The Stranger on the Ice

by Bernadette Calonego

  “Sedna? Why Sedna?”

  “She’d helped Emily renovate. Emily Sears. You know her. Sedna did good work, so Emily recommended her.”

  “You are the craftswoman, not her.”

  “Yes, but Sedna has an eye for design. That’s different from the actual renovation work. What Sedna did at Emily’s place looks fabulous.”

  “Really? I didn’t know she could do that. She told me she was a private eye once.”

  Faye gave a dry laugh. She was wearing a colorful scarf on her head and looked like an Abyssinian princess. A princess in running shoes.

  “I’d say she was pulling your leg. But the laugh’s really on me because she fleeced me, damn well fleeced me.”

  “How so? How’d it happen?”

  Faye lowered her eyes and stopped, then scraped her shoes on the soft forest floor.

  “She said she could get a special price for the parquet flooring and tiles and all the stuff I needed for the new kitchen. And everything for the new bathroom. Said she had good connections to wholesalers and got discounts. And it was all true—Emily confirmed it. Sedna wanted me to put money into an account that we both had access to.”

  Valerie half suspected what was coming next.

  “But you surely didn’t do that, or did you?”

  “I did.”

  They’d come to the bridge over the waterfall.

  “How much?”

  “Twenty-five thousand.”

  Valerie’s jaw dropped.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Faye shook her head sorrowfully.

  “Now the account’s empty, and Sedna’s gone. And we haven’t even started renovating.”

  Valerie stared at the flowing water foaming up as it skimmed over a rocky ledge.

  “Did you go to the police?”

  Faye made a face. Valerie had never seen her so ashamed.

  “No, of course not, because—look, I gave her access to my account, voluntarily.”

  “That’s a pile of money! Did you sign a contract?”

  Faye’s contrite expression delivered the answer.

  They leaned over the railing as the water roared beneath them.

  “I suppose,” Faye said, “it was an act of desperation. She . . . she simply borrowed it. She must have needed it very badly.”

  Valerie slowly shook her head and said nothing. So Faye talked instead.

  “I believe Sedna’s somewhere around Inuvik. She often talked about Inuvik after your tour.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she liked it up there, the wild-country atmosphere . . . the people. Nothing specific.”

  Valerie started walking. She could have told Faye about her conversation with Clem, that he hadn’t heard anything about Sedna, but something held her back.

  Faye suddenly asked, “Can I go on your tour? Maybe I can find Sedna.”

  “Faye, look . . . you’ve just . . .” Valerie groped for diplomatic words. “I mean, the trip’s expensive and . . . and you . . . you’re short twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Take me along as a driver. I have a license and bus-driver’s license.”

  Valerie didn’t know how to respond. It sounded like an unexpected solution to an urgent problem. But after her experience with Sedna, she’d sworn to never again take a friend on the tour.

  Holy shit! Twenty-five grand.

  Faye was otherwise so reasonable and thrifty. Valerie couldn’t understand it. Maybe this odd story had sides to it that her neighbor wasn’t telling her about.

  “You don’t have to pay me,” Faye offered. “I only want a separate room. So that we don’t get in each other’s hair.”

  Valerie had to laugh in spite of herself.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  They quietly turned around to go back.

  When they got to the car, Valerie said, “You might be sorry if you go with me. Just look at how it turned out with Sedna. I’m not good with friendships and relationships in general. I cheated on my husband even though he was faithful to me.”

  Faye threw up her hands in feigned despair.

  “Can we drop this self-pitying, oh-I’m-such-an-awful-person farce? We . . . we’ll get along no matter what, because your customers will be with us. And I promise not to skip out on you.”

  As Valerie was having her yogurt in the kitchen afterward, she noticed Christine’s white envelope on the table. At first she just left it there and wandered idly through the house, taking the garbage to the garage and bundling up old newspapers, before picking it up and carrying it to the living room, where she settled down on the sofa. She heard a noise on the patio. Probably raccoons. Ignoring it, she stretched her back and opened Christine Preston’s little gift.

