Todd parked his truck directly in front of her apartment and scampered around to open the door. He held her hand as if she were a fragile bird as he helped her down.
“I’m not broken,” Livia said, pulling her hand away. “I’m just concussed. I would’ve driven myself home if the doctors had let me.” She paused to give him a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Irritability goes with the territory. Thanks for driving me. I couldn’t stand Mom and Dad for one more moment!”
“I’m glad to help.” He flushed, looking for a flippant answer. “Besides, I had an ulterior motive, you know.”
She wavered down the walk. Instinctively, he reached out to steady her, but stopped himself. “I know,” she said. “Maybe we can help each other.”
“I can be your eyes, if you tell me what to look for.”
“You can be my wheels. I’ll look for myself.”
“Livia, you know what the doctor said. Your brain needs a rest.”
She laughed, but he could see pain on her pinched features. “My brain never rests.”
“Okay, but this is probably enough for your first day. Can we at least dial it back until tomorrow?”
She leaned against the doorframe to catch her breath. “Deal. Pick me up at eight o’clock.”
“Where are we going? The homestead shack?”
“Nope. The abandoned Oaks farm.”
When he’d brought her phone to the hospital, he had hoped she would share what she’d learned before the attack, but she’d remained maddeningly vague. He knew she’d checked out the homestead shack and spoken to some of the nearby farmers. But what could she possibly learn from the abandoned Oaks farm?
“The Oakses hold the key,” she said when they were en route the next morning. “It was near their old homestead shack that the body was found, and Shelley Oaks is ground zero of the mystery. I was just starting to look into their history when I was attacked. Someone must have been watching me. Maybe the same dude with the white truck.”
He was silent. He had not mentioned the white truck also following Amanda. Her brain did not need the added worry. Instead, he shifted the focus. “But the place might not even be there any more. I looked it up. The Oakses sold it decades ago. Right after the barn fire, actually.”
“Oh, it’s there. Just left to fall down because the new owners were too lazy to demolish it. I’m hoping the Oakses left a bit of history behind.”
The gravel range road cut through a patchwork of irrigated grain fields and open grassland scattered with cattle. Todd’s ancient truck rattled over the rough surface, and Livia propped her head in her hand, trying to hide her pain. Several times he was on the brink of turning back. Concussions were nothing to mess with.
He was relieved when she pointed to a cluster of buildings taking shape on the horizon. As they drew closer, he studied the wooden buildings that had withstood the relentless elements for nearly a century.
“I love photographing these old relics,” he said. “It’s like capturing time. This looks like it was once a ready-made. They must have towed it here.”
She raised her head from her hand to squint at him. “Towed it?”
“Happened all the time. Lumber was scarce, so when a farm foreclosed or the farmer gave up and moved on, someone else towed his house over to their place. Why waste a perfectly good house?”
When they turned into the long dirt lane, he was mildly curious to see traces of multiple tire tracks etched in the dust. Had the cops been here as part of their investigation of the body in the coulee?
They bumped through the ruts and pulled in next to the main building. Livia clambered stiffly down and paused to lean on the hood of the truck. She was wearing huge dark glasses, but despite those, she kept her head bowed against the sun’s glare. He let her rest while he took photos. The dusty yard was crisscrossed with tire tracks, but there was no sign of a functioning vehicle. One rusty pick-up and two tractors were encased in weeds and scrub. He walked over to take a few close-ups of them. When he turned, Livia was on the front step, pushing at the door.
“Locked,” she said.
Todd picked his way through the weeds to the one window that wasn’t boarded up and peered through the gaping hole. The room inside was empty, its wooden floors covered with the fine sand of decades.
“Wait here,” he said as he vaulted into what appeared to be the living room. The air was dense and stale, with a faint tang of mouse. His boots echoed as he crossed the floor. Beneath the sand, the wood still glistened with traces of old polish, and faded floral wallpaper graced the walls. This had once been a proud home, he thought. Not a rough shack like the one near the coulee, but a beloved family home.
“Hey!” Livia rattled the front door. “Let me in!”
Todd hit the stiff dead bolt and opened the door, letting a shaft of sunlight into the room. Turning, he froze.
