The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn

by Gail Bowen

  It seemed my penance was taking shape already.

  Rapti was buoyant. “We’ll have fun,” she said. “We can get started on the wine. I have a feeling we’re going to have to be totally blitzed to endure Tom’s TV debut.”

  “You don’t think he’s going to be good?”

  Rapti chortled. “I have a premonition that Jill’s boyfriend is going to be a twenty-two-karat, gold-plated, unmitigated disaster.”

  I was smiling when I turned back to Taylor and her narrative. “Okay,” I said. “Did Samantha back down, or did her mother have to shoot the cake?”

  Our day filled itself, as Saturdays always did, with the inevitable round of lessons and practices and errands. Twice during the day I told myself I should try Kellee’s number again; both times, I drew back before I even picked up the receiver. I felt fragile, like someone whose energy has been sapped by a long illness, and I was grateful for the Saturday routine that carried me along in spite of myself. Whenever I thought of Alex and what he must be feeling, I wanted to be with him, but the best I could do was hope that his Saturday had its own pattern of mindless, sanity-saving errands.

  In the afternoon, Taylor came with me when I went to Mullin’s Hardware in search of something glamorous in a tool box. Then we came home and I made chili while T sat at the kitchen table and worked on her sketches of Nanabush and the Close-Your-Eyes Dance.

  After she’d been drawing for about thirty minutes, she called me over. “It’s not working,” she said. “I’m trying to make it seem real but not real, like the story. But I don’t know how to do it.” I sat down and looked at her sketch. To my eye, it was amazing. The section Taylor was working on was the one in which the hungry Nanabush tries to convince a flock of plump ducks that if they join him in a Close-Your-Eyes Dance, they’ll have the time of their lives.

  “See, it’s all too real,” Taylor said. “Alex’s story wasn’t like that.”

  When I looked again, I saw what she meant. “I have something that I think can help,” I said. I went into the living room and came back with a book on Marc Chagall that Taylor’s mother had given me years ago. I flipped through till I came to an illustration of the painting “Flying Over Town”; in it, a man and a woman, young and obviously in love, float above a village. The village is very real, and so, despite their ability to defy gravity, are the young couple. But the world they inhabit is not a real world; it is a world in which love and joy can carry you, weightless, above the earth. In “Flying Over Town,” Chagall had created a fantastic world that transcended physical facts; it was the same world that came to life when Alex told Nanabush stories.

  Taylor leaned so close to the book that her nose was almost on the page. Finally, she said, “Nanabush and the birds don’t have to be on the ground.” Then, without missing a beat, she ripped up the sketches she’d been working on for days, and started again.

  Taylor was still at the table when I left for Nationtv at 5:15. I kissed the top of her head. “Chili’s on the stove,” I said. “Angus promises to dish it up as soon as his movie’s over, and I’ll be home in time to tuck you in.”

  For the first time in months, Taylor didn’t even turn a hair when I announced I was going out for the evening. “Good,” she said absently, and she went back to her drawing. Finally, it seemed I had done something right.

  It was strange to walk across the park towards Nationtv on a Saturday evening without feeling a knot of apprehension about the show, but I was grateful that there was no hurdle I had to leap that night. I’d had enough. All I wanted to do was take deep breaths and look around me. In the park, the signs of an early spring were everywhere: the breeze was gentle; the trees were already fat with buds; the air smelled of moisture and warming earth. As I walked, my mind drifted. Once I had heard a poet describe the eyes of Hawaiian men as “earth dark,” and I had thought of Alex’s eyes. When I told him, he had laughed and said I was a hopeless romantic. Maybe so, but I had still been right about his eyes.

  The first person I ran into when I walked into Nationtv was Tom Kelsoe. He was wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. Very hip. My first impulse was to pretend I hadn’t seen him, but if I ever wanted to reconcile with Jill, I was going to have to bite the bullet.

  I smiled at him. “Break a leg,” I said.

  Tom Kelsoe looked confused. “What?”

