Where the Ice Falls Read online

  Zoe looked out at the fence dividing the two backyards, where snow clung to bare aspen branches, white against the brownish haze of downtown. The scene was starkly cold, like a faded Dutch winter painting. All that was missing was a canal with skaters. “Aidan handled Eric’s friend pretty well.”

  “Calvin? Oh, he’s lost without Eric. He’s living in their basement now.”

  “Doesn’t he have his own family?”

  Arliss shook her head. “He’s from Hong Kong. His mother was here the first year. When he started high school, she boarded him with another family and went home. I’m not sure she realizes how messed up he is.”

  “So Calvin had nobody except Eric, and now Eric’s gone? It must be horrible for him.”

  “I doubt either Leslie or Brian has a clue what to do about him now. They don’t know what to do with their own kids.”

  “I was thinking,” said Zoe, “about inviting them to go cross-country skiing or something with my gang. The kids, not the parents.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea. You should ask them right away.”

  “I don’t want to intrude.”

  “I’ll go over with you.” Arliss stood up, pulling Zoe’s mug from her lax fingers. “It’ll be my excuse to muscle in and get them sorted out.”

  Excitement and terror buffeted Zoe. What if she was wrong about this ghost thing? What if she had a psychotic break? “Aidan isn’t home. Shouldn’t we wait?”

  “He’ll be back any minute, I’m sure. It’s the weekend, so he’s probably just gone to the grocery store.”

  All too soon, Zoe found herself inside the brown-brick house, shivering not from the cold, but from the shock of seeing how very close it was to her vision, down to the quirky blue vase full of fake sunflowers sitting on the hall table. She stammered out her invitation over the pounding of her heart, and held her breath while Clemmie accepted for all three kids in a hushed tone. Her parents never appeared.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “No, it really went okay,” Lacey heard Dee say as she came down from delivering Loreena’s breakfast tray. “I counted out all her pills just like you showed us.” Dee hung up as Lacey entered the kitchen. “I’m liking it without Sandy around. I’m sure she’s used to keeping secrets, but every time I say something about legal work or real estate, I’m aware she could violate my client’s confidence without realizing. It ties my tongue.”

  “She’s pretty sharp.” Lacey reached for her favourite mug. “I bet she knows that we need the chalet sold. Has your mom asked you about the money situation?”

  Dee shook her head. “I can’t hide it much longer. I paid the power bill on my credit card, but I don’t dare turn down the heat when Mom’s so easily chilled.”

  “I’ll get her an electric blanket for Christmas. You and I can wear sweaters.”

  Dee leaned her face on her palms. “I can’t believe,” she said, her voice slightly muffled, “the dead guy’s now a Major Crimes case. My Christmas photos will be outdated before I can pitch the place to buyers. If I’d thought ahead, we could’ve done generic winter photos at the same time.”

  Lacey pulled up a stool. Dee’s varnished log walls and black granite countertops had long ceased to impress, but she never tired of the view: white hillside, dark spruces, and clear, cloudless sky. “There wasn’t anything to suggest that Eric went into the chalet, so maybe Major Crimes hasn’t taped it off. You can never tell with those guys, though. I’ll ask Bull if we can still —” She was interrupted by the chime of her phone. “Oh, speak of the devil.” She thumbed the screen. “Yeah, Bull. What can you tell me about the backpack?”

  “Someday, McCrae, you’ll learn to say good morning like a normal person. No backpack.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I said. Not on the body, not in the shed.”

  “Nobody abandons their car in a blizzard without taking their gear.” Lacey swapped the phone to her other ear. “Maybe carbon monoxide was leaking in and he was disoriented, or his heater stopped working and he was halfway to hypothermia before he started walking. Like that guy in the Yukon Arctic Ultra race who took off his shoes and walked away from his sled into the bush. He’d been going hypothermic for twenty-four hours by then. Could this kid have wandered for a whole day without seeing a single other building? And why go into the shed instead of the chalet?”