Livia pushed past him. “What?”
He pointed to the floor. “Footprints. Someone’s been here recently. I wonder if the cops searched this place.”
She pulled off her sunglasses and squinted around the room. “Could be looters.”
“After all this time? There’s nothing here. I’m going to look around.” He started to move and then stopped, causing her to collide with him. “Try not to walk in the prints or disturb the sand. If it’s not the cops, it may be important.”
He changed lenses and began to photograph the room, crouching to take photos of the clearest footprint. It had the thick, heavy tread of a hiking boot about the same size as his own. Not too many men with size 13 feet.
Afterward, he explored the kitchen, pantry, and bathroom at the back, all of which were stripped bare. The toilet and bathtub had been removed, leaving only rust and water stains, but the sink and vanity were turquoise, a popular sixties colour, and the chequered tiles were black and white. He found no further sign of the intruders, but as he started up the steep, narrow staircase, he spotted more footprints in the dust. Cobwebs wove intricate patterns through the carved railing.
He heard Livia’s footsteps on the stairs behind him. “I don’t think you should come up. It’s steep.”
“I’m not a cripple,” she snapped. “There’s a railing.”
Nonetheless, she paused at the top of the stairs, pale and wavering. “Fucking concussion,” she muttered, pushing aside his steadying hand. She leaned on the wall and peered into the first bedroom, which was small and empty, given over to sand and tiny critters. The second bedroom at the front of the house was likewise untouched. Judging by its size and the gabled windows affording a view east toward the distant river, Todd assumed it was the master bedroom.
The third bedroom gave him a surprise, however. The plywood had been knocked away from part of the window, letting sunlight into the room and revealing a glimpse of the quilted prairie fields to the south. The cobwebs had been cleared away and the floor swept. A broom was propped against the wall. In one corner were two neatly folded blankets piled on top of a pillow and a vintage suitcase. Livia was about to open it when he caught her arm.
“This is not the cops. It might be evidence.”
“Of what? It’s probably a squatter. A super neat squatter.”
“But why? There’s nothing around here for miles.”
She shrugged. “Why do people squat? Because they like the freedom, or they’ve got no money. It could be somebody visiting the dinosaur park. Who knows?”
“That doesn’t make any sense. There are campsites in the park, and lots of cheap places to stay. The person owns a vehicle, so they’re not completely broke.”
She frowned at him, her fuzzy brain slowly churning over. “What do you think? That this is something criminal?”
“Think about it! This was the Oaks place. Someone attacked you when you started looking into the body, and Amanda Doucette thinks she’s being followed.”
She eyed the suitcase. “We have to open it. There could be a big story here.”
“Fine. But let’s do it carefully, and I’ll take photos of everything that we do.”
They knelt on the floor, and she reached for the snaps of the suitcase. “No fingerprints!” he cried and pulled a crumpled tissue from his pocket. She rolled her eyes and accepted it between two fingers. The snaps opened with ease, old but not rusty. Inside was a neatly folded stack of clothes — shirts, sweater, jeans, boots, and underwear — along with some food. A bottle of whisky, chocolate bars, potato chips, and a bottle of olives. Todd photographed each item as Livia unpacked it.
“Men’s clothing.” She stroked the tooled leather cowboy boots. “Nice.”
He held up the boot, which appeared to be the same size as the footprints but not the same tread. The sweater was likewise large. They inspected the pieces, but although the clothes were all good-quality brands, there were no names or clues to the owner. There was no wallet, receipts, or personal papers in the pockets.
But at the bottom of the case, coiled in a circle, lay a hand-tooled leather belt, broken, blackened, and brittle with age. He picked it up.
Livia leaned over to finger the brittle edge. “This looks burned.”
When Todd turned it over, he couldn’t suppress a gasp. The oval buckle was so black and corroded that he was barely able to make out the details, but in the centre was an antique oil derrick, and engraved below it, too scratched and stained to decipher, was a name.
At sunset on their last day, the group gathered around the campfire at Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, sharing their favourite moments and greatest discoveries of the tour. The flames crackled, and in the background, the Milk River gurgled as it meandered past the beach. A strong breeze was blowing down the river valley, and even in the shelter of the cottonwoods, the chill of the September evening crept in. The students pulled up their hoodies and clustered around the fire.
