by Gail Bowen
During her marriage to Kenneth Brook, Livia’s life had centred on her husband. Beyond teaching her classes and picking up her paycheque, she had shown little interest in the day-to-day business of the university, but suddenly she was inviting colleagues for tea and soliciting their opinions about where our department was headed. Invariably, these tete-a-tetes moved from the abstract to the personal. As they poured out their career ambitions and disappointments, Livia’s colleagues were warmed by what Ed Mariani referred to as her “rampant empathy.” There was talk that when Ben Jesse’s tenure was over, a woman as perceptive as Livia would make a fine department head.
When the Kevin Coyle case erupted, the rampant empathy that had caused Ed and me to raise our eyebrows saved our department. Ben Jesse asked Livia to meet regularly with the women who had accused Kevin until the charges against him were given a fair hearing. Ben’s confidence that open communication would contain the women’s anger proved ill-founded, but the women trusted Livia, and when Ben died we all knew that Livia was our best hope for achieving reconciliation. Every member of our department supported her proposal that we make a special effort to recruit female candidates to fill the two vacancies created by Ben’s death and an early retirement.
Landing Solange, who was brilliant, had been a coup for our small university; however, Livia had been forced to argue Ariel’s case vigorously. Ariel’s paper credentials were acceptable rather than extraordinary, and she had interviewed poorly. The hiring committee found her warm and likeable, but equivocal about academic life. Livia, who had met Ariel the summer before at a women’s retreat on Saltspring Island, maintained that Ariel was simply suffering from post-dissertation ennui, and that by the time September rolled around she would be itching to get into a classroom. And Livia had a clincher. Unlike Solange, Ariel was a prairie girl who loved her birthplace. Our university wouldn’t be a stepping stone for her; it would, Livia assured us, be “forever.”
Livia had been right about Ariel – at least in part. The students had loved her, and she had been a glowing presence in our department. That morning when I heard Livia’s voice I felt the debt of her gift, the weight of her loss.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“It’s about Ariel’s class,” she said. “There are still three weeks to go, and you’re the logical one to take over.”
“Livia…”
She cut me off. “I know you planned to do some writing this spring, but plans change. I’ve learned that.”
“So have I,” I said. “Ian’s death taught me that nothing is certain. But Livia, I’m not getting any younger, and I haven’t exactly got a dazzling list of publications.”
“You still have the summer,” Livia said quietly. “Ariel doesn’t. Jo, she was so committed to this class.”
I could feel my pendulum being drawn into Livia’s rhythm. “Okay,” I said. “As soon as we get back from the lake, I’ll come up to the university and grab a syllabus and a class list.”
“Come this morning,” Livia said. “Then you’ll have the weekend to get prepared. Rosalie will have everything ready for you.”
I did not accept the yoke gladly, but as I drove to the university, I knew I had no right to complain. As Livia had pointed out, I did have the summer; besides, Alex had called, and for a novice he gave great telephone.
Ariel’s picture was still on the counter in the Political Science office. In front of it was a bud vase holding a single, perfect ivory rose. When I called hello, Rosalie looked up from her computer. She had done something new to her salt-and-pepper hair. For as long as I could remember, she had worn it tightly curled in the style my daughter Mieka called a Kurly Kate do. Now, the curl was relaxed into soft waves, and the colour was a uniform and becoming silver. “Nice look,” I said.
Rosalie reached up eagerly to touch her freshly feathered bangs. “The bridal book says not to try a new style the day of the wedding, so I thought I’d practise.” Her voice was as tentative as that of a girl preparing for her first date.
I tried not to smile. Until she met Detective Robert Hallam, Rosalie had approached life with the flexibility of a sergeant major. She knew exactly how life should be lived, and she was not forgiving of those of us who didn’t measure up. Love had come late to Rosalie. She was in her late fifties, and Robert was her first romance. When they met, he had been as intransigent and judgemental as she, and their mutual transformation had been a joy to watch.
“If I were you, I’d stop practising,” I said. “You’re not going to improve on that look. Now, come on. Fill me in. How are the wedding plans coming along?”
Her brow furrowed. “Pretty well, I think, except Robert’s been assigned to Ariel’s case, so he’s going to be putting in some long hours. He warned me last night that I’m going to have to be making some decisions for both of us.” She reached forward to save the work on her machine. “Joanne, did you go to the vigil for Ariel last night?”
“Yes.”
“I should have,” Rosalie said. “But I was still so upset, and I know it sounds selfish, but I want to enjoy this time before my wedding.”
“That’s not selfish,” I said. “You were better off at home. The evening got pretty unpleasant towards the end.”
“Robert had reports from some of the officers there. They said the situation was explosive.”
“I didn’t notice any police,” I said.
“They were female detectives, in plainclothes,” she said. Her voice lacked spirit. It was obvious her mind was somewhere else. She adjusted the diamond solitaire on her left hand. “Joanne, do you have a minute to talk?”
“Of course.” I pulled up a chair, so we could talk face to face. “Is there something I can help with?”
She laughed nervously. “It’s this business of being engaged to a policeman. I thought, since you and Inspector Kequahtooway are a couple, you might be able to help.”
