by Gail Bowen
“I have a nosebleed,” I said.
“But you’re okay.” I could hear the anxiety in her voice.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just trying to be as brave as you were when you cut your hand. Now, you have fun, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning.”
Marissa Desjardin shuddered when she saw my face, but after the doctor in emergency had checked me over, he said nothing was broken and I’d live to fight another day. He said the same thing to Jill. When he went off to write a prescription for painkillers, Marissa Desjardin rolled her eyes and whispered “asshole” at his retreating back.
We were out of police headquarters in twenty minutes. Marissa Desjardin was a whiz at taking statements, and, as she said, she knew Jill and I were fading fast. It was a little after 8:00 when we walked through my front door.
After I’d helped Jill off with her coat, I said, “We can’t combine painkillers and Glenfiddich. Which would you prefer?”
“The Scotch,” she said. “And Carly Simon. Have you still got those old tapes of hers? The ones we used to listen to when we’d stay up and talk all night.”
“Of course,” I said. “I was just waiting for our next pyjama party.”
While Jill went after the Scotch, I got out the glasses and ice and checked the messages. The first one was from the Parents’ Committee at Taylor’s school, wondering if I could bring a pan of squares to the Kids Convention Monday night. The second one was from Angus. He and Camillo had gone to Sharkey’s to play pool, and he’d check in later. The third message was from Alex. It was a bad connection, and I could only catch snatches of what he said. But I heard enough to know that he had had car trouble somewhere outside of Meadow Lake and was waiting for parts. When I heard Alex’s voice, I instinctively raised my fingers to my face, wondering what he would see when he looked at me.
Jill came into the room just as the tape played its final message. It was Dr. Roy Crawford. “Your new kitten came through the surgery with flying colours,” he said. “You and Benny can pick him up on Monday.”
Jill looked at me quizzically.
“Don’t even ask,” I said.
I dropped a tape in my cassette player. As Carly Simon began to sing “Two Hot Girls on a Hot Summer Night,” Jill handed me a drink and raised her glass. “Life goes on,” she said, but there was a bleakness in her tone that made me wonder whether she was wholly convinced that life going on was a good idea.
Jill and I listened to all my Carly Simon tapes twice that night, and we went through a fair amount of Glenfiddich. The combination seemed to help. Jill needed to talk, and I needed to hear what she had to say. The truth of the matter was I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand how a woman as smart and as competent as Jill could make herself believe she was in love with a manipulator like Tom Kelsoe, and I didn’t understand how, once the beatings began, she didn’t simply report him and walk away.
Every situation Jill described that night was a perfect fit for the pattern of abuse. Tom’s father had been a batterer whose frequent absences only served to underline the horror of his presence. When Tom’s father was away, the Kelsoe home was a happy one, but when he returned he was, by turns, demanding and cold. Tom could never measure up to the ever-shifting standards his father set for him, and he came to see his mother as his only anchor in a violent and unchartable sea of threats and violence. After enduring years of cruelty at her husband’s hands, Tom’s mother ran away with the first man who promised her safe haven. Tom was left with his father. He was devastated. As soon as he was old enough, he left home and began the search for his ideal: a woman who would never desert him, no matter what.
The first time Tom hit her, Jill had been dumfounded. She and Tom were, as Tom frequently asserted, the perfect match, complementary halves of a whole, logos and eros. Tom’s remorse when he saw Jill’s bruises the morning after the first beating had been so intense, Jill had feared he would harm himself. He’d come to her apartment that night with a bottle of expensive bath oil and a silk peignoir. As he bathed Jill’s bruised body, he had tearfully offered up his excuse: he was obsessed by the fear that his new book would fail and that Jill would abandon him the way his mother had, the way everybody he’d ever counted upon had. And so she had forgiven him.
