A Colder Kind of Death

by Gail Bowen

  He furrowed his brow. “What?”

  “Chill out,” I said.

  He gave me a small smile. “Yeah,” he said. “And you stay cool, Mum. There’s going to be weirdness coming at you, too.”

  He was right. I could hear my 10:30 class buzzing as I came down the hall, but as soon as I stepped into the classroom, there was silence. They seemed to have trouble looking at me, and I remembered a lawyer on TV saying he always knew the verdict was guilty if the jury couldn’t make eye contact with the defendant. Some of my colleagues seemed to have a problem with eye contact too. As I passed them in the hall going back to my office after class, they muttered hello and hurried by.

  When I opened my office door, I was glad to see Howard Dowhanuik sitting at my desk. He had shaved and he was wearing a fresh shirt, but he looked like a man who had been up all night. When he saw me, he smiled.

  “First friendly face I’ve seen since I got here,” I said.

  “That bad?”

  “That bad,” I said. “This is a city that reads its morning paper.”

  “That’s why they keep the morning paper at a Grade 6 reading level,” Howard said.

  “Whatever happened to your reverence for the common man?” I said.

  “Man and woman, Jo. I’m surprised at you. And the answer is I don’t have to revere them any more. I’m out of politics.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Howard looked weary. “Have you got coffee or something?”

  “We can go to the Faculty Club,” I said. Then, remembering the ice in the greetings I’d gotten on my way back from class, I said, “On second thought, maybe I’d better make us a pot here.”

  I made the coffee and plugged it in. “Howard, before we talk, let me call Taylor’s school. I want to make sure someone’s keeping an eye on how she’s dealing with all this.”

  After I talked to Taylor’s principal, I felt better. Taylor was the fourth of my children to go to Lakeview School, and over the years Ian MacDonald and I had come to know each other. He knew that none of the Kilbourns would ever be a Rhodes Scholar, but he also knew that my kids were decent enough, and that he could count on me when he needed an extra driver for a field trip. He said he’d talk to Taylor’s teacher, then he cleared his throat and told me he knew I wasn’t a murderer and he would make sure that other people knew that, too.

  I’d often thought Ian MacDonald was a bit of a taskmaster with the kids, but at the moment he was a hero, and my eyes filled with tears. The tissue box in my desk drawer was empty. All I could find in my purse was a paper napkin with the Dairy Queen logo. I mopped my eyes on it. “Dammit,” I said, “I’m so tired I feel like I’m going to throw up. Howard, how bad is this?”

  He sipped his coffee. “At the moment it’s not great, Jo. I was down at the police station after you were there. Gave them my statement, then I just kind of nosed around. I go back a long way with some of those guys.”

  “And …?” I said.

  “They’ve got a window for the time of death. You found Maureen Gault’s body at 11:15, and the woman who works in the hotel smoke shop remembers seeing Maureen just before 11:00. She was just closing the till when Maureen came in to buy a package of LifeSavers. She said they were for her son.”

  For the first time since Maureen died, I felt a pang. “I’d forgotten about him,” I said.

  “You had a few things on your mind,” Howard said drily. “You still do, Jo. The cops are still checking people’s stories. Logically enough, I guess, they’re starting with the head table. There are only two of us who haven’t got even a sniff of an alibi. I’m one of them and you’re the other.”

  “We should have gotten together,” I said, “told the cops that we spent the hour in Blessed Sacrament praying for the justice system.”

  He didn’t laugh. “I wish we had. Gary’s okay. He went over to Tess Malone’s for a nightcap. Jane and Sylvie ended up at Tess’s too.”

  “Talk about strange bedfellows,” I said.

  Howard shrugged. “Apparently, Sylvie and Tess are tight as ticks. Have been for years. Anyway, the four of them were together until midnight. Craig and Manda went straight home. Their neighbour was out shovelling snow, and they talked to him at about 10:30. Around 11:00 Manda ordered pizza. It was delivered at 11:29. The pizza place they got it from is one of those ‘if we’re late, it’s free’ operations, so they keep pretty good records. Anyway there are some holes in Craig and Manda’s story, but it’s better than …”

  “What I have,” I said. “Howard, I don’t understand this. I saw a hundred people when I was looking for Hilda. Doesn’t anybody remember seeing me?”

