In the back seat, Lacey unrolled the map and traced her finger east along 579, looking for side roads or bush trails.
“Do you remember how you got there?” Bart asked.
“Not really. I was young and in love. I do recall it was some Crown land he wanted bad. As we were bouncing along this horrible bush track, he kept saying he could almost smell the oil under it. He had some backroom deal going on to get a lease, if not a buy.”
Bart and Ben looked at each other. Bart said, “Would that be the land he bought off Susan Norris and promised to put into a nature conservancy?”
“Honey-boy, you are so smart. I bet that’s just where it was. I see a truck coming up this road. Might be my ride up-Island. You tell young Ty he can come visit me when he’s better. I’ll teach him to surf. Love you boys!” The guitar music cut off.
Ben parked in the closest empty space to the airstrip. “Well, fuck.”
“Yeah,” said his twin. “Why didn’t we call her first thing?”
Lacey wondered that, but even more she wondered why Earl, who had already been an adult and working in his father’s business when that land was drilled, had not mentioned anything about a road or a hunting shack that must be very close, relatively speaking, to the Range Rover’s last known location.
In the map tent, Lacey found Terry and Markov waiting with the search manager. She laid the ranch map beside theirs. “I have reason to think we’re looking for a hut in an approximately square area bordered north to south by range road 579 and the top of the Norris land, and west to east from Highway 40 to approximately the longitude where Tyrone was found. It’ll most likely be accessible from 579. Can anyone tell me what roads and tracks have already been cleared up there?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The pounding on the patio door came again. Jan reluctantly lifted her eye mask, wincing at the afternoon light. Her movement had evidently been seen, for the pounding changed to a light tapping. She sat up, every joint and muscle in her body protesting, and looked over the back of the couch. Chad waved.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered. Of course, Rob had told him to come back today. He obviously hadn’t said “call first,” much less “wait for an invitation.” The last thing she needed in her current crashed state was to be polite to this doofus who had cost her so much squandered energy yesterday.
“Jan?”
He clearly wouldn’t leave unless she told him to. She rose unsteadily to her feet, holding onto the couch back until her head stopped whirling. Then she staggered to the patio door. “Say what you have to say and then please go away.”
“Sorry to wake you,” Chad said, “but I have someone in the car who really needs to see you.”
Chad had a car? Yesterday he had no vehicle.
He disappeared around the corner of the deck. After a moment, while she still stood clutching the patio door, the front doorbell rang. Aching at every step, she groped her way to the foyer. Opening the door wasn’t as bad as she had feared. Clouds had piled up over the mountains, casting their grey shadows over the river valley, a relief for her overtired eyes.
“Hello?” The woman who spoke was almost invisible beneath a long-sleeved cotton overshirt and a wide-brimmed sunhat, her face half hidden by large sunglasses. Her chin, though, was Kitrin’s. She removed the glasses, exposing tired hazel eyes heavily painted with brown eyeliner. “Jan, I don’t know if you remember me? Barbara Davenport?”
Kitrin’s mother. Surprised that her foggy brain had remembered Kitrin’s real surname, Jan said, “Come in,” not because she wanted them in but because she had to sit down very soon, and shutting the door in their faces would likely cause more problems later. She led them into the kitchen, because it was easier, and because she remembered her pills were in there, and water to take them with, and food.
With the pill inside her, soon to be restoring nutrients to her starving cells, Jan offered each of them a glass of iced tea and hunted through a cupboard for Terry’s secret stash of cookies to put before them. Women of Mrs. D’s generation had standards. Chad alone wouldn’t have rated any refreshments at all. He took his glass of tea and leaned on the wall, saying nothing. Mrs. D took a chair at the table and looked around, making a few meaningless comments about the lovely view. Jan sat down opposite.
“I’m so sorry about your daughter. I understood she’s going to be sent home to Regina for burial. What brought you here?”
“I’m hoping to be allowed to say goodbye to my grandson. Once he’s back in California, I might never get to see him again.”
