by Gail Bowen
Felix looked away. “I wish that were so,” he said. “Gabe was a good man, and he deserved a good death.”
“But he didn’t get one,” I said.
“No,” Felix said. “He didn’t. After I came in, Evan suggested we all have a drink and calm down. Gabe agreed, but he said an odd thing. ‘I’ll drink your liquor, but it’s still Sam Waterston time – time finally to stand at moral attention.’ The reference didn’t mean anything to me, but clearly it did to Evan. The room became even more tense. Evan appeared distracted. He said he’d forgotten he didn’t have any Scotch, and he went down to Claudia’s room for a bottle. When he came back, we had a few drinks, then Gabe slumped in his chair. I was a little drunk myself. I suggested we order some coffee and sober up.
“Evan was very cool. He told me Gabe had been determined to tell Jill something she didn’t need to hear until after the wedding and he’d put something in Gabe’s drink to calm him down till he could listen to reason.”
I could feel the hysteria rising, but my voice was firm. “Felix, it’s important for me to know how Gabe died?”
Felix’s gaze was soft. “You cared for him, Joanne?”
“Yes,” I said. “We didn’t have much time together, but I liked him very much.”
“What I’m about to tell you isn’t pretty.”
“I still want to hear it.”
“I respect your decision,” Felix said. “The moment we picked Gabe up to carry him to his room, I knew something was wrong. He wasn’t moving at all. His jaw had fallen open, and his eyes were glassy.” Felix closed his own eyes as if to shut out the image. “I felt for his pulse. There was none. I told Evan we had to call the police.”
“And he stopped you.”
“He didn’t have to. Evan held up his binder and asked if I’d read it. When I admitted I had, he made me an offer. He said he knew I was in love with his mother and that if I helped him cover up Gabe’s death, he’d refuse to allow the network to use the film of Caroline. I was in a state of shock. There was a dead man in the room. Everything seemed unreal. I didn’t say anything. Evan seemed to interpret my silence as a rejection of his offer. He picked up the phone, handed it to me, and said, ‘Call my mother and ask if she’ll be able to live with your decision to expose her life.’ ”
“And Caroline convinced you to change your mind,” I said.
Felix nodded. “Evan and I took Gabe’s body down in the freight elevator and carried him out into the back alley. It was deserted. It was late, and there was a blizzard – the conditions couldn’t have been more perfect. I’ve had nightmares about what I did every night since I walked away from that alley.”
“Felix, I won’t lie to you. We both know that what you did was terrible, but you were faced with an impossible choice.”
“Since I introduced Jill and Evan, there’ve been nothing but impossible choices,” Felix said. “That’s why I’ve had to rely on Caroline’s guidance.”
“Were you relying on Caroline’s guidance when you killed Evan?”
“She showed me we had no alternative. At the reception, Evan told me the deal was off. He said the network had called earlier that day and they were so high on The Glass Coffin they were bumping another program to show it during sweeps week in February.”
“But that was your chance to back out and go to the police,” I said. “If Evan wasn’t going to honour his part of the agreement…”
“Honour,” Felix repeated the word as if were a vestige of ancient language. “Joanne, Evan and I had left a man’s body beside a dumpster behind the hotel. As Evan pointed out when I begged him to reconsider, that made us equally culpable. I was beside myself. Caroline was about to be publicly humiliated, and my stupidity had made it impossible for me to be her champion. I went downstairs and called her. Evan was her son. I thought she might have some insight into how I could appeal to him.”
“But she didn’t.”
Felix shook his head. “She said Evan had never loved her as he should, and that he was a cancer that had to be removed from our lives.”
“So Evan was murdered because he didn’t love his mother enough?” I said. Even to my own ears, my horror was evident, but Felix didn’t pick up on it.
“No, no,” he said impatiently. “Caroline was able, as she always is, to take in the larger picture. She had seen Jill’s commitment to Bryn. She saw that with Evan out of the way, Jill would be the one making the final decisions…”
His eyes searched my face, waiting for me to finish the sentence. “And Jill would make certain Bryn’s grandmother was protected,” I said.
