by Gail Bowen
“But within hours of that talk, Roy was in ‘a state of mortal terror,’” Georgie said. She picked up her cardigan and shrugged into it. “I wonder if we’ll ever know what happened?”
We walked together to the door. When I reached to open it, Georgie touched my arm. “I’m glad we talked. There’s truth in that old adage that a burden shared is a burden halved.”
She sounded as miserable and confused as I felt. “We’re having people for lunch here tomorrow,” I said. “It will be mostly family, but Ben Bendure, the filmmaker who made The Poison Apple, the documentary about Sally Love, is coming down from Saskatoon for the day. He knew Sally and me all our lives, and he was part of all our summers at the lake. I realize this is a last-minute invitation, but I’m sure you and Ben will enjoy each other. We’ll be eating around one, but if you want to catch the Easter egg hunt, come earlier.”
Georgie didn’t hesitate. “I accept,” she said, “and I’ll be early.”
* * *
The news about Roy had shaken me, and I waited for my head to clear before I returned to the kitchen where the egg decorating had moved into high gear. The grandchildren each had a dozen hard-boiled eggs to work with, and the adults shared another four dozen. Our eighteen-month-old grandson, Charlie, had made quick work of his quota. He’d given all twelve eggs a speedy dip in the bowl of red colouring. Now forgotten, the eggs were back in their carton drying, and Charlie was hammering pegs into holes in a board from his tool set. His twin, Colin, was still moving his first egg carefully from one bowl of colour to the next, seemingly mesmerized by the changing colours.
Our daughter-in-law Maisie, our daughter, Mieka, and her daughters, Madeleine and Lena, were wrapping squares of silk cut from old neckties and blouses around raw eggs, boiling them for twenty minutes in water and vinegar and hoping for the dazzling results promised in the DIY video.
Madeleine, who was eleven, squinted at the boiling eggs. “Do you think these are really going to turn out?”
Lena said, “If Taylor was here the eggs would turn out. Everything she does ends up looking the way it’s supposed to.”
“That’s because she’s an artist,” Madeleine said. “Remember how good she was at making pysanka? All the fancy patterns she could make with the wax?”
“Yeah, ours weren’t as good as Taylor’s, but they were still really nice,” Lena said. “Do you think Taylor and Vale are making pysanka today out at the lake?”
“Why don’t we FaceTime them tomorrow and see?” I said. “We could show them our eggs too.”
Lena brightened. “That would be good.”
“Not as good as having Taylor here with us,” Madeleine said. “But we’re going to have to get used to her not being here all the time. She and Vale are moving into their new condo as soon as the movie Vale’s in is finished.”
“I wish things could just stay the way they are now,” Lena said.
“So do I,” Zack said, “but Mimi says Taylor and Vale are starting a new life together and they need their own space.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Lena said.
“I guess it does,” Zack said. Then he sighed and turned his wheelchair back to the butcher block table where he, our son, Peter and Charlie Dowhanuik, Mieka’s new husband and godfather to the son Peter and Maisie had named for him, were wrestling with the twins’ gifts from us: “easy to assemble” balance bikes.
It was a warm and comforting scene, and when Zack gave me a questioning glance, I tried for a reassuring smile.
Maisie and Peter were taking the twins to a birthday party at a vegan pizzeria, so after they’d packed up their eggs, and we’d snapped final pictures, they headed out, and I heated soup for the rest of us. After we’d eaten, Mieka and the girls went to April’s Place, one of the two café play centres Mieka owned, to supervise yet more egg decorating, but I asked her new husband, Charlie D, to stay behind. There was something I wanted to talk to Zack and him about.
