Where the Ice Falls Page 6

  Marcia looked blank.

  “Pembina is the super-field of the Alberta oil patch. Dozens of companies, ours included, have blocks of land rights there. ‘Our Cardium wells’ means the wells this company has drilled into that formation.” She paused, trying to think how to avoid underlining Marcia’s complete uselessness while still getting the information she needed. “The wells all have individual identification numbers. I can send my request to whoever is the current senior production accountant. They’ll know.” They might not know right off who had the missing files but they’d recognize the well reference and know who to ask.

  Marcia’s face cleared. “That’s Kim, but she’s on mat leave. Send me a note and I’ll figure out who’s covering her job.”

  Wonderful. Zoe had noticed things seemed to be drifting in JP’s absence, but had HR not bothered to assign a temporary production accountant? The year-end books would be a disaster if someone with serious petroleum accounting experience didn’t take the reins very soon. Well, nothing she could do but put that information into her nightly report to JP. Preferably in uppercase, bolded, bright-red font. She pulled up a smile that felt as constrained as Marcia’s accounting experience.

  “That will help, thanks. While I have you here, about Eric Anders’s death … should there be a company gathering? Coffee and donuts or something? Or should we just say that anyone who wants to attend the funeral can do so?”

  “I see no need. He was only here for two months, and to be honest … JP wouldn’t like me to say this, but Eric wasn’t working out. He was supposed to be learning Information Technology, but he was always nosing around other departments, disrupting their staff. I talked to JP about terminating his internship, but Eric was his old neighbour’s son and could do no wrong in his eyes.”

  “So, no need for a company-wide event then,” said Zoe. A chill crept across her neck. Time to get out of this cold basement. “I’ll find out the time and place of the funeral in case anyone wants to go. Someone ought to represent JP.”

  “Better you than me,” said Marcia. “I’m leading winter survival and ski-trekking courses every spare minute.”

  The accountant was halfway out of the room before Zoe’s brain made a connection. “Marcia?”

  The bigger woman turned back. “Hmm?”

  “Ski trekking, would that be something my family could do over the break? My stepsons are visiting and we were supposed to have a ski week, but it’s been cancelled.”

  “My lessons are single-day and half-day only. Do your stepsons cross-country ski at all?”

  “I’m not sure,” Zoe confessed. “I know they snowboard.”

  “If they want to learn cross-country, I can teach them the basics in a couple of hours. But it would have to be after Christmas.”

  “Thanks. I’ll ask at supper and get back to you.”

  “No problem.” Marcia turned away again, then stopped. “You know the ski lift is running weekdays at Black Rock now, right? Started this week for the holidays. You could take them out there to snowboard.”

  Faced with explaining to this tough wilderness woman why she wasn’t up to taking Lizi or herself back to a place where they’d found a body, Zoe smiled weakly. “Good to know. Well, I’d better get back to these files. Thanks for your help.”

  Alone again, she hauled another dusty stack of folders from the rack. She found original contracts for two more share wells, but not the Cardium ones. Bloody nuisance. She texted the land numbers up to Marcia, then re-shelved everything except the files she’d need to photocopy.

  Something clicked behind her. She turned. Was that a person’s shadow in the hallway? Any sound of footsteps was lost as a bus rumbled by on Sixth Avenue, setting the window grilles vibrating. Maybe it was a flicker made by someone walking past at sidewalk level outside. But the feeling that she was not alone down here was creeping up her spine. She grabbed the stack of folders, closed and locked the file-room door, and hurried to the elevator. As she waited for it to arrive, she alternated between willing the glowing button to turn green and peering over her shoulder at the empty corridor. When the elevator door began to open, she was almost sure she saw a face peering over her reflected shoulder. She whirled around, but there was nobody in the hallway.

  Hallucination. She’d overslept and forgotten to make the doctor’s appointment. If she went home and had a good nap this afternoon, would it stop?

