An Image in the Lake: A Joanne Kilbourn Mystery

by Gail Bowen

  I knew that many of the children the twins played with came from Muslim or Jewish homes, but when I asked Colin if all their parents were okay with their children making the sign of the cross, he was clearly puzzled. “Mimi, nobody wants their kid to turn back. They just want their kid to go down the big slide.” I left the table knowing that I had just learned a life lesson. What that lesson was was anybody’s guess.

  After we’d cleared away the dishes, Zack called Bob Colby and asked him to have his investigators look into Thalia Monk’s relationships with her brother, mother and father. Then he and Maisie drove to the Webers’ to meet with Mike Braeden, while Pete, Taylor and I took Charlie and Colin up to the guest cottage to get them ready for bed.

  Taylor volunteered to read the boys Michael Kusugak’s stories about Allashua, a young Inuit girl whose curiosity leads to hair-raising adventures with the mythical creatures who live beneath the sea ice. The books had been among Taylor’s and then Madeleine and Lena’s favourites, and the illustrations of inuksuit, the stone landmarks built by Inuit as signposts, had inspired Taylor, Gracie Falconer and Isobel Wainberg to build their own inuksuit around the horseshoe shore of Lawyers Bay. As an incentive to get the boys to be still so they could fall asleep, Taylor promised to take Colin and Charlie around the shore the next day. Together, they would inspect the inuksuit, so the boys could help make any necessary repairs before winter set in.

  Less than two hours after they left for the Webers’, Zack and Maisie were back at Lawyers Bay. Their interview with Mike Braeden hadn’t been lengthy, but I could tell it had disturbed Zack. The creases that bracketed his mouth like parentheses had deepened — always a sign of stress. As soon as he came in the door, I rubbed my husband’s arm and said, “Time to turn in.”

  Zack didn’t put up a fight, and he was preoccupied as we readied ourselves for bed.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” I said.

  “Not much,” he said. “Mike Braeden is innocent. A prof of mine at law school said the trial lawyer’s greatest fear is having an innocent client. If your client’s guilty, you give the case your best shot, and if you lose, you know that justice has probably been served. If you have an innocent client and your gut tells you that you can’t save him, you want to put your fist through a window fifteen times a day.”

  “I know you can’t give me details, but did you learn something tonight that made you question your ability to get Mike off?”

  “No. It wasn’t that. Jo, you and I both know that Mike Braeden’s life would have been better if he’d never set eyes on Patti Morgan, but all Mike could talk about tonight was Patti’s daughter. He’s worried sick about her. He asked our advice about calling Thalia just to reassure himself that she was all right. Of course, Maisie and I nixed that. We have no idea what Thalia believes happened, and the police regard Mike as a person of interest. The optics of Mike calling Thalia would raise suspicions.

  “He accepted our advice, but he was insistent that somehow we make sure that Thalia is not in a situation that will exacerbate what she experienced. I told him Thalia is staying with Hugh and Julie Fairbairn and suggested Clay Fairbairn as a possible go-between. Mike was content with that and then he said, ‘I’ve never seen a human being suffer as cruelly as Thalia has. Patti never missed a chance to turn the knife. I married Patti because I thought I could give them both a stable home and a good life, but I failed.’

  “And now,” Zack said, “Mike is determined to save Thalia at any cost.”

  “That’s why you want to put your fist through a window,” I said. “Well, don’t do it here. This cottage has premium PVC windows — guaranteed to withstand Saskatchewan winter blasts. If you tried to put your first through one of these, you’d just bruise your knuckles.”

  Zack harrumphed. “Spoilsport.”

  “Just saving you from yourself. Speaking of which, that leg spasm you had today wasn’t the first one this week. Time for some leg exercises.” I knelt beside my husband, placed one hand under his knee and the other around his ankle and extended the leg by lifting the ankle up until it was parallel to the floor.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Zack said.

