“Dee’s ‘better’ is partly circumstantial, too,” she said. “Her mom’s death was hard, but she’s more at peace with it than I expected. The grieving was mostly done up front.” And Dee was freed from fear of losing her own house, now that her inheritance income topped up her disability pay. “Emptying Loreena’s house was a catharsis, too. Hardest part was figuring out what to do with all those cancer medications. There was enough morphine around to overdose a dozen junkies: sublingual drops, pills, stuff for injecting into the IV line.”
Terry looked out over the river valley, with its spruces wavering in the westerly breeze. “My worst Search and Rescue call-out was for morphine: a teen who stole his grandmother’s leftover meds, hoping to get high.”
“Did you find him in time?”
“Nope. OD’d in his childhood treehouse. What did you do with Loreena’s drugs?”
“Returned them to the pharmacy. She wanted us to find a program that would redistribute them to the needy, but there didn’t seem to be one in Ontario. The pharmacist thanked us.”
Terry clinked his bottle neck against hers. “So do Search and Rescue, EMT, and the cops. Drugs like that should never be left loose in people’s houses.”
As Jan came back, carrying a glass, the dogs sat up, staring toward the driveway. “Rob’s coming,” she said.
“Hello, darlings!” The museum curator strolled around the side of the house, hands in the pockets of his khakis. “You’ll never believe who’s in town.”
Dee returned, carrying two glasses of wine. She handed one to Rob. “Who?”
Rob raised his glass in a dramatic gesture. “Kitzu, that’s who.”
Terry groaned. “Oh, hell.”
Jan sat bolt upright. “You’re joking.”
“Not.” Rob dropped into a chair. “She came into the museum this morning with the Lord High Husband himself. And his entourage. They’ll be using our Old West Post Office as a set for some cattle-drive picture he’s making next month and screening each day’s films in our theatre. I’m surprised Dee didn’t tell you. The museum board had to okay the deal.”
Dee shrugged. “A film crew is renting space in September. I didn’t think it was newsworthy, but if you know the people involved …”
“Not newsworthy?” said Rob. “When Mylo Matheson, three-time Oscar-winning director, will be swarming our little hamlet with half-a-bazillion movie actors, stunt people, and all the other Hollywood paraphernalia?”
Jan sank back into her chaise. “And Kitzu. Did she see you, Rob? Does she know I’m here?”
Lacey looked between their two faces. “Who is this woman you don’t want to see?”
Terry glowered. “Their old university roommate, Kitrin Devine. Acting major, not Visual Arts. Her real name is Katrina Davenport, but she always used her actress name. I forget who first called her Kitzu.”
“Kitzu?” said Dee. “Like kudzu? The vine that ate the American South?”
“Exactly,” said Rob. “She was so clingy that the nickname couldn’t help but stick. And look where it got her: married to a big Hollywood director, with a minor film career.”
“Anything we’d recognize?” Lacey asked.
Jan shook her head. “Small parts only. Kitrin’s kind of a heroin-chic version of that woman in the pearl-earring movie. Unless you’re a stunt person, looking like a more famous actor is the kiss of death.” She squeezed a lime wedge into her glass. “In our second year at SFU, she got work-experience credit for being an extra on a movie, although she only got the gig because she was seeing a guy who worked security on the film.”
Lacey picked at her beer label. “Security on movie and TV locations is a full-time job in Vancouver. Some guys made good money doing close personal security for movie stars during a shoot. Of course, they had to call us whenever an incident occurred. Violent takedowns by bodyguards only happen in the movies.”
“Kitrin’s boyfriend wasn’t a bodyguard,” said Terry. “Just a beefy guy who stood at gates repelling rabid fans.”
“He was working his way up to personal security,” said Jan. “And he was a nice guy, not that it mattered to Kitrin. Once she came to Mylo’s attention, that was the end of the boyfriend. Then she came up pregnant, and Mylo divorced his third wife for her. We figured she’d be home in a year with the baby, but it’s closer to twelve now. How’s she look, Rob? Still as waiflike as ever?”
Rob grimaced. “Honestly? Worse. Like those twig dolls they sell over at the Trading Post. Her hair’s straw, and her skin is dry as scraped parchment. She moves slower than you do, honey, and that’s saying something. Lord High ignores her existence, like he always did.”
