Kerry and Wendy got up to dance. A burly man in a black leather vest, tattoos on his bare arms, came over to our table. I remembered seeing him at the Dominion Hotel. He said something to Nuala, and she followed him onto the dance floor.
Foster kept his eyes on the dance floor until Nuala returned to the table.
“Someone you know?” I asked her.
She laughed. “Neanderthal’s not my type. Once around the dance floor was enough.”
We turned our attention to the stage as Soupy introduced the band. “And now for the door prize. Thanks to all of you, the Legion will be able to make a donation to the cenotaph restoration fund. Get your tickets out, folks, and our lovely Mara will do the honors.”
Robbie rolled the drums while Mara reached into a basket and pulled out a ticket. I looked around the room. Where was Tracy?
The drums rolled again. “The winner,” Mara announced, “is ticket number three-five-zero!”
Nuala yelped. “That’s me!”
The band struck up “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” as Nuala went up to the stage. Mara handed her an envelope, and everyone stood and cheered.
“Hope she likes fishin’,” Lainey shouted across the table. “It’s a gift certificate for Glencoe Rod and Tackle.”
Leather Vest came up to Nuala when she returned to the table. She smiled at him and shook her head.
“Ruby Taylor still around?” he asked the rest of us. “Saw her here earlier.”
We shrugged or shook our heads. Where had Ruby and Tracy gone?
“That guy’s trouble’,” Burt said and got out of his chair.
I watched him follow Leather Vest to the front door. Leather Vest had asked about Ruby and now the township’s reeve was turning him out. Not only did everyone in the community know about the grow-op, but they all seemed to be connected to it in some way.
I was staring at the door, mulling this over, when it opened and Bruce came in. He spotted me and wove his way across the room.
“Sister Celia here?” he yelled over the music when he got closer.
“She stayed home tonight.”
“There…there was a message last night. From Jennifer Collins. On the rectory voice mail.”
Foster pulled over a chair for him from the Nowaks’ table. “Tell us about it.”
“Bruce,” I said, “why don’t I drive you—”
“Let him finish.” Then Foster continued in a softer tone. “This message?”
Bruce wedged himself between Foster and me. “Forgot to tell Sister about it this morning. Jen said to let somebody called…Tracy Tierney know that she’s okay.”
Foster leaned closer to him. “Did she say where she is?”
“No, that was it.” He eyed the beer in Tracy’s glass.
“The message was from Jennifer Collins?” Foster persisted.
“I’m not sure if it was actually left by Jen.” Bruce sat up straighter in the chair. “It was a woman’s voice. She said, ‘This is a message from Jennifer Collins for Tracy Tierney. Jen is fine, don’t worry about her.”
So Jamie was with Al and Ruby. If not at their place, at some safe place they had found for her.
“Did you delete it?” Foster asked.
“Yup. Nearly forgot all about it too.”
I should have told Foster where Jamie might be. But I knew she was checking out something that Lyle had told her in his letter. I had to let her go on looking. She wouldn’t be able to find anything if she was in jail.
Bruce looked at me. “Tierney. That’s your name. Tracy’s your…?”
“Daughter,” I said. “Bruce, what were you doing in Veronica’s car on Friday?”
He glanced at Foster, who was saying something to Lainey. “Errand.”
But not an errand for Veronica. She wouldn’t let him drive her car.
The band was blasting out Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” when Tracy returned to the table. Relief washed over me. And I saw that she looked a lot much more relaxed. She even had a sparkle in her eyes.
Foster’s jaw dropped when he saw her.
“I told you Tracy was driving up today,” I yelled in his ear. “It’s my birthday.”
Across the table, Lainey pointed at the empty chair beside her. “Sit over here, dear. Burt’s havin’ himself a smoke outside.”
“Up here to see your friend?” Foster shouted across the table.
“I’m here for my mother’s birthday.”
He got up from his chair. “I’d like to talk to you, young woman. Outside.”
Tracy got up and followed him to the door.
Lainey was staring at me, so I felt I should explain why Foster wanted to talk to my daughter. “Tracy’s a friend of Jennifer Collins. Inspector Foster wants to know if she’s heard from her.”
She nodded. “Jen’s probably with Al and Ruby.”
Everyone in the Highlands seemed to know that.
Tracy returned a few minutes later and came over to my chair. “We’d better get back, Mom. I’ve got to hit the road first thing in the morning.”
Wendy elbowed Kerry, and they stood up.
“C’mon, Bruce,” I said. “I’ll drive you to the rectory.”
We said our goodbyes to Nuala and Lainey. Bruce chugged down the beer in Tracy’s glass and wiped his mouth on his jacket sleeve.
The High Lonesome Wailers were rocking to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” as we crossed the parking lot. Wendy leaned into Kerry. “That was fun, sugar.” She smiled at me. “How about a nightcap at our place?”
“Thanks,” I said, “but Tracy has an early start tomorrow. We’re calling it a night.”
Wendy opened the Jeep’s passenger door. “Another time, then.” She waved as the vehicle pulled out of the parking lot.
I turned to Tracy. “So what happened with Ruby?”