“If I can.”
“I never know how much I should ask Robert about his work. I don’t want him to think I’m nosy; on the other hand, I do want him to know I’m interested.”
“Maybe it’s best just to follow Robert’s lead. A lot of the time, police officers live in a grim world. If Alex is any indication, sometimes they need to talk about anything except the case; other times they seem to need to talk it through.”
Rosalie looked thoughtful. “Last night, Robert must have needed to talk it through. I’ve never seen him so upset. Ariel’s case is really getting under his skin.”
“I guess until they have a suspect…”
“But they do have a suspect… at least they’ve brought someone in for intense questioning.”
“Who is it?”
“His name is Kyle Morrissey. He’s the young man who found Ariel’s body. His company sent him to work on some problem with the air conditioning in the sub-basement. He says he just took a wrong turn and ended up in the archive room.” She glanced around quickly to make sure we were alone. “Joanne, the police have had dealings with him before. Apparently, he has a violent temper.”
“So, why is Robert uneasy?” I said.
Rosalie’s face registered her distress. “He’s not certain they have the right man.”
“Why?”
“Instinct. Robert says that crimes like these typically involve rape. This one didn’t.”
I could feel the pinprick stirrings of anxiety. “So there was no evidence of forced sex?”
“None. She was just… slumped onto a table facing the front door. She was stabbed in the back. Robert said death was instantaneous.” Initially, Rosalie’s words had been halting; now they began to tumble out. “Robert said Ariel died from a single wound, surgically clean – doesn’t that sound terrible? And she didn’t struggle. There was nothing to indicate that Kyle Morrissey had tried to force himself on her. In fact, he called for help as soon as he found the body.”
“How did he get in? I thought those rooms were always kept locked.”
“They are – at
least the doors the public uses are. But there’s a back door that workmen use. It opens up from the crawl space that has all the heating equipment and plumbing for the building.”
I leaned towards her. “Rosalie, maybe you shouldn’t say anything about this to anyone else.”
She looked stricken. “You mean I might compromise the case?”
“I guess, until the case is solved, the fewer people who know about the details the better.”
“I haven’t told anyone but you,” she said.
“Good.” Her eyes still sought reassurance. I did my best. “Rosalie, it’s okay. When you told me, you knew it wouldn’t go any further.”
“Because you’re in a relationship with a police officer, too.”
“Right.”
The cloud lifted. “It’s like a sisterhood, isn’t it?” she said.
“That’s what it is,” I said, “a sisterhood, so if you want to talk about this to anyone, you can talk to me.”
“What can she talk to you about?” Neither of us had heard Livia come into the office. Her hands clutched the poppy-painted silk scarf draped around her shoulders, and the shadows under her deep-set eyes were so dark she looked as if she’d been beaten. I remembered her hopes for Ariel and felt a pang in case I had made things hard for her on the phone.
I turned to her. “We’re just ironing out the details about the class.”
Rosalie rose with a start. “I’ve made up a file with copies of the syllabus and the class list. Ariel kept her grades on our shared drive on the computer, so I’ve printed them out for Joanne.”
“Sounds like everything’s in order,” I said, standing.
“Not quite.” Rosalie frowned. “I called the bookstore. Ariel was using Political Perspectives as her text in that class, but the bookstore is out of it, and by the time they can get it in, the class will be over.” She took a key from her desk drawer. “Joanne, would you mind going to Ariel’s office and getting her copy of the text? I should have done it, but I just couldn’t bring myself to open that door.”
I took the key. “There’s no reason you should,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I tried to be matter-of-fact, but the truth was I dreaded going to Ariel’s office. I’d been in it only a handful of times, but it was as characteristic of her as her thumbprint. She had surrounded herself with a cheerful clutter of books and journals, and a gallery of soft-sculpture figures of family and friends that she’d made from scraps of odd and lovely material. She was a person who loved process. A few weeks earlier, she’d called me in to show me how she’d placed a low table in front of her window and begun to grow a flat of tomato plants from seeds.
The office had celebrated the many pleasures of her life, but when I turned the key in the lock, I walked into a room that was oddly impersonal. Ariel’s desk was clear; the books on her bookshelves were neatly arranged according to subject and author, but the folk art and the photographs were gone. So were the table she’d placed under the window and the tomato plants that sprouted to life on it. I checked the section of books devoted to introductory politics: Political Perspectives was not there. I glanced through the other texts: Political Perspectives was still among the missing.
I walked back to the main office. “Rosalie, did someone take away Ariel’s things?”
“Not that I know of. Is something missing?”
“Everything that was personal.”
Rosalie followed me down the hall and peeked around the corner. Her face became troubled. “It wasn’t like this last Monday. I had to take some photocopying in, and it looked the way it always did. The police were in here last night, but I can’t imagine they’d remove anything.”
“They wouldn’t,” I said. Then I closed the door, locked it, and handed Rosalie the key. “Maybe Livia will know something about it.”
But when we got back to the main office, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
I started for the stairs. Then, haunted by the absence of Ariel in that room that had once teemed with her life, I doubled back and rapped on a door that was seldom rapped on any more.