As Jill told me about her relationship with Tom Kelsoe, I tried hard to make some sense of it. I couldn’t. In my heart, I didn’t believe Jill could either. That night, as we talked, she was filled with guilt. She felt that, if she had acted, Tom could have been stopped before two lives had been lost. Her anguish about what might have been allowed me to ask the question I’d been haunted by. “If you didn’t want to involve the police,” I said, “why didn’t you come to me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I felt so cut off. It was as if I was living on the other side of a glass wall.” Her eyes were miserable. “Jo, believe me, it’s not easy to let people see that you’ve allowed yourself to be victimized.”
After I showered the next morning, I flinched at the sight of my face in the bathroom mirror. When Angus and Taylor saw it, they were going to need a lot of reassuring. Before I took the dogs for their walk, I smoothed makeup over my bruises, swathed my head in a scarf, pulled up my jacket collar, and put on my largest dark glasses. As I gave my face a last anxious check before I left the house, the light began to dawn. Jill was right. It wasn’t easy to face the world as a victim.
When it was time to pick up Taylor, I let Angus drive. Before she’d taken a cab home to her apartment, Jill had made me promise that I wouldn’t get behind the wheel until I’d had a chance to recover. Besides, I didn’t want to face Taylor alone. Angus had done exactly the right thing when he saw my bruises. He had put his arms around me without saying a word. When we got to Sylvie O’Keefe’s house, Angus went to the door to get Taylor. As they walked towards the car, I could see him preparing her for what she was about to see. She looked scared, but she managed a smile when I told her there was nothing to worry about. As soon as we got home, I gave Taylor a short but honest account of what had happened. After I’d finished, she asked me two questions: the first was, did I hurt; the second was, did the doctor think my face would ever look the way it used to look. I told her the answer to both questions was yes.
I spent Sunday recuperating. The most vigorous activity I undertook was to find my old bridal picture so Taylor could draw a portrait of me in my big dress to cheer me up. Jill arrived at dinnertime with two pizzas from the Copper Kettle: spinach and feta for the grown-ups, and everything but the kitchen sink for the kids. By the time I slipped between the sheets, I felt I was on my way to recovery, but when the dogs and I set out on Monday morning, it soon became apparent that one day of rest hadn’t been enough. I was bone-tired and we only made it part way around the lake before I gave it up as a bad job and came home. Rosalie Norman was sympathetic when I called in sick. She hadn’t seen the political panel Saturday night, but she’d certainly heard about it. News travels fast on a university campus.
When I hung up, the day stretched before me. There were a hundred things that needed my attention, but only two jobs I had to do. I called Roy Crawford and told him the kids and I would be in after school to pick up the new kitten; then I got down my cookbooks and began searching for a recipe for Nanaimo bars.
I deep-sixed Taylor’s plan to have Benny join us when we went to the vet’s, but she was too excited to put up more than a token protest. From the moment she saw the tortoise-shell, Taylor was filled with plans. “He and Benny will be best friends,” she said. “When I’m at school, they’ll play all the time.”
Angus rolled his eyes, but remained silent.
“Don’t expect too much of Benny, T,” I said. “His nose may be a little bit out of joint at first.”
“Not Benny,” she said confidently.
When we were leaving, the receptionist smiled at Taylor. “What are you going to call your kitten?”
Taylor didn’t miss a beat. “Bruce,” she said, and she
headed for the car.
Benny’s reaction to Bruce surprised me. Apparently, there were depths of feeling in Benny that had been unplumbed. From the moment Taylor undid the blanket and placed the new kitten in front of him, Benny was devoted to Bruce. It was clear that I had seriously underestimated Benny, and every glance he gave me let me know it.
It was still light when Taylor and I set out for the Kids Convention. As we walked towards Lakeview School, we spotted other parents with other kids and other pans of Nanaimo bars. Taylor was buoyant with the combined excitement of Bruce’s arrival and of being out after supper on a school night. But as we crossed Cameron Street, she scrunched up her nose. “I wish Alex had got here in time for us to all go to school together.”
“Taylor, I wish you wouldn’t count on Alex making it tonight. Meadow Lake’s a long way from here, and it takes time to get car parts.”
