The Last Good Day

by Gail Bowen

  “Nice to know God has his eye on the Point Store,” I said. “So, T, are you ready to come back to the cottage and have dinner?”

  Taylor gave Leah a sidelong glance. “Is it okay if I go?”

  “Absolutely,” Leah said. “The store closes at six-thirty sharp.”

  “Six-thirty on a Saturday night?” I said. “That surprises me. I would have thought there’d be a lot of last-minute business.”

  “Not for us,” Leah said. “Stan Gardiner says if people don’t have what they need by six-thirty, they can’t have needed it very much.”

  “Very sensible perspective,” I said.

  “Sensible and enlightened,” my son yelled from behind the meat counter. “Leah and I have a barbecue to go to.”

  I walked back and checked out the meat cooler. “Anything you can recommend for Taylor and me?”

  “There’s one last piece of beef tenderloin,” Angus said thoughtfully. “High-end stuff, but just before you came, Stan told me to sell it for what I could get. He doesn’t believe in keeping meat too long, and he says you ruin meat when you freeze it.”

  Taylor and I dined elegantly that night. Beef tenderloin, tiny carrots, fresh peas, and fried bannock, a treat from Rose. After dinner, we took Willie for a walk along the beach. The sun smouldered against the horizon. We were, in that most poetic of phrases, in the gloaming. For years, I’d loved this time of day when the half-light signalled that the passions and frets of a day with kids had burned themselves out and that it was time to indulge in private thoughts. But that night the prospect of being alone with my private thoughts had little appeal.

  Chris Altieri’s cottage was in darkness and we hurried past it, but piano music drifted through the open windows at Zack Shreve’s. Tonight, he was playing one of my favourites, Johnny Mercer’s “I Remember You.” The setting sun made a path of light across the silent lake. It was a night for memories, and as we walked along the horseshoe I found myself wondering whether the people inside the cottages were cherishing their memories or wrestling with them.

  Taylor had been uncharacteristically quiet on our walk, and she’d been watching me carefully. “You’re not having a good time at the cottage, are you?” she asked.

  “It’s been a rough week, Taylor.”

  “Isobel says her mum never stops crying.”

  “Mrs. Wainberg and Mr. Altieri were good friends,” I said.

  “But he was friends with Mrs. Falconer, too, and Gracie says her mother hasn’t cried at all.”

  “People react differently,” I said.

  Taylor stopped to shake a pebble out of her sandal. “Gracie says her mum and dad fight every night.”

  “That’s not good,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t want people fighting at our house every night,” Taylor said.

  “Neither would I.” I read the worry on her face. “You know what I’m in the mood for?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Crazy eights,” I said. “Are you feeling lucky?”

  Taylor grinned. “I wasn’t, but I am now.”

  Our card game was raucous and diverting. When I tucked Taylor in, she’d lost her careworn look and was planning the next morning’s agenda. I was less keen about seizing the day. Even the prospect of enduring the next few hours was daunting. As far as I could see, my options had narrowed to a classic example of Hobson’s choice: go to bed, stare at the ceiling, and brood about the events of the afternoon, or stay awake, stare at the wall, and brood. The knock at the door was a relief.

  Delia Wainberg’s hair was wet and curly, as if she’d just come from a swim or a shower, and she was wearing navy shorts and a white T-shirt. She looked like the kid sister of the haggard, urbane lawyer who strode up the aisle at the funeral Mass.

  “Too late for a visit?” she asked.

  “Not from you,” I said.

  Delia followed me inside, then gestured towards the back porch. “Mind if we play through?”

  The silver-dollar ashtray was in the dish drainer beside the sink. I picked it up and handed it to Delia.

  “Thanks,” she said. She walked onto the porch, collapsed into the nearest chair, and lit up. “I’m supposed to find out why you blew off the reception today.”

  “I ran into an ex-student of mine.”

  “I said it was probably something like that.” Delia shrugged. “Anyway, you didn’t miss anything – my face is stiff from being stoic. What kind of sadist invented the post-funeral party anyway?”

