WHY THE ROCK FALLS
The Falls Mysteries
When the Flood Falls
Where the Ice Falls
Why the Rock Falls
WHY THE ROCK FALLS
THE FALLS MYSTERIES
J.E. BARNARD
Copyright © J.E. Barnard, 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Publisher: Scott Fraser | Editor: Allister Thompson
Cover designer: Laura Boyle
Cover image: istock.com/GROGL
Printer: Marquis Book Printing Inc.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Why the rock falls / J.E. Barnard.
Names: Barnard, J. E., author.
Description: Series statement: The falls mysteries ; 3
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200210734 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200210742 | ISBN 9781459741478 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459741485 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459741492 (EPUB) Classification: LCC PS8603.A754 W59 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
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This novel is dedicated to
Ilonka
Anne
Gemma
and
Rosemary
who’ve had my back through many struggles in writing, in life, in ME/CFS.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ME/CFS RESOURCES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
The first, faint cry came from above and might have been a bird call. Lacey lowered her screwdriver and listened. The second cry was unmistakable. “Help!”
She hustled down the ladder, her workboots ringing the metal rungs, and charged up the terrace stairs three at a time. At the outdoor pool, she scanned the sun-dazzled water.
One floating chaise, empty.
One decorative waterfall, tumbling off a rocky ledge into the pool.
Two women being churned by the waters, their long, dark hair twining like eels.
As she dropped her tool belt, preparing to rescue them, Lacey realized only one of them was struggling …
CHAPTER ONE
Four Days Earlier …
The helicopter’s blades shredded the hot August afternoon, their every thwap vibrating up through Lacey McCrae’s workboots. Fed up with gazing down on the barren dust of clear-cuts and oil wells, she looked the other way, into the green cirque of Black Rock Bowl, at deserted ski chalets half hidden amid fluttering aspens. The ski slopes lay golden in the sun, their late-summer grasses split by peninsulas of pine and spruce. The chopper swung away, around the mountain. Immense limestone walls closed in, their jagged grey faces ripped by white granite veins. Ominously close, it seemed to her.
Jake Wyman, in the co-pilot seat, sat calmly as the rocky valley narrowed. He’d have been this way lots of times, visiting his well sites out in the Ghost Wilderness. Today was Lacey’s first ride-along. After a day baking in the boulder-strewn wilds, she longed for nothing more than cool water and dust-free clothing. At each site, she’d tested cameras and motion-sensor lights, replaced one solar panel — and hadn’t mentioned aloud the irony that oil companies used renewable energy to power their equipment. There’d been no sign of the vandalism her boss told her to watch for; only normal wear and tear from exposure to harsh mountain winters and the scouring winds of summer. She opened her phone and added no sabotage to the report. The sooner she emailed the document to Wayne, along with her time sheet, the sooner she could stop the clock and jump into a shower.
The chopper flew straight at a vast, sheer cliff, like a hummingbird about to splat on a picture window. She’d almost compared it to a mosquito, but that label belonged to the neon splash that was surely a mountain climber clinging to bare rock a hundred metres from anywhere. Soon she made out tanned limbs splayed against the grey cliff and traced the rope that anchored the climber from above. The helicopter hovered at a distance as the climber edged across the rock face. The pilot’s voice came through her headphones.
“Up or down, sir?”
Jake’s thumb went up. The machine followed. Soon the cliff-top lay below them. Two more brightly clad climbers sat in the sun while another guided the rope that dangled over the edge. As the helicopter settled on a flat spot well back from the valley, one of the sitters pulled off a helmet, revealing short auburn hair.
Jake said, “That’s her.”
The woman jogged to the chopper and scrambled in. Clearly an experienced passenger, she clipped herself into her seat and put on her headphones before speaking.
“Thank you, darling. You have my luggage, too?”
Jake nodded. The helicopter lifted off. The new passenger turned dark glasses on Lacey’s workboots and sweat-stained T-shirt and as promptly looked away, chatting to Jake about her last climb, a 5.11b — whatever that meant — and her son Earl, the one still climbing. “He’s head of our Denver office now,” she said. “A far stronger leader than any of his brothers, although they won’t admit it. Bart fills his desk chair when he remembers, and Ben is still rebelling against his father by protesting the company in ridiculous ways. He’s been arrested more times than I can remember.”