Felix relaxed – grateful that no further explanations were necessary. “It was only a question of waiting for the opportune time. Given Evan’s family, I didn’t have to wait long. When I got back to the party, Bryn and her father were arguing. At one point in their quarrel, she picked up the hunting knife. I suppose she was just being dramatic as the young often are, but unwittingly, she had shown me the way. When Evan left the room, I picked up the knife and followed him.” Felix broke. “Do you know what Evan said when he saw the knife? He said, ‘My mother sent you.’ He was so calm it was as if he’d been waiting for that moment all his life. Then he said, ‘In one way or another, she will murder us all.’ ”
“Evan had come to see the truth about Caroline,” I said. “Making the movie must have opened his eyes.”
Felix scowled. “If his eyes truly had been open, he would have seen what I saw. A woman of infinite strength. The night Evan… died… she was magnificent. After I’d done what I had to do, I was utterly spent. All I wanted was to be in Caroline’s arms. I went to the hotel, showered and changed, and caught the first flight out. I brought the bloody clothes with me and left them in a locker at Pearson. I was certain she would welcome me.”
“But she sent you back,” I said.
“She said that by coming to Toronto I’d linked her to Evan’s murder. And of course, she was right. She told me that I had to go to Regina, see the murder investigation through, then we could be together forever.”
“And you believed her?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
I was exasperated. “Felix, can’t you understand what happened? Caroline manipulated you, the way she’s manipulated everyone else all these years. But this doesn’t have to be the end of it. Your life doesn’t have to end in a stranger’s living room this morning. We can get people to attest to your character. We can get experts to testify about what she’s done to you.”
The hand holding the gun relaxed, lowering it so the muzzle pointed at the floor. Relief washed over me.
“And you really would help?” Felix said.
“I would. Jill would. So would everyone. Please. Just put down the gun, and let me get Dan Kasperski in here, so you can talk to a professional.”
Our eyes locked, and for a moment I thought I had him. Then, as if to prove that evil is always a force to be reckoned with, the phone rang.
“Don’t answer it,” I said. “We can work this out. You can have a life.”
“What kind of life would I have without her?” he said.
The phone rang again. Felix touched my shoulder. “You will tell people the truth about us, won’t you?”
“I’ll tell them the truth,” I said.
Felix picked up the phone. “I’m ready,” he said. “Thank you, Caroline. Thank you for giving even my death beauty and purpose.”
When he rested the muzzle against his temple, I closed my eyes. For a moment after he pulled the trigger, I felt as if I’d been shot too. The sound of the gunshot ricocheted around the small room causing something in my brain to vibrate in sympathy. The stench of sudden death filled my nostrils, leaving me breathless and gagging. The force of the shot had driven Felix’s head backwards and I noticed, as if from a great distance, that my clothes were covered with blood and something worse than blood. I felt cold – cold as the dead. I don’t know how long I sat beside the body before I bent to pick up the cel
l from the place on the floor where it had fallen. After I called Alex, I chose the softest of Dan’s quilts and placed it over Felix. On the television screen, Caroline MacLeish’s image remained frozen – a wasp in amber – beyond regret, beyond pain, beyond humanity.
Suddenly I was angrier than I can ever remember being. I grabbed the remote control and hurled it at the screen. “You murdering bitch,” I said. “You venomous, murdering bitch.”
Only when the remote control bounced impotently to the floor did I begin to weep.
When Alex Kequahtooway arrived on the scene, I wasn’t alone. At some point after the shot rang out, I’d run out to the garage and pounded on the door to Dan’s office. Dan had reassured his young patient and steered me into his drum room. There among the dazzling display of Zildjian hi-hats, crashes, and earthplates, I told my story.
After I was finished, Dan took my hands in his. “You did everything you could, Joanne,” he said. “And it was good that you were with Felix at the end. No man should go to his death alone.”
“He didn’t think he was going alone,” I said. “Caroline promised that she’d die with him – a double exit.”
“Do you think she kept her word?” Dan asked.
I remembered Caroline’s image frozen on the TV screen. “Not a chance,” I said. “Not a chance.”
Alex’s interview with me was consummately professional. My answers to his questions were factual but not expansive, and when he realized there was nothing more to be gleaned from questioning me, he told me I could go. He didn’t chastise me for throwing the quilt over Felix’s body and contaminating the suicide scene. Alex was a good cop, and he seemed to understand instinctively that the answers to Felix’s suicide would not be found in forensic evidence.