* * *
I had known Charlie Dowhanuik since the day he was born. His father, Howard, was premier of our province, and he was away politicking on the day his son came into the world. I drove Marnie Dowhanuik to the hospital, and I was in the delivery room with her. As a rule, even health care veterans meet the arrival of a newborn enthusiastically, but except for Charlie’s howl, during his first minutes of life, the room was silent. The necessary tasks were performed — the umbilical cord was tied and cut; the baby was cleaned and placed in his mother’s arms — but after seeing the port-wine birthmark that covered the left half of the newborn’s face like a blood mask, no one said a word. Marnie Dowhanuik kissed her new son and said, “We’ll handle this,” and they had. After she’d explored every medical possibility and learned that nothing could be done, Marnie stood back and let Charlie live his life.
Like his mother, Charlie was physically stunning except for that mark: he had her strongly carved features and her beautiful coal-black wavy hair, and like his mother he was fearless. He was a wild child, a danger freak who was always surrounded by admirers, and his mother’s wry assessment that Charlie didn’t have friends, he had fans, proved prophetic.
Blessed with impeccable cadences and a voice as soothing as dark honey, Charlie D had parlayed his quick wit and deep well of empathy into a stellar career as a radio personality. For twelve years, his national call-in show, a blend of cool music, edgy riffs on life and a deep understanding of his listeners, maintained enviable ratings, notably with the fourteen to twenty-five demographic. At the end of his twelfth season, Charlie checked into a hospital renowned for its laser treatment success and the blood mask disappeared, but Charlie’s visceral knowledge of what it felt like to walk down the street and see strangers avert their eyes remained, as did his tender heart.
Despite his media success, Charlie D had never lost touch with Peter and Mieka. As kids, the three of them had spent countless hours playing together in drafty small-town halls while their fathers politicked, and Marnie and I helped the local ladies dish up cabbage rolls and pierogies. They had taken a blood oath, nicking their fingers, pressing their fingers together and pledging kinship — the kind of things kids did in those days that they would never allow their own kids to do now. I had never been as innocent as Mieka believed me to be about the sexual attraction between her and Charlie D. I knew their almost primal bond had caused tensions in Mieka’s short-lived first marriage, and when Charlie D moved back to Regina in January, and he and Mieka announced their engagement, I wasn’t surprised.
They had a quiet family wedding, and Charlie D had begun hosting a two-hour national interview program, Charlie D in the Morning, for MediaNation. I had long since given up assessing or judging other people’s relationships, but Charlie D and Mieka had the warm glow of two people who knew that they had found what they’d been waiting for. Madeleine and Lena embraced Charlie D’s presence in their lives as easily and fully as he embraced their presence in his. It seemed the universe was unfolding as it should.
The March ratings for Charlie D in the Morning that had come out earlier in the week showed that, after a strong start, the program was gaining traction. U.S. programmers had taken note and the show was being picked up by a score of radio stations in desirable media markets. Charlie knew how to do an in-depth interview, and as his reputation for giving his subjects the chance to reveal their truest self was growing, he was landing some high-profile guests.
One of those high-profile guests was Roy Brodnitz. Charlie D had interviewed him earlier in the month, and the two men bonded. As Charlie said wryly, “Roy’s demons and mine recognized each other immediately.”
Now, as we sat in our sunny kitchen and I told them the news about Roy, Charlie’s face, like Zack’s, was somber.
When I’d finished, Zack wheeled his chair closer to me. “This doesn’t make sense,” he said. “How could Roy be fine when you talked to him just before noon and within hours b
e so terrified he was unreachable?”
Charlie D took out his phone. “I’ll call the newsroom in Toronto and see if they’ve heard anything.” The call he made was brief and clearly unsatisfactory. “Nada,” he said. “But they aren’t letting any grass grow under their feet. The interview I did with Roy was scheduled for broadcast in April, but the network is now considering playing it on Easter Monday.”
“If Roy doesn’t recover . . .” I said.
Charlie D was resigned. “That’s the way of the world, Jo,” he said. “The trailers for The Happiest Girl hit theatres this week, and in his interview with me Roy is candid about his lifelong struggle with depression and his fear of failure.”
“I’m surprised he talked to you about that,” I said. “He’s always struck me as a very private person.”
