by Gail Bowen
The Endless Knot
Gail Bowen
ACCLAIM FOR GAIL BOWEN AND
THE JOANNE KILBOURN MYSTERIES
“Bowen is one of those rare, magical mystery writers readers love not only for her suspense skills but for her stories’ elegance, sense of place and true-to-life form.… A master of ramping up suspense.”
– Ottawa Citizen
“Bowen can confidently place her series beside any other being produced in North America.”
– Halifax Chronicle-Herald
“Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn mysteries are small works of elegance that assume the reader of suspense is after more than blood and guts, that she is looking for the meaning behind a life lived and a life taken.”
– Calgary Herald
“Bowen has a hard eye for the way human ambition can take advantage of human gullibility.”
– Publishers Weekly
“Gail Bowen got the recipe right with her series on Joanne Kilbourn.”
– Vancouver Sun
“What works so well [is Bowen’s] sense of place – Regina comes to life – and her ability to inhabit the everyday life of an interesting family with wit and vigour.… Gail Bowen continues to be a fine mystery writer, with a protagonist readers can invest in for the long run.”
– National Post
“Gail Bowen is one of Canada’s literary treasures.”
– Ottawa Citizen
OTHER JOANNE KILBOURN MYSTERIES
BY GAIL BOWEN The Nesting Dolls
The Brutal Heart
The Last Good Day
The Glass Coffin
Burying Ariel
Verdict in Blood
A Killing Spring
A Colder Kind of Death
The Wandering Soul Murders
Murder at the Mendel
Deadly Appearances
Copyright © 2006 by Gail Bowen
First M&S paperback edition published 2007
This edition published 2011
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian
Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Bowen, Gail, 1942-
The endless knot : a Joanne Kilbourn mystery / Gail Bowen.
eISBN: 978-1-55199-246-4
I. Title.
PS8553.08995E54 2011 C813′.54 C2011-900313-9
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
Published simultaneously in the United States of America by
McClelland & Stewart Ltd., P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011925598
Cover image © Blair Witch | Dreamstime.com
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
www.mcclelland.com
v3.1
To James Henry Cook,
a truly good and generous man,
and to his great-nephews,
Jess Benjamin Bowen-Bell and Peyton Benjamin Bowen
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Jan Seibel for her solid legal advice, to Dinah Forbes for her sensitive and perceptive editing, to Joan Baldwin, the model of a family physician, and as always to Ted, who makes everything possible.
Contents Cover Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication AcknowledgementsChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15About the Author
CHAPTER
1
As I bent down to cut the last of our marigolds on the Friday before Thanksgiving, I was as happy as I could remember being. The stems of the flowers were cool against my fingers, and their sturdy beauty and acrid scent evoked memories of marigolds hastily picked by my kids and carried off, stems sheathed in wax paper and anchored by elastic bands, to be given to a teacher or abandoned on the playground. It was a morning for remembering, as filled with colour and ancient mystery as a Breugel painting. Above me, skeins of geese zigzagged into alignment against the cobalt sky. The high clear air rang with their cries. A north wind, urgent with change, lifted the branches of our cottonwood tree, shaking the leaves loose and splashing the lawn with gold. Beneath my feet last week’s fallen leaves, bronze and fragile as papyrus, crackled into the cold earth.
For the first time in a long time, there was nowhere I had to be. I was on sabbatical, expanding an article I’d written about the emerging values war in Canada into a book. It was an open-ended project that I found easy to pick up and easier to put down. My three grown children were living independent lives marked by the usual hurdles but filled with promise. They were all strong and sensible people, so I crossed my fingers, enjoyed their company, and prayed that the choices they made would bring them joy. Since my son, Angus, had enrolled in the College of Law in Saskatoon the month before, my younger daughter and I had been alone in our house. We missed Angus, but Taylor was just about to turn eleven, and the world was opening up to her. Listening as she spun the gossamer of unexplored possibilities was a delight neither of us ever wearied of.
Freed from the tyranny of a timetable, I read books I’d been meaning to read, gazed at art with an unhurried eye, listened to music I loved, and revelled in the quiet pleasures of the season Keats celebrated for its mist and mellow fruitfulness.
Best of all, there was a new man. His name was Zachary Shreve and he’d brought with him a piercing happiness I’d forgotten existed. But I had just celebrated a birthday. I was fifty-six and as I walked back into the house, my joy was edged with autumn’s knowledge that nothing gold can stay.
