by Gail Bowen
The Old Pulteney and the shortbread were indeed a sublime pairing, and as soon as he was certain Zack and I were taken care of, Warren waded into the subject at hand. “Zack, in all the chaos yesterday morning, I didn’t have a chance to thank you for the fact that you and your daughter-in-law have agreed to represent Mike Braeden. I’m relieved and I’m grateful. Falconer Shreve is the best firm in the province, you and Maisie are two of its top trial lawyers and Mike is innocent.”
“You sound very certain,” Zack said.
Warren’s voice was as steady as his gaze. “I am certain.”
“Then our task is clear,” Zack said. “I articled with a lawyer who taught me that if there’s a turtle on top of a fence post, it didn’t just get there. Somebody put it there.”
Warren chuckled. “My father used to say something similar. We believe Mike Braeden is innocent, so it’s up to us to learn what happened to Patti Morgan in the hours before she died.”
Zack turned his chair towards the door. “Joanne and I made notes on some of the people and events we felt Colby and Associates should look into. We made copies for you and Annie. Jo thinks it might be useful to go through what we know with you. You may see a pattern we’re not picking up on.”
“Let’s hope,” Annie said. “Mike is bearing up, but this is getting to him.”
“Tell Mike this is going to work out,” I said.
Zack shot me a questioning look. “Do you know something I don’t know?”
“No, but look at the team Mike has backing him: Colby and Associates, Maisie, you, Falconer Shreve’s best and brightest, the Webers and me.”
Zack’s grin was sardonic. “Piece of cake,” he said, and with that he was gone.
When the door closed behind him, Annie said, “That was a nice send-off. Are you really that certain?”
“No,” I said. “So, let’s get to work.” I took out my copy of the notes. “I’d like to start with Thalia Monk because Thalia and the people closest to her seem to be at the centre of all the unsettling events that have happened in the past four and a half months.”
“Mike is determined to keep Thalia out of this,” Warren said. “I don’t see how that’s possible. She’s clearly a very troubled young woman.”
“The first time I saw Thalia was that day when we were at the Scarth Club with you,” I said. “She was wearing that white eyelet dress and an Alice in Wonderland ribbon that held her hair off her face. She seemed so young and so fragile. Watching her being ripped apart by that farce with the cake, the candles and the servers singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ was sickening. I realize Patti Morgan was drunk that day, and I understand she was in her own private hell, but I remember thinking that she wasn’t drunk when she ordered that cake. Patti must have known that celebrating the birthday Thalia shared with her brother would break Thalia, but Patti went ahead with her plan.”
“That struck me too,” Annie said. “What Patti did to her daughter was unforgivable. But that day when I drove her home, Patti was as broken as her daughter. She couldn’t stop talking about Nicholas — ‘her glowing child,’ as she called him. She kept saying that Thalia had taken Nicholas from her and somehow led him to the path that ended in his suicide.”
“Did she express any concern about Thalia?” I asked.
Annie’s tone was uncharacteristically harsh. “No. Except for blaming Thalia for Nicholas’s death, Patti didn’t mention her daughter at all.”
Warren had been listening intently. “Joanne, I’m sure you remember that line of poetry Thalia quoted, before she ran out of the Scarth Club that day.”
“I do,” I said. “‘For nothing now can ever come to any good.’”
“It’s a line that goes straight to the heart,” Warren said. “I knew I’d heard the line before, but I couldn’t remember the source. When Annie and I arrived home that day, I looked it up. The line is from the last stanza of W.H. Auden’s ‘Funeral Blues.’
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
“Those lines seem strangely prophetic now, don’t they?”
“They do,” I said. “And, as Zack said, someone put the turtle on that fence. There’ve been a number of strange and damaging occurrences, and all of them seem to have a connection, however tangential, to MediaNation.
“Thalia Monk is the daughter of MediaNation’s head of human resources and Patti Morgan, who for twelve years was an on-air personality at MediaNation. Thalia was one of the company’s four summer interns. The other three, like Thalia, are members of a tightly knit group called the University Park Road Gang.”
