Alberta Alibi

by Dayle Gaetz

  “Wha…” Dark tousled curls and startled brown eyes appeared above the crumpled sheet. “What’s going on? Why’d you wake me up? What time is it?”

  Sheila sat on the edge of the bed and stared at her best friend. She tried, but no words would come out of her mouth.

  Katie sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Sheila! What’s wrong?”

  “Katie, you’ve got to do something! They’re arresting him!”

  “What? Your dad? Why?”

  “They said a bullet from his gun shot the night watchman.”

  Katie leapt out of bed and scouted around for some clothes. First she looked under the bed, then she lifted the covers. Then she stood in the middle of the room in her pajamas with her hands on her hips. She spotted her clothes draped over a chair and ran over to grab them. “That’s no big surprise,” she said.

  “Katie! How can you say that?”

  “It’s true. I mean, one of the rifles was missing, right? Your dad said he didn’t know where it was and neither did Ben. So if they’re both telling the truth, then someone must have stolen it on the night in question. Why would anyone bother to take it if they weren’t going to use it?”

  “But how? You said the locks hadn’t been tampered with. And how did it get into my dad’s truck?” An odd feeling came over Sheila, a sense that she knew something without quite knowing what it was. You might know something you don’t know you know.

  Katie was dressed by then and picked up a brush to run over her short curly hair. “Someone else may have a set of keys. What about Adele? Maybe she borrowed your dad’s keys and had copies made.”

  Sheila thought of Adele showing up when no one was around, sitting in the kitchen as if she owned it. “But Adele was in Calgary.”

  Katie shrugged. “So she says.”

  “She’s my dad’s girlfriend, they like each other.

  Why would she want to make him look guilty?”

  “To cover her own tracks,” Katie said matter-of-factly. “Maybe she’s not really his girlfriend at all, maybe she’s just pretending so she can set him up.

  Even Adele admitted she has the best motive.”

  “But…”

  “What?”

  “Adele’s coming to stay with us until Dad gets back.”

  “Good.” Katie walked to the door and pulled it open. “That way we can keep an eye on her. Whatever you do, don’t let her think we’re on to her.”

  Before going downstairs, they knocked on the guest-room door, where Rusty was sleeping.

  “What?” a sleepy voice growled.

  “Get up and come downstairs,” Katie called through the closed door. “The police are here and Huntley’s coming over.”

  Adele and Huntley arrived at the front door just as Rusty stumbled, bleary-eyed, down the stairs.

  Katie and Sheila met all three of them in the front hall.

  Sheila studied Adele’s face. The woman looked pale and shaken, and she rubbed her hands together nervously. Sheila’s eyes were drawn to the car keys that dangled from one finger on a key ring. There were a lot of keys.

  She felt an elbow in her ribs and turned to see Katie frowning at her. Katie’s eyes rolled to Adele in a meaningful way. She was trying to tell her something, but Sheila had no idea what.

  “Sheila’s brain isn’t awake yet,” Katie told Adele.

  She turned back to Sheila. “Adele asked where your dad is.”

  “Oh!” Now that was really weird. Scary too, because Sheila hadn’t heard a thing. “I guess he’s still in his office with those two, uh, men.”

  “You kids come on down to the kitchen. I’m going to tell them I’m here.”

  So who made you the boss all of a sudden? Sheila glared at Adele’s ponytail as it swung down the hall.

  Adele tapped once on the office door, then disappeared inside. Sheila, Katie, Rusty and Huntley waited in the kitchen, clustered together at the end of the counter, staring silently down the empty hall.

  It seemed like forever before the door opened again and Adele walked out, clinging to Chris’s arm, her face tight and frightened. The RCMP officers followed close behind.

  Sheila’s dad stopped when he saw her. “Sheila,” he said.

  It seemed to her that his entire body slumped, like a rag doll, and she had never seen him look so sad.

  She ran over to him.

