The Further Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn

by Gail Bowen

  CHAPTER

  9

  By 2:00 on the afternoon of Palm Sunday, I was on my way to meet Neil McCallum. After church, I had driven over to Gordon Road and stopped by Kellee’s apartment. The building she lived in was called the Sharon Arms. It was a new and charmless building, but it was handy to the university and secure. In the outside lobby, there was an intercom with the usual panel of buzzers opposite the appropriate apartment numbers and name slots. On the information card she had filled out for the Politics and the Media seminar, Kellee had written that she lived in apartment 425. The name slot opposite the buzzer for 425 was empty, but that didn’t surprise me. All of Kellee’s actions on St. Patrick’s Day suggested she was a woman who saw herself surrounded by outside threats; it made sense that she wouldn’t advertise her whereabouts. I had pressed Kellee’s buzzer long enough to let anyone inside know that I wasn’t a casual caller, but there was no response.

  By the time I got home, I’d made up my mind. I was going to Indian Head. I called Sylvie O’Keefe and we arranged a double-header for her son, Jess, and Taylor: lunch with me at McDonald’s, then bowling with Sylvie at the lanes at the Golden Mile.

  As I drove east along the Trans-Canada towards Indian Head, I saw that the fields were already bare of snow. It wouldn’t be long before farmers were back on the land, and the cycle of risk and hope would begin again. It took self-discipline not to turn off onto the road that wound through the Qu’Appelle Hills towards the Standing Buffalo Reserve and Alex Kequahtooway. Alex had been a strong and passionate presence in my life for months, and I ached for him. I turned on the radio, hoping to shift my focus. Jussi Björling was singing “M’appari tutt’amor” from Martha. There had never been a time in my life when I hadn’t thrilled to Björling, but as Lionel, his despair as he recalled his former happiness and hopes cut too close to the bone. I leaned forward and turned him off in mid-aria.

  For twenty minutes I drove in silence, yearning like a schoolgirl. A few kilometres outside Indian Head, I realized that, before I met Neil McCallum, I had to get a grip on myself. I pulled over on the shoulder, turned off the ignition, got out and looked at the prairie. The sky was clear, and the air was sweet. In the ditch at the side of the road, the first pussy willows were growing, and I broke off some branches to take back to Taylor. The catkins were silky and soft, and the woody, wet smell of the willows filled the car, a foretaste of April, with its mingling of memory and desire. An omen, or so I hoped.

  I hadn’t hesitated about promising Neil McCallum that I’d drive seventy kilometres to talk to him. His recital of the reasons behind his growing concern about Kellee had been a Euclidean line of facts that pointed in only one direction: something was terribly wrong. Neil and Kellee were the same age; they had grown up next door to one another, and, according to him, they had always been close. The year Kellee graduated from high school, her parents had been killed in a car accident, and she and Neil became even closer. When Kellee went off to university, he had helped pack her things; since then, he had been the one who had made sure her house was ready for her when she came home.

  For three years, Kellee’s routine, when she was at school, had not varied. She called Neil every Wednesday, she took the 6:20 bus back to Indian Head every other Friday, and she left on the 4:30 bus, Sunday afternoon. But on Friday, February 24, the pattern had changed. She had been home the weekend before; nonetheless, on the twenty-fourth she’d taken the bus back to Indian Head. She’d come home the next two weekends too; then on the weekend of March 17, her birthday, although she had told Neil to expect her, she hadn’t shown up. He hadn’t seen or heard from her since.

  As I turned off the highway and drove over the railway tracks and down the tree-lined streets towards the centre of town, I found myself wondering about Kellee’s best friend. The directions he’d given me were a model of clarity, but a certain thickness in his speech and a habit of hesitating before he answered a question and of waiting a beat between sentences made me curious.

  Neil McCallum and his dog, a black bouvier who looked like a young bear, were waiting for me on the front lawn of his house. Neil was a little below medium height and stocky. He was wearing blue jeans, a green open-necked sweater, and a Saskatchewan Roughriders ball cap. Up close, I saw that the hair under his ball cap was brown and that he had the small almond-shaped eyes and distinctive mouth of a person with Down syndrome.