Taylor’s gaze was untroubled. “He’ll be here,” she said. “He promised.”
The front hall of Lakeview School was hung with construction-paper stars. Inside each star was a student’s picture. In case we didn’t get the message, there was a sign in poster-paint script: “At Lakeview School, every student is a S*T*A*R!” After Taylor and I found her star, and Jess’s and Samantha’s and those of her seven other best friends, I said, “Let’s go see your Nanabush mural.”
“No,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair. We have to wait for Alex. There’s other stuff.”
For the next half-hour, we looked at stuff: a fisherman’s net filled with oddly coloured papier-mâché fish made by the grade ones; First Nations masks made by the grade threes; family crests made by the grade sixes; poems about death and despair written by the grade eights.
We ended up in front of a collage called “Mona and the Bulls”; in it, the Mona Lisa was wearing a Chicago Bulls uniform and looking enigmatic. “I can only take so many high points, Taylor,” I said. “I think ‘Mona and the Bulls’ is going to have to be my last stop before the mural. I promise I’ll enjoy it all over again when we look at it with Alex.”
The Nanabush mural had been mounted in the resource room, and it had attracted quite a crowd. At the edge of the gathering, just as Taylor had predicted, was Alex Kequahtooway. When she spotted him, Taylor said, “There he is,” and her tone was matter-of-fact.
She went over to him and tweaked his sleeve. He knelt down and talked to her for a moment, then he stood up and started towards me.
I put my hand up to cover my face. “I had an adventure,” I said.
He reached over and took down my hand. “Marissa Desjardin left a message for me at the garage in Meadow Lake. I was on the next bus home.” Alex reached out to embrace me; then he noticed, as I had, that we were attracting more than our share of sidelong glances. He stepped back.
I moved towards him. “Alex, I really could use someone to lean on right now.”
He slid his arm around my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right, Jo?”
I closed my eyes and lay my head on him. “No,” I said, “but for the first time since all of this happened, I think maybe I’m going to be.”
It rained the morning of Kellee Savage’s funeral, but by the time Jill and I were on the highway, the sky was clear and the sun was shining. Alex had offered to drive to Indian Head with me, but Jill had been anxious to go. “It’s the least I can do for another journalist,” she said simply.
The United Church was full, but the only people I recognized were Neil McCallum and Kellee’s classmates from the J school. There were flowers everywhere. Ed Mariani, who’d come back from Minneapolis with a terrible cold and Barry’s forgiveness, had sent the white roses that were on the table with the guest book, and the air of the church was sweet with the perfume of spring. The service had the special poignancy that the funeral of a young person always has. There were too many young faces in the pews, and the minister had the good sense to admit that the reasons for the death of a person who has just begun life were always as much a mystery to him as they were to any of us.
Afterwards, the congregation was invited down to the church hall for lunch. It was a pretty room: warm with pastel tablecloths and bowls of pussy willows splashed with afternoon light. Neil McCallum was surrounded by people, so I went over to the table where Linda Van Sickle and Jumbo Hryniuk were sitting. When he saw me, Jumbo leaped up and helped me with my chair.
“This is the first funeral I’ve ever been to,” he said. “I almost lost it up there. Do they get any easier?”
“No,” I said. “They don’t. But I’m glad you’re here.” I turned to Linda Van Sickle. “I’m glad you came, too. I never had a chance to ask you the results of that ultrasound you had.”
“I’m going to have twins,” she said. “Two little boys.”
“That must be so exciting,” I said.
“It is,” she agreed, but her voice was flat. Physically, Linda looked better than she had the last time I’d seen her, but she’d lost the serenity that had enveloped her during so much of her pregnancy. When she spoke again, I could hear the strain in her voice. “Is it true about Tom Kelsoe? That he killed Kellee and Professor Gallagher?”
“It’s true,” I said.
“The worst part,” Jumbo said, “was the way he dumped Kellee in that field – just like she was an animal.”
“Less than an animal,” I said.
Linda chewed her lower lip. “What’s going to happen to Val?” she asked.