The kitchen phone was ringing. I dropped the marigolds in the sink and picked up, expecting to hear Zack’s voice. For the last eight weeks he’d been putting in twelve-hour days – first on a case involving the death of a homeless man who had the bad luck to seek shelter in a warehouse on the night the warehouse owner set his property on fire, and now on a high-profile case of attempted murder. Zack called often – mostly just to talk but, if we were lucky, to arrange time together. My caller wasn’t the man I loved. It was my old friend, Jill Oziowy, who, after a heady New York experience, had decided to return to the relative sanity of Toronto and her old job as producer of NationTv’s Canada Tonight. As always, Jill didn’t waste time on preamble.
“How would you like to go once more into the breach for NationTV?”
I cradled the phone between my shoulder and ear, picked up the vase on the counter and started filling it with water. “Not a chance,” I said.
“At least hear me out,” Jill said. “The heir apparent to the anchor job here got picked up last night for having sex with some underage admirers.”
“And you want me to talk to him about keeping it zipped.”
“No, I want you to replace him as Canada Tonight’s eye on the Sam Parker trial.”
My pulse skipped. Sam Parker was Zack’s client in the attempted murder case. “Jill, I’m not a reporter. I teach political science.”
“But you’re on sabbatical – which means you’re free during
the day, and when you did the political panel for us you were great, so we know you don’t freeze on camera. And hey – are you still working on that book about the values war?”
“Intermittently.”
“Well, not so long ago Sam Parker was the great white hope of the political right in this country. He’s still a figure to be reckoned with.”
“God, I hope not,” I said. “I’ve been reading some of his old speeches on the battleground issues: abortion, same-sex marriage, Charter rights, judicial activism. He makes my blood boil.”
“You can turn down the heat,” Jill said. “Apparently Sam’s done a complete 180 on a lot of the hot-button concerns. Seeing him up-close-and-personal at the trial might get your scholarly juices flowing again. Convinced yet?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, this case is going to need a certain gravitas, and face it, Jo, you’re the Queen of Gravitas.”
“I’m also in a relationship with Sam Parker’s lawyer. Still interested?”
Jill’s intake of breath was audible three thousand miles away. “Mother of God. You’re canoodling with Zachary Shreve.”
“As often as we can manage,” I said. “Want to withdraw your offer?”
“No,” she said. “Jo, have you heard the stories that are out there about your boyfriend? He’s brilliant, but he plays rough.”
“He doesn’t play rough with me,” I said. “Now, why don’t we drop this and talk about the job?”
“Okay, but I reserve the right to discuss your love life.”
“The job, Jill?”
“Rapti Lustig will call you with the details. She’s network producer in Regina now. You worked with her when you were doing the political panel, didn’t you?”
“I did,” I said. “And I liked her a lot.”
“That’s one in the plus column,” Jill said. “And there’s more. The money’s not bad. The trial shouldn’t last longer than a month and the work’s easy – just sit in court all day, then come out and do a two-minute standup giving our eager nation the background on crime and punishment, Saskatchewan style. So what do you say?”
“I appreciate you thinking of me –”
Jill groaned. “At least mull it over.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll mull, but I hope you have more names on your list because these days I’m just content to be contented.”
Jill snorted. “Contentment’s for cows. I’m calling back in an hour, and your answer better be yes.”
She hung up and I went back to arranging my marigolds and weighing my options. I truly was enjoying my life, but there were compelling reasons for giving Jill’s offer serious consideration. Trial law was a huge area of Zack’s life, and I’d never seen him in court. And Jill was right about the allure of the Sam Parker case. Professionally and personally, Sam Parker intrigued me. I wanted to know him better. I wanted to understand how, when his son’s situation made his political and personal views collide, he chose to alter his beliefs rather than turn against his child. By any journalist’s criteria, the Sam Parker case was a plum, and Jill had handed it to me. As I twirled the last bloom into place, the deciding vote was cast. My old friend Hilda McCourt once said that marigolds carry a great life lesson: they’re blooming when you put them in and they’re blooming when you pull them out. I wanted to be like Hilda, blooming to the end, and so an hour later when Jill called, I said yes.
Jill was elated. “In addition to everything else,” she said, “you’ll be doing the media world a favour. The Sam Parker case raises some interesting questions about journalistic ethics, and I don’t want some himbo or bimbo using this trial as an audition tape for a job with Fox News.”
I laughed. “You and Bryn have a good Thanksgiving.”
“You too,” Jill said. “Wow, Zack Shreve, and I thought the most daring thing you ever did was skip flossing once in a while.”
“My turn to hang up,” I said, and I did.
Within minutes, Rapti Lustig called. We agreed it was going to be fun working together again. She promised to e-mail the background information on the case immediately, and then she congratulated me on my new boyfriend.
Jill worked fast.
