Why the Rock Falls

by J. E. Barnard

  After a moment, Andy slid out of the SUV and let them into the building. She opened a locker and changed into a different T-shirt, tied a hoodie around her waist, pulled her hair through the back of a baseball cap, and switched to a different pair of sunglasses. Then she changed her sandals for running shoes. She looked at Lacey’s feet.

  “Can you run in those boots?”

  “If I have to.”

  “Here, take this other hat and glasses. We can pretend we’re suburban moms out for a walk. It’s not perfect, but just in case that guy’s connected to someone outside the ranch who’s seen you …” Back at the front door, she filled a neon orange water bottle from a drinking fountain. “You go outside first and see if anyone’s around with their cellphone raised.”

  Lacey strolled across the parking lot, checking out the other vehicles. None had occupants, and only one person was in sight, heading slowly away along a path with an elderly black Lab ambling along behind. She beckoned to Andy. “Looks clear.”

  “Good. Let’s get across that road before someone does come along who’ll recognize me.” Andy led the way. “We’ll take the field path, basically making for the fence behind those houses but farther along. There’s a gate into my backyard. If it looks clear, we’ll go in that way. If not, we’ll just keep walking and circle back to the parking lot to drive away. Are you good with that?”

  Lacey nodded, but her feet curled up at the thought of a long walk on hot ground in her workboots. Her jogging shoes would have been so much better for walking. Or running, if it came to that. She plodded across the road behind Andy. The tall, dry grass rustled. Somewhere a dog barked. A child’s laugh echoed.

  Andy waved her hand. “There’s a playground over there.” She made her way toward copses of poplar and aspen, pausing frequently to sip from her water bottle and check out the surroundings. As they got closer to the fenceline, she stopped more often.

  Lacey asked, “Would you like me to go ahead now?”

  “Please. Just keep going along the fence and watch out for anyone walking. If they have a dog they’re probably okay, but that’s no guarantee.”

  Lacey reached the first trees, slowed, and took a good look through the trunks and underbrush. Was a payday photo of Andy enough to make someone risk ticks and other creepy-crawlies for hours of on-spec waiting? She called on her old RCMP search training for wooded terrain and looked closer still. No flare off a camera lens or binoculars, no unusual movement of leaves or branches. She waved Andy forward. “I think you’re good to go.”

  Andy unlocked the gate and stepped through.

  Lacey followed her into a shady passage between a garden shed and a pool pavilion. Nobody would get a shot of the yard unless they were perfectly lined up, and that would show only a narrow strip of walkway leading to the house. The gate locked behind them, and she looked around. It was a nice yard by city standards, part lawn and part paved with interlocking bricks around an oval pool. Loungers, sunshade, tables, and a single air mattress surrounded it. The house had ells protruding at each end with a semi-enclosed patio between them, half shaded by a balcony above.

  Andy let them into a cool, white kitchen. She dropped her hat and sunglasses, untied the hoodie, and flung it onto the grey granite island. “Thank God we’re here, and in time for me to rinse off before my appointment. I’ll be about an hour. Help yourself to a drink or something. Wi-Fi password is on the fridge, or books and TV in the room to the right. I don’t need to tell you to stay away from the windows, right?”

  She hadn’t gone two steps from the kitchen when she looked back, waving frantically. She put a finger to her lips, and pointed up the curving staircase.

  Lacey had barely untied her workboots. She kicked them off and hurried over, immediately identifying the sound from upstairs. Someone was walking across a floor.

  She signalled Andy to lean against the wall, out of sight, and started up the steps. Technically, she should call this in as a break-in, but she’d bet the intruder was a sneak-thief who would run when confronted. Illegal but not dangerous. Still, she looked around for something heavy enough to serve as a weapon. The upper hall was empty except for small framed paintings. Hand to hand, then, if it came to a fight.

  Ahead of her, someone coughed. A male voice answered. The sound brought Andy charging past her.

  “Bart? Is that you? What the hell are you doing here?” She flung open a double door. Lacey almost ran into her when she stopped in the doorway, staring at a rumpled king-sized bed that took up half the hardwood floor.

