Strange Things Done (27 page)

“So,” Jo said. “I overheard Byrne asking you earlier if you think I suspect …”

Sally raised an artfully drawn eyebrow. “Oh?” Without missing a beat, she added, “And do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“What exactly
do
you suspect, my dear?” Sally’s green eyes glittered. She didn’t look alarmed at all. Surely if they were talking about Marlo’s death and Byrne’s culpability, or Sally’s involvement, she would look guilty.
Unless she were truly evil.
Sally smiled, as if on cue.

“That Byrne murdered Marlo?” Jo said.

Sally laughed. “Oh! If I thought that were true for even one second, I would have something more to say to Byrnie about that, don’t you think?”

“Then, what were you talking about?”

Sally was still smiling. “It was a private matter, and I’ve been sworn to secrecy, and if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s keeping a good secret. I pride myself on loyalty. I can, however, swear to you on what little honour I have that it had nothing to do with Marlo’s sad demise.”

“Why can’t you tell me?”

Sally shook her head, still looking amused. “You’ll have to ask him, I’m afraid. It isn’t my place to tell you.”

It was Sally’s casual, relaxed demeanour that finally convinced Jo to accept her answer. “Okay,” Jo said. “I guess I trust you.”

“Then you’re even more foolish than you look,” Sally returned, but she raised her glass to Jo before downing it.

“What bothers me—I mean aside from that fact that another person has just been murdered—is that I feel like I was getting close to something. I got the distinct impression that Doug was protecting the mine, or maybe Grikowsky.”

“But why would he?” Sally said. “Editors live for stories.”

“Exactly.”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

“Yeah. Except …”

“Except?”

Jo pulled the antique key out of her back jeans pocket and held it up for Sally to see.

27

“This is a colossally stupid idea.”

“Should I point out that it was your colossally stupid idea?” Sally smiled briefly, before burying the lower part of her face into her fur coat and scarf.

“No,” Jo said. “Last time the door was open.”

They stood in front of the red door at the back of May Wong’s house, hands deep in pockets,

“Maybe the police locked it on their way out? They would have searched her house.”

“I suppose. Still. It’s odd.” Jo brushed away a long strand of hair, pinned to her cheek by her toque. She needed to feel like she was doing something useful with her hands. There was nothing worse to her than feeling useless.

“Looks like you stole the wrong key.” Sally glanced at Jo, fine lines around her eyes spreading as she smiled, a geisha’s fan unfolding.

“I didn’t
steal
it.” Jo’s tone was a little defensive, and she knew it, which made it worse.

“Whatever.”

Nothing was said for a moment. A husky, or perhaps a wolf, cried into the night, and the sound captured some sense of great sorrow or injustice.

“What were you planning to do the last time if it was locked?” Sally smirked.

Jo glanced around the yard, in lieu of a response. She swallowed. Her mouth was somehow too dry, and still tasted like sour flakes of gold. There was a woodpile near the back of the garden.

Sally followed her look. “Ah, I see. Subtle, but effective. I like it.”

“Good. Then you do it.”

“Get some ovaries, Sherlock. This is your mystery. I’m just along for the ride.” Sally turned up the collar of her fur coat a little higher against the gnawing cold.

Jo sucked in an icy breath of air, set her jaw firmly, and began the knee-deep trek to the log pile, silently cursing Sally.
Useless, furry eye-candy.

The sound of crunching glass under a brand new pair of winter-white North Face boots rang out through the jagged window, across the yard, and into the night. Jo hesitated for a moment, causing a soft collision as Sally bumped into her.

“Bad place to stop!” Sally hissed.

“Sorry,” Jo said, almost tripping over something dark at her feet. “Watch your step,” she whispered, illuminating the frozen log with her flashlight. She hoped that the neighbours would be out, holed up somewhere with a woodstove or a fireplace, like the rest of Dawson: waiting for the power to come back on. Perhaps the outage would work in her favour. Of course, if the neighbours had a woodstove they might be home. Or they might have just gone for the police.

They padded up the staircase to the landing, where Jo paused a second time. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched.

“What?” said Sally in a hushed tone.

Jo listened for a moment, but heard only the wind. “Nothing.”

Sally held the flashlight as Jo inserted the antique key into the desk drawer lock. The key turned loudly. Jo and Sally exchanged a look. Jo opened the drawer and reached inside, withdrawing a sleek, silver laptop.

“Nice machine,” said Jo. “Business must be going well …”

“Yeah,” said Sally. “But in the Yukon, the question is always,
which
business?”

Jo opened the notebook computer and waited a moment. A window was already open on the screen: an image of Front Street, dimly lit by streetlights, with the river behind a great, black void. A red pickup truck was crossing through the frame. “What is this?” said Jo.

Sally leaned in closer. “Town webcam. It’s over the bookstore.”

“Oh. So it’s a live feed.”

“Yeah.”

“Then it looks like the power’s back on. Streetlights are on.” Jo felt her stomach do a little cartwheel. If the neighbours had been out, they would be on their way home now. “So … May’s keeping an eye on Front Street?”

“Apparently so. Though you’re not supposed to camp on that site. It overloads if too many users sit there at once.”

“Yeah, it seems to have frozen.”

“Like everything else in this godforsaken town.” Sally said.

“You could leave.”

“No way. Better to be a big fish in a small pond. And I like to be a very big fish.” Sally grinned. The light from the computer screen spilled onto her from below, giving her a deranged appearance.

Another window on the screen was also open. When Jo clicked on it, an Excel spreadsheet opened, revealing columns of initials and amounts. The last few entries showed the name “Peg” and initials “JG” and “MC.” “Whoa! She’s doing more than keeping tabs, then.”

