Strange Things Done (31 page)

“Don’t know, but the police must have something on him, or they wouldn’t be able to take him in.” Sally was in the middle of reattaching a diamond to the top of a precisely manicured nail. She held it up to the light with a gleeful expression as the diamond winked in the light.

“But if the killer were Grikowsky, why did he make the bodies look like victims of the Surrey Strangler?”

“To distract police? Maybe he wanted police to think it was you,” Sally said. “And it worked—god knows I don’t trust you.” Sally gave Jo a suspicious look. “In fact, I still have my eye on you.”

“How did he even know about that story? In fact, how did you know about it?”

“Doug told me,” Sally said. “I don’t know who else he might have told. Can’t ask him now.” Sally laid down some wrinkled bills on the counter for the two cocktails she’d just ordered. “Anyway, what you need right now is another drink. A cocktail, in fact.”

Jo didn’t argue. There was something she needed to ask Christopher Byrne, as soon as possible, and a little liquid courage wouldn’t hurt. A hand reached over and dropped something—about the size of a big olive—into a glass, making the drink fizz and froth over the top. The glass was passed down the bar, en route to its intended victim. An off-key symphony of slurred voices chanted their dark invocation:

You can drink it fast,

you can drink it slow,

but it doesn’t count

‘til lips touch TOE!

Jo held the macabre concoction dubiously in her hand and attempted to peer at the thing inside the glass. It looked a little yellowy. It occurred to her that an olive should be more … green … but she’d had quite a bit to drink already. Perhaps her judgement was impaired. The crowd at the bar appeared to be especially interested in her bubbly.
Strange. Had someone just said the word “toe”?

“Bottoms up!” cried Caveman, a crazed glint in his eye. He chuckled maliciously.

Jo sniffed at the beverage a little. It smelled peculiar … not just champers, then. Something else. She glanced at Sally for a second opinion. Sally, dressed in cancan attire (even though Gertie’s had retired its cancan act for the season), raised her glass and flashed a wicked smile. “Cin cin!”

Jo held the cocktail up to her lips. Whisky. Probably something else. Some other base note … She closed her eyes. “What was that thing they said about a toe?”

“Nothing.” Sally’s voice. “Go!”

“But it’s not a real toe, right?”

The crowd egged her on. “Drink! Drink! Drink!”

“Not a real,
human
toe …” She said it more to herself than anyone, for no one else was listening. Jo wrinkled her nose and took a little sip.

“Oh please. You can do better than that. Show us some ovaries,” Sally said.

Jo looked at Caveman. He only shrugged. As she slugged about half of it back, something cold, wrinkled, and slimy bumped into her lip.

“Hooooorrrrraaay!” The voices shouted. “Welcome to the Sourtoe Cocktail Club!” Someone clapped Jo on the back, handed her a blurry certificate, and offered to sell her a T-shirt. Sally leaned over and snatched the bottle of “Baby Canadian Sparkling” while the Saloon’s keep had his back turned, pouring for herself and Caveman too. They raised their glasses.

“To Marlo,” Caveman said.

“To Marlo and May. And to getting our man Grikowsky behind bars.” Sally held her glass high before taking an inelegant swig.

Jo raised her own, “And to Doug Browning. May they all rest in peace.”

“Rest in peace.” Sally and Caveman murmured.

Jo took another sip of the vile substance, then peered into the nearly drained glass. “What? Wait a minute … I think this olive has a toenail.”

Sally smiled. “Of course it does. That’s why it’s called a ‘sourtoe cocktail.’ Sour. Toe.”

Jo clasped her hand over her mouth and made a little sputtering noise. She felt the contents of her stomach churn. “Oh! I find that a little hard to swallow.”

They laughed and Caveman looked sympathetic for a moment. “Don’t worry. It’s completely sterile. Been sitting in alcohol for yearrrs, eh?” His Canadian r’s seemed to lengthen as he drank.

Jo grabbed an ice water, which turned out to be vodka on the rocks. The oily liquid carved a path deep inside her chest. “Arrrgh! Whose toe is it? Where do they get the toes?” She took another mouthful of vodka, swished it around, and spit it out in the tumbler. Her imagination was already beginning to get the better of her. She pictured a quick flash of a body on a morgue slab—minus the toe and the accompanying toe tag.

“I have a theory about that …” Caveman began to say.

“Omigod …”

“The Yukon has a real problem with frostbite …”

“Stop!” Jo said, holding up one hand. “Who
are
you people? No civilized culture drinks cocktails full of body parts.”

“Please. Nobody here said anything about civilized. Part of our charm,” said Sally, winking.

The bartender, who wore a plaid shirt and put the “dirty” in thirty, motioned to Jo. “Call for you,” he shouted over the noise, leaning across the bar. He gestured “phone” with his hands. Everyone looked at her.

Sally chimed in, “I had our calls forwarded here so you didn’t miss that one you were waiting for.” Anyone else would have looked sheepish, but Sally laid it on down like a gauntlet.

“You had my calls forwarded to a
bar
?” In the back of her mind, Jo wondered who the caller might be, imagining Kessler at the
Sun
, or one of her other former colleagues.
What would they think? Then again, what did it matter at this point?
She had already hit rock bottom—right at the bottom of her rock glass. Garnished with a toe.

“Of course I did. No cellular service here, my dear.” Sally said, with a patronizing tone of voice that got under Jo’s skin.
The only thing worse than being patronized is being patronized by a woman.