  “I know, but I like doing it. For the same reason you like putting lotion on the parts of my back I can’t reach. We like taking care of each other. And after we’re through here, we’re going to continue taking care of each other by going to bed early. You and Pete promised to teach the boys the rudiments of driving the boat. Colin and Charlie will be raring to go before the sun comes up, and you’ll need to be in fighting trim.”

  * * *

  Zack and I are early risers, and on Thursday morning, we were dressed and clearing away the breakfast dishes when there was a spirited knocking on our front door. I glanced at my watch. “It’s six twenty-one,” I said. “I believe your grandsons are here for their lesson in driving the Chris-Craft.”

  Once in a while, I’m prescient. When I opened the door, the twins in matching, hooded, fire-engine red rain slickers were standing on our porch. Behind them, smiling sheepishly, were their parents.

  “They woke up at four,” Maisie said. “We coaxed them into staying in their beds and playing quietly for another hour, but Pete and I are no match for the lure of the lake.”

  “Would you like coffee?” I said. “Taylor’s going to crew with Pete, and she’ll be here at seven.”

  Before Charlie and Colin had a chance to cloud up at news of the delay, Zack wheeled over to them. “I went online to the Chris-Craft store and got us each a manual,” he said. “A manual is a book that shows you how to do something like drive a boat. On the big table in the sunroom, there are three manuals: one for each of us. We have to go through them carefully before we go down to the lake.”

  Colin nodded sagely. “The manual keeps us from making mistakes,” he said.

  Zack beamed. “And you’ve just learned the first lesson.”

  Taylor arrived on the dot of seven. The manuals had been a hit, and we hadn’t heard a peep from the boys or their grandfather since they’d gone out to the sunroom. When they emerged, the boys were clutching their manuals and looking determined.

  “So, did you guys have fun?” Maisie said.

  Charlie narrowed his eyes. “No,” he said. “We were learning.”

  Maisie ran her fingers through her thick copper curls. “I stand corrected. Everybody take a pee and then we’ll go down to the dock, and you guys can show us what you learned.”

  * * *

  Except for the screech of the gulls and the lap of the waves against the hull of Amicus, the morning was quiet. Maisie held the boat manuals as Pete and Taylor tied the boys’ red life jackets. Zack had a device that allowed him to lower himself into the boat. The mechanism was sophisticated structurally, and it depended solely on dexterity and strength. Zack was heavy-set, and I was struck again by the power his arms must have to hoist his body from land to boat. The manoeuvre took time, and the boys didn’t move a muscle until Zack was in his place behind the controls.

  As I watched Zack do a shoulder check to make sure everybody was ready, images of another ride in Amicus flashed through my mind. When I met Zack, he habitually left his life jacket on the floor of the launch when he drove. The first time we took out the boat after we’d made love, he put on his life jacket. I was relieved, but I’d tried to keep the moment light. “Decided to leave your inner rebel behind?” I said.

  He took my hand. “Just aware that I now have something I don’t want to lose.”

  Remembering that moment, my eyes filled. I reached over and took the boys’ manuals from Maisie. “I’ll run these down to the twins,” I said. I squatted next to the launch, handed the boys their manuals and then rested my hand on Zack’s shoulder and leaned in to kiss him. It was a serious kiss, and he was clearly surprised but pleased. “What was that for?” he said.

  “For wearing your life jacket,” I sai
d. Then I swallowed hard and went back and stood with Maisie, watching until Amicus disappeared from view.

  * * *

  I’d had no part in decorating the house at Lawyers Bay. Like the landscaping, the colour scheme and furnishings had been in place long before Zack and I met. But from the day I first walked through the front door, I’d been at ease in our home’s cool, uncluttered, light-filled spaces.

  With one exception, the furnishings were tasteful, and remarkable only for their clean lines and fine craftsmanship. The exception was a treasure that Zack’s decorator found at a local auction: a gleaming oak partners’ table from a long-defunct law firm. The table came with twenty-four oak chairs upholstered in leather the colour of the fine port that I imagined the partners sipping on Friday afternoons.

