by Gail Bowen
Craig Evanson was waiting outside the door. “I thought you and Sylvie might want some privacy,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said.
“How’s the baby?” Taylor asked.
“Perfect,” Craig said. “Would you like to see her?”
“You mean today?” Taylor said.
“Why not?” Craig said.
“Jo doesn’t believe in kids skipping school for no reason.”
“Seeing a new baby is a reason,” Craig said.
Taylor looked glum. “It won’t be a reason for Jo,” she said.
“At the moment, I can’t think of a better one,” I said. I held my hand out to her. “Come on. Let’s go.”
When Manda Traynor-Evanson answered the door, she had the baby in her arms and the ginger cats, Mallory and Alex P. Kitten at her heels. Taylor didn’t know who to grab first. Manda solved the problem. She asked us to take off our coats, then she turned to Taylor.
“Would you like to stay for lunch?”
“I would,” Taylor said.
“So would I,” I said.
“Great,” said Manda. “But, Taylor, you’ll have to give me a hand with the little one. Why don’t you scoot into the family room and sit in the big brown chair. That’s the official baby-holding chair.”
When Taylor was settled, I stood behind her. Together, we looked down at the baby.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” I said.
Taylor touched the baby’s hand gently. “I didn’t know babies were born with fingernails and eyelashes,” she whispered. “I thought they grew those later, the way they grow teeth.”
“No,” I said, “they’re pretty well perfect right from the start.”
“She’s perfect,” Taylor said. Then she furrowed her brow. “Jo, what is this baby’s name?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s been so much going on. I guess we just never asked.”
“Ask,” Taylor said.
“You ask,” I said. “It won’t sound so dumb coming from a kid.”
Manda was standing in the doorway. “What won’t sound so dumb?”
“That we don’t know your baby’s name,” Taylor said.
Manda grinned. “Her name is Grace. After we’d bored everybody to death asking for advice and bought every book, we named her after Craig’s mother.”
I looked at the baby. Her hair was dark and silky, and her mouth was as delicate as a rosette on a Victorian Valentine. “Grace suits her,” I said.
Lunch was fun. When Craig came home, he set up a table in the family room, so we could watch the birds at the bird-feeder while we ate. Manda had warmed up a casserole of tofu lasagna, so I was glad Taylor was distracted. When we’d had our fill of tofu, Craig and I cleared the dishes, and Taylor played with the cats while Manda fed Grace. Then we all drank camomile tea from thick blue mugs and talked about babies.
“If Grace had been a boy, what were you going to call him?” Taylor asked.
“Craig, Jr.,” Manda said, shifting the baby on her hip. “We’ll save it for the next one if that’s okay with you.”
“That’s okay with me,” Taylor said. “It’s not a good name for a cat.”
“Did I miss something here?” Craig asked.
“Taylor still hasn’t named her kitten,” I said.
Manda shrugged. “I’ve got a stack of baby name books over there, Taylor. If you like, you can take them with you when you go. We’ve already got a name for Kid Number Two, and when Number Three comes along, I’ll get the books back.”
Craig turned to Taylor. “You’re welcome to the books,” he said, “but I think I know a name that might work. It’s the name of the man who’s the patron saint of artists: ‘Benet.’ ”
“Benet,” Taylor repeated the name thoughtfully. “What do you think, Jo?”
“I like it,” I said.
“So do I,” Taylor said. “Because if my cat’s name is Benet, I can call him Benny for short, and I really like the name Benny.”
The wind was coming up as Taylor and I walked home. When we got to our corner, I saw that the boys had turned the outside Christmas lights on. The day had turned grey and cold, and the lights in front of our house were a welcoming sight. Even Jack O’Lantern looked good. During the long mild spell, his centre of gravity had shifted. From a distance, the lights inside him made him look like an exotic Central American pot.
Taylor ran ahead. She couldn’t wait to tell Benny that, at long last, he had a name. Halfway up our walk, she wheeled around and waved her arms at me. “It’s snowing,” she yelled. “We’re going to have snow for Christmas.”
I looked up at the sky. Storm clouds were rolling in from the north, and with them the promise of a world that would soon be white and pure again.
A Killing Spring
CHAPTER
1
In the twenty-five years I had known Julie Evanson-Gallagher, I had wished many things on her. Still, I would never have wished that her new husband would be found in a rooming house on Scarth Street, dead, with a leather hood over his head, an electric cord around his neck, and a lacy garter belt straining to pull a pair of sheer black stockings over his muscular thighs.
I was on my way to my seminar in Politics and the Media when Inspector Alex Kequahtooway of the Regina Police Force called to tell me that the landlady of the Scarth Street house had found Reed Gallagher’s body an hour earlier and that he wanted someone who knew Julie with him when he broke the news. Although my relationship with Reed Gallagher had not been a close one, I felt my nerves twang. Alex’s description of Reed Gallagher’s death scene was circumspect, but I didn’t require graphics to understand why Julie would need shoring up when she heard about the manner in which her husband had gone to meet his Maker.
