An Image in the Lake: A Joanne Kilbourn Mystery

by Gail Bowen

  “The word ‘family’ set her off. Patti was in pretty much the same state that afternoon as she was today. She wasn’t making much sense, but I could piece together some of what she said. She said she had no family because Nicholas, her ‘glowing child’ had been ‘ripped away’ from her. I didn’t understand what she meant by ‘ripped away,’ so I said I was sorry to hear about her son, but that she still had a daughter.

  “Big mistake. I’d poured kerosene on a long-smouldering fire. Patti believes that somehow Thalia supplanted her in Nicholas’s life; in Patti’s words, Thalia ‘led Nicholas astray’ and caused his death.”

  “How did Nicholas die?” I said.

  Annie’s lips were tight. “Suicide. It was four, maybe five years ago. Patti says she’ll never recover from his death, and from what we witnessed today, it appears her daughter will never recover either.”

  Zack’s gaze was probing. “What was that travesty of a celebration about anyway?”

  “Nicholas and Thalia shared a birthday,” Annie said.

  “They’re twins?”

  “No,” Annie said. “Nicholas was a year older than Thalia. They just happened to be born on the same day.”

  I was incredulous. “So, Patti threw a party to celebrate the birth of her dead son and torture her living daughter? She must have known that luncheon would be agonizing for both Thalia and her.”

  “And for Mike Braeden,” Zack said. “Mike was the one left to pick up the pieces today.”

  “It won’t be the first time,” Warren said. “Nor will it be the last. But Zack, I’m grateful that you and Joanne were here today. Not just because of our lunch together, but also because the four of us have now seen first-hand what Mike, Patti and Thalia are going through. They’re going to need help. Without even asking I know you’ll be there, and that’s a great comfort for Annie and me.”

  * * *

  By the time the Webers’ driver dropped us at home, it was close to three, so our plan to leave for the lake in the early afternoon was scuttled. Our exposure to the pain-filled lives of Mike Braeden, Patti Morgan and her daughter had been sobering. The prospect of loading up the dogs and the car, driving to Lawyers Bay and unloading, getting settled in and starting dinner had lost its appeal, and we decided, instead, on a quiet afternoon on the patio reading and catching up on unfinished business. I’d just finished the last chapter of Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach and was revelling in the deep satisfaction of a well-written novel, when my phone rang.

  I checked the caller ID, then turned my phone towards Zack. When he saw Jill Oziowy’s name, he mouthed “good luck” and wheeled into the house.

  Jill’s voice was tentative. “Is this a bad time?”

  “No. I’m doing absolutely nothing.”

  “Lucky you,” she said. “Something of interest just popped up on my newsfeed. Are you familiar with the Lee Gowan Prize?”

  “I am. It’s a big deal — fifty thousand dollars to an emerging writer under the age of thirty who’s written a non-fiction piece on something in politics, popular culture or community activism that the writer feels will be transformative. One of the three judges has to be an academic, and I was a judge one year. It was a challenging job. There had been some winnowing by the time the final crop got to us, but we still had to consider over fifty submissions, and they were all first-rate. It was tough to choose a winner.”

  “Well, this year’s winner is Harper Janvier, Alison’s son.”

  “The Janvier family will be thrilled, and they won’t have to worry about charges of favouritism because the submissions are blind — no names, just numbers. Jill, is this news embargoed or can I tell Maisie?”

  “It is embargoed, but the Lee Gowan committee will be announcing the winner at a snazzy brunch in Toronto this Friday, so you can certainly tell Maisie. And there’s something else: Clay Fairbairn was on the short list for the prize.”

  “That explains something his grandmother said to me the day after the picnic. Julie brought me a box of pastries from Gâteau des Rois and urged me to get you to destroy the video of Alison’s ‘little tumble.’ She explained that Clay was upset because he’d suffered a disappointment.”

  Jill’s tone was withering. “Poor baby. And Julie believes I should destroy evidence of her little snowflake working off his disappointment by an act that threatened the health of another human being.”