  “Good luck with the show,” I explained.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. For once, his tone wasn’t rude. He seemed genuinely perplexed; somehow my presence had knocked him off balance.

  “It’s personal, not professional,” I said. “There’s a party for the woman who does makeup for the show. She’s getting married.”

  “I guess Jill mentioned it,” he said warily.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I’m glad I ran into you. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you and Jill at the service for Reed yesterday.”

  I could see the pulse in his temple beating. “Who put that display by the door together?” he asked.

  “I did,” I said. “What did you think of it?”

  He flinched. “It was fine.” He checked his watch. “I’d better get down to the studio.”

  “Have you got another minute?” I said. “I need to ask you about Kellee Savage.”

  “What about her?”

  “Apparently, Reed Gallagher had a very high opinion of her work. I wondered if you shared it.”

  Tom looked at me coldly. “She’s a troublemaker,” he said; then, without a syllable of elaboration, he headed for the elevators. Apparently I wasn’t the only faculty member Kellee had gone to with her charges against Val Massey.

  I was the first person at the party. The green room was empty, but somebody had brought in a clear plastic sack of balloons and made an effort to arrange the furniture in a party mode. Two tables had been pulled together to hold the food and drink, and the chairs had been rearranged into conversational groupings. The effect was bizarre rather than festive. All the furniture in the green room had been cadged from defunct television shows, so there was a mix of styles that went well beyond eclectic. I was trying to take it all in when Rapti Lustig came through the door.

  Rapti was an extraordinarily beautiful young woman: whip-thin, with a sweep of ebony hair, huge lustrous eyes, and a dazzling smile. But as she looked around the room, she wasn’t smiling.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “I think it looks like the window of a second-hand furniture store,” I said.

  Rapti made a face. “A cheesy second-hand furniture store.” She pulled a roll of tape out of her pocket and handed me a balloon. “Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

  It didn’t take us long to get the balloons up, cover the tables with paper cloths, and set out the paper plates and glasses. Rapti had bought everything in primary colours and, despite its entrenched charmlessness, the room was soon as cheerful as a box of new crayons. At 6:00, Rapti gave the room a critical once-over, pronounced it not half bad, walked to the television set in the corner and turned on our show. When the theme music came up, and I heard the announcer’s familiar introduction, I was grateful that I was sitting in the green room with Rapti. In less than a week, I had lost my job and my man. If I’d been sitting home alone, it would have been hard not to feel my life had become a country-and-western song.

  Rapti handed me a glass of wine. “To good women and good men. May they find one another.”

  I pulled a chair closer to the television. “I’ll drink to that,” I said.

  As I looked at the screen, the first thing I noticed was that Tom was still wearing his jacket. Black leather was perfect for Tom’s “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” image, but before the show was five minutes old, it was apparent that Tom had given more thought to his outfit than to his homework. He made a lulu of a factual error about the powers possessed by the Senate, but when Sam Spiegel, who was a senator himself, nudged him gently towards the right answer, Tom was adamant. Gl
ayne Axtell wasn’t gentle. When Tom misrepresented what the leader of her party had said, Glayne said crisply, “It would help your case if you got at least one of your facts straight.”

  When the phone-in segment started, Tom’s performance went from bad to worse. The callers, sniffing incompetence, made straight for Tom’s jugular. As the show ended, and the screen went into its farewell configuration with the host in the centre and the panel members in their respective corners, Sam Spiegel interrupted the host’s wrap-up to announce that he wanted to say goodbye to two colleagues who had been on the panel with him from the beginning, and whom he was certain the audience would miss as much as he did. When Sam was through, Glayne Axtell sent what certainly appeared to be genuine good wishes for the future to both Keith and me. Tom Kelsoe, isolated in his box on the lower left of the screen, gave an odd little salute to the camera but remained silent. By the time the credits finally rolled, I almost felt sorry for him.

  Rapti jumped up and turned off the set. “That,” she said, “was the worst hour of television since ‘The Mod Squad’ got cancelled. Jill’s going to be livid.” She shuddered theatrically, “This is going to be one tense little party.”

