Strange Things Done (12 page)

“Hello? Anyone home?” She didn’t want to disturb May if she happened to be with someone. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was not quite right.

Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard squeaked. Jo froze. Her heart drummed a frantic rhythm and the inside of her woollen sweater felt damp. She tried to listen above the melody that the wind was whistling. A soft dirge. She was just beginning to think that she’d imagined the noise when she heard a clear scraping sound, like wood on wood, in one of the rooms above her.

She lost a moment or two as she wrestled between dual emotions: terror and curiosity. Then, she moved stealthily through the lounge to find a dim staircase at the front of the house. As she climbed the steps, the wood floors tattled on her approach. She paused at the landing. The second door down the hall was slightly ajar. A chilling draft emanated from the room, as though it were softly exhaling while she held her breath. She moved forward, giving the door a little shove and then stepping back.

Lace curtains billowed like a broken cobweb, waving farewell in the breeze. Next to the open window: an antique desk, one drawer slightly ajar. Jo padded over and drew back the curtain.

The blanched limbs of a skeletal tree clawed the window, making a handy escape ladder from May’s office. Jo leaned forward for a better look, searching at the base of the trunk for new footprints in the snow. She had a good view of the ailing wooden fence and the fringe of wild growth beyond that disappeared into the woods. It would be the perfect escape route.

Jo realized her mistake just a moment too late. The only footprints were those leading toward the house: hers and a set of larger ones, both disappearing at the back door. She heard some kind of movement behind her and was just turning her head and raising one hand when the world went black.

10

It was the icy air that brought Jo to her senses. She felt stiff, her body twisted awkwardly as she came to, shivering on the floor. She opened her eyes slowly, blinking against the soft light of a Yukon afternoon after a snowfall. Her head throbbed and her neck ached. Her first instinct was to touch the side of her head, near the back, where she’d been hit. With that realization came a wave of panic that she might not be alone. Painfully, she moved her eyes and sat up, causing a brief ripple of nausea and a distant tinkling sound, like falling glass. The room appeared to be empty, the window still open.

Jo removed her glove and touched a bare finger to her scalp, resulting in a cool, damp sensation. For one horrible moment, she thought that the contents of her skull had been spilled, but when she brought her hand away, it was covered in gold glitter. Jo released a slow breath and moved her head painfully to look around. The floor was covered in shards of glass and a sparkling dust, as though she’d just been hit over the head by a combative fairy. A circle of wood lay at the epicentre of the destruction. She picked it up. A gold plaque along the edge read, “Dawson City, City of Gold.” Nearby on the floor, the shiny figure of a miner kneeled thoughtfully over a pan of gold, lost in time and space.

Shakily, Jo got to her feet and crunched across fragments of glass to the window. This time when she leaned out, there were a second set of large footprints below, beginning at the back door and disappearing into the woods. Jo donned her gloves and closed the window.

She picked up the receiver from a rotary phone on the desk and dialled Dawson’s emergency number, already dreading another interview with Cariboo. The receptionist spoke maddeningly slowly. Once she’d made the call, Jo took another look at her surroundings.

The soft, new snow seemed to deaden all sound, muffling the distant hum of a chainsaw and the rough laughter of ravens. Jo wondered how much time she had. The only thing that appeared to be amiss was a desk drawer, which wasn’t quite closed. It slid open easily, revealing a set of letter-sized files. She flipped quickly through the labels on the file folders. All but one were related to May’s shop, The Gold Digger. The last was labelled “Claim 53.” Jo withdrew the file, rifling through the documents. Gold production … Staffing … Various articles about the increasing strength of gold on the market. Then a legal document naming May Wong as the owner of Claim 53 at Sourdough Creek, and someone named Jack Grikowsky as the manager. The name rang a bell. Tires crunched on snow in the driveway. A car door slammed.

Jo shoved the folder back into the desk drawer, which she returned to its original position. She tugged on the handles of the other two drawers. One contained innocuous office supplies. The other was locked. Jo knelt down, removed one glove, and felt the underbelly of the desk.

The sharp sound of boots rang out on wooden stairs. A voice called out, “Ms. Silver?” Cariboo.

