by Robin Spano
Georgia eyed Wade’s pour, like she was critiquing how full his tumbler was. She sipped her sauvignon blanc — her second glass, so she had no right to be judgy. “My hairdresser told me about this blogger.”
Fuck. This was the last thing Wade needed. He seized on the word hairdresser. “You had your hair done? It looks great. New color?”
“Highlights. And about three inches shorter. Wade, I didn’t want to have this conversation at your work. But I read the post this afternoon, and it’s making me crazy.”
Wade took a long gulp of Scotch.
“The blog said you were cheating on me.”
“Are you serious?”
Georgia nodded. She looked small and sad, like the young woman he’d fallen in love with.
Wade shuffled his feet on the rubber floor mat. “Why would he invent such an awful lie?”
“Is it a lie?”
“Of course.” Wade reached across the bar to hold Georgia’s hand in his.
Georgia pulled her hand away and picked up a carrot stick, which she used to poke a piece of celery. “I can handle the truth. Things have sucked with us lately.”
“I know. I’ve been stressed, a crappy husband. That’s why I want a partner in Avalanche — so I can be married to you, not to work.”
“Is it true that Sacha had a teddy bear?”
Wade wanted to find that bear and tear him into shreds, starting with his missing eye. Seriously. Fuck Jules. “I don’t know. How would I?”
“It’s in the blog.” Georgia’s eyes flickered to life. She reminded Wade of the kids in the Scream movies — it was all so exciting until they got killed by a psychopath. “If you cheated, Wade, we’ll get past it. I just need to know. I miss that honesty, from the beginning. Remember when we were so excited to tell each other every tiny detail from our days?”
Wade knew it had been there once, but could only remember feeling that way about Sacha. “Of course I remember. And of course I didn’t cheat with some scraggly snowboarder waitress.” Wade nearly choked to talk about Sacha that way, but he needed Georgia onside. “You know that murderers do sometimes lie?”
“Murderers? I’m talking about a blogger.”
“A blogger who cares a bit too much about this death. I don’t think we can discount him as the killer.”
Georgia looked down at her veggie platter, then up again, her eyes alight like she was caught up in something dark and interesting.
Wade came around the other side of the bar and wrapped his wife in his arms. “Maybe I will close this bar, if it’s tearing us up like this.”
“I’m doing my best to help, Wade. But sometimes you have to cut your losses.”
“I know.” Wade touched a strand of Georgia’s hair and wished it was straighter and darker, like Sacha’s.
FORTY-SEVEN
CLARE
Clare dawdled behind Chopper and Jana. The cobblestones seemed to be rotating, singly and together, glistening with snow and colors. “This is amazing,” she said. “Like I have a kaleidoscope in my eyes. Whoever invented that toy must have been on acid.”
Jana stopped walking. She turned around to look at Clare. “Lucy, are you a cop?”
Clare wrinkled her nose and tried to look serious. She ended up bursting out laughing. “No.”
Jana’s face started to blend into the kaleidoscope. Clare wished she could get rid of it.
“Are you sure?” Jana said. “You weren’t going to drop with me until I said how will I know you’re not a cop and promised to show you Sacha’s suicide note.”
“Is that true?” Chopper said. Now his face was in the kaleidoscope, too. He was still a polar bear, but with sharper teeth than before.
Clare wanted to run away, but she forced herself back into Lucy mode. Lucy wouldn’t be afraid, because she wouldn’t see these two as a threat. “Can you guys keep walking? I was having this awesome visual and now your faces are involved.”
“Lucy, we’re asking you a serious question.” Chopper advanced toward Clare, foam dripping from his polar bear fangs.
Fuck. What would Lucy do? “Stop attacking me,” Clare said.
“I haven’t touched you.”
“I mean with words. You guys are invading my trip with mean thoughts. I’m not a cop. Now please shut up.” They’d left the village center, were about to cross the road to the parking lot where Chopper kept his truck. Clare looked around for people who would hear her if she screamed. No one. “I’m not going on your stupid sled ride, either.”
“Because now you’ve seen the Jules footage,” Jana said. “I’m not sure how safe it is if we let you live.”
Clare gasped, involuntarily. “I wasn’t even watching the footage. I was sitting there wishing I was naked with Chopper.”
Chopper smirked. “You can get naked with me later. Come on, let’s cross the street.”
He and Jana started crossing, but Clare stayed rooted to the sidewalk. Jana and Chopper didn’t even like each other, but suddenly they were acting like best friends?
Jana was laughing hard. “Come on, silly. I was joking. We’re not going to kill you. The sledding will be wicked with all this fresh snow.”
Chopper came back to Clare. He took her gloved hand and squeezed. “Even if you are a cop, no one’s going to kill you. Not while I’m there. You’re way too cute to be a corpse.”
His touch, even through padded snow gloves, felt hot. And his eyes were not lying. She let him lead her across the street.
Jana was waiting. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew I was joking. I know you’re not a cop because you wouldn’t have dropped acid, like, for sure. I checked with my brother-in-law who studied forensics in school, and he said there’s no way an undercover would be allowed to take a drug like that. They’re even supposed to avoid marijuana, if you can believe that.”
