Lament for Bonnie

by Anne Emery

  “What did he die of?”

  “Something fairly common. Pneumonia, it was. I imagine she told the Mounties. What in the name of God were they trying to insinuate?”

  “This gives us a whole new take on the teddy bear in the cellar, the bear sitting across from the facsimile of Bonnie, dressed in a T-shirt commemorating Elvis’s appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.”

  “But what —”

  “That event was in 1956, same year that Lyle died. That must have been the point.”

  “My God! I mean, I didn’t think it was an announcement from the world beyond that Elvis had risen from the dead, given that the image was buried under the ground. But I thought it must be just a coincidence. Whoever the hateful person was who put that little tableau together was probably making some kind of point with the teddy bear dressed like Bonnie, and the Elvis shirt just happened to be on the other teddy. Now we have to consider the possibility that the guy was linking the death of a child in 1956 with the disappearance or, God forbid, the death of a child now in 1994. If that’s the case, you’d think that scene was staged by someone close to the family, or even a member of the family. Who else would think of it and try to link the two events?”

  “How widespread was the knowledge of Ginny’s teenage pregnancy? She was living in Toronto at the time. Those weren’t exactly kind and gentle times for unwed mothers and their babies. Maybe the family kept it quiet?”

  “The only memory I have was of a visit at Christmas time. Ginny brought Lyle home. I don’t remember hearing anything about him before that. But, you have to remember, I wasn’t born till several months after him. So the news of her pregnancy, if any news travelled, was before my time. Ginny obviously felt, though, that she could come home with him and join in the family celebrations, so he must have been accepted into the family. In fact, I know he was. There are photos, with Morag herself holding him. Showing him off, if I’m picturing things correctly. And, come to think of it, all the time I was growing up I don’t recall any snide remarks or knowing looks passing between any of the members of our family in relation to babies born ‘early’ or ‘out of wedlock.’ I don’t remember ever getting the impression it was considered a scandal.”

  Good thing, I thought, considering that our little Dominic was conceived on the wrong side of the blanket when Maura and I were living apart. All I said was, “And Ginny herself on that visit? Do you remember how she was? Happy, enjoying herself?”

  “She was just another mum in the group; I can’t remember noticing anything. But then I probably wouldn’t have. The grownups were all mysterious to us at that age. But now the Mounties think there was something suspicious about Lyle’s death? Why? I mean they can hardly think there is any connection between what happened to Lyle in Toronto and whatever has happened to Bonnie here in Cape Breton nearly forty years later. What connection could there possibly be?”

  There was no need to answer that question aloud. The connection might be Ginny, sixty-four-year-old Ginny, as unlikely as that seemed, or someone else in the MacDonald clan. Again, hard to imagine.

  Chapter X

  Pierre

  A guy got knifed last night, so I was on the job at daybreak. I had worked all weekend of course on the Bonnie MacDonald case. Missed a trip up to Shediac for La Fête Nationale des Acadiens, our Acadian national day. It’s August 15 of every year, Assumption Day. Our people have been celebrating it in fine style for over a hundred years. Music, dancing, partying. And le joyeux tintamarre! That’s when we march through our communities making a joyful noise with pots and spoons and any other thing that makes a racket, all to remind everybody we are here! Back again and still here after the expulsion of 1755. I try every year to get together with my buddy Patrick Tremblay for the festivities in Shediac. Sometimes I have to miss it. But that’s the job. I wouldn’t change it for the world. Well, yeah, I’d change it maybe but wouldn’t give it up. And this year I wouldn’t be much good for dancing or marching with my leg in a cast. Solange drove up to New Brunswick for it with the kids. She sent me a look of pity as she pulled out of the driveway with a basket full of delicacies for the feast.

  Anyway, the murder. Male identified as Randall David Gouthro, known as Randy, forty-six years old, on probation with a number of conditions after being convicted of some drug offences. Cause of death was loss of blood from a stab wound to the neck. Killer managed to sever his jugular vein after a few false starts. Gouthro had no history of violence himself, apart from a couple of bar brawls years before. He had served time previously for a series of narcotics offences and break-and-enters. Businesses, not homes. Accomplice on more than one of them was Bonsai McCurdy. This was before my time in Cape Breton, but other members at the detachment remembered that Bonsai was the ringleader in their ventures. It didn’t take long for the press to come calling, and we gave them the basic facts. We withheld the nature of the stab wound so we could assess the genuineness of any tips or, less likely, confessions that came in. You get a lot of nut calls with something like this.

  We started with people who knew Gouthro, and that led us to people who had seen him on his last night on earth. His buddy Al had been drinking with him at the Dirk bar in Kinlochiel until around midnight when Gouthro left to walk home. Did he leave alone? Yes. Did he seem worried about anything? No, not that Al noticed. Did Gouthro talk to anybody else at the bar? He knew a lot of the regulars there, so he greeted various people and had chats with some of them. Al named a few people, and Dougald and I recognized most of the names. Anyway, Gouthro left, and that was the last anybody saw of him. Did Al notice anybody leave shortly after Gouthro? Sorry, he didn’t notice.

