by Gail Bowen
“I talked to him two more times before … before the end. It was after New Year’s Day, but I don’t remember the days. Who remembers days when it’s just ordinary life going on? Anyway, the first time, Izaak was on top of the world. ‘No more money worries. I’ll be your banker from now on, Ellie.’ That’s what he said. Of course, I tried to get him to tell me the particulars, but he just laughed.
“He wasn’t laughing the last time he called. He sounded screwed up tight and frightened. This time when he wouldn’t tell me what was going on, I didn’t take no for an answer. I kept at him. I badgered him until finally he hung up on me. But I didn’t give up even then. I phoned him back. He sounded so tired it broke my heart, but I was scared, too. I pleaded with him. I told him I’d keep calling him until he confided in me. Finally, he said, ‘You always were persistent. But you know, sometimes it’s safer not to know. I found out something I wasn’t supposed to know, and now I’m out past Jackson’s Point, Ellie. I’m way past Jackson’s Point.’ ” She looked at me, waiting.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“It was a place we weren’t supposed to swim past when we were kids. Every summer there were stories about kids who swam past Jackson’s Point and got caught in the weeds and were never seen again. Anyway, for Izaak and me, Jackson’s Point became a way of saying we were in over our heads.” Suddenly her eyes were filled with tears. “So I should have listened, right? Miss Practical saving for the future while the weeds are pulling my brother under.”
“Have you told the police this?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “they were very patient. They heard me out and they asked me if I thought Izaak was involved in blackmail. When I said that’s exactly what I was afraid of, they pounced. All the more proof of his guilt, they said. If Izaak knew he was going to be exposed, he might have killed Sally so she’d never know what he’d done.” She looked directly at me, and there was a flash in her eyes that was very like her brother’s. When she spoke again, her tone was like his, too: sardonic, mocking. “So,” she said, “does that make sense to you? To kill someone you love so they won’t think less of you?”
Her question was still in my ears as I walked across the snowy lawn in front of the fine arts building. There were other questions, too. If there was blackmail, who had been the target? Stuart Lachlan? If Stuart was the one, what was he being blackmailed about? How was Clea Poole involved? She and Izaak had little use for one another. Sally had told me that, but they both loved Sally. Had they discovered something condemning about Stuart Lachlan and decided … Decided what? And the one question that suddenly loomed over everything. If Izaak hadn’t committed the murders who had? Who had killed Sally Love?
As I turned onto the street where I’d parked, my head was pounding. I was tired. I couldn’t seem to work out any of the permutations and combinations, and I didn’t want to. I wanted to go home and stand under the shower until all the horrors were washed away.
But the horrors were just beginning.
There was a traffic ticket on the window of the Mercedes. Except when I got closer I saw that it wasn’t a traffic ticket. It was an envelope, square, creamy, good quality. I opened it. Inside on a square of matching paper a message was printed in careful block letters: I SAW YOU KILL SALLY LOVE.
My first thought was that the note was some kind of bizarre sendoff for Izaak. But Izaak was dead. Twenty minutes earlier, the small mahogany box that held his earthly remains had been sitting on a table in the fine arts building. He was beyond messages. And the envelope hadn’t been delivered to the funeral. It had been stuck on the windshield of my car.
Except it wasn’t my car. The silvery Mercedes with the characteristic ARTS licence plate didn’t belong to me. It belonged to Stuart Lachlan. The accusation of murder hadn’t been directed at me; it was directed at Stuart Lachlan. I got into the car. My hands were shaking so badly I had trouble getting the key in the ignition.
I started to drive to Spadina Crescent. Then I thought about the nature of my evidence: an anonymous letter, a sister’s belief that someone other than her brother was a killer. Why was I so ready to believe Stuart Lachlan was capable of murder? We had never been close, but I had liked him well enough. I’d been a guest in his home. I was his dead wife’s oldest friend.
