The Last Good Day jk-9

by Gail Bowen

  My friend Holly Knott taught family law at the University of Saskatchewan. She was smart and she was a feminist, exactly the kind of professor to whom a bright young female student might gravitate. I typed in Holly’s address and wrote a note explaining that I was spending the summer at a friend’s cottage on Lawyers’ Bay, that Clare Mackey’s name had come up, and I wondered if Holly remembered her. Just as I was finishing off, Taylor drifted in to my bedroom, draped her arms around my neck, and stared at the screen. “Who’s Clare Mackey?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out,” I said.

  It was Sunday – pancake day – and when we went into the kitchen Leah and Angus, well aware of family tradition, were there in T-shirts and matching polar-bear boxer shorts mixing batter.

  I poured myself coffee. “Gold stars all around,” I said.

  “Two for me,” Angus said. “I took Willie for his walk.”

  Leah wiped her brow with the back of a floury hand. “One star for you,” she corrected. “You were here all of thirty seconds before Jo and Taylor showed up. So far all you’ve done is grunt ‘Make way for a man who needs his engines stoked.’ ”

  As I leaned across her to turn on the griddle, I patted Leah’s shoulder. “Thanks for not dumping the batter over his head.”

  “It would have meant starting again from scratch,” Leah said. She narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you sit down and let the hungry man serve you some pancakes? You look like you could use a little sustenance. In fact, you look like you need a holiday from your holiday.”

  After we’d eaten, I checked my e-mail. I’d sent my note to Holly Knott’s university address so I was surprised to see her name in my inbox. As it turned out, she was at work. She was off to Crete the next day, so she was spending Sunday in her office finishing an article. She suggested that I give her a call to talk about Clare. The tone of her note was brisk except for the last line. “It’ll be good to hear your voice,” she wrote. “It’s been too long.”

  Something about the words “it’s been too long” tugged at me. It had been too long since I’d seen Holly. It had also been too long since I’d talked to someone with whom I could let down my defences. My daughter Mieka and her family lived in Saskatoon. A visit with them might prove to be just the holiday from my holiday I needed.

  I called Mieka and Holly. Both were enthusiastic about a visit. Holly said she’d see me at three o’clock that afternoon at the university, and Mieka had already planned our dinner menu by the time I hung up.

  Taylor was sitting cross-legged on her bed knitting when I walked in. “Hey, are you up for an adventure?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “What is it?”

  “I thought we might drive up to Saskatoon to see Mieka and Greg and the little girls.”

  “Today?”

  “Right now. Throw some stuff in your backpack and we’ll hit the road. If we get moving, we can make it in time for lunch.”

  “And after supper, when it’s not too hot, we can take Maddy and Lena to the merry-go-round in Kinsmen Park and Maddy can ride the unicorn and I can hold Lena on the yellow pig.”

  “I used to hold you on the yellow pig,” I said.

  “When I was young,” Taylor said.

  A half-eaten apple peeked out from under Taylor’s pillow. I picked it up and held it in the air. “Right,” I said. “When you were young.”

  The moment I walked into the backyard of the house on 9th Street, I knew the trip had been worthwhile. Mieka and her girls were sitting on an old quilt under the shade of the elm tree. My seven-month-old granddaughter, Lena, was on Mieka’s lap, her Woody Woodpecker thatch of black hair on end, her bright brown eyes focused on her sister, Maddy, who was singing a song about five little rabbits.

  For a beat, I stayed silent, revelling in the sun-dappled Mary Cassat lyricism of the scene. But Taylor was not partial to scenes in which she played no part. “We’re here, guys,” she said, and tranquillity gave way to an exuberant jumble of hugs and greetings and confusion.

  “Is it always this idyllic?” I asked Mieka.

  “Sunshine and lollipops, twenty-four/seven. Never a tear, never a tantrum. That’s our motto here at the Kilbourn-Harris home. How’s Lawyers’ Bay?”

