More silence.
“Laz, you know that nothing goes beyond this kitchen without your say-so.”
Something flickered over the dark face at the other end of the table. Lazarusie took his time, sipping his tea as if it wasn’t boiling hot. Clem observed him, fascinated. He must have the rough tongue of a whale. Suddenly that tongue was loosened.
“A woman,” Lazarusie said.
Clem put down his teaspoon.
“The dead woman?”
“Yep.”
“Nobody tells me anything, Laz. What did you see?”
“I was watching out for moose, with binoculars. Then I saw something.”
He paused, and Clem waited.
“A head.”
“What? The woman’s head?”
“No, a moose head.”
“Jesus, Laz! And the woman?”
“I saw her too. Farther along. About two miles.”
Laz rubbed his face with his hand.
“She wasn’t alive.”
“Did you know her?”
Lazarusie shook his head.
“A white woman. Never saw her before.”
“Blond? Dark haired?”
“Don’t exactly know.”
Laz paused again and thought about it.
“Not blond.”
“What else?”
“Saw a pickup too.”
“Where?”
“Not far from the moose head. Stuck in the snow by the roadside. I thought the guy saw the moose and got stuck in the snowbank.”
“What guy? Did you know him?”
Lazarusie slid forward on his chair.
“Blue pickup. Helvin’s pickup.”
Clem gaped at him.
“No!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, yeah. ‘Suntuk Logistics’ written on the side.”
“No way that’s true,” Clem said. Then, almost soundlessly, “Now we’re really in deep shit.”
CHAPTER 6
Valerie looked at the expectant faces before her while trying to appear enthusiastic and composed at the same time, though she was anxious and tense. And yet she had real reason to feel relieved. Faye had brought her some good news three days ago: the police had tracked down a brother of Sedna’s who sounded the all clear. He said Sedna was fine, he was in touch with her regularly, and there was no cause for worry. The police saw no reason to pursue the matter further, especially since Valerie had been running a high fever the night of Sedna’s phone call and might have imagined it all.
“You see,” Faye said, “that was just one of Sedna’s more artful dramatic performances.”
But Valerie wasn’t so sure. Sedna had never mentioned a brother. She knew about Valerie’s twin brothers, Kosta and James. So wouldn’t she have said something about her own siblings at some point?
Valerie repressed the thought and faced her audience with a smile. Almost fifty people had come to the library in Gibsons for this event, and they were too important for her to appear preoccupied. She was there to drum up business, to advertise future tours. Valerie had observed that elderly people like to plan far in advance because anticipation of the tour gave them almost as much pleasure as the trip itself. Her customers read up on things and did their homework; many of them put together a booklet with pictures and facts beforehand. Valerie was always impressed.
She began her slide show with pictures of three Inuvialuit women who made up part of the Inuvik council of elders. She’d photographed the trio two years earlier. She knew their names and many members of their families and had listened to their stories while sharing sweet bannock and even sweeter tea with them.
Valerie showed slide after slide as she led her audience through the most important stages and high points of the Arctic tour: arrival in Whitehorse in the Yukon; travel by dogsled along the Takhini River; and on to the gold-miner town of Dawson City via the Alaska Highway. Sorry, no gambling in the casino, and no long-legged cancan dancers performing in Diamond Tooth Gertie’s gambling den. It was too early in the season for all that. There was a trip instead to Rabbit Creek where gold had been discovered in 1896, touching off a great gold rush. A stop-off at a gold miner’s tent. And then drinks that night in a historic brothel.
Laughter and murmuring interrupted her talk, as she’d expected. It had become a bit of a routine, a ritual she liked. She resumed her talk about the Dempster Highway, 460 miles of snowy, icy dirt road with breathtaking views of lakes, rivers, and mountains.
“And if we’re lucky, which is often enough the case, we’ll see wild animals—a few caribou, ptarmigan, moose, and maybe even a lynx.”
