by Gail Bowen
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” I said. “And there’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know. Jill, if Bryn really is involved in Evan’s death, you can’t cover it up. Kevin’s a good lawyer. He’ll be able to talk to the Crown about what Evan did to his daughter…”
Jill put her hands over her ears, like a child shutting out the world. “I don’t know what happened between Bryn and Evan. I don’t want to know. I just want her to have a life. I want us to have a life. Is that too much to ask?” When Jill raised her face to me, the misery in her eyes killed the answer in my throat.
“We can talk in the morning,” I said.
She nodded. “I’ll phone Kevin and tell him to call off his investigators.”
“Why not let them keep working?” I said. “They might find evidence that implicates someone else.”
“And they might not,” Jill said. “You know the old axiom: a smart lawyer never asks a witness a question to which she doesn’t already have the answer. I don’t have any answers, so I can’t afford to have people running around asking questions.”
“What happened to ‘And the truth shall set you free’?”
Jill met my gaze. “Will you ever be able to respect me again?”
I put my arms around her – in part because I wanted to reassure her, but also because I didn’t know what to say.
The next morning when I came back from taking Willie for his run, there was a note on my plate telling me that Bryn had insisted on keeping her appointment with Dan, and Jill and she had gone to his office in a cab. Clearly, Jill was no more eager than I was for a face-to-face, and I was grateful she had spared us both an encounter that would have been beyond awkward.
I had no idea when Kevin Hynd started his business day, but I was in no mood to wait. I was also in no mood to roll over and play dead while a friend made decisions that could land her in jail. When he answered his phone, Kevin sounded foggy, but my precis of the night’s events galvanized him. “We need to talk, Joanne,” he said. “I’ll put on the coffee pot.”
My pulse quickened as I spied Further’s multi-coloured, Day-Glo, spray-painted exterior. Like Ken Kesey, the owner of the iconic, iridescent bus from which Kevin’s business took its name, I was going into uncharted territory, but Kesey had a garden of pharmaceutical delights to ease his passage, and I was going in straight.
Kevin opened the door immediately. “I saw your car pull up,” he said. “Welcome.” Mellow in blue jeans and a mohair sweater the colour of a frozen grape, he helped me off with my coat and ushered me into his kitchen.
He handed me a mug of coffee and a plate filled with still-warm biscotti. “Comfort for the body and the soul,” I said. “I’m a lucky woman.”
“We at Further aim to please.” He pulled up a chair opposite me. “Your timing couldn’t have been better, Joanne. Shania called just after you did. She’s on her way over.”
“News?”
“Apparently,” he said. “But it can wait. Let’s enjoy the moment.”
The coffee had a chicory bite that conjured up New Orleans and the biscotti were dotted with pistachio nuts and cranberries that made them simultaneously savoury and sweet. Giving myself over to sensual pleasures was easy, but as I reached for a second biscotti, I knew it was time to fill Kevin in. I omitted telling him about Jill’s decision to call a halt to the investigations, but even without that information, Kevin was uneasy.
“Her mind is clouded by fear and love,” he said. “She’s making bad choices.”
“My thinking exactly,” I said. “So what do we do?”
Kevin shrugged. “Stay the course,” he said. “See what Shania comes up with, and keep hoping that neither of us has to remind Jill that mother love is not a justification for condoning murder.”
The Shania of my imagining was a woman with big hair, a midriff she was proud to bare, and three navel piercings. The Shania who walked into Kevin’s shop had a small, plug-shaped body, a round, flat face, almond eyes, coppery-red hair that was smartly buzzed, and skin the colour of strong tea. She was dressed in layers that she proceeded to strip away: first a pea jacket with wooden toggles, next a heavy satin jacket with a mandarin collar and frog fastenings, then a turquoise silk shirt covered in birds of paradise. When she came to a simple cotton T-shirt with a picture of Jim Morrison, she stopped.
Kevin introduced us, offered her refreshments, and smiled. “Whenever you’re ready, Shania.”
“I’m always ready.” She turned to me and said, “A word about my methods. I have a good brain, and I use it. Kevin has given me photos of the principals and accounts that are as detailed as he can make them. If he was aware of the actual words used by one of the principals, he attempted to relay them accurately. The value of a true verbatim account is beyond rubies, but even close is good. After Kevin and I talked, I went home to contemplate.” Her face was split by a slow moon-like smile. “I must thank you, Kevin, for that exquisite box of Thai sticks.”
