An Image in the Lake: A Joanne Kilbourn Mystery

by Gail Bowen

  Our dragon wasted no time making its appearance. Alison may have been a political novice, but she could judge when applause had reached its peak. When she was handed a John Deere cap, she donned it, waved one last time to the crowd and started towards the back of the stage. What happened next was a blur. There was a tangle of wire cables on the floor. Alison did a quick check to make sure her path was clear, then someone in the crowd called out to her and she turned towards them. When Alison’s attention shifted, a young blond man in a spiffy golf shirt leaned against the edge of the stage and pushed the tangle of cables into her path. When Alison turned in the direction that would take her off stage, her foot caught on the wires, and she fell forward. It was a hard fall, and for a few agonizing seconds, she was motionless.

  Maisie handed Colin to Zack and pushed herself onto the stage and knelt beside Alison, murmuring her name. The man in the golf shirt pulled out his phone and started taking pictures of Alison lying face down on the stage. Jill had her phone out too, but her camera was pointed at the man, and she was moving towards him. I followed close behind.

  When she was close enough to be heard, Jill said, “Delete that video,” and her tone was flinty. As soon as I saw the young man’s face, I knew he was Clay Evanson. His likeness to his mother was remarkable, but where Lori’s face radiated innocence, her son’s face was dark with arrogance and anger. He had a press pass on a lanyard around his neck. He grabbed the pass and flashed it at Jill. “I’m a journalist with MediaNation,” he said.

  “That’s a coincidence,” Jill said, pulling her photo ID out of her purse and waving it at Clay. “I work for MediaNation too. Delete the video.”

  Clay Evanson held his press pass closer to Jill. “Read the name of this ID.”

  Jill glanced at the name and shrugged. “I heard you had a summer internship here, Clay. Those internships are a great opportunity for professionals to assess what an intern could bring to our profession. Our CEO would be very disappointed to see that video of you deliberately obstructing Alison Janvier’s path, so you could create a clip that shows her falling flat on her face.”

  Clay was sputtering. “Hugh Fairbairn is the CEO, and he’s also my grandfather. I could have you fired.”

  Jill may have had a history of choosing deeply flawed men as romantic partners, but she recognized a prick when she saw one, and she made short work of diminishing Clay Fairbairn. “Hugh and I go way back,” she said. “He’s a pragmatist. He would never fire a colleague for showing him that one of his budding journalists needs a refresher course in ethics. Do yourself a favour — delete that video.”

  Clay’s peaches-and-cream complexion was mottled by anger. “You really are a cunt,” he said.

  “Strike three,” Jill said, and she touched her phone’s keypad. “Time to let Hugh see you in action.”

  Clay’s mouth twisted. “Don’t,” he said. He tapped his keypad. “There. It’s deleted. Now you delete yours.”

  Jill was derisive. “No way,” she said. “First rule of journalism: Preserve the evidence.”

  Clay reached out to grab Jill’s phone.

  Zack wheeled his chair to Jill’s side. “I don’t know what your game is, Mr. Fairbairn, but I’m a lawyer, and you should be aware of the fact that if Alison Janvier sustained a serious injury because of that fall, you’ll be up on charges. What Ms. Oziowy has on her camera is evidence of what might well turn out to be a criminal act. The law takes a dim view of people who destroy evidence.”

  Clay spat out the word “cunt” again, then stalked off.

  “A limited vocabulary,” Jill said mildly. “He’ll have to work on that.”

  Howard took her arm. “I think Jo and her family can handle this. There are a couple of people I’d like you to meet.” He gave me a quick peck on the cheek and pointed to the stage. A crowd had gathered around Alison. Howard was clearly concerned, but he was also aware he was exacerbating the situation. “Call me later and let me know what’s happening?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Pete’s expression was grave. “Sports have taught me enough about concussions and possible concussions to know that Ali needs watching tonight. Maisie and I will take her back to our place.”

  “Do you want us to keep the boys for a sleepover?” I asked.