  Bart, over by the balcony door, was pulling on a shirt. Thankfully, he’d already got his pants on.

  Andy said again, “What the hell? Do you know there’s a paparazzi out front?”

  Bart’s eyes flickered toward a closed door. Lacey barely had time to think Shit, he’s got a lover in there before Andy screamed, a primal sound of sheer rage that echoed off the glass doors. “You fucking asshole. You brought the paparazzi home in the midst of this mess just to get your fucking rocks off?”

  Bart came toward her, hands raised in a pacifying gesture. “It’s not like that. I didn’t plan this.”

  “Fuck you!”

  He stopped, rubbing one bare foot over the other. “Honest, babe. Something came up. We had to talk it over in private, so we came here, and one thing led to another. Look, it’s not a reason to panic.”

  Andy hoisted a heavy crystal vase and drew it back like a shot put. “You in the bathroom. Get your fucking ass out here.”

  The bathroom door opened. Bart’s mystery guest appeared around the door frame. As he saw Lacey, his eyes widened.

  She stared back. “Rob?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jan groaned. So much for perfection. As the video panned around Mrs. Harder’s Old West bedroom, it captured one vividly out-of-era detail. On a shelf under a knotty wood bedside table was a wicker basket filled with bright yellow prescription containers, clearly marked in modern black fonts. How had she not noticed that in the eight times she’d viewed the clip before including it in the final video? She snipped the revealing frames and chose a replacement image from her still-photo file. In it, the oblique sunlight was highlighting those same white labels and yellow pill bottles, but she photoshopped balls of grey wool in their place. Inserted into the video, the image displayed small and then zoomed in on the pretty quilt to distract from the wool seams. She watched the whole video again. Was it perfect? No. This time she caught a reflection in the dresser mirror of Mrs. Harder leaving the room. Just the back of her head and torso, but the modern clothing and short auburn hair were enough to ruin the illusion. She replaced that shot with a still, too, and watched for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  As the last frames of the log cabin video flickered by, she checked her watch and decided it was good enough. Maybe not up to Hollywood standards, but she was only an art director’s assistant’s contract helper. She started the video uploading to Davey’s site and set aside the laptop. A good day’s work. Once she’d rested up from this, she would call Jake’s place and see how Michael was doing, maybe invite him to come along to her next art collection excursion and get some ice cream.

  She’d barely closed her eyes before a vehicle pulled up outside. Not Terry’s truck. It sounded like Rob’s car, but what would he be doing here at quarter after four? He didn’t usually leave the museum until five. The front door clicked. “Rob, is that you?”

  “It’s me. Are you awake?”

  “Sort of. What’s up?”

  “Remember those things I wouldn’t tell you yesterday?”

  She sat up, wincing as the light struck her overworked eyeballs. Rob stood in the doorway, looking as shattered as she had ever seen him. She rolled off the couch and went over, wrapped her arms around him, and held on.

  After a while he pulled back. “I’d better tell you all this now. Lacey will be up in a few minutes.”

  “She’s home? Did they find Orrin and Tyrone?”

  �
��No. Nothing to do with the search. She happened to be handy when things exploded this afternoon, and we drove out from Calgary together. She’ll be heading back to the ranch soon, and I’ll need both of you up to speed before she goes.” He dragged himself into the living room and slumped on one end of the couch.

  She crawled back into her nest at the other end. “Okay, talk to me.”

  After that highly confusing beginning, he didn’t seem to know quite how to go on. Eventually, she prodded him.

  “Is this about your alibi for Saturday morning?”

  He nodded. “You remember I said I couldn’t out my friend without his consent? Well, I set up a lunch meet with him today. Figured if I explained the situation, we might come up with a workaround, so I could get my alibi without him being outed. Like, say we were doing something else together. It wouldn’t pass a lie detector, but they’d have no reason to suspect him of collusion.”

  Going by his miserable expression, his lover wasn’t willing. She waited, giving him space to get the words out in his own time.

