by Linda Moore
Then, with a sudden shiver, I recognized one of the men coming out of the store. It was the interrogator, the one who had pushed me into the back seat and put the restraints on my wrists.
But what happened next took my breath away. Following him out the door, carrying the grocery bags, was not his partner, the SUV driver, but someone else.
I looked at Sophie. “What’s going on here? That’s Jacob!”
Chapter 11
As we watched, the interrogator got in on the passenger’s side. Jacob put the supplies in the back and then got behind the wheel, reversed, turned, and drove out of the lot. He entered the main road and made a left at the Boer War Monument, heading up the 358 towards North Mountain.
“I think I’m in shock, Sophie,” I said, realizing that Jacob was either a very recent recruit, or he had been working for them all along and had said nothing.
“Come on, Roz. Let’s go! Before they get too far ahead.”
I started the engine just as my phone bleeped. “It’s a Wolfville number,” I said glancing at the screen.
“It might be the vet. Better take it,” Sophie said.
“You take it.” I handed her the phone. “I’ll drive, so we don’t lose them.” I pulled out of the empty lot, and signalled to turn at the monument.
“Yes?” Sophie said. “Constable Cudmore?” She looked at me.
“Oh, God. Just a sec,” I said.
“Roz will be with you right away.”
I turned the corner and pulled over to the side of the road and took the phone.
“Constable Cudmore, of course, I remember you from yesterday morning. What’s up?”
“I’m on assignment from Corporal Monaghan. She sent me up Jasper Creek Road to take a look around. She wanted me to get in touch with you.”
“Have you found something?”
“I’ve found Mr. McBride’s car.”
“You have? A red Subaru wagon?” I locked eyes with Sophie, and put the phone on speaker.
“It’s his. I’ve checked the plate number,” he said.
“Where is it?”
“Uh…there’s a quarry along that road—”
“I know where you mean. There’s a hand-painted sign across the road from the quarry entrance, right?”
“Yup. It’s parked in there.”
“But he’s not there?”
“No sign of him.”
“Anything else catch your eye—any evidence of a scuffle?”
“No, ma’am. Just the car.”
“Is it locked?”
“Yes it is. Corporal Monaghan wants me to leave it in place for now, in case Mr. McBride gets back to it.”
“In case?” Sophie mouthed to me.
“What else can you tell me, Constable Cudmore? Did you go to the end of the road and check out the bridge?”
“This is as far as I got. I’m off duty now, so I’m heading back to the detachment.” I rolled my eyes, remembering how easily he had given up on seeing the girl in the tree.
“Will you be going back out that way sometime soon?”
“It all depends on my orders.”
“Please don’t hesitate call me if something else comes to light. Even if you think it’s nothing. Even if it’s the middle of the night.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He ended the call.
“The last person I expected to hear from,” I said to Sophie.
“You see, Roz, you did get things moving this afternoon, and they found Ruby! So let’s get going. If we do nothing else tonight, we can at least get a look at McBride’s car.”
“What about eating? Are you okay, Sophie?” I asked.
She reached down into her bag and pulled out a granola bar. “I’ve got two of these, an apple, and half a bottle of water. We’ll be fine. And we’ve got the maps.”
“Okay. Here we go.” I signalled to pull out into the traffic and headed up the 358. The SUV would be well ahead of us by now. There were plenty of cars on the winding road with people heading home, or coming down from the North Mountain communities to attend evening events in the valley. It was almost 7 P.M. but there were still a couple of hours of light. We needed to get to the quarry, and I hoped we would also have enough time to take a good look around.
While I drove, Sophie studied the map. “Oh—there’s the quarry. It looks like there’s just the one,” she said as we turned onto Jasper Creek Road.
“It’s down near the end of this road, close to the Bay of Fundy.”
“That’s right,” she said. “It looks tiny on the map. What do they quarry there?”
“I’m assuming it’s sand and gravel for construction projects.”
“But why would McBride’s car be parked there?”
“That’s the question, Sophie. Did he park it there? Did someone else stash it there? We don’t know.”
I slowed down as we passed the driveway to the arts centre to see if there was any sign of Jacob or the SUV, but all was quiet. I had no way of knowing whether Jacob was actually working for the thugs, or if it was under duress. It would explain his reluctance to talk to me, those serious warnings about crossing the bridge, and his knowledge of the guard dogs. But did he have direct knowledge about McBride?
I needed answers and at the moment there were none. We drove along in silence for a couple of kilometres. I glanced at Sophie. She was working hard to keep herself distracted.
“I never even asked you how Toronto was,” I said.
“Oh, it was…Toronto. Let’s face it, I have a love/hate relationship with that city. But I do have some old friends there who I stayed with—actors I went to the National Theatre School with—so great to see them. I did a couple of decent auditions. One was for a new crime series which I think I might actually get work on.”
“That’s great news. What would you do, move up there?”
