When the Flood Falls. J.E. Barnard

kindly millionaire? He tried to run you over?”

      “No. He lets guests drive his cars. It was another stupid bloody hockey player behind the wheel, I’m sure. They think they own the world.”

      “Three jocks in an orange BMW, by chance?” Lacey wasn’t surprised by Dee’s nod. The timing fit. “They burned into the Centre’s parking lot while I was out there. Probably right after they passed you. If I’d known, I’d have nailed them.”

      “I’m sure Jake has thumped them down by now.” Dee eased her shoulders from her blanket. “I called Rob’s phone right away to tell them not to hold the press conference. Jan answered. She’d have told Jake first thing.”

      “Who’s Jan? That shaggy-haired woman with the piercing shriek?”

      “My uphill neighbour. Old friend of Rob’s, and she’s known Jake forever, too. I heard her yell his name and then she was cut off.” So Jake Wyman was the old cowboy. He didn’t dress like Lacey’s West Coast idea of a multi-millionaire, but that explained the reporters’ deferential distance while he told off the punk driver.

      “Your neighbour was cut off,” she told Dee, “because she threw the phone at the jocks and then tried to beat them up. She had to be restrained.”

      Dee sat up. “Seriously? I hope she’s all right.”

      “She said she was. She looked a wreck to me.”

      “I’m sorry I told her. It just poured out of me when I heard a friendly voice. Like when you walked in. What else are friends for?” Dee grabbed a fresh tissue and mopped her face. “Why are you here? Need lunch? Leftover chicken and salad in the fridge. One of us will have to get groceries soon.”

      Lacey explained about Wayne’s offer. “You’ll feel safer tonight if I can get those lights installed in the right places after work. And I’ll get your bike down, too.”

      “No rush on the bike.” Dee unwrapped her legs from the blankets. “I’m too shaky to try riding today. But I’m so glad you came home. I feel saner already. I’ll do food while you do photos, okay?”

      As Lacey moved around the outside of the house, trying to balance the need for prowler protection with the story she’d told Wayne about the dogs, she wondered at Dee’s sudden mood shifts. Was it just the stress, or had she become a bit, well, unstable? Was there any prowler, or had she imagined the whole thing? She’d said she had suspected that of herself; now Lacey suspected her, too. But they had to proceed as if there was evidence to be gathered. If nothing triggered the extra lights by Friday, the day of the museum gala, they could discuss that again. And she’d have three more days to evaluate Dee’s mood swings. Wouldn’t that be a touchy conversation — suggesting that Dee needed to see a therapist.

      Chapter Four

      Back at the Centre after lunch, Lacey copied her photos to Wayne’s laptop. He skimmed through them and, using his finger on the touchpad, drew arrows and circles on the relevant images to show where she needed to install the lights. “You’ll have to use extension cords for now, and I can’t spare any. We’ll wire them in properly if she wants to keep them. Go load them in your car before you forget. And bring this list of stuff from the van. We’ll do the art vault this afternoon.”

      Extension cords weren’t exactly high security; they could be unplugged if someone managed to sneak under the motion-sensor panels the first time. Lacey made a mental note to make sure the sensors covered wherever the cords came from. If the lights went on just once, they’d prove Dee hadn’t imagined the whole thing and demonstrate the need for greater security. She’d convince Dee to spend the money, or Wayne to delay billing for the work, or something. She went out into the brilliant afternoon, shuffled around the equipment per her instructions, and headed back inside to meet Wayne at the elevator that would take them into that holiest of holies in the art world: the vault.

      Located deep in the sub-basement, poking its rear end out under the parking lot, the steel-encased, climate-controlled room was reachable by only one elevator, and only if the right key card was used. It was also at least ten degrees colder than the atrium. Standing in the small elevator lobby across from the shining steel vault door brought goosebumps up in waves on Lacey’s bare arms. She tried not to rub them while Wayne briefed her on the security. Only those key cards held by Wayne, Rob, and the board’s president and vice-president would allow access down here. The elevator would not leave if the vault door was unlocked, something staff members would know, but illicit entrants would not. Those top four high-security cards could override that rule and call up the elevator to some other level, trapping intruders until police arrived.

      “It’s almost more anti-vandal defence than anti-burglary,” Wayne said, handing up a screwdriver as she balanced on a small plastic stepstool to adjust the angle on the camera above the elevator door. “That protester outside could be the visible tip of a lot of local resentment. Who knows what some shine-swilling bush hermit might try for his fifteen minutes? Since Mayerthorpe, nobody takes chances with disgruntled farmers.”

      Lacey nodded, although she thought Wayne was overstating his case. Mayerthorpe, Alberta, was where four RCMP officers had been picked off by a mean man with a grudge. The bright, touristy environs of Bragg Creek seemed a different universe from that of such men. In reality, the two small towns were hardly a half day’s drive apart, and there was plenty of bush around here to harbour angry nutters. The lone protester didn’t look angry enough to worry about, but then, some of the worst mass murderers in history had seemed nice enough to their neighbours.

      When the two lobby cameras were cable connected and their angles adjusted to his satisfaction, Wayne unlocked the vault with his key card and a numerical code and pulled the shining door open. A wave of deeper chill flowed out, reminding Lacey of a morgue fridge. Peering past Wayne, she caught her first glimpse of the inner sanctum: ten metres by fifteen of white walls and floors under a six-metre-high ceiling, with lighting so intense it bleached out every shadow. One side of the room held bare, open shelving of varying depths and widths, the other a long frontage of vertical panels, each half as wide as a standard door, with a drawer pull in the middle and three slots for labels above that.

      Lacey gestured. “What’s behind those?”

      “You, in a minute.” Wayne lifted a remote control from a wall mounting and pushed a button. With a hiss of hidden hydraulics, one panel moved smoothly out into the room. Behind the polished metal front was attached a rigid-mesh construction half as long as the room and almost as high, with a handful of movable hooks hanging randomly from its expanse. “They’ll hang pictures on these for storage,” he added. “All computer hydraulics, and the software programmer is the biggest pain in the ass I’ve met in five years.” It was the most personal commentary he had let slip so far. He pushed another button to send the massive rack back to its resting place.

      “Where do we start?” Lacey set down the plastic stepstool and tugged her tool belt into position. They tested and focused the motion-sensor camera over the door, a second camera facing along the shelving, and a third aimed along the front of the hydraulic racks.

      “One more,” said Wayne. “Take everything and go tight up against the end wall.”

      When she was in position, he pointed the remote. The rack closest to the wall rolled out with a whisper of steel wheels and a hiss of overhead cables, cutting off Lacey from the rest of the vault and giving her a long moment to either panic or admire the posters taped up on the mesh, presumably by the construction crew. Jayne Mansfield’s cleavage made a change from the hockey players on either side, but none of it distracted Lacey from the claustrophobia that was never far below the surface ever since the underwater incident all those years ago. She concentrated on breathing steadily. There would be no panic, no sign of weakness, not when Wayne was finally showing signs of accepting her. At least she could see through the mesh. A solid wall would have sent her through the roof.

      When the motion stopped, she sidled along the rack to its back end. The plastic stepstool’s feet bumped along the mesh behind her, bouncing away only to rebound off the cement wall and