The Last Good Day jk-9

by Gail Bowen

  “Delia still does,” I said.

  “Good for her,” Holly said. “Who knows? Maybe Falconer Shreve can reclaim its magic. I always wondered about exactly what went wrong there… not that there was a dearth of rumours.”

  “What kind of rumours?”

  “None worth repeating.” Holly’s pretty mouth had hardened into a line. “People I trusted said they had some kind of money problem. Whatever happened, it was a crucible for Falconer Shreve. Before it happened they were one kind of firm; after it happened they were another. They took cases they wouldn’t have taken before, cut corners the old Winners’ Circle never would have dreamed of cutting. Nothing to get them in front of the Law Society, of course, but they started operating in the grey area.”

  “The worm was in the bud,” I said.

  Holly raised an eyebrow. “I’d never thought of it that way,” she said. “But yes, they had been corrupted.”

  After that, there didn’t seem to be much to say, except goodbye. Holly walked me to the stairs. “Thanks for squeezing me in today,” I said. “I know you were pressed for time.”

  “It was the least I could do. Clare’s a decent person. If Falconer Shreve railroaded her, she deserves justice. She was a student of the College of Law, and our motto is Fiat Justitia.”

  “Let justice be done,” I said.

  Holly nodded. “Right,” she said. “And those should not be empty words.”

  CHAPTER

  6

  It was drizzling by the time I got to my parking spot in front of the College of Law. I was as tired as I could ever remember being, and when I checked the skies, I was relieved to see that the clouds rolling in were the colour of asphalt. God in Her infinite wisdom had heard my prayers. A gully-washer was on the way, and that meant a reprieve from my date with the yellow pig on the merry-go-round at Kinsmen Park.

  The blessings continued. Mieka made my favourite creamy Spanish gazpacho with sourdough bread for dinner, and after we’d finished eating we sat by the big window in the kitchen watching the storm and listening to Taylor read from a book she’d found in Maddy’s room about Inuksuit, the rock figures the Inuit build to mark the Arctic landscape.

  Taylor was passionate about process. She liked to know how to make things – origami, compost, lasagna from scratch – and the book’s instructions about how to pile stones to create landscape intrigued her. She was, however, puzzled by the fact that a book so obviously intended for adults had found its way into Maddy’s library. When she asked, Mieka was matter-of-fact.

  “A father’s logic,” she said. “Maddy’s favourite book this summer is Hide and Sneak, and there’s an Inukshuk in it. So Maddy’s father bought her a book that tells her more than anyone needs to know about Inuksuit.”

  “History repeating itself,” I said. “When Mieka was Maddy’s age, she stacked six blocks on top of one another, and her dad came home with a book on the world’s greatest architects.”

  Taylor turned to Mieka. “So how come you didn’t grow up to be an architect?”

  Mieka shrugged. “I discovered the Easy-Bake Oven,” she said.

  When the lights flickered and the power went out, Mieka lit candles to ward off the gloom. I held Lena a little closer, and Taylor taught Maddy how to tell the distance of a strike by counting off the time between a lightning flash and a thunderclap. It wasn’t long before my eyes grew heavy, and when Maddy decided it was story time, she didn’t have to coax me to crawl into bed with her and read. We unearthed a flashlight, burrowed under the covers, and started on the pile of books beside her bed. Somewhere between Hide and Sneak and A Promise Is a Promise, I fell asleep. When I awoke, the room was dark and quiet, and my granddaughter’s small fingertips were resting on the pulse in my neck. I turned so I could see the other twin bed in the room. Taylor was in it, breathing rhythmically. I watched as she stirred, then settled in. A sense of peace, unfamiliar as it was welcome, washed over me, and I rolled over and drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep that lasted until morning.