  “There’s a snowmobile and ski trail running behind all those properties — access is behind the woodshed. If he came that way, the shed would be the first shelter he’d come to. The poppy was his, by the way. Fingerprints on the back. Must have been under his coat if he was wandering for long. The trail’s being searched for the backpack, which will tell us which direction to look for the car in, but we haven’t found either of them. And we still don’t know who barred the door.” Lacey heard the sound of shuffling papers. “McCrae, what about the sleeping pills? Have you learned anything from that woman?”

  “The daughter only uses herbal tea for sleep. Zoe was complaining about not sleeping, and she looked like hell. In my opinion, if she had access to sleeping pills, she’d have taken them.”

  “Will you be talking to her again?”

  “Unlikely. Unless you call her in and she asks for support. In which case I’ll recommend she call a lawyer.”

  Dee pounced as soon as Lacey hung up. “Still no answers?”

  “Negative. They don’t know how Eric got to the woodshed, or whether he’d taken or been given sleeping pills, or who barred the door.” Lacey swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Now I have to phone Aidan Anders and tell him there’s no backpack. No personal effects to comfort his grieving mother.”

  She was dialing when she remembered his request about business hours. Saturday midmorning was hardly that. She texted instead. This is Lacey from last night at the church. Please call me today when it’s convenient for you. They ate toast in silence until Lacey’s phone buzzed across the countertop. She snatched it up. “Lacey McCrae here.”

  “Hi Lacey, this is Aidan.”

  “Yes, I wanted to let you know about that backpack. The police say it wasn’t found with him. It must still be in his car.” She waited a few beats. “There wasn’t anything wrong with his car, was there? Faulty heater or carbon monoxide seepage that might have made him disoriented?”

  “No. He had it winterized only a couple of weeks before, when the snow tires were put on.” Aidan muttered something under his breath. “What I don’t understand is why he left it at all. We know the drill. We all have emergency kits — candles, food, space blankets. Our mom’s a freak about stuff like that. It’s like he ignored everything she’s ever taught us about winter safety. It’s not like him.”

  “Was he taking any medication that might have clouded his thinking?”

  “Hell, no. Eric hated pills. He was really sick as a kid. For years he had to swallow more pills than food. Now he doesn’t even take aspirin if he can help it.”

  “I understand he was driving out to see JP Thompson?”

  “Yeah. He’s a family friend. He gave me a work placement semester at his company’s accounting department a few years ago, and when Eric needed an IT internship, JP offered it to him right off.” He paused. “I guess those papers are still in the backpack. I didn’t think to ask if Eric had left a copy at work.”

  “What papers were those?”

  “Eric found something weird in the accounting software. That’s what he wanted to talk to JP about.”

  If Lacey had been a police dog, her ears would have perked straight up. Was this perhaps a motive? “Can you tell me what he found?”

  “It seemed at first to be a simple glitch in a computer program. I looked over a printout for him and told him what supporting documents to look for before he reported it.”

  “Did you tell the police about it when he went missing?”

  “I forgot all about it. My mom was, well, a wreck, and none of us was thinking straight. I hope the IT guys caught the problem, or JP will be furio
us that I didn’t tell him right away.” His voice shook. “God, I don’t need responsibility for this, too.”

  It’s not your fault, Lacey wanted to say, but truthfully she had no idea how serious the accounting issue was. Or if it had anything to do with Eric’s not surviving the attempt to tell his boss about it. Had anyone verified exactly what time JP returned to Calgary that day?

  “Calvin knows more about it than I do,” Aidan said. “He helped Eric sort it out.”

  The jittery guy from the Blue Christmas service. Oh, great.

  “Can you ask Calvin if he’d be willing to explain it to me?” It might have no bearing on Eric’s death, but if it looked like a possible motive, she could give Bull everything to pass on to Major Crimes.

  “I can ask.” Aidan sounded dubious. “Cal is not the most sociable even at his best. And right now, he’s really not at his best.”