“Surely Mylo won’t keep him from you forever.”
“I don’t know.” Mrs. D looked at her glass, not at Jan. “He isn’t there right now, and they won’t let me in the gate. Chad says he can’t sneak me in either because of something that happened yesterday.” She looked up then. “Is my grandson in danger?”
“Why would he be? From whom?”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. D repeated. She fiddled with the arm of her gigantic sunglasses. “Maybe from someone they met here? Kitrin called me, you know, the day after you had supper with her. She said you had passed on greetings to me and that you were very kind to Michael.”
Considering Jan had only said about five words to Michael that night, “very kind” was an exaggeration. “He’s a good kid.”
“She said a man there was very curious about me,” said Mrs. D. “Orrin Caine.”
A spark kindled in Jan‘s brain. “What did she say about Orrin?”
“That he was nosy. She wanted to know if I’d met him when he used to go to Saskatchewan on business.”
Given all that Rob had revealed about Kitrin’s paternity, Orrin’s obsessive interest in her and Michael — which Jan had completely forgotten about in the chaos over her death and his disappearance — took on a whole new relevance.
“You knew him, didn’t you? Back in Saskatchewan.”
Mrs. D turned the sunglasses upside down, folded the arms and unfolded them, and then, finally, staring at her reflection in the outsized lenses, whispered, “Yes.”
“Obviously there was something between you. I’ve seen pictures of …” Jan looked up at Chad. “Do you want to talk about this in front of Chad?”
“He’s already asked me about it. My daughter told him about our family problems years ago.” Kitrin’s mother fixed her weary eyes on Jan’s. “What do you mean, you’ve seen pictures?”
“I recently saw a photo and oil painting of Orrin Caine’s mother. She strikingly resembles your daughter.”
Mrs. D dropped the sunglasses. “Then I don’t have to spell it out for you.”
She didn’t seem able to stop herself, though. “I don’t have any excuses. We lived in Estevan, when my husband was working his way up the oil company ranks before he went into politics. He was away a lot, and I was bored. You have to understand, in those days Estevan had no nightlife beyond that one bar, and I couldn’t go there without my husband or the whole town would’ve been talking. Orrin was in town with a government-sponsored investment tour, and as an oil company wife I was invited to a cocktail party and supper. They all went for drinks at the bar afterward, but I invited Orrin for a drink at my house. He came by every night that week. It wasn’t the first time I’d entertained someone when my husband was away. But his business trip went long that time, and before he got back I’d already suspected I was pregnant. He suspected, too. It clouded Kitrin’s whole life.”
“Did you ever tell Orrin?”
“What would be the point? I knew he was married. I only slept with married men so there wouldn’t be complications.” She lifted her reddened eyes. “Why would he care after all these years?”
Jan sipped her tea, gathering her words. “You couldn’t possibly know this, but Orrin was disappointed with two of his three older sons, and he had no grandsons.” She thought back to the table conversation. “I think he suspected from the moment he saw Kitrin, because of the resemblance to his mother. And everyone there saw how
much alike his youngest son and Michael were. He really wanted fresh blood in his family line, and I think he also wanted a tie to the big-shot Hollywood director. Eventually he might have claimed both Kitrin and Michael.”
“That would be the last straw for my marriage.” Mrs. D was back to fiddling with her shades. “He hasn’t said anything else, or been around since she … died?”
“Orrin and his youngest son went missing in the wilderness last week. The same day that your daughter was …” Jan couldn’t bring herself to say the word murdered. She didn’t want to remember the chill water dragging at her long skirt or her desperation to pull Kitrin clear of the waterfall.
“I am so sorry you were the one who found her,” said Mrs. D. “But I’m grateful she was with a friend at the end.”
Chad slid a box of tissues onto the table. Jan and Mrs. D both sniffed and blew their noses. Chad sat down.
“I’m sorry about yesterday, Jan. Michael was alone so much without Kitrin, I just wanted to give him one good memory.”
“Why sneak him out the back gate?”
