Burying Ariel

by Gail Bowen

  “Maybe she didn’t have that much potential after all.” Rosalie’s blackberry eyes sparkled with secret pleasure. “Solange wasn’t able to reach Ms. Bergman through the Political Science department there. She must have flunked out. Anyway, Solange came back and asked if we had anything more current.”

  “And we don’t.”

  “We don’t, but I knew Dr. Coyle would. He makes a point of keeping track of all the people involved in his defence. He calls them his ‘players.’ I guess he was able to give Solange what she needed because I haven’t seen either of them since. Funny. Dr. Coyle didn’t even drop by to tell me where he could be reached. That’s not like him at all.”

  “Rosalie, do you have Tom Bradley’s number? He’s …”

  “Head of the Political Science department that accepted Maryse Bergman?” she said. “Of course, I have it. He was one of Dr. Jesse’s closest friends.”

  “I’d forgotten that, too,” I said.

  “I haven’t forgotten anything about Dr. Jesse,” Rosalie said wistfully. “When he was head of this department, we had standards.” As if to stop herself from elaborating, she snapped her lips shut and reached for her Rolodex. The conversation was over. I walked to the filing cabinet, found Maryse Bergman’s file, and pulled it.

  When Rosalie handed me the paper on which she’d written Tom’s number, I noticed her manicure. “I like that shade of nail polish,” I said. “What’s it called?”

  “Bridal Pink,” she said, but for the first time an allusion to her wedding didn’t bring a blush and a smile.

  I went back to my office and opened Maryse Bergman’s file. What I saw confirmed the need to call Tom Bradley. Not only were Maryse’s grades mediocre, the file was fat with letters of protest she had written about grades. Maryse had never been my student, but her litany of aggrieved entitlement was a familiar one. “I spent three weeks working on this paper and I know for a fact that X wrote hers the night before, and I don’t think it’s fair that she got a better grade …” I closed the file and picked up the phone.

  I’d met Tom Bradley several times when Ben had been alive, and we had liked one another enough to keep up the acquaintance through e-mail. I was glad we were on good terms because the question I had to ask Tom was a humdinger.

  His pleasure when he heard my voice filled me with guilt, but there was no turning back. “I need to ask you about Maryse Bergman,” I said.

  When he spoke again, there was a distinct chill. “What about her?”

  “Is she still in your M.A. program?”

  “She didn’t last.”

  “That can’t have been a surprise. I’ve just been looking at her file. What made you accept her?”

  The silence between us grew painful.

  “You did it as a favour to Ben, didn’t you?” I said.

  “To Ben and to your department,” he said finally. “Joanne, you remember the atmosphere then. It was a war zone, and the press was panting over every lurid rumour. Finally, when it seemed as if the worst was over, Maryse Bergman came along with her charges against Kevin Coyle. They would have been proven false. I want you to know that. If there had been even the slightest chance that Maryse Bergman was telling the truth, Ben wouldn’t have called me.”

  “And asked you to accept Maryse into your graduate program to get her out of the way,” I said.

  “It was a decision I didn’t lose a moment’s sleep over,” Tom said. “By accepting an unqualified student who, logic suggested, wouldn’t make it through her first year of studies, I was able to spare an innocent man more public humiliation and give your department a chance to reflect and regroup. Most importantly, I was able to take some of the heat off Ben. He’d already had one heart attack. I could see the price he was paying for trying to be fair and decent to a small group of people who were neither. I didn’t want to lose him. As it turned out, we lost him anyway, but I take comfort in the fact that I did my best for him.”

  “You should,” I said. “Ben Jesse was one of the finest men I’ve ever known. Unfortunately, that’s not a factor here. I still need to get in touch with Maryse Bergman. Do you have a number where she can be reached?”

  “So Ben’s obituary is going to be rewritten after all,” Tom said coldly. “Like Neville Chamberlain, he’ll be remembered as a man with a fatal need to appease.”

  “If I’m lucky, Ben’s name won’t even come up,” I said. “All I need to find out from Maryse Bergman is if she acted alone or if she had a little help from her friends.”

