The Last Good Day

by Gail Bowen

  “No,” I agreed, “it isn’t.”

  “Then let’s get out of here. I live at the Balfour. It’s five minutes away and air-conditioned.”

  Hot and sick at heart, I was an easy sell. “Let’s go,” I said.

  I didn’t manage a clean getaway. As I walked down 13th Avenue to my car, I heard Zack Shreve behind me.

  “Hey,” he said. “You can’t blow off the reception. I promised to pour.”

  “You’ll have to show me your technique another time,” I said. “I’ve decided just to drive straight back to the lake.”

  He looked at me hard. “That’s a lie,” he said pleasantly.

  I flushed. “Why would I lie?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Why would you?” He shrugged and smiled. “You’re a woman of mystery,” he said, and he wheeled away.

  On a day when the world seemed an increasingly uncertain place, the solid bulk of the apartments that had become the Balfour Condominiums was reassuring. Sturdily built and handsome, the Balfour had anchored the corner of Victoria Avenue and Lorne Street for generations. Once the preserve of lifelong bachelors with ascots and ladies with mauve-tinted hair, the Balfour had been discovered by the young and affluent, people willing to pay a good chunk of change for a central location, classic lines, and the chance to do a serious reno.

  Anne Millar had apparently decided against knocking down walls and installing stainless-steel appliances. Her apartment had the antique charm of a carefully preserved dowager: floors covered with the boundless richness of Persian carpets; walls hung with lush landscapes by long-dead Victorians; massive ornate furniture that glowed with the patina of age.

  Anne was a distracted but efficient hostess. She filled a silver bucket and placed it on a tray with gin, tonic, two heavy monogrammed glasses, and two ecru linen napkins, also monogrammed. We sat at a round breakfast table that looked out on Victoria Park. Anne poured the drinks, handed me mine, and took a large sip from hers.

  “This could get to be a habit very easily,” she said.

  “Luckily, we don’t bury a good man every day,” I said.

  Anne eyed the condensation on her glass. “I’m not sure Chris Altieri was such a good man,” she said.

  She walked over to a side table and touched the button on her answering machine. Chris Altieri’s voice, nervous and tentative, filled the room. “I need to atone,” he said. “There are a lot of people I have to talk to, but I thought I’d start with you. Name the time and place and I’ll be there.” His laugh was nervous. “And make it soon, please. I’m losing my courage.”

  I felt a pang. The last time I’d seen Chris Altieri, I told him nothing was unforgiveable. Apparently, he’d been listening.

  Anne held out her hands, palms up, in a gesture of frustration. “What do you make of that?”

  I was still operating from the script in which she and Chris had been lovers. “It must at least give you some kind of comfort,” I said.

  She looked genuinely surprised. “Why would it give me comfort?”

  “Obviously you two had differences,” I said. “It must be a relief to know that he wanted to reconcile them.”

  Anne leaned across the table and locked eyes with mine. “Joanne, I barely knew Christopher Altieri. I went to him because I was apprehensive about what had happened to a friend who’d worked for Falconer Shreve and left abruptly. I’d met Chris a couple of times at parties, and he’d always seemed like a pretty decent guy.”

  “But he wasn’t decent to you.”

  “No,” Anne said. “When I asked him for reassurance that all was well with my friend, he was evasive. He promised to look into things and get back to me, but he never did. And he never returned my calls. I think the night he died, he’d decided to tell the truth.”

  “And you think there’s some connection between Chris’s death and what happened to your friend.”

  Anne picked up her napkin and folded it carefully into the smallest possible square. “I don’t even know if anything did happen to her. She may have simply decided to move on and not look back. That’s what everyone keeps telling me.”

  “But you don’t believe them.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who would leave without saying goodbye, but people surprise us all the time, don’t they?”

  I looked out the window. Across the street in the park, lovers were strolling hand in hand and children were fighting over swings. Their sunny world was seductive. If I were to agree with Anne Millar that people were unpredictable, finish my drink, and thank her for her hospitality, I could be part of that sunny world in five minutes.