  We had better luck about the night before the murder. A witness saw Randy Gouthro in the bar of the Bayview Hotel in Glace Bay. We knew that’s where the MacDonald clan had headed after their concert at the Savoy. The witness knew Gouthro by name but not well enough to speak to. When he saw him at the Bayview, Gouthro was talking to a “young one” our witness had noticed at a few music events over the summer. He described her as having “Cleopatra” hair, and he thought he’d heard her called Sandy or Sabby or something with S anyway. The conversation between Gouthro and this young female seemed “urgent.” Our witness couldn’t make out what they were saying, but Gouthro appeared to be nervous and kept looking around. The woman seemed to be trying to reassure him. After a few minutes of this, Gouthro left the Bayview. Alone. Armed with the description and the possibilities for the name, a couple of our members were able to track down a young woman called Sabrina Fay-Waddams. She was staying at a bed and breakfast, a big white house with a glassed-in front porch, out at Dominion Beach. Dougald and I found her there just after noon and asked to have a word. She wasn’t happy to see us, and it wasn’t long before we found out why.

  Sabrina was in her thirties by the look of things and, yeah, she had a Cleopatra kind of thing going with her hair. She was wearing what my wife would call a muumuu, a loose foolish-looking blue dress with yellow pictures of the sun and stars all over it. Looked to me like folk-art pictures. When we stood in the doorway to her room and refused to take a hint, she finally invited us inside. It was a room with lots of frilly stuff, on the curtains and on the edges of the flowery bedspread and chair coverings. We sat down on two chairs that were much too small for us, and she sat opposite us on the bed, fiddling with her hair and looking around the room. Nervous. No harm in that, at least from our point of view.

  “Ms. Fay-Waddams.” What a mouthful that was. Hope if she gets married, she’ll drop it and not add another hyphen and name to the string. “Can you tell us about the Bayview Hotel bar on the night of August fourteenth, two nights ago?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What was going on there? What did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I was just there for the get-together after the Clan Donnie concert.”

  “Were you with friends? By yourself? What?”
<
br />   “I knew people there, but I . . .”

  “But?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “We can handle complications. Tell us about it.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “We’re not having a chat over a cappuccino here, madame. A man was murdered.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Did you know him? Randy Gouthro?”

  “No, I just . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It was the first time I met him.”

  “First?”

  “Only time, I mean. It was the only time I ever met him. I never saw him again.”

  “How did you end up being in a conversation with him?”

  She fussed with her hair as she played for time. Finally, she said, “He wanted to talk to Monty.” A blush rose on her cheeks when she said the name.

  How many Montys had I heard of around here? Must be Monty Collins. I knew he and the family were there that night. We had questioned them all, and none of them had noticed a man fitting Randy Gouthro’s description in the place. Anyway, that must be the Monty she meant. But I played dumb. “Who is Monty?”

  “He’s a prominent lawyer from Halifax. And he has a very good blues band. They’re called Functus, made up of Monty and people he was in law school with.”

  “Right. Go on.”

  “Monty was busy. Family obligations.” Sabrina made a face when she said it. I don’t know whether she realized she was doing it. But she made family obligations sound like a disagreeable chore for Monty. Anytime I’d seen him with the MacDonald and MacNeil families, he was having a fine time in their company. But this was Sabrina’s tale, not mine. “And he takes his obligations seriously. He’s so good,” she said, sounding for all the world like an old lady sitting beside the coffin of somebody about to be planted in the ground. He was a good man.

  “Okay, Monty was busy. So, what happened?”

  “I told him, the man you’re asking about, I told him I would pass his message along to Monty.”

  And get a little face-to-face time with Monty herself. “How did he know to ask you about Monty in the first place?”

  “Well, he came in and —”

  “Let me stop you there for a second. You were already in the hotel bar before Gouthro arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were part of the post-concert gathering?”

  “Not really. I was just there, having a little glass of wine. You know.”

  Yeah. I knew. I knew why she was there in a room full of MacDonalds and Drummonds and MacNeils. And Collinses. “And then Randy Gouthro arrived. What time was that?”

  “I guess around midnight, a little before. I’m not sure.”

  “And?”

  “And he asked the bartender if Monty Collins was there.”

  “What did the bartender say?”

  “He didn’t hear the guy because of all the noise and people talking. So . . .”

  “So . . .”

  “I said to the guy, ‘I’m a friend of Monty’s.’ And that I would . . .” She looked down at her hands.

  I waited. All the time in the world.

  Her mouth quivered a bit, and then she got it out. “He said, ‘Collins is a cousin of Bonnie MacDonald, right?’”

  Ostie de Crisse de tabarnak! This was about Bonnie Mac. I could see Dougald out of the corner of my eye, rooting for something in his pocket. He stopped dead still. Neither of us said a word.

