The Glass Coffin

by Gail Bowen

  “You went to see your sister every night?” Jill asked.

  “I was in the company,” Tracy said. “One of the Lost Boys. How’s that for typecasting?” She sipped her espresso. “One night, Annie and I decided to switch roles – just for fun. By the end of the first act, we both knew the audience hated me, so we switched back.”

  “I always thought changing places with a twin could be a lot of fun,” I said. “Did you two do it often?”

  Claudia cut Tracy off before she could answer. “Almost never,” she said. “Now, let’s see if we can find a waiter. It’s time for some Christmas cheer.”

  The waiter appeared and immediately fell under Bryn’s spell. We had to repeat our orders three times, and even then, Taylor, who had ordered her Shirley Temple with great precision, ended up with an umbrella-less rye and Coke. When the drinks were finally straightened out, Claudia raised her glass. “To better times,” she said. “Speaking of … Joanne, we have to thank you for recommending Lauren Ayala. She’s one sharp lawyer, not to mention a generous one. Not many lawyers would see a client on Christmas Day.”

  “Choosing a lawyer on the basis of how she does sun salutations obviously has something to recommend it,” I said.

  Claudia laughed. “Whatever criterion you used was obviously spot on, because Tracy and I are finally getting out of here tomorrow.”

  “And Lauren says that’s all right?”

  “She says Tracy’s empty prescription bottle is worrying but hardly conclusive, especially since Tracy and I were together during the period when the police say Evan was murdered.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Jill said.

  “Well, now you do,” Claudia said matter-of-factly.

  “That’s right,” Jill said thoughtfully. “Now I do.”

  The pause that followed was awkward. Luckily, Taylor, as she frequently does, leapt into the breach. “Do you think we could go to the buffet now? I’m starving.”

  Angus shot her a glance. “How could you be starving? Three hours ago you ate an entire lobster, a mound of potato salad, and two helpings of croquembouche?”

  Taylor shook her head in wonder. “Beats me,” she said. “I just know that that turkey smells really good.”

  “If I were a well-bred host, I’d insist we wait for Felix,” Jill said. She glanced at her watch. “But he’s twenty minutes late, and Jo and I skipped lunch. Let’s eat.”

  By the time we had made our way through the buffet line twice, it was clear the evening was not working out as Jill had hoped. Her plan to elicit information about Bryn’s past had been torpedoed by a choir in full Victorian dress who sang lustily and at great length, and Felix was still a no-show.

  When he finally did appear, he looked as if he had stumbled into the wrong party. Felix took pride in his appearance, but as he walked into the glittering dining room, he was wearing his ski jacket and he was tieless and unshaven. He was also agitated. He went straight to Jill. “I checked the phone messages at our office,” he said.

  “On Christmas Day? Now that’s devotion.” Jill indicated his empty place at the table. “Sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

  The moment Felix sat down, Bryn’s waiter was at his side. Felix ordered a double-vodka and swivelled his chair to face Jill. For all the attention he directed our way, the rest of us might as well have been cardboard cut-outs. “There were a number of calls for Evan,” he said. “Urgent calls.”

  Jill tensed. “Personal or professional?”

  “Professional,” Felix said. “NBC is picking up the series. Evan signed an agreement with them. The telephone calls that came after his death were nominally condolences, but everybody wanted to talk to the widow. It’s clear they’re hot for this, Jill. They want to use the material Evan sent them.”

  “There is no material,” Jill said. “All we gave them was a proposal. How can they be hot for a program that doesn’t exist?”

  “Because,” Felix said tightly, “the program does exist. Apparently Evan gave them a fully edited first show for ‘The Unblinking Eye.’ The network people are over the moon about it.”

  Jill picked up on the implications immediately. “Evan submitted something he’d already shot,” she said.

  “It will be about me,” Bryn said in a voice dead with resignation.

  “I won’t let them use it, baby,” Jill said.

  “You may have to if Evan signed a contract,” Felix said.