  Christine’s name and address were indeed on a little card attached to a thin plastic file folder. Valerie opened the file and thumbed through photocopies of pages that appeared to be from history books, descriptions of Inuvik and the story of the Dempster Highway. Did the Lady in Yellow—as Valerie secretly called her—think that she didn’t own these books herself or hadn’t read these stories? Then a newspaper clipping caught her attention. It included a photograph of her mother that Valerie had never seen before. It had been taken before her marriage. The caption read, “Mary-Ann Strong as a Student in Paris.”

  Had Christine provided the newspaper with that picture? Another photograph showed her parents before leaving for the famous Dempster Memorial Trek, as the photo caption said. Their faces could just be made out beneath their fur-trimmed hoods. A third picture showed a native boy beside a tent: “Siqiniq Anaqiina, the Boy Guide for Peter Hurdy-Blaine.”

  What? Nobody had ever mentioned a boy. She thought her parents had gone all by themselves on their famous trek to trace the trail of Jack Dempster’s rescue party.

  She felt butterflies in her stomach.

  So in that case, maybe there was a witness, still living, to her mother’s mysterious death. The boy in the picture looked about fourteen years old.

  Her father had never, not one single time, spoken to his children about the tragic event. “He’s too upset to talk about it,” was the standard explanation she heard from her grandparents and other relatives. She’d gotten the same response from Bella Wakefield, her stepmother, later on. Peter Hurdy-Blaine had married Bella two years after returning from that fateful trip to the Arctic. The Arctic he’d thought was a paradise had turned into his very personal hell.

  Valerie only knew that thirty years ago her parents had set out on that fateful snowmobile trip. Several days after they left, Mary-Ann Strong was killed by a bullet. The exact details of what had happened were never made public. Valerie was still unclear as to who had ordered the matter kept under wraps.

  She and her brothers had never undertaken extensive research on the matter: the unwritten law in the family was to let sleeping dogs lie. But the twins agreed with Valerie’s suspicion that it might have been suicide. And now, the news that an Inuvialuit boy had accompanied their parents was weakening Valerie’s inclination to bury her head in the sand over this question.

  Where was Siqiniq Anaqiina from? Was he still alive? And why didn’t he appear in other reports at the time? The name of the paper had been cut from Christine’s copy. Valerie had the impression it was some minor local rag. How did Christine come by this article? And why, given all the news coverage back then, did she want Valerie to see this particular article?

  Valerie couldn’t ask her father anymore. He’d died from a lethal virus in West Africa fourteen years after her mother’s death. The Arctic didn’t kill him, but a vacation in the savanna heat did. And she couldn’t ask Bella—Valerie called her “Mama”—because Alzheimer’s had robbed her of her memory. One day, a neighbor had called to tell them that Bella couldn’t find her way home. A few weeks later, Bella confided that she couldn’t recognize numbers anymore. After numbers, it was letters that became an unsolvable riddle. And then she lost her sense of time. Instead
of reading, now she listened to the radio. But before her illness, Bella had read at least two books a week. She tried audiobooks but was soon unable to understand them. Valerie and her brothers were shocked and in denial at first. Thankfully, Bella still had enough of her wits about her to sign herself into a nursing home. That’s the way she’d always been—practical. And determined to do what was best for the children who weren’t her own.

  That seemed the natural thing for Bella to do. She loved Peter Hurdy-Blaine and therefor his children. Valerie and the twins reciprocated without reservation.

  Valerie had tried to ask Bella some questions the last time she’d seen her. For instance, where could she find her father’s missing diary? But Bella had just smiled at her. And time and again, she’d shout out the word waterfall. First softly, then more and more urgently. Valerie couldn’t make heads or tails of it. When she saw that her questioning was upsetting Bella, she took her in her arms and rocked her like a baby, telling her, “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

  Valerie closed her eyes. Her stepmother’s gradual retreat into an inexplicable, dark world pained her. A second mother gone out of her life. Should she tell Kosta and James about Christine Preston? And about the existence of a possible witness to their mother’s death?

  She suddenly felt tired and hungry. She nestled down on the sofa cushions. Time for the TV evening news.

