by Gail Bowen
“From what?”
“From that house she lived in. It’s a museum – exquisite, but not a place where people live. Evan’s grandfather was a diplomat in the days when treasures went cheap. Everything you sit on or look at or drink from is priceless: shoji screens, lacquers, Japanese wood-block prints, the most incredible red sandstone Buddha.”
“Not an easy place for a child to grow up.”
“No, and the people in that house weren’t easy people to grow up with. Bryn’s mother was a real piece of work. And you’ve seen Tracy…”
“Annie’s been dead for almost fifteen years. Why does Tracy still live there?”
Jill raised her hands in the universal gesture of the confounded. “Who knows? My guess is that when Tracy discovered that the spotlight would always shine on her sister not her, she just followed the path of least resistance.”
“A role in a children’s show and living at home – someone else’s home at that. Not exactly a sparkling destiny,” I said.
“No one in that house has a sparkling destiny – it’s a house of half-lived lives.”
“Claudia seems to fill her days.”
“A pair of Rottweilers, a niece who can’t wait to leave, a sister-in-law who’s a basket case, and a mother who hasn’t been out of the house in forty years – not my idea of a fully realized life.”
“Caroline hasn’t been out of the house in forty years?”
Jill nodded. “Apparently after Claudia was born, her mother suffered a postpartum ‘incident.’ That’s when the agoraphobia began.”
“Claudia told me today that her mother never wanted children,” I said. “Was the incident caused by guilt?”
Jill shrugged. “Who knows? That family is full of secrets.”
“Still, someone must have tried to get treatment for Caroline.”
“Of course, they did,” Jill said. “Her husband was a professor at U of T. He tapped every colleague and acquaintance he had at the School of Medicine. They offered to psychoanalyze her, medicate her, and modify her behaviour. Caroline turned them all down flat.”
“Why?”
“According to Evan, his mother saw herself as a woman like Virginia Woolf – a person with an exceptional mind and exceptional problems. Apparently, she simply refused to allow people she considered to be her intellectual inferiors to roam around in her brain.”
“And her family accepted that?”
“They had no choice.” Jill ran a thumbnail down the label of her Great Western. “For all her problems, Caroline is a force to be reckoned with. She has a lot of money and she really is brilliant. She has one of those quicksilver minds that shimmers from one idea to the next.”
“Her illness must have put a pretty serious dent in her shimmering.”
Jill nodded. “It’s been devastating for her. She should have been setting the world of ideas on fire. Instead, she has nothing more to do than muse over her tchotchkes, supervise her garden, and read everything ever written about agoraphobia. She’s an expert there – in every way. She’s so knowledgeable, she’s written articles that have appeared in medical journals. She just can’t break out. She says it’s as if she’s in a fairy tale and some evil witch cast a spell on her, so that every time she tries to step out of the house, the demons attack.”
“Is she bitter?” I asked.
“People make accommodations…” Jill gazed at her bottle. “Empty,” she said.
“Are you up for another round?”
“Nope,” she said. “I think I’ve had enough fun today. I’m going to hit the sack.”
After Jill went up to bed, I checked on the kids. Angus and Bryn were engrossed in the movie credits, but the question of whether Ralphie would ever get his Red Ryder so he could shoot his eye out would remain unanswered for Taylor. She was sound asleep.
I tapped my son’s shoulder. “Santa’s still doing his evaluations,” I said. “Are you up for a good deed?”
“You want me to carry Taylor upstairs?”
“I do,” I said. “It’s the end of the day, and your sister is no longer a featherweight.”
We climbed the stairs together and tucked Taylor in. “Dismissed with thanks,” I said.
Angus didn’t leave. “Mum, have you got a minute?”
“Of course.”
He followed me down to my room, closed the door, and stared at his shoes.
“Let me help,” I said. “Is this about the fact that Bryn is back on the A list.”
Angus coloured. “We had a long talk. She told me that sometimes she doesn’t know how to behave. Like with her dad dying – she says she must have been in a state of shock or something.”