  Up on the fifth floor, feeling safer and more grounded, she settled into Accounting’s dedicated printer room to copy papers that would interest any potential purchasers of TFB Energy. One of the recent employees, a blond in her early twenties whose name Zoe couldn’t remember even though she’d been introduced only a few days ago, came in looking for a report that should have been sent in from a field office to one of the printers.

  The woman sighed as she looked around the room. “It feels like there’s a third person in here.” Meeting Zoe’s eyes, she added quickly, “Sorry, I know that sounds crazy. But the IT department had an intern, Eric, who was in here a lot unjamming machines, and we used to chat. I guess I still feel like he should be here. I’m very sensitive to people’s leftover vibrations. Even more than my auntie who reads tarot cards.”

  Zoe picked up the next document and pretended to skim it while she digested the implications of the comment. Maybe she was not alone in sensing a presence. Maybe it was Eric’s “vibrations.” She slid the page into the copier, searching her mind for a pretext to prolong the conversation.

  “Eric didn’t disturb your work?” she asked.

  “Oh no. He was great. Totally into what I was doing. I showed him how the monthly reports get compiled and a lot of other little things about accounting.” Blondie smiled. “I think he was crushing on me.”

  “I heard he wasn’t popular with the other workers.”

  Blondie cast a glance over her shoulder. “He wasn’t popular with our acting chief. She distrusts all the younger guys. Maybe they used to egg her house at Halloween or something.” She looked around the room again. “It sure feels like Eric is still around somewhere. I’m going to light a candle in my office for him so he feels welcome. Do you know when the funeral will be?”

  “Not yet. I’ll send out a memo when I find out.”

  As Blondie departed, muttering about lying liars in field offices, Zoe looked around the small room. So, this had been a regular stop in Eric’s day. Could his spirit have followed her from the woodshed, hoping to find a familiar place? What if she wasn’t crazy? What if she was, like Blondie, sensing his leftover aura or whatever? When she’d cracked up as a teen, the voice she’d kept hearing was a dead neighbour’s, and then only after the new owners of his house knocked down his backyard workshop. There’d been no room for this kind of thinking in her mother’s version of the Greek Orthodox religion, however, and after the prayer circle failed to cure her of the “demonic influence,” as her mother called it, Zoe had been so terrified of being possessed that she couldn’t fall asleep. Sleep deprivation could also cause hallucinations. Maybe the combination of the two had put her in the psych ward. Maybe she’d never been truly psychotic.

  As she returned the folders and the photocopies to the appropriate stacks in her temporary office down the hall, Zoe struggled to recall any aunts who’d read tarot cards or done other strange things. She could call Nana, but would Nana talk about this honestly, or would she tell Mama, who would call in her priest for an exorcism? Was it worth the risk of starting another round of How crazy is Zoe, anyway?

  She drove home through the lunchtime rush, half listening to the noon-hour call-in show on the radio. Today’s oddball guest swore his dead mother had told him where to find her lost diamond ring. “My mom hadn’t worn makeup in fifteen years, but there was the ring, slipped around her mascara tube. My daughter got engaged three days later wearing it.”

  He sounded so convinced that his mother had communicated with him. Was it remotely possible Eric’s ghost was trying to communicate with her? Mayb
e if she saw his family, he would transfer to haunting them. Or she could go back to the scene where he was found and see if that would put her own haunted thoughts to rest.

  When she reached home, Kai and Ari were eating cereal at the kitchen table. Kai got up. “I made coffee. Want some?”

  “Thanks.” She accepted a mug and pulled up a stool to the counter. “There’s eggs and ham and stuff in the fridge.”

  “No place to work it off,” said Ari. “All we’ve done since early yesterday is sit around in airports and airplanes, eating junk.”

  Kai nodded. “Is there someplace we could go to swim or work out?”

  Zoe swallowed a sigh. Spend the afternoon hauling her stepsons to rec facilities, or get this ghost issue sorted? Or … maybe there was a way to do both.