“Roy was not in great shape the day I interviewed him. Twice he became so emotional, I asked him if he wanted to stop, but he refused. I tried asking questions about his career — soft lobs, nothing emotionally charged — but Roy kept steering the conversation back to his failings. It was clear he needed to talk, so I let him go. You’d be amazed at how often an interview becomes a character excavation for the person being interviewed.”
My body stiffened. “Do you think Roy might have hurt himself — not deliberately — perhaps by taking the wrong combination of medications?”
Zack’s voice was gentle. “He has a history, Joanne, and Shakespeare was right — too often, the past is prologue. Roy used drugs before to stop his pain.”
Charlie D was a journalist, but he was also my son-in-law, and when he asked whether Sisters and Strangers would be scuttled if Roy died, his voice was soft with concern.
I shook my head. “The project is too far along,” I said. “Shooting starts in ten weeks. Georgie Shepherd told me when she was here that although she is nominally the series’ executive producer, Ainsley hired her as backup in case Roy wasn’t able to finish the scripts.”
Zack turned to me. “How would you feel about that?”
“Fine, I guess,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to think about it. Everything has happened so fast. But that’s been true from the beginning.”
“One morning Roy appeared with proof that Desmond Love, not Douglas Ellard, was my biological father, and within days Roy was talking about collaborating with me on a six-part series about my family and Des’s.”
“Then in the blink of an eye, you were drafting the legal papers, and Gabe was arranging the financing. When everything fell into place so quickly, Roy and I thought the gods must be on our side.”
Charlie D leaned forward. “I’ve been curious about that. A six-part series usually takes months, even years, to get as far as pre-production, and Sisters and Strangers is almost ready to shoot. How did that happen?”
“Honour to whom honour is due,” I said. “Gabe Vickers may have lacked a moral compass, but he knew how to get the money to put a project on its legs, and he knew who to hire on- and offscreen to create something people wanted. He moved fast. By the time he approached potential backers for Sisters and Strangers, Gabe was able to point out that, in addition to an amazing story and the brilliant writer/director collaboration that had produced The Happiest Girl, he had already signed a renowned actor, Rosamond Burke, and Vale Frazier, a young actor on the verge of becoming a major star. It must have been an easy sell.”
“It wasn’t entirely smooth sailing,” Charlie D said. “My research for the Brodnitz interview referred to a six-part series that was about to get the green light from the network, but the final contracts hadn’t been signed, so Gabe used dark magic and knocked that project out of the box to make way for Sisters and Strangers.”
“That sounds a little bizarre. Do you have any idea what Gabe did?”
Charlie D shook his head. “No. The head of the entertainment division at MediaNation suggested that I look into the history behind Sisters and Strangers’ rapid ascent but the production company that got the boot wasn’t protesting the network’s decision, and Gabe’s project was moving along smoothly. Until now, there didn’t seem to be any reason to dig around.”
Zack was quick to pick up on Charlie D’s inference. “But if Roy dies under seemingly mysterious circumstances, there will be a reason to dig.”
“You bet,” Charlie D said. “Especially given Gabe Vickers’s sudden and dramatic demise.”
My nerves tightened. “The coroner called Gabe’s death ‘death by misadventure.’”
Our son-in-law’s hazel eyes were troubled. “I know. I checked, and when I was doing my homework, I learned that ‘death by misadventure’ describes a death that is primarily due to an accident caused by a dangerous risk taken voluntarily.”
Zack’s response was matter of fact but firm. “I’m sure you also learned that the Vickers file is closed.”
“I did,” Charlie D said. “And let’s hope it stays closed. There are still many unanswered questions about Vickers’s death, Zack. Anyway, I’ll be in New York this week. It’s the epicentre of rumours and gossip, and if a dragon somewhere has crawled out of its lair I’ll hear about it.”
“It’s always useful to know if a dragon is headed in our direction,” Zack said with a half smile.
