by Gail Bowen
He smiled. “I think I’d better stick around till tomorrow. Blaine shouldn’t be moved when he’s like this. Besides, Lorraine has a touching belief that men are useful in a crisis. I’ll call you as soon as I get back in the city.”
I gave him my number, then I tapped Taylor on the shoulder.
“Come on, T. It’s time to boogie.”
Taylor handed me her drawing. “Here, for Angus,” she said. It was a page full of frogs. “Since he can’t take any real ones home with him,” she explained.
“Great,” I said. I looked at it again. “It really is great, Taylor.” I showed it to Keith, and we walked to the house. When I got to my room, I slipped the picture into my bag and forgot about it.
The couple who worked for Lorraine Harris were busy in the kitchen making breakfast. I could smell the good aromas of bacon and toast and waffles. Some of the young people from the party were already eating. They were over the first shock, but as I looked at them, I knew it would be a long time before they recovered. Their voices, so exuberant the night before, were muted; even their gestures seemed careful and controlled, as if they were afraid of drawing attention to themselves.
Keith and I filled plates for ourselves and for Taylor. After we’d eaten, I poured a glass of juice and went up to check on Peter. I knocked at his door.
“It’s okay. Come on in,” he said.
He’d showered and dressed, but he looked terrible.
I handed him the juice. “They have breakfast downstairs,” I said. “Can I bring you something?”
He took a tentative sip. “Thanks, Mum. I think I’ll be doing pretty well if I manage to get this down.”
“Pete, I think as soon as you’re up to it, we should go back to the city. This place is a nightmare for everybody right now. If we went home, you could sit out in the sunshine with the dogs and be by yourself for a while.”
Peter went to the corner, picked up the clothes he’d been wearing the night before and shoved them in his knapsack. “I’m ready when you are,” he said.
After everyone had eaten, it didn’t take us long to get organized. Mieka decided to stay at the lake with the Harrises. She said they needed her, and she was right. The doctor who came to check on Blaine had been alarmed about the deterioration in his condition. Greg wanted to stay with his grandfather, and Mieka wanted to be with Greg.
Peter said he’d feel better if he drove, and Angus volunteered to go with him. So just Taylor and I were riding in the Volvo for the trip back. As I started up the driveway, a yellow Buick hurtled out of the garage behind the house and turned onto the driveway. I had to brake to keep from hitting it. I don’t think Lorraine Harris even saw me, but I saw her. She was wearing her horn-rimmed glasses, and her grey hair was loose. She disappeared over the hill in a split second, but as I drove carefully around one of the hairpin turns on the reserve road, I saw the buttercup-yellow Buick on the other side of the valley. Lorraine was really tearing up the highway. I thought she must be desperate to put miles between herself and the disaster she left behind.
It was the Saturday morning of a holiday weekend, and traffic on the highway into the city was light. When we passed Edenwold, I saw that the tundra swans had gone. Moved on north. I thought of Christy standing by the fence in the brilliant May sunshine: “If they’re smart and lucky, they’ll make it.” Maybe, I thought. Maybe.
We were in Regina by ten-fifteen. As we drove through the city streets, we could see people in their front yards putting in bedding plants, visiting. The months of grey isolation were over; it was time to get reacquainted with the neighbours.
“How would you like to do that today?” I said to Taylor, pointing to a girl helping her mother garden.
She frowned. “I thought maybe we could get my new bike today, since we came back early. Maybe Angus could teach me how to ride it.”
I hadn’t told her about Christy yet, and I was dreading it. Taylor had already seen too much death in her young life. I remembered Angus’s guilt and confusion about Christy the night before. Giving his sister bike-riding lessons might be just the distraction he needed.
“What do you say we go right now? Then we can come home and surprise the boys.”
When we came back from the bike shop, Peter’s car was in the driveway. Angus shook his head in amazement when he saw the bike. “Oh, T., a pink two-wheeler?” But he helped her buckle on her helmet and lifted her onto the seat. I ran inside and got the camera and snapped away as Taylor, proud in the bike seat, wobbled onto the sidewalk.