  “Dee,” Lacey said, once she was off the phone. “Do you think your friend Marcia would be willing to tell me whether her company was having accounting trouble?”

  It was near lunchtime and Zoe was looking gloomily at shelves full of old computers, monitors, keyboards, and printers. “You’re sure they’re all on this inventory?”

  The IT tech twisted his pen and clicked the end a couple of times. “I checked it in September, but things do get moved around. We had an intern for a while who was supposed to sort them for disposal.”

  Zoe tensed. “Are you referring to Eric Anders?”

  He clicked the pen again. “Yup. The guy who was lost in that blizzard. They found his body recently.” He shook his head. “Shoulda stayed with his car.”

  “He’d probably be just as dead if he had,” Zoe said through clenched teeth. “They haven’t found his car yet.” She eased her jaw. “Was he reliable? Anders, I mean. Would he have moved equipment without accounting for it?”

  “Nah. Like I said, these are all surplus. We got them when we bought that last little gas company, and they weren’t as good as what we had. Maybe we’ll get another intern after Christmas to sort them out. If I’m here that long.”

  “Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “You hear rumours. I could look for another job, but if we’re sold, there’ll be a buyout of my stock from the employee ownership program. Higher than list price, I mean. Those paydays don’t come along often anymore.”

  An employee retention plan — another thing Zoe had to talk to JP about. “I wouldn’t worry about being sold just yet. No companies like making changes before the holidays.”

  “Did they have the employee share program when you worked here before? Because you might think differently if your retirement savings were on the line.”

  Zoe wasn’t about to tell him so, but her savings were on the line. Her annual bonus had come in the form of shares those first few years. She pointed to the next shelf. “Are these all the surplus printers?”

  “That’s your second page. These, plus there are printers in each executive office, and in the copy rooms on each floor.” He ran his finger down the page. “And the dedicated cheque-printing machine. I’m not sure what category it goes in for accounting or depreciation purposes, but it’s probably not worth a buck. It’s an antique, frankly.”

  “What makes it different from an ordinary printer?” She knew full well, having been there when it was installed, but the voice in her head seemed very excited about the cheque printer.

  He coiled up a loose cable and wrapped a twist-tie around it. “It’s a specialized combination of computer and printer, with controlled access.”

  “Show me.”

  The dedicated cheque printer was in the same supply room as it had always been. How could JP not have upgraded his cheque-writing operation? In her day, she would never have allowed the office to fall so far behind technologically. But then, her replacement had been more interested in marrying the boss than in keeping the company operating at peak efficiency.

  “If I understand correctly, nothing gets plugged into this printer except during the twice-monthly payment run?”

  He clicked his pen, which she had come to realize was his way of nodding. “It only accepts commands from the Accounting boss. No remote access, either. Like, you can’t log in from home for that. You have to be logged in right here.”

  “Thanks,” said Zoe. Cheque security remained exactly the same as when Arliss had set it up, way back when she still handled all the books. “I’ll count the other printers myself.” She took three steps and turned back. “Did that intern ever babysit this printer, or was that too important a task for him?”

  Pen click. “He knew his stuff well enough for this, and most routine jobs. We’d probably have hired him as a summer student, except he wasn’t committed to IT.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He hung with the Land guys, asking about well cleanup and environmental stuff. Wanted to switch his major. Say, Land has a printer, a giant plotter one. It’s our single most expensive machine. It prints those wide sheets hanging off the walls, to show where the wells are. It probably has a separate accounting line, too.”

  Zoe thanked him again and moved along the beige-walled hallway to the land department. The common area, hung with plotter maps, was full of people donning coats or taking plastic containers out of a bar fridge. Under questioning, they didn’t indicate that Eric had been a disruption in any way. Joanne, a middle-aged woman with harsh auburn hair, sniffed and blew her nose. She lifted a package of red licorice off a windowsill. “There are all these jokes about computer nerds eating licorice. Like if you feed them that, they’ll never leave.” She sniffed again. “I brought this in special for him, but he never came back.”

