by Gail Bowen
“My friend was my salvation. She made an appointment for me with her doctor. He asked me a number of questions and arranged for tests. He concluded that I had indeed suffered a stroke on the May long weekend when I was at the cottage. The blanks in my memory and my confusion would have righted themselves if I had sought treatment, but by that time my paranoia — and that’s what it was — had advanced to the point where I didn’t trust anybody.
“I really believed the summer interns were out to get me, to punish me for the condescension I’d shown Thalia when I saw her carrying Thus Spake Zarathustra. Instead of getting medical treatment, I self-medicated on a stew of antidepressants, painkillers and anti-anxiety medications. You know the rest. It got worse: the slurred speech; the outbursts of temper, the denials, the hostility and then finally the call from Joseph Monk in Toronto telling me he’d received one hundred and fifteen separate letters from employees in my unit saying that I was no longer capable of carrying out my responsibilities.
“That’s when I hit bottom,” Rosemary said. “And I accept full responsibility for everything that happened. The blame is solely mine.”
“I know how difficult reliving that time was for you, but you did it,” Zack said. “You’re doing remarkably well, but Rosemary, there’s another difficult subject facing us. How would you characterize the nature of the relationship between Thalia Monk and her brother, Nicholas?”
“So you know,” Rosemary said, and her entire body seemed to relax as if a burden had been lifted.
“Yes,” I said. “We know.”
“The relationship was incestuous,” she acknowledged.
“Just three more questions,” Zack said. “We’re almost finished, Rosemary. Are you aware that Ellen Exton possessed a series of photographs of Thalia and Nicholas Monk having sexual relations?”
“I am.”
“Do you know how she came to have them in her possession?”
“I gave them to her the day MediaNation terminated me. I told her they were her insurance policy.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that if Joseph Monk attempted to do to her what he’d done to me, she could threaten to make the photos public.” Rosemary lowered her head and said, “It was a terrible thing to do, and I’m deeply ashamed.”
“We all do things of which we’re ashamed,” Zack said gently. “How did you get the photographs?”
“Patti Morgan gave them to me.”
“Do you remember when?”
“Just before last Christmas. Patti found the pictures in Thalia’s room. She called Joseph Monk, and he said that he wasn’t aware of the photographs but that he had come home early from work one afternoon and heard his son and daughter in Nicholas’s bedroom. He confronted them, and Thalia was on the next flight to Regina.
“And Nicholas decided to end his life,” Rosemary said. “I’m able to see the tragedy of what happened now, but on the day I left MediaNation, I simply wanted to hurt Thalia Monk because I believed she had plotted against me. I knew Patti had been unbelievably cruel to that girl, but that didn’t stop me from compounding the cruelty.” Rosemary paused. “I was hoping Thalia would be here today, so I could apologize to her.”
Zack finished his drink, and leaned back in his chair. “Unless anyone else has something we should discuss, I think we’re finished here.”
When Charlie, Kam and I remained silent, Zack wheeled his chair to where Rosemary was sitting. “Thank you,” he said. “I hope you know that we all wish you the best.”
“I believe that,” Rosemary said, in her thrilling voice. “And I’m grateful I had a chance to say what needed to be said.”
And with that, it was over. We washed and dried the glasses, wiped the table and when the others were in the hall, waiting for the elevator, I locked the door to the priests’ common room. It was time to go downstairs, meet Ellen Exton’s parents, say our goodbyes and return to a world that we knew was about to be strafed by pain.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was close to nine o’clock when we dropped off Charlie and Kam. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into our driveway. Zack turned to me. “I can’t remember ever being this tired.”
“Neither can I,” I said.
Those were the last words we exchanged until eight o’clock the next morning, when Pantera and Esme decided enough was enough and nudged and whined until Zack and I faced the inevitable and started the day.
It was past nine when the dogs and I returned from our run. Taylor was already at work on the mural in the swimming pool room, and Zack had breakfast ready to go. After I showered and changed, we sat down to juice, coffee, bagels, cream cheese and lox.
Zack smeared cream cheese on his bagel, covered the cream cheese with slices of smoked salmon, then carefully topped the salmon with a spoonful of capers. “You know what you and I need?” he said.
“I assume that’s a rhetorical question.”
“It is,” Zack said. “Remember the mental health days Taylor used to take?”
“I do,” I said. “Two mental health days per term. Mieka, Peter and Angus had them too. Peter and Angus always used one for American Thanksgiving, so they could stay home and watch football without having to fake a mysterious short-term illness. Having a day in which you have no obligation to do anything but recharge your batteries is a gift.”
“It’s a gift you and I could use today,” Zack said. “What do you think the odds are?”
“Not good,” I said. “You sent Debbie Haczkewicz the tape of Rosemary Morrissey’s interview. I expect Debbie will be joining us very soon.”
Right on cue, the doorbell rang, and as I had anticipated, it was Debbie. She was a tall, large-boned woman who favoured trouser suits and wore them well. That day she was wearing a sand herringbone tweed that was particularly flattering, but she was uncharacteristically curt with me, so I swallowed the compliment on the tip of my tongue and led her into the kitchen.