  “Joanne, does all this have something to do with that instructor who was killed out there last week? There hasn’t been much about it in our media, but I assumed it was a case of random violence. It never occurred to me till this minute that there might be a link with that mess two years ago.”

  “There may not be,” I said, “but if there is, Maryse Bergman may be able to shed light on the connection. Will you give me her number?”

  “Sure,” he said. “But if you were of a mind to, you could hop in your car and be talking to her face to face in less than an hour. When her studies didn’t work out here, Maryse moved back to Saskatchewan. She works on the front desk at the Big Sky Motel in Moose Jaw.”

  I thanked Tom, rang off, then dialled the number he had given me. My call was picked up on the first ring. I was obviously dealing with a five-star establishment.

  “Big Sky Inn,” a male voice said, “Kelly speaking. How may I help you?”

  “I’d like to speak to Maryse Bergman, please. She’s an employee.”

  “Maryse is no longer with us.”

  “As of when?”

  “As of this morning. She walked off in the middle of her shift without a word of explanation to anybody.”

  “Do you have a home number for her?”

  “It’s against company policy to give out the phone numbers of employees.”

  “But she’s no longer an employee.”

  He laughed. “You’ve got me there, ma’am. Hold on.”

  He gave me the number, but when I dialled, all I got was Maryse’s voice mail telling me that she’d been forced to relocate and her friends would hear from her soon.

  Too restless to work, I headed for the café in the Lab Building where Ann Vogel and her group hung out. It was empty, and the metal accordion screens had been pulled across the serving area. It seemed everyone but I had left for the weekend. I’d started back to my office when I heard someone call my name. I turned and saw Kristy Stevenson, the archivist who had sung at the vigil for Ariel.

  “Have you got a few minutes?” she asked. She was wearing a lavender-blue silk blouse; the colour matched her eyes, but her oval face was pale and miserable. “I hate this Friends of Red Riding Hood stuff,” she said. “I keep thinking of the lines from that song by Beowulf’s Daughters that you used in your talk.”

  “Darkness is our womb and destination, Light, a heartbeat glory, gone too soon,” I said.

  “Well, no one at this march has any interest in turning back darkness. Ann Vogel and her gang are getting ready in the library quadrangle, and it makes me sick.” Kristy bit her lip in frustration. “Joanne, I’ve loved libraries since I was a little kid. That’s why I chose to be an archivist, making certain that all the pieces of the puzzle were there for anyone who was seeking answers.”

  “People like Ann Vogel don’t need archives,” I said. “They don’t even need libraries. They already have the answers.”

  Kristy’s eyes flashed with anger. “You bet they do. Simplistic ones. Women who don’t share their views are bad; books that don’t reflect their philosophy are bad; art that doesn’t mirror their reality is bad; literature that doesn’t tell their story is bad. Why would they need a library?”

  We had reached the glass doors that opened onto the quad. Outside, perhaps a dozen women were working on placards: attaching wooden pickets to poster-board, filling the blank faces of the signs with words or with painted sunflowers or ferocious cartoon wolves. The finished plac
ards were propped against a low wall to dry, and their messages were designed to foment: NEVER FORGET; WOLVES BELONG IN CAGES; ARIEL WARREN – THE BEST AND BRIGHTEST; REAL MEN DON’T KILL; REVENGE THE RED RIDING HOODS; MURDERERS DESERVE WHAT THEY GET.

  “There seems to be a certain lack of focus,” Kristy said dryly.

  “No lack of firepower, though,” I said. “I’m going to go out and ask them to tone down the rhetoric.”

  Ann Vogel was on her knees stapling rectangles of poster-board back to back. Despite her falling-out with Solange, Ann appeared to be sticking to the combat look: head-to-toe black, and hennaed hair shirred to a buzz cut. When she recognized me, she stood and waved her staple gun in mock menace. “You’re not wanted here,” she said.

  “That makes us even, because I don’t want to be here,” I said. “So I’ll just ask one quick question. What if you’re wrong about Charlie, too?”

  Ann narrowed her eyes. “What else was I wrong about?”

