Lament for Bonnie

by Anne Emery

  When Dougald told me about the interview, I answered without hesitation that I would be representing Ginny, that they were not to question her, and that I would be at the detachment in half an hour.

  That’s when he broke the news. She had already been questioned, had already given a statement. And it had all been above board. The Mounties had read Ginny her Charter rights, told her she did not have to say anything, that anything she said could be used in evidence, and that she had the right to call a lawyer without delay. She said she understood, she was innocent, and they could ask her anything they liked. That gave me hope, though I’ve been around the block enough times that it should have been the death knell of hope. But, the way I wanted to see things, it spoke to me of innocence. A bad move to be sure, a bad move to tell the police anything. Because, as I had told every other client I had ever represented, you never know what information the police have, which, coupled with something you tell them, however innocuous it may seem, can complete the picture of guilt and seal your fate. Anyway, the die was cast. She had spoken. I got into my car and headed straight to Sydney to see her.

  She was distraught when I arrived, so much so that I could not get any information from her. Instead, I was treated to what had already been done. I sat down to watch the video of Ginny MacDonald’s statement to the police. They had her in an interview room containing nothing but a table and two chairs. Sergeant Pierre Maguire, his left leg in a cast, sat across the table from his suspect. She stared at him, unblinking. Maguire read her her rights and asked if she understood them. She did. Did she want to take advantage of her right to call a lawyer? Would she like to get in touch with Legal Aid? To my mind, Maguire was practically begging her to get a lawyer. But she gave him a firm no. “I’ve done nothing wrong, and I will answer your questions. Then, I hope, this misunderstanding will be cleared up, and I can go home.”

  So the interrogation began. “As you know, Ginny, we’ve been doing our best to trace Bonnie’s movements on the night she disappeared.”

  “Of course.”

  “And we have received some new information recently.”

  She looked up at him with what appeared to be genuine relief. “Have you found her?”

  He didn’t answer that but said, “We won’t get into any information right now. We just have some questions for you.”

  “All right.”

  “Now, you were at the party that was held at Red Archie Drummond’s and Mary Reid’s houses?”

  “I was there.”

  “At both houses, or did you stay in one place?”

  “I only went to Mary’s. Didn’t feel like traipsing back and forth. And I knew if I stayed in one place, the party would come to me because everybody else was moving from one to the other and back again.”

  “How late did the party go on?”

  “Well, late, I guess. I didn’t stay the whole time.”

  “Oh? What time did you leave?”

  “It would have been around eleven thirty, I suppose.”

  “So where did you go then?”

  “I just went home.”

  “And how did you get home?”

  “I walked. I like to walk as much as possible.”

  “That’s how you keep yourself so fit, Ginny!” He smiled at her. Trying to put her at ease? Or lull her into a false sense of security?

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “How tall are you, Ginny, do you have a rough idea?”

  “Why do you want to know that? You can see me for yourself!”

  “Five nine, five ten, something like that?”

  “That’s right. I’m around five ten.”

  “How did you get to the party in the first place? Walked or did somebody drive you?”

  “I walked.”

  “Now, I imagine you saw Bonnie at the party.”

  “Oh, yes. She was at Mary’s, and I talked to her for a while there.”

  “Do you recall what she was wearing?”

  “Yes! She had a new bright blue sweater, cotton knit, you know, for summer evenings. I had never seen it on her before. It looked lovely with her eyes. Other than that, I think she had on a kilt or a skirt. And she was wearing a nice pair of suede boots. Blue. Like the old song.”

  “The Elvis Presley song.”

  She blinked and took a moment before replying, then said, “I wouldn’t know. That’s not the kind of music I listen to.”

  What was it with Ginny and Elvis Presley? She had reacted strangely to the news about the teddy bear in the Elvis shirt, and now this, a musician pretending she didn’t know that “Blue Suede Shoes” was an Elvis song.

  Maguire ignored that and said, “So Bonnie never had the blue sweater on in your company before.”

  “No, she had just bought it that day, or the day before. She had gone into Sydney with Andy and had done some shopping.”

  “What kind of things do you keep in your car, Ginny?”

  “My car?”

  “Yeah. What would you typically have in there?”

  Ginny looked perplexed and gave a little shrug. “Just . . . I don’t know.”

  “You’d carry groceries in it.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Snow scraper and brush in the winter.”

  “Of course.”

  “Cleaning rags to wipe off a misty window or something?”

  “No, no, I don’t think so. I have a box of Kleenex in it, and some maps. Other than that, I can’t remember. Why are you asking me about the car?”

  “Rope?”

  “Rope? What do you mean? What kind of rope?”

  “Just do you keep any rope in the car for emergencies or any reason?”

