No Return (A Lee Smith Mystery Book 2)

by Jay Forman

  “Joshua did not do what you are questioning. He respects life too much.”

  Was Arthur psychic? Or a shaman? His insight into my thoughts was literally giving me the chills.

  “I do not know what happened to the prospector or to Bernice. Bernice has been unhappy here for some time. I worry that she may have chosen to leave not just here, but also Earth.”

  Suicide? It kind of made sense. Her lover had been killed and she was going to be booted out of her home. She wouldn’t lose her home if Arthur was convicted of killing Ross, though. Only if Arthur came back would she have had to find a new place to live. But she wouldn’t have known he’d be coming back … would she? The only way she could have known that would have been if she knew that Arthur hadn’t killed Ross – if she knew who really had killed him.

  “You said you had questions about River’s rocks.” Arthur grounded my thoughts.

  What was it I’d wanted to ask?

  “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to ask River to show me where he found his rocks.”

  “You want him to take you there?”

  “No, no, just on a map.”

  Arthur stood up and went over to the couch to talk to River quietly.

  Elba refilled our mugs with the last dregs from the teapot and then took the empty pot over to the sink and filled it with water. She opened one of the bottom drawers in the kitchen and pulled out a map. She sure knew her way around Bernice’s kitchen.

  I moved the mugs to clear an open patch on the table and Elba spread the map out.

  Arthur and River came over and Arthur said some more words to River.

  River took his little finger and pointed to the river’s edge on the other side of Eagle Rock.

  “Then why did you ask your teacher to take you here?” I asked him as I pointed to the southern tip of the peninsula.

  River said something pleadingly to Arthur.

  “Tell the truth.”

  “Because I didn’t want them to know where I really found my rocks. They’re mine. Not stupid Mary’s.”

  So Ross’ body had been found by accident? It was just a fluke?

  Arthur took one sip of his tea and instantly spit it back into his mug. “No disrespect, Elba, but I simply can’t drink another cup of this. I have missed my coffee.” He went over to the counter and pulled the plastic lid off of the can of coffee grounds again.

  River went back to the couch to watch television.

  I stood up. I had one more question to ask Arthur, but I wasn’t sure if I should. “Um …”

  He turned around with a scoopful of coffee grounds in his hand. “Yes?”

  “Look, I don’t know how to ask this so please forgive me if I ask it all wrong and insult you. That’s not my intention, I swear.”

  “Ask.” Arthur poured the grounds into the filter of the coffeemaker.

  “Why did …” There was no politically correct way to say it. “Why did your ancestors scalp people?”

  Arthur scooped up some more grounds from the can and dumped them into the filter. “Some say scalps were a trophy, to prove to your tribe that you had killed the enemy. Others say that it was the white man who offered bounties for them as he raided our lands.”

  Neither explanation explained why Ross had been scalped.

  I heard the plastic scoop scraping against the metal can.

  “River?” Arthur called out. “Are these your special rocks?” He reached into the can with his hand and pulled out one large white rock, then another.

  River squealed with delight as he jumped over the back of the couch, ran to the kitchen and reached up to snatch them out of Arthur’s hand.

  “Why did you put them in the coffee?” Arthur asked.

  “I didn’t! I hid them under my pillow. Mary must have done that!”

  I stood up and walked over to Arthur to get a closer look at the rocks. They didn’t look that special to me. They were just chunks of quartz. But River probably thought they were diamonds. He thought the garnets were rubies … No. They couldn’t be. Could they? I leaned closer to Arthur’s hand. Oh, if only Jack was here. He’d know what they were. “Would you mind if I took a picture of them?”

  Arthur dropped them into River’s open hands.

  “But you can’t tell anybody where I found them! Especially stupid Mary.” River stood up tall, one rock in each open hand, and smiled from ear to ear for my camera.

  “I won’t.” I might tell someone, but not Mary.

  ****

  The school was locked when I tried to get in to email Jack.

  The curtains had been drawn across Sara’s front window, but the blue flickering light from her television playing inside the house was lighting them up.

  Joshua and Sara were cuddled up on the couch, watching the news.

  “About this,” Sara smiled up at me as I came into the room. “Please don’t tell anyone about us? We’re trying to keep it on the down-low right now.”

  “No problem.” They hadn’t kept it down-low enough for me not to already notice and chances were I wasn’t the only one who’d picked up the signals between them. But if they wanted to try to keep it secret I wouldn’t do anything to mess that up for them.

  “I’ll put the pizzas in the oven.” Joshua unravelled his arms from around Sara and stood up.

  “Sara? Would it be possible for me to hook up to your internet connection on my computer?”

  “Sure.” She stood up and went over to the table where her computer sat open.

  “Um, could I do it in my room?” If Jack actually answered I wanted to talk to him in private.

  “No, but you could in our room.”

  “That would be great, as long as you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind, as long as you don’t mind our mess. Hang your coat up and I’ll get you set up.”

  I waited until Sara had me up and running and had gone back to the living room before quietly closing her bedroom door.

