Long Gone Man
LONG
GONE
MAN
PRAISE FOR PHYLLIS SMALLMAN
“Smallman, winner of the Unhanged Arthur Ellis, is at the top of her game.” â
The Globe and Mail
“Sure to join the ranks of our national talent, finding acclaim on the international crime scene.” â
Zoomer Magazine
“Smallman knows how to crank up the reader's tension. The dialogue is often sharp and funny.” â
National Post
“Phyllis Smallman is a gifted writer.” â
The Sherbrooke Record
“Solid entertainment.” â
The Hamilton Spectator
“Reading . . . Phyllis Smallman is like sitting down at a bar for a drink with an old friend and knowing the beer is going to be cold, the peanuts fresh, and the stories spicy!” âAllene Reynolds, Mystery & Me blog
“I have always been partial to the style of writing in this series: it is sharp, funny, and the plot keeps a steady pace with plenty of suspenseful moments throughout.” âToni Osborne, reader review
A Singer Brown Mystery
LONG
GONE
MAN
Phyllis Smallman
Copyright © 2013 Phyllis Smallman
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit
accesscopyright.ca
.
Phyllis Smallman Publishing
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Smallman, Phyllis
Long Gone Man / Phyllis Smallman.
(A Singer Brown mystery)
ISBN 978-1-771510-30-1 [print]
ISBN 978-0-987803-38-2 [eBook]
I. Title. II. Series: Smallman, Phyllis. Singer Brown mystery.
PS8637.M36H54 2012 C813'.6 C2012-904826-7
Editor: Frances Thorsen
Proofreader: Cailey Cavallin
Cover and interior design: Pete Kohut
Author photo: Linda Matteson-Reynolds
eBook development:
WildElement.ca
ALSO BY PHYLLIS SMALLMAN
Sherri Travis Mysteries
Margarita Nights
Sex in a Sidecar
A Brewski for the Old Man
Champagne for Buzzards
Highball Exit
Sherri Travis Short Mysteries
Bitty And The Naked Ladies
Jack Daniels And Tea
An Accidental Death
For Gordon Kilborn Cunningham
“. . . Love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning,
Never sick, never old, never dead,
From itself never turning.”
âSir Walter Raleigh
Table of Contents
One
The singer leaned towards the
dash, straining to see the road. The fog, which had hovered just above the road at the bottom of the mountain, now obscured everything beyond the six feet of pavement directly in front of the van. The swirling veil lifted for a brief moment to reveal a sharp curve to the left and the tips of evergreens growing a hundred feet below the roadway.
“Jesus!”
She pulled hard to the left, away from the edge, as the fog closed in again.
A loud screeching of metal on rock filled the cab as the van reached the curve and scraped the jagged rock face. She jerked the wheel to the right.
She edged a little farther to the right, to where she thought the road should be. Had she moved over far enough? Impossible to tell how close she was to the rim, and if she made a mistake the trees growing below the road were the only thing that would slow the van's plummet down the face of Mount Skeena.
A soft mewling sound alarmed the singer until she realized it came from her. She forced herself to breathe deeper, to relax her locked fingers and fight the panic that would make her overreact and cause a disaster. She eased farther left, terrified to be in the path of downward traffic but more afraid to lose the road.
She cursed. The hate that brought her to Glenphiddie Island had driven her beyond caution.
You waited twenty years; one more night would have been nothing,
she thought. But hatred is an emotion that ignores prudence.
The singer hadn't
planned on being so late. She thought she had perfectly calculated the time needed to make the three ferries necessary for the trip from Vancouver to Glenphiddie Island, an island so small that it wasn't even on the map of Canada that was mounted on the wall of the ferry terminal. Only a dotted red line out into the Pacific showed the
Island Queen
's destination.
Stuck on the dock in Sidney, watching and worrying as fog rolled in, delay seemed like the worst possible thing that could happen. And then, for a brief space of time, she'd felt jubilant, as hers was the last vehicle loaded onto the car carrier before the red barrier went down.
As the
Island Queen
moved slowly through the fog, sounding its horn, she realized she would rather have been back on the dock waiting for morning and the next sailing. Her apprehension had sent her out into the fog to walk the deck, straining to see anything on the water, any obstacle waiting to ram them.
It was close
to ten o'clock when they finally docked safely in the harbor. She joined the thin conga line of cars clattering down the ramp to begin the drive over the toe of Mount Skeena towards the small town of Kilborn ten miles north.