  A report about the young woman in Inuvik followed a story about a terrorist attack and another on a disastrous avalanche in the Rockies. An excerpt from a press conference in Inuvik made her ears prick up. The dead woman on the Ice Road had been identified as twenty-one-year-old Gisèle Chaume from a small town in Quebec. Her body had been found by a truck driver not far from a pickup that Helvin West, the manager of Suntuk Logistics, had reported stolen.

  Cause of death was still to be determined, the newscaster said. The police were treating the situation as “suspicious,” he said. A special investigator had been called in from Yellowknife.

  The place where the body had been found was shown. And then—

  Clem Hardeven.

  Valerie gave a start. Clem was standing somewhere on the Ice Road, looking concerned. He was expressing his sympathy for the young woman’s parents and saying he hoped the case would be cleared up quickly.

  “We’re doing everything to ensure safety on the Ice Road,” he stated. “It’s a mystery how something like this could happen. This young woman’s death has profoundly shaken the citizens of Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk.”

  With that, the report was over.

  Valerie turned off the sound. It had grown dark outside.

  Cause of death unknown. Suspicious circumstances. Special investigator.

  That certainly sounded like . . . murder.

  CHAPTER 8

  The polar bear was emaciated; it moved ponderously and slowly. It squatted before a large breathing hole in the ice where the two hunters had seen seals surface just a few minutes before. Nuyaviaq Marten wasn’t after natchiq; he delegated seal hunting to his sons. This man from Tuktoyaktuk was the most successful polar-bear hunter in the region—a reputation that filled him with pride. He’d killed his first nanuq when he was thirteen. His father had taken him out on the ice and taught him how to detect the tracks of the powerful predator. They were out on the frozen Beaufort Sea for four days, then moved westward, at first on snowmobiles, then on foot. His father not only showed him how to find nanuq tracks; he also taught him patience. “Nanuq has sharp teeth and claws, but we have patience”—that’s what his father had drummed into him.

  His cousin who was with him today, Henry Itagiaq, was short on patience. Instead, he had a fever—burning buck fever, the nervous excitement that novice hunters feel when they’re close to game. Nuyaviaq could nearly smell it. They lay on their stomachs on the ice and observed the bear through binoculars. It was just over a hundred yards away, upwind so it couldn’t pick up their scent. Henry tried to crawl closer on his stomach, like a seal. Nuyaviaq held him back with a hand signal. He knew when the right moment would come. He just knew.

  He noticed something else. Nanuq was nervous. Distracted. Did the bear suspect that hunters were on his tail? Nuyaviaq watched the yellowish giant, fascinated. Why didn’t it seize one of the seals that periodically popped their heads out of the hole? Nanuq must be very hungry. Its flanks were hollowed out in spite of the abundance of seals that winter. Its coat was shaggy and dull. Nuyaviaq knew he wouldn’t get a good price for it. It pained him to see nanuq in such a state.

  All of a sudden the bear sprang to its feet. Something had frightened it. Then it began to run in the direction of the hunters. Nuyaviaq murmured, “Stay down ’til I—”

  Too late. Henry was already up on his feet. Nuyaviaq had no choice but to jump up himself. They stood stock-still, rifles at the ready. The bear turned to the right and ran faster. “Shit!” Nuyaviaq said to himself. Then, suddenly, a cracking sound came from the ice.

  Boom! An earsplitting bang!

  They instinctively threw themselves down on the hard ice as the echo from the blast sped through the air like flickering northern lights. The ice quaked.

  And then silence.

  Henry spoke first.

  “What the hell . . . !”

  Nuyaviaq cautiously raised himself to a kneeling position and looked around. At first he couldn’t see anything. He scanned the horizon through binoculars.

  “Over there!” he shouted. “Smoke!”

  A distant, dark, giant cloud of smoke billowed up to the sky. A strange odor hit their nose. Henry grabbed his binoculars.

  “What the hell . . . !” he repeated.

  When he realized that something had happened that deserved more than mere curiosity, he shouldered his weapon.

