by Gail Bowen
Taylor plunked herself next to Howard. My old friend was only marginally better with children than he was with women, but he had one party trick that Taylor loved. He told Tommy Douglas’s old political parable about Mouseland with immense panache. Taylor had always been fascinated by the story about the little mice who, every four years, walked to the polls and blithely cast their ballots for an all-cat slate of candidates. That night, however, as Howard moved towards the story’s climax, my daughter was squirming. Howard had barely described the scene in which one little mouse proposes electing a government made up of mice and is locked up as a Bolshevik when Taylor streaked out of the room.
“Losing your touch,” I said to Howard. “She didn’t even stick around for ‘You can lock up a mouse or a man, but you can’t lock up an idea,’ and that’s the best line.”
“Maybe Bruce and Benny got to her,” Howard said gloomily. “Any more of that gin left?”
Luckily, my daughter was back before I had to tell Howard that, as far as he was concerned, the bar was closed. She was struggling under the weight of a canvas almost as big as she was. Howard jumped up to help her, and she sighed dramatically. “This was supposed to be a surprise, but when you told the story I knew I couldn’t wait.” Her eyes caught mine. “Jo, I won first prize in that Social Studies contest. Ms. Cousin wanted to tell you, but I thought it would be so neat if you thought you were just coming to the Legislature as a parent-helper, but it was really because I’d won.” She looked up at Howard. “Could you turn the painting so we can see it?”
Howard dropped to his knees and held the canvas out in front of him. “Jesus,” he said. “It’s Mouseland. Look, Jo, there’s the Legislature and there are all the mice, running the show. It’s great, Taylor, but who’s that old mouse – the tough-looking one with the snarl?”
“You!” Taylor crowed. “You’re in charge.”
“Maybe I’ll do a better job this time,” Howard said. He turned to me. “So fill me in. What’s this all about?”
“Actually, it was an idea Ben Jesse had to get kids thinking about studying government. All the grade twos from the city were eligible to submit projects. Livia chaired the committee that judged the entries. I knew she was going to be at the presentation tomorrow, but she didn’t breathe a word about Taylor winning.” I looked at my daughter. “Neither did you. I can’t believe you didn’t spill the beans.”
Taylor clenched her fists in triumph. “Angus says I can’t keep a secret. I kept this one right till the day before you were supposed to find out.”
“A record,” I said.
She ignored me. “The prize is you get to meet your Member of the Legislature and then you and your parent have refreshments with her or him.”
Howard hooted. “So, Jo, you’ll be breaking bread with Bev Pilon. That’ll be nice for you.”
I had tried hard to defeat Bev Pilon in the last election. She was smart, rich, and unswervingly committed to the proposition that the sleek should inherit the earth. In a real-life Mouseland, she would be Queen of the Mean Cats.
“My cup runneth over,” I said.
Taylor scrunched her face. “But you are glad I won.”
I reached out and touched her cheek. “I couldn’t be more proud. Now we’d better get that painting in the house before the mosquitoes splat into it.”
When I returned, I thought for a moment that Howard was asleep. He was stretched out on the lazy lounge with his eyes closed, but when he heard my step, he turned his head towards me. “There are good times,” he said.
I reached over and took his hand. “Plenty of them,” I said. “And there will be more.”
Across the yard, Charlie and Eli were getting out of the pool – Eli picked up a towel, tied it around his waist in the way of teenage boys, then threw another towel to Charlie. Charlie wrapped himself in his, instinctively covering as much of his body as he could.
When Eli started towards the house, Charlie called out after him. “Thanks,” he said. “That helped. It really did.”
Instead of following Eli, Howard’s son veered towards us and squatted cross-legged on the ground, turning his face so that the birthmark was away from us. “Not many people are smart enough to know that sometimes the best thing you can do to help is just be there and be quiet,” he said.
His tone was wistful and reflective, but Howard didn’t get past the words. “Goddammit, Charlie, do you think the cops are just sitting there being quiet, or do you think they might actually be out there asking questions and getting answers?”
“I just meant I was grateful to Eli, Dad.” Suddenly, there was an edgy danger in Charlie’s voice. “I understand that you need me to work out answers for the police’s questions before they ask me,” he said.