  Ginny looked wary then. It was about time. She must have caught on, as I had long before, that the Mounties had found something in her car. A piece of rope, presumably. Maybe fibres from a blue sweater. It was possible that they had found nothing and were putting forward these suggestions to make her nervous and prompt a response. But I didn’t think so. The fact that they had brought in a sixty-four-year-old grandmother told me they had something. This didn’t come out of the blue.

  As for the rope, she said, “No, I don’t think so.”

  “All right,” Maguire said then, “you and Bonnie talked for a while at the party.”

  “Then she went over to the other party, at Red Archie’s. Or so I thought.” There was a quiver in her voice as she recalled what we would all hope was the last time she had seen her granddaughter.

  “That would have been what time?”

  “I don’t know. Well, I left at eleven thirty, so . . .”

  “How long before that did you see Bonnie leave?”

  She shook her head, and regret was written all over her face. “I don’t remember. I just don’t know.”

  Maguire leaned back in his chair, and Ginny seemed to relax a bit in synch with the cop.

  Then he sucker-punched her, not literally but with a question nobody could have expected in a million years. The gentleness of the cop’s voice belied the brutal frankness of the question. “How did your little boy die, Ginny?”

  What on earth was he doing? I knew she had a baby when she was very young, working in Toronto, and the child had died not long after reaching school age. Ginny had moved back to Cape Breton and eventually started a new life with Stewart MacDonald. But she never got over the death of her firstborn child. Who would?

  Ginny MacDonald always looked good. Fit, athletic almost. Stylishly dressed, younger than her years. Now she stared with horror at Pierre Maguire, and she seemed to age before my eyes. I wanted to fly into the interview room and clap my hand over her mouth, but of course it was too late. The statement was in the past.

  Maguire prompted her. “Mrs. MacDonald?”

  Her voice was almost a croak. “He had pn
eumonia.”

  “I know this is going back forty years, Ginny . . .”

  “Not quite that long. It was in . . .”

  “It was in?” he prompted her.

  “Um, 1956.”

  “Right. Of course. Can you recall when exactly Lyle first showed signs of pneumonia?”

  I had never heard anything the least bit questionable about the little boy’s death in Toronto. What in the name of God were the Mounties up to? I concluded that they must be trying to throw her off balance, so she might blurt out something she might not say if she were under control. Something they hoped she might say about Bonnie. But whether it was about Bonnie or that long-ago death of a child, I prayed that she would be cautious. If she said anything wrong, and the police could contradict her, her credibility would be shot. Maybe that was the object of the exercise here.

  “When did he come down with pneumonia?”

  She was too flustered to give him an answer beyond, “I don’t know. It’s all . . . I can’t remember the dates . . .”

  “Who filled out the death certificate?”

  She was ready for that. “Father Bertoni!”

  “A priest.”

  “That’s right. My parish priest up there.”

  “But the government in Ontario, the records —”

  “I don’t know anything about that. Father Bertoni took care of everything for me.”

  “Was Lyle admitted to the hospital?”

  Her eyes flew from her interrogator’s face to the far side of the room, and she didn’t reply. It was a fatal hesitation. If a child had been diagnosed with pneumonia, surely he had been in a hospital.

  Then, in an attempt to recover, she said, “I had the doctor come.”

  “To your home?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the doctor’s name?”

  “I don’t remember! It was nearly forty years ago.” But she had had the priest’s name on the tip of her tongue. “I was beside myself with worry! My child was dying before my very eyes! Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I know this must be terribly painful for you, Ginny. At any time. But particularly with . . . whatever has happened with Bonnie.”

  “That’s right. So why aren’t you out there looking for her? Instead of keeping me in here and asking horrible questions and pretending you think I had something to do with Bonnie’s disappearance!”

  “I imagine you kept a copy of the death certificate?”

  “I hardly needed a piece of paper to remind me that my son had died!”

  Good answer.

  The Mountie said nothing. Eventually, Ginny filled the silence. “But I probably do have it amongst my things, somewhere.”

  “Perhaps you’ll tell us where we can find it?”

  Ginny bent forward in her chair. “Why are you here, tormenting me about the death of my child? Have you nothing better to do? Such as get out there and find my granddaughter?”

  “We’re doing everything we can to find Bonnie. I can assure you of that.”

  Maguire lapsed into silence for a few long moments, then asked, “Where is your son buried, Ginny?”

  “A ’Mhac an Diabhail!” I asked around later and found out that means “O son of the devil!”

  Her interrogator looked at her placidly with his light blue eyes. He had all the time in the world. The woman was trembling. Her words bespoke innocence, but her body language said something else. She finally struggled out of her chair, and Maguire rose with her. She jabbed a finger in his direction.

  “Leave me!”

  “If you could find that death certificate, Ginny, that would be most helpful.”

  “Helpful for whom? Not for me, having to relive the most painful time of my life. And with wee Bonnie missing . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she sank back into the chair. She turned her face away from Maguire, who said for the record that the interview was being suspended at eleven fourteen a.m.