  “Lots of people remember seeing you, but nobody is willing to swear it was between 11:00 and 11:15. Jo, that’s only fifteen minutes. Most people at the dinner had had a couple of drinks by then and, you know how it is, time gets kind of fuzzy.” He looked as tired as I felt. “Do you want me to hang around for a couple of days? My plane leaves in an hour, but I don’t have to be on it. I can get somebody to cover my classes.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter, Howard. I just need the police to find something. And they will. They have to. For one thing, there has to be a connection with Kevin Tarpley’s murder, and I’m in the clear there.”

  “No handgun with your initials on it at the crime scene?” Howard asked.

  “No. And I wasn’t anywhere near Prince Albert that day. I have witnesses, too. There was a Hallowe’en party at the art gallery. Taylor and I went to it after her lesson. There must have been thirty-five people there. After that, we picked up Angus and took him downtown to get new basketball shoes. I’ll bet we went to six stores and I’m sure the sales people would remember us. Angus is a difficult customer. Howard, I could find fifty people to verify that I was in Regina Saturday. That’s probably a world record. Now come on, if we make tracks, I can get you to the airport and still get back for my next class.”

  As we drove along the expressway, it was like old times. We talked about politics and Howard’s ongoing courtship of his ex-wife, Marty. Reassuringly ordinary conversation, but when Howard turned to say goodbye to me at the airport, I lost my nerve, and Howard, who had known me for years, saw it happen.

  He reached across and covered my hand with his. “Jo, I think you’re right about this thing resolving itself pretty quickly, but until it does, promise me you’ll stay out of it. Whatever’s going on here is ugly. This isn’t a case for Nancy Drew. Go home. Enjoy your family. Teach your classes. Be safe. Trust the cops.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  He shook his head and opened the car door. “Not good enough,” he said, “but a start. I’ll be in touch.”

  As I drove off I could feel the tension in my body. All the brave words in the world couldn’t change the reality. For the time being at least, I was the prime suspect. And Howard was right. Something really ugly was happening. The only thing to do was steer a prudent course and pray that police would work their magic.

  I headed back to the university. Filled with resolve, I went down to the political science office to check my mail.

  Rosalie Norman was there waiting for me. “In the morning paper there was a picture of that woman who was murdered. I recognized her. She was in the hall outside your office the day you accused me of leaving your door open.” Her blackberry eyes were gleaming with excitement. “What do you think I should do?”

  I leaned across the desk and picked up her phone. “I think you should tell the police, Rosalie. Here, I’ll dial the number for you. Put a little excitement in that life of yours.”

  The adrenalin was still pumping when I walked into class. I ignored the whispers and the averted eyes, and the class went well. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” I muttered as I put the keys in the ignition and started home. As I drove past Gary and Sylvie’s big grey clapboard house on Albert Street, I remembered the worm cake and, on impulse, I pulled up in front of their house.

  Jess answered the doo
r. He was wearing blue jeans, a Blue Jays T-shirt, and a fireman’s hat. He looked past me expectantly.

  “Where’s Taylor?” he said.

  “At our house, I guess. I haven’t been home yet, but Miss McCourt’s there. I just stopped by to ask your mum if I could get the recipe for your birthday cake.”

  “Sure,” he said. “She’s out back in her darkroom. I’ll go get her. You can come in.”

  I stepped into the entrance hall. It was a handsome area. The hardwood floor gleamed, and the patchwork quilt draped over the carpenter’s bench by the door was welcoming. But my eyes were drawn to the walls. They were lined with blowups of black and white photographs. When I moved closer, I saw that the subject in all of them was the same: Jess.

  I had seen Sylvie’s book, The Boy in the Lens’s Eye, and I’d been moved by the way in which she had captured the vulnerability and the toughness of her son. But nothing in the book prepared me for the power of the originals. Jess, at four, an otherworldly child, swinging naked on a tree branch, his small body surrounded by a cloud of light. Jess at two, laughing as he is engulfed by a field of sunflowers. All the fugitive moments of Jess Stephens’s childhood were rivetting, but one in which he seems to swagger as he holds a brace of dead gophers out to the person behind the camera was a knockout. I was leaning close to the photograph, marvelling at the contrast between the black stiff bodies of the animals and the soft radiance of little-boy flesh, when the real Jess came up behind me.

