Читать книгу When the Flood Falls - J.E. Barnard - Страница 6

They were working inside the loading bay, stringing camera cable up above the ceiling tiles, when Lacey got around to asking her boss about loaner lights.

“And who is your roommate that I’d trust them with my equipment?” Wayne’s voice was dry in the way that every sergeant’s voice Lacey had ever heard was dry, like he couldn’t quite believe a rookie was asking such a stupid question, but then, what better could be expected of a rookie? She flushed without meaning to and found she was standing at parade rest without having consciously shifted position. Working for another ex-RCMP officer was supposed to ease her transition back to civilian life, but it reminded her every day that she hadn’t been strong enough, in the end, to cope with the strains of a cop’s life. Quitting on Wayne wasn’t an option; she needed something besides RCMP on her resume. And now she needed to stay near Dee, too.

“Dee Phillips,” she said.

His flat stare assessed her. “Well, aren’t you the savvy operator? Moved in with the boss of the whole job, just like that.”

“We were university roommates. She heard I was out here and offered me a bed until the Centre’s wired. Saves me the commute from Calgary.” She eased out of the formal stance and repeated the request. “May I borrow two motion-sensor lights to monitor her yard for a few nights, please?”

“No.”

So much for that option. Maybe there were cheap versions at Canadian Tire. She could rush in right after work to buy some and whatever tools she would need to install them. Getting back to do it before dark would be tricky, especially if she went to Tom’s to pick up her stuff.

“No,” said Wayne again. “Since she’s the president of this whole job, we should do better by her. Get me photos of the area you want covered and I’ll draw you up a plan. There are five or so spare lights in the van you can take. Is her house close enough that you can get there on your lunch break?”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded, his mind already moving to the next task. “Get me the small crimpers from the van, and a half-dozen AV ends.”

Lacey headed up the stairs to the staff exit and pushed open the flat steel door. A camera flashed in her face. She froze for a nanosecond, but the photographer was merely testing his equipment. Of course — the press conference Dee had mentioned. Out on the freshly laid lawn, a half-dozen microphones and cameras ignored the usual nutty protester by the road and focused on a grizzled cowboy in a battered beige hat and boots. He looked a hundred years old. The slender blonde leaning on his shoulder was barely a third his age. Her perfect teeth were aimed at the cameras while the fitful breeze flung strands of her glossy hair across the cowboy’s weathered face. His hand rested on a sturdy wooden sign that gave, in authentically rustic burnt lettering, the facility’s twin titles of Arts Centre and History Museum.

The woman looked faintly familiar and the cowboy not at all, but then Lacey had been on this job for barely a week. The only person she could name in the throng was Rob, the curator/manager of the new facility. With his pleated khakis and frosted dark hair, he stood out among the worn jeans and hard hats that infested the building. She veered behind a log pillar to avoid the media and came face-to-heels with a pair of scuffed workboots on a ladder. A workman on a ladder and a second up another ladder were stretched to full height, hooking a rolled-up banner between two of the fat logs that made up the building’s colonnade. Similar banners hung between other sets of pillars, with a pull rope strung between them all.

A videographer with a shoulder camera was the only person paying any attention to the workers, panning up their ladders, gathering background footage. Lacey edged past him, glad to be incognito in grubby civvies. No reporters today would demand comments on the Capilano River bridge incident or ask if she was part of the class action lawsuit against the RCMP. That life was behind her.

She followed the colonnade toward the parking lot. As she stepped clear of the building, the river assaulted her ears with its menacing rumble. Surely that brown, churning mass of water was a foot higher than yesterday? It was nothing like the happy, shallow blue stream she had seen last week. She turned her back on the swollen river with a shudder and breathed deep of the fresh mountain air. It smelt faintly of fir trees and strongly of good, clean mud, much better than the usual building-site odours of varnish and diesel. She unlocked the van, leaned into the rear door, and was groping for the right crimpers when a convertible shot into the parking lot with a squeal of tires. On instinct she noted the particulars: late-model BMW M6, bright orange, Alberta vanity plate Y-MAN4.