  Pete shook his head. “That’s a tempting offer,” he said. “And I’m grateful, but the boys need to know what’s going on. And if they’re with us, we can tell them.”

  “Good parenting,” I said. “If you need help later, let us know.”

  Maisie had made her way to the edge of the stage, and she jumped down. “Luckily a doctor was sitting close to the front and he’s checking Ali out. He believes the injuries are not serious, and Ali says she’s taken harder hits in lacrosse, but they agree that she should be watched tonight.” She turned to Peter. “I volunteered.”

  “That’s exactly what I would have done,” Pete said. “Time for Charlie, Colin and me to head out.” He gave his wife a quick hug and scooped Colin from Zack’s knee. “The boys and I will bring the car around to the exit so Ali won’t have far to walk.”

  “I’ll let Ali and the doctor know the plan,” Maisie said. She turned to Zack and me. “I’m glad you two were here. I always feel stronger when you’re around.” And with that, our daughter-in-law climbed back onto the stage and disappeared into the crowd.

  “That was intense,” I said.

  “It was,” Zack agreed. “Clay Evanson Fairbairn appears to have travelled a long way from that sweet little boy in the pumpkin suit you remembered.”

  “I wonder what happened,” I said.

  “Clay’s keeping his eyes on the prize,” Zack said. “He dropped his parents’ surname, he dropped his parents and he turned into an asshole.”

  “Succinct but accurate,” I said. “I just wish it didn’t have to be that way. Zack, I’d like to talk to Jill for a minute. Can you take the girls to the car? I’ll meet you there.”

  Zack held out his arms, and I leaned in. “You always know what I need,” I said.

  Howard was talking to a young couple wearing the campaign shirts, and Jill was standing a few feet away from them checking her phone. Thirty-five years earlier when I met her, Jill had untamed shoulder-length carrot-red hair, freckles, shining eyes and an open smile. Her hair was now a fashionable shade of burgundy, styled in a severe, side-parted gamine cut that set off her extraordinary tawny eyes. When I approached her, her smile was guarded.

  “I wanted to thank you,” I said. “Do you have any idea what that was about?”

  Jill put away her phone and turned to face me. Her gaze was steady. “I’ve been trying to figure that out,” she said. “I’m sure Charlie D explained why I’m here. We’ve lost two key employees under disturbing circumstances; we’re under the gun as far as time for introducing the new season is concerned, and morale is terrible.”

  “Charlie is very concerned about Ellen Exton,” I said. “He told me about how HR in Toronto had handled Rosemary’s situation. Forcing her colleagues to send individual written reports on her ability to do her job was cruel and stupid.”

  “Cruel and stupid pretty much sums up Joseph Monk’s skill set,” Jill said. “Those individual assessments he insisted on have left everyone feeling like Judas.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” I said, “but I don’t believe what Clay Fairbairn did this afternoon was a result of tensions in the workplace. I was watching his face. He didn’t hesitate for a millisecond before he pushed those wires into Alison Janvier’s path. She could have been badly hurt, but all that mattered to him was getting a photo of her being humiliated.”

  Jill raised an artfully shaped eyebrow. “So, you think I should follow up on this? See what I can dig up?”

  “No. I think you should let it go. Summer’s over. Clay will be going back to the School of Journalism. His step-grandfather is
your friend and your boss. Don’t get in the middle of this, Jill. In fact, you’d be smart to give Clay a wide berth. I have a bad feeling about him, and I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  Jill’s smile was weary. “You say that as if you actually care.”

  “That’s because I do care,” I said. “Do you still have the same phone number?”

  She nodded. “I wanted to make sure you could get in touch if you felt like talking.”

  The girls were quiet as we started back to the city. Finally, I broke the silence. “Do you have any questions about what happened?”

  “Granddad talked to us about it on the way back to the car,” Madeleine said. “He told us that the name of the blond man with the camera was Clay Fairbairn, and that he wanted to get a video of Ali that would make her look weak.”

  “Grandad also told us that Jill did the right thing when she made him delete the video.”