“Oh no. It would only be for two or three months. It’s a big production company. My agent thinks they’d take care of accommodations and so on. They hope to start shooting in late August. I should know soon, so fingers crossed. Maybe McBride could even come with me for a stretch—that’s what I was thinking, but….” She trailed off. We both felt the fear grab us as the conversation veered back around to the present situation.
“Oh—quarry’s coming up!” I said. I slowed down to prepare to turn in. But just then a large tanker truck loomed in the entrance, signalling to pull out. I came to a halt on the narrow shoulder to allow the truck to clear. I fully expected the driver to pull around me and head towards the valley. But instead he turned right, driving towards the Bay of Fundy. We watched the truck disappear over a low rise, its silver tank shining in the early evening sun.
“Now why on earth would he go that way?” I said.
“Well, what’s down there?”
“Of course!”
“What?”
“He must be going down there to cross that industrial bridge! What other reason is there to go that way? I mean, it’s the end of the road. Let’s follow him and find out.”
“No! C’mon, Roz, we have to go in here first and take a look at Ruby Sube. Please! I have to lay eyes on that car.” Sophie was distraught. My instincts were to follow the tanker, but I gave in.
“You’re right. Let’s at least see whether the car is actually there.”
The quarry wasn’t large. The open section felt about the size of a baseball diamond. There were various piles of different grades of gravel and sand and slate, and impressive piles of sliced rock, which had clearly been quarried directly out of a high outcropping that formed the back end of the area.
There she was. Ruby Sube! Tucked in close to the trees on our left. More central, and near the back of the quarry, was a rickety camper-trailer that possibly served as an office, but for the time being we had the place to ourselves. I drove over a
nd parked next to Ruby, nosing in towards the trees and undergrowth that grew along either side of the quarry. Sophie and I got out. I couldn’t see anything of particular interest on the ground around McBride’s car. Sophie bent down and tried to peer in through the windows on the passenger’s side.
I stood by the driver’s door and smiled at her across the roof. “I have a key,” I said.
“Handy.” She smiled back.
I’d picked McBride’s car up on many occasions while I was working for him and still carried the key on my ring. I opened the door, got in, and reached across to unlock the passenger’s side for Sophie. The two of us sat silently in the glow of the low sun, staring into the trees, trying desperately to imagine what could have befallen McBride and where he was now. There didn’t seem to be any clues in the car—though the floor of the back seat was its usual collection of papers, plastic bags, fast food wrappers, and crumpled coffee cups.
“Not the tidiest,” I said drily.
“He’s working on it,” Sophie said, “but honestly, Roz, the house was a sight!”
“Oh, dear. If he’d made it home, I know he would have cleaned it up for you. Listen, since we’re here, I’m going to quickly scout the circumference of the quarry and see what there is to see.”
“I just need to sit here for a minute,” she said.
I jogged up to the rear boundary of the quarry and behind the old trailer, which had a couple of small windows that were held together with masking tape and covered on the inside by old bent venetian blinds. I paused and stared. Could he be in there?
I ran around to the front of the trailer and up some little steps. I knocked. Then I tried the door, but it was locked. If I stood on my toes, I could see most of the area inside through the filthy door-window. There was a cluttered desk and an old swivel chair with ripped upholstery, a sink and cupboard area, and a narrow cot. That was it.
I resumed my circuitous inspection of the quarry borders. The rock face along the back was fairly high and sheer and extended across the entire width of the quarry. Then I turned to explore the side opposite to where we had parked. Alders and other undergrowth formed the border. Assorted grades of gravel extended in piles from the back all the way to the ditch by the road. As I made my way along the edge between the gravel and the bush, something on the ground just beyond the boundary caught my eye. I moved in among the trees to get a closer look. Unmistakable.
I picked it up, legged it back across the quarry, and slid into the driver’s seat beside Sophie. “Look what I found!” I handed her Molly’s round white water dish.
“Oh, Roz.”
“So McBride has been here with Molly! He must have let her out of the car for a little exercise and a drink. But did he just forget the water dish—or did something distract him? Was this before he was at the bridge or after?”
We looked at each other. “Who knows?” she said, starting to tear up again.
“Okay listen, Sophie, let’s get into my car and go down to the end of the road, to see what we can discover.”
Just as we reached for the door handles to let ourselves out, headlights appeared at the entrance and a large tanker truck rumbled into the quarry. Even though it was the back end of McBride’s car that faced into the circle, Sophie and I both instinctively slid down in our seats.
The driver carefully maneuvered the truck around so that it was pointing out towards the road and away from us. He jumped down from the cab. On his head was a well-worn Stetson Western.
“Nice hat,” Sophie said.
“Check out those kickers!”
“Ancient eh? They’ve seen a lot of miles.”
I watched him in my side mirror as he walked to his left and behind a small mountain of quarried gravel.
“Now what’s he doing?” I muttered.
“Nature calls?” Sophie ventured. “So, is that the same truck we just saw coming back now, or what?”
“No. It’s the same style of tank but the cab is different, and this one approached from the valley, not the Bay of Fundy. You know what? A tanker truck almost forced me off this road last night. What are all these tankers doing? I mean, they’re certainly not here to pick up gravel.”
