She heard Glenn’s voice coming from somewhere.
“She’s my sister.”
Valerie gave a start. She was in shock. She saw Glenn in front of her, his face distorted with pain.
“What?” she wanted to shout, but her throat was blocked.
She shook her head.
“It’s true, Valerie—Sedna is my sister. You won’t want to believe it, but our mother was Bella Bliss. Bella Wakefield now.”
Poppy was nervously pacing back and forth.
“What was she doing here? This is Pete’s cabin.”
Glenn ignored him. His eyes were unwaveringly fixed on Valerie.
“She deserted us to marry your father. She simply walked out on her children. Sedna and me.”
Valerie shook her head again.
“That . . . that can’t be. That . . .”
“We didn’t know for a long time where our mother was. But Sedna sniffed her out. It came as a shock to Sedna. Our mother had left to become part of another family. A stranger’s children were more important to her than her own children.” He was yelling now.
Poppy interrupted him. “We mustn’t waste time. We have to call the police and an ambulance!”
Glenn was absolutely frantic. “Someone killed her!” he shouted. He grabbed Poppy by the shoulders and shook him. “Who wanted her dead?”
Poppy extricated himself from Glenn’s grasp.
“Cool it, man. The cops will figure this out. You can come back with us.”
“Are you out of your mind? I won’t leave Sedna here alone. Somebody killed her.”
Poppy looked toward Valerie, his eyes pleading for help. She was the tour guide and responsible for her customers. But she didn’t know what she could do to sway Glenn; she didn’t recognize him anymore. He was a threatening stranger.
When she tried to speak, she could only croak.
“Glenn, we should take care of Sedna—you’re right. We won’t leave her here alone. But now—”
“She almost made it. She was going to tell the whole world. The whole world’s going to know what a son of a bitch your father was, Valerie. How he killed Mary-Ann Strong so he could marry our mother.”
Glenn walked over to a little table that held a propane lamp, notebooks, and a bundle of papers. He grabbed the bundle and held it high.
“Here! It’s all in here!”
Enraged, he threw it into a corner.
Poppy seized Glenn’s arm.
“Don’t touch anything. We need to leave everything just as we found it for the police. It’s important.”
Glenn pushed him down onto the floor. There was a tussle, and the next thing Valerie saw was a pistol in Glenn’s hand.
Poppy dove for cover under the table.
But Glenn’s eyes were trained on Valerie.
“You think you’re untouchable, you and your family. A family of murderers. You killed Sedna because you were afraid the truth would come out. Now the whole world will know.”
Valerie slowly backed away from him. Panicked, she looked for an escape, but Glenn was blocking the way out. She had to stall Glenn as long as she could.
“Why didn’t Sedna ever tell me? We were friends. Bella never told us that she had children. It was impossible for us to know. And we were just children ourselves. What could we have done about it?”
“What could you have done about it? What could you have done about it?” Glenn’s voice grew louder and louder. “You’re right, Valerie. You were just kids, just like we were. Maybe none of us could have done anything about it. But we’re not helpless kids anymore—we’re adults now. Sedna and me . . .”
Something slammed into the outside back wall, startling Glenn. Valerie glimpsed a shadow diving by her. A figure came through the open door and jumped on Glenn. They fell to the floor.
The pistol landed at her feet. She heard steps. Somebody reached for the gun. Strong arms unceremoniously dragged her outside.
“Don’t be afraid. You’re safe,” the figure said. “Get behind the snowmobile for cover.”
Even with the scarf that covered half the person’s face and the beaver hat, Valerie recognized her: the caribou lady.
CHAPTER 33
She crouched all alone behind the snowmobile for what seemed like an eternity. Agitated voices came through the open door. The caribou lady ran around to the back of the cabin and seemed to be talking to the police on some device. Then she went back inside.