  I looked at the fresh yellow paint on Mieka’s clapboard house, the frilled red and white petunias in the window boxes, the sand spilling out of the tire by the fence, and the little-girl bathing suits and rinsed-off Ziploc bags pegged to the clothesline.

  “Not as nice as this,” I said.

  Mieka took my hand in hers. “Is the accident still weighing heavily on you?”

  “Among other things,” I said.

  “What other things?” Mieka asked.

  I squeezed her hand. “Things you and I are going to need two long spoons and a quart of Haagen-Dazs to talk about,” I said.

  In midsummer, most university campuses manage to look almost as good as the photograph on the front of their calendar, and the Tyndall-stone buildings and big prairie sky gave the University of Saskatchewan a special glow. It was a Sunday, but there were still enough tanned and leggy students tossing footballs and ambling past flower beds towards the libraries to create a Kodak moment.

  As she was about everything, Holly had been precise about the time of our meeting. When I parked in front of the law college and checked my watch, I discovered I was ten minutes early. Rather than take the elevator, I hoofed it up the three flights of stairs to her floor; then with more time to kill, I wandered into a small student lounge, found the ubiquitous soft-drink machine, and bought a bottle of water. I sipped it as I checked out the walls of the lounge. They were lined with photos of recent graduating classes. It took me less than a minute to find Clare Mackey’s photograph.

  Delia Wainberg had threatened that, if she ever saw Clare Mackey again, she would punch Clare’s heart-shaped face. Clare’s face was indeed heart-shaped, and at first glance she did seem chocolate-box pretty: honey-coloured hair with a gentle curl, and a nose with a becoming upward tilt. But her blue eyes were penetrating, and there was a firmness in the set of her mouth that stamped her as a woman who knew her value. She would, I sensed, be a formidable opponent. I finished my water, and then obeying an impulse I leaned over and spoke to Clare Mackey’s photograph. “I’m going to find you,” I said. My moment of high drama over, I pitched my bottle into the recycle bin and walked down the hall to the office of my old friend. I was right on time.

  Holly Knott was Saskatchewan-born and -bred, but there was something ineffably French about her style. She was in her late forties but her look was timelessly chic: the lines of her shiny black bob were ruler-straight, her makeup was skilfully muted, and the lipstick-red scarf knotted casually around her shoulders was a precise match for the colour of the polish on her nails. When she stood to greet me, she moved with the athleticism of the lifelong tennis player.

  “Jo, this is kismet. One more day, and I would have missed you, and that would not have pleased me.” For a small woman, the timbre of her voice was surprisingly rich. She motioned me to the chair on the student side of the desk. “Make yourself comfortable. I can’t offer anything that doesn’t come out of a machine, but if you’d like a soft drink…”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “And I know you’re busy, so I won’t take much of your time.”

  “You wanted to talk about Clare Mackey.” Holly slid into her own chair. “On the phone you said you needed to know what kind of person she is. Obviously, since your call I’ve been trying to come up with a sensible answer. I’ll have to confess I didn’t know her well. She wasn’t a woman who invited intimacy. She was a very good student – older than most of the others and serious about her work. She was an accountant before she started law school, and she had an accountant’s approach to her studies: precise, painstaking, diligent. She did her homework. Her cases and notes for study were the gold standard. She prepared everything meticulously. She didn’t like surprises, a significant trait in a lawy
er, and even as a student she was thoroughly professional.” Holly smiled. “Do you need more?”

  “No,” I said. “That’s enough. It doesn’t fit.”

  Holly’s eyes widened. “What doesn’t fit? Jo, on the phone you were vague about your reasons for wanting to talk about Clare, but I assumed they were professional.”

  “In a way, I guess they are,” I said. “There are some questions about the way in which she left her last job.”

  “At Falconer Shreve,” Holly said.

  “So Clare did stay in touch with you.”