On the Day of Judgement, God’s interest might lie in what is written in the human heart, but Julie’s judgements had always been pretty firmly rooted in what was apparent to the human eye. Discovering she was the widow of a man who had left the world dressed like RuPaul was going to be a cruel blow. Alex was right; she’d need help. But when he pressed me for a name, I had a hard time thinking of anyone who’d be willing to sign on.
“Jo, I don’t mean to rush you …” On the other end of the line, Alex’s voice was insistent.
“I’m trying,” I said. “But Julie isn’t exactly overburdened with friends. She can be a viper. You saw that yourself when she paraded you around at her wedding reception.”
“Mrs. Gallagher was being enlightened,” he said tightly, “showing everyone she didn’t mind that you’d brought an aboriginal to the party.”
“I wanted to shove her face into the punch bowl.”
“You’d never make a cop, Jo. Lesson one at the police college is ‘learn to de-personalize.’ ”
“Can they really teach you how to do that?”
“Sure. If they couldn’t, I’d have been back on Standing Buffalo Reserve after my first hour on the beat. Now, come on, give me a name. Mrs. Gallagher may be unenlightened but she’s about thirty minutes away from the worst moment of her life.”
“And she shouldn’t be alone, but I honestly don’t know who to call. I think the only family she has are her son and her ex-husband, and she’s cut herself off from both of them.”
“People come together in a crisis.”
“They do, if they know there’s a crisis. But Alex, I don’t know how to get in touch with either Mark or Craig. Mark’s studying at a Bible college in Texas, but I’m not sure where, and Craig called me last week to tell me he and his new family were on their way to Disney World.”
I looked out my office window. It was March 17, and the campus, suspended between the bone-chilling beauty of winter and the promise of spring, was bleak. Except for the slush that had been shovelled off the roads and piled in soiled ribbons along the curbs, the snow was gone, and the brilliant cobalt skies of midwinter had dulled to gunmetal grey. To add to the misery, that morning the city had been hit by a wind-stor
m. Judging from the way the students outside my window were being blown across the parking lot as they ran for their cars, it appeared the rotten weather wasn’t letting up.
“I wish I was in the Magic Kingdom,” I said.
“I’m with you,” Alex said. “I’ve never been a big fan of Minnie and Mickey, but they’d be better company than that poor guy in the room upstairs. Jo, that is one grotesque crime scene, but the media are going to love it. Once they get wind of how Reed Gallagher died, they’re going to be on this rooming house like ducks on a June bug. I have to get to Julie Gallagher before one of them beats me to it.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I know you aren’t crazy about Mrs. G.,” he said, “but I’ve been through this scene with the next of kin enough times to know that she’s going to need somebody with her who isn’t a cop.”
“I was just on my way to teach,” I said. “I’ll have to do something about my class.” I looked at my watch. “I can meet you in front of Julie’s place at twenty after three.”
“Gallagher’s identification says he lives at 3870 Lakeview Court,” he said. “Those are the condos, right?”
“Right,” I said.
After I hung up, I waited for the tone, then I dialled Tom Kelsoe’s extension. This was the second year Tom and I had co-taught the Political Science 371 seminar. He was a man whose ambitions reached far beyond a Saskatchewan university, and whenever he heard opportunity knocking, I covered his classes for him. He owed me a favour; in fact, he owed me many favours, but as I listened to the phone ringing unanswered in his office, I remembered that this was the day Tom Kelsoe’s new book was being launched. Today of all days, Tom was hardly likely to jump at the chance to pay back a colleague for past favours. It appeared that our students were out of luck. I grabbed my coat, stuffed a set of unmarked essays into my briefcase, made up a notice saying Political Science 371 was cancelled, and headed out the door.
When I turned the corner into the main hall, Kellee Savage was getting out of the elevator. She spotted me and waved, then she started limping down the hall towards me. Behind her, she was dragging the little cart she used to carry her books.
“Professor Kilbourn, I need to talk to you before class.”
“Can you walk along with me, Kellee?” I asked. “I have to cancel the class, and I’m late.”
“I know you’re late. I’ve already been to the seminar room.” She reached into her cart, pulled out a book and thrust it at me. “Look what was on the table at the place where I sit.”
I glanced at the cover. “Sleeping Beauty,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“Read the note inside.”
I opened the book. The letter, addressed to Kellee, detailed the sexual acts it would take to awaken her from her long sleep. The descriptions were as prosaic and predictable as the graffiti on the wall of a public washroom. But there was something both original and cruel in the parallel the writer had drawn between Kellee and Sleeping Beauty.
Shining fairies bringing gifts of comeliness, grace, and charm might have crowded one another out at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, but they had been in short supply the day Kellee Savage was born. She was not more than five feet tall, and misshapen. One shoulder hunched higher than the other, and her neck was so short that her head seemed to be jammed against her collarbone. She didn’t bother with eye makeup. She must have known that no mascara on earth could beautify her eyes, which goggled watery and blue behind the thick lenses of her glasses, but she took pains with her lipstick and with her hair, which she wore long and caught back by the kind of fussy barrettes little girls sometimes fancy.