They laughed, sang, and talked about the world that had opened up ahead of them. For some, college and scientific research, for others creative arts and journalism, for still others the thrill of ranching and rodeo shows. Friendships had been cemented, and Kari and Michel were now inseparable. Kari was still committed to law, but Michel had expanded his future dreams to include documentary filmmaking.
Amanda was glad she’d been able to set aside all her personal drama to focus on the rest of the tour. The students would fly home out of Lethbridge the next day, and that would be the time to check with Shelley and Natalie to find out what had happened since Shelley’s return.
In the morning, after they had taken down the camp and packed everything onto the bus, the students used their final minutes to take group photos under the cottonwoods and selfies on top of the hoodoos. Then they piled into the bus for the climb back up the escarpment to the prairie. Amanda let Kaylee have one last ride with her new fan club while she followed alone in the Hulk.
When she came into range of a signal, her cellphone signalled an alert. To her surprise it was a missed call from Todd yesterday. He had left no message. She hesitated, her finger hovering over the call button. Curiosity nearly got the better of her, but she conceded she would have plenty of time to follow up on the body and her uncle once the students were on their way up north.
She followed the bus back onto the main highway toward Lethbridge, a journey of less than an hour and a half. Although it was another dry, cloudless, Southern Alberta day, there was finally an autumn tang in the air. In another two weeks, it might have been too cold for camping.
The Lethbridge airport was in fertile farmland south of the city. Turning west onto the airport road, she glimpsed a white truck in her side mirror. It didn’t signal as it followed her across the lanes at a discreet distance. She gripped the steering wheel more tightly and tried to ignore it. When she reached the airport, it hung back and became almost indistinguishable from the other dusty, light-coloured pickups in the lot. She tried to avoid staring at it as she parked, retrieved Kaylee, and followed the students inside.
At the security gate, the final goodbyes were emotional and full of promises to stay in touch. Amanda accepted an offer to come north to Kari’s village to see the beauty and cultural richness of her home. Afterward, Amanda stood watching as the students clambered onto the plane. After one last wave, she turned from the window, feeling that peculiar mix of sadness and fulfillment that always followed the end of her trips.
Only then did she remember the truck in the parking lot. She sneaked back to the front of the terminal and peered out through the glass. The truck was still there, partially visible behind an RV in the corner of the lot. She marched out in full view, gave Kaylee a quick tour of a nearby strip of grass, and then led her to the Hulk, all without a glance in the truck’s direction.
She drove rapidly back toward the highway, hoping to put some distance between her and the truck before she whipped the Hulk onto a side road and spun it around to hide behind a nearby warehouse. Her heart pounded as she waited. Should she drive in front and block it? Should she drive in the other direction? Jack White, who are you and what are you up to?
In the end, she hid behind the warehouse as close as possible to the road and aimed her phone through her front windshield. After an apparent eternity, the truck crawled past as if it were searching for her. For two seconds, the driver was visible through the driver’s side window. He turned his head, and his jaw dropped as his eyes met hers. He slammed on the accelerator and shot forward, but half a second too late. She had no time to block his exit, but at least she had got her photo.
He took off in a squeal of tires and a swirl of dust, his truck rocking as he wrestled it back onto the road. She chased him a short distance up the highway, but her skills and recklessness were no match for his. Gradually, he disappeared among the lines of traffic ahead. She pulled onto the shoulder so that she could look at the photo. Despite using the zoom on her phone, the picture was too small and blurry for her to make out any facial detail. She could see it was a clean-shaven man wearing a cowboy hat and what looked like a dark windbreaker. He looked shocked, but he could be anyone.
It was not until late that afternoon in her Calgary Airbnb that she had time to open the photo on her laptop. The first glimpse was the most powerful. Despite the blurriness, poor lighting, and partial reflection from the window glass, he looked familiar. Something in the set of the eyes and the slant of the brows. She pulled up a series of photos on the screen and flipped between them. She squinted. Was it possible? Thirty years was a long time. Yet the overall impression had not changed.
Could this be Jonathan?