  He watched as I got out of the car. Finally he took a step towards me. “You’re Joanne,” he said.

  “And you’re Neil.” The bouvier was watching me intently. I walked over and held my hand out, palm up, for it to sniff. “What’s your dog’s name?” I asked.

  “Chloe,” Neil said. “A French name.”

  Chloe came over and nuzzled me, and I knelt down and stroked her back. “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  For the first time since I’d arrived, Neil McCallum smiled. “I’m going to breed her pretty soon. I’ll have puppies at the end of summer.”

  “Are you going to keep them?”

  “Mum says one bouvier is enough. I’m going to sell them. To good homes.”

  “I always thought that breeding dogs would be a nice job.”

  He smiled mischievously. “If you breed dogs, you have to have another job. To pay for your dogs.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said. “What’s your other job?”

  “I have three jobs,” he said. “When it’s winter, I help at the concession stand at the curling rink. I take care of the ice, too. When it’s summer, I help at the concession stand at the ball diamond.”

  “Must keep you pretty busy.”

  “Busy’s good,” he said. “Let’s look at Kellee’s house.”

  Neil and Chloe started up the walk between his house and Kellee’s, and I followed. The bungalows were almost identical: mid-sized, with white siding, shining windows, and well-kept grounds. On the face of each house were three wooden butterflies, poised as if for flight.

  Neil pulled out a key-ring and opened Kellee’s front door. The house had a slightly stale closed-up smell, but the living room was pleasant: uncluttered and filled with sunshine. There was a couch on the far wall, a couple of comfortable-looking chairs by the front window, and a television set in the corner. On top of the television were two framed pictures. Neil McCallum picked one up and handed it to me. “That’s Kellee’s parents.”

  The photograph had been professionally taken by one of those companies that set up in department stores and malls and offer great prices and your choice of three possible backgrounds. Kellee’s parents had chosen spring in the Rockies. As they stood against the cardboard range of improbably pink-hued mountains, the Savages’ smiles were open and their eyes were as grey and without illusion as a Saskatchewan winter sky. Good country people.

  “Kellee’s parents didn’t have any other children?”

  “Just her.” Neil put the family photo back carefully in its place on the television, and handed me the other picture. “That’s Kellee graduating from Indian Head High School. I went there too, but in a different class. I have Down syndrome.”

  “You seem to be having a pretty good life.”

  He shook his head. “Not any more. I’m too worried. My mum says Kellee’s just busy. I don’t think so. Something’s wrong.” Without explanation, he turned and walked away. After a second’s hesitation, I followed him past the entranceway and down a hall that seemed to lead to the bedrooms. Neil stopped in front of the only room with a closed door. The door had a lock, and he pulled out his key-ring and opened it. “Look,” he said.

  The room was unnaturally dark. When Neil turned on the light, I saw that thick drapes were pulled tightly across the only window. Someone had pushed an old oak filing cabinet and a heavy bookcase in front of the drapes. The result looked less like a decorating decision than a barricade. Flush against the wall to the left of me was the kind of computer table offices use; on top of it were a computer and a printer. Both were state-of-the-art, and b
oth were pricey. To the right of the table was a small metal bookcase. It had three shelves of books, all with Library of Congress numbers on their spines. One shelf contained books I recognized as the reference texts Kellee had used in her essay on how the alternative press had been used to voice the concerns of prostitutes in our city’s core area. A second shelf held books on the dynamics of groups, and the third held journals from the J-school library; all of them seemed to focus on the subject of journalistic ethics. Thinking of how old Giv Mewhort would have chortled at that oxymoron, I smiled to myself. I leafed through a couple of the J-school journals, hoping for a bonanza: a bus schedule or travel itinerary. All I could see were yellow Post-it notes marking various case studies and articles.

  Neil was watching me with interest. “I don’t like it here,” he said.

