Strange Things Done (36 page)

Now she turned her face toward the café window. It was snowing again. Thick, lazy snowflakes that stuck to one another and crystallized on windowpanes. Jo closed her eyes and cleared her mind, allowing the sounds of the room to wash over her: the bright tinkle of cutlery, the clink of porcelain cups on tables, the low conversations of those around her.

It was Jo’s particular curse, she thought, that she was a shameless eavesdropper. Any sort of meditative process was doomed to failure if she were in close proximity to other human beings. Much easier to eavesdrop on the conversations of others than to think about what might lie ahead, or the decision she would have to make. Toronto wouldn’t wait forever.

A high-pitched voice from a table behind her: “Jim come up yesterrrdee to help chop firewood. Wish I could say the same for them ones next door. You know who I mean.”

“Goddamned huskies won’t shut up, neither.”

Jo allowed the voices in the hotel lounge to wash over her with nuances of language that were still largely unfamiliar.

“My cousin’s on disability in Whitehorse and he just sunk all his money into a claim. I tried to tell him.”

“You can’t reason with ’em once they git like that. Only interested in pay dirt, eh?”

“Won’t be hitting pay dirt now. Have to wait until thaw.”

“Geez, hope they’ve got enough in the shed to last until then.”

A woman made a sound that suggested some doubt.

“Hey, did you hear about May? Not only was she blackmailing half the town, she’d also been exporting illegal animal parts to China with Christopher Byrne. They reckon he killed Marlo because she found out. Then he killed May, too.”

“Well, I heard somebody else has taken over the racket now.”

“Somebody told me was that dancer. The one that shot Byrne.”

“He was going to kill both of them … she had to shoot.”

“Hmm. I heard they were partners. Maybe she wanted to keep him quiet, like.”

“That’s bull and you know it.”

“Yeah? Then where did she get the cash to buy out Bombay Peggy’s?”

“No!” A pause. “Well, who cares where she got the money, as long as Peggy’s stays. And better a local owns it. Anyways, keep your voice down in here.”

“Jerry’s kid just had another ATV accident.”

“No! Again?”

When she opened her eyes, the world looked a little different to her. Jo stared out the window, gently cupping the drip brew. The dawn light illuminated thin streaks of bone-coloured cloud that feathered across the horizon, curling into the distance like a
hollow rib cage. On the boardwalk, a woman was using her husky to tow a snowsuited child atop a scarlet sled.

From a distance, the town of Dawson City had the idyllic quality of a postcard. The quaint Victorian houses splashed in colourful pastel relief against a white landscape. The solemn appearance of the fir trees. The jaunty stovepipe chimneys that threw soft spirals of smoke into the air like ticker tape, suggesting an atmosphere of celebration. And the snow, the snow falling silently over everything.

Burying all of the town’s secrets.

Acknowledgements

This book has been a long journey for me, which could not have been completed without the support of many helpers along the way.

I would therefore like to acknowledge the kind support of both The Canada Council for the Arts and the Klondike Institute for Art and Culture (KIAK), which aided in the development of the story by enabling me to travel to Dawson City and live there for a time as an Artist in Residence.

This project would not exist in book form without the efforts of two people in particular: Carolyn Forde, my lovely and good-humoured agent at Westwood Creative Artists (thank you for the late night conversations across multiple time zones), and Diane Young, who has earned a special place in my heart during the editing of this story. Thanks also to copy editor Laurie Miller for his enthusiasm and attention to detail.

I consider myself fortunate to have had a swat team of advance readers who are also professional writers: Kat Rooney, Phyllis Smallman, and Lucie Wilk. All three were tireless and unwavering in their dedication to providing feedback on rewrites.

The project also owes a lot to the mentorship of Gail Anderson-Dargatz, my instructor while I was a student in the University of British Columbia’s Masters Program in Creative Writing. The story also received the support of the Crime Writers of Canada (CWC), via their New Writers Mentorship Program. The CWC paired me with Donna Carrick of Carrick Publishing, who provided invaluable feedback and encouragement at a crucial time in the process.

Thank you in advance to the team of good people at Dundurn Press for taking this story on and seeing it through to book form.

I also owe a big thank you to those members of the community in Dawson who helped with early research, especially the Dawson RCMP and the Trondek Hwech’in via KIAK. Later Chris Coulter of the RCMP on Bowen Island fielded procedural questions (and taught me how to preserve footprints in snow).

Muchos gracias
to my son’s nanny, Rosie Perez: the only person my toddler deemed worthy of minding him two mornings a week so that I could write and the person who taught us the words to “La Bomba.”

Finally, thank you to my family for supporting the project, and still managing to dredge up enthusiasm for this book even on days when it took me away from you. This story is especially for you.

Copyright © Elle Wild 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of TAP Books Inc. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Editor: Diane Young

Design: Jennifer Gallinger

Cover Design: Sarah Beaudin

Cover Image: Aurora Borealis by Rafal Konieczny; Ice by Jared Erondu

Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Wild, Elle, author

Strange things done / Elle Wild.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-3380-0 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3381-7 (pdf).--

ISBN 978-1-4597-3382-4 (epub)

I. Title.

PS8645.I4135S77 2016 C813’.6 C2015-908783-X

C2015-908784-8

We acknowledge the support of the
Canada Council for the Arts
and the
Ontario Arts Council
for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canada
through the
Canada Book Fund
and
Livres Canada Books
, and the
Government of Ontario
through the
Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit
and the
Ontario Media Development Corporation
.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

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Table of Contents

Cover

Dedication

Table of Contents

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

Acknowledgements

Copyright