by Vicki Delany
“Gosh, will you look at the time, and me with all my Boxing Day calls still to make.” Nancy brushed crumbs off the front of her Christmas tree sweater and rose ponderously to her feet. “I had better get going. Thanks so much for the eggnog, Joanna.”
“You’re very welcome.” Joanna walked her guest to the door. “Too bad you weren’t here a bit earlier. You just missed my daughter and son-in-law.”
Nancy struggled into her winter boots and heavy coat. “That would have been nice,” she said, departing with a bright smile and a cheerful wave.
Joanna cleared up the glasses and cake plates and placed them into the sink to wash later. She returned to her desk, sorted through her papers, and tried to get her mind back to where she had left off. Her eyes fell on the gift basket sitting on the corner of the desk and she ran her fingers across the now-discarded wrappings. She liked the sound the cellophane made as she crinkled it between her fingers. She felt a twinge of guilt; Nancy seemed so keen to offer her, Joanna, friendship. Then she reminded herself firmly that she didn’t want any friends-that she only wanted to be left alone. She pounded the “Enter” key to clear the screen saver.
Maude and Rocky also dropped by to pay a social call. Maude brought a bottle of homemade jam and Rocky attempted to bring a dead twig that was caught in his long, fluffy tail. Maude had no news of Tiffany. Their Christmas had been strained; the girl’s intense disappointment at not hearing a word from her mother was palpable although she tried to hide it behind a fa�ade of indifference. From the police they had, thankfully, also heard nothing. Maybe it would all blow over, Maude said more to herself than to Joanna.
As soon as the old woman and her dog had set out for the walk home, Joanna remembered Tiffany’s bright red scarf, which was still hanging on the coat hook beside the front door. She considered running after Maude to return it, but it was now snowing copiously and she was reluctant to pull on the necessary layers of clothing to venture outdoors. She promised herself that she would take it over tomorrow.
Of course, she forgot all about the scarf as soon as her back was turned and it hung on the old wooden hook throughout the New Year.
She accomplished a lot of work in the week between Christmas and New Year. She finished the bicycle club web page and her client was wildly enthusiastic about it. The task was enjoyable and she hoped that it would lead to more. She talked on the phone with Francis Fukuyama daily and expected to have the demonstrations and models ready for Morris Lipton in plenty of time.
It snowed steadily most of the week and she left the cabin only to shovel the driveway and drag her cross-country skis out for some exercise. The iron stove was kept going all day and all night and the last batch of firewood that Robert had so clumsily chopped was almost finished.
One dark evening a dose of cabin fever descended on her with the ferocity of the plague and she drove well over an hour through bad roads and worse driving conditions to North Ridge, to the nearest available “good” restaurant. That is, one that served something more imaginative, she was thrilled to discover, than hot turkey sandwiches with canned peas and gravy and mashed potatoes. She had a lovely dinner, and then it was back to the cabin and work and more work.
Scott was not due back from Florida until the first week of January and Elaine had taken off again, this time to Mexico. Joanna spent New Year’s Eve working, and scarcely glanced up when the clock reached midnight.
But the holidays were over eventually and then it was time to travel down to Toronto for another round of meetings on the documentation project. She couldn’t wait to get out of the cabin and out of Hope River. She and Elaine arranged to meet for dinner and this time she felt she could afford the luxury of a night at her friend’s house rather than drive all the way back up north through the winter night.
The strange, disturbing dreams had not bothered her since Christmas Eve, although they remained unnaturally memorable and fresh in her mind.
Joanna arrived at the company’s offices for her appointment only to find Francis waiting for her among the crowd of smokers puffing away outside the front doors. The young man looked tense and concerned. He was standing alone, well away from the social groups of smokers and was not smoking himself. She approached him, hand outstretched, frozen smile in place, already afraid of the news he was so obviously there to give. He did so quickly: Morris Lipton had suffered a massive heart attack on New Year’s Day and would be off work for quite some time. Francis had not been at work yesterday; he was attending a family funeral in a town some distance away so he only heard the news this morning. He tried to call Joanna, but she was on her way. Overnight, Fred Blanchard had taken control of the documentation and training aspects of the project and was already causing trouble. He had called Francis in first thing and proceeded to rip their work to shreds. Francis knew that Morris was pleased with it, but he would be unable to contact him for verification until, at the very earliest, he was released from the hospital.