Valerie waited, immobile as a nearby fir tree in the sparkling snow. The sunshine struck her face. The edges of her ears turned numb. She pulled the thin head covering she wore under her helmet over her head. A wave of despair threatened to bury her. Sedna is dead. Sedna is dead. How in the world did it happen?
Suddenly, Marjorie Tama’s words about her mother flashed through her mind.
“Her soul is still here. Talk to her, Valerie. She’ll give you counsel and guide you.”
And so she closed her eyes and called to her mother. Give me a sign that you are here, that you are standing by me. Do not leave me alone in these dark hours. I need your help, my unknown mother. Be with me with your love and counsel. Her eyes filled with tears that froze to her eyelashes. She blinked and blinked. And then she saw it. An Arctic fox was crouching just a few yards in front of her beside the fir. An Arctic fox! Valerie knew that these white foxes were common around Tuktoyaktuk. But not Inuvik. You’d only expect to see red foxes there.
The fox watched her with dark button eyes buried in white fur. It turned to look back and then again in her direction. They stared at each other for several long seconds. And in a moment of sudden intuition, it became clear to Valerie that life was a struggle for all, for this fox in the Arctic, and for her, and for all people. The one thing she could do at that moment was to accept that fact and face life as it was.
The fox twitched all of a sudden, then bounded off and disappeared. Somebody had come out of the cabin. Valerie could still hear men’s voices.
“Come with me,” the caribou lady said. “Let’s go where we can talk in peace and quiet. The police will be here soon, but first I have to explain why we’re here.”
They went around the cabin, where Valerie saw three parked snowmobiles.
“I’m Ellen Sukova and my partner is Alex Firth. We work for a security firm in Vancouver. Your brother Kosta hired us to follow you and see to your safety. I’m sure that comes as a surprise; it might be best if you call your brother today and have him confirm it.”
Ellen talked quickly and smoothly as if she’d long prepared for this moment. Valerie listened in silence.
“Kosta told us about Glenn Bliss’s identity. He really is Sedna Mahrer’s brother. And Bella Wakefield, also known as Bella Bliss, is Sedna and Glenn’s mother. We know that Sedna sent the threatening letter to your brother. She and Bliss planned a tell-all book about your parents.”
She halted her rapid flow of words.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Valerie nodded like a robot.
“Good. Better stay put until the police come. We contacted them by satellite phone. We want everything to be carried out properly on our end.”
She scrutinized Valerie, whose silence seemed to be unsettling her.
“You’re probably asking yourself how we located Sedna. Somebody in Inuvik gave us a vital tip. We were here last evening but couldn’t see any movement inside the cabin. No sign of life. We thought we might have the wrong place. This morning we tried it again. We knew from Poppy Dixon that your tour group was coming here today, including Glenn. We wanted to monitor everything so we hid behind the cabin. We—”
Valerie raised a gloved hand.
“Please, this is all too fast for me. It’s . . . it’s all so . . . inconceivable.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I understand perfectly well.” Ellen sounded very professional. “Please cooperate with the police when they arrive. We want all this tied up properly.”
Valerie nodded. She screwe
d up her courage.
“How did Sedna die?”
Ellen’s voice stayed businesslike, as if the question was just one item among many on a list.
“I don’t want to anticipate what the police will say, but it might have been carbon monoxide poisoning. Sedna heated the cabin with a portable stove. The windows were boarded up, and the door was shut, so the cabin might have filled up with carbon monoxide; it’s possible no fresh air could get in. She probably just dozed off and never woke up.”
Ellen looked up.
“There’s the police helicopter.”
She put her hands on Valerie’s shoulders.
“I know this is very tough on you. But you’ll pull through, believe me.”
Valerie nodded once more.
But Sedna didn’t pull through.