  “It’s short notice, but would you guys like to go snowboarding? That ski chalet has snowboards and lift tickets. I could take you there. As long as you don’t mention it to Lizi. She’d be horrified.” She watched the grins spread over their almost-matching faces. Kai’s was wider, more open, like his nature, and Ari’s was a bit more reserved. They both looked very much like their dad.

  A quarter hour later, Zoe took a mug of red pepper soup into her office and Googled psychics, ghostly presences, and a few other terms before realizing she could sit there reading all day without finding a trustworthy answer. She slid her office door shut, opened her address book, and found her grandmother’s phone number.

  If Nana was surprised to hear from her, it didn’t last long. Nor did she laugh when Zoe finally asked outright about ancestors who might have talked to ghosts.

  “I wondered if that would turn up again in you or your daughter.”

  “Inherited psychosis?” Zoe held her breath.

  “Hardly psychosis, dear. Just a quirk that shows up in some families from the old country. Usually in teenage girls.” Nana’s voice sharpened. “Was that your trouble in high school? Your mother skated all around the subject.”

  “That was it. A neighbour died.” Weights rolled off Zoe’s shoulders. “So I’m not crazy?”

  “Well, probably not. I wish your papa had told me what was going on. It was my cousin Tiana with the ghosts. She came to live with us one summer, haunted by a man in her village who had recently died. The way she told it to me was that he wanted her to tell a woman — not his wife — that he still loved her. Tiana didn’t dare pass along the message, but he kept pestering her, even in her bedroom at night, which was quite terrifying for a girl of our generation.”

  “What did she do in the end?”

  “Confessed to the priest.” Nana sighed. “Naturally he told her it was the devil tempting her to cause strife. He forbade her to mention it, and she faithfully kept telling the ghost to bugger off, but then people started whispering about her talking to people who weren’t there. Her parents sent her to us to get her away from all that.”

  “And did she? Get away from it, I mean? The ghost didn’t follow her?”

  “It didn’t. But she did see other ghosts after that, later, as an adult.”

  Zoe tipped back her chair and stared at the window blinds. Sunlight glanced off the edge of every slat, like a jail cell with bars made of light. Would she have the courage to open those blinds and look beyond, to possibly face a dead boy out there looking back at her?

  “What did she do about it, Nana? Whenever she saw a ghost after that?”

  “She sat quietly and asked what they wanted. When they told her — if they told her — she would either tell them she would try, or she’d say they should talk to somebody else.”

  “Talk to them? That’s it?” Zoe tipped her chair down again. The furnace cut in and the blind slats wavered, showing her a glimpse of the bright outdoors. No ghost.

  “That’s it. If you or Lizi are being bothered by a ghost, I suggest you ask it what it wants. But not where anybody else can hear you.”

  A couple of hours later, Zoe turned off the van and looked out at the snow-dusted steps of JP’s chalet. There hadn’t been much of a lineup at the chairlift on a Thursday afternoon, and Kai and Ari were probably halfway up the mountain already. She guessed she had about three hours to herself before it got too dark for snowboarding. If this was the ghost of Eric, he had better show her a sign, and then she could tell him to buzz off. After that, she could start the inventory of sports equipment and furnishings that JP was sure to decide he needed. He might be ruled by Phyl in where he lived going forward, but he had a lot of good memories bound up in Black Rock Bowl, some of which he might want to keep.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lacey cracked the window open to let in the crisp mountain air. Sunlight sparkled on snowy boughs, and small birds flickered in the trees. The yard with the Christmas decorations appeared, its myriad lights pale starbursts of colour against the white background.

  Dee smiled at her from the passenger seat. “We’ll have lots of days like this. More sun than cloud, as many warm as cold, afternoons ideal for skiing, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling, or simply walking through a glorious winter forest.” She looked down at her phone again. “I should have made time to go through those boxes of decorations and pick out the best stuff. Staging 101: a few high-toned holiday touches will make a property seem the perfect Christmas gift for an oil baron’s teenage kids or trophy wife, without us having to decorate the whole place. We’ll do outdoor and window shots while we have the sun, minimally decorate one tree to try in different corners, and see what other shortcuts are possible.”