  “The theory is that the reception gives the bereaved a chance to connect with the living again.”

  “Even if that’s the last thing the bereaved want to do?”

  “Especially if that’s the last thing the bereaved want to do,” I said.

  “I guess I see some logic there,” she said. “Enough chitchat. I’ve been sent to extend an invitation you can’t refuse.”

  “Go for it.”

  “We’re taking what remains of Chris out on the lake tomorrow morning.” She drew deeply on her cigarette. “His last boat ride, and the consensus is that you should come along.”

  “I take it you didn’t lead the march to the consensus.”

  “No, I think it’s a stupid idea.”

  “I agree. You did your duty. Just report back that I said no.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Delia extended a leg and wiggled her foot. She was wearing flip-flops with daisies. Frivolous footwear for a woman on a serious mission. “Anyway, you probably should say yes. Kevin wants you to come.”

  “You got in touch with Kevin?”

  “Lily did.” Delia arched an eyebrow. “According to her, Kevin would like you to go in his stead.”

  “That doesn’t make sense either,” I said. “Kevin and I are friends, but we’re not …”

  “You’re not lovers,” she crowed. “I knew it. The others all thought you were – that Kevin had sent you up here this summer to try you out – see how well you fit in with us.”

  “That’s bizarre,” I said. “Delia, Kevin walked away from Falconer Shreve because he wanted something else. He’s hardly going to wander all over Tibet so that his ex-partners can check out his new girlfriend.”

  “Thanks for the reminder.” Delia’s eyes glittered. “You’re right, of course. Kevin stopped caring about what we thought a long time ago. As far as he’s concerned the Winners’ Circle is dead and Falconer Shreve is just another shitty law firm.”

  Delia’s face was grey. It seemed unconscionable to add to her burden. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning,” I said.

  Delia slumped with relief. “I owe you,” she said, crushing out her cigarette.

  “It’s the least I can do,” I said. “You’ve all been kind to us, and Kevin may not be a lover but he is a friend.”

  “Sometimes that’s better,” Delia said. “Less wear and tear on the heart.” She stood, removed a fresh cigarette from her pack, and gave me a small smile. “So I’ll see you at the dock at five? Early, I know, but we wanted to get out on the water before the invasion of the Jet Skis.”

  “Five is fine,” I said. “Delia, can I ask you something?”

  She tensed. Her fingers still rested on the handle of the screen door, but her voice went unexpectedly hard. “If it’s about the rumour that Chris’s death wasn’t an accident, forget about it. I refuse to give headspace to that theory.”

  “No, it’s something else,” I said. “Can you tell me about Clare Mackey?”

  I was watching Delia carefully for a reaction. What I got wasn’t subtle. She shuddered as if she’d touched something loathsome. “If you know someone who’s thinking of hiring her, tell them to forget it.”

  “She didn’t work out at Falconer Shreve?”

  “Au contraire. She worked out fine – quite the rising star – then she just took off, leaving her files in an absolute mess.”

  “Disorganized?”

  “Oh, they were beautifully organized. They were also incomplete. A lot of lawyers, me in
cluded, carry information about cases around in their head. Sometimes it’s just safer that way. But if circumstances change, and you know you’re not going to be handling a particular file, you have a duty to your clients and to your colleagues to make sure somebody knows what you know. Little Clare must have been absent the day they covered that particular obligation in ethics class. When she got that job offer in Victoria, she just took off.”

  “I thought she went to Vancouver.”

  “Somewhere on the left coast, I don’t know. All I know is she skipped off and took a lot of essential information with her.” Her face clouded at the memory. “It still makes me furious. Clare wasn’t a novice. She knew someone would have to pick up the slack, go over ground she’d already covered. She also knew that, unless you had specialized knowledge, it would be tough sledding. Clare does corporate work. She also has a commerce degree with a specialty in forensic accounting –”

  “Accounting analysis,” I said.

  “With enough precision to make the results stick in a courtroom. Forensic accountants offer a lot of litigation support, quantifying economic damages – the economic loss involved in a breach of contract or the loss of future earnings. I guess when Clare was playing second fiddle to the litigators she got the hots for the law – I used to nod off in corporate law, but some lawyers love it, and of course, with corporate clients, the money’s good. Anyway, to give Clare her due, she was a whiz.”