CHAPTER 34
Five heads turned toward Valerie when she and Faye arrived at the group’s table in the hotel restaurant. They were fortunately out of earshot of the other guests, just as she’d asked the maître d’. The day’s events had dragged her down like lead weights. She kept replaying the images in her head. Paramedics loading Sedna’s body onto the stretcher and into the helicopter. RCMP officials carrying out forensic work in the cabin. Her interrogation by John Palmer and Franklin Edwards, his colleague from Yellowknife, who once again intimidated her with his penetrating stare. Ellen Sukova and Alex Firth in animated conversation with the investigators.
And Poppy Dixon, who took her under his wing until they got to the hotel where Faye was waiting. They went to Valerie’s room, and Faye listened to Valerie’s hasty account and asked a lot of questions.
After she finished, Valerie burst into tears.
“I’ll never be able to ask Sedna why she didn’t just tell me everything,” she managed to get out amid sobs. “We could have talked it out. Then she might still be alive today. I might have gained a sister—”
“Stop!” Faye broke in. “Stop right this minute. Sedna was free to make her own decision, and that decision had nothing to do with you.”
Then Faye put her arm around Valerie’s shoulder and let her cry until the tears stopped flowing.
Valerie took a seat at the table, acutely aware that her eyes were still red and swollen.
“Where’s Glenn?” Paula asked.
“He’s still at the police station,” Valerie responded, surprised at how composed she sounded. “We found a dead woman in the cabin we stopped at. She was Glenn’s sister. She was on vacation here, but Glenn didn’t want to advertise that fact for whatever reason. She was staying at the cabin, and Glenn wanted to check on her.”
Her eyes scanned the group until they landed on Jordan Walker, whose face showed the same bafflement as the others’ did.
“How did she die?” Anika asked.
“It was probably an accident. It looks like she died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The door was closed and the windows were sealed, and she had a propane camp stove. The cabin had a woodstove, but she hadn’t lit it; she probably tried to heat the place with the gas stove.”
She decided not to mention the security people Kosta had hired and her own relationship with Sedna. Things were complicated enough as it was.
“Did you find Glenn in the cabin? With the dead woman?” Anika asked, sounding curious, not troubled.
“Yes. He was very upset, of course, as you can imagine. He . . . thinks somebody killed his sister. He must have felt threatened somehow because . . . he was distressed and waved a pistol around.”
A wave of shock passed through the group.
“What? He had a pistol in his luggage?” Carol’s jaw dropped.
Valerie raised both hands.
“Shhh. Not so loud. I don’t want the other guests to hear. It wasn’t a real pistol, the police told me, but a fake.”
“Why did he have a fake pistol with him?”
“He’s an American, and they’re obsessed with guns. They constantly feel like they have to defend themselves against whatever.”
They all looked at Jordan, who’d nonchalantly uttered the remark.
“Did you know about it?” Paula asked.
“Certainly not, or I’d have taken it away from him.”
“How did he get the pistol through airport security?”
Jordan shrugged.
“I’d guess he bought it in Whitehorse, but I don’t know. Glenn and I, we don’t know each other all that well. We have the same hobbies—orchids and filming nature. We met at an orchid show. When he asked me if I wanted to see the Ice Road, I said yes.”
A waiter approached, and Valerie motioned to him to come back later.
“When the police were searching the bus, Glenn seemed rather nervous,” Anika said.
Valerie and Faye exchanged glances.
Trish spoke up in her warm, hesitant voice.
“I thought . . . the day I got lost . . . when I had to . . . to go. I went into the brush and Glenn used the outhouse. Do you think he’s the one?”
“What one?”
“The one who followed me? Who scared me.”
Now everybody started talking all at once.
Valerie thought back on the shaman’s rattle that Trish had found near the outhouse. The rattle that Valerie recognized as the same one Sedna had shown her last summer. Of course. Sedna must have given it to Glenn! And he’d planted it intentionally to cause confusion.
But why did he want to scare Trish? Was that Glenn and Sedna’s intention from the outset, to cause trouble for Valerie’s tour? Or to hurt Valerie? To trip her up? Glenn had made a spectacular display of his hatred in the cabin. “A family of murderers,” he’d screamed.
