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She managed a brief nod, and to salvage her pride added, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t write about it. But I won’t use anything you tell us here today without your say-so.” She looked at Wy, who was glaring at Liam.
“I know,” Liam said again.
“I thought Woodward and Bernstein used two sources for every story,” Jim said.
Jo appreciated the effort he was making to lighten the air. “They did.”
“You don’t?”
She matched his effort. “Not if the first source is a state trooper with twelve years on the job and a reputation for upholding truth, justice and the American way.”
There was a round of nervous laughter. Everybody looked at Liam, who sighed. “Yeah, okay.” He looked at Wy, who was studiously examining her coffee mug. His lips tightened.
“From the begi
Liam didn’t strike. Instead, he told the story simply, begi
“I never met anyone who was arrested who ever was guilty of anything,” Jo observed.
“Yeah. I know.”
Liam’s smile was thin and strained, and Wy tried not to feel guilty. What else could I do? she thought. He had to know. Maybe he’s right, I should have told him sooner, but it’s only five months since I saw him again, only a month that we’ve been together.
She thought back to the afternoon at the mining camp. I love you, Wy, Liam had said, and so she had told him, then and there, and he, at first disbelieving and then enraged, had stalked up to the cabin in a huff, ostensibly to search for evidence to help solve the mystery of Mark Hanover’s murder but really, she knew full well, to put her far enough out of reach that he wouldn’t be tempted to deck her.
She didn’t blame him, but she wouldn’t fall into the trap of blaming herself, either, not a second time. Shit happens. You can’t let it define you, you can’t let it define the rest of your life. She hadn’t, and she wouldn’t let him do so, either.
Jo’s voice recalled her to the present. “But you still don’t like them for it.”
The trooper shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right. Why’d they call in the Mayday? According to Wy the Hanovers weren’t due to be picked up until Labor Day. If they did it, they could have left the body lying where it was, ready for the nearest grizzly to wander out of the woods and eat the evidence.”
“In that case, where’s Rebecca?” Jo said.
Labor Day, Wy thought, and remembered the last time she’d delivered supplies to Nenevok Creek. Three fishermen getting restive as she fought the cargo netting and the bungee cords. Rebecca watching with a wistful expression on her face, arms cradling the stack of magazines Wy had brought in for her. Mark Hanover coming up the path and-oh. “Oh hell,” Wy said.
Everyone looked at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I totally forgot.”
“What?” Liam said.
“The fishermen were in a hurry to get to the lodge and I was humping it to get the plane unloaded and we’d hit an air pocket on the way in and the cargo had shifted a little in flight, you know, just enough to wedge itself into-”
“Wy,” Liam said. “What did you forget?”
Wy took a deep breath. “The last time I made a supply run into Nenevok Creek, Mark Hanover pulled me to one side and said they might need another order of supplies, a big one this time. Like I said, my passengers were in a hurry and I wasn’t paying much attention. I told him to get me a list and he said he would and we took off.”
There was a brief, electric silence.
“You only just remembered this now?” Liam said.
“I’m sorry,” Wy said helplessly. I’ve had other things on my mind, she thought, and knew by the shift of expression on his face that he had seen that thought reflected in her eyes.
“A big order of supplies,” Jo said, her eyes bright, her nose all but twitching. “At the end of the summer? Nobody orders supplies at the end of the summer. You’re just inviting the bears in, leaving a bunch of food sitting around your cabin.”
“Unless,” Liam said.
“Unless,” Jim said, “you’re ordering up enough to see you through the winter in that cabin.”
“From what her friend Nina said,” Liam said slowly, “Rebecca Hanover wasn’t more than lukewarm about spending the summer out there.”
“If he told her about this wonderful new idea just before they were scheduled to leave-” Jo said.
Liam looked at Wy. “Tell me everything you remember about Rebecca Hanover.”
“I already did.”
“Tell me again.”
He was all trooper now, firm, implacable, totally focused on the job. He bore no resemblance whatever to the furious man who had raked her over the coals at Nenevok Creek. In one way, she welcomed it. In another, she did not. She got up and went to the corner desk from where she ran her business, and pulled out a tall red book filled with dated, lined pages. She opened it and flipped through May, until she found the day she wanted. “Here it is, May twenty-ninth, the Saturday before Memorial Day. Passengers Mark and Rebecca Hanover, along with two hundred pounds of freight, to Nenevok Creek.”
Wy looked up. “She was frightened. First time she’d been in a small plane, I think. But he jollied her on board. They sat in the back-we had to take the Cessna because of all the freight-and I strapped some of their ca
“How did she strike you?”
Her eyes narrowed in memory. “As a dyed-in-the-wool city girl,” she said after a moment. “She’s beautiful, blond hair, blue eyes, great figure. Immaculate manicure. Soft voice, called him honey a lot. She’s not your typical Bush rat. Her husband had the gold bug, and she was along for the ride.”
“Willingly?”
She considered. “If you mean by that, did he have a pair of handcuffs on her, no.”
“But?”
“But.” She met Liam’s eyes straight on for the first time in forty-eight hours. “But she wasn’t happy about his decision.”
“She think it was pie in the sky? Gold mining is, mostly.”
Wy shook her head. “Wasn’t the money. She just didn’t want to be out there. It was like pulling up a hothouse orchid and trying to transplant it on the moon. She knew it. He didn’t.” She looked down at the Day Timer, leafed through some more pages. “I dropped off supplies half a dozen times. Every time, she was waiting at the strip. I took her some newspapers and magazines and she was, well, almost pathetically grateful.”
She closed the book and raised her head. “I don’t think she killed him, Liam. She isn’t the type.”
“Everybody’s the type, Wy, given the right provocation.”
“I know you always say that,” she said stubbornly, “but she loved him. They had this kind of, I don’t know, sexual thing going on that practically gave off sparks. He was gorgeous, too, one good-looking hunk of man. What’s more, I’d say he loved her as much as she did him.”
“Never underestimate what three months in the Bush will do to a relationship,” Jim observed. “You see the results in the front pages of her rag every day.” He hooked a thumb at Jo.
“Hey,” she said, faintly protesting. “I resemble that remark.”
Wy put the book back on the desk. “Are you still absolutely sure Hanover’s death has nothing to do with Opal’s?”
His eyes went from her to the map on the wall behind her. “Different weapon. A long way to go on foot in a very short time. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.”
The phone rang and Bridget answered it. Liam could hear Prince’s voice. “One moment,” Bridget said. “It’s for you,” she added u