by Gail Bowen
“Luckily, they can be found at high-end garage sales.” I said. “Like Florence, your Lalique sparrow has already known another home. You seem destined to own second-hand birds.”
Ed ran his finger over a crystal wing. “Then perhaps Barry and I should accept our fate with grace,” he said. “I can almost hear Livia intoning that this is our way of acquiring good karma.”
The first thing I did when I got home was check Eli’s room. Charlie still hadn’t shown up. There were no messages on the voice mail. It was obvious there had been a change of plans; it was equally obvious that neither Howard nor his son had seen any point in telling me. Howard’s failures to communicate were legendary, and I was neither worried nor nettled.
The day was getting lovelier by the moment and, while I did have work to do, there was no reason I couldn’t do it outdoors. I made myself a pot of green tea and took the mid-terms out to the sunshine of the back deck; by lunchtime, I’d made a small but measurable dent in the pile. After I’d eaten, I took a swim. As I was changing out of my wet suit, my bed looked so inviting I put on my pyjamas and slid between the sheets.
I woke to the sound of Charlie Dowhanuik’s voice, but when I opened my eyes it wasn’t Charlie standing beside the bed, it was Eli. He was wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt and holding a portable radio.
“I’m sorry to wake you up,” he said, “but I thought you should listen to this.”
Charlie was in full rhetorical flight. “The word ‘mob’ is a shortened form of the Latin mobile vulgus, ‘fickle common people,’ ” he said. “For the Romans, the mob was harmless enough, a bunch of boys and girls with a fondness for bread and circuses. Your basic WWF crowd. But mobs have changed. Today, right here in our city, there’s a mob forming. And the people in it aren’t just good old boys and good old girls. They’re sophisticated. They even have their own Web site. Their name may sound innocent but, make no mistake, the Friends of Red Riding Hood are not fairy-tale characters. They’re beasts who feed on the stupid, suck up the gullible, then move along, leaving nothing behind but a reeking spoor of self-righteousness. Fight them. Now… back to the Dave Matthews Band.”
Eli sat on the edge of my bed. “That’s the only music he’s playing. It’s his theme, ‘Ants Marching.’ ”
“I’ve heard it before,” I said. “It’s a good song, but I’m not sure how many repetitions I could take.”
Eli nodded. “Charlie D’s taking calls, too. Some of them are really scary. Threats. He doesn’t seem to care. CVOX has been running announcements all day saying they’re standing behind Charlie D. On the news just now, a guy said the Friends of Red Riding Hood are renting buses to take the Friends out to the station tonight so they can protest. Charlie D told them to come ahead.”
I looked at Eli. “I’m going to call Charlie’s dad,” I said.
I tried Howard’s apartment. There was no answer. I tried his cellphone. A female voice told me, in both official languages, that the customer I was calling was unavailable at the moment. The news was hardly surprising; in order to have been ‘available,’ Howard would have had to activate his phone, and that was something he seldom did.
“No luck,” I said to Eli.
“What are you going to do?” Eli asked.
“Get dressed and go up the university. Howard knew there’d be trouble, and he’s always believed in attacking trouble at its source. The march is scheduled to start from the library. Even if Howard isn’t there, I’ll be able to see firsthand what’s happening.” I glanced at the clock on my night-stand. “Incidentally,” I said, “it’s two-thirty. How come you’re home from school.”
“Half-day teacher in-service,” he said. “I told you about it last night.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m playing with an incomplete deck these days. Does Taylor have the afternoon off, too?”
“Nope, it’s only the high schools. Taylor’s class is on garbage patrol in her schoolyard, so she won’t be home till after four. She mentioned that, too,” he said gently.
“How would you like to move in permanently?” I asked. “We’ve never had a kid around here who actually delivered messages.”
“Cool,” he said. “Talk to Uncle Alex. I think we’re a matched set.”
I threw my pillow at him. “Get outta here,” I said.
He left with a grin, but the strains of ‘Ants Marching,’ Dave Matthews’s indictment of mindless conformity, lingered.
As I drove to the university, my nerves felt as if they were connected by piano wire. I couldn’t slap a label on what I feared, and so, nameless, the fear grew. It took an act of will to insert the key in the lock of my office. When I saw the envelope lying on the floor, my heart sank. Any message Solange had considered critical enough to slide under my door the night before wouldn’t be good news. The envelope I picked up was the kind our office used for business letters. Inside was a single sheet of university stationery. The note was handwritten, two lines long: Joanne, The heart has its reasons, and they’re not always immediately apparent to others. Forgive me, Solange
The remorse was apparent, but the note’s ambiguity gnawed. The two lines could be read as either an apology for a temperamental outburst or an admission of complicity in something more sinister.
I walked down the hall and knocked on Solange’s door. There was no answer, and when I tried the knob, the door was locked. I had no better luck at the main office. It was 3:30 – Rosalie’s coffee time. Even Kevin Coyle wasn’t in.
I went back to my office and tried Solange’s home number. There was no answer. I pulled the mid-terms from my briefcase and began to read. Five minutes later, I gave up. I would not have wanted one of my kids to have their paper marked by an instructor whose concentration was as fragmented as mine. I reread Solange’s letter. It didn’t yield any answers. All I knew for certain was that there had been a radical shift in Solange’s feelings. The question was, Why?