Francis smoothly guided Joanna away from the group of smokers at the front doors. He didn’t want Fred to know that they had their heads together and news travels fast, but not nearly so fast as gossip. It was a few degrees warmer in Toronto than Hope River and the accumulation of snow was melting rapidly. Puddles of slush made navigating every street corner a challenge. Exhaust fumes and kicked up mud from countless cars and buses cast a thick black layer of grunge over the banks of snow. A light, freezing rain was beginning to fall and the sharp wind blew icy pellets into their faces.
“You should know before we go up that Fred is threatening to cancel your contract all together. He said that the work isn’t up to the quality agreed upon.” Francis shivered slightly. In trying to slip out of the building unnoticed, he had not stopped to put on his coat.
She groaned. “But we know that Morris was pleased. He told you so. That’s right, isn’t it?”
Francis nodded. “Yes, he did, last week. He came into the office for one day after Christmas and I briefly showed him all that you had done. He said that it was good.”
“Did he tell anyone else?”
“Not that I am aware.”
“Well, let’s not panic. I have known Fred Blanchard for a long time and he can be a first class - pardon me - prick.”
Francis lowered his head and the corners of his mouth turned up, just a touch.
“He’s playing a power game here. With Morris Lipton out of the way for a while, it gives Fred a good chance to flex some muscle. Show everyone how important he is, how he can make the tough decisions,” Joanna snorted. “God, how I hate that phrase. It’s just an excuse for being mean. Oh, well, let’s go on in and face the lion in his den. Thanks for the warning, Francis. I wouldn’t have wanted to walk into this blind.” She turned and stepped off the sidewalk into a river of slush. The cold water sloshed over the top of her low boots and rushed in through the holes in the soles. She was trying so hard to keep calm that she didn’t even notice her stockings soaking up the icy water. She had circumvented Fred by going straight to Morris to get the contract. Fred would be spoiling to get even. She had always suspected that beneath the well-coiffed hair and shiny smile, Fred could be a nasty piece of work. He certainly would not have forgiven her for going behind his back to get the contract she wanted.
He made a great show of welcoming Joanna to their meeting. Shock was expressed all around at Morris’ heart attack. She was surprised to hear that he was only 41-he looked a great deal older. So much for putting in endless hours and making a life-long dedication to the company. No one had any updates and of course no one could guess when he would be able to return to work.
“I spent most of yesterday going over your work to date, Joanna,” Fred said, smiling like a barracuda as he got down to the business at hand. “And I must say, I didn’t think it quite came up to your usual standards.”
Joanna smiled tightly. Beside her she could feel Francis twitching in his seat. “What exactly do you mean?”
Fred opened the pile of
papers in front of him. “Here, let me show you.”
For the next two hours Fred went over Joanna’s work with a fine-toothed comb. She twisted in her seat and could barely curb her impatience as he carefully pointed out supposed grammatical errors and nit-picked over every little point. At long last, he sat back with a satisfied grin. “I know that it seems like a lot to throw at you right now, Joanna, but you understand that I have to make some tough decisions in Morris’ absence.”
She moaned inwardly but her smile was fixed firmly in place. Good thing she had a nicely signed contract and was well into the project. If Fred fired her now, they would never get anyone else to finish on time. But he had given her a lot more work and no more time to do it in. Neither working through the nights nor explaining why her project was late were ideas that appealed to her.
It seemed like she was doomed to spend the rest of her life in that claustrophobic boardroom, smiling inanely and listening politely to reasons why her work was just not good enough, but eventually the ordeal ended and everyone rose to their feet. Handshakes and false smiles all around and Joanna escaped back into the bracing winter air.