“That’s our street,” Annie said.
“It is,” I said. “And all the members of the group live on it. I’m sure you and Warren know their families. Clay Fairbairn is Hugh and Julie Fairbairn’s grandson; Austin Brinkmann is the son of Graham and Nancy Brinkmann. Ronan Farquhar, like Clay, is being raised by his grandparents.”
“Lionel and Mercedes Farquhar, our next-door neighbours,” Warren said. “Ronan couldn’t have been more than seven when he came to live with Lionel and Mercedes. He was a dear little boy but fearful. Not surprising because the first seven years of his life were not easy. The Farquhars’ daughter, Ronan’s mother, had a drug problem, and there was never any mention of Ronan’s father.” Warren leaned forward. “Joanne, you said those young people were all part of a gang. To me, that word connotes lawlessness. I realize there’s a several generation gap between me and Thalia Monk and those young men, but I can’t imagine any of them breaking laws.”
“As far as we know, they haven’t,” I said. “They all attended Luther College High School, the school Thalia transferred to when she moved back to Regina in grade eleven. Taylor went to Luther too, as did one of her best friends, Gracie Falconer. Taylor was a year younger than the kids from University Park Road, but Gracie was in their year. According to Gracie, before Thalia arrived, the boys in the group were just some very smart kids who lacked social skills and who all lived in the same neighbourhood.”
“But Thalia Monk changed them,” Annie said.
“According to Gracie, in the summer between grades eleven and twelve, Thalia transformed the boys, physically and emotionally. When they started grade twelve, they saw themselves as a ‘cohort’; they dressed well, they took pains with their appearance and Thalia convinced them that they were superior beings who could make their own rules.”
“They certainly sound obnoxious,” Annie said. “But isn’t it possible they’re just compensating for all their nerd years?”
“I know what you’re saying, Annie, and you’re right. At that age, kids do go through phases; they try on identities until they figure out who they are. But this is different. Gracie Falconer is one of the most sensible and generous people I know, but she says that when the members of the cohort were together, they emanated a darkness that she could feel.”
Warren leaned against the back of his chair and closed his eyes. “Do you believe the cohort is at the centre of all this?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but the problems did start when the interns began their tenure at the beginning of May. They got off to a bad start and the exit letter the interns submitted collaboratively at the end of the summer puts the blame squarely on Rosemary Morrissey, the former executive producer for programming. Warren, the letter is the first item in the folder we brought. Would you mind reading it aloud?”
“Not at all,” Warren said, and he put on his wire-rimmed reading glasses and began. When he’d finished, he shook his head. “That’s a powerful indictment of MediaNation’s treatment of their interns. Is it true?”
“Yes,” I said. “I talked to the producer of Charlie D’s show, and he says everything in that letter is fa
ctually true, but he feels the interns’ interpretation of what happened is wrong.”
“That’s not a convincing argument,” Warren said. “Facts are facts. The letter says that Rosemary Morrissey suffered a breakdown and left MediaNation. Where is she now?”
“No one knows. The head of HR in Toronto asked the one hundred and fifteen people in Rosemary’s unit to write individual letters assessing her ability to do her job. They did. Joseph Monk delivered the verdict of her co-workers to Rosemary. That was towards the end of June. That day, Rosemary cleared out her office, put her house and cottage up for sale and no one has heard from her since.”
“That is so unfair to everyone,” Annie said. “Ms. Morrissey’s colleagues had to tell the truth, but they must have felt sick about what they were doing. And why did the head of HR feel compelled to tell Ms. Morrissey that all her co-workers sent letters saying she was no longer capable of doing her job?”
“Zack’s reading of the situation is that Joseph Monk is a sadistic son of a bitch,” I said. “That’s as good an explanation as any. And Rosemary was only the first casualty.
