“Unless, in retrospect, she was disturbed by having done this in her own past,” said Trish, “and it was her way of lashing out and burying it. Maybethatwas her big dark secret.”
“Then why her apparent smugness?” Willow countered. She turned to Angie. “See, that was the thing. Whatever big secret Jaz was on about, it was cloaked in a cocky superiority. It was something she was happy about or at least positive. She was waving it about like a red flag.”
“Why would she do that?” Angie said.
“Hell knows. She was twenty-five. World at her feet. We were old bags. Maybe that’s all it was. Animalistic superiority of youth. Put the old crones down.”
Angie held their eyes. “One more question,” she said. “Rachel mentioned that a group of males taunted you from the shore while you were drifting downriver.”
“Oh, that.” Another dry laugh from Trish. “We figured that was Jaz’s fault, too. She affronted a group of local males in a pub at Port Ferris. We’d all gathered there for a meal and briefing with the two guides the night before heading up to Predator Lodge. We’d booked into the adjacent motel for the night. But in the pub side of the restaurant, there was some game on television, and it seemed like the whole town had come out to cheer on a local hero. Plenty of drink flowing.”
“So the place was raucous, patrons really drunk?”
“We weren’t doing so badly ourselves,” Trish said. “It was our big pretrip sendoff. Some of us, including Jaz, filtered over to the pub side and joined the locals in celebration of the big win.”
“How did Jaz offend these guys?”
“Well, most the guys in the pub were really big dark-haired logger types, a lot of them wearing the Kamloops tux—”
“Kamloops tux?” Angie asked.
“Oh, just a name for those padded plaid jacket things everyone out in the rural areas of BC seems to wear, from loggers to hunters to mechanics,” Willow said.
Angie’s mind shot to Garrison Tollet, now current owner of Predator Lodge. He fit the mold—big, built like a logger, thighs the size of her waist. He’d been wearing his padded plaid jacket on both occasions that Angie and Maddocks had interacted with him at the lodge.
“What did Jaz say to these guys?” Angie prodded.
“Something about them being interrelated. She asked if they were all cousins and whether they forwent dental hygiene and played banjos in the woods,” Trish said.
“Oh jeez,” Angie said. “You’re kidding me?”
“’Fraid not. So we think some of the guys from the pub figured it would be a lark to follow us along the river. There were three of them in the woods, following us, we think. Two big men. One with black hair, one who wore a red toque and a plaid jacket. The third man was shorter and skinny. They’d appear in the trees along the riverbank, just standing there. Sometimes we’d see them silhouetted up along the talus ridges. Then one afternoon we heard a banjo. We heard it again that night near our camp.”
“And one of the big guys was always carrying something,” Willow added. “It was long. Could have been a rifle or shotgun.”
“So you think they were just out to spook you, or did you actually feel threatened? Did you feel they could be dangerous?”
“It felt tense to me,” Willow said. “Bottom line, Jaz asked for it. If Garrison and Jessie hadn’t stepped in and defused things in the pub that night, I suspect things could have gone seriously sideways. Garrison took Jaz aside, bought her another drink, and cozied up to her in a booth at the back of the bar while Jessie talked the other blokes down.”
Trish and Willow exchanged another look, as if weighing something. Then Trish said, “We weren’t going to say anything because it was personal, but we’re pretty sure Garrison Tollet got into Jaz’s pants that night. She was booked into the motel room next to ours, and we ... heard her with someone.”
“Heard?”
“Banging headboards kinda heard.”
“So she slept with Garrison Tollet, her guide, on the first night?”
“Yes.”
Angie’s mind shot back to her and Maddocks’s trip. They’d met Sheila Tollet, Garrison’s wife. Sheila had mentioned at the time that she and Garrison were going on twenty-six years of marriage. They would have been married only two years the night Garrison allegedly slept with his client, Jasmine Gulati.
“Are youcertainit was him in the next room with her?”
“No. That’s also why we didn’t really want to mention it, because shecouldhave been with someone else entirely. But if you look at the footage Rachel shot in the pub that night, you might learn more.”
“Not exactly the behavior of a woman promised to another man,” Angie said quietly.
“Nope,” Trish said. “That you’ll certainly see from the tapes.”