  “Did he?” Jill asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t pick up our messages till late yesterday afternoon. By then everyone was gone for the holiday. The only person I could get in touch with was Larissa.”

  “Our office manager,” Jill explained. “So was she able to help?”

  Felix shook his head. “Not really. She told me that everything connected with Evan’s current projects had been carted off. I said I presumed the Toronto police were acting on orders from the department out here. Larissa said that was a sensible assumption.”

  The slightest hint of a smile touched Jill’s lips. “Good old Larissa,” she said.

  Felix’s head shot up. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Jill said. “So there’s no way to know what Evan sent to the network until the holiday’s over?”

  “Which could be tomorrow, and could be after the weekend,” Felix said, and I was surprised at how fretful he sounded. His lean, boyish face was suited to whimsy, but that night the creases around his mouth had deepened, and he seemed grave and preoccupied. His response seemed excessive for a problem that, by my reckoning, concerned him only tangentially. When his cellphone rang, he started, and despite furious glances from the diners at the next table, he picked up. As soon as heard his caller’s voice, he leapt up. “I’ll talk to you outside,” he said. “There are people around.”

  Without explanation, he left the dining room. Jill raised an eyebrow, and I followed him. Felix had stopped just outside the maître d’s station, and as people do when they’re talking on cellphones in public places, he had turned to face the wall. I stopped behind him, pretending to study a menu. He was almost whispering, but I overheard him make a lover’s promise. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you,” he said. “You are my lifeblood.”

  When I got back from the ladies’ room, it was clear the party was over. Felix had already downed his vodka and pulled on his ski jacket. “I’m going up to my room to make some phone calls,” he said. “There must be somebody at NBC who’s taking care of business.”

  Claudia followed his lead. “I guess we should go upstairs too. We have to pack.” She took Jill’s hand. “Thanks,” she said. “Given the circumstances, it was a very pleasant dinner. I’ll call you before we go to the airport.”

  Tracy went to Bryn and stroked her hair. “Your mother always wanted the best for you – it wasn’t her fault that her life didn’t work out.”

  “There’s nothing you can tell me about my mother that I have the slightest interest in hearing,” Bryn said, and she jumped up and ran from the room.

  Taylor, oblivious, reached over and nabbed a chocolate truffle from Bryn’s plate. “Boy, this was some Christmas,” she said.

  “You’ve got that right,” I said. “And do you know what the best part of this particular Christmas is?”

  Taylor popped the truffle in her mouth and shrugged.

  “In four hours, it will be over,” I said.

  After the kids were in bed, Jill and I took a bottle of Hennessey and two snifters into the living room. I turned on the tree lights and lit every candle in sight. Jill handed me my drink.

  I took a sip and sighed with contentment. “There’s nothing like Hennessey,” I said. “And we earned it. We got through the day.”

  “We did,” Jill agreed. “Now there’s only the rest of our lives to worry about.”

  “It’ll get better,” I said.

  Jill gazed at the candelabra blazing on the mantelpiece. “I love candles,” she said. “They always make me think of college.”


  “Stuck in Chianti bottles and lined up along your dorm window to prove you were a woman of the world?”

  Jill smiled at the memory. “For me, candles meant Edna St. Vincent Millay – I loved her image of burning the candle at both ends, so you could make a lovely light.”

  I swirled my brandy, watching the amber waves hit the curved sides of the snifter. “Living at full throttle becomes less appealing as the years tick by,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Jill said. “But a wise man once told me that when it comes to life, ‘the bigger the investment, the bigger the payoff.’ ”

  “So was this sage one of your long line of lovers?” I asked.

  “No, but he was one of the few men I’ve ever truly admired. It was Ian, Jo.” The candlelight glanced off Jill’s diamond solitaire. “Did you ever realize how lucky you both were to get it right the first time?”

  “I realized,” I said.