  “Yes, and when I turned her down, she called me moralistic, said she’d find another way to handle the problem and stomped off.”

  “She should handle the problem by talking it over with Clay’s grandfather,” Jill said.

  “That’s what I think too, because what Clay did was not child’s play. Are you close enough to Hugh Fairbairn to talk to him about this?”

  “I am. But Hugh has a blind spot when it comes to his grandson. Our friendship means a great deal to both Hugh and me. I don’t want to risk it.”

  “I understand. I’d find it difficult to be grateful to someone who decided to deliver a few home truths to me about one of my one kids.”

  “I’m not closing the door, Jo. I just want to make certain that telling Hugh is worth the risk.”

  * * *

  When Zack returned with our drinks, I took mine gratefully. “Just after the nick of time,” I said.

  “Bad news?”

  “No, just a puzzle piece I wish I hadn’t been handed.”

  Zack sipped his martini. “So, what’s the puzzle piece?”

  When I told him about Harper Janvier winning the award Clay believed should have been his, Zack was sanguine. “So, that was Clay’s motivation. I was watching his face when he pushed that tangle of wires into Alison’s path. He was smirking.”

  “The stunt he pulled was payback,” I said. “Lori and Mark are such gentle souls. Knowing what their son has become would break their hearts.”

  Zack looked as troubled as I felt. “I’m certain this was not an isolated incident,” he said. “The alacrity with which Clay moved when the opportunity presented itself and his lack of remorse afterwards point to an unsettling possibility.”

  “That Clay’s behaviour is pathological,” I said. “I asked Jill if she and Hugh Fairbairn were close enough for her to talk to him about his grandson. She said they were, but that Hugh had a blind spot when it came to Clay, and she didn’t want to risk their friendship.”

  “Not discussing the possibility that Clay may have serious mental health issues raises other risks,” Zack said flatly.

  “So, what do we do?”

  Zack drained his glass. “We don’t do anything — we’re not in a position to. We don’t know Hugh Fairbairn. You and Julie have a history, but she’s already made her stand on the issue clear, and she will not welcome an overture from you.”

  “No, Julie and I slammed that door shut the day after the picnic. That leaves Clay’s parents. Mark and Lori would do anything in their power to save their son, but Clay and his grandparents have cut them out of his life.”

  Zack turned his chair towards the house. “We’re pretty well stymied. The next move is up to Clay. All we can do is keep our eyes on him. If he stays on the straight and narrow, all will be well.”

  “And if he doesn’t . . .”

  Zack shrugged. “We’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.”

  Chapter Eight

  At eight o’clock Thursday morning, Zack and I were sitting on our sunny patio, with our dogs flattened beside us, drinking coffee, listening to the murmur of the creek and reading — the poster couple for gracious retirement living.

  After listening to me wax ecstatic about Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series, my husband had begun reading the novels at the beginning of summer and quickly became a fan. To see Zack in his wheelchair reading Rex Stout, stopping only to give Pantera the occasional head scratch, was to witness true happiness. My husband’s pleasure double
d when, as was often the case, he was able to share a passage with me.

  He was reading The Final Deduction, and from his chortles and grunts of approval, I knew it wouldn’t be long before he peered at me over his reading glasses to signal that he was in a sharing mood.

  “You’ll like this,” he said. Zack has an actor’s voice, musical and expressive, and even when he read The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog to our granddaughters, he had his audience sitting on the edge of their chairs. But Zack had a particular affinity for Archie Goodwin, and when he read a paragraph of Archie’s narrative, I was immediately transported to the old brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street. That morning as Zack cleared his throat and began, I kicked back and enjoyed the performance.

  At the dinner table, in between bits of deviled grilled lamb kidneys with a sauce he and Fritz had invented, he explained why it was that all you needed to know about any human society was what they ate. If you knew what they ate you could deduce everything else — culture, philosophy, morals, politics, everything. I enjoyed it because the kidneys were tender and tasty, and that sauce is one of Fritz’s best, but I wondered how you would make out if you tried to deduce everything about Wolfe by knowing what he had eaten in the past ten years. I decided you would deduce that he was dead.