“I need you to tell the truth, son.” Howard’s words had a simple Biblical force.
So did Charlie’s response. “I’ll tell the truth,” he said.
The darkness had settled. It was a relief to listen without the distraction of Charlie’s face. Nightfall seemed to free him, too, allow him to become a truer self, one in whom I began to discern flashes of the boy Marnie had raised and, for a time, Ariel had loved.
Howard breathed deeply. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with the big one. Did you kill Ariel?”
“No.”
Howard nodded, seemingly accepting his son’s one-word answer as sufficient. It wasn’t enough for me, but I could feel myself moving towards belief in Charlie’s innocence.
“Then the next step,” Howard said, “is to find out if you know anything that will help the police find out who did kill her.” “All right,” Charlie said.
There was an awkward silence. Howard shot me a look that called for help. “So, Jo. You’ve been closer to this than we have. Any thoughts?”
“That was smooth,” I said. Charlie laughed quietly. Encouraged, I continued. “I guess my first thought is Solange,” I said. “Charlie, when you two clashed today, you told Solange that Ariel was afraid of her. Was that just a heat-of-the-moment accusation or was it true?”
Charlie made a gesture of dismissal. “There’s so much about the past that just doesn’t seem relevant any more,” he said. “Solange is going through her own hell.”
“I know,” I said. “But that doesn’t exempt her, and it doesn’t make what happened in the past irrelevant. We’re not just talking about being dumped here; we’re talking about murder. If Ariel really was afraid of Solange, it matters.”
Charlie drew in his narrow shoulders and looked down at the grass. “Ariel and Solange had an unusual relationship.”
“Unusual in what way?”
He looked thoughtful. “In its voltage,” he said finally. “It was far too intense – at least on Solange’s side. It wasn’t always like that. At first, Ariel and Solange were just friends, the way any two people who work together are. Solange even came by the house and had a drink with us a couple of times, but after they went to Mount Assiniboine it was different.”
“Solange told me that Ariel found herself on Mount Assiniboine.”
Charlie shook his head with the weariness of a man forced to explain a self-evident truth. “Ariel found herself with me. I gave her everything she needed or wanted. She’d lost sight of that, but we would have worked it out if Solange hadn’t come along with her insights.”
“So you don’t believe that Ariel was liberated by her experience on Mount Assiniboine.”
Charlie’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Liberated. That has to be Solange’s word, and it couldn’t be more wrong. Joanne, we’re not talking about girl power here. It’s something more complex.”
“Then explain it to me,” I said.
“Solange loved Ariel,” Charlie said. “Ariel felt that brought certain obligations.”
Howard’s reaction was a sputter. “You mean Solange and Ariel were
…?”
“They were nothing.” Charlie’s voice was low with fury. “Solange was temporary. An abberation. Ar
iel’s destiny was intertwined with mine from the day we met. She was just confused.”
“You and Ariel talked about this confusion?” I asked.
“We didn’t have to,” Charlie said. “I didn’t need flaming letters in the sky. When you’re as close to someone as I was to Ariel, you learn to read the signs. After Mount Assiniboine, the signs were there. She didn’t want to be with me. There was never an angry word, but one night I brushed her arm and she flinched. It wasn’t calculated. It was the response a person has to touching something they find repugnant, like a snake or a slug. I ignored it. I knew that if I just kept loving her…”
“But loving her wasn’t enough,” I said. “She wanted out.”
“She thought she wanted out. But even when she was saying we had to break it off, her real feelings were apparent. She told me that her life had been immeasurably enriched by knowing me, that she couldn’t have asked for more in a lover or a friend.” He rubbed his eyes with his fists, like a child fighting sleep. “That’s why I couldn’t let her go. I knew neither of us could have a life without the other.”
“Jesus!” Howard’s curse was an explosion in the tranquil air. “I can’t listen to this.”
When Howard jumped from his chair, I grabbed his arm. “Let Charlie talk,” I said.