  “She did,” I agreed. “Jill realized that Clay Fairbairn deliberately set out to hurt Ali, and she stepped in to keep Clay from hurting Ali even more.”

  Madeleine was pensive. “Was what Jill did today enough to make up for the mistake she made before she went away?”

  “How much did your mum tell you about that?”

  “Not much. Just that Jill made a bad mistake and it hurt our family. Will what she did today be enough to make things right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but it could be a start.”

  Chapter Six

  Monday morning, when the dogs and I returned from our run, Charlie and Zack were in the kitchen having coffee. Zack was dressed for the office in a lightweight mochaccino suit, and Charlie was dressed for radio in blue jeans and a T-shirt bearing a photo of a heartbreakingly young Chet Baker holding his trumpet. While Zack fed the dogs, Charlie D filled a mug and handed it to me.

  “Glad you’re home, Jo,” he said. “I have to get to work, but I wanted to give you both an update — such as it is — on Ellen Exton. Kam Chau called me just before I left the house this morning. Kam’s been the associate producer of our show since it started, and he’s taking over Ellen’s job. He’s smart, and he knows what he’s doing, so the transition will be smooth.

  “Kam’s usually a no-drama guy but when he called, he was keyed up. He’s been out of town, so he didn’t learn Ellen had been fired until last night. As soon as he heard the news, he tried to contact her. No luck. He called some of the other people on our production team. Still nada, so he called Ellen’s parents in Saskatoon. They hadn’t heard from their daughter since Thursday, and they hit the panic button.”

  “Understandably,” I said.

  “Kam tried to reassure them, but he’s concerned too. Ellen is a cat owner, and when she’s out of town, Kam takes care of Ellen’s cats. He has the keys to her house, and this morning on his way to work he stopped by her place. When there was no answer at the door, Kam let himself in. He called me from there, and he’s convinced something has happened to Ellen. The house was in good order, but the cats’ water and food dishes were empty, and they were frantic.”

  “Cats are pretty self-sufficient, aren’t they?” Zack said. “If Ellen needed to get away for a while and she left them food and water, wouldn’t they be okay for a couple of days?”

  “As a general rule, they would, but as Kam pointed out, everyone who knows Ellen knows she would never leave Mary and Mr. Grant overnight without having someone check on them.”

  Zack’s eyes widened. “The cats are named Mary and Mr. Grant?”

  “Mary and Mr. Grant are characters in an old sitcom,” I said.

  “Ellen told me that when she was growing up in Saskatoon, she taped The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and she watched every episode so often, she had the characters’ lines memorized,” Charlie D said tightly. “Mary Richards, the lead character, was Ellen’s role model, a single woman working as a producer in a TV station.”

  Zack was pensive. “Ellen is an adult, and she’s only been out of touch since Friday, but people’s patterns of behaviour matter. If everyone who knows Ellen agrees that she’d never leave Mary and Mr. Grant unattended, that’s a red flag. I’ll call Debbie Haczkewicz. She’s head of Major Crimes. She’s sharp. When we fill her in about Ellen’s devotion to her cats and give her a timeline, she’ll take this seriously.”

  Alerting Debbie Haczkewicz to the situation was the right move, but my heart sank as Zack made the call. I liked and respected Debbie. She was smart, she was fair, and she and Zack were close. At a function honouring Zack, Debbie said that police officers and trial lawyers are like the orca and the great white shark, natural enemies, but that she and Zack had learned to cherish the times when they were able to swim side by side. Debbie’s involvement meant that Ellen Exton’s disappearance could no longer be explained away. Debbie, like Zack, was dogged. She would not give up until she’d learned the truth about what happened to Ellen Exton, and I knew Zack would be beside her all the way. The stillness my husband and I longed for would have to wait.

  * * *

  For all of us Zack’s health was a huge concern, but it was one about which we seldom talked. Paraplegia complicates everything, including the working of internal organs, the blood’s ability to flow without clotting and the skin’s ability to heal. As a paraplegic Zack was vulnerable to respiratory ailments, renal failure, pulmonary embolisms and septicemia.