  Dad pulled away from Adele and wrapped his arms around Sheila. “I’m so sorry you had to see this happen.” He stepped back and looked down into her eyes. “But don’t worry. I’m innocent, so everything will be okay. I may even be back by tonight.” He kissed the top of her head. “I love you, girl. Promise me you’ll stay right here, in the kitchen, until we’re gone?”

  Sheila nodded, unable to speak.

  Her dad looked over at Huntley and attempted a smile. “Sorry to run off like this, Hunt, but I’ll be back before you know it.”

  “Katie, Rusty,” his sad eyes turned in their direction, “I suggest you try leaving a message on your grandparents’ cell phone; maybe they can come pick you up. You too, Sheila, if you want to go…”

  “I’m staying,” she said fiercely.

  “It’s time.” The big officer took her dad by the arm and led him toward the front door. Sheila turned away. She clutched the countertop to keep from running after him.

  When the front door closed behind them, Sheila glanced at Adele, half expecting to see a victorious smile spread across her face. But the woman looked anything but happy. She trembled with anger. “They’ll pay for this!” she said, fists clenched at her sides.

  “Who?” Sheila asked.

  “Those goons at Glenmar!” Adele crossed her arms, cupping her elbows in her hands, and proceeded to pace back and forth across the kitchen, staring at the floor.

  Sheila caught Katie’s eye. So Adele had a temper.

  Interesting.

  Adele poured herself a coffee and marched into Chris’s office, leaving the door wide open behind her. They soon heard her talking on the phone, so quietly they couldn’t tell what she was saying. If only she had closed the door they could creep down the hall and listen.

  They barely spoke as they ate cereal, peaches and toast and peanut butter. Then Katie said, “We’re staying too. Even if we could reach Gram and GJ, this is where we’re needed.”

  “I’m going to call Mom,” Sheila said. “Maybe she’ll know what to do.”

  Katie nodded. “We’ll wait outside,” she said.

  Sheila dialed her home and listened to the phone ring. She hung up when the answering machine clicked on. What could she say? She ran outside to join the other three.

  Sheila really wished Huntley would go away, but for a completely different reason now than a few days ago. How were they supposed to keep an eye on his mother with him hanging around every minute?

  They couldn’t tell him what they suspected because he would probably go right to his mom and tell her everything. Even if he didn’t tell her, he’d be angry.

  Still, there was something Sheila had to do, and she realized it didn’t really matter if Huntley came along or not. She hoped Katie would, though, sore butt or not. “I need to see Wendell Wedman,” she said.

  “Why?” Katie asked.

  “That’s where Dad and I were going when the RCMP showed up. He wanted to ask Wendell if he saw anything the night of the fire. And he was going to ask exactly what Wendell saw on,” her eyes rolled to Katie, “the night in question.”

  “Oh,” Katie replied without enthusiasm, “so you’re going to ride all the way out there?”

  Sheila nodded. “It would take us forever to walk.”

  “Good idea,” Huntley said, already on his way to the barn. “Let’s get the horses saddled. Can I ride Ingot?”

  Sheila nodded absently. She turned to Katie. Please! she silently begged. Her friend’s face was a mix of interest and dread. “You’ve had a day off from riding,” Sheila said. “You should be okay now.”

  Katie looked doubtful, but
she glanced toward the open barn door and down at the notebook tucked under her arm. She tapped the cover with her fingertips. “Okay, but we just go straight there and straight back, no side trips, okay?”

  Sheila nodded. “It’s a promise.”

  They both turned to Rusty. He rolled his eyes, rubbed his backside and said, “What’s a little more pain in my life? Pain is my middle name.”

  “I thought it was Jerold,” Katie said, “after Grandpa Jerry.”

  “That too. But I’m adding Pain because it suits my lifestyle.”

  Sheila would have laughed if she didn’t feel so sick with worry.

  16

  The damage was clear from the hillock above Glenmar Development. The portable closest to the barbed wire fence was nothing more than a rectangle of blackened, twisted metal. One side of the second portable was also black, some of the metal had buckled, and the window glass had blown completely out of its frame. The lower branches of the nearby pines were singed and brown, and the grass in between looked black as tar.