  “Kevin Coyle,” I said. “I talked to Tom Bradley, he’s the head of …”

  “I know who Tom Bradley is,” Ann snapped.

  “Good. So you’ll know that, while the idea of a trustworthy man may be an oxymoron to you, it’s not to a lot of other people. When Tom says that Ben Jesse believed the charges Maryse Bergman made against Kevin were false, I believe him. Other people will, too.”

  Ann tilted her chin defiantly. “Kevin Coyle deserved what he got,” she said. “He’s unfair to women. He marks us too hard. He’s dismissive of the answers we give in class.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Ann. Kevin’s unfair to everybody,” I said. “He marks everybody hard, and he’s dismissive of everybody. That doesn’t make it right, but that’s the truth. He’s an anachronism. When I was an undergraduate, the universities were full of profs like that.”

  “We don’t have to take that kind of crap from men any more.”

  “I know,” I said, “and amen to that. But I still don’t get it. Why did you target Kevin? He’s rude, he’s abrupt, he’s probably misanthropic. But he’s not a misogynist. Why did you get Maryse Bergman to lie about him? Why did you go after him?”

  “You never get the point, do you?” She looked around to check if anyone was in hearing range, then she lowered her voice. “We needed an example. If we showed how bad he was, everybody would see that we needed women in the department.”

  “There were women in the department,” I said.

  “Women like you,” she said. “Women who were no better than men. Look at what happened yesterday. You’re given the honour of going to a funeral for a Red Riding Hood.”

  “For Ariel Warren,” I corrected her quietly.

  “Whatever. But when Ariel’s killer crashes the party with his father, you just leave with the men. Now you tell me, what does that make you?”

  “A loyal friend?” I said.

  “A traitor,” she said. “Not just to Ariel but to all women, and no matter what Maryse is saying now, what we did then was for all women. Our department needed gender parity.”

  “And that was worth risking a man’s career?”

  “It was worth everything,” she said.

  “ ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the wrong deed for the right reason,’ ” I said.

  She looked at me sharply. “What?”

  “Solange has defected from your group, hasn’t she?”

  “She had issues,” Ann said coldly. “And I have signs to make, so if you’ll excuse me …”

  “I’ll excuse you,” I said. “But I won’t forgive you.”

  She stepped close to me and placed the staple gun so that the business end was flat against my cheek. “Go fuck yourself,” she said. Then she turned on her heel, strode over to a stack of placards, and began stapling them to pickets.

  Very scary. As I walked back into the library, I thought with gratitude of the solid complement of police officers who would be accompanying Ann on the march and who were charged with the duty of keeping her and the other Friends of Red Riding Hood from discovering just how scary they could be.

  CHAPTER

  13

  Taylor and Bruce and Benny were waiting for me on the front step when I got home. Taylor had a new skipping rope, and she was making a lazy crack-the-whip movement with it through the grass so the cats could chase its iridescent rainbow handle. All three were blissed out, and I thought, not for the first time, that being a cat must be one of the alltime great gigs.

  Taylor held out the rope to show me. “I got this for helping with garbage patrol.”

  “Very fancy,” I said. “I used to get a new rope every spring.”

  She looked at me with amazement. “Can you skip?”

  “Can Wayne Gretzky score goals?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “can he?”

  “Not so many any more,” I said. “But I haven’t retired. Why don’t you give Bruce and Benny a rest and let me have a turn?”

  The moment I began to skip, the tensions of the day dropped away. Salvation through muscle memory. Taylor watched, saucer-eyed, as I not only skipped, but rattled through my store of old skipping songs.

  When Angus pulled up, he took in the scene, jumped out of his car, and yelled, “You go, Mum.” And I did. I skipped until there wasn’t a breath left in my body and my heart felt as if it was about to exit through my chest wall. By the time the kids gave me a round of applause and I quit, my ears were singing, but I’d banished my memory of Ann Vogel and her staple gun, and increased my odds of getting through the evening.

  “Okay,” I panted. “Show’s over. I’d better go in there and act like a mother. Taylor, since you’re the headliner today, you get to choose dinner. Make it simple. I’ve already done my star turn.”