  Zack’s speculation about the early life of the partners’ table was less romantic than mine. Any law firm that had twenty-four partners was obviously a major player in early twentieth-century western Canada, but Zack had had no luck chasing down the names of the lawyers who had thundered and bellowed in the chairs where our granddaughters now drew pictures of girls with spiky purple hair and saucer eyes.

  * * *

  Maisie wasted no time getting down to business when we returned to the cottage. Her briefcase and laptop were already on the partners’ table, and she sat down, opened her laptop and glanced at the screen. “Looks like Colby and Associates are living up to their reputation,” she said. “Information about Thalia’s relationship with her brother and her parents was a trickle when I checked at four a.m., and now it’s pouring in. Bob Colby says they’re still nailing down precise dates, but what they have is certainly enough for now.”

  Maisie kept her eyes on the screen as she gave me a running commentary of Colby’s report. “By the time Joseph Monk left for Toronto, he and Patti had been separated for several years, but they lived in the same condominium block, and apparently Nicholas and Thalia moved easily between their parents’ respective homes. Nicholas was six and Thalia was five when Joseph Monk was offered the job in Toronto. They were already enrolled in the neighbourhood school in Regina, so Joseph and Patti decided their children should stay there. Joseph Monk had generous visitation rights, and he exercised them. The children were with him for holidays and for one month in the summer.

  “When Nicholas was twelve and Thalia was eleven, they moved to Toronto to live with their father. Patti was amenable to the decision. By that point, she’d sensed her career here was going nowhere, and she’d been applying elsewhere. Joseph Monk was settled in Toronto, so the children moved in with him. From everything Colby and Co. have picked up, it seems the life of the Monk family was harmonious. The children seemed to be thriving, doing brilliantly at school, never in any trouble.

  “Then out of nowhere in the middle of a school year, Joseph Monk yanks his sixteen-year-old daughter out of the school where she’s been an exemplary grade eleven student and sends her halfway across the country to Regina. The day after Thalia was sent away, seventeen-year-old Nicholas Monk jumped from the roof garden of their condominium to the courtyard below — a twenty-seven-storey drop.”

  Nicholas’s death was not news to me, but hearing the words had the force of a punch in the stomach. “That fits with everything we know,” I said. “Where did Colby’s people get their information?”

  “From a snitch at MediaNation. Colby’s people have sources in all the right places. They really are good.” Maisie shifted her focus from the screen to me. “Do you know what the motto of Colby and Associates is? ‘The truth will come to light.’”

  “Comforting words from The Merchant of Venice,” I said.

  “Words that take me back,” Maisie said. “We did what our teacher called a stage reading of The Merchant of Venice in grade eleven. I loved that line: ‘The truth will come to light. Murder cannot be hid long.’ I was Portia, but that’s not her line. It’s Launcelot’s, and the boy who read Launcelot played it for laughs. I was furious.”

  “It should have been your line,” I said.

  Maisie’s eyes were blazing. “Damn straight.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, I’m over it. Back to work.”

  “So, Colby’s people know what happened,” I said. “Do they have any theories about why it happened?”

  Maisie shook her head. “No. That is still a matter for conjecture. What’s your conjecture, Jo?”

  “From all accounts, Joseph Monk was devoted to his children. He must have known that separating them would be devastating for them both.”

  “And yet he carried through with a decision that destroyed them. Why did he separate Thalia and Nicholas?”

  “Because he had no choice,” I said. “The alternative was unthinkable.”

  The silence between my daughter-in-law and me was fraught. Neither of us wanted to put into words what we knew must be the truth.

  Finally, Maisie said, “Colby’s people sent photos of Nicholas and Thalia from their yearbook the last year they were in school together.” Maisie pulled her chair closer to mine and adjusted her laptop so we could both see the screen. “As soon as I saw their photos side by side, I knew what must have happened between them.”