Nobody Lacey knew. She tuned out and watched the scenery unroll below: the Bow River, braided turquoise a
nd blue; the navy depths of Ghost Lake, where boats darted around like water bugs; a dusty sage pasture dotted with black Angus cattle; the Trans-Canada Highway slicing the rolling prairie from Calgary to the mountains. The chopper picked up the greeny-grey Elbow River and followed it to Jake’s estate overlooking Bragg Creek. After a gentle landing on the gravel helicopter pad, everyone except the pilot piled out. A young man in a green staff polo shirt brought a golf cart for the baggage and passengers.
Jake offered a hand to the red-haired woman. “I’ll have a car for you in five minutes, Giselle.”
“Make it twenty and give me a drink first,” said the redhead. She linked her arm through his and told the driver to take them to the house.
Left behind, Lacey strolled toward the main swimming pool at the west end of the sprawling ranch house. The breeze cut off when she stepped inside the high walls. The pool was an oasis of luxury, with a waterfall tumbling down a fieldstone chute, a huge hot tub, a swim-up bar, and floating devices that ranged from inflatable alligators to lounge chairs complete with drink holders and waterproof phone docks. After her dusty afternoon a swim would be heaven, but today she was technically staff — well, Wayne’s staff, but he worked for Jake — and her privileges did not extend to this area. Reluctantly, she opened one of the glass doors beyond the bar and followed the dim corridor to the airless, windowless security office.
The good news for Wayne would be the lack of vandalism. Drunken off-roaders sometimes broke stuff for fun, and hunters occasionally shot up equipment, but there’d been no sign of those today. No radical environmentalists, either. She wasn’t sure how real that last problem was, but every oilman she knew was convinced eco-sabotage was a real threat. They told each other stories of the lunatic up north who’d waged a years-long campaign of pipeline damage before being caught. There hadn’t been wide-scale sabotage elsewhere, but the oilmen’s concern ran deep. An undetected pipeline blowout could poison a wilderness watershed and hand anti-pipeline activists a potent public relations weapon. Still, if oilmen weren’t worried about eco-saboteurs, Wayne wouldn’t have half his clients, and she wouldn’t have the job of maintaining his on-site security equipment.
She finished the report, hit Send, and stretched. Day’s work done and still time to do a few laps in the swim machine on the lowest level before Dee arrived for her workout. One small perk of her grey-zone existence between staffer and neighbour was Jake’s willingness for her and Dee to use the workout space he’d built for his frequent hockey guests. He’d only offered because he still felt guilty about last summer’s mess. Even though he’d played no intentional role in Dee’s near-fatal attack, he had deviated from his own code and inadvertently exposed her to it. Access to his fully equipped workout area up the road from Dee’s made him feel better and her rehab a lot more convenient.
Returning to the sunny pool, Lacey strolled past chaises with their striped cushions and headed down the cliff stairs to the terraces below. Halfway to the lowest one, she realized its glass wall was drawn back, opening the workout area to the lovely afternoon. The swim machine’s hum warned her someone was there already. Dee wasn’t supposed to swim without supervision, in case her weakened leg gave out. Lacey hurried.
The swimmer was a stranger. Pinned against the back wall by the current, her thin arms scrabbling at the small pool’s rim, she dipped beneath the surface. Lacey dashed across the paving and knelt to grab one bony forearm. She pulled up until the woman’s face cleared the water.
“I’ve got you. Take a few breaths.” The woman was skeletally thin, light enough to hold like this indefinitely, but already too exhausted to help herself. Lacey adjusted her grip. “If I get you to the ladder and give you a hand, can you climb out?”
“I—” The woman coughed. “I think so.”
After a few minutes’ crawl to the ladder, and a few more while the woman rested up, Lacey finally got her out of the pool. The dark blue one-piece huddled on the tiles as water drained from the thin brown hair. The spidery limbs seemed uninjured, and the woman was breathing, although heavily. She coughed again.
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine, really. Had the current set too high.” After a moment the woman added, “Can you help me up?” Lacey led her to a chaise and wrapped her in the terrycloth bathrobe spread across it. She lay there, wan and trembling, but when Lacey moved toward the house phone, one shaking hand came up. “Please. Don’t tell. They’ll worry.”
“You should get checked out by a doctor. You’re very weak.”
“I’ll be okay.” The woman lay there, eyes closed, until the elevator chimed. Then, surprising Lacey, she scrambled up and pushed into the elevator as Dee exited. In a moment, she was gone.
“Who was that?” Dee asked, slinging her gym bag onto a chair. “And why are you wet?”
“Some guest was swimming with the current on and was too weak to get out on her own. This is what I worry about for you. Why I don’t want you swimming without the harness. And supervision.”
