By Wednesday evening, the snow was under control and his shift supervisor had sent him home before he became a serious hazard on the road. Dinner, a quick stop to give his kids a goodnight kiss and a promise of Disney World at March break, and he fell into bed. He slept through the alarm the next morning and the kids’ preparations for school, not waking until the dog shoved her cold, impatient nose into his face. Frankie stared at the clock in disbelief. It was almost noon.
He turned on the television as he stumbled around the kitchen brewing coffee and fixing himself a heaping plate of bacon, eggs and toast. Every muscle of his body ached. He allowed the local news show to drone on in the background with a mixture of patter, features and brief news bytes. Gradually he became aware of a story about a missing woman. The camera panned the scene of volunteers trudging through snowy streets, probing snowbanks with ski poles.
He picked up his plate and carried it to sit down in front of the TV. A police spokeswoman was asking all residents throughout the city to check their own properties for any sign of the woman, who was believed to be wearing a hooded red jacket. She had last been heard from on Monday evening, and if she had been injured, she might be lying beneath forty centimetres of snow. So far the official search had concentrated on the residential areas between downtown and Carlingwood, but the woman could have gone anywhere.
More than two days beneath the snow, Frankie thought. She’s dead, no doubt about it. He got to thinking about all the miles he’d covered in those days, all the acres of pure white snow. The garbage bins, snow shovels and kid’s sleds he’d tossed up from under that pristine cover. A memory rose up, of a slight bump, a flash of red on the snow behind him. Slowly he set his fork down. A strange sensation churned in his gut. Was it possible? What day had that been? Where had he been? On a residential street somewhere, in the dead of night. Wednesday. No, Tuesday.
He felt sick. Tuesday morning, more than fifty-four hours ago.
He grabbed a city map and began to retrace his routes, trying to remember where he had been plowing early Tuesday morning. Somewhere in the east end not far from downtown, but nowhere near where the police thought she might be. But what if they were wrong? After five minutes he threw the map aside in frustration. He had to see the streets for himself and replay the night in his mind’s eye.
He revved his pick-up out of the drive and headed into town. The roads were clear now and a brittle sun glared on the fresh snow. Salt crews had covered the main roads, polishing them a glossy black. Frankie lived in Cumberland at the far eastern extremity of the city, but at midday it took him less than half an hour to reach the fashionable old neighbourhood nestled in the crook where the Rideau River joined the Ottawa. He had covered Vanier to Manor Park that night, but as near as he could remember, he had been around Lindenlea and New Edinburgh when he’d bumped something. Both neighbourhoods bordered the more exclusive enclave of Rockcliffe Park, home to ambassadors and wealthy CEOs, and Frankie was never sure where one area ended and the other began. Rockcliffe had no sidewalks and had an English village feel, despite the multi-million dollar homes set back on huge properties. Lindenlea was quaint and smaller in scale, but still way beyond his bank balance even if he had wanted to rub shoulders with associate deputy ministers and university profs. His black pick-up with the roof rack and the trailer hitch would look like a bouncer at a tea party among the Audis and Volvos in the drives.
Beechwood Avenue bisected the area, dividing the haves from the have-nots in neighbouring Vanier. Once he’d turned onto the narrow streets of Lindenlea, he eased off the gas and tried to visualize that night. It had been dark and dead quiet, poorly lit by streetlights. He’d been driving around a sharp curve and was just picking up a bit of speed when he’d felt the jolt. Now he drove slowly through the looping streets, searching for the right layout. Nothing. The neighbourhood was full of short, curvy streets clogged with snowbanks. He widened his net, venturing into the nearby fringes of Rockcliffe, where unassuming bungalows worth close to a million peeked from behind snowladen cedar hedges. Turning off Juliana Road onto Maple Lane, he had a memory flash. The stretch had looked like this. He had turned left just like this and had been accelerating towards a wide-open stretch when the bump occurred.
He inched down the street peering closely at the snowbanks made by plows over the past days. No hint of red. No telltale lump in the snow. He parked his truck and began to walk. There was almost no one out on the street. No volunteers probing the snowbanks or checking under the boughs of huge spruces that drooped to the ground under the weight of snow. Only a solitary woman walking her Labrador retriever off leash. The dog looked at him suspiciously and barked, like a stranger was a weird sight in the area.
The woman took in his salt-splattered pick-up, his well-worn bomber jacket and his three-inch growth—he’d left without shaving that morning—and her eyebrows shot up. “Can I help you?”
He started to shake his head then stopped himself. “I’m a snowplow operator, and I think I hit something with my plow a couple of days ago. I’m just checking around.”
Her eyebrows drew together now, like a teacher who’d heard that line before. “What did you hit?”
“I don’t know. A sled, maybe? Red shovel? Do you live around here? Did anyone find anything like that?” He wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell her the real reason. Maybe just because she looked like she could get him in a whole lot of trouble if he even mentioned he might have hit someone.
She was backing away now, her dog tightly leashed at her side. “I think you’re wasting your time. Wait till the snow melts in the spring.”
He watched her stride off up the street and knew she didn’t believe him for a minute. He took a deep breath. Now what? He hadn’t brought a ski pole, and although he had a shovel in the back on the truck, it was a hell of a big snowbank to be digging up.
Nonetheless he took out his snow shovel and tested the mound of snow left by his plow. It was granular now and hard to penetrate. New snow had been blown on top of it by the homeowners clearing their own driveways. It seemed an impossible task. He needed help, but if the dog lady was any indication, the neighbours on this street wouldn’t lend a hand. On the other hand, it was too early to call the police.
Up ahead the dog was barking again, and when Frankie looked up, he saw the animal circling a pile of snow by a driveway halfway up the block. The dog was pawing excitedly.
Jesus, Frankie thought. Grabbing his shovel, he headed up the block. The woman glanced towards him, her jaw dropping. She yanked at her dog, dragged it away from the snowbank and set off almost at a run.
I bet she calls the police, Frankie thought. Well, at this point, maybe that’s not a bad idea.
* * *
Brandon entered his mother’s home office, which was located on the second storey at the back of the house. Her desk was positioned in the bow window and flooded with sunlight. In the summer, the yard would be a paisley print of perennial beds but a blanket of pristine snow hid them all, and even the snow-laden Colorado blue spruce at the rear of the yard could not improve his mood. The Valium was wearing off, leaving him a brain of cotton wool through which thought moved sluggishly.
He knew his mother would be out most of the day. The Superior Court calendar had been booked months in advance and nothing, not even the disappearance of her future daughter-in-law, would keep her from the arcane motion being heard today. She hadn’t even tried to send her junior. It was as if she knew there was no great crisis and Meredith was off somewhere for her own selfish reasons, as if the police were poking snowbanks in vain and there would be no gruesome discovery to disrupt her in the middle of her argument.
What the hell did she know?
When the desk itself yielded no answers, he spent an hour meticulously going through the papers in her filing cabinet. Like her life, they were carefully compartmentalized. Her university lectures, course notes and student assignments were all in