Things had gone very wrong for Stuart in the past months. There was no denying that, but Stu was a civilized man, and civilized people don’t commit murder when things go wrong. As I turned onto my street, I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn’t jeopardized my relationship with Stu and Taylor by levelling hysterical accusations at him. I’d always considered my two best qualities loyalty and common sense and I didn’t seem to be exhibiting either. What I needed was rest and a chance to put things like an anonymous accusation into perspective.
Angus was running out the front door when I got home. “I left you a note. James asked me to sleep over. His parents are taking us to the Globetrotters and his mom says it’ll be late so if it’s okay with you I’ll stay there. I know it’s a school night, but I thought maybe for the Globetrotters, you could bend your rules.”
I was glad to see him excited about something again. “For the Globetrotters, I’ll bend,” I said. “Have you got money?”
“Their treat,” he said happily. “Thanks, Mum. I’ll get my stuff after school.”
“If I don’t connect with you then, have a good time.”
“Right,” he said as he kissed the air near my face and ran out the door. He was back in a second.
“You’ll be all right alone, won’t you?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“It’s all over, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s all over.”
“It’s all over,” I repeated, as I stepped under the shower. But in my bones I knew that it wasn’t over, and I was filled with apprehension.
It was when I was zipping my blue jeans that I remembered the package Sally Love had left at my house the night we came back from skiing at Greenwater. “My insurance policy,” she’d called it. “If you lose it, I’m dead. And don’t get curious.”
Well, I hadn’t lost it, but suddenly I was curious. The myth of Pandora’s box didn’t scare me. I couldn’t imagine loosing any more evils on mankind than the horrors we’d already seen. I pulled on the sweater Nina had given me for Christmas. The pattern was an elaborate and brilliant patchwork of colours. Nina said it had taken her most of the month of November to finish it. Just putting it on made me feel close to her.
The package wrapped in brown paper was right where I had left it, in my sewing basket. I tore the wrapping off and found a videotape.
“Surprises,” I said as I walked down the hall to our family room. Young Frankenstein was in the VCR. Angus and I had watched it together the night before. I pushed eject, then I put in Sally’s tape, sat back in the rocking chair and watched.
For the first seconds I thought that somehow I’d erased the tape. The screen was filled with grey static, but then I saw a long shot of Stuart Lachlan’s house. There was no sound, and the quality of the video wasn’t very good. There was a close-up of Taylor’s family of snow people, the father, the mother and the little snow girl with her sign – “Merry Christmas from Taylor.” Home movies. The camera lingered a little on the snow people and then it moved down the flagstone walk past the stand of pine trees at the corner of the house and around to the backyard. Somehow the movement seemed purposeful, as if the person behind the camera had a plan in mind. There was a quick establishing shot of the backyard and then we were looking through a window. I recognized the room immediately. There was a wall of books and family pictures, a cabinet filled with Royal Doulton figurines and, over the mantel of the fireplace, a portrait of Sally and Taylor. The room was Stuart Lachlan’s study at the back of the house.
There were people in the shot, and at first I couldn’t make any sense of what they were doing. The quality of the film wasn’t good – gre
y and grainy and unfocused. But then the focus was adjusted and I saw. There were two figures, a man and a woman. Both were naked. The man was on the floor on all fours in a position of submission. Behind him the woman raised what looked like a pony whip and brought it down on his back. He flinched but he didn’t move. She raised the whip again. And again and again. Finally the whipping stopped. He rolled over and she lowered herself onto his erect penis.
I didn’t watch any more. I didn’t have to. I’d seen enough. The man on the floor was Stuart Lachlan, and the woman who first beat him and then guided him into her body was Nina Love. My heart was pounding, and the blood was singing in my ears, but I didn’t hesitate. I knew what I had to do. I pushed the eject button and threw the tape into my bag. I went upstairs, put on my ski jacket and boots, got into the Mercedes and drove to Stuart Lachlan’s house.
CHAPTER
13
By the time I turned off the University Bridge the place behind the scar on my forehead was aching so badly I thought I was going to have to pull over. I could hear my mother’s voice: “Nina may have fooled you, Joanne, but she never fooled me. She never fooled me.”