  The temptation was real, but so was the evidence that the universe was not unfolding as it should. A man I was certain cared for me had been unfaithful with the wife of a Falconer Shreve partner, a Falconer Shreve partner who seemed to be finding his way back from despair had committed suicide, and now a young lawyer at Falconer Shreve had left under unsettling circumstances. I turned to Anne Millar. “Tell me about your friend,” I said.

  The day’s events had clearly rattled Anne, but she didn’t allow emotion to distort her narrative. She told her story well, without digression or unnecessary detail.

  “Her name was Clare Mackey,” Anne began. Neither of us responded to the fact that she referred to Clare in the past tense. “We ran together,” Anne continued. “It started out casually enough – we both had the same route in the mornings, down Lorne, into the park, and around the lake.”

  “That’s my route, too,” I said. “At least the lake part.”

  “Six-thirty in the summer, seven in the winter,” Anne said. “Are you earlier or later?”

  “Earlier,” I said.

  Anne sighed. “And we thought we were virtuous.”

  “I have a virtuous dog,” I said.

  The comment earned me a smile. “Anyway,” Anne said, “Clare and I started running together. You know how informal those things are. We’d just meet up, do a few stretches, and start. We discovered early on that we were both lawyers. Every so often one of us would have a breakfast meeting, and we agreed to let the other know by e-mail so nobody had to hang around.” Anne’s face clouded. “Last November 11, Clare didn’t show up. It was a holiday; I thought maybe she’d decided to sleep in. I waited for a few minutes, but it looked like rain, so I got in my run, came back here, and checked my e-mail. There was no message.

  “That night we had an ice storm, so the next morning I ran at the Y. Same thing the next day, but before I left home I e-mailed Clare asking if she wanted to join me. She didn’t show up, and she didn’t respond to my note. The third day the streets were clear, so I waited for her at the corner of Lorne and Victoria. Another no-show. When I got home, I e-mailed her and asked if she was okay.” Anne took a small sip of her drink. “She answered right away. Clare’s e-mail name was ‘roadrunner.’ I was so relieved to see it pop up on my screen. Her note said that she was in Vancouver. She’d flown out for an interview with an all-female law firm there – her dream. She said she’d let me know if she got the job. A couple of days later she e-mailed to say everything had worked out. The new firm had liked her, she’d liked them, and she was going to start immediately. I sent congratulations and asked her to stay in touch.”

  “But Clare didn’t stay in touch,” I said.

  “No.” Anne’s eyes were troubled. “To be honest, there was no particular reason why she should have. I hope I haven’t misrepresented our relationship, Joanne. We were just friendly acquaintances. Clare and I ran together, but we didn’t chat a lot. We were both pretty internal people. I think we both saw running as a good way to get centred for the day.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” I asked. “The way you’ve explained the situation, everything sounds perfectly normal.”

  Anne clenched her fists in frustration. “I know it does. It just doesn’t ring true – at least not to me. Clare wasn’t impulsive. She was methodical. She saw t
hings through. No matter how good the job at the law firm in Vancouver was, she wouldn’t have walked away from Falconer Shreve without clearing off her files.”

  “You think something happened at Falconer Shreve to make her want to leave?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that nothing adds up. A few weeks before she moved away, Clare asked me about vacancies here at the Balfour – she was interested in buying a condo, ‘putting down roots,’ to use her term. If anything went wrong at Falconer Shreve, it must have been very sudden and very serious.”

  I felt a chill. “And you went to Chris Altieri to ask if he knew why Clare had left so abruptly.”

  “Yes. And he was ready with an answer. He corroborated all the information in the e-mail. He said Falconer Shreve had been sorry to lose Clare, but she’d been offered her dream job, so they let her go. He also said the partners found it easier to make the decision because they knew they wouldn’t have any trouble replacing Clare.”