Terry trailed Beau’s silky ear through his fingers. “She’d been in an eating disorder clinic for the summer before second year. Could be relapsing.”
Jan sighed. “God, I hope not. I’ll feel terrible if I’ve been snarking about her and she’s really in trouble.”
“You should visit,” said Rob. “She and the Lord High are staying up at Jake’s while he scouts outdoor locations. He won’t drag her along in the chopper every day, I’m sure. She could blow out the window and drift away.”
Lacey peeled back the corner of her beer label. “I might have met her this afternoon, and yeah, eating disorder is my guess.”
“Lacey had to drag her bodily from the lap pool,” Dee said. “She’d been swimming with the current turned too high and went under.” She massaged the pale scar down her thigh. “That would have been me back in March, too weak to kick against the current.”
“She’s very frail.” Lacey picked at the next strip of label. “When I was a lifeguard in high school, one of my squad mates was anorexic. She pushed herself hard, too, swimming extra laps and not eating enough to keep a cat alive. Died in her twenties from heart failure, I heard.”
“Poor Kitzu.” Jan shook her head. “It’s got to be rough, with Mylo surrounded by young actresses who’ll happily sleep with him for a speaking part.”
Terry got to his feet. “I can see where this is going. You’ll waste your energy visiting because you feel sorry for her. If you must go up there, take your scooter. You’re not that strong yet, and I won’t have you making yourself sicker again for a woman who never did you any favours.”
Jan frowned up at him. “Yeah, all right. She might not even want to see me.” Her phone trilled. She pulled it from a pocket. “It’s Jake,” she told them. “Hi, we were just talking about your movie guests … Oh, really?” Putting her hand over the receiver, she said, “Jake wants us all to come for dinner on Thursday. He’s having people in to meet Mylo and says most of them will be our age.”
“I’m busy that night,” said Rob.
Dee shrugged. “I’m in.”
Lacey nodded and surreptitiously texted her boss: Wayne, Jake Wyman has a famous movie director and his wife visiting. Do we need security patrollers in case of paparazzi? Extra hours would mean extra income to put toward her divorce.
Rob’s phone rang as Jan closed hers. He glanced at the number, flushed, and hurried into the house. Jan frowned at his back.
“What’s wrong?” Lacey asked.
“I think he’s involved with someone.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid it might be someone, er, not single. He’s been cagey about it.”
“Involved with a married man?” Lacey frowned, too. “Seems sketchy for Rob.”
“Depends, I guess, if the marriage is open or not.” Jan bit her lip. “There was an older guy in university — his first serious affair — who strung him along for ages, always promising to tell the wife. But he didn’t. Rob was heartbroken.”
“He’s a decade older now,” Terry said. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Jan shook her head. “Just as well he isn’t coming to supper on Thursday. Jake said one of the guests is a major homophobe. Well, he called Orrin Caine ‘an old gay-basher from way back.’ He wanted me to warn Rob so there wouldn’t be any unpleasantness. Jake�
�s so mellow that I forget men of his generation can be macho assholes.”
“Not just his generation,” said Lacey. “There are still plenty in the RCMP, even though they’re more careful nowadays not to get caught using homophobic slurs in front of civilians.” Fourteen months away from the Force, yet its toxic culture remained in her bones. She looked around at her friends and thanked her lucky stars she’d washed up on Dee’s doorstep last year. Leaving Dan and the RCMP had turned out much better than she’d ever dared hope. “Cheers,” she said, and lifted her beer.
CHAPTER TWO
Jan locked her seat belt as Terry backed out of the garage. “I just hope Kitrin isn’t as badly off as Rob and Lacey said. I really don’t want to get sucked into rescuing her again.”
Terry wheeled the truck uphill from the driveway. “Keep telling yourself you can’t spare the energy. I can do it for you, if I see you weakening.”
“No, don’t. Mylo will take offence, and then Jake will be annoyed. Let’s just have a calm dinner and get home with no fallout. Do you know anything about these Caine people who are coming to meet Mylo?”