  Looking down at his hands, he said, “We were discussing activities we could both swear to that wouldn’t be what we were actually doing, but not quite a lie, either. I hoped Lacey could feed the alibi to the investigators without him going on the record, where it might come out and get him into trouble. She did it before, for that student last winter. Remember?”

  “Uh-huh. So this guy is willing for you to be cleared as long as he doesn’t have to confess that you’re involved with him?”

  “Of course.” He looked at her oddly. “It’s not a casual relationship. We just have to minimize the fallout.”

  “But you said ‘things exploded.’ That’s not a positive outcome.”

  “It would have been, except …” He flushed. “One thing led to another, and his wife arrived home unexpectedly. She kind of freaked out when she walked in on us.”

  “She didn’t know he was sleeping with —” She changed from “a man” to “you” at the last moment.

  “Oh, no, she’s always known that. About him, and about me from early on. We haven’t met before, though, and it wasn’t a great way to meet today.”

  “Because you were in her house?”

  “Because a photographer followed him home and was staking out the place.” He scrubbed both hands through his hair. “You’ve met them, Jan. It’s Bart Caine I’ve been seeing for the past, well, since the spring.”

  “Bart Caine is gay? Orrin Caine’s son?” Jan sank back against her pillows. “No wonder he really doesn’t want to come out. What a disaster for you both.”

  “No shit.” Now that the news was out, Rob looked fractionally less tightly wound. “Lacey brought Andrea into town this afternoon. You probably don’t know, but Andrea had paparazzi trouble before she married Bart. She can spot a camera lens a kilometre away, and there was one out front of their house while we were inside.”

  “Did he get photos of you going in, or anything compromising?”

  “I don’t think so. The most he’d have got was me walking up the street and being buzzed in at the gate, because I parked around the corner, like usual. But you can see how this would make a great side-scandal in the midst of the search for Orrin. Suspect in Hollywood murder involved with son of missing millionaire!” He shuddered. “Tabloid city, and Andrea would be caught in the middle of it. I can’t blame her for screaming.”

  “So she freaked out because of the photographer, not because you were sleeping with her husband in her house?”

  “Pretty much. She thought Bart was risking everything they’ve kept hidden just for sex. She calmed down a bit when we explained that Bart’s my alibi for Kitrin’s murder. Except she didn’t know Kitrin had been murdered, and she got mad at Lacey for not telling her.”

  “Jackpot or what?” Jan hugged herself, chilled by the narrowly averted feeding frenzy. Orrin — assuming he came home alive — would probably disown Bart. Rob would still be a suspect if his only alibi was a lover. Reporters would hound Andrea, yelling questions about her marriage and sex life every time she set foot out her front door. Her marriage might not survive. “Will she forgive Bart?”

  “I don’t know. She was going to talk to her therapist and hopefully calm down. Then she and Bart will come this way to pick up Lacey. So I guess we’ll find out when they get here.” He stretched his legs and propped his feet on the coffee table. “She’s good at misdirection, that’s for sure. She sent Lacey and I out the front door with a wrapped painting, making it look like Lacey’d been there since before Bart got home. If we’re identified, well, I was there collecting a loaner painting from the Caine collection, and she was its security escort. Bart and Andy will sneak out the back way and pick up the vehicle she and Lacey left at the canoe club. The photographer can keep staking out an empty house.”

  “Wow.” Jan lay there with her head whirling. Bart Caine, son of possibly the most homophobic man in Alberta, had been hiding his true self from his father all his life, even marrying as a disguise. Yet Andy had married him, knowing that? She gave her forehead a smack. The most important matter for her was clearing Rob. “So does Lacey think she can pass along your alibi without forcing Bart to give a formal statement that might come out later?”

  “God, I hope so, because it doesn’t look like the police have lost interest in me. An officer was at the museum this morning asking for my phone logs and appointments calendar, even a handwriting sample. He asked me to come in and give my fingerprints voluntarily. I said I’d have to ask a lawyer about that. I’m pretty sure they’ll be back to arrest me unless someone with more motive turns up.”