  “At least that part is true,” I said. “Falconer Shreve is a hot ticket. Any young lawyer with an ounce of ambition would give her eye teeth to work there.”

  “Chris pointed that out, too, and I bought his explanation. We were quite matey. Then just as I was leaving I asked Chris if he could give me the name of the firm Clare was working for. He became flustered. He said he couldn’t remember the name, but if I left him my card, he’d send me the information. He was so anxious to get me out of the office he almost pushed me out the door.”

  “And he never got in touch.”

  “No, so I started looking elsewhere for information.”

  “You were that concerned.”

  “Concerned and, to be honest, pissed off. I don’t like being stonewalled. At any rate, I started asking around. The legal community here is a pretty small one, so it wasn’t hard to find people who’d had some contact with Clare. As it turned out, she’d moved to Regina only last spring.”

  “And she left Falconer Shreve in November.”

  Anne’s nod was emphatic. “The timing is all wrong, isn’t it? How could she move here in April, be happy enough to consider settling permanently in September, and then just leave?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, but I felt my nerve ends tingle.

  “It didn’t make sense to me either,” Anne said. “And then, towards the end of November, I got an electronic card from Clare, thanking me for being such a good friend.”

  “And that didn’t reassure you?”

  “It made me even more anxious. None of the women I know would dream of sending an e-card thanking another woman for her friendship, but I went along with the charade. I replied, thanking Clare for the card, but I also asked a question only Clare could answer.”

  “You suspected someone other than Clare was using her e-mail address,” I said.

  Anne’s eyes met mine. “I knew it,” she said simply. “But I decided before I went to the police to test my theory one more time. Coming up with a question that required intimate knowledge was difficult. Clare and I hadn’t exchanged confidences. Then I remembered that she’d teased me about the laces on my running shoes. They’re Strawberry Shortcake laces.” Anne coloured. “There were these dolls in the early eighties …”

  “I remember them,” I said. “My daughter Mieka was a fan.”

  Anne’s smile was wan. “Anyway, I e-mailed Clare a note asking her to describe my shoelaces. The e-mail program I use lets me know when my messages have been read, so I know someone opened the e-mail, but there was no response. That’s when I went to the police.”

  “And the police didn’t investigate?”

  “They said they did.” Anne bit off the words.

  “But you didn’t believe them.”

  “I believe they went through the motions. The kindest construction is that the detective they sent to investigate was simply out-manoeuvred by the partners at Falconer Shreve. According to the detective I spoke to, events unfolded exactly as Clare’s first note to me said they had. She received the Vancouver offer out of the blue – it was everything she’d ever wanted, so she went for it. Falconer Shreve accepted her resignation reluctantly, but they didn’t want to stand in the way of a woman’s chance at her ‘dream job.’ ” Anne peered at me closely. “The detective used that phrase, too, Joanne. They were all reading from the same script.”

  “And you let the matter drop?”

  “I was advised to …”

  “By whom?”

  “By the detective. He said I should drop the case, that people are complex and that sometimes their behaviour is inexplicable.”

  “Sounds condescending,” I said.

  “The words do,” Anne said. “But if you could have seen his face …” She shook her head, as if to clear the memory. “He seemed to be wrestling with something. At the time I thought his superiors had told him to put a lid on the case, so I tried to psych him out. I told him if the police weren’t going to find Clare Mackey, I would.”

  “Did he try to stop you?”

  “No. His response was quite bizarre. For the longest time he just stared at me. Finally, he said, ‘Sometimes when the pressures get to be too much, people walk away.’ You know, Joanne, I don’t think he was talking about Clare at all. I think he was talking about himself.”

  “It sounds as if he should be reported. Do you remember his name?”

  “It was a hard one to forget. He was aboriginal. His name was Alex Kequahtooway.”

  I tried to keep my voice steady. “I don’t suppose you remember exactly when you talked to him.”

  “Oh, but I do,” Anne said. “It was my birthday. November 30.”

