When the Flood Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  It was eleven o’clock and daylight hadn’t yet left the western sky when Lacey finally left the building, slumped in the passenger seat of Dee’s Lexus. One more chore awaited before bed: choosing a suitable evening gown. She dumped her filthy work clothes on the floor in the mudroom, scooted up to the shower in her skivvies, and stepped into the massive master bedroom ten minutes later. Dee was in the walk-in closet, a room with more floor space than Lacey’s old bedroom. Surrounded by racks of clothes and shoes, she was flipping through hangers holding a rainbow array of dresses, some of whose skirts trailed on the floor.

  “No trains,” Lacey said immediately. “Do we really have to do this?”

  “Yes, we do. You’re representing the museum and Wayne’s company at the gala, and you’ll need to blend into the crowd. Plus you want to look tasty in case opportunity presents for your post-divorce fling. Where Jake goes, hockey players follow like lambs.”

  “Jocks aren’t my style,” said Lacey. “But maybe they’re yours. This Jarrad that Jan warned me about, was he your post-divorce fling?”

  “I wouldn’t touch that jackass with a tire iron. Anyway, he’s Camille Hardy’s boy toy. I told you about her fooling around with her husband’s protege, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but …”

  Dee shook something blue and frilly off its hanger. “Try this one. It’s probably not your style, but the neckline ruffles will disguise your lack of boobs.” As Lacey’s head was enveloped by the fabric, she added, “My post-divorce fling was a nice enough guy up visiting Jake during the All-Star break last January. We had a great sexy weekend, then he went back to his team and I broke my ankle. End of story. Although, if he shows up at the Stanley Cup party on Saturday, I might treat myself to a second helping as a reward for surviving the grand opening.”

  “There’s a party on Saturday, too? Don’t you people ever stop?”

  “Last fall, when we picked the gala date, we didn’t know the Finals would start so late. Or that the Flames would be in them. What were the odds? And that dress is definitely not you. Too cowgirl.” Dee flung something bronze and rustling at her. “Try this. More a winter style than high summer, but we can skip the jacket. Anyway, you should come to Jake’s party with me. Lashings of food and drink, and plenty of single men.”

  “I’m not invited. Also, I have to be up early Sunday for a picnic with Tom’s shift and their families. The more people I meet in Calgary, the better chance of finding another job when this one finishes.” And a place to live when I’m not needed here, she didn’t add. “Those folks live in my wage bracket, and they’re police families. They kind of get me, which pro hockey players and oil barons don’t.”

  “And it’s a bit too soon for Cautious McCrae to start flinging with wild abandon. Fine.” Dee looked her over with a critical eye. “Bronze is a good colour on you, but the cut is completely wrong for those hips.”

  “And these boobs. You have some, while I make Kate Moss look overendowed. Face it, there’s nothing here that will fit me. But while you’re on this fruitless quest, you might as well tell me more about Jarrad. Would he have any reason to hold a grudge, to wish you ill?”

  Dee’s hand crushed the shoulder of a crimson-silk sheath. “He’s the one who killed Duke last winter. I lost my temper with him once already over that.” She shoved the sheath aside just a little more roughly than it deserved. “Now I avoid him. His trial is next month and I won’t give his defence team a second chance to discredit me as a witness.”

  “You don’t think being a witness against him makes him your enemy and a potential prowler-slash-stalker?”

  “I didn’t know it was him. Someone else identified his car. He can’t make it all go away by frightening me into silence any more than Mick could fix it by hiding the car in his townhouse garage in Calgary while the little brat flew straight back to the States. Jarrad might not like me, but he has nothing to gain by stalking me. Plus he’s been away ever since January. He plays for the St. Louis Blues.”

  Maybe that was the accepted story, but if that team had played the Calgary Flames, he’d have come with them. Or to Edmonton — that was only a few hours’ drive from here. There would be a record of when and where the teams met. Without dates for the prowling incidents, though, Lacey couldn’t line them up against the game schedule. She could only arm herself with as much information as possible against future threats.