  Jill stared at the flickering fireplace, mesmerized. “Sometimes watching your life with the kids and each other, I felt like the Little Match Girl pressing my nose against the window. I wanted that life, Jo – I still do. That’s why I’m ready to invest everything I have in Bryn.”

  “Every investment carries the possibility of loss,” I said.

  “I know. I’m not a complete idiot.” She laughed softly. “But hey, I’m the last of the red-hot Edna St. Vincent Millay fans – want to hear the best two lines she ever wrote?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Of course not.” The tone was congruent with our usual easy mockery, but when Jill turned to me her eyes shone with a terrifying hope:

  “Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:

  Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!”

  CHAPTER

  10

  It didn’t take long for the sands under Jill’s shining palace to shift dangerously. Just after midnight, my son shook me awake. “Come down to my room, Mum.” As I fumbled for my slippers, Angus babbled, “I didn’t turn the lights on because I heard somewhere they can get violent if you wake them up.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He lowered his voice. “Bryn’s sleepwalking. I was in bed just kind of staring at the wall, and she came in. Her eyes were open, but when I called her name, she didn’t hear me.” He pointed towards the graceful naked figure in the window. “Look at her. She doesn’t even know we’re here.”

  The moon played tenderly on Bryn’s flawless body, outlining her slender legs, touching on the gentle curves of her buttocks. As we watched, she pivoted slowly towards us, staring at us from wide, unseeing eyes.

  “Get her robe,” I said.

  “You’re not supposed to interfere with them,” Angus said.

  “This is a special case,” I said. “Get the robe.”

  When Angus came back, I draped Bryn’s robe around her shoulders and led her back to her room. As I pulled the covers up, I leaned close. “I know you’re faking,” I said.

  The bud of a smile touched her lips, but she didn’t say a word.

  Bryn was at the breakfast table watching the birds crowding each other at the feeder when Willie and I came down the next morning. I let Willie outside, plugged in the coffee, and sat down. It was, I suddenly realized, the first time Bryn and I had ever really been alone together.

  With her hair tied back in a schoolgirl ponytail and her face innocent of makeup, it was impossible to believe duplicity was even in Bryn’s emotional vocabulary.

  She didn’t waste the moment. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.

  “Here I am.”

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “A gorgeous, perfectly groomed, naked girl bathed in moonlight – it was just too much. Why did you do it?”

  “To get him on my side,” she said.

  The memory of Bryn’s seductiveness with the camera was fresh. “You don’t have to use your sexuality to get someone on your side,” I said.

  “It’s all I have.”

  “That’s not true. There are other ways,” I said.

  “Not for me,” she said. “I’m damaged goods. I’ve done terrible things.” She lowered her gaze. “None of them involved Angus, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Angus isn’t my only concern.”

  “That’s right,” she said angrily. “There’s Jill too. Well, I’ve done things to protect her.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “I can’t talk about it with you.”

  “Did you call the police and tell them to check the garbage bin out back?”

  Bryn froze, tense as a cornered cat. “Why would I do something like that?”

  Her antagonism was palpable. I knew I had to disarm her. “I think you did it for Jill,” I said. “To protect her. It was a generous impulse, Bryn, but you need to do more. If you knew the pill bottle was there, then you know who put it there. You have to tell someone.”

  “I’m not telling you,” she said.

  “Could you tell a psychiatrist?”

  “I don’t need another psychiatrist,” she said.

  For a few minutes we sat in an uneasy silence, then I sent up a quick prayer that the words I was about to utter would do more good than harm. “Do you want to end up like your mother?” I asked.

  The effect was electric. “What do you know about her?” Bryn said, and the fear in her voice was genuine.

  “I’ve watched Black Spikes and Slow Waves. Her future was so filled with promise, Bryn. It was terrible to watch her destroy herself.”

  “It was her choice,” Bryn said coldly.

  I leaned towards her. “Yes, and what happens to you next is your choice. I know what your father did to you. Yesterday, I saw part of the film he was making of your life.”