At this point she always inserted the story of Jack Dempster, a member of the North-West Mounted Police in the Northwest Territories, who in 1911 led a rescue team out in the dead of winter to find a lost police patrol. The “Lost Patrol” was a name that went down in the history books: four bold policemen who delivered the mail by dogsled to isolated communities and kept watch over the people in these remote areas, thereby shoring up Canada’s claim on Arctic territory. In 1910, the four had gotten lost in the Ogilvie Mountains—Valerie showed a slide of the area—and in March of the following year, Jack Dempster’s team found them, all dead. Four had starved to death, and one had killed himself in despair. They were a mere thirty-five miles from the manned trading post of Fort McPherson, where their lives would have been saved. But the poor men didn’t know it; they’d probably become completely disoriented.
“They were so close—what a tragedy!” Valerie exclaimed.
She found the story just as gripping every time, and nobody in the room had any idea why. At least that’s what she thought. An elderly man put up his hand.
“Why is Jack Dempster celebrated as a hero? After all, he didn’t save the five missing men. They were dead when he found them.”
Valerie was briefly taken aback.
“You’re right, he wasn’t able to save them. But an attempted rescue in the Arctic winter—and a bad winter at that—is an act of heroism all the same. Dempster and his men could easily have died themselves. Don’t forget how brutal the climate is there. I’m talking about snowstorms, icy cold, whiteouts, and possible injuries that couldn’t be treated.”
She stepped closer to the audience.
“If conditions are nasty enough, it’s often impossible to find the bodies of the missing, so their relatives never find out what happened. So many men disappear on the ice without a trace, their fates forever unknown. Jack Dempster risked his life, and at least the policemen’s families were spared the uncertainty of not knowing.”
The man thanked her, and she proceeded to show pictures of the northern lights, which elicited oohs and ahs from the audience, then switched to pictures of the Muskrat Jamboree, the Inuvialuit spring festival. She showed the dogsled races and the snowmobile trip out onto the estuary of the Mackenzie, Canada’s longest river. Then the exploration of a traditional Inuvialuit ice cellar, or ice house, below the permafrost, where families stored supplies, particularly beluga—the white whale—fish, seal, caribou, moose, and goose. And lastly the climax: the Ice Road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, a village on the Beaufort Sea that the locals simply called “Tuk.”
“The Ice Road runs for one hundred and fifteen miles and is the longest nonprivatized ice road in the world and the only one over fresh and salt water,” Valerie said in conclusion.
When she turned on the lights, she saw amazement in the audience members’ faces. The silent magic of the Arctic had seized many of them, and, as she knew full well, it would never let some of them go.
Answering the call of the Arctic never came cheaply; in fact, throughout history, many had paid with their lives. The Arctic had been a dream for her own mother, Mary-Ann Strong, and one day she didn’t wake up from it. She pursued her dream even after her children were born, leaving them behind, but not the temptation of everlasting ice.
It cost her her life. How exactly was something that even Valerie didn’t know.
She was invariably
plied with questions after her presentation, or with tales of travels that she listened to attentively. A woman friend had confessed to her once that she simply could not deal with seniors. Valerie forgave her and resisted reminding her that she too would be old someday. Valerie had a soft spot for the elderly. While her parents were trekking around in the Arctic, she’d spent most of her childhood in her dear grandparents’ care—until fate dealt her a cruel blow.
Valerie put away her laptop and the brochures. Eleven people had tentatively signed up for the Ice Road tour the following year. That was five more than she’d be leading in a few days. She left the library to find a gray-haired woman in a pale yellow raincoat waiting for her outside.
“I’ve always wanted to meet you,” the woman said in a soft but confident voice.
Valerie wasn’t surprised. There was almost always somebody who wanted to talk to her after the others had gone.
“I knew your mother quite well,” the woman said.
Valerie looked at her, puzzled. Which mother? Her stepmother? Or her biological mother, Mary-Ann?
