When the Flood Falls by J.E. Barnard

Author:J.E. Barnard
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2018-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

The bridge over the Elbow River was still open on Tuesday after lunch, when Lacey returned from Calgary. She white-knuckled over it, trying not to look at the churning brown water so close to the bridge deck, then drove up to the house and sat, too tired to get out of the car. The night nurses had turned a blind eye to her snoozing at Dee’s bedside, but this morning’s guy said Dee would not be waking today. Lacey was free, he added, to go home for a shower.

What would she find in the house this time? Monday morning she’d found all the drawers in Dee’s bedroom open, their contents tumbled about. Lacey hadn’t looked in the room since Friday, so she couldn’t say if Dee normally left it like that. The napkin drawer on Sunday still nagged at her, as did Dee’s purse. Had it been moved, or had she imagined it on the stool because that was where it usually hung? Dee wasn’t awake to ask and probably wouldn’t remember how she’d left things, anyway. This was all too reminiscent of the weeks Lacey had spent after Dan moved out, walking from room to room to look for evidence he’d been snooping around while she was at work. She couldn’t afford to install security to watch this house while she hung out at the hospital watching Dee. Maybe Wayne would lend her alarms temporarily.

She got out of the car and almost fell right back in as Boney headbutted her in the stomach. “Oof! What are you doing out?” She reached for his collar without much hope, sure he’d run off. Instead, he abruptly sat down beside her, tongue lolling and head cocked. Jake Wyman and another man rode up the drive on glossy brownish-red horses, with Beau strolling sedately alongside. Jake threw his reins to his younger companion and dismounted, tucking a silver whistle into his sleeve as he landed.

“G’day, Miss. I hear Dee-Dee isn’t awake yet?”

“No. They’ll start easing off her sedation tonight, so maybe tomorrow.”

“How come they tell you so much, and give me nothing but ‘stable condition’?”

“I said I was her sister.” She hadn’t hesitated to lie, not with Dee’s next of kin being her sick mother in St. John’s and her only local semi-kin being that skunk, Neil.

“Smart. You’ll keep Terry in the loop, right?”

Taking her agreement for granted, Jake snapped his fingers and went off around the porch, the dogs following.

After some silent fidgeting with the loose end of his reins, the young man said, “I’m real sorry about this. None of us thought Jarrad would go this far. He said he was coming home to do a dance on somebody, but we never guessed it was Ms. Phillips. I mean, it was only a windshield.”

“What windshield?” When he chewed his lip instead of answering, Lacey fixed him with her best cold cop’s eyeball. “Tell me the about the windshield. From the beginning.”

“Yes, ma’am. Jarrad killed Ms. Phillips’s dog last winter — an accident, honest, but still, he should have owned up right away and said sorry.

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