Kevin touched his forehead in a small salute. “I knew you’d appreciate them.”
“Oh I did,” she said. “And they speeded an epiphany. As I sat in my room, smoking and mulling, one sentence nagged. You reported that Inspector Kequahtooway told Joanne that Felix Schiff seemed to ‘disappear off the face of the earth for sixteen hours.’ That action didn’t jibe with Joanne’s description of Mr. Schiff as a ‘go-to-guy.’ What, I asked myself, would make a man known as the one to be counted on in a pinch vanish when his friend’s need for him was so great?”
“Because his friend asked him to,” I said.
Shania nodded. “Of course, that raised another question. What had Mr. Schiff been asked to do during those hours? Here two figures of speech fused in my mind: Inspector Kequahtooway’s image of Mr. Schiff ‘disappearing off the face of the earth’ and the image you used, Kevin, when you paraphrased the inspector’s remarks. You told me that Felix Schiff had ‘vanished into thin air’?” Shania gazed first at Kevin, then at me. “Are you following my train of thought?” she asked.
The penny dropped. “Felix flew somewhere that night,” I said.
Shania nodded approval. “Precisely. I took Mr. Schiff’s photo out to the airport and showed it to someone who’s been known to share information with Kevin and me. After a little detective work of his own, our contact discovered Felix Schiff had flown to Toronto on the early-evening flight and returned the next morning.”
I remembered Felix’s appearance when he’d come into the hotel the morning after Evan was murdered. He looked like hell, but it wasn’t because he’d been cruising the club scene. He’d travelled three thousand miles in those hours, but except for the time he’d been seated on airplanes, his whereabouts was unaccounted for. “What was he doing in Toronto?” I said.
“That’s still to be determined,” Shania said. “But as a rule these quick flying trips indicate the need to cover something up or recover something. Kevin, I think your client should give Richard Shanks the go-ahead to hire more people to find out exactly what Felix Schiff was up to that night.”
Kevin shot me a look.
“Just tell Richard Shanks to do what he has to do,” I said. “If the bills for the detectives get out of line, I’ll cash in my pop bottles. And let’s make sure the former housekeeper gets special attention.” I looked at Kevin. “Does Shania know about the cooperative Mrs. Carruthers?”
Shania answered for him. “I do,” she said. “Did Mrs. Carruthers’s sudden departure from the household where she’s worked for fifty years raise a question in your mind, Joanne?”
“It did,” I said. “And there’s something else. From all accounts, Caroline MacLeish is incapable of living in that house alone. If Mrs. Carruthers has really moved on to greener pastures, why hasn’t Caroline called and asked her daughter to come home?”
Kevin arched an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting that if I were to phone the MacLeish household at this very moment, the mysterious Mrs. Carruthers might answer the phone?”
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“My guess is she wouldn’t be far away,” I said.
Kevin pulled an address book from his pocket, consulted it, then picked up his cell.
The speech he gave to the person who answered the phone in Toronto revealed that, as a prankster, Kevin was canny as well as merry. “This is Jim Morrison,” he said.
Shania beamed and glanced fondly at the image on her T-shirt.
“I’m with CHJO Radio,” he continued. “We’re doing a story on Evan MacLeish. The word out here is that MacLeish’s mother is some kind of nutcase. Would anybody at that address be willing to talk to us about her on air?”
I could hear the sputter of outraged denial from where I sat.
“And your name, ma’am.”
Kevin listened, then touched his index finger to his thumb in the circle that indicates success. “Thank you, Mrs. Carruthers, we here at CHJO pride ourselves on our accuracy.” Kevin hung up and shook his head. “It appears Mrs. C didn’t leave her post after all,” he said. “We’ve been had.”
Shania rubbed her buzz thoughtfully. “Sometimes ‘being had’ is instructive. Obviously Mrs. Carruthers didn’t come up with the idea for this wild goose chase on her own. She was acting on someone’s instructions.”
“Whose?” Kevin asked.
“Someone who was willing to throw every member of that household except Caroline to the wolves,” I said.
“Or someone who wanted to make it appear that way,” Shania said.
“ ‘Always walls, always corridors, always doors – and on the other side, still more walls,’ ” I said.