The fog had eased during the crossing. It seemed like a portent of good things to come. She counted three roads on her left before she turned. She'd never been on Glenphiddie Island before and was going on a stranger's instructions on how to find the shortcut up to the top of Mount Skeena. The guy had told her it would save her going into Kilborn and doubling back, cutting at least half an hour off her trip. He hadn't told her that the gravel roads had no signs and it was impossible to tell farm lanes from public roadways.
Her old van rattled down narrow rutted tracks that ended in front of darkened houses. Inside the houses, a light would come on, or a curtain might open, as she made a cautious turn before driving back to the road to try another narrow, twisting path.
Well and truly lost and searching for a safe place to park for the night, she found, quite by accident, a narrow switchback road that led up the mountain. Arriving late at night would give her the added element of surprise. This time she knew she was going to triumph. That's when the fog closed in and her terror began.
Two
Inch by terrifying inch, the
singer crept higher, afraid to stop and afraid to go on. She'd made a terrible mistake. The headlights of the ten-year-old van were stuck on bright and pointing up into the sky. In the fog they were only a little better than driving in the dark. The clapped-out vehicle was being pushed beyond its ability to perform, and now the sound of the engine changed. It hesitated.
“C'mon, Beastie,” she whispered. Cautiously, she pressed her toe down on the gas as she patted the dash. “Don't let me down now.” The Beast took her pleas to heart and settled into its usual growl. “That's my boy.”
She searched the blackness for a driveway, any driveway, not just the one she'd set out to find. She had to find a place to stopâeven a widening in the road would be welcomeâa place she could wait out the night. The parking brake no longer worked, so she'd have to find something to block the wheels. On this steep grade it would have to be something a fair size. But there was nowhere to pull over. Would there be a place at the top of the mountain to wait out the night? How would she recognize the end of the road?
She gave the dash another pat.
We'll be fine
, she thought, but she couldn't block out the image of the old Dodge Caravan getting to the top and tipping over the pinnacle, falling two thousand feet to the valley below.
Was it better to drive off the mountain or park in the middle of the road and become a speed bump? She gave a small hic of laughter and tightened her grip on the wheel.
Not now,
she thought.
I'm not going to die now.
Not after all those years, not when she was so close.
It felt like she'd been spiraling upward for hours. A man's watch hung from the rearview mirror. She pulled it close to her face, but in the dark she couldn't make out the dial. She let the watch bounce back on its flex bracelet, useless, just like the bastard who left it behind.
The right side of the vehicle dipped dangerously, gravel crunching beneath the tires. She jerked the wheel to the left and backed off the gas. The rear end of the van shifted as the tire slipped off the asphalt. Terror, a giant hand squeezing the breath out of her, grabbed her. She fought to bring the Beast back onto the pavement, but the van was being dragged closer and closer to the drop-off by the soft shoulder.
She screamed into the night and stood on the brake. The Beast rocked, tilted wildly to the right, and stopped. Mewling with fear, she froze, afraid of what would happen if she shifted her weight or eased off the brake. The van seemed to settle. The worst was over.
And then the rear end slithered farther sideways.
Her heart crashing into her ribs, she clung to the wheel and took huge gulps of air. “Okay, okay,” she said softly. She cranked the wheel as far to the left as it would go. With her left foot on the brake, she gently pressed her right foot down on the gas before ever so gently releasing the brake. The back end fishtailed farther off the pavement. She stomped the brake pedal and shoved the gearshift into park. The headlights shone out into emptiness through the thin fog at the edge of the world.
Carefully she reached forward to turn off the ignition, afraid the least movement on her part would send the van diving into the void. The noise of the great engine died. The Beast seemed to sigh and settle at an even steeper angle as if it knew it was done, its life over.
Grabbing a huge canvas bag from beside her and shoving hard against the heavy door, she rolled off the seat. Gravity pulled the door closed on her leg before she hit the pavement.
Splayed on the tarmac, she stared at the tunnels Beastie's headlights made in the sky. Her battery would wear down. She'd need to get it boosted. How much would that cost? It would be suicide to attempt to reach back into the van, teetering on nothing, to shut off the lights, and what difference would a dead battery make if the van fell over the side? The Beast would be gone forever. Too late to do anything about it now. Who knew what was keeping Beastie from slipping away; the least shift, the tiniest movement, could tip the balance. She sat up and took stock. The blacktop had sanded the skin from her left hand and knee but that was nothing. She got to her feet.
Only then did she realize that her long skirt was caught in the door. She yanked. It didn't give. Putting all of her weight behind it, she tried to rip the material from the door, but the Beast wasn't about to give up its prize. She was tied there on the edge of the abyss.