  During the next twenty-four hours I kicked back and let the domestic rituals of a happy household carry me along. When we woke up, Taylor and I took the girls outside so Mieka could catch some extra sleep. The horizon was bright, and Taylor dried the front steps off with an old beach towel so the four of us could sit on the top step in our nighties, watching 9th Street spring into the accelerated rhythms of Monday-morning life. Mieka’s catering business was closed on Mondays, so when she woke up we all gave ourselves over to the sweet laziness of a day off. We took a long and aimless walk, then spent the rest of the morning in the backyard, running through the sprinkler and playing ball. Mieka cranked up James Brown on the CD player, and she and the girls rocked to “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”; we ate a picnic lunch, and then the little girls and I retreated to my shady bedroom and I napped with a granddaughter in each arm.

  When we woke up, we made the long-anticipated trip to Kinsmen Park, where Taylor and my granddaughters squeezed into the seats of the same miniature train and rode the same merry-go-round that Mieka and her brothers had thrilled to during Saskatoon visits when they were kids. There were a few changes – an ear-splitting whistle on the train and two new horses on the merry-go-round, a black stallion with wild green eyes and a zigzag blaze of white on his chest, and a bubblegum-pink pony with curling eyelashes and a lush showgirl mane. Maddy tried out both the newcomers, but the old yellow pig with a handful of freshly painted blue daisies sprinkled like freckles over his snout was still the favourite. As I watched Taylor hold Lena on the pig’s broad back and saw my granddaughter’s small body sway to the music and the wonder of it all, I gave thanks for summer moments – inconsequential and ephemeral, but capable of warming the bleakest day of deep winter.

  Magic time, but Lawyers’ Bay was never far from my mind, and Mieka was quick to pounce when my smile grew fixed and my eyes deadened into a five-mile stare. A half-dozen times she asked me to tell her what was wrong, and a half-dozen times I shook her off and changed the subject. That night, after the kids were in bed, she buttonholed me.

  “Last chance to tell me what’s going on,” she said. “I should warn you that I’m not going to let you leave town until you open up.”

  “Mieka…”

  “I’ve been your daughter for thirty-one years, remember? I know you. There’s nothing you love more than being with the grandkids, but you breeze in here yesterday, looking like hell, pat the girls on their heads, rip up to the university to see a law professor – no explanation given – then you fall into bed at seven p.m. and sleep for twelve hours.”

  “It’s been a lousy week,” I said.

  Mieka raised her hand in a halt gesture. “I’m not criticizing you; I’m worrying about you. You’ve been doing all the right things this weekend, but you keep slipping away from us. I know the accident at Lawyers’ Bay must have been a nightmare, but you haven’t brought it up once. There has to be something else.”

  I took her hand in mine. She had her father’s hands, long-fingered, slender, and heartbreakingly familiar. The inner walls came tumbling down. Suddenly, the prospect of talking was very appealing. “There is something else,” I said.

  “Let’s get some coffee and go out on the deck where it’s cool,” Mieka said. “The upstairs windows are open, so we can hear the girls if they need us.”

  We carried out a tray with coffee things, and Mieka touched a match to a votive candle in a small blue metal box that protected it from the wind. Letters were cut out of the metal, and when the candle was lit, the spaces glowed, spelling out the word Harmony. For a few minutes we sat in the comforting half-light, inhaling the heavy sweetness of a July garden and listening to the low voices and bursts of laughter from the guests at a barbecue next door.

  Finally, Mieka put down her mug and leaned towards me. “So, what’s going on?” she asked.

  “I wish I knew,” I said. “Nothing fits, Mieka. For starters, despite what the media says, Chris Altieri’s ‘accid
ent’ was no accident. It was a suicide, but I was with Chris the night it happened. He’d been through a rough time. A woman he’d been involved with had an abortion, and he’d been depressed about what had happened. But that night he seemed to turn a corner. When we said good night, he asked if he could come for a run with Willie and me the next morning. Two hours later he was dead.”

  “Something could have triggered a relapse,” Mieka said. “He might have seen a baby or heard a child’s voice.” She peered at me, checking for a response. “Too melodramatic?”

  “No,” I said. “He just seemed to have moved past that. And then at the funeral, a former student of mine who’s now a lawyer herself said she thought there was something very wrong at Falconer Shreve.”