As I entered Rapti’s new contact information into my laptop, I knew the ineluctable cycle of the cosmos was pressing on. It seemed only fair to let my boyfriend know that our lives were about to change.
I dialed his private line at Falconer Shreve. He picked up on the first ring. “This is nice,” he said. “I’m always the one who does the calling.”
“Then it’s time I took the initiative. What are you up to?”
“Chasing my tail,” Zack said equitably.
“Why don’t you let me chase it for a while,” I said. “Come over here for lunch. The menu’s limited, but nobody will ask how your case is going.”
“You just pushed the right button.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up – give us more time together. Is noon okay?”
“Perfect,” he said. “As are you. Do you know I slept here last night? I fell asleep at my desk, woke up this morning, and kept on working. I’m getting as crazy as a shithouse rat.”
“I’ll watch my back,” I said.
“I’m not after your back,” he said.
I was smiling when I hung up the phone, but my sense of being at one with the world didn’t last. When I turned around, I noticed a boy standing at our back door. He was framed by the screen, and I tensed at the sudden knowledge that I hadn’t been alone. I walked to the door, but I didn’t open it.
He met my eyes. “I’m looking for Taylor,” he said.
“She left for school twenty minutes ago.”
The boy didn’t move. “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said. “You were on the phone.”
“That’s all right,” I said. I looked at the boy more carefully and felt my pulse slow. With four children of my own, there had been hundreds of kids through my house and there was nothing about this one to alarm. He was young – perhaps thirteen or fourteen, but he was already taller than me – at least five-foot-eight. He was slender, fine-featured, and dark-haired, a good-looking kid, dressed in a black pullover and khakis. Unexceptional except for one detail. Suspended from a hemp cord around his neck was a five-pointed gold star.
I opened the door and peered more closely. “That’s a pentangle, isn’t it?” I said. “I haven’t read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight since university, but I remember that.”
His eyes met mine. “I’ve never met anybody who’s read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” he said. “It’s the most important book in my life.” His fingers touched the pentangle. “Five perfect points, wholly distinct, yet part of one whole.”
The boy’s gaze was unnerving. For an awkward moment, we were silent. Neither of us seemed to know what to say next. Then the boy gave me a small smile. “I’d better go,” he said. “If I’m late, I’ll get another detention.”
He turned and ran across my backyard towards the alley. I watched until he disappeared, then I gave myself a shake, wiped the kitchen counter, and went upstairs to check my e-mail.
As promised, Rapti Lustig had sent files on the background of the Sam Parker case. There were no revelations, but it was grim reading. I’d followed the case closely and I was acquainted with several of the principals. Kathryn Morrissey, the woman Sam Parker was alleged to have shot at, was a faculty member in the school of journalism at the university where I taught. I knew her well enough to greet her when we passed in the hall or to chat with her while waiting for a meeting to begin, but we weren’t friends.
Kathryn was intelligent and articulate, but she was unnervingly self-centred. Once, after she’d just begun at the university, we had lunch together at the Common Table in the Faculty Club. Over the asparagus soup, Kathryn gave a nasty account of her evening at the home of a colleague who had invited her to dinner. The colleague and his partner had a Santa Claus collection they enjoyed, and Kathryn dismissed their collection as kitsch and ridicul
ed them for being bourgeois. Over the years my kids, like the children of many who worked at the university, had enjoyed the Santas and the sweet, milky tea and lacy cookies their hosts had served them. Kathryn’s mockery of their hospitality rankled, and in the two years since that lunch I hadn’t sought her out. In my opinion, she was cruel and untrustworthy. When her book Too Much Hope was published, I was proven right.
The lepidopterist’s preferred technique for killing a butterfly is to pinch its thorax between the thumb and forefinger. The action stuns the specimen immediately and prevents it from damaging itself. In chronicling the troubled lives of the sons and daughters of a baker’s dozen of Canada’s most prominent families, Kathryn Morrissey did not display the lepidopterist’s humanity. Her subjects hungered for redemption, and Kathryn, an interviewer who was as skilled as she was silken, had seduced them with the promise that confession would bring salvation.
Confess they did. By the time Kathryn’s subjects realized they were damaging themselves irreparably, it was too late. She had pinned them to her mounting board and there was no escape. While her subjects flailed, Kathryn typed her notes, submitted her manuscript, and banked the advance from her publisher.
Next to her pitiless exposés of children who had become thieves, brawlers, druggies, drunks, or garden-variety creeps, Kathryn’s disclosure that Glen Parker, the only son of Samuel Parker, the new messiah of the fundamentalist right, was a transsexual seemed like small potatoes. However, the revelation that Glen, a theatre major at our university, had changed his name to Glenda and was quietly making the transition from male to female devastated his parents.