  “Will he be at the gala tomorrow night?”

  “He’s on the program, in a skit with Camille. I can only imagine how horrendous it will be.” Dee turned with something greenish in her arms. “Try this silk. Shimmery olive will be great against the theatre walls.”

  “Point him out to me right away,” said Lacey as she stripped off the bronze dress. “I want to keep a close eye on him as long as you’re in the same building.”

  “Please do. If you see him anywhere near me, come right over. I want a credible witness to any words we exchange.”

  The green silk was the one. Its draped neckline disguised the absence of cleavage. The matching handbag was big enough for her key card, cellphone, and other paraphernalia she would carry in her dual role as elegant guest and security presence. She was more ready for the gala now than the actual building was. Tomorrow would be another hurried day of finishing up small jobs and troubleshooting glitches in all the high-tech security programs. She hung the green silk on her closet door and went to bed.

  The first glitch appeared by nine in the morning. The elevator security program, which was only supposed to lock down the elevator if the vault door was open, had fixated on a different door once the vault level was locked off. It kept defaulting to locking down the elevator whenever the caterers propped open the loading bay doors. Tonight, not only catering staff, but actors and musicians, too, would use those doors throughout the evening while the building was full of high-wattage guests who didn’t like to be kept waiting. Eventually Wayne gave up trying to debug the program and simply unlocked the vault level, with strict instructions to Lacey to turn it back the instant the caterers left the building that night.

  Lacey nodded. If nobody knew the bottom floor was accessible, nobody would bother to go down there. Camille was the likeliest candidate to try to show it off to an art donor, but hopefully she would be too busy once the party got rolling.

  All day the bitchy blonde and her shrieking friends got in people’s way, interfering with the children’s choir’s dress rehearsal, harassing the caterers, and criticizing the placement of pictures in the main gallery. En route to the kitchen for a coffee refill, Lacey narrowly dodged a trampling by five sets of spiky heels in a cloud of expensive perfume. She found Rob gently beating his head on a cupboard door.

  “Bad time?”

  “That woman.” Rob fluffed the front of his frosted hair. “And her blasted posse. I keep reminding myself they’ll be off on some fabulous holiday by this time next week. May Ms. Hardy forget to return. What can I do for you, Lacey? More bad news from Wayne?”

  “Not that I know of.” She pointed to a line in the gala program lying nearby. “Do you know what this Jarrad Fiske looks like? I want to recognize the performers so I don’t try to run anyone out of the backstage area who belongs there.”

  “All I know is hearsay: he’s the guy our esteemed vice-president was groping in the theatre. Nobody has introduced us. I’m only the hired help in their eyes. Especially that Hardy woman.”

  “She hasn’t deigned to notice my existence at all,” said Lacey. “Considering how she runs Dee up the walls, I’m getting off lucky.”

  “You are indeed.” Rob held out the coffee pot. “Dregs?”

  “They’ll do me,” said Lacey. She went off to the theatre to identify the man Camille was groping. The only man present was one of the teachers from the elementary school, trying to corral a handful of rowdy boys into the back row of the choir risers. She didn’t have the heart to in
terrupt his Herculean efforts, especially since he might not know Jarrad by sight, either.

  Around three o’clock the interchangeable blond board members dispersed. Wayne, with a few last-minute instructions, let Lacey go, too. She found Dee home ahead of her, sleek and gleaming from her upswept hair to her tawny silver pedicure. In a short silk dressing gown over a body stocking, she looked like a flawless apparition, bearing little resemblance to the red-eyed mess of three days before. She hustled Lacey through a light meal, into the shower, and then into a chair before her well-equipped dressing table.

  “Updo,” she said firmly. “You can paint your nails while I pin. Cocktails at six thirty. We need to be early.”