At a dinner where Zack had been the guest of honour, Debbie had used a graceful simile to describe the relationship between Zack and her. She said that like the orca and the great white shark, police officers and trial lawyers were natural enemies, and that although Zack would always be a great white shark and she would always be an orca, they had learned to cherish the times when they were able to swim side by side.
Clearly that morning was not one of those times. Zack felt the chill but waded in. “So, how’s it going, Deb?”
“It’s been better,” she said.
“I sent you an audio file last night. Did you get it?”
“I did. It was kind of you to remember that there is a police department here in Regina working 24/7 on a murder case. In all likelihood, Ms. Morrissey had information that could have been pivotal to that case. The file is useful, but knowing that Ms. Morrissey was alive and within range for an interview would have been even more useful.”
Zack sliced his bagel in two, slid one half onto a plate and pushed the plate towards Debbie. “Peace offering,” he said. “I didn’t know Rosemary Morrissey was alive until she strolled to the lectern in the St. Thomas More chapel and delivered Ellen Exton’s eulogy. She was in Saskatoon for the funeral only. She had a plane to catch. She’s in a probationary period with her new job, and she didn’t want to miss a day’s work. You have all her contact information, and you have a recording of everything she said during our hastily arranged interview. I’m not holding anything back.”
“He really isn’t holding anything back,” I said. “We were with our son-in-law, Charlie Dowhanuik, and Kam Chau, who took over as producer of Charlie’s show after Ellen disappeared. All of us walked into that chapel believing Rosemary Morrissey was dead. As Zack said, seeing her alive was a shock, and our time with her was limited. Zack did the best he could under the circumstances, and he sent you everything he had.”
“I believe you,” Debbie sa
id. “And I apologize. But Zack, I know you and I know how you operate. When I listened to that interview, I couldn’t understand why you didn’t push Rosemary Morrissey harder. There were a dozen questions you could have asked, starting with whether she and Ellen Exton stayed in touch after Rosemary left town.
“If we knew they had, we could have a real sense of Ellen’s life in the weeks before she died, and that would have given us leads into how Ellen Exton apparently vanished into thin air until her body turned up weeks later in a farmer’s culvert. As it stands, we don’t know enough to ask the right people the right questions. I’m tired of banging my head against brick walls. Why didn’t you do what you always do with a witness: keep pummelling until they break?”
Zack drew a deep breath. “Because Rosemary was already broken,” he said. “You heard the interview. She’d suffered a total breakdown, and she is now just beginning to put the pieces together again.”
Debbie was unconvinced. “Rosemary Morrissey was totally in possession of herself. Her answers were precise and economical.”
“They were,” Zack agreed. “But her fingernails were bitten down to the quick. She’s been through enough, Deb, and she’d just endured the funeral of a dear friend. If you have questions, all you have to do is call and ask.”
“I’ll wait a day or two,” Debbie said. “Thanks for the bagel. May I pour myself a cup of coffee to go with it?”
“I’ll get it,” I said.
Debbie had just taken her first bite when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen. “Work,” she said and picked up. She listened without comment for several minutes until her caller had finished. When she responded, her voice was even, but I was grateful I wasn’t the person on the other end of the call. “Tell me how this could have happened,” she said. “We did a grid search of the area around the culvert. Seven experienced officers examined every square inch of that area twice. And suddenly a cellphone turns up?”
Zack and I exchanged a quick glance. Whatever information Debbie’s caller had passed along was worth listening in on. As she processed what she was hearing, Debbie was intent, but the tension in her face lessened. “I’ll be right there,” she said and ended the call. And then, surprisingly, she smiled — a genuine smile, broad and open.
“A break in the case?” Zack said.
Debbie nodded. “And it could be a big one.” She took a sip of coffee. “From my end of the conversation, I’m sure you were able to piece together part of the story. As soon as the body was found, we did a grid search: every square inch around the culvert was searched, and there was nothing. Suddenly it turns out there was something: a cellphone.”
“What happened to it?” I said.
“A seven-year-old boy named William Duncan had found it weeks ago. The boy spotted the phone when he was out in the field gopher hunting just before he went back to school in September. So we have a time frame. There’d been a rainstorm, and the phone wasn’t working, but William helps his grandfather when something around the place needs to be fixed, and he knows his stuff.
“Long story short: William carried the phone back to the house; took it apart; used his magnifying glass to make certain no part had any moisture on it; replaced the parts; added a new battery; and the phone worked.”
“Why didn’t the parents tell the police?”
“They didn’t know. William had been wanting a cellphone for a while, and his parents believed he was too young to have one. William didn’t want them to take it away from him.”
“That poor kid,” Zack said.
Debbie raised an eyebrow. “Maybe save your pity for the person who owns that phone because they’re in big trouble.” She wrapped her bagel in a napkin. “Mind if I take this with me? It looks like I’m not going to be able to eat for a while.”
“I can make you a fresh one,” I said.
“Thanks, this’ll be fine. When we find out who owns the phone, I’ll let you know.”
“Please do,” I said. “Deb, I noticed when you were hauling Zack over the ashes, you said the police were investigating a murder case, not two cases. Was that just a slip?”