“What do you think is in those shiny silver tanks?” Sophie asked.
“Thousands of gallons of something….”
“There he is,” Sophie said, peeking between our two seats and out through the rear window of Ruby Sube.
We watched him as he took his phone out of his denim shirt pocket, punched in some numbers, and paced around in front of his truck. He spoke, then nodded his head and looked at his watch. He put his phone away, leaned back against the front grill, took out a package of cigarettes, and lit one.
“Players,” I said.
“Central casting,” added Sophie.
“It’s a waiting game. What’s he waiting for?”
“Maybe he’s waiting for that other one.”
“Like for a meeting, or…no—that’s it! You’ve got it, Sophie!”
“What have I got?”
“There must be room for only one tanker at a time! That’s why they come in here—they’re using this quarry as a kind of holding pen while they wait.”
As if on cue, the tanker we had seen when we first arrived rumbled by the quarry entrance, making its way back along Jasper Creek Road towards the valley. It gave a short blast of its horn as it passed the entrance. Our driver, still leaning against his truck, dropped his cigarette, ground it out, and pushed himself away from the grill. He ambled around to the driver’s side and climbed up into the cab. He started up the engine and the tanker lumbered forward to the entrance, and pulled out, heading right, towards Fundy.
After a couple of minutes, we got into Old Solid and followed him. The sun was a red ball low in the sky.
“I was here at exactly the same time last night,” I said. “Oh, and I was here this morning too. No wonder I feel like I’m getting nowhere.”
“That’s not true, Roz,” Sophie said. “If you hadn’t been here this morning, you wouldn’t have found Molly. And you had no choice but to get her out of here and straight to the vet.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But why oh why haven’t we heard anything from McBride?”
We were passing the dirt lane that went off to the left behind the cabins.
“You know what? I’m going to pull in here and ditch the car,” I said to Sophie. “In case Jacob and our friend in the SUV happen by and recognize Old Solid.”
I turned left and drove along behind the camps. Each property had a little driveway. I chose the third one and tucked my car in between what looked like a well house and the cabin. There was no sign of any summer-dwellers. The windows had their protective shutters in place. “Winter and July,” I said.
“Okay, here we go.” We jumped out. I grabbed my grey hoodie from the back seat, and Sophie put on her leather jacket. She tucked the folded maps into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. I locked the car and we walked rapidly out to Jasper Creek Road. The light was a kind of pre-dusk purple and it was getting chilly. I pulled on my hoodie. The air was sweet with the unmistakable smell of brine.
We could hear the roar of a truck engine and, looking beyond the bridge, we caught sight of the tanker disappearing into the spruce forest at the top of the high promontory overlooking the bay.
“That’s gotta be our cowboy!” Sophie said.
“Yeehaw!” I said, smiling. “This means the quarry, the tankers, and the bridge are all connected! McBride must have been piecing it all together when they got him. There must be a building up there or a depot or….”
“So back to the question: how do we get up there?” Sophie said, champing at the bit.
“That’s what I meant about crossing the creek further inland and making our way through the undergrowth to the top of ridge.”
“So we really can’t just go straight up there from here?” There was an impatient edge in her voice.
“As much as I’d love to do that right now and see what’s going on with that rig, we’d be jumping the gun, especially if there are guard dogs up there. And we know Molly was attacked, Sophie—those dogs are real.”
“Then let’s go with your plan, Roz. Come back early tomorrow and find that creek further inland, and make our way to the top.” She patted her bag. “We’ve got the maps.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s what we’ll do.”
We started to head back to my car. We’d just turned onto the lane behind the cabins when headlights coming along Jasper Creek Road lit up the trees on our right. I caught a quick glimpse of a blue pickup.
“You look,” I said to Sophie, keeping myself turned away from the lights. The vehicle sped past the lane and continued towards the slope that led down to the wharf. “What was it?” I said.
“A small truck. I think it’s blue—it’s a bit too dark to know for sure.”
“Was it a Ford?” I asked.
“Could be.” I always teased Sophie because she could never tell one make of vehicle from another.
“It’s gotta be buddy from this morning who called me a gawker and told me to mind my own business.”
“Go get your car, Roz. I’m just going to whip back along the side of the road and take a peek down to see what he’s up to. Don’t worry—if he questions me I’ll tell him I lost my hat or something. I mean, it’s still a public beach. I’ll meet you right back here at this turnoff.”
Before I could stop her she had darted back out onto Jasper Creek Road and was running towards the top of the slope. I picked up my pace. I didn’t want Sophie out there in the dark in the same place where I’d recently lost McBride.
My fears were unfounded. Sophie was right where she said she’d be and jumped in beside me, just as the sun sank below the horizon.
“So who is he and what’s he doing?” I asked.
“It is an older fella, with a plaid jacket and a peaked cap.”
“That’s him,” I said. “Mind you, that description fits most of the old boys in the Valley.”