The Bimmer skidded to a stop in a swirl of dust. Three buff young men leaped out, hurdled over the row of newly planted shrubs, and stampeded over the sod toward the entrance. Beefcakes on the hoof. The media pack swung around to meet them. By the time the next camera flashed, the blonde was in their midst, draping her hands decoratively over a muscular forearm and leaning back to let her blond locks flutter over another man’s brawny shoulders. The old cowboy, abandoned, wandered toward a nearby bench. A shabby woman there shuffled sideways, making room for him while she fumbled a cellphone toward her shaggy brown curls. Lacey’s eyes slid back to the photo op, where Blondie was basking in the camera-flashes like a starlet on a red carpet. How was this promoting the new facility?

A shriek shredded the queit morning, so loud it echoed from the hill across the road. As Lacey spun to find its source, the shaggy woman lurched to her feet and stumbled toward the press, screeching. The cowboy jumped up, one hand reaching fruitlessly as Shaggy hurled her phone over the heads of the reporters. It bounced off an athlete’s shoulder. Media heads and camera lenses whipped toward the disturbance. Lacey’s feet were already moving, impelled by the old cop habit of running toward trouble, but Shaggy reached the scrum first. She batted a microphone away and was shoving a reporter aside when Rob leapt into her path. She staggered to a halt and slumped, weeping, onto his shoulder.

The media pack surged forward, blocking Lacey’s path, giving her the pause she needed to recall she was a mere civilian now, with no official standing to intervene. In any event, the threat seemed to be over. She retreated.

The cowboy came up behind Shaggy and waved his hand at the crowding reporters. They shuffled backward, but not far. Peering between the shoulder-cameras and microphones, Lacey watched the unlikely trio of shaggy woman, grizzled old man, and dapper Rob put their heads together. After a very short conference, Rob led Shaggy back to the bench. The old cowboy strode toward the reporters. Lacey expected a plea for mercy on the distraught woman but he said nothing. His hand flicked again.

The sound of thunder was probably her imagination, but the scrum felt it, too. They parted ahead of the old man like the Red Sea before Moses, leaving the athletic youngsters stranded on the grass. Even Blondie scuttled sideways, leaving the old man and the young ones in a circle of empty lawn. Whatever he said was too low for Lacey to catch, but the Bimmer’s driver took a sudden step backward. His tanned face paled. Scenting blood, the media stepped forward the instant the old man turned away. Rob left Shaggy’s side and drew them off.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he called over the murmur of the breeze, “the banner reveal is delayed a few minutes. I’d be happy to take questions now on the development of this wonderful new facility and the opening gala for our first-ever exhibition: A Century of Western Canadian Hockey.”

The reporters, with some backward glances, shuffled toward him, leaving the old cowboy once more seated on the bench with the shaggy woman. He no longer looked like a thrower of thunderbolts, but as perplexed as any man stuck with a crying woman. Lacey dodged around the re-forming scrum to crouch beside Shaggy. If there was any more trouble from this disturbed woman, she might help keep it off camera.

“Can I help you?” she asked Shaggy, who was still sobbing, although into a large white hankie that was probably the cowboy’s. “Are you hurt?”

The woman sniffed, dark curls tumbling over her shoulders. “Sorry. Got out of hand. I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?” The woman nodded, lowering her head until her droopy hat brim hid her tear-streaked face. Okay then. Since she showed no signs of leaping up or screaming, Lacey scanned the scene for other sources of trouble. There were none. The protester, his sign still held high, was staring from the roadside, just off the property. The media pack had followed Rob to the front entrance, where he was gesturing at the rolled banners high overhead. Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing for Lacey to do with her old, hard-wired police reactions. She went back for the crimpers, counted out the cable connectors, and headed for the staff door.

Fifteen minutes to fetch tools from the van. Not a good way to impress Wayne. He might think she was out here kissing up to the old cowboy, whoever he was — clearly someone the reporters respected and, since he was front and centre at the press conference, a power at the new museum.

Near lunchtime, she left the building by the front entrance. The media and the ladders were gone. The unrolled banners of outsize hockey players fluttered between the log pillars. She turned to view them from across the lawn, recognizing the ubiquitous Calgary Flames jersey on one as well as the Vancouver Canucks jersey she had been only too familiar with in the Lower Mainland. The opening exhibit upstairs in the east-wing gallery held more kinds of hockey memorabilia than she had ever suspected were made: sculptures, posters, comics, bronzed skates, and old uniforms. The walls were mostly bare, awaiting paintings and photographs on the same theme. Why a hockey exhibit in a cowboy-themed tourist village like Bragg Creek? She knew too little about art galleries or hockey — or cowboys — to hazard a guess. She left the Civic in the lot and set off on foot, staying on the side of the road farthest from the river.