Still coatless, Francis stood beside her on the sidewalk. “Well, Joanna, I don’t know what you did in there, but we seem to have survived.”
She chuckled without mirth. “There was no real battle, Francis. Fred couldn’t possibly release me from my contract, and he can’t bring anyone else in or order you not to help me any more because there isn’t time to start anything new. He knew that all along. It was just a lot of posturing and chest-thumping on his part as he pretended to show me who’s in charge.” Joanna stepped to the edge of the pavement and waved furiously at a passing taxi. The cab kicked up a wave of slush over her boots and sped past. She eyed another cab bearing down in their direction and stepped out into the road as she lifted her arm. This time the taxi pulled to a halt at her feet, coughing and sputtering as if it couldn’t make it for another kilometer. The driver sported long Rastifarian dreadlocks and continued to eat his fried chicken lunch from a takeout container on the front seat while he sat staring out the front window. He didn’t give his potential fare the barest of glances as Joanna gripped the door handle and hesitated for a moment.
“If you want some advice from me,” she said to Francis, “and I really don’t know why you should, but keep your head down for a little while. Fred can bear a grudge for a very long time, as I well know.” She slipped into the back seat of the cab. “But I have a feeling that he won’t be lasting too much longer. So hold on for a while and you’ll be okay.”
Francis shook her offered hand and bowed slightly over it as he had done on their first meeting. To him, it was plain to see that if Morris was out of the loop for very long, the company was heading straight down, and quickly. He intended to be long gone well before it hit the bottom. But he smiled at Joanna and shook her hand. “I will call tomorrow,” he assured her, “and we’ll carry on working from where we left off.” He slammed the car door and stood in the muck as the cab pulled out into traffic.
Joanna gave the driver directions to Elaine’s office where she had parked the car. She kicked a lipstick smeared Styrofoam coffee cup under the front seat and collapsed back into the cracked vinyl seating. The project was saved, but at the cost of a lot more work and to the detriment of any other contracts that might come in. She swore under her breath and tried to shut out the static-encrusted, blaring rap music, not her favorite at the best of times, which emanated from the cab’s tinny little radio. She reminded herself of all the reasons she had left the world of corporate politics in the first place. This sort of one-upmanship seemed awfully familiar. Dilbert was very, very, funny-at least until you had to live in his world.
The cab dropped her off at Elaine’s building in the heart of the financial district. Still angry at the world, Joanna left a miserly tip, then she wandered around until business hours were finished and it was time to meet her friend. She wanted to buy some clothes, something new that would be smart and businesslike for all the future meetings she hoped to have, for all the contracts that should start flooding in any minute. But although she peered into endless shop windows and pawed through countless racks she could find very little that would fit her size 16 frame and nothing to suit either her taste or her limited budget.
She still had a bit of time to kill before meeting Elaine so she took a seat at a fashionable coffee bar, overlooking the street, and sipped at a frothy, cinnamon-laced cappuccino. She sat for a while and watched the parade of people passing by her window. When she first caught sight of the beer-bellied man shuffling uncomfortably down the street, quite out of place among the fashionably dressed business crowd in his plain brown cap, massive parka and heavy work boots, she thought that he would fit in better in Hope River. With a start, she realized that he really would fit in better in Hope River. It was Jack Miller, Nancy’s uncle.
She had no temptation to run out into the street to greet him; she didn’t like him very much, and he clearly didn’t like her. Instead she watched as he walked up to a bike courier lounging on the street corner, smoking. The two men exchanged brief greetings, and then moved on, circling the corner and out of Joanna’s sight.
She scooped the last remnants of delicious steamed milk out of the bottom of her cup with one finger and licked it off. Strange to see Jack in Toronto at all, and very strange to see him with a bike courier, of all people. It looked as if the two men knew each other and their meeting didn’t appear to be happenstance. Maybe Jack has a secret, she giggled to herself. A long lost, illegitimate son. That bit of news would no doubt cause a gossip hurricane in the little hamlet of Hope River.