“She seemed pretty focused to me,” I said. “She wants to move to New York and she isn’t about to let anything interfere with her plans.”
“I know that’s how it looks,” Angus said. “But she’s trying. You saw how nice she was tonight.”
“Yes,” I said, “I did.”
Angus looked at me hard. “You don’t think she’s sincere.”
“Just take it slow,” I said.
“Because?”
“Because the fact that a young woman believes taupe is an underrated colour isn’t enough to build a relationship on.”
As if on cue, the taupe-lover herself burst through the door. This time there was no mistaking Bryn’s sincerity. She was so agitated her words tumbled over one another. “There’s something going on in the back alley. A lot of lights, and I think police cars. Should I get Jill?”
“No,” I said. “Let her sleep till we find out what’s happening.”
As we followed her, Bryn filled us in. “The dog was making this weird noise, so I let him out. The minute he got in the backyard, he started to bark. I went out to the deck to see what was going on. That’s when I saw…,” she shrugged, “whatever I saw.”
We all put on coats and boots; I called Willie, snapped on his leash, then the four of us went to investigate. As soon as I unlatched the gate that opened onto the alley, Willie made a sound I’d never heard him make before: a low, guttural warning growl. I knew how he felt. The quiet alley along which we’d walked an hour before was floodlit, and khaki tarpaulins had been thrown over the snow. Half a dozen police officers were tipping garbage bags from the bins onto the tarps, then searching through their findings. It was not a pretty sight.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Police business,” a cop who didn’t look much older than Angus said.
“That’s my garbage you’re going through,” I said. “So it’s my business too. What are you looking for?”
The young cop took a step towards me, and Willie strained at the leash, growling at him with bared teeth.
“Hold that dog back,” the young officer said.
“He doesn’t do anything without a command,” I said.
“I’ll get the inspector.”
Alex Kequahtooway came back with the young cop and, in an instant, Willie morphed from killer to buddy. Tail wagging, he leapt up and began licking Alex’s face. The corners of the young cop’s mouth turned up as he looked at me. “Looks like your dog needs a command,” he said.
“Heel, Willie,” I said in my new Claudia-inspired voice, and amazingly, Willie came and sat at my feet.
I glanced at the tarpaulin – and recognized some treasures from our garbage: takeout containers from Heliotrope, some wizened tangerines that had been hiding in the back of the crisper, an empty bacon package. A young cop was going through the detritus with the fervour of a man panning for gold. “So, Alex,” I said, “what exactly is it that you’re looking for?”
Alex’s left eye twitched, a sure sign of tension. “I can’t answer that,” he said. “This is a police investigation. I think you should leave.”
“It’s a pleasant night,” I said. “And this is public space.”
“Suit yourself,” Alex said.
After five minutes, my bravado had dissipated and my feet were cold, but
at least I wasn’t alone. Angus had stayed with me, so – surprisingly – had Bryn. Both were uncomplaining, but I was just thirty seconds from calling it quits when the young officer closest to us held up an empty prescription pill bottle. “Bingo,” he said.
Alex gave the discovery the briefest of glances and said, “Good work. Bag it for forensics.”
I stepped towards the tarpaulin. “All that effort for a pill bottle,” I said.
Alex hesitated before responding; when he did, it was clear he had decided to push my buttons. “It’s evidence,” he said. “A conscientious citizen told us we might find something helpful to our case here, and sure enough we did.” He looked hard at me. “What’s the matter, Jo? You seem a little shaken.”
“Just concerned about my neighbourhood. I hope your people are planning to clean up this alley – kids play out here.”
“Unlike civilians, we don’t leave messes we’re not prepared to clean up,” Alex said. Then he turned to Angus, and his voice grew gentle. “Could I have a minute with you?” he asked.
“Sure,” Angus said.
“Bryn and I will go back to the house,” I said. “You can catch up with us.”
We were barely out of earshot when Bryn pulled me close. “Was that my aunt’s pill bottle they found?”
“We can talk about it inside,” I said.