  I sat on the edge of their bed and clicked on the icon for Jack’s FaceTime. I looked at the shoes in their closet as I listened to the ringing sound coming from my computer. Joshua’s shoes dwarfed Sara’s. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the picture change on my computer screen.

  “Hi.” He looked tired.

  “Hi.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  “Do you have any idea what that did to me? To find out that you’d lied to me?”

  “I didn’t—” I stopped myself from going down that excuse path. “I should have told you that I’d changed my travel plans.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me.

  “And I’m sorry for the bitchy email. You didn’t deserve that. It’s just … I’m used to being free, going where I want, when I want, without having to answer to anyone.”

  He raised his left eyebrow, but the rest of his face remained locked in neutral. “Is that how I make you feel? Like you have to answer to me?”

  “No!” I was explaining it all wrong. Maybe because it was inexplicable?

  “Lee, the last thing I ever want to do is stifle you. Your independence is one of the things I love most about you.”

  I thought of the diamond padlock in the velvet box in my backpack. Why was I letting it freak me out so much? This was Jack. The guy who’d always been in my corner, no matter what corner of the world I’d run off to. He knew me; knew me better than I knew myself sometimes. And he still loved me. Unconditionally. Just as he’d done for over 20 years. Putting a ring on it hadn’t changed him.

  “If the ring is making you feel that uncomfortable give it back.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Was he breaking up with me? “So am I. I don’t want to give it back.”

  He tried to fight a smile and managed to keep his lips in a flat line, but his cheeks went up just enough to be noticeable. “Nothing’s changed, Lee. You’re my best friend. You always will be – ring or n
o ring.”

  “That’s not true. Something has changed.”

  His eyebrows lowered with concern. “What?”

  “We went over two decades without ever having sex and now we can barely keep our hands off each other.”

  “According to your email it may be another two decades before we have sex again.”

  “I didn’t really mean that.”

  “Which part? The bit about not having sex with Joshua or the bit about not having sex with me?”

  I knew it! He had been worried about me being with Joshua. “I didn’t, I wouldn’t …”

  “Relax, I know you didn’t.”

  “You made that crack about Joshua being one of my good friends.”

  “That was my version of a bitchy email. I shouldn’t have said that and I’m sorry. I trust you completely.”

  I wanted to say that back to him, but couldn’t. It had nothing to do with sex. I couldn’t, or maybe wouldn’t, trust anyone completely. My trust had been broken too many times. It was the hidden scar that wouldn’t heal.

  “We are going to have sex again, right?”

  “Yes,” I laughed.

  “Phew!” His Ewan McGregor smile, the one that pushed his glasses up to his eyebrows, spread across his face.

  This was Jack. The man who always knew when I was sinking too far down into my own thoughts and knew how to pull me out with laughter.

  I didn’t hear the door open and was surprised when Sara came into the room. “The pizza’s ready, so I thought I’d bring you some.” She put a paper plate with three pieces of greasy pizza on it beside me on the mattress. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “Thanks.”

  She saw Jack’s face on my computer screen and said hello to him before leaving the room.

  The minute she closed the door Jack started talking again. “Lee?”

  “Yes?”

  “FaceTime’s nice and all, but I need some body time.”

  “Me, too.”

  “When can we make that happen?”

  “I guess I could leave tomorrow, if there’s an afternoon flight. They’ve let Blaze’s grandfather go …”

  I quickly brought him up to speed on what had been happening.

  “I heard about the missing woman. We sent one of our helicopters to help with the search.”

  “I saw one from De Beers, too.”

  “Yeah, even though we’re competitors and spread out all over the place up there, we’re a tight community. We forget about the bottom line and work together when someone’s in trouble. Did they find her?”

  “Not that I’ve heard. They’ll probably be out looking again tomorrow. I’m meeting Aileen at eleven. The chief wants me to find out where she and Ross have been staking.”

  “Why not just get a CLAIMap from the Ministry?”

  “A what?”

  “All claims have to be recorded with the Ministry and anybody can get a map that shows who’s doing what and where.”

  “Why doesn’t the chief know about that?”

  “Because the mining issue is relatively new up there and it’s a huge learning curve for the First Nations. It’s like they have to learn a new language again, the language of mining. Chief Troutlake is probably the most well informed of all the chiefs I’ve met, but even he still has a lot to learn. Why don’t I swing by the Winisk mine tomorrow, get a map printed out and bring it over to him? Added bonus: we’d be in the same place at the same time.”

  “You don’t have to do that. You should finish with your meetings in Antwerp and I’ll go see Aileen. I’m going to interview her about what it’s like to be a female prospector.”

  “She’s not a prospector, not really anyway.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I did some digging. Ross and Aileen are what we call fringe stakers. They watch where the real prospectors and exploration companies are, the ones who actually do the work necessary to find significant mineral deposits, and then they go in and stake claims all around the fringes of existing claims, hoping the original claims didn’t cover enough territory.”

  “Do they ever find anything?”

  “I only know of one instance where a fringe staker hit it big and that was up here in the Northwest Territories.”

  Wait a minute. Up here? “Where are you?”

  “At the Wekweètì mine. I needed to go over some things with my management team.”