“She was a friend of my youth. We spent a lot of time together—those were lovely days. We went to Paris, to learn French.”
A warm smile spread over the woman’s face.
Paris. Mary-Ann Strong, Valerie’s biological mother. Did the older woman know that she was dead?
“You’ve probably never heard of me. I’m Christine Preston.”
“No,” Valerie responded, tightening her grip on the handle of her small briefcase. “I can’t say that I have.”
“I live in Ontario. I’m visiting my daughter in Vancouver. I’m retired and spend my time traveling these days. And so I heard about your presentation. I thought to myself, Here’s an opportunity to see Mary-Ann’s daughter.”
Valerie tucked away a loose strand from her ponytail.
“How . . . how did you find out I’m her daughter?”
She had always tried to hide her identity, to avoid being recognized as the daughter of her famous father. Peter Hurdy-Blaine was still a household name: he was once Canada’s best hockey player. And his story was well known. Married a young beauty. Later, a failed Arctic explorer. A terrible human tragedy.
She couldn’t listen to another word.
“Mary-Ann was an important part of my life, so naturally I was curious about what happened to her children,” Christine answered.
This will never end, Valerie thought. People hunting down my brothers and me. Not because of who we are; it’s always because of our parents.
Christine appeared to read something in Valerie’s face.
“I won’t keep you,” she said. “But I would like to give you something. It might be of interest to you.”
She pulled an envelope out of her handbag. Valerie accepted it without thinking.
“Should you wish to get in touch with me, my address is in there,” she said kindly.
Valerie thanked her and struggled to find suitable words of good-bye, but Christine Preston had already turned around and begun walking away.
Valerie thought about telling her brother Kosta in Vancouver about the unexpected encounter. When she arrived home and shut the door behind her, she remembered that she hadn’t turned on her cell phone after the presentation. She pulled it out and discovered a message waiting for her. Clem Hardeven.
She hung up her jacket and called him right away.
Her ears and eyes in Inuvik, Clem always knew what was going on. To be sure, she distrusted his attractive, roughneck charisma, which exuded a love of adventure—a mistrust that surely went back to her father. A man like Clem could be a woman’s ruin. Alana Reevely had once told her at a boozy farewell party that white men in Inuvik came there to run away from something, were incapable of relationships, or didn’t know what women need. And they were incorrigible machos. But Alana was obviously happy with Duncan, a musher, who seemed to be capable of handling a relationship. Valerie intended to worm more details out of Alana on that topic in two weeks.
For all her leeriness, Valerie had to admit that Clem was always supportive whenever something was troubling her and was friendly and reliable. And he also hadn’t responded to Sedna’s flirting last summer.
Clem’s voice coming through her cell phone snapped her out of her thoughts. She was lucky to get him immediately, something that almost never happened. His cell had no reception on the Ice Road.
“I’m in the office because the Ice Road is closed,” he explained.
Valerie knew that whiteouts and blizzards repeatedly made temporary road closures necessary. Nevertheless she was surprised because she’d read on the Internet that the forecast for Inuvik was favorable. The undertone in Clem’s voice made her suspicious.
“Is something the matter?”
“Don’t tell anybody you got this from me. A person was found dead on the Ice Road. Frozen to death.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
“Who? What happened?”
“The police aren’t releasing any information, but word is, it’s a young woman.”
“Was she found in a car?”
“No, she was lying on the ice.”
“Oh my God! Was she run over?”
“It’s not official, but according to the grapevine, she seemed unharmed. Might have frozen to death. Please, Val, this is all confidential, OK?”
“Yes, you can count on me. My lips are sealed. But . . . is there any danger? Should I watch out?”
“You know we’re all dangerous up here. Don’t forget your shooting iron.”
When she didn’t respond immediately, he continued, “My little joke; I didn’t mean it seriously.”
She hoped he didn’t hear her deep breathing.