“Shut up,” I said, “just shut up. Let me work this out.” The tape was terrible, but I couldn’t let my horror over the video of Nina blind me to the significance of the tape itself. I had no doubt about the identity of the person who had held the camera. After all, I’d been in her sights myself New Year’s Eve. Clea Poole had been everywhere with her video camera during those last days of the old year – “Mouse and her faithful Brownie,” Sally had called her.
The tape was the missing piece in so many puzzles. Its existence explained Stu’s sudden change of heart about Taylor’s custody. (“Sally, did you sell your soul to the devil?” I had asked, and she had laughed. “No, to a mouse.”) The tape was the explanation for the envelope of money Nina had taken to Izaak Levin’s – not as an advance on a favourable book review, as Stuart Lachlan had told Nina, but to keep a humiliating image of himself buried. He had succeeded; Stu’s sexual practices were not a matter of public record. But increasingly it looked as if a worse image of him was about to emerge: the image of a man who had cold-bloodedly murdered three people because they stood in the way of how he believed his life should be lived.
I had no plan when I rang the doorbell of the Lachlan house on Spadina Crescent. Somehow I had to warn Nina so we could get Taylor out before … Before what? I didn’t know. My mind was numb. I couldn’t seem to think beyond the next moment. No one came to the door.
“Please, please, please,” I said, as I rang the bell again, but there was only silence and the sound of the blood singing in my ears. I followed Clea Poole’s route to the backyard: down by the stone wall, past the stand of pine trees, along the snowy flagstone walk.
I banged at the back door. I think I knew there’d be no answer. I pulled the keys to the Mercedes out of my bag. They were on a chain with other keys. I tried one that looked like a house key, and first time lucky, the kitchen door opened and I was inside.
On the round oak table by the window were the remains of breakfast: three juice glasses, a half-empty milk glass, three porridge bowls. I wondered if Goldilocks had felt as scared as I did. I called Nina’s name, then Taylor’s. Finally, tentatively, hoping there would be no answer, I called for Stuart. There was nothing but silence. As I moved through the house, I felt a coldness in the pit of my stomach. The living and dining rooms were immaculate, but in the bedrooms the beds were unmade, and drawers and cupboard doors gaped. It looked as if they had left in a hurry.
I left Stuart’s study till the last. I don’t know what I was afraid of – a scarlet letter marking the place on the rug where Stu and Nina had performed their strange act of love? I had to steel myself to open the door, but there was nothing there. An innocent room filled with books and family pictures, a display case where Stuart’s mother’s collection of Royal Doulton ladies smiled and poured tea and bowed to one another, and over the mantel the portrait of Sally and Taylor, mother and daughter.
On the desk there was a telephone with an answering machine. I pressed the button to hear the message they had recorded for callers. No clues to where they had gone there; it was the same message I’d heard a dozen times over the winter. “This is Stuart Lachlan. Nina and Taylor and I are unable to come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name …”
I pushed the button again. “This is Stuart Lachlan. Nina and Taylor and I …” I pulled open Stuart’s desk drawer. Shoved inside, not hidden, was a square envelope, the twin of the one I’d found on the Mercedes. I opened it. There was a note: THE CAMERA SAW WHAT YOU DID. There was also part of a photographer’s contact sheet with eight proofs of pictures on it. I recognized them immediately as the ones the woman Anya had taken the night of the dinner. THE CAMERA SAW WHAT YOU DID. The camera saw, but I couldn’t. The proof of Stuart’s guilt was in my hand, but I couldn’t see it. The pictures were so small I couldn’t make out anything beyond the identity of the people at the table. Sally was in all of them: sitting between Stu and Izaak and looking miserable; leaning across Stu to say something to me; looking up at the camera as Nina stood behind her; scowling at Izaak as Stu leaned across her plate. I looked at that last picture again. It had to be the one. I couldn’t make out what Stu was doing, but I thought I could see his hand close to Sally’s plate.