Kevin leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Last Year at Marienbad,” he said. “A truly strange adventure in cinema.”
“It was indeed,” I agreed. “And I’d like to stay and talk about it, but I have my own adventure in cinema waiting. Do you two need me here?”
“We like having you here,” Kevin said. “But need is another matter.”
“We’re cool,” Shania said. “We’re just going to discuss logistics and personnel. What movie caught your interest?”
“Another film by Evan MacLeish,” I said. “All I know is the title. It’s called The Glass Coffin.”
“Evocative,” Kevin said. He picked up a biscotti, wrapped it in a paper napkin, and handed it to me. “One for the road,” he said. “And don’t forget to call me with your movie review.”
I drove around Dan’s neighbourhood until I was certain Bryn’s appointment was over. At this point, my relationship with Jill was too precariously poised to risk confrontation. When my watch indicated that it was five minutes to the hour, I thought I was safe.
Dan was in his backyard scooping sunflower seeds into one of his bird feeders. He acknowledged my presence with a wave of his scoop and kept filling the feeder with seeds. “The house finches love these,” he said. “They’ve just started coming to Saskatchewan, so I want to make them welcome.”
“They’re lucky they have such a thoughtful provider,” I said.
“Works both ways,” Dan said. “As soon as the angle of the sun is right, the finches begin to sing. They have the most glorious song, and they begin so early – late February or early March. To hear them when there’s still snow on the ground is like a promise from spring.”
Dan closed the bag of seeds and faced me. “You have to talk to Jill,” he said.
“The session went badly?”
“The session didn’t go at all,” he said. “Jill refused to leave Bryn alone with me. I don’t get it. The whole idea was to give Bryn someone she could open up to, but today it was as if Jill was afraid to let Bryn say anything. Understandably, Bryn was upset at Jill’s interference. She’d brought along this journal she’d started, and she was anxious to talk about what she’d written.”
“But Jill wouldn’t let her?”
“No,” he said. “I suggested Jill come into the house to resolve the problem, and as soon as we were alone, she fired me.”
“I don’t know what to say, Dan – except to apologize. You’ve gone out of your way to help us.” I looked at him carefully. “You are aware that this is no reflection on you.”
Dan nodded. “My ego will survive,” he said. “It’s Bryn I’m concerned about.”
“I’m concerned about everybody and everything,” I said. “And I haven’t a clue about what, if anything, I should do next.”
“Do you want to talk about it? I still have a couple more minutes before my next appointment.”
“Okay, I guess I should start by saying that Jill would not be happy to see me here.”
“She doesn’t want you talking to me?”
“She doesn’t want anybody talking about Bryn – she wants Kevin to shut down his investigation; she wants you to stop Bryn’s therapy; and she’s offered Claudia and Tracy pretty much whatever they want if they’ll agree to keep spinning stories that will protect Bryn.”
“From what?” Dan asked. “The biggest threat to Bryn is herself.”
“Jill doesn’t see it that way. She thinks that if people start delving too deeply into Evan MacLeish’s murder, they might find something that will connect Bryn to it.”
“Does Jill really believe Bryn killed her father?” Dan’s words formed little clouds in the frigid air.
“I think she doesn’t want to risk knowing the truth,” I said.
“And she’s prepared to build a life on not knowing.” Dan said. “That surprises me. Jill struck me as someone who would want to know everything.”
“As a rule she does, but she’s also a human being, and as you once told me, that means being ‘fallible, fucked up, and full of frailty.’ ”
Dan grinned. “The world according to Albert Ellis,” he said.
“There are worse teachers,” I said.
“Yeah,” Dan agreed. “There are.”
A teenaged boy in an army surplus winter jacket came around the corner. “Hey, Dan,” he shouted. “Notice that I’m right on time for once.”
Dan gave the boy the high sign. “I’m impressed,” he said. “Let’s get rolling.” Dan turned back to me. “I’ll keep eight tomorrow open for Bryn. Bring her yourself if you have to.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Dan, I’d like to go inside and check out some of the films that came from Evan’s office. I shouldn’t be long.”
“Stay as long as you like,” he said. “You won’t be in my way. I have back-to-back appointments all morning.”