  It turned out Rapti was wrong, at least about the party. It was a very merry prenuptial event. No one made a hat with ribbons for Tina, and no one decided to break the ice with games. The wine was plentiful and the take-out from Alfredo’s was sensational. The only person happier than Tina was Rapti. As she pushed in the red wheelbarrow that was her gift, Rapti glowed with the effects of good Beaujolais and triumph.

  Even I had fun. My improved spirits were, I had to admit, due in no small degree to Tom Kelsoe’s pitiful debut. My pleasure might have been mean-spirited, but I was revelling in it until, almost an hour after the party had begun, Jill Osiowy walked in the door. She was pale and tense, and as she picked up a bottle of wine from the refreshments table and poured herself a glass, I saw that her hands were trembling. She drained her glass, refilled it, and walked over to join the group who had clustered around Tina.

  I had known Jill for over twenty years, and as I watched her trying to blend in with that carefree crowd, my heart ached for her. I was familiar enough with the structure of Nationtv to know that Jill had spent at least part of the past hour on the telephone being castigated by someone who didn’t have half her talent but who picked up a paycheque twice as hefty as hers. I also knew that the most punishing criticism Jill would be subjected to that night would come from herself. She was in a miserable spot. She was passionate about two things: her work and Tom Kelsoe. Tonight the show that she had created, lobbied for, and nursed along had sustained a heavy blow because she had been foolish enough to offer it up to the man she loved.

  I had long since stopped trying to fathom the choices other people made in their relationships. Perhaps, as an old friend of Ian’s once told me, it was all a matter of luck; if you were born under a benevolent star, your loins would twitch for the right one. In my opinion, Jill’s star had led her astray. If that was the case, maybe the time had come for me to stop sulking and let her know she was still very dear to me.

  I walked over and put my arm around her shoulder. “How would you like to curl up with a large tumbler of single-malt Scotch?”

  She smiled weakly. “That beats my last offer. The vice-president of News and Current Affairs suggested hemlock.” Suddenly her eyes filled with tears. In the years I’d known her, I’d seen Jill deal with deaths, betrayals, and disappointments, but until that moment, I’d never seen her cry. “Can I take a rain check?” she asked. “I think I just want to go home and go to bed.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Any time.”

  Her voice was low. “Jo, I’ve missed you.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  The clock was striking nine when I walked in the front door. The kids were down in the family room. Taylor and Benny were curled up on the rug listening to the soundtrack from The Lion King, and Leah and Angus were huddled together on the couch, doing homework, or so Angus said.

  “Fun’s over, T,” I said. “I’m back.”

  She rolled over and grinned.

  “How’s Nanabush?” I said.

  “Better,” she said, “but I don’t want anybody to see it now until it’s done.”

  “How was your party?” Angus asked.

  “Good,” I said.

  “How good could it be if you’re home by nine o’clock?” Then he grinned. “Alex called.”

  “And …?”

  “And he said he was heading out to Standing Buffalo for a couple of days. He said if we need him, we can get in touch through the band office.” My son looked at me expectantly. “Aren’t you going to call him?”

  “Angus, I think he meant we could call if there was an emergency.”

  Angus rolled his eyes, but for once he held his tongue. Leah came over and handed me a piece of paper. “You had another call,” she said. “I hope you can read my writing.”

  “Let’s see,” I said. “Grace from the Faculty Club called. She found the picture. She wouldn’t have bothered me at home, except she thought I seemed worried about it the other night, and I can call her at the club until ten p.m.” I held the neatly written note out to Angus, who had long been known as the black hole of messages. “This is how it’s done, kiddo. Note the inclusion of all pertinent facts.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I’ve got a life.”

  I kissed him. “And you’re now free to lead it. Thanks for staying with Taylor, you guys. Angus, don’t be too late. Church tomorrow. It’s Palm Sunday.”

  He groaned, grabbed Leah’s hand, and headed for the door.

  I turned. “Okay, Miss, bath-time for you.” When he heard my voice, Benny arched his back and hissed. I looked him in the eye. “T,” I said, “why don’t you throw Benny into the tub, too. I think he’s starting to look a little scruffy.”