“Blackmail?” Sally said it with a tone of admiration.

“JG could be Jack Grikowsky. But who is MC?”

Sally shook her head. “Dunno. But Peg might be for Bombay Peggy’s. Could be Terra. She has certainly been short of cash recently.” Sally smiled to herself.

“I wonder if May saw something on Front Street that she shouldn’t have.”

“Of course not. She’s gone hunting, remember?”

“I wonder why she called me, then. Either she was going to put me on her client list because she knew I was out at the Bluffs, or she was going to warn me about something or someone.”

“She called you?”

“The night before she disappeared. She wanted me to meet her at The Gold Digger the next day, but she never turned up.”

“You have been keeping secrets.” Sally sounded impressed.

“Maybe she chose the wrong person to blackmail.” Jo felt inside the drawer with her hand to see if she had missed anything while Sally flashed the light around. Jo’s fingers bumped something soft at the very back of the drawer, making them tingle. Jo withdrew her hand, revealing a small, velvet sack. She placed it on the desk and clenched her fist once before shoving bare, numb fingers inside, where they were met with two cold lumps of something startlingly flesh-like. She gasped and released whatever it was, still inside the bag.

“What?” Sally said, peering over Jo’s shoulder. “What is it?” Jo didn’t look at Sally, but could hear the edge of excitement in her voice.

“It feels like … ” Jo held her breath as she grasped the objects again and removed them. She opened her fingers. “Skin.” What looked like two shrivelled brown eggs sat in the nest of her hand. “Whaddya think these are?”

Sally squinted a little as she leaned in with the flashlight. “Bear balls.”

“Jesus!” Jo dropped the offending objects, shaking her naked hand as though it had been burned. “Oh!”

Sally calmly leaned over and picked up the first, then knelt down to find the second, which had rolled away on the floor.

“That’s disgusting!” Jo was still wiping her hand on her clothing. “What would May be doing with them?”

Sally was on all fours under the desk with the flashlight. “Illegal trade of animal parts is big business here. Very valuable on the Chinese market. Whatever she’s doing, I’d bet it’s lucrative in off-season.” Sally located the missing object and held it up in the beam of her flashlight for closer scrutiny. She looked pleased.

“We should get out of here before the neighbours get back.” Jo stuck her hand in the desk drawer one last time and, feeling blindly until her fingers met something cool and flat. She tugged on it.

“Yes, and power or no power I’ll be expected to turn up for my bar shift at Gertie’s.”

“I thought Gertie’s had closed?” She withdrew a thick rectangle of paper from the desk, about the size of a tourist flyer.

“Only to the tourists, dear. Stays open to the locals a little longer. Care to join me?”

Jo shook her head. “I need to print out copies of the
Daily
for tomorrow and figure out something to say about Doug. Hang on …”

“Better hope the power is back on at the house, too. Might not be on everywhere yet.”

“How much time do you have before your shift?” Jo asked, holding up the thing that she’d thought was a flyer. The beam of the flashlight illuminated a cheerful pop of blue and orange: a ticket that read, “Air North Gift Certificate” across the front.

“Holy crap—May was blue-ticketed too?”

Jo opened the ticket. “Dawson to Fairbanks. One way.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“How much do you want to bet that Marlo received one too?”

“But that means you’re …” Sally said.

“Yes.” Jo felt something inside her swan-dive at the thought. “I think we’d better swing by the airport and ask some hard questions about who has been buying these things.” Jo returned the other items to the drawer, including the key. Then she folded the air ticket in half and tucked it into the pocket of her parka, where it seemed to hold some kind of secret promise.

28

Snow drifted across an abandoned runway like tumbleweed. Dawson City’s airport terminal, a squat, utilitarian building that looked beaten down by sky and weather, had been locked up and abandoned to the elements. A low, slouchy peak over the front doors expressed apathy, like rounded shoulders. The white-domed outbuildings and orange sheds, home to the old Hawker Siddeley air fleet, were silent. Jo pressed her nose against cold glass, peering at the unmanned ticket desk. “Closed,” she said, wincing at her own penchant for stating the obvious.

“Mmm,” said Sally. “That’s probably for the best, since Sergeant Cariboo told you not to leave town.”

“I wasn’t actually going to leave. I just wanted to see if I could find out who bought the tickets.” Her breath fogged up the window, forcing her to step back.

“Are you sure about that?”

Not entirely.
“Of course.”

“I hope so.” Sally’s frosted lips were pursed.

They turned away from the one-room terminal and watched the blowing snow in silence for a moment. Jo wasn’t sure that she would have actually left, that she could have left without knowing what had happened to Marlo McAdam, Doug Browning, and May Wong, but she was experiencing a strong urge for self-preservation, especially since she had just been blue-ticketed. She was also bothered by the knowledge that everyone in town would be talking about her right now because of her blog. The whole point of coming to the North had been to escape all that. Now, not only had she landed back in the public eye, she was also trapped for the winter in this remote, isolated community with someone who in all probability was seeking to harm her.

Jo reached inside her parka and withdrew the white envelope that had been dropped on the bar at Bombay Peggy’s. She removed the ticket. The Air North logo was a compass, a nautical image that made Jo feel somehow adrift at sea in an ocean of snow. The northern point of the compass formed a dagger, which impaled the “N” in “North”: ominous, under the circumstances. The certificate provided one-way, open-ended travel, listing Josephine Silver as the passenger, but gave no information as to a credit card number or the purchaser of the ticket. Most likely it had been paid for in cash.