I wasn’t as sanguine as my husband. I had been the prompter for Bishop Lambeth School’s production of Macbeth, and the second witch spoke a line that always disturbed me. “By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.” It had been over forty years since I’d thought of that line, but seemingly, it had not lost its power to make my blood run cold.
Chapter Two
The image of a vengeful dragon is not easily dispelled, but that evening Zack and I did our best. Our martini glasses were a little fuller than usual, and we dined by candlelight. Mieka had brought us moussaka: my only task was to pour on the béchamel; sprinkle the extra nutmeg and cheese on top and bake the dish for an hour. Zack made a green salad; I opened the wine and turned on Norah Jones. It was perfect — except we were two instead of three.
Zack served us both, then looked at his plate mournfully. “Moussaka is one of our daughter’s favourites.”
“Everything is one of Taylor’s favourites,” I said. “She’s a trencherwoman.”
“What do you suppose she and Vale are having for dinner tonight?”
“Well, they went straight from the airport to the cottage, so I imagine Taylor will pull something out of the freezer. They haven’t seen each other for almost a month, and they’re in love. I don’t imagine food will be at the top of their agenda.”
Zack sipped his wine. “You know I’m still having a hard time getting my head around this.”
“The fact that Taylor’s beloved is a young woman?”
“No, I’m fine with that. I’m just finding it difficult to believe that Taylor has a beloved at all.” Zack raised his hand in a halt gesture. “And you don’t have to tell me that our daughter is happy. I’ve seen her face. But she and Vale are only eighteen.”
“They’ve both had to learn how to live with extraordinary gifts,” I said. “Taylor sold her first painting when she was thirteen, and Vale has been acting since she was a child. They’ve both discovered the importance of making wise career decisions. This is the first love for both of them,” I said. “The attraction was there from the beginning, but they haven’t rushed into a relationship. They’re working it through. Now eat your moussaka before it gets cold.”
It was a quiet evening. We lit a fire. Zack worked on his opening statement for court Monday morning, and because I was thinking of Roy, I read the script for The Happiest Girl in which Vale was one of the leads. The film she was working on now was on hiatus for a week, and she and Taylor were staying at our cottage forty-five minutes from Regina. Vale was also playing the young Sally Love in Sisters and Strangers, and I’d been hoping she’d find time to come into the city and let Roy and
me hear her read some of the dialogue Roy had written.
I was still hoping for that, but when our land line rang, I drew a ragged breath and ran to answer. It was Taylor, and the relief washed over me. “Just calling to say goodnight to you and Dad,” she said. “I knew you’d want to hear that we were fine.”
“You know us well,” I said. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s perfect,” she said, her voice soft with contentment.
“Your dad wanted to know what you had for dinner.”
She laughed. “Bacon and eggs. When we got to the lake, we were both starving. Vale hasn’t had much experience putting heat to food, so I made our old standby. Is Dad there?”
“Right beside me. As soon as he realized it was you on the line, he wheeled over.”
“Better hand him the phone or he’ll drive out to the lake to count my fingers and toes for himself.”
* * *
Zack and I decided to make an early night of it. I’d just finished brushing my teeth when the phone rang. Once again, I tensed. Roy and Taylor had always had a special fondness for each other, and I’d justified not telling her about Roy’s collapse by reminding myself that the outcome was still uncertain. If the news was grim, she’d have to be told sooner rather than later.
However, my caller was not Georgie Shepherd with news of Roy, it was my old friend, Ben Bendure. The documentaries Ben made often raised painfully troubling questions, but he was a comforting presence, and I was looking forward to seeing him the next day. Normally, Ben’s deep and melodious bass was filled with energy, but that night his voice was a rasp, and he sounded weary.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“Yes, but Joanne, I won’t be able to come to lunch tomorrow. I felt a cold coming on, and at eighty I take no chances. Pneumonia may be the old person’s friend, but I’m not prepared to go gentle into that good night quite yet.”