Bryn was relentless. As soon as we stepped through the kitchen door, she turned to me. “So was it hers?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m guessing it was.”
“Then she killed Mr. Leventhal?”
“Bryn, what do you know about the way Mr. Leventhal died?”
“Enough,” she said. “There’s not a lot that happens I don’t know.” Her eyes were glittering and her cheeks were pink. She seemed almost feverish with anticipation. “So do you think the police will arrest her?”
“If it’s Tracy’s prescription bottle, they’ll certainly want to talk to her.”
Bryn seemed oddly gratified. “Then they’ll stop thinking it was Jill,” she said and added, as if to herself, “It was a lucky thing the police were out there.”
“Lucky for who?” I said.
She looked incredulous. “For Jill and me.” She stifled a yawn. “I’m really tired. Angus and I are going shopping tomorrow morning, so I’d better get some sleep.” Suddenly, she remembered her manners. “Thank you very much for the nice evening,” she said.
I was still reeling when Angus came in.
“Everything okay here?” he asked.
“Couldn’t be better,” I said. “Bryn had a nice evening and she’s gone to bed.”
“She wants to go shopping tomorrow,” he said.
“She mentioned that,” I said. “What did Alex want?”
Angus unzipped his jacket and turned away. “He just wanted to say Merry Christmas. He’s still a great guy, Mum. He taught me how to drive. He taught me a lot of stuff. I always kind of thought you two would end up together.”
“For a while, we kind of thought the same thing,” I said. “But it’s not going to happen, Angus. It’s over.”
My son gave me a bear hug. “Well, it was fun while it lasted,” he said.
“You’re right,” I said. “It was fun.”
Suddenly alone, I moved to the glass doors that overlooked the alley where Alex was supervising the search for evidence. Despite everything that had gone wrong between us, I still felt connected to him, and I longed to tell him it was time he came in from the cold. If, as Nadine Gordimer says, human contact is as random and fleeting as the flash of fireflies in the darkness, Alex and I had made the most of our moments. Hands joined as we sat at the symphony listening to Mozart; heads bent towards one another as we played killer Scrabble in front of the fireplace; bodies touching as we lay on the sand at the lake, our books forgotten, listening to the pounding of the waves and thinking ahead to the possibilities of the old couch on the screened porch, we had always been smart enough to know we were happy. But at some level beyond the reach of reason, we had both known that our firefly moments were numbered.
My encounter with Alex might have provided conclusive proof that our relationship was over, but it had also raised some unsettling questions that had nothing to do with our personal relationship. I would have bet the farm that the prescription bottle in the dumpster had belonged to Tracy Lowell, but how it had made its way from her room at the Hotel Saskatchewan to my back alley was a mystery. The identity of the helpful citizen who had called the police tip-line was less enigmatic. Bryn was both fastidious and self-involved; yet she had stood in the cold with me watching a police officer paw through garbage until he came up with exhibit A.
A cynic might conclude that she had known all along that he would find what he was looking for.
CHAPTER
8
On a normal day, few things gave me as much pleasure as dialling my daughter’s number and waiting to hear her voice. On the morning of December 24, I dreaded making the call. Since Thanksgiving, we had been making plans to spend the holiday together in Saskatoon. After the birth of my granddaughter, Madeleine, we had made the trip to Saskatoon at least one weekend a month, and Mieka and Greg had put more than a few kilometres on their Volvo wagon coming to see us. We were a family that enjoyed one another’s company, and we had all been counting the days till Christmas. I’d been ready for two weeks: presents wrapped, stocking stuffers bagged, casseroles frozen, but once again Robbie Burns was right on the money, and the best laid plans of mice and men had “gang agley.” Given the fact that the police had told Jill, Tracy, Claudia, and Bryn to stay in Regina until further notice, there was no way I could leave Jill alone at Christmas.