“My brother had already warned me off. I never told him there was a chance Michael was my son.”
Jan barely suppressed her second “oh, shit.” She had completely forgotten she’d have to tell Chad. “Whatever you might have wondered, Michael isn’t yours. Mylo had DNA testing done years ago.”
Chad traced a drop down his glass. “To be honest, I thought he was Rob’s. They kind of look alike.”
“You knew Kitrin slept with Rob, too?”
Chad nodded. “She told me years ago. I used to work security around Vancouver movie sets, and we hung out a bit when Mylo was filming there. But I’d never seen Michael in person until last week. I didn’t know when his birthday was until then, either.” He looked at his hands. “I’m even more sorry for him now. Mylo ignores him a lot.”
Conversation lagged after that. Jan wasn’t going to ask where Mrs. D was staying in case the woman expected her to offer a guest room. Soon Mrs. D stood up.
“We’d better go. I have a suite reserved at a B&B across the river. I’m really hoping Mylo will see me tonight and let me spend some time with Michael.”
“I wish you all possible joy with that. He’s a wonderful kid.”
It wasn’t until after the visitors were gone and Jan was back on the couch with her blackout mask that she thought about the coincidence of Orrin recognizing his daughter two days before she was killed and he went missing. Could there possibly be a connection?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
In the map tent, while the others compared the Caine brothers’ markings to the search grids, Lacey beckoned Markov away.
“Can you tell me where the drone operators got Orrin Caine’s phone number for their first sweep?”
He flipped backward through the search manager’s binder and pointed to a line. “Earl Caine.”
Lacey added that to the tally of Earl’s lies and omissions. She was debating whether to share those suspicions with Markov right now, or wait until she discussed it with Wayne, when a text came in from Jan. I just learned the connection between Kitrin and Orrin. Is it possible her death and his disappearance are connected?
She texted back immediately. What’s the connection?
She’s his daughter. Looks like his mother. Her mother just confirmed & is worried about Orrin making it public.
Lacey bit her lip. Then she texted Wayne. Is the thing Orrin asked you to look into an unknown daughter from an affair in Saskatchewan thirty-three years ago?
While she waited for Wayne’s response, she told Markov, “Earl not only withheld two relevant phone numbers from the search, today he outright lied to me about a hut Orrin dumped him at when he was Tyrone’s age. He got lost. Susan Norris found him that time, not far from where she found Ty yesterday.”
Markov frowned. “Are you suggesting Earl Caine is implicated in his father’s disappearance?”
“So far, only that it’s very convenient for him to drag out the search until his father is presumed dead.”
Her phone vibrated again. Wayne: Where did you get that? He told me in confidence. She texted back: From my video expert. She’s good with faces. Next she texted back to Jan: Good going. You may have blown this case wide open.
Now to find that hut. It would be someplace Earl didn’t want them looking.
Susan Norris rode into the camp on old Rebel. As she dismounted, Lacey called her over. “I think Orrin is at a hut on land that you either still own or used to own. Any idea where that would be?”
Susan gave a curt nod.
“Come and show me on the map.” Lacey crowded aside people to make room for Susan.
The old woman put her finger on a spot northeast of the airfield. “Hunting cabin up on a bluff. You get there off 579. Past all them oil wells Orrin drilled.”
Lacey looked around the table. “Surely the roads leading off 579 were checked?”
The search manager flipped a page in her binder. “First day. Three OHV trails petered out, one cutline likewise, one road led to a locked gate. The team reported no sign of a vehicle near the gate, so they assumed Orrin had not gone that way. You can see them all on the satellite blow-ups of the area.”
As Lacey bent over the images, Ben spoke up. “That’s Orrin’s land. He had a key. Didn’t anybody tell you that?”
Markov, his face grim, said, “I’ll go check it out right now.”
Bart said, “You’ll have to cut the lock off. I’ll come along and take responsibility for that.”
Ben asked Susan, “Is there a way up through your land? That might be faster.”