  “Minimally. When she was approached by Falconer Shreve, I supplied a reference for her. She sent me a thank-you note when she got the job.” Holly picked up a chunk of quartz resting on top of a stack of journal articles. She turned the rock until the sun from her office window bounced off the quartz, igniting pinpricks of fire on its surface.

  She stared at it meditatively. “And then, of course, at Christmas there was a card.”

  I felt my pulse quicken. “You heard from Clare this past Christmas?”

  Holly frowned. “In my books it wouldn’t qualify as hearing from her. She sent an electronic card – pretty enough, snow falling on a cabin – but I remember thinking it was uncharacteristic.”

  “She isn’t the type of woman to send e-cards?”

  “She isn’t the type of woman to send cards at all.” Holly narrowed her eyes. “Jo, what’s this all about?”

  “There was something odd about the way Clare left Falconer Shreve,” I said. “Apparently she was content enough with her job and her life to talk about buying a condominium. Then out of the blue she just took off.”

  “Without telling her firm?”

  “No. I gather she told them she was leaving, but she didn’t give them notice. She just took off and let her colleagues deal with the mess.”

  “She would never do that. Never. Never. Never.” Holly slammed the quartz down on her desk, then she smiled sheepishly. “Sorry about the dramatics. Old litigation lawyers are incurable.”

  “You’ve convinced me,” I said. “But the fact is, Clare Mackey did leave Falconer Shreve.”

  “Without an explanation?”

  “No, there was an explanation. She’d found her dream job in Vancouver.”

  “Bullshit. Clare’s not a liar, Jo, but if that’s her story, she might have been covering up a problem that had developed at Falconer Shreve.”

  “The problem must have come up pretty suddenly,” I said. “I talked to a young woman Clare ran with every morning. The woman’s name is Anne Millar, and she says Clare was talking about putting down roots in Regina.”

  “Maybe the person Clare planned to put down roots with had a change of heart.” Holly reached over and picked up her cordless phone. “And maybe you and I should stop speculating and just pick up the phone and ask Clare.”

  “That would be logical,” I said. “But unfortunately no one seems to know where she is.”

  Holly’s face darkened. “But that’s nonsense. Falconer Shreve would have a contact number and Clare must have had friends.”

  “So far, Anne Millar seems to be the only friend who’s been concerned enough to ask any questions. When Clare didn’t show up at their regular running time, Anne went to Falconer Shreve and talked to one of the partners. He was the one who told her the dream-job story, but when Anne pressed him for specifics he – to use her word – ‘stonewalled.’ ”

  “Which partner did she talk to?”

  “Christopher Altieri.”

  Holly winced. “I still can’t believe he’s gone. I was a year behind him in law school. He was one of the few truly moral human beings I’ve ever known. People always said he was the conscience of Falconer Shreve.” She straightened her shoulders and breathed deeply, the former litigation lawyer getting her second wind. “At any rate, Chris’s innate decency aside, he didn’t have anything to gain by stonewalling. If the situation is as you described it, Clare was the one who walked away. Falconer Shreve was the injured party.”

  “That’s certainly how Delia Wainberg sees it,” I said. “When I broached the subject with her, she was still seething.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Holly said. “Delia was always a pistol, and her loyalties were primal. She would see what Clare did as betrayal.”

  “But you don’t?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know the whole story.”

  “Neither do I. That’s why I came to you.”

  “And I was no help,” she said. “But I can point you to some possibilities.” She walked to her bookshelves, knelt, and began checking the spines on a number of green leatherette yearbooks. She pulled one out and flipped through until she found what she was looking for. “Clare’s graduating year,” she said. “One of the women in her Moot Team will know where Clare is. They were exceptionally tight.”

  “What’s a Moot Team?”

  Holly chuckled. “The students say they’re the law-school equivalent of varsity football, but with more bloodshed. Really, they’re just mock courts. Someone comes up with a hypothetical legal dilemma, and the teams come up with arguments and make submissions the way they would in a real court. The competition can get pretty cutthroat.” She handed me the yearbook. “Anyway, here are the Moot Teams. You’ll notice that Clare’s group takes the entire venture very seriously.”