“At the end of August, Joseph Monk told Ellen Exton, the producer of Charlie D’s show, that the company had received a sexually explicit video of her with an extortion threat. Ellen told Charlie she’d sent several relatively innocuous videos via an online dating site, but Joseph Monk refused to hear her out.
“Monk gave Ellen Exton two options: sign a non-disclosure agreement and resign with a generous severance package and a glowing reference — or be fired.”
Warren made no attempt to hide his disbelief and disgust. “MediaNation must have a legal department,” he said. “Monk must have known the options he gave Ms. Exton left the corporation open to a charge of wrongful dismissal. Why did he go rogue and handle Ms. Exton’s case alone?”
“Because Joseph Monk was the one who engineered the Jared Delio debacle.”
Annie’s eyes widened. “I remember that. Three women accused Jared Delio of forcible sex offences. The MediaNation spokesperson defended Delio until tapes surfaced proving what the women said was true, and Delio was fired.”
“Joseph Monk engineered that debacle,” Zack said. “But that’s history. This summer Monk has treated situations with two loyal long-serving employees in ways that were both ham-handed and cruel.”
As Zack described Joseph Monk’s handling of the situations with Rosemary Morrissey and Ellen Exton, Annie made no attempt to hide her disgust. “And he still has a job? Joseph Monk must have something career-ending on somebody.”
“Or, as Zack always says, ‘shit floats.’”
Annie smiled. “True enough,” she said, then her smile faded. “Where’s Ellen Exton now?”
“Nobody knows,” I said. “Everything happened very quickly. A MediaNation employee appeared. He was charged with making certain Ellen Exton cleared out her desk and did not take any of the company’s property with her. Ellen got in touch with Charlie. He’d already gone home for the day, but he came back and offered to help her in any way he could. Charlie said she was dazed. She just wanted to get out of the building, so he helped her carry out her things, drove her to her house, and when all the boxes were carried in, she thanked him and he left. No one has seen or heard from Ellen since. Unlike Rosemary Morrissey, Ellen did not set her house in order before she left. She simply vanished, leaving her two much-loved cats behind.”
Annie’s brow furrowed. “Joanne, where have the police been in all this? Surely when no one could reach Ellen Exton, the police were alerted.”
“They were,” I said. “But Ellen was an adult. There was no evidence of wrongdoing at her house, so the police waited. Over forty-eight hours passed before they started investigating. They’ve been pursuing the case diligently, but nothing has come to light. Kam Thau, who took over producing Charlie’s show, was a friend of Ellen’s. Her cats are now with him. He’s still hoping, but I’m sure he’s convinced that Ellen’s dead.”
“Two women working for the same company disappear within a month and a half of each other after being treated abysmally by management.” Warren picked up the folder we’d brought. “Is there anything in here suggesting a connection between what happened to Ms. Morrissey and Ms. Exton?”
“No, but there are extensive notes on what Zack, Maisie, Jill and I know about other troubling matters. Some of the information, like Clay Fairbairn’s attack on Alison Janvier at the Real Prairie Picnic, will be old news to you, but that, at least, is documented. The cohort’s not-so-veiled attempts to make public the circumstances behind the conception of Alison’s son, Harper, are not well known, but Maisie gathered enough concrete evidence about Ronan Farquhar’s involvement in that particular venture to prove the cohort is behind it. Much of the rest is pure conjecture, but we’ve included copies of two fragments of paper in the folder. Neither of them conveys a coherent message, but we believe they’re significant. Kam Thau found the first one under a script on his desk the morning after Rosemary Morrissey left MediaNation for the last time.”
Annie stared at the words and then spoke them aloud: “I am warning you not to be fooled. This person is young, charismatic, narcissistic and capable of . . .” She looked at me questioningly.
“Kam is certain that Rosemary Morrissey wrote those words,” I said. “She always used a fountain pen and black ink, and her handwriting was strong and distinctive. He believes this scribble reflects Rosemary’s state of mind — that she was attempting to warn him, but at the last minute changed her mind and ripped off the words that would have completed her thought.”