  “But you don’t have any motive.”

  “That isn’t strictly true.” Rob bit his lip. “But I better wait to tell you that part until Lacey gets here. I didn’t want to tell her before you knew.”

  Jan pushed back her afghan. “I need some iced tea to help me digest all this. Do you want anything?”

  “No. I’m too spun right now to even drink to unwind. God, Jan. What if I don’t get arrested, but Bart still throws me over because I’ve involved him in a murder investigation and forced him to come out before he was ready?”

  There was nothing Jan could say to ease his fear. She brought him a glass of cold water, figuring dehydration wouldn’t do him any good on this hot day, even if his life wasn’t falling apart around him.

  Jan was icing a fresh pitcher of tea when she saw Lacey striding up the drive. She set the pitcher and glasses on the island and settled on a stool as Rob brought Lacey in.

  “Okay, Lacey’s here. Now tell us why you’re the chief suspect in Kitrin’s death.”

  Rob flushed. “Fine. But please remember this was back in university, and I was still finding out who I was.” He pulled up a picture on his phone and turned it to face them. It was the selfie he’d sent Jan, of him and Michael at the art museum, the day before Kitrin died.

  It took a moment for her to realize she was looking at a text message to Kitrin: the photo followed by a single line that read Is he MINE???

  “But …” she said, “how could he be?”

  Lacey looked from the photo to his face. “There is a resemblance.”

  Rob turned the phone and looked at the picture. “Kitrin didn’t answer me. I intended to visit Saturday afternoon after my date with Bart, to see if she’d tell the truth.”

  “But … you slept with her?” Jan asked. “While we were all living together?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  Jan sat in shocked silence while Lacey spelled out what it looked like from her perspective.

  “So, Rob, you had more of a relationship with the dead woman than you previously admitted. You might have fathered her child, a fact that she kept from you for more than ten years. That would make some men very angry. Worse still, you put the possibility in writing, where Kitrin’s husband might find it. That would make him very angry.” She pointed a finger at him. “What did you think ego-driven Mylo Matheson would do if
he saw this? If he thought his wife had tricked him into marriage while pregnant with another man’s child?”

  Rob looked stricken. “You’re not saying he killed her over my message?”

  “No. I doubt he’s even seen it. He’s in the clear for the time of death, so unless he hired someone …” Lacey frowned. “But you acted without thinking, and it’s going to make you look impulsive to the police. Like a man who’d lash out. You’d better tell me from the start, so I can assess how damaging this is. Especially since you told the RCMP you’d had no relationship with her beyond being roommates, a decade ago.”

  Rob looked at his phone again. “It was one time. Kitrin was so miserable. Her dad was being such an asshole, and Mylo had finished filming and gone away without a hint about wanting to see her again. Jan and Terry had gone away for reading week, but she and I stayed in Vancouver. You remember, Jan?”

  “I guess.” Jan twisted her empty glass between her hands.

  “You were unsupervised,” said Lacey. “Go on.”

  Rob cancelled the picture with the swipe of his thumb and put the phone face down. “Kitrin was a mess. She couldn’t handle Mylo’s abandonment on top of her dad’s rejection — I guess you don’t know this part, Lacey: her father wanted her to take a DNA test because her mother had been screwing around throughout the marriage. Kitrin was already fragile because of that, and after Mylo left she was pretty much suicidal. I didn’t dare leave her alone for an instant, so I offered to hold her until she fell asleep.” His neck reddened. “She pretty much begged me to show her she was still desirable, that somebody would love her again someday. Honestly, she was only the third woman I’d ever slept with. I’d only been with one guy by that point.” He raised his eyes briefly to Jan’s. “And you know how badly that went. So I guess I needed some comfort, too. It never dawned on me that she might have gotten pregnant until Michael walked into the museum looking like my Grade Five picture. When he told me when his birthday is, I realized it fit. I sent that text like two minutes later. I’ve wished ever since that I had held off, spoken to her in person.”