  The backhoe, bulldozer and SUV, all parked near the edge of the reservoir, looked to be undamaged.

  Not far from them, under a copse of cottonwoods, was a large travel trailer.

  “It’s lucky the fire didn’t spread through those pine trees,” Sheila observed.

  Huntley agreed. “Mom says it’s a good thing we had lots of rain last week or those trees would have gone up like torches and taken out most of the forest on our property too. But anyway, she heard on the news that the owners happened to stay here last night, so they managed to douse the flames before they spread.”

  “What a lucky coincidence,” Katie murmured.

  “And isn’t it fortunate they moved the machines and SUV before the fire?”

  “Hey there, kids!” a voice called. “C’mon down!”

  A dog started barking behind them.

  Wendell Wedman was standing down near the stream. He waved, then turned away to quiet Rebel.

  They hobbled the horses to graze on the hillside and walked down to the stream. By then Rebel was wading in the shallows, scouting for interesting rocks. Wearing high rubber boots, Wendell stood in the middle of the stream, holding a large water keg.

  Two more kegs just like it stood on the gravel shore.

  He removed the lid, laid the keg in the water facing upstream and let it fill.

  Sheila remembered swimming here with her mom, but now the water was so low it wouldn’t reach her knees. Dad must be angry at Glenmar Development for diverting the stream like that. He needed the water for his fields and cattle. Her thoughts shifted to the trumpeter swans. This was their nesting period, but there wasn’t enough water for them anymore. Everything was being ruined by that stupid development.

  When the keg was full, Wendell replaced the lid, screwed it tight, picked up the keg by its wide, sturdy handle and made his way carefully over slippery rocks to shore.

  He placed the heavy keg beside the other two.

  “Well, that’s done,” he said.

  This time Katie had brought her notebook stuffed in her backpack. She got it out now and opened it.

  “You got more questions?” he asked warily.

  “Um, a few. Sheila does too.”

  “In that case, you kids better make yourselves useful.” He picked up the keg with one wiry arm and started to trudge up the slope toward his van. “Think you can carry those other two kegs for me?”

  “Simple!” Rusty ran over to one of them. He grabbed the handle, pulled, strained and managed to move the keg about one centimeter off the ground. He struggled forward one full step and put it down again.

  “Want some help?” Huntley asked. With both boys clutching the handle, they managed to lift the heavy keg high enough to lurch forward with it.

  The girls walked over to carry the third keg.

  Sheila was surprised by how heavy it was, even with Katie’s help. Wendell must be stronger than he looked. The girls didn’t do much better than the boys, but arrived at the van slightly ahead of them.

  Wendell had already finished emptying the first keg into the van’s water tank.

  He turned, took the girls’ keg from them and lifted it to pour the water into a funnel he had rigged up on his water intake pipe. He watched Rusty and Huntley struggle up the last of the slope. “Simple, eh?” He winked at Rusty.

  Red-faced and puffing, Rusty put down his side of the keg, straightened up and rubbed his hand.

  There was a bright red mark across it where he had gripped the handle. He grinned. “Easy for you to say.”

  Wendell refused to answer any questions until he had emptied every drop of water into the tank.

  Then he muttered something about the kettle and disappeared inside his van.

  The boys wandered back down to the stream and tossed sticks for Rebel. Katie waited with Sheila. They sat on rickety folding chairs beside a lopsided card table covered with a red and white plastic tablecloth. Katie read her notes. Sheila tapped her foot impatiently. She thought of taking out her new Discman, which could play music through either speakers or headphones. Music would help soothe her jangled nerves, but what if Katie insisted on listening too? She left it in her backpack.

  When Wendell returned, he was carrying a metal tray with five mugs and a plate of chocolate cookies. He carefully placed it on the table and lowered himself onto a folding chair. “Hope you like tea,” he said. “Help yourselves.”