The day after Felix’s death, Alex called and invited me for coffee. We met – not in Marv Brenner’s window – but in a small and pretty cafe where we’d often come to drink coffee, eat cinnamon buns, and count the moments until we could be alone. The meeting was not a success. After a few perfunctory questions about how I was handling the trauma of witnessing a man’s suicide, Alex lapsed into silence. I asked a few questions about Alex’s future plans and about how his nephew, Eli, was doing in university, but the responses I got were monosyllabic. The air between us was heavy with the weight of things unsaid, and we left after ten minutes, each carrying an uneaten cinnamon bun in a red-and-white-checked paper bag. On the sidewalk outside the cafe, Alex kissed my cheek. “I wish this had gone better, Jo,” he said.
“Me too,” I said. I was the first to turn and walk away.
Jill and Bryn stayed with us till the last day of the old year. Claudia and Tracy had left for Toronto the night before. They were not going back to the house on Walmer Road – not that day, not ever. Their plan was to spend some time with a friend of Claudia’s who lived in Garden Hill, a small town east of the city. Claudia was going to look for an acreage where she could raise and board dogs, and Tracy was going to take in the country air until her next big theatrical break. Jill was financing the move, and she was sanguine about the fact that the investment she was making would be long-term.
Relations between Jill, Bryn, Claudia, and Tracy had been steadily improving since the four of them sat down together and watched The Glass Coffin. Jill described the experience as highly affecting, a breaking of the emotional logjam that had trapped the members of Caroline MacLeish’s household for years. Jill said the film was the most important and enduring legacy Evan could have left his family.
The members of Evan’s family weren’t the only ones who gained entry to the private world of Caroline MacLeish that winter. The morning I was to drive Jill and her stepdaughter to the airport, she called me into her bedroom and pointed at the TV. The network ad campaign for The Glass Coffin had started. Someone at NBC had unearthed a treasure from Evan’s archives of discarded footage: a poignant scene of Caroline alone in her bedroom. She was wearing a silk robe in the forget-me-not blue of her eyes and she approached the camera with a lover’s intensity. “My world is smaller than most,” she said. “But what my life shows it that even the smallest world can be made to yield everything. I have known loyalty and betrayal, joy and despair, and I have known love.” Her fingers caressed the frame of a photograph on the elaborately carved table beside her. The camera moved in for a closeup of the picture in the frame. It was of Felix Schiff. “I have known unimaginable love,” Caroline said triumphantly.
The television announcer’s voice was breathless. “And Felix Schiff killed for that love – not once, but twice. In time for Valentine’s, NBC is proud to present the passion that made headlines: a very special portrait of a very special love.”
Beside me, Jill shuddered. “Poor Felix,” she said. “Speaking of – I had a call from the funeral home yesterday. They have two boxes for me: Evan’s ashes and Felix’s. How’s that for a going-away present?”
“Unique,” I said. “What are you going to do with them?”
“I’ve already been in touch with Linn Brokenshire’s brother about having Evan’s ashes buried with her.”
“That’s a surprise,” I said.
“It shouldn’t be,” Jill replied. “You were the one who told me that Evan really loved Linn, and I didn’t have any other ideas. There’s only one catch. The brother’s a born-again, so there will have to be what he calls ‘a truly Jesus-centred service.’ ” Jill shook her head. “After all these years, Linn is going to get to save Evan’s soul.”
“We get our rewards on this side of the grave or the next,” I said.
“If only…,” Jill’s eyes filled with tears. She took out a tissue and blew her nose noisily. “Anyway. That leaves Felix. What should I do about his ashes?”
“FedEx them to Caroline,” I said. “To the victor go the spoils.”
“What a monster she is,” Jill said. “Poor Felix. Poor all of us. Do you think we’ll ever be happy again?”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s New Year’s Eve – the most hopeful night of the year – 365 days of possibilities ahead.”
“And what are you doing New Year’s?” Jill asked.
“We’re going to Mieka’s tomorrow, so I’m taking down our Christmas trees tonight,” I said. “Kevin is coming over to give me a hand.”
“Speaking of possibilities,” Jill said. Suddenly she looked impish. “Hey, here’s a plan. Let’s crack open a couple of cool ones and listen to Taylor’s tree one last time.”
“I don’t think I can take it,” I said.
“Sure you can,” Jill said. “It’s for auld lang syne.”
So my old friend and I went downstairs, opened two bottles of Great Western, and turned on Taylor’s tree. We drank a toast to absent loved ones, then we sat on the floor and listened to the world’s most painfully tuneless version of “The Way We Were.” Above us, Jerry Garcia, once the bard of Songs of Innocence and Experience, now an icon in a Day-Glo sunburst, beamed down warmth and hope on our cold and needy world.
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