  “But she left her clients and her colleagues in a mess,” I said.

  “Oh boy, did she ever. There was one particular case – I still get the shivers when I think about it. It was so complicated and we were working against the clock. None of us had pulled that many all-nighters since law school.”

  “Why didn’t you just get in touch with her? Surely she had an obligation to her clients to tell you what she knew.”

  “Lily tried. Clare clammed up, said there were numbers she simply didn’t remember and didn’t feel comfortable estimating. Which was bullshit. We didn’t need her to give us the numbers; we needed her to give us the information she’d used to arrive at the numbers.”

  “And she refused?”

  “Apparently. And if she ever shows that sweet little heart-shaped face around here again, I will personally punch out her lights.” Delia struck a match and touched the end of her cigarette. “Do you know I’d quit this for ten whole days before Clare left? But as soon as I saw that mountain of work she’d left behind I bummed a smoke from one of our clerks, and I was back to square one.”

  “I understand Clare left on Remembrance Day,” I said.

  Delia exhaled slowly. “You’d have to ask Lily, but considering all the memories little Clare left behind, Remembrance Day would have a certain resonance, wouldn’t it?”

  CHAPTER

  5

  When I hit fifty, I vowed to keep physical and mental inflexibility at bay through the practice of yoga. Given my lackadaisical approach, it seemed unlikely that I would ever reach the highest happiness of nirvana, but there was one yoga posture I was faithful to. When my body or my children told me it was time to chill out, I would close the door, dim the lights, roll out my mat, and assume the shava-asana or corpse pose: head centred, body and palms on the floor, mind focused on my breathing. Shava-asana had never failed me, but that night even the corpse position couldn’t deliver me from the torment of monkey thoughts.

  Nothing about Clare Mackey’s sudden relocation to Vancouver rang true, and there was more. Clare wasn’t the only one who had been missing in action on that icy Remembrance Day. Alex Kequahtooway had been a no-show too. November 11 was Taylor’s birthday, and we’d had big plans: a trip to the Science Centre with nine of her closest friends, then back to our house for cake, ice cream, and presents. We’d arranged to leave our house at two in the afternoon. When Alex hadn’t arrived by ten past, I called his office, his home, and his cell. There was no answer. By two-thirty, the kids were bouncing off the walls, and I pressed Angus into service to drive the group Alex was going to take. The rest of the afternoon had been a nightmare – trying to keep the mood light while I watched the door of the Science Centre and waited for my cell to ring. Neither Alex nor the phone call of explanation ever came.

  When – finally – I managed to reach Alex the next day, he was distant, and his apology was hollow. We quarrelled – or rather I quarrelled, and he listened. Clearly, his mind was elsewhere. Two weeks later I discovered what had captured his attention. There was another woman, and I found out about her existence through the oldest of B-movie clichés. Alex stopped by the house, and the perfume I smelled on his jacket was not my brand. When I asked him about the scent, he didn’t bother to lie – in fact, he embraced my accusation that he had been with someone else. Seemingly grateful that I had lifted a burden from his shoulders, he said goodbye. It was the evening of November 30. Earlier that day, he had advised Anne Millar that sometimes in life it was best just to walk away. Apparently he had been so impressed with his counsel that he’d decided to follow it himself.

  It had been eight months since Alex severed our relationship, but remembering the breakup still made my face burn and my skin crawl. That morning I was relieved when my bedroom began to fill with pre-dawn birdsong and the knowledge that it was time to get up. Riding out to the middle of the lake to scatter a man’s ashes wasn’t at the top of my list of cottage pleasures, but anything was better than lying in the dark, lashing myself with memory. I swung my legs out of bed, and as my feet hit the floor I came as close to an epiphany as a woman can before she’s had her first cup of coffee. I didn’t have to lie in the dark, passively accepting every jolt and bombshell the fates sent my way. On my seventh birthday, my grandmother had given me an autograph book. She had handed along her own wisdom on the first page. “Don’t be a doormat all your life,” she had written. “Learn to give and to take and you’ll be happy.” Almost fifty years later, I knew it was time to listen to Nana.