Clare laughed, because everyone had some friend like that, who wasn’t really a cop but loved to pretend they had inside information. “Wow,” she said. “That sounds extreme.”
Chopper shrugged. “If I was a cop, I’d still drop. I’d be the law, man. Who could tell me not to?”
Jana rolled her eyes. “Can we please just go on this sled ride? I’m burning for some action.”
Clare climbed into the truck, wondering if she should be following her first instinct and staying in the village. But the kaleidoscopes had stopped. She felt clear and in control. “Let’s do it.”
FORTY-EIGHT
MARTHA
Martha liked the dark mornings of winter. She liked the moments to herself before the sun came up. She liked the efficient routine of popping a bagel in the toaster, stretching on her pantyhose, and gulping down a coffee before heading to the car that was waiting outside to take her to the airport. What she did not enjoy was having this purposeful solitude interrupted by her phone ringing.
“I have news.” Ted was breathless. “The FBI got a call late last night. I mean really late, as in only a couple of hours ago.”
Martha was tempted to tell Ted that there were no undecided voters present; he didn’t need to create extra drama or urgency.
“Whistler RCMP thinks Sacha was murdered.”
Martha’s bagel popped in her toaster. She was glad she hadn’t eaten it already. “Yesterday you said they found a suicide note.”
“They did. But apparently the note is ambiguous. Isn’t there someone we can pressure into showing it to us?”
Martha thought of Paul Worthington at the FBI. She’d been pushing her comfort zone even asking for the first favor. If Paul was keeping her in the dark, it would be for the good of the investigation. “No.”
“Come on. Worthington?”
Martha didn’t like Ted’s tone. “I have to trust that Paul is doing his job.”
“Really? This is your daughter we’re talking about. You should be entitl
ed to read her last words. You should also want to.”
Martha wondered if Ted was right, if there was something wrong with her for not wanting to probe further.
“I have a friend with the NYPD,” Ted said. “I’ve asked him to keep his ears open . . . maybe to open them up a bit further than usual . . . to hear what he can about Sacha.”
Martha felt her eyebrows lift. “You have a friend with the police? What does he do?”
“He’s on the enforcement side in Queens. He’s pretty respected.”
“You mean he’s a street cop.” Martha wondered when Ted would learn that he’d be a more interesting guy if he stopped trying to cover up his middle-class background.
“He thinks that the way Sacha was murdered . . . well, if it isn’t suicide, then it’s most likely a serial killer.”
“Why?”
“Because of how she was posed. It wasn’t random — not an angry lover. It was deliberate . . . someone who enjoys the kill, on some level.”
Martha’s stomach wanted to hurl its bile all over her kitchen counter at the thought of a killer taking pleasure in taking Sacha’s life.
“Are you going to the University of Michigan talk?” Ted asked. “I know it’s bad planning — you were just in Detroit for Hillier — but we need to go hard at the youth vote.”
“That was my plan.” Martha’s head had begun to nod involuntarily. She felt like a bobble toy, which made her woozy feeling ten times worse.
“My friend suggests . . . we maybe need to tighten security. He thinks you might be a target.”
“A serial killer would have a pattern, no?” Martha pictured Sacha’s wrists being lifted, slashed, gently placed back on the snow for her life to bleed out of her.
“My friend thinks maybe the killer has a vendetta. He thinks it might be the blogger.”
“Is your friend working with a team of psychologists on a case he’s not even assigned to? Or is this simply conjecture from a street cop?” Martha eyed her bagel. Maybe it would be smart to choke some down — soak up a bit of her nausea. “Look, Ted. It’s touching that you’re going the extra mile for me on this. Really. But I have Secret Service with me at every turn. If they’re good enough to keep presidents from being assassinated, they’re good enough to keep me safe from a blogger.”
FORTY-NINE
CLARE
Clare woke up to loud metal crashing sounds coming from the kitchen. She felt okay. The world seemed to be moving a little more fluidly than usual — walls didn’t seem quite so fixed in place; the bright colors seemed to dance within their patterns on the drapes — but she felt solidly sober, and glad to be in control of her own mind. She threw on some sweats and headed into the kitchen.
Jana had her hands in the sink, cleaning the orange-mango juice glasses from the previous night. God, that had been delicious. She glanced at Clare. “Lucy! Thank god you’re awake. I need someone to talk to.”
“I figured,” Clare said, “by the clanging pots, that you didn’t want to be alone.”
“Did I wake you up? Sorry.”
Clare poured herself a coffee and sat down. “Sorry I got weird about the sled ride last night. I’m glad I went — it was a great way to come down from the trip.”
Jana smiled. “My fault, really. I shouldn’t have messed with your mind on your virgin excursion.”
“Yeah, that was evil. Whoa. Why did a lightning bolt just shoot across the kitchen?”
“Tracers.” Jana set the last glass in the drying rack and sat at the table with Clare. “You’ll see those for a few days. Maybe even years from now, you’ll see one.”
“What? You said there were no harmful effects.”