When I went to the house to get another roll of film, the phone was ringing.
Jill Osiowy sounded excited. “Something interesting’s come up in the Little Flower murders, Jo.”
I sank into the chair by the phone. I didn’t want to hear what Jill was going to tell me. I didn’t want to hear anything more about young women who had died before they’d even started to live.
“Listen to this,” she said. “The cops have decided that Bernice Morin’s death wasn’t one of the Little Flower murders. The face wasn’t mutilated, and the weapon was wrong. The other girls were stabbed with heavy knives, the kind you buy in a sporting goods store if you’re going hunting. The scalpel that killed Bernice came from a medical supply house. It’s the kind they use in hospitals and labs. I’ll tell you the details later, but here’s the scary part. The cops think Bernice’s murder was a copy-cat killing. Think about that for a minute, Jo. There’s somebody out there who figured if he made Bernice’s death look like another Little Flower murder, the police would just kind of wink and look the other way. The perfect crime.”
Suddenly, Jill noticed that I hadn’t said anything. “Jo, what’s the matter? Have you lost interest in these girls, too?” She sounded angry, and I felt a lump come to my throat.
“Don’t be mad,” I said. “It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just … Jill, we’ve had a tragedy ourselves. Peter’s friend Christy Sinclair died last night out at the lake. I’m doing my best to keep everybody, including me, from falling apart. I don’t think I can take in another thing.”
Jill’s voice was soft with concern. “Jo, I’m sorry. How awful. Is there anything I can do? If you want company, I can be over there in ten minutes.”
“Maybe later on tonight,” I said. “Right now, I think we’re better off on our own. Everybody’s pretty fragile.”
“I can imagine,” she said. “Look, if you need me, call. You know, sometimes the best thing to do is just go through the motions.”
And that’s what the kids and I did. We went through the motions. All things considered, we didn’t do badly. We had lunch, and the kids rode bikes most of the afternoon. No one broke a bone, and they were still speaking to one another when they came in for dinner. Peter curled up on the couch and watched the Mets-Dodgers game, and I put in bedding plants. I had just finished planting the last of the geraniums in the front garden when the police car pulled up.
I recognized Constable Perry Kequahtooway, but I didn’t remember seeing the woman who was with him. She was a small brunette with a tense body and clever eyes. Perry Kequahtooway introduced her as Officer Kelly Miner.
“I wonder if we could step inside for a moment, Mrs. Kilbourn?” she said. “We’re still puzzled about Christy Sinclair’s next of kin situation.”
They followed me in, and we sat down at the kitchen table.
Constable Kequahtooway spoke first. His voice was as gentle as his manner, but he got right to the point.
“We keep coming back to you, Mrs. Kilbourn. Everywhere we check – her employment records, her university insurance policy, even the form she filled out when she had some outpatient surgery in Saskatoon last February – every place we look, Christy Sinclair listed you as her next of kin.”
I started to say something, but he held his hand up to stop me. “There’s more. The Saskatoon police just checked out Christy Sinclair’s condominium. Were you ever there?”
I shook my head. “She always came to our p
lace.”
“It’s in Lawson Heights,” Officer Miner said, “very posh. But the point is that there were pictures of you and Christy all over the place.” She was watching my face carefully.
“Christmas pictures,” I said.
“For the most part,” she agreed.
“They’d have to be,” I said. “Peter and Christy only dated for a few months, and Christmas was the only time we were taking pictures. But we took pictures of everybody during the holidays. There were pictures of Christy with all the people in our family.”
“Not in her home,” Officer Miner said. “And there weren’t any indications of the Estevan connection you mentioned, either. No address book or envelopes with an Estevan address. We’ve checked in Estevan, too. No Sinclairs. No one by that name in the area. We’re trying a picture ID down there, but so far no luck.”
I looked at them both wearily. “What’s your point?”