The old woman glared at him. “Now you’re asking permission?”
“For that old bastard, yes,” he said. “As much as I hate him, he is my father.”
Susan eyed him from under lowered brows. “You’ll have to do some climbin’.”
Ben looked at his twin. “Back to the ranch for gear, then we split up.”
“I’ll go with Ben,” Lacey said, rather than let him confront Earl without witnesses. “Markov, you take Bart. It’s a long way around by the road, and you’ll drive faster. Susan, will you come with us to show us the way?”
The old woman nodded. “Meet me at my yard. You’ll need that big truck that tears up the earth.”
“Thank you,” said Ben. “I’ll try not to rip it up any more than absolutely necessary.”
The party split up, with Markov talking on his phone while Bart followed him toward the RCMP truck. Ben and Lacey jogged to the green machine, pushed along by a gusty wind that spun dust devils across the dry ground. As soon as she was buckled in, Lacey called Wayne.
“Locate Earl, please. He’ll be wanted for a police interview ASAP.”
On reaching the ranch, Ben headed straight for the machine shed. Finding Ike out front, he called, “We’ve got a lead on Orrin. Can you give a hand to load up some climbing gear?”
Ike followed them into the gym. “That’ll be where Mr. Earl raced off to?”
Lacey looked back. “He’s not here?”
“Left ten minutes ago in the other Jeep, with a chainsaw for bush-whacking.”
Shit. If he got up that road ahead of Bart and Markov, he could drop trees across it and stall them while he made sure of his father’s death. He might know of a back way out from the hut, one that wouldn’t appear viable on satellite but that the Jeep could handle. It was either catch him in the act or lose him entirely due to lack of evidence.
She grabbed the coils of climbing rope Ben pointed out, slung one over each shoulder, and trudged back to the green Jeep. When she hurried in again, Ike was holding a tub as Ben filled it with chocks, cams, equalizers, carabiners, and every other piece of gear she’d ever heard of.
He threw climbing clothes at her. “Get changed. You’ll need layers with this wind, and bring your climbing shoes.” Two harnesses landed in the bin. “I wish I’d tried you on living rock before today, but we’ll have to train you as we g
o.”
Lacey hurried into the workout room’s washroom, donned neon-pink climbing shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, then pulled her jeans back on. Still chilled from the damp wind, she yanked open the drawer labelled Andy and found a sweatshirt, also pink and splashed with huge purple flowers. Not her style at all, but that didn’t matter today. She pulled it on as she hurried to the gym, and passed the chalk bags and gloves at Ben’s command. There seemed to be far more gear than they’d ever need.
“How high is this cliff, anyway?”
Ben grabbed two pairs of safety goggles. “We won’t know until we get there. Better to have too much than be missing something vital. Get those helmets, would you? I think that’s everything. I’ll change clothes and meet you at the truck.”
“Meet me up top,” said Lacey. “I need to report to Wayne.”
In the security office, Wayne was flicking rapidly through camera images, speaking quick and sharp into his phone. When he disconnected, he said, “Clock’s ticking again. The boy woke up enough to communicate that his father was alive but badly injured when he left the hut three mornings back. Say sixty hours.”
“Shit. Did Earl get that message, too? He left in an off-road vehicle nearly twenty minutes ago. If he knows Orrin’s possibly alive, he’ll beat us to the hut to finish the job.” She caught him up on the search situation and ended with Jan’s bombshell. “It’s too much of a coincidence that Orrin’s rediscovered daughter died the same day Orrin himself vanished. Find out where Earl was on Saturday morning. He was present last Thursday when I told Jake Wyman the pool camera was down.” As she turned away, she added, “I hope I’m right that Markov already called this in. We’d split up before I knew Earl was on the move.”
Wayne picked up his phone again. “I’m on it. Good hunting.”
As Lacey reached the driveway, Andy ran from the main house with insulated food sacks. “You might need these,” she said. “Stay safe, and if the rain starts, get off the wall fast.”
Why the Rock Falls Page 27