  Nicholas’s and Thalia’s likeness to each other was breathtaking as was their physical beauty. Their eyes were the same stunning shade of sapphire blue; their ash-blond hair, centre-parted, fell in brush strokes around their fine-boned faces; even their mouths were identical: expressive lips curled in a sardonic half smile.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off them. “Siegmund and Sieglinde,” I said.

  Maisie’s look was quizzical.

  “Siegmund and Sieglinde are characters in Richard Wagner’s opera cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung,” I said. “They’re twins, separated at birth, unknown to each other. They meet, realize they’re brother and sister, but they still fall in love. Sieglinde becomes pregnant with their child and gives birth to Siegfried, who is the hero in another opera, but that’s as far as memory takes me.”

  “That’s far enough,” Maisie said dryly. “Nicholas and Thalia knew they were brother and sister, and became lovers anyway. And that is not a problem covered by Dr. Spock.”

  “No, it isn’t. I’ve heard nothing good about Joseph Monk, but no parent should be faced with a situation that heart-rending.”

  “I’ve dealt with cases of incest more often than I care to remember,” Maisie said. “But Jo, this isn’t a drunk father violating his daughter, or an uncle forcing himself on his niece. This looks consensual. Look at them. Apparently, he was as brilliant as she is. They’re certainly both beautiful.”

  “And they thought of themselves as superior to their peers in every way,” I said. “Maisie, something Gracie Falconer mentioned is nagging me. She told me that Thalia and the other members of the University Park Road cohort all carried around copies of Thus Spake Zarathustra.”

  Maisie closed her eyes and massaged her temples. “Nietzsche,” she said. “I read Thus Spake Zarathustra when I was seventeen. My sister and I went to a high school where most of the students, like us, were farm kids. A lot of them were smart, but Lee and I were always at the top of our class. Lee was more grounded than I was. She said there were many different kinds of intelligence — ours was just the kind that was rewarded at school.”

  “But you didn’t agree,” I said.

  Maisie’s smile was rueful. “No. Unlike my sister, I did not see the larger picture. I just saw me, and when I came upon Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch, I fell for it hook, line and sinker.”

  “The idea that superior beings can create their own morality because they’re beyond the morality dictated by society is seductive,” I said. “And Nicholas and Thalia were both at an age where hormones play a large role in choices.”

  Maisie was pensive. “The incest taboo is one of the most widespread in all cultures.”

  “Nicholas and Thalia obviously felt t
heir love for each other transcended the taboo,” I said.

  Maisie sighed. “This case is going to bring a world of grief to people who have already suffered far too much.”

  “There’s a possibility we could be way off the mark about the relationship between Nicholas and Thalia,” I said. “Even if we’re not, Nicholas committed suicide almost five years ago. I can’t see how it’s relevant to the Patti Morgan case.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Maisie said. “It’s inevitable that the media will dig up Nicholas’s suicide, but I don’t see them using it. And it won’t affect the Crown’s case or ours. Maybe we’ll catch a break, and everyone will see that his death is a tragedy that is best left alone.”

  “I wonder,” I said. “Five years ago would have been around the time Sunny Side Up was phased out. Suddenly Patti had no job and no prospects; her beloved son had committed suicide, and the daughter whom Patti had always seen as her rival was suddenly her responsibility. That’s a heavy burden; she must have confided in somebody.”

  Maisie scrolled through the information from Colby and Associates. “The only friends listed here are Rosemary Morrissey, whom Colby’s people describe as ‘mentor and colleague.’ Ellen Exton, ‘casual friend and colleague,’ and Kam Chau who produced Sunny Side Up its last year on the air, ‘good working relationship.’ Joanne, do you think Patti had any inkling that the relationship between Nicholas and Thalia was sexual?”

  “I’m sure she didn’t — at least not at first. I don’t think she would have agreed to having Thalia live with her if she’d known.”

  Maisie rubbed her temples. “And what you and I have is just conjecture. We may be way out in left field with this, Jo.”