Her fingertips brushed against cold metal under the desk. She dipped her head to look.

The footsteps reached the top of the stairs. “Josephine!” He sounded both alarmed and irritated.

“Yes!” she called out. “I’m here!” She straightened, left hand still clutching her right glove.

When Cariboo arrived at the door, competing emotions showed on his face. “Why didn’t you answer me?” His dark eyes strayed from hers and his gaze travelled to her hands. Jo could feel his suspicion.

“Sorry,” she said. “Still a bit dizzy from the whack on the head. Not thinking straight.”

The tip of the little gold key in her pocket nudged the top of her leg in accusation.

11

Snow had piled up along the edges of the street in high banks. The SUV skidded a little, and Cariboo steered into the slide to correct. The town flashed by in pastel pops of false-fronted Victorian buildings.

“What if she hasn’t gone hunting?” Jo asked, squeezing her gloved hands both to comfort herself and to generate some kind of warmth. Her head throbbed dully with the strobing of the storefronts. Jo winced as she turned to look out the window. She rubbed at the back of her neck, but avoided touching the bruised area on her head, where she now had a sizeable lump.

“You should see a doctor about that. You might have a concussion.” He looked concerned.

“It’s fine,” she lied. “Anyway, isn’t the nearest hospital in Whitehorse? I can just imagine what people would say if I had to be airlifted out of Dawson in my second week. Not very sourdough.”

“There is a part-time nursing station.” He glanced at his watch. “Though it’s closed now.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

Cariboo didn’t look like he believed her. After a weighty pause, he said, “Her gun is missing from the rack. Her vehicle is gone. It’s moose season.”

“What kind of a gun is it? The missing one?”

“A Springfield. Thirty-aught-six.”

“Is that a moose gun?”

“Definitely. It’s quite powerful. You’d only use it for big game.”

Or self-defence.
“But doesn’t it seem a bit odd to you that she would leave now?” Jo felt the pain pulsating from the back of her head and radiating to her temples and down her spine.

“It’s moose season now. May often goes hunting. Sometimes she’s gone for days at a time.” Their eyes met, and Jo felt the dark intensity of his stare. She experienced the sensation again that he was looking through her. “Anyway, come by the station as soon as you’re up to it so I can take your statement.”

“But you already did an audio recording of my statement.”

“I’d like you to write it down, as well. I’ll buy you a coffee.” He smiled at her, but the smile concealed a question.

“You mean you want to interview me as a possible suspect.”

Cariboo focused on the road. “I’m just doing my job, Josephine.”

“Jo.” She felt her face heat up. “And I told you, the door was open. I stepped inside, called out, and heard something upstairs. I thought May might be in trouble.”

“Yes. So you’ve said. But what you were doing there in the first place?” He frowned, as though he didn’t like to have to ask the question.

Jo experimented with tilting her head to the right, and was rewarded with a quick jab of pain. “I wanted to talk to her about what happened Sunday night. She left Gertie’s early, right? She might have seen something in the parking lot, or given Marlo a lift.”

Cariboo shifted in his seat. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that information. And it’s not your job to play detective.”

Jo wondered what he might be holding back. “But if May did see something and now she’s missing, that seems pretty ominous, doesn’t it?”

Cariboo glanced at her. He looked like he wanted to say more, but didn’t.

She felt shaky, and the jostling and lurching of the SUV seemed to be creating waves in the ocean inside her stomach. Should she tell Cariboo that she’d been invited to meet May at The Gold Digger, and that May had never shown? It concerned her that May had asked her to keep the phone call a secret. She had no idea who to trust with the information. She bounced both knees, squeezing them tightly together. The heater in the front seat roared in a promising way, but the warm air didn’t seem to circulate. Jo pictured herself in the airlift helicopter, circling up over the town like a raven, flying away. She shivered, shaking off the thought.

“Anyway, as you know, my memory of that evening is a little fuzzy. I had hoped that seeing May might … I don’t know, help me jog it a little.” When she swallowed, her throat felt constricted. “I went by The Gold Digger first. It was after 11 a.m., but her shop was still closed. I thought she might be at home.” Jo decided she’d talk to Frank later about how much to tell the police in Dawson about the phone call from May.