“You’re a killer, Stu.” I tried the words aloud. They sounded right. “Well, you’re not going to win this time, Stuart. I’m going to find you, and I’m going to make sure you pay.” I picked up the phone book and found the number of the city police. On the other end of the line, the man’s voice told me Inspector Mary Ross McCourt was unavailable, could he help. I thought of what would happen next. The search for Stuart and Nina. The media announcements. Nina’s private life suddenly becoming public knowledge. I imagined Nina somewhere answering the door, and strange men in uniforms surrounding her, questioning her. What Stuart had done was not her fault. She loved him. I remembered the videotape. The thought of strangers sitting in a dimly lit room in police headquarters watching Nina’s nakedness made my stomach turn.
“Can anyone else help you?” the voice on the other end of the line asked.
“No,” I said, “no one can help me,” and I hung up. There was a personal telephone directory on the desk. How did you list your own summer house? I was halfway through the alphabet when I thought about S for Stay Away Lake.
The phone rang a dozen times before it was picked up. The voice on the other end was Nina’s. It seemed like a good omen. I hadn’t thought where to begin, but I knew I had to keep her from reacting in case she wasn’t alone.
“Nina, it’s Jo. Is Stuart there with you?”
“No, he’s out taking Taylor for a walk down by the lake, but I can get him. Joanne, is something wrong?”
“Yes, Ni, something’s wrong. Something’s terribly wrong. You have to get Taylor and come back to the city right away.”
“Is there a problem with your family?”
“No, my family’s fine. Ni, please get back here.”
“Joanne, we just got unpacked. Stuart’s exhausted. I can’t ask him to turn around and drive back to the city. He needs time to heal.”
“Fuck Stuart,” I said. “Nina, you and Taylor have to get out of there. I know I’m not making sense. Too much has happened. It looks like Izaak Levin isn’t the murderer after all. Ni, prepare yourself for some terrible news. I think Stuart is deeply implicated in the murders. You have to get out of there.”
The silence on the other end of the line lasted so long I was afraid that Stuart had come into the room. But finally Nina answered me.
“Joanne, come and get me. Come and get us both. If Stuart has done what you say he did, I’m afraid of what will happen if I try to leave. Please, Jo. I’ve never asked much of you, but I’m asking this. Please, please come and get us.”
The area behind my scar was throbbing. A steady beat of pain. I closed my
eyes, and the image of Nina was there, lovely, loving, caring about me when no one else did. The one constant in my life.
“Of course,” I said, “Ni, just hold on. I’ll be right there.”
“Do you know the way?”
“I can find it.”
“If you start now, you’ll be here before dark. Taylor and I will be at the dock waiting for you. Don’t worry about driving across the lake. I know it’s been warm, but the man at the crossing says the ice is safe. We’ll be waiting.”
It was a three-hour drive from the city to the Lachlan cottage on the island at Stay Away Lake. Three hours to think about the unthinkable. Sally’s death was the perfect solution for Stu: no more problems about custody; no more threats to blow him out of the water over the stupid book he’d written. With Sally dead, Stu had it all. But he wasn’t going to get it. When I saw the turnoff sign, I was filled with relief. It was almost over.
I looked at the lake. The ice was the colour of pewter, but there were dark places, too. There are often wonderful legends about these northern lakes, but the story of how Stay Away Lake got its name was not appealing. Local people said that at the turn of the century a madman lived on the island where the Lachlans later built their cottage. He killed anyone who came near the island and he dumped their bodies in the water – a dozen in all, they said, before finally he turned his rifle on himself. The legend was that at night you could hear the voices of his victims calling up their warning from the lake bottom: “Stay away. Stay away. Stay away.”
The old man at the landing was not as sanguine about the ice as Nina had been. “It’s been warm and the ice is punky,” he said. “If I was you, I’d leave my car doors open, in case I had to make a quick getaway out there.”
So I drove with the doors of the Mercedes open, and thought about the lost souls a few feet beneath me in the weedy darkness, crying out their warnings.