  Lacey steered the SUV over the short log bridge. The creek below cut through the trees, its banks edged with jagged ice. “Where does that creek go, anyway?”

  “To Ghost River. It’s not far. Look — all the shops are open, and the ski lift is running. I guess the holiday schedule has officially started. You’d never get a ski bus up that road, which is all that keeps the plebs out.”

  “Oh, right. No hotels, either. I guess they don’t sell ski-week packages here.”

  Dee nodded. “You don’t ski here unless you can afford a good four-wheel drive and a million-dollar chalet. That’s my target market.”

  They followed the road up the Bowl’s south shoulder. Lacey turned in at JP’s chalet, following a set of fresh tire tracks in the snow. Pulling up near the porch, she frowned. “That looks like the same blue van that was here the other day. Zoe Gallagher’s.”

  Dee peered at the bumper. “Yeah, it’s got that Dungeons & Dragons bumper sticker I stared at for half an hour while I was waiting for you. Why’s she back? Staging the photos will be impossible if the place is filled with family clutter.”

  “One way to find out.” Lacey opened her door and stepped out. “Can you walk that far, or should I ask her to move her van?”

  “I’ll go ask.” Dee swung her legs out. “You stay here and park closer when the van’s out of the way.” She clambered up the steps and opened the front door.

  Lacey sat in the SUV, the sunlight warming her arm right through her coat. The remains of the crime scene tape fluttered from the woodshed. It could be gone by this time tomorrow if only someone would come forward to say they’d accidentally barred the door without checking inside.

  A few minutes later, Zoe came out, waved, and moved the van over to the garage. Lacey pulled up as close to the front door as she could get and started unloading the decorations. When she got the first boxes inside, she realized there was no family to work around. Only Zoe was here. She’d come in through the back door to the kitchen and was perched on a stool, chatting to Dee in an atmosphere of strained politeness. Once she’d gotten the box holding Jan’s biggest tree inside, Lacey kicked off her boots and joined them. An electric kettle hissed on the countertop, and a teapot sat lidless, waiting for hot water.

  Dee filled Lacey in, her voice giving no hint of her thoughts. “Zoe is doing inventory for JP. Contrary to what he told me, she thinks he’ll keep some of the furnishings and sporting equipment. I was about to phone him, so I don’t mislead p
otential buyers.” She hobbled out to the living room and gazed out the great front windows.

  Lacey looked over at Zoe, who still seemed worn out, but not as deathly pale as she had been the day before. “I’d have sworn you’d never want to see this place again.”

  “I didn’t.” The kettle clicked, and Zoe warmed the teapot. As she rummaged for teabags, she added, “My daughter panics at the thought.”

  What are you really doing out here? Lacey was keenly aware she had no standing to ask questions; she wasn’t a cop anymore. This wasn’t her investigation. She was Victim Services, though, and this mother and daughter were her concern.

  “How was Lizi after the statement signing? Has she had any more nightmares?”

  Zoe shook her head. “She’s tired today, but that’s because we made a midnight airport run. Her half brothers arrived late yesterday from New Zealand. Otherwise she seems okay. I think she’s moving past it.”

  “And you? Are you able to move past it?”

  Zoe set the teapot down. “I wish I could. I still have to go see Eric’s parents.”

  “I’ve heard his mother is taking it very hard.”

  Whatever Zoe might have been about to say was forgotten as Dee hobbled in. “Is that spiced tea I smell?”

  “Some exotic blend Phyl bought.” Zoe shrugged. “There are lots of gourmet treats here, too. We’ll have to dispose of those if the place sells.”

  Dee opened a few cupboards. “JP says the dishes and kitchen appliances all go with, and the snowmobiles can be thrown in as a sweetener. Did he mention to you that you can take any of the skis and other snow equipment you want?”