  I felt as if he had caught me trespassing, but he was nonchalant. “You can look at those anytime. Come in the living room, I’ve got tropical fish.”

  We looked at the fish, then Jess drifted off the way my kids always did when they’d fulfilled what they considered their social duty. Alone in the room, I looked around. More prints, not Sylvie’s. Two Robert Mapplethorpe prints of flowers, a Diane Arbus, some I didn’t recognize. Over the mantle above the fireplace was a photograph of Ansel Adams. Handwritten in its corner was a quotation, “Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs,” and the signature, “Ansel Adams.”

  I walked over to a bookcase looking for The Boy in the Lens’s Eye. I wanted to see if the gopher picture was there. But the book I found was Sylvie’s first book, Prairiegirl. It had come out ten years before, and its publication had dealt a serious blow to Gary’s political career. Prairiegirl was a collection of photographs of small-town girls from the southeast of the province. The girls were very young, mostly prepubescent, and their parents, not versed in the aesthetics of Mapplethorpe and Sally Mann, had been outraged when, instead of freezing their daughter’s innocence in time, Sylvie’s photographs had explored their burgeoning sexuality. I had just begun to look at the book when Sylvie came into the room.

  Without a word, she strode over and took Prairiegirl from my hands. Her gesture was so rude that I was taken aback.

  “Jess invited me in,” I said. “He was a very good host till he lost interest. His social skills seem about on a level with my kids’.”

  She didn’t respond. She was wearing blue jeans and an oversized white shirt. Her face was scrubbed free of makeup and her blond hair was brushed back. She looked weary and hostile.

  “Sylvie. I just came for a recipe. Taylor’s birthday is next week and she wanted me to make the same cake you made for Jess … He really did ask me in,” I added.

  She was holding Prairiegirl tight against her chest as if, given the chance, I would rip it from her hands. Her fear didn’t make sense. Then, like Paul on the road to Damascus, the scales fell from my eyes. Sylvie thought she had a murderer in her living room. There didn’t seem much point in prolonging the agony.

  I walked to the entranceway. Sylvie followed me, and as I sat on the carpenter’s bench pulling on my boots, she watched in silence. I put on my coat and headed for the door. When I opened it, Sylvie said, “I’ll send Gary over with the recipe. I wouldn’t want to spoil Taylor’s birthday.”

  I turned. Sylvie had positioned herself in the centre of the hall, and her stance was aggressive. Behind her, Jess peeked out from the living room. “I wouldn’t let you,” I said, and I closed the door behind me.

  When I pulled up in front of our house, there was more good news. A van from Nationtv was parked in my driveway, and there was a young woman on my front lawn talking to Taylor while the camera whirred. This time I was the one who did the grabbing. I took my daughter’s hand and turned to the young woman. “Beat it,” I said. “If I ever catch you bugging my kids again, I’ll break your camera.”

  She started to argue, but I was past listening. “Count on it,” I said, and I was pleased to see that she backed away.

  Hilda opened the door just as Taylor and I hit the front porch. She took in the situation as soon as she saw the Nationtv van.

  “Damn them,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “I’ve been fending off media people on the telephone and here they were in the driveway.” She looked at me. “Did they talk to …”

  I nodded.

  “No ethical sense,” she said. “Ruled by expediency and the imperative to exploit.”

  When I picked up the telephone, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely dial Jill Osiowy’s number. As the phone in her office rang, I could hear the call-waiting beep on my line. I looked out my front window. The red, white, and blue truck of another TV network was pulling up in front of my house.

  Jill had to bear the brunt of my anger. “Whose decision would it be to send a news team out here to ask a six-year-old child if her mother was a murderer?”

  For a moment, Jill was silent. Then she said, “It’s news, Jo. I’m sorry. I know that’s not the answer you want, but that’s the answer there is. You’re news.”

  “And that makes my kids fair game,” I said.

  “In some people’s minds, yes,” she said.