Tracy put a finger on her lips and inclined her head toward Bruce.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kerry’s Jeep had disappeared into the night when I pulled onto Highway 123. I drove into Braeloch and dropped Bruce off at the rectory. Then I turned the Volvo around and drove back to the highway.
“So?” I asked when we picked up speed outside of town.
“You can trust me,” I said when Tracy didn’t answer. I made a zipping motion across my mouth. “My lips are sealed.”
“I know, Mom, but…” She leaned back and fell silent.
The sky was studded with stars, and I hoped that meant we wouldn’t have to wait for Hank and his plow the next morning. I smiled, thinking that the weather doesn’t affect us nearly as much in the city.
Tracy slipped a CD from her handbag into the player, and the voice of k.d. lang crooning “Constant Craving” flooded the car. I turned the volume down.
“Mom!”
“What did Ruby have to say?”
She sighed. “All right. I promised, but I suppose I can tell you.” She paused. “Ruby said Jamie’s okay, that we should let her lie low for a while.”
“What else? You were gone a long time. You didn’t happen to see Jamie when you went outside?”
“No, I didn’t.”
I wasn’t sure whether I believed her, but I decided not to argue the point. “Did Ruby tell you why she’s lying low?”
Tracy said nothing for a few moments.
“Come on.”
“Jamie’s working on something.”
“She’s working on whatever Lyle told her in his letter. What was it?”
“Ruby wouldn’t say.”
Again, I wasn’t sure that she was telling me the truth. “And Foster? What did he want?”
“The usual. Where is she? Why hasn’t she contacted him?”
“Why did Ruby come to see you tonight? Jamie left you a message.”
Glancing at her, I saw I had her full attention.
“What message?”
We passed the Legion. Judging from all the vehicles in the parking lot, the party appeared to be still in full swing. I told Tracy w
hat Bruce had said.
“Hmm. I guess she doesn’t want us to go back to her friends’ house.”
“That’s where she’s staying?”
“I think so, although Ruby didn’t come out and say it.”
I pointed out the Critchley place as we drove by it. The driveway gate was closed and crime scene tape was still strung over it.
“Jamie came here the day Lyle was killed?” Tracy asked.
“Someone with Jamie’s color of hair was seen on the property. Someone who was driving a Honda Civic.”
The next stretch of highway passed Glencairn Conservation Park, fifty acres of hiking trails through forest and around wetlands. We had just passed the park’s entrance when I saw a set of headlights in my rearview mirror. The vehicle—with its brights on, I couldn’t tell if it was a car, a SUV or a pickup—must have pulled out of the park’s driveway. It picked up speed and, in seconds, it was bearing down on us.
“Jesus! What’s that guy doing?” Tracy cried.
“I don’t know,” I said, gripping the steering wheels.
The vehicle bumped our rear fender. I pressed down on the gas pedal.
Seconds later, the Volvo was shimmying and sliding on the road. Black ice! I lifted my foot and remembered what I’d heard about driving on black ice. Don’t hit the brakes. I gripped the steering wheel and hung on for dear life.
“Mom, he’s trying to run us off the road!”
“He doesn’t have to. Black ice is doing it for him.”
I feathered the wheel, and tried to steer the Volvo toward the middle of the road. No sudden moves, I told myself. But the Volvo was drifting toward the snow-covered shoulder of the road. The drop down to the culvert was pretty steep along that stretch and there was no guard rail. If we went over, we would probably have survived the fall, but we couldn’t have got the car back on the road without help. We hadn’t taken our cell phones—if we could even get a signal out there—and it would have been a long walk back to town.
The Volvo started to spin just as the bright lights bore down on us again. Our pursuer wanted me to panic. Wanted me to pull to the right and slide into the culvert.
“Mom, do something!”
Then the Volvo’s tires gripped bare pavement and it steadied itself. Our pursuer pulled up on our left side. My instinct was to yank the wheel to the right, but I resisted the impulse.
Suddenly, the vehicle whizzed past us and zoomed down the road ahead, its taillights disappearing in the darkness.
I exhaled in relief, but my heart was still skittering around in my chest.
“Oh, my God!” Tracy moaned.
I looked at her quickly. “You okay, honey?”
She nodded.
“Notice the type of vehicle? Could you read the licence plate?”
“No, its lights were too bright. Couldn’t make out anything. And it happened so quickly.”
I had taken the Volvo up to sixty, when Tracy asked, “Mom, what was that all about?”
“Someone’s trying to tell us something.”
She groaned. “So what’s wrong with picking up the phone?”
“Whoever it is doesn’t want to talk. He just wants us out of here.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Celia met us at the door. “Farah’s had a scare.”
Farah was curled up at the end of a sofa, her dark eyes wide with fear. Celia motioned for us to sit down. “Farah, tell Pat and Tracy what happened,” she said.
Farah gave a shudder. “Horrible. I hear banging noise out there.” She glanced at the heavy hemp curtains that had been pulled over the sliding glass doors to the three-tiered deck. “Then this face, it look at me through the glass.”
I raised an eyebrow at Celia. I wanted her version of what had happened.