  While Taylor ran her bath, I called Grace at the Faculty Club. Her news was unsettling. The cleaners had found the photo of Reed and Annalie when they’d emptied out the receptacle for used paper towels in the men’s washroom. Grace had been puzzled. “It was just an old newspaper clipping,” she said. “Why would anybody go to all that trouble?”

  I told her I didn’t know, but as I hung up I thought it would be worth a couple of phone calls to try to find out. On her message to Reed Gallagher, Annalie Brinkmann had said her area code was 416 – that was Toronto. I dialled Information. There was only one “A. Brinkmann” listed and, as the phone rang, I felt my pulse quicken. But it wasn’t Annalie who answered; it was her husband.

  Cal Woodrow was a pleasant and helpful man. When he told me that Annalie was in Germany attending a family funeral, he must have heard the disappointment in my voice.

  “If it’s urgent, I can get her to call you,” he said. “She’ll be phoning here Wednesday night.”

  “It’s not urgent,” I said. “But maybe you can tell me something. Did your wife know that Reed Gallagher died?”

  “No,” he said. “She’d left for Dusseldorf by the time the obituary appeared in the Globe and Mail. I didn’t see any point in breaking the news to her when she called to tell me she’d arrived safely. Isn’t it strange that after all this time …?” He didn’t complete the sentence.

  “After all this time what?” I asked.

  “No,” he said decisively. “That’s Annalie’s story to tell or not to tell.”

  “Could I leave my number?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Annalie will be most interested in talking to anyone who knew Reed Gallagher.”

  It was 9:45 when I tucked Taylor in. She’d brought the Marc Chagall book to bed with her, and she asked me whether her mother had given me the Marc Chagall book because Chagall was her favourite or because she thought he was mine. It was the first time Taylor had talked about her mother openly, and her healthy curiosity about Sally made me optimistic. Maybe Ed Mariani was right in believing that art was the answer.

  When I t
urned out Taylor’s light, I went downstairs, made myself a pot of tea, and picked up my briefcase. I was tired, but I was too edgy for sleep. There were a couple of journal articles I had to plough through before class Monday, and this seemed as good a time as any to get started. When I pulled the articles out, I saw Kellee Savage’s unclaimed essay, and I felt a sting of irritation. Present or absent, Kellee was a problem that wouldn’t go away. On impulse, I picked up the phone and dialled her number. No answer. It was a south-end number, and it suddenly occurred to me that I could stop by her place on the way to church. There were only two weeks of classes left. If Kellee was lying low, watching Oprah and eating Sara Lee, it was time she shaped up and came back to school.

  I went over to my desk, took out my box of index cards, and pulled out the section marked Political Science 371 – the Politics and the Media seminar. I flipped through, stopping to smile at Jumbo Hryniuk’s. The students filled out their own cards with name, address, and reason for taking the course. Jumbo had stated his reason succinctly: “Because in this day and age, nobody can afford to be just a jock.” Fair enough. When I pulled out Kellee Savage’s card and checked her address, I felt as if a piece had suddenly dropped into place in the puzzle. Two addresses were listed. One was her Regina address, and the other was the one she called her home address: 72 Church Street, Indian Head, SK.

  She had gone home. The obvious answer to her whereabouts had been there all along. I reached for the phone and dialled the Indian Head number. The phone was picked up on the first ring. It was a man’s voice. “Kellee?” he said.

  “No,” I said. “But I’m looking for her. My name’s Joanne Kilbourn. I teach Political Science at the university. Kellee’s one of my students, but she hasn’t been in class for a week. I wanted to get in touch with her; I was afraid that there might be a problem.”

  “My name is Neil McCallum,” the man said. “I’m Kellee’s friend, and that’s what I’m afraid of, too.” He spoke slowly, and there was a slight distortion in his pronunciations, as if he had a speech impediment. He paused, as if giving careful consideration to what he was about to say. Then he cleared his throat and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. “Maybe,” he said, “we could help each other.”