She glanced at her watch, and promptly forgot all about Jack and whatever tawdry little secret he might have. It was time to go. She dashed across the slush-covered street and traveled up to Elaine’s corner office high above the teeming city.
Discouraged as she was by the failure to find the perfect contractor-on-the-go business suit, Joanna was even more depressed at the first sight of Elaine. Not that there was anything at all different about Elaine; rather, as always, every stitch of her beautiful winter-white wool suit was perfect, her blood-red silk blouse looked as if it had been taken fresh off the store rack that very hour. Her shoes sported three-inch spike heels and were an exact match to the color of the silk blouse. Tiny diamond earrings and a thin gold and diamond tennis bracelet were her only jewelry. At the tail end of a very long and hectic business week, every dyed and permed blond hair lay perfectly in place; every painted, manicured nail was…perfect.
Joanna wanted to scream; instead she collapsed into her friend’s warm embrace. Elaine was the first to pull away and leaned back to stare up into Joanna’s face. “Maybe it’s the blood of my gypsy mother talking, but I have a feeling that your meeting didn’t go too well.”
Joanna shook her head. “Bit of an understatement, that. But I survived. Again.”
Elaine picked up her bulging briefcase and flicked off the office light. “I need a good drink, and I think you do too, so you can tell me all about it at the Duke of Westminster.”
Chapter 24
Christ, it’s cold out here tonight,” Tiffany mumbled into her woolen mittens at the same time she blew on them in a fruitless attempt to create some heat.
The boy looked at her lazily. “So what’s your beef? The old lady asked you if you needed better gloves. You said no, so stop your moaning and let’s go.”
“I’m not moaning,” she moaned, following her friends through the woods. “I’m telling you that I’m cold, that’s all.”
“Oh, shut up.” The girl who had come along to pick her up hissed at them. Tiffany didn’t know her name, and didn’t particularly want to know it. “Ever since that stupid old man got his stupid old self knocked off near here the pigs have been creeping around the woods night after night. Can’t barely take a step out of place anymore or they’ll be on to you. It’s getting pretty hard to score around here, I’ll
tell you.” She pulled off her toque and scratched at her shaven scalp. A row of silver hoops marched up the sides of both of her ears, drawing attention to the tiny snake tattooed onto the side of her neck with its tail curling around to the back.
Tiffany shivered at the sight of the blue snake and stuffed her hands back into her pockets but she stumbled though drifts of fresh snow after the others. Brad and Pam she knew from school. Pam was okay; Brad was a braggart and a show off. But what else was there to do in this miserable town? She had never seen any of the other kids before. Friends of Brad. From North Ridge, he had said. No one introduced them.
Brad’s car, if you could call the old barely-alive 1981 model a car, was parked further down the road. The girl was right, Luke’s death was highly unusual in this little community, the police continued to look into it and this group did everything possible to avoid the police.
The sharp northern wind blew gusts of snow and air so cold it was almost solid, into the front of Tiffany’s exposed neck and right down to her thin chest. She held the collar of her coat closed with one hand, almost instantly her fingers began to tingle again. She couldn’t decide which was worse: frozen fingers or snowdrifts piling up on the inside of her coat.
She cursed again and stumbled after her friends.
“You look like you’re absolutely freezing, Tiffany,” one of the girls remarked. Out of the group of six heading into North Ridge tonight, indeed out of all of the teenagers she had met since coming to Hope River, Pam was the only one who had tried to show Tiffany some real friendship. She was a tall, exceptionally skinny girl with a shock of curly hair the color of a maple tree in autumn, and masses of freckles. Tiffany knew that the boys loved the color of her hair and they particularly adored her complexion; but like every redhead, Pam absolutely hated her freckles and bore an intense dislike for her hair.
“I’m freezing, Pam, so totally freezing.” Tiffany shivered and clutched the collar of her second-hand coat tighter. “Maybe I’ll just go home. You guys go on without me.”