“He’s still in the hospital,” I said. “I guess the first thing he’s going to have to do is come to terms with what happened. His dad has a lawyer working on the legal questions.”
Jumbo looked puzzled. “Val always thought his dad hated him.”
“Val was wrong about a lot of things,” I said.
Linda shook her head sadly. “I guess we all were.”
I looked across the room. Neil McCallum was motioning to me to come over. I stood up, shook hands with Jumbo and gave Linda a hug. “There’s someone over there I want to talk to,” I said. “I’ll see you in class on Friday.”
Neil’s eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, but he smiled when he saw me.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“Not very good,” he said. “I miss Kellee. I hate wearing a suit, but Mum says you have to for a funeral.”
“Your mum’s right.”
“I know,” he said. Then he brightened. “Are you ready to go?”
“Go where?” I asked.
“To see the crocuses,” he said. “Don’t you remember? When I told you Chloe and I saw the crocuses, you said you wanted to see them.” He held out his hand to me. “So let’s go.”
I followed Neil outside, and we walked down the street to his house to get Chloe. As we headed for the edge of town, the dog bounded across the lawns and ran through every puddle on the street. When we hit the prairie, and started towards the hill where Neil had seen the crocuses, a breeze came up and I could smell moisture and warming earth. Neil and Chloe ran up the hill ahead of me.
Suddenly he yelled, “Here they are.”
I followed him to the top of the hill and looked around me. For as far as I could see, the ground was purple and white. It was an amazing sight.
Neil bent down, picked a crocus and handed it to me. “They’re nice, aren’t they?” he said.
“They’re beautiful,” I said. “There’s a story about where crocuses came from.”
Neil sat down on the ground and began to take the burrs out of Chloe’s coat. “Do you want to tell it?”
I sat down beside him. “Yes, I think I do,” I said. “It’s about a woman named Demeter who had a daughter named Persephone.”
Chloe yelped, and Neil leaned over to reassure her.
“Persephone was a wonderful daughter,” I continued. “Very sweet and thoughtful. Her mother loved her a lot. One day Persephone decided she had to go to the underworld to comfort the spirits of the people who had died.”
“Like Kellee,” Neil said.
“Yes,” I said. “Like Kellee. But in the story, once Persephone was gone, her mother missed her so much that she decided that nothing would ever grow again.” Chloe leaned over and put her muddy head on my lap.
“She likes you,” Neil said.
“I like her too,” I said. “Anyway, one morning when Demeter was missing Persephone so much she thought she herself might die, a ring of purple crocuses pushed their way through the soil. The flowers were all around her, and they were so beautiful Demeter knelt down on the earth so she could see them up close. Guess what she heard?”
Neil shrugged.
“She heard the crocuses whispering, ‘Persephone returns! Persephone returns!’ Demeter was so happy she began to dance, and she made a cape out of white crocuses to give to her daughter when she came back from comforting the spirits of the dead.”
Neil lay down on the ground. For a while he just lay there, looking up at the sky with Chloe panting beside him. Finally, he turned to me and smiled. “I heard them,” he said. “I heard the crocuses whisper.”
Verdict in Blood
CHAPTER
1
When the phone on my bedside table shrilled in the early hours of Labour Day morning, I had the receiver pressed to my ear before the second ring. Eli Kequahtooway, the sixteen-year-old nephew of the man in my life, had been missing since 4:00 the previous afternoon. It wasn’t the first time that Eli had taken off, but the fact that he’d disappeared before didn’t ease my mind about the dangers waiting for him in a world that didn’t welcome runaways, especially if they were aboriginal.
I was braced for the worst. I got it, but not from the quarter I was expecting.
My caller’s voice was baritone rubbed by sandpaper. “This is Detective Robert Hallam of the Regina City Police,” he said. “Am I speaking to Hilda McCourt?”
“No,” I said. “I’m Joanne Kilbourn. Miss McCourt is staying with me for the weekend, but I’m sure she’s asleep by now. Can’t this wait until morning?”