Terry slowed as the sunlight blasted fully onto the windshield. “Orrin’s another oil man, bringing his wife and/or kids. I’ve met him, and I think the oldest son, too. Orrin’s a stereotype of what everyone else in the country hates about Albertans: old white racist jerk who thinks he earned his own way, even though he went to private schools and the bank of Daddy set up his first oil play. Intolerant of anyone who didn’t make their fortune in the oil patch, also of gay men, Indigenous people, anyone who speaks French, and women who dare to disagree with him. Politically connected.”
“Of course he is,” said Jan. “Our politicians love a deep-pocketed bigot with no respect for the environment. You make me glad Rob isn’t coming, although it’s too bad his own plans fell through.” She waved at a Lexus SUV visible in the side mirror. “Dee and Lacey are right behind us.”
A half minute later, both vehicles cruised through Jake’s tall wrought-iron gates. As the Brenners pulled up to the main doors, the house steward steered Jan’s power armchair onto the porch.
“Good evening, Mrs. Brenner. Drinks are being served in the great room.”
“Thanks.” Jan settled herself on the chair and wiggled the joystick back and forth. The chair swung, narrowly missing Dee as she mounted the steps. “Oops, sorry.” She backed up the chair and passed through the door held open for her. “It always takes me a bit of getting used to after I haven’t driven it for a while.”
She led the way through the vast foyer, ignoring the familiar artworks and potted shrubs, steering fairly straight down the middle of the varnished oak flooring that demarcated carpeted sitting areas from the main dining room, with its floor-to-ceiling view over the lawns. Please let Kitrin be healthy and happy, and please let Orrin Caine turn out less of an asshole than he sounds. Terry’s opinion wasn’t entirely unbiased, after all. The first of his family even to attempt post-secondary education, he really had come up under his own power, from a dirt-poor bush farmer’s son to chief geologist at Jake’s billion-dollar oil and gas company. Silver-spooners who claimed self-made status made him cranky. And he didn’t care for Kitrin or her husband.
As she arrived at the archway to the great room, Jan added one more wish to the list: Please let there be someone here tonight that he’ll thoroughly enjoy.
Although Lacey had kept watch on the road to Jake’s all day while she worked around Dee’s yard, there was no sign of paparazzi or even an unfamiliar vehicle. No easy escape from her financial double bind: she needed money from work to pay the lawyer in B.C. to attend hearings so she could eventually get Dan to buy her out of the house in Langley so she could afford to finish paying the lawyer and someday get her own place again. Maybe Mylo Matheson or Kitrin Devine would want more security, if she suggested the option? She followed Jan’s wheeled armchair through the great room’s arch-way and stopped, half blinded by the sunlit valley vista beyond the dim room.
Jake’s voice said, “Welcome, everyone. Come on in and let me introduce you.”
Her vision adjusting, Lacey stepped around Jan to take the first hand that was offered. The skeletal fingers belonged to the frail woman she’d pulled from the swim machine two days earlier.
“How nice to meet you.” Kitrin Devine, her thin brown hair twisted up in a straggling chignon, showed no sign she remembered Lacey. After a brief, limp touch of the fingers, she offered the same hand to Dee. Jan got a cheek kiss.
The movie director stood with one elbow propped on the wide stone fireplace mantel, clearly expecting people to come to him. Jan and Terry went first, briefly recalling their previous meetings in Vancouver. Dee gave a perfunctory handshake and sat down near Kitrin. Jan wheeled her chair up to theirs. Terry turned to Jake and said something about a work matter.
Then Lacey was face to face — eyeball to eyeball, since they were very near the same height — with Mylo Matheson. He was a wiry man all in black, with a face so smooth she suspected plastic surgery. His artfully greyed temples were the only obvious concession to age. She marked him as late forties or early fifties, not quite twice his wife’s age. Now to get him interested in having more security, without it being obvious to Jake that she was shilling for work hours.
“How are you enjoying your stay, Mr. Matheson?”
“Mylo, please.” The great man scanned the room and, apparently finding nobody else worth his attention, finally looked at Lacey directly. “This hilltop is ideally placed for scouting mountain backdrops.”