She was a student at the School of Journalism, but she had been in my class twice: for an introductory course in Political Science and now in the seminar on Politics and the Media. Three times a week I passed her locker on the way to my first-year class; she was always lying in wait for me with a question or an opinion she wanted verified. She wasn’t gifted, but she was more dogged than any student I’d ever known. At the beginning of term when she’d asked permission to tape my lectures, she’d been ingenuous: “I have to get good grades because that’s all I’ve got going for me.”
I held the book out to her. “Kellee, I think you should take this to the Student Union. There’s an office there that deals with sexual-harassment cases.”
“They don’t believe me.”
“You’ve been there already?”
“I’ve been there before. Many times.” She steeled herself. “This isn’t the first incident. They think I’m making the whole thing up. They’re too smart to say that, but I know they think I’m crazy because …” She lowered her eyes.
“Because of what?” I asked.
“Because of the name of the person who’s doing these things to me.” She looked up defiantly. “It’s Val Massey.”
“Val?” I said incredulously.
Kellee caught my tone. “Yes, Val,” she said, spitting his name out like an epithet. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”
This time it was my turn to look away. The truth was I didn’t believe her. Val Massey was in the Politics and the Media seminar. He was good-looking and smart and focused. It seemed inconceivable that he would risk an assured future for a gratuitous attack on Kellee Savage.
Kellee’s voice was thick with tears. “You’re just like the people at the Harassment Office. You think I’m imagining this, that I wrote the letter myself because I’m …”
“Kellee, sometimes, the stress of university, especially at this time of year …”
“Forget it. Just forget it. I should have known that it was too good to last.”
“That what was too good to last?”
She was crying now, and I reached out to her, but she shook me off. “Leave me alone,” she said, and she clomped noisily down the hall. She stopped at the elevator and began jabbing at the call button. When the doors opened, she turned towards me.
“Today’s my birthday,” she sobbed. “I’m twenty-one. I’m supposed to be happy, but this is turning out to be the worst day of my life.”
“Kellee, I …”
“Shut up,” she said. “Just shut the hell up.” Then she stepped into the elevator and disappeared from sight.
She hadn’t taken Sleeping Beauty with her. I looked at the face of the fairy-tale girl on the cover. Every feature was flawless. I sighed, slid the book into my briefcase, and headed down the hall.
Class was supposed to start at 3:00, and it was 3:10 when I got to the seminar room. The unwritten rule of university life is that, after waiting ten minutes for an instructor, students can leave. I had made it just under the wire, and there were groans as I walked through the door. When he saw me, Val Massey gave me a small conspiratorial smile; I smiled back, then looked at the place across the table from him where Kellee Savage usually sat. It was empty.
“Sorry,” I said. “Something’s come up. No class today.”
Jumbo Hryniuk, a young giant who was planning a career hosting “Monday Night Football” but who was saddled nonetheless with my class, pushed back his chair and roared with delight. “Hey, all right!” he said. “We can get an early start on the green beer at the Owl, and somebody told me Tom Kelsoe’s publishers are picking up the tab for the drinks at that party for him tonight.”
Val Massey stood and began putting his books into his backpack. He imbued even this mechanical gesture with an easy and appealing grace. “Tom’s publishers know how to court students,” he said quietly. He looked at me. “Are you going to be there?”
“Absolutely,” I said. “Students aren’t the only people Tom’s publishers know how to court.” Then I wrote a reading assignment on the board, told them I hoped I’d see them all at the launch, and headed for the parking lot.
There was a cold rain falling, and the wind from the north was so fierce that it seemed to pound the rain into me. My parking spot was close, and I ran all the way, but I was still soaked to the skin by t
he time I slid into the driver’s seat. It was shaping up to be an ugly day.
As I waited for the traffic to slow on the parkway, I looked back towards the campus. In the more than twenty years the new campus of the university had existed, not many politicians had been able to resist a speech praising their role in transforming scrub grass and thin topsoil into a shining city on the plain. I had written a few of those rhetorical flourishes myself, but that day as I watched the thin wind-driven clouds scudding off the flatlands, I felt a chill. Set against the implacable menace of a prairie storm, the university seemed insubstantial and temporary, like a theatre set that could be struck at any moment. I was glad when there was a break in the traffic, and I was able to drive towards the city.
Wascana Park was deserted. The joggers and the walkers and the young mums with strollers had been forced indoors by the rain, and I had the road that wound through the park to myself. There was nothing to keep me from thinking about Julie and about how I was going to handle the next few hours. But perversely, the more I tried to focus on the future, the more my mind was flooded with images of the past.
Julie and I shared a quarter-century of memories, but I would have been hard pressed to come up with one that warmed my heart. C.S. Lewis once said that happy people move towards happiness as unerringly as experienced travellers head for the best seat on the train. In the time I’d known her, Julie had invariably headed straight for the misery, and she had always made certain she had plenty of seatmates.
Craig Evanson and my late husband, Ian, had started in provincial politics together in the seventies. In the way of the time, Julie and I had been thrown together as wives and mothers. From the first, I had found her brittle perfection alienating, but I had liked and respected her husband. So did everyone else. Craig wasn’t the brightest light on the porch, but he was principled and hardworking.