  Sabrina started to speak, cleared her throat, and started again. “So I said no.”

  “No?”

  “No, I said he would be a cousin by marriage.” The word marriage came out through a twist in her mouth. “And the man said he wanted to talk to Monty about the Bonnie MacDonald case.”

  Sainte Monique, donne-moi de la patience, I prayed. The man had something to say about the case.

  “And did he speak to Monty?”

  She shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “I told him he could speak to me instead.”

  What the fuck? I made like an Anglo and kept calm and carried on. “You told him that why?”

  She was looking mighty humble now. “I told him I was working with Monty on . . . on the investigation.”

  “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are doing the investigation, madame.”

  “I know, I know. But Monty has done investigations himself. Solved crimes, and I know he is working hard to find out what happened to the little girl, so, you know, there is nothing I would rather do in this world than save that young musician!”

  And make a place for herself in history and in the heart of Monty Collins.

  “Are you someone who has worked with Collins in his law firm, or what is the situation?”

  “Monty and I . . .” The name was like honey on her lips. Even as deep in the merde as this girl was now if she had fucked up the investigation, even with all that, she couldn’t resist getting his name into the conversation. “Monty and I, let’s just say we understand each other. I understand his music, what he is saying in it. What he is trying to say. And maybe what he is trying not to say. He is not free to, well, that’s private. About this man coming in and wanting to talk to Monty about Bonnie, I told him in all honesty that whatever he had to say, he could say it to me, and I would give the information word for word to Monty after . . .”

  “After?”

  “Monty was surrounded by the MacDonalds. I thought it would be painful for them to hear whatever this man might say, and that I should relay the information privately to Monty whenever I could see him alone.”

  A sure way to get Collins alone would be to hold out the promise of information about the little missing girl.

  “Go on.”

  “The man kind of craned his neck trying to see Monty, but then he looked nervous. As if maybe he had seen someone who frightened him! There were a lot of people there. I could tell he was getting edgy, so I asked him to say what he had to say.”

  “And that was?”

  She took a deep breath and said, “He told me he had seen a girl who looked like Bonnie. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure it was her, but it was a girl who looked like her in the car.”

  “The car.”

  “Right. He saw a big old car heading out onto the highway with a young girl in it.”

  Ô mon Dieu, a possible eyewitness, and now he was lying on a slab in the morgue. Silenced forever. I had to take what I could get.

  “First of all, what impression did he have of the girl?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did she look injured? Frightened? Tied up?”

  “I . . . don’t know. Just that she looked similar.”

  “Who else was in the car?”

  “A man.”

  “He was sure it was a man.”

  “Well, he said it was someone tall with short hair . . .”

  “What else did he say about the man? The driver? Hair colour? Age?”

  “I didn’t get all the details. I decided it would be a good idea to make an appointment with him, to get together with him and Monty, and we’d take his statement.”

  “I take the statements around here, moonbeam.”

  “I know! Monty and I would have brought the information to you, arranged a meeting with the witness.”

  This was a disaster. I prayed again to Sainte Monique, the patron saint of patience. “Did he say anything at all, however insignificant it might have seemed to you, anything at all about the man?”

  Again, a shake of the head. Then, “Just that he was driving.”

  “And the car? What about it?”

  “Just that it was a big old car.”

  “Colour? Make?” I knew it was hopeless.

  “No, he said —�
�

  “He said what?”

  Now she knew she had stepped in it. Eventually, she got it out. “He asked if I knew anything about cars. I don’t. I walk and take public transportation! And he said that was all right. He would wait and describe the car in detail to Monty when they got together, and Monty could pass the description on to the cops.” Another piece of information that was never going to make it to our notebooks. “He said the police didn’t like him. Because he had been in trouble. Nothing weird, he said to me, nothing violent and nothing about girls.”

  That, I knew, was true.

  “But he wanted it so Monty would make contact with the Mounties, and he would tell Monty whatever he knew. Monty could take it from there.”

  “You said ‘highway.’ Which highway? Which direction? Where was he seen?”

  Again, nothing.

  I summoned all the patience I had remaining from the gift of the saint. “When this man was talking to you, were there other people nearby?”

  “There was a big crowd. People were milling around.”

  “Could anyone have overheard the conversation?”

  “I don’t think . . . I don’t know. We were standing close to the door. People were coming and going. The MacDonalds and their friends, Monty, and the rest of them.”

  “So. What did you do with the information he gave you?”

  She had the shakes now. “I didn’t get a chance to speak to Monty that night.”

  “Why not? He was there. You had important information for him.”

  “There just wasn’t . . . it wasn’t the right time.”

  “It was the only time, madame.”

  So this guy never got to Monty Collins who, at the very least, would have known what questions to ask and what details would be crucial to the investigation. I thought it safe to assume Collins would have come to us with the information so we could follow up. Not going to happen now. Thanks to this wingnut and her delusions of grandeur.