Officer Miner looked at me steadily. “Easy on there, Mrs. Kilbourn. There are no accusations being made here. This is an information session. We’re just letting you know that, no matter how you saw the relationship, Christy Sinclair apparently chose you to be the most important person in her life.”
Unexpectedly, I felt my eyes fill with tears. “It’s too late now to do anything about that, isn’t it?”
Officer Kequahtooway lowered his gaze and coughed. “Actually, Mrs. Kilbourn, it isn’t too late. There are a number of details that have to be attended to, funeral arrangements, that kind of thing. You have no legal responsibility. I should make that clear. But there are other kinds of responsibility.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “there are.”
Officer Miner stood to leave, and Constable Kequahtooway and I followed her to the front door. But when she started down the front walk, he didn’t follow.
Instead, he turned and said, “Mrs. Kilbourn, this is unofficial, but I think when we get the final reports from pathology, we’re going to find out that Christy Sinclair’s death was a suicide.”
I leaned against the doorjamb. “I kept hoping it wouldn’t be,” I said. “That makes everything a thousand times worse.”
“It always does,” Perry Kequahtooway said softly. Then he looked at me. “Sometimes people find comfort in searching out the truth about the life of a person who’s passed on.”
“You mean investigating?” I said. “But you’ll be doing that.”
Constable Kequahtooway shrugged. “That’s right, we will, but sometimes people like you can get to a different kind of truth than the police do. It’s just a thought, Mrs. Kilbourn. But I think, in the long run, it might comfort you and Peter to find out why you mattered so much to Christy Sinclair.”
When he started down the steps, I touched his arm. “Constable, what does your last name mean? We had a friend years ago named Kequahtooway, and I know the name is significant.”
He squinted into the sun, and then, unexpectedly, he grinned.
“In Ojibway,” he said, “it means he who interprets. You know, the guy who tries to help people understand.”
CHAPTER
5
On Victoria Day, when I went to the mailbox to get the morning paper, Regina Avenue was as empty as a street in a summer dream. I went in, made coffee and looked out at the backyard. Peter was in the pool swimming, and Sadie and Rose, our dogs, were sitting on the grass watching.
I went out and knelt by the edge of the pool.
“How’s it going this morning?” I asked.
Peter swam to the edge of the water and looked up at me.
“It’s been better,” he said, and I could hear his father in the weary bravado of his voice.
“I know the feeling,” I said.
His face was a mask. “I didn’t go after her, Mum. When she said she was going out on the lake, I was relieved. I was going to have a whole hour where I didn’t have to worry about her. So I didn’t go after her, and she died. How am I going to live with that?”
“I don’t know, Peter,” I said. “But for starters, you can see that what you did was pretty normal. You thought about yourself. You wanted some breathing space, and when the chance came, you took it. Mother Teresa may not have done what you did, but most people, including me, would have. Look, I’m not saying that it was right to let Christy go when she was that upset, but we don’t carry a crystal ball around with us. You didn’t know what Christy was going to do, and you’re certainly not responsible for what she did.”
“Mum, listen to yourself. You don’t even believe what you’re saying. You know I didn’t have to be in the boat with her. You know it’s not that simple because you’re the one who told me it’s never simple – that we’re always responsible for what we do and what we don’t do. You’ve been drumming that into me for nineteen years, you can’t expect me to just walk away now.”
He pulled himself up on the side of the pool. His body, still pale from winter, was as graceful as his father’s had been.
“I’m seeing Daddy everywhere in you today,” I said.
He raked his hair with his fingers. “That’s not bad, is it?”
“Not bad at all,” I said. “Come on inside, and I’ll get us some breakfast.”
Taylor and Angus were already at the breakfast table having cereal. Taylor was unnaturally quiet. The night before when I had told her about Christy’s death she had listened attentively, then gone off to her room to draw. When I went in to say goodnight, she was asleep, and the bedspread was covered with pictures of swans.
While Peter went upstairs to dry off and change, I poured us all juice and started batter for pancakes.