  Bryn jumped up so suddenly that her leg caught on the edge of the table. Tears of rage and pain filled her eyes. “Damn him,” she said. “Even after his throat is slit, he’s still hurting me.”

  I went to her. “Don’t let him,” I said. “Don’t be another woman whose life is destroyed by Evan MacLeish. You have an appointment with the psychiatrist Jill told you about at eight o’clock. Keep the appointment, Bryn. Give the doctor a chance to help you. Give yourself a chance.”

  “Will you take me?”

  “Of course, but Jill will want to do it.”

  Bryn shook her head. “I don’t want her to. I want to start fresh with her – whole, like a normal person. That’s what I was trying to do in church Christmas Eve. I wanted to be washed of sin, born again – the way those ministers on TV in the middle of the night say people can be.” She buried her face in her hands. “I know how crazy that sounds …”

  “Not crazy at all,” I said. “Why don’t you grab something to eat and get dressed. Since you’re the first appointment, Dan might be able to sneak us in a bit early.”

  Bryn and I left the house at 7:40 a.m. At 7:43, I checked my rearview mirror and spotted an all-too familiar silver Audi. Alex Kequahtooway was a skilful cop. On the day he’d graduated from the police college, he had known how to tail a car unobtrusively. That morning he didn’t make the slightest attempt to disguise his mission. Alex wanted me to know he was there. I wasn’t Bruce Willis. I had no special knowledge about how to lose a tail, and I was afraid of car chases. I continued following the route I always took to Wallace Street, observing the speed limit, stopping at lights and school zones, and exercising due caution.

  When the Audi pulled up across the road from me at Dan Kasperski’s, I ignored it. I walked Bryn briskly into the office at the back of the house, introduced her to Dan, waited till they had established a comfort zone, and beat a hasty retreat. The Audi was still there. Alex was talking on his cell. I strode up to the car and tapped on the door. He turned towards me and rolled down the window. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

  “Just wanted to commend you on your vigilance,” I said.

  “I’m not as vigilant as you are, Jo –
visiting Dan Kasperski twice in two days – once with Jill and her lawyer in tow.”

  “You had someone watching us?”

  “I was watching you. There’s been a lot of activity at your house.”

  “It’s the holiday season,” I said. “People come and go.”

  “True,” he said. “And they make telephone calls.”

  His eyes bored into me, waiting for my reaction. I met his gaze, and when I responded my voice was steady. “So the call about the prescription bottle in the garbage bin did come from my house,” I said.

  “You know I can’t confirm that.”

  “Then I guess we don’t have anything more to talk about.”

  My hand was resting on the edge of the window. For the briefest of seconds, Alex covered it with his own gloved hand. “Be careful who you trust, Jo,” he said.

  “I will,” I said. “You be careful too.”

  A fire smouldered in Dan’s fireplace. I rifled through the reading material in the magazine rack designated for the parents and caretakers of his young clients. I chose a women’s magazine I hadn’t picked up since the early days of my marriage. I’d loved the magazine then for its recipes and for its short fiction, gossamer thin plots with spunky romantic heroines. The feature article in the current issue was on sex games that would add zip to my relationship. I soldiered through “Beat the Clock” (no penetration until a pre-set timer goes off), “Spanking the Bad Girl” (no penetration until after paddling), and “The Love that Binds” (no penetration until your partner has tied you to the bedpost), but when I hit “A Close Shave” (no penetration until he’s lathered and shaved your pubic area), I knew the world had passed me by. I slid the magazine back in the rack and returned to my thoughts.

  They were not comforting. Alex had confirmed my theory that Bryn had called the police, but I didn’t know what had motivated her call. She had hinted that she was protecting Jill, but from what? Bryn prided herself on knowing what was going on. She had either witnessed or engineered the deposit of the pill bottle in the dumpster. Which was it? By the time Bryn and Dan emerged from the backyard office, the questions were multiplying exponentially, and I was longing for the uncomplicated pleasures of “A Close Shave.”