  The passage was vintage Archie, and we were savouring the moment when my phone rang.

  It was Maisie extending an invitation we couldn’t refuse. “Your birthday present for the twins is being delivered that morning,” she said. “Pete and I are taking the boys over to Mieka and Charlie D’s to keep them out of harm’s way till the workers are finished putting up what they are referring to reverently as the Rocky Mountain Play Structure and Clubhouse. Pete and I thought you might want to be here when Charlie and Colin see their gift for the first time.”

  “Wild horses couldn’t keep us away,” I said. “What time should we be there?”

  “The Rocky Mountain Play Structure and Clubhouse should be ready to rock by eleven. When you get here, just come through the side gate, and we’ll meet you in the backyard. Nobody wants to waste a day like today waiting around inside.”

  The twins and I share a September 29 birthday, so our gift was twenty-six days early, but as Zack pointed out, the early delivery meant Charlie and Colin would have twenty-six extra days of good weather in which to have fun, and Zack would have twenty-six extra days in which to watch them.

  When they’d moved back to Regina, Peter and Maisie bought the lovely old Tudor house that once belonged to Zack’s late law partner Blake Falconer, his wife Lily and their daughter Gracie. Zack’s partners at Falconer Shreve had been like family to him. When I married Zack and he adopted Taylor, she and I joined that family.

  It had been a soft landing for Taylor. Like Isobel Wainberg and Gracie Falconer, Taylor was an only child, and Isobel and Gracie were just a year older than she was. All three attended Luther College High School, so the gravitational force of the world of girls had pulled Isobel, Gracie and Taylor inexorably towards one another’s lives, and the Falconers, the Wainbergs, and Zack and I had come to know one another’s homes well.

  Lily Falconer was a perfectionist, and the landscaping of the Falconer home had reflected her passion for order. The lawns were always manicured, the three Monet lily ponds offered guests serenity and the gardens were an ever-changing showcase for the delights of the earth. From the moment the first snowdrop raised its milky white head till frost claimed the last Michaelmas daisy, Lily’s gardens were breathtaking.

  The backyard that Zack and I entered that day was a far cry from Lily’s Arcadia. Peter, Maisie and the twins were a busy family, and they needed a space where they could throw a ball around and have fun.

  The lily ponds had been drained and converted into a triple sandbox that was home to an impressive collection of Tonka construction vehicles. Tricycles and scooters had mastered the intricacies of the winding garden paths. And now there was a new wonder.

  When it came to finding exactly the right birthday gifts for the people he loved, my husband was indefatigable. It had taken many hours and reserves of patience Zack didn’t often draw upon, but finally he found exactly what he had been searching for, and now the holy grail of playsets was firmly in place in the Crawford-Kilbourn backyard.

  We’d barely had time to catch our breath before the new owners of the Rocky Mountain Play Structure and Clubhouse, their parents and their cousins arrived. As always, Colin and Charlie burst through the side gate and barrelled into the backyard, but the new addition that confronted them stopped them in their tracks.

  Even Madeleine and Lena were taken aback. “That is awesome,” Lena said, and for once her sister did not chide her for overusing the word. Understandably. Because with its swings, slides, climbing wall, monkey bars, tunnels, ropes and clubhouse, the Rocky Mountain was indeed awesome.

  When instead of racing to explore the new wonder, Charlie and Colin seemed rooted on the spot, Pete went to them. “Don’t you guys want to check out your birthday present?”

  Colin looked wary. “It’s too big.”

  “It’s about the same size as the play structure in the park, and you two are on that all the time,” Pete said

  “It’s too big for a present,” Charlie added helpfully.

  “It’s from Mimi and your granddad,” Pete said. “There are two of them and two of you, so it’s really like four presents rolled into one.”

