near Dee, too.
“Dee Phillips,” she said.
His flat stare assessed her. “Well, aren’t you the savvy operator? Moved in with the boss of the whole job, just like that.”
“We were university roommates. She heard I was out here and offered me a bed until the Centre’s wired. Saves me the commute from Calgary.” She eased out of the formal stance and repeated the request. “May I borrow two motion-sensor lights to monitor her yard for a few nights, please?”
“No.”
So much for that option. Maybe there were cheap versions at Canadian Tire. She could rush in right after work to buy some and whatever tools she would need to install them. Getting back to do it before dark would be tricky, especially if she went to Tom’s to pick up her stuff.
“No,” said Wayne again. “Since she’s the president of this whole job, we should do better by her. Get me photos of the area you want covered and I’ll draw you up a plan. There are five or so spare lights in the van you can take. Is her house close enough that you can get there on your lunch break?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded, his mind already moving to the next task. “Get me the small crimpers from the van, and a half-dozen AV ends.”
Lacey headed up the stairs to the staff exit and pushed open the flat steel door. A camera flashed in her face. She froze for a nanosecond, but the photographer was merely testing his equipment. Of course — the press conference Dee had mentioned. Out on the freshly laid lawn, a half-dozen microphones and cameras ignored the usual nutty protester by the road and focused on a grizzled cowboy in a battered beige hat and boots. He looked a hundred years old. The slender blonde leaning on his shoulder was barely a third his age. Her perfect teeth were aimed at the cameras while the fitful breeze flung strands of her glossy hair across the cowboy’s weathered face. His hand rested on a sturdy wooden sign that gave, in authentically rustic burnt lettering, the facility’s twin titles of Arts Centre and History Museum.
The woman looked faintly familiar and the cowboy not at all, but then Lacey had been on this job for barely a week. The only person she could name in the throng was Rob, the curator/manager of the new facility. With his pleated khakis and frosted dark hair, he stood out among the worn jeans and hard hats that infested the building. She veered behind a log pillar to avoid the media and came face-to-heels with a pair of scuffed workboots on a ladder. A workman on a ladder and a second up another ladder were stretched to full height, hooking a rolled-up banner between two of the fat logs that made up the building’s colonnade. Similar banners hung between other sets of pillars, with a pull rope strung between them all.
A videographer with a shoulder camera was the only person paying any attention to the workers, panning up their ladders, gathering background footage. Lacey edged past him, glad to be incognito in grubby civvies. No reporters today would demand comments on the Capilano River bridge incident or ask if she was part of the class action lawsuit against the RCMP. That life was behind her.
She followed the colonnade toward the parking lot. As she stepped clear of the building, the river assaulted her ears with its menacing rumble. Surely that brown, churning mass of water was a foot higher than yesterday? It was nothing like the happy, shallow blue stream she had seen last week. She turned her back on the swollen river with a shudder and breathed deep of the fresh mountain air. It smelt faintly of fir trees and strongly of good, clean mud, much better than the usual building-site odours of varnish and diesel. She unlocked the van, leaned into the rear door, and was groping for the right crimpers when a convertible shot into the parking lot with a squeal of tires. On instinct she noted the particulars: late-model BMW M6, bright orange, Alberta vanity plate Y-MAN4.
The Bimmer skidded to a stop in a swirl of dust. Three buff young men leaped out, hurdled over the row of newly planted shrubs, and stampeded over the sod toward the entrance. Beefcakes on the hoof. The media pack swung around to meet them. By the time the next camera flashed, the blonde was in their midst, draping her hands decoratively over a muscular forearm and leaning back to let her blond locks flutter over another man’s brawny shoulders. The old cowboy, abandoned, wandered toward a nearby bench. A shabby woman there shuffled sideways, making room for him while she fumbled a cellphone toward her shaggy brown curls. Lacey’s eyes slid back to the photo op, where Blondie was basking in the camera-flashes like a starlet on a red carpet. How was this promoting the new facility?
A shriek shredded the queit morning, so loud it echoed from the hill across the road. As Lacey spun to find its source, the shaggy woman lurched to her feet and stumbled toward the press, screeching. The cowboy jumped up, one hand reaching fruitlessly as Shaggy hurled her phone over the heads of the reporters. It bounced off an athlete’s shoulder. Media heads and camera lenses whipped toward the disturbance. Lacey’s feet were already moving, impelled by the old cop habit of running toward trouble, but Shaggy reached the scrum first. She batted a microphone away and was shoving a reporter aside when Rob leapt into her path. She staggered to a halt and slumped, weeping, onto his shoulder.
The media pack surged forward, blocking Lacey’s path, giving her the pause she needed to recall she was a mere civilian now, with no official standing to intervene. In any event, the threat seemed to be over. She retreated.
The cowboy came up behind Shaggy and waved his hand at the crowding reporters. They shuffled backward, but not far. Peering between the shoulder-cameras and microphones, Lacey watched the unlikely trio of shaggy woman, grizzled old man, and dapper Rob put their heads together. After a very short conference, Rob led Shaggy back to the bench. The old cowboy strode toward the reporters. Lacey expected a plea for mercy on the distraught woman but he said nothing. His hand flicked again.
The sound of thunder was probably her imagination, but the scrum felt it, too. They parted ahead of the old man like the Red Sea before Moses, leaving the athletic youngsters stranded on the grass. Even Blondie scuttled sideways, leaving the old man and the young ones in a circle of empty lawn. Whatever he said was too low for Lacey to catch, but the Bimmer’s driver took a sudden step backward. His tanned face paled. Scenting blood, the media stepped forward the instant the old man turned away. Rob left Shaggy’s side and drew them off.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he called over the murmur of the breeze, “the banner reveal is delayed a few minutes. I’d be happy to take questions now on the development of this wonderful new facility and the opening gala for our first-ever exhibition: A Century of Western Canadian Hockey.”
The reporters, with some backward glances, shuffled toward him, leaving the old cowboy once more seated on the bench with the shaggy woman. He no longer looked like a thrower of thunderbolts, but as perplexed as any man stuck with a crying woman. Lacey dodged around the re-forming scrum to crouch beside Shaggy. If there was any more trouble from this disturbed woman, she might help keep it off camera.
“Can I help you?” she asked Shaggy, who was still sobbing, although into a large white hankie that was probably the cowboy’s. “Are you hurt?”
The woman sniffed, dark curls tumbling over her shoulders. “Sorry. Got out of hand. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” The woman nodded, lowering her head until her droopy hat brim hid her tear-streaked face. Okay then. Since she showed no signs of leaping up or screaming, Lacey scanned the scene for other sources of trouble. There were none. The protester, his sign still held high, was staring from the roadside, just off the property. The media pack had followed Rob to the front entrance, where he was gesturing at the rolled banners high overhead. Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing for Lacey to do with her old, hard-wired police reactions. She went back for the crimpers, counted out the cable connectors, and headed for the staff door.
Fifteen