  “My hair will take an hour?” Lacey was joking, but Dee didn’t laugh. She brushed a bit more furiously, spread some goop on her palms, rubbed that through the hair, and brushed some more. Whatever the goop was, the result was rather nice. Lacey’s unruly front curls lay smooth against her forehead, with the wayward strands at the back neatly tucked and pinned. After layers of expensive, nearly invisible makeup were added and dusted and the pale-olive dress was drifted into place, Lacey stood staring at her mirror image. “I’m undercover as a trophy wife,” she said, looking over her shoulder to check the drape of the gown. “Or a two-grand hooker.”

  Dee lifted one arm to be zipped into a silvery-bronze sheath. “Ready? I want to go approve the arrangements before Camille gets down there to demand changes. We should have offered danger pay to the whole staff, or insured against rage-induced aneurysms.”

  Chapter Ten

  Friday’s secret half pill got Jan through part of the day. To disguise that small dose, she cut up a whole bunch of pills and dumped them back into the bottle. If Terry didn’t take her word, if he was counting the pills, he would find it harder to be sure. At least for today. Tomorrow she would not take any. Or maybe just a quarter, if she really needed it to get on her feet for Jake’s Stanley Cup party. She’d been on the lounger in the cantilevered sunroom all afternoon, soaking up the warmth while hiding her eyes from the bright day, swapping between dark glasses and an eye mask. Rolling over amid the pillows and afghans was an effort. She did it anyway for the sake of changing the view from uphill, into the setting sun, to downhill, so she could look toward shadows. Shadows suited her today, with everyone she knew heading for the museum when she would be staying home alone, again. The gala guests were friends, neighbours, Terry’s co-workers. They shared more of his life than his own wife did. What if the contrast between cranky, frumpy Jan and some sleek, tennis-playing harpy got to be too much for him? Would he walk out? Would he force her out of the house into a tiny apartment in Calgary, where she’d eke out a miserable existence on her ever-ebbing divorce settlement? Would he stay with her out of guilt and have a long affair, or a bunch of them? Would she end up like that cellist in that movie who had ALS or something and was left to wither alone while her husband started a family with another woman?

  She pushed the thoughts away. Emotion was energy and she had none to spare. Terry was a decent guy and he loved her. She had freely chosen to help Rob yesterday, chosen to overclock her mitochondria with the stimulant pills, and now she was paying for it. Tonight’s dress would do for some future party. Although it was hard, today, to think of any occasion that would be worth three days’ rest beforehand, plus a whole day’s effort to pace the getting ready, followed by however many days it took to recuperate.

  Today, with the nausea and the muscle aches and the brain fog that smothered any train of thought and made television a too-bright, too-loud horror, all she could do was gaze out the windows on the shady side of the house, watching the neighbours depart in their gala finery. She had her bird binoculars to hand, but birds moved too fast for her exhausted and uncoordinated brain to follow them. People she could keep in focus for a bit longer.

  First Dee and her guest came out, lifting long, shimmering dresses above the gravel driveway, tucking their glamorous skirts into the Lexus. Their golden chariot drove slowly down the hill, vanished behind the trees at the curve, and reappeared when it turned into the museum parking lot. Dee had barely stepped out of her vehicle when Jake Wyman’s beloved old Mercedes rolled smoothly into Dee’s driveway. If he was hoping to casually offer his escort to the museum, he had missed his chance by scant minutes.

  Terry came in from his post-work run, glowing with health and sweat. “Get you anything before I shower?”

  “Could you warm up my rice bags?”

  “Still having chills? This must be your worst crash all year.” To his credit, he didn’t mention the pills. He took the flannel-covered lumps to the kitchen. The microwave hummed. Although Jan listened hard, she couldn’t make out any sound of him pouring out pills for counting. When he brought the heated rice bags back, he looked past her and asked, “Is that Jake’s car at Dee’s place? Did he convince her to be his date?”

  Jan tucked the bags back under the afghan, shaping one around her feet and laying the other across her aching thighs.

  “She didn’t wait for him. You think he’s after her to be Wife Number Four?”

  Terry shrugged. “Or just being a good neighbour. He’s been great with the dogs. Those mutts like him as much as they like you.” He left for his shower. Jan closed her eyes, giving them a rest from the glare outside. If he went to the gala without asking about the pills, she would not have to decide whether to lie to him or not.