“You can take it in the kitchen, but make it quick,” the bartender said, adjusting his trucker cap.

Jo sincerely wished she hadn’t seen the kitchen of the Sourtoe Saloon. Between the human toe in her drink and a glimpse of the cooking area, which didn’t appear to have seen soap since the gold rush, Jo was certain that she would never order here again. But that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that she obtain a piece of information that might solve at least part of a greater puzzle: why May Wong had been blackmailing Jack Grikowsky. Jo was certain it had to do with the mine. With smuggling. And possibly with uranium smuggling. She picked up the phone, which may once have been white, but had long since been covered in a layer of filth and fingerprints. “Jo Silver …”

Nothing but staticky breathing for a moment. Jo was about to hang up, when a man’s weathered voice said, “What, you
live
at the bar now? Jesus. That’s what I call bungee-jumping off the wagon. You do your old man proud.” The quality of the call made Frank’s voice sound as if it had been imported from a foreign country. And in a way, it had been.

“I
really
hope you’re calling me with the results of that water analysis … You certainly took your sweet time returning my call, Frank.”

“No uranium. But I wouldn’t brush my teeth with it. Totally polluted with effluents, apparently.”

“What?”

The crowd at the bar was shouting and catcalling, making it difficult to hear anything even from the kitchen. Somewhere a glass smashed: a violent, discordant sound. This was followed by a few strains of guitar and a cheer.

“Hello?
Hello?
” Jo heard her father fumble with the phone, accidentally pushing a button against his cheek. “Goddamned things …”

“No uranium?”

“You sound disappointed. How much of this water have you been drinking, anyway? Are you all right? You’re not in any kind of trouble up there, are you?”

Jo didn’t answer right away. She was still reeling from the news that the puzzle didn’t fit together in the way she thought it would, or should. She had thought that she held some knowledge of the town, of its dark riddles, but yet again that knowledge had evaded her. “No,” she said, hoping she sounded convincing. Whoever had broken into her office and murdered Doug hadn’t taken the Geiger counter. Whatever was going on at the mine wasn’t about uranium, then.
She’d lost the thread of what connected three victims in Dawson. Perhaps it wasn’t about the mine at all.

“Good. There’s something else.” Frank was never one for preambles. She listened to the sound of his breath for a moment as it mingled with the wind. The sinking feeling she experienced made her think of the river, of sliding under ice, a calm stillness settling in. “Something we need to talk about.” He wasn’t cursing or berating her. This was definitely going to be something bad.

“Jesus, Frank, you’re scaring me now. What is it?”

“You might want to sit down.”

There was nowhere to sit. “Okay,” she said. Jo listened to him breathing for a moment and pictured him running one hand through silver, close-cropped hair.

“He’s back, Jo.” She didn’t need to ask the question “who.” This was something she’d been dreading for a year. “At least, the VPD thinks he is.”

“Where?”

“Washington. A hiking trail southeast of Tacoma.”

“Was she …”

“Strangled. Burned.”

“Shit.” Jo felt her throat closing up.
My fault.
There it was. It didn’t matter what she did in Dawson, the past was always ready to tap her on the shoulder and make her look back. But, if the Strangler was in the Seattle area, then he sure as hell wasn’t in Dawson.

“I know,” Frank said, and for the first time in a long time, Jo wished she were home. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she lied. They both knew it was a lie. Everything felt different now. Breathing felt different. She tried to focus on just taking the air in and out. She knew that Frank was listening to her laboured breath and shaky voice. Neither of them said anything for a moment.

“You want me to come up there?”

“Thanks, but the airport already closed.”

“I’ll come anyway. I’ll drive up. I can leave tonight.”

“You’d have a hell of a time getting through, and if you did, you’d be stuck here all winter in some drafty old brothel.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.”

“I’ll be fine. Thanks for letting me know.” She decided not to tell him about recent events just yet. He’d only worry.

“Jo …”

“I’m fine, Frank. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

A man with bulging eyes and a sizeable head, perhaps exaggerated by the salmon costume he was wearing, had taken to a makeshift stage in Jo’s absence. He was belting out such an enthusiastic rendition of “Friends in Low Places” that Garth Brooks himself would have surely stomped his cowboy boots in appreciation. The salmon-man’s fishy friend clapped his fins in time to the beat, while a fiddler and guitarist provided raucous backup. As the fish hit the chorus, the entire bar joined in.

The room went crazy. Sally and Caveman had disappeared from their barstools, but it didn’t take Jo long to locate Sally, who was climbing onto a table to provide impromptu entertainment with her scarlet cancan costume, while singing several notes flat and at the top of her lungs. Someone called out for beer chasers as Jo began shoving her way through the crowd. The mood of the room was infectious, and Jo wished she could give herself over to it, but she felt now that something was terribly wrong.

The news that Grikowsky had been incarcerated had ripped through the bar like a northern wildfire. A beer-bellied man in a cowboy hat handed Jo a bottle of Gold as the next cacophonous round of the chorus kicked in. He wouldn’t allow Jo to pass until she agreed to take a swill of beer with him.

“If you insist,” Jo said. “But I draw the line at line dancing.” Thankfully, Cowboy Hat moved aside, raising his Yukon Gold in a wordless salute. Jo wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, cursing under her breath as she slid in a pool of liquid. Things were getting messy.