When I broke the news, Mieka erupted in tears, but, as she pointed out between sobs, she was eight and a half months’ pregnant with her second child, hormonally driven, and not her best self. She was, however, cheerful and pragmatic by nature and that morning we rejigged and rescheduled most of our plans within five minutes. By the time Jill walked into the kitchen, Mieka and I were reassuring one another that, whenever we got around to celebrating it, this would be the best Christmas ever.
Jill was frowning when I hung up. “Sounds like you were bailing on Mieka,” she said.
“Not bailing, just shifting things around a little.”
“Because of me,” Jill said.
“Yes,” I said. “But the decision has been made, so live with it. ‘All will be well,’ as my yoga teacher says. Speaking of transcendence, you’re looking more like your old self this morning.”
“Actually,” Jill said. “I’m feeling not bad. I had a good night’s sleep, and when I stepped on your scales, I discovered I’d lost three pounds.”
“Every cloud has a rainbow,” I said.
Jill smiled. “Are you sure you’re okay about not being with your incomparable granddaughter and her parents tomorrow?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “We’ll have two Christmases: Taylor and Madeleine will be surfing the bliss wave. My only problem now is poultry. I’m trying to think of a butcher who would still have a fresh turkey big enough for all of us.”
“Problem solved,” Jill said. “I’ll take care of dinner. We’ll eat at the Saskatchewan. These old railway hotels really know how to do holidays. I brought this not so merry band into your life, the least I can do is feed everybody.”
“The hotel will cost you,” I said.
Jill sliced a bagel and popped it in the toaster. “At 5:00 p.m. last night, I became a woman who will never have to worry about money again.”
“Evan made that much from his movies?”
“Nobody gets rich making movies,” Jill said. “Evan inherited money, and he played the market. Luckily for me, unlike his sister, my husband knew when to hold them and when to fold them.”
“Claudia is a woman with money worries?”
“Big-time, but she’s not paying for dinner.”
“In that case, the Kilbourns accept your invitation with ple
asure. Taylor will be thrilled that she gets to wear her swooshy dress again.”
“Good.” Jill smeared peanut butter on her bagel. “So what’s going on around here?”
“Eat first, then we’ll talk.”
“Let’s talk now,” Jill said.
As I told her about the police garbage-seining operation, she slumped. “Why is it that lately all the news has been bad news?”
As if on cue, the phone rang. Jill and I exchanged glances. “Don’t answer it,” she said.
“It could be deliverance,” I said.
“Fat chance,” Jill bit into her bagel morosely.
When I heard the voice on the other end, I mouthed the name “Claudia,” and Jill rolled her eyes.
Claudia got straight to the point. “We had a visit from the police last night. Tracy needs a lawyer,” she said. “Can you suggest someone? A woman would be best. Tracy tends to be manipulative with men.”
“Let me think,” I said. “There’s a lawyer named Lauren Ayala in my yoga class. She has a sound reputation, and when she says namaste at the end of class, her face is incandescent.”
“Perfect,” Claudia said. “Competent and centred enough to deal with Tracy. Have you got her number?”
“I’ll look it up.” I cradled the phone between my ear and my shoulder and flipped through the book till I found an ad for Lauren Ayala’s office. Her area of special expertise was criminal law. I gave Claudia the information, hung up, and turned back to Jill. “You heard everything?”
“I did,” Jill said. She touched her napkin to her lips. “Do you think the kids would be all right if we went out for a while?”
“Sure,” I said. “I have to drop Taylor off at a friend’s, and Bryn and Angus are driving around doing what Angus calls his kamikaze Christmas shopping. What did you have in mind?”
Jill stood up and stretched. “Might be useful to hear Tracy’s story before your lawyer friend helps her get her chakras realigned.”
I grinned at her. “You’re not nearly as dumb as you look,” I said.
After Taylor waved us off from her friend Jess’s house, Jill and I drove downtown. Claudia struck me as someone who didn’t like surprises, but when she opened her door to us, she was cordial. “You should have told me you were coming,” she said. “I would have ordered fresh coffee.” She stood aside to let us pass. “As you can see, I’ve finished, but Tracy hasn’t even poured her tea.”