Away from the building, the noise was louder. At the corner where the bridge came across, where she usually turned to head back to Calgary, she couldn’t avoid the sight of the water any longer. Big branches and other debris churned up against the bridge abutments. The largest pieces hit with a crack before swirling away, barely a foot below the bridge’s underbelly. She watched in sickened fascination until a car came along. The driver honked at her and she jumped, stepping hastily off the pavement beside the uphill turn to Dee’s house. After two minutes of steady walking, she was turning up Dee’s long driveway through the spruce trees. She let herself in by the mudroom door, noticing gratefully that the dogs were not in their pen to make a fuss. As she stepped into the house, though, a setter loped over from the living room, planted its feet, and growled at her.

Dee’s voice came behind it, sharp with fear. “Who’s there?”

“Me,” Lacey called back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I walked up.” When the dog turned away in answer to Dee’s call, she followed him into the living room. “You missed the excitement at the press conference.” She stopped. Dee was huddled on the couch, her faced blotched and her nose red. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“Not hurt bad, but I wrenched my ankle a bit. Again.”

Lacey scanned the room at light speed, but nothing seemed disturbed. Not an intruder, then. She breathed. “If it hurts enough to make you cry, maybe we should get it checked. Where’s the nearest medical place?”

Dee blew her nose on a soggy tissue. “Nothing closer than Calgary. And anyway, that’s not why I’m crying. Can’t a girl shed a few tears after she’s nearly been run over for the second time?”

Lacey perched on the corner of the massive coffee table and leaned toward her friend. “This happened today?”

“Yeah. I was walking with the dogs down toward the Centre when some assholes came speeding down the hill. I grabbed Boney and Beau and jumped into the ditch. When the dust settled I couldn’t get up right away. I just sat there, shaking.”

“Tell me you called the police.”

Dee lifted her chin. “No need. It was Jake Wyman’s car.”

“The kindly millionaire? He tried to run you over?”

“No. He lets guests drive his cars. It was another stupid bloody hockey player behind the wheel, I’m sure. They think they own the world.”

“Three jocks in an orange BMW, by chance?” Lacey wasn’t surprised by Dee’s nod. The timing fit. “They burned into the Centre’s parking lot while I was out there. Probably right after they passed you. If I’d known, I’d have nailed them.”

“I’m sure Jake has thumped them down by now.” Dee eased her shoulders from her blanket. “I called Rob’s phone right away to tell them not to hold the press conference. Jan answered. She’d have told Jake first thing.”

“Who’s Jan? That shaggy-haired woman with the piercing shriek?”

“My uphill neighbour. Old friend of Rob’s, and she’s known Jake forever, too. I heard her yell his name and then she was cut off.” So Jake Wyman was the old cowboy. He didn’t dress like Lacey’s West Coast idea of a multi-millionaire, but that explained the reporters’ deferential distance while he told off the punk driver.

“Your neighbour was cut off,” she told Dee, “because she threw the phone at the jocks and then tried to beat them up. She had to be restrained.”

Dee sat up. “Seriously? I hope she’s all right.”

“She said she was. She looked a wreck to me.”

“I’m sorry I told her. It just poured out of me when I heard a friendly voice. Like when you walked in. What else are friends for?” Dee grabbed a fresh tissue and mopped her face. “Why are you here? Need lunch? Leftover chicken and salad in the fridge. One of us will have to get groceries soon.”

Lacey explained about Wayne’s offer. “You’ll feel safer tonight if I can get those lights installed in the right places after work. And I’ll get your bike down, too.”

“No rush on the bike.” Dee unwrapped her legs from the blankets. “I’m too shaky to try riding today. But I’m so glad you came home. I feel saner already. I’ll do food while you do photos, okay?”

As Lacey moved around the outside of the house, trying to balance the need for prowler protection with the story she’d told Wayne about the dogs, she wondered at Dee’s sudden mood shifts. Was it just the stress, or had she become a bit, well, unstable? Was there any prowler, or had she imagined the whole thing? She’d said she had suspected that of herself; now Lacey suspected her, too. But they had to proceed as if there was evidence to be gathered. If nothing triggered the extra lights by Friday, the day of the museum gala, they could discuss that again. And she’d have three more days to evaluate Dee’s mood swings. Wouldn’t that be a touchy conversation — suggesting that Dee needed to see a therapist.