  The twins’ ability to communicate wordlessly always dazzled me. Without exchanging so much as a wink or a nudge, the decision was made and the boys streaked towards their four-in-one birthday present. Within seconds Colin and Charlie were halfway up the climbing ropes. The new owners of the Rocky Mountain Play Structure and Clubhouse had taken possession.

  Maisie draped an arm around her husband’s shoulder. “Nice math there, Dad.”

  Pete’s grin was sheepish. “It worked,” he said. “Now who’s for pizza?”

  We all placed our orders, and Pete called the Copper Kettle. When he announced the pizza would be delivered in thirty minutes, Maisie turned to Madeleine and Lena. “Plenty of time for you two to give each other that back-to-school pedicure we talked about. You know where everything is. Go for it.”

  “Maddy and I are going to paint our toenails in the school colours: navy blue and yellow,” Lena said. “We already asked Mum. She said it’s fine, but toenails only.”

  With nothing more weighty on our minds than waiting for the pizza man, Maisie, Peter, Zack and I settled back to watch the boys do what kids do best: stretch their muscles and their imaginations. Our conversation was easy and aimless until Maisie introduced a topic that caught Zack’s attention and mine.

  Our daughter-in-law had been sitting on the edge of a lounge chair, both eyes on her sons, gauging their ability to handle the new challenge. Like their mother, Colin and Charlie were natural athletes. When Maisie had assured herself that the boys were in command of the situation, she swivelled to face us. “That was an inspired gift. Well done, grandparents.” She paused. “Change of topic. Did you two happen to catch Quinlan Live this morning?”

  “No,” I said. “Zack was reading The Final Deduction to me.”

  Maisie’s laugh was wry. “Sounds like more fun than Quinlan Live was today. Alison was Jack Quinlan’s guest. Call-in shows are always a landmine, but everything was going well until a caller asked Alison why she chose not to have an abortion when she became pregnant at sixteen.”

  Zack leaned forward. “Is the fact that Alison had a child when she was sixteen common knowledge?”

  “Yes and no,” Maisie said. “Alison has always been public about the fact that she has a son. Her parents raised him in La Ronge until Alison graduated from law school, but Harper has always known Alison is his mother.” Maisie tented her fingers and flexed them for a few seconds. “What is not common knowledge is the fact that Harper was conceived after his mother was
raped.”

  Zack scowled. “Her assailant was never charged?”

  “Alison was ashamed, and she didn’t tell anyone about the assault,” Maisie said. “By the time she discovered she was pregnant, the man who raped her had left La Ronge. He was her grade eleven history teacher. It was the end of the school year, and he packed up his things, drove off and was never heard from again.

  “Ozzie and Ruth Janvier never pressed Alison about the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy. They simply said they would support whatever decision she made about her future.”

  “That’s a big decision for a sixteen-year-old,” I said.

  Pete’s voice was gentle. “Not the approach you would have taken if it had been Mieka?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “By the time Mieka was sixteen, life had dealt her some punishing blows. Your father’s death and then — you remember how it was, Peter — in the months after Ian’s death I wasn’t the person I’d been before. By the time, Mieka was sixteen, she’d taken on a heavy load of responsibilities, and she’d handled them well. I knew how strong she was, and I trusted her judgment. That said, I’m glad I never had to make the decision that Alison’s parents faced, but I hope I would have done what they did.”

  “Ozzie and Ruth are remarkable people,” Maisie said. “They’re both community organizers. When we were in law school, Alison went back to La Ronge every summer; she would work with them and be with Harper. She really loves that boy.”

  “Understandably,” I said. “And yesterday Jill Oziowy told me Alison now has another reason to be proud of Harper. The announcement hasn’t been made yet, but Harper Janvier is the winner of this year’s Lee Gowan Emerging Writer Award.”

  Maisie’s eyes widened. “Wow. That is major. Ali must be having a tough time keeping that under her toque.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Zack said. “But there’s a dark side to Harper’s win. Clay Fairbairn was on the Lee Gowan short list, and he did not take his loss well.”