  I worried about every detail of Zack’s life and I worried about letting him know how much I worried. As a trial lawyer, his hours and stress level were horrific.

  One of the features that drew us to the house on the creek was that it had an indoor pool. Taylor and I were both enthusiastic swimmers, and after spending eighteen hours a day in a wheelchair, Zack needed exercise to give his cardiovascular system a workout, help control the leg spasms that harassed him and just relax.

  The original owners of our house had installed the pool for therapeutic reasons, and the area surrounding it had been antiseptic and depressing. One wall was glass, but Taylor had filled the other three with a mural depicting an underwater scene of swimmers — human, finned and crustacean — that pulsed with movement and colour.

  The explosion that had rocked our house six years earlier had destroyed the beautiful room. The contractors restoring the house had replaced the pool and the area was once again functional, but the walls were once again bare and antiseptic. Our lives were busy and restoring the pool to its former glory was low on our list of priorities. After Taylor and Vale had moved into a place of their own, decorating the pool area drifted even lower on the priority list.

  But Zack was having leg spasms; his blood pressure was too high, and the cold weather was on its way. It was time to make the pool area inviting once again.

  We’d hired the workers, chosen a soft grey shade called Metropolitan for the walls and complementary porcelain tile for the flooring. I’d hit the late summer sales for poolside furniture and tropical plants. The plan was to have the workers start on Monday. The foreperson estimated ours was a three-day job, so we could have the furniture and plants delivered Thursday and all would be in place by the weekend.

  However, once again, Robbie Burns’s tart observation that “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men / Gang aft agley” was proven true. Just after Zack left the house for an appointment downtown, Dawn McCudden, the foreperson of the crew, called. One of her workers had broken his leg over the weekend and was in traction. Dawn had found someone to take his place, but the new person couldn’t start until later in the month.

  When she was a teenager, Mieka had a skiing accident that landed her at Regina General in traction for ten days, so I was empathetic. After I assured Dawn that the delay would not inconvenience us, I went outside to tackle a task I’d been avoiding: deciding what to do with our garden.

  We’d been at the lake for most of August and despite my sporadic forays against the weeds and the best efforts of my
neighbours, the heat had taken its toll. I had moved the planters of herbs into the cool of the mudroom and they were thriving, but except for the marigolds, which my late friend Hilda McCourt prized for their great life lesson — “they’re blooming when you put them in and blooming when you pull them out” — our zinnias and asters, the normally hardy prides of the late summer garden, were beyond resuscitation.

  I picked up a basket and wandered through the vegetables, rescuing survivors: a hidden cuke, six green onions, a handful of late lettuce and, unsurprisingly, a zucchini. Encouraged, I picked up another basket and began pulling the carrots, beets and onions. Clearing a garden was a task I could handle, and energized, I decided to continue harvesting the rows of root vegetables. When I finished, I was sweaty, dirty and satisfied.

  I was stretching to get out the kinks, when Julie Evanson Gallagher Fairbairn appeared around the corner of the house. When she saw me, Julie gave me an assessing gaze and cooed, “I’ve caught you at a bad time.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “What can I do for you, Julie?”

  As always, Julie was immaculate. Her silver hair fell smoothly from a centre part to a point just below her cheekbone. She was wearing a filmy lilac blouse and matching slacks and carrying the distinctive pink and white striped box of Gâteau des Rois, our city’s finest patisserie. She held the box out to me with a dimpled smile. “Peace offering,” she said. “We share thirty-five years of history, Joanne — not all of it good. I knew a phone call wouldn’t be enough. We had to meet face to face.”

  “And here we are,” I said. “Face to face. You’re welcome to come inside for tea, Julie, but if you’re here because of the incident with your grandson, Clay, yesterday afternoon at the picnic, you’re wasting those fancy pastries. Take them to Jill Oziowy. She’s the person who has what you want.”