“Valerie?”
Faye’s voice snapped her out of her musing.
“What’s it look like for the rest of our trip? Can you tell us?”
“Yes, sure. We have two options: We retrace our route tomorrow on the Dempster back to Whitehorse. Or we stay here three days longer and fly from Inuvik to Whitehorse and then to Vancouver.”
It was Jordan once again who spoke very calmly.
“I’d like to stay here and take care of Glenn.”
Paula spoke up, her voice full of excitement: “I’d like to stay here, too, and do the Ice Road again before it’s closed. And then go ice fishing in Tuktoyaktuk.”
“Somebody has to take the Chevy back to Whitehorse,” Trish submitted, looking at Valerie with a worried face as if the minibus were one of her children.
“We can definitely find somebody to do it. In the meantime, you all can think about it a little more.”
They ordered dinner, and at the end of the meal, some lively discussion produced a decision. Three extra days in Inuvik.
Valerie could have hugged them all out of relief.
She entrusted the group to Faye while she went up to her room.
She longed to tell Clem about the day’s events. But first she absolutely had to talk to Kosta; she’d already e-mailed him the basics.
She called his number, and he answered after the fifth ring.
“I can’t believe everything that’s happened,” she said instead of a hello.
“Sedna’s death shocked us, too. Have the police confirmed the cause?”
Kosta sounded as factual as ever. It was his modus vivendi. Valerie envied him for it at that moment.
“Officially no, not yet. The bureaucratic mills grind exceedingly slowly. Why did you keep so much from me?”
“To protect you. And to make your job easier. What would you have done if I’d told you?”
She reflected. Yes, what would she have done?
Would she have left Glenn behind? Confronted him? What would that have meant for her long-planned tour? Maybe it really was better for her not to have any idea about what she would have done.
“I can tell you a few things now,” Kosta continued. “But first fill me in on the details.”
She took a deep breath and started slowly, but then it all burst out of her full force. Kosta didn�
��t say much, just an “oh” or a “really” or an “aha” now and then.
After she’d finished, he started his report, in a voice that struck her as lower than usual.
“Bella Wakefield’s first husband was an American named Theodore Bliss. She married him in the US and had two children by him, Glenn and Sedna; Sedna’s first name at the time was actually Iris. Bella was unhappy in her marriage. She met Dad at a sporting event she’d organized for top international athletes. They met again later when he was in the US. More meetings followed, a half dozen or so. At some point she decided to leave her husband because Dad was prepared to marry her. Evidently, it was very serious for them both.”
Kosta’s words rendered her speechless.
“Are you still there?” he asked.
“Yes, yes. It’s all so overwhelming. Did Bella and Dad meet when our mother was still alive?”
“Yes, but they didn’t get involved until after Mary-Ann’s death. There’s a lot more. Bella apparently tried to take her children to Canada with her. Illegally. But her husband prevented it at the last minute. Not one of Bella’s better moves. She did manage to make it to Canada, but she had to leave Sedna and Glenn behind in the US. You can imagine how messy the situation became after that.”
Yes, she could.
“Keep talking,” she said.
“Theodore Bliss was able, through the American courts, to prevent the children from having any and all contact with Bella. He feared a kidnapping. His relatives, as well as Bella’s strictly religious family, turned their backs on her. Nobody told the children where their mother had gone. She . . .”
“That must have been terrible for them.”
“Yes, for them and for Bella.”
“And we were completely in the dark.”
“Yes. Apparently, Dad thought it was best to keep us out of it.”
“My God, Kosta, how she must have suffered!”
He said nothing for a few seconds.
So she went on.
“She gave all her love and care, all . . . her maternal feelings to us, Kosta.”
“She really was a good mother.”
“Lucky for us, but for Sedna and Glenn . . .”
“It was an irreplaceable loss; you’re right there.”
The Stranger on the Ice Page 21