  It explained why he wasn’t wearing a shirt and tie. I should have wondered about that before. I recognized the sweater he was wearing. Auntie Em had given it to him for Christmas. “You didn’t tell me you were going to Wekweètì. I thought you were still in Antwerp.”

  “And I thought you’d be in Winnipeg tonight. Sorry, I don’t want to go over that again.”

  Neither did I. But what was really bugging me was that I’d felt a flash of anger because Jack hadn’t told me where he was going to be. The ring had changed something else, something in me. I wanted to know where Jack was. Just like he’d wanted to know where I was.

  “Why is the chief worried about where Ross and Aileen were staking?”

  I was glad to be back on track. I’d sort out my thoughts later. Maybe. “Because Joshua and I found a claim stake post thing on Webequie lands. They’re worried that if Ross and Aileen found something it will mean that a mining company will want to come in and start digging.”

  “I doubt they found anything. They don’t have a great track record. Not in Ontario, anyway. Aileen used to work on the team with one of the top gold prospectors in the Yukon, worked with him when they had some pretty big finds in 2009, but then she joined up with Ross and moved to Ontario. Huntington Mining leased a couple of their claims just to make them shut up and go away, but there isn’t enough chromite in those claims for them to ever see a return on their investment.”

  “Is that what they’d be looking for here? Chromite?”

  “Guaranteed. That area around Webequie is the mother lode of chromite.”

  “What about rubies?”

  “There aren’t any rubies in Ontario. There might be some on Baffin Island, but nobody’s been able to find them yet. Why would you ask about rubies?”

  “River, the world’s most adorable little boy, Blaze’s cousin, found some red rocks that he thinks are rubies.”

  “They’re not.”

  “What about diamonds?”

  “What about them?”

  “Could Ross and Aileen have been looking for diamonds?”

  “No, for a million reasons. No one’s found a kimberlite pipe close to Webequie, and fringe stakers don’t have the scientific background to know how to look for diamonds. They only know how to latch onto other people’s work.”

  “Maybe De Beers have some claims near here that you don’t know about?”

  “I’d know about it. We keep a pretty close eye on each other.”

  “How do you know where to look for diamonds?”

  He ran his hand through his hair. He needed a haircut. “How detailed do you want me to be? PhD, Masters, undergrad or high school level geology?”

  “Kindergarten.”

  “Material deep in the earth’s crust heated up, pressure built up and it eventually went boom. Stuff got shot up to the surface and formed a pipe called a kimberlite pipe. It’s shaped like a carrot in the ground. Diamonds are found in kimberlite pipes. A lot of rocks were in the stuff that got shot out to the surface through the pipe – those rocks are called indicator minerals; they indicate the presence of a kimberlite pipe. Insert a whole bunch of scientific words here, with the end result being a bunch of maps and surveys and measurements for big word things like radioactivity, conductivity, density, magnetism—”

  “It’s getting boring.”

  “Okay. So we look at all that scientific information and maps, maps and more maps, and sometimes we see something that makes us think there might be something down there. Then we put some boots on the ground—”

  “What are you doing? Sta
rting a ground war?”

  “Almost. We send in our troops and they start looking around. If the troops find indicator minerals we go to the next step and hang a big electronic doohickey below a helicopter to do an aeromagnetic geophysical survey. If that doohickey spots something that looks like a bullseye on our monitors we know that we’ve found a kimberlite pipe. Then we put more boots on the ground. They drill samples and do a million other scientific tests. If everything comes up sparkly we start drilling. Not right away, though; there have to be environmental assessments, feasibility studies—”

  “Sara explained some of that bit to me. When the kimberlite thing goes boom, does it spew out diamonds? Is that what you look for when you’re walking around?”

  “It can, but it’s very, very rare to find a diamond of any size in a mineral train. The common indicator minerals are chrome-rich diopside, picroilmenite, olivine, chromite and pyrope garnet.”

  “Hang on! Be right back!” I ran out of Sara’s room, grabbed my camera from the table in her main area and had the memory card from it plugged into my computer by the time I sat back down on the bed. “Give me a minute.” I scrolled through the pictures I’d taken that day.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Finding something.” I came to the shots I’d taken of River’s rocks in the classroom and sent the best close-up to Jack. “I just sent you something.”

  “Got it.” I watched his eyes look away from the camera. He leaned in closer to the screen. “Where did you get these from?”

  “I didn’t. River said he found them at the shore of a river near here. What are they?”

  “I can’t be certain, but they could be pyrope garnets.”

  “Which would mean that they indicate that there are diamonds near here?”

  Jack shook his head. “It’s not that easy in Canada. When the kimberlite pipes spewed out the indicator minerals they didn’t just stay on the ground where they fell around the pipe. The glaciers came through after the kimberlite pipes exploded and they pushed the indicator minerals south. When the glaciers melted the water they left behind filled the rivers they’d carved out and a lot of minerals were washed downstream as the glaciers retreated. Finding a couple of indicator minerals doesn’t mean you’re anywhere near a kimberlite pipe. You could be standing right on top of it, or you could be hundreds of kilometres away from it. Insert more big scientific words that describe the calculations we have to go through to determine where those indicators came from, how much they may have travelled.”