  “Neither do I.”

  Neil frowned. “It used to be nice.”

  “Before the window was blocked off.”

  He nodded. “I told her it wouldn’t look good. But she said that’s the way it had to be. So I put the furniture where she said.”

  “When did you and Kellee change the room?”

  “The weekend she wasn’t supposed to come home. That’s when she bought the curtains too.”

  “To close out the light?”

  “So nobody could see in.” His brow furrowed. “Who would want to see in?”

  I looked over at the barricade, and I felt a sense of oppression so overwhelming, I could barely breathe. Suddenly, I wanted to get out of that room. I turned to Neil. “Let’s check Kellee’s bedroom.”

  “For what?” Neil asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You might notice that something’s out of place.”

  He looked puzzled. “How would I know? I never go in there.”

  Neil stayed in the hall while I went into Kellee’s room. Everything seemed to be in order. A Care Bear and a Strawberry Shortcake doll rested side by side on a pink satin pillow at the head of the bed, and the girlish pink-and-white bedspread was smooth. A brush and comb were neatly aligned beside a wooden jewel box on the vanity. I opened the box. It was full of barrettes: butterflies, plastic ribbons, beaded sunbursts, feathery combs.

  I closed the jewel box and turned back to Neil. “Did Kellee ever talk to you about friends she might want to visit?”

  “I’m the only friend,” he said gently.

  “What about family?”

  “She has an aunt.”

  “Here in town?”

  “No, in B.C.” Suddenly he smiled. “She sent Kellee a box of apples and I got half.”

  “Neil, do you think Kellee might have gone to visit her aunt?”

  “She wouldn’t go away,” he said flatly.

  I opened the closet door. Inside were clothes that I remembered Kellee wearing in class. Involuntarily, I stepped back.

  Neil McCallum was watching my face. “You’re scared too,” he said.

  “A little,” I agreed. “But let’s not panic. When I go back to Regina, I’ll try Kellee’s apartment again. I went there this morning, but she wasn’t home.”

  “You should talk to Miss Stringer.”

  The name was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Who’s Miss Stringer?” I asked.

  “Kellee’s landlady.”

  “Neil, it’s a brand-new apartment building. Those places don’t have landladies.”

  Neil’s voice rose with frustration. “It’s not new. It’s a dump. Kellee said so. And Miss Stringer lives there.”

  “On Gordon Road?” I said.

  Neil shook his head impatiently. “You went to the wrong place,” he said. “Gordon Road is where she lived before.” He pulled a small black notebook from the pocket of his shirt, and thumbed through it. “This is where she lives now,” he said. “She wrote it in herself. So it’s right.”

  I took the book from him and read:

  Kellee Savage,

  317 Scarth Street,

  Regina S4S 1S7

  For a moment, I didn’t grasp the significance of the address. When I did, my pulse began to race. It was the address of the house in which Reed Gallagher had died.

  When I drove back to Regina, Kellee Savage’s graduation portrait was in a Safeway bag on the seat beside me. I knew the picture would be helpful if I was going to make inquiries about Kellee’s whereabouts, but Neil hadn’t wanted to part with it. He told me that Kellee didn’t like having her picture taken, and that he liked having a photograph of her where he could see it every day. I promised him that I would take good care of it, and he promised me that he wouldn’t let anybody else into Kellee’s house and that he’d be careful.

  Neil and Chloe had walked out to the car with me. Before I left, Chloe gave me a final nuzzle, and Neil reached out as if to hug me, before he drew back and settled for a smile. “One more promise,” he said. “No stopping looking until we find her.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He looked at me intently. “You have to say it.”

  “All right,” I said. “No stopping looking until we find her.”