  How much time passed she wasn’t sure, but Dee’s setters started barking. At first it was just one yap from Boney, but Beau quickly joined in. So many days, she had lain right here listening to them — this was their intruder alert. A bear? She reached for the binoculars again and scanned as much of Dee’s yard as she could from this angle. Nothing. It must be in the trees, or on the trail. Jake had just missed it; he was turning out of Dee’s drive. He hadn’t gone far when Camille backed her butter-yellow Bimmer onto the road with utter disregard for anyone coming down it. Jake hit his brakes at the last second, and then his horn. Camille waved a hand in a way that might have meant anything and sped off down the hill. Going to give Dee a hard time because her dogs were barking? Jan swung the binoculars back to Dee’s yard.

  Terry came back, showered and dressed in his lightweight summer suit. “What’s up down there?”

  “Bear, I think. I can’t see it, though. Can you go look from the bedroom? If it goes after the dogs’ supper you’ll have to shoot off a banger at it.” Terry loved his pen-sized bear-banger launcher. With the extra elevation on his side, he could lob it over the intervening trees and pop it off right behind Dee’s house. Hopefully the bear would run, and the dogs would not be too upset by the explosion. It wasn’t the first time they’d been close to one, but their sensitive ears would hurt. Terry had barely gone when Mick and Jarrad the boy toy appeared on Dee’s deck. Jarrad was supporting Mick. What on earth were they doing down there? And dressed for the gala, by the looks of it. They must have walked up the trail, an insane feat considering Mick’s weak heart. “It’s not a bear,” she called after Terry. “It’s people. I think Mick’s in trouble.”

  She sat up for a better look and trained her lenses on the pair, watching as Jarrad helped Mick into a deck chair. He dragged the chair out to the terrace, into the sun, and dropped to a crouch beside it. Terry came back.

  “I think it’s his heart,” she said. “Should we call 911?”

  “If it’s an emergency, Jarrad will be dialing already. Is he?”

  “Nope. They’re just sitting there, maybe talking. Mick’s not grabbing his chest or anything.”

  “Probably just taking a rest, then. I can stop on my way down, offer them a ride. You need anything before I go?”

  “I’ll be okay.” Jan’s wrists ached from holding up the binoculars, but she kept watching. If Mick got suddenly worse, she could call for help faster. “He should be home, in bed or in front of the TV. Not dragging himself out to watch
Camille humiliate him on stage.”

  “Perils of marrying someone half his age. Not showing up would enrage her.” Terry kissed the top of her head. “You know where I’ll be if you need me.” A couple of minutes later, his van rolled up Dee’s driveway. Jarrad hurried to meet it. Terry didn’t even get out, just talked from his seat and then drove away again. Jan fumbled for her phone and hit his number as he pulled into the museum lot below.

  “You were supposed to help them.”

  “Didn’t want help. Jarrad said he’d walk down for his car in a minute. They’re adults. They can manage.” Jan swung the glasses back. Sure enough, there went Jarrad now, jogging easily down the drive, leaving Mick slumped in the chair with his head in his hands.

  “Okay, I guess you’re right. Have a good time. Say hi to Dee for me, if she stands still long enough.”

  Jarrad came back at the wheel of his vintage red Corvette. He helped the older man into the car. Mick was far too frail to be out of the house. He’d have to face the humiliation of Camille’s “acting” with Jarrad, too. Poor Mick. That was one part of the show Jan was only too happy to be missing. And that was the last of the neighbours, the final distraction. It had helped her, though: Terry had left without mentioning the pills. She wanted to feel victorious, but shame crawled like ants across her oversensitized skin. Was she really an addict, even though she had hardly been on the Adderall a week? Would her marriage be destroyed by this latest failed treatment attempt? She busied herself rearranging her blankets and rice bags. Then she distracted herself by trying to think of a famous painting whose sky matched the translucent turquoise glow off to the east. Today the fixed world of long-dead artists was easier to face than the ever-threatening present.