Free Strange Things Done by Elle Wild Page A

a line of crusty icing, placing it lightly on her tongue. Mmmmm. Plenty of rum.
    Jo leaned against the doorframe, one ear against a cold telephone receiver, listening to the distant ringing in her father’s living room. It was late—almost midnight. She hoped that Frank was still up, watching House (he was always a sucker for a bit of misanthropic humour) or reruns of Law & Order . She could picture Pepper Spray, Frank’s Scottish terrier, barking in disapproval at the telephone, as though it were another yippy dog. Frank and Pepper’s heads would turn in unison; their twin expressions (surprise and accusation), closely clipped grey hair, and matching moustaches presenting the appearance of familial relation. They’d be sitting on the plaid blanket that had covered the couch for years.
    Jo was eyeing the half-eaten tray of rum-fudge brownies when Frank picked up, compacting the sense of culpability she experienced at the sound of his voice.
    “Jo? About bloody time.” Pepper was indeed making aggravated little sounds in the background. “Shut it, furball,” he said to the terrier.
    “I’m sorry. I meant to call you to let you know I got in okay, but there’s no cellular service here, and things kicked off so quickly.” (Jo ignored her father’s derisive snort at this.) “The RCMP found a body in the river this morning.” This sad fact would at least give them something to talk about, something that wasn’t an admission of guilt or a defence.
    Jo tried not to blame Frank for persuading her to accept what the VPD had asked her to do: to kill the publication of her story about the tactics of a serial killer operating in the Vancouver area. Her conversations with her father as of late had circled around their mutual feelings of recrimination and self-blame. It was exhausting.
    “A body?” Frank sounded alert now.
    “Yes. A local politician.”
    “Foul play suspected?”
    “Possibly. She’d been drinking, but the police don’t think she was alone before she went into the water.”
    “Suspects?”
    “Frank, they interviewed me. I met the woman last night, in the parking lot outside the local pub.”
    “Did she say anything relevant?”
    “Not to me. To someone I was with.” She was loath to say any more. “Who might be a suspect.”
    “Who?”
    “Just someone who was giving me a ride home.”
    “Name please.”
    Jo listened to her father breathing into the receiver for a moment as the wind hummed outside. His familiar voice was almost comforting. She wished for a moment that she could tug on the frozen telephone wires to bring him closer. “Christopher Byrne,” she said.
    “Jesus, Josephine! One week in a new town and you’re getting into the vehicle of a strange male in a dark parking lot in a place with no emergency cellular service. Haven’t I taught you anything?” His breathing sounded laboured now.
    Jo thought of the dire warnings she’d received over family dinners when she was growing up, the stories her parents had told of young women turning up in her mother’s emergency ward or disappearing altogether in Frank’s district. But she said, “I am an adult, you know.”
    “Fat lotta good that will do you in an isolated place with the wrong person. You of all people should know that.”
    Jo had the fleeting image of a woman’s body in long grass, a snail leaving a silver trail down one pale arm. The blue necklace of bruising around the throat. One flame-mangled ear. The Surrey Strangler’s second victim.
    “I mean, Christ,” Frank continued. “The police think this Byrne guy had something to do with this?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    “Well, I’m going to find out. Get me his driver’s license number or date of birth and I’ll run a CRC.”
    “No,” she said, her tone sharp. She cleared her throat, and said more softly, “No. I’ll look into it myself.”
    “But it would only take me …”
    “No thanks, Frank.” In the ensuing pause, Jo thought of the warm taste