  It was a little before five when I pulled up in front of the house on Scarth Street, picked up the Safeway bag with Kellee’s photograph, and got out of the car. Alma Stringer was out on the porch, knocking down cobwebs with a broom. When Alex had interviewed her the day she found Reed Gallagher’s body, he had characterized Alma as a tough old bird. As I watched her darting at the cobwebs with her broom, her arms and legs winter-white and pencil-thin, her scalp pink through her sparse and fading yellow hair, I thought there was something chicken-like about her. When she saw me, she raised her broom aggressively. Alma, it seemed, was more banty rooster than mother hen.

  As I introduced myself, I tried to look pleasant and non-threatening. I must have succeeded, because before I had a chance to explain what I was doing on her grassless lawn, she had apparently made up her mind that I wasn’t worth her while and gone back to her cobwebs.

  I climbed the stairs and stepped in front of her. “I won’t take much of your time,” I said.

  She gave the underside of an eavestrough an expert flick. “You won’t take none of my time,” she said.

  I took the photograph of Kellee out of the bag and held it out to her. “I’m looking for this young woman. She’s one of your tenants.”

  She looked at the portrait without interest. “Number six on the main floor.”

  “Is she there now?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember when it was that you saw her last?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “No one’s seen her around for a while. I’m worried.”

  “You her mother?”

  “Her teacher.”

  “That’s a break for you. Popping a kid that ugly wouldn’t give a mother much to be proud of.” She chuckled at her witticism. Her laugh was a smoker’s laugh, and its husky roughness seemed to act as a spur. She reached into her back pocket, pulled out a pack of du Mauriers, and lit up. As the smoke hit her lungs, she closed her eyes in satisfaction. I tried to take advantage of the new and mellow mood.

  “Could you just give me a moment of your time, please? If you can’t remember when you saw Kellee last, maybe you can remember a visitor she had. Anything, Miss Stringer. What you know may not seem important, but …”

  She narrowed her eyes. “How did you know my name?”

  “I’m a friend of one of the detectives who investigated the murder.”

  She inhaled deeply, then pivoted on her heel so she could be sure that the smoke she blew out hit me full in the face. “Why don’t you get your friend, the detective, to answer your questions?”

  “You’ve lived in the house all along. He doesn’t have the perspective you have.”

  “Yeah, but he also don’t have my problem.” She looked at me expectantly.

  “What is your problem?”

  “My problem is that it’s almost the end of the month. For your friend on the police force, that’s not a problem
. Cops can count on getting that monthly paycheque of theirs whether they’ve earned it or not. I can’t count on dick. All I’ve got is those rents.” Alma looked at me craftily. “Maybe you’d like to take care of number six’s rent for her.”

  “No,” I said.

  Alma took a last deep suck on her cigarette, then, in a movement so effortlessly perfect that I knew she must have done it a thousand times, she drew her arm back and pitched her cigarette so that it sailed across her yard and hit the street beyond her property. “The next time you want to talk to me,” she said, “make sure you got a rent cheque in one hand and a damage deposit in the other.”

  As I walked back to my car, I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I was tired and hungry and discouraged, but Neil McCallum had extracted a promise from me. Police headquarters were on Osler Street, less than ten minutes away from Alma’s; not far at all for a woman who had given her solemn word that there would be no stopping until she found Kellee Savage.

  At the station, a downy-cheeked constable directed me to the office that dealt with reports of missing persons. As I turned down the corridor he’d indicated, I caught a glimpse of dark hair and a familiar grey jacket disappearing through an open door. It was Sunday night. Alex might have come back from Standing Buffalo early. Like an adolescent with a crush, I stood in the hallway, watching the door, knees weak with hope, while police and civilians walked by. Finally, the dark-haired man in the grey jacket emerged. I saw that he was a stranger, and I cursed Alex for not being there and myself for being so stupid that I believed he would be.

  The name of the officer I talked to in Missing Persons was Kirszner. He was polite, but he pointed out the obvious: many people lived in the rooming house where Reed Gallagher had been found dead, and all of them were free to come and go as they wished. Then, echoing Alex, he suggested that the salient fact to consider about Kellee Savage was not that she lived on Scarth Street, but that she was a twenty-one-year-old student who was two weeks away from final exams.