“Tracers aren’t harmful. They’re fun. They remind you that life isn’t only three dimensions.”
Clare hated the thought of her brain being permanently altered. But she had no one to complain to but herself. She was just glad she hadn’t blown her cover — and that she hadn’t run into Amanda anywhere in the cobblestone labyrinth that was the town.
“Have you watched the rest of the footage from Jules?” Clare asked.
“No. I can’t find the memory stick. But we can look for it later. That blogger posted again.”
Clare was way more interested in finding the memory stick and downloading the video so she could share that with Amanda. But as Lucy, she said, “For real? Who did he interview this time?”
Jana pointed to herself. She was grinning broadly.
“You?” Clare’s shock was genuine. “Did you know you were talking to him?” She was bursting to grab Jana’s phone and trace her call log, find out the area code and hopefully other details of the caller.
“He said he was a New York Times reporter. But this is so much cooler, don’t you think?”
Clare could think of other words, like scarier. She leaned in to read.
The Best Friend
by Lorenzo Barilla
Jana Riley knew Sacha better than anyone.
Or so she says.
According to Jana, they were best friends in college and moved to Whistler together, to have one last year of freedom before springing into their careers.
But when I interviewed Senator Westlake earlier this week, she said Jana was more of an acquaintance than a friend to her daughter — someone fun to pass the time with, nothing more.
This angered Jana.
“I know the Senator hates me,” Jana said. “She couldn’t understand my friendship with Sacha because she never understood her daughter in the first place. She wanted Sacha to be someone else — someone more Republican. Which is funny, because my family’s been Republican for generations, and they hate Martha Westlake. They say they’ll vote Democarat if she wins the nomination because they can’t abide her separating church and state.”
I asked if she wanted to elaborate on her family and their politics — or their religion.
“No,” Jana said. “Politics are boring and religion is hypocritical. Which is why I left home.”
I asked Jana why she thought Sacha left home — by which I meant the comforts of her East Coast world — to be a small-town waitress.
“Sacha thought her mother would be a better person — happier, more fulfilled, better able to make a real contribution to the world — if she was out of politics. So she came to Whistler on a mission to destroy her mother politically. It seems to have worked — though I wish she didn’t have to die to win the battle.”
When I asked about this mission, Jana said no comment.
I asked Jana if the mission involved drugs. A certain kind of LSD I keep hearing about that’s manufactured in the Whistler woods.
“That’s just a rumor,” Jana told me. “Sacha dropped acid with her stepmother in New York — a tab called Mountain Snow — and I guess someone told her it was made up here. I haven’t seen it.”
A shame that we couldn’t trace the drug and close one piece of this nebulous puzzle. Interesting about the stepmother, though. I asked if Jana could tell me more.
“Daisy and Sacha used to be friends. Daisy was cool — she came skiing with us, she was fun. She was halfway between Sacha’s age and her father’s, and she didn’t try to pretend she was anything else. But things went bad a week or two before Sacha died.”
Interesting timing. “Bad how?”
“Daisy told Sacha that her father wasn’t really her father, and with a new baby on the way, Daisy was cleaning up her own life. She wanted to cut ties to anyone she’d done drugs with — and since Sacha wasn’t family anymore, that included her.”
I asked how Sacha took the news.
“She was gutted, obviously. She tried not to show it, but you could tell it made her feel homeless and lonely. She hated her mother, and now she had no father. And her stepmother — her one so-called friend in her family, was hanging her out to dry. I know Sacha was an adult, but we all need roots. I think that’s w
hy she killed herself.”
Clare stared at the screen, blankly trying to take it all in.
“That was cool,” she said finally, “the way you gave the blogger just enough truth to make him not suspect you were lying about the Mountain Snow.”
“Right?” Jana said. “If there’s one thing I learned from Sacha, it was how to make a lie seem like the truth.”
“The stepmother seems like a bitch,” Clare said. “Were she and Sacha really friends?”
Jana shrugged. “Personally, though, I think Sacha only told Daisy about the smuggling so it would get back to her mom.”
“Sacha told Daisy?”
Jana nodded. “They thought I was asleep, I guess. But I was in my room. I heard everything.”
Clare wanted to ask if anyone else knew Sacha had a leaky mouth. Like, did Jana tell Richie or Chopper that Daisy knew about the smuggling? But since Jana wasn’t exactly a supermodel of secret keeping, Clare was pretty sure the interested parties had been told.
At least Clare was starting to develop a credible list of suspects: Jana was insane. Wade was married and seemed to want to stay that way. His wife — Clare should find out more about her. Richie and Chopper had a business to protect. And Norris . . . Clare wished there were a way for her to get closer to him, to talk to him and feel him out. But she couldn’t — not as Lucy.
FIFTY
MARTHA
Martha banged on Fraser’s apartment door. Yes, she could use the buzzer, but banging felt better. She would need to be rushed through security to make her flight to Michigan on time, but this stop could not be postponed.
Was it true that Sacha thought Martha wanted her to be someone else? If so, she could not have been more wrong. God, what Martha wouldn’t give for one more conversation.