“The second piece is a photograph the police took of a Post-it Note on Ellen Exton’s refrigerator door. ‘It’s not enough!’”
Warren’s headshake reflected the frustration we all felt. “Those three words would seem to describe the weight of the information we have at the moment,” he said. “What we have is suggestive, but it’s not enough.”
* * *
When Zack returned, his expression was unreadable.
“How did it go?” I said.
“It went well,” Zack said. “But since Mike is now my client, that’s about all I can volunteer. Any Roman candles go off here while you were looking through the folder?”
Annie shook her head. “No, but aren’t Roman candles the fireworks that ignite in stages? Give us a little time.” As she looked at her husband, Annie’s smile was wicked. “We always manage to ignite, don’t we, Warren?”
Zack and I exchanged glances. “I believe that’s our cue to leave,” I said. Annie started to protest, but I waved her off. “Taylor’s at Lawyers Bay, and she’ll be eager to hear about our visit with you.”
Annie jumped up. “Give me a second, and I’ll box some shortbread for her. Is Vale with her?”
“No, she’s not.” I swallowed hard. “I’m still not used to saying these words, but Taylor and Vale are no longer a couple.”
Annie’s face fell. “I’m so sorry.”
Warren put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I’m sorry too. Annie and I had a long talk with Vale and Taylor at the Falconer Shreve Canada Day party. They seemed to have a bright future ahead of them.”
“They’ll still have bright futures,” I said. “Just not together.”
The Webers walked us to the dock. When Zack and I had our life jackets on, Annie handed me the box of shortbread for Taylor.
“Taylor will appreciate this,” I said. “Thanks for thinking of her.”
“And thanks for being there for Mike,” Zack said. “He’s going through hell. It’s a relief for me professionally and personally to know that you two are close by.”
Warren’s gaze was piercing as he looked first at Zack, then at me. “Mike Braeden is a good and ethical man. He would never knowingly harm another human being. Hang on to that, and we’ll all come through this just fine.”
Chapter Seventeen
When Zack and I were married, he purchased his late partner Chris Altieri’s cottage at Lawyers Bay for our family to use when they joined us at the lake. It was a perfect arrangement: we were able to be together, but we were also able to be apart. Our grown children were responsible for getting their family’s breakfast and lunch, but every night we all sat down at our place for dinner in the sunroom overlooking Lawyers Bay.
Wednesday afternoon, Pete called to say that Maisie was in court, so we should expect them a little later than planned. They were picking up takeout from the East Indian place in Fort Qu’Appelle. According to our oldest son, the Crawford-Kilbourn order was heavy on dumplings, and the boys were crazy excited about eating dumplings, sleeping over, seeing Taylor and the dogs and learning how to drive the big boat. When I passed the message along to Zack, he beamed. “Sounds like the days will be jam-packed,” he said.
All the adults who sat down at the partners table that evening brought heavy thoughts with them, but we kept to our rule about sticking to light conversational topics during meals — a commitment made easier by the fact that, in a developmental spurt that children on the brink of turning four are prone to, both Charlie and Colin had suddenly become loquacious. The Rocky Mountain Play Structure was proving to be the neighbourhood kid magnet. The twins had tales to tell about their new friends and, between mouthfuls of tiger shrimp and vegetable samosas, Charlie and Colin filled us in. Charlie was voluble, but it turned out that Colin, the quiet observer, was the boy who delivered the telling detail. I was sitting next to Colin, and after he’d polished off his third naan, he turned to me. “Before he goes down the big slide, Cole Potter always does this,” he said, touching his forehead, his lower chest, his left upper arm and then his right.
“Cole’s making the sign of the cross,” I said. “The way we do in church.”
Colin’s smile was patient. It was obvious I didn’t get it. “No, you do it so you don’t turn back. Cole says if you’re too scared to go down the big slide, you just do this,” Colin made the sign of the cross, “you won’t be scared. So now all kids do that, and nobody ever turns back.”