  “Sloppy Joes the way Nik Manojlovich makes them on TV. He’s so funny.”

  “Good choice,” I said. “I can manage Sloppy Joes. Besides, they’re portable, and I thought we’d watch the news while we ate supper tonight. I want to tape you winning your prize.”

  At 5:30 on the button, we were sitting in the family room with plates filled with Sloppy Joes, potato chips, and raw vegetables balanced on our TV tables, the perfect fifties family – minus the father. Unfortunately, our television wasn’t showing “Leave it to Beaver” or “Don Messer’s Jubilee.” The news began with brief accounts of the investigation into Ariel’s murder and the battle that had erupted between the Friends of Red Riding Hood and their popular host, Charlie D. There was a live shot of the concrete and glass boxes that housed the station’s deep-discount neighbours, then the camera closed in for a tight shot of the CVOX call letters, lingering on the lascivious Mick Jagger tongue that wagged from the red-lipped open mouth of the O. The first of the buses that had been scheduled to arrive in time for live coverage pulled up, and the Friends of Red Riding Hood piled out.

  In all there were perhaps twenty-five protestors, and the NationTV reporter, a dark-haired beauty named Jen Quesnel, struggled to keep the report lively as the Friends handed out their placards and milled about, trying to decide on their next move. As Jen reported that the turnout was surprisingly small, Ann Vogel muscled her way into camera range and began a chant that was picked up by the others. The words were simple and cruel. “Show us your face, Charlie D. Show us your face.”

  But nothing happened. Not even a bird disturbed the eerie calm at the entrance to the radio station. No buses arrived carrying reinforcements, and the meagre crowd of protestors, embarrassed by the ragged quality of its cry, grew silent. Caught in the middle of what was clearly a non-event, Jen Quesnel began to wrap up her story.

  Throughout the newscast, Eli had been as motionless as if he were carved in stone. Now he relaxed. “It was a bust,” he said. “And I’m glad because what those people are saying is really shitty.” He darted a glance in my direction. “Pardon my language.”

  “No pardon necessary,” I said. “What they’re saying really is shitty.”

  Eli laughed. When
he was happy, his face became animated and open. It was a sight in which I always took pleasure, but that night the pleasure was short-lived.

  Suddenly, he leaned forward, his eyes riveted once more on the screen. “Charlie’s coming out,” he said. I turned my attention back to the television in time to see Charlie walk through the front doors of CVOX. He was alone, and he moved deliberately from the shadow of the building into the light. A slight figure in bluejeans and a T-shirt, he stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He made no attempt to cover his face or hide it.

  Jen Quesnel ran over to him with her microphone. They exchanged glances, then she said, “So, Charlie, people want to hear what you’re thinking right now.”

  Before he had a chance to answer, Ann Vogel leaned into the microphone. “Tell the truth, Charlie D. Tell the truth.”

  Charlie shrugged his thin shoulders. “You already know it,” he said. “I loved a woman. She’s dead. The beauty in my life is gone. I don’t care what happens next.” Charlie turned to the crowd. “I’m here,” he said, raising his arms in a gesture of surrender. “Do what you want.”

  For a few seconds, the camera stayed on Charlie; then it moved to Ann Vogel for a reaction shot. Her face registered disbelief, then anger.

  “This is a trick,” she said. “We won’t let you get away with it.” She turned to her supporters. “Will we?” But her dispirited followers were already straggling towards the bus.

  Jen Quesnel looked into the camera. “Apparently the Friends of Red Riding Hood have decided on a change in strategy. That’s it from our location at CVOX. Now back to Kathy in the studio.”

  Kathy did an item on a house fire in the inner city, then one on the robbery of a convenience store. After the announcement from the City’s Department of Parks and Recreation of the dates for the opening of outdoor swimming pools, it was our turn. Bev Pilon and Livia Brook were on the screen.

  “Hit record on the VCR,” I said to Angus.

  He grimaced in exasperation and waved the remote control in the air. “I already have, Mum.”