She grimaced, then shook her head as if to clear it. “This case is making me sloppy. One of the reasons I came over here this morning was to tell Zack that his client, Mike Braeden, is off the hook. There is no concrete evidence connecting Mike Braeden with Patti Morgan’s death, and we’ve interviewed at least two dozen people who say Mr. Braeden is a salt of the earth guy with the patience of a saint. There’s no reason to suspect him except for the facts that he and Patti Morgan had a bad marriage and he found the body. We were watching someone else for a while, but that blew up in our face last night.”
My pulse quickened. “Was Thalia Monk the person you were watching?”
Debbie leaned forward. “How did you know that?”
“Just conjecture.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter now,” she said. “We had an anonymous tip that on the early morning of the day Patti Morgan was killed, Thalia was seen without a necklace that apparently she was never without. There were marks around her neck suggesting that the necklace had been forcibly taken from her. Our anonymous tipster said we should check into Thalia’s story.”
“When we questioned Thalia, she said that she’d been mugged in Wascana Park on her morning run, and her assailant had ripped the necklace off her neck. Her story was corroborated by a person who was with her shortly after the incident. Thalia left a description of her necklace with the police in case someone found it and turned it in.
“That would have been the end of it, but when we learned that the relationship between Ms. Monk and her mother was troubled, to say the least, Ms. Monk became a question mark. Last night the man who assaulted Thalia Monk attacked another woman. A bystander witnessed the incident, called us, and the man was brought in for questioning.
“A lucky break for us and for Ms. Monk. This guy is a collector. When we checked out his apartment, we discovered a cache of trophies he’d taken from women he attacked. Among them was the amulet that Thalia Monk described.” Debbie paused. “The officer who returned it to her this morning said Thalia wept when he handed it to her.”
“That amulet contained a lock of her dead brother’s hair,” I said. “It was the only link she had with him.”
“I’m glad we were able to return it to her,” Debbie said. “At any rate, Mike Braeden and Thalia Monk were our only possibilities. The coroner says there’s a fifty-fifty chance that Patti Morgan suffocated because of the combination of alcohol and drugs in her system rendered her incapable of turning her head to breathe. Our investigation turned up nothing to disprove that, so the case is closed.”
After Debbie left, Zack said, “Do you realize it’s only ten thirty in the morning? Whatever we do after this will be anticlimactic.”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure?”
Zack gave a satyr’s smile. “Why don’t we go back to bed and see if we can discover it?”
“Let me get these dishes in the dishwasher and I’ll be right there.”
At that point, Taylor bounced into the kitchen. She was wearing cut-offs and a button-up shirt. She had paint in her hair; her feet were bare and she was ebullient. “This mural is going to be amazing. I can’t wait for you to see it.”
“How long do we have to wait?” Zack said.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Taylor said. “With Thanksgiving and the baptism, this weekend will be a zoo, and I want there to be a time for just a few of us to see it together. I thought maybe we could look at it on Saturday afternoon before everyone arrives for dinner.”
“That’s settled then,” I said.
But Taylor’s attention had already wandered to the kitchen table. “Bagels, cream cheese, lox and capers. I am so hungry.”
“Go for it,” I said. “When you’re through, you and I can straighten
up the kitchen together.”
Taylor was already slicing a bagel. “I can clean up the kitchen,” she said. “You and dad just go ahead with whatever it was you were planning to do.”
Zack held his arms out to me, and I reached in. “Rain check?” he whispered.
“You bet,” I said.
Zack turned his wheelchair towards the hall. “In that case,” he said, “I’m going to the office to check in with Maisie about the latest. Debbie didn’t say anything about telling Mike Braeden he was in the clear, did she?”
“No,” I said. “You should probably make certain he knows.”
“Will do,” Zack said. “The news will be an immense relief to Mike and to the Webers.”
As Zack chose his clothes for the office, and I made the bed, I thought of someone else who would welcome the news.
“The fact that Mike Braden is no longer a suspect will be a relief to Thalia too,” I said. “Mike Braeden never stopped caring about her. Sylvie always said no matter what happens in the future, a child will remember that there was someone who never walked away.”
“And Thalia picked up on that,” Zack said. “When push came to shove, she was as eager to protect Mike as he was to protect her. She deserves to know all’s well.”
“She does,” I said, “and when I talk to her, I’ll be sure to mention the role the anonymous tipster played in getting Thalia’s amulet back to her.”
Zack chortled. “You do that, and tell Thalia you and I are both pulling for her. She really has had a helluva life.”
When I called Thalia, I got her voicemail. I left a message asking her to call me and added that the news I had for her was good. Then because there was nothing on my calendar and because thirteen years at Bishop Lambeth School had taught me that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, I decided to tackle a job I’d been avoiding.
Desmond Zackary Dowhanuik was being baptized wearing the ivory muslin christening dress with Ayrshire whitework that generations of Maisie’s family, the Crawfords, had been christened in. The dress was an heirloom, and it was fragile. Maisie had called all over town in search of a dry cleaner or laundry service that would clean the gown. No one would risk it. I had looked online, and the directions for washing a delicate baptismal gown seemed simple enough, so I volunteered.