Dee looked back at the elevator as she stripped off her shorts and tee. “Scary. Tell you what, I’ll wait right here while you change into your suit and drape your clothes in the sun. They’ll be dry by the time we’re done.”
Ninety minutes later, Lacey pulled up before the neighbour’s stucco bungalow. Dee slid from the passenger seat and hobbled toward the deck overlooking the Elbow River while Lacey released the dogs from the vehicle’s rear compartment. Boney and Beau, their rusty tails aflutter, skirled around her legs until she snapped her fingers. Except for tilting his head toward Dee’s departing back, Beau sat like a china fireplace dog, his red coat gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Boney’s tail plume swept the brickwork. His ears twitched. His nose lifted, assessing the breeze. When she flicked her hand, he shot off after Dee with Beau lolloping along behind. It struck her then how thin Dee’s legs still were, more than a year after the hit and run. Tanned, finally, but stringy like the dogs’. Was Dee overdoing the exercise, like that woman in the pool?
Lacey hurried after them all and stooped to hug Jan Brenner, who lounged as usual in a shady chaise. Picking a chair at Jan’s side, she ignored the view over the Elbow River and the year-old Bragg Creek Museum, instead watching Dee step carefully over the doorsill into the kitchen. Not that skinny, surely?
“Jan,” she said in a low voice, “do you think Dee’s taking it too far? This fitness craze, I mean? It’s barely been six months since she could walk at all, and now she’s on the treadmill an hour a day plus the swimming. There’s toning up and then there’s obsession.”
Jan’s dark curls fluttered in the breeze. “Trust me; she’s been leaner than this. Actually, I was thinking you and Dee both have lightened up a lot recently, like you’re coming out from under a dark cloud. It’s good to see, after the year you’ve both had.”
Lacey nodded. It had been some year. Well, more like eighteen months, starting from leaving her marriage to Dan, and her RCMP career, behind in B.C. Then she’d hunted Dee’s stalker, followed by all the upheaval of Dee’s long convalescence. Just as they had both begun to get their feet under them again — in Dee’s case, literally — Dee’s mother announced her terminal cancer. That sad Christmas had been punctuated by murder. Lacey had broken three ribs, been concussed, burned both hands saving a witness. And those were only the big events. Jan didn’t know about Lacey’s nightmares or her frequent flashbacks to Dan’s violence, or about the possibility that, as her divorce wound its way through the legal system, he would make his way to Bragg Creek, intent on finishing her. She would know if he left B.C., though. In her first private investigator course last spring, she’d learned enough about cellphones to put a tracker on his number. Every six hours, it alerted her to the phone’s location. It worked because Dan, being a middle-class white male, an RCMP constable, and a chauvinist from hell, didn’t consider a mere woman enough of a threat to bother turning off his GPS. She reached for her phone out of habit, even though the next update w
as two hours away.
“Earth to Lacey!” Jan waved a hand at her. “Why are you worrying about Dee being skinny? Is she eating okay?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. No worries there.” Lacey let the phone drop back into its holster. “There was a woman in the swim machine up at Jake’s and —”
“Lacey saved her from drowning,” Dee called through the open window.
Shit. Had she overheard Lacey gossiping about her? “It’s nowhere as exciting as all that. I just helped her out of the pool.”
Jan looked up the hill, where a corner of Jake’s lowest terrace peeked through the trees. “Jake didn’t mention any guests when I saw him last week.”
Her husband, Terry, came through the sliding door with two frosted beer bottles. He handed one to Lacey. “Hungry? We can eat as soon as Rob gets here. He’s walking up from the museum.”
“You forgot my club soda, babe.” Jan uncurled from her chaise and headed into the house.
Lacey watched her go. “She’s walking really well. Unlike Dee, who’s overdoing the workouts.”
Terry nodded. “Jan would, too, if she could. But now there’s finally some hope. That new med she started last month — which she only found out about because someone in her online support group took part in research at Harvard last spring — changes how her muscles respond. She won’t be running a marathon anytime soon, but she might be strong enough to try that definitive two-day exercise test for mitochondrial dysfunction. The only lab in Canada that does it has opened in Calgary.” He glanced at the kitchen window. “Dee’s doing better, too, looks like. Less weight on the good leg.”
Trust Terry to notice those physical details. It came from years of watching his wife’s every movement in case she keeled over. Lacey rolled the damp bottle across her forehead, enjoying the cool. If Dee’s old friends thought she was doing fine, there was nothing to worry about. Dee wasn’t frail like that woman in the pool.
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