  I took my laptop into the kitchen, made coffee, sat down at the kitchen table, and sent a note to Anne Millar, giving her a précis of my conversation with Delia Wainberg and telling her that alarm bells were going off for me, too. I asked if she had the names of anyone Clare Mackey had been close to; then, proving that epiphanies beget epiphanies, I asked where Clare had gone to law school. If she practised in Saskatchewan, chances were that she’d gone to the university in Saskatoon. Clever students often keep in touch with their mentors, and I had friends on the law faculty there. It was a long shot, but there was a decided shortage of sure things.

  After I’d sent the message to Anne, I glanced at the phone. Alex had told me to call if anything came up. The past twenty-four hours had brought plenty of revelations, but if I was going to confront him with questions about his relationship with Lily Falconer and his refusal to become involved in Clare Mackey’s disappearance, I needed more information. I looked at my watch: it was four-thirty. I let Willie out briefly with a promise of more to come later, showered, dressed, checked on Taylor, whispered to Leah that I’d be back in an hour, then feeling less like a doormat than I had in a long time, I walked down to the dock.

  The others were there already, waiting. They could have been mistaken for the most carefree of vacationers: the sun was just rising over the horizon, bringing enough breeze to give the waves a chop. Zack Shreve’s Chris-Craft was beside the dock and he was already in the cockpit behind the steering wheel. Lily and Blake Falconer were sitting aft – as far away from one another as it was possible to be. The Wainbergs were standing at the end of the dock, Delia with her inevitable cigarette, and Noah behind her, kneading her shoulders with his big, gentle hands.

  When he saw me, Zack waved and pointed to the seat next to his. Relieved I didn’t have to sit next to Lily, I took my place. Delia and Noah came aboard, sliding into the space between Lily and Blake.

  Zack did a shoulder check. “Looks like we’re all here.”

  “Where’s Chris?” Delia said. The question was blackly hu
morous, and everyone smiled.

  “Exactly where he’s supposed to be,” Zack said, “in a box in the storage area.” Then he gunned the motor and backed the boat smoothly away from the dock into the open water. No one spoke as we headed for the lake’s centre. When we’d reached the middle, Zack cut the motor. Except for the screech of the gulls and the slap of the waves against the launch’s hull, the world was silent. I cast my eyes around the shoreline, getting my bearings. Until that moment, the cottages on the far shore had been dabs on a pointillist’s canvas, strokes in a vista created for our pleasure. Now they leaped into dimensional life with boathouses, rafts, floats, and docks of their own. When I looked back at Lawyers’ Bay, the handsome summer homes seemed to have no more substance than a stage designer’s balsa-wood mock-up of a set, too fragile by far to support the weight of Chris Altieri’s tragic death.

  Zack interrupted my musings by tapping me on the arm and gesturing towards the storage area under the bow. “Why don’t you do the honours?” he asked.

  I leaned forward, opened the latch, and pulled out a cardboard box. Zack took it from me and without ceremony threw a handful of ashes into the water, then passed the box back to Blake. The sequence was so devoid of emotion that it seemed brutal, but when I looked over at Zack, his eyes were moist. In turn, each of the partners and their spouses threw ashes into the water. Lily was the last, and as she took the open box a breeze came up and blew some of the ashes against her. Her reaction was swift: she hurled the cardboard box into the lake, then scooped water and began scrubbing furiously at the ashes on her shirt. I remembered a doctor I knew advising against scattering ceremonies, explaining that human ashes are so dense they stick to skin and embed themselves under nails.

  Zack chortled. “Chris seems to be finding it hard to leave you, Lily,” he said. I was no fan of Lily’s, but I didn’t believe in kicking someone when they were down, and at that moment, Lily Falconer was definitely down. She looked ill: her skin had a greenish tinge, and her eyes were as blank as those of the woman in the wood carving at the base of the gazebo.