  I looked down at my hands. They were trembling as if they belonged to a very old lady or a very sick one. November 30 was the date on which Alex had ended our three-year relationship.

  I’d planned to drive straight back to the lake, but my conversation with Anne Millar had been a stunner, so I drove home instead. The story of Clare Mackey had been deeply unsettling; it had also opened a Pandora’s box that I’d hoped I’d finally managed to nail shut. I needed time to absorb Anne’s story, but I also needed time to regroup.

  My breakup with Alex had been, as these things often are, both a shock and a relief. We had never lived together, but we had created a life together that I thought had fulfilled us both. Unmarried, Alex had a nephew, Eli, who was the same age as Angus, and after a few false starts our families had blended seamlessly. Our pleasures were domestic: crosscountry skiing, watching videos, going to Roughrider games or the symphony, being together. At our best, we stretched one another’s spirits, and even at our worst, we had been passionate.

  Our relationship was not ideal. The fact that I was ten years older than he had never been an issue; the fact that I was white and Alex was aboriginal had been a wound that never healed. Alex was one of the gentlest human beings I’d ever known; he was also one of the angriest, and the rage never left him. For long periods we would be happy, but just when I believed the anger had been quenched, it would flare up in a blaze that consumed us both. Alex would wall himself off and become, in one of the buzzwords of our day, emotionally unavailable.

  In the months before our breakup, the walls never seemed to come down. Nothing I did or said could dent his armour of anger. When he told me we were through, I was relieved but I was also bewildered. I genuinely didn’t understand what had gone wrong. Anne’s portrait of Alex’s state of mind on the day we broke up offered a flash of insight, but it also raised questions far too vexing for a hot summer afternoon. What was the source of the pressures Alex had been experiencing? He was a man who believed in the value of police work, yet he had blown off Anne Millar, dismissed her very real concerns as if they were less than nothing. He had also dismissed me. Tempting as it was to blame Lily Falconer for everything that had gone wrong, I couldn’t convince myself that Alex’s attraction for her could change the man he was.

  It was a relief to peel off my funeral clothes and put on a sundress and sand
als. In a perfect world, changing clothes would have transformed my mood, but even the summery lightness of a cotton dress and bare legs didn’t raise my spirits. I wasn’t surprised. This was not shaping up to be a summer of easy solutions.

  Angus had asked me to bring back some of his CDS. When I went into the family room to get them, I noticed my laptop, still in its carrying case, propped against the bookshelf. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t take a computer to the lake, that this summer I would recreate the innocence of the pre-information-technology world at the pristine beach and sparkling water known as Lawyers’ Bay. But now isolation was no longer an option – I needed to be connected to the world that lay beyond our privileged half-moon of lakefront cottages. I picked up the laptop, slung the strap over my shoulder, and headed for Paradise Lost.

  My radio was tuned to a community-station show that featured up-and-coming young artists. As I turned off the highway onto the road that wound through the Qu’Appelle Valley to the lake, the twenty-something deejay announced that the next selection was by a group called the nancy ray-guns. The name of the song was “Windigo,” and the deejay said it was the tale of a giant stone shape-changer who fed on human flesh. Perfect drive-home music.

  When I stopped at the Point Store to pick up Taylor, everything was reassuringly ordinary. The old men of Coffee Row were sitting under the cottonwood trees spinning tales, and the store was bustling. It was six o’clock on a hot Saturday evening in July, and wieners, potato chips, hot-dog buns, and mosquito coils were at a premium. Leah was in the front of the store at the till, and Taylor was beside her, bagging groceries.

  My younger daughter trumpeted her joy the moment she spotted me. “This has been the best day,” she said. “I got to do everything, and Mr. Gardiner showed Angus how to work the meat grinder and he let me hand him the raw meat.”

  Leah raked a hand through her blond bob. “The fun never ends,” she said.

  “Had enough?” I asked.

  “Actually it is kind of neat,” Leah said. “And as my Aunt Slava would say, ‘That Taylor – she must have been sent by God.’ ”