Howard’s son continued like a man in a trance. “So she stayed. I tried to anticipate everything she could possibly want: food, flowers, music – even Fritz. She’d always wanted a dog, so we went to the Humane Society and got Fritz. I thought our relationship was working.” He hunched into a position that was almost foetal. “Two weeks ago I came home, and she was moving out.”
“Fraser Jackson was with her,” I said.
“He was just incidental,” Charlie said wearily, closing the topic.
I reopened it. “So you came home by chance…”
“When it came to Ariel, I never left anything to chance,” he said. “Everything about her was too important. I knew her habits, her routines. She always folded her nightgown and left it under her pillow. That morning, I checked. The nightgown wasn’t there. That’s what alerted me. So I asked Troy to finish the show, and I came home early. Of course, she’d hoped to avoid a confrontation.”
“Did it get violent?” Howard asked.
“Do you mean apart from the fact that she was ripping our lives apart? No, Dad, it didn’t get violent. It was just sad – really sad – for both of us. She seemed so tired, but I couldn’t help myself. I lost it…”
“Lost it how?” I asked.
He winced at the memory. “I cried. You know, that thing real men aren’t supposed to do. She just seemed to slump. It was as if I’d hit her. That’s when she told me she’d broken it off with Solange, too.”
Suddenly, Howard was all lawyer. He leaned forward. “What did Ariel say exactly?”
Charlie’s face tightened. “She said, ‘I can’t go through this again. I thought she at least would understand. She’s always insisted that all she wants is for me to be happy… but she was so angry. I’m frightened. She’s done some terrible things.’ ”
“And she mentioned Solange by name?”
“Not by name,” he said, “but who else could it be?”
Howard pounded his fist into his palm. “Why the hell didn’t you mention this before?”
Charlie looked at his father in amazement. “How anxious would you be to revisit the worst day of your life?”
They left early, not much past eight o’clock. Charlie insisted on staying at the home he and Ariel had shared, and Howard insisted on not leaving his son alone. I watched their cab pull away, then went upstairs to check on the kids.
Taylor was already in bed, eyes squeezed shut, courting sleep, but when she heard my step, she bolted upright. “I’m so excited,” she said. “Are you?”
“Very,” I said. “Now, I want to take a closer look at Mouseland. The light wasn’t very good outside, and we were all a little distracted.”
“By that boy,” she said.
“By that man,” I said, correcting her. “Charlie’s twenty-seven years old. The same age as Mieka.”
Taylor took in the information. “He seemed more like a kid.” She shrugged. “Let’s look at the picture. You didn’t even notice that I put you and me in there.”
I picked up Mouseland and carried it over to the bed. It really was a terrific piece: the Legislature was Crayola-bright and surreal, but Taylor had drawn the duly elected mice and the sulky displaced cats with a cartoonist’s eye for detail. At the top of the marble steps leading into the Legislature, a matronly mouse in sensible shoes raised her paws in delight as a shining-eyed young mouse with braids twirled on one toe.
I pointed the figures out to Taylor. “Us?” I asked.
She nodded happily. “This is going to be so fun, Jo.”
“You bet,” I said. Then I leaned across her and turned out the light.
Eli’s door was closed, but when I knocked, he invited me in.
“I just wanted to thank you for helping Charlie tonight.” I said.
“I didn’t do anything special.”
“You were there,” I said, “and that was what he needed.”
Eli matched the fingertips of his hands and flexed them thoughtfully. “My uncle used to tell me this was a spider doing push-ups on a mirror,” he said.
“Funny guy, your uncle.” I said.
Eli smiled. “I wish he was here.”
“Me, too,” I said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. Even your uncle couldn’t have done a better job than you did tonight.”
For a moment, I stood outside Eli’s doorway thinking about all the things I should do: phone Ed Mariani and ask him if there had been any problems with the mid-term; take the dishes out of the dishwasher; mark some of the essays that seemed to breed in my briefcase; iron a blouse to wear to the Legislature the next morning. There was no shortage of worthy projects awaiting my attention. I rejected them all in favour of a hot shower and clean pyjamas.