“It was about fifteen minutes ago,” Celia said. “I was upstairs working in my room. Farah screamed and I ran down here. She was pointing at the doors, terrified. But by the time I got here, whoever was out there had gone.”
“I saw him!” Farah cried. “Look at me like he want to—”
“Did he knock on the door?” I asked.
“No. He just look at me.”
“A man?”
She nodded. “Ugly man. White face with broken nose.”
“Hair? Hat?”
“No hair,” Farah said. “Just white face.”
“He must have been dressed in black,” Tracy said. “With a black tuque on his head.”
I opened the curtains and saw Farah tense up on the sofa. We’d left the curtains open since we’d arrived because the view of the lake—even frozen over and covered with snow—was spectacular.
I turned on the deck lights. No one was out there, but there were footprints in the snow from the stairs to the door and back again to the stairs.
I turned off the lights and pulled the curtains across the doors. Farah sighed with relief.
“Those footprints lead around the house to the driveway where they meet tire marks that aren’t ours,” Celia said. “But I didn’t hear a vehicle drive up.”
Farah pulled the afghan tightly around her. “We are far from people here. I cannot stay alone with Tommy.”
I pictured her packing her bag the next morning, but I shelved that worry for later. “We’d better call the police,” I said.
“Foster or Bouchard?” Celia asked.
“Both of them.”
Roger Bouchard picked up on the first ring. I told him what had happened and he said he’d be right over. I left a message for Foster.
“Farah has a tendency to overdramatize,” I said to Celia as we made hot chocolate in the kitchen. “But we’d better show the footprints and the tire marks to the police. It’s clear outside right now, but they could be covered with snow in the morning.”
I told her about the vehicle that tried to run us off the highway. “I’ll let the police know about that too. It came up behind us around the same time that Farah saw our visitor.”
“They had to be two different people,” she said.
“Who may have been working together.”
Sergeant Bouchard arrived forty minutes later. “Doors haven’t been tampered with, nothing’s broke,” he said looking at the sliding deck doors. His beak of a nose pointed at me. “Somebody must’ve dropped by to see if you were home.”
I turned on the deck lights. “He could have knocked on the front door.”
“‘Round here, everyone goes to the back door.”
“To stare inside the house? This guy didn’t knock on the deck door either.”
I opened the sliding doors. From the doorway, Bouchard looked at the footprints on the deck. “Kodiaks,” he said. “Size nine, I’d say.”
I closed the door and the curtains, and took him over to the dining table where the others were seated. He sat down and asked Farah a few questions about the face at the window.
Then he sat back and studied her. “How old are you?”
She looked startled. “I have twenty-three years.”
“Where do you come from?”
Her dark eyes widened. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“Farah came to Canada from Iraq three years ago,” I said. “She and Tracy drove up from Toronto today.”
“Would it be fair to say that you overreacted?” he asked. “You had a long day and you’re in an unfamiliar place. So when this caller knocked on the door, you—”
“No!” she cried. “He not knock on door. He just stare at me.”
“We have something else to tell you, officer,” I said. Tracy and I took turns telling him about the vehicle that tried to run us off the highway.
He took a few notes. “Don’t suppose you got the license number?”
“No,” Tracy said. “Those brights were blinding.”
He closed his notebook. “Some moron was playing games with you. Real stupid. Someone could’ve got hurt.” He stood and zipped up his parka.
“Aren’t you going to look at the tire marks
on the driveway Tracy asked.
He sighed. “If it makes you happy.”
We went out the front door and over to where the footprints from the deck met the tire marks. I stared at the tread marks in the snow and wondered if they would mean anything to the police. They probably had distinctive nicks and scrapes, and other signs of wear.
“Goodyear snow tires,” Bouchard said. “Looks like it was a medium-sized van.”
“Aren’t you going send to someone over to take photos?” I asked.
“Ms. Tierney, you had yourself a caller tonight. Nothing more.”
I stared at him.
“Good night, ladies.”
I was fuming when we returned to the house. Celia sat studying the dying embers in the fireplace. Farah had gone to bed.
Tracy put her arms around me. “’Night, Mom. I’ll probably be gone when you get up in the morning. I’ll set my alarm for six.”
“There’s no rush to get back. Sunday’s not a work day. Why don’t you sleep in and leave after lunch?”
“I want to catch up on some work.”
I watched her go upstairs. Whatever Ruby had said had put her mind at ease about Jamie.
I sat down beside Celia. “Do you have a camera?” I asked.
She shook her head.
Then it came to me. “I can take photos with my cell.”
I got my cell from my bedroom only to find that the battery had died. I hadn’t used it for a week, and I’d let it run down. I plugged it into its charger.
“As soon as it’s charged,” I told Celia, “I’ll get photos of the footprints and the tire tracks.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I woke up on the sofa when Tracy came downstairs the next morning. My watch told me it was five past six. I threw the blanket off me. I had to photograph the footprints and the tire tracks.
My cell was charged. I grabbed my parka from the chair where I’d left it and opened the curtains over the doors to the deck. The eastern sky was pink, a sign of a sunny day, but it had snowed during the night. Not enough snow to warrant plowing the drive, but enough to cover the prints on the deck. I wondered if the forensics people could lift prints from under fresh snow.
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