“Tell me—the woman . . . Is she a local or a stranger?”
“A white woman. Apparently very young. Dark hair. That’s all I know.”
Sedna was not very young, and her hair was strikingly colored. Still, Valerie had to let Clem know about the recent call.
“Sedna phoned me a few days ago. Just a short call. We lost the connection after a couple of sentences. She told me she needed help because somebody was trying to kill her.”
There was a pause at the other end. Valerie could visualize Clem sitting at his desk, which was much too low for his six-foot-two frame—a desk covered with papers and all kinds of tools. She envisioned his attractive face, with its eagle eyes and long, straight nose, his expression showing total concentration (she liked that look more than she wanted to) on what she was confiding to him. After Sedna’s futile, seductive dance around Clem, she had declared him “arrogant” and “humorless.” But Valerie knew Sedna was dead wrong.
“Might you perhaps entertain the idea that he could have a girlfriend?” she asked Sedna at the time.
“Might you perhaps entertain the idea that he could be a homosexual?” Sedna countered, mimicking Valerie’s tone of voice.
As far as their new friendship was concerned, that trip had been an absolute flop.
“Where was she calling from?” Valerie heard Clem ask.
“That’s just it. I haven’t a clue. She disappeared from here about five months ago.”
“And nobody knows anything? She didn’t tell anybody where she was going?”
“Not that I know of. I haven’t been in touch with her since last fall. I was annoyed because of . . . something she . . . Oh, that’s neither here nor there. But she’d told me before that she felt like spending a couple of months in a gold-miner’s camp. She’d apparently met somebody, a man who persuaded her to do it. Maybe somebody in Dawson City.”
“I haven’t heard a word about her,” Clem added in his matter-of-fact way. “And you can bet I would have if she’d been in the area.”
“I called the police, but her brother apparently told them he was in touch with her and that she was fine.”
Clem cleared his throat.
“Got a call on the other line. We’ll talk for sure before you leave. So long.
”
She held her phone in her hand and stared out the large living room window. A gentle breeze was stirring in the branches of the mighty yellow cedars. A hummingbird sipped sugar water from the feeder she’d put out on the patio. Spring had come to the Sunshine Coast a good while ago. The fresh grass shimmered, a lush green. Contrast that with Inuvik, where they had to expect fifteen to twenty-five degrees below zero.
What could have happened to that young woman on the Ice Road? Should Valerie inform her tour group about the incident? What should she tell them? Clem seemed irritated that he hadn’t been better informed about it. She could empathize: the Ice Road was his turf, and he felt responsible for it. She was glad he’d confided in her. It would have been distressing if a participant in the upcoming tour had blindsided her with the news.
She discovered another message on her phone’s display.
Oh, no, she thought, not this too!
She listened to the message from the tour-bus driver she’d hired for the upcoming trip. When she’d finished, the doorbell rang. It was Faye. They’d arranged to go for a walk in Cliff Gilker Park.
“You look worried,” Faye said. “Aren’t you glad you don’t have to worry about Sedna anymore?”
Valerie sighed.
“I’m still looking for a tour-bus driver because my first guy broke his arm. Now the next one has just canceled. If that’s not Murphy’s Law, what is? Now I’ve got exactly one week to find somebody.”
“Good grief! What lousy luck! Come on, get your running shoes and we’ll go get some fresh air. I’ve got something to tell you.”
Fifteen minutes later they turned onto a path in the woods that led over roots that looked like huge blood vessels. They ignored the WARNING: BEAR SIGHTINGS! sign. The air smelled of damp moss and rotting cedars. Loud squirrel calls trilled through the silence.
Out of the blue Faye said, “Sedna cleaned out my bank account.”
CHAPTER 7
Valerie stopped in amazement.
“What did she do?”
Faye kept running, and Valerie stumbled along behind her.
“I never told you, but she wanted to help me renovate my place.”
The Stranger on the Ice Page 4