  Most of the students had opted to be captured in a moment of goofy high spirits: mugging for the camera or striking over-the-top formal poses. In one grouping, a petite female lounged Cleopatra-style on the outstretched arms of her three strapping partners. Clare’s group, all women, wore matching open-necked white blouses, smartly tailored dark suits, and the tight smiles of students who knew this photo was one more hoop they had to jump through before they could get on with the serious business of their lives.

  Holly handed me the yearbook. The women’s names were listed under the photo: Sandra Mikalonis, Maggie Niewinski, Clare Mackey, Linda Thauberger. “I’ll e-mail the head administrator at the College of Law and tell her it’s okay for you to get the contact information. And Jo, when you find out what’s going on with Clare, let me know. If she’s backed herself into a corner somehow, I may be able to show her the way out.”

  It was my cue to leave, but I didn’t pick it up. I stood in the doorway. “Holly, how well did you know the members of the Winners’ Circle?”

  “Not as well as I wanted to,” she said, and her voice was wistful. “None of us knew them as well as we wanted to. Law school is a funny place – despite the august trappings, it’s like high school in many ways, cliquey. There are the jocks and the beautiful people and the brainiacs and the spoiled rich kids and the leftovers who band together because nobody else wants them. And, just the way they do in high school, everyone knows exactly who fits where. Everyone at this law school knew about the Winners’ Circle, and we all envied them.” Holly glanced at her watch. “If you have a moment, I can show you the way they were when I knew them first.”

  “I have a moment,” I said.

  Holly led me down the hall, past more photos of graduating classes, and opened the door to a classroom. The air in the room was stale with the smell of a closed-up room in summer. There were caricatures on the wall, likenesses of justices whose names I recognized from the long-ago newspaper stories. And there were yet more photos – older ones. Holly steered me towards the back. “There I am,” she said.

  “You haven’t changed much,” I said. “Still a looker, as my friend Howard Dowhanuik would say.”

  “Thank you. On the day before I fly off to an island where I plan to wear a bikini, albeit a modest one, I appreciate that.” Holly moved to the framed class photograph next to hers. “And here they are,” she said. “The members of the Winners’ Circle. There’s Chris. He was so beautiful – in every way.” She shook her head. “There weren’t many women in our class, and all of us would have been livid at being objectified as sexual objects, but we had a lot of fun speculating about the men i
n the Winners’ Circle.”

  “Who would be the best lover?” I said. “That kind of thing?”

  “We were much more cerebral than that,” Holly said. “We had a theory that you could discern a great deal about a woman by the man she most admired in the Winners’ Circle. Chris was for the altruists. Blake Falconer was for the party girls. Your friend Kevin Hynd was for the rebels.”

  “How about Zack Shreve?”

  “The Prince of Darkness. We always figured he was for women who longed to get up close and personal with a chainsaw. But he certainly had his partisans.”

  I laughed. “Where did Delia fit in?”

  “One of the gang.”

  “Any theories about which member of the Winners’ Circle she most admired?”

  “No need for theories. It was Chris Altieri. They were both idealistic – passionate about changing the world, big into human rights. A lot of people thought they’d end up together.”

  “But they didn’t?”

  “Nope. Delia ended up with one of the leftovers.” Holly pointed a perfectly manicured nail at the last picture on the page. “Good old Noah.”

  “Noah Wainberg is a lawyer?”

  “He has a law degree.”

  “I thought he was a sort of handyman.”

  “Well, that’s pretty much what lawyers are.”

  “Is that what you tell your students?”

  She smiled. “Not until they’re in third year. By third year, they’ve pretty well lost their illusions.”

  “The members of the Winners’ Circle have certainly lost their illusions,” I said.

  “So I’ve heard,” Holly said. “And it really makes me sad. When they were here at the college, they were dazzling. They used to talk about their ‘lust for justice.’ ”