Luckily, the time frame during which the change took place was a narrow one. Fraser Jackson had been with Solange on the island and on the flights back. He had struck me as a man with keen powers of observation and a good ear for detecting variations in the emotional pitch of others. I packed up my mid-terms, locked my door, and walked to the elevator. I needed information, and Fraser seemed as good a place as any to start.
His door was open, but when I stuck my head around the corner, I saw that he was on the telephone. As soon as he saw me, he hung up. “Synchronicity,” he said with a grin. “I was just calling you. Molly told me on the way back that it was your idea to invite me. I’m grateful, Joanne. I found it very comforting to be part of the ceremony.” He gestured to the chair opposite his. “But you came to see me…”
“I wanted to talk about yesterday, too,” I said, taking the chair he’d offered. “Fraser, I was hoping you could tell me about how Solange was after I left.”
He took a breath. “Well, at first she was very angry. Of course, you saw that.”
“It was pretty hard to miss,” I said. “But sometime last night she slid this under my office door.” I gave him Solange’s note.
As Fraser read the note, his face was sombre. “I can’t say that I’m surprised,” he said.
“Then something did happen.”
“No single thing,” he said slowly, and I could see my own concern reflected in his dark eyes. “Solange took me aside as soon as you left with Howard and his son. She was… distraught. She asked me about my relationship with Ariel. There didn’t seem to be any point in lying, so I told her the truth. She took the news calmly; in fact, she seemed almost indifferent. I’ve thought about it since, and I think I just had to establish my bona fides before she asked the one question that really mattered to her.”
“Which was?”
“Which was if Ariel had ever suggested, in any way, that she feared her.”
“Had she?” I asked.
“Never. She always spoke of Solange with the greatest affection and respect.”
I
felt the piano-wire tension of my nerves lessen. “So Charlie was wrong.”
“One hundred per cent wrong.” Fraser was adamant. “Solange was a hero to Ariel. She believed Solange had given her some sort of key to living her life fully.”
“And you told Solange that.”
He shook his head in amazement. “She was so grateful, Joanne. She told me I couldn’t have given her a greater gift. Then the penny dropped.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wish I knew. All I know is that the light went out of her face, and she said, ‘If it wasn’t me, then who was Ariel afraid of?’ After that, she just withdrew. I made a point of sitting beside her on the flights home, but she didn’t say another word till we were about to land in Regina. Then she asked me something I’m still puzzling over. She wanted to know if I’d ever studied Murder in the Cathedral.”
“T.S. Eliot,” I said. “I don’t get the connection.”
“Neither did I, but I wanted her to keep talking. I told her the summer before last I’d seen a terrific production of the play in London, and that I’d done some work on it and was considering doing a student production here. That’s when she asked me if I knew Thomas Becket’s line about the greatest treason.” Fraser leaned towards me. “Are you familiar with the play?”
“Very,” I said. “When my husband was in politics, that particular line came up a time or two. ‘The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.’ ”
Fraser nodded approval. “It’s a provocative line for idealists,” he said. “I wasn’t surprised that Solange had been taken with it, but it seemed she was more interested in the inversion. ‘It’s treason the other way, too,’ she said. ‘If a person does the wrong deed for the right reason.’ ”
“And she didn’t elaborate?”
“Not another word on that subject or any other. The plane landed; we shared a cab from the airport. I got dropped off first, and I haven’t seen her since. I’ve been uneasy enough about her state of mind to try her office and her house a half-dozen times. No luck.”
“I’m sure she’s fine, just out riding her bike somewhere,” I said, with what I hoped sounded like conviction. “I’ll call if I manage to connect with her.”
“I hope one of us finds her soon,” he said. “Because all the bike-riding in the world doesn’t offset the fact that that note was written by a deeply troubled woman.”
When I got back to the Political Science office, Rosalie was at her desk. She was wearing a white silk blouse, a single strand of pearls, and delicate pearl and diamond drop earrings. She looked lovely, and I told her so.
“One of the tips in my bridal book is that a bride should try out her jewellery for the wedding beforehand. It says a bride doesn’t want to be walking down the aisle when she discovers that she should have had her grandmother’s pearls restrung.”
“No,” I said, “I guess she doesn’t.”
Rosalie picked up the flatness in my voice. “Am I talking too much about my own life these days?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I love hearing the details. You know that. I’m just a little preoccupied. You haven’t seen Solange, have you?”
“She was waiting outside the office when I got to work this morning.”
“Is she around now?”
“No. She wanted some information, and when I gave it to her, she left.”
“What was the information?”
Rosalie fingered her grandmother’s pearls pensively. “You know that I try to keep my dealings with every faculty member confidential…”
“This is important,” I said quickly.
“I guess there’s no reason not to divulge this,” Rosalie said. “Solange wanted to know if we had a current phone number for Maryse Bergman.”
The name was familiar but I couldn’t make a connection. “Is she a student?” I asked.
“She was a student,” Rosalie said. “She was the one who accused Dr. Coyle of rape.”
“Right,” I said. “How soon we forget.”
“I’ll bet Dr. Coyle hasn’t forgotten,” Rosalie said tartly.
“I’m sure he hasn’t,” I said. “So, did you have a current number?”
“The last listing we had was in care of the Political Science department where Ms. Bergman went to do her M.A.”
“You mean some university actually accepted her into their graduate program? Kevin showed me her transcript when all his problems with her started. She barely made it through her undergraduate degree. Who took her?”
Rosalie named the university.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “Their program is first-rate. They’ve rejected students of ours who had a lot more potential than Maryse Bergman.”
“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.�
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“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.