  Dougald MacDougald took me to a room where I would be joined by Ginny. I stood and waited for them to bring her in. She ran into my arms and stood sobbing. Dougald didn’t order us to have no contact; he simply left us as we were and closed the door. Then I eased her down into the chair and took the seat opposite. She took a deep shuddering breath and looked at me.

  “What the hell am I doing in here, Monty?”

  “Ginny, I am here to help you, to get you out of this.” Then I couldn’t stop myself. “From here on in, you say nothing to the Mounties or to anyone . . .”

  “I don’t see why I need any help. Why are they here interrogating an innocent woman about the loss of her child four decades ago?”

  “The child’s father, Ginny, was he with you back then —”

  “He had no father, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “How long were you with him? Was he involved at all with the boy, or . . . ?”

  “His involvement ended the day I announced the pregnancy.”

  “Same old story, eh?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, if you have the death certificate, that might get the Mounties off the subject of your son’s death all those years ago.”

  “I’ve got the damainte death paper, and they’re welcome to it!”

  “Good. We’ll take care of that when we get you home.”

  “Are they finished with me? Will they leave me alone now?”

  As traumatic as all this was for her, she still had no idea how much trouble she was in.

  “They aren’t finished with you, no.”

  “A Dhia cuidich sinn! I just assumed that once I told them they had made a mistake, they’d let me go.”

  “They don’t know that.”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “That you are innocent. They obviously think there is something that ties you to Bonnie’s disappearance.”

  “God help us!” she prayed again, this time in English. “What can they possibly be thinking? You don’t think it, do you, Monty?”

  I couldn’t imagine her hurting her grandchild. But, then again, I’d never heard anything that raised suspicions about the death of her son. Whatever the case, I was not about to walk out on her and let her down. “I’m sure you’ve done nothing wrong, Ginny. But you know what my job is. I defend people whether they’ve done it or not.”

  “Well, I had nothing to do with whatever happened to Bonnie! I have no idea where she is. If I did, I’d have brought her home safe and sound.”

  I nodded and hoped to God she was being straight with me.

  “What can you tell me about the night Bonnie disappeared?”

  She told me the same thing she had told the Mountie. She had walked to the party, she had seen Bonnie at one house and assumed that Bonnie had left for the other house, and then she, Ginny, had walked home at around eleven thirty. End of story.

  “Ginny, as painful as it is for me to leave you here right now, I’m going to go and try to find out what brought this on. I’ll see what their story is.”

  “They don’t have a story. I did nothing wrong.”

  I went out then and had a word with MacDougald and Maguire, asked them what led them to Ginny MacDonald. They were upfront with me, or so I believed.

  Maguire did the talking. “We have a witness who saw her car on a street just around the corner from the video shop where Bonnie was captured on CCTV. The camera recorded Bonnie walking by on the street with a man — a man or a tall woman — at thirty-eight minutes after eleven. Very shortly after that, our witness saw a car matching Ginny’s. Not too many seventies-era Ford LTDs in town.”

  “Doesn’t mean Bonnie was in it, or Ginny was driving.”

  “She didn’t say anything to us about it being stolen. And she told us back in July that she was on foot that night.”

  I kept my next thought to m
yself, that maybe Ginny lets other people drive the car. Family members. “All right,” I said, “and?”

  “And we found bright blue cotton fibres in the front seat and fibres from a rope made of hemp, and there’s a bit of blood visible on the rope fibres.” I tried to maintain a poker face while listening to this. “We don’t have the lab reports on the blood yet, but when you combine that with the blue fibres and Ginny’s statement that she had never seen the sweater on Bonnie until the party, we can conclude that the fibres were not in the vehicle until that night.”

  I drove Ginny to her house and told her I’d leave her to relax a bit before I came back and talked to her again. She thanked me and said there was no need to wait. So we went in together. She headed upstairs and came back a few minutes later, changed and refreshed. Her next destination was the kitchen, where she got busy with the teapot. When the tea was brewed, she brought two cups into the sitting room, and we sat and sipped.

  “Ginny, as you must have gathered, the Mounties say they found something in your car.”

  “How could they have? What was it? What was all that about a rope?”

  “They found fibres of a rope.” I decided to leave out the blood for the time being. “And blue cotton fibres as well.”

  Ginny looked as if she were about to faint. Her hand holding the teacup was shaking so badly she had to put the cup on the table beside her chair.

  I waited to see what she would say, and she finally responded. “There was never any rope in my car.”

  This was another of those instances when an admission would have been better. Sure, I’ve had rope in the car from time to time to hold things together. Nothing new about that.

  “Could Bonnie have been in your car that night?”

  “No! I didn’t have the car with me.”

  “Do other people borrow the car?”