“Anybody want to take the dogs for a walk after breakfast?” I asked.
“Samantha’s mum is taking us for a ride on the bike path,” Taylor said.
“Are you up for that, T.?” I asked. “You just started yesterday.”
“Samantha’s mum has never ridden a bike in her life, but she says today’s the day.”
“Good for her,” I said. “Angus, how about you?”
He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’m playing arena ball as soon as I’m through here, then I’m coming home to make a cake.”
“A cake,” I said, trying to keep the surprise out of my voice.
“Alison next door made this cake, and it was great. She says it’s a real no-brainer.”
“A no-brainer?” I asked.
He looked at me kindly. “Easy? Any dummy can do it?”
“Right,” I said.
After breakfast, Peter and I put the dogs on their leashes and walked them downtown to Victoria Park. The walk to the park was a family tradition on the twenty-fourth of May weekend, one of those small ceremonies whose only justification was that we did it every year. My husband, Ian, used to say it was our way of making sure that Good Queen Vic, the fertility goddess, would smile on our garden.
It was the first really hot day of the year, and the streets were coming to life with people riding bikes or jogging or pushing babies in strollers. There was a regatta on Wascana Lake, and from the bridge we could see the bright sails of the skiffs waiting for wind.
Peter and I didn’t say much. We never did. We sat on the bench in front of the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald and listened to the chimes the multicultural community had donated to the park play “Edelweiss.” Four days earlier I had sat on this same bench with Mieka, reeling from the shock of the death of another young woman. It was not a pattern I was happy about repeating.
Finally I said to Peter, “Do you remember Constable Kequahtooway? He was the first one there the night of the accident.”
Peter nodded.
“Well,” I went on, “he says that taking care of the details of Christy’s funeral and finding out more about her might help us accept what’s happened.”
“Face it,” Peter said angrily. “Nothing’s going to help.”
He leaned back on the bench and raised his face to the sun. The chimes finished “Edelweiss” and started on “T
he Blue Bells of Scotland.” When “Blue Bells” was finished, Peter leaned forward and looked across the park.
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do the right things for Christy,” he said. “But it’s not going to be easy. Sometimes I wonder if she ever told me the truth about anything.”
“Maybe that’s what she wanted to tell me that last night,” I said.
Peter shook his head. “You never give up, do you?”
“That’s what your dad used to tell me. He didn’t see it as a particularly admirable trait.” I shrugged. “Anyway, the truth must be somewhere. I guess the place to start is Christy’s family. The Estevan angle doesn’t seem to be true, but she must have somebody. It’s terrible to think of her people out there not knowing. How would you feel about calling some of Chris’s friends in Saskatoon and seeing if she ever mentioned anything about her family?” I looked at him. “Nothing’s come back to you, has it? I mean something she said that might help the police.”
“Mum, she said so many things …” He leaned forward and put his arms around the neck of our golden retriever. The dogs had always been his consolation. In a minute he stood up.
“We’d better get back,” he said. “I think what I’ll do is drive up to Saskatoon. If I leave now, I can be there after lunch. It’ll be easier for me to talk about Christy face to face. I’m hopeless on the phone.”
“I know,” I said, picking up Rose’s leash. “I’ve talked to you on the phone for nineteen years.”
As soon as we got to the house, Peter filled a Thermos with coffee and headed north. I was watching Angus line up the ingredients for his cake when the phone rang.
The man’s voice was brusquely authoritative. “Joanne Kilbourn? This is the pathology department at Pasqua Hospital. We’re ready to release Christy Sinclair’s body and we need a signature.” He hesitated, and when he spoke again he sounded almost human. “You’d better make some arrangements for a pickup.”
I watched Angus carefully break three eggs into a cup, then I went upstairs and opened my closet door. I looked at the bright cotton skirts and blouses and wondered what you were supposed to wear when you signed for a body. I picked the dress closest to me, a grey cotton shirtwaist. As I left the house I caught my reflection in the hall mirror. I looked a hundred years old, which was about half as old as I felt.