It had been two years since I’d been in Kevin Coyle’s office. His frequent assaults on mine made reciprocal visits unnecessary, but a quick glance around the room assured me that all was as it had always been. His floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were jammed with thick books made from cheap paper. Their covers were dense with Cyrillic lettering and maps splattered in blood. The politics of Eastern Europe had a painful history of exsanguination. The brown overstuffed reading chair was still in its place by the window, and the illegal hotplate upon which Kevin made coffee and toasted sandwiches was still in plain view. But that day, as always, the most prominent feature of Kevin’s office was the four games of Risk he had set up on the dining-room table with the sawed-off legs that dominated the room.
In the good days, students, mostly male but some female, would spend hours in Kevin’s office, playing Risk, talking politics, eating toasted sandwiches and drinking Kevin’s execrable coffee. It had been a long time since students had ventured through that door, but Kevin had left everything at the ready – waiting for the Restoration.
“You’re like Miss Havisham,” I said.
“You think I don’t know whom you’re talking about,” he grunted, “but I do. Miss Havisham was that loony old broad in Great Expectations who got jilted at the altar and kept everything just as it had been on the day of her wedding. You’ll note I’m not wearing a wedding gown and there’s no mouldering wedding cake in sight. You’ll also note that I’m not insane. On the contrary, I’m a sane man in an insane world. May I offer you a cup of coffee?”
“Did you make it within the last two days?”
“Within the hour,” he said. “I’m turning over a new leaf.”
“Then I’ll take a chance. Kevin, I need some help.”
He brought me the coffee in an orange and brown striped mug whose earth tones were as faded as the earth-friendly activism of the seventies. The coffee was surprisingly good, and I told him so.
“I’ve learned the secret,” he said mysteriously.
“Kevin, I’d love to sit here and talk coffee with you, but I need some information. As the one department member who’s here day and night, do you have any idea who cleared out Ariel’s office?”
He couldn’t suppress the triumph in his eyes. “She and I did.”
“When?”
“A week ago Tuesday. It was around eight-thirty at night. I was here, working on my appeal, and I heard noises coming from down the hall. I went over to investigate. I was listening at the door when I heard a crash. I didn’t wait to be invited in. Ariel was on the floor. She’d been standing on her chair getting down the books from the top shelf of her bookcase when she slipped. She was all right, just shaken up a bit. She told me she’d been packing up her things, which was a fairly obvious statement since there were boxes all over the place. I asked if she needed some help getting the boxes downstairs to her car. She said she did.” He lowered his voice. “I have a private dolly on loan from the library.”
“That’s obliging of them,” I said.
“It would be if they knew I had it,” he agreed. “At any rate, it took us two trips to get everything into her truck, but we made it. Of course, I was curious about what she was up to, so when we loaded the last box on, I asked her, in a jocular way, whether it was moving day. She said no, she was just simplifying because she didn’t know what lay ahead.”
“Did she seem frightened?”
“Not frightened, just tense and resolute. Before she got in her car, she kissed me.” Remembering, Kevin touched his cheek. “Then she said, ‘People were wrong about you. That’s the next battle, and I’m not looking forward to it.’ ” Kevin’s face darkened. “Until that moment, it was a wonderful evening, but I pushed it too far. That’s a flaw of mine. Have you noticed?” He glared at me, waiting for a response.
I let him glare. Finally, hating silence, he continued. “That�
�s when Ariel and I had the exchange that Ann Vogel and her friends are getting such mileage from.”
“What exactly was the exchange?”
“It was obvious Ariel had learned something, so I pressed her to tell what she knew. She said she couldn’t until she’d talked to someone else first. Of course, I was certain the person she had to speak to was a member of the odious group of women. So I said, ‘Stay away from those harpies or you’ll be sorry.’ All I meant was that she’d lose the ground she’d gained, but I must have shouted because apparently I was overheard. Unfortunately, no one overheard her response.”
“Which was…?”
“Which was, ‘I already am sorry.’ ”
“Did you tell the police this?”
“Of course. They wrote it down very carefully. I’m sure the report has already been consigned to the shredder. Isn’t that how the authorities process all statements from middle-class white men over fifty?”
“Can it, Kevin. Let’s keep the focus on Ariel. Did she tell you anything more about why she was clearing out her office?”
“Just that she was separating what she needed from what she didn’t need.”
“That was it?”
“That was it.”
I finished my coffee and stood up. “I’m glad you were there,” I said.
He shrugged. “I’m a human being, Joanne. That brings certain obligations.”
As I walked down the corridor to my office, I had to admit I was spooked. Why had Ariel cleaned out her office four weeks before her class was over, and what had she meant by “the next battle”? Something else was troubling. Despite his promise to call me, I hadn’t heard from Howard Dowhanuik. That mystery, at least, appeared to have a solution within my reach, but when I got back to my office and dialled Howard’s apartment, there was no answer. I checked my machine at home. There were two messages: the first was from Marie Cousin thanking me in advance for being a parent-helper the next week when Taylor’s class visited the Legislature; the second was from Howard telling me he was worried about Charlie, and he’d be in touch.
