposed you to this. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  Fay smiled. “You did what anyone would have done. You headed for the one place you always felt safe.”

  Laura looked at her mother, unable to speak. Home had been safe as long as Dad was alive. Why had she come here? Had she honestly hoped she would be safe?

  “Fay…” she began.

  “No,” said Fay, putting up a hand. “Where would you go? The magazine is out in two days,” she added calmly. “Stay at least that long. Then we can discuss it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the morning Laura waited for her mother to leave for work before getting up. Fay now worked two days a week at a women’s safe house, but hadn’t said why. The why was clear to Laura. Her parents had had a strained marriage. Now that her husband was dead, Fay wanted to help women whose relationships had gone beyond strained. But Laura couldn’t help thinking Fay’s choice of work was like advertising her marital difficulties to the whole world, and an implicit criticism of Dad.

  Her first impulse on rising was to see the river. She padded barefoot to the kitchen balcony and stood in her nightgown, shivering and rubbing her arms. Below her the river rumbled in steely glory. The sun peeked over the mountain range and frost sparkled like magic dust on the garden. The shadows on the cliffs opposite seemed cool and mysterious. Wilted fireweed had turned from fiery red to rust, brown and yellow, and spiky foxtail seeds cartwheeled through the air, waiting to hook on fur, feather or fabric.

  Laura went back inside and took a hot shower. The house needed no tidying. Her mother’s room, at the other end of the house from hers, was neat. A new bedspread graced the bed, matching the new curtains. The geometric pattern with its mustard yellow accents contrasted well with the green walls. Nothing else had changed in the house.

  Fiv
e years earlier, Dad had converted the second-floor guest bedroom to a workroom for Fay’s quilting. A large cutting table filled one side of the room. The wall above it was fitted with a pegboard from which hung various scissors and rolling blades, measuring tapes, gridded cutting boards and clear plastic rulers for cutting even strips of fabric. Against the opposite wall, beneath the window, Fay had set up her sewing machine. Another pegboard, about four feet by four feet, was screwed to the wall, next to the machine. It was filled with multi-colored bobbins of thread, a cheerful mosaic. A quilt stand in one corner held three folded quilts in various stages of completion. An ironing board hung neatly on its holder behind the door, the iron safely stored in its own compartment.

  Laura left the guest room and went to the room next to it. It had been designed as a music room but was rarely used as one. Open to the rest of the house, it faced the equally open kitchen across from, and looking down on, the sunken living room. A series of long, narrow windows on the upper level filled the house with light and gave the music room the best light in the house. There Fay had set up her quilting loom. Laura wandered over to the quilt in progress, admiring the tones of amethyst, rose and emerald that formed the main colors of the work. Flying clouds, thought Laura, recognizing the pattern. Beautiful.

  The telephone rang, giving her a start. She waited, controlling the impulse that almost sent her running for the kitchen extension. One, two, three, four rings. Finally the answering machine clicked on.

  “You’ve reached 555-7344 and I can’t come to the phone right now,” said her mother’s voice. “Please leave a message at the sound of the tone.”

  The tone came on and Laura waited, but only silence followed. After five seconds, the caller hung up.

  Not her mother, then. They had agreed Fay would leave a message on the machine to identify herself. Only then would Laura pick up.

  Disturbed, Laura returned to the kitchen. She shouldn’t let the anonymous caller bother her. Lots of people refused to leave messages on answering machines.