Even the warmth of Dan’s welcoming home couldn’t dispel the chill I felt when I contemplated Jill’s future. The night of the rehearsal dinner, as Jill stood between Angus’s torches, swathed in the soft folds of her timeless velvet cloak, it seemed she had finally gotten it right. In that incandescent moment, everything seemed possible for her. Now it was clear that no matter what Jill did, her story wouldn’t end with “happily ever after.”
As I came into the living room, I was overwhelmed with despair. For days, I’d been fuelled by adrenaline, responding to the unimaginable, reacting, deciding, hoping against hope. Now the heart had gone out of me. I was sick of tragedy and death. In the words of the old Spirit of the West song, all I wanted was to turn my head and walk, walk away.
But if the last days had taught me anything it was that, wherever I walked, trouble would follow.
I sank to my knees and began hunting through one of the boxes of tapes that had been sent from Evan’s office in Toronto. My search was perfunctory, but The Glass Coffin wasn’t hard to spot. The other tapes were obviously works-in-progress with titles and dates hand-printed on their spines. The Glass Coffin was in a paper sleeve with the name and address of a film and video processing company printed on the box and a computerized label describing the box’s contents: The Unblinking Eye: The Glass Coffin, Seamless Master, Length: 44.58 minutes. (Textless @ Tail), Ch I
2: Stereo Mix. There were other notations, too cryptic for me, but I knew at once I’d found the tape Evan had sold to the network.
I pu
t it in the machine and pressed play. In seconds, the room was filled with the hauntingly elegiac “Pavanne for a Dead Princess” by Maurice Ravel. On screen, the ruffled deep-mauve petals of a perfect rose bloomed slowly in the soft morning light. A woman began to speak. “Even their names are beautiful,” she said. “Shropshire Lad, Abellard, Cajun Dancer, Gabriel’s Fire, Dakota, Black Magic, Callisto, Natasha Monet, Flamingo, Cachet, Cadenza, Hand in Hand, Lasting Peace.” The camera pulled back, revealing as it moved a fairy-tale profusion of roses in the extravagantly gorgeous hues of early summer: deep rose, soft pink, apricot, lemon, pale peach, cream, burgundy, magenta. As the distance between the camera and the roses increased, the vibrant life of the garden ebbed, making the petals seem less a product of nature than of an artist’s broken brushwork.
The woman’s seductive contralto continued. “It’s been forty years since I felt the sun like a hand on my back as I bent to the earth; forty years since I knew that numinous moment when the scent of growing roses perfumes the air. For forty years, I’ve watched the world from behind a wall of glass.”
When the camera moved to the woman’s face, I was struck by how young Caroline MacLeish appeared to be. Evan’s lighting of his mother had been benevolent, but Caroline’s agelessness went beyond a filmmaker’s trick. Like the cloistered nuns of my childhood, Caroline had been sheltered from the harsh rays of the world’s scrutiny, and, like them, her complexion retained the faint pearl-like aura of youth when chronological youth was just a memory.
There were no flashbacks to still photographs of Caroline as she had been before the postpartum incident that circumscribed her life. Evan’s interest was clearly less in what had shaped Caroline than in how Caroline had shaped her world. The first minutes of the movie followed Caroline through the small ceremonies of her day: her hour in bed with Indian tea and the newspapers; her careful coordination of her makeup, clothing, and accessories; her diligent study of current medical journals and the Internet for the latest information about her illness; her supervision of the plantings and prunings in her rose garden. It was impossible not to pity this woman who hadn’t felt the wind on her face or been touched by a raindrop for four decades. But as Evan enlarged his focus to include the secondary players in Caroline’s drama, sympathy turned to revulsion. One by one, the members of Caroline’s inner circle – Evan, Claudia, Tracy, Bryn – made their entrances. All approached Caroline with the pitiful eagerness of beggars seeking alms; all left with nothing more than scraps of her attention. No matter how often they were ignored or rejected, they kept coming back – arms outstretched, eyes wary but hopeful. Evan’s portrait of the power of the clinical narcissist was devastating. It also raised some provocative questions about the filmmaker and his subject. Had Evan been aware of what his film revealed about Caroline or had years of living with her blinded him to the truth? And what about Caroline? What had she seen when she looked at footage of The Glass Coffin? A dutiful son’s tribute to his mother or betrayal? One thing was certain. The film proved that Jill had been wrong about her mother-in-law – Caroline MacLeish was a monster.