Cariboo threw her a quick, suspicious look before returning his attention to the road. “Well, I guess you can see about that when she’s back,” he said.

“You’re not even going to look for her?”

“I’ll ask around town today, check out the hotel lounges where she might go for a coffee break, let her know about the break-in if I find her … but like I said, she hasn’t been missing twenty-four hours and her car is gone, so it looks like she’s left of her own accord.” He was scowling now, either at the weather or at her questions. When he glanced at Jo again, their eyes locked. Jo knew that Cariboo didn’t believe May Wong had gone hunting. “I
will
look for her,” he added more softly, though whether to reassure her or himself, Jo couldn’t say. He had a curious expression on his face.

“But what about the break-in?” Jo could see the
Daily
now. She straightened up in the seat and rested a glove on the door handle in anticipation.

“The guys will do a routine investigation. Look for fingerprints and photograph footprints. But it was probably just some transient looking for cash. Sometimes it happens when the summer kids leave town at the end of the season.”

Jo listened to the squeaking sound of the tires on dry snow, and the soft static of the RCMP radio for a moment while she thought about that. “What if you’re wrong?”

Cariboo made a sound that was supposed to be a laugh. “Be quite a story.” He gave her a sharp look.

Something inside her flared. “Yes, it would: the RCMP’s only witness in a murder investigation goes missing. You’d better hope you’re right, because I will certainly make sure people read all about it if you’re wrong.” Jo began unbuckling her seat belt, anxious to be free of him.

“Please don’t leave yet, I’m not finished,” he said, shoving the gear shift into park with more force than was really required. He left the car idling and turned to face her. Jo could feel her cheeks flushing. “It has not escaped my attention that Marlo McAdam died shortly after you arrived in Dawson …”

“An enormous coincidence …”

“ … and that you were in the vicinity at the time of her death.”

“… that would never stand up in a court of law.” The tips of her ears felt like they were on fire.

“You have formed some kind of relationship with a person who had a motive to kill her …”

“This is what you do in small towns, don’t you? Blame the outsider?”

“… and you have just been found present at the scene of another …”

“If you accuse me of anything you’d better do it with my lawyer present.”

“This is not a formal accusation.”

“Then we’re done here. My father is a police officer in Vancouver, Sergeant, so if you think you can bully me, you are sadly mistaken.”

“I just think you might want to be careful.” Cariboo had a strange expression on his face, but she was too angry now to care. “Also, I consider myself to be a good judge of character, and I know when someone isn’t telling the whole truth.”

“Thank you for the ride, Sergeant.” Jo leapt down from the front seat of the SUV, her rubber boots making an emphatic sound as they hit the snow. She closed the cruiser door as gently as she could when she exited, but she knew it would make little difference. By the end of day, everyone in town would know about Jo’s ride in Cariboo’s SUV.

12

There are only so many places to look for a person in a decaying frontier town of thirteen-hundred-some-odd people. The Riverside, the only coffee shop in town, had just closed for the season, so that made the list even shorter. The windows of May’s Victorian beauty on Eighth remained dark, and the mail untouched. The bars and restaurants in Dawson were almost exclusively located on the premises of a handful of hotels: the Eldorado, the Westminster, the Downtown, and a former brothel, called Bombay Peggy’s. Jo checked them all.

No one seemed particularly alarmed that May hadn’t opened her shop. During the winter months, store hours became erratic. If the hunting was good in the morning, a waitress at the Jack London Grill informed Jo, a person might just stay “out there.” It was moose season, she said, refilling Jo’s warm mug of drip coffee.

Jo had not only landed squarely in the middle of “nowhere,” she now occupied a shifting terrain where a person could disappear without consequence. If someone couldn’t be found “on the map,” it was merely assumed that they’d been swallowed up by the ever-encroaching outer terrain called “the bush.” She was uncomfortable with grey areas, with life’s little uncertainties. She wanted to occupy a space defined by a clear set of fundamental truths. A black-and-white world where gourmet coffee was available.