  On the notepad beside the telephone, Hilda had carefully written the telephone numbers of all the media people who had phoned. Most had called more than once, but Troy Smith-Windsor had gone for the gold and called five times. Suddenly I was so exhausted I couldn’t move.

  “How long will this go on, Jill?” I asked.

  “Till they find someone else.”

  “I’m not going to wait that long,” I said.

  There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Jill said. “What can I do to help?”

  “See what you can find out about Kevin Tarpley’s murder. There has to be a connection, and I’m in the clear there.”

  “I’ll check our police sources, and I’ll ask Terry Norlander from the Prince Albert affiliate to go talk to that guy in the cell across from Kevin’s. The one who helped Kevin with his letters.”

  “Ah, yes, the letters,” I said. “You know that minister – Paschal Temple – Kevin might have told him something. Jill, see if you can track him down, will you? If it sounds like he’ll talk to me, I can drive up there this weekend. Hilda said she’ll stay a few days, so the kids will be okay.”

  “You got it,” Jill said. Then she laughed, “Hey, Nancy Drew, it’s good to hear that you’re back in business.”

  I winced, relieved that Howard Dowhanuik was snarled somewhere in Toronto rush-hour traffic, safely out of earshot.

  Dinner was, given the circumstances, a cheerful affair. After I’d talked to Jill, I ran through the options for dinner and ordered in pizza, extra large, loaded. The kids ate like people with nothing more serious on their minds than double cheese and pepperoni. I relaxed and listened as Taylor ran through the guest list for her birthday party and Angus talked about a girl named Brie who had just moved to Regina from Los Angeles. “Talk about culture shock, eh, Mum?”

  “Yeah,” I said, as I opened bottles of Great Western beer for Hilda and me. “Brie’s going to find it hard to keep up with the scene here in Regina.”

  Jill called at 6:30. “I just got off the phone with Terry Norlander. The police up there have zip on the shooting. Their ballistic people say the bullets came fro
m a handgun. Kevin was with that inmate from the cell across from him. According to Terry, this guy is something else. Apparently, he’s embraced our prison system so wholeheartedly that he prefers to be known as 49041 Rudzik. Anyway, Kevin and 49041 were shooting baskets in the exercise yard. When Kevin went down, 49041 thought he’d tripped. Then he saw the blood. Apparently the car and the driver just disappeared. Terry is going to try to see 49041 again tomorrow, but I wouldn’t hold your breath about any revelations there. Speaking of revelations, we’ve had some luck with Paschal Temple. I called his house and got his wife. Paschal’s in Regina. One of the brethren had a heart attack, and he’s taken over the church down here till the guy recovers. It’s Bread of Life on 13th Avenue. His wife told me they have a 7:00 service tonight, so if you hustle, you can still make it.”

  “I’ll hustle,” I said. I could hear the grimness in my voice.

  Apparently, Jill did too. “Hey, Jo, guess what Mrs. Paschal Temple’s name is?”

  “Hepzibah,” I said.

  “Wrong by a country mile,” said Jill. “It’s Lolita.”

  An hour later, I was sitting in Bread of Life Tabernacle waiting for Lolita Temple’s husband to begin his sermon. Bread of Life had the cheerless utilitarian look of a building that had been constructed on the cheap, but the pews were filled, and the air was electric with emotion. I sat next to a man who seemed to be about my age, but most of the congregation was in its teens. A Christian rock group with the name Joyful Noise spray-painted on its bass drum began to play.

  As the music soared, some kids near the front stood up, raised their hands towards heaven, closed their eyes, and began to sway. The man beside me smiled and shook his head. I smiled back. Two middle-aged people commiserating about the excesses of youth. The music grew more intense, and the kids who were swaying began to whirl up the centre aisle towards the altar. I was absorbed in their progress when the man who had smiled at me began to howl and speak in tongues.

  It was a relief when a small, sensible-looking man who appeared to be in his mid-sixties walked to the front and stood behind the lectern. He was wearing trousers, an open-necked shirt, and a red cardigan. He thanked the members of Joyful Noise and smiled with real affection at the kids who had danced in the aisle and who had collapsed, sweaty and depleted, on the floor to the left of him.