  “Run!” he exclaimed.

  They sprinted back to their snowmobiles as fast as they could.

  From a distance they could see a gray veil hanging in the air over the ice for a long time. And a distant yellowish dot.

  Nanuq was fleeing, just like its hunters.

  It took them over two hours to reach Tuktoyaktuk, where they headed directly for the shed with a green metal roof. A light was on in the little window. Nuyaviaq turned off his motor and bounded up the steps. Inside the office, a squat man who was on the phone—an Inuvialuk like himself—looked up in surprise. Roy Stevens, the man behind the desk, could tell from Nuyaviaq’s excitement that all hell had broken loose somewhere. Stevens was a ranger stationed in Tuktoyaktuk, a member of the Canadian army volunteers, a troop formed primarily from the indigenous population and charged with patrolling remote stretches of the Arctic.

  Nuyaviaq gave the ranger an unambiguous hand signal, and Stevens abruptly ended the call.

  “There was an explosion,” Nuyaviaq said. “Out on the ice.”

  Nuyaviaq spoke with a quick urgency that was entirely uncharacteristic. Being an Inuvialuk, he always gave his words just the weight that was necessary.

  “A huge explosion about two hours to the northwest,” he added. “Enormous.”

  Henry Itagiaq had come in as well and nodded vigorously in agreement.

  “And then we saw black smoke like an enormous cloud. Gigantic.”

  Stevens blinked at the two men. His brain was still processing the news. But his body reacted faster: his insides were already knotted up.

  “Who was with you?” he asked.

  “Just us two.”

  Stevens couldn’t overlook the fact that the hunters were shaken. And normally it wasn’t easy to see that an Inuvialuk was scared. He himself was an Inuvialuk but with a bit more ambition flowing through his veins. And when the Canadian government was looking for people to serve as scouts and watchdogs in the Arctic, he seized the opportunity. Inuit and Inuvialuit rangers had skills that normal soldiers could only acquire with enormous effort. It took an experienced man of the Arctic like Stevens to find his way around in the emptiness of that frozen universe, to survive the brutal cold and the endless darkne
ss in winter, and to avoid the permanent threat of death by starvation and thirst.

  Stevens picked up a pen and a printed form.

  “I’ll make an official report, OK? Like some tea?”

  The men looked at him. They made no move to sit. He poured three cups of tea, adding sugar and condensed milk. Then he started to piece together the puzzle of their story. As the ranger diligently wrote down all the details, he gradually became convinced that Nuyaviaq Marten and Henry Itagiaq hadn’t simply been fooled by a polar fata morgana, an Arctic mirage. What they’d seen and heard was real. A gigantic explosion.

  Roy Stevens tried with all his might not to think about what that could mean.

  CHAPTER 9

  Clem Hardeven slammed down the tailgate. Lazarusie Uvvayuaq’s snowmobile was tied down in the truck bed. Meteor ran around inside the back of Clem’s four-door cab from one window to the other in anticipation, sticking his moist nose in the back of Lazarusie’s neck, who was in the passenger seat. The Ice Road had been reopened, and Clem wanted to drive to Tuktoyaktuk as quickly as possible.

  He drove down to the frozen Mackenzie. A transparent white veil hung over the blue sky, thin as tissue paper. As soon as it dissipated, the sun would shine on the ice unobstructed.

  They drove past tugboats that had been pulled up on the bank at the beginning of winter. On a hundred-foot-long barge, a two-story, boxlike structure with little windows was waiting for the ice to melt. Floating accommodations. It was the least expensive way to create temporary dwellings in a permafrost area. Soon after the huge white storage tanks, the Northwest Territories government road sign appeared on the right, clearly indicating that this was not a private road. What a joke, Clem thought. Of course the Ice Road was administered by the government, but it was Helvin West who really controlled it. He made the rules, and Clem ensured that everyone obeyed them.

  Shortly afterward they passed the place where the young woman from Quebec had been found dead. A band of black-and-yellow police tape snaked its way along the side of the road.

  “Would you like to get out and show me where she was lying, exactly?” Clem asked his passenger.