  The boys must have smelled food because they both appeared within seconds and each snatched up a couple of cookies. Rebel charged up the slope and darted around like a maniac, flinging water on everyone. But when the boys took their mugs and settled on the grass, the dog perched in front of them, his long, pink tongue hanging out.

  Katie took this opportunity to ask her first question. “When the night watchman was shot, where did you say the truck was parked?”

  “Far as I recall, I didn’t say.”

  “Well then, where was it parked?”

  “Seems like it went down there first.” Wendell nodded toward the spot where the girls had earlier noticed tire tracks. “Looks to me like it ended up in the wrong place. Anyway, it stopped and turned around there, then zipped over the ridge. Didn’t hear a thing, and that stupid mutt never made a peep. Mind you, I didn’t see the truck down there, just the tracks it left behind.”

  “So did you ever see the truck?”

  “Yep. After I heard the shots and ran outside.”

  “But you said it was on the other side of the hill by then.”

  “Yep.”

  “So how did you see it?”

  “Didn’t. I heard it start up though, poppin’ and growlin’ and complainin’ like it does. Finally spotted it over there.” He pointed to a line of pines at the far end of the ridge. “Just before it disappeared into the trees.”

  “And you could tell what color it was? Even in the shadow of the trees?”

  “Nope.” He popped a whole cookie into his mouth and chewed noisily.

  “Okay, then, how do you know it was blue?”

  He finished chewing, swallowed and took a swig of tea. “Never said it was. Said I couldn’t say for sure.”

  “But when we saw Huntley that day, he said the police were looking for a blue truck.”

  “True enough. That’s what the night watchman told me when I went down to see him. It was me made the 911 call with that cell phone your dad insisted on lendin’ me. Soon as I heard the sirens I hightailed it back home. Anyway, I’m guessin’ he told the cops what he knew about the truck.”

  While Katie wrote in her notebook, Sheila realized it was her chance to ask a question, yet she hesitated, almost afraid of the answer. Now or never. She took a deep breath and plunged in. “Wendell, did you see my dad’s truck two nights ago, before the fire?”

  “Hmm, can’t say as I did.”

  “So you didn’t?”

  “Saw a truck takin’ off, same as before, over by those pines.”

&nbs
p; “Did you see anything else?”

  “Can’t say as I did, and I was sittin’ right here too.

  Happen I couldn’t sleep that night, it was hot as an oven in my van. Anyway, ’bout one thirty I wandered outside where it was cooler. Always did love watching the stars spinnin’ around up there in the night sky. A silence, pure as peace, generally settles in ’round that time of night too.”

  “Generally?” Katie glanced up from her notes.

  “You mean it was different that night?”

  “Sure was. All those voices natterin’ away, how’s a man supposed to relax?”

  “What voices?”

  “Couple of men, one woman. Voices carry a long ways on a still night, almost like over water.”

  “So you could hear what they said?”

  “Can’t say as I could. Only voices. Anyway, pretty soon that truck scooted off, and then the sky lit up with fire. I climbed up the hill and saw those two Coutts standin’ there, watchin’ the fire like they’d lost the power to move.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, I ran back to my van, grabbed my fire extinguisher and charged over the hill yellin’ my head off for them to meet me at the fence.”

  “And?”

  “That got them moving all right. The woman came runnin’ over, surprised as anything and none too pleased judging by the look on her kisser. She snatched the extinguisher and started sprayin’ the second portable. Had to back off, though, ’cause the fire was too hot. The man started up a hose and went after the fire spreadin’ across the grass. Managed to put it out before the trees went up.”

  “That was lucky,” Sheila said.

  “Sure was. Anyway, guess they called the cops after that, don’t know for sure. There was nothin’ more I could do. I went back to bed and slept like a rock until after the sun came up.”

  17

  Riding back home, Sheila almost dared to believe her dad would be there when they got back and that everything would be all right. But of course it wasn’t.

  Adele’s little white SUV was still parked in the same spot, but now a small black Jeep with no roof was parked beside it. “That’s Ryan’s,” Huntley said.