  Another man said, “You hear a lot about these kids not being good workers, but he was genuinely interested. Good attitude.”

  Joanne dropped her tissue into the wastebasket. “If there ends up being a memorial service, I hope they give us time off to go.”

  Zoe nodded and changed the subject. “Who do I ask about recent land swaps?”

  “You’re being really thorough,” Joanne observed. “Is it true the company’s going on the market?”

  As per JP’s orders, Zoe said, “I’m assessing so I can make a recommendation. Think about who wants to stay on during a sales process. It can be stressful waiting around for months, wondering if the buyers will hire you.”

  Joanne gave a wry grin. “Honey, I’ve been around four different companies under sale. If the retention package is good enough, I’ll stick. Most of us will.”

  Marcia passed the common room door and came back to look in. “Zoe, I’m off for lunch. Want to come along?”

  “No, thanks. I have to get home to check on my stepsons.” But she followed Marcia out. “I meant to ask you again about teaching them to cross-country ski.”

  “When did you have in mind?” Marcia unhooked her winter coat from her office door.

  “Boxing Day, late morning or early afternoon?”

  “Let me check my schedule and get back to you.”

  Zoe intended to go back to her office and sort out the morning’s data. Her feet, though, carried her to the cheque-writing printer. She stood looking at the clunky machine. Her hand stretched toward the back right corner and the connection panel: power cord, power button, empty pins for a network cable, empty USB slot. Her fingertips slid over the connectors, feeling for … what?

  “Something wrong there?”

  She whirled around. It was Pen Guy from IT.

  “Uh, no. I was just wondering how you’ve kept this old machine running all these years.”

  He scratched his ear with the pen. “It’s a pain. Jams a lot. Like you said before, one of us has to babysit it during runs. We hand deliver any mangled cheques back to Accounting for them to verify and rerun. Most places outsource their cheque printing now, what’s left of it, to a dedicated service. Email them the file and they send you back the cheques and reports, all ready for mailing and filing.” He sneezed. “Sorry, somethi
ng in the air in here is getting to me. Anyway, if you’ve got the boss’s ear, maybe suggest to him that e-transfers are better for the bottom line … and the environment.” He collected a box of staples and left.

  The instant he was out of sight, Zoe’s fingers fumbled with the empty connectors again. She snatched her hand back and hurried out, feeling as though, for every step forward she took, she was being dragged slowly back. What was it with that printer room?

  By lunchtime, Dee’s borrowed Christmas trees were nearly decorated. The green one stood before the French doors in the dining room, decked with red bows and multicoloured lights, ready to shine for the skiers on the trail out back. The taller white one rose before the great-room windows, gleaming with silver and blue balls, and garnished with the same silver ribbon they’d used at the chalet. The fireplace and stair rails were draped with white lace garland and accented with more ribbon. It all looked quite festive in a frosty, wintry way. Lacey and Dee wouldn’t have bothered if it were just them, but for Loreena’s last Christmas, nothing was too much trouble.

  Sandy arrived in time to hold the kitchen stool steady while Lacey finished trimming the upper branches of the white tree. Then Dee handed her the silver-and-crystal tree topper to set into place. It was done.

  “Looks good,” Sandy said as Lacey climbed down. “Here, take a picture of me in front of it to send to my grandkids.” She hurried to the front hall and came back carrying a small yellow purse with purple and pink sequins in the shape of a unicorn head. “My granddaughter gave me this to use while shopping for her presents. She’ll get a kick out of seeing me with it.”

  The purse flared bright when the flash caught it. Lacey blinked away spots and checked the photo to make sure the unicorn had not been dazzled out of existence. “Is that all sequins?”

  “Yup. And watch this.” Sandy smoothed her hand over the unicorn and it vanished, leaving the bag plain yellow. She ran her hand up the other way and the unicorn reappeared. “Flip sequins: like magic to a seven-year-old.”