  A breeze caught the candle on our table; the letters spelling out Harmony flickered, then disappeared. Mieka didn’t seem to notice.

  “Why was this woman talking to you? Why didn’t she go to the police?”

  “She did go to the police,” I said. “She told them she was concerned about an acquaintance of hers who left Falconer Shreve suddenly and without explanation. The detective she talked to told her that sometimes people just walk away, and she should forget about it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I hope she reported him or her.”

  I took a breath. “Mieka, the detective she talked to was Alex.”

  Mieka shook her head vehemently. “I don’t believe that.”

  “I didn’t want to believe it either, but it turns out Alex has a Falconer Shreve connection of his own. The new woman in his life is Lily Falconer, the wife of one of the partners.”

  My daughter’s face tightened. “A married woman – great. What’s she like?”

  “Enigmatic. Angry. Erotic.”

  Mieka snorted. “Call me superficial, but I was thinking more along the lines of whether she’s drop-dead gorgeous and has a great bod.”

  “No to the first, yes to the second,” I said.

  My daughter took a sip of coffee. When she spoke she made no attempt to hide her impatience. “I don’t buy it,” she said. “You and Alex were happy together. He wouldn’t just sniff the air and follow the first woman who put out a scent, no matter how enigmatic, angry, and erotic she was.”

  “Lily didn’t just happen along,” I said. “She and Alex have known one another for years. They both grew up on Standing Buffalo.”

  “Then it could just be a brother-sister thing.”

  “Like Siegmund and Sieglinde?”

  “I don’t know who Siegmund and Sieglinde are,” Mieka said. “I’m the one who dropped out of university in first year, remember?”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “Till your dying day,” Mieka said dryly. “Anyway, Alex wanted out of your relationship. That happens. But the rest of this just doesn’t make sense. Alex wouldn’t get involved with a married woman. And he wouldn’t compromise his job by refusing to talk to someone who came to him with a problem.”

  I picked up the pack of matches on the table and relit the harmony candle. It was cold comfort. “We’re dealing with facts here,” I said. “We may not want to believe them, but that doesn’t make them less true.”

  “Poor Mum,” Mieka said. “No wonder you looked wiped when you got here. So what are you going to do?”

  “Go back to the lake, I guess. See what happens next.”

  “Not good enough,” Mieka said. “Be proactive. Talk to Alex.”

  “As your Uncle Howard would say, ‘I’d rather be pecked to death by a duck.’ ”

  Mieka laughed softly. “Funny, I don’t remember your ever going for the duck option. You’ve always been gutsy about tackling things head-on, and that’s what you should do now. Ask Alex why he blew off that lawyer who tried to tell him something was rotten at Falconer Shreve, and ask him, as nicely as possible of course, if the reason he left you was that he was screwing around with this Lily Falconer.”

  “That’d be a memorable conversation,” I said.

  “But a productive one.” Mieka stood up. “Clear the air. Find out what you can. Make sure the authorities know everything they need to know, then let them handle it. Mum, Greg and the girls and I are coming up to Lawyers’ Bay for the entire month of August. You’re going to have to be in fighting trim to put up with us till Labour Day.” She stretched. “Bedtime for me,” she said. “And for you.” She lifted my chin and looked at me speculatively. “You know what you need?”

  “Do I have a choice about hearing this?”

  “The same choice I had when you shared your thoughts about my dropping out of university.”

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “You need a good all-night date. Put Alex behind you and find a new guy. A little romance will give you back your glow.”

  On the drive back to the lake, Taylor continued to be absorbed in the Inukshuk book Mieka had lent her, so the miles sped past in silence. I had plenty of time to consider my daughter’s advice – all of it. Mieka’s counsel to confront Alex was solid. Asking him the hard questions would be painful, and I might not like the answers. Still, it would be better to know. It would be good to learn what I could about Clare from the members of the tightly knit Moot Team, too. If one of the women had been in touch with her in the last eight months, the case was closed, but if none of those closest to Clare had heard from her, we were clearly dealing with a matter for the police. Fiat justitia: I would do what I could to make certain that justice was done, but once I’d got the ball rolling, I was going to step aside and let Anne Millar and Clare’s law-school friends take over. As Mieka had reminded me, August wasn’t far away, and I wanted to be in shape for some serious fun.