After ten minutes, she still hadn’t slid another word into his monologue about what he’d seen and where he intended to set certain key scenes. Hinting about possible security concerns wasn’t possible. This man had no interest in anything except his movie. He probably had people to do the worrying for him.
The steward came back and caught Jake’s eye. He stood up. “The chopper’s coming. Who’d like to greet the Caines with me?”
Mylo left Lacey without a backward glance, snapping his fingers at his wife as he went. Kitrin jerked upright like a marionette and followed. Jan, caught midsentence, stared after them with her mouth open.
“I’ll wait here with Jan,” said Dee.
That left Terry and Lacey to follow the others along the dim corridor between the security office and the attached garage. Mylo and Jake stepped out the glass doors, with Kitrin breathing hard as she hurried through behind them. The door swung shut, almost catching her turquoise caftan.
Left inside, Lacey muttered to Terry, “He actually snapped his fingers at her? I didn’t imagine that?”
Terry’s lip curled. “He hasn’t changed a bit. And Kitrin is in really bad shape. How can he drag her out there when she can barely stand up on her own steam?”
“What brought them together when he so clearly despises her weakness?”
He reached past her to the door handle. “Mylo wouldn’t be the first man to get sucked into a relationship by a woman’s frailty and end up resenting her for it.”
She eyed him, suddenly alarmed. “Do you resent Jan for being so weak? I’d never have guessed. You look after her really well.”
“Of course I don’t resent her. For one thing, she wasn’t frail when I met her. The opposite, in fact. I used to worry about keeping up with her. Now I just worry about her.” He pulled the glass door inward, stepping sideways to let Lacey pass. “She’s doing really well again, compared to the past few years. We’re finally getting back to a more normal life, and if anything happens to change that, well … somebody’s going to pay.”
“It isn’t your job or Jan’s to rescue Kitrin from her marriage.” But as the words left Lacey’s lips, her gut squirmed. She hadn’t realized how psychologically abusive Dan was until she’d been away from him for months. Kitrin, living in a world completely bounded by what Mylo wanted, probably couldn’t see how abusive he was, either. What, if anything, to do about that was a question for another day. For today, Lac
ey’s task was to get Mylo or Jake to ask for extra security. It was a twofer, really: if she was around more, not only would she earn more, but she could assess Kitrin’s psychological and physical situation; maybe create a safe zone for her to see things more clearly. God, not even two minutes’ conversation with the woman all week, and already the urge to rescue her was strong. Old RCMP habit. She willed it away and stepped out onto the pool deck, blinking in the sunlight.
“If you think Mylo’s an ass,” Terry murmured, “wait till you meet tonight’s other alpha guest. Orrin Caine’s a foul-mouthed old bastard, tinpot god of his own oil and gas conglomerate. If Jake wasn’t my boss as well as my neighbour, you wouldn’t catch me sitting in the same room with either of them.”
The heat hit with visceral pressure, rebounding off the sun-baked tiles and only marginally eased by a faint breeze over the long, cool pool. Jake, Mylo, and Kitrin had stopped farther along the rim, watching a boy on the diving board. Kitrin’s caftan, the same turquoise shade as the water, fluttered in the breeze, exposing a red ring of bruise around one wrist. Had Lacey done that when pulling her from the pool downstairs, or was that evidence left by Mylo?
“Michael.” Mylo’s voice echoed from the surrounding walls. “Get your shoes on.”
The boy backed off the board and raced along the far side of the pool, hurtling over the arched bridge that spanned the decorative waterfall’s foot. He snatched a towel and hat held up by a curly-headed woman. Shoving his feet into water shoes, he ran past Lacey and Terry with a muttered, “’Scuse me.” The family passed through the gate.
Lacey brushed a drop of water from her bare arm. “Mylo sure has him trained.”
Terry made an unreproducible noise of disgust and was thereafter silent as they walked across the lawn to the screen of trees by the helicopter pad. They joined the others in the shade and stood listening to the distant thwap of helicopter blades. After a moment Lacey realized there was another vibration, localized at her left hip. She pulled her phone from her pants pocket and checked the six-hour update. Dan’s phone was still in the Lower Mainland, right where it should be: five mountain ranges to the west. She cancelled the alert and tucked the phone away again.
Why the Rock Falls Page 2