Fifteen minutes later, I was in bed. As a sop to my conscience, I took Political Perspectives with me. I was trying to make sense of the concept of sovereignty-association when the phone rang. A sixth sense told me the news would not be good, and the sixth sense was right.
Kevin Coyle’s voice was a breathy rasp. “Trouble’s brewing,” he said.
“Kevin, you’re starting to sound more and more like a character in a Sam Peckinpah movie.”
“You think you’re insulting me – implying I’m marginal and obsessed with the dark side – but Peckinpah knew things about the human psyche that you and I would do well to remember.”
“Such as…?”
“Such as the fact that violence doesn’t just pop up like a mushroom. It’s character-driven. If you don’t believe that, check out what Ann Vogel and her wild bunch are doing on Ariel’s Web page. There’s a fresh list of atrocities and new plans for retribution. Incidentally, there’s a reference to you that’s less than favourable. Apparently, you’re guilty of a sin of omission or commission that’s moved you from the circle of the elect to the circle of the damned.”
“Kevin, I’m so sick of this.”
“There’s more,” he said, but his tone was both gentle and apologetic. “There was someone sniffing around your office earlier tonight. When she saw me she ran.”
“Who was it?”
“I was down the hall but, unless I’m very much mistaken, it was our friend, Solange.”
“What was she doing?
“Sliding something under your door.”
“Swell,” I said.
“I’m sure Solange draws the line at letter bombs,” Kevin said.
Remembering the scene Charlie had described, I was silent.
“That was supposed to cheer you up,” Kevin said. “A Sam Peckinpah joke.”
“I think I’m beyond cheering,” I said.
There was a pause. “This gives me no pleasure. I hope you know that, Joanne.”
“I
do. It’s hard for all of us. Now, I guess I’d better check out that Web site.”
“You’ll need fortification.”
I didn’t have to be told twice. I walked into Angus’s room with a glass containing two fingers of Crown Royal. When I saw the Web page I was glad I have broad fingers. Someone had managed to get the autopsy photographs of Ariel and had posted them on the site. Whether the thief had been bribed or had simply shared Ann Vogel’s monomania would be a question for the police to answer. All I knew was that the last private place in Ariel’s life had been invaded, and I was sick at heart.
Oddly, except for the fact that she was lying on a metal autopsy table, the photographs of Ariel were not disturbing. She was, of course, very pale, but otherwise unmarked. I remembered Rosalie quoting her ever-quotable Robert on the fact that Ariel had died from a surgically precise wound in the back. She hadn’t been mutilated; in death she was as lovely as ever. With her trailing hair, her perfect profile, and her translucent skin, she looked like a Maxfield Parrish illustration of Sleeping Beauty, waiting for the kiss from her prince.
But the additions the Friends of Red Riding Hood had made to Ariel’s Web page were not the stuff of fairy tales, and their statistics conjured up a world in which princes were in mighty short supply. One hundred women murdered each year in Canada by a male partner; 62 per cent of all women murdered, victims of domestic violence; a Canadian woman raped every seven minutes; 84 per cent of sexual assaults committed by someone known to the victims; almost half of all women with disabilities sexually abused as children; number of sexual assaults reported to Canadian police growing exponentially.
Horrifying as they were, the statistics were simply prologue. The real focus of the Web page was a letter addressed “TO ALL WHO SEEK JUSTICE.” It began: Some of you will question our decision to post autopsy photographs of Ariel Warren on this page. You want to remember Ariel as the vital, evolving woman she was, not as a corpse with a toe-tag. You will find the pictures disturbing. You will resent us for forcing you to confront images so stark and so real that to contemplate them is to feel the knife in one’s own back. Events in the past week have made it necessary for us to act. In the days before her death, Ariel attempted many times to leave her Intimate Partner. He refused to let her go. Now she is dead; her ex-lover walks the streets; one of her colleagues joins forces with her killer’s father; the police shrug. The Friends of Red Riding Hood refuse to abandon Ariel to the vagaries of a patriarchal law system, a system created by men to protect their own. Charlie Dowhanuik (a.k.a. Charlie D of CVOX radio) must be brought to justice. Hunt him down the way Ariel was hunted down. Phone him. E-mail him. Fax him.