  Mentally, I had crossed every t and dotted every i, but the sight that greeted me when we pulled up in front of our cottage was fresh proof that when humans make plans, the gods laugh. Noah Wainberg was on his hands and knees on the mat in front of our door. He had a green tool box beside him, and it appeared he was jimmying our lock.

  “What’s Isobel’s dad doing?” Taylor asked.

  “Only one way to find out,” I said, sliding out of the car and shaking the stiffness out of my legs. “Let’s ask him.”

  Noah turned when he heard us. “Bad news,” he said. “You were robbed.”

  My pulse quickened. “Is everybody okay?”

  “Yeah. Nobody was home, but you should probably take a look around. Your son’s girlfriend – Leah, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, Leah gave the place the once-over. She didn’t think anything was missing except your laptop computer.”

  “No great loss,” I said. “It’s vintage, and I haven’t really used it in ages. The main thing is that no one was hurt.”

  “I agree. Material things are replaceable.”

  Taylor’s eyes were wide. “Cats aren’t. They better not have taken my cats.”

  “You’re probably safe on that score,” I said, but Taylor didn’t hear me. She had already raced into the house to check on Bruce and Benny.

  “So when did the break-in happen?” I asked Noah.

  “Last night. Leah and your son had taken your dog for a run down the beach. When they got back, the front door was open. This is the only cottage here without a security system. Kevin’s parents were pretty trusting, and he takes after them. Anyway, the lock I’ve installed is just temporary. A security company is coming out from the city tomorrow to hook you up.”

  “That’s sort of sad, isn’t it?” I said.

  Noah wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Sad but inevitable,” he said. “Oh, and I was supposed to tell you that Lily’s ordered a new laptop for you.”

  “Everything taken care of,” I said.

  He smiled lazily. “I can take the lock off the door if you want.”

  “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful,” I said. “I guess I’m just a little shaken. How can there be a robbery in a gated community?”

  Noah shrugged. “The water isn
’t gated. Somebody wants to come up onto the beach in a canoe, I guess they can do what they want.”

  “It’s kind of hard to imagine someone paddling up to steal a laptop,” I said. “The images don’t quite mesh.”

  “We live in troubling times,” he said.

  “That we do,” I said. “Look, can I get you a glass of iced tea or something? You’re getting the full blast of the sun there.”

  “Some water would be good. Actually, so would some shade.”

  I gestured towards the cottage’s shadowy recesses. “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  Taylor was curled up on the couch with her cats and Willie. When he spotted me, Willie leaped off the couch and scrambled over to me.

  “I’m glad to see you too,” I said, rubbing his head. When Noah and I went out to the porch, Willie stuck to me like glue.

  “Bouviers are great dogs,” Noah said.

  “Best dog I ever had,” I said. “If you’re ever in the market for a loyal if challenged companion, I highly recommend them.”

  Noah scratched Willie’s head. “Delia’s frightened of dogs.”

  “Did she have a bad experience?”

  “No. She’s scared of a lot of things – dogs, spiders, thunderstorms. But she can present a brief to the Supreme Court without breaking a sweat, and I know of more than one macho lawyer who’s looked up at that big bench and fainted dead away.”

  “Did you ever present a brief to the Supreme Court?”

  “I never practised law,” Noah said quickly.

  “But you graduated from law school,” I said. “When I was in Saskatoon I visited an old friend of mine who teaches at the College of Law. We were looking at photos of graduating classes. I hadn’t realized you were in the same class as Delia and… the others.”

  “The ‘others’ being the members of the Winners’ Circle,” Noah said. “I was never a member of the Circle, but it’s been years since I was crushed by the omission. They’ve discovered I have my uses.” He tapped his tool box. “I’m the only one around here who can unplug a toilet.”